James O'Brien (filmmaker)

James Edward O'Brien (born December 6, 1969) is an American independent film director, screenwriter and producer.

Raised in Bergen County, New Jersey, O’Brien attended Bergen Catholic High School, and was a captain of the cross country and track teams. He is a graduate of Providence College, and competed in his early collegiate years for Ray Treacy’s Providence Friars.

Midway through college, O'Brien shifted gears from athletics to English and Drama, directing a number of university-screened short films and documentaries and acting in the Blackfriars Theatre productions.

After backpacking around Europe, and inspired by the DIY cinema of Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee and Richard Linklater, O’Brien moved to Los Angeles, to make independent films.

The first film he made after moving to LA was Bastard, a B&W short about a schizophrenic hit man. It was selected by the American Cinematheque to open for Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre at a 1993 Directors Guild of America retrospective.

O'Brien's debut feature Venice Bound follows the lives of three off-beat twenty-somethings who meet by chance on Venice Beach and agree to pull a robbery. The film debuted at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Los Angeles before making its international premiere at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.

Venice Bound was championed at the Cannes festival by Mark Cousins, film critic and curator of the Edinburgh Film Festival. Cousins selected it for the Rosebud category of his ’95 festival and opened the door to an extensive European festival run.

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