While John Avildsen is being memorialized for his Best Picture winning film Rocky as well as The Karate Kid, Lean on Me and others, it isn’t all about film credits. Here, John Gray, who directed the film White Irish Drinkers and Glimmer, and helmed episodes of series including Grimm and The Family, recounts an act of…

During his career, production designer Roy Forge Smith, who died this week at 87, worked with such directors as Terry Gilliam (Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and Mel Brooks (Robin Hood: Man in Tights). His most frequent collaborator was writer-director John Gray, with whom he worked on seven TV movies, including Mart…

Friends and colleagues of Ian Sander are gathering at 10 AM this morning at Valley Beth Shalom for a memorial celebration of the veteran TV producer, who died last Tuesday at the age of 68. Among them is writer-producer John Gray, creator/executive producer of the long-running CBS drama Ghost Whisperer starring…

EXCLUSIVE: Bryan Buckley returns to features on the Reese Witherspoon vehicle Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus at Lionsgate Summit. The film is based on the John Gray self-help title, a guide to relationships and marriage that is the best selling non-fiction hardcover book of all-time (excepting the Bible and…

White Irish Drinkers writer-director John Gray has acquired the Bryan Gruley mystery thriller The Hanging Tree, and he’ll write the script to direct. Gray will also produce it under his Ovington Avenue Productions along with partner Melissa Jo Peltier. They worked together on White Irish Drinkers, the coming-of-age…

The start of Summit Entertainment’s trajectory began when the mini-major convinced Stephenie Meyer to sell her Twilight Saga book series after she’d been left so frustrated by how Paramount Pictures let it languish. Was it a billion dollar lucky break? As the vampire-werewolf series that fueled Summit’s recent $750…

White Irish Drinkers, John Gray’s heartfelt coming of age story, which premiered at 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, opens March 25 in New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Toronto and rolls out in 10 other markets in April through Screen Media. The pic also opens the Craic Irish Film Festival in New York March…

EXCLUSIVE: Summit Entertainment has hired Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan to adapt and direct Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, based on the 1992 John Gray book that highlights the vast differences between men and women, and attempts to bridge the differences. Elfont and Kaplan will turn the title into a…

Another worthy independent film that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival has found distribution. Screen Media Films has acquired North American rights to White Irish Drinkers, a hard-edged coming of age story  set in 1975 Brooklyn. Written and directed by John Gray. A spring 2011 theatrical release is…