We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Loren Hayes. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Loren below.
Hi Loren, so happy to have you with us today and there is so much we want to ask you about. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others developed certain skills or qualities that we are struggling with can be helpful. Along those lines, we’d love to hear from you about how you developed your ability to take risk?
Thank you so much for saying that! Yeah, I mean on some level I think everything I do involves a kind of… willful disregard for risk, if not actively pursuing it. I’ve always been prone to avoiding or neglecting things that come easy, because if there’s not an element of risk involved I find it difficult to identify the value in acquiring it.
Okay, that makes me sound like a nightmare of a human being. And every bad date you’ve ever had. Sorry.
On some level, I think risk-taking is baked into the bones of me and always has been, but I haven’t always been good at getting past being frozen by anxiety and just… doing it scared. So that’s probably the first part. I’m an actor with no family name, no trust fund and no connections; I’m a writer only motivated to put words on paper when what I have to say is terrifying to me; I’m a producer by necessity and the skin of my teeth. Every step of my journey has been terrifying, risky, a fundamental rejection of a stable life in favor of a true one. And the common denominator has been being terrified, and being so obsessed that it doesn’t matter.
Maybe I am an adrenaline junkie. But I think the answer is don’t fear risk, just look at it as another resource at your disposal. Your capacity for risk fluctuates just like your bank account.
I don’t want to discount that the above statement is fairly bleeding with privilege — I grew up in Kentucky, the only child of a single mom, a teacher whose village was primarily her sister and her sister’s husband (both attorneys), and the focus afforded to an only child, combined with the ability to graduate with no debt via scholarships, gave me the space to be able to develop a capacity for risk in a safe way. But also, in order to be who I am (nonbinary, queer, a person striving for success in one of the most difficult industries in the world to find a path forward in) I can’t just tolerate risk — I have to be a little enamored by it. How much risk can I afford? Is this risk worth it? What about that one?
Conceptualizing it affords me opportunities that expand in strange ways with every swing that I have no right to take. I’m not where I wanna be, or even close, but I’m working on things I’m absolutely fixated on, which makes the risk worth it.
An example:
At the moment, I’m in the tail end of crowdfunding a short film I wrote called BELLY BELLY, an LQBTQ+ body horror satire about connection, compulsion, and body obsession inspired by Cronenberg, Mimi Cave, Ari Aster, and Bong Joon Ho. Every single part of this process has been a risk – the piece is a fictionalized, grotesque depiction of my own struggles with an eating disorder that took over my entire brain for longer than I’d like to admit.
Turning this into a full fledged project meant pulling artfully arranging the things I’m most deeply ashamed of for public consumption. Writing it was already flaying myself open. Then I had to *share* it. I had to *market* it, I had to hustle for funding from my own network and find a way to manipulate every skill I have at my disposal to produce the thing. Now we’re about to jump into principal photography, which means letting go of “my” thing and placing it in the hands of a director and allowing it to become something entirely new. And while I trust the incredibly talented Gabriel Carnick with my life, there’s no part of letting go that is easy. All of this to say — there hasn’t been a single moment of this process that isn’t the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. It’s worth it, though. Find your worth it, do it scared.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I spoke about this above, (see also, OBSESSIVE!) but I’m pretty laser-focused on the projects I’m working on right now. BELLY BELLY is in its final few days of fundraising, and I’ve gone off about it at length here: https://seedandspark.
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?
Oh, this is an easy one:
1) Curiosity – curiosity about your own craft, curiosity about others, and the desire to soak up as much knowledge as you can from weird and disparate sources is a foundational skill to making anything. Develop this by paying attention to what YOU genuinely find compelling and follow that thread to its logical conclusion.
2) Effective writing – learn to write. I’m being so for real. Learn to write for a variety of audiences, learn to be compelling. It’s a skill you can capitalize on in so many different aspects and the ability to distill everything going on inside of you to a package you can externalize is impossibly useful. Best way to do this is to read – read screenplays, read articles, read classic literature, read romance novels, read spicy fanfiction. Doesn’t matter. Just read.
3) Move – both in terms of developing a movement practice that feels good in your body, and in a broader “travel, talk to strangers, teach yourself that you have endless capacity for reinvention” sort of way.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I’m always seeking to expand my collaborative network! I mean, there’s the mercenary answer which is “I seek people with the technical skills I lack to build a team to create with for future projects”, but more importantly, I look for people who are curious, genuine, self reflective, and sensitive… because I find that those people tend to make the most interesting work.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lorenhayes.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/indomitablelulu
- Other: https://seedandspark.com/fund/belly-belly#story
Image Credits
Aaron Soffer Cory Graves Hannah Burnett
