I have been writing about independent films and the film industry since the late 1990s, when I started as the first features editor at IndieWire.com. During my tenure at the growing news website and community, I had the incredible good fortune and opportunity to interview some amazing filmmakers (i.e. Christopher Nolan, Wong Kar-wai, Alfonso Cuaron, Darren Aronofsky, Mary Harron, Todd Haynes, Steven Soderbergh), write some significant stories about changes in the business, and first called out then-actress Greta Gerwig walking down the street in Austin, Texas in 2007 as a future star.
I was also (and still am) a contributing editor to Filmmaker Magazine, where I’ve written the ongoing Industry Beat column, and contributed frequently to the late great Village Voice, where I covered the launch of the Blair Witch Project, the demise of seminal indie company Good Machine, the rise of Maggie Gyllenhaal, and wrote a number of stories about the intersection of politics and film. I also wrote for a number of magazines, newspapers, and websites, most notably articles about foreign-language films in the U.S. for the New York Times, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi for the Los Angeles Times, industry reporting for the Wall Street Journal, and even the best doughnuts in the northeast for the Boston Globe. I also edited this must-read collection of interviews with Steven Soderbergh, and co-wrote Ted Hope’s invaluable and entertaining book “Hope For Film: A Producer’s Journey Across the Revolutions of Indie Film and Global Streaming.”
In the early 2010s, I left New York and began focusing more on teaching, film festival programming, and documentary films and the documentary industry. I now contribute regularly to Documentary Magazine, and work as the Senior Programmer at the Chicago International Film Festival. I also co-founded and program the Doc10 film festival in Chicago, and teach film studies at the New School University (remotely) as well as Loyola University Chicago and DePaul University.