Jim Hemphill

Jim Hemphill is the award-winning screenwriter and director of THE TROUBLE WITH THE TRUTH, a critically acclaimed (currently 94% at Rotten Tomatoes) romantic drama starring Lea Thompson and John Shea. After receiving his B.F.A. from Columbia College in Chicago and his graduate degree from the film school at USC, Jim began his career by writing and directing the micro-budget horror movie BAD REPUTATION, which received international distribution on DVD and VOD from Warner Bros. and Twentieth-Century Fox following a successful festival run. In addition to his moviemaking endeavors, Jim is a respected film historian whose essays on cinema and television have appeared in the Chicago Reader, Film Comment, Film Quarterly, Moviemaker, and many other outlets. He currently hosts a monthly podcast for American Cinematographer’s website, where he interviews the industry’s top directors of photography, and is the author of Focal Point, a regular column on directing for Filmmaker Magazine. Jim is also a programming consultant at the Egyptian and Aero theaters in Los Angeles, where he has moderated discussions with Martin Scorsese, Nicolas Cage, David Mamet, Jim Jarmusch, Paul Schrader, Viggo Mortensen, Shirley MacLaine, and others. His films have screened at dozens of film festivals and art houses including the Sundance Film Festival, American Cinematheque, Facets Multimedia, Alamo Drafthouse and ArcLight Hollywood.