Richard J. Lewis

Not to be confused with the neurotic American comedian of a similar name, Richard J. Lewis is a Canadian film and television director. Like many directors from north of the 49th parallel, Lewis got his start in Canada's thriving low-budget television industry, directing episodes of a syndicated reboot of the thriller anthology "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and a television series based on DC Comics' "Superboy" character in the mid 1980s. After that inauspicious start, Lewis's first feature film, 1994's "Whale Music," turned out to be a small masterpiece; based on the cult-favorite novel by Canadian author Paul Quarrington and featuring original music by Toronto scene heroes the Rheostatics, Whale Music told the story of the Brian Wilson-like reclusive rock star Desmond Howl (Maury Chaykin), who went into the hiding after the death of his brother. The brother was played by writer-actor Paul Gross, who went on to hire Lewis to direct episodes of the comic crime series he created and starred in, "Due South." Lewis worked steadily in both Canadian and American television for the rest of the 1990s, and in 2000 began a nine-year association as a director and executive producer on the hit police procedural drama "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation." In 2010, he returned to the big screen with an adaptation of Mordecai Richler's comic novel "Barney's Version," starring Paul Giamatti and Rosamund Pike.