After graduating from the Bronx High School of Science in 1985, Bass
attended New York University as a Dean's List pre-law major and worked
part-time and/or summers at New York City law firms such as Howard,
Darby & Levin and Davis, Markel & Edwards. At the same time, Bass, as
keyboardist and vocalist, performed and recorded regularly with a
number of local musicians, most notably The Wildcats, with and without
sensational frontman Charles "Bubba" Brown. From 1987, Bass became a
frequent "guest" member of Mickey Gilley's Urban Cowboy Band on select
dates around the United States.
In 1990, Bass married, and he and his wife Erica relocated to Boston,
MA where he attended his first year of law school at Boston University.
In 1991, the couple relocated to Nashville, TN, where he completed his
Juris Doctorate degree at Vanderbilt University School of Law in 1993.
Trips home to New York usually meant off-the-cuff recording sessions,
yielding spontaneous gems featuring Brown, The Blue Scoobies, B.U. Law
School classmate Glenn Moses on guitar, fellow New York law firm
employee and monster bassist Kevin MacNeil, and French guitar wiz
Daniel Hoffenberg.
It was during this period that Bass turned his love of music and eye
for detail into another part-time vocation, as he began writing
articles and assembling discographies and liner notes for LP and CD
reissues of many seminal recordings in American popular music. His
jaundiced view and avowed love of genre movies brought requests for
articles and interviews concerning past and present cult movie stars,
and in 1993, the Basses relocated to Los Angeles, California.
Almost immediately, Bass met writer, film encyclopedia, and fellow
traveler, Lawrence Greenberg, then working in development at
Touchstone, and b-movie auteur Richard Gabai. Following a series of
behind-the-scenes articles (most notably for "Femme Fatales" magazine)
and stints in film publicity, Ari earned a series of production jobs on
independent features, including a few produced by Gabai. After working
with Daily Variety chief film critic Todd McCarthy on McCarthy's
exhaustive 1997 biography of filmmaker Howard Hawks, Ari joined the
production team on the short film, "Three Women of Pain" starring
friend Jeremy Sisto.
The Basses divorced in 1997, and the same year, Ari entered the field
of film distribution, incorporating U.S. Rep Corp. with Paul
Davis-Miller later that year, and thereafter joining Producer's Rep
Seth J. Kittay at All Channel Films, Inc.
Bass joined Gabai, a veteran singer/songwriter/guitarist in a revamped
version of Gabai's 1980s band, The Checks, before co-founding Uncle
Daddy, a much-loved local "rock 'n' roll cabaret" act which featured
B-movie sexpots Shannon Whirry and Alexander Keith (aka Wendy
Schumacher) as dancers/back-up vocalists.
In late 1998, Bass and Greenberg began developing Greenberg's
directorial debut, "Men Named Milo, Women Named Greta." With the
addition of the more experienced Gabai as fellow producer, it was shot
in May 1999 with an ensemble cast (including Jeremy Sisto, Poppy
Montgomery, Allen Garfield, Sally Kirkland and Jonathan Silverman, as
well as one ex-girlfriend, Alexander Keith), and a cinematographer
(Antonio Calvache, recommended by another flame, Melissa Behr) who went
on to shoot "In The Bedroom." Milo was a film festival success,
appearing at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, and being picked up by
the Sundance Channel. In 2001, Bass and Greenberg
re-teamed for "What They Wanted, What They Got," starring Alana Ubach,
Zach Galligan and Michael Des Barres.
In 2005, Bass departed All Channel Films and took the reigns of Pop3
Media Corp., a publicly-traded film production and distribution
shingle.
