Our guest today joins us from Hollywood, he is Justin Connor. He is a filmmaker, actor, director, and producer. His latest film is currently out on Amazon Prime called The Golden Age: The Life and Times of Maya O’Malley.
The soundtrack, also written, performed, and produced by Connor, is available on all streaming platforms, with a double vinyl album.
THE GOLDEN AGE, a musical rockumentary shot over a decade in California and India, introduces us to the character of subversive pop star Maya O’Malley who, after a string of controversial remarks, gets dropped from his music label and sets out on a spiritual pilgrimage throughout India in an attempt to resolve his troubled past.
Winner of the Audience Award at the AWARENESS FILM FESTIVAL and winner of the Best Performance Award at the NEW HAMPSHIRE FILM FESTIVAL, Connor is also releasing A DAY IN THE LIES, a memoir novel that delves deeper into the life of the film’s main protagonist, Maya O’Malley, which will be released on Amazon later this Summer.
Justin Connor currently lives in Los Angeles, and splits time between music and painting, and prepping the release of his third album, MATERIAL LIFE.
You can track the film’s progress on social media as well as at www.justinconnor.com.
Justin says that he started as an actor but then veered towards music, released an album, and then for this second album as he was trying to figure out how to adjoin writing and directing a film that intertwined music without relying on lip-syncing. He wanted songs that helped tell the story in an organic way. He was also watching a lot of documentaries at that time and decided to play with the ideas of what’s real and what’s fake.
The character of Maya is born in these moments, he wanted to have a more substantive dialogue on the permutations of fame and pop culture and substantive songwriting. Something similar to Bob Dylan and Roger Waters did. He wanted to tell a story that was partially autobiographical about his own past. The whole document ends up being a comedy, but a comedy that also is supported on reality. It's a satire about material life, documentaries of artists and how artists are broken. He tried to approach the story with sincerity.
The form of the documentary proved to be challenging because you play a little trick by satirizing.
The Filmmaking Process
The process of making a film such as this along with music and the collaboration of a team Justin also said that it was a healing exercise for him. As a survivor of abuse, Justin says that there is an immense amount of shame that people end up struggling with. Those wounds don’t necessarily go away per se but people eventually learn to bridge a different connection with them. Justin got to really challenge himself while making this film.
Justin also talks about how sometimes the stories that stayed with him after going through a dysfunctional household also make him feel that he had to heal from them like it was a mandatory thing. Which is something that he also wanted to reflect on in this documentary. Victims can heal and grow, just on their own terms and time.
Currently, Justin is also finishing a book that will accompany the film and will go even deeper into it. He hopes that this story can help others heal. So this whole process has helped Justin heal a lot and come to terms with his wounds. This is why in part the film took so long before he was really wrapped in this and now in the end phase he feels like he is finally starting his life over.
His multiple roles in filmmaking
Justin is the creator, director, and actor in this film....
