Join us as we talk to Ryan about his many projects, what he’s learned along the way about love and following his passion, and how he keeps going in an incredibly competitive industry. During Thanksgiving dinner! I had him on speaker with my friends…it was so twisted.” He called me three days in a row last week. Two months later, he called me,” Ryan told us. “I had a dream in August that I filmed him playing guitar in prison, and so I wrote him for the first time. ![]() In the midst of our interview last week, Ryan had to pause to screen a call, in case it was from Manson himself. In-between projects, he leaves the city behind for epic adventures in the surrounding desert. In 2008, after he graduated, the Toronto native moved to LA to follow his passion and now supports himself by making short films and documentaries and writing screenplays. When we were in college together, I would often run into Ryan in the streets of downtown Chicago early in the morning, and he would tell me of the long night he spent editing his (jaw-droppingly incredible) feature-length documentary film, Cease to Exist–the story of Charles Manson’s relationship with The Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson. That energy and passion also makes him push himself beyond all imaginable limits. He can talk unendingly about the music and movies he loves, about the aged American dreams of the Old West or Easy Rider…about whatever he may currently be into, and by the end of the conversation, you’ll find yourself joining him in his passion, ablaze with new ideas. Ryan appreciates and supports others with an infectious joy and excitement. Ryan has a kind of irrepressible energy that spurts out at random moments, forcing everyone to stop and appreciate a song, a moment, or a particularly hilarious thing someone else said. Ryan has since moved on from Life Line, although his interest in telling unique and forgotten stories has carried over to his new projects. The series, called Life Line Booth, had just sold to the network Pivot and was about to air on TV. ![]() He was working on a social outreach docu-series centered around phone booths that he and his friends transformed into temporary havens for Skid Row’s homeless. We were talking about Ryan’s latest project, at the time, on our way to a hidden beach near Malibu. While the sun glinted off of the windshield, the red light on my recorder reflected back onto the glass. Ryan steered calmly along the twisting roads with a practiced air that made me feel like we were floating rather than driving. Filmmaker Ryan Oksenberg’s car waved slightly between the yellow and white lines as the road curled around the steep mountainsides of Topanga Canyon at sunset.
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