Screenwriter Lem Dobbs has carved out a unique niche as a talent whose greatest work may exist, but has yet to be seen. After doing some uncredited polishing on Romancing the Stone and writing a made-for-cable thriller, Dobbs got his first feature credits on 1991's Kafka and The Hard Way. Kafka, a willfully difficult, literate screenplay, was directed by Steven Soderbergh as his follow-up to sex, lies, and videotape. After that film suffered the traditional sophomore slump, Dobbs worked on a variety of projects.
Screenwriter Lem Dobbs has carved out a unique niche as a talent whose greatest work may exist, but has yet to be seen. After doing some uncredited polishing on Romancing the Stone and writing a made-for-cable thriller, Dobbs got his first feature credits on 1991's Kafka and The Hard Way. Kafka, a willfully difficult, literate screenplay, was directed by Steven Soderbergh as his follow-up to sex, lies, and videotape. After that film suffered the traditional sophomore slump, Dobbs worked on a variety of projects. The cult favorite science fiction film Dark City would be his first onscreen credit in seven years. He would team up with Soderbergh again for The Limey in 1999, but Dobbs was not happy with many of the changes the director made to the script. They have a revealing, entertaining debate on the DVD for The Limey, a movie which also qualifies as one of the highlights of Dobbs' career. In 2001, Dobbs brought his unique sensibilities to Frank Oz's caper film The Score. As impressive as these credits are, it is the legendary, unproduced screenplay titled "Edward Ford," written when Dobbs was 19, that looms largest over his career. Widely considered one of the very best screenplays never produced, "Edward Ford" is about a cowboy actor. While it is unclear if Dobbs will ever see his prized work hit the big screen, his work has shown a keen intelligence that is capable of working in many different film genres.
Johnathon Schaech started his acting career taking on the lead in Franco Zefferelli's The Sparrow...he went on to play title character's in TNT's HOUDINI and ABC's JUDAS...and starred in such films as HUSH, THE FORSAKEN, THE DOOM GENERATION and Tom Hank's THAT THING YOU DO...to name a few of the features and television productions he's been part of.
Johnathon Schaech started his acting career taking on the lead in Franco Zefferelli's The Sparrow...he went on to play title character's in TNT's HOUDINI and ABC's JUDAS...and starred in such films as HUSH, THE FORSAKEN, THE DOOM GENERATION and Tom Hank's THAT THING YOU DO...to name a few of the features and television productions he's been part of.
Recently he starred in two award winning indies SEA OF DREAMS and LITTLE CHENIER. And he also starred in theatrical blockbusters PROM NIGHT and QUARANTINE for 2008.
He recently produced, wrote and starred in THE POKER CLUB. The first feature under his company CHESAPEAKE FILMS with his partner, Richard Chizmar.
Richard and Johnathon wrote for Showtime's MASTERS OF HORROR series and penned a couple episodes of NBC'S FEAR ITSELF. Working with directors Peter Medak and Stuart Gordan.
Schaech and Chizmar have adapted Stephen King's FROM A BUICK 8 for director Tobe Hooper. Which will go into production this Spring.
They're currently attached to adapt Stephen King's QUITTER'S INC as a feature for Sam Jackson.
Sean Hood graduated from Brown University, with a double major in pure mathematics and studio art. He continued his studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, graduating in 1997 with an MFA in production. His Short Film, "The Shy and the Naked" won a grant from the Sloan Foundation for the positive portrayal of science.[1]
Sean Hood graduated from Brown University, with a double major in pure mathematics and studio art. He continued his studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, graduating in 1997 with an MFA in production. His Short Film, "The Shy and the Naked" won a grant from the Sloan Foundation for the positive portrayal of science.[1]
He is currently writing action films including Hercules for Millennium Films, and the sequel to Stigmata for MGM. He also wrote the episode "The Echoes" for NBC's Fear Itself.
He was one of the founding members of Filmmakers Alliance and often collaborates creatively with FA's president, Jacques Thelemaque.
Joseph Gangemi was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1970. An early love of science fiction took him to the Clarion Writers Workshop (that genre's Iowa) in 1986, where he was the youngest attendee in the workshop's history. Shortly thereafter he made his first professional sale, publishing a short story in the "speculative fiction" anthology Full Spectrum II (Bantam Doubleday, 1989).
Joseph Gangemi was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1970. An early love of science fiction took him to the Clarion Writers Workshop (that genre's Iowa) in 1986, where he was the youngest attendee in the workshop's history. Shortly thereafter he made his first professional sale, publishing a short story in the "speculative fiction" anthology Full Spectrum II (Bantam Doubleday, 1989).
In 1992 Joe graduated from Swarthmore, a small Quaker liberal arts college outside Philadelphia, with a degree in psychology, and commenced the long apprenticeship required of writers. During this time he paid the rent by working as a waiter, a translator for a Russian shell corporation (though he doesn't speak Russian), a receptionist for a private detective agency, a fundraiser for an order of Catholic priests, and a Kelly Girl. Eventually his typing skills landed him at a small consulting firm, where he worked his way up to a senior position as communications consultant to such corporate clients as DuPont and Conoco.
In 1995 his friend Jon Cohen, a Swarthmore native and novelist, approached Joe about collaborating on a screenplay. The partnership produced Crossover, a thriller about a team of vampire heart surgeons, which was subsequently optioned by Interscope Films. (Jon would go on to pen the Steven Spielberg thriller Minority Report.)
Several solo screenplays followed for Joe, resulting eventually in the 1997 spec sale of Black Ice to New Line Cinema. Retiring from the corporate world, Joe devoted himself full-time to screenwriting, working on open writing assignments such as a (unproduced) big screen adaptation of Stephen King's Salem's Lot for Warner Brothers, as well as original scripts like Eliza Graves, which is tentatively slated for production by Mel Gibson's Icon Productions in 2004. Currently, Joe is completing a 1970s-set thriller in the tradition of Three Days of the Condor for Tobey Maguire and Columbia Pictures.
Joe's ongoing interest in unexplored footnotes in history has lead to him writing -- over ten intense months of 2002 -- his first novel.
Inamorata was published in hardcover by Viking on January 26, 2004. Set in 1920s Philadelphia, and featuring a cast of skeptical graduate students, morphine addicts, beguiling spirit-mediums, sadistic gynecologists, peg-legged Filipino butlers, and a talkative ghost (who bites), Inamorata takes place only a few blocks from the Rittenhouse Square home where Joe currently resides with his longtime girlfriend, PR executive Stacey Himes.
Richard Thomas Chizmar (born 1965) is best known as the publisher and editor of Cemetery Dance magazine and the owner of Cemetery Dance Publications. He has edited more than a dozen anthologies, including series.
He has contributed fiction to many publications, including Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and The Year's 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories. He has won the Horror Writers Association Board of Trustees Award, two World Fantasy Awards, and four International Horror Guild Awards.
Richard Thomas Chizmar (born 1965) is best known as the publisher and editor of Cemetery Dance magazine and the owner of Cemetery Dance Publications. He has edited more than a dozen anthologies, including series.
He has contributed fiction to many publications, including Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and The Year's 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories. He has won the Horror Writers Association Board of Trustees Award, two World Fantasy Awards, and four International Horror Guild Awards.
Richard Chizmar and Johnathon Schaech are the founders of Chesapeake Films. Their first projects include an adaptation of Stephen King's From A Buick 8 for director Tobe Hooper. Which will go into production this Spring.
They also co-wrote the screenplay for Road House 2: Last Call (along with Miles Chapman) and Showtime's Masters of Horror presentation of The Washingtonians (based on Bentley Little's story) and penned a couple episodes of NBC'S FEAR ITSELF, working with directors Peter Medak and Stuart Gordan.
Currently Chizmar and Schaech are attached to adapt Stephen King's QUITTER'S INC as a feature for Sam Jackson.
Johnathon Schaech started his acting career taking on the lead in Franco Zefferelli's The Sparrow...he went on to play title character's in TNT's HOUDINI and ABC's JUDAS...and starred in such films as HUSH, THE FORSAKEN, THE DOOM GENERATION and Tom Hank's THAT THING YOU DO...to name a few of the features and television productions he's been part of.
Johnathon Schaech started his acting career taking on the lead in Franco Zefferelli's The Sparrow...he went on to play title character's in TNT's HOUDINI and ABC's JUDAS...and starred in such films as HUSH, THE FORSAKEN, THE DOOM GENERATION and Tom Hank's THAT THING YOU DO...to name a few of the features and television productions he's been part of.
Recently he starred in two award winning indies SEA OF DREAMS and LITTLE CHENIER. And he also starred in theatrical blockbusters PROM NIGHT and QUARANTINE for 2008.
He recently produced, wrote and starred in THE POKER CLUB. The first feature under his company CHESAPEAKE FILMS with his partner, Richard Chizmar.
Richard and Johnathon wrote for Showtime's MASTERS OF HORROR series and penned a couple episodes of NBC'S FEAR ITSELF. Working with directors Peter Medak and Stuart Gordan.
Schaech and Chizmar have adapted Stephen King's FROM A BUICK 8 for director Tobe Hooper. Which will go into production this Spring.
They're currently attached to adapt Stephen King's QUITTER'S INC as a feature for Sam Jackson.
Steve Niles is one of the writers responsible for bringing horror comics back to prominence. Currently writing Wake The Dead, Freaks Of The Heartland, Fused: Think Like A Machine and Love Me Tenderloin: A Cal Macdonald Mystery for Dark Horse Comics and Hyde and Dark Days for IDW, Niles also recently released his third Cal MacDonald illustrated prose novel, Dial M For Monster.
Steve Niles is one of the writers responsible for bringing horror comics back to prominence. Currently writing Wake The Dead, Freaks Of The Heartland, Fused: Think Like A Machine and Love Me Tenderloin: A Cal Macdonald Mystery for Dark Horse Comics and Hyde and Dark Days for IDW, Niles also recently released his third Cal MacDonald illustrated prose novel, Dial M For Monster.
His 30 Days Of Night comic is also being developed as a major motion picture, with Spider-Man's Sam Raimi producing. Also in pre-production are adaptations of his Wake The Dead and Hyde, and also a Criminal Macabre movie for which he will write the screenplay as well.
Niles got his start in the industry when he formed his own publishing company called Arcane Comix, where he published, edited and adapted several comics and anthologies for Eclipse Comics. His adaptations include works by Clive Barker, Richard Matheson and Harlan Ellison. IDW recently released a hardcover collection of Niles' adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend.
Niles has completed a wide array of projects, including Remains and Aleister Arcane from IDW and The Nail (with Rob Zombie), Fused: Dazed And Confused and Fused: Machinehead from Dark Horse Comics. Additionally, he is hard at work on another Cal MacDonald novel, Last Train To Deadsville and a second 30 Days Of Night sequel entitled Return To Barrow.
Victor Ronald Salva[1] (born March 29, 1958) is an American film director, mostly of horror movies. His body of work includes the films Powder and the Jeepers Creepers series.
Victor Ronald Salva[1] (born March 29, 1958) is an American film director, mostly of horror movies. His body of work includes the films Powder and the Jeepers Creepers series.
Salva was born in Martinez, California. He grew up watching Creature Features on television and is a self-confessed "Jaws baby". In 1986, he made the low budget horror film Something in the Basement which attracted the attention of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, who in turn helped Salva finance his first feature-length film, Clownhouse (1989), and many subsequent films.
In 1995, he directed the Disney-financed Powder and in1999 took the Grand Prize at the Santa Monica Film Festival for Rites of Passage.
Award-winning filmmaker Mick Garris began writing fiction at the age of twelve. By the time he was in high school, he was writing music and film journalism for various local and national publications, and during college, edited and published his own pop culture magazine. He spent seven years as lead…
Award-winning filmmaker Mick Garris began writing fiction at the age of twelve. By the time he was in high school, he was writing music and film journalism for various local and national publications, and during college, edited and published his own pop culture magazine. He spent seven years as lead vocalist with the acclaimed tongue-in-cheek progressive art-rock band, HORSEFEATHERS. His first movie business job was as a receptionist for George Lucas's Star Wars Corporation, where he worked his way up to running the remote-controlled R2-D2 robot at personal appearances, including that year's Academy Awards® ceremony. Garris hosted and produced "The Fantasy Film Festival" for nearly three years on Los Angeles television, and later began work in film publicity at Avco Embassy and Universal Pictures. It was there that he created "Making of..." documentaries for various feature films. Steven Spielberg hired Garris as story editor on the AMAZING STORIES series for NBC, where he wrote or co-wrote 10 of the 44 episodes. Since then, he has written or co-authored several feature films (RIDING THE BULLET, *BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED, THE FLY II, HOCUS POCUS, CRITTERS 2) and teleplays (QUICKSILVER HIGHWAY, VIRTUAL OBSESSION, THE OTHERS), as well as directing and producing in many media: cable (Showtime's PSYCHO IV: THE BEGINNING), features (CRITTERS 2, SLEEPWALKERS), television films (QUICKSILVER HIGHWAY, VIRTUAL OBSESSION), series pilots (THE OTHERS, LOST IN OZ), and network miniseries (THE STAND, THE SHINING, STEVE MARTINI'S THE JUDGE). His independent feature film version of Stephen King's RIDING THE BULLET, which Garris adapted (and produced and directed) from King's e-book phenomenon, was released in October, 2004, and he is currently completing postproduction on DESPERATION, which King adapted himself, and which Garris is producing and directing as a three-hour ABC feature for television.
Garris is the creator and Executive Producer of the Showtime series MASTERS OF HORRORTM as well as a writer and director on the show. A LIFE IN THE CINEMA is his first book, though he has had stories published in several magazines and anthologies. His second book - and first novel - DEVELOPMENT HELL: THE NINE LIVES OF A HOLLYWOOD PLAYER, will be published by Cemetery Dance in 2005. Garris lives in Studio City, California, with his wife, Cynthia, an actress, musician, composer and muse.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Knauf attended several colleges in South California studying fine art, and later graduated from the California State University, Los Angeles with a bachelor's degree in English in 1982.[4] He began work as a employee benefits consultant and later a health insurance broker, writing once he was able to support himself and his family financially.[3][4] Hoping to become a screenwriter, Knauf's first script…
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Knauf attended several colleges in South California studying fine art, and later graduated from the California State University, Los Angeles with a bachelor's degree in English in 1982.[4] He began work as a employee benefits consultant and later a health insurance broker, writing once he was able to support himself and his family financially.[3][4] Hoping to become a screenwriter, Knauf's first script was a draft of Carniv�le, written in 1992,[2] 180 pages long and twice the length of the average feature film.[3] Convinced the screenplay could not work as either a standard television series or a film, he put it aside, planning to one day adapt it into a novel.[2] Carniv�le evolved as a result of Knauf's childhood fascination with carnivals and his interest in "freaks", due in part to the childhood polio that confined his father to a wheelchair, which Knauf felt his father was defined by.[2][3] After meeting with a number of television writers at a Writers Guild of America retreat in the mid-90s, he started to think that his screenplay might work as a television piece. He took the first act and reworked it as a television pilot, but shelved the script again when he could not get the project produced.[3]
Knauf went on the write the 1994 HBO-produced television movie Blind Justice,[5] and, during a low-point in his screenwriting career, created his own website, posting his resume and Carniv�le's first act online.[3] He created the 2001 television pilot Honey Vicarro and wrote, produced and directed for the television series Wolf Lake and feature film Dark Descent[4] before a television production scout brought Carniv�le to television producers Scott Winant and Howard Klein, who brought it to HBO where the series ended up being produced,[5] twelve years after Knauf had first drafted the script.[3]
Since Carniv�le was cancelled in 2005, Knauf has moved on to write for television series Supernatural and Standoff, also serving as a co-executive producer on the latter. He and his son Charles Knauf have written issues 7-18 and 21-28 Iron Man for Marvel Comics,[6] as well as volume #2 of The Eternals since its 2006 revival after over thirty years.[7][8] He will also write a Captain America Theater of War: Zero-Point story set during World War II, and has submitted a draft to Sci Fi Channel for an adaptation of the Phantom.