Q&A with Ted Perkins
Ted Perkins has worked in various professional capacities in the motion picture industry and in senior executive posts at two major studios, including Warner Bros., and Universal Pictures. He has also held positions as a senior film marketing and distribution executive at Senator (now Lionsgate International) and Vision International, and is an expert in international film financing and distribution, pre-sales, TV sales and syndication, business planning, and SVOD/AVOD programming. Perkins also enjoys success as a produced screenwriter for feature films. He has sold various scripts to Hollywood studios, including Searchlight Pictures, New Line and Overture Films, Pantelion (Lionsgate) and Televisa/Univision. His film NOTHING LIKE THE HOLIDAYS (un-credited) was released theatrically in the U.S. on 1,200 screens. His most recent film, COMPADRES, was released in Mexico and the U.S. by Pantelion Films and became one of the highest grossing films in the company’s history. He just signed an option to develop a 13-episode TV series for the Latin American network Televisa. Perkins, the son of a Foreign Service diplomat, has a B.A. from the University of Virginia with a double major in Literature and Drama, and a Master’s Degree from USC in Communications Management. He has lived and worked in over 50 countries and is fluent in Spanish and conversation French and Italian. Perkins currently works in the marketing and communications department for SMART Recovery USA and facilitates peer-to-peer mutual support meetings for anyone who would like assistance with any addictive behavior. His meetings take place online via zoom at 7pm every Wednesday. Zoom Meeting number 182 684 973
Q. If you are in recovery, what was your drug of choice? When did you stop using?
A. I loved alcohol until I didn’t love me back. I don’t count the days since I’ve quit, but it’s been enough time for me to realize how lucky I was to catch it in time.
Q. If you are in recovery, are you back to going to in person meetings or sticking with zoom?
A. I host a weekly SMART Recovery online meeting via Zoom every Wednesday night at 7pm and find it works nicely. Eventually I’ll go back to F2F. Please feel free to pop by: Zoom ID: 182 684 973
Q. Do you think addiction is an illness, disease, a choice, or a wicked twist of fate?
A. The words “disease” and “illness” and “choice” and “fate” are value laden and prone to misuse and misapplication. Addiction is a positive feedback loop that has become auto perpetuating and harmful. That feedback loop happens in the brain. The feedback loop is more common and intense in people who have experienced trauma, feel anxiety, suffer from depression, have a certain gene sequence which predisposes them to like certain reward systems more than others. Some people are addicted for no reason at all other than they just really like using.
Q. Where did you grow up?
A. Italy, Spain, Guatemala, Mexico, Venezuela, South Korea, USA
Q. Do you have any children?
A. A 9-year-old daughter Quinn and a son Sebastian, 7.
Q. If and when you retire would you prefer to live by the ocean, lake, river, mountaintop or penthouse?
A. Mountains, lakes.
Q. What is your favorite hotel or resort?
A. Dorchester Hotel, London
Q. If you were giving a dinner party for your 3 favorite authors, living or dead, who would they be? (choose 4 if you think one might be too drunk or stoned to attend.)
A. Albert Camus, Joan Didion, Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Conrad.
Q. What books are you reading now?
A. CHASING THE SCREAM by Johann Hari, THE DAWN OF EVERYTHING by David Graeber, THE EGO TUNNEL by Thomas Metzinger
Q. What book(s) have you read more than once?
A. Dickens’ Great Expectations, Aristotle’s Poetics, Marcus Aurelius Meditations.
Q. Who is your favorite poet?
A. Shakespeare
Q. Which film have you watched the most?
A. INCEPTION
Q. Who is your favorite director?
A. George Miller
Q. Who is your favorite sober celebrity?
A. Me
Q. What/Who is your favorite band/composer/musical artist?
A. Bach, Depeche Mode
Q. What is your favorite city?
A. San Sebastian, Spain
Q. What is your favorite museum?
A. Any museum
Q. What is your favorite restaurant?
A. Sichuan Impression
Q. What is the best piece of advice someone gave you?
A. What do you care what other people think? – Richard Feynman
Q. What is the best piece of advice you’ve given someone else?
A. Happiness or sadness is a personal choice. Choose wisely.
Q. What is the greatest risk you have ever taken?
A. Running with the bulls in Pamplona
Q. What is your biggest regret?
A. Regret is mental poison.
Q. Have you ever been arrested and if so, for what? Leave blank if this is too personal.
A. Yes, for impeding an arrest when I stepped in to help translate what the officers were yelling at a Mexican migrant who has done nothing wrong.
Q. What is the proudest moment in your life?
A. Winning a fencing tournament that everybody thought would be utterly impossible to win. Selling a script everybody thought nobody would buy.
Q. Do you believe in God or a Higher Power?
A. I cannot in good conscience believe in a god that would create, tolerate, be indifferent to, or be powerless to stop, suffering.