Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
The Charlotte Observer has a story on the other Asheville guy at Sundance last month:
PARK CITY, UTAH –Five years ago, Paul Schneider attended the Sundance Film Festival as just one member of a celebrated class of the filmmaking school at N.C. School of the Arts.
At this year’s festival, which wrapped last weekend, he showed up as a star.
Schneider, an Asheville native, made his directing and screenwriting debut at Sundance with “Pretty Bird,” the tale of three entrepreneurs who set out to get rich with a rocket belt invention that enables people to fly, but who end up viciously turning on one another. Paul Giamatti, an Oscar nominee for “Sideways,” and Billy Crudup star.
The story — inspired by a similar true-life case — came from one of Schneider’s classmates at the Winston-Salem arts school, where he graduated in 1998. But his filmmaking inspiration since then has come from a much broader array of sources, he said during an interview at the festival.
“(The arts school) has been a formative influence, but I’m influenced by a lot,” he said. “I’m trying to learn more about and explore my aesthetic as an actor and director, and obviously I have a lot of room to grow in both.”
In the 2003 festival, Schneider starred in “All the Real Girls” opposite Zooey Deschanel. It was directed by his classmate David Gordon Green. The film got a brief theatrical run and won a special jury prize at Sundance for its emotional truth.
Since then, Schneider has built a reputation as an actor in films including “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” and “Lars and the Real Girl.”
Next, he plans to act in the upcoming film “Bright Star.” It’s directed by Jane Campion, whose Oscar-winning 1993 movie “The Piano” is what inspired Schneider to attend film school (a poster of the film still hangs in his L.A. kitchen). “I’m totally in awe of her as a woman and as a filmmaker. She’s a bada–,” he said with a smile.
