Enos joins MCP team

Lisa Enos

 Editor’s Note: We are in the process of expanding our editorial staff. I am excited to announce the first addition to our team, Lisa Enos.

Lisa will be reporting on the Mason County Board of Commissioners and the West Shore Community College Board of Trustees. She will also provide special coverage of court trials and breaking news.

Lisa and I have known each other since we were classmates in middle school. We graduated together in 1988 from Mason County Central High School and we worked together at the Ludington Daily News and both fell victim to the company’s buyout. 

Lisa contributed as a special correspondent during the Sean Phillips Trial last April and was also influential in helping me create MCP.

She is an award winning writer and filmmaker who splits her time between Los Angeles, London and Ludington. Lisa graduated from the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University and began her career writing and directing educational films for a Chicago-based company of which she became co-owner. She moved the production company to Portland, Oregon during the digital boom where the company thrived. Enos wrote, produced and co-directed the series, “Life Lessons” for which she was awarded the education film prize, the Bronze Apple. In 1996 Enos wrote and produced her first made-for-television documentary, “The Angel of Bergen Belsen,” a harrowing story about a woman who saved 54 children from imminent death at a Nazi concentration camp. The film was nominated by the network for an Emmy.

Her next film, “Copycat Crimes,” which she directed, took her to Hollywood to examine the connection between violence in cinema and real life events, such as the Columbine massacre. It was there she decided to stay and pursue a career in acting and film making. In 1999 she co-wrote the award winning, “ivansxtc,” (Ivan’s Ecstasy) based on Leo Tolstoy’s, “The Death of Ivan Illyich.” The film — about a Hollywood agent trying to find meaning among the excesses of the movie business, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival, won the Boston Independent Film Festival and was nominated for Four Independent Spirit Awards as well as a British Independent Film Award. Enos received a personal nomination for the John Cassavetes Award as the film’s co-writer and producer.

The film played to an international audience in many commercial theaters outside the U.S., but its controversial subject matter and criticism of Hollywood insider tactics as well as exposing the drug culture of the major Hollywood insiders kept the film out of U.S. cinemas. With her foot firmly planted in the Hollywood community, Enos has enjoyed a career producing such films as Mr. Nice, starring Rhyss Iffans, Chloe Sevigney and David Thewlis, The Kreutzer Sonata, with Danny Huston, Elisabeth Rohm and Anjelica Huston, among others.

Lisa lives and works from home in Ludington and travels frequently for business and for pleasure. Next stop, South Africa, for “Cavegirl the Movie,” based on the hit UK television show of the same name, starring Jennifer Stone of Wizards of Waverly Place. In her spare time, she continues her freelance career as a journalist. Her hobbies include, reading, golf, skiing, kayaking and relaxing on the beach.