Childhood dreams usually have more to do with odd imagery and delusions of grandeur than career-oriented success. But on rare occasions, the whimsical visions of youth become the fruitful reality of adulthood.
Richard Mazda grew up in England wanting to make it in America. When he was five years old, his grandmother asked him what he was going to be when he grew up – Mazda responded, “a pop star or a tycoon.”
“As a teen it was a tossup between music and acting,” said Mazda, who now runs The Secret Theatre in LIC. “I finally decided to get into music because I thought it would get me more girls.”
And the girls came rolling in. Mazda scored his first record deal in his early 20s, eventually catching the ear of The Police producer Miles Copeland.
“He saw something in me and flew me out to L.A.,” he said. “There, I became a record producer.”
As the in-house producer of IRS Records, Mazda worked with such seminal punk and new wave acts as The Fall, Wall of Voodoo and The Fleshtones.
He made the transition from punk to funk, writing “How Long,” a billboard R&B No. 1 hit for Ultra Nate – which won him a prestigious American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) award.
But soon the mid-90s rolled around and Mazda knew it was time to get out of the music industry. He could see the writing on the wall, as the industry started to become like a factory – manufacturing pop stars from basically nothing. He saw that the level of success that some people were having went way beyond their talent. And he wanted out.
By chance, his daughter was invited to be an extra on the set of a movie. Mazda thought it sounded like a fine day out, so he went along with her. While on the set, he started to think about all that he could have done as an actor. He immediately enrolled in acting school.
Mazda scored some acting jobs – mostly bit parts playing villains, gangsters, thieves and prison guards. It wasn’t enough. Mazda wanted to make something of himself, but mostly, he wanted to get back to America. He needed a break and eventually, he got one.
“I found out the screenwriter of ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ [Richard Curtis] wanted to meet me. He was looking for someone for a film he was working on called ‘Love, Actually.’ He needed someone who knew their way around a recording studio,” he said. “We ended up meeting for two hours and I got the part of a record producer.”
This opened the door for movie roles in Hollywood blockbusters, including “Batman Begins,” “Saving Private Ryan” and the first “Harry Potter” movie.
Within three months of living in Queens, Mazda decided to found an acting company, the Queens Players, which is still going strong. With this acting company, he wanted to give back and repay the acting world for all of the opportunities that others had given him. He also wanted to do it for his love of New Yorkers in general.
“New York artists possess a bravery and courage stylistically linked to the soul of the city. This is a courageous town and that influence seeps into the pores of the armies of people who come here to study,” he said. “I wanted to provide an opportunity for these people.”
Mazda also founded The Secret Theatre in September, 2007.
Recently Mazda decided to bring artists of all different genres together for the LIC Arts Open, which he founded with Karen Dimit. This large-scale street fair/art fest will bring together art, music, comedy and everything in between for an eight-day festival, May 14 to 22. The festival will be held in various locations around the neighborhood and will feature a myriad of cultural activities and events, many of them free.
For more information, visit www.licartsopen.com. Any artists looking to participate should email Mazda at Richard@licartsopen.org.
