Alan Jacobs is an American independent film director, screenwriter and producer. His films have been acquired by major distributors, including Miramax and Columbia Pictures and have been invited to several major festivals, including Sundance and Toronto. His career began at Apple Inc., where he was the in-house filmmaker. Jacobs is a graduate of Wesleyan University and the Stanford Business School. Early life Jacobs was born to Sara and Bernard Jacobs, in New York City. He grew up in Tappan NY and attended Tappan Zee High School, in Orangeburg, New York. Jacobs studied writing and literature at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He wrote his first screenplay in his mid-20s before which he had almost no interest in movies. Career Jacobs realized early on that independent filmmaking offered the creative freedom that best suited his lifestyle. His first feature, Nina Takes a Lover (1994), was a purely independent film that Jacobs wrote, directed and produced for $600,000. Both the Sundance Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival accepted the film. Soon after Sundance, Columbia Pictures bought the rights to Nina Takes a Lover and distributed it theatrically. Sundance that year launched the careers of a distinguished group of filmmakers, including, David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook), Kevin Smith (Chasing Amy), Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans) and the team of Scott McGehee and David Siegel (What Maisie Knew). Jacobs demonstrated his versatility as a director in his next film, Just One Night (2000), a screwball comedy about the crazy exploits of an earnest groom-to-be. The film stars Oscar-winning actor Timothy Hutton. Critics described the film as “romantic, lively, sexy, original, flawlessly produced.” Following Just One Night, Jacobs co-directed the animated film Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists (2000) with Evan Ricks. It was the first movie ever created solely from the motion capture process. The film, described by critics as “[an] adventure story created with state-of-the-art computer technology,” stars Brendan Fraser, Leonard Nimoy and Mark Hamill. In his next film, American Gun (2002), Jacobs returned to the drama genre. Starring the Oscar-winning James Coburn, the film follows an anguished father's journey to trace the gun that killed his daughter. It was Coburn's final screen appearance, which ends fittingly with the legendary actor staring straight into the camera lens. Jacobs suggests that his early filmmaking career offered him opportunities to master the craft of film directing. He cites Malcolm Gladwell's book “Outliers”,