About Me
I’m a screenwriter, script editor, author and consultant and a member of the Writer's Guild of South Africa.
Born and raised in Johannesburg, about as far as you can get from Hollywood. After high school, I studied advertising at a private college, then accounting. After completing my degree, I taught, lectured and developed accounting courses for a number of years. After moving to Los Angeles in 2009, I took on a number of marketing and copy writing positions, started my own accounting education website and published a series of basic accounting books.
But that's not my true love. My true love is film and screenwriting.
I’ve always loved watching movies. But I didn't always write them. The genus of my screenwriting career was simply an idea. An idea I came up with one day when I was looking for a job in the paper. I felt the idea was just begging to be made into a film. That was 2005, in Johannesburg, and the idea was for a story called Affirmative Action. Soon after that idea was born, I attended my first screenwriting seminar, and started learning how it all works.
Over the next few years, in my spare time, I ploughed through books like Syd Field’s Screenplay, William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade, Linda Seger’s Making a Good Script Great, Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat, amongst others (great screenwriting books to read), not to mention countless articles online.
Between 2009-2014, while living in LA, I attended numerous screenwriting and film making seminars, including a number by the late Eric Sherman, a well--known film director, educator and consultant to Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures (amongst others in the “industry”).
In 2014 I moved to Tel Aviv, Israel. I think one interesting thing about myself is that I have now lived in 3 countries - South Africa, the US as well as Israel - and I hold citizenship with each of them. As such, I think I have a pretty unique worldview.
While in Israel I started consulting others and worked with a few producers, helping them to develop and market their scripts and ideas. While there I also did a bunch of copy writing and editing for corporate videos, emails and sales campaigns.
In 2016 my South African comedy feature, Affirmative Action (the original idea that started my whole screenwriting journey) was selected for development by South Africa's National Film and Video Foundation. Bureaucratic delays and complications followed, but the recognition was humbling nonetheless. In 2019 the screenplay placed as a semi-finalist in the Writer's Guild of South Africa's Muse Awards.
In 2017 I adapted the book, He Died Alone in Tijuana, by Raymond Dayan into the true-life, historical drama, "Crossing Borders." This script has since been rated by a National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Emmy-winning screenwriter in the top 5% of scripts they've reviewed: "I found this to be an incredibly unique, compelling story... There was some fantastic visual storytelling throughout the script." The screenplay advanced and placed as a semi-finalist in the 2019-2020 WeScreenplay screenwriting contest.
I'm now moving into my 15th year as a speculative screenwriter. I love the art form more today than ever before.
I also love helping others with great projects to fulfill their own visions.
Other interests of mine include sport, music, travel and self-improvement, and I occasionally work as a life coach to help people overcome personal problems and reach their goals.
I also do a little acting sometimes. Here's a commercial I was in a couple of years ago in Israel:
Born and raised in Johannesburg, about as far as you can get from Hollywood. After high school, I studied advertising at a private college, then accounting. After completing my degree, I taught, lectured and developed accounting courses for a number of years. After moving to Los Angeles in 2009, I took on a number of marketing and copy writing positions, started my own accounting education website and published a series of basic accounting books.
But that's not my true love. My true love is film and screenwriting.
I’ve always loved watching movies. But I didn't always write them. The genus of my screenwriting career was simply an idea. An idea I came up with one day when I was looking for a job in the paper. I felt the idea was just begging to be made into a film. That was 2005, in Johannesburg, and the idea was for a story called Affirmative Action. Soon after that idea was born, I attended my first screenwriting seminar, and started learning how it all works.
Over the next few years, in my spare time, I ploughed through books like Syd Field’s Screenplay, William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade, Linda Seger’s Making a Good Script Great, Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat, amongst others (great screenwriting books to read), not to mention countless articles online.
Between 2009-2014, while living in LA, I attended numerous screenwriting and film making seminars, including a number by the late Eric Sherman, a well--known film director, educator and consultant to Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures (amongst others in the “industry”).
In 2014 I moved to Tel Aviv, Israel. I think one interesting thing about myself is that I have now lived in 3 countries - South Africa, the US as well as Israel - and I hold citizenship with each of them. As such, I think I have a pretty unique worldview.
While in Israel I started consulting others and worked with a few producers, helping them to develop and market their scripts and ideas. While there I also did a bunch of copy writing and editing for corporate videos, emails and sales campaigns.
In 2016 my South African comedy feature, Affirmative Action (the original idea that started my whole screenwriting journey) was selected for development by South Africa's National Film and Video Foundation. Bureaucratic delays and complications followed, but the recognition was humbling nonetheless. In 2019 the screenplay placed as a semi-finalist in the Writer's Guild of South Africa's Muse Awards.
In 2017 I adapted the book, He Died Alone in Tijuana, by Raymond Dayan into the true-life, historical drama, "Crossing Borders." This script has since been rated by a National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Emmy-winning screenwriter in the top 5% of scripts they've reviewed: "I found this to be an incredibly unique, compelling story... There was some fantastic visual storytelling throughout the script." The screenplay advanced and placed as a semi-finalist in the 2019-2020 WeScreenplay screenwriting contest.
I'm now moving into my 15th year as a speculative screenwriter. I love the art form more today than ever before.
I also love helping others with great projects to fulfill their own visions.
Other interests of mine include sport, music, travel and self-improvement, and I occasionally work as a life coach to help people overcome personal problems and reach their goals.
I also do a little acting sometimes. Here's a commercial I was in a couple of years ago in Israel:
"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." - Nelson Mandela