Edward Summer - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Edward Summer has been an award winning painter, motion picture director, screenwriter, internet publisher, magazine editor, journalist and science writer, comic book writer, novelist, book designer, actor, cinematographer, motion picture editor, documentary film maker, film festival founder, and educator.

Among his better known works are the ground-breaking collection of Carl Barks

Carl Barks

Carl Barks was an American Disney Studio illustrator and comic book creator, who invented Duckburg and many of its inhabitants, such as Scrooge McDuck , Gladstone Gander , the Beagle Boys , The Junior Woodchucks , Gyro Gearloose , Cornelius Coot , Flintheart Glomgold , John D...

stories Uncle Scrooge McDuck: His Life and Times, the Dinosaur Interplanetary Gazette
Dinosaur Interplanetary Gazette
The Dinosaur Interplanetary Gazette , founded July 4, 1996, was a pioneering online science magazine. It is arguably the first continuously published online science magazine in history....

(one of the pioneering online magazines), the first motion picture based upon Robert E. Howard's

Robert E. Howard

Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....

character Conan The Barbarian

Conan the Barbarian

Conan the Barbarian is a fictional sword and sorcery hero that originated in pulp fiction magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, several films , television programs, video games, roleplaying games and other media...

, the novel Teefr, and a prequel The Legend of Teddy Bear Bob.

Early work

Born in Buffalo, New York, Summer studied painting at the Albright Art Gallery (now called the Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Albright-Knox Art Gallery

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is an art museum located in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. The gallery is a major showplace for modern art and contemporary art. It is located directly across the street from Buffalo State College.-History:...

, Albright Art School, and with the noted water-color painter Sandra Chessman. He was also acquainted from childhood with another noted water-colorist, Robert Blair

Robert Blair

Robert Blair may refer to:* Robert Blair , Scottish clergyman* Robert Blair , Scottish poet* Robert Blair, Lord Avontoun , son of the above, Scottish lawyer...

.

Charles Summer, his father, was an amateur photographer who owned a then uncommon Exacta single lens reflex camera. The world-famous photographer Milton Rogovin

Milton Rogovin

Milton Rogovin was a documentary photographer who has been compared to great social documentary photographers of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis. His photographs are in the Library of Congress, the J...

was a family friend and early on exposed him to fine-art photographs.

At fifteen, Summer had a special one-man exhibit of his drawings in a group show at the Buffalo Museum of Science.

Theater

Studio Theater (now called Studio Arena Theater

Studio Arena Theater

- History :Founded in the 1920s in Buffalo, NY by a group of local enthusiasts, the Studio Theatre evolved as both a theatre and a theatre school into Western New York's only professional regional theatre....

), Buffalo, NY. appearance in Many Moons

Many Moons

Many Moons is a children's picture book written by James Thurber and illustrated by Louis Slobodkin. It was published by Harcourt, Brace & Company in 1943 and won the Caldecott Medal in 1944. Princess Lenore becomes ill, and only one thing will make her better: the moon...

, based on a James Thurber

James Thurber

James Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine.-Life:...

book, choreographed by Michael Bennett

Michael Bennett

Michael Bennett was an American musical theater director, writer, choreographer, and dancer. He won seven Tony Awards for his choreography and direction of Broadway shows and was nominated for an additional eleven....

. Director: Roberta Sharpe circa 1961.

Worked with Fred Keller and Neal Du Brock

Neal Du Brock

Neal Du Brock directed the world-premieres of many important plays including Edward Albee's Box and Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky ....

as actor and stage manager. Also Joe Krysiak founder of Project Artaud.

Motion pictures

Encouraged by experimental film maker Peter Adair

Peter Adair

Peter Adair was a filmmaker and artist, best known for his pioneering documentary, Word Is Out.-Career:Adair entered the film industry in the 1960s and first gained critical attention with his 1967 documentary Holy Ghost People, a film record of a Pentecostal snake handler worship service in the...

, Summer ultimately attended the first year of the New York University School of the Arts (then under the NYU School of Education and called the School of Television, Motion Pictures and Radio). Haig Manoogian, instrumental in starting the career of Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese

Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...

by producing the film "Who's That Knocking at My Door

Who's That Knocking at My Door

Who's That Knocking at My Door, originally titled I Call First, is a 1967 drama film, which marks Martin Scorsese's debut as a director. Exploring themes of Catholic guilt similar to those in his later film Mean Streets, the story follows Italian-American J.R. as he struggles to accept the secret...

" headed the school and was one of the main instructors.

At NYU, Summer continued painting and studied with, among others, acclaimed photo-realist Audrey Flack

Audrey Flack

Audrey Flack is an American photorealist painter, printmaker, and sculptor.Flack studied fine arts in New York from 1948 to 1953. She earned a graduate degree and an honorary doctorate from Cooper Union in New York City, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Yale University. She studied art history at...

. Harry Hurwitz

Harry Hurwitz

Harry Hurwitz was an American film director, screenwriter, actor and producer. His film The Projectionist was his directorial debut and also the first acting role for actor/comedian Rodney Dangerfield. He often used the pseudonym "Harry Tampa"...

, director of The Projectionist
The Projectionist (film)
The Projectionist is a 1971 film written and directed by Harry Hurwitz. It featured the film debut of Rodney Dangerfield. The film employs the use of superimposition of older films, the first time such techniques were used.-Plot:...

was also an instructor and personal friend.

His student film "Item 72-D, The Adventures of Spa and Fon" not only won multiple awards, but was shown worldwide at many film festivals. It was the first film shown at the now famous Film Forum

Film Forum

Film Forum is a nonprofit movie theater located at 209 West Houston Street in New York City. It began in 1970 as an alternative screening space for independent films, with 50 folding chairs, one projector and a US$19,000 annual budget. Karen Cooper became director in 1972 and under her leadership,...

movie theater in New York City when the Film Forum was only a tiny loft space on West 88th Street in Manhattan. Hervé Villechaize

Hervé Villechaize

Hervé Jean-Pierre Villechaize was a French actor who achieved worldwide recognition for his role as Mr. Roarke's assistant, Tattoo, in the television series Fantasy Island...

, then unknown was one of the stars of "Item 72-D, The Adventures of Spa and Fon" Villechaize went on to fame in The Man with the Golden Gun

The Man with the Golden Gun (film)

The Man with the Golden Gun is the ninth spy film in the James Bond series and the second to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond...

and as a recurring character in the television show Fantasy Island

Fantasy Island

Fantasy Island is the title of two separate but related American fantasy television series, both originally airing on the ABC television network.-Original series:...

. A co-writer of the film, John Byrum

John Byrum

John Byrum is an American film director and writer known for The Razor's Edge, Heart Beat, Duets and Inserts....

went on to write and direct numerous other films. Both Manoogian and Scorsese were advisors to the project.

Other early films included:
Solstice

Solstice

A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year when the Sun's apparent position in the sky, as viewed from Earth, reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes...

(1968) - Film Editor
High in the Wind Rivers (1970) - Cinematographer, Film Editor
Street Scenes 1970 (1970) - Cinematographer, Sound Recording, Film Editor

As a fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

, Summer received a grant to produce a documentary about the history of American Comic Strip and Comic Book art. This unfinished film covered, among other people, Jack Kirby

Jack Kirby

Jack Kirby , born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium....

, Milton Caniff

Milton Caniff

Milton Arthur Paul Caniff was an American cartoonist famous for the Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon comic strips.-Biography:...

, Carl Barks

Carl Barks

, Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones

Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...

, Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...

, Dick Huemer

Dick Huemer

Dick Huemer was an animator in the Golden Age of Animation.- Career :...

and Ralph Bakshi

Ralph Bakshi

Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...

.

He worked with CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

Camera Three

Camera Three was a Sunday morning program devoted to the arts. It ran on CBS from 22 January 1956 to 21 January 1979, and moved to PBS in its final year to make way for the then-new CBS News Sunday Morning...

on a two-part series covering the history of comic books and comic strips.

In 1975, Summer helped his friend Brian De Palma

Brian De Palma

Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense and crime thriller films, including such box office successes as the horror film Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission:...

re-do all of the promotional materials for Phantom of the Paradise

Phantom of the Paradise

Phantom of the Paradise is a 1974 musical film written and directed by Brian De Palma. The story is a loosely adapted mixture of The Phantom of the Opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Faust and also briefly references Frankenstein and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari...

. As a result, producer Edward R. Pressman

Edward R. Pressman

Edward R. Pressman is an American film producer.Pressman was born in New York City, New York, the son of Lynn and Jack Pressman, known as the "King of Marbles", who founded the Pressman Toy Corporation.-Filmography:...

approached Summer for other projects. The result was Conan The Barbarian

Conan the Barbarian

which took nearly seven years to bring to the screen. The original treatment/screenplay was written by Summer with some collaboration by Roy Thomas

Roy Thomas

Roy William Thomas, Jr. is an American comic book writer and editor, and Stan Lee's first successor as editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. He is possibly best known for introducing the pulp magazine hero Conan the Barbarian to American comics, with a series that added to the storyline of Robert E...

who had written and edited the Marvel Comic Book series.

2003 Founded The Buffalo International Film Festival

Buffalo International Film Festival

The Buffalo International Film Festival was founded in 2003 and takes place in Buffalo, New York. It is also known as The Buffalo Film Festival.-History:The film festival became a 501c3 not-for-profit charity in January 2005....

Comic books

Gold Key Comics

Gold Key Comics was an imprint of Western Publishing created for comic books distributed to newsstands. Also known as Whitman Comics, Gold Key operated from 1962 to 1984.-History:...

Several science fiction adaptations for Starstream. Born of the Sun. Shaka

Marvel Comics

Marvel Comics

Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...

Plot Red Sonja

Red Sonja

Red Sonja, the She-Devil with a Sword, is a fictional character, a high fantasy sword and sorcery heroine created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith, and loosely based on Red Sonya of Rogatino in Robert E. Howard's 1934 short story "The Shadow of the Vulture"...

Issue One. Red Sonya and the Unicorn. This story largely defined Red Sonja's personality and "inner nature."

Plot: The Invaders

The Invaders

The Invaders, a Quinn Martin Production , is an ABC science fiction television program created by Larry Cohen that ran in the United States for two seasons, from January 10, 1967 to March 26, 1968...

Involving the revival of the Golem

Golem

In Jewish folklore, a golem is an animated anthropomorphic being, created entirely from inanimate matter. The word was used to mean an amorphous, unformed material in Psalms and medieval writing....

to defeat the Axis

Axis Powers

The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...

.

Plot: Conan The Barbarian

Conan the Barbarian

The Devourer of the Dead Story about origin of Egyptian pyramids.

Editor: Superman

Superman

Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...

the Movie Magazine, DC Comics

DC Comics

DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...

Summer was instrumental in beginning the process that resulted in Shuster and Siegel receiving lifetime financial benefits from their creation of Superman

Superman

Magazines

Founding editor and co-publisher: The Dinosaur Times
The Dinosaur Times
The Dinosaur Times was a magazine published by the founders of The Monster Times. The magazine was published by Les Waldstein and Larry Brill, and the editor was Edward Summer. Although four issues were written and designed, only three were ever published...

Contributing writer: Written By
Written By
Written By is a 2009 Hong Kong fantasy drama film co-written, produced, and directed by Wai Ka-Fai, and starring Lau Ching-Wan and Kelly Lin. Lau plays a lawyer who is killed in an accident, leaving behind his wife, daughter, and son...

, Time Magazine, New York Times, Circus
Circus (magazine)
Circus was a monthly American magazine devoted to rock music. It was published from 1966 to 2006. In its heyday the magazine had a full-time editorial staff that included some of the biggest names in rock journalism, including Paul Nelson, David Fricke, and Kurt Loder, and rivaled Rolling Stone in...

, Films in Review, The Perfect Vision, The Absolute Sound
The Absolute Sound
The Absolute Sound is an American monthly magazine which reviews audiophile-oriented sound-reproduction and recording equipment and recordings, and comments on various music-related subjects. It was founded in 1973 by Harry Pearson, who was the Editor in Chief...

, Home Theater Magazine, Skeptical Inquirer
Skeptical Inquirer
The Skeptical Inquirer is a bimonthly American magazine published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry with the subtitle: The magazine for science and reason....

, Skeptical Briefs, The Monster Times
The Monster Times
The Monster Times was a horror film fan magazine created in 1972, published by The Monster Times Publishing Co. Intended as a competitor to Famous Monsters of Filmland, it was edited at various times in its formative years by Chuck R. McNaughton, Allen Asherman, Joe Brancatelli and Tom Rogers...

.

Digital Nitrate Prize

In 2005, Edward Summer founded The Digital Nitrate Prize in order to encourage the research necessary to properly transfer and preserve the worlds motion picture heritage

Cultural heritage

Cultural heritage is the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations...

using the developing digital media

Digital media

Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital form. It can refer to the technical aspect of storage and transmission Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital (as opposed to analog) form. It can refer to the technical aspect of...

. Based upon the X Prize, the Digital Nitrate Prize will offer a cash prize for the first individual, group or corporation which is able to exactly duplicate the look of nitrate film (nitrate motion picture film) using digital transfer and digital projection.

Constructive Living

Edward Summer is a certified instructor of Constructive Living

Constructive Living

Constructive Living, founded in the 1980s by Dr David K. Reynolds, is a unique synthesis of the ideas and practices of Shoma Morita embodied in Morita Therapy and Naikan Practice as evolved by Ishin Yoshimoto.Constructive Living is a registered trademark....

. He studied with David K. Reynolds

David K. Reynolds

David Kent Reynolds, PhD is a writer and the founder of Constructive Living.He was retained by the World Health Organization to teach Constructive Living to professional health workers in China. Dr. Reynolds studied naikan with Yoshimoto Ishin in Japan.Reynolds, an American, currently divides his...

in Los Angeles, New York, West Virginia and Tennessee.

Filmography

1968 - Solstice
Solstice
A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year when the Sun's apparent position in the sky, as viewed from Earth, reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes...

- Producer, Editor

1968 - DeFeet - Producer, Director, Cinematographer

1970 - Item 72-D: The Adventures of Spa and Fon - Producer, Director
1970 - Street Scenes
Street Scenes
Street Scenes, also known as Street Scenes 1970 is a documentary directed by Martin Scorsese. It documents two protest rallies against the Vietnam War that took place in May 1970: the Hard Hat Riot on Wall Street in New York City and Kent State/Cambodia Incursion Protest in Washington, D.C...

, 1970 - Director/Cameraman, Editor

1970 - High in the Wind Rivers - Director/Cameraman

1982 - Conan the Barbarian
Conan the Barbarian
Conan the Barbarian is a fictional sword and sorcery hero that originated in pulp fiction magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, several films , television programs, video games, roleplaying games and other media...

- Associate Producer

1983 - Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...

- Marketing Consultant

1989 - Little Nemo
Little Nemo
Little Nemo is the main fictional character in a series of weekly comic strips by Winsor McCay that appeared in the New York Herald and William Randolph Hearst's New York American newspapers from October 15, 1905 – April 23, 1911 and April 30, 1911 – July 26, 1914; respectively.The...

: Adventures in Slumberland - Screenplay

2005 - Silent Music - Producer, Director (In Production)

2005 - The Magic of Magic - Producer, Director (In Production)

2006 - Clicker Clatter - Producer

2007 - Sirens - Producer (In Production)

2007 - Calvin of Oakknoll - Executive Producer, Consulting Director (In Production)

External links

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