I'll Try Not to Make This Weird
But here we are. I almost called this site My Charmed Life, but that felt like a bit much. There’s been some charm, sure, but I’m more of a stray dog with a bowtie than anything polished or predictable.
I was born in Selma, Alabama, but raised in Oak Park, Illinois, home of Frank Lloyd Wright and Ernest Hemingway. One of them built houses. The other drank and complained about writing.
I took the writer’s path early. I wrote for Trapeze, the same high school paper as Papa, then haunted the campus of Southern Illinois University, where attending class was more of a suggestion.
I made it to Los Angeles with a checkered teenage past and a kind of reckless professionalism, equal parts ambition and poor impulse control.
I was a delinquent when I met Russell, a hotshot record promoter who was absolutely certain he knew best about everything, including me. He wasn’t wrong. When I was a mess, he showed up. When I needed a door opened, he opened it. We had crazy love and still do.
Russell got me my first job at one of the largest talent agencies, and in a lot of ways made me who I am. I’ve never quite figured out how to stay mad at him.
At ICM, I delivered scripts to movie stars, packages to rock stars that were definitely not scripts, and was once greeted by a young Nick Nolte in his underpants.
Still one of my favorite Tuesdays.
CAA poached me after reading my script synopses. I landed at the desk of Martin Baum, famously one of the meanest bosses in Hollywood. He yelled at me daily, publicly, and with real flair. It was brutal. I loved him.
I was a personal manager and signed Howie Mandel early in his career, then Sandra Bernhard. I produced some of Howie’s HBO specials and helped shepherd Sandra’s Without You, I’m Nothing from a hit off-Broadway show into a cult film that still impresses people who are impossible to impress. Both are still friends. Keepers.
I was young. I had too much money. I never met a drug I didn’t at least flirt with at a party.
There were the bodybuilding years. Yes, really. Then a period best described as foggy, freelance-y, and feral.
I pulled myself together and started a company that, somehow, someone bought. Then came Comedy World, a 24/7 streaming radio network in a dial-up world that went bust with the rest of the dot-coms.
Then I lost Billy, the one who knew everything and loved me anyway. It broke me in ways I’m still counting.
Sirius Satellite Radio kept the lights on while I went fetal. Then Jamie, someone I grew up with at CAA, took a chance and gave me a job at Discovery, where I zigzagged through nearly every network in the portfolio. Including a fourteen-month stretch at Oprah’s OWN. Which is about all I can say about that.
In 2015, two friends pulled me over to NatGeo/Disney+, and I’ve been here ever since. Solid people. Funny, challenging, and more than a few have become real friends. I also get to do it all in the same building where Walt Disney once had his office, which still gets me every single morning.
On Labor Day of ’21, I met someone who unfroze my heart after twenty years. You’ll meet him, sometimes in code. I got very lucky.
Bill Ledbetter left his handprint on my heart. He’ll always be my Guyster.
The rest of it is scattered around here if you feel like digging.