Meet Courtney Romano | Filmmaker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Courtney Romano and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Courtney, what role has risk played in your life or career?
I have an evolving relationship with risk. When I was younger, I would often look at risk as starting something new. And I felt super brave because I would start new things all the time. I was never really afraid of trying a new medium or mode of expression. I enjoyed being a beginner. And while that is objectively a fun thing to do, it wasn’t a big risk for me. I allowed myself to move on before I could get past that beginner stage, and so I never really had to play ball, as it were. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve recognized that the real risk for me is doing deeper work, getting my work seen, and getting other people to join in my work with me. Practically, that has meant on-boarding a team and raising money for my projects. Doing so as forced me to hone my vision for the project, communicate the vision for the project, and risk someone saying “no thank you” to my project. That kind of risk has been really scary for me, but so worth it. It’s made me a stronger, smarter artist and I think my work has benefitted from it.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
The artistic voice I’m going for as a director is: a cultural critic who’s also the life of the party. I want to assert a few scathing indictments on institutions, systems, and personalities that abuse or disenfranchise others. But I want to do it in sequins. If you know what I mean? It’s taken me some time to get to this mental space of saying, ‘No, I actually have something to say about this, and not everyone will like it.”, and I have a lot further to go. More boundaries to push. And more institutions to take on.

I’m very much in the middle of my journey as a director. I had a lot of stops and starts at the beginning. I acted in New York City for 10 years, I self published a book, I ran creativity workshops, I wrote poetry, essays, and articles. I eventually started writing plays, screenplays, and pilots. I went to theatre school, not film school, so I had no idea how to write a screenplay. And I learned through the Breaking Bad pilot! And many other scripts of course, but that pilot was the benchmark for me to figure out structure and formatting. I’d take a look at the scenes and discern what was really happening in them and why they were integral to the movement of the story. Then I’d go to my script and think about what a comparable “moment” might be, what rules I had learned. It wasn’t until after the first draft that I discovered “Save the Cat” and The Hero’s Journey, which in retrospect, could have saved me a lot of time. But, I still study other scripts to figure out what works and what doesn’t, and that study time never feels wasted.

So I wrote lots of things no one ever saw and I kind of danced around what I wanted to do for awhile. And then after I had a baby and she turned one, I looked at my husband and said, “I want to direct and no one has any reason to hire me to do this. If I don’t do it now, it’s never going to happen.” And we talked about it and decided I needed to write and direct something. Just try it out. I made a short film that did a great little run through some film festivals, and as soon as we wrapped production on that, I started working on the script for my series, Kinsley Vs. I knew I was going to love being on set, and I did. I was hooked. The whole filmmaking process from writing to filming to post production fits so well with my personality.

It’s obviously so hard to “break in” to any industry, but film for sure. But in actually executing two projects in the past two years, I’ve learned that if you get yourself moving, people will jump on the train with you. But you can’t rally folks behind something that’s not already going. You have to commit. You have to show up yourself. You have to be the force and enthusiasm behind the thing, making it happen. And then, you’ll be surprised by all the ways people come out to collaborate and help you make it a reality.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
First of all, taco trucks. You have to get the street food in New York City or you’re missing out on one of the main things that makes this the greatest city in the world. There are a couple great taco trucks in Queens that I would bring them to, and then we’d hop on the subway and head to Little Branch in the Village. It’s this sweet little speakeasy on 7th, completely innocuous from the outside except for the bouncer standing by a door. It has live music and as soon as you go down the stairs, it feels like you’re transported to the 1920s. I love it because it feels very wrong if you’re on your phone. When you’re there, you’re just there.

From LB, we would cab it over to Huertas, a delicious Spanish tapas restaurant in the East Village, and get the Chef’s Menu. Also the wine. We’d need to get a tiny bit drunk on their Tempranillo.

After that, we’d head up to Koreatown and go to a Karaoke bar. Those karaoke bars always feel like lawful chaos, especially on a Saturday night and they’re so much fun. Everyone ends up losing their voice and ordering in pizza. Singing in those rooms can be intense it can sometimes feels like exercise.

There’s also the LIC waterfront in Queens, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and honestly a night at CitiField watching the Mets is a pretty great time.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The producing team behind my latest project, Kinsley Vs. (a digital series), Benjamin Shaw, Sara States, Allison Koehler, and Craig Hanson all gave me incredible encouragement and collaboration. When things felt very risky for me (i.e. the first time I went out to fundraise), they each reminded me that I was not alone and we were doing this together. Sometimes it surprised me they wanted to be involved in this project, as they’re each so brilliant in their crafts. And remembering that those folks said yes to this story gave me so much more confidence to take bigger risks and face down bigger challenges.

Website: queensbirdfilms.com

Instagram: queensbirdfilms

Facebook: queensbirdfilms

Other: bit.ly/ScreenTest2020

Image Credits
Ashley Verhasselt Dave Scaringe