George Huang (director)

George Jay Huang is an American film director, writer, producer, and educator. He is best known for writing and directing the 1994 film Swimming with Sharks. In addition to working on his own films, he also contributes work to other independent filmmakers, including Robert Rodríguez.

George Huang
Born	George Jay Huang (1966-12-01) December 1, 1966 (age 57) California, United States
Alma mater	UC Berkeley University of Southern California
Occupations	Director producer screenwriter educator
Years active	1992–present
Notable work	Swimming with Sharks

Early life

The son of Taiwanese immigrants, George Huang grew up with an avid love of motion pictures. After high school, he originally enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley to pursue a degree in business, but during this time he interned at Lucasfilm. After undergrad, he enrolled in a producing program at the University of Southern California.^{[citation needed]}

Career

After graduating from USC, Huang began working from the bottom-up as an executive assistant at Columbia Pictures. In 1992, Columbia acquired the distribution rights to the film El Mariachi by Robert Rodríguez. As the film was being prepared for release, Rodriguez struck up a friendship with the young studio assistant with whom he shared a love of film. Rodriguez, a native and resident of San Antonio, Texas,^[1] stayed at Huang's apartment in Los Angeles.^{[citation needed]}

Rodriguez – known for his money-saving and high-quality filmmaking techniques – was amazed by Huang's blasé attitude toward the way his superiors spent millions and millions on the production of a single motion picture. Huang, believing his own original stories would never be told, shared some story ideas with Rodriguez, who promptly told his new friend and roommate that he needed to immediately quit his job and make his own films. Huang was understandably reluctant to this idea, but in January 1993, he resigned from his post at Columbia.^{[citation needed]}

Huang next began writing, and seeking financing for, a script loosely based on his experiences at Columbia. Released in 1994, Huang's debut film, Swimming with Sharks, is a satire of Hollywood politics from the point of view of a studio underling.^[2]

Since then, Huang has gone on to do a lot of behind-the-scenes work with directorial turns on several short-lived television series, such as Significant Others, Live Through This, and The Invisible Man. He also directed the independent films Trojan War (starring Jennifer Love Hewitt) and How to Make a Monster (which has become a cult favourite, starring Clea DuVall as the only leading role).^{[citation needed]}

Huang shot Elijah Wood's audition tape that landed him the role of Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.^[3]

In 2006, Dimension Films acquired the rights to comic book series Madman, and planned to have a film directed by Huang and produced by Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avellán. Series creator Mike Allred was set to write the screenplay along with Huang.^[4] The project ultimately didn't pan out, however, with Allred announcing he had reverted the rights to a Madman film in 2015.^[5][6]

Huang wrote the screenplay for Final Recipe, a 2013 South Korean-Chinese-Thai co-production starring Michelle Yeoh and directed by Gina Kim.^[3]

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Producer	Notes
1994	Swimming with Sharks	Yes	Yes	No	Also dialogue editor and sound effects editor
1997	Trojan War	Yes	No	No
2001	How to Make a Monster	Yes	Yes	No
2003	S.W.A.T.	No	No	Yes
	Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over	No	No	No	Creative consultant
2010	Machete	No	No	No
2011	Into the Night	No	Yes	No
	Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World	No	No	Yes	Co-producer
2013	Final Recipe	No	Yes	No
2016	Hard Target 2	No	Yes	No
2018	22 Willowbrook	No	No	Yes	Co-producer (short film)
2024	Weekend in Taipei	Yes	Yes	No

Television

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Notes
1998	Significant Others	Yes	No	1 episode: "My Left Kidney"
2000	Live Through This	Yes	Yes
	The Invisible Man	Yes	No	1 episode: "Germ Theory"
2006	Asian Excellence Awards	No	No	Creative consultant
2007	American Heiress	Yes	No	27 episodes
2010	Law & Order: Special Victims Unit	No	Yes	1 episode: "Gray"

Commercials

Year	Title	Notes
2011	Nike: The Black Mamba	Writer

References

1. Marvis, Barbara J. (1998). Robert Rodriguez. Mitchell Lane. p. 5. ISBN 1883845483.
2. Maslin, Janet (1995-04-21). "FILM REVIEW; Getting Even In Hollywood Can Be Fun". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-01-05.
3. Hueso, Noela (2017-10-03). "George Huang". UCLA School of TFT. Retrieved 2022-10-24.
4. Fleming, Michael (2006-12-19). "Dimension crazy for 'Madman' pic". InPharma. 293 (1): 7–8. doi:10.1007/bf03312758. ISSN 0156-2703. S2CID 198203134 – via EBSCO Host.
5. Schultz, Ian (2021-07-16). "Interview with George Huang – director of Swimming With Sharks". Retrieved 2022-10-24.
6. "Twitter". Mike Allred on Twitter. Retrieved 2022-10-24.

Further reading

• Metz, Nina (Jun 1, 2018). "Another Swim With 'Sharks'; Rewatching Spacey vehicle through the prism of #MeToo". Chicago Tribune. Sec. 4, pp. 1, 3

External links

• George Huang at IMDb
• George Huang at UCLA