Leo Gabriel Raised $50K, Went Union and Built His Own Break With 'Running Through the Void'

Leo Gabriel graduated from NYU Tisch half a year early with no plan and no patience for waiting by the phone. So the New York actor and filmmaker raised $50,000 on his own and built himself a lead role.

The result is "Running Through the Void," in which he plays an anxious young man whose panic attacks start throwing him through time. Gabriel shot it under a SAG-AFTRA agreement on purpose so that he could earn his union membership on his own production.

"When you make your own things, you take back the power other people can have over your career," Gabriel says.

Gabriel produced the short through his company Super Slayer. Pretty Fast founder Timothy Fornara, showrunner of truTV's "Top Secret Videos," and Imagine Entertainment producer Kara Welker ("The Whitest Kids U'Know") are executive producers, and ARRI Volker Bahnmann Award winner Matt Liang shot the film.

Costarring are online comedy stars Troy Bond, a comedian, comedy creator and actor who was a 2023 Just for Laughs New Faces of Comedy pick, and Audrey Trullinger, an actor and comedy creator whose credits include Hulu's "Prom Dates" and "Planet of the Bass." Rounding out the cast are Zach Shaffer and rising actor and creator Victoria Papadopoulos. Shaffer appeared in "Oh, Canada" with Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi and on Broadway in the Roundabout revival of "The Man Who Came to Dinner," and he has performed at Joe's Pub with artists including Bridget Everett.

A Second City Conservatory grad mentored in sketch writing by two time Emmy winning SNL writer Emily Spivey, Gabriel wrote a full episode on his own at 18 for a project from "The Boondocks" producer Carl Jones. Projects he wrote and directed have since been accepted into festivals including the New York Comedy Film Festival and the Hollywood Independent Filmmaker Awards and Festival. He worked as a PA on Lin-Manuel Miranda's Freestyle Love Supreme on Broadway and on tour, later teaching and performing alongside company members including Wayne Brady and Chris Jackson, and as a performer he does more than 150 impressions and more than 22 accents and dialects.

Gabriel spoke about how he financed the short and why he told a story about anxiety through a superhero lens.

What are you working on right now, and how did it start?

The inspiration came when I got out of a year long "situationship" and, like any self respecting American, proceeded to go speed run a whole slew of hookup debauchery instead of sitting with my feelings. I was sad and anxious, graduating drama school half a year early with no barista skills or plan, and too many fucking opinions. The whole time I was at school, I watched people go down the audition rabbit hole, waiting on a call that somebody else decides to make. I get it, it's the job. I just knew I'd lose my mind doing it. I wanted to make something that was actually mine, and the only thing I had was the mess I was in. So when life gives you lemons, you raise money to make a dark comedy sci fi about your dating experience.

I just finished creating a calling card short film called Running Through the Void, which I wrote, directed, led, and produced. It follows an anxious young man (me) who keeps sabotaging his own love life and friendships, being too much for everyone around him, joking 24/7 as a way of constant emotional deflection. But when anxiety about one particular ghosting sends him spiraling, he discovers his panic attacks can throw him through time. As he is forced to relive his past relationships, he starts to realize something dark has been following him through every one of them. With the time jumps growing more violent, he's pulled toward The Void, a surreal cosmic realm between space and time, where something has been waiting for him. It's a trippy, dark and comedic deep dive into mental health, and the painful truth that sometimes the only way to move forward is to accept who you really are.

What's been the hardest or most unexpected part so far?

Raising money is always difficult, and so is figuring out the strategy for how you do it. I was very lucky that I was able to raise $50,000 to make this. Then the budgeting becomes its own challenge. You think you're spending $40,000 and suddenly it's $45,000, and there's always more that gets added on.

Then, like a psycho, I made it SAG too. I wanted this movie to open doors for me as an actor and as somebody who makes his own stuff, so I made it under a SAG agreement on purpose. That way I could earn my SAG membership and start creating opportunities for myself rather than waiting years to land my first union role. A lot of nights that felt like the dumbest decision I've ever made, and a few nights it felt like the only one.

The other hard part was the swing I was going for. I studied what does well at festivals, and so much of it is art house. But my lens, the way I view the world, is through comic books, sci fi, fantasy, superheroes and comedy, and critics don't give that stuff the love it deserves even though it's art and the people who make it work ridiculously hard. So I wanted to take a very personal experience and flip it on its head. Here's a story about anxiety, but told through a lens it hasn't really been told through before. Honestly, I wanted to trick people into watching it. I wanted them turning it on and thinking, oh, this is very A24, and by the time all the sci fi stuff starts happening and they're in another dimension, it's too late, they're in too deep. I wanted people who never would have put on a sci fi or time travel film to suddenly be invested. When my producer got handed the script, he read the first couple of pages and went, oh no, not again, another young twenty something in New York romance story. Then he hit page five, there's a time jump, the guy time travels, and he went, what the hell, this is crazy. It comes out of nowhere, and that's when he was in.

What's the thread that runs through everything you make?

I think it's a sense of otherness. I grew up very nerdy and I wasn't always the most popular kid, partly because I didn't know how to shut up. I still don't, which turns out to be great for acting.

So a lot of what I make is about being othered and then finding belonging within yourself. Finding it in a community is great, but I think that only does so much. When you love yourself and start to address your own behaviors and how you show up in the world, that's when you really start to make change.

That's why I love stories with superpowers so much, because there's always the question of what the power represents. I took the struggles I've been having and tried to portray them in a cinematic way that works for the story, so my character ends up battling the physical manifestation of his own anxiety, self sabotage and negative self talk in The Void, a surreal realm between space and time. Somebody once told me I could make bank if I just did straight drama, pure romance stuff about a guy looking back at his past relationships. I told them yeah, I probably could, but my brain just doesn't work like that. I view the world through a superhero lens.

What makes someone great to create with?

Number one, honestly, is someone you can just mess around with and go to uncomfortable places with. Especially with comedy, you need someone who isn't afraid of that. Communication is huge too, and it goes way past the writing room. If you can't answer a text or you're hard to get a hold of, it gets very difficult.

You also need someone who's honest and won't blow smoke up your ass. One of the worst things that can happen to you as a creative is having somebody tell you something is fantastic when it's actually garbage. And it's fine when it is, because that's part of the process and it's how we get better. I want someone who cares about you enough to risk hurting your feelings.

The other thing is an innovator, someone who isn't waiting for anybody to hand them an opportunity and just goes and makes their own. If something comes of it, great, and if nothing does, that's okay too. I've made projects I poured thousands of dollars into that only got 300 views on YouTube, then 6 months later got into a festival. It's never a loss or a waste, it's simply just growth. It's all a learning opportunity for me. When someone shares that mindset, trusts their gut, doesn't get caught up in what other people might say or whether a joke goes too far, and has your back, you have a solid partnership.

How do you usually find the people you work with?

Honest to God, everywhere. A lot of the time it's been social media, where I'll see sketches people make or stand up comics doing their thing, or actors. That's really been it. I hit up the people who are making stuff and the same goes both ways. Every job I've ever gotten, as an actor or a director, has come from someone seeing a video I made.

But my biggest philosophy with networking my whole life has simply been to "just ask." I got Troy because I went to a show of his where he was doing a meet and greet with like 300 people. I had 30 seconds, I elevator pitched him, and he liked it enough that I was able to reach out to his manager. With Audrey, I literally just found her work email and emailed her the thing, and she wanted to do it. I'd been a fan of their comedy for years, and improv is a big part of how I work. You truly never know if you don't ask. That's how it's gone with pretty much every actor I've worked with. If people like the project, they want to do it.

It's honestly about making sure they have a passion for it and are excited about it. We had a ridiculously small budget, $50,000 is nothing for a film, so if somebody bigger is willing to do it for that little, it's because they believe in it. The people who believe in the project are the ones who go the extra mile on the day, who hype it up and cheerlead for you, because they actually care. You can get the biggest star in the world, but if they don't give a shit, it shows, and that's not worth the money. Obsession wouldn't be Obsession without Inde Navarrette. She wasn't a massive star at the time, but she was passionate about that film, and it became one of the biggest movies in years.

The other side of "just ask" has simply been to pick their brain. If there's someone way bigger than you, you'd be shocked how willing people are to sit down and grab a coffee, because they've been there and they know what it's like, and there's something really nice about that. Don't walk in going "hey, look at my project." If the conversation's going well, you'll probably end up showing it anyway. But if there's someone whose work you love and you get the chance to meet them, pitch them. What's the harm? Worst case you don't get that person and you find someone else who loves the project. Best case you land someone with more eyeballs than you who loves it too, and then you're golden, and you've got a collaborator for the rest of your life.