Happy Columbus Day!

Happy Columbus Day, Modern Philosophers!

I’m very excited because it’s not often that a screenwriter, director, and producer gets a holiday named in his honor.

Then again, most filmmakers don’t have the resume of Chris Columbus.  Add to that that he is a fellow NYU Film School graduate, and you would understand why this is such a big deal!

To many of you, Chris Columbus is best known as the director of the first two films in the Harry Potter series.  Chris directed “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” while also producing “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.”  He helped cast the little actors who wold grow up to be such powerful Witches and Wizards.  That alone deserves a holiday!

I might be showing my age and my partiality to Screenwriting, but the first thing that pops into my head when you mention Chris Columbus is “Gremlins”.  He wrote that classic story about fuzzy little Gizmo and the bad little buggers that appear if you get it wet or feed it after midnight.  What a great movie, right, Modern Philosophers?

Another great Chris Columbus achievement was “Adventures in Babysitting”.  That was the first flick he ever directed.  Elizabeth Shue was awesome and those kids she was in charge of were so darn adorable.

Of course, he’s also responsible for the “Home Alone” flicks that forced that Culkin kid into our lives, but at least the first one was fun.  Didn’t Joe Pesci win an Oscar for that?

Columbus also helped us discover other great movies like “Mrs. Doubtfire”, “Nine Months”, “Stepmom” and “Bicentennial Man”.

He was nominated for an Academy Award for Producing “The Help”.

Did I mention that he went to NYU Film just like your favorite Modern Philosopher?

Happy Columbus Day!  Congrats, Chris, on an awesome body of work and even more so for getting a national holiday out of the deal!