Morgan Pehme

Background

The son of journalist Kalev Pehme, Pehme achieved renown as a child for his success as a chess player.

Pehme attended The Dalton School in Manhattan with Josh Waitzkin, the subject of the book and film Searching for Bobby Fischer. In the book, the author Fred Waitzkin, wrote: "Morgan was a year and a half younger than Josh but had the vocabulary and wit of a smart 14-year-old, and he was already one of the three or four strongest chess players in the country in his age group (third grade and under)." Pehme was also portrayed as the character "Morgan" by actor Hal Scardino in the 1993 film adaptation of the book.

Pehme is a former United States National Scholastic Chess Champion (1993 National Junior High School Championship)[1] and represented the United States in the Boys Under 12 section of the 1990 World Youth Chess Festival for Peace in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. [1] His participation in the latter event, the student world chess championship, led to him being one of the subjects of director Lynn Hamrick's 1996 documentary Chess Kids, as well as Hamrick's 2011 30-minute follow to her original film.

Film

As founder and CEO of the production company Merlion Entertainment, Pehme executive produced his first feature film in 2004. The movie, Exist, directed by Esther Bell, was hailed by The New York Times as "an antidote to the whimsy and solipsism endemic to much of what passes for independent film making."

The next year Pehme produced Nightmare, which he also co-wrote with the film’s director, Dylan Bank. For their collaboration, Pehme and Bank were awarded the jury prize for Best Screenplay at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas. The film was released in the United States by IFC Films.

In 2012, Pehme made his directorial debut with Nothing Sacred, a fantasy horror film starring William Sadler, Thierry Lhermitte, Philippe Nahon, Eric Godon, Debbie Rochon, Naama Kates and Alan Barnes Netherton. Again, Pehme collaborated with Bank, this time as co-directors and writers. Though the film, which was shot in the United States, France and Belgium, is primarily English language, it also features sequences in French and Muscogee, a Native American language.

On March 2, 2017, Netflix announced that it would release Pehme’s feature-length documentary Get Me Roger Stone about notorious conservative political consultant Roger Stone. The film, which Pehme co-directed with Bank and Daniel DiMauro, is slated to make its world premiere at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.

Entertainment Weekly reported that Get Me Roger Stone will chronicle Stone’s role in the rise of Donald Trump, who was interviewed for the film, and the transformation of American politics.

The author Jon Ronson references Pehme and the Stone documentary in his 2016 Kindle e-book The Elephant in the Room: A Journey into the Trump Campaign and the Alt-Right. According to the book, Ronson and Pehme met in a Winnebago at the 2016 Republican National Convention, where Pehme was following Stone and Ronson was following Infowars host Alex Jones.

Journalism and Politics

Early in Pehme’s journalism career, he served as a columnist and managing editor for The Queens Courier, a community newspaper.

From January 2008 to January 2010, Pehme wrote The Brooklyn Optimist, a blog focused primarily on politics, the arts, and community empowerment in Brooklyn, New York. In September 2008, Pehme, a critic of Brooklyn Democratic boss Vito Lopez, ran in the Democratic primary to represent a portion of Greenpoint, Brooklyn as a County Committee Member in the Kings County Democratic Party and was elected.

On September 19, 2011, Pehme was named one of City Hall's Rising Stars 40 Under 40 for his work as executive director of New York Civic, a good government group founded by former New York City Parks Commissioner Henry Stern.

On August 18, 2012, Pehme was hired as editor-in-chief of the newspaper City & State, which covers New York politics. During Pehme’s tenure, City & State won a number of New York State Press Association awards [2], including Best Coverage of Elections/Politics, 2013, for which he was personally recognized, along with Nick Powell, Jon Lentz and Aaron Short. Describing Pehme’s award, along with Lentz and Matthew Hamilton, for Second Place in the Best News Category, 2014 (Division 2), the selection committee wrote, "This is the best kind of public-service journalism, executed with depth and clarity."

On December 23, 2014, Politico reported that Morgan Pehme had departed City & State. [3]

On January 29, 2015, Politico wrote that Morgan Pehme had been hired as executive director of EffectiveNY, a nonpartisan government watchdog group and public policy think tank founded by businessman Bill Samuels.

On October 20, 2015, Talkers magazine reported that Samuels would host a new weekly Sunday radio show on AM970 in New York City called "Effective Radio with Bill Samuels", which Pehme would co-host and produce.

Pehme is a former adjunct professor of mass communications, journalism, TV and film at St. John’s University.