Screenwriting Symposium Faculty
The Hollywood Connection Faculty
Faculty Bios & Sessions
Click on a faculty member's name or event to view more information.
|
LEGEND:
|
|
SS
|
= Screenwriting Symposium
|
|
HC
|
= The Hollywood Connection
|
Ian Abrams
Since 1998 Professor Ian Abrams has been head of the Screenwriting & Playwriting Program at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Prior to that he worked in Hollywood for twenty years, ten of them writing and producing film and TV. He wrote the 1993 MGM film Undercover Blues starring Kathleen Turner, Dennis Quaid and Stanley Tucci, and was co-creator of the long-running CBS show Early Edition.
Ian has written for or sold screenplays to Warner Bros./CBS, TriStar, Universal, DeLaurentis Entertainment Group, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount, and Spelling Films.
His titles reflect his wry sense of humor: "The Dust Devil In His Greatest Adventure," "House-O-Matic," "Murder Can Be Fun," "Weirdos," "Too Many Husbands," and "Presumed Impotent."
|
|---|
Terry Borst
Terry studied with screenwriting gurus Lew Hunter, Richard Walter and William Froug. His credits include many episodes of the BBC action-adventure series Bugs (syndicated in 30+ countries), the TV movie sequel Midnight Run Around and the independent feature Private War. He has written other screenplays for Paramount Pictures, USA Network, the BBC, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, and various independent producers.
For more than a decade, he co-wrote a trade publication and website column, *alt.screenwriters*, focusing on the collision of screenwriting and new media technologies. He's taught screenwriting at the College of Santa Fe, UCLA, USC, Moorpark College, Santa Fe Community College, and Canada's Banff Centre for the Arts, and his students have won film festival competitions and been accepted at top film schools around the country.
You can find more about Terry at www.terryborst.com.
|
|---|
David Boxerbaum
David Boxerbaum, VP, AGENCY for the PERFORMING ARTS (APA) started his career at Jerry Bruckheimer Films as an Assistant/Intern, moving from there to work for producer Robert Fried (Collateral, The Boondock Saints, Godzilla). Next he went to William Morris Agency where he worked for Sr. VP Lee Rosenberg. His next step was at William Morris Endeavor for partners Ari Greenburg & Rick Rosen. After stints as Creative Executive at RKO Pictures and Head of the Literary Department at Metropolitan Talent Agency, he settled in at APA.
David was also named in 2003 as one of Hollywood Reporter's Next Generation Top 35 Under 35 people in the business.
|
|---|
Kirk Ellis
Writer, Producer
Santa Fe-based writer/producer Kirk Ellis won two Emmys and the Humanitas Prize for his work on John Adams starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. Ellis wrote and co-executive produced the seven-part HBO miniseries, which is based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning biography. The miniseries scored a record 23 nominations, second only to Roots in Emmy history, and won a record breaking 13 Emmys in total, as well as four Golden Globe awards. Ellis has also received a Writers Guild of America nomination for his script.
Ellis will continue his association with McCullough and the American Revolution on his next project for HBO, 1776. Like Adams, the miniseries will be produced with Tom Hanks' Playtone Co. In addition Ellis is adapting the James Ellroy novel "American Tabloid" as a series for Playtone and HBO.
For the big screen, Ellis is working on the feature project Blood and Thunder, an epic drama of Kit Carson and the Navajo Wars, and Escape, the true story of Carolyn Jessop, who escaped from a plural marriage in a fundamentalist Mormon compound under the leadership of Warren Jeffs. Katherine Heigl will star and produce under her Abishag banner along with Michael Menchel of Relevant Entertainment.
Ellis' collaboration with Steven Spielberg and DreamWorks brought him the Western Writers of America's Golden Spur Award for Best Drama Script for Hell on Wheels, an episode of the Emmy and Golden Globe nominated TNT/DreamWorks miniseries Into the West on which Ellis served as supervising producer and writer. He also received the Wrangler Award for Best Television Feature from the National Western Heritage Museum for his work on the miniseries.
Previously Ellis received an Emmy nomination and won the Writers Guild of America and the Humanitas Prize for the ABC miniseries Anne Frank which he wrote and co-produced. Additional credits include writing the award-winning ABC miniseries The Beach Boys: An American Family, co-executive producing Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (which earned him a Critics' Choice Award) and writing The Three Stooges telefilm.
Ellis made his feature film debut writing and co-producing The Grass Harp based on the coming-of-age novel by Truman Capote. He has also collaborated on projects with such esteemed directors as Francis Ford Coppola, Roland Joffe and William Friedkin.
|
|---|
Rebecca Ewing
UNITED TALENT AGENCY
, Motion Picture Literary Agent
Bio Coming Soon...
|
|---|
Paul Robert Herman
Screenwriter/Producer Paul Robert Herman received his BA in psychology from the University of North Carolina. He then earned his teaching credentials from the University of Colorado, specializing in creative writing and cinematography. After moving to Hollywood and landing his first literary agent, Herman graduated from UCLA's Professional Program in Screenwriting. It was during his time at UCLA that he developed the idea for Tales from the Script. He is the Founder and CEO of Jade Tiger Productions. For more on the film and the companion book, go to www.TalesfromtheScript.com.
|
|---|
Josh Olson
After writing and directing the horror/comedy cult movie INFESTED, Josh Olson broke into the studio world when he sold his original script THREE GUN BLUES to Paramount Pictures, with producer Gale Ann Hurd attached. That led to his first studio assignment, adapting the graphic novel A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE for New Line. Olson's work on that film was nominated for the Academy Award, the BAFTA, the WGA award, and the Edgar.
Since then, Olson has collaborated with legendary author Harlan Ellison on an adaptation of Ellison's The Discarded for the ABC TV Series "MASTERS OF SCIENCE FICTION". The episode starred Brian Dennehy and John Hurt.
He worked on adapting the hugely popular video game HALO for producer Peter Jackson and director Neill Blomkamp, and has adapted the Dennis Lehane short story UNTIL GWEN, which he will also direct. He contributed the script for "HAVE I GOT A STORY FOR YOU" to the smash hit BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHT project.
He recently wrote a sequel to THE WIZARD OF OZ for Warner Brothers, and has just finished adapting the Lee Child bestseller ONE SHOT for Paramount. His Village Voice essay "I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script" became an internet phenomenon, getting upwards of two million hits, and is spawning a book.
He is currently developing a TV drama, "PLEASED TO MEET ME", with the legendary guitarist Slash, and is writing the pilot for "MEANWHILE", a dramatic series he created and sold to producer Peter Chernin and the Fox Network.
Olson can be seen commenting on classic film trailers at Joe Dante's website, TRAILERS FROM HELL.
|
|---|
Ken Rotcop
Among Ken's many honors, he is the winner of the Writer's Guild Award, the Image Award and the Neil Simon Award for producing and writing, "For Us, The Living; The Story of Medgar Evers".
His latest book "The Perfect Pitch- 2nd Edition" was released in '09 along with his latest DVDs "Let's Sell Your Script!" and "Secrets of Animation".
Ken's first musical "Mama Cass" is scheduled to open 2010.
As a former Creative Head of four Hollywood studios including Embassy Pictures and Hanna-Barbera, Ken supervised Lion in Winter, Carnal Knowledge, The Graduate, and Charlotte's Web.
In 1988 Ken created his first PitchMart where the writers of his workshop could sit one-on-one with top studio executives and pitch their scripts. It has been going strong ever since.
Ken is the subject of an award winning, feature length documentary titled "Talk Fast".
He has been featured on Oprah and is included in "Who's Who in Entertainment". Ken can be reached at: PitchMart@Juno.com
|
|---|
Chris Soth
CHRIS SOTH sold his USC thesis screenplay Firestorm for $750,000 while still a graduate student. The movie was made, starring football star Howie Long, Scott Glenn, William Forsythe, Barry Pepper, and Suzie Amis, and was released in January of 1998. ("Firestorm rages with adventurous appeal." - LA Times.)
He received sole credit on the film and has gone on to make the movie Outrage. This year he will direct his own screenplay, "Dead Man's Hand."
He teaches his own proprietary structure and story method through MillionDollarScreenwriting.com and via teleseminar at ScreenplayByPhone.com. Chris is the author of the Internet Best-Seller: Million-Dollar Screenwriting: The Mini-Movie Method as well as the star of Sold! How I Set Up Three Pitches in Hollywood, the Writer's Store best-selling pitching DVD.
He has taught at USC and UCLA and mentors screenwriters throughout the world at YourScreenplayMentor.com. Chris has authored more than 28 screenplays. He holds an MFA with distinction in screenwriting from the University of Southern California and a BA in Dramatic Literature from Vassar College, with highest honors.
|
|---|
Wendall Thomas
For the last twenty-two years, Wendall Thomas has worked in Los Angeles as a casting director, director's assistant, script reader, story editor, development executive, entertainment reporter, script consultant and screenwriter, writing and developing projects for companies including Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Universal, Showtime, PBS, RKO, A&E, NBC, T&C Film, ACC Entertainment, Gabriel Films and Scottish Screen.
In addition to writing and consulting, she has lectured throughout Europe for the Arista Screenwriting Workshops and in the U.K. for the Welsh and Northern Irish Film Commissions, Northern Film and Media, the Folkstone Literary Festival and Screen South. She recently returned from a lecture tour for the New Zealand Film Commission.
She has consulted for the Atelier du Cinema Europeen Producing Program in Paris, served as Writer's Mentor for Screen South's Good Foundations Plus program 2005-2007 and is directing the LA FEATURES program for the UK Film Council's Northern Film and Media for 2007-2009.
She is also a Star Speaker for the annual Los Angeles Screenwriting Expo and runs the Living Room Lecture series in Los Angeles. She is in her thirteenth year as Adjunct Professor of Screenwriting in the Graduate School of Film and Television at UCLA.
|
|---|
This faculty list is based on the availability of instructors
and is subject to change without notification.
|
|
