Brett Wagner is a former professional wrestler and reality TV star, which is too bad for Brett Wagner the director, because it dilutes his search results. Brett Wagner the director has many industry awards crowding the mantle he will have when he gets a bigger house, one with a mantle.
He creates brand storytelling, comedy, and real-people spots for clients like McDonalds, Ford, Time Warner, American Savings Bank, North Carolina Lottery, Lexus, Hawaiian Airlines, Belkin International, EmblemHealth, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. (He's repped by LA-based Whiskey Bear.)
When he’s not making commercials, Brett is often sleeping. When not sleeping, he writes and directs award-winning films such as THE BIG BEND, which despite the tone of this bio is a suspenseful drama and something of a tear-jerker. The Hollywood Reporter called it “alluring” and Film Threat called it “exceptional.” THE BIG BEND is 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and was released theatrically in 2024. (If it is, say, 2025 and America still exists, you can probably find THE BIG BEND on any of your favorite streaming services.)
Brett also directed a film called CHIEF, which premiered at Sundance and was declared “a must-see” by Indiewire, and another one called CARE, starring Rachel Brosnahan. Both films won a bunch of film festivals, earning them Academy Award qualification and many Lucite statuettes, which will one day go on that mantle.
Brett is the Associate Chair of Film & Television at The Savannah College of Art and Design, in beautiful Savannah, GA, where he lives with his family and sometimes other people’s families.
He grew up in beautiful Cleveland, OH, which is adjacent to the regular Cleveland, OH. He earned an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He has dived with great white sharks, organized Martin Scorsese’s film collection, sipped kava with the village elders in Samoa, traded on the black market in Soviet Leningrad, worked concessions at the Rocky Horror Picture Show, poked lava with a stick, and once squished a Suzuki with an excavator. His intentions were honorable.
He looks like this, on a good day, and only if there is a beach behind him:
FILM & TELEVISION REPRESENTATION:
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