Meet Michael Cueto | Screenwriter and Filmmaker

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

Hi Michael, why did you pursue a creative career?
For me, an artistic career was a no-brainer. Obviously, like most other creatives, I thought about it a lot, stressed about it, second-guessed myself, and continue to worry about if I’ve really made the right choice all the time. Film is a hard field and it demands a lot from you. But at a certain point in my life I had to read the writing on the wall: when I was 7 I wanted to draw comics, when I was 9 I wanted to be a novelist, and going into high school I wanted to enter film. I’ve always wanted to do something creative. The connecting tissue between the three was that I just wanted to tell stories. I want to tell stories. Not because I have some higher purpose in mind, not really. But because telling stories is just about the only thing in my life that comes naturally to me, and eventually I did start feeling like I had something to say. Something too visceral and important to me to leave unsaid. And stories are just how my mind decided to order those feelings. More than images or music, story is just what I respond to. Even in those mediums, when I dabble, I find myself telling stories.

All of this to say that pursuing a career in art was never an “option” for me, it was the only path that made sense. At some primal level, I feel like my talents would be wasted elsewhere, and that I wouldn’t be very good at anything else. Simply put, I am pursuing a creative career because I am an artist. Not an “aspiring artist” but an artist, because I create art, and I do it genuinely. In my eyes, that’s really all you need to do. The labeling of my art as “student” or even “independent” is just a way for people to disregard it, and is a result of a capitalistic need to organize and quantify. To tell you what should and shouldn’t be bought. I keep finding that the simple act of creating art has a certain rebellious value to it, in spite of its success or lack there of. I’ve had many conversations with friends, creatives or not, about the distinct possibility that a creative career will not work out for me. I always tell them the same two things: “I’ll kick myself if I never try” and “Even if it’s not paying my bills, I’ll always be making art.” It’s not something I can turn off. I find that my creative friends, like me, would if they could. But we can’t. So all I can do is ask everyone to get used to it.

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 consider myself a multidisciplinary artist, gravitating towards writing and directing film, both traditional and experimental, as well as photography and poetry. I had a very powerful experience during the summer of 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic, where my mentality transitioned from one of, “I should focus on film because I go to film school” to considering myself an Artist that was unconfined by labels and had the potential to create in any field I wanted. For the first time, I let myself explore the ideas that I had previously pushed aside because they weren’t “cinematic.” And this mentality has become extremely important for me. I feel like, just because of my circumstances, I have limitations placed upon my art already. The last thing I should do is limit myself.

In 2021, Juliet Wang, Daniel Oh, Alex Abrams, and I started a creative collective called VWC (which doesn’t stand for anything). With them, I’ve been able to write, produce, direct, and edit a whole range of projects, including sketch comedy, experimental films, and fully-fledged narrative features. We also run our “brand” together and are slowly but surely trying to grow it. Both within and outside of VWC, what I do most often is direct and edit. I’ve directed, or co-directed, and edited almost everything I’ve ever had a hand in making, ranging from music videos made for independent bands and musicians, promotional content (also usually for independent bands and musicians), sketch comedy, as well as narrative shorts and feature films.

As a filmmaker, I try to never define myself by my “style,” or the style I wish to have. In recent years, I’ve grown to love and respect the philosophy of filmmakers that have a more subtle or less consistent style in comparison to those that are more consistent or obvious. The form of filmmaking is a way to package the content of a story, so to me, there are endless directing possibilities if you are willing to fit the style of a film to the story it’s telling, as opposed to the other way around. Some of my favorite directors do this beautifully, and are my favorite directors BECAUSE of their ability to create films that feel radically different from each other. Because of this, I tend to gravitate to stories that play with form. For example, VWC’s feature film READY FOR PICKUP which is shot through the lens of 4 friends trying to vlog while they work as food delivery drivers. As well as “Voyeur” set within the computer screen of a “true-crime” fan watching the last footage of a murder victim, which I co-directed with my friend Max Dubner. This tendency to explore the way that films are packaged and viewed extends into my experimental work, both my own and with VWC. I don’t want my experimental films to feel like reality. I want them to feel like videos, exploiting their natural distortions and flaws. Dirty, grainy, noisy, ugly, corrupted, chaotic. While making most of my experimental films, there would actually be rendering errors that I kept in, because they fit so well with what I was trying to accomplish. I want the sound to be grating, loud, and uncomfortable, mostly without worrying about abrupt changes in volume. I want to convince myself that I found these videos in some dark corner of the internet, instead of creating them. And thus, I try to style them after videos I could actually find. Like my award-winning fake travel ad “Destiny Airlines” about modern capitalist imperialism, “IMG_122521.MOV” which has been described as a video suicide note, or VWC’s CONTENT AWARE series, a three-part video poem written during a panic attack, about the interplay between art and an anxiety disorder.

But most of all, I’m a screenwriter. It’s hard, it’s frustrating, and it exhausts me like nothing else. But it is the most rewarding thing I do. I’ve always been a writer, and I think that’s mainly because I went to Catholic School. Say what you want, but Catholics definitely have a flair for the dramatic. I didn’t know many other 10 year olds outside of school that were contemplating morality after recess. It’s these themes and my own struggling with them that colors much of my work. I’ll also say this about writing: there’s no perfect way to do it. It’s been a process all on its own of finding what works for me, it’s ongoing. And the hardest writing you’ll do is not written down. Ideas need time to simmer. Once I became okay with that fact, I embraced the fact that I was and had always been a writer.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Honestly, I’m sort of a shut-in. So this will be brief but: First, Philippe The Original, and then Chinatown. My mom’s side is like 100 years of LA natives, so we’ve been getting Philippe’s basically since it opened. And then, if you can’t find something interesting in Chinatown, I don’t know why you’re even visiting me. Next, the Getty. It’s sort of a litmus test for if we can speak about art or not. If they’re bored, I’ll know to keep it to small talk. And then after that, I have no plans. I have family members and friends that have very strict itineraries when we go on vacation, and by the end of it, it feels like I haven’t had a vacation at all. I try to keep it very very very go with the flow at all times in these situations (even if it’s not the best for budgeting). And I like wherever my girlfriend takes me!

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?
I owe a lot of my current creative life to my friends Juliet Wang, Daniel Oh, and Alex Abrams, and our creative collective: VWC. My favorite thing about our group is our emphasis on being able to explore anything and everything. Essentially, our mission was to create an environment where any pitch was on the table, and anything was possible with enough brainstorming and ingenuity. Especially ingenuity, considering we also emphasize productions that are affordable for us as 4 college students. With this philosophy, we’ve created many of the works that I’m most proud of. We also have a strong emphasis on the structure behind the scenes of our films. The 4 of us, and on occasion our collaborators, receive directing credit as “VWC” with room to include our individual names if we feel it’s appropriate based on who helmed the project. This comes directly from a refutation of auteur theory, the belief that the director is the sole author of a film, and the immense ego that stems from it, which each of us have encountered individually, outside of VWC. We hope that through this, not only the 4 of us, but also our collaborators and crew members (whom we consider collaborators as well), feel like they are included as an important part of the artistic process. And in all honesty, it’s just how the 4 of us work together naturally. And that’s really the key to it. Together, we’ve built something extremely special to me, where I’ve been able to do some of my best work, work that I never felt would be understood or appreciated outside of VWC. I love you guys, and I sincerely hope that we “VWC” everything we do for years to come.

And where would I be without my dad, Emilio Cueto? He inspired me to pursue what I was interested in from a very young age. He let me read and watch what I wanted, when I wanted. He’s the reason I’m an artist, and I couldn’t be happier about that. He continues to be my #1 fan, my harshest critic, and someone I consistently go to for artistic advice. He’s also an abstract painter, sculptor, and artist in his own right, and the most talented person I know.

Website: https://michaelcueto529.myportfolio.com

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

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

Other: https://www.youtube.com/@vwc https://www.instagram.com/theofficialvwc/ https://linktr.ee/theofficialvwc

Image Credits
Alex Abrams VWC