James P. Mercurio

Jim grew up in, New Castle, a small town north of Pittsburgh in a blue-collar Italian family which might explain why his favorite film is Bicycle Thieves. He met Max Von Sydow in Ann Arbor and regrets not asking him for a cameo in his dream project: a sequel to Three Days of the Condor starring Ed Norton. While receiving an MA in Film from University of Michigan, he won a Hopwood Award for screenwriting and his script Dysfunction Junction was a quarter-finalist in the 2011 Nicholl Fellowship. Jim fell in love with movies as an adult and confesses to having seen Annie Hall before Star Wars. He produced Hard Scrambled, starring Kurtwood Smith and Richard Edson, which premiered at Cinequest and won Best Drama Feature at Garden State Film Festival. His films have played at fests around the world including Ann Arbor, Australia (Night of Horror), Mexico (Macabro) and Brazil (Cinefantasy). He wrote for Creative Screenwriting in its early years and he interviewed filmmakers like Allison Anders, Paul Schrader and John Sayles. He and Creative Screenwriting founder Erik Bauer teamed on an unproduced web series based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft and were producing partners on the indie drama, Hard Scrambled. Erik produced Jim's latest directorial effort, Last Girl, a thriller which satisfies their love of genre movies and higher-minded films. As a story analyst, he works with Oscar-nominated and A-List filmmakers. He writes material for a few professional comedians and wrote a poker comedy column for the national magazine, All In.