bio

I think I might need another cup of espresso before I write this.  Can you wait a sec?  Ok, thanks. Ready now.

In 1998 I started a production company called DocuCinema. It really was a game-changer for me, fielding crews, running a staff, working with networks. I’ve always been a storyteller and media maker, but creating television like that really felt like the big time. DocuCinema is a vastly different company now. But to know why, we have to get personal.

Short form?  Writing short stories as a kid in New York City and suburbs, carrying a camera around, image- and word-making though college at Antioch in Ohio, but it took a couple of decades to understand how to put them together. I was an obit and weather report writer for the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram, then a general assignment reporter, then a playwright in New York, then a cartoon writer, then a television writer, then a movie writer for Disney, then a news writer, then a news producer for E!, Fox and NBC, then a documentary director.  You can pick up the story here, or check out my IMDB.

I’ve left behind a few things along the way – at one time I fronted jazz bands as a tenor saxophonist and played as a street musician in Rome – and I’ve gained a real appreciation for simplification. I’m doing media really differently now than I once did, with the Shelter project and the be global podcast. I’m working with online media that didn’t exist when I started out in Texas, writing in a reporter’s notebook and then going back to the newsroom to type on an IBM Selectric.

I like writing for The Huffington Post and Storify, and posting images to Flickr and Pinterest. I am attracted/repulsed by politics. Science is cool. I live in Santa Monica, California with Tabby Biddle, a writer and editor. My daughter Carolyn lives in New York City and my son Dean is studying furniture design at California College of the Arts. My personal blog is called 500 Words.