Neal Marshad

Neal Marshad is an Emmy Award-winning American filmmaker, television producer, director of photography, digital media pioneer, and founder of The Marshad Technology Group. While attending New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1973, Marshad produced, edited, and co-directed the documentary …and the walls came tumbling down with Patrice Marden. The film documented an improv theater workshop led by actress Marketa Kimbrell with incarcerated men at the Queens House of Detention in New York City. It was distributed by the University of California, Berkeley Extension Media Center, selected for NYU’s 33rd Annual Student Film Festival at Bleecker Street Cinema, and entered into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Regional Student Film Competition. That same year, Marshad was hired as a sound effects editor and Foley assistant at the Ross-Gaffney post-production company in New York City, working on Gilbert Cates’ film Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams. After graduating from NYU in 1974, Marshad directed and photographed the PBS documentary Sculpture by Isaac Witkin, broadcast in 1976 and screened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1978, he began a decades-long creative collaboration with writer/director Tom Schiller for Saturday Night Live, producing and photographing cinematic short films starting with Perchance to Dream in 1979. Marshad served as producer, cinematographer, and post-production supervisor for the SNL short Java Junkie, starring Peter Aykroyd and Teri Garr, which was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for theatrical distribution. That year, he also directed a live concert film of Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes at Asbury Park Convention Hall, broadcast on Qube cable TV in 1980. In early 1980, Marshad produced and photographed Linden Palmer, Hollywood’s Forgotten Director, another SNL short. That same year, German director Wim Wenders hired Marshad for post-production and audio services on The State of Things, edited in Marshad’s New York edit room. In 1982, Marshad won an Emmy Award for outstanding directing and cinematography on CBS’s Super Bowl XVI. In 1984, he collaborated with Michael Douglas to produce a documentary on handgun violence dedicated to John Lennon. Marshad produced and shot the 1988 SNL short Love is a Dream, starring Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks. The short was later selected by Lorne Michaels for SNL’s 25th, 40th, and 50th anniversary specials and is considered one of the show’s most iconic pre-recorded moments. In 1989, Marshad co-directed the PBS documentary The Conspiracy of Silence with Donna Olson. Featuring Kathleen Turner and Denise Brown, the film examined domestic violence in America. He continued producing shorts for Saturday Night Live into the 1990s, including Falling in Love (1989) with Victoria Jackson and Jon Lovitz, and Hooked on Sushi (1990) with Kevin Nealon. In 1989 and 1990, Marshad directed two standup comedy specials hosted by Budd Friedman, broadcast on The Comedy Channel and Comedy Central, featuring future stars Steve Harvey, Ray Romano, Judd Apatow, and Ellen Cleghorne. In 1996, Marshad founded The Marshad Technology Group, providing digital strategy and production for Chanel, Neiman Marcus, La Prairie, and the BBC. He created Speedo’s first e-commerce site and enabled email communication between Olympic athletes and fans during the 1996 Summer Games. That same year, Marshad built the first website for the International Theatre Institute with Edward Albee and Martha Wadsworth Coigney, recording and streaming Albee’s first online interviews. In 1998, Marshad collaborated on Saturday Night Live: The Best of Phil Hartman, which aired following the actor’s death and featured contributions from dozens of past and present SNL cast members. His film Love is a Dream was included in the Emmy-winning SNL 25th Anniversary Special in 1999 and rebroadcast again after the death of Jan Hooks in 2014. The film also aired during the Emmy-winning SNL 40th and SNL 50th Anniversary Specials in 2015 and 2025, respectively. In the 2000s, Marshad served as executive producer for Eurocinema, a U.S.-based on-demand channel for European films. In 2011, Marshad signed an agreement with the Apollo Theater to co-produce music and comedy content for online streaming. Marshad began developing Tribeca Co-op in 2023, a dark comedy murder mystery set in a gentrified Tribeca building. Initially conceived as a feature, it was later adapted into a TV pilot co-written with Dashiell Finley and produced with G. Mac Brown and James Signorelli.