Vertical

Rex Pickett is a California-based screenwriter and author who is most well known for writing Sideways, the book that became one of the most critically acclaimed and highest-grossing comedy films in Hollywood history. The screenplay for the film was named one of the Top 100 Screenplays of All Time by the Writers Guild of America while the movie itself was nominated for five Oscars (winning Best Adapted Screenplay) and seven Golden Globe Awards (winning Best Screenplay and Best Picture). Pickett also wrote the script for the Oscar-winning Best Live Action Short My Mother Dreams the Satan’s Disciples in New York, and his Sideways sequel Vertical won the Gold Medal for Popular Fiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. The Rex Pickett Papers are in archives at Geisel Library on the campus of his alma mater, UCSD. Pickett resides in Del Mar, California.

Scott Brick first began narrating audiobooks in 2000, and after recording almost 400 titles in five years, AudioFile magazine named Brick a Golden Voice and “one of the fastest-rising stars in the audiobook galaxy.” He has read a number of titles in Frank Herbert’s bestselling Dune series, and he won the 2003 Science Fiction Audie Award for Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. Brick has narrated for many popular authors, including Michael Pollan, Joseph Finder, Tom Clancy, and Ayn Rand. He has also won over 40 AudioFile Earphones Awards and the AudioFile award for Best Voice in Mystery and Suspense 2011. In 2007, Brick was named Publishers Weekly’s Narrator of the Year.

 Brick has performed on film, television and radio. He appeared on stage throughout the United States in productions of Cyrano, Hamlet, Macbeth and other plays. In addition to his acting work, Brick choreographs fight sequences, and was a combatant in films including Romeo and Juliet, The Fantasticks and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. He has also been hired by Morgan Freeman to write the screenplay adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama.