Hollywood Stories

In what sounds like a Hollywood storyline, Vanderbilt sold his first screenplay days before graduating from the University of Southern California. For his senior thesis, he’d been working on a “terrible” action script about a team scaling Mount Everest to prevent a nuclear bomb from discharging. On the side he also was writing a romantic comedy, which he shared with a friend who was an aspiring literary manager.

“Warner Bros. bought it on a Wednesday, and my parents flew in for graduation Thursday. My mother’s first reaction was to burst into tears because I now had health insurance,” Vanderbilt laughs. “I graduated from college on Saturday and went to my first studio meeting on Monday.”

While that project ultimately was not made, Vanderbilt was off and running — and he hasn’t stopped. Part of his success, Vanderbilt acknowledges, is his versatility as a writer. His first big break after selling that initial script was optioning a second one in a different genre. That was the military thriller “Basic,” which Vanderbilt describes as “the movie with John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson that is not ‘Pulp Fiction.’” His next script became an action movie called “Rundown” starring Dwayne Johnson. In a full-circle moment, he recently penned “Murder Mystery” and “Murder Mystery 2,” two comedy films for Netflix that star Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston.

Vanderbilt has become known for that versatility, and it’s what he looks for both in his own writing and in the projects he chooses for his production company, Project X Entertainment. In March alone, Project X will release “Scream 6,” “Murder Mystery 2,” and the Netflix spy thriller series “The Night Agent.” Whether writing or producing, Vanderbilt has hopped genres from action to crime to comedy without missing a beat.

“I was never someone who enjoyed doing the same thing over and over,” he says. “I got a good lesson early on that you don’t have to stay in any one lane; I’ve always kind of zigzagged. But I’ve found that I’ve been able to sustain a career doing that rather than trying to live up to what other people’s definition of my work might be.”

DAVE COGGESHALL ’94, SCREENWRITER
After graduating from Colgate in 1998, Coggeshall packed up and drove to L.A. He landed a job as an assistant to a producer at Paramount, where his duties included fetching coffee and answering phones. But he also was asked to offer feedback on scripts.

“I read script after script and wrote a detailed analysis of every one of them,” Coggeshall recalls. “That was my film school.”

While waiting for his big break as a writer, Coggeshall worked various other jobs, including as a junior writer on the game show “Pyramid with Donny Osmond” and as head writer on the series “1000 Ways to Die.”

Coggeshall then shifted into the horror genre and began to gain traction when his first feature, “The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia,” was produced. Next came the production of his script, “Prey.” Coggeshall’s career took another step forward when “Star One” made the prestigious Black List, an annual compilation of Hollywood’s favorite unproduced screenplays.  

“Overnight, I went from being seen as only a horror writer to more action/adventure,” he says, “which opened a lot of doors.”

Coggeshall was soon tapped to write “Thundercats” for Warner Bros. and sold a science fiction pilot to Syfy channel. He returned to the horror genre to pen Paramount’s “Orphan: First Kill,” which enjoyed a successful theatrical run in 2022. Coggeshall reinvented himself yet again with a family action/comedy script called “The Family Plan” that marked his return to the Black List and sold in a bidding war to Skydance and Apple. It’s currently filming with Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Monaghan.

Coggeshall enjoys pointing out that his former agent dropped him right before “The Family Plan” script went to market and sparked the biggest year of his career, including re-teaming with Skydance to adapt the Matchbox toy line into a big-budget feature film of the same name.

“Let’s just say I wasn’t without an agent for very long,” he jokes.

Coggeshall’s big 2022 also included writing “The Deliverance” for director Lee Daniels, produced this past summer by Netflix and starring Glenn Close and Mo’Nique. “The Deliverance” and “The Family Plan” will premiere later this year.

“After 20 years of doing this,” Coggeshall says, “I finally feel like I have an actual career.”

DAVID WALTON ’97, ACTOR
Walton jokes that he has a “high tolerance for insecurity.” That’s an actor’s life, after all. But Walton’s consistent work in the profession over the last two decades demonstrates an enviable staying power.

He recently returned from Vancouver, where he was shooting a four-episode arc for ABC’s “A Million Little Things.” Home for Walton these days is Prouts Neck, Maine, where he lives with his wife, actress Majandra Delfino, and their two young children. Making that move a few years ago after nearly 20 years in L.A. was a career risk for Walton, but he and Delfino felt Maine would be a great place to raise their family.

“I miss some of the serendipity that can happen there,” Walton says of leaving L.A. “Like dropping your kid off at kindergarten, striking up a conversation with another dad who happens to be a writer, and then three months later you’re developing a show together. That can happen in L.A.; it does not happen in Portland. The big fear of moving to Maine and trying to maintain this career was would I be forgotten? Knock on wood, so far so good.”

A Boston native, Walton developed the acting bug as a kid, when a friend of his was cast in the 1990 film “Lord of the Flies.” He played Petruccio in “The Taming of the Shrew” in his first role at St. Paul’s and was selected for the now-defunct improv group SPIT. At Brown, Walton was a member of the sketch comedy troupe that also featured John Krasinski. He moved to New York right after 9/11 and got an agent through a national casting search for “Terminator 3.”

“Once I got an agent, it went from considering a hundred-dollar-a-week job in Northern Maine to auditioning for a new pilot called CSI,” he says.

Not long after that, Walton signed a holding deal at Fox and was cast in the series “Cracking Up,” an early project of “White Lotus” creator Mike White. He jokes about playing “doctors and idiots,” despite his Ivy League education. Among his long list of credits are a two-year run on the NBC series “About a Boy”; turns in the “Bad Moms” movies and “New Girl” on Netflix; and a recent starring role on the Starz series “Power Ghost.”

“What happened with ‘Power Ghost’ was actually the dream of moving to Maine, which was: go to New York for four or five days, fly back to Maine for two weeks, go back to New York,” Walton says. “That was the rhythm for six months. It was awesome.”

ELECTRA LANG ’78, PRODUCER
After graduating from Stanford with an art history degree, Lang spent seven years working in New York for a company that specialized in visual effects and post-production.

“It made sense, because I wanted to be an art historian [but had found] I couldn’t connect with the idea that I’d be raking through the boneyard of other people’s work,” Lang recalls. “I was worried about not having a world where I would connect with other people. Who knew it was possible to work in production and combine art and working with people?”

From there, Lang joined Pittard Sullivan Fitzgerald, which created motion graphics for television, splitting her time between the U.S. and Germany. Lang met her husband, Peter, a commercial director, and in 1995, the couple started their own production house, Picrow. Nearly three decades later, the company is thriving, in part because of a partnership with the production branch of Amazon. Equal parts production house, creative studio and post-production facility, the company’s projects include “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Modern Love,” “Transparent,” “Goliath,” and “Mozart in the Jungle,” among others.

In her work as an executive producer, Lang and her team provide the “connective tissue” to her projects, overseeing everything from writers’ rooms to payroll services to negotiating contracts with the various creative guilds.

“For example,” explains Lang, “‘Maisel’ is a huge show. We’ve done five seasons, so that’s years of building rapport with these amazing teams that, in the end, are freelancers. Picrow provides continuity and support structure from banking, funding and HR to the back end, making sure insurance claims get paid, tax credits run smoothly — because it all runs through us. It’s the busy work of making it all happen.”

At any given time. Picrow may have as many as 30 shows in various stages of production worldwide. In a twist of SPS fate, Picrow recently wrapped a show that began shooting in Hong Kong and Los Angeles in July 2021. The limited Amazon series, “Expats,” which features Nicole Kidman, is based on the book of the same name written by former Trustee Janice Y.K. Lee ’90, who served as a consulting producer on the project.

CHARLOTTE COOLEY ’13 AND AMANDA MORRISON ’15, PRODUCERS
Morrison and Cooley did not really know each other at St. Paul’s, but their paths ended up intersecting in a big way in 2020.

It was Cooley who told Morrison about an opening on an upcoming docuseries she was producing for Ark Media, where she had been employed since shortly after graduating from Georgetown. Morrison, a recent Princeton graduate, had just returned from Beijing as COVID-19 was making the news. Cooley, too, had found herself back in New York after a stint in Ethiopia working on a documentary for Ark.

With much of the film industry in shutdown mode during the pandemic, Cooley and Morrison traveled to Short Creek, Utah, where they were part of a crew filming interviews for the Netflix show “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey.” The limited series details the story of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) — a polygamist sect that broke off from the Mormon Church — its disgraced leader, Warren Jeffs, and the women who managed to escape. Cooley describes it as a “timeless moving portrait of resilience in the face of really challenging circumstances,” and credits the courage of those who chose to tell their stories. The series recently landed on The New York Times list of “What to Watch on Netflix.”

“There’s been a lot done on FLDS with a salacious or sensationalized angle,” Cooley says. “It was exciting working with a director who wanted to approach this subject without sensationalizing it.”

While living in Utah, Cooley and Morrison were roommates. Cooley was an on-the-ground co-producer and part of the advance team that screened the interviewees and made sure everything was in place for production. As an associate producer, Morrison conducted key research and spearheaded the collection of archival materials from the primary interview subjects. They both formed close bonds with the cast members and their families, even eating Thanksgiving dinner in 2020 with the couple whose story of joining FLDS opens the series.

While Cooley continues to work at Ark and is also working on her own documentary, Morrison has moved on to Little Monster Films. The women are proud of their work on “Keep Sweet” and were gratified by the reaction of those featured in the series. One of them FaceTimed Cooley and Morrison after watching the premiere.

“She called us in happy tears,” Morrison says. “The most rewarding part of the whole experience was seeing the impact of being able to tell your story and have people listen.”

COTTY CHUBB ’67, PRODUCER
Decades into a career as a film producer, Caldecot “Cotty” Chubb ’67 laughs when he thinks back to the inevitable pull of Hollywood and the entertainment industry.

“One of my friends described me as just another moth to the flame,” says Chubb, who splits his time between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.

A human biology major at Stanford, he arrived in L.A. in 1980, hoping to break into the film business after a brief career as a photographer in New York. His first job in L.A. was working as an assistant to a director and then on sets for Roger Corman, the prolific independent producer. He also worked in two separate stints for independent producer Ed Pressman and for eight years at Alphaville, a studio production company first on the Universal lot and then at Paramount. Having formed his own production company, ChubbCo FilmCo, early on, Chubb began working almost exclusively for himself in 2003. Over the years, he has been enchanted by strong storytelling and by finding scripts and writers primed for the big screen. That has involved building relationships with a web of film professionals, from line producers to editors to financiers.

Though he has three dozen projects to his credit, including film and television, among the ones that remain closest to Chubb’s heart are “Eve’s Bayou,” “To Sleep with Anger” and “The Crow.” “Eve’s Bayou” was the 1998 winner of Best First Feature from the Film Independent Spirit Awards. “To Sleep with Anger” won the Spirit Awards’ Best Screenplay in 1991 and, along with “Eve’s Bayou,” is one of two Chubb-produced films selected for the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.

Chubb continues to be captivated by stories that move an audience, though these days he “only works on a few things I care about.” He’s currently producing a feature-length version of a short “traumedy” called “Hallelujah” and serving as executive producer on a “genre-adjacent” Canadian drama about two Indigenous brothers and the vengeful spirit that is attacking them.

SPS in ENTERTAINMENT
The alumni highlighted here are just a sampling of those working in the entertainment industry in various capacities. Below are others we’re aware of, including a number that we’ve profiled in past issues of Alumni Horae. Is there someone we missed? Let us know at alumni@sps.edu.