Erik Carlson
Writer and Director
Born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa, I graduated from the University of Iowa in 2012 with a B.A. in English and Cinema and from the Los Angeles branch of the New York Film Academy in 2016 with an M.F.A. in Filmmaking. My thesis project, "A Night at the Movies," won seven awards on the festival circuit, including Best Short Screenplay at the San Diego International Kids Film Festival. My love for film developed as a kid when my grandma introduced me to the comedy of Laurel and Hardy, The Little Rascals, and Abbott and Costello, and I would later watch films like Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Back to the Future. As a screenwriter, my favorite genres are Adventure (particularly pulp and swashbucklers), science-fiction, and fantasy, and I hope eventually to try mystery, Western, and horror.
What I'm Looking For
Mentorship opportunities, collaborations on features
Skills & Specialties
Screenplays
Henry and the Fictionals
“After putting aside his ambitions and taking a normal job for financial stability, a stressed out screenwriter's characters stage an intervention for him on the night a make-or-break assignment is due.”
Henry and the Fictionals follows Henry, an aspiring screenwriter who has moved to the West Coast to get into screenwriting. Struggling to find a job, his parents financially support him, much to his embarrassment. Finally, he takes a soul-crushing office job out of desperation, putting his creative ambitions on hold. After a period of struggling to keep afloat at the office and lying to his parents and a neighbor down the hall that he has a crush on, things come to a head when Henry races to meet a project deadline, with his boss threatening to fire him if its late, only for his fictional creatures to stage an intervention to get his attention. Over the course of this crazy evening, Henry eventually learns to be true to himself, take responsibility, and leap back into the uncomfortable unknown.
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