Draft:Gregg Masuak
Gregg Masuak (Ma-zoo-wak) (born September 11, 1959) is a film maker, writer, producer and adventurer. Responsible for some of the most iconic music videos of the late 80’s, 90’s and early 21st century Masuak works across a multitude of written, spoken and visual platforms including film, television, commercials, theatre, is the host of several web radio shows as well as author of irreverent self-help book “The Spiritual Slob”.
Biography Masuak spent the early years of his childhood in remote British Columbia and Alberta, Canada in a series of towns he describes as “directly out of a Steven King novel”. Bullied and unpopular, Masuak’s inability to fit in left him to find comfort in the escapism provided by the wild and isolated environments around him and his own imagination. The disassociation stemming from being an outcast would find its voice outside of his music videos and commercial works, which thematically focus on complex characters who’ve been discarded, abandoned or abused - though with a dark humor that’s become his trademark.
With his parents divorced and both remarried, the newly formed family emigrated to Australia in 1974 where during high school a chance glance at a list of career possibilities posted on a school bulletin board opened his eyes to the idea of studying film, a choice that changed his life (before that, Masuak thought he would either be a math teacher or a welder).
Early Days Compelled to pursue that option Masuak ditched all further studies and spent the last 6 months of high school drawing on hundreds of borrowed plastic cels a North Sydney animation studio “Zap Productions” gave him, resulting in his being only the second Australian high school student in history at that time to make an animated film for his final year project which, along with his answer at interview time at prestigious North Sydney Technical College’s Film School arm to the question “What will you do if you don’t get into this course” of “I guess I’ll throw myself off the Harbour Bridge”, clinched his entry.
At NTSC Film School the studies encompassed all aspects of film making in a highly technical sense, where Masuak learned the intricacies of cinematography, lighting, editing and sound, ultimately choosing a diploma in cinematography. In the gap between 1 st and 3 rd /4 th years of the course where students are to find and gain practical experience in the industry, Masuak worked as camera assistant in a small industrial film production company, was accepted into art school where he spent his days teaching himself black and white photography in the darkroom, while meanwhile finding himself part of popular “cool surf/punk/powerpop” indie band Surfside 6 with a residency every Saturday night in a Kings Cross hotel, eventually releasing two EP’s under the Phantom Records label. Surfside 6 featured 7 members including journalists Richard McGregor and Toby Creswell (who played guitar and keyboards respectively), Jolyon Burnett on vocals, Geoff Datsun (guitar), Cathy Courtenay (bass), John Hackett (drums) while Masuak played guitar, organ, sang and go go danced to their iconic “theme” song “Cool In The Tube”. Masuak also wrote the lead song of their 2 nd EP “Can’t You See the Sign”. Both EP’s were produced by Masuak’s brother, Chris, from Sydney band Radio Birdman.
Masuak completed the final years of NTSC film school part time while obtaining a BA in Communications (Film, Film Theory, Film Writing majors) at the New South Wales Institute of Technology neglecting (again) his other final year studies in order to make “The Mary Quant Masque of Death” (theme song written and performed by SS6’s Datsun and Courtenay) a short film which created such a sensation with both fellow students and teachers that the film was accepted as a final degree statement for all studies and Masuak gained both his BA at the same time as he graduated from NTSC film school.
With his final year film project and a music video he created for his brother’s other band “The Hitmen” for “I Don’t Mind” as his calling cards, on a whim Masuak packed everything up and headed for London, England, to pursue his dreams of being a film maker. “The Mary Quant Masque of Death) was chosen as “Outstanding Film of the London International Film Festival” and although nothing led career-wise from the accolade, it did end up with Masuak having to have a face to face meeting with Mary Quant’s husband Alexander Plunket Green who, after watching the film with him and seeing the film did not intend on using her name disparagingly, deemed that “Mary would love this film”.
Early Career While surviving on the scraps of vegetables left in the gutters of the local market and living in a heatless warehouse in Clapham Junction, a chance encounter with a small production company gave Masuak the opportunity to learn video editing for a small wage and soon after that first experience he found himself walking into Catalyst, another small production house in Covent Garden, where he met Toby Courlander, a young PA who hired him on the spot to do whatever was needed in the chaotic company, which eventually ended up with Masuak creating trailers of little known or unreleased films to be presented at the head of video rentals for the then fledgling video rental industry.
Realizing that after 18 months of work he’d only saved 200 English pounds, Masuak shaved his head and made it a mission to travel to Tunisia to find Roman Polanski’s “Pirates” set, rumored to be filming somewhere off the coast there. His instincts led him to find the famous film set tucked away in a disused army base but his inability to speak the language stopped him from entering the studio and Masuak ended up hitchhiking back to London where he realized without a visa no future would be possible and he returned to Sydney to regroup and figure out his next move. There he worked with brother Chris Masuak, recording his own music, had a “less than impressive” run as a cameraman on Simon Townsend’s Wonder World, and filmed “When I Kissed Your Lips This Morning”, which again he wrote, directed and edited. Masuak described the film as “stunningly beautiful and everything I wanted to say at that time, but without the craft of being able to really direct actors I found it embarrassing to show, as beautiful as it was – it was not the level of film making I wanted to put out there into the world, as truly gorgeous as much of it was”. On returning to London the film was only submitted to one festival before being shelved and Masuak took a then-unexpected direction, to learn everything about the hands-on craft of film making, whatever it took. To that aim, he rekindled his friendship with Courlander who edited his film work to date with music added and took the compilation around record companies in order to sell him as a music video director.
Music Videos, Commercials and Film Career The Masuak/Courlander Director/Producer duo was to last for several years and it wasn’t long after the first set of rounds they were given their first professional music video commission for “Hi Hi Friend” by band Vitamin Z, which led to an increasing series of higher profile commissions, from popular indie band Hipsway (“The Honey Thief”), American band Berlin (“Like Flames” and “You Don’t Know”), which led to a commission for Kim Wilde’s cover “You Keep Me Hanging On”, consolidating a reputation for indie- spirited Masuak as a popular international pop music video director.
Masuak went on to direct Kim Wilde in a total of 9 videos (“Another Step”, “Say You Really Want Me”, “You Came”, “Never Trust A Stranger”, “Time”, “Who Do You Think You Are”, “It’s Here”, “Breaking Away”; 4 videos for Kylie Minogue (“If you Were With Me Now” (a duet with Keith Washington), “What Kind of Fool”, “Give Me Just A Little More Time”, “Celebration”, while directing the 3 videos of 4 hits from Take That’s “Everything Changes But You” album: Pray (Winner of Best video at the 1994 Brit awards), Babe (MTV Video Music Award for International Viewer’s Choice for MTV Europe), “Everything Changes” – followed by “Sure” from the album “Nobody Else” which would be his last video with the band for 22 years when the band would hunt him down in order to create “New Day”, a fun take on nightmares and horror movies that famously ended with Masuak’s “funny-stupid” dance off between the band and the creatures chasing them.
His Spice Girls “Who Do You Think You Are” video added, for Richard Curtis/ Comic Relief “Red Nose Day”, the now famous “Sugar Lumps” sketch featuring Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Kathy Burke, Lulu and Llewella Gideon and consolidated his reputation as someone who not only made performers look great and who could bring out the best of their personalities, but that he was now excellent at directing actors. (Masuak in his determination to hone his directing skills has studied acting around the world including London, Sydney and Los Angeles under such teaching luminaries as Diana Castle, Al Mancini at Beverly Hills Playhouse and acclaimed Larry Moss (famous for coaching such stars as Helen Hunt, Hilary Swank, Jim Carrey, Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio).
During this period Masuak wrote, directed and edited a 50 minute film “Born With Glasses”, starring long-time friend and half of British comedy duo “Rabbitt and Doon”, Anne Rabbitt. Featuring a stunning score by Martin Brett (Voice of the Beehive) and Michael Dempsey (The Cure, The Associates) the film won Best Short Comedy/Satire at Chicago’s International Film Festival. Along with continuing his music video career Masuak segued into the world of commercials, where his eclectic visions led him to move between various categories, from charities like NSPCC to corporate icons like Barclays Bank, exotic travel destination in Thomsons Holidays to various hair-centric spots featuring Courtenay Cox, Denise Richards, Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek) although comedy was the style he was most satisfied by (his Aids Alliance spot for “Come Together” was deemed by The Huffington Post as “one of the most provocative ads to be screened on British Television”).
Meanwhile his desire to create the kind of unusual, multi-leveled work that initially inspired him to want to be a director turned his focus more and more to the writing that always accompanied his personal projects, and during this time, seeing a gap in the spiritual self help book marketplace he created “The Spiritual Slob”, a mouthy, irreverent but “truly helpful” spiritual self help book, published through Soul Odyssey Books. The audio version of the book was produced by Michele Mariotti, the “guiding voice of Polyglot Radio”, where Masuak’s audio version of The Spiritual Slob is featured, as well as his ongoing Top 20 hits show, and is due to feature Masuak in front of the camera in “wild oblique adventures around this crazy planet of ours”.
Real Life and Unreal Life After 2 ½ decades of working to make others and other people’s products look good and, increasingly annoyed by the waning standards of many of the video and commercials commissioners and agencies, Masuak turned his back on it all and back to what made him a director in the first place: Life.
“I realized that I had literally no practical useful employable skills apart from writing and directing and I wanted to move away from the rarified air of that life and learn more about the world, because that’s what initially inspired me. I spent awhile away from London in Los Angeles and Istanbul and on returning to London I was determined to incorporate into my life something more day to day, mundane, something people would need when everything shuts down in the media industry and finally I found a job as a runner at the 6 th floor Bar and Restaurant at the Tate Modern Museum in London. No one knew what I’d previously done, and those few that hired me that did were baffled why I would take a job on that was basically polishing glasses, stacking plates and doing the elf-work that kept everything going. It would be months before others finally knew what I “really” did, somehow. I think they found out because after only working there for about 2 weeks I had to take a month off to film Take That’s “New Day” and somehow it leaked out. I loved being “in disguise” and doing excellent work that was unpraised and unseen. And talking and getting to know those people you tend to ignore- the security guards, the cleaners, pulling out the dirty trash bags”.
His journey through the “real world” at the Tate Modern led him to take on producing and directing short film “Invisible” which won Gold at the Atlanta Shortsfest as well as “Best Female Protagonist Film” at City of Angels Women’s Film Festival. Meanwhile, inspired by the dark, confusing passageways that working at the Tate would often find him lost in, he wrote, directed, filmed and edited a film in the normally “unfilmable” Tate Modern titled “I’ll Meet You There”, which was exhibited there that same year as part of the Insiders Collective Exhibition. Meant as a mood piece for the feature film version to be filmed at a future date, the film features a soundtrack by director Jamie Thraves, an ex Oil Factory alumni and friend whose compositions drive the quirky narrative.
Disgusted despite his love for working “incognito” there at seeing how the staff there were treated (Masuak says “on my floor staff regularly missed feeding hours, were breaking down physically and emotionally every day. Despite its kind façade, the true attitude of Corporate Tate Museum was like Dickensian England, operating like work houses and tryannising poor people having to work long hours and starving for the sake of other’s prosperity. I ended up forcing the chefs in both Tate Modern and Tate Britain to have me around the table discussing changes in how the system works in feeding the staff. Initially I was literally pushed to one side of a group discussion of around 20 people who were determined to silence me but I stopped the meeting in its tracks and called everyone out on the matter. My years of manning a set as a director played out and in the end, calmly assuring everyone I was not going to go away, historical changes were made as a result and it was like that moment, the exhibition of “I’ll Meet You There” and an accident in the kitchen that severed a tendon and put a stop to my journey at the Tate forever, called “curtain” on this period of my life in a way that was undeniable.
While navigating all of this, Masuak’s play-turned-screenplay-turned play again “Flycatcher” found its way into London’s prestigious Hope Theatre, Islington for a short run, to rave reviews. One reviewer stated: “In trying to encapsulate what Gregg Masuak’s Flycatcher is like, I’ve been thinking along the lines of “Charlie Kaufman meets Terry Gilliam” or “The Fast Show” meets David Lynch”. Flycatcher, the film version, more recently won “Most Innovative Screenplay” at the prestigious City of Angels Women’s Film Festival in Los Angeles and is currently in pre production.
Feature Films, Television and Beyond Masuak now moves between London, Los Angeles, and Palm Desert, actively working on pre production for one of his films “The Keeper”, “The Spiritual Slob” TV series, and “Smash It”, a documentary that’s commenced its first photography, featuring such 90’s bands as Let Loose and covering the crash-and-burn mentality of the 90’s music and music video scene.