Nancy Hult Ganis
Encyclopedia
Nancy Hult Ganis, is an American
TV
and film
publicist, writer, producer and developer as well as the co-founder and partner of Out of the Blue…Entertainment. Ganis' most recent credits include the 2006 film Akeelah and the Bee
and the 2011 ABC television series Pan Am
.
, Hult's professional life started as a math teacher in her hometown's inner-city public schools. She later received an undergraduate degree
in history then attended the University of California at Berkeley to get a Master's degree
in journalism. After receiving her graduate degree, Hult worked as a journalist and in the public affairs department at San Francisco's PBS station, KQED. In addition to these duties at KQED, Hult also worked as a segment producer and writer covering foreign affairs and public policy issues. Her next big assignment at KQED was working on The Making of Raider's of the Lost Ark; the documentary won an Emmy for the program's producer, and Hult's future husband, Sid Ganis
.
Following the success of the Raiders documentary, Hult Ganis worked as a developer for the long-running PBS series Comedy Tonight. What began as a showcase featuring Bay Area comedians such as Dana Carvey
later listed national headliners such as Bobcat Goldthwait
, Kevin Pollak
, and Ellen Degeneres
. Whoopi Goldberg
hosted the series in 1987.
After working as Steven Spielberg
's assistant, Hult Ganis returned to San Francisco and a position as special projects director for the CBS affiliate, KPIX; during her tenure, the station went from last to first in Arbitron
the major market ratings.
on the film Amadeus
, Francis Ford Coppola
on Peggy Sue Got Married
and Lucasfilm
on Howard the Duck
.
Hult Ganis moved permanently to Los Angeles
in 1986 and set up the marketing department for Carolco Pictures
, at that time an independent film production company. While with Carolco, Hult Ganis handled such films as Extreme Prejudice, Angel Heart
, and the Tom Hanks
/Sally Field
vehicle, Punchline. After her move to Los Angeles, Hult Ganis became more politically active and joined the Hollywood Woman's Political Committee. This connection allowed her to co-produce the "Bells for Hope Celebration" shown at the inauguration of U.S. President Bill Clinton
. Having established an association with the Clinton Administration, Hult Ganis was able to contribute once again to her first love, education, by working with the president and his advisors on education issues. In the same vein, Hult Ganis worked worked with Michael J. Fox
on promoting the importance of having educational themes in television programs and movies to her producer and director contacts in Hollywood.
In 1996, Hult Ganis and her husband, Sid Ganis, created Out of the Blue...Entertainment, a film production company with credits that list both Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
; the Adam Sandler
films Mr. Deeds
and Big Daddy; and Akeelah and the Bee for Lionsgate Films, among others.
, and its in-the-air employees during the early 1960s. Initial development for the series came directly from executive producer Hult Ganis' own experience as a stewardess with Pan Am from 1968 to 1976.
Not only relying on her own experiences with the airline, as developer, Hult Ganis researched details for the show by reading up on Pan Am history and interviewing former Pan Am stewardesses. During the interviews, she learned about Pan Am's involvement in U.S. State Department
operations and behind-the-scenes missions prior to the beginning of the Six-Day War
in the Middle East
. Aside from finding plot line and story development ideas, Hult Ganis also spends time monitoring the mannerisms and behaviors of the show's characters in scripts as well as on the set. This includes being watchful of costuming, speaking habits and dialect of the characters, and even the smallest of details such as gum chewing and whether or not Pan Am employees would be seen in public drinking anything in an open can or cup. In September 2011, Hult Ganis told Wired
magazine online, "I brought together a lot of former Pan Am people to talk to them about their experiences. No one character is any one person, but there’s elements of our stories in the stories [on the show]."
, Sid Ganis. Together, Hult Ganis and her husband participate in charity giving through a fund they have set up with The San Francisco Foundation, a network of philanthropists and civic leaders working toward investing in the San Francisco community. Hult Ganis cites growing up in civil rights–era Detroit, as well as her work in inner-city areas there, as being the catalyst for her desire to give to the community she is a part of. During a 2008 interview she stated, "...I saw at a fairly early age that there were terrible inequities in the education system. I lived in a good neighborhood so we had great public schools, but that was not the case in the inner city. I was shocked to see kids in this country who had so little and no access to a quality education. I often wondered what it was like for the other children to study or take entry exams such as an SAT without any sufficient resources available to them. Ever since then, I have always felt compelled to try to give back."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
TV
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
and film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
publicist, writer, producer and developer as well as the co-founder and partner of Out of the Blue…Entertainment. Ganis' most recent credits include the 2006 film Akeelah and the Bee
Akeelah and the Bee
Akeelah and the Bee is a 2006 American drama film written and directed by Doug Atchison. It tells the story of Akeelah Anderson, portrayed by Keke Palmer, an 11-year-old girl who participates in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, her mother, portrayed by Angela Bassett, schoolmates, and also her...
and the 2011 ABC television series Pan Am
Pan Am (TV series)
Pan Am is an American period drama television series created by writer Jack Orman. Named for the iconic Pan American World Airways, the series focuses on the pilots and stewardesses of the airline as it operated in the early 1960s at the beginning of the commercial jet age.Sony licensed the rights...
.
Education and early career
After growing up in Detroit, MichiganDetroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
, Hult's professional life started as a math teacher in her hometown's inner-city public schools. She later received an undergraduate degree
Undergraduate degree
An undergraduate degree is a colloquial term for an academic degree taken by a person who has completed undergraduate courses. It is usually offered at an institution of higher education, such as a university...
in history then attended the University of California at Berkeley to get a Master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
in journalism. After receiving her graduate degree, Hult worked as a journalist and in the public affairs department at San Francisco's PBS station, KQED. In addition to these duties at KQED, Hult also worked as a segment producer and writer covering foreign affairs and public policy issues. Her next big assignment at KQED was working on The Making of Raider's of the Lost Ark; the documentary won an Emmy for the program's producer, and Hult's future husband, Sid Ganis
Sid Ganis
Sidney Ganis is a Greek-American motion picture executive and producer who has produced such films as Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Big Daddy, Mr. Deeds, The Master of Disguise and Akeelah and the Bee. On August 23, 2005 he was elected President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
.
Following the success of the Raiders documentary, Hult Ganis worked as a developer for the long-running PBS series Comedy Tonight. What began as a showcase featuring Bay Area comedians such as Dana Carvey
Dana Carvey
Dana Thomas Carvey is an American actor and stand-up comedian, best known for his work as a cast member on Saturday Night Live and for playing the role of Garth in the Wayne's World movies.-Early life:...
later listed national headliners such as Bobcat Goldthwait
Bobcat Goldthwait
Robert Francis "Bobcat" Goldthwait is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and film and television director. He is commonly known for his energetic, ravenous stage personality, his dark, acerbic black comedy, and his gruff but high-pitched voice.- Early life :Goldthwait was born in Syracuse,...
, Kevin Pollak
Kevin Pollak
Kevin Elliot Pollak is an American actor, impressionist, game show host, and comedian. He started performing stand-up comedy at the age of 10 and touring professionally at the age of 20...
, and Ellen Degeneres
Ellen DeGeneres
Ellen Lee DeGeneres is an American stand-up comedienne, television host and actress. She hosts the syndicated talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and was also a judge on American Idol for one year, having joined the show in its ninth season....
. Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg is an American comedian, actress, singer-songwriter, political activist, author and talk show host.Goldberg made her film debut in The Color Purple playing Celie, a mistreated black woman in the Deep South. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won...
hosted the series in 1987.
After working as Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
's assistant, Hult Ganis returned to San Francisco and a position as special projects director for the CBS affiliate, KPIX; during her tenure, the station went from last to first in Arbitron
Arbitron
Arbitron is a consumer research company in the United States that collects listener data on radio audiences. It was founded as American Research Bureau by Jim Seiler in 1949 and became national by merging with L.A. based Coffin, Cooper and Clay in the early 1950s...
the major market ratings.
Hollywood, films, politics
After her success at KPIX, Hult Ganis started her own production and marketing firm. This venture allowed her to work with Saul ZaentzSaul Zaentz
Saul Zaentz is an American film producer and former record company executive. He has won the Academy Award for Best Picture three times and in 1996 was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award....
on the film Amadeus
Amadeus
Amadeus is a play by Peter Shaffer.It is based on the lives of the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri, highly fictionalized.Amadeus was first performed in 1979...
, Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
on Peggy Sue Got Married
Peggy Sue Got Married
Peggy Sue Got Married is a 1986 American comedy-drama film directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Kathleen Turner as a woman on the verge of a divorce, who finds herself transported back to the days of her senior year in high school...
and Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO....
on Howard the Duck
Howard the Duck
Howard the Duck is a comic book character in the Marvel Comics universe created by writer Steve Gerber and artist Val Mayerik. The character first appeared in Adventure into Fear #19 and several subsequent series have chronicled the misadventures of the ill-tempered, anthropomorphic, "funny...
.
Hult Ganis moved permanently to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
in 1986 and set up the marketing department for Carolco Pictures
Carolco Pictures
Carolco Pictures, Inc., Carolco International N.V., or Anabasis Investments was an American independent film production company that, within a decade, went from producing such blockbuster successes as Terminator 2: Judgment Day and the first three movies of the Rambo series to being bankrupted by...
, at that time an independent film production company. While with Carolco, Hult Ganis handled such films as Extreme Prejudice, Angel Heart
Angel Heart
Angel Heart is a 1987 North American/British mystery-thriller film written and directed by Alan Parker, and starring Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro, and Lisa Bonet...
, and the Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies, gaining wide notice in 1988's Big, before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title...
/Sally Field
Sally Field
Sally Margaret Field is an American actress, singer, producer, director, and screenwriter. In each decade of her career, she has been known for major roles in American TV/film culture, including: in the 1960s, for Gidget or Sister Bertrille on The Flying Nun ; in the 1970s, for Sybil , Smokey and...
vehicle, Punchline. After her move to Los Angeles, Hult Ganis became more politically active and joined the Hollywood Woman's Political Committee. This connection allowed her to co-produce the "Bells for Hope Celebration" shown at the inauguration of U.S. President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
. Having established an association with the Clinton Administration, Hult Ganis was able to contribute once again to her first love, education, by working with the president and his advisors on education issues. In the same vein, Hult Ganis worked worked with Michael J. Fox
Michael J. Fox
Michael J. Fox, OC is a Canadian American actor, author, producer, activist and voice-over artist. With a film and television career spanning from the late 1970s, Fox's roles have included Marty McFly from the Back to the Future trilogy ; Alex P...
on promoting the importance of having educational themes in television programs and movies to her producer and director contacts in Hollywood.
In 1996, Hult Ganis and her husband, Sid Ganis, created Out of the Blue...Entertainment, a film production company with credits that list both Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo is a 1999 comedy film starring Rob Schneider. Other cast members include Eddie Griffin, Amy Poehler, Oded Fehr, Arija Bareikis, and William Forsythe....
and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo is the 2005 sequel to the 1999 film Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, from Happy Madison Productions. Rob Schneider returns in the role of a male prostitute Deuce Bigalow who visits his former pimp T.J...
; the Adam Sandler
Adam Sandler
Adam Richard Sandler is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, musician, and film producer.After becoming a Saturday Night Live cast member, Sandler went on to star in several Hollywood feature films that grossed over $100 million at the box office...
films Mr. Deeds
Mr. Deeds
Mr. Deeds is a 2002 American comedy film, directed by Steven Brill and starring Adam Sandler and Winona Ryder. The movie, which is loosely a remake of the 1936 film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, also stars Peter Gallagher, John Turturro, Allen Covert and Steve Buscemi...
and Big Daddy; and Akeelah and the Bee for Lionsgate Films, among others.
Pan Am
Out of the Blue produces the 2011 ABC series, Pan Am, a period-based show focusing on the iconic airline, Pan American World AirwaysPan American World Airways
Pan American World Airways, commonly known as Pan Am, was the principal and largest international air carrier in the United States from 1927 until its collapse on December 4, 1991...
, and its in-the-air employees during the early 1960s. Initial development for the series came directly from executive producer Hult Ganis' own experience as a stewardess with Pan Am from 1968 to 1976.
Not only relying on her own experiences with the airline, as developer, Hult Ganis researched details for the show by reading up on Pan Am history and interviewing former Pan Am stewardesses. During the interviews, she learned about Pan Am's involvement in U.S. State Department
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
operations and behind-the-scenes missions prior to the beginning of the Six-Day War
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War , also known as the June War, 1967 Arab-Israeli War, or Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt , Jordan, and Syria...
in the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
. Aside from finding plot line and story development ideas, Hult Ganis also spends time monitoring the mannerisms and behaviors of the show's characters in scripts as well as on the set. This includes being watchful of costuming, speaking habits and dialect of the characters, and even the smallest of details such as gum chewing and whether or not Pan Am employees would be seen in public drinking anything in an open can or cup. In September 2011, Hult Ganis told Wired
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
magazine online, "I brought together a lot of former Pan Am people to talk to them about their experiences. No one character is any one person, but there’s elements of our stories in the stories [on the show]."
Personal life and philanthropy
Hult Ganis is married to motion picture executive and former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...
, Sid Ganis. Together, Hult Ganis and her husband participate in charity giving through a fund they have set up with The San Francisco Foundation, a network of philanthropists and civic leaders working toward investing in the San Francisco community. Hult Ganis cites growing up in civil rights–era Detroit, as well as her work in inner-city areas there, as being the catalyst for her desire to give to the community she is a part of. During a 2008 interview she stated, "...I saw at a fairly early age that there were terrible inequities in the education system. I lived in a good neighborhood so we had great public schools, but that was not the case in the inner city. I was shocked to see kids in this country who had so little and no access to a quality education. I often wondered what it was like for the other children to study or take entry exams such as an SAT without any sufficient resources available to them. Ever since then, I have always felt compelled to try to give back."