Mentors on the Mic: Your guide to pursuing a career in the Entertainment industry - Linda Mendoza - From page to Comedy TV/Film Director of Scrubs, The Good Place, and more

Linda Mendoza - From page to Comedy TV/Film Director of Scrubs, The Good Place, and more

12/07/20 • 62 min

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Mentors on the Mic: Your guide to pursuing a career in the Entertainment industry

Linda Mendoza is an Emmy nominated, Comedy Director Extraordinaire. Her credits are extensive, directing episodes of Scrubs, Gilmore Girls, The Mindy Project, The Good Place, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Ugly Betty, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Grownish, The Chris Rock Show, Girlfriends, The Bernie Mac Show, The Tick, Liv & Maddie, 30 Rock, and many, many more. She has also been the go to Director for many Comedy specials including Tiffany Haddish (Black Mitzvah and 6 episodes of They Ready), Katherine Ryan, Wanda Sykes, Jamie Fox's Laffapalooza, Caroline Rhea, and various Mark Twain Prize specials (Ellen Degeneres, David Letterman, Bill Murray, Tina Fey, Bill Cosby, Carl Reiner, and George Carlin). She has been nominated for 2 DGA Awards, a Primetime Emmy, a NAACP Award, and an ALMA Award (which she won).

In this episode, we talk about:

• Why she gave up $8k a month to work on SNL

• How Bernie Mac helped her transition into Narrative

• Her new TV Special, Yearly Departed, starring Tiffany Haddish, Sarah Silverman, Rachel Brosnahan, Natasha Leggero (Hosted by Phoebe Robinson) Comedy special features eulogies for the year 2020 with a line-up of all-women comedians discussing everything from casual sex to beige Band-Aids and everything in between that we've "lost" in 2020. - Premiering on Amazon Prime Video on December 30th, 2020

• Her first directing experience

• Her Comedy special 'pet peeves'

• Often being told that she was the first female director that a show has ever had

• Her Mentors, including Bruce Gowers (famous for Bohemian Rhapsody Music video)

• BTS on various Mark Twain Specials and Comedy Specials

• What makes her the best at what she does

• How a Mexican girl from Detroit, who everyone thought was Chinese, made it as a TV director

Resources:

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Mendoza

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0579318/

Yearly Departed: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13321268/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adetroitmendoza/?hl=en

Recommendation: If you like this Episode, check out Episode 1.17 to TV Director Jason Ensler (currently directing HULU's Love, Victor).

Host:

Instagram: @MentorsontheMic @MichelleSimoneMiller

Twitter: @MentorsontheMic @MichelleSimoneM

Mentors on the Mic Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/mentorsonthemic

Website: www.michellesimonemiller.com

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/24mmichelle

In this episode, we talk about:

• Why she gave up $8k a month to work on SNL

• How Bernie Mac helped her transition into Narrative

• Her first directing experience

• Her Comedy special 'pet peeves'

• Often being told that she was the first female director that a show has ever had

• Her Mentors, including Bruce Gowers (famous for Bohemian Rhapsody Music video)

• BTS on various Mark Twain Specials and Comedy Specials

• What makes her the best at what she does

• How a Mexican girl from Detroit, who everyone thought was Chinese, made it as a TV director

Resources:

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Mendoza

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0579318/

Yearly Departed: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13321268/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adetroitmendoza/?hl=en

Recommendation: If you like this Episode, check out Episode 1.17 to TV Director Jason Ensler (currently directing HULU's Love, Victor).

Host:

Instagram: @MentorsontheMic @MichelleSimoneMiller

Twitter: @MentorsontheMic @MichelleSimoneM

Mentors on the Mic Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/mentorsonthemic

Website: www.michellesimonemiller.com

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/24mmichelle

Previous Episode

Scott Feinberg - From Oscars blogger to The Hollywood Reporter Awards Columnist & Host

Scott Feinberg is an Awards Columnist for The Hollywood Reporter. He is also the Host of the incredibly popular podcast "Awards Chatter," where he has interviewed over 350 incredible guests including Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Oprah, and Denzel Washington. He is considered by many as an Oscar Oracle, helping many people (including myself) win their Oscar pools. Having previously created one of the first successful Oscar blogs called "And the Winner is..." he was hired to create something similar out of college for the LA Times.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Some tips and tactics to predicting the Oscar winners every year

• The Jennifer Lawrence episode (one of my favorites) and how the emotionality of that interview developed

• The evolution of Awards Chatter podcast into an expose of the body of work of the guest

• How his love for films and the Awards shows turned into a job

• How Oscar campaigns are similar to elections

• Why there is a human factor into picking winners

• What's strategic about the way he starts his interviews/episodes

• How he started his website prior to The Hollywood Reporter and had studios buy ads

• Sneak peek of a new episode with Sophia Loren

• How he does all of the research for a guest himself and why that's so important to him

• How he profiles anonymous Academy members

Resources:

Feinberg Forecast: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/topic/award-predictions-feinberg-forecast

Awards Chatter podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/awards-chatter/id1039032256

Jennifer Lawrence episode: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/awards-chatter-podcast-jennifer-lawrence-mother-1059777

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scott_feinberg/?hl=en

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-feinberg-a3517012

Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottfeinberg

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8901539/

If you like this Episode, check out Episode 1.19 to listen to E! Correspondent and Host of Rotten Tomatoes Naz Perez.

Host:

Instagram: @MentorsontheMic @MichelleSimoneMiller

Twitter: @MentorsontheMic @MichelleSimoneM

Mentors on the Mic Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/mentorsonthemic

Website: www.michellesimonemiller.com

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/24mmichelle

Next Episode

Get to know your Host Michelle Miller

1 Recommendations

People kept asking for more information on me (thanks guys!). Since I can't interview myself, I asked my good friends of the popular Voices of Misery podcast if I could use some of their interview for a Bonus Episode.

In this episode, we talk about:

• How I started acting and my first outside school gigs on The Rosie O' Donnell show and the Off Broadway play "I Never Saw Another Butterfly"

• Best advice for any actor

• How I booked a Hand Modeling campaign for Samsung

• Dealing with nerves in the audition room

• Being cancelled from TV shows like HBOs "Crashing" and "The Night Of"

• Being cut from Winter’s Tale

• What’s my fallback and how I look at that question

Full Episode of the Voices of Misery interview:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nerd-new-friend-actress-michelle-simone-miller-shoot/id1445643241?i=1000490639287

Host:

Instagram: @MentorsontheMic @MichelleSimoneMiller