Life During Lockdown: Neal Foard
I’ve collaborated creatively with Neal for exactly 20 years, since he was a client of mine in the TV commercial production business. Since then, we’ve worked together on all kinds of projects, from making short films for UCLA, to producing Toyota campaigns, and creating animation for TiVo. I love Neal’s energy and his friendship. He’s also extraordinarily talented and super generous with his time. Neal has many times gone out of his way to help me with presentations, including when I gave a TED Talk. Helping people present ideas is one of his super skills. He’s currently the Executive Experience Design Director at Czarnowski, and he lives with his family here in Los Angeles.
1. Give me some highlights and lowlights from your first month in lockdown mode
Apparently, by the time your children leave for college, you have already spent 94% of the time you will ever spend with them. So, the highlight of our lockdown is that our college kids are studying at home and we have the whole family around the dinner table. So, aside from the global medical suffering and economic kick to the nards, huzzah for the silver lining. The lowlight is just that awful feeling about how many people are losing their jobs. I don’t know anyone who feels completely safe about their job. And every time some brand advertises with patrician reassurance, “We’ll get through this…”, I kind of want to punch them in the neck a little. The suffering is legit. Don’t pat people on the head and tell them all is going to be well, unless you’ve got a tangible idea on how to make it well.
2. How have you grown personally and professionally during this disruption?
Well, I’m sure outside my comfort zone. I’m trying new ways to reach out to people beyond just the phone. I am rolling through my old colleagues list and trying to connect again, and get counsel from mentors I respect. I really should have done that more in the past, so I guess that’s growth. Every time I hang up the phone with someone I haven’t spoken to in years, I have a smile on my face. Better than coffee.
3. Has your relationship with your work and telling stories changed as a result of being locked in your house?
For writing or designing, there are times when you just need distractions to end. And the lockdown has been great for that. If I haven’t created something to make someone smile that day, I go to bed mad at myself. A paradox of the lockdown is that I’m getting up earlier, watching less TV, and feeling more obliged to be creative. I find myself sending post-it notes via text, instead of just text messages, for that little extra dose of humanity. The less physical contact we have, the better it is to send things that have that real-person smell.
4. Can storytellers and creators like yourself create positive change in the world during the pandemic? If so, how?
May I start on an upbeat note and then get dark? Creative re-purposing of skills is a great creative act. Czarnowski, the company I work for, switched from building auto show sets to creating virus testing centers and temporary hospital structures. Our management was really speedy on that pivot, and I was deeply impressed. Meanwhile, regarding storytelling, I think there’s a lesson from Hollywood during the Great Depression. It’s widely known there were a lot of comedies and dance spectaculars. But what people forget about the 1930’s is that’s when gangster movies started getting popular. They were usually about criminals who came from nothing and upset the social order. Because there was a lot of simmering anger about banks and fat cats who didn’t care about the little guy, and didn’t seem to grasp how bad it was for them. Meanwhile, big shots sitting on vast fortunes gloated about it instead of actively raising people out of despair. Well, history rhymes, and I see a reckoning coming. I am not advocating violence, but it wouldn’t surprise me if driving a $250,000 car in late summer earns a cinderblock through the windshield. When a drug lord gives out turkeys at Christmas, that doesn’t mean all is forgiven. So, for how storytellers can create positive change, I’d like to tell stories that bring on the twilight of the narcissists.
