We were lucky to catch up with Tim Carr recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tim, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

The most meaningful project I have ever been a part of is something I do called the L.U.C.Y. Initiative (Lucy was my dog who passed away a few years ago, I named this after her because please trust me, when I say, she was a very, very good girl) L.U.C.Y. Stands for “Life, Unity, Community, You”.

I’d realized this needed to come together, as I’d been volunteering a lot in my communities, but I wanted to pivot to a position where I could get involved more… (we’ll talk about pivots in a little bit) where maybe I could create more of a direct pipeline to provide for those who need it, for example, I’ve been able to donate clothing, fresh socks, shoes, athletic equipment, new coats etc, but through my work with L.U.C.Y., I was able to plug myself in directly, where I could donate to 40+ local organizations that get these items to those in need, immediately.

I am currently able to go off and coach Special Olympics athletes in the age of 3 years to 7 years old, directly now, to encourage these children to keep working hard, to keep striving for the things that they love in life. We get involved in programs for military veterans, we get involved with Habitat for Humanity, March of Dimes, I was just in Washington DC with my friends at Surfrider to talk to Congress about the oceans. I’m able to expand the scope of how and where I can help, all under The L.U.C.Y. Initiative.

Even better? I can get involved, but my family now gets involved, my friends get involved, we’re now part of a community looking to help other communities. I find that it brings out the best in us. There’s a saying that “negativity can breed negativity” but maybe if that’s true, it can work the other way too.

The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, but modern humanity has only existed for about 200,000 years, and of those 200,000 years? The life expectancy of humans is 76 years old. That means we’re only around for .0038% of the time. Not 38%, but .0038%. I find myself questioning those who use their .0038% of the time that they get… to judge others on how they may live, or how they love, or demanding to speak to the manager. That seems like poor time management. We can always do better. Please don’t think that this is my campaign to run for Pope, or anything like that, I just think we can always at least try and lend a helping hand when we can.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I was a bit of a professional “new kid” growing up, about every couple years it’d be a new city or town or school. This isn’t a bad thing, I’m really proud that I still have friends from every one of those eras.

You know how, growing up, you would see kids that had really natural gifts? Some can do math really well, or some were really fast runners, maybe some could play basketball really well, know what mine was?

I didn’t have one. But know what I was good at? Saturday Night Live. Yes, I was good at watching a television show.

I didn’t understand all of the jokes, but I knew when a joke was “killing”. So, my first instinct was to immediately repeat those jokes word for word. I’d still like to apologize to all of my neighbors, when I was about 6 or 7 years old and I’d learned and repeated the Tim Kazurinsky “Four on the floor-gasm” bit from Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update”. When I’d get my hands on old Eddie Murphy SNL clips? I’d get in trouble, a LOT. That just made me realize it was all working, and I needed to do it more and more often and much, much louder. If you see Eddie’s SNL’s clips even now, almost 40 years later, they are still really funny.

This kept going into my teens. Teen years… when there are so many “epiphanies”, when so many young people get an idea of what they want to do, or how they might want to spend their lives. People that I knew were getting college scholarships, signing up for internships, learning a vocation or studying for the SAT’s. For me? My epiphany was when I saw the film “The Jerk” with Steve Martin. I didn’t know how to make a living like that, but I knew if someone could tell a story like that… a story about a guy who gets into all of these random and funny adventures just because he finally found his “rhythm”, I knew, that if a job like that existed… I wanted to do THAT.

So fast forward a whole bunch of years, a whole bunch of jobs in showbiz, like acting, writing, directing, commercials, more infomercials than I’ll ever remember, I’m the poster boy for a few different sandwich places, I’ve even done roles in “Afterschool Special” types of programs, I remember one specifically, that was about everyone being mean to a kid because he has asthma. I’ve done these jobs non-stop over the years and in a whole bunch of cities.

In that time, have I ever been able to be as funny as “The Jerk”? No. But I’m still out there. Catching flights, catching trains, jumping into cars. (“Planes, Trains and Automobiles”, see what I did there? That movie also had Steve Martin in it, and it was also excellent) trying to tell some stories, trying to find my rhythm, and trying to find and show the best version of myself.

I am very aware my career is more “oh, hey, aren’t you that guy from that thing?” and I am fine with that. It’s my job to be out there telling stories, so if anyone remembers me from anything? It’s a great, great honor.

Right now, I’m in a TV series called “The Grounders” which is this beautiful, wild ride of a TV show that feels a little bit like “Parks and Recreation” meets “Stranger Things” and when it finds its home, I’ll be excited for you all to see it. I finished writing a project and it’s definitely something I’d written out of my comfort zone called “The Monday Project”. It’s funny and sad and strange all at once, I have no idea what it is, or what it could be. I have two films coming out with a great streaming service, which I may be able to talk about soon. I’m in talks with a movie star I really admire about doing a movie together that I’ve written, and depending on how negotiations go with the Writer’s Guild and the upcoming negotiations with the director’s guild and actor’s guild, that may be the timetable on the “if”, “how”, and “when” it might get made.

In this world there are always ups, there will always be downs, I just hope we can all just keep moving, and looking out for one another.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

There’s so much. Though, I’m not sure I love the word “non creatives” I think I prefer “those, logical enough to go have another job”, I am grateful to have many different people who do many different jobs in my life. But I think for anyone in this business, chances are they will likely find all sorts of issues in their lives of creativity, which may be almost impossible to explain to those not in this world, for example…

We don’t work every day. We don’t work normal hours. That in itself, is a strange thing. I just finished doing this incredible TV show called “The Grounders”, and I remember we filmed multiple days, around the holidays, so when folks in “normal” jobs were planning holiday activities, we may have been shooting on nights or on weekends, which is all part of the job.

I have found the schedule discrepancies have been the most consistent issue over the years. There are many “where’s Tim?” “Oh, he’s in New York ’til at least 3am Monday morning” type of conversations, that my loved ones have likely had to have.

Another common factor in this business, is that rejection happens, quite literally, all of the time, like, around the clock. I think this business is 99% rejection, and sometimes that rejection comes in brand new ways. For example, there was a higher profile film I was in consideration for a few months, guess who told me I didn’t get it? A lady at the gym, who’d heard about me not getting it before I heard about me not getting it. One time in the course of about six months, I had been scheduled to have a recurring role on 2 television shows, one time a friend, not even in this business… called me to tell me that the show had gotten cancelled, and another time I was in a meeting in NYC and was talking about the show, and how I was working that following Monday the executive simply said “No you’re not. Show got cancelled 15 minutes ago”.

Sometimes you’ll go from town to town, show to show, hotel to hotel, just working, and maybe, if you’re lucky, 4% of all of that work is available for people to see. Sometimes, things run regionally, some shows get delayed for years, some things just never come out. All we can do, is not worry about what “might” happen and just do the best work that we can.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Everything and everyone can benefit from a pivot, sometimes. Right now this very second, there is a writer’s strike, and I support the writers getting their fair share, because they deserve it. So how does showbiz stay afloat while a fair deal hopefully gets worked out? Would maybe live comedy or improv shows be a source of entertainment right now? There is some experimental theater, there are all sorts of things we can do and see, but that does mean that we may need to get out of our comfort zone and try some things.

I’ve always felt that a pivot was absolutely necessary for me to have a career. When I first got on a TV show, I thought it was “easy street”, I thought it was just a matter of time before Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorcese were giving me a call, but I wasn’t even able to get an agent at that point. So, I ended up signing a deal as a model/actor type (that is called a “slasher” like “actor slash model slash spokesperson” and if it sounds familiar, it’s because it was a joke in “Zoolander”, but I assure you, it is a very real thing). So, for me to make money, I ended up getting out of my comfort zone a bit and taking a different path. Wildy enough, there were times where I made way more money being a spokesperson (traveling from town to town giving out samples of products, almost like a live commercial) than as a model or actor. So, pivoting to get that deal, did help.

Later when the acting income was steady (or at least “more steady”) I’d realized over the course of about 18 months, I’d worked, but basically played the same “type” of character in everything. So, it was time to pivot again, It was a cold gray night, in a cold gray town and I’d gone downstairs to a cold gray basement, and I wrote a 10-20 page script. What was it? Was it theater? No, it wasn’t theater, and the reason it wasn’t theater… was because it got rejected from a One Act Play festival. It became a short film. That I directed. So, I made a pivot from consciously trying to play a different type of role, but also pivoted to “writer/director” (see? A slasher again. Writer-Slash-Director. “Zoolander” really got so many things correct in that film)

That short film ended up playing EVERYWHERE. New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, Philly, Germany, India etc but before it played all of those places, it premiered at a film festival. A director was there. 2 weeks after that premiere, that director offered me one of the leading roles in his next film. See? That pivot in that cold gray basement, getting out of a comfort zone where I knew there was work and income, I was able to go off and do a truly unique role in a truly unique film.

After that? It was time to let lightning strike twice. I wrote another short film. THIS time, I was going to pivot away from the feedback of the first film, which reviews called “cute” and “harmless”, I was going to pivot to a film that was weirder and edgier. And guess what? It failed. Pivots are necessary, but aren’t always a home run.

Same goes for life. People evolve all of the time, I have really great friends, and the reason why we’re still all friends after many, many years, is because we support one another when life needs that natural pivot.    

Contact Info:

• Website: www.parkinglotfilms.net
• Instagram: nottimcarr (I’ll follow you all back, let’s be friends)
• Linkedin: ParkingLotFilms
• Twitter: ParkingLotFilms
• Other: IMDB: www.imdb.me/TimCarr

Image Credits
Picture 1 Jennifer Beers https://jenniferbeersphotography.com/ Picture 2 Jennifer Beers https://jenniferbeersphotography.com/ Picture 3 Brooklyn, NY Picture 4 Joey DiCamillo III Picture 5 Bryan Andrew Picture 6 Jerry Habraken Picture 7 Poster “The Grounders” Picture 8 Poster “The L.U.C.Y. Initiative”