griffin hood
Your home: Helena, Ala.
|Montevallo Profile|
Your hometown: Calera, Ala. Tell us about your family: Wife Stephanie, two sons—Mayson 7 and Lincoln 5 months. Two bulldogs, Maverick and Bronco. Stephanie and I met in the summer of 2010. I was working in Gulf Shores for the summer. The relationship was supposed to be nothing more than a summer fling. Two years later we were happily married. Excited to see where we go from here. What is your profession? Writer/Actor What is the last book you read, and who is the author? Low Town, Daniel Polansky What awards/honors have you received? My best friend and work partner, Barry Battles, and I first created a short film several years ago. We won multiple awards at festivals across the country, and that served as a catalyst for us to continue our quest to shoot a feature film. What is your secret for success? Hard work. Don’t wait around for something to happen. If you want it, go out and get it. It may sound cliché, but it’s true. I’ve lived it. Everything we’ve ever accomplished came from our not accepting defeat and continuing to drive forward. What is the best advice you have received? To always be creating. After we made “The Baytown Outlaws” we went against everything we stood for and waited on Hollywood to provide our next job. That’s the biggest mistake. My writing and producing partner, Barry Battles, and I have always created our own content. It keeps up sharp. When you think you’ve made it, you get complacent. Always keep the hunger. Even if you have job prospects, just keep doing what you do. You can never have enough content to work from. Do you have a favorite motto? If so, what is it? Get out there and live. Have life experiences. You can draw off of them. If they’re not in a writing format, you can always use them for conversation pieces. In business, you don’t want to be the person that doesn’t have anything to contribute to a conversation. What’s new? Barry has moved to L.A. to continue trying to get meetings as a director. We have a shared idea that we are shopping in hopes of getting another project set up. It’s a tough marketplace right now. My wife and I welcomed our first baby boy into the world back in July, so we’ve stayed in Alabama until another job comes up that could pull us back to L.A. Please tell us about your educational foundation: Graduated in 2006 from Montevallo with a B.A. in theatre and a minor in business. How did Montevallo affect your career path? It helped to get me plugged in to a world I never knew existed. Contacts are extremely important in the film industry and any field of business, really. Dr. Callaghan also stressed a high level of professionalism. He had a vast knowledge of experiences to draw from, and he was able to share those. He would also bring in guest professors to speak to the parts of the business he may not have been so familiar with. What are your favorite Montevallo memories? Being involved with the production of “The Normal Heart.” That’s a project I will always be proud to have been a part of. BUT MOSTLY, Jason Styres took me under his wing. I kind of stuck out like a sore thumb in the theatre department. Coming from an athletic background in high school, I didn’t have the base theatre background that most of the students in the department had. He eventually became my Purple Dad. So I know that’s not a specific memory, but I would say just getting to know Styres and hanging out with him during and after college would be some of my favorite memories.
Photo illustration by Brittany Headley ’14
Follow Griffin on Twitter: @griffhood
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www.montevallo.edu/alumni