User:Zappalajohn/sandbox

Early life
Paul F. Ryan attended Texas A&M University in 1992, for a BA in Marketing. After he received that, he earned his MA in Cinema/Television at University of Southern California in 1998. After attending school, Paul moved to California and started being a director, producer, and film editor. Ever since the 1990’s, he worked on featured independent films and founded MOR Entertainment, which started his venture into the film industry located in Manhattan Beach, California. In the last decade or so, MOR Entertainment worked with many film production companies such as Miramar Films, The Weinstein Company, Rogue Pictures, Dimension Films, and Paramount Digital Entertainment, and well-known cooperate companies such as Anheuser-Busch, Pepsi, and Myspace.

Home Room
In 2003, Ryan wrote and directed a drama award-winning independent film called Home Room. Home Room is a 133 minute feature debut and was released on September 5, 2003. The film is about two teenagers dealing with a post-Columbine experience. Unlike other school shooting films, Elephant and Zero Day, Home Room focuses more on the physiological side of events. The two teenage girls in the movie, Deanna (Erika Christensen) and Alicia (Busy Philipps), are troubled after the high school massacre. Deanna, described by Holden as “perky and so habitually upbeat,” suffers a head injury from the shooting, and Alicia, “dresses like a punk goth,” is ordered by the principal (James Pickens Jr.) to visit Deanna in the hospital. While that happens, police detectives investigate whether Alicia was involved in the shooting, due to claims of her standing next to the shooters before attacking. The film explores the depth of both teenage girls and focuses on the friendship they develop throughout the movie.

Critical Reception
The movie received mixed reviews from critics. It has a rating of 55% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 22 reviews, with a rating average of 5.6/10. On Metacritic, another review aggregator, the film has a score of 43 out of 100 based on 10 critics. Steven Holden, film and music critic for the New York Times, said that the film is “sluggishly paced and refuses to lighten up for even a second” but continued to state that “as the police story plods along, it eventually seems like a structural contrivance.” He concludes that “You come away from the movie not only caring about both girls, but believing that the bond they develop is genuine.” LA Times Staff Writer, Kevin Crust, stated, “With an unconscionably long running time of 2 hours and 11 minutes for what is essentially a two-hander between Philipps and Christensen, "Home Room" feels like detention -- without the possibility of recess.”

Personal Life
Ryan worked in a handful of award-winning independent films. He took part in the project Eye of the Storm, which received the Harold Lloyd Scholarship for Film Editing. He also did a thesis film called The List, which was rewarded First Place Drama at the College Emmy Awards. After working on small independent films, Ryan was a lecturer at Loyola Marymount University and Chapman University in film courses. He is currently teaching classes on directing, producing, and film editing at Brooks Institutes.