Creative

Footer Legal

Main

NavBar

Sections

Topics

Become a subscriber today to get unlimited access

Thanks for reading!

Register to continue

Talkhouse

Born and raised in New York City, Jonathan Levine has been making films since the age of 12. A graduate of Brown University&#8217;s Art/Semiotics program and the AFI Conservatory, he made his directorial debut in 2006 with All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, following it up two years later with The Wackness, starring Josh Peck and Ben Kingsley, which won the Audience Award at Sundance and an Independent Spirit Award nod for Best First Screenplay. Levine has made two films with Joseph Gordon Levitt and Seth Rogen, 50/50 (2011) and The Night Before (2015), and in 2013 wrote and directed the hit adaptation of Isaac Marion&#8217;s YA bestseller Warm Bodies. He directed the pilot of the Showtime drama <a href="http://www.sho.com/im-dying-up-here" target="_blank">I&#8217;m Dying Up Here</a>, which debuts June 4, and the Amy Schumer-Goldie Hawn comedy <a href="http://www.foxmovies.com/movies/snatched" target="_blank">Snatched</a>, out May 12 through 20th Century Fox.

Jonathan Levine

Isaac Marion grew up in the mossy depths of the Pacific Northwest, where he worked as a heating installer, a security guard and a visitation supervisor for foster children before publishing his debut novel in 2010. Warm Bodies became a New York Times bestseller and inspired a major film adaptation. It has been translated into 25 languages. Isaac lives in Seattle with his cat, Watson, writing fiction and music and taking pictures of everything. His latest book in the Warm Bodies series, The Burning World, is published by Atria / Emily Bestler Books on February 17 and is available for pre-order <a href="https://t.co/O6wwbQ7I5b" target="_blank">here</a>.

Isaac Marion

Film

Warm Bodies Director Jonathan Levine Presents an Exclusive Excerpt From Isaac Marion’s The Burning World

The 2016 Talkies: Talkhouse Film Contributors Share Their Top 10 Movies of the Year

The 2016 Talkies: Talkhouse Film Contributors’ Top Films of the Year

Jay Giampietro is a writer, director, actor and musician whose short films have played the New York Film Festival, BAMcinemaFest, and the Montclair and Maryland Film Festivals. His short film Hernia won the 2015 Hammer to Nail Summer Shorts contest and he made his acting debut in the feature Stinking Heaven, which was distributed by Factory 25. His <a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaygiampietro/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">street photography</a> capturing the eccentric denizens of New York City has been praised by The Village Voice, British GQ and The Guardian and is the subject of Joe Stankus&#8217; short documentary <a href="https://vimeo.com/257314493" target="_blank" rel="noopener">I’ve Never Been A Fisherman</a>. His most recent short films are <a href="https://vimeo.com/314395817" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Quarterbacks</a> (2018) and <a href="https://vimeo.com/245097348" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Unpresidented</a> (2017).

Jay Giampietro

How Filmmaker and Street Photographer Jay Giampietro Saw Trump’s New York on Election Day 2016

Jennifer Phang is a San Francisco-based filmmaker. Her award-winning debut feature, <a href="http://halflifemovie.com/" target="_blank">Half-Life</a>, premiered in 2008 at Sundance and was distributed by the Sundance Channel. Phang was commissioned by ITVS to create the short film Advantageous (2012), as part of the Futurestates series. She subsequently adapted it into a feature film, also called <a href="http://www.advantageous.me/" target="_blank">Advantageous</a>, which had its world premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, winning a Special Jury Award.

Jennifer Phang

Independent Spirit Award-nominated writer/director/actor Jonathan Lisecki made his feature film debut with the romantic comedy <a href="http://www.gaybyfilm.com/" target="_blank">Gayby</a> (2012), adapted from the award-winning short film of the same title. He lives in New York and Los Angeles with his husband, New Yorker music critic Alex Ross. You can follow him on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/jonnynyc" target="_blank">@jonnynyc</a>.

Jonathan Lisecki

Rodney Ascher is a filmmaker known for working in the spaces between documentaries, collage, and genre films. His feature debut, Room 237, managed a theatrical release despite the fact that it was made on a home computer in his living room. Other projects include The Nightmare, Primal Screen, Haunted, Horrifying Sounds From Beyond the Grave, and as editor, Andy Kaufman’s posthumous (?) comedy album, Andy and His Grandmother. A Glitch in the Matrix, his latest, explores Simulation Theory and, knock on wood, will premiere later this year. He lives in a fast-gentrifying corner of Los Angeles with his talented family and their beautiful cat. (Photo by Joseph Cultice.)

Rodney Ascher

Election 2016: Filmmakers Get Out the Vote!

Barney Rosset was born in 1922 in Chicago to a Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother. He bought Grove Press in 1951, and sold it to the Getty family in 1985. He died in 2012.

Barney Rosset

That Time Rip Torn Tried to Kill Norman Mailer and Hervé Villechaize Nearly Drowned

Rod Lurie is a writer-director. His films include Oscar-nominated The Contender and Straw Dogs. His TV series include Commander in Chief.  He is a sexual God.

Rod Lurie

Joe Dante is a lifelong film buff who turned his obsession into a career. He got his start cutting trailers for Roger Corman and later directed the hit movie Gremlins, as well as Gremlins 2: The New Batch, for producer Steven Spielberg. His feature films include The Howling, Innerspace, Matinee, Small Soldiers, The ‘burbs, The Hole and the zom-com Burying the Ex. His TV directing work includes the HBO film The Second Civil War, the Masters of Horrors titles, episodes of Eerie, Indiana (which he helped create), CSI: NY, Hawaii 5-0 and Salem.

Joe Dante

Onur Tukel is a writer, director and illustrator. Some of his films include Catfight, The Misogynists, Scenes From An Empty Church and Summer of Blood. He co-wrote the children&#8217;s books Let&#8217;s Make a Movie! and The Legend of Halloween with David Gordon Green, and his latest book, the illustrated novel <a href="https://www.pitchstonebooks.com/catalog/run-werewolf-run" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Run Werewolf Run</a>, is out now.

Onur Tukel

Chadd Harbold is a Brooklyn-based director, producer, and writer. He wrote, produced, and directed Private Property starring Shiloh Fernandez, out May 14 through Lionsgate, and Long Nights Short Mornings. Recently, he produced Colin West’s Linoleum, starring Jim Gaffigan; and Aharon Keshales’ South Of Heaven, starring Jason Sudeikis. His other producing credits include Ana Asensio’s Most Beautiful Island, Dan Berk &amp; Robert Olsen’s Villains, Rashaad Ernesto Green’s Premature and horror icon Larry Fessenden’s Depraved. As a director and producer, his films have screened around the world, including AFI Fest, BAMcinemaFest, BFI London Film Festival, Fantaspoa, Fantasia Film Festival, Film at Lincoln Center, International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Museum of Modern Art, Tribeca Festival, and Sitges Film Festival, among others. He is a Film Independent Spirit Award nominee, Gotham Fellow, and graduate of NYU&#8217;s Tisch School of the Arts.

Chadd Harbold

Allison Anders is an award-winning film and television writer and director. She is best-known for films such as Gas, Food Lodging (1992), Mi Vida Loca (1993), Four Rooms (1995) and Grace of My Heart (1996), and is currently a prolific TV director, helming episodes of shows such as Sex and the City, The L Word, The Mentalist and Orange is the New Black. A winner of the MacArthur Genius Grant, she is also a Distinguished Professor in the Film And Media Studies Department at the University of California Santa Barbara.

Allison Anders

Talkhouse Film Contributors Remember Curtis Hanson

Primarily known for his &#8216;Jungle Geronimo&#8217; series of boys&#8217; adventure stories, L. P. Eaves is a lifelong aficionado of the silver screen. His literary debut was the poetry chapbook Wadded Leaves (1974). He quickly went on to his famed series of find-a-word-puzzles, for which he received the prestigious Stiggs Prize in Gamesmanship. A number of his instructive pamphlets for the FDA were collected in his humorous travel memoir File Under Queasy. He lives with his sister Penelope in a converted glue factory on the shores of Lake Michigan. His forthcoming The Hauntings at the Old Glue Factory is based upon his own experiences.

L.P. Eaves

Exclusive Book Extract: The Opening of the Uncle Kent 2 Novelization

Matt Berninger is the frontman of the National. He formed El Vy in 2014 with Brent Knopf of Ramona Falls and released the album Return to the Moon in November 2015.

Matt Berninger

Music

Matt and Tom Berninger Talk (Rather Disastrously) About Their Creative Process

Alex Winter is a writer-director whose new documentary, <a href="https://www.yteffect.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The YouTube Effect</a>, is out now in theaters and whose other non-fiction films include Zappa, The Panama Papers, Trust Machine, Deep Web and Downloaded. A former child actor on Broadway, he found fame playing Bill S. Preston, Esquire in Bill &amp; Ted&#8217;s Excellent Adventure, Bill &amp; Ted&#8217;s Bogus Journey and Bill &amp; Ted Face the Music. The co-creator of the MTV show The Idiot Box, he made his directorial debut in 1993 with Freaked. Learn more at his <a href="http://alexwinter.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">official website</a>. (Photograph by Rick Wenner.)

Alex Winter

Mohammad Gorjestani is an Iranian-American filmmaker. In 2013, he was named as one of Filmmaker magazine&#8217;s 25 New Faces of Independent Film for his ITVS-commissioned film, Refuge. Starring Nikohl Boosheri, Refuge premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and went on to screen at the 2014 South by Southwest Film Festival. He is a recipient of the San Francisco Film Society&#8217;s Kenneth Rainin Foundation Filmmaking Grant for his first feature film in development, and in 2015 was selected as a resident at the San Francisco Film Society&#8217;s FilmHouse.

Mohammad Gorjestani

Robert Greene’s critically acclaimed films include Bisbee ’17 (2018), the Sundance award-winning Kate Plays Christine (2016) and the Gotham Award-nominated Actress (2014). He has edited many others, including Her Smell (2018), Golden Exits (2017), Queen of Earth (2015) and Listen Up Philip (2014) by Alex Ross Perry and award-winning documentaries such as Approaching the Elephant (2014). Robert was an inaugural Sundance Art of Nonfiction fellow in 2015. He writes for Sight &amp; Sound and is the Filmmaker-in-Chief at the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the University of Missouri. <a href="https://www.impactpartnersfilm.com/films/bisbee-17" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bisbee ’17 </a>begins its theatrical run at Film Forum from September 5.

Robert Greene

Stephen Cone&nbsp;is a Chicago-based filmmaker whose films include&nbsp;Princess Cyd&nbsp;(BFI London Film Festival, BAMcinemaFest) and&nbsp;Henry Gamble&rsquo;s Birthday Party&nbsp;(BAMcinemaFest, Maryland Film Festival), both of which are currently streaming on Netflix, as well as the Outfest-winning,&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;Critics Pick&nbsp;The Wise Kids, which can be found streaming on Hulu. Other films include&nbsp;Black Box&nbsp;(Devolver Digital),&nbsp;This Afternoon&nbsp;and&nbsp;In Memoriam&nbsp;(Vimeo).&nbsp;Stephen&nbsp;teaches in the Department of Radio / Television / Film at Northwestern University.

Stephen Cone

Talkhouse Film Contributors Remember Abbas Kiarostami

Pat Healy has acted in over 50 films including Craig Zobel’s Great World of Sound and Compliance, E.L. Katz’s Cheap Thrills, Ti West’s The Innkeepers and worked with Werner Herzog, Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Bay and Ivan Reitman, to name but a few. He has appeared in over 30 TV series including Ray Donovan, How to Get Away with Murder and Six Feet Under, and also written several episodes of the HBO show In Treatment. He is the author of two Black List screenplays (Snow Ponies and Strange Skies) and is currently preparing to direct his first feature film.

Pat Healy

Richard Shepard’s first documentary feature, <a href="https://filmforum.org/film/film-geek" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Film Geek</a>, premiered at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles this past fall and is screening for two weeks at Film Forum in New York City starting May 17. He is an Emmy- and DGA-winning director/writer whose feature films include the Golden Globe-nominated The Matador, starring Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear; Dom Hemingway, starring Jude Law and Richard E. Grant; and The Perfection, starring Allison Williams and Logan Browning. In his career, Shepard has directed 10 television pilots to pick-up including Criminal Minds; Ugly Betty, for which Shepard won the Director’s Guild award and Emmy award; the Golden Globe- and Emmy-nominated Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist; and Acapulco for Apple, now in its third season. Through its six seasons, Shepard directed 12 episodes of the Golden Globe-winning HBO series Girls, including the controversial “American Bitch” episode, for which Matthew Rhys received an Emmy nomination, as well as several Emmy-nominated episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale. He recently directed the final two episodes of the multiple Emmy-nominated Welcome to Chippendales, a Hulu limited series. Shepard’s HBO documentary I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale was nominated for an Emmy award.

Richard Shepard

Talkhouse Film Contributors Remember Michael Cimino

Brandon Colvin is a filmmaker, scholar and educator. He has written, directed and produced two features, Frames (2012) and Sabbatical (2014), and served as a producer on Tears of God (2015). He is currently a PhD candidate in Film Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Brandon Colvin

Caveh Zahedi is an autobiographical filmmaker whose body of work attempts to tell the story of his life as it unfolds. His latest film, <a href="https://www.roxycinemanewyork.com/screenings/tripping-with-caveh-getting-stoned-with-will-oldham/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Getting Stoned with Will Oldham</a>, a follow-up to his cult classic Tripping with Caveh, 20 years on, has its world premiere on October 19 at the Roxy Cinema in New York City. His feature-length films include The Sheik and I (2012), I Am A Sex Addict (2005), In The Bathtub of the World (2001), I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore (1994), and A Little Stiff (1991). His short films and other series include Getting Stoned with Caveh, Bob Dylan Hates Me, Tripping with Caveh, and I Was Possessed by God. A box set of his films is available from <a href="http://www.factorytwentyfive.com/caveh/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Factory 25</a>.

Caveh Zahedi

Frankie Latina is an Italian-American independent writer-director born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who began using his uncle Dave&#8217;s Super 8mm camera to make movies when he was a teenager. He studied film at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he learned how to make 16mm movies, and made his feature debut in 2009 with Modus Operandi. It was released theatrically by Kino Lorber in 2010 and is now available on VOD. <a href="http://www.frankielatina.com/" target="_blank">Latina</a> is currently making his second feature, Snapshot.

Frankie Latina

Jeff Reichert is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker and critic based in Brooklyn.

Jeff Reichert

Joel Potrykus resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he works with a filmmaking band, Sob Noisse, including long-time collaborator Joshua Burge. His latest feature, <a href="https://tribecafilm.com/films/vulcanizadora-2024" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vulcanizadora</a>, makes its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2024. His films Ape, Buzzard, The Alchemist Cookbook and Relaxer have premiered at the SXSW Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, and have screened at the Lincoln Center and the MoMa. He teaches filmmaking at Grand Valley State University.

Joel Potrykus

Writer and director Nick Simon grew up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He moved to Los Angeles in 2006 to attend the American Film Institute Conservatory. Upon graduation, Simon co-wrote and directed his first thriller, Removal. During the next several years Simon continued to write and direct for TV and film. Sticking within the horror and thriller genre. With films like The Girl in the Photographs, The Pyramid, and Cold Comes the Night”. Working alongside film legends like Wes Craven and Dean Cundey.  Simon is also pizza connoisseur, rescue dog enthusiast and lover of team-of-expert-movies.

Nick Simon

Penny Lane has been making award-winning, innovative nonfiction films for more than a decade. Her latest documentary,&nbsp;Hail Satan?, about the The Satanic Temple, premiered at Sundance and is being released in select theaters by Magnolia from April 19.&nbsp;Her previous documentary features include&nbsp;The Pain of Others (2018),&nbsp;Nuts! (2016) and&nbsp;Our Nixon (2013). She&nbsp;was named one of Filmmaker magazine&#8217;s &#8220;25 New Faces of Independent Film&#8221; in 2012.&nbsp;Lane is currently an associate professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Colgate University, where she lives in a very old house and shows movies in her barn. And yes, Penny Lane is her real name.

Penny Lane

Riley Stearns is the writer-director of Faults (2014), The Art of Self-Defense (2019) and his new film Dual, starring Karen Gillan and Aaron Paul, which is available on digital, on demand and AMC+ on May 20. He lives in Los Angeles. You can visit his website <a href="http://www.rileystearns.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.

Riley Stearns

Terence Nance is an Artist, Musician, and Filmmaker born in Dallas, Texas in what was then referred to as the State-Thomas community. Nance wrote, directed, scored, and starred in his first feature film, <a href="http://ofherbeauty.com">An Oversimplification of Her Beauty,</a> which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically in 2013. In 2014, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow. In the summer of 2018, Terence’s Peabody award-winning television series Random Acts of Flyness debuted on HBO to great critical acclaim, and was renewed for a second season by the network. His latest release as a musician, Vortex+, came out in early 2025.

Terence Nance

Zach Clark is the writer-director of The Becomers, Little Sister, White Reindeer, Vacation! and Modern Love is Automatic. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Zach Clark

Zack Parker is a Midwest-based independent filmmaker. His features include the horror/thrillers Inexchange, Quench and Scalene. <a href="http://twitter.com/PROXY_Movie" target="_blank">Proxy</a>, his latest, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013, and will be released on Blu-ray and DVD by IFC Midnight August 12th.

film other