Eric Tozzi

It was at age nine, after seeing Close Encounters of the Third Kind, that Eric Tozzi knew he wanted to be a filmmaker. Born and raised in Malibu, CA Eric was surrounded by the wonder and magic of filmmaking. His father, a Grammy winning Opera and recording star and TV/Film actor and his mother, a singer, had a huge influence in his creative endeavors. Malibu became the backdrop for Eric's super-8 movies, which he began making at the age of 10. His first film, "Terror In The Backyard", was a huge hit, especially with neighbors and friends. Entering the Hollywood Teen Film Expo with a super-8 film called the "Midnight Zone", Eric received second place in the Experimental category. After graduating from Santa Monica High School, where he studied martial arts and played in the school band, Eric pursued screenwriting, landing a literary representation by Lew Weitzman of Preferred Artists Agency. To date Eric has written four feature-length, action-based scripts and landed an option deal for his action/thriller "Ivory White". Eric always knew his ultimate goal was to be a director so the next natural step was directing and editing music videos, commercials and industrials. Notable credits include directing platinum selling artists Building 429 for the music video "Fearless", co-editing the episode "World Enough and Time" - Star Trek: New Voyages, and the critically acclaimed short film, Stephen King's "Paranoid", which saw a stellar write up in the King biography "The Essential Stephen King" as well as a DVD release through Total Movies Magazine. In early 2007 Eric teamed up with longtime friend and screenwriter, Sean Hinchey and together they produced and Eric directed the 16-part webseries, "Dirty Bomb Diaries" (DBD). DBD has garnered exceptional Internet notoriety with over 1.6 millions views to date. The series has been featured on sites such as Veoh, Revver, Daily Motion and Ziddio. Eric's directing and shooting style is influenced by action films such as "Die Hard", "Lethal Weapon", "The Rock", "Predator", "Duel", "Man On Fire", and Comedy films such as "Office Space", "After Hours", "Grosse Point Blank" and "The Simpsons". He is inspired by directors such as Tony Scott, Steven Spielberg, John McTiernan, Michael Bay and David Fincher. Eric currently resides in Torrance, CA with his wife and is continuing his collaboration with Sean on the feature length version of "Dirty Bomb Diaries".