Eric Thompson was born in Hamilton, Montana and lived there until his parents moved to a farm on the outskirts of nearby Corvallis when he was three years old. The son of a cobbler and a (well educated) stay-at-home mom, Eric was raised with a particular respect for education and the outdoors. At Corvallis High School, he won multiple scholastic, athletic, dramatic, and civic awards and graduated valedictorian with Highest Honors.
He accepted a full-ride scholarship to Montana State University where he majored in Media and Theater Arts with a focus on cinema production, criticism, and writing. In 1997, Eric gave up his scholarship in order to serve a full-time mission in and around Paris, France where he learned first hand how useless everything he had learned up to that point was. While there, he developed a deep and abiding love for Africans, paté, and the Gospel (although not so much fo Coca-Cola products served at room temperature). Upon completion of his mission, Eric returned to Moo-U (sadly, without the full-ride scholarship). Many of his university expenses were supplemented with writing, from interviews for regional health and wellness magazines to socio-political columns for the university newspaper. During this period, Eric wrote numerous critical essays on everything from racism in the Star Wars films to gender reversal throughout the James Bond franchise. Eric also received acclaim for various short film credits, notably as a writer. His short comedy The End was a recipient of multiple Audience Choice awards and won the New York Independent International Film Festival Award for Best Short Comedy. As the principal actor in the film, Eric received second degree burns all over his torso from failed bullet squibs and was hit by a 1987 Jeep Grand Cherokee eighteen times, leading to his conviction that simply “bleeding for your art” doesn’t sound so bad when compared to other options.
Since graduating, Eric has worked in the publishing department for Disney Feature Animation and contributed to project development for JetSet Studios and as a ghostwriter for other studios, marketing agencies, and independent writers. His first feature-length screenplay The Divine Number Nine (co-authored with friend and college collaborator Patrick McNair) was a quarterfinalist in the AAA Screenwriting competition and their religious thriller Outlier was optioned in June of 2008.
Among his chief interests to this day is writing. Eric still pursues screenwriting (and doctoring) and is currently outlining a semi-biographical novel to be co-written with his father. He also loves to cook, spend time in the outdoors, swim, ski, read, and do all of those sort of generic things that people love to do. He longs for the days of doing stand-up comedy but looks forward to the days of doing more sit-down writing.
On Halloween of 2006, Eric married Esther Ellsworth (a graduate of the University of Texas and alum of BYU’s graduate film program) in the Logan, Utah temple for time and all eternity and enjoyed a reception where everyone dressed up… including Esther’s ninety-year old grandmother who came as a corpse. Hilarity interspersed with brief moments of panic ensued. They currently reside in Mesa, Arizona with their invisible cat, Oberon.
A Motley Vision 