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Leigh Richert |
| "My Brother's Keeper" |
Jimmy has bullies to contend with at school, and his younger brother,
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It's the cold, late Fall in Detroit back during the late 70's. Mrs. Curtis, a single mom, tries her best, but her two kids are at each other's throats all day long.
Will the brothers learn to unite rather than fight? |
| Leigh's been addicted to movies ever since he was a little kid. Around the age of ten, he began to wonder what it would be like to work in the film business. But everyone around him scoffed at the idea. To them, the idea that a person could earn a living at something like making movies was preposterous (Leigh grew up in a working class family from a small Michigan town where his Dad commuted to Detroit every day to work on the assembly line at Ford Motors). Ultimately, the concept of succeeding in Hollywood became to surreal for Leigh, as impossible as winning the lottery. That was until he saw a Halloween screening of Sam Raimi's independent horror/comedy "Evil Dead" when he was in high school. Leigh loved it and studied up on the filmmaker. He learned how Raimi (who also grew up in a small Michigan town) made the film on a shoestring budget with the help of family and friends. Leigh figured if Sam could do this, he could also, and decided to take steps to make a once "silly" dream a reality. Leigh decided he didn't want to take any chances, so he copied Raimi's early career choices very closely. First, Leigh went to Michigan State University, the same college Raimi attended. He took most of the creative writing and media arts classes that Raimi did, many of which were still taught by the same professors. Leigh also joined the MSU Film Society, a club in which Raimi made his first movies. After MSU, Raimi jumped right into making movies. But Leigh decided he needed to learn more about the technical side of filmmaking. So, after graduating from MSU, he moved to Los Angeles to attend school at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. He majored in graduate film production and studied under some of the most talented people in the business, including Mardik Martin (writer of "Mean Streets" and "Raging Bull", for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), Paul Seydor (editor of such recent hits as "Guess Who" and "Barbershop 2: Back in Business"), David Bondelevitch (sound designer of the "Strangers with Candy" movie and the new "Battlestar Galactica" series), and Jennifer Warren (lead actress in "Night Moves", starring Gene Hackman, and "Slapshot", starring Paul Newman). Leigh's USC thesis is the short comedy film "Detroit: Not For Wimps", which he hopes will launch him into the next stages of his filmmaking dreams. |
