C O M M U N I T Y
PRIZ ES, PREM IER ES & P UBL ICAT IO N S
Eat Wheaties! A new award-winning comedy from executive producer Daniel Webb ’13 explores the pratfalls of social media and “going viral.”
The epic biography of Malcolm X — coauthored by Tamara Payne ’88 and her father, the late Les Payne P’88 — is the winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X is “a powerful and revelatory account of the civil rights activist, built from dozens of interviews, offering insight into his character, beliefs and the forces that shaped him,” as the Pulitzer judges noted when the award was announced in June. Les Payne — a Pulitzer-winning journalist, former Newsday editor and co-founder of the National Association of Black Journalists — began working on The Dead Are Arising in 1990. His daughter Tamara joined the book project as a researcher soon after her return from living abroad in China in 1991. When Les died in 2018, Tamara, then principal researcher, completed and published the book, which was intended “to put Malcolm finally in the context of American history, and to give recognition to how important he really is,” as she explained in the spring 2021 issue of the PSS. Read the profile at hws.edu/ alumni/pssSpring21/payne.aspx.
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PHOTO BY BOBBY YA N (TOP LEF T )
Payne’s Pulitzer
▲ The Dead Are Arising also won the 2020 National Book Award for Non-Fiction and the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Biography/ Autobiography.
Eat Wheaties! follows Sid Straw (played by Tony Hale of Arrested Development and Veep), who is asked to plan his University of Pennsylvania reunion, only to see his life unravel as he takes to Facebook to prove that he was in fact college friends with movie star Elizabeth Banks. The film — “dryly funny, sweet and surprisingly touching” (Richard Roper, Chicago Sun Times) — is the first feature from executive producer Daniel Webb ’13. Webb, who was also the film’s graphics producer, broke into Hollywood as an intern to Mark Neveldine ’95, the writer, director and producer of films such as Crank, Gamer and The Vatican Tapes. Webb later served as an assistant to Neveldine and his producing partner, Skip Williamson, an executive producer of the Underworld series. After writing, producing and directing a number of short films, music videos and commercials, Webb joined the crew of Eat Wheaties!, which premiered at the Calgary International Film Festival in September 2020 and was screened opening night at the Heartland Film Festival, where it won the Humor and Humanity Award. Eat Wheaties! also won Best Comedy at the 2020 San Diego International Film Festival, prior to its April 2021 release.
▶ This photo features (left to right) director Scott Abramovitch, producer David J. Phillips, executive producer Daniel Webb ’13 and star Tony Hale.
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