Meet Jason Decker | Filmmaker & Revolutionary

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

Hi Jason, what habits do you feel helped you succeed?
The number one habit that I’ve stuck to my entire life is to always – and I mean always – look at every situation from the other side… or the five other sides… or from underneath and slightly to the left. I learned early on that we as humans tend to get stuck in our own perspectives, seeing life through just one lens, which oftentimes locks us in a limiting box of our own creation. By constantly forcing ourselves to try out viewpoints that don’t feel natural or comfortable, over time we start to break free from our programming and become better able to improve our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

Deciding that I don’t agree with another person’s viewpoint is easy. Working to understand why they hold that viewpoint gives me a much better insight into what societal forces got them there, and how I, as an artist, can interact with those forces to influence change through my work.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I was a full-on science and tech nerd in high school, who loved experimenting in the chem lab, programming on his basement computer, and engineering architectural ideas on paper. Unfortunately, corporate pharmaceutical R&D was the only chem career I was aware of (boring!), nobody told me that video game programmer was an actual job, and the only architects I’d met were stuck designing parking lots and apartment blocks. So I threw everything in with my other love and got myself a BFA in Theatre (with a minor in Philosophy) from NYU. I’d always been told that it was a hard life — and I love a challenge — but what nobody told me was that the life of an actor is almost never about the challenge of the work, it’s about the challenge of selling yourself as an asset in a market that is rarely interested in the art.

After a few brutal years in New York learning that I had absolutely no facility at the self-promotion necessary to survive as an actor, and discovering that the type of avant garde theatre that I wanted to be doing was all but impossible in our market capitalist society, I headed to CalArts to transition myself into the director’s chair for both stage and film. As luck would have it, I stepped out of those doors directly into the Great Recession and floundered for a bit, barely keeping a roof over my head for a year or two.

Finally, a friend got me a job as an Assistant Editor for Luminant Media where I worked for several years, ultimately handling all of the post-production for several Sundance films, TV shows, and online content, all of an activist mindset. Those years helped me to find my voice and helped me to transition into my current iteration as a Documentary Editor by day and Independent Filmmaker by night (with occasional bouts of writing and spiritual exploration on the side). After that long and winding rollercoaster, I’m now finding a way to pull those avant garde threads back into my work with my upcoming feature “The Naked Truth” which aims to blur the lines between documentary and art as it explores masculinity and the male body in the current moment of rapid reassessment of what those terms mean.

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.
As a kid from the suburbs of Pittsburgh who grew up with an idealized vision of LA and an assumption that it was never really going to be a part of his life, sitting behind the Hollywood Sign and watching the sunset is still one of my favorites. I also live right down the block from Formosa Cafe and grabbing a drink by the LA Confidential booth never gets old. A sunset picnic at Barnsdall Park followed by dinner in the neighborhood is also pretty choice.

The science nerd in me has gone to visit Endeavour several times and will probably go back many more. I’ve also been to JPL to shoot an interview and, though they’re only open one or two days a year to the public, if I had people in town for those days, we’d definitely be standing in line for that. Also, Wisdome is a wonderful little slice of Burning Man hidden away in the Arts District. Pair an evening there with a bar &/or restaurant downtown (Clifton’s would be my choice for out of town guests) and you’ve got a solid night out.

As for food, there are way too many to name — and this comes from a guy who spent his first five-or-so years here as a New York food snob. Just stay away from the chains and the big names (I’m looking at you, corporatized Umami Burger, and the soulless shell that you have become) and dive into any of the immigrant kitchens spread across the city. It’s a never-ending, and always rewarding, adventure.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My shoutout goes to all the teachers I’ve had along the way who recognized that I didn’t really fit in any of the normal boxes they were used to, and who either encouraged me to figure out what my path was truly meant to be… or who at least had the good sense to get out of the way. School gets a pretty bad rap in our collective consciousness and, in many ways, I think that’s because teachers are overworked and under-funded, so they generally aren’t able to develop the close relationships with their students needed to help them discover their true paths through life. I got very lucky to have a number of outstanding mentors — from kindergarten all the way to grad school — and I’d really love to see a future where everyone is as lucky on that front as I was.

Website: https://www.thenakedtruthfilm.com/

Instagram: @jasondecker42

Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1645233 https://linktr.ee/thenakedtruthfilm