Chattanooga native Richie Walls, a partner/producer/manager with Whitener Entertainment Group, will have a seemingly simple message for those who gather for the December Backlot meeting at Heritage House in East Brainerd on Monday.
The monthly meetings are open to anyone interested in or involved in the film industry - actors, producers, crew members, camera operators, makeup artists, lighting technicians and writers.
Walls wants people to know there are lots of ways to work in the TV and movie business. The key is following your passion, finding what you are good at, learning your craft and being ready when the opportunity knocks.
And you can do a lot of that from just about anywhere in the country, especially here in Tennessee.
About The Backlot
The Backlot: A Place for Filmmakers is a mixer designed to connect filmmakers, talent and crew. Typical activities at the monthly gatherings include featured speakers from the motion-picture industry, casting calls and screenings of locally produced films. Gatherings take place at Heritage House Arts & Civic Center, 1428 Jenkins Road. Doors open at 6:15 p.m. with presentations beginning at 7 p.m. on the third Monday of each month (weather and national holidays permitting). A Q&A follows the presentation, and both usually last about 90 minutes. Time for networking is built into the evening. Attendees are encouraged to bring business cards and/or head shots for networking. Admission is free. Dinner is potluck, with those attending asked to bring a simple side, mocktail beverage or snack to share. For more information, call 423-855-9474 or email Chris Holley at cholley@chattanooga.gov. Find our more online at www.chattanooga.gov/youthandfamily/recreation/senior-and-cultural-facilities/heritage-house.
The Whitener Entertainment Group, which has locations in Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Atlanta, Nashville and Knoxville. Walls is chief operating officer of the group and has partnered with Gordon Whitener and Brett Thomason. He says he's passionate about growing the film industry in the state and in Chattanooga, where he grew up and still has family.
After his parents, Richard and Glenda Walls moved the family to Bristol, Va., and then Knoxville after his eighth-grade year, Walls would return here to visit his grandparents, the late Hershel and Elizabeth Jones, and Sarah Walls, and later to attend the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. His parents moved back to Chattanooga several years ago.
"They love it," Walls says.
Walls most recently was a producer on the feature film "Dog Years," featuring Burt Reynolds and Ariel Winter, which filmed in Knoxville in the summer of last year. For him, being back in Neyland Stadium, where he watched dozens of football games, including ones in which his brother Alex Walls was a kicker for the Vols, was "everything coming full circle.
"I said that on the first day of shooting to Burt Reynolds, and he said, 'Isn't that how it is supposed to be?"
An athlete who was active in track, swimming and cycling, Walls was spotted in high school by a national modeling agent. It was not a career he'd given much thought to previously, but when the opportunity came, he embraced it. He worked in Miami, Chicago, and New York in the modeling and acting realms after graduating from Radford in Virginia and was eventually offered a staff position by a Knoxville agency.
Walls worked for acting agencies across Tennessee, as well as in Florida and New York, before moving to Los Angeles in 2005 to be the managing director for Warning Model Management in Beverly Hills.
While at Warning, Walls placed talent for clients such as Ralph Lauren, Vogue, Maxim and L'Oreal.
In 2005, Walls became a full-time theatrical agent, in part because of the HBO series "Entourage." He was kept busy filling the many model-type roles for the series. Walls then started his own company, which now partners with James Cameron's company, Cameron-Rock-Walls, in the role of talent producer.
In this role, Walls has helped many members of the traditional fashion modeling community to cross over to television and theatrical acting roles.
Walls has booked talent for television shows including "Community," the "CSI" franchise, "The Sopranos" and "Grey's Anatomy," as well as movies "Ironman 2" and "The Social Network."