Outstanding Creative Team to Collaborate on the 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards®

SAG Awards® will be Simulcast Live on TNT and TBS on
Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012 at 8 p.m. (ET) / 5 p.m. (PT)

LOS ANGELES - (Dec. 1, 2011) - Jeff Margolis, executive producer and director of the 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards®, announced the team of talented producers and artists who will create this year’s ceremonies.

“We look forward to the SAG Awards® as an opportunity for fresh collaboration with an outstanding group of creative colleagues,” said Margolis, whose Jeff Margolis Productions produces the awards telecast in association with Screen Actors Guild Awards® LLC. “We take great pride in designing a memorable evening for both the community of actors at the awards ceremony and for our audience at home which has grown consistently year after year.”

Kathy Connell is the Screen Actors Guild Awards’ producer. Connell is also the Screen Actors Guild’s executive producer for national programming and in 2007-2008 produced the Guild’s yearlong award-winning celebration of its 75th Anniversary.

The Awards Committee for the Screen Actors Guild – chair JoBeth Williams, vice-chair Daryl Anderson, committee members Scott Bakula, Shelley Fabares and Paul Napier – advise at all stages leading up to the production.

Supervising producers are Gloria Fujita O’Brien and Mick McCullough. Fujita O’Brien, who met Jeff Margolis on ABC’s primetime special airing of the “Special Olympics Opening Ceremonies” has spearheaded project development and show production for Jeff Margolis Productions since 1988. Mick McCullough was brought aboard to produce the “Miss America Pageant” in 1992. Nearly twenty years later Fujita O’Brien and McCullough continue to serve as producers on most Jeff Margolis Productions projects.

Executive in charge of production Benn Fleishman is a three-time Emmy® nominee for the HBO specials “Bill Maher…But I’m Not Wrong” (2010), “Ricky Gervais: Out of England” (2009) and “Bill Maher: The Decider” (2008).  He most recently served as supervising producer on “Colin Quinn:  Long Story Short” on HBO and the syndicated “A Hollywood Christmas Celebration at the Grove” and produced the “Creative Arts Emmy Awards”, the “NewNowNext Awards” for Logo and the 2011 “Do Something Awards” for VH1.

In addition to the SAG Awards, Peabody Award winning writer Stephen Pouliot has collaborated with Jeff Margolis on numerous specials, including “CBS: 50 Years from Television City,” and “A Gala for the President at Ford’s Theatre.” Other specials he has written include “The 9/11 Concert for New York City”, the Academy Awards® and the Opening Ceremonies for the International Special Olympic Games in Shanghai.

Production designers John Shaffner & Joe Stewart have been honored with 34 Emmy nominations, an Art Directors Guild Award for the 2006 Emmy Awards, plus four Art Directors Guild nominations and five Emmys. Shaffner was the chair of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Board of Governors, while Stewart serves as chair of the Academy’s Governor’s Ball and Sculpture committees.

Lighting designer Jeffrey Engel is an Emmy-winner and 22-time Emmy nominee for such projects as the 63rd and 64th Academy Awards.

Composer and conductor Lenny Stack is an Emmy-winner for music arranging for the “Screen Actors Guild 50th Anniversary Special” and composer of the current SAG Awards theme. Stack is also the musical director for the Golden Globe® ceremony.

Eight-time Emmy nominee Douglass M. Stewart Jr. will produce the film tribute saluting the accomplishments of SAG Life Achievement Award honoree Mary Tyler Moore. Stewart is a veteran of 28 Oscar® telecasts, 13 Emmy shows and 20 Emmy nominations announcements.

Paul Fagen will produce the SAG Awards “In Memoriam” homage.  Fagen produces live film events specializing in celebrity tributes and award shows. In the past 20 years, he has honored over 60 major celebrities. With his company P. Fagen Productions he also produces tribute reels, trailers, industrial films and documentaries.

Quinn Monahan is producing the SAG Awards annual salute to Guild members. Monahan has created film packages for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Costume Designer Guild Awards.

Art director, Keaton S. Walker is a multiple Emmy and Art Director’s Guild honoree for his work on the Oscars and the Emmys.

Keith Greco will design the Award ceremonies’ grand entrance and showroom décor. Among many recent entertainment and corporate projects, Greco Décor designed the premiere for Cirque du Soleil’s “Iris” at the Kodak Theatre, the launch event for Activision’s record-breaking video game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” and the “Los Angeles Haunted Hayride” in Griffith Park, which drew 50,000 visitors.

Maggie Barrett Caulfield returns as the SAG Awards executive in charge of talent. Rosalind Jarrett, executive in charge of publicity, was the 2011 recipient of the ICG Publicists Bob Yeager Award for community service. She was previously honored with the Publicists Guild’s 1986 Maxwell Weinberg Showmanship Award.

SAG Awards coordinating producer Jon Brockett began his career at SAG in 1996 at the New York branch office in production development. Another SAG Awards success story is publicity manager Carrie White Scanlan, who began as the awards production secretary in 1999. As the junior member of the publicity department the following year, White Scanlan created the SAG Awards Online Auction to Benefit the SAG Foundation, which she has continued to expand and manage for a dozen years.

Cynthia Kistler serves as the SAG Awards associate producer and previously was the Awards’ production manager. She most recently was associate producer on the Creative Arts Emmy Awards, the “NewNowNext Awards” for Logo and the 2011 “Do Something Awards” for VH1.

SAG Awards event supervisor Andrea Wyn Schall, a two-time Special Events Gala award nominee and author of “Budget Bash – Simply Fabulous Events on a Budget,” coordinates the Awards’ event design and logistics.  She and Greco create the Champagne Taittinger toast that opens the SAG Awards Red Carpet.

The SAG Awards challenges a chef to create a single plate that appeals to both the eye and the palate and as a televised event requires impeccable service that is efficient and unobtrusive. Lucques Catering under the direction of James Beard Award-winning chef Suzanne Goin and front-of-the-house expert Caroline Styne, will cater the SAG Awards. Goin, together with award-winning sommelier Styne, owns three of Los Angeles’ hottest restaurants, Lucques, A.O.C. and Tavern. They share the SAG Awards philosophy of “going green,” in their choices of food purveyors and culinary practices, while offering the impeccable service that a televised awards show requires.

Lucques’ menu will be complemented by Champagne Taittinger’s Brut La Française, which is also served in the Champagne Taittinger Toast that opens the SAG Awards Red Carpet each year, and wines by the SAG Awards official vintner Dry Creek Vineyard. Both multi-generational family-owned firms, Champagne Taittinger and Dry Creek Vineyard are donors to the SAG Foundation.

Punctuating the dinner table design will be the classic Hollywood-inspired floral arrangements by Christopher Matsumoto of C.J. Matsumoto & Sons. C.J. Matsumoto & Sons was co-named Best Florist by Southern California Meetings and Events Magazine in their 2010 Best of Industry Awards.

While the showroom is being transformed, rising in the Shrine’s east parking lot is the tent housing the Post-Awards Gala hosted by PEOPLE, the world’s most successful and popular magazine and the Entertainment Industry Foundation, for 68 years a philanthropic leader in the entertainment industry, to honor the charitable endeavors of SAG members.  EIF and PEOPLE not only throw the Awards fabulous after-party to honor actors charitable endeavors but also make a generous annual donation to support the SAG Foundation.

The 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremonies will be simulcast live coast-to-coast on TNT and TBS from the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center on Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012 at 8 p.m. (ET) / 5 p.m. (PT). An encore presentation will air immediately following on TNT at 10 p.m. (ET) / 7 p.m. (PT).

Preceding the SAG Awards® ceremony will be the annual tnt.tv and tbs.com Red Carpet Webcast at 6:00 p.m. (ET) / 3:00 p.m. (PT) featuring the announcement of the SAG Honors for Outstanding Action Performances by Film and Television Stunt Ensembles at 6:15 p.m. (ET) / 3:15 p.m. PT.

The 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards will be produced by Jeff Margolis Productions in association with Screen Actors Guild Awards®, LLC. For more information about the SAG Awards, SAG, TNT and TBS, visit sagawards.org/about, “like” SAG Awards at facebook.com/sagawardsofficialpage and follow SAG Awards at twitter.com/sagawards.

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Contact: Rosalind Jarrett
publicity@sagawards.org
(310) 235-1030