Yule Caise
Co-founder, Behind the Billboards
Writer-director-producer Yule Caise is the co-founder of Behind the Billboards, a TV development company specializing in global content.
He is Writer/Executive Producer of the upcoming limited series James Baldwin In Paris for UK-based Impact X Studios. After winning the prestigious Fox Writers Intensive in 2013, Caise inked a development deal with FX Networks, in conjunction with Fox Broadcasting Co and 20th Century Fox Television. He was also selected as a WGA Writers Access Project winner.
Prior to joining the writing staff of Heroes on NBC, Yule’s work and contributions as a New Media Producer and Director won an Emmy Award for Interactive Media Programming for The Heroes Digital Experience. Caise also wrote and directed Heroes: Going Postal, a web series premiered in Hall H at Comic-Con in 2008. Recently, Caise was a Writer-Producer on Tales, a scripted Hip Hop anthology series airing on BET. As Producer-Director of two hit music video shows, Pump It Up UP! (Fox) and Night Tracks (TBS), he was an early influencer who also served as acting coach to the biggest names in hip-hop including: Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Eminem.
An award-winning filmmaker, his film Boy’s Night Out, about homophobia and HIV/AIDS, played festivals worldwide. Notable writing credits include: Free Of Eden starring Sidney Poitier, for Showtime Networks; and the film Way Past Cool, where he also produced alongside Ira Deutchman, Milos Forman, and Norman Lear.
In addition, he’s produced the comedy On Edge, starring Jason Alexander; the drama Tweek City, and the film Warrior Queen, filmed entirely on location in Ghana, West Africa. His first feature film Swishbucklers was released in 2010.
Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Yule trained at the American Conservatory Theater and starred in the landmark PBS television series Up And Coming. At Harvard, Caise directed the award winning short film Shoes, about troubled youths in Boston, broadcast on A&E, BET, and PBS. A veteran of hip-hop, Yule also directed music videos for legendary artists Run DMC and Poor Righteous Teachers.
As playwright, his play Broken was staged at Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice, CA. A lifelong theater geek, Caise has directed for Naked Angels at the Actors Gang in Los Angeles, had works performed by the Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA, and proudly served seven years on the Board of Directors for Cornerstone Theater Company.
Yule Caise received the NAACP/NBC Fellowship in Screenwriting at UCLA, and won of the Sidney Sheldon Award for Screenwriting. He is a Film Independent Fellow and alumnus of the Screenwriting Lab. Caise is also former Rockefeller Fellowship Media Arts nominee, and was awarded a Bogliasco Fellowship in Italy; and won of grants from the Eastman Foundation and Ford Foundation. He has taught screenwriting at Columbia College Chicago, UCLA and USC. He has lived in various countries around the world.
A child of the Free Speech Movement, raised in the shadow of the Black Panther Party, Caise graduated from Harvard College and earned his MFA from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.