For over thirty years, starting at San Francisco's KGO-TV in the late 60's, then Dick Clark Productions in Hollywood in the early 70's, CBS, ABC and Hanna-Barbera in the late Seventies, Marvel Productions, King Features and CBS in the Eighties, and National Geographic, Tribune and FX in the Nineties, I have written, produced and developed shows and scripts of many different descriptions for television, home video, cable, live arena and Broadway. (Credits and excerpts to come. Hopefully, with audio or even video clips of finished productions.)
ANIMATION
Below, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus adapted by me from Frank Baum's novel for Universal Home Video. Apparently, this little gem is still selling quite nicely around the world. I like the writing better than the production. Adapting Baum was a joy.
Story-editing falls into the realm of writing and writing supervision, so I am including animated series which I story-edited along the way. Scooby Doo, Where Are You?, for which I coaxed the writer of "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, " Bobby Lees out of retirement. He said writing for animation was the hardest thing he had ever done.
Trollkins was the first show I developed with Joe Barbera after arriving at Hanna-Barbera. I went on to story-edit, hiring my friend, Jeffrey Scott to do most of the writing. Joe Barbera had me audition for one of the recurring Troll Chopper roles and I landed the part of Aphid. The audition was handled by Barbera himself and he put me through a lot of character hoops with my old friend, Frank Welker at my side. Two years later, when I left Hanna-Barbera to become VP of Marvel Productions, I signed Jeffrey Scott to an exclusive Marvel development deal out of which Muppet Babies was our most successful project together.
Dungeons and Dragons was the show that got me to Marvel as VP in an attempt by Judy Price, VP of CBS Saturday Morning and an old Dick Clark Productions comrade-in-arms, to strengthen the writing and production at the studio. I also took over voice-directing duties on this series. Bob Richardson and I met on this show and, together with Toei Animation in Japan, honed it into "The gem in the crown of Saturday morning animation" according to Daily Variety.
During Dungeons and Dragons' reign in the crown of Saturday Morning animation, Jeffrey Scott came aboard and our combined Richardson, Scott and Saroyan talents seemed really energized. About this time, Jim Henson met with us and other Los Angeles animation studios for a project based upon a scene in Muppets Take Manhattan where the Muppets regressed to baby-hood. Purportedly based upon the personalities present in that meeting, he chose MArvel. We had what seemed to be instant rapport both personally and creatively.
Below,thanks to YouTube, is part one of Skeeter and the Wolf, one of the few episodes I found time to write solo with all my other responsibilities. Production was made more complicated by the use of toy instruments to match Prokofiev's use on one instrument per character in the classical symphony Peter and the Wolf.
Muppet Babies remains my favorite animated show experience and the longest in duration. As VP of Network Development for Marvel when the studio was between Presidents (David De Patie having stepped down and no replacement having been found) operations were overseen from New York by James Galton, CEO of the Cadence Corporation, who owned Marvel Comics. James was a great and kind man who allowed me great personal latitude in the way creative issues were handled.
I had made an overall development deal with Jeffrey Scott, locking him exclusively to Marvel for the year and, in my opinion, had the best and fastest mind and typing fingers in animation on my small team. Bob Richardson and I had formed a real bond and trust as producer/director/story editor of Dungeons and Dragons, so he was a natural choice for Muppet Babies.
We then flew to New York and met with Jim and his staff. Present also were James Galton of Cadence, Judy Price of CBS, Lee Gunther, Marvel's VP of Production, Bob Richardson, producer, Takashi, our chief designer, and Jeffrey Scott. We met at the fanciful Henson offices on E. 68th street.
What grew out of this get-together was another massive creative meeting at Marvel's office in LA at which the wide-open creative stance of Muppet Babies evolved. The highlight of this meeting arose when there was concern as to whether or not we should postulate things like the babies being keyed into scenes from Star Wars. Jim said, "Hank, may I use your office?" I said, "Yes." We walked into my office. Jim picked up the phone and made a call. He woke up George Lucas in his hotel room in Hong Kong at 4 AM, briefly told him what we were doing and what we wanted. George said it sounded cool and instructed me to call Howard Roffman at Lucasfilm. Done. Prints were delivered to Marvel within two days and we were off and running. Essentially, the same scenario took place with Steven Spielberg and the rolling ball scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. We were running even faster. We put the rolling ball scene in the main title. Jim loved it and was quite pleased that we could eliminate Harrison Ford running through without roto-scoping.
Below are parts II and III of Skeeter and the Wolf. On the Director page of this website I'll put links to The Pig Who Would Be Queen, an episode that Jim Henson said was his favorite script up to season six, as to him it maximized the potential of the Muppet Babies concept.
LIVE-ACTION WRITING
The Prism Awards became an obsession after I produced the roll-in segments for their winning shows in 1998, among them Party of 5, which called forth many vivid memories of my childhood as the only child of a couple in which one partner was an out-of-control alcoholic. I worked arduously with Brian Dyak and Larry Deutchman to hone this heartfelt small breakfast event into a prime time award show that met all the diverse requiremtns of theirmission statement. The list of stars who participated during my tenure as producer and producer/writer is staggering, and it allowed me to bring to the table old show business production relationships from my days at Dick Clark. Emory Cohen and Laser Pacific Media were particular champions of this initial effort, as was IATSE.
In the midst of my Prism Awards years, I wrote a somewhat interesting episode of the famous Jett Jackson about acceptance. Beyond this I cannot remember a thing about it. Not sure I ever saw it, as I was so quickly embroiled in Prism business afterwards.
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The National Geographic Channel was just getting up to speed when my White Sneakers, Inc. production company undertook the creation of this one-hour sports-wildlife special and with the help of Tim Kelly at National Geographic Television, Steve Sabol and Earl Mann at NFL films, and James Brown, then of Fox NFL Sunday. Together we created one of the most unusual and captivating hours on which I have ever worked. We are currently attempting to find ways to make the show more accessible to both sports fans and animal lovers, and to create a sequel.
When I was a program executive at ABC in the Seventies, my late uncle, William Saroyan, suggested his renowned short story "The Parsley Garden" to me as a Weekend Special, a unique ABC half-hour franchise for kids based upon literature. At the time, no one at ABC was interested, but thirteen years later, more than a decade after his death, ABC said, "Yes," changed my life completely by allowing me to get back into live-action and allowed me to fulfill a bit of my life-long promise to this man, my uncle, who touched millions of hearts during and after the Depression with his profound take on what it means to be a human being. The cast included Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Bosley, Curtis Armstrong, James Earl Jones and newcomer, Christopher Miranda and earned me the Outstanding Directing Emmy on my directorial debut.
