George Huang

George Jay Huang is an American film director, writer, producer, and educator. He is best known for writing and directing the 1994 film Swimming with Sharks. In addition to working on his own films, he also contributes work to other independent filmmakers, including Robert Rodríguez. Early life The son of Taiwanese immigrants, George Huang grew up with an avid love of motion pictures. After high school, he originally enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley to pursue a degree in business, but during this time he interned at Lucasfilm. After undergrad, he enrolled in a producing program at the University of Southern California. Career After graduating from USC, Huang began working from the bottom-up as an executive assistant at Columbia Pictures. In 1992, Columbia acquired the distribution rights to the film El Mariachi by Robert Rodríguez. As the film was being prepared for release, Rodriguez struck up a friendship with the young studio assistant with whom he shared a love of film. Rodriguez, a native and resident of Austin, Texas, stayed at Huang's apartment in Los Angeles. Rodriguez – known for his money-saving and high-quality filmmaking techniques – was amazed by Huang's blasé attitude toward the way his superiors spent millions and millions on the production of a single motion picture. Huang, believing his own original stories would never be told, shared some story ideas with Rodriguez, who promptly told his new friend and roommate that he needed to immediately quit his job and make his own films. Huang was understandably reluctant to this idea, but in January 1993, he resigned from his post at Columbia.