David Leaf is a Peabody and WGAW award-winning writer, director and producer, the creative visionary behind such critically acclaimed films and festival favorites as The U.S. vs. John Lennon (winner of the Exhibitors’
Award at The Venice Film Festival), Focal Award winner The Night James Brown Saved Boston, the Grammy-nominated Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of SMiLE, and The Bee Gees: This
Is Where I Came In.”

In 2025, he wrote SMiLE: The Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Brian Wilson (published by Omnibus Press) and in 2022, he authored a massively updated edition of his first book, God Only Knows: The Story of Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys & the California Myth (Omnibus Press).

Most recently, in film, he is the writer/director/producer of the feature documentary on Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, Dion: King of the New York Streets, wrote, produced and directed To Tell The Truth (a film about the WWII Japanese internment camps), and was a consultant for the White Horse Pictures production of Frank Marshall’s HBO feature documentary, The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart.

Leaf’s television credits include being one of the writers on the Emmy-winning, landmark 9/11, all-network telethon “America: A Tribute To Heroes.” That same year, Leaf wrote and produced TNT’s acclaimed An All Star Tribute To Brian Wilson and was a producer of the Emmy-nominated “Billy Joel: In His Own Words (A&E).

As an author, Leaf is known for his books for the Grammy-nominated The Pet Sounds Sessions, his groundbreaking Brian Wilson biography, The Beach Boys & The California Myth, co-authoring The Bee Gees, the group’s authorized autobiography, and writing the Beatles and Beach Boys chapters for Capitol Records’ 50th Anniversary book.

Very simply, whatever the medium, Leaf is a world-class storyteller. You can learn more about his career off-campus at his website, www.leafprod.com.

Since 2010, Leaf has been an essential faculty member in the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music Music Industry program.

Leaf has created four undergraduate classes: “The Reel Beatles,” a class that contextualizes the Beatles story through television, the films they made and those made about them; a course in music documentary, “Docs That Rock, Docs That Matter”), songwriting (“The Legends of Songwriting: Killer Hooks, Essential Songs & Songwriters of the Rock Era…and Those They’ve Influenced” and “Good & Bad Vibrations,” a course on Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys).

In 2019, Leaf endowed “The Brian Wilson Scholarship for Composing,
Arranging and Producing Popular Music,” awarded bi-annually to a talented, promising junior at UCLA.

In 2020, Leaf received a major grant from the University of California system to turn “The Reel Beatles” into an online course for the entire UC system, and in the Spring of 2023, it was offered online to the UC system for the first time.
In addition to his work as an Adjunct Associate Professor, Leaf has been the Faculty Advisor for Grammy U, has worked with students on their Capstone projects and, for ten years, was the intern supervisor for the Music Industry program, helping guide students each year as they navigate their career path from the Westwood campus into “the real world” of the music business.