Lindsay Doran has worked in the movie business for more than 30 years as a studio executive and as a producer. She has served as the President and COO of United Artists Pictures and as the President of Sydney Pollack’s Mirage Productions. She currently divides her time between her producing duties and her work as “The Script Whisperer®” – story consultation for studios on high priority script development.

Lindsay’s first film credit was as Executive in Charge of Production on the mock-documentary This is Spinal Tap. As a producer, her credits include Dead Again, Sense and Sensibility, Nanny McPhee  and Stranger Than Fiction. She is currently in the early stages of producing a stage musical adaptation of Nanny McPhee, written and directed by Emma Thompson.

As an executive, Lindsay worked on dozens of films including The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Planes Trains and Automobiles, The Naked Gun, Pet Sematary, Ghost, The Thomas Crown Affair, and two James Bond films – The World is Not Enough and Tomorrow Never Dies.

She is an Oscar nominee and the winner of numerous awards including the Golden Globe Best Picture Award and the British Academy Award for Best Film, both for Sense and Sensibility. More recently she received the Pioneer Award from the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center for “igniting a movement toward Positive Film.”

Lindsay tries to be guided by the Three Rules of Drama, found in an ancient text, as the basis for what motion picture entertainment ought to be:

#1 It must be arresting and amusing to the drunk.

#2 It must address the question, “How should we live?”

#3 It must address the question, “How does the universe work?”

Simultaneously, she tries to be guided by the three rules of scene writing, found in the less ancient writings of David Mamet, as to the three questions that must be answered in every scene:

#1 Who wants what?

#2 What happens if he or she doesn’t get it?

#3 Why now?