Otoja Abit
The path from actor to director and producer isn’t an easy one, and there’s no roadmap to guaranteed success — and that’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s the kind of democratic aspect of the art form that has made it possible for generations of auteurs to forge new paths in film.
But it’s also a loophole exploited by traditional gatekeepers, keeping the power of who gets to make film in the hands of the people with the money — meaning that what gets made is dictated by financial interest first, last and pretty always … even in the independent film world. Many filmmakers don’t have the resources of an MFA program or a childhood with access to filmmaking equipment or the environment in which creation is encouraged.
“I didn't come from a world where we had cameras or camcorders or people making films for fun,” Filmmaker Otoja Abit says. “That wasn't my world. My world was like, ‘there's a basketball he's an open park, do something with it.’ I always had the inclination, or I guess advantage, to write stories and things like that. But I never knew what kind of job I could find.”
Abit studied theatre and business at St. John’s University, where he also played Division 1 basketball in the highly competitive Big East Conference. He applied his athlete’s mentality (and business acumen) to building a career as an actor in New York.
“When you play sports, no one can tell you that you can't do something,” he says. “You just go out and practice until you're able to do it. But in the art world, how do you prove to people that you can do things? … It’s about being able to be in those rooms. I had the opportunity to play basketball overseas, and a lot of my teammates at the time, all they knew was basketball. I had a different passion other than basketball. I think at that point in my life, it's like, ‘I really need to explore this now, as I'm young and hungry and there’s no excuse’ … And without coming from an MFA program, you’ve got to get back into helping people out, picking up garbage, being in a room, doing anything like that.”
A stint as an intern LAByrinth Theatre Company introduced not only to the inner workings of creating visionary theatre in an expensive city, but to company founders John Ortiz and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and a host of incredible actors and writers, including Pedro Pascal, Nyambi Nyambi and Stephen Adly Guirgis. His first post-LAByrinth gig was as assistant director on the 2011 Broadway revival of That Championship Season directed by Gregory Mosher and starring Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric and Chris Noth.
Little could Abit have anticipated that nearly a decade later he’d be directing Noth in his debut feature film.
From That Championship Season, Abit doggedly built a career as a working actor, appearing across from Al Pacino in The Night Of on HBO, as Paris in Aleta Chappelle’s Romeo and Juliet in Harlem and as Marsha P. Johnson in the film Stonewall, among many other gigs like Black-ish and The Defenders.
Over this time, he gained experience and collaborators along with resume credits. In 2018, this culminated in the short film Jitters, written and directed by Abit, who also played the lead. An inventive twist on the “one that got away” genre, the film explores a groom’s last-minute crisis as he locks himself in the back room of a church and thinks about a woman from his past. He fights his way through the jitters with another man who, we later learn, is actually the man he loves.
Jitters did the rounds in the film festival circuit, gaining acclaim and attention for its inventiveness, but also its warmth and authenticity. And, in a turn worthy of its own movie, it led to the opportunity for Abit’s first feature.
“We hit the festival circuit, we won a few awards, and a lot of people really liked the film, because of the fact of what it explored as a black person, the black male, and also for the fact that we had this twist ending, but beyond the twist, it's more so that it's a happy feeling that you don't really see or expect,” Abit explains. “[Producer] Kory Apton saw Jitters and liked it. Her and her team at Conglomerate Media wanted to have more. There's a need for a holiday film that has representation, queer representation and people of color representation … I asked myself, ‘what really resonated with people with the short film?’ It was the idea of seeing same sex couples getting married in the church, and also the idea of high school love, or childhood love, and I explored that.”
With Conglomerate’s support, Abit and producing partner Ian Phillips set to work shooting what would become A New York Christmas Wedding, which premiered on Netflix in December, 2020. And, while it wasn’t the first LGBTQ+ holiday film to hit the market, was the first with a BIPOC lesbian lead… and the only one to feature Chris Noth, aka Mr. Big, as a Catholic priest.
In a nod to It’s a Wonderful Life, Jennifer (played by Nia Fairweather), is visited by an angel (Cooper Koch) on the eve of her wedding to David (played by Abit). She is given the opportunity to see what her life would have been like if she’d pursued a relationship with friend and first love, Gabrielle (Adriana DeMeo). The rest is holiday movie magic.
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“We filmed it in 14 days with friends, family, and a really talented crew,” Abit says. “I’m very surprised that people say it feels like it's a Netflix film … People think it's a Netflix original. It's not. But it's definitely something where Netflix knew we have a film here that would definitely do well on their platform.”
Filming a feature in 14 days in New York is no mean feat. “We started mid July [2019] and ended August 10,” he explains. “It's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, to make the film with a low budget, and just keep going. What kind of pushed us or even me as a producer/director is that literally we had enough money to get through the film and anything else … you know. There’d be some days where we have to pay for parking tickets and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, that's taken away from day number 7.’ But sometimes you’ve got to let things go and just get the best film in front of you. And I was very excited to know that we could finish a film in that amount of time.”
Independent filmmakers can relate to this pressure cooker — limited time, limited budget, making do. Abit saw it as an opportunity to prove himself and forge a real career as a triple threat who gets the job done, and does it well.
“I remember one of our crew members was telling me, ’this this film’s a little bit too ambitious.’ And I totally agree. And I totally understand that for me, as a Black artist, I don't have that second or third chance to make something. I have to make something right now … So yes, it's ambitious in nature. One: we got it done. But two: I want to be in the ambition world, rather than the world of just, ‘let’s film in the backyard because we have a backyard.’ There’s some people who do that, and more power to them. But those [are] the same people writing a short film, and thinking ‘people want to see this,’ and they think about hitting all these boxes, rather than really making something that's speaking truthfully. And I think at that point in my career for my first film, speaking truthfully about this wedding in a church around this holiday time, there’s only one way we could really do it that made sense.”
“I think that's definitely because of the athletic mindset,” he adds. “‘Oh, you can't do that.’ Okay, watch me.”
Abit’s vision is driven by truth and authenticity, whether he’s making an arthouse short or a holiday romantic comedy. His experience as an actor drives this.
“Once I did the film Stonewall as an actor, I started seeing the world differently,” he explains. “I was able to play Marsha P. Johnson, and what I really understood then is ‘why am I not learning about a woman like herself? Who is Black? Who is a pioneer for civil rights? Who lived in New York City and I’m from New York City? Why am I not learning about this in any time of the year, but even in Black History Month? Because she's queer.’ So, because of that, I started seeing that there's so many different sides of people that we're not seeing because of stereotypes and perceptions of people. You know, for me, I'm an I'm a former athlete, so everyone perceives me to be to be this tall, athletic person. As an actor, I could play a security guard — I don't wanna play security guard, I want to play a character that's going through something more emotional, rather than security guard. I don't want to play a gang banger. But because of what people see, that's what people would perceive me to be and what they would label me as.”
“We have to make films that people haven’t seen before,” he says. “People need to really explore as independent filmmakers. What are they saying that hasn't been said before? No two people on this planet are the same. There's something different there. So filmmakers should find that difference in themselves, and really explore that.”
Our conversation turns to what Abit hopes audiences and filmmakers can take away from his work. “I hope my work will be an example of getting it done not just to say you've done it, but getting it done to really explore something in yourself, and in the art itself. I think for filmmakers, or artists, when you really experience life, you really want to expose your experience onto a specific art form. People want to see that. So what people can notice from my films or my work is that I I'm more than just a tall Black man who is decently handsome and who can maybe intimidate or whatever. I'm more than that. And I'm more than that because of what I'm saying. I want to leave it behind as my art. Films live on forever.”
