AUGUST’S SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER:
LINDA OBST
Producer
(How to Losa a Guy in 10 Days, The Siege, Contact, Sleepless in Seattle, etc.)

Lynda Obst Obst, producer and best-selling author, is renowned for having produced big box office hits and some of Hollywood’s most memorable movies. She has worked with sought-after A-List talent and filmmakers in Tinseltown and is held in the highest esteem of her peers – an honor that most only dream of. Through Lynda Obst Productions (www.lyndaobst.com), the feature film production company she helms, Lynda has had lucrative deals with top movie studios, including a current first-look deal with Paramount Pictures, where she has produced such films as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, and Abandon, the directing debut of Academy Award winner Stephen Gaghan, starring Katie Holmes and Benjamin Bratt.

Currently in the works are Sydney to Hobart, written by Ken Nolan, based on "The Proving Ground" by G. Bruce Knecht - the true story of the harrowing 1998 yacht race of the same name that was struck by a storm with hurricane force winds, leading to the death of six competitors, and the daring helicopter rescues of many more. The Untitled Dover Project, written by Ron Nyswaner, based on the recent Dover, PA "monkey trial," where a quiet rural town was torn apart over the culture-war issue of evolution versus "intelligent design", a contemporary "Inherit the Wind".

For the past 20 years, Lynda Obst Productions has nurtured over a dozen film projects from the early development and writing stages, through principal photography, post-production, and finally to theatrical release. While based at Columbia Pictures, Obst executive produced Ephron’s, Sleepless in Seattle, produced Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King (with Debra Hill), and Nora Ephron’s directing debut, This Is My Life.

At Fox, Obst produced The Siege, starring Denzel Washington and Annette Bening, Hope Floats, starring Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick Jr., One Fine Day, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney and Someone Like You, starring Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman. Lynda executive produced Contact, starring Jodie Foster for Warner Brothers and executive produced The 60s, a two part miniseries for NBC.

Her successful partnership in 1985 with Debra Hill (Hill/Obst Productions) at Paramount Pictures shepherded Chris Columbus’ directing debut, Adventures in Babysitting, as well as Heartbreak Hotel, which he wrote and directed.

Lynda’s non-fiction book: Hello He Lied: And Other Truths from the Hollywood Trenches was first published by Little Brown and debuted at #1 on the LA Times Best Seller list. It was published by Broadway Books in paperback in 1997, once again debuting on the Best Seller List where it remained for 12 weeks. Hello He Lied was recently adapted into a documentary by the award winning directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini of the highly acclaimed American Splendor and aired on AMC.

Lynda Obst grew up in suburban New York and graduated from Pomona College in 1972. She attended graduate school at Columbia University in Philosophy. After Columbia, she began her film and journalism career as the editor/author of The Rolling Stone’s History of the Sixties, a compendium of the era’s people, politics, and popular culture. She then became an editor at the New York Times Magazine, where she covered such diverse topics as science, philosophy, and publishing, before being recruited to Hollywood in 1979 by Peter Guber, then chairman of Casablanca/Polygram. There she developed Flashdance and Clue, as well as beginning the development of Carl Sagan’s novel Contact. In 1982, Lynda joined the David Geffen Company where she worked on the development and production of a number of films, including Risky Business and After Hours.

Lynda was the commencement speaker for the class of 2000 at Pomona College and awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Fine Arts. She is a regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review, LA Times Book Review, does the annual Oscar coverage for Slate.com and New York Magazine with film critic David Edelstein, and has written for Texas Monthly, The Nation, and Harper’s Magazine.

Lynda’s teaching and public speaking experience has burgeoned since the publication of Hello, He Lied. She has taught a Master’s screenwriting class at USC and a course in producing at the University of Texas. She has given seminars on the film industry around the world, and is a regular moderator and speaker at the annual LA Times Festival of Books.