Navy SEALs - Presskit - About The Filmmakers

About the Filmmakers

Director LEWIS TEAGUE guided the international production of NAVY SEALS after successfully helming another production shot off Mediterranean shores: the 1986 box-office hit The Jewel of the Nile, the popular sequel to Romancing the Stone.

Teague began his career as a film editor. After producer Roger Corman gave him his first directorial assignment with The Lady in Red, Teague followed with Alligator (a cult classic written by John Sayles), and two horror films based on Stephen King stories, Cujo and Cat's Eye.

He has most recently directed striking Back starring Tom Skerritt, and Collision Course starring Jay Leno and Pat Morita.

On television, Teague has directed episodes of such top-rated series as Vegas and Barnaby Jones, as well as A Man Called Sloane and Ryker. Recently, he also directed the well-reviewed TV film Shannon's Deal, which reunited Teague with writer John Sayles.

Producer BRENDA FEIGEN brings a versatile background in law and motion picture representation to her current film production activities. A Cum Laude graduate of Vassar College and a Juris Doctor graduate of the Harvard Law School, she established a law practice in New York, where she became active in causes including women's rights. After entering the field of entertainment law, she became a motion picture agent with the New York office of the William Morris Agency, and later pursued her own film and television projects as a producer.

NAVY SEALS began when Feigen met SEAL Team Commander, Chuck Pfarrer. Knowing his was a story that had to be told--and one that she wanted to produce as a feature film--she talked Pfarrer into leaving the SEALs. Orion, the first studio Feigen took the project to, bought it in two days.

NAVY SEALS is Feigen's first film production. Others in the works include a Jane Fonda comedy for Columbia pictures and a CBS movie-of-the-week about compulsory sterilization of poor Southern black girls in the '7Os, an issue with Feigen was involved as director of the Women's Rights Project of the ACLU. She has a number of other projects in development.

Among producer BERNARD WILLIAMS' many successes filmed in America and abroad is the recent Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, memorable as much for its luminous South-of-France locations as for the comedic flair of its stars, Steve Martin and Michael Caine.

Entering the motion picture industry at 15, the London-born producer advanced from production assistant to assistant director to location manager to production manager by the time he was 27.

During that time he worked on such major films as Billy Budd, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Khartoum, Alfie and The Battle of Britain.

Williams next served as production supervisor of the trend-setting English TV series, The Prisoner, whose bizarre blend of espionage and allegory resulted in worldwide critical acclaim. Then came a four-year stint with director Stanley Kubrick, during which he was associate producer on A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon.

Since then Williams has served as executive producer or producer of such motion pictures as Lady Caroline Lamb, Flash Gordon, Ragtime, The Bounty, Amityville II: The Possession, Manhunter, Who's That Girl and Wisdom. During his career Williams has been associated with such acclaimed directors as Fred Zinnemann, David Lean, Milos Forman, Robert wise, Irvin Kershner, Richard Donner, Michael Mann and Roger Donaldson.

Screenwriter CHUCK PFARRER, who also serves as technical advisor, is a former Navy SEAL who left the service to pursue a writing career.

Born in Boston to a career naval officer, he attended 12 grammar schools and four different high schools as his father's assignments kept the family constantly on the move. His college career, while noteworthy, was less itinerant. After studying clinical psychology at Britain's beautiful University of Bath, Pfarrer continued at California State University, Northridge, where he earned a Magna Cum Laude B.A. degree.

A few months in pursuit of a Masters degree soon found him restless, so Pfarrer enrolled at Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. Winning his ensign stripe, he then underwent six months of SEAL training at Coronado, California. ("It was so demanding that I'm amazed I made it", he recalls.) Then came Army Airborne training school, and finally assignment to Underwater Demolition Team 21. During subsequent tours of duty in the Caribbean and Central America, and a combat tour in Lebanon, Pfarrer felt an increasing desire to write, particularly screenplays. When The Crook Factory, a story about Ernest Hemingway which he co-wrote with a friend, was snapped up by the William Morris Agency, and Feigen urged him to write a screenplay about the SEALs, Pfarrer left the service for good.

He has since written seven other screenplays, one of which--a science fiction thriller entitled Dark Man--has been produced and will be released this summer.

While NAVY SEALS makes the third screenplay written by GARY GOLDMAN, the New Orleans native has also written and directed a pair of impressive short films. His Degas in New Orleans was shown at the Cannes Film Festival while Yes, Ma'am, a tale of black domestics in his home town, won first prize at the 1982 American Film Festival in New York, and was subsequently aired on PBS.

A graduate of Brandeis University, Goldman studied filmmaking at New York University and UCLA before entering motion pictures as assistant to Louis Malle on Pretty Baby. He continued to write while also serving as an executive at Paramount, where he worked with producer Larry Gordon. Goldman's feature film writing bow was 1986's Big Trouble in Little China, which he co-wrote with David Z. Weinstein. He most recently co-wrote the futuristic adventure Total Recall with Ronald Shusett and Dan O'Bannon.

An Academy Award-nominee for his dazzling camerawork in Chinatown, veteran cinematographer JOHN A. ALONZO has amassed an impressive list of major credits. Included are such action films as Vanishing Point and Blue Thunder, the comedies Nothing in Common and The Cheap Detective, and the science-fiction blockbuster Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Alonzo, who most recently shot Internal Affairs and The Guardian, entered feature films after a successful career in documentaries. He has served as director of photography on Harold and Maude Pete 'n' Tillie, The Fortune, Farewell My Lovely, Black Sunday, Zorro the GayBlade, Norma Rae, Back Road, Scarface, Cross Creek, Runaway, Overboard, Smoke and Steel Magnolias.

Editor DON ZIMMERMAN is yet another Oscar nominee--for his work on Coming Home, the powerful post-Vietnam drama which brought Academy Awards to both Jon Voight and Jane Fonda.

A Vietnam veteran himself, zimmerman began his film career after a tour of duty with the Air Force. Returning to his native California, he signed on as an apprentice editor under acclaimed director/editor Hal Ashby and worked with him as assistant editor on such films as Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, and Shampoo.

After making an impressive debut as the full editor on Ashby's Coming Home, Zimmerman has since edited Heaven Can Wait, Barbarosa, Being There, Teachers, Best Friends, Staying Alive, Cobra, Over the Top, Rocky III, Rocky IV, Roxanne, Everybody's All-American, and The Package.