James A. Bretney is an American film director, screenwriter and film producer. He attended the University of Arizona and the Art Institute of California in Los Angeles to study life action and animation filmmaking.
Bretney's feature film debut, A Paradise of Bachelors was shot in the summer of 2009. The low budget production is still in post production. Bretney's follow up film Universal Empire is set in Ancient Rome. He is working on preproduction for Up The Trail - a western.
Bretney was born in Utica, New York in 1973 to Mark and Virginia Bretney. Mark Bretney was an electrical engineer for the defense industry. His parents met in the Philippines when his father was a sailor during the Vietnam war. His mother was born a Filipino national from the Island of Cebu.
While attending the University of Arizona, Bretney was an intern for Senator John McCain. He graduated in 1996 with a degree in History with emphasis on American and Mexican history. Prior to enlisting in the Army in 1999, Bretney worked in wholesale business to business food sales.
While in the Army, Bretney volunteered and served as an Electronic Maintenance Technician in the Special Operations community with one year in the 75th Ranger Regiment and four years in 3rd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. With 10th Group, Bretney deployed three times to Iraq serving a total of twelve months though not continuously. It was in Mosul, Iraq where Bretney decided to pursue a career in art and entertainment.
Bretney left the Army in 2006 and took a job in as Test Engineer in the defense industry pursuing filmmaking part time. In Yuma, Arizona, Bretney formed his production company in 2007 and moved to Los Angeles in 2009 to pursue filmmaking full time.
James Bretney is an unabashed conservative and is very active in politics. He has volunteered in as a grassroots activist in campaigns in California, Arizona, Washington, Georgia, South Carolina and Colorado. He is an outspoken neoconservative blogger and documentarian. His YouTube documentary series "Falsely Accused Fathers" discusses the problems fathers have with the Los Angeles County Department of Family and Children.