Alex Epstein

By Nicola Warwick

Alex Epstein graduated Yale in 1985 in Computer Science and English, magna cum laude. After a year in Paris shooting short films, he went to UCLA, where his MFA thesis film, Santa Fe, won the CMLEA award.

He then joined Arama Entertainment, quickly rising to VP Production. During his tenure, Arama expanded from two staff to six and obtained over $1.7 million in development financing. At Arama, he was responsible for everything from finding and recommending projects, negotiating writer deals, supervising rewrites, finding and making offers to directors and talent, to assisting with production to selling our pictures at markets. He helped negotiate all major deals, including an acquisition deal with Hollywood Pictures for First Strike and $500,000 development/$4 million Japanese distribution deal with Largo Entertainment for The Sailmaker, and supervised all documentation for $1,900,000 production loan for Warriors, including sales agency, foreign distribution, chain of title, co-production and bank loan agreements. In 1993, while at the company, he co-wrote and was Associate Producer on Warriors, an action adventure movie starring Gary Busey.

During that time, he also worked as a screenwriter for numerous production companies. In May 1995 he struck out on his own as producer and screenwriter.

In June 1996 he joined Blue Rider as Vice President of Production, bringing many of his projects to the company. While there, Epstein was Associate Producer of Children of the Corn V, and developed many projects, including Silver Wolf and The Clown At Midnight. He also wrote several scripts for Blue Rider. He is currently writing on his own, and is represented by Boyd Hancock of the Irv Schechter Agency in Beverly Hills. His radio play, Strangers, is being produced by The Fiction Works as an audiocassette for Winter, 1999 release.

Alex lives in a great house called Under Hill with his wife Angel, Sirrah (a border collie also known as The Bouzou Dog, a dog with a dirty beard, giving new meaning to the term five o’clock shadow). Also, the cats, Orion (or Minga the Merciless), Owein Glyndwr (aka Toad Cat) and Pyewacket.

The Web site for Muse of Fire Productions includes Alex Epstein's online book on the technique of screenwriting called Crafty Screenwriting.

"Oh, for a Muse of Fire, that would ascend the brightest Heaven of Invention."

--William Shakespeare, Henry V

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Nicola Warwick is the author of life's little luxuries. She lives in Manchester in the North West of the UK. Nicola's articles have been published in various writing, computing, and electronics magazines. Read more about her here.

Related Links:

Alex's Web site, Crafty Screenwriting, has many in-depth articles and tips about how to
write for the film industry.

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