About
"Here's looking at you kid."
- Casablanca 1942
Toni Gonzales got her start in television at the ripe old age of 15. She did it the old fashioned way by becoming an intern while still in high school at the local CBS affiliate in Roswell, New Mexico. Long before the days of the internet and e-mails, she worked her way through the station by doing beat checks, and editing tape to tape on 3/4 inch tape. Soon, she was a commercial producer and eventually made her way up to the Duke City and Albuquerque as a photographer with the ABC station, KOAT.
Leaving the Land of Enchantment in 2001, Toni left the desert air, hopped a balloon ride, packed up her green chile and headed for balmy Florida and WFLA in Tampa. There she mastered the edit bay before being scooped up by Daytime, a new at the time infotainment show syndicated throughout the country. It was there that hard work and a mostly luck had her on the train to Hollywood.
When a fellow preditor called out sick she temporarily took over a movie show, also syndicated, called Star Watch. It was love at first frame for Toni. She along with fellow film critic and Broadcast Film Critic Member Sam Hallenbeck crafted the finest 22 minutes of TV about movies there ever was. Sam would travel the globe and leave Toni to produce and edit the weekly show back in Tampa. Yet another stoke of luck was dealt to Toni when a colleague fell ill forcing her to cover a junket in Los Angeles. Toni filled in and soon added celebrity one-on-one interviews to her list and frequent flyer miles to her Delta account.
It was during these years and endless disagreements over movies that Toni realized she had a real passion for film. After a decade and some change Toni was coaxed back to her home state of NM when ReelzChannel came calling. An entire network about movies - what was not to love? Abq Studios was her home while she produced half hour specials on the latest movies as well as helping the network to launch several of it's original programming shows. Never mind that it sat on the very same lot where some of the best in television and film were made (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Avengers, Terminator). She was surrounded by other lovers of film like Leonard Maltin and Richard Roeper. Soon, Toni added her critiques to the latest releases all while falling in love with television.
To be surrounded with all that creative love and passion for film was a dream come true. Two years later, missing the palm trees and Buccaneer Football Toni returned to Florida. She is now an Executive Producer of an info-tainment show. She is a weekly contributor on both film and television to that show in addition to Scripps where she now calls home. When not in a movie theater for her segments, she is in her home screening independent films as she is the Programming Director for the FM Film Festival.
