Alan Jay Glueckman(1944-2015)
- Writer
- Producer
Glueckman grew up loving movies. At 13, he took his bar mitzvah money
and bought an 8mm movie camera, Eumig projector (with sync sound) and
editing deck and started making movies. At 15, he wrote and directed
his first film, The Babysitter and the Beasts, a horror thriller with a
synchronized sound track. At the University of Michigan, he served on
the Cinema Guild and worked on the Ann Arbor Film Festival. He also
made more films at U of M under the guidance of George Manupelli. After
graduating Michigan, he wanted to go to USC's film school but his
parents insisted he get an MBA and a real job, so he studied business
at Columbia University and worked in advertising as a copywriter and
producer, eventually directing commercials. Needing a portfolio film to
get the attention of a Hollywood agent, he enrolled in an intensive
film workshop at the New School learning all aspects of the craft from
Jim Pasternak and Jessica Scott Gray. He kept the workshop team
together, raised funding and wrote and directed _Pickup (1977)_, a 22
minute Hitchcockian thriller about sex and violence in the afternoon,
casting as his lead actress Glenn Close in
her first appearance before a motion picture camera.
_Pickup (1977)_ got him signed by Hollywood
agent Cindy Turtle and he moved to LA in 1977. He had eight movies
produced including Russkies (1987),
Gross Anatomy (1989) and
The Fear Inside (1992)
and has written over 30 screenplays for Disney, Universal, Warner
Brothers, Paramount, Viacom, New Century, NBC, CBS and ABC. In 1996, he
became an Internet content pioneer when he co-created, wrote and
designed the Site Architecture for the groundbreaking Mission:
Impossible The Web Adventure for Apple Computer, which garnered 36
million hits its first six weeks on the web. His last project in
Hollywood was creating and co producing with
Tony Masucci five pilot episodes of
Scoring, an interactive dating show for MTV networks in 2002. He is now
the Co-founder/Chairman/President of eJamming Inc, a high tech company
connecting musicians so they can actually play music together over the
Internet in real time, earning him kudos from Fortune magazine (one of
the top 24 technology innovators of 2008; Forbes magazine (one of the
top 10 Breakout Tech companies of 2009) and a profile by Bloomberg TV's
Innovators Show in May 2011.