South Florida
Hudak On Hollywood is thrilled to offer a wide variety of lecturers and topics to South FL communities. Lecturers are thoroughly vetted and come highly recommended by activities professionals. Most lectures are audiovisual and one hour. Rates vary and are negotiable.
Topics include: Classic Films, Broadway, Health/Wellness/Nutrition For Seniors, Film History, Jewish History, Women’s Studies, Pop Culture, and American History. We also have people who host classic film screenings and discussions!
Hundreds of audiences across the country have enjoyed our humorous and informative talks. Please e-mail dan@hudakonhollywood.com or schedule a call to discuss bringing a lecture to your community.

Dan Hudak
Owner / Film Lecturer
Expertise: Classic Films
Available for in-person lectures in: All Markets
Available via Zoom? Yes
To book Dan, e-mail: dan@hudakonhollywood.com
A lifelong film lover, Dan Hudak has worked extensively as a film critic in print, radio and television. He has provided film reviews and commentary for WPLG-TV (ABC) Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, ABCNews.com, the Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, CNN.com, indieWIRE.com, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Newsday, Orlando Sentinel, San Francisco Examiner and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
He is the owner of Hudak On Hollywood, Inc., and his popular "Hudak On Hollywood" lectures are given throughout Florida and Colorado. He is the former chairman of the Florida Film Critics Circle and a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association. He studied Film History and Criticism at Bard College and the University of Miami, where he received his M.A. in Film Studies. To give Dan a piece of your mind, e-mail him at dan@hudakonhollywood.com.

Hap Erstein
Broadway & Film Lecturer
Expertise: Broadway & Classic Films
Available for in-person lectures in: South Florida
Available via Zoom? Yes
To book Hap, e-mail: dan@hudakonhollywood.com
Born in Washington, D.C., Hap Erstein went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in dreary Troy, New York, where he narrowly escaped becoming an engineer. In 1994, he and his wife moved to West Palm Beach, where he assumed the position of theater critic at The Palm Beach Post and soon after added the job of film critic. He held these positions for 15 years, until retiring from the paper in 2008. Hap now writes for Palm Beach ArtsPaper, an online and hard copy arts magazine. He has taught theater appreciation courses at Florida Atlantic University's Lifelong Learning Society and been a longtime member of the Carbonell Awards panel recognizing theater excellence in South Florida. Each weekend, he can be heard on WJNO Radio talking about the latest film releases. During his career Hap has interviewed such show business legends as Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Lucille Ball, George Burns, Stephen Sondheim and Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. When not working, he can usually be found playing tennis or backgammon.

Bill Hirschman
Broadway & Film Lecturer
Expertise: Broadway & Classic Films
Available for in-person lectures in: South Florida
Available via Zoom? No
To book Bill, e-mail: dan@hudakonhollywood.com
Bill Hirschman is the editor, chief critic and reporter for Florida Theater on Stage, a professional advertising-supported arts journalism website he created 11 years ago. He has been a professional journalist since interning during high school in 1966 in Westchester County, New York. He began reviewing theater for the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1998 and had written about the arts and reviewed for several decades before that, especially books. His arts coverage has appeared in Variety, American Theatre magazine, Playbill.com, a&e magazine, the Sondheim Review, Mystery Scene Magazine, Florida Health News, 850 magazine, and the Miami Herald among many other outlets. He is the former chairman of the executive committee of the American Theatre Critics’ Association and currently chair of its advisory committee. He lives in Plantation with two dogs, one named after the heroine of Sunday in the Park With George, and his wife Oline H. Cogdill, who he says “makes all things possible.”

Leslie Burman
Nutrition, Health & Wellness Lecturer
Expertise: Nutrition, Health & Wellness
Available for in-person lectures in: South Florida
Available via Zoom? Yes
To book Leslie, e-mail: dan@hudakonhollywood.com
Leslie Burman is a Registered Dietitian, Licensed Nutritionist, Certified Diabetes Educator, and is board certified with advanced certifications to adult and adolescent weight management. She also held licenses as a certified fitness instructor, hypnotherapist, and MBTI instructor. She has great passion for helping others with their personalized health and wellness journey via entertaining and educating by way of lecturing. For the past 25 plus years Leslie has been providing nutrition and wellness related services throughout Palm Beach and surrounding counties. Areas of interest included: Wellness lectures, healthy eating related programs, individualized nutrition consultations, cooking lessons, grocery shop tours, nutrition workshops, food demonstrations and more. Leslie looks forwards to providing you with lectures to better serve your health and wellness goals.

Alex Bruner
Jewish History Lecturer
Expertise: Jewish History, Israel, Middle East
Available for in-person lectures in: South Florida
Available via Zoom? Yes
To book Alex, e-mail: dan@hudakonhollywood.com
Alex Bruner is a former international management consultant and fundraiser. A child of Holocaust survivors from Yugoslavia who remained in Europe after World War II, he has lived in and worked on three continents. His special interest is the history of the Jewish people. He lectures to educational, social, political and community groups in person and on Zoom on various topics related to Israel, the Middle East and antisemitism.
He was the chief Palm Beach fundraiser for the Weizmann Institute of Science (Rehovot, Israel). Bruner also served as the North American director for an agency established by American and Canadian business leaders to assist early-stage Israeli companies. He holds a BS, Ch. Eng. from the University of Maryland and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Roberta Presser
Film Enthusiast
Expertise:
Classic & Foreign Film Discussions
Available for in-person discussions in:
South FL
Available via Zoom?
Yes
To book Roberta, e-mail:
dan@hudakonhollywood.com
Roberta Presser has had a multi-faceted career in the film industry as a Location Manager, Production Coordinator, Assistant to the Producer, and Second Assistant Director. She has worked with such luminaries as Tom Hanks, Richard Burton, Tatum O’Neal, John Belushi and Dan Akroyd. On The Blues Brothers, she coordinated more than 100 vehicles used in this iconic car chase comedy. You can see her film credit every Halloween when they show Friday the 13th, Pt. 2!
While living in Toronto, Roberta set up a workshop for Toronto Women in Film and Television and assisted at the Toronto Film Festival. Back in New York, she was an active member of the Media Educators Association and wrote for their newsletter.
Since moving to Florida, Roberta has taught film and hosted screenings for the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the JCC in Palm Beach Gardens and Boca Raton, the Palm Beach County Library, the Boca Raton Jewish Film Festival, and Temple Beth El in Boca. For the past twelve years, she has been teaching film courses to retirees at the New York Teachers’ Union (UFT) headquarters in Boca, and, since Covid, she has also been teaching on Zoom nationwide for the Queens, New York, UFT office.

James Todd
American History Lecturer
Expertise:
Politics, American History
Available for in-person lectures in:
South Florida
Available via Zoom?
Yes
To book James, e-mail:
dan@hudakonhollywood.com
James Todd is an Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Politics at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach. His areas of expertise include American government, constitutional law, and political history. Since he and his family arrived in Palm Beach County in 2015, Dr. Todd has been a frequent contributor to local and national media coverage of politics. He has regularly appeared as a speaker for Palm Beach County civic, community, and library groups. In 2022, Dr. Todd contributed lectures about the Constitution to the State of Florida Civics Seal of Excellence teacher training program. A native of Alabama, Todd received a B.A. in political science and economics from Jacksonville State University (2001), a law degree (2005) and Ph.D. in American politics (2015) from The University of Alabama. His most recent published work is "Why Do We Have a Constitution?" for The U.S. Constitution in Five Minutes (2023).

Jane Caputi
Women's Studies & Pop Culture Lecturer
Expertise:
Women's Studies, Sexuality, Pop Culture
Available for in-person lectures in:
South Florida
Available via Zoom?
Yes
To book Jane, e-mail:
dan@hudakonhollywood.com
Jane Caputi is Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University. She grew up in Huntington Long Island in a large family. Her first job was at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, which she loved, especially because she learned so much from the Indigenous cultures there. But Albuquerque is literally high and dry and in 1997 she moved back to the ocean, taking a job at FAU. She has written four books, most recently Call Your “Mutha’”: A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene (Oxford University Press, 2020). She also has made two educational documentaries, The Pornography of Everyday Life (2006) distributed by Berkeley Media and Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth (2016), distributed by Women Make Movies.
Dr. Caputi was FAU’s Distinguished Teacher for 2001 and received FAU’s Research and Scholarly Activities award (Professor level) for 2005 and for 2012. In 2016, she was named Eminent Scholar of the Year by the American Culture/Popular Culture Association and in 2020 the Association for the Study of Women in Mythology gave her their annual “Saga Award” for contributions to women’s history and culture.
Are you ready to bring Hudak On Hollywood to your community?
Please e-mail dan@hudakonhollywood.com for additional information. We look forward to hearing from you!