Douglas Day Stewart | Screenwriter | Director

Douglas Day Stewart is best known for his original screenplay “An Officer and a Gentleman,” which was based on his own experiences as a Naval Officer Candidate in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1962, undergoing rigorous training while dating a local factory girl. In addition to the many accolades and awards garnered by the film, “Officer” was recently listed by the American Film Institute as one of the ten highest grossing love stories in cinema history.

A medical problem would keep Stewart from realizing his dream to fly jets, and unlike his hero, he did not marry the factory girl, but he would spend three years as a ship’s officer serving off of Vietnam, and become an “O.O.D. — Officer Of the Deck underway, which qualified him to be at the helm of an 18,000 ton ship with 1700 souls aboard.

UPCOMING: screenwriter Douglas Day Stewart Tuesday Jan 5, 2010 6pm ET 5p CT 3p PT To listen live click bolded link below:

Rex Sikes’ Movie Beat chats with screenwriter Douglas Day Stewart

For twelve weeks in 1965 Stewart was the junior officer on a top secret team of Naval and Marine officers which sent the entire population of Marines at Camp Pendleton to Vietnam, thus ending our “police action” in that country and starting “The Vietnam War.”

Stewart’s other writing credits include the enduring first “Blue Lagoon” with Brooke Shields, the acclaimed “The Boy In the Plastic Bubble”, (the ABC television movie that launched John Travolta’s career), and “The Scarlet Letter,” Stewart’s take on Hawthorne’s classic novel, starring Demi Moore. Stewart wrote and directed the cult favorite “Thief of Hearts” (which boasts clubs of devoted women around the country) and the controversial “Listen to Me,” about college debaters forced to take both sides of the abortion issue.

Stewart has been nominated for an Academy Award, an Emmy, and for numerous Writers Guild Awards. His original screenplay “The Accident” (a semi-autobiographical story of a teen tragedy) will go before the cameras in Europe this year. His Musical adaptation of “An Officer and a Gentleman,” will begin production in Australia next year, and is Broadway bound after that. Stewart will direct his most recent original screenplay “The Flying Man,” a cross-cultural love story with spiritual overtones set in modern day Burma, next Spring.

Stewart is the father of three, sons Dylan and Sean, living in Los Angeles, and Shady, a fashion student at Parsons in New York City. He recently married artist Judith Gersten and settled in Hawaii.

As a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Stewart votes on all the major categories for the Academy Awards and he and Judith watch every film in contention. Stewart has lectured on screenwriting at the University of Southern California where he chaired a Mentors Group of awarded writers to help screenwriting students.

Rex Steven Sikes is an actor, producer, corporate presenter, entertainer, interviewer and seminar leader. Rex Sike’s Movie Beat interviews filmmakers, and people making it happen on radio, television and the web. (For a complete bio please visit his website.)