Peter Hedges

Peter Hedges adapted his first novel, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, for director Lasse Hallström. Other screenplay adaptations include Nick Hornby’s About a Boy, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award®, and Jane Hamilton’s A Map of the World. Peter wrote and directed Pieces of April, starring Katie Holmes and Patricia Clarkson, and most recently directed and cowrote Dan in Real Life, starring Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche. He will be directing his adaptation of Jonathan Tropper’s Everything Changes, with Tobey Maguire, for Sony Pictures in the near future. Peter lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Susan Bruce, and their children, Simon and Lucas.

Gregory Hoblit

Gregory Hoblit examines the human condition in all of his films, including the recent Untraceable and Fracture. His other credits include Hart’s War, Frequency, and Fallen. In 1996, Hoblit made an auspicious feature debut with the moody courtroom drama Primal Fear. The seeds of Hoblit’s feature success were sown in television, where as an executive producer and director he helped to develop and craft Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, NYPD Blue, the NBC movie Roe Vs. Wade, and he 1990 AIDS documentary The Los Altos Story. He received nine Emmy and three Peabody Awards as well as the DGA, CableACE, Humanitas, Golden Globe, and People’s Choice Awards. Born in Abilene, Texas and raised in Berkeley, California, Hoblit completed his undergraduate degree at UC Berkeley and UCLA before studying film and television on the graduate level at UCLA. He began his professional career producing talk shows in Chicago and as an associate producer on a sitcom and low-budget films in Los Angeles.  Hoblit partnered with Steven Bochco to produce the series Paris, Hill Street Blues, Bay City Blues, L.A. Law, Hooperman, Cop Rock, Civil Wars, and NYPD Blue.

Callie Khouri

Callie Khouri galvanized women and sparked nationwide debate in 1991 with her screenwriting debut Thelma & Louise, for which she received an Oscar®, a Writers Guild of America award, a Golden Globe, and a PEN Literary Award. In 1992, Khouri received the Los Angeles Women Making History Award and the New York Women in Communications Matrix Award. Her second film was 1995’s Something to Talk About, and her directorial debut was 2002’s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, which she also adapted for the screen. In 2006, Khouri collaborated with Steven Bochco to create the television series Hollis and Rae, for which she wrote and directed the pilot. Khouri recently released her second feature, Mad Money. Born in Texas and raised in Kentucky, Callie Khouri majored in drama at Purdue University and studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute in Los Angeles and later with Peggy Fuery. Khouri twice served on the board of directors of the Writers Guild of America and also served on the board of trustees of the Writers Guild Foundation. In 2005 she was awarded the Horton Foote Award for special achievement in screenwriting. She resides in the Los Angeles area.

Oliver Platt

Oliver Platt, the son of a career diplomat, spent most of his childhood in the Far East. He graduated from Tufts University with a degree in drama and began working in such theater productions as John Guare’s Moon Over Miami, Lincoln Center’s production of Ubu, Jules Feiffer’s Elliot Loves (directed by Mike Nichols), and Brian Kulick’s Twelfth Night at the New York Shakespeare Festival. Mr. Platt will next be seen in Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon and Harold Ramis’ Year One. Other film credits include The Ten, Casanova, The Ice Harvest, The Impostors, Benny & Joon, Funny Bones, Bulworth, Married to the Mob, Working Girl, Flatliners, Postcards from the Edge, Indecent Proposal, The Three Musketeers, A Time to Kill, Doctor Dolittle, Simon Birch, Lake Placid, Don’t Say a Word, and Pieces of April. He made his producing debut on the indie film Big Night. He recently received a SAG Award nomination for the hit ESPN miniseries The Bronx is Burning. Other accolades include a Tony nomination for his work on Broadway in Connor McPherson’s Shining City, a Golden Globe and back-to-back Emmy nominations for Huff, and an Emmy nomination for his guest role on The West Wing. Mr. Platt can currently be seen on the FX television hit Nip/Tuck. He resides in New York with his wife and three children.

Christine Vachon

Christine Vachon produced Todd Haynes’ controversial first feature, Poison, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival. Since then, she has produced Far From Heaven, Boys Don’t Cry, One Hour Photo, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Happiness, Velvet Goldmine, Safe, I Shot Andy Warhol, Go Fish, Swoon, and others. Along with partner Pamela Koffler, she runs Killer Films, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2005 and was honored with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Killer movies have been nominated for eight Academy Awards® and 11 Emmys and won the Oscar® for Hilary Swank’s transforming performance in Boys Don’t Cry. Recent Killer releases include I’m Not There, which earned Cate Blanchett an Academy Award® nomination, and 2008 will see Savage Grace, An American Crime, and Then She Found Me. In 1994, Christine was awarded the Frameline Award for Outstanding Achievement in Lesbian and Gay Media and in 1996 was honored with the prestigious Muse Award for Outstanding Vision and Achievement by New York Women in Film and Television. She received the IFP’s 1999 Gotham Award and, for her work on Far From Heaven, was honored by the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review. She is the author of two best-selling books, 1998’s Shooting to Kill and A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond, which was published in 2006.