CreativeChaos Finds Its Cool in the ‘Socially Provocative’

Since its founding in 2010, production company CreativeChaos vmg locked real-world issues in its crosshairs and made award-winning feature documentaries and series that, in the words of cofounder Ilan Arboleda, are “socially provocative” and “move the dial of conversation.”

Along with cofounder and filmmaker Tom Donahue and their late creative partner Steve Edwards, CreativeChaos’ “Casting By” (2012), “Thank You for Your Service” (2015), “This Changes Everything” (2018), “Dean Martin: King of Cool” (2021) and more have framed recent history in dialogue with current events in ways that led to tangible reform.

“We’ve had films that have changed laws, have created new laws; we’ve changed the industry. Our movie ‘Casting By’ is a prime example,” Arboleda told TheWrap for our latest installment of Office With a View. “The new category for casting directors at the Oscars that will begin next year is a direct result of us making that film 10 years earlier.”

He added: “We have a track record of using films to push change and to create an urgency.”

Now following Arboleda and Donahue’s partnership with Paramount and last year’s release of docuseries “Murder of God’s Banker,” CreativeChaos’ new six-part project, “Mafia Spies,” unveils one of American history’s most incredible, stranger-than-fiction espionage operations that saw the CIA working with the mob against a common Cold War enemy: Fidel Castro.

Arboleda and Donahue connected with TheWrap to discuss the docuseries’ July 16 launch on Paramount+ — “We’ve ridden the storm with them,” they said of the streamer — and to tease what’s to come for the company.

Give us the quick origin story of CreativeChaos and how you two first came to work together.
Tom Donahue: We met at Sundance in 2004. We had an agent who said, “Hey, you two should know each other,” as simple as that. And we immediately clicked because we have so much in common. And then we started the company six years later. We kind of started the company organically, we just started working together on things. We codified it in 2010 into a company with our third partner, Steve Edwards, who passed away in September 2021.

Ilan Arboleda: At the time, Tom and I were both producing films and doing other things with feature films. I was packaging and financing films back in those early days when we met, and I had felt I was getting away from actual creative production and physical production, but really creative production. And Tom, at the time was a successful producer, but also one of the most sought after editors in the business. And he really knew that he should be directing for a variety of reasons. It was an opportunity for us to really bring both of those desires together in a way that we completely coincided. Because creatively, we’re almost 100% aligned on the things that we want to do, the topics we want to explore, the things that excite us and the way that we want to find unique ways to attack new problems when it comes to storytelling.

In terms of sniffing out what’s what’s next to tackle, is that a shared effort?
T.D.: Very much. We both have a great ability to network and build relationships and have people trust us and believe in us. So a lot of people bring us stuff. And also we just read stuff. Generally, when I tell Ilan, “I think this would be a great idea,” I know that he’s going to agree. Right now, we’re developing 35, 40 projects, and we’re out there pitching constantly.

I.A.: We pitch a lot to buyers, but we also have a long track record of raising equity and doing really interesting financing models for our documentaries. So we sort of do both at the same time simultaneously, it’s never too much in one basket. But the other thing, Tom and I made a decision about a year ago as we’ve been scaling our business, we thought, well, let’s build a development department. And we realized the only way to develop the stuff that we love to make is to do it ourselves. And the only way we’re going to truly scale to do the things that we want to do is to really invest in development and in ourselves. So Tom and I do all the development, really. And it’s actually for the best.

Just in the time that you’ve been working together, the world of nonfiction storytelling in streaming has gotten massive. How has that changed your instincts in terms of what’s going to work and what’s of interest?
T.D.: What’s interesting is when we started the company in 2010, it wasn’t to do a nonfiction company. However, we started with limited financing, so we got a camera and we started shooting interviews for what would become “Casting By.” “Casting By” blew up, and it got nominated for an Emmy. And then it brought opportunities in the doc space that have not stopped. And this is at the same time that Netflix documentaries started exploding in 2015ish. It suddenly became an actual business model that can work, so we’ve stayed in that space. We are looking to break out into scripted within the next few years.

I.A.: The other transition we made was just before the pandemic, we knew we wanted to start getting into series as well. And we were lucky Paramount came on board and greenlit two back-to-back for us. So we did “Murder of God’s Banker,” and then we did “Mafia Spies,” so we moved into that space really quickly through the pandemic and we were able to keep pretty strong during that time.

How has that partnership with Paramount been?
I.A.: Perfect. It’s been great. You know, they’ve obviously had a lot of ups and downs over the last year and a half, and we’ve ridden the storm with them, so to speak. And we were very lucky to have an amazing, legendary executive overseeing “Mafia Spies,” Susan Zirinsky, she was the president of CBS News. It was a godsend, and she’s been terrific. She’s really shepherded the project and really believed in it.

How did this “Mafia Spies” source material first come across your desk, and what made you think that it’s ripe for screen adaptation?
I.A.: So Tom and I are good friends with Danny Strong and Matt Jackson, and they had the rights to this project, the book by Thomas Maier. And Danny called Tom and I up and said, “What do you guys think about this as a docuseries?” And Tom and I read the book in a day, and we call him back and were like, “This is amazing. We want it. We know exactly how we would do this.”

T.D.: Right, it’s kind of right up our alley. Because the two things I’d say that Ilan and I do are social impact docs, but also docs about Hollywood history. Docs like “Dean Martin,” docs like “Casting By.” So this combines both in that this is geopolitical, and that we love the meat and potatoes of that, and the conspiracy of the CIA and the mob. But also, we’re able to lean into this old movie aesthetic in order to tell the story, the old movie tropes and cliches of spy movies and mob movies. So they kind of combined all the best worlds for us. And then we’re able to take these cliches and these tropes and kind of subvert them in that disruptive way that Ilan and I have been doing now for 14 years.

Was a docuseries always the way to go with this or did you talk about adapting it to a film?
I.A.: There was initial talk of making something scripted, but we thought the best way to tell this was unscripted. We knew that unscripted was the way to go with it because of the ability to use the documents to show the evidence, because what it does is having this document data dump and really be able to connect the dots, it allows us to parse away conspiracy theory and the actual conspiracy. Because this is a massive conspiracy – there’s no “theory” element to the conspiracy. So we’re able to remove the theory element to it. And all the people we got on board the project were kind of like, “Listen if you’re going to go conspiracy theory, we don’t want to be onboard. But we will do it if you know if you’re going to stick to the facts.” So we have Pulitzer Prize winners, we have the highest academics, great writers and people who have a real connection to the source material and know the source material that well.

Walk us through how you went about building the impressive roster of talking heads and experts.
T.D.: We have a really good track record of getting the best people. So you have Thomas’ book, that’s your foundation, but then all these roads start to open up, and you’re talking to the greatest minds who have spent decades researching these topics. And suddenly, there’s scenes and there’s events that weren’t in the book. It’s really fun when that happens.

I.A.: The new ground for us with that was we felt that we wanted to have voices on the ground in Cuba. That’s something that American films haven’t shown very much of and been able to have that access. So Tom and I actually made an exploratory trip to Cuba, we had a fixer who helped us, and we found people from the intelligence units, spies and people who were children soldiers on the other side of the Bay of Pigs invasion – just amazing access to people. We went, we gained their trust, and then when we went back a month later, we actually interviewed them all. Having those people on camera added a dimension that you just wouldn’t see the American series or film or television.

How do you feel “Mafia Spies” is an extension of the other projects that you two have made with CreativeChaos?
T.D.: Weirdly, maybe unconsciously, almost all of our films deal with the topic of toxic masculinity. We did a movie called “This Changes Everything” about gender equality in Hollywood. Geena Davis was our executive producer. I had a female producer stand up after a screening and say, “Tom, you didn’t make a movie about women. You made another movie about men. It’s just these are their victims.” And I think “Mafia Spies” is an example of these secret patriarchal organizations run amok because there’s no accountability. It’s the ultimate example of toxic masculinity.

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