Trivia

Burt Reynolds' last film was Movie Money: Confidential (2022) written and directed by Rick Pamplin.

Pamplin directed his first feature film Provoked (1989) based on a verbal pitch, samples of his work, including a short film, a syndicated TV series, his spec script and the commitment of the star of the TV show to play the lead in the movie. He met the distributor who backed the film at a seminar at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Pamplin successfully taught screenwriting for 10 years in Hollywood. His classes and seminars were primarily held at Sherwood Oaks Experimental College, Loyola Marymount University, the Artists & Writers Workshop and the University of Southern California. Out of roughly 1,500 students, about 65 scripts were sold, many of them to major motion picture studios.

A Hollywood literary agent once met with Pamplin and his writing partner after reading their screenplay. He forcefully told them they were talentless, should get on a bus the next day and go back to Michigan, where they were from, and never come back to Hollywood or think about writing movies. They ignored his advice, then wrote and sold numerous screenplays.

Pamplin has been included and/or profiled in seven editions, beginning in 1998, of Louise Levison's best-selling book "Filmmakers & Financing: Business Plans for Independents." For the 9th edition, published in 2022, he wrote a 5,000-word chapter where he interviewed himself.

Pamplin's original co-written "spec" script "The Photographer" was optioned multiple times, eventually sold, produced and released in 1989 as Darkroom (1989) by Universal Studios. "It was a low-budget one location thriller, reminiscent of early Hitchcock, completely destroyed by the alleged filmmakers who ruined a very promising project," says Pamplin.

Before pursuing a career as a screenwriter and director, Pamplin studied acting in Hollywood, including at The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, and appeared in numerous plays, TV shows, commercials and movies, mainly as an extra or in small parts with under five lines.

In 2000, the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills requested a copy of the screenplay for the movie Hoover (2000) starring Academy Award- winning actor Ernest Borgnine, an original script created and written by Pamplin and his Darkroom (1989) co-writer, for the Academy's permanent collection.

Before securing his first feature film directing job in Hollywood, Pamplin worked as an unpaid intern, extra, actor, screenwriter, script doctor, teacher, production assistant, boom man, location scout, creative consultant, producer and assistant director.