Emerging Artist: Galen Hutchison’s Plan to Take Hollywood

Galen Hutchison has always been a “cheeky” kid. In fact, in his one-day movie shoot on the set of Beerfest (2006), filmed at a private home in Northeast Albuquerque, he is referred to on the call sheet as “the wise-ass party goer.” This boundless energy and confidence led him to leading roles in high school productions as widely divergent as A Christmas Carol, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream and to a comic turn as Launcelot Gobbo in The Arden Players’ production of The Merchant of Venice. Yet, while he thoroughly enjoys acting and jobs “keep chasing me down,” Galen has his eyes firmly set on Hollywood and film. For a young man of eighteen, he has a clear game plan for the future.

Galen is currently spending half his time taking all the film classes he can at the College of Santa Fe “to learn more about the craft” of his chosen profession and half his time writing screenplays. While he believes that “a film degree is basically useless,” he sees the need to improve his knowledge and skills and to make professional connections: “Work is the most important thing there is.” Writing is in Galen’s blood and is a major part of my “overall game plan.” His father was a successful writer-journalist in the era of Timothy Leary and John Lilly. He wrote a few novels, but his most successful works are Megabrain: The Anatomy of Sex and Power and The Book of Floating.

Galen has two major writing projects on which he is currently working. He is working with screenwriter Deborah Dennison on a contemporary version of Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer. His focus is to “revamp the plot to a modern setting” and “to focus primarily on dialogue.” He is also working with a student partner on a “cheeky romantic comedy” set on a generic college campus in which two film school students shoot hard-core porn and become an underground success. All comes a cropper when one of the film students falls in love with an “ultra-feminist whom he woos while attempting to keep his career under wraps.”

In response to a query, Galen admits “to love writing with another person. All moves faster when you have a second person to bounce ideas off of.” His writing style is organic and fluid. He tries out various plots and settings, often setting aside a draft and beginning over. Every screenplay is “many variations on a theme” with “new things coming up as he (and his collaborator) write.” Once he settles on a plot that element changes little, but the other elements are all open to major reworking.

While the usual route to making films follows the film school, reel resume, local film office, production assistant, assistant director, and director progression, Galen is self-aware enough to realize that he’s “too lazy” and too ambitious to take this conventional path. He wants to take the “notoriety” route in which he “is in the business” and “gets known” and “meets the right people.” In his case, this means using his acting ability, something that Galen believes “one is born with.” On the suggestion of a family friend, Galen hired an agent while still in high school. Within a few months he secured a party scene, one line part—“Dude, aren’t you like forty?”—and met his heroes, the actors/writers of the Broken Lizard Troupe. In 2007, he secured the featured part of Dobie in The Burrowers, a movie filmed locally at the Bonanza Creek Ranch in Santa Fe County The Burrowers is a western-horror film (Silverado meets Jaws?) that was funded by Lion’s Gate and the State of New Mexico Film Office. Under the direction of screenwriter J. T. Petty, The Burrowers is the story of a posse of cowboys searching for a missing family. Galen’s character Dobie is a rookie cowboy on the hunt only because William Packer, the leader of the search party, is wooing Dobie’s mother. (The release date for The Burrowers is late summer 2008.)

I was surprised at how quickly the audition process was for Galen. He memorized his lines prior to his audition, had a call back, met the director, and signed his contract. All of this happened within a few weeks. Galen has an interesting take on the audition process. Once the contract is signed “the part is yours, and you don’t have to act any more. You can just be yourself.”

Galen started his discussion of the six-week shoot on the Bonanza Creek Ranch by stating how hard he worked. But he quickly backtracked: “It’s (film acting) not hard. You read the screenplay, learn your lines, and get paid ridiculous amounts of money for this. There are twelve-hour days, but I spent my time mostly eating and napping.” The only true hard days were those on horseback in the summer heat of July and August. However, the experience was very rewarding, especially since Galen got “to befriend most of the cast and crew.”

There are three mentors who Galen credits with putting (and keeping) him focused: author-film maker Duncan North “who started me writing and knocks me out of any writer’s block situations I find myself in”; performer-teacher Randy Bennett “who helped me in the acting part”; and Deborah Dennison “who sharpened my vague vision of a direction to take.”

Galen Hutchison’s plan to take Hollywood is to enter the business via his acting to ultimately write and direct his own films. He finds the world filled with “unhappy people in an angry world full of hatred” and wants to share the “beauty and poetry in our world, even if it is only the glories of a Santa Fe sunset.” Galen believes film “is the best medium to capture this beauty…Anyway, it’s the best I can probably do and it’s worth a shot.” I agree.