Michael Lehmann

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Michael Stephen Lehmann (born March 30, 1957 in San Francisco, California) is an American film and television director.

Lehmann attended Columbia University. His first job in the film industry was answering phones at Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope film company. Later he supervised cameras on films that included 1983's The Outsiders. Lehmann attended film school at USC and graduated in 1985. While at USC he made a student film, Beaver Gets a Boner, the title of which he believes helped get the attention of film executives who would later hire him.

Lehmann is probably most noted for directing the black comedy Heathers. He also directed 40 Days and 40 Nights, The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Hudson Hawk and Airheads.

Lehmann also directs for television, and has worked on the short lived HBO comedy series The Comeback and NBC's The West Wing. He has also guest directed on The Larry Sanders Show, Watching Ellie and Century City. Lehmann also directed one episode of the HBO drama, Big Love.

His upcoming films include Because I Said So, Your Word Against Mine, and Mary Warner, which will reunite Lehmann with Heathers actress Winona Ryder.

At a Q & A session during 2007's South by Southwest Film festival in Austin, Texas, Lehmann claimed he would never make a sequel to [Heathers]. He claimed Wynona Ryder wanted to do Heathers set in Washington D.C., but he saw no potential for the project.