JOY AND SORROW
For decades, Bob Ross has been a soothing presence in a world gone mad. But the real story behind the painter’s life, and especially his afterlife, reveals just as much madness.
Writer and Executive Producer Alston Ramsay was a speechwriter in Washington, D.C., prior to his career as a screenwriter. He has written for and been a senior advisor to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, General David Petraeus, and Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson. In those roles, he traveled to more than three dozen countries on behalf of the U.S. government and spent a year in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he ran the commanding general’s writing team at the peak of the war. After leaving the Pentagon, Alston wrote and produced the film Midnighters, a taut, complex psychological thriller that IFC released in 2018. Later that year, he was selected by the Tracking Board as one of Hollywood's top new writers.
Alston fuses his unique insights working at the highest level of American government into the disturbing character study that dwells at the heart of The Current Occupant.
opinion
LIFE IMITATES ART IMITATES LIFE
Alston Ramsay worked as a speechwriter in the Bush and Obama administrations. Now he’s a screenwriter. And Trump just ruined his new Hulu horror movie, “The Current Occupant.”