Kabir Akhtar

He later directed part of the opening film for the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards starring Jane Lynch and Leonard Nimoy, and directed a segment of the 84th Academy Awards, starring host Billy Crystal and Melissa McCarthy in a well-received segment.

He also edited the opening films for both broadcasts, and was nominated for an Emmy for editing the Oscars opening.

Following the nomination, Akhtar became the lead editor on the fourth season of Arrested Development, and spoke at Prime Cuts, an annual Television Academy event in Hollywood featuring Emmy-nominated editors.

That season he earned a second Emmy nomination and began work on New Girl.

He later became a producer/editor on the musical comedy series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which garnered him a third Emmy nomination and an Emmy win for cutting the pilot episode.

He went on to direct several episodes of the series as a director-producer.

After Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, he continued directing full-time, including Resident Alien, Young Sheldon, Superstore, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, Saved By The Bell, and Never Have I Ever.

He was also a producer and director on the HBO Max series The Sex Lives of College Girls.

Akhtar has also been a featured speaker at industry events held by the Directors Guild of America, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, SAG-AFTRA, and Avid.

At a comedy workshop presented by the Sundance Film Festival, he advised attendees that although filmmakers “can find the comedy on set", they "can break it in editing.

Kabir Akhtar (born January 11, 1975) is an American television director and editor, who won an Emmy Award in 2016.

His credits include work for Arrested Development, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Never Have I Ever, Behind the Music, and the Academy Awards.

Akhtar is also the creator of The Tool Page, the oldest website about the band Tool.

He ran the website (also known as "toolshed") from 1994 to 2016; it predated many popular sites, including mainstays Google, YouTube, and Yahoo!.

Akhtar was an early innovator on the web, and gained some notoriety for being the source of several April Fools' Day pranks.

Before becoming a director, Akhtar began his career as an editor, working primarily on music and documentary series, including Behind the Music.

In 1994, Akhtar started work on an unofficial website about the band Tool.

Part of this effort was the writing of the Tool FAQ, a document which has often been cited as a source of information about the band.

However, because there was little information available about the band in the days before widespread Internet usage, there were many incomplete sections in the original edition of the FAQ.

In early 1995, Akhtar began corresponding online with the band's singer, Maynard James Keenan.

Keenan sent him the then-unpublished lyrics to the band's entire catalog, and filled in the gaps in the FAQ.

Shortly thereafter, Akhtar's website was christened "The Tool Page," and began tracking Tool news updates.

Akhtar and Keenan's relationship has continued since then, with the two collaborating on releasing information about the secretive band, and even on selling Keenan's car.

When Akhtar created a section of the site for fans to discuss their interpretations of Tool's dense lyrics, Keenan became an occasional reader.

Their association led to the band acknowledging Akhtar's work on their official site, and begat the site's description as "semi-official."

Akhtar was also an early adopter of online video technology, offering streaming music videos on the site as early as 1996, nine years before the advent of YouTube.

That same year, MTV renamed Tool's music video "Stinkfist" due to offensive connotations, and the lyrics of the song were altered.

Akhtar encouraged fans to contact MTV and complain about the censorship.

In response to the overwhelming number of emails sent, Matt Pinfield of MTV's 120 Minutes expressed regret on air by waving his fist in front of his face while introducing the video and explaining the name change.

Akhtar has been a repeat guest on the Australian nationwide radio network Triple J, appearing on segments of The J-Files, hosted by Richard Kingsmill.

Each appearance centered on discussion of Tool and the success of the website.

In 2005, while directing for Comedy Central's The Showbiz Show with David Spade, he directed a short film at the Skywalker Ranch.

The short, which starred Brian Posehn alongside Star Wars characters Darth Vader and Chewbacca, was reviewed favorably by StarWars.com as being "like nothing you've ever seen."

In 2006, Akhtar edited the opening film and several short films for the 78th Annual Academy Awards, which were well-reviewed.

NBC soon listed him as one of the entertainment industry's "People to Watch", for his work as an emerging director.

In 2008, Radar Magazine praised Akhtar's work on the first season of Tracey Ullman's Showtime series State of the Union as "slick editing, [with] skillful use of stock footage."

Akhtar began directing episodic television in 2008, directing three episodes of the British comedy series Mumbai Calling.

He has edited the pilot episodes of ten series, including Speechless, Alex, Inc., and I'm With Busey. He also directed the pilot episodes of the MTV series 8th & Ocean and the 2009 relaunch edition of Unsolved Mysteries.

The series, which was shot entirely in India, aired in 2009 on ITV1 in England and HBO internationally.

Comedy is fragile." In 2018, he was a panelist at SXSW.