Shelley Surpin, the entertainment lawyer who produced a half-dozen movies and championed such independent filmmakers as Allison Anders, Nicole Holofcener and Gregg Araki, has died. She was 72.
Surpin died Friday in Santa Monica of complications from a stroke, her law firm, the Century City-based Surpin, Mayersohn & Coghill, announced.
Surpin was a producer on The Doom Generation (1995) and Nowhere (1997), both written and directed by Araki; Louis & Frank (1998), written and directed by Alexandre Rockwell; Prague Duet (1998), written and directed by Roger L. Simon; Sound of My Voice (2012), directed and co-written by Zal Batmanglij and starring Brit Marling; and Jake Squared (2013), written and directed by Howard Goldberg and starring Elias Koteas.
She also assisted Steve De Jarnatt on Miracle Mile (1988), Anders on Four Rooms (1995) and Holofcener on Walking and Talking (1996) and Lovely & Amazing (2001).
A Los Angeles native who attended Hamilton High School, Surpin received her law degree from Boalt Memorial Hall of Law at the University of California at Berkeley after graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford.
She started practicing entertainment law at Pollock, Rigrod and Bloom, eventually becoming partners with Andy Rigrod and founding Rigrod & Surpin. She and Paul Mayersohn started Surpin & Mayersohn in 1984.
Survivors include her husband of almost 40 years, Steve Charnow; daughter Martine Charnow, a film editor; son-in-law Toby Miller; and her grandson, Ember, born the day before she died.
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