Keep Making Noise

What's up everybody, my name is Arthur Cartwright. I'm a writer/director and by the grace of God, I've worked as an actor with people such as Clint Eastwood, Christopher Walken, Val Kilmer, Laurence Fishburne and more. I also produce a traveling stage-play called "We Beat the Streets”, which is loosely based on the New York Times Bestseller of the same name. The play has been running for four years and has been seen by tens of thousands of people.

I fell in love with acting in the 5th grade and I'm now 25 years old, but I didn’t fall in love with simply acting, but telling a story and being a part of it. I really got into acting in high school, I started watching movies differently and really studied the craft. More importantly, I started studying the business. My father is a hardcore businessman, so not only did I have the artsy, poetic side of me that just wants to create, but I also wanted to do good business. I hear a lot of artists who just want to create and not worry about if a project does well financially or not, as long as it's out there. I commend them for that, but the business side of movie making always held my interest. I wanted to know how much movies made and what were the highest grossing projects of all time, whether it was film, television or stage.

 My mother used to play this game with me, asking me at any given moment throughout the day about who directed or produced or wrote a certain film, and I would answer it. She couldn't believe how much I knew about films and the people behind them. With this, I knew my senior year of high school I had to jump straight into the industry somehow. I got accepted into some universities but I decided to jump straight into acting. I sent out headshots and resumes to find an agent. It was perfect timing. At that time, the state of Michigan (where I was born and raised) gave out a tax incentive for films—the largest incentive offered by any state.

Michigan, for a good 2 years, was the filmmaking capital of the country. Hundreds of films were shooting in here from big ones to small ones and I was getting called to auditions for what seemed like every single one of them. The ones I was blessed to book ended up being big ones. My first gig was playing "Prez" in Gran Torino and I got to work with Eastwood and company and even attended the premiere at Warner Bros and went to California for the first time. After Gran Torino, I got other roles that put me on screen with people I looked up to in the film industry like Angelina Jolie, whom I met at Gran Torino’s premiere–I was on cloud nine.

Gran Torino became the highest grossing movie of Clint Eastwood's career so I decided to move out to California while the movie was hot. When I moved out there I got to see the business for what it was—extremely difficult and competitive. I saw that I was just one in millions that were trying to make it. This is when I started a production company and the business side of me came out. I produced “We Beat The Streets” and as a company, I was able to get into doors I may not have gotten into as an actor since I had been talking daily to the people who provided actors with jobs like network executives, producers, directors etc.

I became more interested in this side of the business because these are the people who create the stories that we see on screen. That's my focus and has been for a few years, I don't just want to be a part of the story anymore, I want to create the story I'm apart of. It's a tricky business because it's about who you know and everything seems like it's closed off to new comers. It takes an undeniable, relentless tenacity to make your mark. I pray ALOT, and I have Faith that God has my steps ordered. I do what I do and I let God do what He does. Now, I'm in a great place, I'm married to a beautiful, amazing woman that is a true friend and helper, business is good and most importantly growing, but still marching towards my goal which is to own a thriving movie studio. I have a ways to go, but I'm going to keep pushing, keep making noise.

Have you noticed you can't ignore a sound you don't recognize? If it's an unfamiliar sound, you have to find out where it's coming from right? You want to get noticed? Just keep making noise.

Arthur Cartwright

STH Productions

www.sthproductions.com

IG: @BlockbusterArt

Fast Cash

By: Ayana Bryant-Weekes

The other day I was indulging in my latest social media impulse, Snapchat, and I received a message from the Snapchat family. A video of two teenagers showing the ease of money wiring using “Snapcash” backed by a Broadway musical routine of singing, tap-dancers wearing dollar signs and holding giant debit cards glittered across my screen. Apparently, “with the swipe of three fingers you can make it rain,” on friends in your recent snaps.  Snapcash is virtually seamless, enabling users to quickly upload their debit cards and make payments to their peers by simply typing a dollar sign and payment amount in the chat box.

Long story short, this is yet another way for money to effortlessly fly out of my bank account. People at these mobile cash companies, Google Wallet, Square, and Apple Pay—just to name a few—have made the transfer of money that much more convenient. I learned about the concept of a mobile wallet in a marketing class I took in college. My professor foreshadowed the elimination of a physical wallet and at the time I shrugged it off thinking no one is going to actually use these mobile cash options as a replacement to physical money—that’s ridiculous. However, an article on MarketWatch.com explained that Snapchat’s 100 million tech-savvy 20-something active users who for the most part grew up with smartphones and the spirit of instant gratification, trust that the Internet will keep their personal and financial data “safe”.  Millennials (that’s us) are the most apt to incorporating these mobile processes into our daily lives since we’re already always glued to our phones.

            Don’t get me wrong, I understand (and appreciate) the ease of payments and money transfers with online bill pay, mobile bank transfers and the like but I’ve recognized that with the benefits of convenience follows a multitude of responsibility. Again, it’s becoming way too easy for money to get away from us, and consequently much more tempting to frivolously spend. $20 here, $15 there and we don’t even realize it until we’re left with $1.23 in our bank accounts because the money spent so easily (don’t front like it hasn’t happened to you).

            “Snapcash” is really cool, uniquely innovative and very relevant to the times we live in but the challenge now is that self-discipline and self-control become even more important to our money management practices. I mean, who isn’t tempted just a little bit to try it? I just want to see if actual Snapdollars will drizzle down my screen if someone sends me money.

- Ayana

Message In a Bottle

 By: Ayana Bryant-Weekes

Most people today claim to be introverts, people who are more comfortable being by themselves, relying on themselves and entertaining others only for a short while. The thing about introverts is that most of the time (if not all the time for a true introvert) when an outlet is needed, the introvert only finds comfort within themselves. For these people and others who aren't necessarily true introverts but share the same conundrum of needing someone to share with but not feeling comfortable sharing with anyone, a lot of things are left unsaid. I call this the Message In A Bottle Syndrome.

This is when beautiful things, poetry, novels, ideas, revelations, inspirations, art, comedy etc. are bottled up inside of people waiting for someone to find it and unleash it. The beauty in stumbling upon a bottle washed up onto shore with something inside of it is the element of seemingly finding a treasure. The beauty is also found in the fragility of the vessel and how it survived the graceful monstrosity that is the ocean.

Most of us keep things inside of us out of fear that if we unleash a piece of our soul, it won't be appreciated or respected as much as if someone finds it, so we keep everything bottled up. Whoever places a piece of their soul into a bottle and sets it out to sea knows that some may find a bottle washed up onto shore and ignore it, and some will find a gift, a treasure to be enjoyed and savored. the difference is in who took the time to open it.

-Ayana

Forget Not His Benefits

Imagine the physical effects of smoking a pack of cigarettes everyday for 40 years—pretty horrifying, right? Well, imagine that the absence of prayer, meditation, church fellowship, and the space for God to move on your behalf have that very same physical effect. The old saying goes “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” but can a prayer a day do the same? An article in Relevant Magazine (maybe you can tell by now that Relevant is my favorite faith based magazine) written by Rob Moll, award winning journalist and author of What Your Body Knows About God, breaks down these “5 Ways Your Faith Improves Your Health”.

1. Faith Encourages Healthy Behavior

2. Faith Reduces Stress

3. Community Improves Emotional Health

4. Helping Others Improves Life Satisfaction

5. Space for the Miraculous

The measurable health benefits of Faith, blood pressure, strength of the immune system, and the offset of the effects of mental illness are also mentioned but what I loved most about the article was the 5^th health benefit— Space for the Miraculous. Some will say that the health benefits of Faith are all in a person’s head, and I have to agree. The article references The Placebo Affect, which is a person’s response to a treatment that seems to be real but isn’t.  Now, my belief in this theory isn’t the same as a skeptic’s but it is based on the mantra of my Pastor, Bishop J. Drew Sheard, “If you can’t see it before you see it you never will see it.” That motto has always activated my imagination to believe for something that wasn’t necessarily true yet, and that’s all faith is, the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1).  So maybe it is the Placebo Effect but the bottom line is, Faith can help improve a person’s health.

 “…If we believe that God's authority stretches to the physical as well as the spiritual, then we can accept that He can manifest that authority in our physical health as well as our spiritual health.”

Take a look at The Surprising Links Between Faith and Health here.

-Ayana