EGG
“If words could physically wound, everyone in “Egg” would have to wear body armor. You would NOT want to be in the paths of the verbal daggers flying around in this movie. With a piercingly sharp screenplay by Risa Mickenberg that has echoes of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”...“Egg” is a whip-smart social satire about two couples, each about to welcome a child into the world for the first time.””
“A searing examination of how class, privilege, money, and freedom of choice intersect.”
“The meaning of motherhood is at stake in the biting comedy ‘EGG.’”
“In Egg, questions about parenthood might make audiences uncomfortable. That’s the idea.”
Selected Screenplays
CONSUMED Comic psychological horror. A bitter, broke biographer takes a decadent culinary holiday with a wealthy foodie.
THE MAGIC NUMBER A domestic thriller - a woman re-visits her ex, his wife, and their baby, looking for her place in their relationship.
EGG, screenplay by Risa Mickenberg, based on her original play. Directed by Marianna Palka. Produced by Michele Ganeless, Alysia Reiner, David Alan Basche. (USA) – World Premiere TriBeCa Film Festival. Two couples and a surrogate lay bare the complications, contradictions, heartbreak, and absurdities implicit in how we think about motherhood. With Christina Hendricks, Anna Camp, Alysia Reiner, David Alan Basche, Gbenga Akinnagbe. Nantucket Film Festival, Bentonville Film Festival, Philadelphia Feilm Festival. Trailer Here.
BREATHE, an original coming-of-age story about girls on a swim team, for producers Davien Littlefield and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
PURPLE MAN ROAD, an adaptation, with Lara Shapiro, from Diva Hasse's writings, about adolescent girl runaways in the south in the 70s for producer Fredrick Zollo.
EVERY GOOD BOY DOES FINE: a piano tuner turns into a serial killer who kills people who ruin good music. Rewrite for director Daniel Minanhan and producers Ellen Barkin and IdealPartners.
SALT LAND: Adaptation of the French novel Terre Salée by Irina Egli For Hermann Vaske & ARTE.
TELEVISION:
DON’T SLEEP WITH YOUR DRUMMER, comedy pilot about female rockers in their 30s, based on the novel by Jen Sincero for HBO.
TELL ME YOU LOVE ME HBO's relationship drama by Cynthia Mort. Worked in the writers room mapping out a Season Two.
PLAYS:
THE SHUMAN CONDITION: a modern gothic fairy tale about a woman whose doctor falls in love with her disease, commissioned by South Coast Repertory.
THE MAGIC NUMBER: a play about triangulation in coupledom and the cruelty of happiness.
FIREWOMAN’S LIFT: a short play about a female firefighter, based on first hand accounts of 9-11. Performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Brighton Festival and the SoHo Theatre London. Produced by Host London. Performer: Cathy Haase
XANDER AND THE SNAKE: Wrote and directed a short play about three intergenerational women and a lawn. Performed at Fashion Week, Dallas TX. Produced for Kate Spade.
DOCUMENTARIES:
Associate producer on Michael Moore’s CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY.
Created and produced NEIGHBORS: the pilot for an HBO AMERICA UNDERCOVER series.
Directed LOS ANGELINOS, a documentary about children in Los Angeles for the Getty Center, the LA Children’s Museum and Nickelodeon.
FICTION:
Pushcart Prize for Fiction (Rick Moody Editor)
Published in the premier fiction issue of Vice Magazine with Harmony Korrine, Neil LaBute, Eileen Myles and Chuck Palahniuk.
Published in The Baffler, Purple Magazine, The Witness, Roxane Gay’s [pank], [sic] Vice & Verse, The Witness, Del Sol Review, Utne Reader.
Humor in The American Bystander.
BOOKS:
Author + Packager of the best-selling book Taxi Driver Wisdom (Chronicle Books)
Featured in The NY Post, USA Today, ZDF-Arte, Rosie O’Donnell Show, AIGA best books of the decade…
TAXI DRIVER WISDOM (Author + Packager) (Chronicle Books) A best-selling book. Now in its 7th printing in an anniversary. Widely publicized and awarded American Institute of Graphic Art’s 100 Best Books of the Year.
BEAUTY PARLOR WISDOM (Author + Packager) (Chronicle Books)
WRITER/DIRECTOR: COMMERCIALS + SHORTS
