Ray Schillaci
Virtual Host
Ray Schillaci is a professed film enthusiast whose wife thinks he’s downright obsessive. She insists he loves film more than her, their kids and dog. Not true, he loves that dog!
He received a Bachelor’s Degree in Business and has over 25 years’ experience in the motion picture and television industry. The last five years he shared duties running one of the major unions in Hollywood and was a director on the Motion Picture and Television Fund.
He went onto be a V.P. of Sales and Marketing for a small Burbank production company, and later became an advertising executive for Republic Media. During his time in the studios, he also did a brief three-year stint on the comedy circuit working along side Arsenio Hall, Fritz Coleman and Jenny Jones, to name a few.
After quitting comedy, he decided to put all his efforts into writing. His first script, a coming-of-age horror flick, Mortician’s Daughter, nabbed him an agent. Ray has written over a dozen scripts in different genres; comedy, drama, horror, action/adventure. He had a great deal of help from his mentor, Karl Schanzer, an old Roger Corman protégée. The man worked with a variety of talent from Coppola to Cameron and was the inspiration for Coppola’s “The Conversation.” He was a writer producer, high profile executive at Fox, co-author of the industry book, American Screenwriters and would be an invaluable sensei for Ray.
Schillaci was also a contributor to FRED Entertainment (formerly Quick Stop Entertainment) and is currently part of themovieguys.net as an entertainment journalist, film critic, and offers his PIC of the week. He’s been featured on The Movie Guys showcast with writer/director/producer Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids), director Marcus Nispel (2003’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Katie Hooten, head of Technicolor along with several indie filmmakers.
He recently finished his long in the making first novel, a supernatural spaghetti western, Gothic Dust and currently working on his second novel entitled, Nibble a tale of body horror. Chapters of both novels can be found at his website themonsterinmyhead.com where he blogs about the monster inside the head of every artist that drives them to pursue their art, discusses film, and supplies a synopsis for his screenplays and novels.
He also worked with the Phoenix Film Festival that featured the best in indie filmmaking while providing a voice for diversity and the LGBTQ community, and worked as well with the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival for 10 years in Staff Operations, Presenter, Q&As and as Film Presentation Coordinator. His tastes vary and he appreciates commercial as well as independent film. His only beef is boredom, re-treads and a story that has nothing to say. His credo; life’s too short not to be entertained.