John Cabrera: A Man For All Seasons
June 19, 2008 by poprockcandy
By Amanda Brumfield
Pop- Rock Candy Mountain
John Cabrera is an actor, perhaps best recognized for his roles as Brian Fuller on the tremendously popular television series, “The Gilmore Girls” and as Elliot on “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”. He is also a writer, producer, director, tech geek, painter, illustrator, designer and I’m guessing that, under the right circumstances, he can do the Robot like nobody’s business.
He has three short films under his belt, was a storyboard artist for the film “Slither”, directed the video for Wisely’s, “Through Any Window”, and pretty soon will have some very exciting news to announce about a brand new writing project.
Cabrera is also very kind and consistently aware of and interested in the world around him. PRCM spoke with him about a few of his many projects and in doing so, may have been inspired to start a few of our own.
Pop- Rock Candy Mountain (PRCM) What are you up to right now?
John Cabrera (JC) Well, I’m doing a lot of writing right now. I have a project coming up that I can’t really talk about just yet, but it’s going to be exciting. We’ll make an announcement sometime soon.
PRCM: You studied theater in Chicago at DePaul University, and then a few years later moved to LA to pursue your career. Was that a scary transition- going from Chicago to LA?
JC: You know it was mostly from a financial standpoint. I think a lot of people are afraid of getting eaten by the industry, but I wasn’t really afraid of that- mainly because I’m a project person, I’ve always got a lot going on at one time. So I don’t have a lot of time to think about whether or not I’m getting that call for an audition. I think that’s why a lot of actors leave the scene early, they are trying to figure out why they didn’t get that call.
Financially though it was difficult. At the time I was designing websites for a living- I consider myself very lucky and blessed that in a very short period of time I was on a hit television show. Albeit not as a regular, but I had a strong enough role on the show that the next five years of my life I was very financially secure. That allowed me to then work more on these other projects.
PRCM: Was the “Gilmore Girls” a positive experience overall?
JC: Oh yeah, I loved working with everybody on it. It was a family, not just the cast but the crew, it was a big family. I think when you work with a group of people for so long you are going to have that sort of automatic bonding.
PRCM: I have to ask you about working on the “Gilmore Girls” with Sebastian Bach. I love him, he’s like a big sweet kid. What was that experience like for you?
JC: I love Sebastian, he and I became really close when he was on the show, which is funny. I wouldn’t say my personality is exactly like my character Brian’s was, but I guess I’m a nerdy, respectable guy- I’m into Indie Rock, a little bit of a geek. So to see me and Sebastian Bach hanging out together is just as ridiculous as you would imagine it would be.
He’s such a great guy. I think the best quality about him is that he is totally true to who he is. He doesn’t pretend to be anything more than who he is. Everything you see on television, that’s who he really is. No pretentiousness at all.
PRCM: You directed the video for Wisely’s, “Through Any Window”. How did that whole project come about and where did you get your inspiration for the video?
JC: Jenna (Fisher) and James (Gunn) are close friends of mine. I’ve actually been the closest of friends with Sean Gunn, James’ brother for about 15 years, since we were in college. I am also close with his family and so I’ve been friends with Jenna for a long time as well. Willie Wisely approached Jenna about doing a video with him because he’d read that “Through Any Window” was one of her favorite songs. So she agreed and wanted me to direct it.
We all sort of thought about what we wanted the concept to be and James suggested that we bring Lee Kirk on to help hash it all out. He had the idea about using Polaroids and having them develop during the video. I thought it was an awesome idea so we went with it. We had to outline beat by beat how it needed to go and what would be in the Polaroids.
The week before we shot I put together an anamatic, a 3D representation of the video, so that I could sync-out all of the beats. Everyone came in and watched the anamatic several times, then we rehearsed for a day, and then came in early one morning and started shooting.
We shot the Polaroids early that day because, here’s a secret, all of them were digitally created in post production. You are the first to get the scoop on that. Anyway, we did 37 takes and ended up using take 35.
PRCM: You do so many different things- directing, writing, editing, animation…you always have a lot going on. What keeps you motivated to continue to do all of these different projects?
JC: Hmmmm, I don’t know that is a question I’m not exactly sure how to answer- I think I’ve just always been like this. I do know for sure that my interest in these projects comes from a very strong background in design- I thought I would be a designer, a fine artist, a painter of some sort. Then in my junior year of high school, I just burned out on it. I think I felt that I wasn’t going to be great at it, and that was something that I wasn’t happy with.
My college friends and I have just always been into dreaming up new ideas for projects. Why, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe it comes from some fear that if I stop I might go crazy or something. There’s some part of me that, if I stop, starts to get sad or anxious. I guess a lot of artists that….oh god now this is starting to sound kind of pathetic.
PRCM: No, not at all. I think that is just part of the creative personality. Your brain is always moving at a million miles an hour, and if you stop- it keeps going. That can cause a lot of discomfort.
Anything else we should look out for?
JC: Keep your eyes on my blog, I’m going to make an announcement pretty soon. As soon as I get the OK.
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