Tommy Pallotta

Tommy Pallotta received a degree in Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin. While at UT he met Richard Linklater and began his film career as an actor and production assistant on Linklater's directorial debut, Slacker (1991). After working on numerous films and commercials, Pallotta wrote, directed and produced his first film, The High Road (1997). He also produced several of Bob Sabiston's animated projects including: Roadhead (1999), which received the Best Animation award at the Aspen Film Festival; a series of interstitials for MTV; Snack and Drink (1999), a three-minute short about an autistic child in a 7-Eleven store, which is now part of the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art; and Figures of Speech (2000), a series of interstitials for PBS. He then connected his animation experience with Richard Linklater in Waking Life (2001). Waking Life was the first independently financed and produced computer animated feature.