40 | APRIL 6 • 2023 

W

hen Cory Shanbom 
was 8 years old, his 
parents bought him 
a little video camera that made 
him fall in love with filmmak-
ing.
“I would make short sketches 
with my friends and neighbors,
” 
recalls the 26-year-old Jewish 
Hollywood producer, actor, 
writer and comedian, who 
originally hails from Bloomfield 
Hills. “I just loved watching 
movies and dissecting them.
”
Shanbom, who is currently 
working on his largest-scale 
short film yet, Runaways, was a 
big fan of the Back to the Future 
trilogy and Steven Spielberg 
films like E.T. growing up.
“I liked anything well-written 
and exciting,
” he recalls.
He was also a theater kid and 
knew between his love of the 
stage and love of movies that he 
wanted to pursue a career path 
in the film industry.
Following a short stint as a 
DJ and emcee at Joe Cornell 
Entertainment, Shanbom 
packed up and headed to New 
York City in 2014 to study the 
arts. He attended Pace School 
of Performing Arts at Pace 
University and graduated in 
2018 with a BFA in acting.
Instead of going home, 
Shanbom decided to remain 
in New York. He took all of his 
bar mitzvah money he received 
many years earlier as a teenag-
er at Temple Israel and put it 
toward making a short film that 
he wrote and starred in called 
Meditater.

“It was a crazy thing to do,
” he 
laughs. “But people liked it, and 
it gave me jobs.
”
Shanbom found gigs here and 
there, but quickly learned that as 
a budding actor, he was going to 
spend more time waiting than 
acting. “I’m not somebody who 
likes to be not busy,
” he says.
To fill his time, he walked 
dogs, taught filmmaking at 
an after-school program at 
Brooklyn Middle School and 
eventually began to work on sets 
for films.

A LEAP OF FAITH
Being on set was the spark he 
needed.
From there, Shanbom natu-
rally fell into post-production 
and finally into the production 
process itself. “It was exciting to 
see how movies were made,
” he 
recalls. “There’s so much detail, 
intricacy and moving parts. It’s a 
very complicated process.
”
However, after six years in 
New York, Shanbom realized he 
needed to head to Hollywood 
if he was going to pursue his 
dream in full.
He took a leap of faith and 
moved to Los Angeles in 2020 
without a job. Yet from that 
point forward, Shanbom made 
a promise to himself that he 
wasn’t going to do anything 
except what he wanted to do.
Luckily, Shanbom’s risk 
paid off. He landed a job at a 
post-production house located 
next to his apartment that just 
happened to be looking for an 
assistant editor.

“It’s such a difficult industry 
to break into,
” he explains. “But 
if you really love it, if you’re 
really passionate about it, you’ll 
keep on going until you find 
the right people. And when you 
find the right people, they won’t 
want to hire anyone else, you 
know?”
It’s a determined mindset that 
has allowed Shanbom’s career to 
grow. Since landing his first gig 
in Hollywood, he calls himself 
lucky to have worked on a set 
nearly every week.

HONORING A LEGACY
Now, Shanbom is hard at work 
on Runaways, a project that’s 
near and dear to him.
The upcoming short film is 
in honor of producer and writer 
Joel Steiger, who passed away 
from lung cancer in 2021 and 
worked on shows like Perry 
Mason.
Shanbom is partnering with 

Steiger’s daughter, Emma Steiger, 
who went to summer camp with 
Shanbom, on bringing to life a 
script that Joel Steiger wrote, but 
never had a chance to complete. 
It’s being adapted from the orig-
inal form into a short film.
Together, Shanbom and 
Steiger raised more than $30,000 
on the Seed&Spark crowdfund-
ing platform to create the film, 
which has since received 105% 
of its funding goal. Runaways is 
a mystery-thriller set in Arizona 
and follows two sisters who 
suddenly become fugitives after 
being framed for the murder of 
their mother by their stepfather.
Shanbom says filming is 
slated to begin this month, and 
he is hoping for the film to be 
completed by the end of 2023 
to be screened at various film 
festivals.
Outside of work, Shanbom 
is a fan of playing pickleball 
(particularly against his moth-
er) and enjoys getting together 
with friends to play Dungeons 
& Dragons. “It’s a low-stake cre-
ativity boost,
” he laughs. “You’re 
just sitting around a table mak-
ing up stories.
”
As for those looking to break 
into the film industry, Shanbom 
has one simple line of advice. 
“You can sell yourself if you 
have confidence,
” he says. “Just 
keep on pushing.
” 

From New York 
to Hollywood

Meet aspiring producer Cory Shanbom.

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

NEXT DOR
VOICE OF A NEW GENERATION

Cory 
Shanbom

COURTESY OF CORY SHANBOM

A still shot from Actually Good, 
a short film Shanbom wrote and 
starred in coming out later this year.

