Film Courage: Rory, what inspired you to start a production company?
Rory Karpf, Filmmaker: I was working at NASCAR at the time and I just wanted to kind of have more control over my own destiny and make more decisions beyond just the creative like control, not just what I did, but how it was done because working at a company sometimes you’re at the mercy of other people’s rules and things like that. I remember I went to the accounting department at NASCAR because they would never let us do the budgets and I really wanted to know how budgets worked. I asked one of the accountants to show me how they did a budget and I actually spent a year there kind of trying to brace myself to leave so that I could learn different things like how do you get your own health insurance and different things like that. When I left I kind of had two projects waiting to work on. I felt like I had a little bit of a cushion, of course immediately they went away when I left but it worked out. I remember being in my office at NASCAR literally in the fetal position thinking I made this horrible mistake, but I think that’s what courage is right? Your YouTube channel is Film Courage and courage is being afraid but moving forward anyway.
Film Courage: We will get into this more because I love the story. It sounds like it was a real roller coaster ride and it did work out. How did you know you had everything you needed to make that leap? You’ve been transitioning out, it sounds like planning for a year?
Rory: Everything runs its course eventually. I was at NASCAR, before that I started at the NFL. My boss at the NFL, the head of production there, went to NASCAR and he asked if I wanted to come with him. At the time I was like 25 years old, so I didn’t have children at that point. There’s really nothing to lose. I wasn’t a Nascar fan per se, but I got a lot of opportunities there. It was at a time when NASCAR was probably at its peak of popularity. Dale Earnhardt…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
Rory Karpf is a 4-time Emmy and Peabody Award winning filmmaker who has collaborated with notable talents such as Tom Cruise, Kevin Costner, Snoop Dogg, Shaquille O’Neal, Paul Newman, Vin Diesel, Peyton Manning, Rob Lowe and Dana White. His documentary work includes the ESPN 30 for 30 films “I Hate Christian Laettner,” “Nature Boy,” “The Book of Manning,” the Netflix series “Coach Snoop,” and the AMC series “The Secret History of Comics.” “Grace Point” is Rory’s first scripted feature as a writer and director.
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