EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW:
VLAS AND CHARLEY PARLAPANIDES
Collaborating on creative projects for fourteen years now as a brother-sister team ourselves, we absolutely love connecting with other creative sibling teams, hearing their stories, and learning from them. When the opportunity arose to speak with the Parlapanides brothers--Vlas and Charley--we jumped at the chance. As the co-heads of Asia Minor Pictures, they have written, produced, and acted their way to success together. A year ago, we shared their most recent smash, Blood of Zeus, with you in Volume 6 of Greece Is the Word; if you haven't checked it out yet… stop sleeping.
GREECE IS THE WORD: Which Greeks--if any, living or deceased--have impacted your development as a professional and as a human?
VLAS PARLAPANIDES: Elder Paisios. He believed that people should be humble. It’s a simple concept, but it’s not easy to live with humility. I try. I often fail. So, I try again and again. Trying to live with humility helps me to always keep learning. And it also helps me grow spiritually, professionally and psychologically. In addition, it helps me be grateful for all the blessings I have in my life. Elder Paisios also believed that it’s very important to always be positive. He believed that our thoughts govern our lives. I believe there’s truth to that. Not to sound cliché, but we cannot control what happens to us in life; we can control how things affect us, though, and that’s especially true when it comes to adversity. We can either come out stronger when we’re faced with hardships or they can debilitate us, leaving us crippled. Every hardship is an opportunity to grow, not just spiritually but in all facets of our life.
CHARLEY PARLAPANIDES: I love the choice of Saint Paisios. There’s a saying of his we often reference. He said no criticism should ever bother you. Either it’s true and you learn from it or it’s false and you shouldn’t care. As human beings that’s not always easy to do, but it’s great advice nonetheless. That said, I would love to speak with Aristotle. In Poetics he tackles all of the fundamental building blocks of modern drama. I would love to have a conversation with him, although Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure has kind of ruined that for me. Intellectually, it would be amazing, but in my mind’s eye all I can picture is the Bill and Ted’s version of Socrates quoting soap operas… so maybe I’ll go with Saint Paisios, too.
Who are you named after, if anyone?
VLAS: I’m named after my father. My full name is Vlasis Wally Parlapanides. Vlasis stems from the ancient Greek word, Vlasios, which means to expand and to flourish. “Parlapan” means to talk. “Ides” means son of. So, I’m "son of talker." And that was certainly true. My father was a talker, to say the least. He was also very articulate and a thoughtful speaker. It’s interesting that the “son of talker” is now a storyteller by profession. Regarding Wally, I still don’t know what my parents were thinking or what my grandparents were thinking when they named my father that. It’s a family mystery.
CHARLEY: I was named after our grandmother, our yiayia Kiriaki. She was our mother’s mother and would come from Greece to visit us. We would have to translate TV shows for her, like Little House on the Prairie, which made some indelible memories. Plus, it helped our Greek. But more importantly, she was the epitome of a Greek grandmother. She loved us with all her being and would do anything for us. I’m also grateful for that name because when I think of her, I always think of our family’s Asia Minor roots. Our pro-yiayia Sophia was pregnant with Yiayia Kiriaki, when the Turks burned Smyrna in 1922. Our grandmother was there, literally in utero. The stories our pro-yiayia Sophia told us were horrifying. A Turkish officer shot her husband in the head, leaving her a pregnant widow at the age of nineteen. Only through the grace of God did she make it down to the harbor and escape.
Where did you grow up, and what was that like?
VLAS: I grew up in Seaside Park, New Jersey, and it was amazing. My siblings and I always say that we had the best upbringing kids could possibly have. And a big part of that was growing up in a small town, on the Jersey Shore, that had family values and yet was not narrowminded in any way.
CHARLEY: Yeah, Seaside Park was an amazing place to grow up. In fact, there are times I want to move back! But what makes Seaside Park truly unique is it that during the winter fewer than a thousand people live there. It has that small-town-Americana charm; yet in the summer the town and boardwalk can fill with over thirty to fifty thousand visitors during a busy weekend. You get the excitement of summer and the quiet of winter, all in a single calendar year. Plus, New York City is an hour and a half away via the bus. I love and miss Seaside all the time!
What do you think of when you think about your Greek background? What comes to mind?
VLAS: I think of my parents and how hard they worked for their family. They truly embraced the immigrant work ethic. I also think about all the sacrifices they made and how they imbued in all of us a love for learning. They passed along to us the single best gift a parent can give to a child: faith. Our Greek Orthodox faith has helped us shape our moral cores. In the end, we are all defined by our moral core, not our careers, money, or material things. And they taught us to be proud of our Greek heritage, which we most certainly are. Very proud.
CHARLEY: Totally agree. We are so blessed to be Greek. Our cultural inheritance is an abundance of riches. It’s almost embarrassing. Not only do you get this incredibly rich cultural history, filled with all of the achievements and philosophy of the ancients, but you get the Byzantine history, and also the gifts of the Greek Orthodox tradition. Plus, you couple all of that with the ideal of philotimo, which has always been an integral part of Greek culture. This a truly uniquely combination. We wouldn’t be who we are if we weren’t Greek. And our parents did an incredible job of imbuing that in us.
Who are three of your heroes/heroines?
VLAS: My parents are my heroes.
CHARLEY: I agree, our parents sacrificed everything for us. They truly are our heroes. We knew their happiness was our happiness. Their comfort came from us being comforted. We also knew that they would do anything for us. And as George R.R. Martin says, “Words are wind.” It wasn’t what they said, it was what they did. They walked the walk, constantly working two and three jobs to provide for us. While we didn’t have much growing up, we always had their support. And that was everything. That’s all that matters. We couldn’t have asked for better parents or role models. We would have never made it without their unselfish example. We learned what hard work, sacrifice, and unconditional love are from them.
What initially drew you to writing and film?
VLAS: I had an epiphany my senior year in college where I just knew I had to pursue a creative endeavor.
CHARLEY: Yeah, we knew we wanted to be involved in the business one way or another. Truthfully, of all the disciplines in our business, writing is the only meritocracy. It doesn’t matter where you went to school or who you know. If you have something commercial, that people like and think they can profit from, they’ll buy it. Plus, it’s also the only discipline where you don’t need anyone’s permission. If you are willing to put in the time and hard work, all you need is a pencil and a piece of paper. In all of the other fields in our business, someone else needs to hire you or give you a shot. We didn’t know anyone in the business and realized writing was one of the ways we could get our foot in the door.
How do you deal with failure? What have you learned from it?
VLAS: Failure is part of the business. You have no choice but to deal with it. In fact, most writers experience far more failure than success. The key is to pick yourself up when you’re knocked down and try to do two things after that. One, learn from it; and two, find a way not to let it diminish your enthusiasm. Don’t dwell on it. Move on. Our faith helps us with that. For other writers, it’s yoga or working out (or all three!). When we first moved to L.A., it seemed like 99% of what we were experiencing was failure. It was disheartening, but then I read an interview Arthur Miller had given. Someone asked him how he wrote Death of a Salesman. Arthur said that was easy. He said Death of a Salesman was about failure and 98% of what he had experienced in his life up until that point was failure. So, when the time came to write about it, he knew he could. I told Charley, “Hey, we might be failing 99% of the time, but that’s only 1% more than the great Arthur Miller. We’re not doing that bad after all!” Everything is how you perceive it and, as I already mentioned, we get to choose how things affect us.
CHARLEY: I totally agree with Vlas. If you can’t deal with failure then you can’t be in this business. It’s rife with failure and constant rejection. In fact, that’s the norm. The wins are few and far between. It’s kind of like baseball, in that way. If you get a hit three out of every ten at-bats, you end up in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Well, this business is like that. The rejections will greatly exceed the wins. You have to just accept that and understand that the rejection can be both objective and subjective. The key is to be able to discern between the two. Learn from the objective rejection. Be humble, listen, and grow from that criticism and failure. That said, you have to discard the other rejections. You can’t let them crush your enthusiasm and passion, because if they do, the weight of them will crush you. They will stifle your growth. And the hard truth is, the more you do this, the stronger your writer muscles become. Which brings me to a great bit of advice an older writer once told us. He said there were far more talented writers than him who never made it, while there were also far less talented writers who were way more successful. The key is staying in the game long enough so that when your turn comes you’re ready to make the most of it.
Of what are you most proud?
VLAS: I’m most proud of my children.
CHARLEY: Agreed. I’m most proud of my marriage and our daughter.
For what are you grateful?
VLAS: I’m grateful for many, many things. It would take too long to share them all...!
CHARLEY: Totally agree. We are so blessed. I thank God every day, throughout the day. I can’t count how many times I say, “Doxa to Theo” each day. We are so blessed, in every way imaginable. I mean that sincerely. I am grateful for our wonderful upbringing, for being born Greek, to have grown up where we did. We are blessed to have met our wives and to have families of our own. And now we get paid to sit in a room and make stuff up. Everyone should be so lucky. We are truly blessed.
What does the world need now?
VLAS: More love, forgiveness, and understanding.
CHARLEY: Totally agree. We need more love and understanding. We also need less technology, social media, and cable news. That would be a good start. And more sincere human connections. Most of all, we need more truth. Not subjective truth. Not “my truth.” But real truth. The kind you can’t deny. Plus, a trip to Greece would be nice. After the last eighteen months, I think the whole world has earned one!
Photo Credit: Konstantinos Livadas
1.
BRILLIANT AD CAMPAIGN OR HUGE MISTAKE?
We don’t know, but after seeing this picture we’ll never forget the Cyprus potato for as long as we live.
2.
MARIA HAD A LITTLE (VEGAN) LAMB
At the popular Greek chain, Souvla.
3.
TWO THINGS GREEKS LOVE
Talking and Ouzo. And now you can get them both in a podcast called Ouzo Talk.
4.
STYROFOAM CUPS FOR COFFEE HOUR, SOPHIA? OXI. USING LOTS OF EXPENSIVE AND ENVIRONMENTALLY UNFRIENDLY ELECTRICITY TO POWER THE DESALINATION PLANT, ELENI? OXI.
This edition’s Bravo Sou Awards go to the Greek Orthodox Church for their “Greening the Parish” video series (you might remember this from Volume 20 of Greece Is the Word) and to the scientists who have come up with sustainable, off-grid desalination systems for islands like Ikaria.
5.
DROPPING BOOTS OVER THE GREEK BORDER, BENITO? OXI!
In two days, we will celebrate the 81st anniversary of the legendary moment Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas said “OXI” to Benito Mussolini’s ultimatum at 3am on 28th October 1940. We bow down to every single Greek who backed up that "OXI" with courageous action.
PSA: We are reading more and more about children ending up in ICU with COVID-19. Please, for the love of everything good in the world, MASK UP INDOORS, even if you are fully vaccinated. You do not know what you may be carrying or how susceptible someone else’s immune system may be to whatever you might possibly transmit. #maskupforothers#itsnotaboutyou #weareallinthistogether Whether you wear one of ours or not, be safe and considerate to those around you and keep your mouth and nose covered when you’re indoors with others. #maskupforothers #itsnotaboutyou #weareallinthistogether
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Opa!
Peter and the Greece Is the Word Crew