The Opening Credits
Liz Levine has spent decades building stories for a living.
She’s worked as a journalist, author, development executive, producer, and former Senior Producer & VP Television at Shaftesbury—one of Canada’s most influential production companies. Her credits span publishing, film and television, including jPod, Two Sentence Horror Stories, Hudson and Rex, Ruby and the Well, Story of a Girl and most recently, a feature film starring Christopher Walken.
But talk to people who actually know Liz, and the credits are rarely the first thing they mention. They talk about her honesty, her instinct for story, her ability to cut through noise and get to the thing underneath. They talk about the conversations that changed how they saw themselves and their work.
This July 25–26, Liz will be in Regina for The Story Intensive, a small, mentorship-driven weekend focused on story, authenticity, creative voice, and career sustainability for emerging and established creatives alike.
Before she arrives in Saskatchewan, I wanted to sit down with her to talk about the thing underneath all of it: What actually helps creatives last?
ACT I: The Invitation
The people who change our lives rarely arrive when we’re ready.
I’ve known Liz for more than fifteen years, and throughout that time she’s consistently been someone I could call when things were falling apart. Over the years she’s been a mentor, a confidante, a champion, and occasionally a much-needed kick in the ass. She’s seen me at some of my lowest moments and some of my highest. She’s talked me off ledges, challenged my thinking, and reminded me—more than once—why I started doing this work in the first place.
The thing about mentorship is that we often think it’s about information. It’s not, it’s about proximity. It’s about having access to people who have already walked the road you’re trying to navigate. People who can tell you where the potholes are, where the opportunities live, and sometimes simply remind you that what you’re experiencing is normal. That’s why I was excited to sit down with Liz. Not because she’s produced award-winning television, written an acclaimed memoir, or recently wrapped a feature film starring Christopher Walken.
I was excited because very few people have influenced my creative life the way she has. With Liz coming to Regina for The Story Intensive, it felt like the right time to talk about mentorship, resilience, authenticity, and what it really takes to build a creative life that lasts.
ACT II: The Conversation
On resilience, authenticity, and building a creative life that lasts.
Who mentored you early? What do you still carry?
I was a production assistant at Citytv and MuchMusic when I was young — which mostly meant I was the person bringing coffee into rooms where things were actually happening. Moses Znaimer ran that place, and watching him was an education in itself. What I remember most is that when he wanted people to really listen, he got quieter. Not louder. Quieter. The room would lean in. I never forgot that. I use it to this day.
Later, when I joined No Equal Entertainment as a development executive, Larry Sugar did something that I think about every time I’m in a position to help someone coming up. He would call me into his office — and then take his important calls on speakerphone. He never made a big deal of it. He just let me listen. Deal-making, negotiation, the real language of how this business actually works — I got that education standing in Larry’s office.
Neither of them sat me down and said here is what I’m going to teach you. They just let me be in the room. That’s what mentorship often actually looks like. Not instruction. Access.
What’s a hard truth more emerging creatives need to hear?
Two things, and neither of them are easy to hear.
The first is about money. You need an income to invest in your creative life. Getting great at your craft takes time — and it takes resources. Classes, travel, making things that don’t work, making them again. If you’re waiting for your creative work to support you before you take it seriously, you’ll be waiting a long time. Figure out what you do to fund the work. If you’re lucky — and if you’re good and persistent and a little stubborn — one day that creative life might support you back. But that’s the destination, not the starting point.
The second is simpler and harder: this is difficult. It is genuinely, relentlessly difficult. The development cycles are long. The rejection is constant. The industry is not waiting for you. If any part of you is looking for a shortcut — if you think the right connection or the right moment is going to bypass the actual work — you’ve already failed. The people who last are the ones who understand that the work is the point. Not the outcome. The work.
What makes you lean in — and what separates the people who last from the ones who burn out?
Connection. Authenticity. Passion. When someone walks into a room and those three things are present — when they’re actually there, actually themselves, actually on fire about what they’re making — I feel it immediately. You can’t manufacture it and you can’t hide its absence.
What I’m really responding to is someone who has closed the gap between who they are and what they’re making. When those two things are aligned, it radiates. The pitch is different. The conversation is different. The work is different. I lean all the way in.
The lasting question is harder. And I want to be honest about it, because I think the industry tells a comforting lie here — that the people who make it are simply the ones who wanted it most, who worked hardest, who cared deepest. And those things matter. They are necessary. But they are not sufficient.
I have watched extraordinarily talented, deeply committed people not make it. People who deserved to. And I’ve had to sit with that. What I can say is this: the people who last are the ones who figure out how to stay standing. Who develop a relationship with the work that isn’t entirely dependent on the outcome. Who can absorb a no — or ten nos, or a hundred — and come back to the desk anyway. Not because they’re immune to the rejection, but because the alternative is unthinkable to them.
That’s not the same as burning bright and burning out. Passion without resilience is a fuse. What lasts is passion with roots.
Was there a moment you almost walked away?
A million times. This morning over breakfast, if I’m being completely honest.
I don’t think the question is whether you consider walking away. I think everyone who has been in this industry long enough considers it constantly. The question is what you do with that impulse. Whether it’s information or instruction.
For me it’s never been instruction. It’s always been information. A signal that something is hard, or uncertain, or not working yet — not that I’m done. The difference between those two things has taken me a long time to understand.
What I’ve found is that the answer to almost walking away isn’t a grand revelation. It isn’t a single moment of clarity that makes everything suddenly worth it. It’s smaller than that. It’s one step. And then another. And somewhere in the accumulation of those steps, something shifts — the credibility grows, the confidence grows, the work finds its audience. The IMDb page gets longer.
I think if you’re waiting to feel certain before you keep going, you’ll be waiting forever. Certainty is not how this works. You keep going because stopping is the only thing that actually ends it. Everything else is just hard.
What advice would you give yourself at 25, 35, and 45?
At 25 I would say: figure out your financial life. Not because money is the point — it isn’t — but because financial chaos is a creativity killer. It forces bad decisions. It makes you take the wrong job, stay in the wrong room, say yes when you should say no. Get stable. Give your future self room to be brave.
At 35 I would say: keep pushing. You are already inside the room — you may not feel it, but you are. This is the stage where the work is real but the recognition hasn’t fully caught up yet, and that gap can make you doubt everything. Don’t. The room you’re in is the right one. Keep showing up in it.
At 45 I would say: this is real. This is actually what you do. I remember being on set for Two Sentence Horror Stories — executive producing a series for CW and Netflix — and having this quiet moment of recognition. Not triumph exactly. More like arrival. Like something that had been a hope for a very long time had become simply a fact. This is your dream job. You built it. Now go do it.
The through line across all three, if I’m honest, is the same instruction: trust the work and stay in it. Everything else is just timing.
ACT III: The Lean In
What happens when opportunity knocks—and you’re finally ready to answer.
By the end of our conversation, I felt like I was twenty-five again and not because I suddenly had all the answers, because I was reminded that nobody does. The creatives who build lasting careers aren’t the ones who avoid uncertainty. They’re the ones who learn how to keep moving through it.
That’s what I love most about Liz. For all of her accomplishments, she still talks about the work. The next step. The next story. The next person she can help.
When we hung up, I realized how rare that is. And then I realized something else. For two days this July, a small group of Saskatchewan creatives will get direct access to that mindset. Not from a keynote stage and not through a YouTube video.
We will all be across a table in open and honest conversation. We will be equals in the same room. That’s why we’re bringing Liz to Regina.
If you’re a writer, filmmaker, performer, entrepreneur, communicator, or creative who feels like there’s another level waiting for you, this is the kind of opportunity that doesn’t come around often.
July 25–26. It’s a small room with real conversations and honest mentorship. Trust me when I say this: If Liz invites you to lean in, say yes.