About Us

Heavy Weather Films is a production company based in the Kansas City area. Founded in 2008, our mission is to create original and memorable feature films that also provide a high return on investment. Our strategy is to focus on great stories that transform the way people see everyday reality.

Our initial feature film project, Saints, is about a female Iraq veteran who isn’t able to return to civilian life – and an Arab journalist who follows her story. The film is slated to go into production in Summer 2009.

The Partners

ROBERT HURST has been working in independent film for fifteen years. "Independent, low-budget films are a labor of love, and most often produce the unexpected and unique stories people are looking for", he says.

Most recently, he completed work as supervising sound editor on The Only Good Indian, which opens in Spring 2009. "It's a classy independent feature, with compelling characters and a great story," Hurst says. "The cast and crew came together as a family to produce this picture outside the studio system."

Robert has worked in various capacities on more than two dozen feature-length fiction and documentary films, as well as a host of shorts. He has also worked with corporate clients such as 3M, Pfizer and Cisco. His short films have screened at festivals in the Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Europe.

Robert currently teaches in the Film department at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. He has two children, Owen, 15, and Amelia, 19.

JEFF TAMBLYN

A self-employed writer, producer, director, Jeff Tamblyn worked 25 years in corporate film and video before embarking on his first feature, the award-winning documentary, Kansas vs. Darwin.

"The feature entertainment world is a hundred times harder," he says, "but it's a thousand times more rewarding. And I learned to my surprise that I love all of it - raising money, marketing...even reading and writing contracts. It's exhilarating in ways I never imagined."

Tamblyn began his professional life as a stage actor, performing over 100 roles in regional, improvisational, experimental and children's' theatre before he started freelancing corporate communications "in a desperate attempt to make some semi-serious money." In that arena, he quickly distinguished himself as a stand-out player, working for dozens of Fortune 500 clients and winning a handful of high-level awards.

As he continues this, his third career, he observes: "Not since the invention of motion pictures has show business been this exciting...and this open to innovation. Little guys like us are the future - we'll be the first to find the new frontiers and the first to make them profitable."