A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Alias:
Thomas Ardavany
Birthplace:
San Diego, California, USA
Thomas Ardavany hails from San Diego, and for those of you that don’t know where that is it’s in sunny California, the beach babe capital of the world. The son of a Navy man, he was constantly on the move having to adapt to new locations and accommodate to his new friends, which paid dividends down the road, on the road to writing plays then eventually screen plays. He idolized Chekhov, Pinter and Shakespeare and learned to idolize William Goldman, Billy Wilder and Ethan and Joel Coen , so inspired by a grand parent that worked for United Artists Thomas headed to NYC to learn the craft of writing at NYU night school as well as numerous writing groups and workshops. He dedicated himself to learning the rules so that he could expand on them just to break them as a creative test with non conformity . To this end, he earned a well rounded respect for his creative responsibilities as a writer initially by producing the plays he wrote. His Independent spirit naturally led him into Independent, social justice filmmaking dealing with issues like discrimination (Pizza Man), immigration (An Immigrant’s Affair) (Crossing), bullying (Bullied to the Brink), Poverty (Blood Initiate) and the heart break of war (Check Point). Thomas became acknowledged through wins and selections to various film festivals. He began sharing his knowledge with other aspiring witting, acting, directors, eventually opening a studio in Los Angeles where he developed ‘The Ardavany Approach to On-Camera Mastery’ for 20 years. These days Thomas has turned his attention to running his produced, hilarious, half hour sitcom around town called Betty B’s Spa, selling his screenplays, script doctoring and character development coaching, occasionally directing and even landing an acting gig here and there like a character from the ‘Hole in the Wall Gang’ Ben Kilpatrick in ‘Chronicles of the Wild West’ on INSP network or a lead in a film called ‘Avenged’. Thomas lives in Los Angeles. Filmography: The Idiots of Malibu (1994); Eden’s Mountain (1996); Sunsetter Shorts (1998); Pot Luck People (2000); Check Point (2005); Sex Party (2006); Pizza Man (2006); Crossing (2009); An Immigrant’s Affair (2009); The Invitation (2011); Blood Initiate (2014); Betty B’s Spa (2019); Bullied To The Brink (2020); Produced/Directed Plays: Transcendent (1990); Together (1991); Fe-lo-de-se (1997); Short Eyes (2002); By Miguel Pinero Plays: Transcendent (1990); Together (1991); Fe-lo-de-se (1997); Re-Write (2007); Screenplays: Idiots of Malibu (1994); Eden’s Mountain (1996); Sunsetters (1997); Sunsetters Shorts (1998); Fat Chick & Big Richards (1999); Pot Luck People (2000); The Way Of The Intercepting Fist (2003); Check Point (2005); Lost Angels (2005: Sex Party (2006); Pizza Man (2006); Sexy Science (2006); Tough Love (2007); Venice Project (2008); Crossing (2009); An Immigrant’s Affair (2009); Miriam Makeba (2012); It’s Not The End Of The World (2013); Blood Initiate (2014); Florida (2014); Destined Relation (2018); Betty B’s Spa (2019); Ridding Wild Ones (2019); The Violent Sun (2020); Bullied To The Brink (2020);
Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).
Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).
At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.
Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)
While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:
Regarding profile removals and data corrections:
Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).
Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.
Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.