Kelly Edwards, Staff Writer, Author, Producer: Well, all the ideas out there are big ideas.
All of those things that are getting made are more interesting than I am not realizing that
you are a wealth of story, I am a wealth of story and I just have to dig deep enough to figure out
what story do I want to tell? Film Courage: What’s the difference between helping other
people achieve their dreams and pursuing your own dreams? Kelly: Well I think that
for sure pursuing my own dreams was scarier. It’s a lot easier to help somebody else
but I’ve often said that helping someone achieve their dreams there’s like a crack high (I’ve
never done crack but I imagine it’s like the crack high) that you would get just because it is truly
intoxicating. I’ve been in that business (that world) for a long time. As an executive you’re
constantly green lighting things or you’re pushing something forward or you’re introducing someone to
some key relationship or you’re hiring a staff for a show or a director and making that phone call
is an amazing phone call. I remember when we were picking up Living Single and I happened to be at
home. My boss at the time, Tom Noonan, said Hey, you can make this phone call. He says This is
your show, you can make this phone call.I called Yvette Lee Bowser and I screamed in her ear and
it was such a high-pitched scream because I was so excited. There was this sort of pause on the
other end of the call and she’s like I didn’t hear a thing you just said because I was so excited.
It’s a really wonderful feeling to be able to support somebody. I think it’s easy for me because
there may be the difference between when someone is just starting out particularly
and I’ve obviously worked with a lot of writers and directors who are just emerging.
What they need most besides the acknowledgement, the encouragement and just the general support
of helping shape a piece of material is they really need those connections. I’ve got a lot
of connections and so making those phone calls is not hard for me. That’s part of it and what
I find the difference is between people who are just emerging and struggling and the people who
are really firing on all cylinders is sometimes their network. Let’s just say everything is equal,
the materials all equal and they’re great people everywhere, which I do find they’re great people
everywhere, the people who are connected and the people who are able to create relationships for
those relationships exponentially just it explode and and so I just lend my at this point for many
of those I just led my connections and that's the difference between someone getting moving forward
and someone not getting moving forward oftentimes so so that part's easy for for myself it's harder
because I sit there and I'm wallowing in my own material right and sometimes you're trying to
figure out well what do you do next and how do you navigate you're trying to put your business hat on
and go well if I work on this it's gonna take me away from that so what am I gonna do and what's
the material I'm putting out in the marketplace and then I have to really tap into my own personal
mishegoss about well what's my stuff that I want to what do I want to say and who do I want to be
and that takes a lot of work emotional work that making a phone call does not does not tax my brain
but doing my own personal work is is hard so I do think focusing on myself has been
a little bit of a challenge but I think it's I think it's also time right do you think that
maybe being conditioned to feel guilty for wanting to do something on your own I mean there's a
there's an air of selfishness with any creative pursuit where it seems like oh well it's one of
these sort of artists that they're just going to disregard everything and and go off and and create
is there is there some kind of a stigma with wanting to do your own thing creatively I
don't know I think for me I'm at this place in my life where I'm I've got an empty nest and even if
my kids are here they're adult kids so they know that if I'm gonna lock myself away that it's okay
I think it gets a little harder with my mother who wants to go to costco every week and I'm like
we just go to costco and costco now it used to be like going to costco with mom was a you're in and
out in 45 minutes and you leave with a bunch of stuff and now she likes to linger and when I when
she asks me if she wants if I want to go to costco with her the guilt that I feel about now I really
don't want to spend two hours in costco that's and it seems trivial but I think that's indicative of
when someone else is asking for your time and when that person is really important to you and
you want to give that time but you don't always want to give that time all the time then yeah you
have to make some choices sometimes that family dinner is like the last thing you want to do
so you have to negotiate it's important to negotiate your family time for sure they've got
great samples they do have great samples although they're not always vegetarian samples and that's
my issue yeah sure sure yeah and from being on the other end of doing samples in the past you
meet people that they want to talk to you and that's their only outlet right there and and
could be vice versa I know it's mutual but I know you had written some posts about riding the bus
yes and and some of the interesting people that you had met and it's the same for probably doing
some of these samples and and some of the people you encounter in the grocery store it's that was
one of the best I think shut down my bus riding quite considerably but from 2015 to 2020 I rode
the bus exclusively and and very rarely was I in a car and it was the best most I don't know relaxing
time you would not think that it would be but I think if you're obviously if you're stressed for
time and there was one day that I was trying to do it going to getting to the airport to go to india
and I was stressed like crazy because it was a bus ride that took way longer than it should have
but for the most part I met so many amazing people I learned about my town my city I i
really got a chance to engage with a lot of the world in a way that I hadn't in a really long
time and it's a weird thing to say because in new york you're always in public transportation in
la you're not you're usually in a car but it was it was a pretty magical kind of five years
that I i do look forward to and I'm not I'm a talker anyway so I will I will chat people up
at the drop of a hat so just put me in a place where there's more people and i'll start talking
why wasn't it okay for you to pursue your writing dreams when you were a little bit younger well
when I was coming out of college my stepdad who has passed away just before covent
we we had a very interesting conversation again I remember exactly where we had this conversation
it was on the back stoop of his house and he wanted me to have a real job and he was
concerned he was concerned that I wasn't going to be able to make a living in the industry and
so he had recommended that I take a secretarial job working for a company downtown I think it
was an interior design company couldn't have been farther from who I was personally because I may I
have terrible tastes in decorating and and I know where it came from it came from his fear that that
I needed to have some some means of support and he had grown up in the depression and his father was
I believe his father was a dentist and he he ended up going into the dental field he was a dentist
but what he really wanted to be was a writer and he'd written some books along the way he'd
written them about dentistry if you want to buy one j.w friedman I don't can look him up but
but he had never really ventured out and and took it seriously or took himself seriously and the
short stories that he wrote were just beautiful and I considered at one point making one of them
into a short film but it's just just beautiful work and then he decided he'd had this this idea
sort of locked away inside of him for years and he finally wrote it in his 70s and it's a book
out there I don't I don't even know where you can find it now but I think it's called the seventh
millennium and it's it's it's not my cup of tea but it's it's certainly everything it's a it's
it's underneath it's about his first marriage and there's like a lot of themes that come up for him
and it was his magnum opus it was his thing that he wanted to put out there and and he wrote this
one little book and and then talked about it for the next 20 years and I think his concern was that
I think it was the real fear that I think a lot of parents have about their kids
are they going to make it or are they not going to be able to make this happen for themselves so
so that coupled with the the parental pressure from him on the other hand my mom's going go for
it do whatever you want it's okay but that combined with I needed to make real money
and the job that I had at the time when I was a writer's assistant was probably barely making rent
but again it's trying to figure out well what's the trajectory and how can you
pursue it and when you don't see people who are doing it
and you don't see that there's a pathway and and I was writing on a show
a writer's assistant on a show where it was two latino leads and an entirely white
male writers room and even that's even in my own so basically my own backyard and I can't seem to
figure out and navigate how to do how to get in there I think that there's there's societal things
that happen where and I think and I don't think that this is unusual I think if you look back and
and hear a lot of stories from a lot of people around that time and even before it was a hard
business to break into it still is a hard business to break into and when you're a woman of color
you've got a couple of you know the pathways were just not plentiful so I think that if I
if I had been I don't know that I knew I don't think I had any other options I don't think I was
missing anything I think I was in the I was doing the right things I was writing the scripts I was
working on my craft I do think that there was a frustration at a certain point where I did
stop writing because it was just too painful but I think I also got in my own head and I think if
I had if I was going to give anybody some advice now or even if I was going to talk to myself back
in the 80s I would have said just keep writing and I think I also didn't understand at the time
that I had something to say I think I was really probably putting up a roadblock because I thought
well all the ideas out there are big ideas all of those things that are getting made are are
more interesting than I am not realizing that you are a wealth of story I am a wealth of story and
I just have to dig deep enough to figure out what story do I want to tell I could tell a story about
riding on the bus and it could be an emotional heartfelt amazing story I at the time probably
would not have recognized that but it took me a long time and a pathway through the executive
ranks in order to get to the other side and go oh yeah there's value in in just about everything.