Class Note 1994

I had the pleasure of catching up with award-winning film and commercial director Adam Lipsius right before the theatrical release of his first feature-length film 16 Love in January. After graduating Adam worked in children’s advertising with Saatchi & Saatchi. He then started a film career in post-production in New York, working under such directors as Martin Scorsese on Kundun and Bringing Out the Dead and Barry Sonnenfeld on Men in Black before going on to study writing, directing and producing at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television. His graduate-school short films, At A Loss…, A Modest Proposal and 4° have played dozens of festivals, including the Beverly Hills Film Festival and the Philadelphia Film Festival. While he was still finishing up film school Adam got a job making commercials for a toy company, which yielded spots for Bratz dolls and other Little Tykes products—and, with their small budgets and a quick shooting schedules, proved to be excellent training for independent feature filmmaking.


A teen tennis tale, 16 Love was written and produced by the team behind A Cinderella Story and features young stars Lindsey Shaw and Chandler Massey. E One, the international distributors of the Twilight movies, has bought worldwide rights. Adam forged a cutting-edge plan for distribution in the United States, where the film enjoyed a simultaneous 10-city theatrical run with day-and-date video-on-demand and online streaming.


Next up for his production company, Uptown 6 Productions (so named because he and his wife, Linda, met many years ago on the New York uptown 6 subway line), Adam is developing a young adult detective movie, Knox Chase on the Case, which he will write and direct. He’s also optioned the graphic novel Nanny and Hank: Retirement is Hell, which he describes as a “septuagenarian vampire story.” He’s hoping to get it up on the big screen by the 2013 holidays, “because I think 70-year-old vampire grandparents make for a happy Christmas—but that’s me.”


On a more domestic note, Adam is also the proud father of daughter Dorothy (5) and son Eli (3), who both make their big screen debuts in 16 Love. Adam splits his time between Los Angeles and Denver, Colorado, where his daughter is in class with Owen, the son of Lisa and Jake Mortell. Sam Winslow also lives out that way and, according to Adam, “we are always threatening to go out and have a beer together.” Adam also teaches acting for the camera and shooting action at the University of Colorado, Denver. Congrats to Adam on the film, and thanks so much for a great update!


I also found an interesting post on Facebook from Nicole Schmidt, so I reached out to find out more about her and her husband’s organization, the Baby Alex Foundation. 


“In 2007 our son Alex was born prematurely, at 26 weeks gestation and weighing less than two pounds. He suffered many complications in the hospital, including a severe brain hemorrhage that destroyed part of his brain. Thanks in part to Alex’s amazing neurosurgeon, Edward Smith ’92, Alex has made tremendous progress. He is now a thriving 4-year-old, although he struggles with many obstacles resulting from his difficult start, including cerebral palsy on his left side. Through athletics we have helped Alex gain the use of his left side. My husband, Erik, and I established the Baby Alex Foundation in 2008 to raise money for cutting-edge pediatric brain injury research. We have given more than $150,000 in grants to institutions such as Dartmouth-Hitchcock, Harvard Medical and Children’s Hospital Boston and Mass General.” 


For more information about the foundation, please visit www.babyalexfoundation.com, and if you are an athlete, you can join their long distance running and triathlon team, Team Baby Alex Foundation.


—Suzie Fromer, 26 Irving Ave., Tarrytown, NY 10591; suziefromer@gmail.com