Ring of Fire Directors

I?m very interested in films and stories in which reality and absurdity cross. Luis Bunuel, David Lynch, Jean Luc Godard, Hal Ashby, Robert Altman among others have mastered this in a way that I?ve always found inspiring.
I?m interested in talented people with little ambition, loudmouths and boot-strappers. I like human beings with contradictions and families with deeply flawed infrastructure. Cornerstones of great stories for centuries, they?re inherently funny, and interesting ? I?m thankful for all of them.

Recognized for his sharp, offbeat comedy and ability to inspire honest performances, Australian Craig Gillespie is a critically acclaimed feature, TV, and commercial director. Walking a tightrope between the comedic and the mundane, Gillespie brings a unique tonality to his projects across all filmed media. Craig’s features have grossed over $205 million at the box office, and have included collaborations with Ryan Gosling, Colin Farrell, Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Jon Hamm, Toni Collette, and Margot Robbie. Gillespie’s most recent feature, I Tonya, chronicles disgraced competitive figure skater Tonya Harding's rise and fall at the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, when she plotted to dash another Olympic hopeful’s dreams. The dark comedy premiered at the 2017 Toronto Film Festival and went on to earn 25 major award nominations, including two Golden Globe nods for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, and Best Actress for Margot Robbie’s performance as Tonya Harding, and one Best Supporting Actress Golden Globe win for Allison Janney’s portrayal of Tonya’s mom. In addition to SAG and BAFTA wins for Janney, Critics’ Choice Awards for Robbie and Janney, and other noms, including one from the WGA for Best Original Screenplay, the film heads to the Oscars with three nominations, one for Robbie, another for Janney and a third for Best Editing. In 2016, Gillespie directed “The Finest Hours.” Based on Casey Sherman and Michael J. Tougias’ book detailing a Coast Guard rescue in 1952, the film stars Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Holliday Grainger, John Ortiz, and Eric Bana. In 2014, Gillespie helmed Disney’s “Million Dollar Arm,” which features Jon Hamm as sports agent that recruits talented Indian cricket players to play Major League Ball. In 2011, Craig directed a remake of Fright Night, the 1985 cult comedy-horror classic. WGA Award-winning writer Marti Noxon’s rendition stars Anton Yelchin and Colin Farrell, and earned high praise from discriminating cult followers and critics alike. Craig Gillespie made his foray into feature directing with the critically acclaimed Lars and the Real Girl, starring Oscar-nominee, Ryan Gosling. Hailed by the LA Times as an “implausible feat of sustained imagination,” and the Wall Street Journal as “an almost perfect movie with flawless performances,” Nancy Oliver’s screenplay was nominated for an Oscar, while Gillespie’s film won numerous critics’ awards and festival prizes. Gillespie served as producer and director of the Showtime series, “The United States of Tara,” directing the pilot episode that helped actress Toni Collette earn an Emmy and a Golden Globe. Penned by Oscar-winning Juno scribe, Diablo Cody, the show bears Gillespie’s unmistakable stamp of dancing on the boundary between comedy and drama, while maintaining a clear directorial presence. For his strong and singular body of commercial work, Gillespie has been honored with some of the most prestigious accolades, including many awards from the Clios, LIAA, D&AD, One Shows, Effies, Addys, statues in Cannes, the DGA award, and an Emmy.

Jeff Goodby is co-founder and co-chairman of Goodby Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, the company that Adweek magazine recently chose as Agency of the Decade. GSP has also been named Agency of the Year in Advertising Age, Adweek and Creativity magazines several times each, and has also been selected as Digital Agency of the Year in Advertising Age and Business 2.0, and by The One Club. The firm is widely acclaimed for most successfully integrating traditional and digital media arts. Many of GSP’s campaigns—got milk?, the Budweiser Lizards, Hewlett-Packard’s “Invent,” the National Basketball Association’s “I Love This Game” and the E*TRADE chimpanzee, among them—are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The got milk? campaign that Goodby originated has spawned hundreds of imitators, which are now listed in several places online. In 2002 Goodby served as the president of the Cannes Advertising Festival and has been head of the prestigious Titanium Jury. He has also chaired judging for the ANDYs and The One Club. In 2010 Adweek named him, along with Rich Silverstein, as Executive of the Decade. The two of them were key players in the 2009 industry documentary Art & Copy.

Goodby grew up in Rhode Island and graduated from Harvard, where he wrote for The Harvard Lampoon. Three years were spent as a political reporter in Boston. He began his advertising career at J. Walter Thompson and was lucky enough to meet the legendary Hal Riney at Ogilvy & Mather, whom he still thinks of as his mentor. It was with Riney that Goodby learned his reverence for surprise, humor, craft and restraint. He continues to believe that his success is a happy confluence of his mother, a painter; his father, a Wharton graduate; and his family, a constant reminder of irony and humility. Goodby is also a director, printmaker and illustrator whose work has appeared in TIME and Mother Jones. Two commercials he directed were selected to be among the top 30 advertising films of the 1990s by The One Club of New York. The website based on his “Poemhouse” installation (poemhouse.org) in St. Helena, California, has received thousands of visitors. In 2006 he was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame.

Jeff lives in Oakland, California, with his family, a dog, a cat, a rabbit, three horses and probably some other things he doesn’t know about. 

Noam Murro is a multi-award winning commercials director. He has been nominated for DGA Director of the Year five times, winning the honor in 2005. His unique style was established in 1994 with a memorable campaign that captured elderly customers in Katz's famous deli on New York City's Lower East Side. This led to documentary-style exposes of tobacco monsters for the California Department of Health as well as lighter work for Fox Sports. The poignant Flatline spot for Toshiba, in which a dying man's life flashes before him, was singled out and applauded by the New York Times.
In 2002, he directed Saturn's Sheet Metal, a conceptually driven spot that was highly critically acclaimed. In 2003, Adcritic.com labeled his Got Milk? commercial as the best spot of the year. It went on to become the winner of a Gold Lion at the 2003 Cannes Lions awards. Murro's campaign for Olympus garnered him a second Gold Lion at the 2005 awards along with a number of Silver and Bronze statues for other commercials. Recently, Creativity Magazine named him as one of the industry's 50 most influential people in the last 20 years. He was also recently named the UK's #1 director by Campaign magazine.
As well as directing, he is also the founder of Biscuit Filmworks. Smart People is his first feature film. 

Mark Pellington is also known as the "Godfather of Music Videos" featuring a lot of the MTV hey-day from the '90's, including ?Jeremy? by Pearl Jam.
Mark Pellington is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. A native of Baltimore, MD, he attended the University of Virginia, receiving a B.A. in Rhetoric in 1984. Upon graduation, he joined MTV's award-winning On-Air Promotions Department, where he developed a series of short conceptual spots, editing original footage with found sound and images. This groundbreaking training in post-production collage and unusual sound/image/text juxtaposition became a primary focus of Pellington's early work.
While at MTV, he branched out as a freelance music video director completing clips for Information Society, Malcolm McLaren, and De La Soul, among others. He also ventured into the art world, collaborating on text image pieces with New York gallery artist Jenny Holzer and William Burroughs.
In 1988, Pellington developed an idea for a non-linear collage program. Created in partnership with MTV Europe producer/director Jon Klein, Buzz was an ambitious 13-part global series commissioned by MTV and channel 4 (UK). Hailed by critics as progressive adventurous television, it was the culmination of Pellington's MTV career.
Upon completing Buzz, Mark refined his unique personal vision through a series of TV and video projects. He is internationally recognized as one of the world's Premiere music video directors. His video for Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" is one of the most popular in history, as well as one of the most honored. It earned him Best Director at the 1992 Billboard Video Music Awards, and picked up four 1993 MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Director and Video of the Year.
His Videos for such noted rock, pop, and rap performers as U2, PM Dawn, Public Enemy and Alice in Chains form a prolific and often imitated body of work. A piece for INXS, entitled "Beautiful Girl," is a provocative visual essay on the female body that garnered a Grammy nomination. With his video for the Jungle Brothers' "I Get A Kick Out Of You," Pellington joined Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, and Jonathan Demme as one of the elite group of directors chosen for Red, Hot & Blue, a landmark AIDS special shown on ABC and later released on home video.
Mark brought his commentary on television and media manipulation techniques to large stadiums around the world when he helped create the multi-screen image environment for U2's highly acclaimed "Zoo TV" tour.
He also served as creative director on an experimental multi-media project for the Spanish exhibition at World Expo ?92 in Seville, Spain. "The Memory Palace" was a five-screen live-action/film evocation of cyberspace made in collaboration with science fiction writer William Gibson, Spanish performance group La Fura Dels Baus, Buzz director Mark Neale, artist Julia Heyward, and musicians Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel.
Outside of the music world, Pellington developed his eye for documentary and narrative. Words In Your Face, a half-hour film he created for PBS's prestigious series Alive From Off Center, anticipated the current appeal of spoken word poetry. A half-hour television poem, Words featured John Leguizamo, KRS-ONE and Henry Rollins, and was chosen as one of six U.S. entries at the 1992 Input Festival.
Pellington wrapped up Red Hot & Dance and collaborated with Obie-award winning director David Gordon and music producer Hal Willner on a half-hour live action cartoon called "Punch and Judy Get Divorced" for the PBS series Alive TV.
In 1993 he created his most personal work to date, a 30-minute film for PBS, called Father's Daze, in which he came to terms with his father's suffering from Alzheimer's disease. This intense, impressionistic diary film was screened at the Berlin, Montreal and Rotterdam Film Festivals and was praised by critics worldwide.
The United States of Poetry was a five-part series for PBS that took a year-and-a-half to complete. In the program, Pellington takes the v

GREG POPP IS AN AMERICAN FILMMAKER WHO SPECIALIZES IN COMEDY-DIALOGUE COMMERCIALS. GREG HAS HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO WORK WITH MANY HIGH PROFILE, PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES INCLUDING PEYTON MANNING, TROY POLAMALU, ADRIAN PETERSON, HENRIK LUNDQVIST, DANICA PATRICK, ROGER FEDERER AND VENUS AND SERENA WILLIAMS, TO NAME A FEW. GREG’S FORAY INTO FILMMAKING BEGAN AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY WHERE ALONG WITH A FILM DEGREE, HE EARNED A STUDENT ACADEMY AWARD FOR HIS NARRATIVE-LENGTH FILM THE LOTTERY ROSE. AFTER A BRIEF STINT WORKING IN FEATURES, GREG EMBARKED ON A CAREER AT DDB CHICAGO WHERE HIS WORK WITH ANHEUSER-BUSCH WON LITERALLY EVERY MAJOR ADVERTISING HONOR. IN 2005, GREG LEFT DDB TO DIRECT, AND HIS EFFORTS HAVE WON HIM NUMEROUS AWARDS INCLUDING GOLD AT CANNES, CLIOS, ANDYS, AND DISTINCTION FOR HUMOR AND TALENT PERFORMANCE AT AICP/MOMA. IN 2014, GREG’S SHORT FILM, THE DRAMATIC THRILLER LAST SHOT, PREMIER ED AT THE NEWPORT BEACH FILM FESTIVAL. LAST SHOT WAS A FINALIST AT THE OSCAR-QUALIFYING USA FILM FESTIVAL AND WILL BE APPEARING IN SEVERAL OTHER FESTIVALS AS AN OFFICIAL SELECTION THROUGHOUT THE YEAR. 

Born in Germany, Stacy Wall grew up and watched a lot of television in North Carolina. The perfect grounding to a career in advertising – he spent nine years at Wieden+Kennedy as a copywriter and Creative Director on Nike and ESPN.

Stacy transitioned to directing commercials in 2001. He has since imposed his artful directorial style on countless ads in both the US and UK.

In 2009, Stacy launched Imperial Woodpecker in the US, a company dedicated to making Sno-Balls, sponsoring the Japan Men’s National Cricket Team and producing the last TV commercial ever made. But after receiving the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in TV Commercials, it appears there’s still a lot more work to be done….

We’re glad Stacy is a Rogue… And not just because he’s got a Vox Continental organ either… Although it is a splendid organ. 

Scott Weintrob’s formative years were spent as a photographer’s assistant at the famous East London Click Studios where he assisted fashion photographers Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Albert Watson, Rankin and David Simms for magazines including Vogue, and Dazed and Confused.

A self-confessed "Car guy", Weintrob directed four seasons of Top Gear for the BBC. With a worldwide audience of 350 million, Weintrob’s work has reached a global-scale, as the show is broadcast in over 200 countries.

Since turning his hand to commercials, Scott has worked for such brands as Audi, Hyundai, Lenovo, Cadillac, Volvo, and Acura.

His recent works received awards including: Cannes Lion, D&AD and Creative Circle Awards.