Jessica Mae Stover
Jessica Mae Stover is an American actor, auteur director, screenwriter, filmmaker, and author.
As professionals, and as audience members, start really thinking about what storytelling means, what it means to us socially. This includes everything from news to movies and beyond. The same companies own all of these. I could tell you stories of the manipulative power of vertical integration that would make you physically ill. Fuck, I felt like such a tool once I saw what that merger could have done and how I was a part of using it to impact my teen peers. 5 million of them! I've probably stirred your impressionable thoughts around a bit and you don't even know it. Who was I to have such a global platform for something so comparatively frivolous?
I just think there is a larger philosophy at play here, and I would urge you all not to take all the studio and advertising stuff at surface level.
The film, to me, is a story that is about the limitations that society puts on the individual, what’s your breaking point and how do you react to that. Which is at least a little meta, given what we’re doing with the project.
When I went to discuss independent media at the FCC, in the waiting room it was me and a bunch of NBC-Comcast lobbyists. These are not conspiracy theories: these are the facts of media ownership, business and influence. I wish I had a photo--the stage picture of that waiting room said it all. I was dwarfed by this wall of lobbyists in dark expensive suits.
Once I found out how that system works, the studio system, I was like,'“OK, do I want to work like that or no?--NO. OK, what do I do now?'
Storytelling fills a basic human need.