Mini Biography

 

               

Chicago Theater

My first professionally produced one-act was written at the age of 17, my first full play at 18 and my first musical at 20.  Soon after  that , I began writing, directing and producing for the Chicago stage full time, helming productions at The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Second City Children's Theater, Performer's Arena, the Bristol Faire and Six Flags Fright Fest.

                          

 

             

After receiving my BFA in film and music from Tufts University, I began writing, directing and producing full time. I produced and directed my original shows at The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 'The Second City' Children's Theater, Performer's Arena, the Bristol Faire and many independent theaters in Metropolitan Chicago. My favorite job was with Six Flags/Great America where I worked for JPM Productions on the Fright Fest's annual Halloween event. For four seasons I worked as the street Director and eventually the artistic, then casting director, overseeing over 200 performers in more than a dozen shows and haunted houses for a live audience in excess of 50,000 people per day.

My early television credits include writing and directing special segments (1988-1993) for _The Bozo Show (1980)_ on WGN, the super-station. During this time I held the position of Marketing Director and Resident Producer for Players Workshop, at the time one of Chicago's largest commercial theatrical companies, responsible for numerous touring shows, corporate training/videos and talent development programs.

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GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS

I quickly became a top director in the Chicago area, helming nearly half a dozen shows a year. I met lots of people and worked with many Girls. Of course, after years of focusing on art and spirituality in Boston , I was ready for a relationship when I returned to Chicago. There were crushes, lusty live ins and lots of love leading somewhere I think, for over a decade:   My first love was Maria K_____, an all German wild woman that I met in the SCA when I was 16 (she was 17). We had a stormy year in which my life was transformed. That relationship is chronicled in detail in my Novella, "A SHORT MAGICAL HISTORY", which can be downloaded in PFD format above.

(Girls that filled my heart from 1980 to 1997 [pictures soon to come])

I had a lot of relationships in Chicago. In fact, with the exception of one girl, an Olympic Tennis Champ that I met at The Second City in Los Angeles in 1989, every woman that I have every had a relationship with I met in Chicago, every single one.

MY MOST INTENSE RELATIONSHIPS (women who I lived with in Chicago and traveled with in Europe and America): 

1980 to 1982 - Elizabeth  ("E" or "Ellie") - She was an 18 year old wide eyed artist's groupie of English/Irish descent, well educated, hyper intelligent and very sweet. Her mother was an executive recruiter and her father a science professor in the south and "E" had the genteel qualities of of a southern lady. "E" loved the stage and we met when she was the assistant costumer for a show I was a lead in. She ended my years of celibacy and supported me in all things. I wrote shows and she costumed them and we lived poor and happy in an apartment in a student neighborhood on Chicago's north west side. But I was very young and ambitious and I didn't want to be tied down, I wanted to pursue my art and fame. In the end she left me for a man whom she quickly married and had two children with. But we have always stay good friends and I count her as one of the great loves of my life.

1982 to 1984 - Ellen - This relationship was so intense and unpredictable that had it gone on longer, one or both of us would have probably passed out. Ellen was a counter-culture icon and a stellar photographer, the youngest daughter of four, all children of a Republican Congressman.  They were golf loving, poker playing, bar hopping, country clubers,  of English/Swedish descent. Ellen was a wild woman, and I fell for her hard. She was big, and sexy, and I would have done anything to keep that girl happy. I even wore eye make up to please her, so I would look like a Goth, androgyny, an appropriate appearance as Ellen and I adventured into all sorts of fun and lascivious activities. She starred in Marat Sade with me and we even traveled all over Europe, Greece and Egypt together, reading the Lord of the Rings out loud. But in the end I broke up with her for various reasons and got another apartment. We tried to rekindle things a couple of times but there was no way. We have seen each other  since, and she was gracious and beautiful. But as far as a lasting friendship goes, we never did stay in touch (unlike "E" with whom I speak often). Ellen and I were just too crazy together to sustain things, as intense as they were. But in many ways she was the only woman who could handle me and my passions and ambitions with such a deft hand. Only my wife Karen comes close, but luckily (or unfortunately) I am a different, tamer man now than I was with Ellen. But to this day, hers is my favorite relationship to remember, and certainly the one that was most fun.

1984 on and off to 1988 - Elizabeth (Liz) -  Almost in protest to the craziness of Ellen, my next relationship was with a very beautiful and sexy young actress who was attending workshops at Players Workshop and was doing lights for a show. She was blond (of Swedish, Irish descent [notice a theme]) and smart and stable. Her mother was a southern belle and her father was a one star general in the army (retired due to some racism scandal). Elizabeth's sister was following in the father's footsteps, working for the CIA, leaving to Elizabeth the role of the rebel in the family. So she decided to become and actress. We hit it off right away and were soon living together. My family loved her and she instantly became good friends with my mom and best friends with my sister. But unlike Ellen, she was not wild, and unlike "E", she didn't do costumes or keep a house (and she wasn't  a groupie like "E" either). In fact, as it turned out, Liz had no job and she often laid in bed for days at a time waiting for me to write a starring role for her in a show, which I did. I ended up casting Elizabeth in half a dozen plays and musicals and she did a fine job, but she was not as dynamite a performer as she needed to be for me to rest my entire career on writing roles for her. This depressed her and confused me and I ended up doing lots of shows without her, which put her in the role of hanging around all the time for no reason except to be there like an audience member. But I loved her in my way and she certainly was beautiful. She tried to please me but it was doomed between us. I broke up with her and got back together with her a number of times between 1986 and 1988. When we finally broke up for good she focused on her looks and just looked better and better and she became sassy and even nasty to me but she still remained friends with me, my family and even my future girlfriends (mostly to talk shit about me) up until recently.

1990 - 1997 - Mimi  - Having had my fill of Protestants and WASPs I began dating one of my Jewish students at Players Workshop, a tall blond, thin woman named Mimi. She was handsome and well educated and she had a career as a business executive for her father's business. She had a strong family and was always smiling. I had spent a couple of years playing the field and so I was happy to settle down with a real woman that I could maybe marry one day. And the fact that she was a Jew was a big plus. Almost all of my male friends were Jewish and I had been raised at Second City as the only non Jew in the bunch, so I was ready to live the life, and I loved the life. Temple, Sader, Kol Niedre and the family had their noses in everything. It was like the Italians on steroids. Mimi had and apartment and made money and that was great. I had a condo and we decided to keep our respective places and life was good. In fact the comfort of companionship gave Mimi and I both an excuse to cut loose and eat out every night and before we knew it we were gaining weight. When we met, Mimi was at the tail end of a long stint with Weight Watchers, so she quickly gained back all that weight. I was always a little chunky (accept when I was with Ellen when I weighed 140 lbs). So all the food made me gain weight, hitting sizes that I had never dreamed of (1 was 180 lbs when I got together with Mimi and I shot up to 270 with her). Then Mimi's father's business went under and my mother's Players Workshop begin to fail. Mimi wanted to go back to school, to learn how to do glass and to become an artist, but her family, especially her mother wouldn't hear of it. Mimi was forced to go to business school. She didn't want to and she felt manipulated. She wanted to sell her condo and travel, maybe even go with me to California to pursue film. But again her mother wouldn't hear of it and the family sent Mimi to a psychiatrist (a friend of the family) and then had meetings with the psychiatrist to talk about their daughter. Mimi was trapped and she got depressed and lost. I wanted to get married but my condition was that we went to Hollywood. Mimi's mother said "no" and told me that if I loved Mimi I would convert to Judaism. We were at an impasse. Finally I broke up with Mimi because I couldn't see a future with her. So Mimi agreed to move to Europe with me under the auspices of studying international business in Vienna. Ergo, instead of breaking up and moving to LA, I went to Vienna. Mimi's mother was against it and refused to come and visit as it all was a waste of time to her. The relationship between Mimi and I lasted another eight months, mostly due to Vienna. But in the end I returned to the states to work at the ren faire and the fright fest and Mimi staid on in Europe. We she returned to Chicago, she asked me to move out because the place was too small for me to spread out all the head shots for my casting the fright fest. I don't think that she realized that by doing that she had broken up with me. When I finally told her it was over from the phone of my new place, she was surprised. I had a few other lovers after her, intense and brief. but I wanted to get married, I wanted children and it was hard to find a woman that had the potential for that as much as Mimi. On that level she was a tough act to follow. After moving to Los Angeles for about ten months into it, during a visit to Chicago, Mimi and I got back together for a short week. It was nice and we talked about her coming to LA to see if she liked it. But Mimi was still hung up on her mother and did not even want to mention my name to her. I went back to LA and met my wife-to- be in Beverly Hills two weeks later. By the time Mimi had thought about it and called me to tell me that she decided to go against her mom and come to visit me in California, it was too late. We e-mailed each other for a few years and then one day I got a note: Mimi had decided to marry her old boyfriend whom she broke up with before we got together in 1990. He lived in Toronto and had three kids that she would adopt. The important thing was that her mother approved. He was Jewish, and in the end that counted for more than I ever could have imagined the day I met Mimi, tall and thin and blond and always smiling.

(1985) 1998 - present - Karen Goodman (my wife) - The story of this relationship is told in my on-line diary "1997 to the present". Suffice to say that while I was in Chicago, living with Elizabeth Nelson and doing theater, I was drinking Guinness in a bar called The Vu on Lincoln Ave with my cast and crew when a cute, firecracker of a red head, a little chubby, smoking and drunk came up to me and loudly proclaimed that she was an amazing costumer, a great producer and a serious force to be reckoned with. She was in from San Diego Rep and was working at the Goodman. She told me that she could do a lot for me and that if we joined forces she would make me a huge director. I am sure that I bought her a few drinks but Liz was watching me like a hawk, otherwise I may have dragged the young and boisterous Karen Goodman into the bathroom for a shag. "I'm with someone" I told Karen. She looked over at Liz, looked back at me and said "Dump The Blond".  I did not and Karen went on to move in with Scot Vehil, help found The Prop Theater, and become one of Chicago's premier avant garde directors. I saw her shows and they were very edgy and cool. She and Scot were together for many years until she walked out on him after he knocked her around. Then in 1998 while I was walking down the street with Patti Horvath, a friend from Boston, I ran into Karen in front of her work, Il Fornaio in Beverly Hills. She was taking a cigarette break in the front rather than in the back where she usually took her breaks. So we met again. A few days later and we were on our first date. And so ended a long string of heart enriching, heart wrenching, heart breaking relationships that constituted that bulk of my life and my hope and my youth. A new phase of life had begun, all because she took a break in the front, all because I dumped the blond.

 

OTHER RELATIONSHIPS THAT WERE MEANINGFUL

LUSTY CRUSHES - Valerie, Susie, PE... , Monica, Michelle, Kris, Jamie, Carol, Lauren, Molly, Mo, Becky and a few others all of whom were larger in my imagination than in real life... one kiss, one night and I was in dreamland... but it never went any place.

SUPER MEANINGFUL AND LONG STANDING RELATIONSHIPS THAT NEVER WENT ANY WHERE SO I'M STILL TRYING TO FIGURE THESE OUT:

Kay - I landed a huge crush on her during the production of A Dozen Idiots when she was 17 and I was 21 but I never pursued her romantically until my good friend Charles Schneider cast her opposite me in a feature film as my love interest. On the day of the big kiss scene after the on screen smooch I found Kay and Charles making out in the car. Then he left town to return to his girlfriend in New York and leaving me with Kay crying on my shoulder missing him. She put all of her love energy for him into me and I took it. We did not consummate. Then, after a year of him seeing her on and off, and breaking her heart, things began to lighten between the two of them. Kay and I never consummated, but we definitely loved each other. She became good friends with Ellen and I. And Kay has remained my dear friend ever since, (although my relationship with Charles Schneider was ruined in part because of it).

Maureen - I met her in my early twenties and had a lusty relationship with her on and off until right before I got married. Defined by that, my romance with her lasted for longer than any other. The high point was when we met in Paris for eight days of food and sex. She was in love with me in a way that was perhaps more intense than anyone ever. But I was never able to bring myself to do more than the affair. At it's best it was one of the best things in my life. At worst I was ready to run as fast as I could.

Kimbelle - Like Maureen, Kimbelle and I met young and had an on and off romance for years. Our world was the Ren Faire where we were both in costume and playing personas for much of the time. She was a chubby, sexy, handsome rennie with red hair down to her ass. She loved me and maybe was even in love with me too. But our relationship began with the faire and ended with the faire and we almost never even wrote to each other in between. For what it was, it was great ,and when I was free to sleep with her I looked forward to the faire like a long awaited party. When I had a girlfriend outside the faire I kept my relationship with Kimbelle as  a friendship, most of the time. To this day I realize that I care about Kimbelle more than I thought and I always ask about her and wish her well.

 

CRAZY LUSTY FLINGS WHERE I WAS HEAD OVER HEALS IN LOVE, AND HAD MY HEART BROKEN

Christine - Boy did I like her. A few years my senior she was a tall blond beauty from New Orleans into a new age religion similar to EST which made her both enlightened and wildly neurotic. She was one of the best lovers I have ever had and I really liked her. But she had a baby boy, was in the middle of a divorce and she wanted a husband and a father for her kid. I couldn't do it.

Sharon - This girl was a knock down gorgeous beauty pageant queen from farm land Iowa, married young and divorced in her early twenties she was absolute eye candy for me. She fell in love with me and perused me until a fell for her back. She was sweet and adventurous but she thought I was a brainiac and I had to limit my intellectual output at her request so she didn't feel stupid. She was an aspiring actress and singer and tried very hard.  Finally she got a job at The Gaslight Club as a "singer" and walked around in a skimpy outfit being oogled at and solicited until she didn't even want to be touched any more. We broke up after a protracted period of my trying to get back into her pants and her trying to keep me out. Still to this day when I need a boost of ego, I think, "wow, my girlfriend Sharon was amazingly hot, I must have been a real player". Ah yes, memories.

Kim  - I got together with Kim right after Mimi in 1996, right before I left for California. She was so young that the photo of her that she gave me for my wallet was a school picture. I think she was 21. She was short, cute as a button, chunky just the way I liked and had absolutely corn silk blond hair. Her parents were German and she was a Wisconsin girl. I really like her more than I should have. She bitched at me all the time. But I really wanted to take her to Los Angeles and fill her full of children. She seemed to want that too and actually followed me out to LA when I first came out. But in the end she needed to go to college and get on with her real life and I would have had to raise her along with our kids. It didn't work out, but I wouldn't trade in a moment of it. When she made me happy I almost cried in euphoric bliss.

Ann Elizabeth  - I knew AE since she was a college kid. She joined the Ren Faire when she was 18 or so and I was her teacher. I watched her become quite a woman, smart, insightful, funny, boisterous, and very interesting. After we became lovers when she was 26, my favorite moment with her was lying in the bed and taking turns singing bars from Bach's Little Fugue. We could have long conversations about art, architecture, history and theater. I never met a woman like her, not "Ellie", not Christine and not my wife. The closest person in the world to her mind other than my own is my fathers, pedantic intellectual that he is. But I fell in love with her more desperately than I should have or than she deserved. But she was my last finger hold to Chicago and the Ren Faire and my past life, my past success. Once she was gone I would be a Californian, an aspiring film maker instead of a seasoned and successful playwright and director. I would be a one in a million sad, wannabe Hollywood guy instead of at the top of game, Bristol celebrity, Second City alumni, well know Chicago native. I didn't want to let go. So I held on tight, too tight for AE. She broke up with me on my birthday when I went to see her in Chicago. It lead to an explosion of drunken one night stands and then I left the Midwest for good. I left Chicago and my old Bristol job in the hands of AE and moved back to LA with no aspirations to return to my native Lincoln Park, my city by the lake, my Bristol, my home. So began my exile in the west. Two weeks later I ran into Karen. My old life was over.

 

Cupid works in mysterious ways.

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Traveling Around the World

Spain, Morocco - 1976  - I went with my mother on a tour.

Great Britain - 1978  - I went with my father. Moira and met my friend from Sierra Madre Bob McGuire there. We traveled through London, Scotland and Ireland and drank a lot of ale and Guinness.

Italy, Tunisia, Vienna, Berlin & Paris - 1981   - I traveled with my friend Ralph on a budget using mostly a 2nd class Italian rail pass and staying in the cheapest places. I nearly died in Tunisia.

Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Italy, Greece, Egypt & Paris, - 1983   -  This was my first trip with a girl and I never went back. My sexy girlfriend, Ellen Sandquist and I back packed for two and a half months from Amsterdam to Aswan.

Japan, China, Thailand, Burma, India, Turkey, Greece, Switzerland & Germany - 1986,  Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Amsterdam and living in Paris, - 1987   -  This was my longest trip, almost a year. It began as a tour with my mother of China. She left me alone in Thailand and I continued West through the sub continent and into the Middle East. I spent Christmas in Germany with friends and then moved to Paris and used it as a base to travel all over. In the middle of the trip I got lonely and asked my ex girl friend, Elizabeth Nelson to join me and we traveled for a few months. I ended the trip in Paris writing a play, A TRIBUTE TO VINCENT VAN GOGH BY THE IMPRESSIONISTS CIRCLE. I returned to America through New York in late June of 1987. The first thing I did was go to see Les Miserable on Broadway and it was amazing.

Holland, Belgium, Paris, Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Germany, Italy, Vienna, Budapest, England - 1988 -   - Originally meant to be a trip with me and my new girlfriend Christine Schneider, it fell apart at the last minute and became another trip alone to Europe but I did meet Maureen Hubley in Paris for 10 days of sex and eating. I also hooked up with girls on the road like Ellen Zirden in Germany, Michelle Murphy in Madrid and a gal from New Mexico in Marrakech.  I also raced to meet my father in Nice and later met up with my mother in France and went to visit her friends in Italy and adventure in Hungary. This trip was under four months.

Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Germany - 1992  -  This was a very nice three week trip with my father and my brother in a rental car. We spent a week in Alsace, a week in Paris and a week traveling to places like Mount Saint Michelle, Carnac and the Loire valley.

Living in Vienna and traveling through Austria, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Slovakia, Czech Republic & Poland - 1995   -  This was a huge and spectacular trip revolving around moving to Vienna so my girlfriend Mimi Fox could do a semester at the Wirtschaft Universitat in international business. So we had an apartment and a bank account and the proper immigration papers and it was great. We used our place in Vienna to launch into amazing trips throughout eastern and central Europe and Turkey. It was the last Trip that I took which had many many months of travel in it.

LATER TRAVELS

Paris, Sweden, Denmark - 1998,        New Zealand, Maui, Oahu - 1999,        Italy, Denmark - 2000,        Mexico - 2001,                                        Denmark, Sweden, Italy - 2002,          Mexico - 2003          Copenhagen, Paris - 2004,          Catalina Island - 2005             Hawaii - 2005,        Copenhagen, Norway, Sweden -2005                Florida, New Orleans - 2005/2006,            Chicago - 2006         Las Vegas - 2007

(note the lack of international travel since 2005: that's what having a second home does to the overall scheme of things)

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Teaching

In the late 1980s I acquired a condo in Lincoln Park and a full time job at Players Workshop.  I was also hired by 'The Second City' to instruct and direct improv comedy groups for the newly created Training Center stages. Among the people passing through the shows and classes at this time were Chris Farley, Bonnie Hunt, Tim Meadows, Bob Odenkirk, Amy Sadaris' and Mike Myers.

When I wasn't at the Second City or Players Workshop, I worked at the Bristol faire as a performer and a director. Soon after that I added the Fright Fest at Six Flags Great America to my list of recurring jobs. They were amazing professional experiences and brought me tons of joy.

           

 

                            

The new hat of being a teacher and a marketing executive fit in well with my search for a mate. I began dating Mimi F____ with the hopes of starting a family. After years of dating and even living together Mimi and I moved to Europe. But in the Summer of 1996 I returned to the States and Mimi stayed on in Vienna. She did not want to move to Los Angeles and I did not want to stay in Chicago. I did one last Ren Faire and one last Fright Fest before heading west. But there was still time for one more relationship: Kim M________, a young fresh energetic and sexy ren faire girl who would have bourn me lots of kids.

 

TRIVIA

I was an actor, director and improv instructor in Chicago (often at The Second City and the Players Workshop) where I worked with Bonnie Hunt, Steve Carell, Bob Odenkirk, Stephen Colbert, Julie Ann Larson, George Wendt, Tim Meadows, Chris Farley, Amy Sedaris, Holly Wortell, Paul Dinello, Cynthia Caponera, Mick Napier, David Koechner, Greg Hollimon, Catherine O'Hara, Will Clinger, Sean Abley, Pat Finn and Robert Smigel.

My cousin, the late Martin De Maat, was the top teacher of improvisation at The Second City in Chicago from 1986 until he died in 2001.

I also worked at Players Workshop along with Bonnie Hunt, Ken Hudson Campbell, Steve Rudnick, Bob Odenkirk, Holly Wortell and many others.

I Directed and taught at Second City at the same time as Chris Farley, Mike Myers, Jon Favreau, Mick Napier, Greg Hollimon, Ian Gomez, and Nia Vardalos were working there.

 

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Leaving Chicago

 

After producing and directing over sixty plays, musicals & comedy revues, I was offered the job of Artistic Director for all Halloween Shows produced for the Six Flags theme parks East of the Mississippi, a move which would have relocated me to their offices in Marietta, Georgia. YIKES!

As quickly as I could I left the meeting, quit my job, packed my car, put my condo up for sale and moved to Los Angeles to pursue my first and deepest professional desire, film making.

I left in March of 1997 for LA.

 

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