You might recognize me from Netflix’s OZARK, HBO’s True Detective, or the WB’s Gotham, or that guy who keeps talking when everybody else stops at the movies (yes, that was me looking out at you from The Purge: Election Year).

They call me Christopher James Baker…

Describing myself seems to be an inherently flawed exercise, short of saying I am aware that there is a me to be aware of.

I’m a storyteller

I’ve been writing, directing and acting for 25 years.

I don’t really enjoy talking about myself, I like to make stuff up and let my work/art speak for itself. I’m an actor primarily, and I think the less you know about an actor the more you can enjoy their work.

As far as tangible stuff; I’m Australian, so I will swear in this. If you don’t like swearing then best fuck off now ;-)

I trained in Australia and spent many years doing theatre there and small parts on the American films that came to town. Whilst I had some success and got to work on some fantastic productions, I knew that I wasn’t going to get where I wanted to be, working with the people I wanted to work with if I stayed there. It’s a small industry and I wanted to be making the sort of work I loved to watch, the films that changed my life, and that was all happening over here in the US. So I convinced my wife to chase a dragon with me and we moved to New York with a suitcase each to give it a try for a year or so to see what we could do. That was 8 years ago and we now have two kids born right here in Manhattan.

Writing, Directing, Blues

My acting finances my writing, directing and blues guitar habits. I love movies and good story telling in any form: music, literature, theatre, dance, puppets, art, the way my kids dance… I enjoy the company of people who understand and express, through the way they breathe and treat other people, what it really means to be cool. In the same way that a tree is cool.

I also play and build guitars out of old cigar boxes. Here’s my latest build for a friend. It’s my first electric and is coming along nicely... Nuff said.

Right now I’m working as an actor on a show that I can’t tell you the name of yet (everything’s top secret these days), but I can say I’m getting to act with one of my hero’s, someone that I grew up watching in films in a small country town in Australia and had a dream that that’s what I wanted to do. Now I am doing it and I feel blessed to be doing it.

Here’s a link to my imdb page if you’re interested in checking out some of the things I’ve done. I’ve been very fortunate to work with some of the best people in the business, from the second season of True Detective, The Purge, Quarry, The Black List, Gotham and many other amazing productions.

Where I am now

You can currently see me in the new Netflix show OZARK. If you haven’t seen it yet you should. It’s very well made and was an exciting show to be a part of, for so many reasons; amazing collaborators, great writing and because it deals with the darkness in all of us and our relationship to money. It’s also part of this new “golden age” of television where the writing isn’t bound by the normal confines of network television, but more a very deep examination of human nature played out in format more akin to great filmmaking. It’s this style of writing and production that we will bring to HardFork.

HardFork Series

By now most of you will have heard or read something about @HardFork-Series and I’m very excited to be a part of the team bringing this epic story to life. When the director and co-writer Doug Karr first came to me with the idea and introduced me to Steemit, began to describe how it all works and how he and the team were putting together something that will not only be a supremely exciting show in its own right, but will help to bring awareness and propel the whole platform and it’s community further ahead, I saw the opportunity to be a part of the next generation of thinkers and shapers and storytellers. You guys.
I’m currently in an exciting position where I have access to some of the best people in the industry and I can see how getting the right people excited and onboard is going to have a huge effect on where we all want Steemit to be in 5 years.

My Collaboration w/@dougkarr

I’ve known @dougkarr for a few years now and we wrote a film together this year because we really wanted to make something as a team. Whilst the writing was one of the best professional collaborative experiences I’ve had, we then found ourselves in the same old situation where we then had get through the gatekeepers and ultimately rely on a whole bunch other people to tell us if, when and how we could make it.

We had a meeting this morning and were discussing an idea for a cool scene we want to shoot and it finished with Doug saying something like “…yeah, it’s definitely do-able. I mean we can easily get the 7 or 8 MMA fighters to do it, set up the motion control rig behind your head, do 8 or 9 passes with them in different setups and on the last one I’ll stand off camera and just burst a huge bag of blood all over you”.

These are the sorts of conversations I get to have all the time because you are all getting onboard and helping us make this crazy dream a reality. I’m so thankful for for this amazingly collaborative team: @ericvancewalton, @andrarchy, @the-alien, @nickytothenines, @jowvic, the insanely talented folks in the HardFork Universe and this amazing community of Stemians.
If you’re not following these brilliant folks I suggest you check them out. There’s some mind blowing content to be discovered.

Storytelling evolves with the mindset and the technology to tell the stories. The stories remain implicitly about the same things, but as the technology evolves; we move from storytelling in the broad daylight, to storytelling around the campfire, to storytelling with the shadows on the wall of the cave; the stories get better with the technology.
That’s what we’re going to do with HardFork. Evolve the storytelling medium. Strap in and hold on to your teeth.

Exploring the Unknown

I don’t know how all this will play out, but I do know it could be a cool story that your millionaire grandkids could tell around the campfire…

I’ve wanted to get involved with cryptocurrency for a while now, but didn’t really have an entry point or way of quantifying it that made a lot of sense to my personal aesthetics.
I find most social media tends to encourage a kind of narcissism and competitiveness that I have been reticent to be involved.
Steemit is the first social media platform that really excites me, because it’s seems to be designed in a way to help us help each other to move us all forward as a community towards a shared prosperity.

Given the current climate both politically and environmentally, I feel steemit can be a place to create, prosper, resist and even revolt.
I see it as a place to be able to create the work I want to see without waiting for the Gatekeepers to give us permission.
We are the gatekeepers.
Destroy the gates.
Let the wild rumpus begin.