Join NYWIFT for a festive salon conversation with the leaders behind the scenes of the smash hit Hulu series Only Murders in the Building at DGA Theater. Celebrate the holiday season in style as we delve into the production elements that bring the iconic fictional Arconia Building and its cadre of Upper West Side residents to the small screen.
Speakers will include Director Shari Springer Berman, Co-Executive Producer Kristin Bernstein, Costume Designer Dana Covarrubias, Production Designer Patrick Howe, and Casting Director Destiny Lilly, CSA.
Reception to follow.
Come celebrate the holiday season with us!
Date: Thursday, December 12, 2024
Time: 6:30pm Panel and 8 pm Reception
Location: DGA Theater (110 W 57th St, NY 10019)
Complimentary to attend.
Panelists:
Shari Springer Berman along with her partner Robert Pulcini are an Oscar- nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaking team. They wrote and directed American Splendor which won over 30 awards including: Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival; FIPRESCI Award, Cannes Film Festival; The Writers’ Guild Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; Best Picture and Best Screenplay, Los Angeles Film Critics Association and National Society of Film Critics and Best Adapted Screenplay Nomination, Academy Awards. Cinema Verite (2011), starring Diane Lane, James Gandolfini and Tim Robbins received nine Emmy nominations including Best Movie, Outstanding Directing and a win for Best Editing. In addition, the HBO movie received three Golden Globe nominations, SAG nominations as well as ACE, GLAAD, Humanitas and Writer’s Guild Award wins.
Their hit film The Nanny Diaries starring Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney, Chris Evans and Alicia Keys was the highest grossing film of 2007 with a female director and premiered at The Venice Film Festival. Berman and Pulcini’s award- winning documentaries include Off The Menu: The Last Days Of Chasen’s, Wanderlust and The Young And The Dead. Pulcini and Berman’s indie, Ten Thousand Saints, premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was selected as a NEW YORK TIMES critic’s pick. The film stars Ethan Hawke, Hailee Steinfeld and Asa Butterfield. Their 2021 Netflix horror hit Things Heard & Seen starring Amanda Seyfried opened at number one, and remained in the Netflix Top 10 worldwide for weeks.
The directing team’s TV credits include their work on three seasons of HBO’S widely acclaimed drama Succession, which earned them two DGA Award Nominations. Their episode “Safe Room” was included on Buzzfeed’s list of the greatest TV episodes of the last decade. In 2022 they directed and Executive Produced four of eight episodes of Fleishman Is In Trouble, the critically acclaimed limited series based on Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s best selling novel for FX ON HULU starring Jesse Eisenberg, Claire Danes and Lizzy Caplan. Fleishman was nominated for 7 Emmys including best limited series. The team directed three episodes of Only Murders In The Building, two of which featured Meryl Streep, and one which featured Steve Martin’s epic performance of the Emmy-winning original song, “Which Of The Pickwick Triplets Did It?” Currently they are directing the pilot of Tina Fey’s new Netflix series The Four Seasons, featuring Fey, Steve Carrell, Colman Domingo and Will Forte.
Photo courtesy of IMDB.com
Kristin Bernstein is a New York City born and bred freelance Film and Television Producer. Her experience spans over 30 years. She worked as both an office and set production assistant before joining the Directors Guild of America where she has held the positions of 2nd Assistant Director, Assistant Production Manager, Production Manager and Co-Executive Producer. Her career highlights in Film include the Oscar winning A Beautiful Mind, the Christmas classic Elf and the Emmy family drama American Son. She has produced such groundbreaking television as HBO’s The Sopranos, CBS’s The Good Wife and Netflix’s The Politician. She is currently Co-Executive Producer on Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building in which she received Emmy nominations for “Outstanding Comedy Series” in 2023 and 2024. Although her work has taken her to many other states and countries she is happiest in New York with the greatest talent pool of both cast and crew.
Dana Covarrubias is a multi-time Emmy Nominated Costume Designer for film and television based in New York City. She has designed costumes for multiple ground breaking productions including Only Murders In the Building (Hulu/Disney), Life and Beth(Hulu), Ramy (A24/Hulu), Master of None (Netflix) Crashing (HBO), Mrs. Fletcher (HBO), Claws (TNT), Louie (FX), and They Came Together (Lionsgate). In 2018 she was recognized for excellence in Costume Design by New York Women in Film & Television. She is a three-time Emmy Nominee for Outstanding Contemporary Costumes for a Series with her work on Only Murders In The Building (2022, 2023, 2024).
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Patrick Howe first caught the theater bug in high school, and subsequently earned an undergraduate degree in theater design. He began his professional entertainment career as a set designer in west coast regional theaters. After a move to New York and assisting on Broadway shows, Patrick found his way to designing for episodic television. He production designed 3,750 one-hour episodes of daytime dramas in 15 years and received 5 Emmy awards. In nighttime television and film, Patrick has production designed Godfather of Harlem staring Forest Whitaker (Seasons 2 and 3) and Marvel’s Iron Fist (Season 2) among others. Currently, he is the Production Designer for Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building winning back-to-back Emmy awards for Seasons 2 and 3. [Photo credit: Michael DiPleco]
Destiny Lilly, CSA, is an Emmy-nominated casting director based in New York. Recent projects include The Color Purple (WarnerMedia), Only Murders in the Building (Hulu), and A Strange Loop and Purlie Victorious on Broadway. She works at The Telsey Office, where she also casts plays and musicals for New York Stage & Film, MCC Theater, Atlantic Theater Company, Second Stage Theater, and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Destiny is an advocate for actors and artists, and she is the president of the Casting Society (CSA).
Amenya Makuku (Moderator) is an independent producer, with tenures at Class 5 Films, where she worked on Thanks For Sharing, FilmNation Entertainment, where she worked on Oscar-nominated films Room and Arrival; and 4thPower Films, where she is presently developing a slate with Courtney Lee-Mitchell. Amenya is currently in post-production on Craig Webster’s Woman in the Cabinet, started during the pandemic. She coproduced director Josephine Decker’s Sundance 2018 smash Madeline’s Madeline, (released by Oscilloscope). 4th Power’s slate includes the projects, Uncatchable (in-development with Apple and Appian Way); Border Hacker (based on the nonfiction novel by Levi Vonk and Axel Kirschner; podcast iteration in development with FilmNation); Alfie (based on the novel by Christopher Bouix); and Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India (based on the memoir by Anita Jain). Scripts include the TV project Green Hill by Writer’s Lab Fellow Zuri Rice, as well as film project Sea of Moscow by Playwrights Realm Fellow David Zax. Amenya is also producing the project We Should Celebrate by sisters Christina and Maria Kiely. She is the Film/TV advisor for theatre-incubator The Playwright’s Realm. She additionally mentors for The Writers Lab fellowships. Amenya sits on the Board of Directors for New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT).
Thank you to our partner:
DGA New York Theater
110 W 57th St
New York, NY 10019
programs@nywift.org
Join the conversation on social media:
#nywift | @nywift
NYWIFT programs, screenings and events are supported, in part, by grants from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
