We were lucky to catch up with Rex Bressler recently and have shared our conversation below.
Rex, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
Los Angeles is called La La Land for a reason. Artists come here with star-studded dreams in their eyes and delusion in the cavity where a brain should be, or at least that’s how I arrived.
I moved here at nineteen from Silicon Valley, where I’d been doing theater and short films, because I loved acting and I wanted to make a career of it. In my head, I was already a network series regular who did mega studio films on the weekend and Broadway in the off-season. I knew that someone would spot me on the street and go “You, Rex Bressler, you are the one.” and then the world would know my name and everything would be easy.
Less than two months later, I moved back home. I’d learned a lot and even made a few friends, but the experience hadn’t lived up to my fantasies, and I could’ve given up. It would’ve been logical to go back to school and get a marketable engineering degree, like many of my high school classmates did. But the thought of pursuing another career felt worse than continuing to fail at the one I loved.
And so, I redoubled my acting efforts in San Francisco, and, less than a year later, I landed an audition to work with a multiple-Emmy-winning showrunner. Working with my LA-based acting coach, I booked the role, recurring on a series that would go on to win a Primetime Emmy. Mind you, I was still living at home and commuting, a seven hour bus ride each way.
At the Emmys, I finally felt like I’d made it. I moved back to LA, ready to capitalize on my award-fueled momentum. That was December 2019. Three months before COVID. So, things didn’t go as planned and I found myself back home, again. But I didn’t give up, because I love entertainment. I love making movies and series, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. And if that means that I have to fail another hundred times, then so be it.
During the pandemic, I transitioned into screenwriting, and now, five years of hard work and filmmaking later, I find myself armed with a deadly combination of industry-relevant skills that keep on opening doors.
Nowadays, I look back and I’m grateful for the failures I experienced early on in my career. They helped me grow the resilience that this industry demands of its faithful. There’s no such thing as an overnight success, no one’s going to pick you out of a lineup and make you a star. But if you do the work, and allow yourself to fail along the way, you just might discover that you can get there anyway.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’m focused on telling stories that inspire hope amid hopeless environments.
My current feature film project is an AI thriller about a cult-like corporate theocracy where ritual suicide is considered the highest honor. Pretty bleak, right? Our protagonist, a rogue-like reluctant hero, will do whatever it takes to prevent a woman he cares about, the daughter of his long-lost love, from succumbing to their society’s highest honor. In the process of trying to save her, he unravels the nature of their society and discovers its dark and secret reason for existing. Does he save the day and make everything okay?
It’s called The Ascendant. A sci-fi thriller that smashes the Matrix into Blade Runner with a heavy heaping of existential dread, I love it, and someday soon, I hope you will too!
In addition to The Ascendant, I’m attached to produce the inordinately talented writer/director Cedric Gegel’s sophomore feature film and have a few other projects in the works.
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?
1. By far the most important thing for any difficult journey is support. I’m incredibly grateful to have two incredible parents plus a vast support network of friends and mentors. Life would be so much harder without their brilliant insight and unerring support.
2. I think my most valuable core trait is my curiosity. I’m always trying to figure out *why* something works. Why do I love this movie and hate that one? I’m fascinated by the analysis of taste, and I’m also driven to learn about all sorts of random esoteric things that occasionally make their way into a screenplay.
3. Writing is my most valuable learned skill, and it really is learned. In high school, I felt like the worst writer. Writing terrified me. I still remember sobbing while my AP Lang teacher went over one of my essays with me, because I hated it so much. No matter how long I spent working on a sentence, it was never good enough. And yet, I continued, and I kept trying, and I kept slamming my head against the keyboard and got to the point the words that come out look mostly okay. It’s the hardest skill I’ve ever learned, which makes me all the happier to feel like I’m good at it.
If you want to develop a career in entertainment, you need to be brave and driven. If you believe in yourself enough, even if you suck, you’ll be able to convince people to take a chance to you. Then, you just need to be driven enough to deliver the goods.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
I love all artists, honestly. That’s the best part about working in this industry, I’m surrounded by the absolute best people. If you love making stuff, and feel like you have something to say with your creativity, please contact me!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rexbressler.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rexbressler/
Image Credits
The three shot with the slate: Billy O’Leary is on the left JoAnne Goldberg (my mom!) holds the slate The two shot with me dancing: Tiffany Chu is in the foreground. LMK if you want any other info!
