Interview - Scott Burkhardt + Jacob Daniel Smith And We Buy Houses
Scott Burkhardt + Jacob Daniel Smith
Seth and Michelle sat down with director Scott Burkhardt and actor Jacob Daniel Smith to discuss their new short film We Buy Houses. It's about the inhabitants of a real life neighborhood dealing with gentrification and how it impacts all of those involved. The discussion ranges from getting clean audio in an abandoned building, being open to new creative opportunities as they happen and letting go of a project and letting it stand on it's own.
Check out Scott's work on his website.
Scott Burkhardt is a writer and filmmaker based in New York City. He is a graduate of Columbia University's School of the Arts.
His thesis script, The Assastant, won the New Line Cinema Development Award and additional grants from the Milos Forman Foundation, The Caucus Foundation, and the Carole and Robert Daly Foundation. The film went on to win the 20th Century Fox/Farrelly Brothers Outstanding Achievement in Comedy Award and the Student Choice Award for Best Writing. The film was nominated for a Student Academy Award and was distributed by Cinetic Media as part of their FilmBuff series on Hulu.
His short film, Girls Are Strong Here, won a production grant from the Sun Valley Film Festival and went on to win the Grand Jury Prize @ IFF Boston (2022) and the Humanitas Prize for Best Short Film (2022).
He has two new short films, Exuvia and We Buy Houses. Exuvia premiered at the 2024 Sun Valley Film Festival and went on to play the Mill Valley Film Festival and other festivals worldwide. We Buy Houses had its world premiere at the 2025 Florida Film Festival. Both films remain unburdened by awards.
He has written for television and teaches screenwriting and television writing at New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, and in the Killer Films/Stony Brook MFA Program.
Jacob Daniel Smith is an actor and director, known for Bad Monkey (2024) Evil (2019), Stars in the House (2020) and The Good Fight (2017). He is a 2020 graduate of The Juilliard Drama Division.
This interview is part of a series we are doing to highlight the creative voices behind the films selected for the 30th Stony Brook Film Festival.
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