RAWSON MARSHALL THURBER, DIRECTOR/WRITER
Born and raised in Orinda, California, Rawson Marshall Thurber graduated from Miramonte High School and then later from Union College (Schenectady, New York) with a BA in English and Theater Arts. He went on to earn an MFA in producing from the Peter Stark Program at the University of Southern California. His first film was a short titled "Terry Tate: Office Linebacker" which he also wrote. He directed his first feature screenplay, the comedy "Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story", for 20th Century Fox with Ben Stiller's Red Hour Films producing. He is currently developing a comedy with this same team for him to write and direct. Most recently Thurber signed a development deal with Imagine/Universal to write and direct the film version of the classic Television series "Magnum PI".
MICHAEL LONDON, PRODUCER
Academy Award-nominated producer Michael London is the principal and founder of the newly formed independent financing and production company, Groundswell Productions. Prior to founding Groundswell, London produced Alexander Payne's "Sideways", which won a Golden Globe for Best Picture (comedy or musical), an Independent Spirit Award, and a Best Picture nominee at the 2005 Academy Awards, where it won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. More recently, London produced "The Family Stone", written and directed by Thomas Bezucha. In 2003 London produced "House of Sand and Fog" and "Thirteen", which both received Academy Award nominations and 2004 Independent Spirit awards. His most recent film, "King of California", written and directed by Mike Cahill and starring Michael Douglas and Evan Rachel Wood, completed production in June of 2006. Previously, London spent five years as a production executive at Fox. He started his career as a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times after receiving his undergraduate degree from Stanford University.
JASON AJAX MERCER, PRODUCER
Jason Mercer was born and raised in Virginia in the United States. For the past several years he has been producing for Rawson Marshall Thurber, his USC classmate. They met at the University of California while Mercer was taking his masters degree in the Peter Stark Producing Program. Later, he began his career as a Television Development Executive at Viacom Productions. He was recognized for the "Terry Tate, Office Linebacker" series of Superbowl commercials which he produced, winning the Cannes Golden Lion in 2003. In addition to developing a number of forthcoming feature and television projects, Mercer maintains a hand in the 30 second world, scripting and directing recent campaigns for Reebok, Jeep, DirecTV, NFL, NBA, Siemens, and Sony-Ericsson.
BRUNA PAPANDREA, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Bruna Papandrea was recently named president of Groundswell Productions, overseeing creative operations for the independent financing and Production Company formed by producer Michael London. Prior to joining London, Papandrea was the Creative Director for Greenestreet Films. During this time she developed and acquired a slate of movies for the company including the upcoming comedy "The Pleasure Of Your Company" starring Jason Biggs and Isla Fisher for which she serves as Executive Producer. Before moving to New York, Papandrea was based in London as a producer with Mirage Enterprises, the company created by Anthony Minghella, and Sydney Pollack. At Mirage, she oversaw the Phillip Noyce film "The Quiet American" as well as acquiring several high profile properties for the company. Born in Australia, where she lived until 2001, she began her career with the feature "Better Than Sex".
PETER CHIARELLI, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Peter Chiarelli earned a Masters degree from the Peter Stark Producing program at USC, where he met Rawson Thurber and Jason Mercer. When he graduated he began his film career at DreamWorks. During that time, Chiarelli produced the short film "Terry Tate Office Linebacker", which was developed into one of the most popular Super Bowl commercials of all time. In 2001, he became an executive at Red Wagon Entertainment, where he worked on the films "Memoirs of a Geisha", "Win a Date with Ted Hamilton" and "RV". He later moved to MGM to work as a Director of Development where he supervised production of "The Pink Panther" and "The Amityville Horror". In 2005, he moved to the Dreamworks lot to head up Kurtzman/Orci Productions. As well as producing he has written a feature screenplay entitled "The Proposal", which was bought by Disney.
MICHAEL CHABON, AUTHOR
Michael Chabon was born in Washington, D.C. and raised mostly in Columbia. He studied at the University of Pittsburgh, got an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at U.C. Irvine, and has spent most of the past fifteen years in California.
Michael Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), was originally written for his master's thesis at UC Irvine and became a national bestseller. His second novel, Wonder Boys (1995), was also a bestseller, and was made into a critically-acclaimed film.
Random House published his third novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, in September 2000. The movie of this novel is also in the works, to be directed by Stephen Daldry ("The Hours"). Chabon is also the author of two collections of short stories, A Model World and Other Stories (1990) and Werewolves In Their Youth (1999). His first young adult novel, Summerland, was published in 2002 by Talk Miramax Books and won the 2003 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature.
His novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was selected by the American Library Association as one of the Notable Books of 2000 and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It won the New York Society Library Prize for Fiction, the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, the Commonwealth Club Gold Medal, and the Pulitzer Prize. Chabon's novella The Final Solution (2004) was awarded the 2005 National Jewish Book Award and also the 2003 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction by The Paris Review.
Chabon is currently working on a new novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, a thriller set in an imaginary world inspired by Franklin D. Roosevelt's short-lived plan during WWII to create a Jewish homeland in Alaska, rather than the Middle East. It will be published in 2007.