This event is bringing together industry luminaries and celebrated pros including executives from NBC Universal, CBS, Warner Bros and Studio 71, as well as screenwriters of such beloved shows as MAD MEN, NCIS, PLANET OF THE APES, CRASH, 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, OLIVE KITTERIDGE and so many more!
Meet Our 2017 Speakers (for 2018 speakers, click upper right tab)
All of last year's speakers are only available to TSL 360 Members.
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Studio Executives
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Dave Devries is a principal at Studio 71, a global media company and digital network for creators, boasting more than seven billion monthly views.
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Carole Kirschner is an entertainment career coach and the Director of the WGA Showrunner Training Program, CBS Diversity Writers Program. Formerly she served as the head of Amblin Television.
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Director of the Warner Bros. Television Workshop, helping to find and cultivate new emerging voices to develop TV and digital series.
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Karen Horne serves as the Senior Vice President of Programming Talent Development & Inclusion for NBC Entertainment and Universal Television Studios. She is responsible for overseeing in-front-of and behind-the-camera primetime diversity efforts for NBC and Universal Television. NBC’s Writers on the Verge Program, the Emerging Director Program, NBC’s StandUp for Diversity nationwide talent search and the NBCUniversal Short Film Festival are among the many programs she heads while also overseeing NBC’s Diversity Staffing Initiative and working with the creative programming team to identify diverse development.
Feature Film Writers
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Scott Neustadter is a acclaimed screenwriter and producer of (500) Days of Summer, The Fault In Our Stars, The Spectacular Now, Paper Towns and X-Men: The New Mutants.
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Bobby Moresco is an Academy Award-winning writer, producer and director known for Crash, Million Dollar Baby, and the acclaimed NBC series The Black Donnellys. His latest project is a biopic of Ferrurico Lamborghini, starring Alec Baldwin and Antonio Banderas.
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Writing team Amanda Silver & Rick Jaffa have been responsible for some of the most successful reinvigorations of iconic franchises. Their credits include Jurassic World, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and Disney’s live action Mulan.
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Marcus Sakey is an award-winning novelist whose series Brilliance has sold over 1 million copies, and who has optioned his work to Imagine Entertainment.
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Phyllis Nagy is an Oscar-nominated writer and director, known for Carol, Mrs. Harris and The Trap.
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Mark Bomback is an in-demand screenwriter known for crafting fresh and character-driven iterations of storied franchises. His credits include Live Free or Die Hard, The Wolverine, Total Recall, Unstoppable, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and War For the Planet of the Apes.
TV Writers
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Jane Anderson is an Emmy-winning screenwriter and playwright whose credits include the acclaimed HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, and How To Make an American Quilt.
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Cathryn Humphris is a producer and WGA Award-winning writer known for her work on Mad Men, Elementary, NCIS: New Orleans, Under The Dome, and Supernatural.
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Niceole Levy is a television writer known for her work on Ironside, Allegiance, The Mysteries of Laura, and Shades of Blue.
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Phil August Jackson is an Emmy-nominated writer, actor and executive story editor known for his work on Key & Peele and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
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Jerry Perzigian has been a showrunner, writer, and producer on some of the most successful half-hour sitcoms in television history, which include Sanford and Son, The Golden Girls, Frasier, The Nanny, Married… with Children, and Malcom & Eddie. Perzigian was nominated for three Emmys and won one Emmy Award in 2004. Jerry currently teaches comedy script writing at The Television Comedy Workshop at Jacob Krueger Studio in NYC.
Managers & Producers
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Steven J. Wolfe is a producing partner and owner of Sneak Preview Entertainment, the Hollywood film production and talent management company he founded in 1993. He has over 25 producing credits to his name, including (500) Days of Summer and Twin Falls Idaho, which was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics at its premiere at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival.
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David Friendly is a journalist turned film producer who served as Vice President of Motion Pictures for Imagine Entertainment and whose credits include Little Miss Sunshine, Big Momma’s House, My Girl, The Chamber, Daylight, Courage Under Fire, and the acclaimed series Queen of the South.
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Literary manager and producer Jewerl Ross is the founder and owner of Silent R Management. He has worked at ICM and Paradigm. Some of his clients include Barry Jenkins, Matt Aldrich, Brad Buecker and Jack Stanley.
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Demian Lichtenstein is a feature and music video director who has helmed projects starring iconic artists such as Queen Latifah, Eric Clapton, Sting, Kevin Costner, and Kurt Russell.
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Alex Lerner is a former agent at Creative Artists Agency and current manager at leading representation firm Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment.
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Jeff Portnoy and John Zaozirny are literary managers and principals at Bellevue Entertainment. They have sold client projects to Warner Bros., Twentieth Century Fox, New Line Cinema, and others, and they have had multiple clients make The Black List for the last three years in a row.
Instructors
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Jen Grisanti is an international speaker, author and entertainment career coach, the writing instructor for NBC’s Writers On The Verge, an a former studio executive, including serving as VP of Current Programming at CBS/Paramount.
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Jacob Krueger is the founder of the Jacob Krueger Studio in NYC, which offers workshops, mentorship, classes and retreats for aspiring screenwriters. His writing includes the Matthew Shepard Story, for which he won the Writers Guild of America Paul Selvin Award and was nominated for a Gemini for Best Screenplay.
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Pilar Alessandra is the director of the screenwriting and TV writing program On the Page, host of the popular On the Page Podcast and author of the top-selling book The Coffee Break Screenwriter. The former Senior Story Analyst for Dreamworks SKG, her students and clients have written for The Walking Dead, Modern Family, Grey’s Anatomy, Lost and Family Guy.
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Robert McKee is a creative writing instructor who is widely known for his popular Story Seminar, which has inspired thousands of screenwriters worldwide. He is the author of the best-selling book Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting.
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Danny Manus has been a development executive (Clifford Werber Productions, Sandstorm Films), producer, and in-demand script consultant in Hollywood and is the founder of No BullScript Consulting. He was ranked in the top 15 “Cream of the Crop” Script Consultants by Creative Screenwriting Magazine and teaches seminars across the country. He is a weekly columnist for The Business of Show Institute and Script Magazine’s website.
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Max Timm spearheads the mission of bringing ISA writers closer to the ISA Industry Professionals. With a concentration on creative customer service and support, Max is playing a hands-on role of helping writers bridge the gaps in their careers. Besides being a consultant, screenwriting instructor, and creative executive, Max is also a screenwriter and author, having signed a three-book publishing deal for his LA Book Festival-winning fantasy, The WishKeeper.
Talent Discovery
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Jorge Gonzalez is the Director of Operations at The Tracking Board, whose screenplay competitions have resulted in over 64 writers being signed in the last 18 months, and more than 24 projects set up for development.
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Joey Tuccio is the founder and CEO of Roadmap Writers, an organization dedicated to helping writers hone their craft and make career-launching connections.
ScreenCraft Masterclasses (available only to All-Access Pass-holders):
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Sean Covel, producer of the highly successful Indie Film Napoleon Dynamite and professor at USC’s Peter Stark Program on Producing breaks-down the intimidating feat of financing your independent film into easily understood elements and steps.
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Michael Colleary, UCLA Masterclass professor, & Mike Werb, member of the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, is Hollywood’s go-to writing team (Face/Off, Laura Croft: Tomb Raider, TV Show Extant) and they give you an in-depth dissection of what makes Comedy, Horror, and Action/Adventure so viable in the marketplace and how any screenwriter can make the most of genre and character.
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Managers think for you and Aaron Kaplan, founder of Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment (500 Days of Summer, Paper Towns, Star Trek Beyond) tells you just how useful a manager can be to sell your work, how to make it better, and how to work in the Industry for the long haul.
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Neil Landau, Head of the Television Department at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and writer of Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead and shows such as Doogie Howser, M.D. and Melrose Place gives insider information about the changing digital market and what you can do to stand out and sell your work to Netflix, Hulu, On Demand, Amazon, and the dozens of online networks.
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Emmy-nominated producer/writer Ellen Sandler (Everybody Loves Raymond), author of the acclaimed The TV Writer’s Workbook, outlines and delivers the qualities that make television a medium that outshines any other and how you, as a writer, can succeed in it.