First off, what projects do you have coming up?
I’m not allowed to talk about a lot of the things coming up! But I can say I’m doing a bunch of stuff including a movie on August Wilson and a movie on the impact of educational television and AI.
How/why did you get started in screenwriting and working on well-known movies and tv shows like St. Elmo’s Fire and Saved by the Bell?
Pittsburgh has always been a tempestuous muse. There’s a great quote by August Wilson next to my desk that says”I love Pittsburgh and can’t wait to come back and the minute I’m here I can’t wait to take the first thing with four wheels out of here.”
Wilson had a love-hate relationship with the city as have I. My mother had a habit of marrying doctors – that’s what brought us to Pittsburgh. When I was 15 my mother ran away to New York to be an actress. I was in boarding school at Shady Side Academy. I babysat then on weekends for a person who owned the St. Elmos Hotel in Chataqua, New York.
How did that turn into the movie?
I met a waitress there at St. Elmos. I was infatuated with her – some may say I stalked her! When I went to school at Duke I wrote a story about her called St. Elmo’s Fire and mailed it to her. She said she loved it and that I should be a writer.
In 1982 I got a paid internship at Universal Studios and the story was adapted into a screenplay with the help of Joel Schumacher who wrote the D.C. Cab movie with Topper Carew. In 1985 St. Elmo’s Fire was foisted on to the world!
In fact, in the movie three’s a line where Emilio Estevez says he met the woman at the fountain – that was really just dictation.
Any preference between TV, film and documentary – you’ve had so much success in all three? How are they different to write and produce?
In college I had done this idealistic documentary – I wanted to do a movie on the story of our generation. I thought St. Elmo’s Fire was going to be that kind of movie – a cautionary tale about capitalism. But instead everyone fell in love with Rob Lowe and the rest of the cast and all wanted to live and party like them instead!
I wrote a bunch of screenplays afterwards and found myself in a beautiful house on Sunset Strip living next to David Schwimmer and Richard Simmons. I later came back to teach at Pittsburgh. I was originally asked by a high school to teach Beowulf at 7 am. I wasn’t doing that!
Why did you move back to Pittsburgh?
My wife originally wanted to move to a family-friendly neighborhood in L.A. I was on the Oprah Winfrey show. You know what they say in LA – when your phone rings you drop your daughter and pick it up!
She read a book that had stories about what people did with their lives and I was in the book and she was fascinated with any story. At that time everything was going wrong in Pittsburgh. That was the worst Winter in the city in years and the city was in financial distress. I asked a friend why everyone was distressed and she said it was because the Steelers were losing. I was shocked. Because of the Steelers? Fred Rogers also passed away that year.
But movie studios were calling me. I had written an article saying at the time Pittsburgh’s main export wasn’t steel – it was talent. I moved back and did a movie called The Tale of Two Cities taking about the city. We had 200 people show up – we offered people chipped ham- you know people in Pittsburgh can’t resist that! In fact Joe Manganiello was one of the people there!
Why the focus on Pittsburgh’s revival and issues?
We did a summit in Pittsburgh with WQED. I spoke to George Romero there and he said no one invests in movies in the city. They had a premier for his Land of the Dead movie and Simon Pegg and Quentin Tarantino came in for it. I didn’t know Franco then, but he came to the premiere with his son. He tapped me on the shoulder and asked if his son Dok could be introduced to Tarantino.
Now, I was a big Vikings fan growing up – I just wanted to be a contrarian then. But that got you thrown into a lot of lockers in Pittsburgh! And Franco was a big reason why those Vikings teams lost.
He and I later took a walk and talked about the Tale of Two Cities movie. He said if the city was to come back, it needed the arts, business and medicine to all come together. I had interviewed Louis Anderson for the movie since he was from Minneapolis which at the time was rated the hottest city to move to. Pittsburgh was last then.
But Pittsburgh started to return. Starzl let me do a movie then with him about how Pittsburgh became the transplant capital of the world. He said that when things are in their darkest moments, Pittsburghers will give their organs and get on planes to help others. Like the Steelers, Pittsburgh punched beyond its weight.
You came close with Franco?
He and I took a walk on the Northside once to talk about the movie. He talked about his son and why he didn’t play football. He said he was throwing his son the ball and his son said he couldn’t do it- he couldn’t keep up. Franco pushed him but realized his son was never going to be a football player. He loved his son so much – he didn’t care about that.
When we were walking two kids came up to him and asked if he was rich and if that was his big house over there, and he said no, that wasn’t his big house – and that they should be happy with what you have. He asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. They said football and basketball players, and he said “No. really. What do you really want to be?” They said lawyer and fireman. So he said “Great! I’ll see you then!”
My brother Tom is an actor and he, Franco and I were talking when Franco asked if I was a good football player. My brother ragged on me and said I couldn’t catch anything! He loved making fun of me – so we ended up playing football together!
Franco ended up showing up for the Jonas Salk movie even though he wasn’t invited. When I asked him what he was doing there he told me “Well, I got the shot!”
A funny story about the movie showing too. We showed it at the Capitol Theater in DC – the first movie ever shown there. Me, Franco and David Newell – Mr. McFeely of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood – all came. When we got there they wouldn’t let David in at first because he was wearing his Mr. Rogers uniform and they didn’t know who he was!
Franco also invested in the Crawford Grill – that’s where jazz guys played back in the hey day in Pittsburgh.
Teaching the next generation of media talent seems to be a very big part of who you are and what you do. Why is that?
A friend in LA once said that in LA everyone says I love you, and in Pittsburgh no one says it, but you feel it.
I’m looking at the next generation now – who will they be? My students are now making movies – one just produced the new Elizabeth Taylor movie. They teach me as much as I teach them.
It’s interesting. My latest project is about AI and education. Pittsburgh is particularly concerned about the impact AI will have on jobs. But television was created by someone from Pittsburgh. Leland Hazard donated a building in 1954 on the Pitt campus for television and it was used to film interviews with people like Robert Frost and Louis Armstrong. People were afraid then that TV would suck people’s brains out – but it was used for good. Fred Rogers used technology to improve people’s lives on his show. It’s all just technology.
The Carnegies gave away so much of their money. Starzl never patented his vaccine. Those stories are so important to me. Pittsburgh at its best is all about humanity and that’s important to maintain.
I’m concerned about the city. I want to see Pittsburgh become a leader again. No one thinks about the Steelers as a victim. Pittsburgh is at it’s best when people pull together for the common good. Pittsburgh has a self-image problem. We don’t view ourselves as leaders – we see our city as tertiary and we should be so much more.
What do you wish the city would do?
To quote my late grandmother, she said when I moved to Hollywood when I was 22 “You’re crazy! No one make it there!” When I moved back to Pittsburgh she asked me “Why are you coming back here? There’s nothing here!”
Those were the two biggest risks I’ve taken in my life – leaving and coming back. To be honest I get tired of telling people the city needs to re-invest in itself and take risks. The city wouldn’t even uncap the film tax credit and instead gave away millions to a cracker plant in Beaver. Atlanta uncapped its tax credit and now more movies are filmed there than in LA.
Pittsburgh needs to find its new steel. it needs to attract young people back to the city. I like to teach to give young people reason to stay. The city isn’t investing enough in young people. The most successful cities invest in its youth – they don’t sit on their money. I hope Pittsburgh gets bold again and does so.
Pittsburgh should be a place where people like Wiz Khalifa and Joe Mangienello come to do more than just visit. It used to be a gateway city when people moved from places like New York to the West. We need to stop being so modest and became a leader again.
The Steelers are a great metaphor for the city. They do so much more than people expect them to do. It’s time the city starts talking about that more.