Charlottesville native Jeff Wadlow may soon belong to one of the world's most exclusive clubs: Hollywood.

Wadlow, son of the late state senator Emily Couric, is well on his way to a career as a film director. Already, he has amassed a resume full of achievements remarkable for someone so young (Wadlow frequently agonizes over the fact that he'll turn 30 in 16 months).

"He's a rising filmmaker who's clearly going places," said Richard Herskowitz, director of the Virginia Film Festival.

In particular, Herskowitz said, he likes the playfulness of Wadlow's films.

While still a graduate student in the Peter Stark Producing Program at the USC School of Cinema-Television, Wadlow directed and hatched the story for a short called "Tower of Babble" which creates three radically different scenarios using the same words.

While Wadlow jokes that the flick's best-paid actor was a monkey, "Tower of Babble" does boast one big-name star: Kevin Spacey narrated the film.

The typical film grad student might have a hard time getting an Academy Award-winner to help out with his short, but Wadlow had two things going for him: persistence and a knowledge of the importance of networking.

After Wadlow had earned his degree in film and history from Dartmouth, he moved to New York to live with his famous aunt, Katie Couric, whose husband had recently died of colon cancer. It was there that he got a job as an assistant to Spacey as he filmed "The Big Kahuna."

Wadlow stayed in touch with the actor after leaving for grad school. When he finished "Tower of Babble," he showed it to Spacey, who offered some suggestions on the film. Wadlow tweaked the movie and showed it to him again. Eventually, Wadlow convinced Spacey to narrate the short.

"What's great about Kevin is he really believes in mentoring," Wadlow said.

"Tower of Babble" went on to win several awards. Today, it can be seen on the Independent Film Channel.

Wadlow entered the short in the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival. In the spring of 2002, Wadlow and other nine semifinalists went to the Cannes Film Festival, where they were given less than two weeks to film a short that included a Chrysler car. Later that year at the Toronto International Film Festival, Wadlow was named the winner - meaning he had a $1,000,000 feature film production deal.

Called "Living the Lie," Wadlow's proposed film would tell the story of twenty-somethings in a Los Angeles liar's club. Studio execs later asked Wadlow to make the characters younger and to move the setting out of L.A.

"The studio system is a very interesting business," Wadlow said.

The new film, now called "Cry Wolf," is set at a Virginia boarding school and follows a group of teens whose lies collide with reality. Wadlow spent four weeks filming the movie in Richmond in the fall of 2003. It's slated for a 2005 release.

Wadlow has also directed an animated film based on a Christmas card designed by a friend. With voices by Larry King and Danny DeVito, the cartoon features a bitter general who wants Santa behind bars.

Even with his busy schedule, Wadlow is heavily involved with the Virginia Film Festival. In addition to sitting on its board, this year he launched the Adrenaline Film Project (see Running Time).

It was a workshop led by Roger Ebert at the Virginia Film Festival that made a teenaged Wadlow hungry for a career in film.

Returning to Charlottesville also gives Wadlow a chance to talk about his mom. Every day at the festival, he said, someone will tell him something his mom did to help the community. These conversations break his heart, he said, but also make him proud.