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Gary Fleder (/ˈfleɪdər/;^[1] born December 19, 1965) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. His most recently completed film, Homefront, was released by Open Road Films and Millennium Films in November 2013.^[2] In recent years he has been a prolific director of television pilots.^[3][4][5]

Life and career

Fleder was born to a Jewish family^[6] in Norfolk, Virginia, the son of Lorraine and Harry Fleder.^[7][8] A graduate of Boston University and the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Fleder began his television career in 1992 with the episode "Seance" followed by the award-winning episode of Tales from the Crypt ("Forever Ambergris", starring Steve Buscemi and Roger Daltrey).^[9] Since then, he has directed pilots and episodes of more than a dozen television series, including L.A. Doctors, Blind Justice, The Evidence, The Shield, Life on Mars, Happy Town, Star-Crossed, Turn: Washington's Spies and Kingdom.^[10] He was an executive producer and frequent director of October Road, Life Unexpected, and The Art of More.^[10]

Fleder directed "Subway" a 1996 episode of Homicide: Life on the Street that earned a Peabody Award for its guest star, Vincent D'Onofrio.^[11] He also collaborated with producer Tom Hanks to direct an episode of the Emmy Award winning mini-series From the Earth to the Moon.

Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, Fleder's feature film debut, premiered at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.^[12] This crime film, written by Fleder's Boston University classmate and frequent collaborator Scott Rosenberg, remains a cult favorite and has been credited with reviving the career of Treat Williams. Denver marked Fleder's first work with several artists who have become recurring collaborators, including production designer/art director Nelson Coates, costume designer Abigail Murray, script supervisor Elizabeth Ludwick, and composer Steve Weisberg.

Since then, Fleder has directed a series of thrillers, including Kiss the Girls (1997), starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman; Don't Say a Word (2001), featuring Brittany Murphy and Michael Douglas; Impostor (2002), a sci-fi thriller based on a Philip K. Dick short story, starring Gary Sinise, Madeleine Stowe, and Vincent D'Onofrio; and Runaway Jury (2003), starring John Cusack and Academy Award winners Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman, and based on the novel by John Grisham.

The Express: The Ernie Davis Story, released in October 2008, stars Dennis Quaid, Rob Brown, and Charles S. Dutton. It tells the story of Ernie Davis (1939–1963), the first African-American winner of the Heisman Trophy.

Fleder is a member of the Directors Guild's Special Projects Committee and has served as adjunct faculty at USC School of Cinematic Arts. Fleder also served as a mentor on student productions, including the USC thesis film Eyeball Eddie (2001), directed by Elizabeth Allen Rosenbaum.^[13] He and Scott Rosenberg sponsor an annual short screenplay contest at the Redstone Film Festival in Boston. He is depicted in Brian Michael Bendis' autobiographical graphic novel Fortune and Glory, which follows Bendis' exploits when Hollywood comes calling to adapt one of his works into a film.

Filmography

Unrealized projects

• Pinball, based on the novel by Jerzy Kosiński, with Guinevere Turner as writer^[14][15]
• Trillion, a sports drama starring Edward Burns set up at New Line Cinema^[16]
• Max and Barry, a dark comedy about hoaxes on talk shows, was set up at New Line Cinema^[17]
• Piece of My Heart, a biopic about Janis Joplin for Lakeshore Entertainment^[18]
• Five Killers Killing, a crime thriller about five British assassins taking down an assassin on their turf, was set up at Sony Pictures^[19]
• Darkling Cove, a thriller about a woman discovering a crime, set up at 20th Century Fox^[20]
• Protection, a thriller written by Allan Loeb about a college professor investigating the disappearance of his wife and daughter, was set up at 20th Century Fox^[21]
• The Bayou, a crime thriller starring Joey King, Gary Oldman, and Dylan O'Brien for Millennium Media^[22]
• Line of Control, an espionage thriller^[23]
• Poker Face^[24]
• Papa Alpha Heavy^[25]
• Sacrament, a revenge thriller^[26]
• True Haunting, a supernatural horror film set up at Screen Gems, starring Erin Moriarty and Jamie Campbell Bower^[27]
• A Guy Walks Into a Bar, a dark comedy starring Kumail Nanjiani and Sam Rockwell and written by Scott Rosenberg^[28]
• Just Play Dead^[29]

References

External links

• Official website Archived 2022-11-09 at the Wayback Machine
• Gary Fleder at IMDb