I am an "escapee" from
Southern California and after
living in Friday Harbor in Washington
State and New England (Lyme,
NH, 10 miles from Hanover -- home of
Dartmouth College) we are now residing
in downtown Jersey City, New Jersey;
right across the river from New York
City.
I started my show business career in New York City as a TV talent agent. The agency CMA (now ICM), is one of the three largest agencies in the world. My job was to find employment for performers and also creative talent (i.e.: writers, producers, directors, etc.) It was also my job to discover and cultivate new talent and sign established talent who were dissatisfied with their representation. I worked with people such as George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Lily Tomlin, Liza Minnelli and countless others.
Eventually, I began to "package" shows, which means I put creative elements together and sold whole entities to networks, etc. I was transferred to the California office as a Vice-President. I left the company in the mid-seventies and made my way back to New York to work on the original "Saturday Night Live." (Associate Producer and Talent Consultant). I stayed with the show for its first year and then returned to California as head of Lorne Michael's (creator of "Saturday Night Live") company.
At the time it was called Above Average Productions. In that capacity I began to involve myself in new projects and also was involved in producing an NBC special/documentary starring the Beach Boys.
I also produced movie classic "The Rutles" which was written and co-directed by Eric Idle of Monty Python. Eventually, I moved on and became a development executive at 20th Century Fox TV which led to a job at Universal and a stay on the Universal lot for over fourteen years where I served in various capacities. I was Vice-President in charge of Comedy Development at Uni for almost six years, a writer/producer for one year and Executive Vice President of the Arthur Company (a company partly owned by Universal's parent company) for six and one-half years. I've developed sitcoms, dramas, TV movies, features etc.
As comedy head at Universal, I developed and sold the hit series "Charles in Charge" among many others including three shows which were executive produced by Steve Martin one of which was the critically acclaimed, "Domestic Life" starring Martin Mull (it aired on CBS-TV).
At the Arthur Company I developed "FBI: The Untold Stories" which I also sold, and CoExecutive produced. It was on ABC-TV for two seasons. In this job, I was responsible for tens of millions of dollars in production.
For the record, a development executive's job is to somehow invent, create or find ideas to sell -- develop them creatively, bring them to a broadcast entity and "pitch" the now developed idea and, if successful, guide it creatively though pilot script, pilot-production and hopefully series. I had a "stable" of writers at Universal all of whom I signed and who were my responsibility. My whole day was dominated by creative matters almost all of which pertained to writing.
In mid 1993, I left that phase of my career behind and decided to pursue other interests including occasional writing projects. (I had been writing on the side). I've written four screenplays and sold two. I have also written a non-fiction book on the subject of fate. I had a novelty book series out several years ago which was financed by B. Dalton (Barnes and Noble). I also have a children's book project (actually a series of books) in the works. I am a member of the Writers Guild of America (West).
After teaching many scriptwriting and related courses (at Keene
State (part of the University of New
Hampshire system) and at other Colleges,
as well as workshops at Burlington
College, Keene State, Boston's Film
and Video Foundation and for the New
Hampshire Writer's and Publisher's
Project, I then founded
Hollywoodscript.com LLC in 1998, which
has become an internationally known
script consultation company.
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