My good old friend Max took this picture of me. We were wrapping a week of intense taping. I still do not know why I look so happy. Relieved it was over or hiding my fear about the result? In case there is confusion: I am Frederic Colier, a French-born, US-naturalized polyglot filmmaker, playwright, novelist, musician, academic, and, I suppose, entrepreneur.

I was born in Audresselles, France, with French and Flemish origins. I have spent most of my life abroad, traveling from Russia to Australia. I have been based in New York City since 1995. I joined my first band, The Fallers in the Bordeaux region as a drummer in 1979. The band never played live however. During this apprenticeship period, I picked up the guitar and eventually settled for the bass guitar, though I still detour quite a lot to the guitar.

Living in the UK from 1984 on, I joined several indie rock bands around London.  After spending two years with Transmission on keyboard and bass, I joined the Birmingham-based pop rock band Purple, along with Nigel Clark, Mathew Priest.  The band went through several incarnations. Ben Lurie was inviting to join only to quit the band a week later to join Jesus and Mary Chain. Andy Miller was incorporated into the trio, which renamed itself Dodgy.  They later charted success in the European charts through the late 90s.

I would define my bass playing style as “present,” modeled after lead rock bass guitarists of the 60s’ and 70s’, mainly John Entwistle of the Who, Jack Bruce of Cream, Chris Squire of Yes and later Jean-Jacques Burnel of The Stranglers. My style got me an audition with alternative rock band New Model Army as a potential replacement for the then-departing bass player, Moose Harris. But my ambitious musical career came to an abrupt end the day after the audition. My left wrist was shattered when an untied grand piano at the back of a truck tipped over during a move . . . and that was that.

My next path led to the theater stage. It was while working a her Majesty’s Theater, in the West End of London, that I completed my first plays and a novel. Though most of my writing from this period was in French, I did write my first play and songs in English.

Relocating to Barcelona in 1992, I taught music, while playing in several local bands, and continued writing. It was during this time that I became interested in films and wrote my first screenplays. In 1995, I moved to the States. While working at the New York-based bilingual theater group, Ubu Repertory Theater, I completed a Masters in Film Studies at Montclair State University, NJ. In 2001, following the closing of Ubu Rep, I took a temporary assignment for Morgan Stanley at the World Trade Center. I had only been working there for only six months, when I witnessed first hand the 9/11 attacks… I worked on the 65th floor but on that day I was unusually late. Someone was watching over me…

I created Altered Ego Entertainment, a production company the same year, and several other businesses along the years: Books du Jour and Lingorama, which I still run. I continue playing music with my groups Troublebadour and Hyper Global Intensity, composing soundtracks for his films and TV series.

Over the years, I also produced and directed multiple film and TV projects. My directing credits include the short films, ”Of Wanderlust” (2003), which screened nationally and internationally and won awards on the festival circuit (Izmir, Turkey, WorldFest Houston, Fire Island, NY), “Desert Weeds” (2004) Clermont-Ferrand, and Bounce” (2005). I completed my debut feature with “The Hindenburg Omen” (2008), and have been the creator and executive producer of the ongoing TV series Book Case TV and Books du Jour. His films tends to focus on the emptiness of modern life where castaways in search of meaning flounder through life. His characters are attracted to experiences just to feel alive.

As a writer-screenwriter, I was the recipient of a 2007 Panasonic Digital Filmmaker Grants, at the Independent Feature Project Market (IFP Market) for my script “M & N.” My follow-up screenplay “Made in China” was selected at the IFP Market 2009, at Dreamago screenwriting workshop 2010, and the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting as a quarter finalist.

As an author, I have written several plays as well as literary and non-fiction works. My first play, “Life Support Machines,” was written to participate in a playwriting contest in the East End of London in 1989. Though I did not win, the jury encouraged me to persevere, underlying the existential quality of my story. Still not convinced that this is an asset. Nonetheless, since, several of his plays have either been read or produced on both sides of the ocean, notably “Barbed-Wire Hearts,” “Heartbreak Tango” and “The Proposal,” the latter was adapted into the feature film “Dinosaur Park” (2009). I have also written several novels, ”Barabane! Barabane!” and “Fleur de Peau” (which will probably never be published), and the collection of short stories “Témoignages Crépusculaires” in French. I authored the play collection, ”Playground for Talking Heads,” the novel, ”The Rain Crow”, the short story collection, ”A Memoir of Absence,” and the experimental novel, “The Bosphorus Hug.” I sometimes writes in popular genres under the name of Frank Debonair, the private book investigator featured on Book Case TV.

I teach rhetorical writing at Fordham University, Lehman College, and film studies at City College. Anything else? Yes, I earned a PhD in Comparative Literature. Anyway, click around. It’s all there. Well almost. I’m married. Two beautiful daughters. But that is private. Looking at it all, sure feels like a long way from where I started…