Asian A.V. Club newsletter #29
Chris Quintos Cathcart started out ready for her closeup as an actor, but fate had other plans, leading her to champion underrepresented filmmakers as a film financier. This is her adventure!
Over the past year, we’ve spoken with many wonderful creatives who initially thought their careers would go in one direction, only to pivot to something even more interesting due to a twist of fate. This kind of career ‘pivot’ best describes executive producer and film financier Chris Quintos Cathcart. As an aspiring comedy writer and actor trying to break into Hollywood, Chris had an epiphany after the birth of her second child: if the industry wasn’t going to offer her the projects she was passionate about, she would make those projects happen herself.
Not only that, she decided to extend this opportunity to underrepresented filmmakers. This decision led her to executive produce films like Elegance Bratton’s The Inspection, Yen Tan’s All That We Love, and this summer’s buzzy crowdpleaser, Sean Wang’s Dìdi (弟弟) We had the chance to talk with Chris about how embracing the pivot has turned into the most creative adventure of her life.
Asian A.V. Club: How did you first get into the entertainment business?
Chris Quintos Cathcart: I actually started as an actor. I’ve always wanted to pursue acting, but the Asian part of me was like, it’s so impractical. Even though I set up an audition for NYU Tisch School of the Arts, I totally bombed it, I think with a hint of self-sabotage. So, I ended up going to a liberal arts school with the plans of going to law school. And I entered the job market after graduating and found myself at 25 working for this awful boss and thinking, ‘my God, this sucks.’ (laughs) It also made me look at my life and decide that I really wanted to return to my first love, which was acting. But I was in San Francisco, and I did the most I could there. Educational theater by day, indie theater at night, I even started my own sketch group. But I realized that if I didn’t move to LA, this would always be a hobby.
So now I'm in LA, I'm 30, I'm having a great time. I'm at UCB [Upright Citizens Brigade – comedy theater], I’m making connections and I have a commercial agent. I am so happy and decide, hey, let’s have a baby! What could go wrong? I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing. (laughs) Guess what, I have the baby and it takes the chair from under me. But I keep going at it and decide to have a second baby. And that was the moment where I realized that I had no more time and space to keep going for auditions and pursue this acting career.
Asian A.V. Club: What did you do next?
Chris Quintos Cathcart: I realized that pursuing acting made me sort of powerless. I wanted more power, and it took my second baby for me to recognize that. I also looked at my husband’s lucrative tech career and realized that with my special background in entertainment and my love for the business side of things, I could possibly make whatever I wanted.
So, I went out looking for my first project with the thought that maybe I would just buy a part for myself. (laughs) I looked for Filipino American filmmakers, I found the one. (dir: Mallorie Ortega, The Girl Who Left Home) I supported her film, but I also discovered what the whole ecosystem, or lack thereof, was like for people who looked like me.
Luckily, I had a good friend (Tyler Boehm) who had been doing film finance for the past 15 years and he and I partnered up to start Unapologetic Projects. And so, I feel like I was able to finally satiate my desire to make something that I’m proud of, but at the same time, be part of the most creative job I've ever had.
Asian A.V. Club: Can you tell us about the role an executive producer has on a film?
Chris Quintos Cathcart: On all films, especially the indie ones, there needs to be funding, kind of like VC (venture capital) money, where it's like, okay, this is a project that I believe in, and I'm going to invest money in it. There are obviously so many kinds of producers, but executive producers, specifically are putting skin in the game. So, we might make this movie for $5, and we try to sell it for $10. It’s super basic business and kind of where I fit in the ecosystem.
Of course, there are boots on the ground producers that usually come to me with a script, a filmmaker and maybe some actors attached. We’re not going to develop. In fact, our money is going straight to production because there's so many projects that are ready to go.
Asian A.V. Club: How do you check in to see if your investment is doing what it should be doing?
Chris Quintos Cathcart: I watch dailies and I check in with the team. But not on a micro level. I’m very big picture and ask things like, are you hitting your budget marks? Are there any big, big fires that you need to put out? For example, on DÃŒDI (弟弟)the boots on the ground producers from Antigravity Academy, Val (Bush), Josh (Peters) and Carlos (Lopez Estrada), I am obsessed with. They are such an amazing production team where I would check in a lot with. I did go to set for a couple days, just to make sure my investment was secure. (laughs) But thankfully, being an actor has helped me like know what a good set felt like. So, I knew I was in good hands with them. Â
Asian A.V. Club: I’m looking at the films that you’ve produced (The Inspection, DÃŒDI (弟弟), All That We Love) and notice a real thread of filmmakers who are extremely tapped into their empathy to tell their distinct stories. I’m guessing you get so many projects that come with bigger names and bigger directors, but yet you’re working with these, sometimes new or fresher voices. How do you decide on them? Â
Chris Quintos Cathcart: That's a really good question. So, firstly The Inspection, which was kind of my first big credit, I joined Effie Brown’s Gamechanger and became an investor in their film fund. That was my entry point. At that time, I was purely trusting Effie’s taste, which I think is a lot of the biz. But meeting Elegance (Bratton, director) made me feel really comfortable about investing in his film. And when it became the TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) darling, that's when like my friend Tyler, approached me and said, I think we can take this to the next level, because now I was a proven entity.
So, there's a magic that happens between the hunting and the green lighting. The Inspection proved that Elegance could have made this movie, I think, five years ago or even 10 years ago. He was so ready. But black and brown creators have just been warming the bench, like watching gameplay and so many of them are ready. Being a creator myself, the only real reason that I wasn't getting a shot is because there was no one who understood me on the other side. Tyler and I decided that at Unapologetic Projects, we make movies from underrepresented voices telling authentic stories, that's our mandate.
When DÌDI (弟弟) came along, the story really struck a chord with Tyler. So, I met up with Sean (Wang, director) and was like, 100% yes afterwards. We’re both from the Bay Area and we were speaking the same language. And I just knew exactly what he was doing. What's interesting is that they had gone around the bend with other investors before us. But when we talked to the other investors, every investor was like, ‘Oh, we love Sean. He's so talented. We love that script!’ And it occurred to me that it took an Asian woman on this side of the table to be like, this isn't just a good Asian story. This is like a good story.
Asian A.V. Club: It must be so cool to be able to say ‘yes’ and then sell it to a major studio like Focus Features.
Chris Quintos Cathcart: I hope I'm starting a trend; I really do. I've always kind of been that person. I don't know, if it's just like, the nature of not being white or because I’m a woman, I'm always finding myself in rooms where I'm the only person that looks like me. I will say, it was hard selling the film. But my life experiences before really helped me not be afraid to deal with people with money. I’m not afraid of big numbers that’s for sure. (laughs)
Asian A.V. Club: We discovered Yen Tan's movie All That We Love at Tribeca Film Festival and loved it. How was his film presented to you because his style of films is very different from Sean’s DÌDI (弟弟).
Chris Quintos Cathcart: So, this one was different, because Tyler had worked with Yen before. And I saw 1985 and thought it was a really beautiful, stunning movie. And then the other factor was that I just hadn’t seen a movie with an Asian person who had such a close relationship with their dog before. (laughs) As someone who’s a dog person, I was like, yes, we really should see an Asian pet owner.
Asian A.V. Club: (laughing) Oh my god, I’m dying!
Chris Quintos Cathcart: Of course, I just loved the script. I read it and was crying and had a true emotional reaction to it. It basically boiled down to I hadn't seen this before.
Asian A.V. Club: Are you discovering any Filipino voices that you want to work with?
Chris Quintos Cathcart: We're still hunting for that and we're really open. We recently joined up with the Antigravity Academy Screenwriters Camp and am also funding short film contests, to try to create different pipelines for creatives to come our way. I still haven't found that Filipino American part that I set out to look for, you know what I mean? (laughs)
Asian A.V. Club: There seems to be a growing number of Filipino creatives in front and behind the camera working in LA these days. It must be nice to walk into spaces and see more people like you doing their thing in the industry.
Chris Quintos Cathcart: It’s been amazing! I don't know if you know Dino-Ray Ramos (journalist, founder of Diaspora), he hosted a Filipino dinner last night where everyone were writers, managers and agents, and we just had a chance to talk and chat. I think one thing that I feel like I’m learning is that there is the Fil-Am community and the Filipino community. Those are two different communities that are trying make something in the same space. I feel like we should try to make something together because the world sees us as one. Maybe we can find something in the mix of it, you know?
Asian A.V. Club: With cinema being so international these days, would you be open to invest in a film by a filmmaker from the Philippines that wants to do something that straddles both worlds? Â
Chris Quintos Cathcart: I feel like for now, we want some kind of American lens on things, because that feels like what we can speak to. Obviously, something like The Farewell, which is still kind of an American story, would be something that we’d be interested in. Maybe those training wheels can come off soon, but not quite. I just feel like I want to be able to speak to it authentically and I need to immerse myself a little bit more in this community, because I'm like Fil-Am through and through. I was born in California, and I've been to the Philippines once, so I just don't feel like I can speak to it in the way of a collaboration yet. Give me a year! (laughs)
Asian A.V. Club: I have a feeling you’re a real fast learner! We really can’t wait to see what you decide to work on next. Thank you for talking to us.
Chris Quintos Cathcart: Thank you.