Ask a Former Assistant: Dezi Gallegos (Director of Development,Proximity Media)
Director of Development, Proximity Media
Hi Dezi! Thank you so much for joining The Hollywood Assistant! Tell us more about your day-to-day as Director of Development at Proximity Media, the production company behind Judas and the Black Messiah, Creed III, Space Jam: A New Legacy, and more.
Thank you so much for the invite! At Proximity, my job is to take a TV show from conception to the screen. An average day is full of meetings with writers, giving notes on projects we have in development, meeting with agents/managers/other executives to discuss new material, and of course, lots and lots of reading: books, pilots, articles, project drafts, etc. Prior to becoming a Director of Development in TV, I was on both Proximity’s film and TV sides, and that era of the job included a lot of time on set—putting out fires, giving notes on the takes, creative problem-solving, etc. I was on set every day for Judas and the Black Messiah, Space Jam: A New Legacy, and Creed III. As we ramp up from the strike, the job is largely reading and development at present, but one of the things I’ve loved best at Proximity is the opportunity to be involved with a variety of projects at every stage.
How do you approach sourcing or evaluating potential projects for development? What are you looking for?
At Proximity (which was founded by Ryan Coogler, Zinzi Coogler, and Sev Ohanian), our mission is to make event-driven feature films, television, soundtracks, and podcasts that draw people closer to often overlooked subjects. In other words, we want to make projects that will reach audiences on a large scale—be it on the strength of the concept, the IP, the genre, the hook, the quality, or all of the above.
To give an example, our first film, Judas and the Black Messiah, was very consciously not a traditional biopic. We wanted to make a gritty thriller (i.e. a clear genre angle) that could also share the too often overlooked story of Chairman Fred Hampton on a big scale. My job in TV is finding the highest quality shows that can reach the widest audiences while engaging with the world around us in a meaningful way. As for my approach to that, it’s meeting constantly with writers, executives, agents, managers, tracking material, and advocating for the stories I believe in most.
You’ve had one of the quickest rises I’ve seen in the industry. You graduated from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2018 and five years later, you’re a Director of Development at an accomplished production company. What do you attribute your success to?
One of the biggest pieces of industry advice I give is to find people you believe in, and do whatever you can to prove yourself as an asset to them. I met Sev Ohanian when he was an indie film producer and part-time professor at USC. I became his teaching assistant, and I had the goal of proving myself over the course of the semester. The bet paid off and immediately after graduating, Sev and his wife/producing partner, Natalie Qasabian, advocated for me to get a work visa for Winnipeg, Canada to assist them on the Lionsgate-Hulu thriller, Run. At the same time, Ryan, Zinzi, and Sev had just founded Proximity, and I’d started working with them in that capacity as well. I’d attribute a lot of my journey over the last few years to doing the job you’ll be promoted to even before receiving that promotion (i.e. I was doing notes documents on each of our projects well before I was an executive), being transparent about your goals, and being relentlessly passionate.
Notably, you’ve worn many hats at Proximity. You started out as an assistant to one of the co-founders in 2019 before rising to a Creative Executive role in 2021, and then you stepped into your latest role in March. Would you advise that early career professionals stick with the same company? Do you see benefits to company “hopping”?
Hopefully it won’t be too much of a cop-out to say everyone has their own path, and I’d hate to be prescriptive about any one strategy. At Proximity, I’ve felt surrounded by collaborators who I believed in and who have believed in me. They’ve rewarded hard work, allowed me to grow and take on progressively more responsibility, and upward mobility was promised and then delivered. That isn’t the case at every company, and sometimes the absence of growth is more than enough reason to go. My advice is: be brutally honest about your assessment of your current situation. If you’re truly putting in the work and working to prove yourself and there’s still no promise of growth, it may be time to reassess. I believe the best boss-employee relationships are symbiotic: I’ll work as hard as I can for you, and you’ll advocate for me, and therefore, I’ll work even harder for you. In the best situations, the chain reaction works in the interest of both you and your employer.
I’m inspired by your ability to take calculated risks. Originally from northern California, you don’t hail from entertainment connections⸺yet you chose to pursue the uncertain path anyway. And in your current position, you’re tasked with essentially making bets on what you believe will be successful. The risk of yours I’m most impressed by: you chose to take a gap year before attending USC to perform your original one-man show, God Fights the Plague. Where do you find the courage to take risks? Do you think fearlessness is a requirement in entertainment?
I’m riddled with fear. But I do feel confident in my sense of character and story as well as my work ethic. I also have a circle of trusted friends around me who I consistently lean on for feedback and to talk through big decisions. That, in combination with genuinely loving the projects I’ve worked on, has empowered me to take risks.
God Fights the Plague (I cringe now at the title) was a personal journey about coming from a secular background and searching for something to believe in. I loved making it. Creative risk-taking is often less of a financial calculation and more emotional; if I truly care about a story, I’m going to operate under the assumption that I’m not the only person in the world that will. There’s a quote from Ratatouille, “There are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.”
We touched upon it with God Fights the Plague, but we obviously can’t go through this interview without addressing your extensive theater background. You’ve written, produced, directed, and performed in a multitude of productions across northern California. What impact has theater had on your life and career?
It’s been tremendous. I still love theater, I go to as many plays as I can in LA. As a creator/executive, perhaps the biggest thing I took away from my theater background was the opportunity to study how to rework a story for an audience. In theater, you get immediate emotive feedback from an audience on what’s working and what’s not—what’s getting a laugh, is the emotion landing in the room?, etc. My years in theater have informed my sense of character, nuance, dialogue, and community—there are few things as electrifying as getting together in a room with trusted collaborators, carrying the energy of “let’s put on a show.”
How did you ultimately make the pivot from theater to entertainment? Was this an organic pivot or were there challenges?
I took a gap year between high school and college where I was able to teach theater by day, and direct/write/produce professional theater by night, and I loved it. Always, though, I dreamed of making movies and television—telling stories that could play all around the world, in movie theaters and living rooms.After my gap year, I started at USC film school and completely pivoted to film. While I knew there would be challenges, I also believed that because I had a sense of story and character, I inherently knew how to make movies. My earliest shorts at USC showed me (and everyone) I did not. For the first half of undergrad, I felt like I was playing catch up—both with those who had grown up around the industry and with those who had shot short films as kids instead of getting friends together to put on a play. But ultimately, after a lot of failure and a few existential crises, I started to find my voice as a filmmaker. The mediums are not one-to-one. My earliest shorts were heavily overwritten, and what might have been powerful onstage felt like melodrama on screen. But bridging that divide has made me a stronger producer and creator.
As previously mentioned, as a Creative Executive, you used to work across both TV and Film. Now, as Director of Development, you specialize in TV. What has been your experience working across both genres? Do early career professionals have to “choose”?
Telling great stories has always been the biggest motivator for me, and that’s true across mediums: film, TV, theater—I love them all. If you have a strong preference for any one medium, don’t wait: make your goals clear early. Find the people who are making things you feel passionate about, then try to find ways you can be of service.
For me, I’m deeply grateful I’ve had the chance at Proximity to become familiar with both worlds. I feel particularly well-versed in film, having seen four studio feature films through development, production, post, and release. When Proximity’s TV division began, I started working in TV as well as features. As much as I’ve loved working in both worlds, having the opportunity to now focus on TV and watching projects I care about move forward from conception toward production has been a true joy.
Final question! Thinking back to your days as an assistant to the Proximity co-founder, and as an assistant to the producers of Run (Lionsgate), what skills still serve you today?
Intense organization. Understanding that so much of this industry is politics and how you work with other assistants matters just as much as how you work with your superiors. Learning how to prioritize. Learning how to candidly and clearly give notes. And finally, understanding that one of the liabilities for creative, passionate people in this industry is there is no limit to the amount you can give: the industry will take. There will always be more scripts to read, more people to meet, more outside-the-box project ideas that can prove your mettle to your employers and yourself… The risk is that if you offer this industry your life, it’ll take it. But balance is a worthwhile goal. You can love this industry without losing yourself—it just takes remembering that no matter how much you love your career, it will only ever be one part of you. It’s important to find other things that you love.
