I was born in the Seattle area, and we didn’t have much of a film industry there. We had gone to Universal Studios when I was a kid, but that was just theme park stuff. But as a young teen, I watched a series called Northern Exposure, which if you’ve never seen it is charming, and so worth a watch. And on one trip between our home in Everett, and my grandparents’ place in Yakima, my parents stopped in a town called Roslyn, which was standing in for the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska in Northern Exposure. Although I knew the show was shot in Washington, it was such a different experience to see that a real show, one that I liked, was shot right here, only a couple of hours away from where I lived.

But we didn’t even have a video camera in my family, so I devoted my efforts to learning photography, and eventually found work in a retail portrait studio, and then another. And in 2008, when I left that job, I decided to pursue a Craigslist ad looking for someone to help out on a documentary about haunted places and the ghosts therein in Denver, Colorado (Passing Through; unreleased). Luckily, the guy making that film was an Emmy Award-winner several times over, and showed me quickly what it was like to be on an actual film set (my first paying job in the industry, in fact), showed me what it was like to produce a no-budget film, and taught me how to edit. Since then, I’ve worked on dozens of projects for dozens of production companies and studios, in many states and even a few other countries. I’ve delivered more than three hundred episodes of television, and several films.

A few that I’m especially proud of include producing the Telly Award-winning corporate film Howard Dental Center: Who We Are, about a Denver dental practice — now part of the Colorado Health Network — providing services exclusively to people living with HIV/AIDS, and associate producing Dave Ohlson’s multi-award-winning documentary K2: Siren of the Himalayas. And I produced a miniseries, starring me, called Andy Hates Advertising. I also had a list published by McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Although the Pacific Northwest will always be home, I’ve made my life in LA for more than a decade now, where I spend many hours in my car, traveling between my apartment and my boat, hoping someday to hit the Powerball.