A Bit About Me
Cole Whitaker grew up outside of Los Angeles and has been a lifelong storyteller but didn’t turn his attention toward filmmaking in earnest until landing in the film capital of the USA: rural New England. It is there that he unexpectedly became an amateur filmmaker when his daughter (4 at the time, and with nary a television in her life) asked, "Daddy, can we make a movie?," and he, for reasons still unknown, said yes. Following that first experiment, and shifting his storytelling effort fully toward film, he has made two more award-winning short films, including his most recent, “The Journey Home” (airing on PBS this winter), in which he narrated a man’s (certainly not his own) letter home to his wife while he is away on a long journey . . . . . to Home Depot. Currently, he is working on taking his feature screenplay, THE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT ASSOCIATION, from script to screen.
In addition to his screenwriting and filmmaking, Cole is a husband, father, and high school social studies teacher who uses teaching as a replacement for the stand-up comedy career he never had. He has written travel and food articles for Roads & Kingdoms, has helped his students craft and tell their own stories, and frequently tells his own true stories live from the stage. Whether on screen, stage, or page Cole loves crafting heartfelt stories with a wry sense of humor, a strong sense of place, and a keen eye for the miraculous and meaning-packed little moments too often lost amid the jumble of our lives, and he is incredibly grateful to have found filmmaking as his own medium for building a community of support for both life and art.
A Bit About Me
Cole Whitaker grew up outside of Los Angeles and has been a lifelong storyteller but didn’t turn his attention toward filmmaking in earnest until landing in the film capital of the USA: rural New England. It is there that he unexpectedly became an amateur filmmaker when his daughter (4 at the time, and with nary a television in her life) asked, "Daddy, can we make a movie?," and he, for reasons still unknown, said yes. Following that first experiment, and shifting his storytelling effort fully toward film, he has made two more award-winning short films, including his most recent, “The Journey Home” (airing on PBS this winter), in which he narrated a man’s (certainly not his own) letter home to his wife while he is away on a long journey . . . . . to Home Depot. Currently, he is working on taking his feature screenplay, THE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT ASSOCIATION, from script to screen.
In addition to his screenwriting and filmmaking, Cole is a husband, father, and high school social studies teacher who uses teaching as a replacement for the stand-up comedy career he never had. He has written travel and food articles for Roads & Kingdoms, has helped his students craft and tell their own stories, and frequently tells his own true stories live from the stage. Whether on screen, stage, or page Cole loves crafting heartfelt stories with a wry sense of humor, a strong sense of place, and a keen eye for the miraculous and meaning-packed little moments too often lost amid the jumble of our lives, and he is incredibly grateful to have found filmmaking as his own medium for building a community of support for both life and art.
