Jim Hemphill

Jim Hemphill is the award-winning screenwriter and director of THE TROUBLE WITH THE TRUTH, a critically acclaimed (94% at Rotten Tomatoes) romantic drama starring Lea Thompson and John Shea. After receiving his B.F.A. from Columbia College in Chicago and his graduate degree from the film school at USC, Jim began his career by writing and directing the micro-budget horror movie BAD REPUTATION, which received international distribution on DVD and VOD from Warner Bros. and Twentieth-Century Fox. In addition to his moviemaking endeavors, Jim is a respected film historian whose essays on cinema and television have appeared in the Chicago Reader, Film Comment, Film Quarterly, Moviemaker, and many other outlets. He is a researcher and interviewer for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Visual History Project, and he has contributed historical audio commentaries to DVD releases of many films including Stanley Kramer's INHERIT THE WIND, Francis Coppola's GARDENS OF STONE, and the Clint Eastwood classic HANG 'EM HIGH. Jim also hosts a podcast for American Cinematographer's website, where he interviews the industry's top directors of photography, and is the author of Focal Point, a regular column on directing for Filmmaker Magazine. He is a programming consultant at the Egyptian and Aero theaters in Los Angeles, where he has moderated discussions with Martin Scorsese, Charlize Theron, Nicolas Cage, David Mamet, Jim Jarmusch, Paul Schrader, Viggo Mortensen, Shirley MacLaine, and many others. His films have screened at dozens of film festivals and art houses around the world including the Sundance Film Festival, American Cinematheque, Facets Multimedia, Alamo Drafthouse and ArcLight Hollywood.