Interview with Darren Passarello (Jade Jordan)

Darren: Hi, I’m Darren Passarello but I also go by Jake Jordan as far as creativity and a pseudonym go. Most people ask me what made me so successful and how did I become bold. Well before we talk about how I became bold, I have to show you the place that made me the man I am today which is the Jim Hanley's Universe here in New York City. So why don’t you join me inside the store where I take you for tour and introduce you to how I became a man today and I should pose that’s a push. This is basically the layout of Jim Hanley's Universe from front to back. All the comics going out in a bed of water which taught me how to arrange stuff in my life and not how to hold chaotic things. Like I said I start here when I was younger and basically brought up in how I versed my life. So the ordering of a lot of things meant a lot to how I structured my life, how I structured my movies, how I structured everything and taught me a well background of bringing things together. as far as everything else goes it’s a lot of visuals in this store and as far as filmmaking goes it helps a lot because you know what’s not eye catching, what’s too much eye catching, what’s too much, what’s going to overload. So the basic way they teach you here and which I was brought up on is to make things usually face front but not too cluttered. Not to have a lot of bright colors, a lot of reds because it’s going to draw too much attention away from what you’re trying to show people. So as you would notice things are easily spaced. There’s not a lot of bright colors in front. All the bright colors are in the back which makes the front stuff pop out more and gives you more of a visual aspect on what you are looking at and focusing. It’s separated from comics to toys to DVDs up front as well as everything you could possibly need. What made this store great is it’s the melting pot. It is where art and literature come together and meet. Not only do you have comic books but you have other things as far as gaming, as far as interesting people. You have posters, you have drinks, you have magnets, you have toys, you have books, you have everything you could possibly want in one place and you don’t have to leave. You’re welcome to stay and read and do whatever you want here in any aspect and if you come in, you want comic books you'll come out learning about gaming. If you come in and you want to see a movie, you’ll come out learning about life and about people. So I think I’ve shown enough about the store. Why don’t we head downstairs and I'll tell you more about how I became the man I am today.

Nick: Sounds good.

Darren: This is the basement. This is where usually the magic happens. Literally and figuratively since this is where they do the magic the gathering.

Nick: Cool! So thanks for the awesome intro.

Darren: My pleasure!

Nick: This is a pretty sweet thing I never really actually been to a comic book store. It’s my first time and nothing better than to start here.

Darren: It’s a lot to take in as you can see from everything around and from the books. It’s going to be an overload if you’re not used to it but...

Nick: It's pretty awesome. So yeah you’ve got some pretty interesting story. You started off loving comics and just evolved in all this. Talk a little bit about what's it like to be on TV. You’re on who wants to be a super hero.

Darren: Yes. Actually when I was 19, I'm going to be 24 in about a month so it’s been a couple of years; I’m going to say about four roughly years. It was amazing. I mean, to be 19 going to California by myself for the first time in front of camera's and things like, it was really overwhelming so I wasn’t really concentrating on trying to win the show as much as I was concentrating on wow this is awesome. I’ve gone to school to fulfil my love of film and now I'm to be in an actual film set with lights and cameras and crew and just everything its fantastic and so that was some kind of destruction because left the whole show man mentality behind and went on to be just interested in what’s going on behind the cameras and what’s going in front and what all the people that are doing to make it. So my focus was on finishing the show as much of being intrigue by everything that was going on.

Nick: It was a learning process

Darren: Basically, yeah. It was a great experience for someone who is in film school to actually be on an actual film set instead of creating one themselves.

Nick: Very cool. So normally I start with what’s one fun fact but we just got one. Gave us another one.

Darren: I like green but that's not really, I mean everybody knows I like green.

Nick: Is there any background behind why you like green.

Darren: No! I mean, you know what it is, it is really weird. I've always liked green but green lantern is one of my favorite super heroes. more so because of the fact that his power is based on his will and the stronger will he has, the stronger his powers are and I feel that its sending a good to people where it’s not about how strong you are or how powerful you are. It’s your mind. It’s your willingness to stand up to use all your strength inside that’s going to give you your power.

Nick: I like that too. It sounds like superheroes were really good almost like a mentor.

Darren: Yeah. I mean I grew up, one of the first shows I remember watching was Stan Lee presents you know spider man and his amazing friends and waking up every Saturday morning to see Stan Lee's voice on TV and the morals that Spiderman taught me as well as other superheroes as far as how you deal with people, how you deal with situations and you know what’s right, what’s wrong and just basically not only giving you a fantasy world but a world in which you can learn from and grow and bring into your real life.

Nick: Very cool. So, I mean we pretty much heard the story about how you got started, so what did it evolve into after you went on who wants to be a superhero?

Darren: After he wants to be a superhero?, POW entertainment and Stan Lee asked me to come work for them. So I started off doing a lot of internet stuff for them as far as MySpace and facebook and just bringing them into the digital age so to speak. From there, I was able to get more involved. We started on campaigns on marketing. from there they saw my film background and other things and I started working more on film stuff and doing a little writing here and there now with Carolyn and the process of them working on some original ideas that I’m trying to pitch them as far as content goes for not only TV but film and internet and all media out there and in the outlet people can view things.

Nick: Do want to go into any of those?

Darren: Yeah. I’ll speak briefly about one project I’m pitching right now. It’s called the Department of Mayhem and basically the premise of the show is it’s striving to redefine what it means to bad the file what the means to be a hero. You have the black and white versions of if you don’t kill people and you live a good life you’re a hero and if you hurt somebody, you’re a bad person. What I want to do is basically take what’s out there and give you a new outlook on it. Everyone’s definition of hero, what’s right and what's wrong is different. No one is going to have the same beliefs. You can generalize and say this is good, this is bad but ultimately everyone has different belief of what's good, different religions, different backgrounds and upbringings. So what we want to do is basically put in your face and ask the question just vaguely as an example, if you kill somebody, does that make you bad? If you had an abortion are you a bad person because society tells you that’s bad but who’s leading society? That changes from generation to generation. I mean at one point of society said cremation was illegal and cremation was bad and then society changed and all of a sudden cremation became okay. The same as the color of your skin matter in society and then it doesn’t matter anymore. so society changing constantly and so you have to ask yourself is the person who’s in charge of society whoever that may be is it right, is it correct? How do they know what’s right?

So it's basically challenging you and throwing everything in your face and putting you in situation where you can say whatever you want. When you’re not in that situation I never cheat, I never do this, but what we're doing is taking you and putting you directly into that situation saying well now you have to choose. You don’t have a choice and now you have to see what this character's choice is and would you do the same thing or would you not to do the same thing and so hopefully the point is we want people to come away from the show with different ideas and different outlooks and not necessarily judging people too harshly based on their decisions but now giving them the time and the room to breathe and say you know what, maybe he is not wrong. Maybe he is right. Maybe for him what he's doing is right and it's sort of what I tell my friends. For example one of my friends was complaining about her boyfriend. She’s like 18 yrs old and really upset about it and most of the people will be like you know that’s ridiculous in like two years it's not going to matter. You know what right now; at her age and at her life right now that’s the biggest issue in her life.

So to her that’s important. I may not be important to me but I have to understand to her it is. You have to treat it like it's a very important subject and the same with everything else as far as the show and what you want to present to people. Everyone has their own opinion and everyone has what’s important to me and people need to understand that and hopefully this show can teach people that.

Nick: That's a pretty interesting perspective cause often times we only think about what’s going on our head and not what’s going on with other people's lives. It’s pretty important. So do you think that you’re going to find that there is a; that’s there is going to be could be an underlying theme throughout this that maybe society, you need t make your own decisions and not base it on what society say.

Darren: Exactly. I mean the basis of the show as far as what the sub plot is it revolves around a group called the Department of Mayhem which is basically Illuminati and it's Men in Black meets Hellboy meets GI Joe. So you have this secret government operation that’s basically running the world and keeping people happy and not telling the truth and covering things up and at the same time you are fighting monsters and aliens and demons and so on and so forth as well as the politics of the world. So it is sending a social message that here’s the villains of the show are the Department of Mayhem itself and the main character has a struggle with who’s right. Society or these people that were hunting and are we hunting them only because they told us. you don’t know and the underlying theme is basically going to show you that society is bad and its bad because its telling you what to do and not letting you challenge authority. it’s not when you challenge their decision and we so were using the government as a government organization not saying that the government is bad but to say that society isn’t letting you challenge them and the whole tag line of the show is department of mayhem you are free to do what we tell you. You got to fall in line and not challenge. So basically the bad guy of the old theme is not challenging what’s being told to you.

Nick: Very cool. So it sounds like the people, first of all this is a pretty bold project and then also you’re pretty bold to not do what you’re told.

Darren: My problem is nowadays in movies and TV and entertainment is people are doing what they’re told. They’re not creating something new. They’re taking what’s already been out there and doing either remakes or just rehashing the same stories and being safe. They’re afraid to challenge authority. They’re afraid to offend somebody and a lot of people do things nowadays out of fear whether its fear of judgment, whether its fear of getting hurt. it’s some type of fear that is limiting them and you have to look and another reason why I like green lantern is green lantern has to overcome fear in order to use his powers and so you have to challenge that fear and say I understand fear, I understand what’s going to happen but I’m not afraid to do it and deal with the consequences as they come and that’s why people need to get over is don’t be afraid. Do it. Challenge yourself. Challenge people. throw their faces in it and if they don’t like life fine but do not be afraid to have that outlet and do like it will burn you or hinder you.

Nick: I really like this green lantern guy. I’m going to have to get one of those comics while I’m here.

Darren: That’s why I wear a ring too.

Nick: How does that tie in?

Darren: Green Lantern's powers is his ring. He has a power ring that basically is what his will is channelled through and it creates constructs. Anything his mind can imagine out of like emerald energy. So basically like he’s fighting somebody the stronger his will the stronger the constructs, the stronger his power. So if he wants to imagine a boxing glove and his ring will emanate.

Nick: So this is like kind of a symbol to remind you.

Darren: Yes basically.

Nick: Very interesting. So you’re a fairly young guy.

Darren: I’m going to be 24 soon.

Nick: How did you like in order to be where you are you had to have like I call it a secret sauce that you’ve applied to something like throughout your entire life. What would you say yours is?

Darren: There’s a ton of things...

Nick: Like persistence or...

Darren: what really got me, I mean I’ve been involved in this my entire life since I’ve been a kid. I’ve wanted more than nothing to either do some aspect of entertainment whether it’s writing, animation, everything. A quick story which explain how my evolution between where I started and how I am now. I always wanted to be an animator for Disney. I always wanted to do Disney movies when I was little and so I went to MGM studios in Florida and they have these places that you can go and you could watch one of the artist draw a character from the next Disney movie that is coming up and so at the time they were doing lion king and I went in and I was like, I think it had to be four or five or whatever age I was and all the little kids were sitting in a group and the artist is like hey blah, blah, blah I’m drawing this. How many of you kids want to be an artist for Disney and I was like me, me, me. Turns around and says don’t. I put my two weeks in yesterday. I’m leaving this place. It’s a terrible place to be. Don’t do any of this. I was shocked at first. you know you may not like it and it maybe not important to you but it’s important to somebody and you’re ruining somebody's dreams and so it carried over later on to the future when I started working at Jim Haney's universe fast forward then years later and I was working with another employee and basically someone came up to me and said do you know where the superman comic books are and I go superman is a terrible superhero. After the guy left my boss pulls me aside and he goes look you may not like superman but to that guy he loves superman and you basically just told him what he likes is stupid and retarded and you’re diminishing his dreams and whatever he liked about him. you can’t do that regardless of your personal feeling you can’t do that to somebody and so I feel like that idea repeated itself as far as not hindering somebody else’s dreams as far as your own and I tried to do that with everything I worked with where yeah I want to give my opinion but I want your opinion as well and I want to respect what you believe whether it’s a religious thing whether it’s an animated thing whatever your likes are I want to respect that as well even if I don’t like them and what really was a turning point for me and I happened in college and it happened, I want to say that it happened late in my career because it was college and I consider college like kind of late.

I saw a movie called thank you for smoking with Aaron Eckhart and after I saw this movie it’s something he said on Joey and from that point on I started to get As on my essays and I talked to people I knew how to write and he basically told his son when they were having an argument how do you, you know cigarette smoking is bad but yet you lobby for it, how do you do that? It requires sort of a moral flexibility that not everyone has. I’m going to give you an example. let’s say you’re arguing about vanilla and you’re arguing about chocolate and I’m defending vanilla and I say to you so you like chocolate and you respond yeah chocolate is all I need. It’s the only thing in the world. So it’s all chocolate for you and nothing else right. Chocolate is the only thing I need. Well I need more than chocolate. I need choice. I need this. I need that and that is the definition of freedom and he’s like but that’s not what I’m talking about and the key there is but that’s what I’m talking about but you didn’t convince me. It’s not about you. I don’t care if I convince you I have to convince all of them out there but you didn’t prove that you were right and the basis is I don’t have to prove I’m right as long as I prove you’re wrong I have to right even if I’m wrong you’re wrong and you look stupid therefore the other option me has to be the right option and so I took that as a you know what that’s right. if I can prove whatever argument there is wrong it doesn’t matter what I’m saying, it doesn’t matter what I’m speaking about because that’s wrong this has to be right and so I took that with everything I learned and I was like you know what the basis of my success is there's no guarantees is what it comes down to.

There’s no guarantees in this world. There’s no guarantees in life and everyone is looking for a guarantee and I look through movies for an inspiration and it’s something I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Tommy Boy. When they’re trying to sell mufflers and his dad turns to the guy and says look a guarantee is just as good as anything. You could take a head and shove it up a bull’s ass to see a steak but would you rather see the butcher’s word for it. I can slap the guarantee on a box of shit and all you’ve got yourself is a guaranteed piece of shit. It doesn’t matter but people want a guarantee. People want to feel safe and so I look at it like okay I have to sell a guarantee in a world where guarantees don’t exist and the basis of my success is I’m not going to give you a guarantee. I’m going to tell you right off the bat there’s no guarantees. There’s only facts and if you know that facts you can do anything you want to do.

For example I don’t know if I’m going to get home tonight safe. I mean I plan to get home safe but I don’t know if there’s going to be a car accident or but there are the facts. I know it’s sunny out. There’s no rain the roads are fine. My car has ABS brakes. my car is a 2010 car so there should be no problems and those are the facts and the facts state that I will get home safe and so my basis for success is there’s no guarantees in this world as long as you do your research, as long as you know what you’re talking about, as long as you respect people for their opinions and their thoughts and you give them facts you’ll be fine in whatever you want to do.

Nick: I like that so obviously you’re pretty bold individual. I mean it’s obvious. If someone is going to describe you as bold what would they be describing? Your appearance, your looks, your thoughts, your personality or the whole package?

Darren: I would say a combination of my thoughts, my personality and my business practices.

Nick: very cool. So did you have any mentors that helped you like groom those business practices or groom you?

Darren: different points in your life and I was on facebook and these girls that I dealt with when I was in high school who I tutored who are kind of friends like whatever. I saw something they wrote on the other ones wall and it really impressed me. She said at different points in your life you always have a different best friend depending where you are in your life but it takes a special person to have that same best friend at every point in their life. I said you know what that’s incredible. that’s great and so I realized like through my life I’ve had different mentors with different things whether it will be from when I was little, my parents were mentoring me on what to be or how to live. teachers in schools when I started working here at Jim Haley’s universe my bosses, my manager Nick Rapport, Ron Hill, Vito de Sante. They taught me different things. They taught me a lot about how to deal with people how to sell and so they mentored me on their ways and basically gave me their knowledge.

right now I’m working with a personal trainer just as far as keeping myself fit and doing different things than just learning because I’m outside of school now but I still want to learn different things and so my trainer Tony Caprero is basically mentoring me and teaching me what he knows and the way that I describe a mentor is not if they’re mentoring you on what you want to be but they’re mentoring you in their life and their knowledge and so anybody that can give you something and teach you anything is a mentor and so I would say I’ve had plenty of mentors and plenty of people that taught me so many things that I can translate over into my field.

Nick: so would you say you’ve learned from everyone?

Darren: I’ve learned from everybody I’ve met.

Nick: that’s an awesome...

Darren: and the mindset that I would suggest to people is keep an open mind. No matter who you’re talking to for however length of time they can be a mentor to you and impart some type of knowledge, some advice, even if it’s an advice of what not to do. It’s something if you’re willing to just listen and take it in.

Nick: that’s an awesome perspective on life. So do you have like any books or favorite comments, comics or something that has impacted you drastically like actually tangible to other people like they could get a quick peek in your life?

Darren: like I said thank you for smoking was a big, big impact. I bought the script for thank you for smoking as well as the DVD. That movie taught me a lot about how to sell, how to market, how to talk to people and just how to be bold. Like the character that Aaron Eckhart played was bold. Nick Naylor was a bold, bold character who knew how to talk to people and was selling a product that people knew would kill them but still sold it in a way that basically giving them a guarantee where there was no guarantee like yeah you’d be fine, smoke it. so I think thank you for smoking if you’re willing to sit there and read the book and you’re willing to watch the movie you’ll come away with a lot of life lessons and I really don’t do a lot of reading physical books only because I’m more of a visual guy but one book in general which I read cause I saw the comic book for it first is the fall of Lucifer by Wendy Alec which her take on the whole fall of Lucifer and religion in general was just unbelievable. Her visual, the way she describes things which is like a movie and the story itself is just a different take and just telling you about the four heroes and what makes a hero. They give you a different outlook on Lucifer. It gave you his outlook that may be, why is he bad because religion told us he’s bad? he may very well be but still you get someone else’s side of the story and it’s good to always have both sides and then you yourself can make a judgement rather than taking what somebody else tells you, yourself should take what you’ll learn and its things that I have difficulty with people in the film industry is when they’re fresh out of film school. Well film school my teacher taught me how to do this. Yes I understand that but you need to learn for yourself. He’s telling you not to do what he’s doing exactly but take what he told you and apply it to whatever you know. Whatever you think is right and like I tell everybody else is they say you can break rules. You can break rules but you need to know the rules before you break them. You need to know what you’re breaking and why you’re breaking it and then you can do whatever you want.

Nick: and be willing to deal with the consequences if there is some.

Darren: exactly. You need to know why you’re doing something before you do it. you can’t just do it and I mean rules are made to be broken like they say and I know that it’s a cliché but you need to know what you’re breaking before you’re breaking it.

Nick: right and I can totally agree with that. I think that’s good. So oftentimes it sounds like you’re seeing other peoples perspectives before you make decisions. Do you have any tips to actually get into that like how you get to know what other people are saying and their point of view? Can you think up of anything?

Darren: it’s very hard because people rely a lot on ego and ego can be a very good thing and ego can be a very terrible thing and I don’t want to keep applying movies and TV but you know what movies and TV are a forum for people who have ideas and have advice to get them out. Most people put them in newspapers. Most people put them in books. If you look at TV as just entertainment you’re losing a lot. It’s somebody’s opinion and somebody's advice and that is their forum to get it out there and so when I watch Scrubs I don’t know if you’re familiar with the show Scrubs. basically they were talking about ego and how one of the doctors Donald Faison who played a surgeon in scrubs and Dr. Cox, I forgot his name but the guy who played Dr. Cox basically telling him cause you know they trashed on the episode because of his ego is too big and he goes you know what ego is what makes you a good doctor. It’s what makes that person a good nurse. It’s that what makes that person a good surgeon. You need ego. It’s a good thing because it makes you confident and it makes you good and so I don’t know where I was going with this...

Nick: basically to see other peoples perspective.

Darren: so like I said ego plays good and bad but people have a hard time letting go of their ego and then getting that raw and a lot of people don’t like to not be in control and I find that you need to stop, take a back seat and it’s very hard to admit to yourself that you don’t know what you’re doing and someone else does. very hard and you just need to before you can listen to someone’s opinion talk to yourself first and sit down and go look I don’t know what I’m doing. even if you do know what you’re doing tell yourself you don’t know what you’re doing because you know what, you can learn your entire life regardless of what you know someone knows something else and you should learn that. just let yourself know that you don’t know everything and you’re willing to take something else in. the minute you realize that then you can sit and take your ego aside and put it out and listen to what someone's saying whether you think that they’re inexperienced or not. It’s still something different and then you can judge for yourself whether or not it was worth it.

Nick: very cool. I’m going to take a bit of a segway. What’s it like working with Stan Lee?

Darren: it’s great. I mean honestly I never thought it would happen. I grew up as a kid...

Nick: he’s kind of your idol.

Darren: yeah I mean he’s a guy as a writer basically which I would say in the film world I’m versed in two things very well, writing and acting. those are my two biggest passions as far as film making goes and to be with one of the greatest writers of all time of my generation, of other peoples generations that impacted the world with comic books at one time where warren Ernst a respected medium but the lesson he taught with great power comes great responsibility and so many other things that really do impact people's lives and I don’t care how old you are you’ve read that and you’ve used that with great power comes great responsibility in your life and to be with somebody who taught me those lessons and to actually be under his wing and see how he works and see how he thinks and just, it’s amazing. I grew up watching shows never thinking I was going to meet this guy in my life and here I am at 24 working for the guy. talking to him on a daily basis like nothing like he’s just somebody else and it’s very rare for somebody in a field to work with their idol in that field or to work with the best person in that field. very rare and to get the opportunity in this lifetime to be with my mentor, to be with somebody I consider one of the highest people in the writing genre is unbelievable and I’m taking every opportunity and every chance I get to pick his brain and just listen to him. Even though I do things in a different way I still listen to him because the man he is and what he’s done he knows what he’s talking about. He knows a lot of stuff and to even be half as good as him and to even have him come to me and ask my opinion is unbelievable. It means a hell of a lot. He emails me what do you think of this? well really you’re like Stan Lee you’re asking me, I mean that’s great and the fact that even at his age 87, 88 he can still be humble enough to turn to somebody and go well I don’t know tell me. You teach me.

Nick: that’s awesome.

Darren: it’s amazing and it’s just what I was talking to you about before. It’s putting that ego aside.

Nick: well what major things have you learned from him in this pretty much a partnership it almost sounds like?

Darren: how to sell, how to deal with people, how to market but mostly how to write. I have a different outlook on writing where you don’t have to and I make the same mistakes too that I accuse other people of following that school and so on and so forth and him saying well you don’t have to. Just because they tell you that that screenplay and treatments has to be formed this way. It doesn’t have to. You can put your own voice in it because I’ve read his treatments and it’s not the standard treatments. It’s Stan Lee talking to you and basically like I was sitting down with you right now. He going this is what I want to do and I want it to be like this and she walks down the street and blah, blah, blah. It’s that on paper and so it’s like wow like you’re right I don’t have to and it’s all about putting my voice out on that paper and getting you interested in reading something.

Nick: it’s you that you’re selling.

Darren: basically.

Nick: impressive. So were kind of running out of time. What one last thing would you leave the viewers with?

Darren: listen to everybody. Advice is very rare. Be willing to take advice from people who are willing to give it to you. if someone is willing to talk to you regardless if you want to listen or not you should listen because they could be crazy, they could not be crazy but somewhere along the way they have something that they want to get out and they want someone to know it and some people will leave a legacy behind making movies, making statues. Steven Spielberg's legacy is going to be his films. Kurt Vonnegut's legacy is his books. It’s what he wrote. Some guy on the streets legacy is the advice that he can pass on to you just walking down the block. that’s what he’s leaving to you and hoping that you’ll take that and impart on to the world because what you take may not mean a lot to you but you take it and you pass it on to somebody and somebody passes it on to another person and before you know it thousands of people everywhere have that knowledge that that one person has passed on and just like the song, the sunscreen song from the graduating class of 99 which I’m sure you probably remember the big famous talking song like wear a sunscreen.

Nick: okay yes.

Darren: there’s a line where he says basically what advice is its someone’s experience talking out of the trash the dirty ugly parts cleaned off and dispensed back to you in a form that you can deal with and so experience means a lot and someone willing to take that time to give you their experience when they don’t have to. You should stop and listen and just listen to everybody you can because everybody has some knowledge or something or some advice or some legacy that they want to leave behind and you may be the only person that that person can leave that legacy to.

Nick: impressive.

Darren: like I said to you what may not be important to you is important to somebody at that time and you need to respect that.

Nick: I like it.

Darren: thank you.

Nick: appreciate it.

Darren: my pleasure.