James Schamus

Known for ProductionBorn 1959-09-07 (age 66)Detroit, Michigan, USA

James Allan Schamus (born September 7, 1959) is an American screenwriter, producer, business executive, film historian, professor, and director. He is a frequent collaborator of Ang Lee, the co-founder of the production company Good Machine, and the co-founder and former CEO of motion picture production, financing, and worldwide distribution company Focus Features, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal. He is currently president of the New York–based production company Symbolic Exchange and is Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University, where he has taught film history and theory since 1989. Schamus was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a Jewish family.He is the son of Clarita (Gershowitz) Karlin and Julian John Schamus and was raised in Los Angeles. He is married to writer Nancy Kricorian, with whom he has two children. His output includes writing or co-writing The Ice Storm, Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Hulk (all directed by Ang Lee) and producing Brokeback Mountain and Alone in Berlin. At Focus he oversaw the production and distribution of Lost in Translation, Milk, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Coraline, and The Kids Are All Right. In addition to his tenure at Columbia University, he has also taught at Yale University and at Rutgers University. He is the author of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Gertrud: The Moving Word, published by the University of Washington Press. He earned his BA, MA, and Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley. Schamus made his feature directorial debut with Indignation, an adaptation of Philip Roth's novel of the same name. Schamus also wrote the script for the film, which stars Logan Lerman, Sarah Gadon, and Tracy Letts, and is the story of a Jewish student at an Ohio college in 1951. The film premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released by Roadside Attractions on July 29, 2016. He was president of the jury for the 64th Berlin International Film Festival. He has also been on the jury of the New York International Children's Film Festival and has served on the editorial boards of Film Quarterly and Cinema Journal, as well as on the board of Creative Capital and the Heyman Centre for the Humanities. Description above from the Wikipedia article Stephen Rosenbaum, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.Read more

Movies & web series

Roy Cohn/Jack Smith

Warrior: The Life of Leonard Peltier

Wonderland

Misfire: The Rise and Fall of the Shooting Gallery

Brokeback Mountain

Somos.

Eat Drink Man Woman

The Boroughs

These Amazing Shadows

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Happiness

I Was on Mars

Sense and Sensibility

Lust, Caution

Suffragette

Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms

The King's Daughter

Pushing Hands

Driveways

The Wedding Banquet

What Happened Was...

The Wedding Banquet

Thank You and Good Night

Alone in Berlin

Dayveon

Surviving Desire

The Ice Storm

Safe

We Grown Now

Love God

In the Soup

Indignation

The Assistant

Lola and Billy the Kid

Auto Focus

Tortilla Soup

Buffalo Soldiers

Keep It for Yourself

Taking Woodstock

Ride with the Devil

Attack of the Hollywood Clichés!

Walking and Talking

Son-in-Law

The Brothers McMullen

Junction 48

The Tomorrow Man

Furlough

Casting JonBenet