A KID LIKE JAKE

The Business

New York

A KID LIKE JAKE

Silas Howard, Daniel Pearle

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Begins at 7:00 PM EDT
Check-in begins at: 6:15 PM EDT

Tuesday, May 22, 2018



Join us for a screening followed by a Q&A with director Silas Howard and screenwriter Daniel Pearle

Moderated by Judy Dry, IndieWire

Estimated program end time: 9:00 PM.

SYNOPSIS
Brooklyn parents Alex (Claire Danes) and Greg (Jim Parsons) are lucky to have a kid like Jake. Their four-year-old is bright, precocious, creative—and just happens to prefer Disney princesses to toy cars and skirts to jeans. Jake's "gender expansive" behavior—as local preschool director Judy (Octavia Spencer) dubs it—is no big deal to Alex and Greg. Or so it seems, until the process of navigating New York City's hyper-competitive private school system opens up a parental quagmire: could Jake's gender nonconformity be just the thing that gives their child an edge in the admissions game? At what age is it appropriate to put a label on a child's identity? Is this just a phase and what are parents' roles in their child's process of self-discovery? Split in their opinions on how to handle the situation, Alex and Greg find themselves navigating an emotional and ethical minefield with one patch of common ground between them: their fierce desire to do what's right for Jake. Transparent director Silas Howard helms this timely, honest, emotionally rich look at 21st-century parenting.


PANELIST BIOS

Silas Howard - Director
Silas Howard is an award-winning director and writer, with a longtime focus in telling honest, boundary-shattering narratives filled with groundbreaking characters, as evident in his recent work directing episodes of Amazon’s Emmy award-winning-Transparent, NBC’s Emmy award-winning-This Is Us, Freeform’s The Fosters, MTV’s Faking It, and FX's upcoming Pose.

Howard began his career crafting stories that challenged society’s conventional boundaries, and was right away met with praise. His first feature film, By Hook or By Crook was a Sundance Film Festival premiere and five-time Best Feature winner.

After this success, Howard diversified into directing documentaries, music videos, web series, and television – never straying from his strength in showcasing revolutionary stories and voices. His documentary, What I Love About Dying, premiered at Sundance and played festivals world-wide. His second feature, Sunset Stories, premiered at SXSW and was awarded best ensemble cast by the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, and best director at CAAM Festival.

His music video, Golden Age of Hustlers, starring Tony-nominated performer, Justin Vivian Bond, screened during the 2014 Whitney Biennial. His documentary, Sticks & Stones, based on the legendary San Francisco transgender chanteuse Bambi Lake, was a recipient of the Horizon Completion grant and is currently playing film festivals internationally.

San Francisco Film Society, in partnership with the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, awarded Howard their 2015 Filmmaking Grant, to produce his upcoming feature film, The Lusty, about the world’s first exotic dancers’ union.

Silas Howard received his MFA at UCLA in directing and is a Film Independent Directors Lab Fellow, Nantucket Screenwriting Colony Fellow, the 2014-15 Arthur Levitt Fellow at Williams College and a 2015 Guggenheim Fellow.

Daniel Pearle - Screenwriter
Daniel Pearle is an American playwright and screenwriter. His plays have been produced and developed at Lincoln Center Theater, London’s Old Vic, The Vineyard Theatre, Ars Nova Theatre, INTAR, and at regional theaters around the country. His play A Kid Like Jake premiered in a sold-out run at LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater (NY Times Critic’s Pick). The play won the 2013 Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award and was also awarded the prestigious Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation’s Theatre Visions Grant. It was also presented at The Old Vic’s TS Eliot US/UK Exchange in London, 2012. Daniel’s feature film adaptation of A Kid Like Jake premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. The film is directed by Silas Howard and stars Claire Danes, Jim Parsons, Octavia Spencer, Priyanka Chopra, Amy Landecker, and Ann Dowd.

His other plays include Freefall (finalist, 2017 O’Neill Playwrights Conference), Remote Viewing (semi-finalist, 2015 O’Neill Playwrights Conference), The Prodigies (semi-finalist, 2013 O’Neill Playwrights Conference), and Plunder (winner, 2008 Loeb Drama Center’s Phyllis Anderson Prize). His short play The Truth About Christmas was a winner of the 2011 Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and is published and licensed by Samuel French.

Daniel is an alum of Ars Nova’s Play Group and a MacDowell Fellow. He was also the recipient of PFLAG’s (Parents of Lesbians and Gays) Leadership in Entertainment Award in 2013. He earned his BA from Harvard University and his MFA from The New School for Drama. He currently lives in Brooklyn.