VICTOR GOSS
WRITER/DIRECTOR/PRODUCER
When I was twelve, I was forced by my parents to attend a little white church near our home, and was deeply impressed by golden rays of sunlight through stained glass falling upon the choir in their shimmering robes. The joyful voices of the congregation seemed to lift that room toward the sky.
When the preacher called for sinners, so moved was I that I shocked myself by stepping forward to receive salvation. Two weeks later, the preacher nearly drowned me, then ran off with the Deacon’s young red-headed wife - after stealing the church building fund.
I was outta there. But something stirred me in that little clapboard church. If religion was spiritual kindergarten, I was looking for higher education.
I began a journey toward the unknown - reading Whitman, Thoreau and Blake and the psychedelic explorations of Huxley, Lilly, and Leary. I met psychics, mystics, gurus, fringe scientists and saints. I discovered the spiritual metaphor of Joyce, and was awed by the starry, starry night of Van Gogh.
It’s been a bittersweet adventure, but a funny one, too – worth sharing with my fellow travelers – because THE APOCALYPSE... ACCORDING TO DORIS is one of those stories. This quest has become the ultimate existential laugh – like the guy looking for his glasses all day only to find them on top of his head!
In a world filled with fear, art must become fearless; for art is the worldly manifestation of our collective unconscious and the medium embracing all our needs, desires, and anxieties. But more importantly, art is an opportunity for deeply felt emotions to be processed within the larger context of all humanity, past, present, and future.
Our company is called StarvingFilmStudents because staying hungry and wanting to learn is the Ethos of hopelessly addicted filmmakers. Our goal is to produce and market exciting and lucrative movie projects at a level of efficiency and creativity beyond the reach of bricks-and-mortar studios.
The on-going fragmentation of the mass film audience has changed the face of the movie industry. This is a window of unparalleled opportunity to directly speak to previously under-served niche communities – and to aggregate multiple specialty audiences into vast numbers compelled by a sense of shared experience.
By inviting seasoned industry professionals it is our concept to navigate and develop new paths that create equity and presence in the film world though highly targeted and uniquely identified movie projects. Low production cost represents sweat-equity investment of highly experienced and award-winning working industry professionals who wish to own their own work.
Through these advantages our goal is to produce quality films that entertain, delight, inspire, and uplift. We take great pride in operating with creativity, integrity and take an unflappable stand for quality and fun. We are committed to insuring a creative environment for every person who works on our projects.
PERSONALLY...
A camera has always been in my hands. With my parents on vacation at age 4, I wandered Yosemite Valley carrying an Ansco 620 around my neck trying to duplicate the photography of Ansel Adams that I'd seen lining the walls in the gift shop at the Ahwahnee Hotel.
Back home I was hypnotized by the moving image of 35mm film dancing in the arclight of the projector gate. This was a bedtime story for me as my dad babysat me in the projection booth of our drive-in theater at night.
I remember reciting nursery rhymes on camera while my dad tested sound-on-film camera equipment used for making newsreels before cable brought network TV to the Santa Maria Valley. When TV finally finished off our drive-in business for good, I moved south looking for a career in the studios.
After running errands as a gopher on an AIP summer Beach Blanket film and picking up work doing every job on the set, I got my hands on a Beauieu 16mm camera and later an Eclair NPR and began shooting and directing regional and national TV commercials, and winning important awards.
My background in writing - and commercials - brought me to the hit TV series WONDER YEARS as cinematographer and 2d unit director. The Golden Globe and multiple Emmy-winning GABRIEL’S FIRE (James Earl Jones) followed where myself - along with a handful of fellow TV commercial-making alumni – brought a visual revolution to dramatic TV that continues to advance to this day.
A decade of episodic television brought opportunities to develop further cinematography and directing chops and gave me a chance to gain the confidence and abilities to shoot difficult schedules - and to cut through the fog of production, to deliver exciting stories on-time and on-budget.
My experience with writing, performers, and cinematography through shooting concert films, commercials, and dramatic films - for both television and the big screen - has given me insight into achieving storytelling style and statement with a camera, appropriate to a "CINEMA PARADISO" upbringing.
This successful film career has been built upon a study of eastern philosophy and meditation under an authentic Tibetan master for fourteen years, coupled with life-long research of anomalous science and psychic adventures – which together have catapulted these efforts to a quintessential creative crossroads of existential cinema that I am proud to share with my colleagues.
I confess that I am also a rabid touring cyclist, and any given weekend will find me on my Scott CR-1 Pro with TEAM MARTINI tearing up and down the SoCal coastline from Santa Barbara to Newport Beach. It is a perfect escape from the insanity and passion of filmmaking. And who wouldn't want to spent their life within spitting distance of the beach?