Hugh Sterbakov

Hugh Sterbakov was born and raised in Philadelphia. After graduating from Lamberton High School, he traveled north to the frigid climate of Ithaca College in upstate New York for a bachelor's degree in Cinema & Photography and then headed to UCLA for a master's degree in Screenwriting. At Ithaca, Hugh won the school's screenwriting honor twice for his first two screenplays. Once Hugh moved to California, he also won the Irene Parisi award for best writer under 25, as part of the World Cinema Festival's Set in Philadelphia Contest, and was a finalist in the enormous Disney Fellowship. Fresh out of UCLA, Hugh sold his first screenplay, a dark romantic comedy entitled "Scorned," to Disney, with Ben Stiller producing and Seth Green co-creating the story and starring. Scorned ultimately was not produced. Soon after, Hugh also sold an untitled (and also unproduced) sci-fi time-travel comedy TV pilot to UPN with partner Richard Hatem (The Mothman Prophecies and ABC's Miracles), with Warren Littlefield producing. Hugh also writes for a multitude of magazines. Although he has done lifestyle and pop culture pieces, his primary area of expertise is video game related. He has published over seven hundred reviews, previews and features for such outlets as GamePro, Official Xbox Magazine, ToyFare, America Online, CNN.com, VideoGameSpot, UGO, Time Out New York, Hit Parader and Toys R Us' RZone Magazine. In 2004, Hugh also story-edited a reality television show, "The Mansion," for Evolution Film & Tape and TBS, and became toy wrangler for the immensely popular Cartoon Network series Robot Chicken. That's right, he gets paid to buy toys. In his spare time, Hugh enjoys watching movies, and playing video games and poker (he was bluffed to smithereens by Mila Kunis--who is the inspiration for Freshmen's The Puppeteer--on E's Hollywood Hold 'Em in early 2005). He was an avid softball player until he tore his ACL in 2004. Then he took up mass burrito consumption, at which he is currently unrivaled. And then there's Boughl Sauce.