Aric Cushing


Aric Cushing is an American actor and writer. He is the co-founder of the Los Angeles Fear and Fantasy Film Festival.

Early life and career

A native of California, Aric grew up in the town of Boulder Creek. As a child he performed in numerous local productions such as This One Thing I Do, a feminist play about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Girl Crazy, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Arsenic and Old Lace, and at 12 years old in A Chorus Line. For his performance in Hats Off: A Tribute to Broadway Musicals in 1986, at 13 years old, he told the Valley Press, "I'm excited. I can't wait to get back out there." A recipient of numerous speech awards, he received a college grant from Hewlett-Packard, attended both the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and the London Court Theater in England, and afterwards toured the Pacific Northwest in a 2-person travelling theater company. Upon moving to Hollywood, he worked at a talent agency before producing and starring in the film Broken and Bleeding, later renamed Shot to the Heart. In 2019, he won Best Actor at the Prison City Film Festival in Huntsville, Texas for his role in Shot to the Heart. After producing and starring in The Yellow Wallpaper feature film, he appeared in America's Most Wanted, Renegade, and a variety of other TV shows and music videos. In 2016, his middle grade book Vampire Boy was published, and won the Readers' View award, the Purple Dragonfly Award, a Pinnacle Award, first place for the Gertrude Lawrence Middle Grade Reader Award, and a Reader's Favorite medal. Also in 2020, he starred in There's [No Such Thing as Vampires] and in 2021 received a Best Supporting Actor Nomination at the FilmQuest Film Festival for his portrayal of the lead villain.

The Fear and Fantasy Film Festival

The co-founder of the Los Angeles Fear and Fantasy Film Festival. The festival began in 2012 and was established by director Logan Thomas and Aric Cushing. Festival awards include Best Actor, Best Picture, Best Actress, and others, as well as a screenwriting competition. The festival was first held in Burbank, California. The festival also released a Horror Shorts Vol. 1 DVD with selections from the festival of fear and fantasy short films from around the world.

Aric Cushing and Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Aric Cushing's relationship to Charlotte Perkins Gilman is varied. Gilman's most famous story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" has been adapted numerous times for stage and screen, most recently in 2011 for a film starring Aric Cushing." The Yellow Wallpaper feature film was directed by Logan Thomas.
He also wrote a corresponding collection of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's work, titled "The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories: The Complete Gothic Collection". "Aric Cushing's introductory essay 'Is the Yellow-Wallpaper a Gothic story?' nails the subject; especially since the original feminist take on Gilman's works often skated over the Gothic feel of her works to focus on underlying feminist interpretations alone." Previously, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's work as a novelist, short story writer, poet, and public speaker was mostly regarded from the feminist viewpoint, especially when her feminist work was used as a platform in the 1960s feminist movement. The introduction contends that before Gilman launched into her socialist themes, and during the time she wrote 'The Yellow Wall-paper" story, she focused on Gothic stories for a short period of time. The story is sometimes polarized between people who believe it to be only a Gothic story and those that only believe it to be a women's rights tale. Aric Cushing is the first to discover two previously 'lost' works that surrounded her short and brief period writing Gothic and ghost fiction, which are included in the compilation, and were never re-published after their original publication dates in the 1890s. The stories are "The Unwatched Door" and "Clifford's Tower". In 2014, Aric edited and published "Lost Essays", a collection of Gilman's commentaries.

Filmography

Stagework