Luke Matheny

Matheny was born in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, the son of DiAnn and Mat Matheny, a pipe welder and furniture designer. He graduated from Wilmington's Concord High School in 1993 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1997 from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

He later worked as a reporter and copy editor for a variety of trade magazines, including the respected television trade magazine, Electronic Media, and web sites in Chicago. His career includes stints as a synopsis writer for Netflix and as a story editor for the MTV series Made.

In 1998 Matheny developed a plan with three friends to shoot a movie about three under-appreciated losers from Chicago who quit their jobs, move to Paris, and become street musicians. Matheny and his friends quit their jobs, moved to Paris, and started shooting the film in May 2001. The film premiered at the 2003 Wilmington Independent Film Festival. Matheny recalled, "It was weird; we hit the ground and started casting people off the street. We were hanging out with Parisian models. It was like this weird Cinderella experience. At the end of it we were all completely broke and living with our parents. ... There're probably 33 funny minutes in it, but we really had no idea what we were doing at all. And at some point I decided that I really wanted to keep doing this."