Producer Bill Gerber (“A Star is Born,” “Gran Torino,” “A Very Long Engagement”) will join the Dodge College faculty as the fall 2019 Marion Knott Distinguished Artist.

Academy Award nominee Bill Gerber has spent over 30 years in the film business in several positions including President of Production at Warner Brothers Pictures and as Producer on such films as “A Star is Born”, “Gran Torino”, “A Very Long Engagement” and “Grudge Match”. He has had a hand in dozens of movies including: “LA Confidential”, “JFK”, “Heat”, “You’ve Got Mail”, “The Perfect Storm”, “Three Kings”, and the “Harry Potter” Series. He has also an Emmy nomination for Executive Producing the TV movie “James Dean”.

Before joining Warner Brothers, Gerber was a partner at Lookout Management, a premier Music Management Company that has over the years represented such Classic Rock Artists as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Tom Petty, The Cars and Devo. Gerber attended Beverly Hills High School and the University of California, Santa Cruz where he studied music and environmental science.

Gerber serves on the boards of the Environmental Media Association, Center for Early Education, and Los Angeles 2024.

Every semester, Dodge College hosts expert filmmakers to meet with and counsel selected scholars, as part of its Distinguished Artists program. This popular program includes regular, bi-weekly meetings with the filmmaker in a one-on-one setting where the student and mentor have the opportunity to develop a specific creative project throughout the semester. In addition, the filmmakers interact with the larger Chapman community at weekly dinners open to students and screenings of the filmmaker’s films followed by an in-class Q&A. As an artist-in-residence, Gerber will share the creative thinking and processes behind producing some of the biggest blockbusters over the last 30 years.

Past Filmmakers-in-Residence at Chapman have included writer, producer and director Dean Devlin (“Independence Day,” “Godzilla”, “Independence Day: Resurgence”); Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences President Cheryl Boone Isaacs; Academy Award winning Visual Effects supervisor Richard Edlund (“Star Wars: A New Hope,” “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi”); award-winning director, writer and producer Michael Apted (“Up” series, “Gorillas in the Midst,” “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “The World is Not Enough”); Rob Cohen, the renowned filmmaker behind such blockbuster hits as “The Fast and the Furious,” “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” and “xXx”; Academy Award®-winning producer Cathy Schulman (“Crash,” “The Illusionist,” “Salvation Boulevard”); Academy Award®-nominated producer JoAnne Sellar (“There Will Be Blood,” “Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia”), award-winning director Donald Petrie (“Miss Congeniality,” “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” “Grumpy Old Men,” “Mystic Pizza”); Hollywood producer Cathleen Summers (“The Sandlot,” “Stakeout,” “Another Stakeout”); director and producer Betty Thomas (“Dr. Doolittle,” “Private Parts,” “Brady Bunch Movie,” “I Spy”); screenwriter and producer Leslie Dixon (“Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Hairspray,” “Limitless”); director and producer Jonathan Sanger (“Vanilla Sky,” “The Elephant Man,” “The Producers”); director Sheldon Epps (“Friends,” “Frasier”), producer Michael Phillips (“Taxi Driver,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”); director Martha Coolidge (“Real Genius,” “Rambling Rose,” “Valley Girl”); and film and TV producer Gary Foster (“Daredevil,” “Sleepless in Seattle,” “Ghost Rider”).

*Fall 2019 Course Offering:
FTV 310/510 Industry Insiders with Bill Gerber
Mondays, 7-9:45 p.m. | Folino Theater
Instructor: Alex Rose

*Open to all students