Enterprising Irish: Murray Cummings

Murray Cummings, a filmmaker from West Cork and Dublin, moved to Los Angeles while pitching his documentary “Songwriter” about his cousin, Ed Sheeran.

Captivated by the California lifestyle, he made it his home, eventually settling down with his wife and two children.

Murray credits his Irish upbringing with helping him build genuine connections in LA, something that played a key role in selling “Songwriter” to Apple. The documentary offers an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the making of Sheeran’s Divide album.

In recent years, Murray has expanded his creative work by founding Murlyn Creative Publishing, a boutique publishing company focused on original, story-driven content.

Through Murlyn, (The Mur is from Murray and the Lyn is from his wife Katelyn), he’s begun writing and developing children’s books that reflect his passion for storytelling, creativity, and meaningful connection; values rooted in both his Irish heritage and his experience in the film world.

Read his full interview

"My name is Murray Cummings, I grew up in a mix of west cork and dublin. I'm a filmmaker and moved to L.A when I was pitching my documentary about Ed Sheeran called Songwriter.

I loved the weather and swimming in the ocean and after a few years I met my wife Katelyn who is from California so I stayed and now we have two children!

I honestly do feel like my upbringing in Ireland made it easier over here to meet and chat to people. I feel like there's a networking vibe here and people can tell if someones only chatting to them to get something. I believe it was a breath of fresh air for the people who would end up opening doors for me that I genuinely just wanted to chat and hang out and have fun.

Specifically in the case of selling my movie to Apple, all of those connections happened randomly at parties and the connections were made before I even knew who they were or what they did for a living and then the randomness takes over where a mate of a mate gets you a meeting.

COVID and the writer's strikes meant a lot of my projects couldn't get made. My children were born and I decided to stay at home and be there for them.

I wanted to be in charge of my own creativity so I started writing children's books. I work with an Irish illustrator called Willow Rose Liao from West Cork, I love her style.

It was proving quite difficult to get a publisher excited as they like to match a new writer with an illustrator they already use and we were a new writer and new illustrator, so I decided to create my own publishing company Murlyn Creative (The Mur is from Murray and the Lyn is from my wife Katelyn) and do it ourselves.

It's just starting out but it's a lot of fun! I'm setting up selling in Ireland as we speak."

- Murray Cummings

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