Jerome Gary is the Chairman of Visionaire Media.
He has Produced: Pumping Iron, the Academy Award nominated documentary that launched the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stripper, the critically acclaimed feature documentary distributed by Twentieth Century Fox; Presented: Old Boyfriends, starring John Belushi and Talia Shire; Executive Produced: The Russians, an eight hour television series for TNT that won a Cine Golden Eagle, the award winning Laughs series for HBO with P.J. O’Rourke, The Gathering (Miramax); Written: Rebel Highway (Showtime), The Gathering, Double Switch (an interactive game for Sega); and Directed: Stripper, Traxx, and True West (stage).
In 2006, he Created, Executive Produced and Directed On The Road in America, a 12 part series about three young Arab men and an Arab woman traveling across America with an American film crew. The series aired in the Middle East on MBC 1 and will air on the Sundance Channel beginning in June 2008. He is completing a 5 part series on Muslim Women which he Executive Produced. He is in pre production on a second season of On the Road in America, American Caravan and a feature documentary on the Esalen Institute.
As an executive in the entertainment industry, he has been an Exhibitor (Co-founder and Co-CEO of the Festival Cinemas, a Chain of art houses in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1972-75); Head of Acquisitions and Production at an independent studio (Cinema 5, the Miramax of its day, from 1978-1980); and President of a Production Company (Visionaire Communications from 1981-86) that did more than 60 hours of high quality programming for television.
From 2001-2005, he was the Strategic Director of USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, charged with government relations, fundraising, managing the Think Tanks and the ICT’s consulting relationships, and founding ICT Works, which was successfully launched in February of 2005.
As a Venture Capitalist, he has been involved in a number of startups: Celestial Seasonings, Innerspace Environments, The National Survival Game, The Peninsula Wine Company, and Pathways International among them.
For 13 years he was a senior lecturer in screenwriting and directing at the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film and Television Studies and was, for ten years, on the directing faculty at the University of Southern California School of Cinema and Television. He has also taught directing, screenwriting, storytelling and digital filmmaking at the Los Angeles Film School, Esalen Institute, Yale University, Dartmouth, the University of Hawaii and in numerous foreign countries. Last year,, he went to Afghanistan three times leading teams of filmmakers to teach storytelling and filmmaking to television personnel in Kabul and Kandahar.
He graduated from Yale University with Honors in History of The Arts and Letters, is a member of the WGA and DGA, and is married to Mary Lambert, the film and music video director. |
