meet the filmmakers

Andrew Wilding

PIANO MAN
www.andrewwilding.com

Sean Gannet

DOTTIE’S THANKSGIVING PICKLE
www.seangannet.com

Sean Gannet was born to drive slow, dance fast, and make movies.  He joins us on Sunday literally moments after wrapping production on a new feature film.  He also just completed production on the short film “The Poets” written by Lori Fischer, starring Susan Louise O’Connor & Jeff Hiller.  This year he also Line Produced the epic TED Prize MissionBlue Conference in the Galapagos Islands.  Sean clearly loves the short format – he also has a pretty rockin’ musical THE ONE THAT I WANT – also produces as part of RIPFEST Collaborative Film Project.

M. Keegan Uhl

Keegan was born in Madison, Wisconsin but quickly moved to Bostonwhere he spent most of his young life. He was introduced to film in high school via the local access TV station where he created his first critical success: a regional champion video in the National History Day competition. Yes, he is a nerd. He received his BFA from Middlebury College in Vermont in 2001. There he enjoyed a liberal arts education, was awarded the David I. Goldman Prize for Excellence in Film and developed a love for Hitchcock and surrealism in film.

George Hickenlooper   (May 25, 1963 – October 29, 2010)

So much to say about George, and yet words seem so deficient.  This short film was a collaboration between Billy Bob Thornton and George, born from a character study Billy Bob developed as part of his 1986 one-man play “Swine Before Pearls”.  George and Billy Bob first worked together on George’s feature “Ghost Brigade”, then George came on to direct Billy Bob’s short script.  The film was shot in three days in a Simi Valley hospital that was the location of “Terminator 2″.   Billy Bob went on to win the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for the feature version of Karl’s story, which he also directed and starred in.  Watching the short film navigate the process from short fest programs to Academy Award Winning Feature was a gamechanger for me personally.  The power of this film changed the way I thought of shorts, and their place in my own life and filmmaking career.  I started HOLLYWOOD SHORTS the next year.

George’s film career, cut so brutally mid-sentence, includes an incredible body of feature films, short films and documentaries.  George was enjoying one of the those magical years we all dream off – his “Casino Jack” starring Kevin Spacey  World Premiere at Toronto, with a distro deal secured, great reviews for Spacey growing from screening to screening.  More great news about the film buzzing about as the film lands screenings at Doha, and Austin, locking an LA premiere at AFI and then… Denver.

I can think of no better way to say good bye to a storyteller I truly respected, and always considered a Really Nice Guy, than to remember the first time I saw his name on the screen and the 25 minutes that ensured  I would never forget it.

See ya later, George. Thank you.