Meet Thomas Fowler

We were lucky to catch up with Thomas Fowler recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Thomas, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

An insane persistence and purpose. Nothing makes me feel more fulfilled than telling stories and entertaining people. As a result, no matter what’s going on in life I’ll find a way to write or make a short film happen. It may take longer than expected, and it often does. Life gets in the way: mental health issues strike when you least expect, family needs you, work is frenetic. The list gets long and scary fast. But if something matters to you, you’ll find time to pursue it. Even if it’s just a small step, it’s impressive how quickly it adds up. If you write two pages of a script a day, you’ll have a first draft done in two months.

And with purpose, I’ve only ever wanted to be a writer since high school. Movies are such a big part of my life. While I didn’t admit it initially, being in a near-life-ending car accident gave me a sense of survivor’s guilt in that I needed to earn the life I was provided. When I was 17, three friends and I were in a massive car accident. The impact was so intense that the rear seat came out with me and my friend buckled into it. We t-boned a Suburban in a small Geo Metro, which sent me flying into the frame of the car, breaking two of my vertebrae, shattering my right orbital, and crushing my lower intestines. That car accident should have left me paralyzed, blind in one eye, or even dead. Yet here I am, none of those things. Some would call it lucky. It also felt like I was spared a horrific outcome, and therefore I have to do something exceptional with this life I’ve been gifted.

A pretty heavy answer for why I’m resilient, I know. But it’s got a two-sided answer, one based on passion, another on purpose.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I’m a storyteller. I’ve been an author, screenwriter, playwright, and content creator. If there’s a story to be told, I’m there! It started with me writing plays in high school. Nothing got made until college with a one-act play I wrote, a short play, and a bunch of skits I did through improv and theater. My friends and I were doing a dinner theater production together and it led to doing video production and our first feature. From there, I entered a decade-long run in advertising, and now I’m in filmmaking while also helping organizations tell their impactful stories through marketing.

My stories are always emotional. It doesn’t matter if it’s comedic or heartbreaking, whatever emotion a reader or audience member should feel at the moment I want them to feel intensely. It’s why my production company, Gracious Monsters, is built on “telling emotional stories in fantastic worlds.”

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

First was a true passion for films. When I was a kid, and this isn’t exaggerating at all, my parents would take me to the theater and I was enamored at a young age. I insisted on staying through the end credits. My love for movies has gone nowhere. My Letterboxd account gets a lot of logs every month. It’s just who I am. By watching movies, absorbing behind-the-scenes footage, and reading screenplays, it helps me understand every facet of filmmaking in any way I can. Those kinds of things can be a film school if you don’t go to film school.

The second would be finding your voice. A crucial area of filmmaking and storytelling is your unique style that lets people know this is your film or your story. Mine is rooted in heavy emotion, largely with genre work. My novels are science-fiction, my work in film so far has been horror but there are other genres I’m eager to explore, even music videos.

The third is doing. Nothing teaches you faster than doing it. So if you haven’t written a screenplay, you can get free software like WriterSolo to start. You can read scripts and learn the specific format online or get books. The information is more available than ever. Then write. Don’t worry whether it’s good or trash, because you can edit a terrible script. Surrounding yourself with others and learning together is also fantastic. It holds you accountable and keeps you moving. The more you try it, the more you’ll learn. One thing I noticed as I studied screenwriting is the way I watched movies changed. I started noticing the ways the director would show a character or frame a scene differently.

What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?

It’s been getting the help I needed with my mental and physical health. During past projects, my anxiety did a lot of the driving. Once things went south on a project, I’d blame myself and it’d put me in a tough period of recovery. This caused a ton of lost years where I could have moved forward or tried something else, but my mental health held me back.

Going into production on my latest short film, I knew I couldn’t let my mental health stop me this time. Getting help with therapy, a healthy diet, and coping mechanisms let me get through it. My ADHD and anxiety still happened while we were filming, before in pre-production, even during the editing phases. However, I learned to work through it and not let it stop me from pursuing this dream.

Asking for the help I needed helped me grow and be ready for the intensity of filmmaking sets and managing dozens of people all at once.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Behind-the-scenes photos by Victoria Heinsohn. Additional photos courtesy of Gracious Monsters, LLC.

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