Filmmaker James Khanlarian Of Khanlarian Entertainment On The 5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career in TV and Film
…If you’re going into the film industry, film school is completely overrated. You’re not going to learn a whole lot in film school that’s really germane to the film industry. Yes, you can learn about focus. You can watch the classic movies. You can learn about the camera. You can learn a little bit about lighting. But even the lighting techniques they taught me, at least in film school, weren’t very useful. You’ll learn more being on set two days with a real director of photography than your entire film school career. Film school is nothing compared to real life experience…
I had the pleasure of talking with James Khanlarian. James Khanlarian, born in Greensboro, North Carolina, has emerged as a distinctive voice in the entertainment industry, known for his work as a producer, writer, and now director. His journey from a sports-oriented family to the helm of his own production company, Khanlarian Entertainment, in Los Angeles, underscores a narrative of persistence, versatility, and a deep-seated passion for storytelling.
Raised in a family where athletics and academia intertwined, Khanlarian’s early life was marked by a strong presence of tennis, thanks to his professional tennis player father, and a commitment to education, seen in his mother’s career as a university professor. Despite the familial legacy in sports, Khanlarian charted his own path, initially exploring mathematics before finding his true calling in filmmaking during his college years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Khanlarian’s professional journey reflects a steadfast determination in an industry known for its volatility and competitiveness. With over two decades of effort in Hollywood, his directorial debut, ‘The Ghost Trap’, represents the culmination of years of perseverance. The film, a drama centered around a lobsterman facing profound personal turmoil, showcases Khanlarian’s ability to navigate the complexities of human emotion, a theme that resonates through his body of work.
His production company, Khanlarian Entertainment, co-founded with producer Peter A. Couture, stands as a testament to his commitment to creating and developing quality content for a diverse audience. Khanlarian’s current and upcoming projects, including the adaptation of K. Stevens’ novel for ‘The Ghost Trap’ and the planned film based on Ellen Hopkins’ ‘Crank’, underscore his dedication to storytelling that engages with deep, often challenging themes. His work on ‘Crank’, a project that tackles the harrowing realities of addiction, further illustrates his commitment to narratives that not only entertain but also provoke thought and dialogue.
As Khanlarian continues to explore new projects and push the boundaries of independent filmmaking, his journey from the tennis courts of Greensboro to the director’s chair in Hollywood remains an inspiring testament to the power of following one’s passion against all odds.
It’s a delight and an honor to meet you, James. Before we dive in deep, our readers would love to learn about your personal origin story. Can you share this story of your childhood and how you grew up?
Gosh, you make me sound like a superhero.
I was born and raised in Greensboro, North Carolina. My father is Armenian. My mother is some mix of English, Scotch, Irish, I’m not sure. My father was a professional tennis player. Growing up, he had a tennis club. I would be there every day playing tennis and working behind the counter at the snack bar, that sort of thing. We always loved the rain because we got to go home. Nobody could play tennis in the rain, and we got the day off.
My mother is a professor at the university. She’s currently with A&T University, teaching accounting. So we had a well-balanced childhood between sports and academics. I’m the middle of three. My older sister was a great tennis player. She played at Yale. My little brother was a great tennis player too. He played with John Isner growing up, and I was the black sheep. I didn’t want to play tennis. I’m still one of the better tennis players in Hollywood, but compared to everybody else in the family, I’m ranked number four. I can beat my mother.
I went off to study math at first at Lehigh University, but I got bored of that and tried a little bit of theater. I realized I wasn’t good at that and transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and got into filmmaking. Their filmmaking program wasn’t exactly good, but I got through and moved on to Hollywood. I’ve been trying to make movies for a long time in Hollywood, but it’s very difficult. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it took me about 20 years to finally direct a film after having tried and failed probably five times before that. And here we are.
You probably have a lot of fascinating experiences or anecdotes or memories from your experience in Hollywood and filmmaking. Can you share with us one or two of the most memorable and interesting stories that have occurred to you?
You get a lot of celebrity stories working in Hollywood as long as I have, but the stories kind of come up situationally. It’s hard to just recall one out of the blue, but I was thinking about one instance the other day. And this is kind of embarrassing, but I’ll tell it anyway because it was my very first celebrity interaction in Hollywood.
It was my first year in Los Angeles, so this was years ago. I was going through LAX and we were going through normal security. A few people down the line, someone looked a little familiar, but I didn’t really put two and two together. Then after security, I dropped my ticket and this man picks it up and hands it to me. He says, “You dropped this.” I turned to him and said, “Oh my God, you look just like Tim Curry.” I think I worded it, “Has anybody ever told you, you look like Tim Curry?” And he looked at me and said, “No,” then walked off. I realized immediately afterwards, “Oh my God, that was Tim Curry!” Being new to Hollywood and not used to celebrities, first of all, I didn’t think Tim Curry would be traveling with us regular people. And second, I didn’t think he would talk to somebody like me. He was perfectly polite, but probably a little stupified by my reaction to him.
Then over the years, you look at your phone and start to see you have dozens and dozens of famous people in your phone book. It’s a fun little thing to show friends back home.
It’s been said that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Do you have a humorous story about a mistake you made when you were first starting filmmaking and the lesson you learned from it?
Gosh, we do learn from our mistakes, that’s for sure. I’m not sure any of my mistakes are humorous because I take them too personally. (Laughs)
We can skip it. I love stories about how somebody who is more advanced opens a door, creates an opportunity for people and that changes their lives. Do you have a story like that where somebody created an opportunity for you when they didn’t have to?
This is a very good question. You see, Hollywood is built on people helping other people. Nobody can succeed in Hollywood alone. And this is, I mean, this is one reason people get so upset about the nepo baby situation, because certain people are getting obvious help from big names. But you’ve got to realize that any parent would want the best for their children and the best opportunities. And so I’m not that against nepo babies. It makes perfect sense to me in the same way my father gave me every opportunity to be a tennis player. If my dad was a big producer, I would have been directing movies a lot sooner than I am.
But as far as me, I got a lot of support from a lot of people in Hollywood, and primarily a gentleman named Larry Mortoff, and he’s an executive producer on the film. He’s produced 40 or 50 films over his career. I met him on the tennis court, oddly enough, and he kind of took me under his wing and taught me how to survive the business. He taught me the legal parts, he taught me production parts, he got me on sets. It’s amazing the value of a mentor in Hollywood.
And Larry wasn’t the only one, but he was the main one. I was lucky to have a good group of mentors, including one of the biggest attorneys in town, Skip Brittenham, who has been invaluable. And Skip is a major power player in Hollywood, so he can’t really help a little guy like me. But he has made a few introductions and the value of that is incalculable.
So you’re not going to get far in Hollywood just trying to do it by yourself. The cliche is “it’s who you know”. And I think they say that about tech now, and it’s very true. It’s about who you know and who your relationships are with. The thing to take away, I suppose, is that not only are you taking on mentors and taking on advice and the experience of the older generation, but suddenly I’m at a point where I have to take on mentees. What’s the term? Is it a mentee? Yeah, I’ve taken on a few of the younger generation myself. There’s a kid back in North Carolina named Jonathan, who wants to be a filmmaker. He’s a very smart kid, but he just graduated college, so he’s very young. And he’s been helping out a lot with this film and he wants to move out to L.A. eventually. I think he’s got a future, so we’ll see.
Can you share with us the exciting projects you’re releasing now and what you hope to be working on in the near future?
Well, you haven’t seen it yet, but we just recently finished a film called The Ghost Trap. Now, The Ghost Trap is not a happy movie. It’s a sad drama about a lobsterman who loses his fiancé to a boating accident. She suffers a severe head injury. And while he’s rehabilitating her, he falls in love with another girl. It stars Zak Steiner and Greer Grammer. We also have Sarah Catherine Hook, Steven Ogg, Taylor Takahashi in a wonderful supporting cast. We were very lucky with the cast and we’ve got our festival premiere coming up very soon. And we are in talks with several distributors currently. So the film should be released in the next few months.
And we’re all very proud of it. It’s obviously not a huge budget film. We don’t have the biggest marketing budget. So you might have to go out and find it yourself, but it’s going to be worth a watch. And we are going to be in a few film festivals this year as well as probably, hopefully we’ll have a limited theatrical run, but definitely some sort of streaming release. And that’s The Ghost Trap. We’re very happy with it. It’s based on a novel by K. Stevens. I should mention that.
After that, me and Peter, my business partner, have a couple of other properties that we’re in development on. One is a romantic comedy. We’ve got some cast attached, but I don’t want to say too much because the nature of Hollywood is that you don’t know it’s going to happen until the money’s in the bank and you’re filming.
We also have a very good property that I can talk about. We have the film rights to a novel called Crank by Ellen Hopkins. It’s a young adult novel. It’s a beautiful novel, but also a sad one. It’s about a girl who gets hooked on meth and has to deal with the difficulties and trials from addiction. And that’ll be a very good movie when we get it made. We’ve just had a hard time making it happen, as is the case with independent film.
Is it a supernatural film?
Oh no, no, no, no. That’s a good question, though. The funny thing about The Ghost Trap is Peter, our producer, bought the book thinking it was a horror film or a horror book. He thought it was a ghost story of some type. Then he read the book and it was this amazing drama. So despite the name, there’s nothing supernatural about it. There’s nothing horrific or terrifying about it. It’s a human drama story.
I think a Ghost Trap is one of the tools they use in Ghostbusters. (Laughs)
Yes, they use Ghost Traps in Ghostbusters, but it’s symbolic in the lobstering industry. As some people know, but I should explain it, a lobster trap, it’s more or less a wire cage, and it sinks to the bottom of the ocean, but it’s attached to a buoy. And the buoy is attached by a string so that the lobster fishermen can find the trap. They just spot their buoy colors. But if for some reason that string is cut and the lobster trap is separated from the buoy, you can never find that lobster trap again, very often with a lobster trapped inside. And so that’s considered a ghost trap. It’s symbolic in our movie, in our story for the thing that has been lost.
What would you say are the lessons and lessons society can take from the motifs of Ghost Trap?
Society as a whole is in a tough place, I feel. And I think the current state of the United States is such that everyone is behaving poorly. And I don’t think it’s necessarily our fault, but I think people behave poorly in a bad system. And we are currently living in a bad system.
I bring that up because I believe our protagonist in the film, Jamie, played by Zak Steiner, is in a bad situation and he is always doing what he thinks is right. And I think he is a good man put in bad situation after bad situation, and he’s doing the best he can. And I believe that’s one thing we all need to do. We are all in a bad situation right now, and I think we’ve got to do the best we can in it.
So, James, you have so much experience and you’ve been blessed with a lot of success. Can you share with our readers, for somebody who was considering filmmaking or considering getting into the industry, what are the five things you need to create a successful career as a filmmaker?
I’ll answer your question. I’ll come up with five things, but I don’t consider… I’ve directed one film and it’s a nice film. And I think people are telling me that I’ll direct several more based on the quality of that film. But I’m far from a success right now. And it’s taken me 20 years to get this close to success.
But I think to succeed…
- First of all, going back to earlier, you’ve got to know people. You’ve got to know the right people, because if you can’t get in the door, then you’ve got no chance. There’s one thing, a corollary to that, people have told me, big people have told me, if other people like you, you will get a second chance if you fail. But if you fail and you’re not a likable person, if you’re just a jerk, you’re not going to get a second chance. So, to clarify that, know people and be good to people, advice point one.
- Number two, if you want to be a success in the film industry, you’ve got to work hard. Working hard isn’t enough, because everyone is working hard and everyone is talented, so you have to specialize, let me say that, because if you want to get into the film industry and you want to be an editor, then you’ve got to edit. If you want to be a writer, you’ve got to write all the time. If you want to be a director, you’ve got to direct. And director is a self-starting position. Nobody just hands you directorship. You can’t go to Hollywood and say, oh, I want to do a little bit of everything, because then you’re going to fail at everything.
- Advice point number three, I’d say “don’t get depressed”, but you’re going to get depressed, so be sure to get over it. You know, go through that and overcome it, because this is a very depressing industry. It’s depressing, you laugh, which is good, but there are big highs and there are big lows and there are extended lows. And for example, we’re just coming out of I think the actor strike was four or five months. But there was a two month start and a two month tail to that where the whole industry was afraid of a strike and then was kind of hung over from the strike. So all of last year, almost nothing happened. And luckily, we were in post-production on that film. So we weren’t too affected. But everyone in my cast was hurt badly. And so it was a very depressing year for most of Hollywood last year. So get through the depression. Those are three points.
- This is a funny one because you may not think about it, but to be a success in Hollywood, you have to stay healthy and in good shape because this might sound trite, but Hollywood is a very visual industry and people judge you very quickly. Luckily, everybody in Los Angeles stays in shape normally. Appearances mean a lot in Los Angeles, and that’s just the way it is. I can’t apologize for it or explain why it is, but people judge you very quickly based on the way you look. And if you are in good shape and well groomed, people take you more seriously. If you have your own certain style and it’s a cool style, they’ll appreciate that. Luckily, that’s one of the cool parts about Hollywood. Hollywood doesn’t mind you being different. They just want you to look good about it.
- And then a final piece of advice. If you’re going into the film industry, film school is completely overrated. You’re not going to learn a whole lot in film school that’s really germane to the film industry. Yes, you can learn about focus. You can watch the classic movies. You can learn about the camera. You can learn a little bit about lighting. But even the lighting techniques they taught me, at least in film school, weren’t very useful. You’ll learn more being on set two days with a real director of photography than your entire film school career. Film school is nothing compared to real life experience.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
I think we need a lot of new people in Congress on both sides. And I think we need election reform. I think we need all sorts of reform in the government. And that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
Let me give you a better answer, though. I think one of the best things a person can do with their influence, and I’m not very influential yet, but thank you. One of the best things people can do with their influence is learn to treat each other better. And it’s really that simple because look, when my father was traveling the world in his day, he says he lived in London in the mid late 60s and young girls could go out anytime of the night and be completely safe. A 14-year-old girl going out at midnight or 2 a.m. and not having to worry about their own safety is pretty significant. And we are not living in a world like that anymore. But there’s no reason why we can’t be. And it all comes down to us as people.
This is our last question. This is our matchmaker question. And sometimes it works. We’re very blessed that prominent leaders in entertainment and business read this column. And is there a person in the world or the U.S. with whom you’d like to have a lunch with or have a beer with because we could tag them on social media and maybe we could connect you?
Oh wow. Well, Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell are dead, so I can’t have lunch with them. But I think considering my industry, I would really like to meet with and have lunch with Terry Gilliam, one of my favorite directors. Most of my favorite directors are long dead, but Terry is alive and doing pretty well, I believe. He’s always been a big influence. And it’s a shame that he seems to have issues with Hollywood as an industry or maybe Hollywood has issues with him. He is a brilliant, brilliant director and funny man.
Aside from that, there are lots of people I would like to meet and have lunch with. But one of the benefits of being in the film industry and having any sort of success in the industry is that it’s actually possible for me to meet these people and have lunch with them. And it’s not too difficult. It could be I reach out to my agent and say, “Hey, I want to pitch this to Terry Gilliam.” And it’s not guaranteed to happen, but it is possible to happen. I’ve gotten to meet a lot of people that I greatly admire, for instance, Harrison Ford, I’ve met several times. He’s a very nice man. Brian Grazer is a very nice man. And he’s a Hollywood legend.
This is not the direct answer to your question, but it’s a fun little side note, I suppose. When prepping for The Ghost Trap, I realized I had to cast a few bit parts. And so I thought, “Oh, who would I like to work with, some of my favorite people in the entertainment world?” And I decided I’d go out to the lead singer of my favorite band, Jon Anderson from Yes. And I didn’t have a direct contact, but I found some email address on his website and I said, “Hey, come out and be in my movie.” And I never heard back. But that’s okay. He would have been great to work with. It’s a fun industry when things go right.
OK, so how can our readers continue to follow your work? How can they support your work? How could they purchase your films? How could they watch your films? How could they do anything that will be supportive to you?
I really do need the support. So all your readers should come and they should rent the film when it’s released or they should go to see it in theaters when it’s released. And we have a website up. It’s simultaneously for the book and the movie. It’s theghosttrap.com.
You can also go to our website, khanlarianEntertainment.com, but just keep checking. IMDB is a great source for upcoming projects. Deadline.com is too.
And I do have a cast that everybody should be following online. I’m not very good at Instagram, but you should follow Zak Steiner, Greer Grammer, Sarah Catherine Hook, Steven Ogg , Taylor Takahashi. These people are far more famous than I am and easier to follow.
Amazing. Well, James, it’s been a delight and an honor to meet you. I wish you continued success and blessings, and I hope this does very well for you.
Thank you. Let’s do this again next year when I have another project.
We’ll have to do it again. I appreciate that.
Filmmaker James Khanlarian Of Khanlarian Entertainment On The 5 Things You Need To Create A Highly… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.