Michael Wechsler wrote, directed and produced "Slaves of Hollywood" (1999), a feature film accepted at more than thirty five film festivals worldwide. "Slaves of Hollywood" won "Best Feature" at The Rhode Island and The Lower East Side Film festivals, and was subsequently picked up for theatrical distribution in Los Angeles, where it received a glowing review from the head critic of the Los Angeles Times.

Following the release of Slaves of Hollywood, Michael was hired by Village Roadshow Pictures to write the feature screenplay "Hangmen," as well as by Miragequest Studios to write the science fiction feature, "Sky Bar." In 2000, he was commissioned to create, write and direct two new series for Always Independent Films, entitled "Celebrity Home Videos" and "The Last Date". Thereafter, Michael created and sold a pilot entitled "Meet the Family" to Spike TV. Since relaunching both webseries 4 months ago, 2 of the shorts-"Brace Yourself" and "Young Seinfeld" have become instant web hits with over 6 million hits collectively on YOUTUBE, and over 20,000 hits a day. Wechsler is now in preproduction to expand both series and capitalize on the burgeoning fan base that has responded to the shorts.

For the last 5 years, Michael has been involved with many projects produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation. At the BBC, he has directed more than thirteen episodes of The Learning Channel's top rated show, "What Not To Wear" as well as their new series, "One Week to Save Your Marriage". In addition, Michael has directed episodes of "Honey, I'm Killing the Kids". This May, he was hired by Los Angeles based Stone and Company to direct the pilot episode of the new Bravo series, "Tim Gunn's Guide To Style" hosted by the eponymous star of the hit series "Project Runway." This fall, Michael served as series producer on a pilot for The Learning Channel called "UGLY," an observational documentary series which follows the reputable London based character agency opening doors in NYC. Currently, he’s producing and directing "Passport To," a Travel Channel show that's in its 8th season. He is also an active member of the Producers Guild of America.

Michael has been featured in articles for Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times,E! Entertainment Online, The Los Angeles Business Journal, Venice Magazine, Film Threat, Indiewire.com, and Max Magazine.

Michael is a graduate of the Tisch School of Arts, Film Program at New York University. He currently resides in Hoboken, New Jersey with his wife and newborn son.

Jonathan’s most recent released film as a producer was THE PRODUCERS –THE MUSICAL (based on the Mel Brooks Broadway musical), which completed principal photography in May 2005, for Universal Pictures (US) and Sony Pictures (foreign territories). It starred the original cast – Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, plus Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell, and was released in the U.S. Christmas 2005.

Jonathan’s films have received a total of 3 Academy Awards, 21 Academy Award nominations, the British Academy Award and the French Cesar (their equivalent). In 1978, Jonathan made his solo debut as a producer by interesting Mel Brooks’ new production company, Brooksfilms, Ltd., in a small film to be directed by David Lynch in England. THE ELEPHANT MAN, an emotionally wrenching story photographed in black and white and starring John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins, made a strong impact on critics and audiences alike, and was rewarded with eight Academy Award nominations in 1980 including Best Picture, as well as, the British Academy Award for Best Motion Picture and the French Cesar Award. Jonathan Sanger’s next project as producer was the equally passionate story of actress Frances Farmer. FRANCES, starring Jessica Lange, Kim Stanley and Sam Shepard, resulted in two Oscar nominations, for Lange as Best Actress and Stanley as Best Supporting Actress.

In 1985, he made his directorial debut with CODE NAME: EMERALD, a World War II spy drama filmed in Paris for NBC’s feature film division starring Ed Harris, Max Von Sydow and Eric Stoltz. That same year, Jonathan Sanger produced THE DOCTORS AND THE DEVILS, a 20th Century Fox film starring Jonathan Price, Timothy Dalton and Twiggy. In 1986, he executive produced FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR for Walt Disney Productions. The film received the Best Picture Award from the Academy of Family Films and Television.

In 1987, Sanger formed Chanticleer Films and created The Discovery Program. This program allowed industry professionals opportunities to cross over into directing. Forty-two short films were produced, including the Academy Award winning and internationally acclaimed RAY’S MALE HETEROSEXUAL DANCE HALL as well as the 1992 Academy Award winner, SESSION MAN. Additionally, Chanticleer received seven more Academy Award nominations for the program, and all the Discovery Program shorts have won awards at international film festivals. The Discovery Program also helped open up the cable and foreign television markets for short films. Discovery Program films have aired on PBS and currently can be seen on Showtime as well as many international markets. Jonathan Sanger has directed more than fifteen episodic television shows, including TWIN PEAKS, WISEGUY, and L.A. LAW. He also wrote and directed the short film entitled PEACEMAKER with Lucas Haas for PBS’ American Playhouse, which won the Houston International Film Festival’s First Prize for Best Short Subject in 1989.

Sanger’s first television movie was CBS’s CHILDREN OF THE BRIDE starring Rue McClanahan, Patrick Duffy and Kristy McNichol. From 1991 to 1993, Jonathan Sanger directed three more television movies: NBC’s CHANCE OF A LIFETIME, starring Betty White and Leslie Nielsen, NBC’s JUST MY IMAGINATION, starring Jean Smart and Tom Wopat and ABC’s OBSESSED starring Shannon Doherty and William Devane. He also Executive Produced LUSH LIFE, a movie for Showtime starring Jeff Goldblum and Forest Whitaker and directed DOWN CAME A BLACKBIRD, starring Laura Dern, Raul Julia, and Vanessa Redgrave for Showtime Networks, which was nominated for three Cable Ace Awards. During the winter and spring of 1996 Jonathan Sanger produced MR. AND MRS. SMITH, a television pilot, for Warner Brothers and CBS. Immediately following, Jonathan was hired by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner (C/W Productions) to Executive Produce the Warner Brothers feature, WITHOUT LIMITS, starring Billy Crudup and Donald Sutherland, written and directed by Robert Towne. Subsequently, Jonathan joined C/W Productions where he supervised all of their productions through 2003 including SUSPECT ZERO and VANILLA SKY, starring Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz, written and directed by Cameron Crowe. In 2000, Jonathan produced (with Ed Elbert) his first large format ("Imax") film, 'NSYNC, BIGGER THAN LIVE, a concert film of America's hottest pop music group.

Most recently Jonathan Executive Produced PARAISO TRAVEL, a new groundbreaking film directed by Colombian filmmaker, Simon Brand (to be released in 2008). Also in 2007, he Produced 100 FEET, a ghost/horror thriller written and directed by Eric Red and starring Famke Janssen. (Also to be released in 2008). Both were made under the banner of Jonathan’s new production company Grand Illusions Entertainment based at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood.

Jonathan has also been a speaker and panelist at various film conferences most recently the 2006 Strategic Research Institute’s Film Finance and Distribution Summit.

Jonathan received a Bachelor of Arts and Masters in Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. He spent three years in the Peace Corps in South America and speaks fluent Spanish. He is married to Carla Sanger, founder and head of “LA’s BEST”, the nation’s largest after-school program, and has two sons. They live in Los Angeles.

Wendy Pronin Herst graduated from Vassar College with a double major in economics and music, and followed it up with an M.A. in Music from Claremont Graduate University in California. While in graduate school, she did a summer internship with Abrams Artists in Los Angeles. Her first real job was in the training program (aka the mailroom) at Agency for the Performing Arts (APA). She jumped ship and went to International Creative Management (ICM) where she worked as an Agent Assistant in the TV/Film Talent department for over a year. Acting upon the advice from a college friend, Ms. Herst took a job as a headhunter with Management Recruiters International (the largest executive search firm in the world at the time). She had discovered her true calling and went on to build two successful recruiting firms, The Human Capital Group (www.humancapitalgroup.com), and Emerald Health Services (www.emeraldhs.com).

"The Red Robin" screenplay recharged Wendy's passion for the film business and inspired her to don the Executive Producer's hat. She firmly believed if she didn't produce it someone else most definitely would. This project represents her first collaboration with writer/director, Michael Wechsler and Modern Primitives Films.

Ms. Herst currently resides in both Los Angeles and Scottsdale, AZ with her husband and their toddler

Terry Keefe is a writer-director who co-created with Michael Wechsler the award-winning feature film Slaves of Hollywood, which played at 35 international film festivals and received theatrical distribution via Filmopolis Pictures. With creative partner Michael Wechsler of Modern Primitives Films, he is currently in pre-production for the reality series "REDO U" co-created by actor Hill Harper ("CSI: New York") . In addition, their web series "The Last Date," and "Celebrity Home Videos" have both become a sensation on YouTube, with hits of some episodes approaching 4 million. Terry has also sold shows to and developed projects with SpikeTV and Double Nickel Entertainment

Tommaso Ortino is a production designer working in narrative films, commercials and TV.  He graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti of Florence in 1998 and received a masters degree in film at the University of Paris VIII in Paris.  Tommaso relocated in 2001 to New York City, where he currently resides.
Tommaso has designed more than a dozen feature films. Those films include: PADRE NUESTRO (Sangre de mi Sangre) which was the Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance Film Festival 2007 and was released in spring 2008 by IFC in the US, as well as a separate release in Europe and South America; DECEMBER ENDS, Best Picture winner at Method Fest 2006; and BUICK RIVIERA, a project from the Cannes Filmmakers Atelier that won the Sarajevo Film Festival 2008 and was a selection at the Berlin Film Festival 2009. Bavaria Film International will distribute Buick Riviera in Europe in the coming year. He has an ongoing collaboration with producer Joshua Zeman and Ghost Robot Films and has designed for them the feature AGAINST THE CURRENT, an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival 2009. Tommaso also has collaborated with producer/director Emily Abt and Pureland Pictures to design the feature TOE TO TOE, an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival 2009.  Both films will be released in the US in early 2010. Tommaso Ortino collaborated with Julio De Pietro and Belladonna pictures for the movie THE GOOD GUY that premiered successfully at Tribeca film Festival 2009.
Tommaso Ortino has two projects in post-production. HOLY ROLLERS and COMING & GOING.

Tommaso is represented by Sara Alexander and Lisa Ruffler at Elevation Talent Management Company.

Bio from Filmmaker Magazine "25 New Faces of Independent Film"

While many d.p.’s steal from art history in order to fashion a cinematic style, artist turned cinematographer Sean Kirby started the other way around. Having received a BFA from Syracuse University in 1993, Kirby quickly found cinema seeping into his artwork. “I was watching Tarkovsky and Kieslowski,” Kirby relates, “and their films were inspiring compositions and visuals in my painting. It was then that I started to see film as image making.”

In 1997, Kirby entered the world of film by working in New York and Boston as an electrician, gaffer and grip. In 2000, Kirby told himself that if he wanted to make a name for himself by shooting films, he’d have to move to a smaller market, where he could break in more easily. Soon after moving to Seattle, he found himself working on Charles Mudede and Rob Devor’s Sundance competition feature Police Beat, his first job shooting a feature. A stunning portrait of a bicycle messenger in romantic crisis, the picture, shot in anamorphic, captured Seattle in exotic, glowing imagery.

It was on this film and the next Mudede-Devor production, Zoo, that Kirby developed his own shooting style. “For eight years of my life,” he explains, “I fancied myself a painter. Because of that, I find every moment visually important. When I studied painting, I didn’t want to say what the thing ‘is’ as much as define its mood, and that same emotional effect is what I strive for in cinema.” In Zoo, Kirby pushes the boundaries of shadow and turns a potentially explosive exposé of bestiality into a lovely and lyrical meditation on nature and loneliness. He also lens the Joseph Fiennes feature, "Against the Current" which was selected for competition in Sundance 2008.

Singer-songwriter, Erin Sax Seymour will be writing the title song for "The Red Robin."  Details Magazine has called the NYC Alt-Country/Blues artist "Tough and sweet, smart and streetwise, her melodies mesmerizing. With echoes - and the songwriting gifts - of Lucinda Williams and Aimee Mann, Sax is the real thing, a star in the making."

Edmund Choi collaborated with director M. Night Shyamalan on his first two features films, the independently produced "Praying with Anger" and Miramax Films' "Wide Awake". After completing "Wide Awake", Edmund Choi was signed to a multi-picture deal by Harvey Weinstein to continue to write music for Miramax Films. Edmund Choi's recent film score credits include Warner Brother's "The Castle" and "The Dish", as well as Miramax Films "Down To You".

Stephanie Holbrook is a seasoned professional in the casting industry, having been involved in casting numerous films and television shows over the past decade. In the last few years, Stephanie worked with Bart Freundlich on his recent "Trust the Man", Tom Dey on the Paramount film "Failure To Launch", and was also the casting associate for New Regency/Twentieth Century Fox film "Little Manhattan". Last year Stephanie had the honor of working with playwright and filmmaker, Kenneth Lonergan, on his latest film Margaret. "Stephanie also completed casting work on Noah Baumbach's latest movie, "Margot at the Wedding" after working on his previous film, the Oscar-nominated "The Squid and the Whale". She has also had the honor of working with such esteemed directors as M. Night Shyamalan on "The Village" and "Lady in the Water", Wes Anderson on "The Life Aquatic" and Mike Newell on "Mona Lisa Smile".

Stephanie is just completing casting of M. Night Shyamalan's latest film, "The Happening", and is currently casting the independent film "Victor in December" for the producer of "Girl With A Pearl Earring".

Glenn Feig has provided full service legal production counsel on over 150 motion picture productions during his tenure as an entertainment attorney. He has represented dozens of domestic and foreign independent motion picture production companies, distributors, sales agents and financiers, as well as writers, directors, and actors. He has extensive experience in the structuring, negotiating and drafting of agreements that govern domestic and foreign production deals, international co-productions, the acquisition of rights, above and below-the-line talent, motion picture financing and loan procurement, completion bonds and various musical services, as well as merchandising, licensing, the clearance of rights and new media issues. Mr. Feig also possesses an expertise in dealing with the Screen Actors Guild, the Writers Guild of America and the Directors Guild of America and advises the firm's clients regarding all necessary interactions with those guilds.

Brian Grossman is an experienced trial attorney specializing in entertainment-related and general business litigation including the areas of contracts, copyright, trademark and business matters. Brian Grossman Executive Produced the independent feature film, "Slaves Of Hollywood" in 1999. Brian Grossman graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science, and received his Juris Doctor degree from UCLA School of Law in 1993.

Claire Forlani has joined the cast and is attached to play Julie Shellner in Modern Primitives Films' psycho-drama, The Red Robin. Claire Forlani is a stunning beauty, and the London native, who moved with her family to Northern California just shy of her 21st birthday, has had a quick rise up the pecking order in Hollywood. Forlani made eight films in four years before being chosen for the plum female lead opposite Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins in "Meet Joe Black" (1998). Her first role of note in a Hollywood film came in 1994's "Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow" in which she played an interpreter for the visiting cops. She went on to play Brandi, the girlfriend to Jeremy London who ditches plans to travel with him in order to appear on a TV dating show in Kevin Smith's uneven "Mallrats" (1995) and had a small but memorable role as Sean Connery's angry daughter in "The Rock" (1996). Julian Schnabel cast the rising star as the waitress-girlfriend of the titular artist in his biopic "Basquiat" (1996) and she subsequently offered a strong turn as the wrist-slashing girlfriend of beat poet Neal Cassady in "The Last Time I Committed Suicide" (1997). The busy actress also co-starred with Rob Morrow and Jake Weber in the romantic drama "Into My Heart/Elements" (1998).

After a small but memorable role in "Mystery Men" (1999), she teamed with Freddie Prinze Jr. for the romantic comedy "Boys and Girls" (2000) and went blonde to co-star in the drama "Anti-Trust" (2001). Forlani toiled in smaller projects for a while, resurfacing in the Polish brothers' art house hit "Northfork" (2003) as one of the townspeople who are about to see their hometown flooded by the arrival of a hydroelectric dam. The actress also made for a comely sidekick/love interest for Jackie Chan in the English language Hong Kong actioner "The Medallion" (2003), and played the wife of iconic golf champion Bobby Jones (Jim Caviezel) in "Bobby Jones, Stroke of Genius" (2004). She next appeared in the brutally violent sports drama, Green Street Hooligans (2005), playing the sister of an expelled Harvard student (Elijah Woods) who flees to her home in England and is introduced to the underground world of football hooliganism by her brother-in-law (Charlie Hunnam).

Roger Guenveur Smith, star of both the silver screen and stage, has attached and signed on to play Leonard Shellner in the Modern Primitives Films psycho-drama, The Red Robin. Roger is an actor, writer, and director whose work has been distinguished with the Obie, Peabody, Audelco, Bessie, Helen Hayes, Barrymore, and NAACP Image Awards. He has served as Artist in Residence at the University of California, as NEA/TCG Playwright in Residence at the Mark Taper Forum, and has received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Charleston.
For the international stage, he has created and performed A Huey P. Newton Story, Frederick Douglass Now, Christopher Columbus 1992, Inside the Creole Mafia, Iceland, Two Fires, Blood and Brains, and In Honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Among Roger's many collaborations with director Spike Lee include "Malcolm X", "Summer of Sam", the telefilm version of "A Huey P. Newton Story", and his improvised creation of the stuttering hero Smiley for the Oscar-nominated "Do The Right Thing." His eclectic range of screen credits also includes "King of New York", "Deep Cover", "Eve's Bayou", "All About the Benjamins", the telefilms Hamlet and The Color of Courage, and the innovative HBO series Oz and K Street. Currently, he is starring in the upcoming Ridley Scott Directed/Russell Crowe crime pic, "American Gangsters".

"Smith's meticulously researched solo performance illuminates caron with laser-like precision."
- Los Angeles Times

"So masterful is he that by the end of his show, one can easily forget that one is watching an actor on stage. Both intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant, it suffers none of the self-indulgence that usually undermines the format. It is a bravura theater piece."
- LA Village Voice

"He sends a chill down your spine."
- San Francisco Examiner

"Without a doubt one of the best and most urgently important productions to hit stages in 2006."
- Los Angeles Alternative

"It is a performance that pairs superb theatrical artifice with genuinely harrowing emotional realism."
- New York Times

Hill Harper, star of CSI NY and Spike Lee films "He Got Game" and "Get on the Bus" has signed on to play Harry Shellner in the upcoming psychological thriller/family drama, "The Red Robin".

An accomplished film, television and stage actor, Harper currently stars in the hit CBS drama series, "CSI: NY," as Dr. Sheldon Hawkes, the reclusive coroner who walked away from a promising surgical career after the traumatic loss of two patients. Prior to "CSI: NY", he co-starred as an ambitious undercover FBI operative on the CBS series "The Handler" alongside Emmy Award nominee Joe Pantoliano. The role earned Harper a 2004 Golden Satellite Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. He has also been recognized by the NAACP Image Awards with a nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the CBS series, "City of Angels".