Behold! A labor of pickleball love.
You’re likely aware of the pickleball craze unless you live under a rock. Love it or hate it, tennis courts are being converted, and vacant big box stores are being transformed into indoor facilities.
When @thepicklr came to me with an interesting idea, I jumped at the chance to help make something fun, action-y, and absolutely epic.
We devised an over-the-top match with a diverse cast that feels like Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World meets Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Direct-to-client work is never easy (no work really is), but to have the chance to go wild on writing a script and assembling a remarkable team that went beyond the call of duty to make something so fun was an incredible joy.
Thanks to this insane above-and-beyond cast and crew!
P.S. Let the record show that I severely injured my foot playing pickleball in my neighborhood for research. 8 weeks later, I’m finally back. Do it for the art!!!!
Written & Directed by: @blainehogan
Produced by: @tessa.films + Kano Films
Executive Producer: @lisamasseur
Executive Producer: @heyheyamy
Producer: @jcqlnschrdr
Casting Director/Line Producer: @shandikk
DP: @bennett_duchin
Starring: @stevehelmsh3 , @rachael.galipo , @seanslobodan , Auntie F
1st AC: @pov_mikkel
1st AD: @lachrymarum_aspen
Gaffer: @ngraven1
Sound Mix: @chrisburton333
Prop Master: @drewtah
Art Assist: @mao.barroteran
Stylist: @lindseytruedunlap
HMU: @tenesha_styles
Post: @vokestudio
Post producer: @gavin_buckland
VFX Supervisor: @tucurly4u
Edit: @lobo__films
GFX: @mrjakemathew
VFX: @_luke_fritz_
Color: @quintonbrogan
Sound: Ryan Pribyl
📣Today is the day!!! 📣
📕 Exit the Cave is officially out in the world!!! 🥳
A few months ago, Ben Arment invited me to @menofthewoods . I’m not really an outdoorsy type and I was in the final stages of editing the book. But something compelled me and I went.
Watch to find out what happened when an adventure turned into the most full circle moment I could have ever imagined.
Let’s call this the official trailer. 😉
📕Exit the Cave📕 is available NOW whenever books are sold. Link in bio. 🥳
🚀Pre-order link in bio!🚀
I’m so excited to finally be able to share the cover for my new book, Exit the Cave: Embracing a Life of Courage, Creativity and Radical Imagination.
🚨LAUNCH DATE🚨November 8th, wherever books are sold.
I took longer than I thought. What I set out to write, a field guide for creatives, is not what emerged. Instead, this book is the story of how I survived a life that almost destroyed me. It is about how abuse and addiction set me on a journey toward wholeness and life and led me to a new understanding of creativity. And I even learned to do the impossible: change my past.
I’m really proud of it, and it is my deepest hope that the tales I’ve told will lead you to contemplate your own stories, so that you might find a new kind of freedom outside of the cave.
As I inch toward launch day, I’ll be talking much more about the book, sharing excerpts, endorsements, giveaways and the like. As a first-time author, I’m learning there are two very important things I must ask of you today:
1. Spread the word! Like, share, repost. All of it. Please and thank you. 🙏🏻❤️
2. Pre-order the book. This is really the biggest way you can support me. It’s available for preorder from all your favorite booksellers and these pre-orders over the next couple of months will go a really long way! The more pre-sales, the better the odds that it will come up in searches online. The more pre-sales, the more likely it is that it will show up on real, live actual shelves in real, live actual stores. ☺️❤️
I’m also planning some really fun live events in select cities later this fall and early next year. More on that later.
But for now, have a look at that beauty, and please do share (and pre-order)!
#exitthecave #exitthecavebook #newbooks #recovery #selfcare #mentalhealth #anxiety #depression #gratitude #bookcover #coverreveal #wellness #goodreads #bookstagram #bakerbooks #creativity #creativeprocess
I spent Monday on a panel for the @producersguild hosted at the @luxstageatlanta at @trilithstudios alongside @dommoxie and Barry Williams, moderated by @luse_tom , who has become one of my most trusted mentors as a director.
The conversation was about budget and vision. How you hold both at the same time. And how you don’t let one quietly murder the other.
It was a good day.
Tom asked me what I do when a producer comes to me and says we need to cut five percent across the board.
I told them I had a better example.
I was shooting in LA not long ago. Big scene. Core to the film we were making. A recovery meeting that was supposed to take place in a beautiful gym with natural light pouring in. Then the budget got cut. We lost an entire day. The gym was gone. All we had left was a house and a white cyc on a sound stage.
I put it on the white cyc.
Then we were messing around with camera settings and our impeccable DP @petermosiman put the image in black and white on the monitor.
I just stopped.
It was more poetic than anything I had planned. More honest than the gym ever would have been. The constraint didn’t compromise the story. It found the story.
I talked about what years of site specific theatre training at @butlertheatre did to my brain. Sometimes we were handed a space and had to find the story that lived there. Sometimes we were handed a story and had to go find the space. I had no idea at the time that I was learning the most important thing a director can carry.
The story always fits somewhere. Your job is to find where (within the given budget, location, etc.).
I also said that producers are my favorite people in this business. I mean that.
They take the dream a director or writer is walking around with and somehow turn it into something real. The moment a great producer comes on board, something shifts. The wind changes. I can’t explain it better than that.
The budget is not the enemy of the vision. Sometimes it’s literally the thing that finds it.
As a theatre kid growing up in Minnesota, by the age of nine I had one singular goal:
Be on Broadway.
But life is funny.
I was once offered a role in a Broadway show and turned it down to stay in a self-imposed grad school/recovery program in Seattle.
So that dream quietly folded up and I moved on.
Then last week, I found out my latest project with @delta and @leonthomas was going to play on the big screens in Times Square. Having something you directed on those massive displays is a bucket list item for any director (or at least for this one).
So @margarethogan and I scrambled to grab a flight, sorted out neighbors to let them know the girls were going to be home for the day without us, and jumped on an early morning plane.
When we got there, we stood on the corner trying to figure out the cadence of ads cycling across the screens. About thirty minutes in, I started wondering if this little adventure had become a bust. The embarrassment of making the trip crept in.
And then…it appeared.
And I turned into a nine-year-old right there on the sidewalk.
Could you guess what street those screens were on?
That’s right. Broadway.
We finished the day watching our neighbor and friend @michellewilliams in @deathbecomesher . After a quick chat in her dressing room, she let me wander out onto the stage for a moment.
Two dream moments in one day.
Life is funny...oh and did I mention kind of miraculous sometimes.
6 months in the making. I’m really proud of this one.
Introducing…
Overhead Originals — a new branded entertainment music series with @delta x @youtubemusic .
Episode 1 featuring the incomparable @leonthomas .
A Boeing 767. An Atlanta hangar. A full band. A live audience with their tray tables up.
@rollingstone covered it today and I think Leon said it best.
“Creative ideas like this help celebrate artists.”
Link in bio. Go watch it.
P.S. thank you to @creativefilterco and @chadshockley for trusting me and for @mattypfeffer for throwing my name in the hat.
I’ve auditioned over a thousand times in my career as an actor.
Been cast maybe fifty.
That’s not a good batting average.
And for most of my career I didn’t question the game.
You show up. You do your best. You wait for someone to choose you.
And then about a year ago I read @philstutzofficial .
And something unlocked.
Swipe to see what changed.
(And yes, @prisonbreak fans. That is indeed me meeting the legendary T-Bag — aka @robert_knepperofficial — for the first time. Twenty years ago!!!!!)
The circus came to Atlanta.
It filled the stages. Employed the crews. Lit up the town.
And then it left.
3/4 of Georgia’s soundstages are sitting empty right now. A studio in Athens is being converted to a data center. Workers who made $9,500 a week are on food stamps.
I live across from @trilithstudios . I’ve had the privilege of working on these stages and I can say they are some of the most beautiful production facilities in the world. But right now much of it is quiet.
Here’s what nobody is talking about.
The problem isn’t the stages.
The problem is who owns the stories.
For too long creatives like us have rented our talent to someone else’s vision. The check clears. The production wraps. And everything walks out the door with whoever booked the stage.
Swipe to see what we’re hoping to build...
And now a few words on the power of live experience.
Sunday night, @doneanddustedtv and @misty.buckley transformed the Dolby Theatre and @theacademy into a garden.
Handcrafted trees. Golden hour light. A sanctuary built by human hands for the oldest reason humans have ever gathered.
To feel something together.
@_milescaton_ rebuilt the juke joint from Sinners on that stage. @therealbuddyguy at 89. @shaboozey . @blackfootwhitefoot . And then @mistyonpointe stepped forward. Dancing ballet. On pointe. In front of everyone.
Including @tchalamet . Front row.
Three weeks ago he said no one cares about ballet anymore.
No statement. No speech. Just presence.
Then came KPop Demon Hunters and a room full of stoic Hollywood adults who knew every word and wanted the glowing orb and let themselves be seven years old for three minutes.
This is what live experience does that nothing else can.
It has a temperature.
And while AI can generate. It can simulate. It can optimize. It cannot replace the moment when something made with human hands lands on a live audience and the whole place rises.
That’s not nostalgia. That’s the oldest argument for why humans gather at all.
Sunday night proved it again.
Last summer I was on set at @trilithstudios shooting brand films for @wearethesamehouse , a nonprofit I believe in with @brandapart , an agency I love.
We were telling real stories of people from organizations like @atltechcollege . Art directed. Theatrically staged. Real people dressed like they were walking the Met Gala. Most of them had never been on a movie set. Never been seen like this.
One of the most moving shoots of my career.
Midway through the day I realized I needed trees for a shot. Didn’t have the budget.
On lunch I grabbed a golf cart to get some air. Turned a corner past horses being prepped for a scene and a giant wind machine being tested and there they were. An oasis. A wall of green in a sea of concrete.
Belonged to the production next door.
I found a PA smoking by the trees. Asked if I could talk to his boss. He pointed to a truck. Man asleep at the wheel.
I knocked anyway. Stated my “do it for the kids” case.
He said yes.
That’s the video. The trees going back. Thanks to @littlemouthsj and her amazing team! 😁
Here’s what I keep thinking about. This shouldn’t feel remarkable. But it does. Someone just said yes. Shared what they had. No agenda.
I’ve watched too many people on both sides of the camera hoard connections and ideas like there’s only so much to go around. Guard relationships like they’re finite. As if generosity has a cost.
I’ve never found that to be true. Not once.
The best work I’ve ever been part of came from people who operated from abundance. Who gave before they knew what they’d get back. Who woke up from a nap and said yes to a guy asking for bushes.
Because the trees come back. They always do.
Feeling all the feels today as we lost a legend of theatre, TV, and film — Diane Ladd.
A while back, I spent a day with Diane and her daughter, Laura Dern, traversing New York City — from the Actors Studio, down Broadway, through Central Park, and ending at Tavern on the Green, where we surprised Diane with her own recipe for her famous banana pudding.
It was cold, rainy, and we were moving fast. Still, I remember this strange calm under it all. I was standing in the literal shrine of acting, directing two women who have given their lives to the craft — absolute warriors of the art form.
At one point, I told Diane about a script Margaret and I were working on, and she said, “Oh doll, you’re gonna send me that script when we’re outta here.”
At Tavern on the Green, she ordered shrimp cocktail. When she couldn’t finish it, she made me sit down beside her.
“We’re not gonna let this fancy food go to waste, are we???”
We talked on the phone a few times after that day — about projects, stories, life. She was kind, curious, and deeply encouraging.
So grateful to have shared that day with her.
Terribly sad to lose her.
What a life. What a light. ❤️
I walked out of last week’s @soi_georgia : Creator Economy panel at @trilithstudios with one thought:
The gatekeepers aren’t just gone…they never saw this coming.
@SarahJaneDhall led a killer conversation with people who are already living in 2027.
Here are a few quotable moments…
@dubphelps — “Do everything as quickly as possible—then adjust as you go.”
While everyone’s chasing theatrical releases, his team is dropping heartfelt teen comedies on Hulu and sketch comedy on YouTube that racks up millions. Speed isn’t sloppiness—it’s how you find your voice before the committee kills it.
@schnippstar — “Fan engagement isn’t the side effect of the business—it is the business.”
We used to make the thing and then convince people to care. Now? The conversation is the content.
@dragon_shark_llc — “The future of storytelling is short, serial, and scrollable.”
He’s producing $200K vertical films that become $200M hits—one 90-second story at a time.
@dhayanalejandrina — “It’s the best and worst time to be a creator—if you’re not willing to learn.”
Freedom is intoxicating. The responsibility? Crushing.
@christinawren — “When you put your work online, you’re no longer competing for a niche audience—you’re building a direct relationship.”
No middlemen. No permission. Just you and the people who care about what you’re making.
The old model: Perfect it, then ship it.
The new one: Ship it, then perfect it in public.
The future isn’t waiting—it’s already in production.
