Tom Schlesinger’s Biography

Tom Schlesinger was story consultant on the Academy Award winning “Nowhere in Africa,” and the Academy Award nominated “Beyond Silence”. He was also the story consultant on two HBO documentaries that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival: “Prom Night in Mississippi” with Morgan Freeman, and “A Small Act,” by fellow UCLA Film School grad Jennifer Arnold.

Tom co-created and developed “The Stranger,” a mythic, action-adventure television series for Moroccan television, which will be broadcast this year. He wrote the feature film screenplay “Red Dune,” that will be shot in Laayoune, Morocco next year.

As a story consultant, Tom’s clients have included “Golden Girls” Executive Producer Marc Sotkin, “Star Wars” producer Robert Watts, Francis Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios, Miramax, Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures, Constantin Film, and TV 60.

Schlesinger received a Master of Fine Arts in Theater Arts at UCLA, and studied storytelling and the psychology of creativity for ten years under the tutelage of mythologists Joseph Campbell and Jean Houston. He has taught his screenwriting seminars under the auspices of Pixar Animation Studios, Lucasfilm, the American Film Institute, the Directors Guild of America, and the Writers Guild of America.

Tom has also facilitated Human Potential seminars including “Art as Transformation” at UCLA, “Myths, Dreams and Movies” at the Esalen Institute, the Saybrook Institute and The California Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and “Creative Flow: the Inner Reaches of Outer Space,” at the Academy of Art in Munich.