ABOUT ADAM EISENBERG
Adam grew up on a cattle ranch outside Boulder, Colorado, and spent his young teens riding horses, showing prize-winning calves at a local county fair, and reading science fiction.
An avid fan of the original film “Planet of the Apes,” Adam got his first taste of being a journalist at the age of fourteen when he and his buddy Tom Barlow decided to create their own ape masks. Adam called Oscar-winning makeup artist John Chambers on the phone and got his advice on how best to make a proper ape face.
When Adam was sixteen, his friend and local magician Sam Kent arranged for them to interview Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry while the legendary producer was in Colorado for a lecture. The morning after the event, they picked Roddenberry up at his hotel and drove him to the airport, interviewing him along the way and in an airport bar. Adam wrote the interview up for a local TV guide, and the article was reprinted in the nationally-circulated TREK Magazine. This experience prompted Adam to write freelance articles for The Denver Post during college, and he earned a journalism degree from the University of Colorado.
Following graduation, Adam moved to Los Angeles and spent seven years as a freelance writer covering movies and television. His work included behind-the-scenes coverage of “Ghostbusters,” “The Terminator,” “Return of the Jedi,” “Gremlins,” “Aliens,” “The Right Stuff,” “Ghostbusters II,” and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade;” and he interviewed George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Oliver Stone, Joe Dante, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, Bill Murray, Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise.
Adam’s credits include The Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Denver Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Twilight Zone Magazine, American Film, Moviegoer, Cinefex, American Cinematographer, Cinefantastique, Kinema Jumpo (Japan), Starlog (Japan), Starfix (France), L’Ecran Fantastique (France) and Star Voyager (England). Adam also wrote and co-produced the 1987 educational video “Reforestation,” a documentary about forest preservation narrated by William Shatner.
Feeling the need to take his career in a new direction, Adam moved to Seattle and earned a J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law. Post law school, he worked as a criminal prosecutor, a civil trial attorney, a Court Commissioner and a Magistrate. In January 2017, he was appointed to serve as an elected judge on the Seattle Municipal Court, and he held that position until January 2023.
While on the Seattle Municipal Court bench, Adam helped create the Domestic Violence Intervention Project (DVIP). He wrote about his work on DVIP in a 2021 Op-Ed for The Seattle Times, Help heal families: Fund domestic violence intervention programs.
Adam is the author of the book, “A Different Shade of Blue: How Women Changed the Face of Police Work,” (Behler, 2009). “A Different Shade of Blue” tells the history of female cops in America through the candid voices of 50 women on the Seattle Police Department. In addition to its U.S. publication, the book has been translated and published in China (Encyclopedia of China Publishing House, 2012).
In 2012, Adam interviewed the late Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times’ journalist Anthony Lewis. Published by History News Network, the wide-ranging conversation featured Mr. Lewis’ observations of the U.S. Supreme Court in light of his forty-year career covering the highest court.
In his other freelance work, Adam has written about mental illness, domestic violence and other law-related issues for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Seattle Weekly; he produced televised public forums for the City of Seattle Domestic Violence Council from 1999-2004; and in 2010 he created the story and characters for Take the Case: Chain of Evidence, an online educational game for the National Law Enforcement Museum that taught middle school kids how evidence goes from the crime scene to the courtroom.
More recently, Adam wrote the 2022 retrospective article, Randall William Cook: An Oscar Winner’s Journey from Harryhausen to Hobbits for VFX Voice Magazine. Also in 2022, his 1985 interview with James Cameron was translated into French to coincide with the release of “Avatar - The Way of Water.” Play it again, Sam : James Cameron ou l’Esprit de suites (entretien inédit)
Currently, Adam teaches law & ethics classes for graduate and law students at the University of Washington, and he serves as a part-time judge pro tem for the Tulalip Tribal Court and King County District Court in Washington state. He also teaches the martial art of aikido to teenagers at Two Cranes Aikido in Seattle.