James Schamus’ collaborations with Ang Lee include producing The Ice Storm, which he also adapted from the novel by Rick Moody, receiving for the latter effort the Best Screenplay Prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival along with 1998 Writer’s Guild and BAFTA nominations; co-producing Sense and Sensibility (Golden Bear at the 1996 Berlin Film Festival, Golden Globe Award for Best Picture, Academy Award® for Best Screenplay Adaptation); co-writing and associate-producing Eat Drink Man Woman (opening night film, Director’s Fortnight, Cannes 1994, Academy Award nominee® for Best Foreign Film, 1994); producing and co-writing The Wedding Banquet (Golden Bear at the 1993 Berlin Film Festival and Academy Award® nominee, Best Foreign Film, 1993); and producing Lee’s first feature, Pushing Hands. Most recently in the context of this collaboration, Schamus produced, with Ted Hope and Robert F. Colesberry, Lee’s Ride With the Devil, for which he also wrote the screenplay.
In 1991, Schamus founded the successful independent production company Good Machine with Ted Hope.
Schamus has also been involved in four of the last nine Grand Jury Prize Winners at the Sundance Film Festival: The Brothers McMullen by Edward Burns (1995, executive producer with Ted Hope); Tom Noonan’s What Happened Was ... (1994, executive producer with Hope); Alexandre Rockwell’s In the Soup (1992, associate producer); and Poison, by Todd Haynes (1991, executive producer).
Schamus is associate professor of film theory, history and criticism at Columbia University, where he was recently a university lecturer. He was also the 1997 Nuveen Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Chicago. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Foundation for Independent Video and Film, and on the board of Creative Capital.
