SCA Professor,
Film & Television Production Division

SCA Professor,
Film & Television Production Division

SCA Professor,
Film & Television Production Division

SCA Professor,
Film & Television Production Division

Senior Business Officer,
USC School of Cinematic Arts

1932–2025
Television Writer and Screenwriting Professor

Friedman, a former architect who collaborated with Frank Lloyd Wright, was a prolific television writer, responsible for more than 700 episodic hours on shows including Get Smart, The Andy Griffith Show, Bewitched, The Odd Couple, Gilligan’s Island, I Dream of Jeannie, The Partridge Family, Barney Miller, Happy Days, All in the Family, Wonder Woman, Chico and The Man, Starsky and Hutch, The Fall Guy and Fantasy Island. Friedman also wrote for many animated series, including G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (originating the battle cries Yo Joe! and Co-bra!), Taz-Mania, and Marvel’s Fantastic Four and Iron Man series. He notoriously killed Optimus Prime in 1986’s animated The Transformers: The Movie, against his will Friedman insisted to fans of the series who frequently lambasted him for the storyline.

Friedman taught screenwriting at SCA and Chapman University for more than three decades. He is survived by his wife Valerie and their three children.

1968–2025
Multihyphenate filmmaker, scholar, and SCA alumnus

Running Wolf, an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Nation, graduated with an MFA in Film & Television Production from SCA in 2002. After studying Mathematics and Chemistry as an undergraduate, Running Wolf turned to media and performing arts scholarship and practice. He also earned an MA in Performance Studies from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies from Stanford University. As a film creative he worked in Production Management at Disney-ABC Television, as a Creative Producer for The CW and NBC network affiliates, as a researcher and tribal liaison for PBS’ American Experience and as an actor in several television series and films. As a scholar he taught at Stanford University, Vassar College and Santa Clara University, and developed and led workshops at numerous tribal and junior colleges on cultural diversity, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary collaboration, the economics and politics of corporate mainstream media, identity politics, and mainstream film/television/theater production. In 2017, he joined the faculty of the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada and was Professor of Race and Media.

1953 – 2025
Director and SCA Alumnus

Foley, who graduated from SCA in 1979 with an undergraduate degree in Production, had a long career directing episodic television and films, beginning with film Reckless (1984) and including At Close Range (1986), After Dark, My Sweet (1990), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Fear (1996), Fifty Shades Darker (2017), and Fifty Shades Freed (2018) and the television series Hannibal, House of Cards and Billions. He was a frequent collaborator of Madonna’s in the 1980s, directing her film Who’s That Girl (1987) and its accompanying music video, as well as music videos for hit songs including Dress You Up, Live to Tell, True Blue and Papa Don’t Preach, and the opening sequence for the film of her first tour Madonna Live: The Virgin Tour.

1936–2025
Documentarian, Amateur Archaeologist and SCA Alumnus

Clapp’s film work was tied to his love of the outdoor adventure. He began working on National Geographic Specials in the 1960s for which he worked on the Oscar-nominated documentaries Journey to the Outer Limits (1973) about a climb of the Santa Rosa Peak in the Peruvian Andes and The Incredible Machine (1975), about the human body. He edited the ABC series The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau (1968) and produced and directed The Great Mojave Desert (1971), a one-hour special for National Geographic and CBS. Clapp won numerous awards for his documentary and was an author of eight books. An amateur archeologist, he assembled a team that uncovered the ruins of a lost city in Southern Oman 1991 that was thought to have existed between A.D. 300 and A.D. 500; the expedition was covered in the New York Times. A California desert preservationist, Clapp was a board member of the Anza Borrego Foundation. He is survived by his wife Bonnie Loizos, and their daughters Jennifer and Cristina.

1986-2025
Filmmaker and SCA Alumnus

Akinloye, a Los Angeles native, was a 2018 graduate of the Peter Stark Producing Program. At his time of death, he worked in Creative Development at Walt Disney Animation where his credits included Encanto (2021), Moana 2 (2024) and Zootopia 2 (2025). He previously worked at MACRO and Issa Rae Productions, and in 2017 was selected for the inaugural class of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Academy Gold Rising Talent Development Program, which aims to help promising young filmmakers get a foothold in the industry. Akinloye is survived by his wife April, and their sons Taj and Tayden.