BERLINGER, Joe 1961-

PERSONAL: Born October 30, 1961; married Loren Eiferman (a producer).

ADDRESSES: Agent—Innovative Artists, 3000 West Olympic Blvd., Building 4, Suite 1200, Santa Monica, CA 90404.

CAREER: Director, producer, writer, and editor. Affiliated with the advertising agencies McCann-Erickson, 1983-84, and Ogilvy & Mather, began 1984; later worked for Maysles Films, became executive producer; with Bruce Sinofsky, owner of production company Creative Thinking International. Director of films, including (and producer) Outrageous Taxi Stories, 1989; (and executive producer and editor) Brother's Keeper, Creative Thinking International, 1992; (and producer) The Begging Game, 1995; (and producer and editor) Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, 1996; (and producer and supervising producer) Where It's At: The Rolling Stone State of the Union, 1998; and (and screenwriter) Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Artisan Entertainment, 2000. Appeared in films, including (as voice of himself) Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, 1996; and (as first Burkittsville tourist) Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, Artisan Entertainment, 2000. Director and producer of made-for-television movie Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, 2000; executive producer of made-for-television movie Hollywood High, 2003. Director of episodes of television series, including D.C., The WB, 2000; (also executive producer and series creator) Fan-Club: Metallica, 2000; and "Identity Crisis," Homicide: Life on the Street, National Broadcasting Company (NBC).

AWARDS, HONORS: Distinguished documentary achievement citation, International Documentary Association, for Outrageous Taxi Stories; best documentary citations, Directors Guild of America, New York Film Critics Circle, National Board of Review, and Boston Society of Film Critics, all for Brother's Keeper; Emmy and Peabody awards, for Paradise Lost.

WRITINGS:

(With Dick Beebe) Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (screenplay), Artisan Entertainment, 2000.

SIDELIGHTS: Director Joe Berlinger and his frequent collaborator, Bruce Sinofsky, are best known for their true-crime documentaries. These include Brother's Keeper, a film about an elderly man who was suspected of committing the mercy-killing of his elder brother, and Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, about three goth young men who were convicted of murdering and dismembering three young boys in what prosecutors said was a Satanic ritual.

Berlinger's biggest-budget project to date is Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, the sequel to the "indie" horror blockbuster The Blair Witch Project. "I wish I could say that I woke up one day and said, 'You know, I've got to make the sequel to The Blair Witch Project as my first [feature] film,'" Berlinger told Patrick Lee of SciFi.com. But that was not the way it happened. In reality, Berlinger was pitching an idea for a small murder-mystery film to a group of studio executives, one of whom was a fan of Berlinger's work on Paradise Lost. "And they just started getting the idea—because on the surface, I'm a guy who runs around the woods making films about real killers and child murders—that I would be an interesting choice for the Blair Witch project," he explained to Lee.

The original Blair Witch Project film is a faux-documentary, purportedly a videotape from a hand-held camera that records the fates of three teens who go into the woods around Burkittsville, Maryland to search for the legendary Blair Witch and never return. The scripts for the sequel that the studio first showed Berlinger were continuations of this documentary approach, but, Berlinger told Peg Aloi of Witches' Voice, "I thought it would be too much to ask audiences to suspend their disbelief to go back into that same territory." Instead, Berlinger wrote his own script, which he described to Aloi as "an anti-sequel, because it comments on the story as opposed to continuing the story."

Book of Shadows features a group of aficionados of the original Blair Witch Project who have paid to take part in a "Blair Witch tour," led by former mental patient and Burkittsville local named Jeff. The four tour members are Erica, a Wiccan; Kim, a goth with telepathic abilities; Stephen, a graduate student who is writing a book about the Blair Witch phenomena and mass hysteria; and Stephen's pregnant girlfriend and fellow researcher, Tristen. Although everyone in Book of Shadows is aware that The Blair Witch Project was an entirely fictional movie, as the film progresses and more and more bizarre things happen to them, they find themselves being drawn into the horrific world of the first Blair Witch Project.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Theatre, Film, and Television, Volume 38, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2002.

PERIODICALS

America, April 17, 1993, Richard A. Blake, review of Brother's Keeper, p. 16.

Back Stage-Shoot, March 27, 1992, "Revenge of the Blurbmen," pp. 38-42.

Christian Science Monitor, November 27, 1992, David Sterritt, review of Brother's Keeper, p. 12; January 7, 1993, David Sterritt, review of Brother's Keeper, p. 10.

Cineaste, fall, 1992, Cynthia Lucia and Richard Porton, interview with Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, pp. 82-85; summer, 1996, Dennis West and Joan M. West, interview with Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, pp. 21-23, Alice Cross, review of Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, pp. 38-39.

Entertainment Weekly, September 10, 1993, Mary Makarushka, review of Brother's Keeper, p. 76; October 11, 1996, Owen Gleiberman, review of Paradise Lost, pp. 69-71; June 6, 1997, Tim Pur-tell, review of Paradise Lost, p. 73.

Legal Times, March 6, 2000, Joel Chineson, review of Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, p. 35.

Los Angeles Times, Christopher Noxon, "Trouble Brewing over Sequel," p. CAL30; October 27, 2000, Kenneth Turan, review of Book of Shadows, p. F1.

Maclean's, March 3, 1997, Brian D. Johnson, review of Paradise Lost, pp. 63-64; November 6, 2000, Brian D. Johnson, review of Book of Shadows, p. 89.

Nation, October 7, 1996, Stuart Klawans, review of Paradise Lost, pp. 34-36.

New Republic, September 30, 1996, Stanley Kauffmann, review of Paradise Lost, pp. 31-32.

New Statesman, October 30, 2000, Jonathan Romney, review of Book of Shadows, p. 45.

Newsweek, November 6, 2000, David Ansen, review of Book of Shadows, p. 78.

New York, September 7, 1992, Stephan J. Dubner, review of Brother's Keeper, p. 22.

New York Law Journal, May 23, 1996, Robert Fogelnest, review of Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, p. 2.

New York Times, September 6, 1992, Ann Hornaday, review of Brother's Keeper, p. H16; September 9, 1992, Vincent Canby, review of Brother's Keeper, p. B4; March 26, 1996, Janet Maslin, review of Paradise Lost, p. B16; September 20, 1996, Janet Maslin, review of Paradise Lost, p. C17; May 23, 1997, Peter M. Nichols, review of Paradise Lost, p. B16; October 27, 2000, Stephen Holden, review of Book of Shadows, p. B12.

Time, November 6, 2000, Richard Corliss, review of Book of Shadows, p. 113.

Variety, October 30, 2000, Dennis Harvey, review of Book of Shadows, p. 21.

Wall Street Journal, September 10, 1992, Julie Salamon, review of Brother's Keeper, p. A12; March 13, 2000, Dorothy Rabinowitz, review of Paradise Lost 2: Revelations, p. A44; October 27, 2000, Joe Morgenstern, review of Book of Shadows, p. W10.

ONLINE

Box Office Online,http://www.boxoff.com/ (April 13, 2003), Michael Tunison, "Dark 'Shadows': Helmer Joe Berlinger on Making the Blair Witch Sequel."

SciFi.com,http://www.scifi.com/ (April 13, 2003), Patrick Lee, "Director Joe Berlinger Casts a New Spell in Blair Witch."

Witches' Voice,http://www.witchvox.com/ (November 6, 2000), Peg Aloi, interview with Berlinger.*