At a pre-release screening of his new movie “Stronger” at the University of Pennsylvania, Academy Award-winning producer alumnus Todd Lieberman discussed filmmaking, his career and the movie business with Penn Professor Peter Decherney, director of the cinema & media studies program in the School of Arts & Sciences.

Lieberman, a 1995 Penn graduate, is co-owner of Mandeville Films. He has produced dozens of films during his 20-year career, including the Oscar-winning “The Fighter” and the recent “Beauty and the Beast.”

“Stronger,” starring Jake Gyllenhaal, is based on the New York Times-bestselling memoir of Jeff Bauman, who was injured in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and had both of his legs amputated. The film is scheduled general release Friday, September 22. 

“That idea of being able to conjure strength far more than you ever thought you had, to be able to push through it, that’s what this movie is about for me,” Lieberman told the audience of about 150 people, many of them Penn students, after the movie screening at Penn’s Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.

Decherney asked a wide range of questions about the making of “Stronger,” as well as about Lieberman’s life, career and moviemaking in Hollywood.

“What I’m always trying to find is something that truly touches my soul, something that genuinely moves me,” Lieberman said, describing his approach to discovering films. “So it’s my job to find great stories and figure out the best way to get it done and to get those to people.”

Growing up in Cleveland, Lieberman said he loved film, theater and entertainment. At Penn, he tapped into his own creativity as a member of the Mask and Wig Club, the country’s oldest all-male collegiate musical comedy troupe.

​​​​​​​Connections he made through Mask and Wig have been instrumental in his career, he said. They helped him secure his first internship and his first real job in the Hollywood entertainment industry, as an assistant in the creative department of Summit Entertainment.

Reading through hundreds of screenplays and finding those that became successful movies led him to become a producer, he said.

“That’s when I’d go back to theater and Mask and Wig,” he said. “That’s what I’ve always liked, which is creating from the beginning and building something from the start.”

The filmmaking industry is changing, he said, but there are many opportunities, on the big screen, and increasingly on the small screen.

“I do know that content is going to always be around and storytelling is going to always be around,” he said. “And the filmed version of storytelling is an incredible medium, that elicits an incredible amount of community, emotion and laughter.”

Lieberman encouraged the students in the audience to pursue what they love in searching for a career in the film industry.

“Understand what your taste is, know what you like, know what you don’t like, read as much as you can and from there try to find people you can learn from,” he said. “You have to figure out what you love first and you have to find your path from there.”

Students also had an opportunity to network with Lieberman at a reception following the event.

The Penn screening of “Stronger” was sponsored by Penn's Cinema & Media Studies Department, the Office of University Communications, the SPEC Film Society and RealArts@Penn.