Meet Mac Watson

We recently connected with Mac Watson and have shared our conversation below.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

My name is Mac Watson and I’m a Canadian film multihyphenate — actor, writer, director, producer, and sometime VFX coordinator. After seven years in Toronto, an undergrad degree in political science, and after one particularly demoralizing commercial audition, I decided it was time to pursue my lifelong dream of going to film school. That’s what brought me to the U.S. in the first place — I moved to LA in 2017 after I was accepted into UCLA’s MFA Producers Program and have amassed eclectic life and work experience in the years here since.

I have always loved to write and tapped out my first full-length screenplay at age 13 (on the family PC without Final Draft). I found my love of acting when I discovered theater in high school. I earned my MFA in producing to learn how to make movies and, this year, I made my directorial debut with my film Last Laugh.

As I mentioned, my “day job” is working in production/post-production, and I had the privilege of working as a VFX coordinator on this summer’s Superman, which was an incredible and inspiring experience. After wrapping that gig in June 2024, I moved home to Canada to live with my parents and save money and focus solely on making MY film.

This project is a true labor of love and has been many years in the making. I first wrote the feature-length screenplay on which the short film is based in 2022 and in the years since, have been slowly chipping away at adapting it into a short script that I could feasibly (with a successful crowdfunding campaign, an incredible team, and some luck) shoot. It was very important to me to prove I was the one to tell this story by both directing it and playing the lead role.

We shot the film in March in Los Angeles with an incredible team of collaborators, some new to me and others dating back to the UCLA film school days. We picture-locked the film in early October and have been submitting to film festivals since. I can’t wait to finally share this story with the world. It’s been a long time coming. I’ve wanted to direct movies since I was eight years old! And damn it, I did it. Our team hopes to get to make the feature-length version off the momentum of Last Laugh’s festival run.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1) Don’t talk about doing it, just do it. Take tiny little steps each day. It’s so difficult as a creative in the film industry because many or even most of us have to have “day jobs.” And for me, as an immigrant on an O1 visa, that job needs to be within the film industry, which limits things. Working a full-time job in addition to pursuing and furthering your creative dreams is exhausting and difficult. But if you want to make something, and you are dying to say something, as I was before I started to write the Last Laugh feature over three years ago, you must find a way. I had a postcard that sat on my desk for the last five years that read, “Find a Way.” It doesn’t have to be the path everyone else takes and it doesn’t need to be all at once, but if you want something, take that first step toward it. Tiny little steps. Every day.

2) Be patient. I’m terrible at this, but it’s necessary in this business. Sometimes you have to work a full-time job and put your dreams on hold for a bit, that’s okay. Your dreams are still there! It helped me to remember to just take those tiny, little steps. I eventually got there and directed my first movie! It wasn’t on the timeline I initially dreamt up for myself, but the sooner you learn that life’s got other plans and timelines and surrender to that, the better.

3) Your work, and what you’re trying to say, have to matter to you, deeply. Last Laugh is inspired by autobiographical elements, so pulling from my lived experience was an endless well of inspiration. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t difficult. It was. Writing about your own pain is so hard, and also very cathartic. When I set out to make this movie, I knew I had so much to say. About the lived experience of being in a woman’s body in this world, about power, sexual exploitation, and the grey areas in between, about Hollywood and #MeToo and what has been and hasn’t been accomplished. About the state of a world where being a sexual predator simply isn’t a social handicap. These thoughts and feelings were spilling out of me and realizing them onscreen was one of the most fulfilling accomplishments of my life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://macwatson.me
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/himacwatson
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/watsonmackenzie
• Other: Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user85589008

Image Credits

Editorial photos & behind-the-scenes photos by: Gerard Gutierrez
Film stills from Last Laugh by: Cinematographer Adam Jacob Lee & Director Mac Watson