Screenplay co-writer Nick Simon gets national press

Nick Simon (right), with Julie Anderson Friesen who at the time was programmer for the Reel Dakota film festival in Sioux Falls.

Nick Simon, former Sioux Falls resident and now a Los Angeles screenwriter and film director, is mentioned in a Variety magazine story outlining his latest project. A story also is in Entertainment Weekly.

Actors Bryan Cranston, Logan Marshall-Green and Alice Eve star in “Eye of Winter,” an indie film Simon co-wrote with Osgood Perkins and director Tze Chun.

The film is about a struggling motel owner (Eve) who, along with her daughter, is taken hostage by a nearly blind career criminal (Cranston) to be his eyes as he attempts to retrieve his cash package from a crooked cop (Marshall-Green).

An earlier Simon project, his movie “Removal,” was released this year. The psychological thriller written and directed by Simon was one of the movies featured at Reel Dakota, a Sioux Falls film series. The film stars Billy Burke of the “Twilight” series, Elliott Gould, Mark Kelly and Emma Caulfield.

Both “Removal” and a short work by Simon, “The 7th Claus,” were selected by Julie Anderson Friesen, former festival director of Reel Dakota and now founder of Cinema Falls. She is currently in talks with Simon about a local screening of “Eye of Winter.”

Simon was a Soiux Falls KTTW TV employee in 2000 when he helped with a sunrise shoot for a 33-minute film by Sioux Falls native Barbara Schock. The film,  “My Mother Dreams the Satan’s Disciples in New York,” won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film that year.