Chris Kato’s Stories, Lessons & Insights

We’re looking forward to introducing you to Chris Kato. Check out our conversation below.

Chris, a huge thanks to you for investing the time to share your wisdom with those who are seeking it. We think it’s so important for us to share stories with our neighbors, friends and community because knowledge multiples when we share with each other. Let’s jump in: What’s more important to you—intelligence, energy, or integrity?
Integrity. Lex Luthor and most major supervillains are intelligent. Intelligence is a value of mine, but I believe it also requires compassion, and it often doesn’t. Energy is certainly enviable but is useless by itself. Energy requires some sort of motivating factor. Integrity, on the other hand, requires a set of values that need to be adhered to and a conscience that keeps one in check. If I had to put my trust in anybody that held only one of those three qualities, it would be the person with integrity. You’re lucky to find a lot of it in this business. (laughs)

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Chris Kato, and I’m an actor, screenwriter, and filmmaker, splitting my time between Southern California and the Pacific Northwest. I think what makes me unique is my background working with troubled youth. I spent years working at a juvenile detention facility, primarily in mental health units, and currently work in a juvenile psych ward. It’s not only given me an invaluable perspective on life experience, which is paramount to telling stories, but I think it’s also been the single biggest game-changer in my personal and professional life. Those kids make me appreciate what I have and make me strive to be a better person. I’ve actually written a pilot based on my time at the juvenile detention facility, and if it actually goes anywhere, I’m sure my experience at the psych wards will work its way into the story, as well. I believe it’s one of the strongest pieces of writing I’ve done, certainly the most authentic.

Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
As a child, I thought I could plan my life out – career, marriage, kids, etc. Clearly, that’s not true. It’s always fun to daydream about what you’ll do when you get older, but once it’s here, it becomes really humbling. It’s like that saying, “God laughs when you make plans,” or something like that. I wanted to emulate certain actors’ careers, and I’m way off schedule for any of those. But the truth is, the business has also changed immensely since those actors started and the pandemic changed everything. Nobody could’ve predicted any of it. So now I have to be a multi-hyphenate and roll with the punches, and just do my best to put my best work out there and leave it to the fates to decide what happens to me and I’ll try not to let it affect me as a person as best I can.

What fear has held you back the most in your life?
The fear of not having control. Like I said, if something didn’t align with how it worked out for someone else, there was a good chance I would’ve avoided it. I might’ve said this before, but for the longest time I was afraid of being known as a writer because I was afraid of how it would impact me as an actor, that no one would hire a writer to act in movies when I identified more strongly as an actor and felt (and still feel) like that’s my strongest skillset. I’ve done the Sylvester Stallone thing of turning down opportunities for my script because the filmmaker or company was hesitant about hiring me as an actor in the part I wrote for myself. In some cases, I made the right call because I do believe I need to play that role, but other roles I feel I shouldn’t have been so precious about. Now that I’m at the point where I would rather be known as a writer than nothing at all, opportunities began presenting themselves and I’ve been more humble about taking them.

So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
That it’s about anything other than money. Especially now, in the age of piracy and consumers feeling entitled to watch whatever they want without paying for it, studios and companies are mitigating their risks as much as possible by “playing it safe” and rehashing what’s worked in the past. People complaining that there’s not enough diversity, as true as that may be, at the end of the day, it’s about the money. There are certainly filmmakers out there committed to making original stories, but unless they have a track record of making money, those filmmakers are often fighting uphill battles and are forced to mitigate their risks by hiring actors off a certain list that changes every day. I hear some companies say they’re committed to telling original stories, and it makes me want to vomit. That said, audiences have a role to play here. If you’re only going to see Marvel movies and remakes in theaters and pirating the cool, low-budget original movies coming out, you’re contributing to the problem. If you have an issue with the lack of diversity and you never see women-led or BIPOC-led movies when they’re released in theaters, studios are gonna think those movies aren’t making money and will be less incentivized to “take that risk,” even though it has nothing to do with that filmmaker or those actors. It doesn’t matter how good the reviews are. Like I said, money is the only thing that talks.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What will you regret not doing? 
Keeping at it. I have a full-time job and a full-time career. The job helps me pursue the career. It’s exhausting, and it’s so tempting to give up the career I’ve been pursuing since I was a teenager just to have more time to myself, to travel, to explore, to start a family, to go on vacation, to watch movies, and play more video games, which is a hobby I often neglect because of the time commitment video games are. But I know the minute I give it up, I would feel incomplete. And that emptiness would stick with me for the rest of my life. I love movies. I love theater. And any time I watch anything, I would be reminded of how I could have contributed to it and wondering if I gave up too soon. This is not advice for others, by the way. Everyone has their limits, and if you feel like you would be just fine watching or experiencing things rather than creating them and would feel just as fulfilled, more power to you. It is enviable in a sense. I do feel like I’m a prisoner to my commitment and the idea of freedom from this idea is compelling.

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Image Credits
Maya Zibung Jones, Chris Kato, Christopher J. Tomlinson

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