Andy Fickman

Film director Andy Fickman arrived in his chosen field by virtue of his career as a musical theater helmer. A native of Midland, Texas who was raised in a Jewish family by a homemaker mother and a geologist father, Fickman found his life's calling by virtue of his father, who conveyed his inveterate passion for the stage to young Andy. Andy later attended Texas Tech as a theater major, and thereafter directed a series of immensely popular plays in Southern California; the most successful, Reefer Madness, embodied a musical adaptation of Louis Gasnier's Z-grade 1936 cult film about the "evils" of pot smoking. The show opened at the Hudson Theater in San Bernardino to sellouts and critical raves, secured a prestigious New York opening in late 2000, and won Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards and Ovation Awards for its director. Fickman followed it up with The Gift, a more sober stage musical about a reunion of college buddies, and juggled this with a day job as a studio development executive. He moved into direction of features beginning in 2002, with the sex comedy Who's Your Daddy?, then directed a film adaptation of his Reefer play for the Showtime network in 2004, starring Steven Weber, Neve Campbell and Alan Cumming. Additional projects included the gender-bending teen comedy She's the Man (starring Amanda Bynes, in drag); the family-oriented sports comedy The Game Plan (starring The Rock; and the 2009 Disney remake Race to Witch Mountain.

~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide