Photo courtesy of Hollywood.com
At Choate, we are taught to be independent thinkers, to work hard for the things we love, and not to shy away from a challenge, no matter how seemingly insurmountable. Someone who embodies this very spirit is Choate graduate Mr. Tom Dey ’83—screenwriter, director, and producer.
Some of Dey’s notable works include Shanghai Noon (a comedy film starring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson), Failure to Launch (a romcom with Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew McConaughey as the leads), and Marmaduke.
The son of former headmaster Charley Dey, the theater was in his back yard: “I grew up at the Curtis house, which was one hundred yards away from the theater in the basement of the chapel. They showed a lot of movies from the early ‘70s, a golden era of American film.” Dey continued, “When I was directing my first movie, those movies and their images came rushing back to me.”
“The Gelb Theater was my first film school — in the basement of the chapel. It was something that I carried with me,” he recalled.
Despite his love for films, Dey did not initially pursue directing in college. At Brown, his alma matter, he majored in philosophy of religion. However, he took advantage of the array of film courses offered at his university and, in his final semester, went to Paris to study film at the NYU affiliated Center for International Education Exchange. It was there that he began screenwriting and assisting directors.
“That was my second film school,” stated Dey, “I was watching films every day. I also learned — ironically — to appreciate classic Hollywood movies in Paris because there were a group of French writers who recognized and championed a number of Hollywood directors from the studio system.”
Dey worked in Paris for a few years after receiving his degree, and then enrolled at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, California. He then began working in the film industry as a production assistant on films and commercials. After graduating with a Master of Fine Arts degree, Dey was offered a job as a director at Tony and Ridley Scott’s production company, R.S.A. Films.
“I was sleeping on a friend’s couch at the time, I couldn’t even afford to update the plates on my car. But I got this great opportunity and that was my big break,” Dey narrated.
Dey, who grew up on the East Coast with no prior connections in the film industry said, “For many years, the possibility of becoming a director was so remote that I didn’t allow myself to entertain it. So I put together a cinematographer’s showreel instead, shot primarily with a 16 mm camera borrowed from a friend. Eventually this friend said to me, “You know, you wrote these things, shot them, and edited them, so why aren’t you directing?’”
“The death of the mid-budget cinema industry provided an opportunity for me to get back to my roots, writing to direct, so that I can tell stories that are more personal to me,” said Dey. Over the past several years, Dey has written three scripts, all of which are in different stages of production.
Dey is also working with his father on a documentary honoring the pioneers of a program in the 1960s. A Better Chance was an experimental scholarship program created to enable talented kids from low-income backgrounds find their ways to independent schools in order to ultimately succeed in college and beyond.
“In some ways, this stage of my career is about finding my way home again. As a faculty kid at Choate I learned about the world and life through movies. I’ve gone on this long journey and now I realize I’m just trying to create films that might make people feel the same things I did, back in that theater in the basement of the Choate chapel.”
