Media Circus

During his college years, Charles participated in the Semester at Sea (SAS) program, which was at that time sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh, through which along with 400 other students selected from the U.

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During his college years, Charles participated in the Semester at Sea (SAS) program, which was at that time sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh, through which along with 400 other students selected from the U.S. and abroad, traveled completely around the world on a large ship and visited 10 countries (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Sri Lanka, India, Egypt, Greece, and Spain) throughout the process. During the SAS voyage, which was sort of like a floating college campus, in addition to gaining first-hand knowledge about those countries, he completed course work in Oceanography, Acting (Improvisational Comedy), and International Cinema while maintaining a 3.75 GPA. During that time, Charles began to develop a strong interest screenwriting, but hadn’t quite acted upon it yet…

After graduating from university, Charles worked as a Commercial Credit Analyst at a large Philadelphia Regional Bank for 2 years. As he grew increasingly disenchanted by the confines of corporate 9-to-5 lifestyle, he burned the proverbial midnight oil and managed to write his first screenplay entitled Hell Bent, a dramatic thriller period piece about a victim of the nuclear weapons testing conducted in Nevada during the 1950s. He submitted that script to several agents, but nothing ever came of it—until a strikingly similar TV movie called Nightbreaker starring Martin Sheen & Emilio Estevez “coincidentally” came out in 1989 while Hell Bent was still circulating. And get this: the tagline for that TV movie was “How close can you get to hell?”

In 1990, Charles moved to Nagoya, Japan, where he lived from working as a Language Consultant and a Marketing Representative. During that time, he wrote The Other Washington, a historical biodrama about another man named Washington who surmounts harsh, often violent opposition as he boldly ascends from the illiterate depths of slavery and ignorance to eloquence as an iconic, world-renowned university president and charismatic leader. This script, which Charles originally wrote for Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks, and Sigourney Weaver to star, received quite a lot of notoriety for placing well within worldwide screenplay competitions, including the Blue Cat Screenplay Competition (run by Gordy Hoffman, brother of Philip Seymour Hoffman) in which it placed as a finalist in 2003. In spite of its critical acclaim, The Other Washington has still not been produced yet…

In 2000, Charles attended NEW YORK FILM ACADEMY where he wrote, directed, and edited four 16mm films. After graduation, Charles returned to Japan to write (Japanese lyrics), produce and co-direct an independent music video; he also served as the JapaneseEnglish interpreter and translator on the project.

In order to earn a living and support his screenwriting habit, Charles has been a Real Estate Investment Consultant from 2005 until now. However, he has several other screenplays in the pipeline at various stages of completion including:

THE NAM GIG – A Wartime Biodrama

Logline: A US Army soldier loses his weapons on his first day of duty in Vietnam, gets recruited by a Viet Cong R&B band, and eventually plays beautiful music—with the guys he’s been hired to kill.

THE MINISTER'S MAN – A Controversial Religious Drama

Logline: A powerful well respected female mega-minister grapples with her own previously unshakable religious beliefs when she succumbs to temptation and manages to get tangled up in a steamy extramarital love affair with an agnostic man who gives her a choice she wasn’t even aware she had…

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