Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

Multifaceted director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon straddled the worlds of film, television and commercial work, doing each with remarkable aplomb. A native of Laredo, Texas, Gomez-Rejon climbed his way up the industry ladder, beginning as an assistant to A-list directors including Martin Scorsese, Nora Ephron, Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu and Sidney Lumet, on big budget movies such as "Casino" (1995), "You've Got Mail" (1998) and "Gloria" (1999). Next came a series of jobs as a second unit director, on titles including "Lucky Numbers" (2000), the Will Ferrell comedy "Bewitched" (2005) and the Oscar-winning "Argo" (2012). It was as a director, however, that Gomez-Rejon truly began to shine and came to public and critical attention. He helmed several episodes of the series "Glee" (Fox 2009-2015) and "American Horror Story" (FX 2012- ), and netted an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries on "American Horror Story: Coven." Meanwhile, Gomez-Rejon also built up a formidable slate of credits as an agency director of commercials, for brands including T-Mobile, American Express, and in a particularly high-profile stint, Chevrolet's ad for Super Bowl XLV in February 2011. Gomez-Rejon debuted as a feature director in the autumn of 2014, with a slasher film remake of Charles B. Pierce's 1976 drive-in thriller "The Town that Dreaded Sundown," about a maniac in a hood stalking the residents of Texarkana, Texas. Yet his next effort lay about as far from exploitation as one could imagine: he then entered the arthouse arena, with the Sundance 2015 premiere "Me & Earl & the Dying Girl," an adaptation of James Andrews's critically acclaimed (and darkly funny) 2013 novel, co-starring Thomas Mann, Jon Bernthal and Olivia Cooke. It tells the story of a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania high school student (Mann) who befriends a girl (Cooke) stricken with leukemia.