DATE OF BIRTH: august 10, 1979

BACKGROUND: bachelors degree in english/education st. john's university, currently employed by the fdny.

ACTING EXPERIENCE: stage only, credits include iggy in "runaways", paul in "a chorus line", finch in "how to succeed in business without really trying" and juror number 3 in "12 angry men".

WRITING INFLUENCES: james joyce (i wish), jd salinger, kevin canty, jack london was the first writer i really fell in love with, but as i grew, i found myself drawn more to the more real characters, with stories that i could relate to.

FILM INFLUENCES: kubrick's everpresent distance, john woo's romantic perspective of extreme action sequences and the beauty of violence, cameron crowe has shown a real capacity for exploiting an incredible level of humanity in his work, ted demme was highly underappreciated in his capacity to create moments of both unflinchingly real humour and poignant honesty. not that there aren't a hundred other great ones.

ACTING INFLUENCES: my first onscreen hero was bill paxton. i remember exploding with glee when he first landed commercial, leading man success. i was so proud of him. as things have turned i have found a gret deal of love for nicolas cage, eric stoltz and christian slater. al pacino is a god of the silver screen.

ON WRITING: i have always found poetry to be my most natural inclination in terms of writing, but it is difficult to truly tell a complete story by poetry alone. next to that, the short story is a bittersweet way to send a message. something that can be written and read in one sitting is a truly beautiful, complete, motivated and consistent experience. it bares, i think, a part of the soul that few other methods can accurately do. it can act out like a moment of total purity. i have written screenplays before, never complete really, but things i could easily envision as motion pictures. when i was younger, i wold write them with the actors i could envision in certain roles as my motivation for a particular character. i think that i grew to create more characters through experimenting with other forms of writing. dialogue has always come naturally to me. i remember always thinking that thee were conversations that i could see real people having. it was hard to write things without explosions and violence and action-packed good versus evil stuff at first. i think all the time spent writing poems and short stories, running on pure, raw emotion trained me to quit that.

ON DIRECTING: i really have never done anything like this before. not on this scale. i want nothing more than to bring this dream to life. there are things in life that you just need to have control over. this is one of those things for me. just something from my past that i would like to build and let live on it's own, so that it is no longer only a story to me, that is judged by my own mind. there should be more than way to interpret a story, and dozens of ways to relate to it. that is a director's job. to present images that evoke a response from his audience. but not necessarily the same response all the time.

ON ACTING: you know, it is one of those things where people always kind of pattted me on the back and told me i did a good job. for a long time i sort of figured that they were going to say that to everyone. and in some ways, i guess it still feels that way. but what i can say is that i have been proud of a few of my performances. don't get me wrong, i have never considered myself a leading man, not even on the occasion that i have received such a role. what i tried to do was wrap myself around a character, so as not to lose the believability of that character. but now i feel more that what ought to be done is perhaps to let thet character overtake you as much as possible. i don't think you can fully become him without drawing somewhat on your own life, but you need to try your best to truly see the world through his eyes. stage is most definately an entirely different animal than cinema. but i don't fear acting before a camera. although i must say, i don't know if any feeling can compare to that first night of bows after "runaways". when those people are cheering for you on that stage, well god damn if it doesn't feel like god has his hand on your own shoulder.

ON THIS MOVIE: i first began writing "a life in the day" at the end of my senior year in high school. everything was highly motivated, i suppose, by a feeling of wanting to be wanted, to feel good enough for something extraordinary in a wrold that has little time for such things. it also was very much rooted in an overextension of a million different emotions brought on mostly by a fear of the drastic changes and constant shifting in the relationships of those who i had clung to my entire life, and the limitless amounts of alcohol we attempted to build out bonds upon in a constant battle to create another memory to recall on some long distant day. it began with a basic story of a fellow coming home after time away at college to discover the drastic alterations his old friends have undergone in his absence, particularly good old jack the drunk, and his lost opportunity at love with his old flame joyce. the couple everybody thought would really make it. everything else just grew out of that. the friends, the complications, the girl who would be enough to solve all his problems when faced with the reality of a completely different place to call home. i always wanted this to be a story that people could look at and say, "yeah, i know that guy". i wanted these to be people you might have hung out with in high school or college. kids you may have seen or remembered. maybe even your own friends. it is most certainly a guy story, but these guys have little to do without their women. they live with the promise of love lingering almost as far as the agony of heartbreak and failure. in the end, as for what the future holds, where our boys will from here? i never wanted to answer that question myself. what i think is one thing, but i'd rather people come to their own conclusions...