Film Fatales members joined us in person at the WGA West for a round table discussion about Comedy Film & Television with David Caspe (Black Monday), Jasmine Daghighian (Our Lady Productions), Patti Lee (Mad About You), and Sydnee Rimes (Black-ish) facilitated by Film Fatales members Nadine Truong and Stefanie Black.
David Herbert Caspe grew up in San Francisco and Chicago. He spent most of his life pursuing visual art, receiving an MFA in painting from The School of Visual Art in Manhattan before realizing his art was shitty. He moved to Los Angeles in 2007 to focus on feature writing. In television, he created and executive produced Happy Endings and Marry Me. David co-created Champaign ILL for YouTube and Black Monday currently airing on Showtime.
Jasmine Daghighian is a TV/Film producer. Her credits include Hot Summer Nights (EP), The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash (EP), Out of Omaha, (CP), Squaresville (Producer) and the Oscar winning documentary short The Lady in Number 6 (AP). In January of 2019, Jasmine became the development & production head of Our Lady Productions – where she partnered with Frankie Shaw (SMILF) to develop for film and television. Prior, Jasmine was a development executive at Imperative Entertainment (Late Night, All the Money in the World) and Imagine Entertainment (Rush, Get on Up).
Born the youngest of five girls in a traditional Chinese-American family, Patti Lee did the unthinkable and went into show business. She debated between a medical career and one in the Arts, but after enduring a chemistry class, Patti quickly chose the latter. Following a Bachelor’s degree from UCLA film school, she began her career lighting feature films, commercials, music videos and television shows, working first as a set lighting technician then becoming a gaffer. All during that time, she continued to sharpen her skills as a cinematographer on independent projects, including the Independent Spirit Award nominee, Bunny. Patti got her first big break as Director of Photography on The Bernie Mac Show. Since then, she has been busy shooting both single and multi-camera television and has received Emmy nominations for her work on Bob Hearts Abishola and Superior Donuts. In addition to her work as a DP, Patti Lee produced the Emmy nominated feature documentary, A Small Act, which premiered at Sundance and aired on HBO. The film was named by Roger Ebert as one of “The Best Documentaries of 2010.” Patti Lee lives in Los Angeles with her wife, director Jennifer Arnold.
Sydnee Rimes is a Vice President, Current Programming, ABC Studios. In this position, Sydnee currently oversees all creative aspects of multiple ABC Studios series including Black-ish, Grown-ish, Mixed-ish, and the upcoming Hulu series Little Fires Everywhere. Prior to joining ABC Studios, Sydnee was Director of Television at Brillstein Entertainment Partners. While at Brillstein, Sydnee was instrumental in the development and production of the ABC Network/ABC Studios series Samantha Who? She also oversaw the development of the CW series Ringer and multiple pilots.
A German-born Vietnamese filmmaker, Nadine Truong earned her MFA degree in Directing in 2009 from the American Film Institute Conservatory. Nadine received the Mary Pickford Scholarship for Excellence in Directing at AFI. She was one of three female directors in AFI’s competitive program, and the only fellow to write and direct two award-winning thesis films. Truong premiered her first feature film Someone I Used To Know (written by West Liang), starring Brian Yang (Hawaii 5-0), Rex Lee (Entourage), and Tzi Ma (Rush Hour), in 2013. Two years later, she directed the teen comedy feature Senior Project, (written by J. Lin) with Ryan Potter (Big Hero 6), Vanessa Marano (Switched At Birth), and comic Margaret Cho in the lead roles. Truong directed two episodes of the 2017 web comedy Misery Loves Company (created and written by Emily C. Chang and Sara Amini). Her episode titled “Racist” went on to become a semi-finalist at the NBCU Shorts Festival. Truong‘s 2017 drama I Can I Will I Did marks the first time she is in both the writer and director seat for a feature length film. Starring Tony Award nominee Mike Faist, the film was a finalist for the Grand Jury Award for Excellence in Narrative Feature Filmmaking at the Los Angeles Asian American Film Festival. At Florida’s Sunscreen Film Festival, it received the awards for Best Feature and Best Supporting Actress. In July 2017, the film garnered the Audience Choice Award at the Asian American Film Festival, New York.
Stefanie Black is an actor, writer, and director originally from Allentown, PA. She is most known for her recurring roles on such shows as Scandal (ABC), Making History (FOX), House of Lies (Showtime) and How I Met Your Mother (CBS); as well as appeared on This is Us (NBC), Causal (Hulu), AHS:1984 (FX), Grey’s Anatomy (ABC), Mike and Molly (CBS), Private Practice (ABC), Rizzoli and Isles (TNT), and many others. She is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a founding member and Artistic Director of the Ovation Award Winning, IAMA Theatre Company. As a director, her first feature film, Adult Interference, which she co-wrote and co-directed was distributed by Gravitas Ventures in 2019 and can be viewed on Amazon Prime, Paramount+, and all SVOD. Her short films have played festivals and won awards all over the United States and Canada. She directed the 2017 ABC Discovers Talent Showcase in Los Angeles. As a writer, she was a semi-finalist for the NBC Comedy Playground, Final Draft Big Break, and Sundance Episodic Lab. Stefanie currently has several projects in development for television and film. She resides in Los Angeles, CA with her husband and son.
