Filmmaker Bios

Deborah Scranton / Director

First-time feature film director, single mother, and former U.S. ski team member Deborah Scranton lives on her farm in the mountains of New Hampshire with her six-year old son Benjamin.

THE WAR TAPES grew out of her WWII television documentary, STORIES FROM SILENCE, WITNESS TO WAR--and her own commitment to using new technologies to give people the power to create their own media, and to tell their own stories. Declining an offer from the New Hampshire National Guard to embed herself in Iraq, she instead gave the soldiers cameras and trained them as cinematographers. She directed THE WAR TAPES using near-perpetual instant messaging and e-mail to answer questions, share techniques and explore stories with the soldiers as they filmed their very personal experiences.

Scranton and Executive Producer Chuck Lacy co-founded Scranton/Lacy Films LLC to produce THE WAR TAPES and other films about everyday Americans telling stories.

Previously, Scranton spent 15 years working as a special assignment television reporter and freelance producer at MTV, ESPN, CBS Sports, and the ABC and FOX affiliates in Salt Lake City, Utah. She graduated from Brown University with a degree in Semiotics.

Robert May / Producer

Robert May was Executive Producer of Errol Morris' Oscar® winning film THE FOG OF WAR: ELEVEN LESSONS FROM THE LIFE OF ROBERT S. MCNAMARA (acquired by Sony Pictures Classics), which premiered at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. THE FOG OF WAR has also won numerous awards for Best Documentary, including: The National Board of Review; the Chicago Film Critics; the Los Angeles Film Critics; the Washington, D.C., Area Film Critics; and the Independent Sprit Award.

May produced THE STATION AGENT (Miramax Films) with director Tom McCarthy. The film won the Audience Award, The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, and an Acting Award for Patricia Clarkson at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. Appearing on over 60 Critics Top Ten Lists, THE STATION AGENT tied MYSTIC RIVER for the most Screen Actors Guild award nominations, was nominated for a WGA, and won a BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay.

May also executive produced STEVIE (Lions Gate Films), a critically-acclaimed documentary by Oscar®-nominated HOOP DREAMS director Steve James. STEVIE won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2002 International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam and the Excellence in Cinematography Award at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.

May's most recent production is BONNEVILLE, a film starring Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Joan Allen and Tom Skerritt. Currently in post-production, BONNEVILLE is the story of a woman and her two best friends on a reluctant road trip that becomes the ride of their lives.

May formed SenArt Films in August of 2000. Prior to the formation of SenArt, May was President of a nationally recognized security firm.

Steve James / Editor / Producer

Steve James is the award-winning director, producer and co-editor of HOOP DREAMS, which won every major documentary prize in 1995, including the Peabody and Kennedy Journalism Awards . James was nominated for an Academy Award in Editing, the only time a documentary has received a nomination in any category other than "Best Documentary." Recently, HOOP DREAMS was named to the Library of Congress's National Film Registry, signifying its enduring importance to the history of American Film.

James' next documentary, STEVIE, won major festival awards at Sundance, Amsterdam, Yamagata, and Philadelphia; was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award; and landed on more than a dozen "Top Ten Films of the Year" lists for 2003. James was also an executive producer, story director, and co-editor of highly acclaimed PBS series, THE NEW AMERICANS, winner of two Chicago International Television Festival Golden Hugos, a Christopher Award, and the prestigious 2004 International Documentary Association Award for Best Limited Series for Television.

James' dramatic films include the feature PREFONTAINE, which premiered at Sundance, the TNT movie PASSING GLORY (1999), and JOE AND MAX (2002), which premiered on Starz and was nominated for an ESPN Espy Award.

James's newest documentary is REEL PARADISE, on former "indie film guru" John Pierson, who took his family to Fiji for a year to run the world's most remote movie theater. REEL PARADISE was James fourth film to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

Chuck Lacy / Executive Producer

Chuck Lacy is co-founder of Scranton/Lacy Films, LLC and an experienced entrepreneur and historian. Currently, Lacy is the president of the Barred Rock Fund, a venture capital fund he founded in 2000. He is the former president of Ben & Jerry's.

This is the first major project for the Scranton/Lacy partnership. He and Deborah Scranton started Scranton/Lacy Films, LLC to make films about everyday people in New England. His other current interests as partner or director include: Gonofone Inc., founder of GrammenPhone, the largest wireless phone company in Bangladesh; Bakewell Reproduction Center, breeder and marketer of the world's best cattle for grass-fed beef production; Hardwick Beef, the largest distributor of grass-fed beef in the Northeast; Guayaki Yerbe Mate, tea produced in Paraguay for the American market; Vermont Mystic Pie Company; and others. He has Undergraduate and Graduate degrees from Amherst College and Cornell University, respectively, and is currently a graduate student at Dartmouth College.