Umm...who?
For Chris Gavagan, telling the truth on the page has always been the easy part. Two decades of screenwriting and storytelling has proven the maxim that the more unguarded and emotionally honest, the more easily the words flowed. Would the same rules apply out loud and on its feet? Would those uncomfortable truths that found their release on the page come so freely when he stood up in front of a five-hundred strangers? Or hundreds of thousands on TV?
The answer was a resounding “Yes”.
Chris has worked in New York’s independent film world as a jack-of-all trades and master of none for two decades. That's not the insult you'd think. Whether working as a screenwriter, casting director, prop master, script supervisor, or production manager, he has brought a love of storytelling and the filmmaking process with him.
In 2009 Chris began directing and producing the documentary project Coached into Silence, which deals with the topic of sexual abuse in the world of youth sports. The project evolved beyond the boundaries of a film production to become part of a movement surrounding the issue of child sexual abuse in sports and beyond. From the grassroots up and from the top of the Olympic and professional ranks on down, he has worked to make leagues and laws around the United States put the safety and wellbeing of the children they serve above all else.
Since 2009, Chris has had the opportunity to speak and show footage from the documentary Coached into Silence before legislators in numerous State Capitols in support of laws strengthening victims’ rights and child protections, as well as on national television and radio. (The New York Times, New York Daily News, The Atlantic, Anderson Cooper, NPR, The Diane Rehm show) As a result of his work on Coached into Silence, he was selected as a member of the USOC’s athlete advisory group for Safer Training Environments and had the honor to be chosen to deliver the keynote address at the inaugural SafeSport Leadership conference in Colorado Springs. That presentation led to keynote speaking opportunities all over the country at venues large and small. Anywhere people are willing to listen, Chris is willing to go and share the lessons he has learned. His call to action is an empathetic vision of a better way, leaving an audience not just more informed, but ready to do their part to help make their own communities safer for children.
Without warning, in March of 2016, Chris was struck down by a ruptured brain aneurysm that would have surely killed him if not for the quick thinking under pressure of his wife, and the skilled hands of the surgeons at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. After two weeks in the neuro ICU, Chris bounced back determined to use his platform to help raise awareness of this condition that nearly robbed his daughter of her Dad.
Chris earned his degree in Communications from St. John’s University and studied film production at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. He is a proud member of the International Documentary Association and The Gotham (formerly--and in his heart, still--known as the Independent Feature Project.) Chris has written nearly a dozen screenplays, a couple of novels, countless bad punk songs and is always adding to a brick of a nonfiction book that is almost actually done, really, he swears. He has been the recipient of the Wildacres Writer’s Residency, where he completed the screenplay Ash to Firewood.
Chris was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY where he still lives with his wife, daughter and dog while occasionally writing about himself in the third person.
The answer was a resounding “Yes”.
Chris has worked in New York’s independent film world as a jack-of-all trades and master of none for two decades. That's not the insult you'd think. Whether working as a screenwriter, casting director, prop master, script supervisor, or production manager, he has brought a love of storytelling and the filmmaking process with him.
In 2009 Chris began directing and producing the documentary project Coached into Silence, which deals with the topic of sexual abuse in the world of youth sports. The project evolved beyond the boundaries of a film production to become part of a movement surrounding the issue of child sexual abuse in sports and beyond. From the grassroots up and from the top of the Olympic and professional ranks on down, he has worked to make leagues and laws around the United States put the safety and wellbeing of the children they serve above all else.
Since 2009, Chris has had the opportunity to speak and show footage from the documentary Coached into Silence before legislators in numerous State Capitols in support of laws strengthening victims’ rights and child protections, as well as on national television and radio. (The New York Times, New York Daily News, The Atlantic, Anderson Cooper, NPR, The Diane Rehm show) As a result of his work on Coached into Silence, he was selected as a member of the USOC’s athlete advisory group for Safer Training Environments and had the honor to be chosen to deliver the keynote address at the inaugural SafeSport Leadership conference in Colorado Springs. That presentation led to keynote speaking opportunities all over the country at venues large and small. Anywhere people are willing to listen, Chris is willing to go and share the lessons he has learned. His call to action is an empathetic vision of a better way, leaving an audience not just more informed, but ready to do their part to help make their own communities safer for children.
Without warning, in March of 2016, Chris was struck down by a ruptured brain aneurysm that would have surely killed him if not for the quick thinking under pressure of his wife, and the skilled hands of the surgeons at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. After two weeks in the neuro ICU, Chris bounced back determined to use his platform to help raise awareness of this condition that nearly robbed his daughter of her Dad.
Chris earned his degree in Communications from St. John’s University and studied film production at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. He is a proud member of the International Documentary Association and The Gotham (formerly--and in his heart, still--known as the Independent Feature Project.) Chris has written nearly a dozen screenplays, a couple of novels, countless bad punk songs and is always adding to a brick of a nonfiction book that is almost actually done, really, he swears. He has been the recipient of the Wildacres Writer’s Residency, where he completed the screenplay Ash to Firewood.
Chris was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY where he still lives with his wife, daughter and dog while occasionally writing about himself in the third person.
Current projects
A novel due for release in 2024, a documentary that took on a life of its own, and season one of a podcast twenty-years in the making. Whether screenwriting, directing or producing, ghost writing, speech writing or just shepherding a project along its journey, Chris is always looking for another way to help others tell their stories.