Hunter Lee Hughes

Check it Out

You can now stream the feature directorial debut of Hunter Lee Hughes, Guys Reading Poems, which world premiered at the 21st annual Palm Beach International Film Festival, followed by screenings at Dances With Films and qFLIX Philadlephia. The film won the Audience Award for Best Feature (Drama) at the 25th annual Woods Hole Film Festival, the “Creativity in Drama” award at Breckenridge Film Festival and “Best of Fest” at the South Texas Underground Film Festival. It was released across platforms by Gravitas Ventures on February 20, 2018.

You can learn more about the film by visiting the Guys Reading Poems site.

Backstory

Storytelling found several pathways of expression through multi-disciplinary artist Hunter Lee Hughes, culminating in his debut feature film Guys Reading Poems, a mixture of poetry, traditional narrative and experimental film.

As a nerdy 12-year old, Hunter booked his first role in a low-budget horror film, shot in his hometown of Houston, Texas. After graduating magna cum laude from Trinity University, Hunter moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the film industry.

To pay bills along the way, he served as a story analyst for Paramount Classics/Vantage and later worked as a writer’s assistant to the late Mardik Martin (co-writer, Mean Streets). Buoyed by this on-the-job training and unsatisfied with the roles traditional Hollywood had to offer at the time, Hunter wrote and performed Fate of the Monarchs, a piece that explored the migration patterns of monarch butterflies as a metaphor for a closeted aspiring artist coming to terms with his sexuality.

He fully committed to “the road less travelled” in 2008, when he founded Fatelink to produce his second play, The Sermons of John Bradley. The mission of the company is to develop compelling three-dimensional characters in movies and plays that prioritize the creative process over profit. Since then, Fatelink has produced a number of plays, films, and series, including Guys Reading Poems.

Below you’ll find samples of some of Hunter’s favorite projects over the years.

Thank you for your interest in the work!

Director

Hunter’s feature film directorial debut – Guys Reading Poems – premiered at the 21st annual Palm Beach International Film Festival, subsequently screening at Dances With Films in Los Angeles and as a Centerpiece Selection at qFLIX Philadelphia. The film won the ‘Audience Award for Best Feature (Drama)’ at the 25th annual Woods Hole Film Festival, the ‘Creativity in Drama’ award at the Breckenridge Film Festival and ‘Best of Fest’ at the South Texas Underground Film Festival.

Hunter previously directed the web television project Dumbass Filmmakers! which won “Outstanding Director – Comedy” at L.A. WebFest in 2013 and has directed several plays in his adopted hometown of Los Angeles.

Writer

Hunter’s produced writing credits include three plays, Fate of the Monarchs (“Critic’s Pick”, Backstage West), The Sermons of John Bradley and Nathaniel Quinn, Filmmaker. The latter was a stage adaptation of his yet-to-be-produced feature film screenplay, A Place by the River.

The darkly comic Winner Takes All screened at ten film festivals before being picked up for distribution by the Black Briefs shorts collection. Other produced material includes the narrative comedy webseries Dumbass Filmmakers! and On Common Grounds, a documentary he co-wrote (Hallmark Channel). Hunter contributed two poems to Guys Reading Poems and wrote the screenplay.

Actor

Hunter Lee Hughes began acting when he was cast in a low-budget horror film at age 12 in his hometown of Houston, Texas. After moving to Los Angeles, Hunter learned the craft of acting from luminaries like Ivana Chubbuck, David Farkas, and Jean-Louis Rodrigue.

Hunter received the StageSceneLa.com award for Best Lead Male Actor in a Drama (2008-2009 season) for his performance in The Sermons of John Bradley.

Favorite roles include ‘Bobby’ in the 25th anniversary production of Thomas Babe’s A Prayer for my Daughter (directed by Dorothy Lyman), and ‘Peanut’ in Bryan Goluboff’s In-Betweens.

Influences

“If there’s one creative figure who has fascinated me more than anyone else, it is the poet Rumi. His injection of a romantic or sensual element into mystical revelations blew me away from the moment I started reading that poetry (at the WeHo IHOP of all places). Looking back, I can see my own strivings to meld together those elements, however clumsily, right from the start with Fate of the Monarchs (photo by Ken Gonzales-Day). To this day, I hope to make a feature film that mirrors what I experienced reading his poems. They go down easy, with poetic phrasing along the way, then end by smacking you with a realization you didn’t know you needed.

In her terrific tome Mysticism, Evelyn Underhill asserts that knowledge of mystic experiences peaked in the 1600s or so, but perhaps we’ve really been devolving since Rumi died in 1273.

We are lost, but that’s okay.

Still, it’s important to also honor the more recent influences that have shaped our perspective and our work. Film directors who inspire me include Bob Fosse, Yasujirō Ozu, Josef von Sternberg, Akira Kurosawa and more recently, Terrence Malick, David Lynch, James Ivory, and Jonathan Glazer. Favorite playwrights include Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, and, from antiquity, Euripides and Sophocles.

Most of all, I’ve been influenced by the talents of friends creating with and around me – the paintings of Deni Ponty, the cinematography of Michael Marius Pessah, the production design of Nathaly Lopez, the words of Angie Weiland-Crosby and the dropped-in performances of so many of the terrific actors with whom I’ve been privileged to share time on set.”

– Hunter Lee Hughes