Susan Skoog

After graduating from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Susan Skoog found work in TV as producer, director and writer, eventually working for MTV, VH-1 and TNT and learning the ropes of maintaining music clearances. That skill came in handy when crafting the soundtrack of her debut feature "Whatever" (1998), since the rights to songs by the Ramones, Blondie and The Pretenders, among other groups, amounted to half her independent film's budget. Setting her film in an anonymous Toxic State (very akin to the New Jersey of Skoog's teen years), she plumbed the depths of suburban-girl angst, telling the very non-John Hughes coming of age tale in which girls muddle through bad adolescent sex, family conflict and self-medication with drugs and alcohol. One of its pivotal scenes involves a teenager so enraged with her parents that she orchestrates a robbery of her home, and the entire movie offers a bleakly realistic look at surviving high school in the early 80s. In addition to "Whatever," Skoog's credits include the short "A Dry Heat" and the TNT documentary "Inside the Academy Awards" (both 1994).