[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: In what ways do people ruin their careers before they start?
Donald F. Glut, Writer, Film Director, and Screenwriter: One way they ruin their career is they don’t realize that there is a career that they could have. When I grew up, we had College Day at high school (senior year). They had all the people come in the study hall room and they would pitch the colleges that were local, not too far from Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and things like that. They would get up there and say Our school is the best for engineering, blah, blah. Our school is the best for physics. I’d sit there, I don’t want to do any of those things. I didn’t know there was such a thing as USC Film School. If some opportunities hadn’t come my way that told me about USC Film School, I never would have known about it. I would have been stuck in Chicago like most of my friends where they don’t want to put their talent on the line, their butts on the line and risk being rejected or not making any connections or anything. They just stay home and think the phone’s going to magically ring. Well, it doesn’t, except in my case sometimes. They just don’t know they can do it. It’s a fantasy world for them.
My high school a few years later, when I had some books that were really well known, I had a movie behind me, they called me up and wanted me to give the valedictorian speech. I said Okay. They were like, We’ll pay your way to Chicago. I had family there. It will give me an excuse to see my mother and cousins and friends again, Okay, I’ll do it under these conditions. When I give a speech I don’t write it out. I make little cue cards and I do it off-the-cuff like I’m speaking now. I used to speak in those seminars for actors and a key word sort of sparks off of a topic and some dialogue.
The second is, I don’t want to wear a cap and gown, I think that looks stupid. Okay, they agreed to that…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
Donald F. Glut has been active in both the entertainment and publishing industries since 1966. Don has had a long and varied career. He has been a professional musician, actor, film director, executive producer, photographer, magazine editor, proofreader and (very briefly, for an advertising agency) copywriter, but is mostly known for his long career as a freelance writer. He has written and directed feature-length motion pictures, documentaries and music videos, authored approximately 80 fiction and non-fiction published books, myriad TV scripts (live action and animation shows, network and syndicated), comic-book scripts, short stories, magazine articles, even music and theatre. He has been involved with numerous popular franchises such as Star Wars, The Monkees, Tarzan, Spider-Man, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Vampirella, Masters of the Universe, The Flintstones, Jonny Quest and many others, and created original comic-book characters for Gold Key, Marvel and DC.
Arguably Don is best known for his novelization of the second “Star Wars” movie The Empire Strikes Back (#1 Best Seller). Don currently executive-produces, writes and directs “traditional-style” horror for his company Pecosborn Productions, and writes scripts for The Creeps horror comics magazine. Also, he is a Southern California representative of Las Vegas Talent Agency. Note: Any motion picture titles that may be listed prior to Dinosaur Valley Girls (1997) are of amateur movies, the first of 41 of which Don Glut made when he was nine years old.
CONNECT WITH DONALD F. GLUT
Advertisement – contains affiliate links
(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)
More affiliates:
Camera we use for interviews – https://buff.ly/3rWqrra
Sound we use for interviews – https://amzn.to/2tbFlM9
Other books on Amazon that Film Courage recommends – https://buff.ly/3o0oE5o
