The Gatekeeper

Angel Lopez is the new mold of Hollywood gatekeeper. In an industry often marked by rooms full of predominantly heterosexual white male executives, Angel is gay and Latinx. Where sales drive everything, he has a passion for the creative part of his role as an executive, working with writers to see their vision realized. Angel and Justin have been friends for years. When Justin made Dear White People, Angel was one of the producers. When the film was adapted into a series, however, Angel was not able to stay on. How do you handle doing business, and awkward deals, with the people you also go to brunch with?

Angel also shares his journey to becoming a filmmaker and astrologist. In the 1980s, his parents had one of the first video stores in the San Fernando Valley. He grew up picking family movies for the store out of a catalogue, making posters for movies he was dreaming up, and casting his little cousins in the stories he would film on his dad’s camcorder. In the late 1990s, when Angel was living in San Francisco, he also discovered a passion - and talent - for astrology. Now, in addition to his busy life as a Hollywood executive, he is a professional astrologer. “Everyone in Hollywood has a psychic, but no one is one,” Justin says. Angel shares how he came to incorporate the many aspects of his authentic self in an industry built on sameness, and one that’s obsessed with sales and sequels.