This I Know: Pat Wyatt, film and video executive
For them it was the road less traveled. For the rest of us Dames, they've cleared the path. Words of wisdom, from some serious success stories. First-up: film and video executive Pat Wyatt talks leaps, Anime production, and playing Lincoln Logs.
“I’ve hit the pause button to assess where I want to go next,” says Pat Wyatt over the phone. This is an executive unafraid to say when.
In 2002, as Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment was enjoying one of its biggest video sales seasons ever with Ice Age and Attack of the Clones—Wyatt, then the president of Home Entertainment and Consumer Products, resigned. After seven years at Fox, she quit the corporate world to launch her own independent film production and financing company which would concentrate on Anime produced specifically for home viewing.
Wyatt’s grandfather, Kiyoshi Masumoto, was one of the founding fathers of Japanese cinema who’d discovered a theater-school of Japanese drama focusing on stories about real life and started one of the first Japanese studios. At the turn of the century, Masumoto brought Western cinema to the East, Wyatt says, telling stories with a linear, three-act progression that was in opposition to the Japanese way of thought. “The Japanese think in a circular fashion—it doesn’t matter if there’s a beginning, middle and end,” says Wyatt. In turn, her indie anime venture would bring the East to the West.
“I worked for a couple years on developing anime in independent film, I really want to be involved in storytelling that is mythic—to complete my grandfather’s journey,” she says.
Currently, being on pause is “very scary—if you are not willing to leap off a cliff without knowing what is going to come next. It [also] opens your mind to any possibility,” says Wyatt who adds that one requisite is that you have to believe you’re not going fall.
“Every time I’ve taken that leap, I’ve ended up on a higher level. [We] run like hamsters on a wheel, getting so exhausted that it’s hard to reflect on whether or not you’re enjoying that. But it’s really a great thing to be able to do, the bills get paid, nobody dies,” says Wyatt adding on more reflection: “Rewards go to the bold.”
Here’s what Pat knows:
Three words to inspire success:
Well, why not?
Three words to push failure:
Never Say Never.
How do friends and family describe you?
Complex and somewhat aloof, but still warm.
Colleagues?
Same.
Breakfast at home or coffee on the commute?
Sunrise, at home with the birds and coyotes.
If you had to swap professions, with whom would you swap?
I'd love to swap with either cinematographer John Bailey, or Jon Stewart. This of course assumes I would inherit their talent and intelligence as well.
Personality trait I'd like to lose:
Perfectionism.
Best advice I ever got:
Don't pay any attention to advice.
Best advice I can give:
Go with your gut no matter what.
Advice never to take:
Play it safe.
High Maintenance or Low Maintenance?
I've been told I'm the worst sort, in that I think I'm low maintenance but am actually really high maintenance.
"Plastic Surgery is...":
an option for anyone who really wants it.
If we were having a party, what would you bring?
Really nice wine.
Favorite childhood Toys?
Barbie dolls, Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, chemistry sets.
Favorite grown-up toys?
Not at liberty to discuss.
Giselle Zado Wasfie is the author of So Fly. Her freelance pieces have appeared in VIBE, Vice, and Black Book, among others, and she previously worked as an editor at Glamour, Sohh.com and URB Magazine.
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