January 2011 Contest

Mark Gill is the Chairman and CEO of The Film Department, an independent film company founded in June 2007. The company fully finances and produces star-driven movies with budgets between $15 and $50 million, including the recent hit Law Abiding Citizen.

Previously, Gill served as the founding president of Warner Independent Pictures. In his tenure, the company produced 15 films and earned 11 Oscar nominations, including projects such as March of the Penguins and Good Night, and Good Luck.

Prior to Warner, Gill spent eight years at Miramax Films, where he was President of Miramax/L.A. He was involved in the production or acquisition of more than two dozen films, among them The Talented Mr. Ripley, Central Station, Next Stop Wonderland, Apocalypse Now Redux, In the Bedroom, Amelie, The Quiet American, Frida, Rabbit-Proof Fence, City of God and Under the Tuscan Sun.

Michael Taylor is the Chair of Film and Television Production at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and a producer of theatrical and television films. His credits include Last Embrace, Bottle Rocket, Phenomenon, The Hi-Line, Instinct, The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper, Mrs. Munck, Princess of Thieves, Phenomenon II, The Commuters, and Copying Beethoven. He is currently producing and directing a documentary film entitled NO LABELS.

A member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Taylor is the recipient of The National Board of Review Award, The Genesis Award for Outstanding Feature Film, The Santa Clarita International Film Award for best Tela-Feature, and The Variety/EDI $100 Million Award.

Gil Cates is an award-winning producer, director and overall film, television and theater powerhouse. A graduate of Syracuse University, Cates began his Hollywood career by directing and producing the 1970 film version of the Broadway hit I Never Sang for my Father, which received three Academy Award nominations. Shortly thereafter, Cates caught the Academy's attention with Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, which received two Oscar nominations. Some of Cates’s other film credits include: The Promise, One Summer Love, The Last Married Couple in America, Oh! God Book II and Backfire. On the small screen, Cates directed and produced a number of high-profile projects including the Emmy Award-winning To All my Friends on Shore, The Affair, and After the Fall.

Cates also served two terms as president of the Directors Guild of America (DGA) from 1983 to 1987. Pulling from his vast professional experience and a desire to contribute to the creative community, Cates founded the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television (TFT) where he also served as Dean from 1990 to 1998. In 1995, Cates founded the Geffen Playhouse to provide the Los Angeles community, as well as UCLA TFT students, access to world-class, original productions.

Cates has won numerous awards: in 1989, the DGA honored him with the Robert B. Aldrich Award for extraordinary service, and two years later with the DGA's Honorary Life Membership. In 1996, he received the Jimmy Doolittle Award for Outstanding Contribution to Los Angeles Theater. While Cates has collected 84 nominations and 17 Emmy Awards over the years, he is probably more well-known for his role behind the scenes of the Academy Awards show—2008’s 80th Annual Academy Awards marked Cates’ fourteenth time as producer of the international broadcast.

Los Angeles native Mike Werb received his undergraduate degrees from Stanford. He put his costly education to use by joining a new wave garage band that never left the garage. Turning to writing, he began a climb up the well-greased Hollywood ladder by entering the UCLA Master's program in screenwriting, and has since worked for every major studio.

Mike's big break was writing the screenplay for the hit comedy The Mask. He also co-wrote and co-produced (with Michael Colleary) the action-thriller Face/Off, directed by John Woo. Other screenwriting credits include Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Curious George, and the family comedy Firehouse Dog. Werb and Colleary also worked with Arnold Schwarzenegger on Collateral Damage.

Mike is the creator/executive producer of Unnatural History—a live action-adventure series for Warner Horizon and the Cartoon Network which launched in June 2010.

He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Writers Guild of America, and is a visiting professor at UCLA's graduate school of Theater, Film and Television.

Larry Turman has chaired the Peter Stark Program at the USC School of Cinematic Arts since 1991. He has produced forty films, running from The Graduate to American History X. He also directed two films and executive produced many films for television. Turman was voted into the Producers Guild of America Hall of Fame, has been a juror at the Flanders Film Festival, and has guest lectured at AFI, UCLA, NYU, La Fémis in Paris, the Triangle Conference in Rome, Equinoxe in Bordeaux, the Polytechnic in Singapore, and the UNIJAPAN Entertainment Forum at the Tokyo Film Festival.

His book, So You Want To Be A Producer, was published by Random House. Turman served on the Board of the Producers' Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for many years. He is a graduate of UCLA and a Los Angeles native.