Billy Frolick

Billy Frolick is an American writer and film director.

Born and raised in Long Island, New York, Frolick graduated from NYU film school, where he studied under the famed professor (and Martin Scorsese mentor) Haig Manoogian.

In the eighties, Frolick moved to Los Angeles and worked at various agencies, studios and production companies as a script reader, agency assistant, and development executive. When the Writers Guild of America, west went on strike in 1988, his career as a journalist began. His first "Premiere Magazine" story, “Sink or Float,” served as the prototype for the magazine’s popular “Life at the Bottom” column. Frolick’s work has also appeared in "The New Yorker", "Movieline", "TV Guide" and "The Los Angeles Times", for which he interviewed such personalities as Milton Berle and Richard Pryor. He also conducted dozens of videotaped interviews with survivors of the Holocaust for Steven Spielberg’s "Survivors of the Shoah" project. Frolick has served as the pseudonymous author of several book-length parodies: "The Philistine Prophecy", "Dumpisms", and "The Ditches of Edison County", a national bestseller which was translated into Japanese and Italian. In 2005 Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, released the latest, "The Five People You Meet in Hell". Frolick’s 1995 Dutton book "What I Really Want to Do is Direct" tracked seven film school graduates over three years. Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh wrote, “If you are reading my words right now, you need to buy this book. Billy Frolick has produced the definitive text on what it’s like to make a start in the film business. I found it absolutely riveting.” And from "Publishers Weekly": “Essential reading.” Frolick's directing debut, "It is What it Is", a full-length feature from his original screenplay, starred Jonathan Silverman ("Weekend at Bernie's") and featured Stephen Tobolowsky ("Memento") and Joshua Malina ("The West Wing"). "It is What it Is" screened at several global festivals, including the 2003 New York International Independent Film & Video Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Best Picture, as well as prizes for Best Screenplay and Best Directorial Debut. The film's cultural significance was noted by William Safire in his March 5, 2006 "New York Times Sunday Magazine" column "On Language," entitled "It Is What It Is." "A burst of the sentence's activity," Safire wrote, "followed Billy Frolick's movie with that title in 2001." For DreamWorks Animation, Frolick has written the feature screenplays "Holy Cow" (with "Chicken Run" writer Karey Kirkpatrick) and "Madagascar" (with directors Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath, and Mark Burton, co-writer of ""). "Madagascar" stars the voice talents of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith and David Schwimmer, and grossed over a half a billion dollars worldwide during its 2005 theatrical release.

Frolick's latest project, for Kiev's Umbrella Vision studio, is the original screenplay for "Paws & Wires", which will be the first 3-D, computer-animated feature ever produced in Ukraine.

In addition to moderating and appearing on many film school and festival panels, Frolick spent four years as an instructor at UCLA Extension's Writers' Program.

His website address is www.billyfrolick.com [http://www.billyfrolick.com] .

References

*imdb name|1129905
* Frolick, Billy. "What I really want to do is direct : seven film school graduates go to Hollywood" / Billy Frolick. New York : Dutton, 1996. 359 p. : ports. ; 24 cm. ISBN 0-525-93770-6