Hometown to Hollywood

She always knew what she wanted to do — in one capacity or another.

When she was a child, (Danielle) Helena Hawkes wrote a play based off the Candyland board game. Today, the 2012 Belen High School graduate, is preparing to direct and produce her first short film, “Thick Skin,” which she also wrote.

Hawkes is one of five filmmakers, who were selected from thousands who applied, to be in the inaugural class of Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions, the Toronto International Film Festival and Universal Filmed Entertainment Group’s “No Drama” initiative. Each filmmaker receives a $50,000 grant from TIFF to produce their projects during the one-year program.

“I was so excited,” Hawkes remembers when learning she was selected for the program. “It was the culmination of everything I had worked for.”

Hawkes will begin filming her movie in late March or early April in Los Angeles, Calif.

“It is about an Hispanic New Mexico woman, who is desperate to cut weight and, in doing so, unveils what may or may not be actually eating her up inside,” she explained.

Since learning she was one of the five filmmakers selected, Hawkes has been hard at work with Peele on the script and preparing for what lies ahead.

“We had five days at Universal — 9 in the morning until 9 at night — doing round tables with filmmakers, executives, agents,” she said. “We did press and interviews, and they had a big industry party for us, and the president of Universal was there, and Jordon introduced us to everyone. That was one of the best nights of my life.”

While it’s going to be a lot of work, Hawkes is excited about the future of “Thick Skin” and is looking forward to creating her vision.

“Jordon Peele is the ultimate horror guy. He’s very kind and knowledgeable, and is very smart,” she said. “I feel so honored to learn from him.”

Hawkes and the other filmmakers will deliver their movies to TIFF at the end of August, and will then be shown at the film festival in September, where there will be an industry screening.

“MonkeyPaw and Universal will then go into their corners and will see if the movies could be a feature,” he said. “They could pick all of us. If they don’t pick my movie, I still retain the rights to the short and could sell it to another studio.”

Hawkes says she is nervous but definitely ready because it’s been what she’s been working for her whole life.

The journey to this point in her career began when Hawkes was in elementary school in Los Lunas. She remembers her first casting call at Belen City Hall for a sci-fi movie.

“I remember pleading with my mom to take me,” she said. “I was in the fifth grade and on my first film set. It was then that I knew this is what I wanted to do — I didn’t know in what capacity yet.

“My mom has always had a fascination with film; my dad as well,” she said of her parents, Danny and MaryAlice Hawkes.

That first shoot was in Santa Fe in the middle of the night. Both Helena and MaryAlice were chosen to run from a fake alien into a school bus.

“The bus was hooked up to hydraulics as if the alien was shaking the bus,” Hawkes says. “We had to react to it. It was really silly and a ton of fun.”

After that, it was clear to Hawkes that she would one day move to Hollywood and pursue a career in film. At first, she wanted to be an actor, going to every audition she could and taking acting classes to hone her skills.

After a year of being home-schooled and pursuing her acting goals, Hawkes started her freshman year at Belen High School.

“I initially wanted to be an actor. I never ended up doing drama because I spread myself so thin in high school,” Hawkes said. “I danced for a long time at Renée Antoinette’s School of Dance. I did cheer. I was student body vice president. I did the year book. It’s my biggest regret that I didn’t do the student drama program.”

During her teenage years, Hawkes went to audition after audition. She was cast a lot as an extra, but became distraught with the audition process.

“I was still trying to get to know myself, and trying to sell myself in the first 10 seconds and try and land an audition was very difficult for me,” she said. “It’s a lot of rejection as well, so I didn’t feel I was fully equipped of taking it all on but I knew I wanted to be involved in the film industry in some way.”

After high school, Hawkes stepped away some from the film industry to focus on her education. She enrolled at UNM in Albuquerque to study strategic and corporate communications, which is marketing.

She figured the best thing she could do was pursue the more creative side of the business. If she wasn’t going to act, she thought of the next feasible, more accessible field.

During her freshman year of college, she got called as a stand in for Sarah Silverman in Seth McFarland’s movie, “A Million Ways to Die in the West.” Hawkes was amazed with McFarland, saying she was infatuated to see him direct.

“That’s when I think I realized what I wanted to do,” she said.

While at UNM, Hawkes begin taking film classes with the university’s Interdisciplinary Film and Digital Media Program. She remembers a significant day when walking by Zimmerman Library. She was on the phone with her mom, and they were talking about her future.

“‘What am I doing? Why am I not pursuing this?’ I told her I was going to either change my major or add a major.

“I told her that I just needed to pursue film.”

With nothing to lose and everything to gain, Hawkes decided she needed to move where movies are made — Hollywood. With the encouragement and support from her family, Hawkes applied and was accepted into Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts. She was also offered a job at a marketing firm in California as well.

The excitement of starting a new life didn’t fall short on her father, a former police officer and magistrate. After taking her last final at UNM, Hawkes returned home to pack, but her father said, “Let’s just leave now.”

“I packed a suitcase and they said they’ll bring everything to LA later,” Hawkes said. “It was crazy but so exciting.”

While in college, Hawkes learned a lot, worked a lot and made a lot of important connections.

“I was fortunate to meet my mentor (at Chapman) — (the late) Harry Ufland, who discovered Martin Scorsese in the 1970s, and was a CAA agent for years. He was known for his noble persona,” Hawkes said of Ufland. “He was quite a softy, but he was just the most amazing creative guide. He would Jedi mind trick us to do our best work. He took us to the major agencies, and we would all do these round table presentations about who we want to be in the industry.”

Hawkes says Ufland taught her that in an audition, it was about selling yourself in the first 10 seconds. She said he taught her how to hone that, and what to zero in on when interviewing at an agency.

As her eduction continued, she began interning at different agencies and realized she wanted to be a producer. She came across an incubator, Condé Nast Entertainment and Indigenous Media. They were looking for filmmakers to create five shorts.

Helena and some other fellow filmmakers jumped at the chance and returned to New Mexico the summer of her senior year in college to produce their vision.

“It was about this community where people would get into a lottery to go to space,” she said. “At the time, I thought producing was the best thing for me to do because it was all encompassing and I could handle it. It’s very hard to describe what a producer does.:

Hawkes said there are many types and levels of producers. An executive producer has either funded the film or has a very heavy hand in the creation of a film. An on-the-ground producer is producing every day — they’re managing the set.

A line producer takes care of everyone below the line, meaning the grips, gaffers, production assistants — everyone who is not the writers, actors, directors and producers.

Hawkes said while she learned a lot from the project, it almost broke her because she was both the line and creative producer, because there wasn’t a ton of support.

When she returned home to Los Angeles, Hawkes was lucky enough that one of her friends turned down an internship with Jason Blum at Blumhouse Production. She decided that her friend’s decision to turn down the job was a sign.

“In my mind, it’s a Catch 22 because you need production company experience to get production company experience. I just said yes,” she said. “To this day, I live by this philosophy: Say yes until you earn the right to say no.”

The internship didn’t start out as expected. She said the interns would get emails, asking if anyone could babysit for Blum.

“I raised my hand and said I would do it,” Hawkes said. “That helped me build a rapport with Jason and his wife, and so I started babysitting. I was doing all this while producing the short here.”

While she wanted to stay at Blumhouse, she spent her second semester internship with Cross Creek Pictures, and then another at The Weinstein Company for four months.

“I went to Jason Blum and told him where I was working, and he was like, ‘Oh no, I have something for you.’

“I had to go to the Weinstein Company and tell them I couldn’t work for them, and it was surprising because they were very supportive and told me to go. I think they knew they were on a sinking ship.”

According to Hawkes, Blum had worked for Weinstein for years in the 1990s, and saw a lot of what was going on.

“When I told him I was going to work there, he stepped in and made a position for me,” she said. “It wasn’t glamorous by any means. I worked as a travel nanny and a personal assistant to him, which he had never had before. There was a caveat — within a year I would be his full-time executive assistant at the office. It was only six months later that I transitioned to that position.”

Working and traveling with Blum was an education all on its own. He would ask her to perform tasks that would test Hawkes, but in the end, she learned how to be resourceful, a trait that she uses in her career.

During that time, she was able to meet a lot of interesting and influential people, such as Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman and more.

“There are these moments in history that I was able to peak through,” Hawkes said. “It was such a great primer in culture and film and technology. I feel so grateful for that first year and a half, because it introduced me to all the players, not only in Hollywood, but adjacent industries as well.”

During her time with Blumhouse, she was also able to meet Leigh Whannell, a celebrated director and producer of several critically-acclaimed horror movies. As it turned out, Hawkes was hired as Whannell’s personal assistant. Her first day was at the premier of his movie, “The Invisible Man,” in 2020.

When Whannell decided to take a short hiatus, Hawkes decided to return to New Mexico for a month. Unfortunately, the COVID pandemic changed her and everyone else’s plans.

“It was a blessing in disguise. I was here for about a year, working remotely,” she said. “I was working on different projects.”

Leigh Whannell and Blumhouse began working together, and from that collaboration came “Wolf Man,” which is actually coming to theaters this weekend.

“They pitched it to Leigh and he said it was great, but said he said he didn’t direct anything he didn’t write,” she said. “They said, ‘What if you write it?’ He pitched his take and the studio loved it.”

Whannell’s new version of “Wolf Man” was scarier that an earlier version, and as they finished the script, they were able to cast the actors — Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner.

The small town girl who grew up in Bosque was on her way to the big leagues. She traveled across the world and spent six months last year in New Zealand, where they shot the film.

“It was amazing, insane — all of the adjectives. It was quite a roller-coaster but it was absolutely the experience I had set out for. It was the perfect front row seat to directing. I was a director’s assistant.

“Leigh is a great mentor and person; he gives you that creative freedom. He asks you what you would do in a certain scenario, and he might not always go with what you say, but he will take it into consideration.”

It was while she was in New Zealand — and sick with COVID — that Hawkes came across the advertisement for the initiative. Not thinking she would ever be selected, she decided to send in what she could come up with in the two weeks until the deadline.

“I still can’t believe it to this day,” she said. “I am very much pinching myself. It was like every step I had going through in my journey — from babysitting to being on the yacht with Jeff Bezos to working with some awful people — had prepared me for that moment.”

While she’s nervous about the short, she’s excited about her future knowing that she’s ready for what she’s been working for, and being supported by her family and “the right people.”

“I’m really excited for what the future holds,” she said.

With an assistant producer credit, Hawkes was invited to the premier of “Wolf Man” last week, which she was going to take her mom, and younger brother and sister, but because of the tragic wildfires, it was canceled.

Regardless, Hawkes hopes others find inspiration in her journey, saying art is important and should be celebrated. Coming from a small town, she knows the struggles, the hardships and the rejection.

“Half of the battle is realizing that it’s possible. If I didn’t think it was possible, I wouldn’t have pushed myself,” Hawkes said of her journey. “If you think it is possible, you need to work toward that dream. It’s about the drive, the persistence, the hard work and even the rejection. You never know what opportunities will bring you.”