Biography for
John Scheinfeld More at IMDbPro »

Mini Biography

Emmy and Grammy and Writers Guild Award nominee and Telly Award-winner John Scheinfeld is a respected filmmaker who brings a broad spectrum of experiences and interests to pop culture, music, historical and spiritual projects for theatrical exhibition, cable and broadcast television.

Scheinfeld has just signed on to direct his first feature film, Fame & Fortune, which is also the first feature film to be made about Elvis Presley. The movie, for which Scheinfeld is also rewriting the script, is based on the 2007 best-selling book, Elvis: Still Taking Care of Business, about the extraordinary friendship between the King of Rock and Roll and his bodyguard, Sonny West.

His most recent documentary film, Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him)? premiered in New York and played in theaters across the country during the fall of 2010. The film, for which Scheinfeld was nominated for a prestigious Writers Guild Award for Outstanding Documentary...and for which USA Today named him one of the Top 100 Pop Culture People of 2010...was released internationally in the Summer of 2011.

A second Scheinfeld film was released in 2010. We Believe is an exuberant celebration of hope, loyalty, faith and the extraordinary love affair between a great city, Chicago, and its baseball team, the Cubs.

Previously, Scheinfeld directed, wrote and produced the theatrical documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon. It was an official selection of the Venice Film Festival, the Telluride Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival and the London Film Festival and was subsequently released in theaters worldwide and on DVD. It was also the recipient of the FOCAL International Award for Best Use of Archival Footage in a Feature/Factual Production).

On the heels of a Grammy nomination for producing 2005's Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of SMiLE, Scheinfeld wrote, produced and directed Electric Youth: Teen Stars in the Music Business, a 2-hour special for A&E for which he received an Emmy nomination as writer. Also, he wrote, produced and directed The Divine Bette Midler, a 2-hour special for A&E's award-winning BIOGRAPHY series and, with David Leaf, wrote, produced and directed a 5-part miniseries for BRAVO, The 100 Greatest TV Characters.

During his career Scheinfeld has written, produced or directed numerous retrospectives about show business legends such as the Bee Gees, Rosemary Clooney, Nat "King" Cole, Jimmy Durante, Bob Hope, Norman Lear, Dean Martin, the Marx Brothers, Ricky Nelson, Jack Paar, Peter Sellers, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams and Jonathan Winters.

Scheinfeld has also been in-demand in the highly competitive world of creating new series for American network television. He has created and written pilot scripts for new dramatic TV series for ABC, FOX, NBC and UPN. He was also Executive Producer of a 2-hour pilot for CBS, Intrigue, shot on location in Europe with Scott Glenn.