Rick Rosenthal - Director/Executive Producer
Rick Rosenthal is an award-winning veteran producer/director with a dynamic career spanning over 25 years in both film and television. He is also committed to helping launch new filmmakers, with a focus on mentoring young directors and supporting emerging filmmakers in the micro-budget world of independent filmmaking.
Best known for helming the hard-hitting drama BAD BOYS, which helped establish Sean Penn’s career, Rosenthal has directed across diverse genres, ranging from comedy (AMERICAN DREAMER), to coming of age (NEARING GRACE), to horror (HALLOWEEN II - his directing debut - and HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION, one of the franchise's most successful sequels). He has also worked extensively in television, directing ABC’s ground-breaking pilot LIFE GOES ON and was recently nominated for a Directors Guild of Canada award for BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. For the past three years, he has been a Supervising Producer on Amazon’s Emmy-winning series TRANSPARENT.
Because he never had a filmmaking mentor himself, Rosenthal launched Whitewater Films as a production company committed to helping up-and-coming filmmakers, offering them the assistance and advice he never had. Since 2003, he has produced or executive produced more than 25 films - and productions from Whitewater Films have been invited to Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, SXSW, Tribecca, Berlin, Deauville and have won numerous awards, including two Indie Spirit Awards, two Crystal Bears, a Humanitas Prize, the Audience Award at SXSW and a Best Director Award at Sundance as well as an Academy Award nomination 3 years ago for Best Documentary, Short Subject and a nomination two years ago for Best Feature Documentary.
The company’s name, Whitewater Films, is derived from Rosenthal’s approach to filmmaking. Much like an expedition down a river, a film rarely goes as planned. No matter how much scouting and how much preparation takes place beforehand, once a film enters the rapids of production, inevitably the craft ends up in unchartered waters. At these times, it’s important to have a good team onboard and a veteran river-guide leading the expedition. And that is exactly what Whitewater Films has offered to its filmmakers.
Graduating cum laude from Harvard with a degree in Visual and Environmental Studies, Rosenthal worked as a cab driver, a tennis pro, a metal sculptor, a carpenter, an assistant to a US Senator and a documentary filmmaker for the New Hampshire Network before traveling west to attend the AFI, where he later became chair of the Directing Program.
An avid tennis player, Rosenthal won the Connecticut State Doubles title as a junior and taught tennis in Monte Carlo when he was 19, with wins over the #2 and #3 players on Monaco Davis Cup Team.
Rosenthal currently resides in Los Angeles with his actress-turned-environmental- and-political activist wife Nancy Stephens and three kids, along with a Golden Retriever named Magill.
Nick Morton - Writer/Executive Producer
Nick Morton is an independent film producer, screenwriter and stand up comedian. He currently works as a producer at Whitewater Films where his credits include FAT KID RULES THE WORLD, AFTERNOON DELIGHT, 7 MINUTES, DRONES and BAND OF ROBBERS.
Prior to that he worked as a production executive for Phoenix Pictures, Anschutz Entertainment Group and Baldwin Entertainment Group and produced movies that include RAY, SAHARA, DEATH SENTENCE, DICK and URBAN LEGENDS.
He performs stand up comedy all over Los Angeles was a recent selection in the Los Angeles Comedy Festival and a finalist in the KROQ Kevin and Bean April Foolishness.
James C. Hart - Producer
Jim is a graduate of California Institute of the Arts. Hart worked on films, commercials, political spots and documentaries in Washington D.C. and New York before returning to LA to produce and direct television series including HILL STREET BLUES, THE WONDER YEARS, LA LAW and CSI. Nominated five times, Hart won the Emmy for Best Dramatic Series for CHICAGO HOPE. Recently, he joined with Whitewater Films to produce both DRONES and 7 MINUTES.
Noah Rosenthal - Cinematographer
Noah Rosenthal graduated from the American Film Institute and went on to shoot such notable films as FAT KID RULES THE WORLD (directed by Matthew Lillard), COLD COMES THE NIGHT (starring Bryan Cranston) and BAND OF ROBBERS directed by Adam and Aaron Nee. He is currently shooting WE ARE UNSATISFIED starring Billy Crystal and Ben Schwartz.