Meet Adam Assad | Filmmaker

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

Hi Adam, do you have some perspective or insight you can share with us on the question of when someone should give up versus when they should keep going?
This is an excellent question and one that I consider all the time. I guess it depends on what you mean by “to give up” exactly. Los Angeles is a very difficult place to live for a variety of reasons. Packing up your bags and moving back home after six months wasn’t for me but it might be a good decision for others. People and circumstances change and there is nothing wrong with that. I want to stick it out and manifest my goals come hell or high water. Without any money and relatively no connections it has been the windiest road. As I get older and I still find myself not where I want to be in just about every aspect of my life “giving up” feels enticing. But what would that look like exactly? Embracing the banal and mundane for the next thirty years (at least) of my working existence? This choice would permanently extinguish the fire inside and the drive to push myself and create. Personally, I need to feed the soul and creating art through the medium of storytelling does exactly that. I choose to keep going because the option of giving up looks even more terrifying.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I am a filmmaker still looking for my place in the world. I am most interested in stories from the working class and the marginalized. The polished, sanitized, and plastic image of Hollwood isn’t really for me. I find the dark and seedy underbelly of Los Angeles to be vastly more interesting. Nothing worth anything in life comes easy and needless to say working in the entertainment industry is certainly no exception. I believe in “greenlighting” yourself to make things happen because there really isn’t another way anymore. If you believe in yourself, create your own short or feature with the resources you have until others notice and start believing in you too. I wrote, produced, and directed my first feature entitled “The Sea Was Never Blue” which was released last year and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Tubi. I learned a lot in the process (too much to type here) but the most important lesson is to surround yourself with the right people. My “brand” (I never really like referring to that) is authenticity and speaking truth to power.

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.
I am probably not the best person for this answer but I would grab a burrito from El Cocinero, show them Doughboy’s house from “Boyz n the Hood,” and then cap it off by watching the sunset at Point Dume.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
The person who deserves the most credit would be without a doubt my mother. She raised me as a single parent in some not so great parts of Florida on a very low income. She followed her dreams despite having to raise a small boy on her own and went back to school to earn an engineering degree. It was always her dream to work for the space program and she made it happen. She worked on NASA’s Space Shuttle program until it ended in July of 2011 and currently still works at the space center.

Another person that needs recognition is Bruce Hochstetler. He served as the father figure I never had growing up and gave me two very important gifts when I was young. The first was a bootlegged cassette tape of Metallica’s “Kill ‘Em All” which forever changed the way I looked at music. The second was a 1993 World Atlas (I still have this somewhere) which fostered my interest in the world and its people, languages, and cultures. I have since traveled to every continent and traveling and learning continues to be a passion of mine.

Website: www.theseawasneverblue.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xadamassadx

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-assad

Twitter: https://twitter.com/adam_cabal

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/xadamcabalx

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@marbleryeproductions