Jeff Hansell

Contact me at: jeffrey.hansell@gmail.com

I worked my way through Miami University and barely escaped with a degree in Film & Television in 1980.

Got start in big-time TV running CTV-3 in Springfield producing the "Roger Reeb Show" and working with fellow classmate Bryon Walls.

Soon followed girl to Boulder, Colorado and stayed for 17 years working my way in and out of a variety of jobs and relationships and today, I bear no visible scars.

(Somewhere in there, I did 2 stints in Los Angeles working on low budget movies for Roger Corman. If you rent the bomb of a movie "Lords of the Deep", and can stand to watch it to the end, my name scrolls up as the very last name in the credits, misspelled, of course).

In 1997, I had to choose between a job at CNN in Atlanta or following another girl I had just met at a wedding back to old Europe.

This time I followed the right girl; lived in Paris with her for a while and brought her back to the States as my wife.

Am now happily installed in Cambridge with Sophie and twin boys

Currently I am running the Belmont Media Center, a new community TV station in nearby bucolic Belmont. I enjoy training and working with special needs students and developmentally disabled adults.

1972: Circle of friends including Jim Snorf, Keith West, Bryon Walls, Danny Hamilton, Chris Guyton, my brother Tim "Lance Romance" Hansell, Chris Davy, Don McCluskey, and the late, great Ed Ricketts formed the "Experimental Film Society".

School officials made us change the name to "International Film Club", because they thought our name was too edgy.

We made a strange movie called "Revenge of the Air Pirates" which resembles a version of Monty Python TV. Later we made a send-up of James Bond that was one long chase scene across rooftops and through streets of Springfield.

Ed Ricketts became legend at that time because he performed dangerous and stupid stunts on camera (much like what you can see on "Jackass" today) without having any idea of what he was doing. Ed was very special to those who knew him then.
I saw Ed just before he died, and he was fearless even then, knowing he had little time left on the planet.

When the Film Club got our Yearbook photo taken in the school hallway, Andy Boller, (class president 1972) happened to walk by and remarked that "there's all the weirdos in school together".

May favorite times were as a musician (tuba player) Orchestra, Symphonic and Concert Bands, Marching & Pep Band - band camp, bus trips to the football games, the goof-offs and camaraderie in the brass section.

And the first year, when the "cool" band director Harry Spyker was still in charge. When we travelled to marching band competition, Harry told us to decoy the other bands by purposely messing up our routines at the practice session, which was supposed to lull our competition into thinking we were not very good. Of course, we had practiced really hard up to that point and thought we were very good and we were, and on track to win.

Problem was, because we messed up in practice, we also messed up in the competition, so we got nothing. It was embarrassing, but also funny.