David Weisman

David Weisman
Copyright David Weisman 2009
Born	(1942-03-11) March 11, 1942 (age 75) Binghamton, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Film producer, film director, author, graphic artist
Years active	1967–present
Relatives	Sam Weisman (brother)

David Weisman (born March 11, 1942) is an American film producer, author, and graphic artist who is most noted for his films Ciao! Manhattan and Kiss of the Spider Woman. He is the brother of film director Sam Weisman.

In the mid-1960s, Weisman worked as Otto Preminger's assistant and designed the graphics and title sequence for his 1967 Paramount Production, Hurry Sundown.

In 1967, Weisman was part of a splinter group from Andy Warhol's Factory who collaborated to make the experimental film, Ciao! Manhattan, which Weisman eventually wound up co-directing with John Palmer and starring Edie Sedgwick. The film was not released until 1972 (almost five years after production began) but received little attention until 1982 when Edie: An American Biography, by Jean Stein and George Plimpton, was released and quickly became a bestseller.

Weisman's gift for languages (with fluency in French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, German, and Dutch) made him an "incurable nomad"; by the early 1980s, while in Brazil, he met and befriended fellow expat Manuel Puig. Although Puig had repeatedly resisted other filmmakers' attempts to acquire screen rights to his fourth novel, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Weisman assembled an impressive team of actors and filmmakers, (including Burt Lancaster and Hector Babenco) convincing Puig to sell Weisman the rights. Weisman developed the film over several years, engaging Leonard Schrader to write the screenplay and William Hurt (replacing Burt Lancaster in the role of "Molina") to star opposite Raul Julia as "Valentine". For his role as the film's sole producer, Weisman was honored with an Best Picture nomination at the 58th Academy Awards on March 24, 1986, at which event William Hurt won the Oscar for Best Actor.