Wainwright has won several awards for his television commercial work for clients including AT&T, Honda, Sprite, WalMart, Foot Locker, Gatorade, McDonalds, Deutsche Telekom, BP, Disney and many, many others. He has worked with such figures as President Bill Clinton, Jennifer Lopez, Michael Jordan, Anthony Hopkins, Michael Jackson, Michael Chang, James Brown, Al Gore and others.
His very first campaign for Reebok won Adweek’s highest award, the Grand Effie, for the most effective Advertising Campaign of 1992. A recent spot, “Dunk Driving”, part of nationally publicized increase in Drunk Driving prevention, was voted #1 most popular spot in the US in August 2007 and was highlighted on The Today Show and The New York Times.
An Olympic Games commercial that Wainwright wrote and directed was the centerpiece of Russia's successful campaign for the 2014 Winter Olympics. It won Wainwright a Mobius Award for Best International Commercial in 2007.
Wainwright has directed three feature films for major Hollywood studios: Stigmata staring Patricia Arquette, Gabriel Byrne, and Jonathan Pryce, for MGM; "The Fog staring Selma Blair, Tom Welling, and Maggie Grace, for Sony Pictures; and Blank Check for Walt Disney. The Sadness of Sex, an independent film that Wainwright wrote and directed, was released to great critical praise.
Wainwright currently has several films in development.
Wainwright directed the TV pilot Wolf Lake for Fox network which was picked up for series. He also directed a pilot for CBS titled Secret Service, a TV movie about John Dillinger for ABC and Warner Bros, and a reality show pilot for the History Channel.
Wainwright has worked with many artists including MC Hammer, N.W.A. and Michael Jackson, directing the videos for "U Can't Touch This" among Hammer's other hits, as well as N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton". This video was subsequently banned by MTV and became a pop culture phenomenon.
His music video work has garnered him five MTV awards, a Grammy, and numerous other awards around the world.
