USC School of Cinematic Arts

Michael Stephen Lehmann is an American film and television director. Lehmann attended Columbia University. His first job in the film industry was... answering phones at Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope film company. Later he supervised cameras on films that included 1983's The Outsiders. Lehmann attended film school at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and graduated in 1985. While at USC he made a student film, Beaver Gets a Boner, the title of which he believes helped get the attention of film executives who would later hire him. Lehmann is probably most noted for directing the black comedy Heathers. He also directed 40 Days and 40 Nights, The Truth About Cats & Dogs, Hudson Hawk, Meet the Applegates, Airheads and Because I Said So. Lehmann directed his first television commercial via the Leo Burnett Company in June 1996 for McDonald's. Lehmann also directs for television, and has worked on the short lived HBO comedy series The Comeback and NBC's The West Wing. Lehmann has guest directed on The Larry Sanders Show, Watching Ellie and Century City.
more

Ronald William "Ron" Howard is an American film director, producer and former child actor. He came to prominence playing Opie Taylor in the sitcom... The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, and later the teenaged Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days for six years. He appeared in the films American Graffiti in 1973 and The Shootist in 1976, the latter during his run on Happy Days. Howard made his directorial debut with the 1977 comedy Grand Theft Auto, and left Happy Days in 1980 to focus on directing. His films include the Academy Award-winning Cocoon, Apollo 13, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Beautiful Mind. In 2003, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Asteroid 12561 Howard is named after him. Howard was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, the son of Jean Speegle Howard, an actress, and Rance Howard, a director, writer and actor. His father was born with the surname "Beckenholdt", and had taken the stage name "Howard" by 1948, for his acting career. Rance Howard was serving three years in the United States Air Force at the time of Ron's birth. The family moved to Hollywood in 1958, the year before the birth of his younger brother, Clint Howard.
more

James Moll is a film director and producer. His company, Allentown Productions, has been based at Universal Studios since 1994, primarily producing... film and television projects focused on stories of non-fiction. Moll graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts in 1987. He began his professional career as an intern reading scripts for film producer Lauren Shuler Donner, who later hired him as an assistant to French writer-director Francis Veber for Veber’s American remake of “Les Fugitifs” . Moll serves on the Executive Committee of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and is co-chair of the Documentary Award for the Directors Guild of America. Moll is director and producer of the 2008 feature-length documentary Running the Sahara about three men who ran 4,300 miles across the Sahara desert from Senegal to Egypt. Matt Damon is the executive producer of the film, which promotes the H2O Africa Foundation, co-founded by Damon to raise awareness of clean water initiatives in Africa. In 2009, Moll was nominated for two Emmy Awards, winning one of them, from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for Inheritance.
more