James Napoli

James Napoli is a filmmaker, performer, and screenwriting educator who earned his MFA in Film from the London Film School and taught screenwriting at National University in Los Angeles and Columbia College Hollywood. In his role as a professional story analyst for Los Angeles production companies, Napoli has read and evaluated nearly a thousand works for the screen. His screenplay “Nick & Vin” was a top ten percent finisher in the Academy Nicholl Fellowships, and he is currently developing an original one-hour television pilot project, Nightside. He has optioned three original screenplays and has written and directed the festival award-winning dramatic short films “The Priests” and “Nobody Gets Hurt.” He co-created and co-hosted the cinema-themed podcast “Movies Not Movies,” and, as Head Writer for the Sirius/XM audio drama program New Frequency, he created over fifty original plays in every genre. James also has a background in improvisational theater, and has found this experience invaluable to the process of screenwriting.

Courses Taught

• Scenes and Sequences
• Writing the Feature Screenplay
• Screenwriting Workshop
• Film History and Script Analysis

Publications

• “Script Readers as Gatekeepers” – The Handbook of Script Development (Palgrave Macmillan)
• “How to Love What You Do When You Can’t Do What You Love” – Perform: Succeeding as a Creative Professional (Focal Press)
• “Cinematic Storytelling Across Cultures: A Foundation for International Online Collaboration in Screenwriting” (co-author with Bettina Moss) – Routledge Research in Higher Education’s Globally Networked Teaching in the Humanities: Theories and Practices
• Creative Screenwriting Magazine – Contributor, Articles on Screencraft

External Professional Affiliations

• Screenwriting Research Network