O14 Press Exclusive

By John Stanley

Charles Evered is a man living a varied life, to say the least. A nationally known playwright who has made the move into directing film, Evered recently founded his own production company; Ordinance 14, which is based out of Los Angeles and Princeton, New Jersey.

Evered is also a director, a former naval officer, a college professor and a journalist. He used to be a newspaper boy, a dishwasher, a retail clerk, a security guard, a janitor, a carpenter’s assistant and for a short period, a lifeguard.

Recently, he wrote and directed the award winning feature film Adopt a Sailor, starring Emmy winners Bebe Neuwirth and Peter Coyote. Adopt a Sailor went on to garner a distribution deal, a limited theatrical release and ended up being an “official selection” at more than 20 national and international film festivals. In addition to Adopt a Sailor, Evered just finished directing his second feature titled A Thousand Cuts, which stars Academy Award nominee Michael O’Keefe and will be released sometime in 2012.

For Adopt a Sailor, Evered got the full cooperation of the United States Navy– for free– including the use of a battle ship and helicopters. Asserts Evered: “Throwing money at a film doesn’t make it better. What matters to audiences are good stories. You can 3D-ize it, you can do whatever, but if the story doesn’t work, nobody will care.”

Evered, who has written scripts for major studios as well as for network and cable television, (Monk etc), studied at Yale under his mentor, Academy Award winning director George Roy Hill.

Ordinance 14 has a full slate of projects in the works.

In the development hopper is a small desert set mystery, which Evered plans on shooting in and around the High Desert, and a script he just wrote called Upon a Star— the tale of a washed up movie star who uses a sick teenager as a means to resurrect his stalled career.