Producer's Master Class with Mike Medavoy and Sergio Aguero
NALIP and the Producers Guild of America (PGA) are proud to announce that this year's Producer's Master Class will be led by powerhouse industry experts, Mike Medavoy (Producer, Phoenix Pictures), Sergio Agüero (Producer, Campanario) and David T. Friendly (Producer, Imagine, Friendly Productions). This will be a continuation and part of our master class series. All three panelists have produced Oscar nominated films and will share their knowledge with our NALIP members at the Latino Lens Festival & Showcase. This master class will focus on producing within the industry and the lessons they have learned along the way. We invite you, directors, writers, cinematographers and all content creators, especially the producers to #CreateWithUs and learn from masters of this industry. Jairo Alvarado (Producer, Circle of Confusion) will be on hand to present and moderate this session.
Joins us at the Latino Lens Festival & Showcase!
Learn more about each of these award winning producers below:
Mike Medavoy
Sample some of the best American films over the past forty years and there’s a good chance Mike Medavoy played in a role in the success of many of them. From agent to studio chief to producer, he has been involved with over 300 feature films, of which 17 have been nominated and 7 have won Best Picture Oscars, as well as numerous international film festival awards, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Recently, Phoenix Pictures has released Showtime’s, Listen to Me Marlon, The 33, starring Antonio Banderas, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, and Shanghai, starring John Cusack and Gong Li.
Joining International Famous Agency as vice president in charge of the motion picture department in 1971, he worked with such prestigious clients as Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Terrence Malick, Hal Ashby, Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Gene Wilder, Jeanne Moreau, and Jean-Louis Trintignant among many others.
United Artists brought him in as senior vice president of production in May of 1974, where he was part of the team responsible for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Rocky, and Annie Hall, which won Best Picture Oscars in 1975, 1976, and 1977, respectively. Other notable films included Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull, Network, and Coming Home. In 1978, Medavoy co-founded Orion Pictures where, during his tenure, Platoon, Amadeus, Robocop, Hannah and Her Sisters, Caddyshack, Arthur, The Terminator, Dances With Wolves, and Silence of the Lambs were released. In 1990, after twelve successful years at Orion, Medavoy became chairman of TriStar Pictures, where he oversaw such critically-acclaimed box office hits as Philadelphia, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Sleepless in Seattle, Cliffhanger, The Fisher King, Legends of the Fall, and Steven Spielberg’s Hook.
As chairman and co-founder of Phoenix Pictures, Medavoy has brought to the screen The People vs. Larry Flint, The Mirror Has Two Faces, U-Turn, The Thin Red Line, Basic, Holes, All the King’s Men, Zodiac, and Miss Potter, among others. These films have received numerous nominations and received Oscar nominations.
Mike was born in Shanghai, China in 1941 to Russian-Jewish parents and lived in Chile from 1947-1957. He graduated from UCLA in 1963. He is married to Irena Medavoy, a founder of Team Safe-T and a charity executive and fundraiser for Industry Task Force. Mike Medavoy has two sons, Brian and Nicholas, and resides in Beverly Hills, California.
Sergio Agüero
Sergio Agüero most recently executive produced FOX’s series “Red Band Society” with Amblin, and has produced /exec-produced studio and indie movies that have grossed $180 million worldwide, such as Academy Award nominee “Y Tu Mama Tambien” and Warner’s “No Reservations”.
At LA based Campanario, he produces television and digital content for multiple platforms by both adapting proven Latin intellectual property (books, formats, movies) and developing original content with Latin creators. He is currently working on family dramedy based on a Spanish hit series at Twentieth Fox Television.
As an Endeavor packaging agent he started the agency’s independent and international efforts, raising financing for clients and representing talent, production companies and completed films. He was an Executive VP at publicly-traded Trimark Pictures before it was acquired by Lionsgate Entertainment, and began his entertainment career in international film sales, travelling around the world pre-selling movies and managing their distribution.
Sergio was born in Havana and grew up in Spain. After graduating from Yale University he became a corporate finance analyst at Salomon Brothers in New York City for two years. He then traveled and worked throughout Asia and Australia on his way to Los Angeles, where he resides with his wife Bobbie and son Aleksei.
David T. Friendly
Executive producer of USA’s new drama “Queen of the South,” David T. Friendly is an Academy Award-nominated producer who has produced over twenty-five films to date and worked with some of the most prestigious directors including Ron Howard, Ed Zwick and the team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris.
In 2006, Friendly formed his own production company, Friendly Films, and prior to that, he partnered with financier, Marc Turtletaub to form Deep River Productions. As President of Davis Entertainment from 1994 to 1999, he secured a first-look deal at 20th Century Fox, where in addition to “Big Momma’s House,” he produced “Here on Earth,” “Courage Under Fire,” “Out to Sea,” and “Doctor Dolittle.”
Friendly’s movie career began at Imagine Entertainment where he executive produced a number of films including “My Girl,” “For Love or Money,” and “Greedy.” During his tenure at Imagine, he rose to President of Production where he also oversaw “The Burbs,” “The Dream Team,” “Kindergarten Cop” and “Backdraft.”
The son of legendary journalist, news producer and CBS President, Fred Friendly, who was portrayed by George Clooney in the Academy Award nominated film, “Good Night, and Good Luck,” David also started out as a journalist. He was named staff writer for Newsweek and later joined The Los Angeles Times, where he was an entertainment reporter and had his own weekly column, First Look.
Friendly is V.P. of Motion Pictures for the Board of the Producers Guild of America and produced the 2009 and 2010 Producers Guild Award Show. For the last twenty years, he has been an active member of the ‘Friends Board’ with The Saban Free Clinic, which provides affordable, quality healthcare to those most in need.