Ed Zwick, Charles Yu & Alex Convery
About the event
Ed Zwick, Charles Yu and Alex Convery: Hollywood Comes to Pasadena
FEBRUARY, 26, 2025
In Hits, Flops and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood, writer/director/producer Ed Zwick, the man behind Love and Other Drugs, Shakespeare in Love, The Last Samurai, and thirtysomething, shared decades of first-hand Hollywood lore and his professional coming of age in a notoriously ephemeral and demanding industry. For Open Book, Zwick told tales with a twinkle in his eye, aided and abetted by National Book Award winner and screenwriter Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe), who had much to share himself. While still early in his career, moderator Alex Convery, screenwriter and producer of the movie Air, brought just the right amount of energy to the stage, taking the conversation deep into cinema and literature, the adaptation of books to screen, and the brick-and-mortar relationships that hold Hollywood together.
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Alex Convery
Alex Convery is a WGA Award nominated screenwriter who wrote AIR directed by Ben Affleck and starring Matt Damon. He's been featured on the annual Hollywood Blacklist three times and was named one of Variety's ten screenwriters to watch. Originally from Chicago, Alex studied screenwriting at USC's School of Cinematic Arts.
Charles Yu
CHARLES YU is the author of four books, including, Interior Chinatown, which won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction, was shortlisted for the Le Prix Médicis étranger, and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Yu adapted Interior Chinatown into a Hulu series. He has received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award, been nominated for two Writers Guild of America awards for his work on the HBO series Westworld, and has also written for shows on FX, AMC, Facebook Watch, and Adult Swim. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in a number of publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Wired, Time and Ploughshares.
Ed Zwick
Ed Zwick is an Academy Award and Emmy Award-winning director, producer and writer with over four decades of highly acclaimed film and television projects. His filmography as director includes Glory, Legends of the Fall, Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai, Courage Under Fire, Love & Other Drugs, and Defiance; with producing credits including Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic and Shakespeare in Love, for which Zwick won the Academy Award. From early-career, breakout performances from Denzel Washington, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon to career-defining roles for Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, and more, Zwick has directed many of Hollywood’s biggest stars. His mark on television is equally impressive, including two series he co-created with longtime creative partner Marshall Herskovitz: the Emmy award-winning thirtysomething, regarded as one of the most influential dramas in modern TV history; and ABC’s Emmy-winning ensemble drama, Once and Again. This past year Zwick published his New York Times bestselling memoir, Hits, Flops and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood.
