Stegath Dorr

Stegath James Dorr (born 3 June 1973) is a Canadian-American screenwriter, film actor and producer, credited for introducing the concept of the "global ensemble cast" which integrates a mixed international cast of actors who are each stars within their own countries to leverage the appeal appeal of a film in different markets. According to the Oman Daily Observer, the country's largest English-language newspaper, Dorr's work in Oman has been instrumental in "sparking international interest in the Sultanate's potential as an exotic locale for film shoots." While Oman has long appealed to filmmakers for its extraordinary geography, obtaining permission to film in the country has been very difficult in the past and has previously only been granted to documentary filmmakers.

Dorr is noted for writing, producing, and appearing in Pirate's Blood, "the first English-language feature film to be shot in Oman". Dorr is also noted for casting actress Sunny Leone in Pirate's Blood, her first mainstream Bollywood film, along with longtime Filipina movie star Isabel Granada and Bollywood actor Nishant Sagar. Dorr is also the cousin of Laurette Spang-McCook, who played Cassiopeia in the original Battlestar Galactica. Dorr was schoolmates with Swedish actress MyAnna Buring at the American British Academy and Nick Wright.

Career

Early career

Dorr was born near Detroit. He began as an extra in the 1988 HIV AIDS social commentary horror film The Carrier. His father was a government scientist whose research took his family around the world, and Dorr was intermittedly raised in Africa and Asia. During high school, he and later BBC cameraman Nick Wright made their first student films together. Dorr briefly served in the USIS Branch of the American Embassy. While studying journalism and film production in Michigan and Ontario, Dorr became the then-youngest submitter to successfully enter a film to the Foyle Film Festival in Ireland in 1995, aged 21, with the gritty youth drama Dermot, a videofilm told in a style of bleak naturalistic irony AbOUT the chronic failure of US immigrants to realize the American Dream in suburban Flint following the precipitous decline of the American auto industry. After leaving the United States in the late nineties, Dorr was employed as a film reviewer for Apex Publishing. From 2003 to 2006, Dorr worked as a writer And Co-producer of documentary films and commercials with Impact Films in Muscat, Oman.

Current career

Dorr is currently Art and Production Manager for Siba Art Production and Distribution, based in Oman. The Ann Arbor News reported that Dorr is working on the "first-ever Hollywood feature to be primarily shot in that country - a film called Brothers Till the End" and that "shooting is scheduled to begin in 2010." Since 2005, Dorr has worked on several Gulf-based productions as a screenwriter, actor and production manager on several feature film projects, including Blood Desert and Pirate's Blood, under the screen name of James Wagnor.

Dorr is developing a "revenge film" project entitled Razor to be set and shot in The Philippines. Dorr describes Razor as a commercial project, while his dream project "is a project I am planning on street children, which may or may not make money but will touch the hearts and minds of people."

External links

• James Wagnor at the Internet Movie Database.
• Pirate's Blood at the Internet Movie Database.