It’s good to see that writing for the Sun doesn’t necessarily doom you to a life of failure. Cornell alum and ex-Sunnie Ryan Silbert ’02 graduated from school with a foundation in business, but found his way into the entertainment industry after completing a Masters of filmmaking at NYU. Most recently, he produced on God of Love (2010), an Oscar-nominated short directed by and starring Luke Matheny. Matheny plays an unrequited lover who receives a box of darts that turns him into a modern-day Cupid, able to prick anyone whose affection he desires. Silbert discussed the film and the labyrinthine maze that is the industry on Monday.

The Sun: How did you manage to compromise two interests — corporate and creative — in deciding to move forward as a producer in the film industry?

Ryan Silbert: Well, I think that Cornell prepares you to do anything you want to … there’s a proclivity to gravitate towards more conventional business routes like consulting or investment firms, but I think that background in business and communications is a really great way to lay a foundation for any field you want to pursue. It’s up to you to take those risks and chances that come with it. For me, it turns into a real balancing act between what the suits need, while still being able to retain a director’s creative control. You don’t want to shortchange the creative to meet the bottom line, but you also can’t overextend the dollar.

The Sun: So what was that initial spark that spurred you to move towards the film industry rather than stay with the PR firm you were working with?

R.S.: I was pretty fortunate in that the PR firm allowed for a lot of flexibility with my schedule. They were really understanding and encouraging of my interest in film — I would take off for a couple weeks at a time using my vacation days to shoot short films or work on independent stuff around New York that friends were working on. Ultimately what sparked me, though, was when I was working on a development team for Hasbro during the first Transformers movie. I grew up with Transformers and I loved that mythic idea of the perfect storyline. It was a peek inside how the studio system works with a corporate brand like Hasbro.

The Sun: So you started Toy Closet with fellow Cornell alum Rob Profusek ’03 in 2007. Had you two stayed in touch since school? How did you decide to start working together?

R.S.: Well, Rob took the more traditional route at first and was an investment banker. He really learned real-world quantitative skills that were applicable to the business side of filmmaking. Then he started working at a small commercial production company, and he was just moving closer and closer to filmmaking as I was doing the same thing. Once I was in my second graduate year at NYU, a lot of projects and opportunities started coming up, and Rob and I teamed up to work on a few commercial features, like Holy Rollers (2010) [with Jesse Eisenberg].

The Sun: And you’ve stayed in New York for most of your career?

R.S.: Yeah, I’ve never lived in L.A. I have a lot of friends who moved out there and it was great for them, but it was something where I was rooted in New York from the start, going to Cornell then NYU. When I worked for the PR firm I was exposed to a lot of clients, so when I went out into filmmaking, I was dealing with the media components for some of those same brands and faces. If I had been working for a studio or with any sort of TV writing, of course I would have to be in L.A. If you’re working at the independent level, though, there’s not all that much of a difference between the two cities.

The Sun: Let’s talk about God of Love, the Oscar-nominated short that you produced. For those who may not be as finely tuned to the intricate machinations of a film’s process, what does a producer … do, exactly? How did you first get involved in the project and what roles have you played in promoting the film once it was released and nominated?

R.S.: God of Love was generated as a thesis project for a friend of mine, Luke Matheny. He was two years ahead of me, and we had talked about collaborating for a while. He’d been writing it for two years, and brought me on as a producer. You can touch upon a whole range of things as a producer, from talking and brainstorming with the director about how to best articulate his artistic vision, all the way down to picking up equipment. You really get your hands dirty at the student level — at the independent level too, really. I think people have misconstrued producers as a guy with a cigar in his mouth and his feet on a table and fortunately that’s not the case. A lot of it is set up during pre-production — your production is only going to be as good as your pre-production, that’s one of the golden rules. And Luke really had that down, I give him credit for that. He did something really smart, which I don’t think a lot of people do — he surrounded himself with his friends as his closest collaborators, from the director of photography all the way to the script supervisor, and he stars in the film. So he really built a great crew and runs a fun set. That made it exciting to go to work every day.

The Sun: I love his face. Crazy interesting features and expressions. Sorry, that was a little weird.

R.S.: Yeah, he has a great screen presence, and was so willing to take God of Love all the way to the end, which you sometimes don’t get with student films. And a lot of things happen when you get to the Oscar level — you get distribution, we were suddenly in 150 theaters, and you have to deliver your trailer, get your visual prints ready to go, and Luke had all that ready to go, so it made it much easier to take it to completion.

The Sun: What do you have going on in terms of upcoming projects?

R.S.: We just recently wrapped a film that was shot on the Lower East Side and had Spike Lee as an executive producer, and we’re currently in the middle of a series of George Romero scripts ...

The Sun: Zombies!

R.S.: No, no zombies. They’re going to be genre films way different than the typical indie fare we usually do. It’s still very early in the process, but it’s not going to be zombies, I can tell you that.

The Sun: Touché.

God of Love will be playing with 2011’s class of Oscar nominated shorts on February 19th and 20th at Cornell Cinema.