I'm not a writer per se, except of pitch decks and script notes. This means I'm a producer, and to be more specific, a creative producer, meaning, I develop projects by originating or helping shape the ideas, scripts, and productions, and get them funded. Once upon a time it was large scale events for major corporations for audiences ranging in size from 1,000 to 150,000. Some of those were a part of the Olympic Games, Formula 1 Racing, PGA Golf, and World Expos. Some of it included performances by superstar performers like Bruno Mars, Aerosmith, and U2. Before that it was agenting celebrities and activists.
Now, it's movies, television, and theater: lead producing/developing a Broadway intended play with music about the legendary poet Maya Angelou with whom I worked for 11 years and for which we have an A-list director, Debbie Allen; associate producing a film about fair pay activist Lilly Ledbetter that stars Patricia Clarkson, released earlier this year and available now on Netflix (Variety named it as one of the best underrated films of 2025); lead producing a film about reproductive rights activist Bill Baird (in development); and lead producing an in-development TV series about the greatest crooked gambler in Las Vegas history. He was my boyhood friend. We're looking to attach an experienced show runner/writer for this project, and an actor or two with track records, all during the worst contraction in the history of the television industry. What are our odds of success for that? Well, it is after all a show about gambling, so we're making and taking bets and playing our hand.
When I say I'm not a writer, it might be more accurate to say I don’t feel I’m a writer yet, but I’m working on it. It’s up to me to define whether I am or not. I’m not basing my judgment on anyone else’s. For me, I need to rack up more “butt-in-seat-time” before I’ll feel I can call myself a writer, and I need to turn out a work finished to my own standards. On the day I put up this post originally I started writing something I have no intended shape or destination for yet, other than to help me cope with a real life story currently unfolding. If “writing what you know” is a strategy of value, now I have to muster the knowledge of how to write what I know well, and finish this piece in some form. It could one day turn out to be a book, or an article, or a movie; I don't know. All I do know is that it is called "Holding Moonlight," and it's about my adventure of being the parent of my now 32 year old writer, film/video editor, and aspiring director son, Jameson, who after four open heart surgeries as a kid now needs and is pursuing a combination, simultaneous heart/liver transplant to save his life. Whether he can get this surgery isn't clear yet. He’s been approved for it, after a lot of wrangling and duress. Getting it sorted out has been harrowing because, as he’s been told by his doctors, he’s a unique case even among the unique population of which he is a part — fontan kids requiring simultaneous heart and liver transplants — which means he doesn’t neatly fit to the parameters the transplant board uses to dole out hearts. So his docs had to file for an exception. It’s recently been granted. Now he’s living in hospital awaiting a donor and hoping one appears in time.
All the producing work I do is in collaboration with my son and wife in a company we call Corstoria. The name is a portmanteau of the latin words for heart and stories. The work keeps the three of us close, purposefully.
The Story Summit experience helps me grow in proficiency towards these goals, and also provides encouragement and community, something I need to survive and succeed. I'm grateful. BTW, we don't take on other people's projects because it's all we can do to manage our own.