Film Background

As one of the most prolific and well know female producers, authors and commentators in the film industry, Lynda Obst has been in the business for over 25 years, and has released films at almost every major studio.

This year Lynda worked with Nickelodeon for the first time, producing the upcoming release Angus Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging directed by Gurinder Chada and is producing her first indie feature This Side of the Truth, starring Ricky Gervais and Jennifer Garner. The film will mark Ricky’s American directing debut and is set to begin production in April 2008.

With a first look deal at Paramount Pictures, Lynda has produced such films as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, and Abandon, the directing debut of Academy-Award winner Stephen Gaghan. Lynda’s producing career has come full circle having begun at Paramount in 1985, at which time she partnered with Debra Hill forming Hill/Obst Productions, and producing the iconic film Adventures in Babysitting, Chris Columbus’ directing debut, and Terry Gilliam’s Oscar Nominated The Fisher King.

Lynda then began a solo producing career securing a deal at Columbia Pictures where she produced Nora Ephron’s directing debut, This Is My Life, and executive produced Ephron’s second film, Sleepless in Seattle. At Fox she moved on to produced The Siege, starring Denzel Washington Bruce Willis and Annette Bening, Hope Floats, starring Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick Jr., One Fine Day, starring Michelle Pfeiffer and George Clooney and Someone Like You, starring Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman. Lynda executive produced Contact, starring Jodie Foster for Warner Brothers in 1997, and in 1999, she executive produced the Emmy Nominated The 60s, a two part miniseries for NBC, which broke viewer records and had a best-selling soundtrack.

In 2007, Lynda joined forces with former protégé and television producer Marc Rosen to form Rosen-Obst Productions. In addition to their feature deal at Paramount Pictures, the company signed a first-look deal with Paramount Television. They are currently producing an adaptation of Lynda’s highly successful How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days for television.

Personal/Writing Background

Lynda Obst grew up in Suburban New York and graduated from Pomona College in 1972. She attended graduate school at Columbia University in Philosophy. After Columbia, she began her film and journalism career as the editor/author of The Rolling Stone’s History of the Sixties, a compendium of the era’s people, politics, and popular culture. She then became an editor at the New York Times Magazine, where she covered such diverse topics as science, philosophy, and publishing, before being recruited to Hollywood in 1979 by Peter Guber, then chairman of Casablanca/Polygram. There she developed Flashdance and Clue, as well as beginning the development of Carl Sagan’s novel Contact. In 1982, Lynda joined the David Geffen company where she worked on the development and production of a number of films, including Risky Business and After Hours.

Lynda’s non-fiction book: Hello He Lied: And Other Truths from the Hollywood Trenches was first published by Little Brown and debuted at #1 on the LA Times Best Seller list. It was published by Broadway Books in paperback in 1997, once again debuting on the Best Seller List where it remained for 12 weeks. Hello He Lied was recently adapted into a documentary by the award winning directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini of the highly acclaimed American Splendor and aired on AMC.

Lynda was the commencement speaker for the class of 2000 at Pomona College. She is a regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review, LA Times Book Review, salon.com, The Huffington Post, does the annual Oscar coverage for Slate.com and New York Magazine with film critic David Edelstein, and has written for Texas Monthly, The Nation, and Harper’s Magazine. Lynda was a contributor for the November 2007 issue of Elle and has a regular column in New York Magazine called The West Coast Office.

Lynda’s teaching and public speaking experience has burgeoned since the publication of Hello, He Lied. She has taught a Master’s screenwriting class at USC and a course in producing at the University of Texas. She has also taught several courses at The Learning Annex, where she is one of their most requested lecturers. She has given seminars on the film industry around the world, and is a regular moderator and speaker at the annual LA Times Festival of Books.

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