Marc Turtletaub founded Big Beach in August 2004 with Peter Saraf to produce and finance independent feature films. The company's production of Little Miss Sunshine won Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Alan Arkin) and Best Original Screenplay (Michael Arndt), and won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature, among many other honors.
Mr. Turtletaub has served as a producer on all of the company's acclaimed films, including Little Miss Sunshine, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris; Liev Schreiber's Everything Is Illuminated, starring Elijah Wood; Matt Mulhern's Duane Hopwood, starring David Schwimmer and Janeane Garofalo; Ramin Bahrani's Chop Shop, which world-premiered at the 2007 Cannes International Film Festival and for which the filmmaker was honored with the Independent Spirit Award for Someone to Watch; and Laurie Collyer's SherryBaby, starring Golden Globe Award-nominated Maggie Gyllenhaal of Away We Go.
Big Beach's most recent features produced by Mr. Turtletaub were Sunshine Cleaning,directed by Christine Jeffs and starring Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, and Alan Arkin; and Is Anybody There?, directed by John Crowley and starring Michael Caine. Venturing into stage work, the company also recently produced the hit off-Broadway show Sleepwalk with Me, written by and starring Mike Birbiglia and directed by Seth Barrish, which won the 2009 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show.
From Big Beach are a new documentary feature from director Jeffrey Blitz, who was an Academy Award nominee for Spellbound; and Philip Seymour Hoffman's Jack Goes Boating, in which Mr. Hoffman stars opposite Amy Ryan.
Focus Features
