Today we’d like to introduce you to Devin Pike.
Devin, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’ve had a lot of “career paths,” from film criticism, then print journalism, to broadcasting, to club DJ, to online media, to film and video production. They’ve dovetailed from each other, and everything I’ve learned from one job has been (for the most part) useful in the next.
In the last 15 years, I’ve built a sizeable CV as a host and emcee, for film festivals like the Dallas International Film Festival and Oak Cliff Film Festival, to comic cons and pop culture expos like Dallas Comic Show, Fan Expo Dallas, and Gallifrey One. I wish I could call that my “job,” but there’s frightfully little money in that realm. My “day job” has been as a video editor and media specialist for internal communications.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There’s been a lot of blood and bruising along the way. I’m currently in treatment for throat cancer – my third trip through that turnstile – and survived a pretty horrific wreck in 2018 where I was run off the road into a concrete barrier at 75 miles per hour. I paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson when tell my friends who shake their heads at it all that I’m “too stupid to die.”
Please tell us about your work.
I set up Bacon Samurai Productions in 2013 when I started work on my first documentary film. The name was too good to keep to one thing, so I’ve used it for event production and promotion, as well as book design and layout work. When I work the occasional karaoke gig around town, I use it as well. It’s memorable – can’t beat that.
There’s a core group of a dozen folks who help out on various projects with Bacon Samurai, and those people wound up being the nucleus of WHO NEEDS SLEEP, a 36-hour online telethon entering its third year. We raise funds for Cook Children’s Fort Worth – specifically their lymphoma and blastoma wards – and Cancer Support Community North Texas. We registered WHO NEEDS SLEEP as a non-profit in 2018, and *finally* got our 501(c)3 designation in early September this year. The main telethon is 8:00 am on Saturday 14 December, through 8:00 pm on Sunday 15 December. We’ll have a music showcase prior to the telethon to tape segments for the broadcast, and we’re in the process of putting together the live auction and raffle items to bring in more donations.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
The prospect of starting over horrifies me. If there were a way to keep the accumulated knowledge and then go back? Maybe. But the one thing I would tell my “just out of high school with the entire world ahead” younger self is to slow the foosh down and let the experiences soak in. Too many times, I’m wrapped up in the moment, and I have no real recollection of how everything went down.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://devinpike.com
- Email: devin@devinpike.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/justdevin
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/devin.pike
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/justdevin
- Other: http://WhoNeedsSleep.org
Image Credit:
Bobby Hitt / Firebird Images; Amanda Rebholz / Darkroom Lament; Marty Gast / DFW Event Photography; Doc Strange / Selig Images
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