ATLFF Alumni Spotlight: Landon Ashworth

October 1, 2024 Guest User

When you meet Landon Ashworth, you know quickly that you won’t forget him. I met Landon at ATLFF’23. He was introduced to me as the winner of that year’s screenplay competition in the TV Pilot category. In the very same category I submitted my script but was disqualified because I took a job with the Atlanta Film Society shortly after submitting. I understood why, but of course, I hated him. I’m kidding. Why? When I met this tall, handsome man wearing a cowboy hat, I could tell there was something quite special about him.

What was it? I didn’t find out until I sat down with Landon for our next edition of ATLFF Alumni Spotlight a couple of weeks ago. And boy, was I right…

Oh, and when you get to the end, I’ll tell you a story that didn’t make the interview.

Keith Hannigan

Hey, folks. I am Keith Hannigan from the Atlanta Film Society and the Atlanta Film Festival. I’m here for another episode of ATLFF Alumni Spotlight. Today, the spotlight shines on the man who won the ATLFF’23 Screenplay Award. By the way, that is the award over his shoulder he won for his pilot script, The Space Suit.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Randy Ashworth. Hello, Landon.

Landon waves appreciatively to the crowd to his adoring fans

Landon Ashworth

Hi. Sorry for all of the fans.

It's all good and understood. If you haven't, you should definitely check out Landon's IMDB because he has a lot going on in his world, including one that is slated to start tomorrow. Landon, what is starting tomorrow for you, my friend?

I'm heading out to New Mexico to direct a feature that I wrote after basically 20 years of being told no by Hollywood.

What's the name of the feature?

GO ON.

Where in New Mexico?

Near Las Vegas, New Mexico. As the crow flies, it's about to 50 miles east of Santa Fe.

Outstanding. We’ll talk more about that in a second because I need to mention that beautiful Phoneix beside you. Which, of course, is the ATLFF’23 Screenplay Award you won for your pilot script, SPACE SUITS. What was that script about, and how did it come about?

It is about the female bra makers of Playtex who won the contract to make the Apollo spacesuits. And they weren't even invited to compete. They just kind of showed up against the military-industrial complex. They were fighting for the contract against a bunch of military people, and they weren't invited to join.

But they learned about the competition a couple of weeks before it happened. All the other teams had six months to a year to prepare their prototypes. Not only did they win the contract after just making bras for a living, but they destroyed the competition.

I wrote the story for several reasons. Number one, I spent my young adult life trying to become an astronaut.

I was a pilot—a civilian test pilot. But then they decided they would only hire military test pilots, even though I had all my hours to apply. So, that degree ended up becoming useless. Then, they said they would slate a mission to Mars and send somebody from the arts community because NASA is a boondoggle, and they must raise public funds.

I'm autistic, and I had therapists who encouraged me to get into acting classes to learn how to mask my autism because I was bullied really, really, really, really bad growing up. So I had already been an actor basically since I was a young kid. And so I applied to conservatories, and I got into one. Then I got my MFA in filmmaking, and they scrapped the Mars mission.

So now I have two useless degrees. Then my academic advisor from undergrad said, "Well, now you got to go back and get your Ph.D. or your M.D.” But medical school was too long. So I got my Ph.D. in astrophysics, and on my dissertation defense day, Obama put a ten-year hiring freeze on astronauts, which made all three degrees useless.

So I sat in my car and cried for a bunch of hours. And then I thought, okay, well, I got to pivot. What am I going to do? I could go back to being a test pilot. Too dangerous. I didn't want to do that. I knew I didn't want to teach physics at university, so I was like, I'm going to try to use this MFA and make a career as a filmmaker. So I packed up my car and drove straight to L.A.

I knew one person out there, a buddy from undergrad who owned a 22-foot sailboat, Marina Del Rey, and moved on to his sailboat because no one was on it. And the person on the sailboat next to mine was the casting director. And the casting director happened to be casting a big commercial. So, my very first commercial audition was for American Airlines. Funny enough, I got the part, and then they aired that commercial for about two years, and it paid a lot.

That was back when commercials paid a lot of money. And so I made a gargantuan amount of money for that. I didn't have to have any side jobs, which was lucky. And then, after I booked a commercial, she said, "You know, there are no A-list actors who don't have their own production companies, so you need to start making your own stuff now that you're kind of set financially."

I wasn't rich, but I took 80% of my earnings and bought film equipment: camera lenses, lights, and sound equipment. Every time I got cast as a costar on a TV show, I would talk to the department heads to learn how to do sound really well.

I would be with the crew asking every single question while the other actors were hanging out and bullshitting with each other. I'd go to the cinematographer and say, I just bought these lights. What do I do? How do I set it up?

This is all stuff I learned during my filmmaking degree. But like, I want to learn because you're on set. I treated it as a master class to be around professionals, doing it for a living, to learn how to do it myself. What I wish the casting director would have told me was,” You need to learn how to network and make things with other like-minded people..” But being artistic and taking things very literally.

Instead, I started making my own stuff and only my stuff. I started writing and directing comedy sketches because comedy kind of comes naturally to me. I don't think that I'm funny, but other people do kind of unintentionally. So I just started writing comedy sketches and then shooting comedy sketches, and that's what I spent all of my free time doing, shooting.

Then I met some actors and then I put them in my comedy sketches and then basically I was not getting ahead from my comedy sketches because they were like, really weird, esoteric, autistic kind of what I consider smart. Smart humor. And smart humor is not made for social media. It's made for BBC. But I am not the BBC.

So basically at the end of of having 200, 300 comedy sketches filmed, I finally was like, screw it. I need some advice. So the next show that I was on, I went up to the showrunner and I said, I've shot all of these things, but nobody's hiring me to direct or write. What would your advice be?

They advised me, and I followed it to the Nth degree. No success. So then the next costar I booked, I'd go up to the showrunner and say, I need help. I followed this advice, and they said, “That showrunner is an idiot. This is what you should do.” So I did that and got no success.

The next costar, go up to that showrunner; “Those guys are idiots. This is what you should do.” So basically, after five or six times of doing every single thing that these showrunners told me to do and getting no success from it whatsoever, I was like, alright, well, advice is really not helping me.

The very last bit of advice that I got was, “You need to do a topical comedy sketch that goes viral.” So I did that. It went viral, but nothing happened for my career. The next bit of advice was, “You need to make a short.” So then I made a short. The next person asked, “Did you put it short in film festivals?” And it was like, no, so I put it in film festivals.

I put it in film festivals, and it was a really weird short that was smart but not something that normal people would like. Then the next advice was, "Well, you got to make it topical. It's got to be something that people want to watch, and it's got to win awards." So then I made something that I thought was smart that people would want to watch, and then it won about a dozen Oscar-qualifying film festivals.

But I didn't go to any of the film festivals because I have crippling social anxiety, so I didn't network at all. So then the next bit of advice that I got was you need to write a pilot and put that into festivals and win awards. And then when I got into the Atlanta Film Festival, I told when I won the award I was like, can you just mail me the award?

And they're like, “You need to come here and network, and we'll protect you and kind of put you under our wing.” And so that's what happened with the Atlanta Film Festival. I wrote the SPACE SUITS. I sat down and wrote it in one day. It was my first draft, and I sent it out to film festivals. Then, it won five or six film festivals for best unproduced and best pilot screenplay, which kind of led me to where I am today.

So, what happened after you won the Atlanta Film Festival?

After I won the Atlanta Film Festival, I met people from several different producers who were part of the festival and several lit agents. The Lit agents told me, “ Nobody's buying historical dramas. Congratulations on your win.” For the producers that I met said, “We can sell this. Let's stay in touch.” I stayed in touch with them. They never emailed me back.

The next TV show I booked was THE RESIDENT, and the showrunner said,” You need to build a really big social media following based on topical stuff. Once you have a big following, there's nothing that you can't do because people want to put butts in seats. If you have a million followers, you're good to go.”

So then I started writing topical sketch comedy, which is the bane of my existence. I hate topical stuff. I like stuff that nobody else likes. So then I started writing topical stuff. In six months, I gained a following of 2 million followers, and then the next bit of advice I got was write a feature and try to get it made, crowdfund it.

And I was like, no, that's the one thing that I will not do. I have friends that have crowdfunded their features, and they have these awful, awful features for 25 grand and I'm not going to put out crap. I'm not going to make a feature if I'm the only one that believes in it.

I'm not going to crowdfund. I'm going to do it the Hollywood way because I've done it the Hollywood way for 20 straight years. And I really believed in the Hollywood way. I believed in you write a script, a producer that does this for a living says, “I like your script. I know how to make movies. I've made movies. I believe in the economic viability of your project. I'm going to make it.”

So I let pride get in my way for a very, very long time because I was never going to make a TV show or a movie that I was the only one who believed in. In one year, I sent about 1100 emails to producers, agents, directors, showrunners, developmental executives, whatever.

I got three responses back in that year. I went back and counted them all, and all three were, “We do not take unsolicited submissions.” So the best answer I got was no. The rest of the 1097 people just ignored it. So finally, I'm like, well, my career is never going to move forward.

And so in January of this year, I was going to quit. I was going to be done with the industry. I won Best Pilot and a dozen other Oscar-qualifying film festivals for Best Short. And I'm like, I'm never going to make it. And that's fine and I'm done.

So I woke up on January 1st, and the first thought in my mind was, "You've done it everybody else's way your entire career. Why don't you try your own way?"

You know, casting directors during casting director workshops were like, “Don't go up to A-list stars and bother them on set. It'll make you look bad. Don't talk to producers and ask them for anything. Just show up, do a good job, and go home.

”I was like, you know what? I'm going to do it my way this year, and if I don't make it, who gives a shit? I've already not made it. I've spent an entire career not making it.

Yeah, I've done a bunch of costars on TV shows, but that's not making it. That's going from job to job where you don't go from costar to guest star to series regular.

That's just, you know, I spent one to four days on set saying my lines, being polite, going home, doing a good job. Every time I would go up to the showrunner at the end of the show, they’d say, “You're great, you're great. We'll keep you in mind in the future.”

They did not keep me in mind in the future. They got the one to five lines out of me, and they would never see me again. People don't keep you in mind unless you're friends with them. And I never networked. So, I said I would do it my way this year. So, I started doing it my way, and I decided the very first thing that I was going to do was stop masking my autism.

I was going to be me, unapologetically me. And by doing that, I gained an even bigger social media following. And I'm like, okay, cool. And then somebody said, “You know what? Now is the time for you to raise money for a movie.” And I was like, well, I've never written a movie that would cost less than 10 million bucks.

And they're like, “Well, then you need to sit down and write a movie you can make for half a million.” And I was like, I don't know anybody with a half a million bucks. That's a movie producer. And they're like,” Just write a movie.” So I sat down and I wrote a movie in two days. I didn't change a single word of it.

I sent it to ten people who had no reason to be nice to me, and all ten of them were like, “Go make this movie right now.” And I was like, well, I don't know any producers. They're like, “Crowdfund, dude, you have 2 million social media followers.” So I was like, okay, this makes me sick to my stomach, but I'll do it.

So I raised $170,000 in donations, just straight up donations in a month. And I was like, okay, I'm going to have to give all of this money back because this is not even close to enough money to get my movie made. And then when I was asking all of the people at the fund raising things, how do I give this money back?

And they're like, but you have enough to make something. I was like, no. I'm going to make this movie or I'm not going to make anything. I'm very passionate about this project for numerous reasons. And they said, “Well, this this is the process that you go through to return all the money.” So I was researching that, and on the same day three weeks ago, I got two emails from two very wealthy individuals and they said, “We believe in you.”

“You've raised this much money so other people believe in you too. We're writing you a blank check, whatever you need, go make your movie.” That was three weeks ago. And now tomorrow, I start to head out to New Mexico to make this feature. So for the past three weeks, it's been a firehose. I hired two producers because I had a budget for the movie, and we've just put it together. We're going to make this movie out in the mountains.

I've got Vincent Kartheiser, a series regular on Mad Men, and Laura Slade Wiggins, a series regular on Shameless, to be in It, and off we go.

So, first of all, congratulations, man. And I'm not talking about all the awards from your entire life. You have pivoted, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt how resilient you are. So everybody watching at home, please grasp one thing from this: Landon has given you a masterclass of listening to people and having that not come true and saying, alright, I'm either going to go this, I’m doing it my way. And if I'm done after that, I know I did everything within myself to do it.

And thank you more than anything for being vulnerable and sharing that you’re autistic.

I told you I was in New Mexico a couple of weeks ago at a writer's retreat, and I had the honor of speaking to some very acclaimed writers, showrunners, and other such people.

One question I love to ask is simply stating that I, like you, have this in common: that we're dreamers. We dream differently, but we dream, and we don't want to let go of those dreams because we keep chasing them with the understanding that our dreams are not going to chase us. So, ultimately, what has been your dream?

Is it standing in front of an audience receiving an Academy Award or an Emmy or anything like that? Is it saying thank you to your mom for everything she's done for you? What is the dream for?

I've only had five dreams, and I had one, which was to be an astronaut, and that door was slammed in my face. And then when I started this career in Hollywood, I set four goals:

One be a series regular on a TV show, which has not happened yet.
Second was to sell a TV pilot that gets made, not to sell a pilot because a lot of people saw pilots and they never went into production.
Third was to get a musical that I wrote about the space race to Broadway.
The last was to write a feature, get it funded, and direct it. That journey starts tomorrow.

God bless you, man. Thank you for achieving your dreams. Because unless people out there knowing right now watching can see you achieve yours, then I can achieve mine… If I work my ass off.

Yeah, you got it. You got to scrape it out of pure marble with your fingernails. I moved to Hollywood knowing no one in the industry. And I mean no one in the industry. I didn't know a P.A. No one has helped me. No one has had my back other than the people at the Atlanta Film Festival. Literally, they're the first people who were like, "We will protect you."

We're going to help you collect your award and help you start conversations. They're literally the only organization that's ever helped me. So I'll do anything for the Atlanta Film Festival. But thank you God. You know, I appreciate you more than you'll ever know. But realize this out there if you want it, it's out there in the fucking dirt.

Go dig it up.

Love it. And speaking of that, before you go out into the dirt and direct your movie, what is it about, man? Was this the story you're going to tell us?

So the logline—I have to go to IMDB because I wrote it—is better than anything I'm ever going to, just like improv. The logline is that two people are forced to confront their past on a remote forest fire-burned mountain. So that's the logline the film is about. I had a cousin, and I went to visit his family out in Texas, and he had two twin boys.

They were on the spectrum, and one of them I really, really resonated with. He's going through some heavy stuff, and I felt like I was one of the only people who really could help other people recognize it. But I felt that I could help. So I invited him to come to my home here in Georgia because I was like, anytime you want to come, just come, and we'll do whatever you want.

Literally, if you want to rob a bank, we'll rob a bank. You want to go steal a car? We'll go steal a car. You want to eat sushi every single meal for a week straight will do that. And I knew that he was going to say no. And I flew back home and then I got a call from his mom and she was like, “So he hasn't stopped talking about him coming out here. Were you serious?”

I was like, my God, please send him. So it blew my mind. The 16-year-old kid said yes. So I got him at the airport, and it was just a week of saying yes to anything he wanted to do. We did. And we talked about literally everything in life. And fame was very important to him at the end of the week. Becoming famous.

And at the very end of the week, he would not tell me why fame was so important to him. And as I was dropping him off at the airport, he turned to me and said,” I just want to matter.” And then he got out of the car, and I was like, okay, I have made an impact. I know how to help him.

Then, a few days later, I got a call from his mom that he had died by suicide. And so I sat down and I wrote this movie in two days. I had no idea where the movie was going. I just went on a journey with these characters. I sent it to ten friends and asked them what they thought.

All ten of them said, “If you don't go make this movie right now, we're going to steal, and you can just deal with suing me. But this movie needs to be made.” And so that's when the fundraising campaign started. So it's in my cousin Landon Bellingham's honor. I just imagine the story is about him being stuck somewhere, or in real life, being stuck somewhere.

He had no way out. And it's two characters at war, trying to help each other where neither wants to give nor wants to take. So that's what the film's about.

So, I think I can speak for everybody watching when I say there isn't a soul out there who isn't rooting for you. Thank you for being you.

Well, everyone else was taken.

I'm never going to forget this conversation. That's the highest compliment I can give.

Please keep telling your stories. Have a wonderful, safe, amazing, life-changing experience, my brother. We can't wait to see what happens, and we can't wait to see what happens next.

So I hope it comes to the Atlanta Film Festival and wins Best Picture.

There we go, brother. There we go. So, I want in to wrap things up. Just keep. How can we keep in touch with you? Can we follow you on any social media?

So, my handle on Instagram is @LandonAshworthdirects. I have a million followers on Instagram and a million followers on TikTok. I check every day and write back to every single one.

It's a compulsion I have got. God bless you, autism. But yeah, so I've got I got a million followers, but I'll still still write you back.

You may have a million followers, but you're one in a billion, my friend. And I have to tell this story about Landon before I take off.

I met Landon at the Atlanta Film Festival in 2023. We had an after-party. I don't know if it was an after-party or a hangout. I can't remember what it was. It was basically something away from the film festival itself in that it was in a building. The building that we were at was called the Illuminarium, and they had a presentation devoted to outer space.

And I saw Landon walk in, and I, I, I'll tear up thinking about it because knowing what you've been through and what dreams you had. I saw a look in this man's eyes like, my God, I'm here. It was wonderful.

Afterward, I reached out to him and said, "I've got a Space Race musical. We should partner." This was another cold email that went unanswered.

I love that, though, you may have apprehensions, but you have a fearlessness about you. You just say, fuck it, I'm going to put it out there. And the worst thing you can ever say to me is no. And trust me, that ain't the worst thing that's ever happened to me.

So, Landon, thank you so very much. If you're watching this and would like to participate, please email me at keith@atlantafilmfestival.com. You can also follow us at the Atlanta Film Society on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

This interview will be posted on the Atlanta Film Festival YouTube page. You can also follow us on our Atlanta Film Festival, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or X, or whatever you want to call it. So, thank you again, Landon. I wish you the best.

I really do. And please, my brother, stay in touch with me. Stay in touch with us. We want to celebrate. Even though you don't believe in many celebrations, we will take care of that for you and we will celebrate everything you do because you are a part of the family and we love you. And thank you for everything.

God bless you, man. Al right, brother. Take care, and I will talk to you soon.

A right. Thank you for your time. I appreciate you.

Landon reminded me of the shitty parts of your best friend that only your best friend can be. The person who will fire tomahawk truth missiles to your sternum. Not because they suck. But because they care. And Landon truthfully cares about people not having to go through what he’s been through and he will tell you exactly why.

Speaking of hard truths, I have to tell you that you only got half of our conversation. I only had about an hour with him, and we were going back and forth for about half an hour before the call dropped. This was only a few days after I ordered high-speed internet from a company that rhymes with AT&T. I was white hot.

However, during that first half, we discussed how he would do it his way and not listen to any more advice. “Keith, if Denzel Washington was across the street, I’m going up to him!” I instantly asked him what he would say. Landon said, “I would go up to him and say I have a fucking script that will change your life!”

I believe in my bones Landon would do just that. And I have to tell you, meeting him has undoubtedly changed mine.

-k.

Watch the full interview on our Youtube channel and checkout our interview with Don-Dimitri Joseph from ATLFF ‘24