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Lawrence Bender, renowned producer and political activist, boasts an illustrious career spanning more than twenty years in the entertainment industry. His films to date, among them Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth and influential mega-hits Kill Bill, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, Good Will Hunting, Pulp Fiction, Anna and the King, Jackie Brown, and Reservoir Dogs, have been honored with twenty one Academy Award nominations, including two for Best Picture. Mr. Bender’s most recent film, An Inconvenient Truth, weaves the science of global warming with Al Gore's lifelong dedication to reversing the effects of global climate change. An environmental advocate, Bender along with his team worked with director Davis Guggenheim to produce this gripping and engaging rallying cry that calls for all Americans to protect the earth we share. The film was honored with the 2007 Academy Award for Best Documentary and Best Original Song for Melissa Etheridge’s ‘I Need To Wake Up.’ Prior to this, Mr. Bender’s Innocent Voices was selected to represent Mexico for the Academy Awards and received the 2005 Producers’ Guild Stanley Kramer Award and the National Board of Review’s Freedom and Expression Award. Mr. Bender was nominated for a Producer’s Guild Award and a Golden Satellite Award for the 1998 film Good Will Hunting, which received a total of nine nominations and won Oscars for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor. Pulp Fiction, which received seven Academy Award nominations and won Best Screenplay, was also nominated for a Producers Guild Award, a BAFTA Award for Best Film, and won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature and Palme d’Or at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. Mr. Bender produced Reservoir Dogs, which was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature, and won both Italy’s Raymond Chandler Award as well as the award for Best Picture by the Australian Film Critics. Mr. bender executive produced Tarantino’s and Robert Rodriquez’s From Dusk Till Dawn, produced Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, for which Robert Forster earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Mr. Bender’s other producing credits include Havana Nights: Dirty Dancing 2 , Knockaround Guys, The Mexican, Anna and the King, (nominated for two Academy), A Price Above Rubies, White Man’s Burden, Killing Zoe and Fresh, which was in the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival. Mr. Bender is also a passionate social and political activist. In 2003, Bender co-founded the Detroit Project, targeting the gas-guzzling SUV. He has also traveled to the Middle East with the Israeli Policy Forum. Mr. Bender is a member of the Executive Forum for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), sits on the Board of Trustees of the Israel Policy Forum (IPF) and is a member of the Pacific Council. He is also on the Advisory Board to the Dean at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and serves on the board of The Creative Coalition. He is a recent recipient of the Torch of Liberty Award from the ACLU. His new philanthropic effort is called 18 Seconds. With the EPA and the DOE, he has created a campaign with a network of different groups, including ThinkLA, the Muppets, Yahoo, Wal-Mart, and many other academic, religious, and political groups. He has met with many other fortune 500 groups, including GM, Home Depot, Simon & Company, along with helping to create Wal-Mart’s first sustainability day at the headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. | 