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| James O'Brien |
Born in Teaneck, NJ in 1969, James O'Brien graduated from Providence College in 1992 with BA in English Literature with a Theatre minor. O'Brien first began making short films and documentaries at Providence.
He moved to Los Angeles in the fall of '92. His first film out west was "Bastard" - a B&W short about a schizophrenic hit man waiting at a bus stop to kill his father. American Cinemateque selected the film to open for Werner Herzog's "Nosferatu" at the DGA retrospective of the German director's work.
O'Brien followed this with his first feature, a 16mm color film, later blown up to 35mm, called "Venice Bound." This film detailed the lives of three off-beat twenty-somethings who meet by chance on Venice Beach and agree to pull a robbery. The comic book style caper film debuted at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown LA to a crowd of 1,500 - before making it's international premier at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.
"Venice Bound" was championed at Cannes by Mark Cousins, director of the Edinburgh Film Festival. Cousins selected "Venice Bound" for the Rosebud category of his '95 festival. Other European festivals followed, including Mystfest, The Hamburg Film Festival, The Welsh Film Festival, The Leeds Film Festival, and the Denmark Underground Film and Video Festival.
Variety magazine gave the film a positive review, calling O'Brien a "talent in the raw" and "Venice Bound" a movie that kept you "glued to the screen." Robert Osbourne of The Hollywood Reporter did a story on the making of the film in his Rambling Reporter column.
In the early years of 2000, O'Brien held the post of managing editor of "Comic News," a Vermont based monthly political satire magazine.
In 2007-2008 O'Brien directed "Wish You Were Here," his second feature film, a cross country road trip movie that will debut on the 2009 festival circuit. He is currently in post-production on his third feature, "Hyperfutura," a science fiction film set in a dystopian future.
FILMOGRAPHY:
1993: "Bastard" - B&W short film. Selected by the American Cinemateque to open for Herzog's "Nosferatu" at a DGA retrospective of the director's work.
1995: "Venice Bound" - Color feature, 99 mins.
2009: "Wish You Were Here" - Color feature, 87 mins.
2009: "Hyperfutura" - Color feature. In post-production.