Adrienne Weiss

Profile

A graduate of Yale, Adrienne Weiss began her career as a theater director but became a filmmaker after realizing that in film she could combine her two great passions—powerful, spontaneous performance and beautiful images. LOVE, LUDLOW, her first feature film as a director, premiered at Sundance ’05 and starred David Eigenberg, Brendan Sexton III, and Alicia Goranson. The Sundance catalogue read, “Weiss sticks close to the raw emotional truth of her characters, and we fall in love with them because their behavior is always unpredictable. With her deeply humanistic sensibility, her flair for ironic humor, and her ability to creatively mine cultural references, Weiss is unequivocally someone to watch.” The film screened at over 20 festivals worldwide, was released by Time/Warner DVD and was broadcast on Sundance Channel, Starz, and other cable networks.

Adrienne works regularly as a private directing-actors and script coach for episodic television and advertisement. Recent gigs include acting as a script and directing actors coach for the Nike webseries Lily V. Margot, a campaign for Miu Miu, and episodes of Ray Donovan and Girls. Past favorites include 30 Rock, Damages, In Treatment, Monday Night Football, and Grey’s Anatomy, among many others.

Adrienne also works regularly as a directing and script consultant for feature films. Projects include THE BAD INTENTIONS (shortlisted for Best Foreign Film Oscar), MAY IN THE SUMMER (Opening Night, Sundance), HOMEWRECKER (Best of Next Award, Sundance), THE ABOLITIONISTS and MURDER OF A PRESIDENT for the American Experience (PBS), SUNBELT EXPRESS, KALUSHI: THE SOLOMON MAHLANGU STORY (post production) and RETABLO (post).

As a screenwriter, Adrienne’s screenplays include FREE, a prison drama which she will direct as her second feature; THE BREAKERS, in development with Opening Night Productions (A LATE QUARTET); and an adaptation of Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s novella The Funeral Party, which was directed by Yefim Gribov and starred Simon Strogachov and other luminaries of the Russian cinema.

Adrienne taught Directing Actors for five years at the NYU Grad Film program and has taught the past eight years at the Columbia Film Division.

Prior to working in film, Adrienne directed numerous theater productions at venues including The New York Shakespeare Festival, Circle Repertory Company, The Women’s Project, Naked Angels, and La Mama. She co-founded the theater company The Sticking Place, where she wrote and directed a series of music-theater pieces with composer Carter Burwell (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH). She also directed the premiere of the new opera Golem at the Hoebbel Theater in Berlin, and a series of classic American musicals in Poland.

Since 2002, Adrienne has been training as a Buddhist meditation teacher. Her training and practice inform all aspects of her work as both a director, writer, and consultant.