William Vito Pollina (born June 25, 1961) is an American film and television writer, producer and director. Pollina was born in

Harvey, Illinois Harvey is a city in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The population was 20,324 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Harvey is bordered by the villages of Dixmoor, Illinois, Dixmoor and Riverdale, Illinois, Riverdale to the north; ...

to Italian immigrants from Sicily. He studied theater at the

American Academy of Dramatic Arts The American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA) is a Private college, private drama school with two locations, one in New York City and one in Los Angeles. The academy offers an associate degree in occupational studies and teaches drama and related ...

(AADA). Pollina was a theater fan, and would promote concerts and plays at an early age. His first film role was a

bit part In acting, a bit part is a role in which there is direct interaction with the principal actors and no more than five lines of dialogue, often referred to as a five-or-less or under-five in the United States, or under sixes in British televisio ...

Richard Rush Richard Rush (August 29, 1780 – July 30, 1859) was an American lawyer, politician and diplomat who served as the 8th United States Attorney General from 1814 to 1817 and the 8th United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1825 to 1829. He serv ...

's slapstick cop drama '' Freebie and the Bean''. After high school in San Mateo, CA., Pollina moved to Los Angeles where he worked various jobs pursuing an acting career, and eventually moved into production work. One of his first jobs was working with children's television producers

Sid and Marty Krofft Sid Krofft (born July 30, 1929) and Marty Krofft (April 9, 1937 – November 25, 2023), known as The Krofft Brothers and born as Cydus and Moshopopoulos Yolas, were a Canadian sibling team of television creators, writers and puppeteers. Through ...

. During the 1980s and 1990s, he ran a film and television marketing company called Optical Nerve. Beyond writing, producing and directing hundreds of trailers and TV spots, Pollina designed and created the first DVD interactive menu for home video specialist Warren Lieberfarb at

Warner Home Video Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment, Inc. (doing business as Warner Bros. Home Entertainment; formerly known as Warner Home Video and WCI Home Video and sometimes credited as Warner Home Entertainment) is the American home video distribution ...

, for

Clint Eastwood Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western (genre), Western TV series ''Rawhide (TV series), Rawhide'', Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the "Ma ...

Academy Award The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...

winning film ''

Unforgiven ''Unforgiven'' is a 1992 American revisionist Western film produced and directed by Clint Eastwood from a screenplay by David Webb Peoples. It stars Eastwood as William Munny, an aging outlaw and killer who takes on one more job years after ...

''. Pollina was President of Optical Nerve when it served as one of

Fox Sports Net Fox Sports Networks (FSN), formerly known as Fox Sports Net, was the collective name for a group of regional sports channels in the United States. Formed in 1996 by News Corporation, the networks were acquired by the Walt Disney Company on Mar ...

's marketing companies during FSN's initial launch. He left marketing to pursue television and film development in 2000 and teamed with several television writers to produce short films such as 2002's Mackenheim. His first film success was with 2004's ''

You Got Served ''You Got Served'' is a 2004 American dance drama film written and directed by Chris Stokes, who was also the business manager of the performers who were the film's main characters: recording artist Marques Houston and the boy band B2K. The ...

'', a film about

street dance Street dance is an umbrella term for a large number of social dance styles such as: breakdancing, popping, Locking (dance), locking, house dance, waacking, voguing, etc. Social dance styles have many accompanying steps and foundations, created o ...

battling and

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. The film opened at No. 1 at the box office and received two MTV Movie Award nominations. In addition to his work in film and television, Billy Pollina has been an activist for LGBTQ rights since the 1980s and the onset of the AIDS crisis. He served as marketing director for The Courage Campaign and was one of the founding organizers for The National Equality March in Washington D.C. in 2009. Pollina spends his time in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and New York.

References

Living people Film producers from Illinois Television producers from Illinois 1961 births People from Harvey, Illinois American people of Italian descent {{US-film-producer-stub