Contact Chris by emailing chris@silentfive.com.

CURRENTLY

In 2016 Chris was commissioned to create a docu-series about the development of cities. He and his producing partner interviewed 120 NYC professional, political and creative superstars, all of them deeply involved in the evolution of the city from the 1970s until today. COVID disrupted the project, but we are now back in post with release planned for 2024.

Chris is now developing personal projects including historical fiction and nonfiction series about the Americas for TV; and a fictionalized multi-platform memoir. His award-winning feature doc Deep Run is also currently for sale and streaming on Amazon Prime, Vimeo and WMM (educational use).

ABOUT

Chris Talbott is a fiction and nonfiction storyteller who has produced, written and directed many movies, video series and plays since finishing his first play in 1993, a hip-hop inspired “folk operetta” told entirely in rhymes with live music accompaniment.

As an activist he has produced dozens of creative social justice actions with Cause Effect Agency, a company he founded in 2001 to support worthy causes.

Raised in a large working-class family in Racine, Wisconsin, Chris attended Brown University where he originally intended to study film and theater. His grandfather who worked at the Golden Books printing press in Racine pushed him to sample history, a subject he personally loved. Highly skeptical, Chris decided to sit in on the 1st day of “Introduction to Colonial Latin American History” by Professor Cope when another desired class was closed.

Cope turned out to be an astounding storyteller. Chris quickly realized that these global civilizations colliding is the paramount unfolding story of our times; wildly misunderstood when known at all, damaged synapses in our collective memories.

Chris majored in history and his interests became global. He was drawn to meet the students of Tiananmen who had dared defy the tanks as he was graduating high school. His father built tractors and he saw Racine’s factories competing intensely with China and losing jobs fast. So he studied the Chinese language then spent one semester studying at Nanjing University in a “proto-capitalist” China (on a bike) in 1992.

Upon graduation Chris had no plan and no clue. So he drove cross country to spend the summer with his college friend, creative collaborator and future wife Ari Vena. His first night in Los Angeles he met her childhood buddies, budding superstars Maya Rudolph and Anna Waronker, who took them to a (then unknown) Beck performance in a dive bar. They had all been born into the very heart of entertainment.

Chris decided to move to New York City and was working early mornings for $7/hour as a temp caterer in the bowels of the World Trade Center just months after it had been bombed the first time. He knew he was not appropriately leveraging his college degree but despite the examples of the previous summer he still had no clue. 

Finally a friend told him about a better-paying temp gig if one knew spreadsheets. He took a 2-hour course at a temp agency and then turned a 3-week gig at Goldman Sachs into a partner-track job as an investment analyst covering commodities like gold and the mining companies that produced said metals. He became especially expert in nickel. After 15 months he walked away unable to contribute to a system he could see was rigged, misguided, and exploitative of people and the earth.

With a recommendation from Gwyneth Paltrow, another of his wife’s childhood friends, Chris secured a job assisting writer/director Tim Robbins and producer/actor Susan Sarandon on the feature film Dead Man Walking. A highlight of finishing the searing death penalty expose was watching Eddie Vedder and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan record intense spiritual laments that anchored the movie’s score. The movie was nominated for 3 Academy Awards, with Tim’s creative and romantic partner Susan Sarandon winning the Oscar for Best Actress.

As the movie wrapped, Chris was asked to stay and manage Tim’s development company Havoc.  While helping Tim make movies, Chris co-founded the arts collective OVO with his 1st wife and some other Racine and LA ex-patriots. OVO first focussed on theater and events, including 3 of Chris’ plays, before the digital video revolution opened the door for movie-making. In the year 2000 OVO seized that moment and purchased the Canon XL1 along with the first edition of Final Cut Pro. They shot The World’s Best Prom that spring in Racine. In 2001 the movie was named Best Documentary at the Wisconsin Film Festival before inspiring a popular prom-mania episode of NPR’s This American Life.

When Susan Sarandon learned about Chris’ experience interpreting financial documents as an analyst she asked him to investigate the finances of her charities of choice, then create a list of 3 challenging questions to pose to the leadership of each. This role grew and he would eventually screen thousands of requests for action for Tim and Susan, helping them leverage their talent and fame for the most worthy charitable partners.

From these experiences Chris created Cause Effect Agency (CEA), a mission-driven business that helps worthy causes and artists work together to elevate their stories. CEA notably managed dozens of celebrity and entertainment company relationships for Heifer International as it grew from a $17 million to a $120 million + organization; and helped HeadCount register hundreds of thousands of voters.

After dozens of charitable social justice collaborations with Chris, Susan Sarandon executive produced Chris’ last completed documentary Deep Run - an award-winning verité portrait of a trans-teen’s life in rural North Carolina. Supported by the Sundance Institute, Deep Run premiered at the magnificent Castro Theater in San Francisco opening night of Pride weekend 2015, the same day (by chance) the Supreme Court made marriage legal for gay people. You can imagine the celebration. Deep Run was then broadcast across the country, streamed on Netflix, and is now streaming on Prime and available for educational use through Women Make Movies. The movie also inspired a semester-long curriculum for high school students around its complex themes; it has been taught in thousands of schools in every state of the nation.