And from that moment on I was “Davy,” like Crockett or Jones, randomly plucked from the front row at Allan C. Hill’s Great American Circus and christened by the misfit minstrel himself, right there under the Big Top. And I didn’t know it then, but that peculiar moment would have a profound impact on that shy little boy who related more to oddballs and outsiders like Tiny Tim and David Bowie, who skipped school for the video store and spent his Friday nights not under the buzzing blindness of a football stadium but the dim glow of the Horror Section.

An outsider is all I’ve ever been.

So maybe that’s where my movie begins…

I grew up very poor outside of Pittsburgh, surrounded by bikers and musicians; hard-living types whose relief from their lives at the local glass plant was a case of Iron City and playing music ‘til the fire went out.

I started writing screenplays at fourteen after watching TAXI DRIVER and tracking down the script at my local library. I started by rewriting any script I could find, play with dialogue, and come up with new scenes altogether. I quickly fell in love with the language of Cinema.

Later on, I’d buy a 16mm Bolex and begin experimenting with short films. I tinkered and taught myself the process. I studied movies, read books about plot and story structure, made a lot of mistakes. And though it was all exciting to me, the smallest project was a tediously long undertaking when there’s no money, so it was always the writing that I went back to, and where I felt most at home. I worked as a projectionist at my local movie theater (back when you still needed to pass an exam to be one) and would spend my nights under a flickering bulb, scribbling out drafts and storyboards on yellow notepads, dreaming of being the next Scorsese or Herzog.

But I told myself that kind of thing doesn’t happen to a poor kid stuck between the rust belt and coal mines of rural Pennsylvania.

So I hit the road.

I hopped trains, slept in boxcars and ate in hobo jungles, shot buskers in Central Park on Super 8, carnies in the Heartland, and the sermons of tent revival preachers on Sunday mornings. I threw my lot in with San Francisco Satanists, small-town Freemasons wearing secrets on their sleeves, and midwestern meditators who taught me all about Transcendence. and, for a time, I was even pals with Charlie Manson. I’m a husband and father, and have worked as everything from a roadie to radio station pitchman, door-to-door salesman, long-haul truck driver, to a writer for a small-town newspaper. I even owned a coffee roasting company that amassed a cult-following.

Yet through it all, my dreams of writing movies never waned.

My niche is Music-driven character studies (Thriller/Drama), unconventional biopics and transgressive Horror, typically set on the open road of dead-end America. Crime, carnies, cultists, Country Music… I know the world I write because I’m from there.

I hold an MFA in Screenwriting from The David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic Arts, where I had the extraordinary privilege of being in the final class under Lynch before his passing.

I’m currently seeking representation from someone who believes in my work as much as I do, and someone to have in my corner as I find my way into the industry.

Lynch once told me to always follow my intuition, so I welcome you to do the same.

read my work. reach out.

let’s make magic.