Q&A with the extraordinary

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Kurt Patino – Career Builder

(Photo Credit: Sarahi Canchola)

Written By: Michael D. McClellan | It turns out that Confucius got it right, and Kurt Patino is living proof. The Chinese philosopher, who once posited that if you choose a job you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life, could have easily had Patino in mind when he dropped those pearls of wisdom on the world. Very few find their true calling. To spend time with Kurt Patino is to know that he is exactly where he should be, doing exactly what it is that he is meant to do. He loves actors. Smitten by their passion, courage, and creativity, Patino in many ways has followed the blueprint of the brilliant Bernie Brillstein, who earned his way into show business in the mail room at the William Morris Agency, and later founded The Brillstein Company, where he managed the careers of an array of stars. Patino, the founder and president of Patino Management Company, is laser focused on a small roster of successful actors who excel at their creative profession. The care and feeding of a select group of clients ensures that Patino has the bandwidth to help grow careers in a way that is unique in an industry overrun with half-truths and broken promises.

“My passion is developing all aspects of an actor’s career,” Patino says enthusiastically. “For me, it’s about doing the little things; helping an actor see the big picture, being there when doubt creeps in, providing sound business advice. You have to wear many hats, and you have to have your client’s best interest at heart. By limiting the number of clients that I represent, I’m able to provide the exclusive attention that every one of my clients deserves.”

To know Kurt Patino is to appreciate the unwavering commitment to those he represents. The faith-based, ambitious family man has cultivated a five-star reputation in the entertainment industry, and his eye for talent has led to the discovery of actors such as America Ferrera, whose breakout performance in Real Women Have Curves drew raves and launched her successful film and television career. For Patino, everything he does begins and ends with trust.

Kurt Patino
Patino Management Company
(Photo Credit: Sarahi Canchola)

“Trust is huge in this business,” he says. “Entertainment is very much relationship driven, and your credibility hinges on your words and your actions. Everything has to align or you come across as a phony. You don’t last long that way.”

Andre Agassi once said that image is everything. In this digital, cloud-connected, Fyre Festival world we live in today, so much of what we see is little more than veneer – professional-looking websites, slickly produced YouTube content, a constant stream of social media posts. Dig a little deeper and it’s all photo filters and selfie sticks. Kurt Patino doesn’t do veneer. Integrity is the currency at PMC, hard work serving as the gold standard. Raised in the North Hollywood neighborhood in Los Angeles, Patino learned that being authentic with a strong work ethic maintains a longer career than relying on style with no substance. He watched his dad thrive in his career because of his incredible dedication to doing the job right, doing it ethically, and doing it well.

“I grew up in the San Fernando Valley and led a regular, suburban childhood,” he says, reflecting on his idyllic childhood. “My dad was a CPA and my mom was a homemaker, and I was fortunate to have a really good home life and a really great family. They taught me right from wrong at an early age. There were a lot of older kids in the neighborhood who were fun to be around, and who taught me things. We played a lot of sports. And, I am still friends with some of them to this day. It was a good time. It was a really fun time growing up.”

Sports not only played a big part in Patino’s childhood, they set the tone for future success at Patino Management Company. He went to St. Patrick’s Catholic School in North Hollywood, right across the street from where he lived, playing tee-ball first before jumping into the Burbank Parochial Baseball League. He dreamed of becoming a Major League baseball player.

 Molly Hagan attends the premiere of “Sully” at Alice Tully Hall, in New York NY
 (Photo credit: REX/Shutterstock)

“Growing up, sports were really my thing,” he says. “I played from the time the sun came up until the time the sun went down. I have a younger brother, and we would have epic basketball games in our backyard. If no one was around, I’d act like I was pitching in a baseball game and throw racquet balls or tennis balls at a target against our garage, which really helped my control when I pitched on my baseball teams. I later pitched in high school, at Bellarmine-Jefferson. By then I got involved in school politics, and was elected senior class president. Sports really gave me confidence and brought me out of my shell. It also fed my competitive juices, both of which helped prepare me for what I’m doing now.”

As a high-schooler, Kurt Patino was popular with his classmates, the kind of kid with a warm, magnetic personality that drew you in and held you in its orbit. He wasn’t a partier – you wouldn’t find him standing around with a beer in his hand – and he was just as apt to stay home and watch TV than go running around with his buddies.

“Actually, I got excited about the entertainment industry by watching television and going to the movies as a kid,” Patino says. “There was just something about the way that stories affected me on these really deep levels. I was drawn to them by the way they made me laugh, and made me cry. The stories about good and evil, where there were very clear heroes with big dreams against all odds, helped form my desire to strive to be the best, while practicing humility at the same time.”

Cerina Vincent on “Stuck in the Middle” on Disney Channel.
(Disney Channel/Eric McCandless)

Even back then, Patino was a nose-to-the-grindstone type of guy. He finished at the top of his class with a 3.9 GPA, the good grades generated by hard work and sheer force of will. And despite his popularity, extroversion wasn’t something that came naturally to him.

“Being around a lot of people can drain an introvert’s mental and emotional energy, because it takes work on our part to stay engaged when there’s a lot going on. However, I’ve learned to develop my extroversion and be more social with the goal of creating strong relationships that might not be immediately beneficial to my business, but will be down the line. The key is following the careers of business associates and finding opportunities to congratulate them and thereby find the right timing to pitch a client or project. Social media allows me to stay in touch with casting, directors and producers by showing genuine interest in their lives and accomplishments. I’ve learned so many fun & interesting things about colleagues in the industry through Instagram and Twitter, and I even once in a long while make a pitch through LinkedIn or Facebook. It’s always fun to mention their posts I liked before getting down to business. It always makes them smile.”

Patino’s wife-slash-actress-slash-client is Kelly Stables, easily recognizable as Melissa in Two and a Half Men and more recently as Kelly in the current NBC hit comedy Superstore. That the two of them are able to balance career and home life speaks volumes to the foundation they have as a family, and is  reflected in the very fabric of Patino Management Company.

Kelly Stables (as Kelly Watson) and Ben Feldman (as Jonah) on the NBC hit comedy series “Superstore”

“Kelly was my first client,” Patino says with a smile. “What impressed me most was how well-grounded she was. She works very hard, but her first priority is always family. One of the reasons I pursued a relationship with her is because she’s different than a lot of actresses. She thinks about the big picture in life rather than just waiting for her next audition. That really fit with who I was and what I wanted to get out of life.”

When it came time for college, Patino chose the University of Southern California. He emerged from school with dreams of becoming a screenwriter. After a series of production jobs and five years as an agent at Defining Artists (the theatrical arm of the Bobby Ball Agency), Patino decided to shift gears and jump headlong into the management end of the business.

“I started out as a production assistant and then worked my way up to 2nd second assistant director,” Patino says, reflecting on the early years. “At first it was exciting work, but after a while you come to the realization that the job isn’t as glamorous as it had seemed from the outside. Filmmaking is exciting, but it’s also slow and laborious. There’s a lot of standing around on set, just waiting for something to happen. Well, I’m standing in the rain one day and I think to myself, ‘What am I doing out here?’ I was soaking wet and freezing. And for what? I spent a lot of my time waiting – waiting for someone to give me my next instructions, or waiting to fill out my paperwork at the end of the day, or waiting for a problem to solve. That’s when I decided that I didn’t want to do that anymore, so I applied for a job at Bobby Ball, which, at the time, was a very successful commercial and dance agency. They had a lot of the top dancers, and also one of the top commercial departments in the business. They also had this little theatrical department that represented some TV actors, but the majority of them were commercial actors looking for film and TV work.”

Patino got his start as a runner, pulling pictures and resumes from huge file cabinets, then stuffing them in manila envelopes before hitting the road.

“We’d drive all around town delivering those envelopes,” he says with a laugh. “Olympic Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard, all over the San Fernando Valley, Santa Monica…that was the way agenting was done before everything went digital.”

It wasn’t long before Patino became an assistant for a theatrical agent, parlaying his hard work into more responsibility, and then into his own agenting gig.

“America Ferrera was a big discovery for me” Patino says. “I saw her in a showcase doing copy for a Coke commercial. A showcase is an event where an acting class will ask agents and managers to watch their students perform in the hopes of finding them representation. America just lit up the room. She had no credits – she was non-union, she was 17 – but you could just tell that she was a natural. She came in with such a charisma and a confidence that, as an agent, I was saying, ‘This is the kind of performer we want to have on our list. She just has something, and it’s very rare to see it.’”

America Ferrera “Real Women Have Curves” film screening, Los Angeles, Oct 16, 2017
Photo by John Salangsang

Patino signed the young actor, who immediately booked a Disney TV movie. And then, in quick succession, Ferrera landed her breakthrough role in Real Women Have Curves.

“She beat out hundreds of other actresses for the role,” Patino says quickly. “I went to Sundance [Film Festival] with her that year. She was nominated for a Special Jury Prize in the Dramatic Category, which she won. I remember her sitting with Robert Redford and being so comfortable and at ease. You could just tell that she was going to be a star.”

Patino didn’t stop with Ferrera. Over the next six years he worked with Rami Malek, who would later go on to star as Freddy Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody; Jessica Alba, who, at fifteen, was transitioning from modeling into acting; Nick Wechsler, best-known for his roles as Kyle Valenti on The WB teen drama series Roswell and as Jack Porter on the ABC prime time soap opera Revenge; and Sam Witwer, who has starred in shows such as Smallville, Supergirl, and Riverdale. He also worked with a lot of the soap actors during this time, people like Farah Fath, who had prominent roles on both Days of Our Lives and One Life to Live. And he met his future wife, Kelly Stables, during this period.

“I invited her to attend a friend’s birthday party, and she agreed to go. There was an immediate chemistry between us. We’ve been married since 2005.”

While Patino enjoyed agenting, he also aspired to produce – something that had been with him since his days as a college student at USC. There was a small hitch.

“Agents could not produce at that time. It was against SAG rules,” explains Patino. “I decided to become a manager so I could start producing. I partnered up with another manager and we started our company, and then we ended up merging with another manager. Career-wise, the timing was right for me to make the move into managing. As an agent, if a client’s not doing well, they’re just not doing well, so you kind of move on to the people who are hot at the time. As a manager, I wanted to find out why they weren’t doing well, and what I could do to help better market them. I wanted to be someone who could stay on top of our client list and really guide them along the way.”

Kurt Patino’s creative side emerged in 2009, with the release of the independent web series Soul Fire Rising. Patino wrote and co-produced the series, which stars Jodi Lyn O’Keefe as Lilith Reborn and Kelly Stables as Eve. The series’ premise – that Demons and Wingers fight for human souls in the ultimate battle for supremacy – is enough to pique the interest of any sci-fi / fantasy fan. Lilith, a demon rebel with her own agenda, takes advantage of the vices Earth has to offer, while also taking many souls. The Winger Gabriel summons Lilith and makes her an offer she can’t refuse: Capture and return Eve to Gabriel, and as a reward, Lilith will receive entry back into Heaven.

JODI LYN O’KEEFE IN “SOUL FIRE RISING”
(Photo credit: Jacob Gaitan)

“The idea for Soul Fire Rising came to me in a hospital where my sister-in-law was having her first child. Everyone was sitting there waiting for the birth to happen, and I was trying to come up with a project that I could shoot. I just started jotting down ideas on a legal pad. I’ve always been fascinated with the idea that angels and demons exist, and I’m a fan of shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so that whole world really interested me. I thought it would be fascinating to have a demon be asked by Heaven to save a fallen angel on earth before demons capture the fallen angel’s soul and use its power to take over the world. It’s an interesting concept, because none of us are completely pure. I think we all have this dark side to us, so it was me exploring the good side of someone who is dark. She accesses that, and agrees to search for and protect this angel from Heaven.”

Soul Fire Rising, directed by Dale Fabrigar, was a labor of love for Patino in many respects.

“Dale is an extremely talented director and producer,” Patino says. “He read the script and really enjoyed it, and after some discussion we decided to finance it ourselves. We shot four webisodes and put them on Koldcast.tv, which doesn’t even exist anymore. We were able to raise the financing needed for the remaining four episodes, and then we were able to secure a deal with Starz Digital, who turned around and worked a deal with Hulu. The entire 8-episode series was on Hulu for five years.”

While Soul Fire Rising is currently mothballed, the memories of putting the series together remain as fresh as ever.

“It was a ball to shoot, really exciting,” Patino says. “We shot in downtown L.A., and we were looking for the right car for Lilith – a car that you’d expect a demon to be driving. We found this great car at Bob’s Big Boy on Riverside Drive, in Burbank, of all places. The restaurant would put together these classic car demonstrations every Friday night, so all these people would come out. Kelly and I happened to be there one night and saw this really cool classic car. It had skull locks, so it just looked like the perfect car for Lilith. We approached the owner and offered to pay him to use the car in the series, and he agreed – we couldn’t believe it. I remember shooting in a factory warehouse in the middle the night, and he brings it out and drops it off. We took really good care of it. We were so proud of how the entire series turned out.”

If Kurt Patino’s eye for talent is the lifeblood of Patino Management Company, his commitment to his clients is its heart. The intangibles – the innate ability to sense what’s coming around the corner, the gut instinct to know what levers to pull – add a dimension that is often missing at other firms in the talent management space. Patino is equal parts nurturer and Nostradamus, his emotional intelligence in tune with his clients’ psyche, his finger on the pulse of what’s coming next. When pressed for his secret recipe, the answer is distilled down to one word.

Molly Hagan as Patricia Cordero on “Jane the Virgin” – The CW

“Trust,” he says flatly. “You want to have a good reputation, and it all starts with building trust. When people do business with you, they want to know that they can trust your work. They want to know that you’re doing the best that you can for their careers, and they want to know that you’re going to put in equal – if not more – work that’s needed to get a project set up, or to get a career started. If someone is putting their hopes and dreams in your hands, you want to handle that very carefully.”

A day in the life of Patino Management Company is one that’s heavily infused with communication, another core ingredient to the firm’s success.

“We’re always talking with our clients,” Patino says. “Whether that’s brainstorming ideas to help with a client’s marketing strategy, or researching ways to get them more activity, there is a constant flow of communication going on. We’re also talking with agents about ways to get more things started for our clients. We’re talking to casting directors and trying to figure out how they see an actor. We’re getting feedback after auditions so we can see how our clients are developing.

Clearly, acting careers take plenty of care and feeding. Patino relishes all aspects of his job.

“As an agent, you’re handling the business end of an actor’s career,” Patino explains. “As a manager, you are handling much more of the stuff on the personal end. You’re hearing all of the insecurities and fears that an actor has, and you have to build them back up when they have a bad audition or when they’re not booking jobs consistently, or when they feel depressed about a personal matter.”

Another key driver is having the client’s best interest at heart – which means shooting straight under all circumstances.

“We want to make sure that they trust that we’re making the best decisions for them, and that we’re advising them in a way that will help them grow both from a professional and a financial standpoint. We help clients believe in their worth. If a deal is bad, and it’s an average project, we’ll encourage them to pass on the project, because there’s no upside financially nor creatively. Actors will sometimes look at offers with short-sightedness. We evaluate every offer on how it can elevate a client’s career or their pocketbook. We have all the information. That’s why actors need good representation. We’re evaluating multiple factors with an offer. The client always has final say, but we explain the whole picture, so clients can make informed decisions about their careers.”

“Sometimes, helping them make the right decisions may mean advising them to spend money to take that extra acting class, pay for a new headshot, hire a publicist, or engage an attorney. They may complain – actors typically don’t like to spend money – but it’s my job to remind them that they’ve just landed on a series, or that they have a big movie coming out, and they need to build awareness. I’ve worked with a lot of actors through the years, and we’ve done really well together. Everyone that I’ve signed has gone on to do better, or they’ve done something while they’ve been with me. I’m very proud of that.”

Kurt Patino’s creative side reemerged with Tin Holiday, an adventure/comedy about best friends, Samuel and Jesse, who travel to London after Samuel experiences a life-changing event. It isn’t long before the vacation goes awry and the friends find themselves in trouble with the Punjabi mafia, Interpol, and in inappropriate couplings. Tin Holiday stars Juan Monsalvez as Samuel, Joe Camareno as Jesse, and Rosanna Hoult (The Lobster, Captain America: First Avenger) as Cassandra. While no release date has been set, the trailer hooks you from the jump. Tin Holiday won Best Story at the 2019 London International Film Festival.

(Poster Design: Sean Bell)

“Joe Camareno is a close friend of mine,” Patino says, smiling. “We used to write sketch comedy together at a place called the Eclectic Company Theatre. Joe has really been a champion of me as a writer, which is another big passion. He approached me about a movie idea he had and asked me if I’d help him write it. So, we sat down at the Backstage Café on Olive and he showed me a draft of what was a dark drama. I told him that it was really dark and sad, and I asked him to consider turning the concept into a comedy. The premise of his idea was of a father whose wife dies in an airplane crash, and how he deals with the death of his wife. I thought about it, and I was like, ‘Dude, what if it’s this guy who doesn’t get along with his wife – she’s always screaming and yelling at him – and then, serendipitously, an airplane part falls out of the sky and kills her?’ Suddenly, the main character has the freedom to go out and explore a different life. So, he and his friend decide to go off on the anniversary trip that he had planned for his wife.”

And that’s when things get good.

“He gets involved in an international conspiracy at an underground poker game. His friend gets kidnapped. He falls in love with a British undercover agent. So, it turns into this huge romance-comedy-adventure. It was a lot of fun. My friend shot it in London, and I produced the L.A. end of it. It was a labor of love, really; we shot it, and then it took years to get the post-production done. We screened it at the American Film Market in Santa Monica this past November. We’re now working on distribution for the film, negotiating with buyers domestically and internationally.”

Like Bernie Brillstein before him, Kurt Patino continues to be himself and do what he loves. He’s charted his own course, done things his way, and the end result has worked out just fine. Successful business. Beautiful family. A new sports podcast with his brother, called 123SPORTS. Board member of the Burbank International Film Festival (www.burbankfilmfest.org). Yes, the competitive juices still flow, just like they did back in the day, when Patino was throwing that tennis ball against the garage and dreaming of fame and glory in Major League Baseball. The competitive streak, while still a mile wide, has been redirected in ways that have made his life richer.

Kurt Patino
Patino Management Company
(Photo Credit: Sarahi Canchola)

“My kids inspire me,” Patino says proudly. “I have a seven-year-old and a five-year-old, and everything that I’m exploring now is so I can prove to them that they really can do anything. I want them to know that I stepped outside of my comfort zone.”

A devout Christian, Patino has made sure to set an example for his children.

“When my first son was born it occurred to me that I had never read the Bible,” Patino says. “By that I mean, reading it from first page to last. So, I made it a goal to read the entire Bible from cover to cover. If you ask anyone who’s done it, it’s quite a feat. I tried to read a passage a day. It took me like four years to finish it, but when I encourage them to read the Bible, I can point to myself as an example of someone who did it. And if I can do it, they can do it, too.”

Kurt Patino is always pushing himself.

Like one evening in 2019, when he took the stage for TEDx Brampton and did something he never thought he’d have the courage to do.

“The TED Talk is something that I can cross off my bucket list,” he explains. “I’m a huge fan, and I was thrilled when a friend of mine connected me with a TEDx organization in Toronto and helped make the dream a reality. It was exciting, but it was also terrifying.”

How appropriate, then, that Patino chose fear as his topic.

KURT PATINO at TEDx
(Photo Credit: Imaad Mian/Mian Studios)

“I wanted to face the TED Talk head on, and flip the script on the fear standing in my way. Fear, I’m now convinced, is a four-letter word for success, an acronym to help people keep fear from holding them back. The F reminds me to face whatever the fear is. The E reminds me to expect suffering. The A reminds me to avoid distractions. The R reminds me to remain patient. It was a thrill for me to share that concept with the audience, because I’ve had to work hard to overcome fear in my life. Professionally, there was a time when I had a couple of clients leave me, and I wasn’t sure things were going to work out. I was thinking of becoming a sportswriter instead, because this business can be so hard. At times there can be a lot of pain. You can invest time and energy in building up an actor’s career and push them up to the top of the mountain when no one believed in them, only to see them move on and sign with another company to satisfy their own egos.  It hurts.”

Patino pauses. He smiles.

“I’ve learned to keep things in perspective,” he says quickly. “I don’t want to build an empire. I don’t have grand plans to take over the world like an Ari Emanuel. I want to spend as much time with my family as possible, and still fulfill my goals and enjoy my creativity. I am competitive, and I am ambitious. I do want to continue to grow my company and grow in my filmmaking, but those aren’t the most important parts of my life. I want to grow as a father, and as a husband. I want to be present and a strong mentor to my sons when they feel discouraged, or they feel like they are stuck and can’t move forward. Those are the things that are most important to me now.”

Ask Kurt Patino for a piece of advice for others breaking into the business, and he doesn’t flinch.

“I have three,” he says. “First, don’t be afraid to fail. When I was growing up, there was a stigma attached to failure. Today, failure means that you’re taking chances. I was chosen to make a pitch at the American Film Market. There were hundreds of submissions, and out of those they selected 16 people to make a two-minute pitch in front of experienced producers. It was in a convention hall in front of 250 people. One filmmaker who pitched before me just wasn’t prepared at all, and the producers just tore her apart in front of the large audience. Witnessing that raised my anxiety level tenfold. Thankfully, my wife was there, and she helped me break it down piece by piece, and we ran through the pitch until I was ready to go. Afterwards, one of the producers remarked on the confidence in my delivery. I was dying on the inside the whole time I was on the stage. But afterwards I was proud of myself for facing my fear head on, and for not being afraid to fail.

KURT PATINO @ AFM
(Photo Credit: Lorenzo Escobal)

“Second, find a mentor. A good mentor will help you grow in ways you never imagined. Having someone who can help guide you, who can answer your questions, who can give you real world advice…mentors are invaluable.

“The last thing is to intern in the industry that you want to be in. If you want to be in sports, you should be interning in some sort of sports organization. If you want to be in entertainment, you need to be working or interning in the entertainment field. There are a lot of waiters in Los Angeles trying to make it as actors. You can throw a rock in L.A. and hit a writer. You should work your day job to pay the bills, but then go intern at Warner Bros. Go intern at a talent agency. Go intern at a post-production house. Those are the things that will make a difference.”

Kurt Patino works in the glitz and glamour that is Hollywood, but he’s a family man who values his home life and all of the ordinary things that go along with it. It should come as no surprise, then, that his better half is similarly wired and surpassingly compatible.

“My wife graduated early from the University of Missouri,” Patino says, “and her dad drove her cross-country to Los Angeles. She got a studio apartment and filled it with blow up furniture. The first thing that she did was find a church. The next thing she did was find a theatre. It was instinctual for her. The theatre provided a place where she could work steady stage productions, and the church was where she found her support system.”

Class Act – Kurt Patino
(Photo Credit: Sarahi Canchola)

Like Kurt Patino, Kelly Stables has worked hard to achieve her own success.

“Kelly never stopped believing in herself,” Patino says, “and she eventually got to where she wanted to be, with a multi-season recurring guest arc on Two and a Half Men. That was a huge break for her, but the thing is, she stayed focused on her goals and didn’t get distracted by the Hollywood lifestyle, or going to clubs, or any of the other distractions that come along with success. I really admire her for the person she is, her values, and what she represents.”

Kurt Patino pauses again, appreciating the way things have worked out.

“We are truly blessed by the Lord. We have two beautiful children, and both of them were born while Kelly was working on a series called The Exes. If you ask any actress in Hollywood, being able to have your children while being a part of a show is a dream come true, and Kelly did it. Still, Hollywood is a business. It’s not like we’re home free, and it’s not like things are always positive. We don’t take anything for granted. We still work really hard. We still struggle to get to the next level. But we have our faith, and we have each other, and if everything else were to go away we would still have our family. That’s the most important thing of all. You know what I mean?”

CONNECT WITH KURT PATINO:

Kurt Patino Management Company
Instagram
Kurt Patino TEDx Talk
123Sports Podcast

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Takaaki Kajita – Ghostbuster

Written By: Michael D. McClellan | Nobel laureate Takaaki Kajita is a quiet, unassuming man, and humble to a fault. The Japanese physicist, who, in 2015, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass, isn’t particularly big on interviews and doesn’t sit down for many. When he does, his answers are usually brief and unfailingly polite, and often dominated with one-liners. Consider: Shortly after the announcement that Dr. Kajita had won the Nobel Prize, he was interviewed by Adam Smith, Nobel Media’s Chief Scientific Officer, and it went something like this:

Adam Smith: How did you hear the news [winning the Nobel Prize]?

Takaaki Kajita: Well, I just, well actually, when I received the phone call I was checking my e-mails.

[AS] In your office? Right. And what was your first reaction?

[TK] Well, that was really a surprise to me.

[AS] I imagine it is still sinking in.

[TK] Yes, yes, still kind of unbelievable.

[AS] You sound as if you are alone, are there not people around you yet?

[TK] Well actually I’m in a small room so no one around.

[AS] I’m sure that very soon you will be surrounded by people.

[TK] {Laughs] Thank you.

Joe Exotic of Tiger King fame he’s not, but that suits Kajita just fine. He’d rather be anywhere else but in front of a microphone, preferably at home with his wife, Michiko, or at the University of Tokyo, where he serves both as a Principal Investigator at the Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, and as the Director of the Institute for Cosmic Radiation Research. Meet him on the street, and there would be little to reason to suspect that his discovery had effectively rewritten the balance sheet of the universe. It’d be easier to imagine sitting down with Kajita in a Japanese bar, talking about the finer points of Kyudo over a bottle of saki, than it would be to think that his work had just turned the Standard Model on its head. How significant of an achievement are we talking? The Standard Model is only the most accurate scientific theory known to human beings. More than a quarter of the Nobel Prizes in physics of the last century are direct inputs to or direct results of the Standard Model. Many recall the excitement over the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, but that much-ballyhooed event didn’t come out of the blue – it capped a five-decade undefeated streak for the Standard Model. Every fundamental force but gravity is included in it. Every attempt to overturn it, or to demonstrate in the laboratory that it must be substantially reworked – and there have been many over the past 50 years – has failed.

Princess Sofia and physics laureate Takaaki Kajita arrive in the Blue Hall for the 2015 Nobel prize award banquet in Stockholm City Hall.PHOTO: REUTERS

That is, until Kajita introduced the world to something called Super-Kamiokande.

While the name might conjure images of a fire-breathing creature in a Godzilla film, Super-Kamiokande is actually a neutrino-observing facility located 1000 meters underground in Hida City, Gifu Prefecture. Inside it is a cylindrical tank which holds 50,000 tons of super-pure water. Its inner walls are lined with 11,000 photo-sensors designed to identify muon neutrinos produced by cosmic rays. In simplest terms, the sensors record flashes of light caused by debris speeding away from a neutrino hit.

At this point you may be wondering what neutrino oscillations are, so let me drop an analogy on you: Imagine you’re the driver of a truck that delivers ice cream, and the company you work for sells the three standard flavors – vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Now, imagine that you load your truck with all three flavors at the factory and drive it to the ice cream store across town, where you swing open the cargo door and make a shocking discovery: The vanilla and strawberry ice cream that you loaded has turned into chocolate! Welcome to the strange world of neutrino physics, a world in which these incredibly small, ghostlike particles change flavors as if by magic.

Godzilla reference, check.

Ice cream analogy, check.

Now, the backstory:  First predicted in 1930 by Wolfgang Pauli, and experimentally observed in 1950, neutrinos come in three flavors – electron, muon, and tau. The mass of a neutrino is less than 1/1,000,000th of that of an electron. If you liken the weight of an electron to that of an elephant, the weight of a neutrino would be lighter than a one yen coin. They do not hold a charge; the word “neutrino” is a combination of the Italian word “neutro,” which means “neutral or electrically neutral,” and the diminutive suffix “-ino.” Literally translated, “neutrino” would mean something like “little neutral one.” Because neutrinos are extremely light and do not hold a charge, they do not interact with most other elementary particles. Several trillion of them pass through the palms of your hands every second. In fact they pass through everything, including the Earth, unimpeded.

Lifetime Achievement
Takaaki Kajita receiving the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics

Neutrinos have long been of interest to physicists, who, for decades, couldn’t explain why the number of electron neutrinos measured in experiments on Earth did not match the amount predicted by the best solar models. Chemist and physicist Raymond Davis was the first to encounter this phenomenon, which later came to be known as the Solar Neutrino Problem. Davis, who in 1967 built a neutrino collector – a tank holding 100,000 gallons of cleaning fluid nearly a mile underground in South Dakota’s Homestake mine – was as perplexed as anyone. Calculations predicted that of the 10 million billion neutrinos passing through the tank every day, roughly one would interact with a chlorine atom and change it to argon. But the detector, operated all the way until 1994, recorded only about one-third the expected number of neutrinos. Over time, a prevailing theory emerged – that the neutrinos were oscillating from one flavor to another and avoiding detection.

The Problem:  How do you prove it?

Enter Dr. Kajita and Super-Kamiokande.

Neil deGrasse Tyson on a boat inside the Super-Kamiokande

The giant detector, which went live on April 1, 1996, is able to observe atmospheric neutrinos coming from all directions. Two years later, Kajita and other members of the Super-Kamiokande Group made a groundbreaking discovery:  The number of neutrinos made on the opposite side of the Earth that had flown the long distance to the Super-Kamiokande detector was only about half as high as the number of neutrinos that came down from the atmosphere directly above the detector.

This could only mean one thing:  The discrepancy in numbers was due to “neutrino oscillation,” a phenomenon in which neutrinos change into other types of neutrinos while in flight. As the muon neutrinos created on the opposite side of the Earth passed through the Earth’s interior, they transformed into tau neutrinos, which is why observations showed fewer muon neutrinos than expected.

So, they oscillate. What’s the big deal?

2015 Nobel laureate Takaaki Kajita

Like photons, neutrinos were thought to be massless. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity states that objects with mass will never reach the speed of light, and that objects without mass will always travel at the speed of light. Also, the faster an object travels, the slower time passes, and once an object reaches the speed of light, time will stop for the object (the object will cease to experience time). Since neutrinos oscillate, they are experiencing time. The fact that neutrinos oscillate while they travel at a speed that does not reach the speed of light proves that they have mass. This, in turn, tells us that there is something missing. The Standard Model cannot be complete.

Kajita, whose responses can be as elusive as the ghostlike particles he’s chased for decades, has taken his newfound scientific superstardom in stride. He gets it. The Nobel Prize is a pretty big deal. His place in the pantheon of great neutrino ghost hunters is secure. The Standard Model will fundamentally change, and he is directly responsible. You’ll just have to forgive him if he doesn’t go all Tiger King over the hubbub, because he’s checked his ego at the door a long time ago. With Takaaki Kajita, its all about the pursuit of science. Maybe its dark matter. Maybe its something else. Maybe proving that neutrinos have mass is lightning in a bottle. It doesn’t really matter, because, at the end of the day, doing good science is good enough for him.

Please tell me about your childhood; what are some of your earliest memories?

I grew up in the Japanese countryside in Higashi-Matsuyama, a small city located about an hour’s train ride north of Tokyo. I grew up in such a peaceful environment. My house was surrounded by rice fields on the north, east, and south, so I was surrounded by nature. I think that this was very important to me in terms of becoming a scientist.

At what point do you remember becoming interested in science?

To be honest, I became most interested in science when I got involved in my graduate courses. Almost accidentally, I entered Professor [Masatoshi] Koshiba’s group, just as he was starting the Kamiokande Experiment. While I didn’t know much about it, I quickly realized that it was really a very wonderful opportunity for me. I really enjoyed working on the Kamiokande Experiment. At that point, I essentially decided to become a physicist.

The 2015 Nobel physics laureate professor Takaaki Kajita (center) poses with his gold medal together with wife Michiko (left) and daughter (right) after the 2015 Nobel prize award ceremony. PHOTO: REUTERS

In what ways did your family help lay the foundation for such a successful career?

I think that this is a very difficult question. I’m not sure how much influence I received from my parents. When I was a child, Japan was still a rather poor country, but I think my parents were already thinking that I should go away to a university so that I could work in an exciting field.

Was there a particular teacher or class that help to fuel your interest in science and mathematics?

In high school, one of my teachers was a physicist, and from his lectures I discovered my interest in astronomy. Certainly, through his lectures, I thought that astronomy was quite interesting.

What was high school like for you?

I went to Kawagoe High School, a rather typical small-town school. This school had a tradition of allowing students to do whatever they liked rather freely. Therefore, I spent a lot of time practicing Kyudo (Japanese archery). I was not particularly good at Kyudo, but I liked it. During one’s time as a high school student, you have to decide what you intend to study as an undergraduate once you are admitted to a university. Since I was interested in physics as a high school student, my choice was rather clear: I decided to learn physics in the undergraduate course at Saitama University, a local university near Tokyo.

Takaaki Kajita

How would you describe yourself?

If I were to describe myself, I would say that I am simply extremely lucky. I was involved in experiments that I liked, and by accident I encountered a very interesting problem. I later I found that this problem was due to neutrino oscillations. So, I was very lucky.

Do you have a sense of humor?

Well certainly, I don’t have much of a sense of humor.

But in a news conference at the University of Tokyo, shortly after the Nobel announcement, you thanked the neutrinos for winning the award. And since neutrinos are created by cosmic rays, you thanked them, too. That’s funny!

I must admit, I thought it was funny, too [laughs].

What are some of your interests and hobbies outside of the scientific world?

To be honest, I am too busy to really have hobbies, so I have no hobbies. Okay, if you insist, drinking Japanese saki would be my hobby [laughs].

How about art, music, or literature?

Yes, I enjoy each, but I do not have much time to spend on these things.

Let’s talk about your undergraduate studies. You stayed close to home and attended Saitama University.  Were you initially unsure about what you wanted to study.

Officially I was learning physics at Saitama University, but, to be honest, I continued to spend a lot of time practicing Kyudo – even more seriously than during high school. I regret that I should have learned more physics during my undergraduate studies, because these studies in undergraduate courses form the basis of everyday research. Knowing this, I continued to spend a lot of time doing Kyudo – so much so that, until the latter half of the third year, my life was really focused on Japanese archery. That changed before the final year. I decided then that I wanted to learn more about physics, so I quit Japanese archery at that time. Well, at least after that I did not take Japanese archery so seriously [laughs]. So that was my life as an undergraduate student. In any case, I found that physics was indeed interesting. So I decided to continue to studying physics at the graduate level.

What excited you most about physics then, and what excites you most about it today?

Today, I am more interested in the research related to astronomy and astrophysics – the universe, cosmic rays, and dark matter. When I was taking the undergraduate courses, I was very interested in particle physics, particularly experimental particle physics. This is because I thought that theoretical physics was too difficult to me. I really enjoyed experiments, such as going underground, constructing the detectors, and so on. I enjoyed this work very much. So, I think I made the right decision.

You pursued your graduate studies at the University of Tokyo. Please tell me about his experience.

I learned everything about experimental particle physics in the graduate course at the University of Tokyo. As I mentioned earlier, I was particularly interested in experimental particle physics. Very fortunately, Professor Masatoshi Koshiba accepted me as a graduate course student in his group at the University of Tokyo. My life as a graduate course student began in April of 1981. Katsushi Arisaka was also a student in Professor Koshiba’s group. He had just finished his Master’s thesis based on a Monte Carlo study of a nucleon decay experiment. This was the Kamioka Nucleon Delay Experiment, also known as Kamiokande. He was the only student working on Kamiokande in early 1981. Just when I started my studies, production of newly developed photomultiplier tubes – PMTs – with a diameter of 50 centimeters began. Katsushi Arisaka convinced me that Kamiokande would be a very interesting experiment and asked me to work on it, which I started to do.

Friend and Mentor
2002 Nobel laureate Masatoshi Koshiba

You mention Professor Masatoshi Koshiba, who won the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Professor Koshiba was my physics advisor, therefore he had a very significant influence on me. Well, he is a big boss [laughs]. He would not tell us many of the details of our experiments, he would leave the research up to us. But he told us how one should be a scientist, especially how to be an experimental physicist.

You applied for postdoctoral studies through the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) but your application was rejected. Dr. Koshiba came to your rescue.

In Japan, the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science posts positions that are  open to every scientific field. I applied, but unfortunately I was not selected. I had no idea what I was going to do after I obtained my PhD. Then, Professor Koshiba received approval for some positions from the University of Tokyo. I do not know the details about how he managed to do this, but afterwards he hired me. The position was for a fixed time…well, he told me that my job was only for one year, but eventually, I stayed in this position for two years.

Princess Sofia and physics laureate Takaaki Kajita

Let’s talk about Kamiokande. What were the early days like?

I enjoyed the preparation work for Kamiokande. In early spring of 1983, we started the construction work on the Kamiokande proton decay detector in Kamioka. It took almost four months to finish building the detector. I liked the construction work, watching the detector being assembled slowly but steadily. After it was filled with water, data taking with the Kamiokande experiment began in early July of 1983.

In 1986, you discovered that there was a significant deficit of the muon neutrino events when analyzing the Kamiokande data.

Oh yes, this moment was really crucial for me. I had a great feeling of excitement, and I also had the feeling that I made a mistake somewhere.

Neutrinos at that time were thought to be massless – and they were also at the heart of the Solar Neutrino Problem.

Well, as I said, I joined the Kamiokande experiment during my graduate course studies, and I received my PhD based on my research for proton decay at Kamiokande. I continued to work on Kamiokande after getting my PhD, as I was still interested in the proton decays and I wanted to improve the proton decay analysis. Through this kind of improvement study, I realized that there was something strange in the background of the proton decays in the atmospheric neutrinos. Basically, there was a substantial deficit of muon neutrinos in the atmospheric neutrino events, and that was the beginning of my interest in neutrinos.

Super-Kamiokande – Kamioka Mozumi mine in Japan – 1000m underground

Let’s talk about your research at the Super-Kamiokande Neutrino Observatory. How does it differ from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada?

The detection principle of the neutrino interaction is similar to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. We detect radiation created by particles which are created by neutrino interactions. However, in terms of the details, our detectors are different. First of all, our detectors are not so deep. Our detectors are only 1 kilometer deep. Also, the structure of the detector is different. In SNO, they have kind of a cylindrical volume at the center of the detector to hold the heavy water. But in the case of Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande, we simply use normal water. Therefore, we do not have the special container for the heavy water. We simply use a water tank to hold the water.

With heavy water, SNO is able to observe electron neutrinos from the sun. And also, SNO is also able to observe the total neutrino flux from the sun. But, in the case of normal water, we can observe these solar neutrinos by the neutrino electron scattering. So, the actual mechanism of detecting solar neutrinos are completely different.

What’s it like working with teams of other scientists and researchers?

I worked in both the Kamiokande and the Super-Kamiokande. Kamiokande was initially a small team. I think we had certainly more than 10 people, but, on the other hand, in the Super-Kamiokande, we had more than 100 people. So we had a big team.

At that time, the other main members of Kamiokande were Teruhiro Suda from the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research of the University of Tokyo, and Atsuto Suzuki and Kasuke Takahashi from the High Energy Accelerator Research Center. Soon after I joined the Kamiokande experiment, Yoji Totsuka returned from Deutsches Electron Synchroton and started to help us. Soon he too joined Kamiokande. Kazumasa Miyano from Niigata University and Tadashi Kifune from ICRR joined during the preparation stage of the experiment. Also, Masayuki Nakahata, who was an undergraduate course student, worked with us. So, as you can see, experiments like those being conducted at Kamiokande and Super-Kamiokande require the involvement of many different people with different strengths and skillsets.

The director of the University of Tokyo Cosmic Ray Research Institute, Nobel laureate winner Takaaki Kajita
Kazuyoshi Yamamoto photographing

Did you enjoy being part of a team?

Well, I do enjoy participating in teams. As far as the data analysis is concerned, I was one of the conveners of the atmospheric neutrino analysis. So, we had video meetings, which was the way to discuss and analyze the data. Also, we had collaboration meetings two or three times a year. I should mention that, in the analysis, both my Japanese and U.S. colleagues played very important roles in the initial stages of the Super-Kamiokande analysis.

Science takes creativity and creative thinking.  Do you have an example?

This is a very difficult question. It depends on how you define creativity [laughs]. Well, certainly we always tried to improve the analysis, but I don’t know how much of this activity is related to creativity. I’m not sure. I’m sorry. I don’t have a good answer to this question.

Since 1949, there have been twenty-eight Japanese winners of the Nobel Prize.  And you are only the ninth to winner the Nobel Prize for Physics. What does that mean to you?

I don’t ordinarily think about this question. Certainly, I feel that I’m very lucky because, well, for example, in 1949, it was not possible to carry out experimental research in Japan. But, in my time, I was able to conduct experimental physics. For that I feel really lucky.

In what ways did winning the Nobel Prize change your life?

Oh yes, since winning the Nobel Prize I have been very busy. One good thing is, I have opportunities to speak about the problems facing Japanese scientific systems. So, that is a good thing.

The Nobel Prize is the ultimate award, but I get the sense that your focus has always been on the science, and that there was never a preoccupation with whether or not you would win it.

Oh yes. Yes, absolutely. As I said, in Kamiokande, I accidentally found the deficit of atmospheric muon neutrinos, and that was really important for me. I really wanted to understand what was going on and that was essentially the only motivation for me to carry out the research.

It’s not every day that someone’s work challenges the Standard Model the way yours did. To me, the significance of that statement is far more profound than the actual Nobel Prize. Do you ever stop to think about that?

When we found the deficit of muon neutrinos we thought this could be due to neutrino oscillations. And, of course we realized that if it is indeed due to neutrino oscillations, this could be a very important work.

Takaaki Kajita

Final Question: You’ve achieved great success in your life. If you could offer one piece of advice to aspiring scientists, what would that be?

For many people, the reason he or she becomes a scientist is an interest in nature. So, I hope that many young people, although they may be busy, don’t forget their initial interest in nature. I believe that this is the single most important thing in order to become a good scientist.

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Cela Scott – Show Stopper

Written By: Michael D. McClellan | Cela Scott takes your breath. A multi-hyphenate badass with roots in Nashville and a career in Hollywood, Scott oozes brashness, confidence, and sophistication in ways that set her apart in an industry teeming with starry-eyed wannabes trying to make their mark. Meet her, and your first reaction is to find a parallel, but drawing comparisons only cheapens both her inimitable range and magnetic charisma. The talented singer-songwriter-actor makes up one-half of the LA-based alternative duo, Automatik Eden. On screen, she’s done everything from Wells Fargo commercials to Star Trek: Renegades to indie movies like the dark comedy Dick Dickster, where she plays a neophyte porn star named…wait for it…Peaches Ripen. Yes, Cela Scott is from this world, but she is not like the rest of us, nor is she someone who can be pigeonholed into a stereotype for the sake of conversational brevity.

“I like being me,” she says, settling in for the interview. “I’ve always charted my own course and figured out things on my own terms.”

Indeed.

Scott could have played it safe and stayed home, working some honky-tonk dive in downtown Nashville, fronting a mediocre band and churning through a weepy old set of country-music standards every weekend. A move like that was never in the Cela Scott playbook. Slender and radiant, with piercing eyes that grip you and refuse to let go, it’s as easy to imagine Scott gracing the cover of Elle or Vanity Fair as it is to watch her perform in the official music video for Renegades. Her vocals on the Automatik Eden single Gold to Straw cast a hypnotic, dreamlike spell where time seems to stand still, while the voyeuristic video dares you to look away. (Spoiler Alert: You can’t.)

Cela Scott

Earning her theater degree at the University of Southern California, today Cela Scott oscillates between music and acting with uncommon ease, equally comfortable in both worlds. Her husband, David Crocco, makes up the other half of Automatik Eden. Their debut LP, Madland, produced a single by the same name that charted on Billboard’s Hot Singles Sales Chart at #12. Scott’s voice delivers exceptional range, natural elegance, and lucent tone. There is a refined edginess to her vocals, a hint of danger dabbed with pop playfulness. She plays the guitar, and does so exceedingly well. And then there’s the look: Depending on the mood and moment, Scott’s eyeliner is a precision event, a marvel, as if drawn on by the kind of pre-programmed robot arm used for laparoscopic surgeries. Red lipstick. Black lipstick. Ornate, patterned jackets over Gothic, ruffled shirts. Tight dresses that stop mid-thigh. All of it complimenting the equally effectual look worn by Crocco and completing the vibe that is Automatik Eden.

“We have fun with it,” she says with a laugh. “When you take the stage, you’ve got to play the part. That’s rock and roll.”

Scott’s comfort level in front of the camera is evident at every turn. She’s acted opposite Tim Russ in Renegades and Robert Ray Shafer in Dick Dickster. She’s played a reluctant goddess of the underworld/part-time secretary at a dotcom. She can soon be seen in Deep in the Forest, a thriller starring seasoned actor Peter Jason.

Cela Scott in Star Trek: Renegades

Today?

Cela Scott continues to audition in the face of COVID-19, using her quarantine time to dress up like a rock star and produce a self-tape to be shared virtually. She, along with Crocco, are plotting the next move for Automatik Eden. Together they continue to grow Crocco’s Emmy-nominated audio post-production company, which has mixed such TV hits as Behind the Music, Punk’d, and United Shades of America. There are more songs to write, more roles to own, more galaxies to explore. All while staying true to her inner compass.

“There is plenty to keep me busy,” she says, smiling. “There is no shortage of opportunities. Sometimes I find it. Sometimes it finds me. It all works out in the end.”

No doubt.

The next chapter, like the last, is all about success.

Please take me back to the beginning.

I was the oldest of four homeschooled kids in Nashville. We were somewhat on the front wave of the homeschooling phenomenon, so not a lot of people had heard of it yet. Today it’s much more accepted as the norm, and now everybody knows what it is. And during COVID-19, many families are getting a taste of what it might be like! My mom is really getting a kick out of that. There was a lot of creativity in my family. My dad was a musician, and my mom was into the theater. I grew up doing mostly musical theater, which is what eventually jettisoned me from Nashville to Los Angeles.

What was it like growing up in Nashville, and how did that influence your creative side?

I came to the guitar later in the game, which is ironic since I grew up in Music City, USA. Nashville was mostly a country town when I was growing up, which is what it’s still famous for, but it’s become a much more diverse place for artists these days. I did not take music seriously as a youngster. It’s kind of what everybody was doing there – everybody in Nashville wanted to write a hit song, just like everybody in Los Angeles wants to write an Oscar-winning screenplay. Growing up I never really saw myself going in either of those directions. Weirdly, I sort of ended up in both of those worlds.

Cela Scott

When did you start singing?

I was in the Nashville Children’s Choir for several years, and we toured all over the place. We played Carnegie Hall and went all over the country, so I have this sort of classical background in music that later would transition into more of a rock ‘n roll sensibility when I got out into L.A.

You went to college at the University of Southern California. Please tell me about this period in your life.

I did my undergrad in theater at USC. That was a very cool time in my life. To this day, some of the closest friends that I have – many of whom are working actors now – are people that I met at USC.  Through the theater I also worked with my husband, David Crocco, on music for a theater piece called Vinegar Tom. This was an existing play about witch hunting in the 1800s, as told through the lens of a modern, feminist perspective. The director wanted to modernize the music that was supposed to go with it, so we created the soundtrack for the play. That was our first collaboration, and it later led us to form a band together.

You and David are Automatik Eden. How did you meet?

David and I have been together a long time. We actually met in Nashville as cast members during a production of Hair, which was before we moved out to California. Hair is this famous rock musical about hippies living in New York during the time of Vietnam, so there are a lot of songs about war protests, the most famous of which culminates in this nude scene at the end of a very powerful song where everybody takes off their clothes. This was a little bit too spicy for Tennessee sensibilities at the time, but we like to joke that we met in the nude [laughs].

Cela Scott

Have you acted together since?

Hair was David’s first and last play. He’s really not an actor, but he auditioned because he loved the music so much. He keeps getting sucked into it here and there because I’m involved in it, so he’s always sort of on the periphery.

How did Automatik Eden get its start?

It wasn’t until after college that we had the epiphany. David had been a musician for a long time, basically his whole adult life, but he had taken a break from it to start an audio production business for TV and film called. A.G.E. Post, which is now an Emmy-nominated post-production facility, which is pretty cool. In 2018 we were nominated for an Emmy Award for mixing Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath. We were kicking around one day in the living room, and he was playing something on guitar that’d he’d written. I had some classical text lying around – I think it was some Shakespeare or some poetry by Lord Byron – and I just started singing the words that were available to me. I was used to cold reading and rehearsing from a script, so I just sort of created a melody to go with what he was playing. We had so much fun doing it we thought, “Oh, maybe we have something here. Maybe this is something we can do together musically.” From there it evolved into the band.

Automatik Eden

Automatik Eden kicks ass.

Thank you! We started getting kind of serious about it maybe five years ago. We went through a couple of different machinations as a band – a couple of different names, and a couple of different band members – but it’s always been the two of us writing all of the original material and recording everything on the tracks. There are occasions where we will bring in some super awesome friends with specialized skills that we really like to showcase on the records, things like saxophone and cello. And our producer is a dear friend named Sean Beavan, who produces and engineers all of our stuff, including Madland. Sean is extremely talented. He’s worked with Marilyn Manson, and 9-Inch Nails, Garbage, and No Doubt. He has a killer sensibility.

How do the two of you collaborate? Is this like Bernie Taupin and Elton John?

Yes, it’s exactly like Bernie and Elton [laughs]. No, I would not compare us to those guys, but those are two of our favorites. David is one of those kind of musicians who can play everything. It’s annoying in an endearing sort of way, but he’s good at all of it – good musician, good lyricist, and good singer. In terms of how we collaborate, it’s been a little bit different every time. Typically, he’ll have an idea for a song that’s fully fleshed out, and then I’ll add a little sparkle to it and kind of fill in what’s left. Or it works the other way around – I’ll have something that is pretty much done, but it’s missing a bridge, or it’s missing lyrics, or needs a stronger chorus, and David will fill in the blanks. There have also been times when we will write something together from the ground up, so it really varies, depending on the mood and the situation.

Madland is one hell of a debut LP.

Thank you again! Madland was really important for us to complete, and we’re very proud of it. We did a few singles before this record, and we released a couple of EPs, but all along we knew that we wanted to do a full-length album. That was a big goal of ours, and we were able to achieve that with Madland. The title is our commentary on the insane state of the world as we see it.

The goal of the record – and I really do hope you got the opportunity to listen to it from start to finish – is for the listener to experience all of it uninterrupted. It’s good driving music in that regard. It’s throwback to the albums from the ‘60s and ‘70s that we loved so much, when the music was connected and it was really about a journey, where one song is meant to go into the next, in a particular order, and it takes you on a ride. We really missed that record experience. You just don’t get that with a lot of today’s digital music, especially with the attention span of today’s listener.

Cela Scott and David Crocco are Automatik Eden

Madland is really diverse.

You’re definitely going to hear some Beatles-inspired stuff. You’ll hear Radiohead and Massive Attack, too. There is a slinky, sexy, electronic, down-tempo kind-of-thing going on as well, which draws its inspiration from Portishead. The more upbeat and aggressive tracks might remind you of an early Pretenders, or maybe White Stripes.

Automatik Eden are wildly popular in Cleveland.

We do have a very strong following in Cleveland. It’s really great. David spent his formative years there as a teenager and as a young adult, and he still has a lot of friends there. We became connected with oWOW Radio, which, I’d like to say, is an amazing streaming service started by John Gorman. John became famous for WMMS in Cleveland, which was a terrestrial radio station that broke acts like Rush, Brian Ferry, and David Bowie in the United States during the early 1970s. People from that region know that station and know that guy, so it’s been very cool to be played a lot by oWOW Radio.

The voyeuristic video for the single Gold to Straw is amazing. You star in it, and it clearly plays into your strength as an actress.

Thank you! I love acting – whenever I can combine music and acting, it’s a good day for me.

Cela Scott in the Automatik Eden video “Gold to Straw”

Did acting school help you transition from stage to screen?  Did it help you as a musical artist?

I would say that in some ways it helped, but in some ways going from one medium to the other can also hinder you. If you’re so used to theater, for example, there are some adjustments that need to be made when you get in front of a camera. You’re not playing as big necessarily as you would to a stage audience. Being a classically trained musician was a really good thing because of the skills that I learned, but that didn’t really apply once I got into a rock ‘n roll kind of sound and started doing music videos. It was more important that the music didn’t sound too perfect or put together, the way one might sing in a choir, which is the way I learned growing up. I had to be aware of the difference, and then let things naturally be more edgy and imperfect. Then I could find the fun in that.

You play Persephone, a reluctant goddess of the underworld/part-time secretary at a dotcom, in the web series Godsdotcom.

That was a fun one to do. It has to do with the idea that the Grecian gods have fallen out of style, and nobody’s really worshiping them anymore. They don’t have the same cachet that they once had, so they try to make themselves relevant again by starting a tech startup company. It has a lot of elements of The Office. They find themselves in this office-y environment, although they are larger-than-life deities, and they have to do mundane jobs to keep the lights on. Persephone is a secretary with not-so-great of an attitude.

Cela Scott

Do you enjoy playing comedic roles?

Comedy may be my favorite thing to do. I loved doing Dick Dickster with Bobby Ray Shafer, who everyone knows as Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration in The Office,and Tim Russ from Star Trek: Voyager. Bobby Ray made the film on a shoestring budget, and he did it in a handful of days. He also used Citadel in the film, which is one of our songs from Madland, Citadel.

It was a lot of fun – I played Peaches Ripen, who is sort of a newbie, wannabe porn star with some serious daddy issues. She’s trying to infiltrate a close knit group of the porn community and make a name for herself, but she’s always messing up. It’s a fun premises for a dark comedy. It’s really a send-up of Hollywood and how everybody wants to be famous and sorta wants to be somebody that they’re not. I had never worked with either of these guys before, but they are so creative and so talented that it made it a blast to be involved.

I hear that you auditioned in full porn star costume.

Yeah, I think I freaked out Bobby Ray, who was at the auditions. I went in with long blonde hair, extensions, fake nails, super high heels, a spray tan, and a little cocktail dress. I was just going for it. Bobby Ray looked at me and thought I was a real porn star. And I was like, “I’m here in character, this is my resumé. I’m acting right now.” Then I did the read and he looked at me like I was an alien [laughs]. I got a call a few hours later and learned that I got the gig.

Cela with Tim Russ on the set of “They Want Dick Dickster”

How did you get your start in acting after moving to California?

I did a bunch of indie kinda stuff, which I still do – I’m pretty much always involved in some kind of independent film project. In 2015 I did a film called Death Valley, which was directed by T.J. Scott, who directed the television show Spartacus, among many others. There were several other cast members who were also from Spartacus, wonderful actors like Katrina Law, Nick Tarabay and Victoria Pratt. That film was very fun to do – they even ended up incorporating some of our songs into it as well, so that was an added bonus.

Your music has also been featured in a very popular Wells Fargo commercial.

Yeah, that was pretty cool. That commercial was created for the STAPLES Center, where the L.A. Lakers play. They have giant TV screens for the sporting events and stuff, and we shot the Wells Fargo commercial portraying a band that is “ready to rock the house.” They used the largest camera I’ve ever seen in my life, the lens looked like it was the size of a car. That was really cool to do, and it played for several years at the STAPLES Center. Actually, it’s weird to see yourself on giant screens like that. It’s surreal – you think you’re prepared for it, but every time you see it there’s a disconnect, because seeing something on that scale is hard to relate.

You’ve not only appeared in Star Trek: Renegades, but Automatik Eden performs the operatic title song, Captain of my Soul.

I ended up getting involved in Renegades through Tim Russ. I actually met him on the set of Dick Dickster, and we connected instantly. It turns out that he’s a musician, too, so I guess that was the common bond that drew us together and helped create our friendship. He’s actually a great musician, and he plays all over Los Angeles with his band, the Tim Russ Crew. He cast me in Renegades, which was a real thrill because I’ve been a total Star Trek nerd since childhood – and I still am!

Tim ended up asking David and I to do the title track. The captain in this series really takes to heart a poem by William Ernest Henley called Invictus. One of the lines in that poem is I am the captain of my soul. They really wanted to take this older poem in turn it into a piece of music, so that’s what we ended up doing. Tim Russ directed the music video, which was also a lot of fun to do. My scenes in the video are done against a rocky, desert backdrop, which gives it a really cool vibe. That’s how it all came together. Captain of my Soul is rather sweeping and epic, with lots of strings. They thought it was kind of appropriate for space opera like Renegades.

Cela Scott in Star Trek: Renegades

Please tell me about your role in the pilot.

The captain in this series is a female, her name is Lexxa. She is played by Adrian Wilkinson from Xena: Warrior Princess, among other things. I end up playing her mother in flashbacks to her childhood, and you quickly learn that she’s lost her mother under some tragic circumstances.

How important is it for an aspiring actor to have an agent?

You need an agent, definitely. It’s kind of tricky – you need an agent to get the jobs, but in order to get an agent you need to have already had jobs, so it’s a Catch-22 kind-of-situation a lot of new actors find themselves in. You have to start building a resumé  as best you can. It’s tricky terrain to navigate, because it’s not always easy figuring out what kind of work you want to get involved with…and it’s really hard to know the quality sometimes. Most actors are really just trying to build their reel, which is just a series of clips, an example of their body of work that shows what they can do. A lot of time you’re doing smaller projects in the beginning, maybe student films and independent stuff. You’re just trying to build that reel, so that you have enough of a resumé that you can take it to an agent who might be willing to take a chance on a newcomer. As a newbie actor that’s how you have to approach it. You want to say, “Hey, here’s what I have, here’s what I can do, give me a shot.” From there, you just audition and you do the best you can. There’s a lot of competition and it’s easy to get burnt out. It’s a wild world and it can beat you down if you let it, but for people who really love acting, you keep getting drawn back into it. It’s sort of hard to get away from in that respect.

Cela Scott & Lochlyn Munro in “Death Valley”

How important is networking?

It is, and it isn’t. I think there are a lot of “networking” events and workshops that are traps that young actors can fall into. I think you have to keep your eyes open and try to be aware of what’s a genuine opportunity and what is a waste of time. There are a lot of sharks out there preying on actors who are kind of naïve. I would advise that nobody ever spend money for anything that is supposed to be considered a networking event. I think the best way to network is to work. That’s the best way to meet other actors and professionals in the business who can really help. You want to network with the people who are on sets, and try to make as many friendships as possible. If you hit it off with the right people, that always leads to other opportunities.

What do you currently have in the works?

In 2020 I’ll be starring in the short film Impulse Control, written and directed by Juliette Beavan of the rock band 8mm. She is Sean’s wife, just a super talent. This film is the first in a series of narratives and music videos inspired by the artists in 8mm’s sphere. Juliette’s motto with these: “Move Fast, Make Things”. She’s in post-production on this one now, and there will be plenty more coming this year.

Cela Scott

If you could offer one piece of advice to aspiring actors, what would that be?

I would say hang in there. It’s tough. It’s also really rewarding. As a creative individual, be sure you have other things in the arts that you enjoy doing. For me, the saving grace has been having another creative outlet. When acting becomes difficult, I can go to music. When I start to get burnt out on music I can go back to acting. I think it’s really helpful if you have something like painting, or writing, or something else in the arts that can help fill that artistic drive when one area has dried up for you. It’ll be easier to keep your momentum going, and you can go back to acting when the time is right.

During Corona Quarantine, I’d love to encourage actors to use some of this extra free time to keep your talent sharp and continue to build your reel. Now is a great time to find a monologue online, or write one yourself, and tape it. Most of us have access to some really good looking phone cameras now. Order a little microphone online and teach yourself about audio. Direct yourself, download some editing software and learn about that. Plan to be ready to get back out there when the world opens up again.

David Holt – Dream Job

Written By: Michael D. McClellan | Everything changed on Wednesday, March 11, 2020.

The week had started with the Golden State Warriors’ decision to host the Brooklyn Nets with no fans at the Chase Center in San Francisco, an unprecedented step aimed and slowing the spread of COVID-19. Asked for his take, LeBron James pushed back against the idea of playing in empty arenas.

“We play games without the fans? Nah, that’s impossible,” James told reporters after the Lakers’ game against the Milwaukee Bucks. “I ain’t playing if I ain’t got the fans in the crowd. That’s who I play for. I play for my teammates, and I play for the fans. That’s what it’s all about. So if I show up to an arena and there ain’t no fans in there, I ain’t playing. They can do what they want to do.”

James’ statement sounds wildly out of touch now, given where we are with the entire nation on lock down, social distancing forever a part of our lexicon, and a pandemic threatening global economies and pushing healthcare systems to the breaking point. The idea of playing games with no fans? As alien as that concept seemed on the morning of March 11, today it’s but a speed bump on the way to not only the NBA cancelling games and suspending its season, but virtually the entire sporting world grinding to a complete halt. March Madness? Scrapped. The Masters? Postponed. Major League Baseball? Delayed until who knows when. The Olympics? On life support.

By noon on Wednesday all appeared normal in Oklahoma City, where the Utah Jazz were scheduled to play the Thunder. Unbeknownst to the rest of the league, the Jazz had contacted local health officials in OKC that morning to request assistance with a player – later identified as center Rudy Gobert – who was showing symptoms consistent with COVID-19. Gobert had already tested negative for influenza, an upper respiratory infection, and strep throat.

Family Man
Mayor David Holt, along with his wife, Rachel Canuso, and their two young children

Gobert remained at the 21c Museum Hotel as players headed to Chesapeake Energy Arena, while Jazz and league officials awaited the results. HIPAA privacy laws prevented anyone from sharing details of his condition. Only a small group – the Jazz training staff and front office, Gobert, NBA officials and Oklahoma City public health officials – knew of the situation.

We all know what happened next. Fans slowly found their seats while players got off shots during warmups, but, just minutes before tipoff, Jazz general manager Dennis Lindsey got the call. Gobert had tested positive for the coronavirus, and commissioner Adam Silver suspended the NBA season indefinitely. What was unimaginable a month ago had become merely unthinkable, and then, in the course of a single day, inevitable – and still, when the news arrived, it was a shock.

All of which brings us to Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt. Energetic and on-point, you’d be hard-pressed to find another mayor who cares as much about his or her city as Holt. Elected in 2018, Holt became the youngest mayor of a U.S. city over 500,000 and the youngest mayor of Oklahoma City since 1923. In many ways, he is reflective of the city he serves – optimistic, forward-thinking, and genuine. One of the nation’s most active mayors on social media, Holt uses the platform to evangelize OKC’s exponential growth, much of it made possible by MAPS, the debt-free public improvement program conceived in the early ‘90s by then-mayor Ron Norick. His political career has taken him to D.C. and back. In 2006 he was appointed as Mayor Mick Cornett’s Chief of Staff, next serving as a state senator, and then, on April 10, 2018, as Mayor of Oklahoma City. He’s had a hand in some of the most important initiatives in the city’s history, including the revitalization of downtown, and he continues to act as its greatest ambassador. For Holt, serving as Mayor of Oklahoma City is his dream job.

The Oklahoma City Museum of Art
Home to one of the largest collections of Chihuly glass in the world

“Serving the residents of Oklahoma City is a privilege,” he says. “I’m very passionate about public service, and to be able to serve as the mayor of my hometown is a dream come true.”

While many outsiders still lean on outdated stereotypes when conjuring visions of Oklahoma City, Mayor Holt smiles through the misplaced digs because he knows that it only takes one visit to change outdated misperceptions. Besides, he’s too busy touting the city’s cultural and social gems to dwell on the negative, like the Rand Elliott-designed Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, or 70-acre Scissortail Park, which extends from the core of downtown Oklahoma City to the shore of the Oklahoma River. How many cities host an Henri Matisse exhibit? Who hasn’t walked away from a performance by the Oklahoma City Philharmonic completely spellbound? Where else can you ride a hot pink streetcar from Myriad Gardens to Automobile Alley to Midtown and back again? That’s not to say that OKC has forgotten its roots. The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is a must see. The Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum is sacred ground. It’s all there in a city unlike any other, a hidden gem covering 620 square miles and populated with some of the most amazing people you’ll find anywhere on earth.

Myriad Botanical Gardens & Crystal Bridge Tropical Conservatory

Today, Mayor Holt’s leadership is being tested by an invisible enemy, one that has turned major cities into ghost towns and sent millions to the unemployment line. This is a global pandemic, and drastic measures are being taken in countries around the world. Hard decisions must be made to defeat the COVID-19 threat, and Holt does not enter into this struggle lightly. Lives hang in the balance. Livelihoods, too. Like many of his peers around the country, Holt has had to declare a state of emergency. He’s had to sign an unpopular order closing bars and other entertainment venues, turning the city’s vibrant restaurant scene into takeout-only. These decisions are not for the faint of heart, but Mayor Holt understands what’s at stake. He also knows the people of Oklahoma City are up to the challenge. There have been other tests of fortitude – oil busts, banking crises, a bombing of unimaginable evil. Each and every time, the citizens of Oklahoma City have risen up and met the challenge head on. COVID-19 is no different. Mayor Holt knows that the battle won’t be easily won, but he knows that his city has something that COVID-19 does not.

OKC Streetcar

The Oklahoma Standard.

“The people of Oklahoma City banded together in a community-wide display of spontaneous altruism,” Holt says when asked about the bombing that claimed 168 lives and changed the city forever. “Call it the Oklahoma Standard, call in One OK, call it love, call it empathy, call it whatever you want. But we know better than most Americans what happens when it is lost. That is the wisdom that each of us possesses for living here at any time in the last 25 years. We understand what it is to carry the load.”

You were born and raised in Oklahoma City. A lot has changed in a short amount of time. Please tell me a little about your childhood, and what OKC was like back in the day.

I was born and raised in Northwest Oklahoma City, and I went to Putnam City Schools all the way through high school. My dad was a high school English teacher in Putnam City Schools. My mom had been a social worker until I came along, and then she was a stay-at-home mom. I had a great education and a great upbringing. I think Oklahoma City was a very lovely place to be in the 1980s and 1990s, but, having said that, I can look back now and I can see the deficiencies that Oklahoma City had in some respects. Now I realize that we were oftentimes in an alternate universe outside of what was going on in the rest of United States, and a lot of our effort in the last 20 years have been to be more connected to the greater country at large. I think that we have been successful. Most of that was lost on a child, of course, because you aren’t thinking in those terms. For me, Oklahoma City back then meant a very nice, suburban lifestyle, with a good education system that was very supportive.

On Friday mornings (as time allows), Mayor Holt visits OKC elementary schools and reads “Goodnight, OKC” to kindergarten classes

From what I’ve read, you learned to deal with adversity at a young age.

I had some challenges. My mother passed away when I was a freshman in high school. By that point my parents were divorced. I was an only child living with her, so my dad stepped in and, along with my mother’s father, helped me stay stabilized. Unfortunately, you grow up pretty fast under those circumstances. Thankfully, I also had a lot of support from my high school, Putnam City North, during that whole transition.

What attracted you to public service?

I would say that none of my parents or grandparents were ever elected officials or anything of that nature, but there was certainly a service-oriented bent to their professions and to their attitudes. With my dad being a teacher, my mom being a social worker, and my mother’s father being career Army, you know they were always just very civic minded and involved. As I grew up, I took a queue from the examples that they set. I was student council president in the sixth grade, class president in my sophomore year of high school, and student council spirit vice president my junior year. I was always very involved in whatever group of people it was that was part of the decision-making process for the community that I was in. During my senior year of high school I was voted “Most Likely to Become President,” so I was always on this path toward public service. Ultimately, I chose a university that dovetailed with that.

You went to college in our nation’s capital.

Yes, I went to The George Washington University in D.C. in the fall of 1997, and ultimately became a political science major. I interned for a couple of Oklahoma congressmen during that time period. My first real job was working for the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and then for President Bush in the White House, until I came back home and worked as the Chief of Staff to my predecessor, Mayor Cornett, in City Hall. I did that for five years until I was elected to the Oklahoma Senate, and from there, after eight years, I was elected Mayor of Oklahoma City.  For me, I’ve always been public service oriented, and I have been around that as a profession my whole adult life.

Presidential Hang Time
OKC’s future Mayor and the Commander in Chief

The average person outside of Oklahoma doesn’t grasp the geographic largeness that is Oklahoma City.

That’s very true. This is also something that even our locals don’t often realize. We are 620 square miles in size. To put that into perspective, you could fit Boston, Miami, Manhattan, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. all simultaneously within the city limits of Oklahoma City. So we are very spread out, which gives the mayor a challenge in terms of really even knowing his own city. You could take a lifetime trying to physically journey to all of the 620 square miles of the city.

Oklahoma City is also very diverse. Under the age of 18, Oklahoma City is 60% nonwhite. We are also undergoing a demographic shift, so there are lots of different kinds of cultures and communities within our city. I would say that these two things combine to create a lot of segregation. Because our city is so large, people have physically segregated themselves into groups that reflect their demography or their socioeconomic status. I think it’s incumbent upon the mayor to get out and try to break down these barriers, and to try to ensure that we all have empathy for each other.

Most Friday mornings you visit OKC elementary schools and read “Goodnight, OKC.” Please tell me about this initiative, and why it is so important to you.

Getting out every Friday morning to read to kindergartners, as benign as it may seem, really is something that operates on multiple levels. It’s certainly an effort to show support for public education. In our system of government mayors don’t operate the schools, but it is arguably the most important function of local government, so it’s important that the mayor be connected with it. And it’s certainly an effort by the mayor to demonstrate the importance of reading, if to no one else, then at least those kids. But I always say that there’s something else at work, too; it’s an effort by me to make sure that I get to all of the neighborhoods around our city. There’s really no better way to do that than to visit the elementary schools, because they are typically fairly equitably placed all around the city to serve a finite geographic area. There are about 100 elementary schools in the city limits of Oklahoma City, across 24 different school districts. And that exercise will eventually, over the course of four or five years, take me to every corner of the city. This is an opportunity to see how everybody else lives, to see neighborhoods and constituencies that, in the normal course of things, I don’t have the opportunity to visit every day. We all live in bubbles, whether we consciously think about it or not. We as people tend to get into our own little routines, and don’t see all of the city that we live in, so you’ve got to come up with a reason to force yourself to get out and about, and break out of your own little bubble. As mayor, I have to work on that, and reading on Friday helps me avoid getting completely sucked into my work in City Hall.

Under your tenure, OKC’s new streetcar system has gone online, construction has started on a new convention center, and the new Scissortail Park has taken shape, all thanks to MAPS.

We have been on a 25-year run where our voters have endorsed these one cent temporary sales taxes to build the stuff that we need. In 2009, they passed MAPS3, which includes Scissortail Park, the convention center and the streetcar system, as well as several other projects. The three that you mention have been coming to fruition in the last year and in the year ahead. That’s very exciting for our city.

Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt, middle, starts the countdown for the ribbon cutting next to Former Mayor Mick Cornett, left of Holt, and other dignitaries during the grand opening of Scissortail Park in Oklahoma City, Friday, Sept. 27, 2019. [Nate Billings/The Oklahoman]

Please tell me about OKC Streetcar.

The streetcar system just celebrated its 500,000 rider in just about 13 months of operation, which we think is very successful. All transit operations are subsidized, but you don’t measure success by whether it pays for itself, you measure success by whether people are using it. We think 500,000 riders speaks for itself, so that’s been great. We’re very proud of our new streetcar system.

Scissortail Park has quickly become an Oklahoma City jewel.

People love the park. It’s right downtown, it’s adjacent to our arena. It’s also adjacent to our future convention center, which will open at the end of this year. The opening of the park was spectacular. The Kings of Leon came, and we had them perform a free concert. Twenty-eight thousand people came out on a Friday night in late September for what was ultimately the largest crowd to ever watch a concert in the city limits of Oklahoma City.

By all measures, MAPS3 has been a resounding success for OKC. And now you have MAPS4.

I get to go out and cut all of these ribbons associated with MAPS3 initiatives, which is obviously a great honor, but the groundwork was laid long before I become mayor. While I wasn’t the mayor when MAPS3 passed, I was serving as Mayor Cornett’s Chief of Staff at the time, so I feel a little less guilty about attending the ribbon cutting ceremonies [laughs]. It does serve as a reminder that these are long initiatives to implement. I know that it probably won’t be me that will cut a lot of MAPS4 ribbons, but it was incumbent upon me to continue to plant those trees at Scissortail Park so that our grandchildren will have shade.

World Class
Yo-Yo Ma performs with the OKC Philharmonic

You were instrumental in the passing on MAPS4. That’s exciting stuff.

My first 18 months or so were really consumed with the development and passage of MAPS4, which we completed in December, 2019 with a record 72% approval from the voters. So I did my part to pay it forward. I get to cut some ribbons on some projects that were approved when my predecessor was mayor, but I did my part to leave some things to look forward to for the future as well.

MAPS has transformed Downtown OKC.

Our downtown was dead 25 years ago. The original impetus for MAPS was to build some stuff that would bring life back to our downtown. We didn’t have a decent sports arena, we didn’t have a downtown ballpark, we didn’t have a decent entertainment district, so we passed MAPS and started building all of these things that would establish that.

MAPS has transformed OKC in many ways
Bricktown Canal

The 605-room Omni Hotel is on track to open early 2021. In 2012, there were 1,250 rooms available downtown. In 2021, there will be 5,000 rooms available.

Your hotel illustration is a good one. I’ll see that and raise you by pointing out that 20 years ago there was one downtown hotel, and now there are over 20, I’ve lost count of the actual number. As you’ve said, we’ve got thousands of rooms, and we are well on our way to being able to host some pretty serious conventions. We’re not Las Vegas necessarily, but we certainly are going to be punching more in our weight class with the opening of the Omni. We will have a very special venue for conventions. I encourage anybody that doesn’t know what I’m talking about to Google Scissortail Park and get a feel for that whole area. We relocated our interstate highway, which opened up this whole area for development. We’ve built a 70-acre world-class park, we’re building a convention center on the east edge of it, and the Omni Hotel is coming in as well. Then, on the northeast corner, you’ve got Chesapeake Energy Arena, and then you’ve got a streetcar stop across the street that links it all together. It’s just a spectacular new part of our central business district that we were able to do without really displacing anyone or anything because it was all kind of on the wrong side of the old highway, and now it’s right there adjacent to downtown. We were able to build this spectacular venue, and it’s a great symbol for how far we’ve come. Twenty-five years ago, nobody would have wanted to come here. Now we have all kinds of visitor attractions and amenities, and now we have the venues to host them. We are very bullish on our future as a convention destination, and as a visitor destination.

The OKC National Memorial is sacred ground. Please take me back to the bombing, which I’m sure is frozen in time for you, and share how the city and state has responded to that horrible tragedy.

Obviously, the bombing was a horrible experience, but we’ve always been proud of how we responded to it. We call that the Oklahoma Standard. We wrapped our arms around the victims and survivors, and especially the first responders who came from all around the country and helped us to recover. And so it’s always a part of our story. Every year we have the opportunity to pause and reflect, to pay our respects, and to recognize how we responded, which we believe is admirable.

The bombing didn’t just destroy the federal building. It’s important to note that we also rebuilt our city.  We just didn’t put it back the way it was, we made it an even better place. A lot of people maybe who not be from here don’t realize that it also caused the demolition of hundreds of other buildings downtown. Ultimately, they didn’t all fall down that day, but they were heavily damaged and had to be demolished. And all of that came on the heels of a terrible decade – an oil bust, a banking crisis, and just one thing after another. A bombing on top of it all could have very likely…I don’t think we would have shut the town down, but we certainly could’ve been in a much more desperate situation, and in turn became a decaying and dying town. Instead, we are really greater than we’ve ever been. So we’re very proud of our story of renaissance that came out of that horrible experience.

Sacred Ground
Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum

The OKC Memorial Marathon honors the victims and survivors, and has become one of the biggest annual events in the city. Please tell me about the Run to Remember.

A few years after the bombing, a small group of running enthusiasts started to organize this marathon. It’s not the most obvious response to a domestic terrorism attack, but even though it’s not in the playbook we had these folks who thought, “We love running, and here’s a great way we can honor the victims and maybe raise some money to help support the Memorial.” It has just grown so much in the two decades since, to the point where the resources raised is actually a significant part of the Memorial’s operating budget.

The Run to Remember is really such a great celebration of life. I haven’t attended other marathons, but I  assume that each of them are celebratory occasions in their own ways. But to have this kind of extra meaning makes the OKC Memorial Marathon unique and very special. I think people who run in it – and we host people from all around the country – I think when they leave, they get that impression that this isn’t just another marathon. It’s become a real institution here in Oklahoma City.

Mayor David Holt and family, ready to kick off the Kids Marathon
Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon

Let’s talk hoops. What did it mean for Oklahoma City to land the Thunder?

In America, the closest thing that we have to a blue ribbon to bestow on our top cities is a professional sports team. It’s sort of a shorthand way of communicating that you have the population, corporate presence, and the general wherewithal to host some of the world’s greatest brands. And those brands are the NBA, NFL, NHL, and Major League Baseball. Oklahoma City had just never been invited into that fraternity. It didn’t seem to matter that we were a lot bigger than some other smaller or midsize cities, because, from the outside looking in, you couldn’t tell the difference if you didn’t have a professional sports team. It just is what it is. Through MAPS we built an arena, which put us in position to have the option should the opportunity arise. Unfortunately, through tragedy we got our opportunity to audition, which was when Hurricane Katrina forced the New Orleans Hornets to have to relocate for a couple of years. We hosted them, and we blew it out of the water. People had never really taken us seriously, and suddenly they saw us coming to the table with 20,000 fans and great sponsorships, and we were able to more than adequately sustain the operations of that team. So that gave us the chance to really be considered for a permanent team, and ultimately, a group of our business owners here in town bought the Seattle Supersonics and ultimately relocated them here. It has changed the way that we see ourselves, and the way that the world sees us. It’s just impossible to overstate what the Thunder means to Oklahoma City. It’s completely altered the perception that people have of Oklahoma City by the fact that we are finally part of this integral aspect of American pop culture.

Please tell me about your 2012 book, Big League City: Oklahoma City’s Rise to the NBA.

I was Mayor Cornett’s Chief of Staff when all of this happened. I had kept pretty good notes. Then I was elected to the Senate, and around 2011 I started to think that somebody ought to write all this down because it was such an incredible story. The fact that we got the team required about 500 things to go just right, and it shouldn’t be lost to history, so I sat down and wrote a book. We have an independent bookseller here in town called Full Circle Books, who had published a few other local histories of this nature, and they thought it was a great idea. We worked together to publish Big League City in 2012. I now feel comfortable that this history hasn’t been lost. We will always have that story, because it was such a major transition in our city’s history to go from what we had been to being a big league city. It’s important, I think, for people to remember what that was like and what it took to get there. So, it’s a political story, a sports story, and a city story all rolled into one.

Thunder Up!
Mayor David Holt with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver

There are some amazing businesses headquartered in OKC, like Love’s and Sonic.

We think that we are a community that has a great atmosphere for starting a business. We appear on, and sometimes at the very top of, lists like that. I think it’s because our regulatory and tax environment is positive. I think that we’ve got a great quality of life, which hasn’t always been true. With the MAPS investments we now feel like that you can live here at a low cost of living, without traffic, with clean air and water, but still have all of the modern amenities and attractions of a great American city. We are very pro-business. We have a great relationship between City Hall and the Chamber of Commerce, and we think we have a great workforce. We can always work at that, and we certainly want to continue to make sure that we have a workforce that is keeping up with the modern economy. But it has been, traditionally, a great place to start a business, and we just want to continue those trends.

Twenty-five years ago it was still a great place to live in a sense, but you weren’t going to have professional sports, you weren’t going to have great art, you weren’t going to have great restaurants, or the kind of the extras that make life worth living. We have addressed that now. We really feel like we present a unique situation to people, which is a great American city without the hassles. And that can be very attractive to job creators. You’ve just got to get them here sometimes. Sometimes they just don’t know about Oklahoma City. If we can get people here, then literally, once we get them off the plane, they get it within an hour. But sometimes we have to overcome their lack of knowledge or perception. That’s just life. It’s our job is to make sure that they think about us. We always exceed people’s expectations tremendously.