Almost Everything with Jeffery Saddoris

“I did small roles in big films and big roles in small films, but I was working constantly for the first six years and then, you know, the bottom kind of dropped out.”

Jude Gerard Prest is an actor, a writer, a director, and a producer with more than 700 hours of television under his belt. He’s also one of my oldest and dearest friends. In fact, I was the second person he met after moving to LA from the east coast to pursue a career in acting. Over the next 25-plus years, his hard work and dedication to his craft behind the camera has earned him the respect and friendship of some of the biggest names in Hollywood, but he’s still looking for that one great role. He’s got more integrity that just about anyone I’ve ever met, he’s taught me about perseverance, humility, and grace and I love him like a brother.

LINKS
We Can Get Them For You Wholesale
IMDb: Jude Gerard Prest

CONNECT WITH JUDE
Website: https://judegp.com
Facebook: judegp

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
(Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Tomorrow would have been my mom’s 74th birthday and while not a day goes by that I don’t miss her, I am grateful for the life I was allowed to share with her. She was generous, compassionate, and the most unconditionally loving person I have ever met. She always encouraged me to embrace the quirky, creative side of myself and insisted that following my passion meant not holding back and always giving 100%. As a child, my mom was a dancer—she and her brother Jerry even appeared on The Jack Parr Show together. A few years later, Jerry decided that “dancing was for sissies,” then life ultimately got in the way and my mom eventually gave it up too. While a life as a professional dancer was not to be, music was still an important part of her life. Even after I came along, our house was always filled with music—mostly Motown. I grew up on a steady musical diet of artists like Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Marvin Gaye, and the Jackson 5. But when she wasn’t grooving to the sounds coming out of Hitsville USA, she was listening to Elvis.

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Here’s a link to the 1999 Charlie Rose Interview with Richard Avedon that I referenced in this episode.If you enjoy that, you may also like this terrific documentary about Avedon called Darkness and Light.

The artist Christo has just unveiled his latest installation, called The London Mastaba—a 600 ton pyramid made of brightly painted 55-gallon drums. The whole gigantic thing is floating in Serpentine Lake in London.

I know I’m a little late to the game on this, but if you want to either deepen or broaden your musical knowledge, check out allmusic.com. It’s an incredible resource that has not only album reviews, but also shows connections to similar artists and recommendations for the best albums within a given artist’s discography . The site even offers suggestions for albums based on your current mood. For example, feeling ironic? Check out Elvis Costello’s Trust, Blur’s Modern Life is Rubbish, or David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane – terrific record by the way.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

E3 was last week and for those of you who may not know what that is, it’s the Electronic Entertainment Expo and if you’re a gamer, it’s like Mecca. Every year, game studios and indie developers descend on the LA convention center for the chance to show the games the’ve been working on, sometimes for years. E3 is full sensory overload—a barrage of sight and sound from the minute you walk through the doors and I love it. Like many kids who grew up in the 70s, I’ve been hooked on video games from the moment I unwrapped my Atari 2600 on Christmas morning in 1977. With each new console, my addiction only grew—the NES, the N64, the Gamecube, the Wii, the Xbox, all of the Playstations. My favorite console was the Dreamcast, by a long shot. I remember being at E3 in 1999 when the Dreamcast launched against the announcement of the Playstation 2. Sony had the budget (and a DVD player), but Sega had the heart. In the end, the PS2 won the battle and became the best-selling console of all time but I think for many of us, there was something about the Dreamcast that transcended Megahertz and Gigaflops.

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Here’s a short documentary on Hiroh Kikai, a Japanese photographer who has spent decades taking portraits of strangers against a the same wall outside a temple in Asakusa, Japan.

The New York Times magazine released a special issue completely devoted to love and photographer Ryan McKinley shot for 24 hours straight to capture all 24 portraits that were used as covers and distributed at random to subscribers and newsstands.

French painter Mark Maggiori brilliantly captures the mood, colors, and spirit of the American West in his drawings and paintings.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Kristopher Matheson is a photographer living in Tokyo after leaving Canada for a teaching position that was only supposed to last six months to a year. Twelve years later, he’s still there and has made Tokyo his home, at least for now. I was introduced to him through the terrific photos he began to post in the On Taking Pictures Google+ group. His images showed a side of Tokyo that I hadn’t really seen before – his composition and use of color made the photos somehow more personal and intimate, despite the fact that people are virtually absent from them. Kristopher and I have become friends over the past several years through calls and emails that are sometimes frequent, sometimes sporadic. But regardless of how often we talk, it seems like every exchange ends up being a slice of a larger ongoing discussion, where questions are raised and sometimes answered and rabbit holes are explored, often over the course of several interactions.

CONNECT WITH KRISTOPHER
Website: https://www.krismatheson.com
Instagram: @kristopher.matheson

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
(Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

There’s a saying in photography that goes “pretty light plus a pretty subject equals a pretty picture.” And if you believe that, then you might be tempted to form an opinion about who Gareth Lewis is based solely on the provocative nature of his portfolio, but you’d be wrong. After booking a one-way flight from his native London to Australia, Gareth found himself a stranger in a strange land. Before settling in Melbourne, he spent the first year driving over 24,000 kilometers exploring Australia in a “Miami White” station wagon. Along the way, he picked tomatoes, clipped mandarins, and even did a brief stint as a jackaroo before eventually finding his way to a camera.

CONNECT WITH GARETH
Website: http://www.garethlewisphotography.com
Instagram: @garethlewis

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
(Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Joshua K Jackson is a terrific street photographer from London. On paper he’s relatively new to the genre, but his already stunning body of work is every bit as compelling as those by some of his photographic heroes. Though Josh is quick to point out that he still has a lot to learn, his dedication to photography as both an art and a craft is immediately evident in his use of bold color and superb composition to communicate mood and narrative. While he often leaves the house with any sort of expectation or agenda, he says that the energy and buzz of the city is like fuel to keep shooting, especially since you never know what the scene could be just around the next corner.

CONNECT WITH JOSH
Website: https://www.joshkjack.com/
Instagram: @joshkjack
Twitter: @joshkjack

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
(Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Recently, I was talking to a friend of mine about Process Driven and he asked me why I did the show. Not from the standpoint of having the conversations, but rather why release them into the world. “What do you get out of it?” he asked. As I thought about it for a bit, I really couldn’t come up with an answer—no one that was coherent anyway. I’ve been thinking about it ever since—a lot—and I think I’ve come up with an answer—at least a partial answer and that it this. Throughout my life there have been a handful of people—and I’m talking about people other than family—who have taken an interest in me that went above and beyond what was expected and as a result of that interest, either subtly or dramatically altered the trajectory of my life.

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In addition to being an incredible film director, Stanley Kubrick was also a photographer. A new book called Through a Different Lens showcases around 300 of Kubrick’s images, many of which have never been seen publicly.

He may have been born Usher Felig, but at 14, he quit school and began photographing for newspapers and ultimately became famous as Weegee. Christopher Bananos chronicles Weegee’s life and career in FLASH The Making of Weegee the Famous.

Yuni Yoshida is a Japanese graphic designer and art director whose work I am absolutely loving.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Simon Baxter is a fantastic landscape photographer from the north of England who I was introduced to by Sean Tucker. There’s something about Simon’s photographs that goes beyond light and composition and draws the viewer into the scene, rather than simply holding us at the periphery. Simon’s passion for photography and his connection to the local woodlands where he photographs are obvious from the moment you look at his body of work. What may not be obvious, however, is the amount of pain Simon often has to endure in order to produce them, and how none of it would be possible without a labradoodle named Meg.

CONNECT WITH SIMON
Website: https://baxter.photos
YouTube: SimonBaxterPhotography
Instagram: @baxter.photos

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
(Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Kent Hall is tough to categorize. On one hand he’s a photographer who makes books. On the other, he’s a collage artist who makes books. But he’s also a poet—and yes, a poet who makes books. His fascination with the mundane and the detritus of modern life are the raw materials for much of what he creates and whether he’s being inspired by film or literature or simply watching the city move around him, his growing body of work gets more and more interesting with every new expression.

CONNECT WITH KENT
Website: https://www.kent.ly
Instagram: @windsorknot

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
(Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Lately I’ve been seeing, or maybe just noticing, the word “iconic” as a means for makers to describe their own work—“my name is so and so and I make iconic portraits of whatever…,” and I’ve got to tell you, I’m having a hard time with how it’s being used.

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The Atlantic posted a terrific article on how the “Nifty 50” became the goto lens for many photographers.

If you’ve ever thought about making your own photo book, you’ll want to check out this PDN article on the art and process of sequencing your images for photobooks.

If you love model trains and miniatures, here’s a fascinating documentary about two brothers who quit their jobs to create Miniatur Wunderland a massive miniature city that has become the most popular tourist attraction in Germany.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0