My father and I were heading up to Lake Superior just after my ninth birthday. We were driving down highway 2 when “Melissa,” a song by the Allman Brothers, came on. I remember getting goosebumps. It was the first time I felt that sort of sensation. Looking back, I recognize that as the first time I felt the power of the entertainer. I was hooked.
I was blessed to have two parents who appreciated cinema. Two of my favorite films, “One flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid” were introduced to me around that same age and I remember life feeling bigger after watching them. It didn’t matter who these characters were or where they were from, I identified with them. I seemed to walk like them and talk like them for months on end until a new character entered my life. That is the magic of film and why I love it so much: it is a universal language.
As I entered high school my need to entertain and love for film continued to grow. I didn’t mesh the two immediately and my search for the former resulted in some dangerous habits. It wasn’t until I began to risk looking like a fool that life became clearer.
I was 16 when I auditioned for my first play. I was afraid of looking like a fool. Like many boys my age, I wanted to hang around the pretty girls and the cool guys. I didn’t really see the theater as a gateway to either. Thankfully my need to act was bigger than that fear, and I went to the audition. I ended up getting the part, did horribly, but took that first step. I’ve talked to a lot of artists and they all have a few defining moments where you either take that step and realize you need to keep going, or you don’t. It is truly scary to think of how many journeys ended before they even started.
I went to college and struggled to find any path that felt like my own. Deep down I knew I had to go west. I remember the night before finals of junior year staying up all night thinking about how if I took these tests that I would be committing to this path; an honorable path no less, but not my path. It was a feeling I just could not shake. The next day I called my parents and told them I had dropped out. They were worried like most parents would be but trusted my gut.
I moved to LA to pursue acting. I worked in restaurants studying scripts and learning the craft, all the while getting told no after no at auditions. I wanted some control over my path and began to write my own screenplays. I figured if they won’t cast me, I’ll cast me. I started submitting my screenplays and was told no after no. Once again, I wanted some control, so I studied directing. I figured if they won’t shoot my screenplay, I’ll shoot my screenplay; this is when it all seemed to click.
Directing had a great mystique to me. I didn’t get what the director did. It wasn’t until writing screenplays that I began to see how the script would translate through the director: the pacing, the control of tone; it is the most exciting magic trick.
A film that illuminated this power to me was “Barry Lyndon” by Stanley Kubrick. You watch that film and it coils around you. You think you know where it is going, and that is the magic trick: he wants you to have that confidence. But by the end of it you are completely in the skin of this seedy person, even rooting for him, and that’s the knockout punch. He holds the dirtiest mirror up to the viewer and says, “What do you see?” I began to call myself a director that day forward.
Around this time, I met an aspiring cinematographer, Jevin Lee, who is now one of my producers. We began to shoot scenes on our days off that felt like a part of a larger production. We compiled what we thought was a minute of good footage and I began to send it to every musician and business I could find. No one seemed to bite. I formed an LLC to give us more weight and called it Pine Tree Pictures. I chose the name as a reminder of that feeling I had driving down Highway 2. I think it is important to remember why you began something, because success and failure make it too easy to forget.
After a year of more restaurants and rejections, I found luck one night as a well-known artist for Atlantic Records was at a bar my friends and I were at. He had just released a new song and I decided to go pitch him an idea for it. My friends said I would look like a fool. I went regardless and only got a few words in before he brushed me off. I went back to my friends who were laughing. I regrouped and went back to the artist, condensing my pitch into these lines: "Hey man, I've never directed before, but I know how to direct you, and here's how I would do it." This time it clicked. Something resonated with him and we had our first job.
This success came nearly 10 years to the day after I first auditioned for that high school play. Flash forward three more years and I have gotten to work alongside some extremely talented fools, and I have made the most foolish friends my creative family. This summer we are shooting our first film which I began writing while I was still working in a restaurant some years ago.
At 29, I can’t tell you much, but I can tell you that looking foolish is a better feeling than lying in bed at night and wondering what could have been.
About the Author: Bobby Hanaford, a Barrington High School graduate, is the founder and director of Pine Tree Pictures based in Hollywood. His work has been on Times Square, and broadcast on CMT and MTV. His most recent project was for Anthony Ramos, an original cast member of the Broadway smash hit “Hamilton.” In its review Rolling Stone magazine said, “...the video, directed by Bobby Hanaford, captures the mood of the song {about} a passionate romance while a darker heartbreak seems to lurk beneath.” Learn more at PineTreePictures.com.