Partners
We draw from all the top talent in the motion picture industry throughout the world. The Partners and Associates will manage your project from ‘Hello’ to ‘Premiere’ (and beyond.)
Ed Elbert
Ed Elbert pursues a passion for innovative marketing that uses the singular persuasive power of motion pictures to reveal how people can build a better society. While working as a teenage summer intern for his Congressman, Ogden Reid, who was also Publisher of the International Herald Tribune, Elbert began to realize that ideas, no matter how valuable, did not gain acceptance unless they were delivered in the persuasive envelope known as marketing. Congressman Reid provided Elbert a unique experience in communication. That passion for communication intensified during his subsequent experience as an intern in the John F. Kennedy administration. Over time, Elbert began to master the dynamics that lead to win-win alignments.
After earning his BA at Tufts University and an MBA at Harvard Business School, Elbert joined American Express Corp. as their youngest-ever departmental head, leading the Corporate Marketing Research Dept. and their Internal Marketing Consulting Group. Later, at 20th Century Fox Film Studios, as part of the team responsible for the U.S. release of the initial Star Wars movie, Elbert developed a key strategy which became an essential component of the film’s astounding U.S. opening, the largest in film history.
Elbert’s first major studio film as a producer, The Mighty Quinn for MGM, starred two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington. The film was picked by America’s top reviewer, Roger Ebert for his 10 Best of the Year list and also his 100 Best of the Decade List. Another of Elbert’s studio films, Anna and the King, for 20th Century Fox, starred two-time Oscar recipient Jodie Foster and Asian superstar Chow Yun Fat, and was itself nominated for two Academy Awards. His film The Martian Child for New Line/Warner Bros, starred Oscar winner Angelica Huston, two Oscar nominees Sophia Okonedo and Joan Cusack, Golden Globe nominees John Cusack, Oliver Platt, and Amanda Peet.
Gerald Sindell
Gerald Sindell is driven by a belief in the possibility of progress. Through his work as a film director, author and publisher, he has created fiction and non-fiction intended to inform and inspire, and at the same time sought to master the marketplace of ideas in order to disseminate the essential tools that make the expressions of this drive for progress show up in numerous fields. His first movie, Double-Stop, a call for the middle class to become engaged in the civil rights battles of the era, was invited to Cannes and won World’s Best Feature Motion Picture at the Atanta film festival. His second film Harpy, a feature film for CBS seen by many millions, was about an architect who was determined to create new ways for humanity to live with minimal impact on a fragile world.
As publisher, Sindell’s book project by Santmyer, …And Ladies of the Club, which told the story of the development of the modern American state in the period following the Civil War and ending with the Depression, owned the #1 spot on the fiction list of the New York Times for 52 weeks. As publisher of Knightsbridge, Sindell made the mold for consumer information books, Winning the Insurance Game by Ralph Nader and Wesley Smith. Sindell may have more bestsellers to his name, as a small publisher and book developer, than anyone else in publishing, having earned $2 Biliion at retail for his titles.
As an author, among his books is the acclaimed Genius Machine, his unique guide to innovation. Praise for his work comes from Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School, as a ‘gift to the world,’ and by best-selling author Ken Dychtwald as, ‘the Obi-Wan Kenobi’ for serious thinkers in any field.
Hear Quentin Tarantino’s celebration of some of Sindell’s films on his podcast.
Jonathan Sanger
Producer Jonathan Sanger has enjoyed over a 40 year successful career as both a movie and theatre producer. To date his films have received 3 Academy Awards, 21 Academy Award Nominations, a British Academy Film award and a French Cesar among numerous other awards.
Jonathan’s film producing credits include but are not limited to The Elephant Man, directed by David Lynch starring Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt; Frances, starring Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard, Without Limits, starring Billy Crudup and Donald Sutherland, Vanilla Sky, starring Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz, and The Producers—The Musical, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.
He recently produced Chapter & Verse, starring Loretta Divine, Daniel Beaty, and Amari Hardwick and Marshall, starring Chadwick Boseman, Kate Hudson, Josh Gad, and Sterling K. Brown. He recently finished Cabrini, an epic origin film about Mother Cabrini, the first American woman to be sainted, starring Cristiana Dell’Anna, John Lithgow, David Morse, and Giancarlo Giannini.
Among Sanger’s numerous director credits are numerous episodic TV shows, including Twin Peaks, Wiseguy and LA Law. He directed Code Name Emerald, starring Ed Harris and Max Von Sydow and Down Came A Blackbird starring Laura Dern and Vanessa Redgrave which was nominated for 3 Cable Ace Awards. He directed several movies of the week, wrote and directed the short film entitled Peacemaker with Lucas Haas for PBS which won the Houston International Film Festival’s first prize for Best Short Subject.
Jonathan received a BA and Masters in Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. He spent three years in the Peace Corps in South America and speaks fluent Spanish.
Larry Ackerman
Larry Ackerman is a leading authority on organizational and personal identity and the pioneer of Identity-Based Management, a comprehensive discipline for tapping into the value-creating core of organizations to help them build distinctive, authentic and sustainable businesses.
His diverse clients have included AARP, Alcoa, Dow Chemical, Fidelity Investments, Lockheed Martin, Maytag, National Geographic, Norsk Hydro, and State Farm Insurance. Underlying Larry’s work, is his passion for revealing the potential of organizations to make a discernable and lasting contribution in the world — its source of value creation, today and into the future..
Ackerman has published two groundbreaking books on identity. The first, Identity Is Destiny: Leadership and the Roots of Value Creation, is aimed at senior executives who want to harness the uniqueness and potential of their institutions. His second book, The Identity Code: The 8 Essential Questions for Finding your Purpose and Place in the World is for individuals seeking to create more fulfilling, meaningful lives.
Leslie Bates
Leslie Bates, JD, Lincoln Law School, brings broad experience in military and entertainment contracting to her work for FSA’s clients, providing assurance for those involved in motion pictures for the first time that they are receiving the advice of a seasoned advocate. The creation of corporate-serving intellectual property gives rise to complex and unique considerations, and Ms. Bates, beginning with her work at Universal Studios Legal, has earned her authority in this specialty.
Ms. Bates has broad global experience, having lived and worked, among other places, in Italy and Turkey, where she created a company that represented a number of American military suppliers, including Allied Signal and Honeywell, to the Turkish military.
Staying in close touch with the creative side, Ms. Bates received her MFA as an American Film Institute Screenwriting fellow, and then formed her own production company, UnicVisions, which has produced the feature films, “Acts of Desperation,” and “Brothers Broken.”
Ms. Bates is an active member of Film Independent, Women in Film, Greenlight Women, and Women in Media.
Addison Wright
Addison Wright combines a passion for the potential of motion pictures to enlighten and persuade, with an uncanny ability to guide the actual production to a successful completion, no matter how daunting the obstacles. Mr. Wright has produced more than 150 feature films and documentaries, starring Robert Downey Jr., Tim Roth, Steve Martin, Toby Maguire, Helen Mirren, Geoffrey Lewis, Norman Reedus and many others. Almost half of these projects were distressed films that completion bonders or insurers had turned to Wright to attempt to rescue when the original producers found themselves in over their heads. He saved all of them.
In addition to theatrical films, Wright has a particular zeal for films that sell, producing 1,000-plus commercials and Public Service Announcements, more than 120 music videos, and over 100 corporate and industrial films for Fortune 500 companies.