ENTERTAINMENT
August 19, 2013 | By Ryan Faughnder, This post has been updated, as indicated below
It's been three years since film producer Michel Shane's 13-year-old daughter Emily Shane was killed by a speeding driver while she was walking along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. Now Shane, 57, an executive producer for "Catch Me If You Can" and "I, Robot," is in a last-ditch push to raise money for a documentary film about the part of PCH that has been called "Blood Alley. " Like many filmmakers before him , he is using the website Kickstarter to ask for donations to fund the movie, which he says will advocate for changes to improve safety along the highway, plus dangerous roads in other communities.
ENTERTAINMENT
January 8, 2003 | From Associated Press
Prosecutors in Poland have questioned a newspaper editor about published allegations that a leading film producer sought a $17.5-million bribe to lobby the government for more media-friendly laws. The allegations against Lew Rywin were carried last month by the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. It reported he approached its chief editor with the offer last July, claiming he represented Prime Minister Leszek Miller. Rywin, 57, is one of Poland's most prominent media entrepreneurs.
NEWS
October 5, 1996
Stephen Friedman, 59, producer of such films as "The Last Picture Show" and "The Big Easy." Friedman earned a bachelor's degree in economics and a law degree at Harvard University. Entering the motion picture business as an attorney, he worked for Columbia Pictures, Ashley-Famous Agency and Paramount. He founded and operated Kings Road Entertainment with profits from his first producing effort, "The Last Picture Show" in 1971.
ENTERTAINMENT
March 21, 2013 | By Reed Johnson
Since Cuban film producer Carlos Vives died in Havana last week at 71, tributes have floated in from newspapers and websites across the Spanish-speaking world. Except, of course, in the United States, where because of Cold War-era political rationales Cuban culture remains largely a taboo topic. By any measure, Vives was a cinematic mogul, with more than 130 works to his credit, including about 40 feature films. More significantly, he backed a number of movies that delved deep into the intricacies of Cuban society and the complex daily lives of ordinary people, while quietly challenging the island nation's communist orthodoxies.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 8, 2012 | Elaine Woo
Jake Eberts, the Canadian independent producer and founder of Britain's Goldcrest Films, which revived the British cinema industry in the 1980s with a string of Oscar-winning movies, including "Gandhi" and "Chariots of Fire," died Thursday in Montreal. He was 71. He was diagnosed in late 2010 with uveal melanoma, a rare cancer of the eye, which recently spread to his liver, said his wife, Fiona. During four decades in the film business, Eberts financed or produced more than 50 films, including four that won Academy Awards for best picture: "Chariots of Fire" (1981)
BUSINESS
December 22, 2013 | By Daniel Miller
The gig: Bill Gerber is a film producer whose credits include "Gran Torino," "The Dukes of Hazzard," and "The In-Laws. " His next movie, "Grudge Match," which will be released by Warner Bros. on Christmas Day, stars Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone as old boxing rivals who come out of retirement for one final fight. Rock 'n' roll dreams: Gerber, 56, grew up wanting to be a rock 'n' roll drummer. "The minute I heard [the Beatles'] 'I Saw Her Standing There,' the world changed," he said.