Chris LaMont
Chris LaMont is an American screenwriter, independent filmmaker, and film professor, who co-founded the Phoenix Film Festival in 2000. He has written and co-written several feature films, including The Locksmith and Hard Kill. He has also produced and directed several independent films, Netherbeast Incorporated, and The Graves.
Born in Edison, New Jersey and growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, LaMont graduated from Arizona State University. While there, he won an Emmy Award for Student Entertainment Production for the sketch comedy series, TV or Not TV.[citation needed ] He directed his first feature with Steve Bencich, The Best Movie Ever Made featuring Adam West. His next feature, Writer's Block, was released to video stores.
In 2000, LaMont directed and co-wrote Film Club, a short film parody of David Fincher's Fight Club. It was included on the George Lucas in Love DVD. The film was featured on CNN Headline News and MSNBC.com. Later, he directed the documentary feature 14 Days in America, and in 2006 he produced with Brian and Dean Ronalds the office-vampire comedy Netherbeast Incorporated, which was released in North America on DVD in January 2009 by Illuminata Films.
In 2008, he produced the animated logos for "R&D TV" that appear on the end of the Season 4 episodes of SyFy Channel's Battlestar Galactica. His film My Apocalypse was a dark comedy/drama, which had its world premiere at the 2008 Boston Underground Film Festival.
In 2009 he produced the film The Graves for first-time feature filmmaker, writer-director Brian Pulido, with the Ronalds Brothers. The supernatural suspense film follows two sisters who are captured in an old ghost town controlled by a religious zealot and his brainwashed clan. The film was released in 2010 by AfterDark Films as one of the "Horrorfest 2010: Eight Films To Die For".
In 2014, he produced the independent suspense-thriller Justice Served, with writer-director Marvin Young, starring Chase Coleman, Lochlyn Munro, Gail O'Grady and Lance Henriksen. In 2015 he produced the micro-budget feature Postmarked for writer-director Gene Ganssle.
In 2015, he started to focus on screenplay writing. He and his writing partner Joseph Russo were named to the 2016 Young and Hungry List.[citation needed ] Their feature screenplay "Road Rage" was a finalist in the annual Final Draft Big Break Contest. Their screenplay, "Soul Mates", was named to The Blood List as one of the Top 13 unproduced genre films in Hollywood and to The Hit List as one of the Top Unproduced Screenplays in Hollywood. Their horror action film "The Red Pill" was named to the 2017 Blood List and their horror screenplay "The Last Will and Testament of Charles Abernathy" was named on the 2018 Blood List.
2019 saw their script "The Au Pair Nightmare" filmed in New Mexico with his writing partner Joseph Russo directing. The film premiered on the Lifetime Network. It was later available on the streaming Lifetime Movie Channel.
In January 2020, the pair's action-thriller Hard Kill starring Bruce Willis and Jesse Metcalf was directed by Matt Eskardi and shot in Cincinnati. The film was released from Vertical Entertainment on August 28, 2020 theatrically and on VOD.
In 2020, the pair sold their screenplay "The Last Will and Testament of Charles Abernathy" to Netflix. In 2021, they co-wrote the suspense-thriller The Locksmith starring Ryan Phillippe, Kate Bosworth and Ving Rhames. The film was released in February 2023 on VOD.
In 2021, their screenplay "Soul Mates" was purchased and independently produced in July 2022 with a theatrical release planned for 2023.
In 2000, LaMont co-founded the Phoenix Film Festival, which had over 23,000 attendees in 2013. In past years, actors and directors including Tom Arnold, Kevin Bacon, Alan Cumming, Laurence Fishburne, Peter Fonda, Robert Forster, John Landis, Kyra Sedgwick, Jane Seymour, and John Waters have appeared. He is the Executive Director of the festival, and president of the non-profit Phoenix Film Foundation, which he also co-founded. In 2002, he started the Phoenix Film Project, an independent filmmaker community group, which has officially changed to IFP-Phoenix, and started the Phoenix Film Society in 2004.
With comic book writer Brian Pulido, he co-founded and is the Executive Director of the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival. The festival attracted over 4,000 attendees in 2006 and has featured such celebrities as Mick Garris, Tobe Hooper, Nightmare on Elm Street' s Heather Langenkamp, and Star Wars' Chewbacca Peter Mayhew. In 2007, he founded the Arizona Student Film Festival to encourage young statewide filmmakers. In 2011, the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival became the late night programming arm of the Phoenix Film Festival.
LaMont has taught at Arizona State University since 2004 in the ASU Sidney Poitier New American Film School - such courses as Film: The Creative Process, Intermediate Screenwriting, Producing for Film & Media, Careers in Media Industry and created two popular online classes: Great Comedy Films and Alfred Hitchcock.