After graduating from USC with a cinema degree, I worked in film and television production for over a decade. At the same time, I wrote and directed short films on the side.
I finally made my first feature film and first daughter in the same year. The movie’s pretty good, but I’m even more proud of my daughter, who already knows all the words to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
In addition to earning a master’s degree in fine arts, I was part of the inaugural cohort of Imagine Impact, the screenwriting accelerator created by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer.
Working out the next shot with the DP.
Discussing the scene with actress Melanie Friedrich.
Comedy and horror are intimately related. They’re all about timing, suspense, setup and payoff. But there’s something mysterious about the fact that a bad horror film often becomes a comedy, but bad comedy rarely becomes horror.
Everything I ever wanted to know about writing is wrapped up in that question.
Cinema is a collaborative art. I believe in carrying that collaboration into the classes I teach. With over a decade and a half of employment in the entertainment industry, in every role from PA to director to producer, I’ve seen how the theory gets put into practice on sets and in writing rooms.