Birth Place: Chicago, Illinois
Date of Birth: 1966/12/31
Heritage: American
Famous for: Creator of ABC's "Bone Chillers" (1996-1997)
Detroit Rock City
Background:"An Adam Rifkin movie is really a movie that I think of as a career movie. Rif Coogan movies are more for fun, my own personal edification, and for practice." Adam Rifkin
Film director and writer Adam Rifkin, sometimes credited as Rif Coogan, made his writing and directing debut in 1988 with a straight-to-video independent film called "Never on Tuesday." He has since served as the writer and director for such films as "The Dark Backward" (1991), "The Nutt House" (1992), "The Chase" (1994), "Mousehunt" (1997), "Small Soldiers" (1998), "Detroit Rock City" (1999), "Welcome to Hollywood" (2000), "Night at the Golden Eagle" (2002), "Underdog" (2007), "Homo Erectus" (2007), and "Look" (2007).
"I see myself as a writer/director, first and foremost. My passion, above all else, is to write and direct my own material. I love to come up with an idea. I love to write the script and I love to then take that script and see it come to life through the process of getting an opportunity to get it made. That's my favorite. I have had great experiences directing movies that I haven't written and great experiences having written movies that I didn't direct. I love all those opportunities that have come my way and I've never had a negative experience that way. But my favorite thing to do is to write and direct my own piece of material." Adam Rifkin
"The achievement that I'm the most excited about is the film I'm finishing right now. It's called 'Night at the Golden Eagle.' The reason I think I'm the most excited about it is because first and foremost, I used my own money to finance it with my producing partner Steve Bing. The reason we did that was so that we had the control to green light it and not have to wait for other people to see if it would fit into their slate, if it was something that they felt they could make enough money on, or if it had foreign pre-sale value or whatever. By financing it ourselves, we cut through all of that and just green lit the film in a five minute conversation. It also afforded us complete creative control, which is very freeing when making a film. I was free to cast whoever I wanted, which enabled me to cast the two leads, which are 65 year old unknowns who had never acted before. Freedom to be able to basically make the movie that I saw, the way I saw it without any compromise or interference. Because of that, I feel the most excited about that achievement right now." Adam Rifkin
Recently, Rifkin directed and starred in the comedy “Homo Erectus.” The film, which also starred Giuseppe Andrews, Gary Busey, David Carradine, Ron Jeremy, Ali Larter, Hayes MacArthur, and Talia Shire, premiered at the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival in January 2007. He also co-wrote the live-action version of the classic cartoon “Underdog” (2007), which featured Jason Lee as the voice of the canine superhero. He then wrote and directed the independent drama feature “Look” (2007), which was reportedly the first feature film shot entirely using surveillance camera footage and won a Grand Jury Award for Best Film at the CineVegas International Film Festival.
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