Biography
As a student at Northwestern University, Larry Brody majored in English and practiced his craft writing dozens of short stories, poetry and essays. Being an avid science fiction fan, he started writing in the genre, and by the time he graduated he was selling stories to The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction and various men's magazines on a fairly regular basis. After graduation he took a major career diversion by going to Law School but quit after one year and enrolled at the University of Iowa, which was well-known for its Writers Workshop.
During that first school year Larry sold his first novel. Armed with confidence from the book sale, LB and his first wife pulled up stakes and moved to L.A. in 1968. It was a tough adjustment for the young couple, both emotionally and financially. Larry's wife got a full-time teaching job while he struggled to finish his next novel, and take meetings with various showbiz power-brokers, hoping, like thousands of other Hollywood denizens, for his first big break. That big break came several months later through a chance meeting with a fellow resident of his apartment building, Sammy Jackson, star of the just cancelled series "No Time for Sergeants".
Painfully shy at the time, Larry avoided Jackson and sat quietly by the pool, reading scripts and working on his novel. But one fateful day, Sammy spotted a script lying in LB's lap and walked over to introduce himself. The two struck up a friendship that would ultimately launch Larry's career.
Encouraged by Sammy, LB worked day and night on a twenty-page short story that was to be the basis for Jackson's comeback show. Entitled 'Cornpone & Honey', it was a comedy about a cynical cartoonist who gets saddled with his neighbor's five-year old daughter, Honey, after her parents die in a car crash. Jerry Katzman, one of the producers that Jackson had shown the story to, liked it enough to set up a meeting with Larry. Katzman had a new project in development, a film entitled 'The Rise And Fall Of A Rock And Roll Singer', with Jim Morrison expected to star. To make sure the film appealed to youthful viewers, he wanted the 23-year-old Larry to co-write the script with Arthur Dreifuss, an old-time B movie maven who was also slated to direct.
Larry worked feverishly with Dreifuss to bring the Rock And Roll script in on a deadline. But before production could begin, the studio had to have a sit-down with Jim Morrison to discuss the project. All went well until twenty minutes into the meeting when the rock and roll icon abruptly nixed the entire deal. Why? Because he had a beard and was adamant about not shaving it for the role. And at this time, never in the history of motion pictures had there been a romantic hero with a full, flowing face, neck, and chest-full of hair!
Although the project was cancelled, word around town regarding the script was positive, and Larry's agent, Sylvia Hirsch, one of the grand dames of the William Morris Agency, used it as a sample to get Larry into the television writing business. Starting out slowly, as a freelancer on the show Here Come the Brides, by the early '70s Larry was one of the most in-demand writers in the medium. Soon he was Producer of the NBC series Police Story, the first of a series of such gigs that went on for over twenty years.
A strong believer in the social responsibility of not only the artist, but of the media as a whole, Larry has for years crusaded to raise standards so that productions will be meaningful as well as entertaining. To that end, he has established TV Writer.Com (www.tvwriter.com), the most highly regarded and visited television writing site on the web, where he shares his experience and insight into the business and artistry of TV writing today.
In the summer of 2002 Larry moved with his third wife, Gwen, and teenage daughter, Amber, to St. Joe, Arkansas, to establish the Cloud Creek Institute for the Arts (www.cloudcreek.org). A non-profit charitable corporation dedicated to the advancement of the arts. The mission of CCIA is to foster and advance creativity and interest in all the arts by helping new artists develop their talents and skills, and to create an environment of respect, appreciation, and support for the arts in the community at large.
Larry is the winner of the Humanitas Certificate and the Population Institute Award for his outstanding work on Medical Story, and was nominated for both an Emmy and a Writers Guild Award for Best Dramatic Writing on that groundbreaking series. Larry also won the Women in TV & Film Award for the NBC television movie, Farrell for the People (1982) (TV), as well as the Nosotros Award for his work on the critically acclaimed, multi-award winning drama, "Police Story" (1973).
He has written two e-books, nine novels, and six books of poetry. Nonfiction books include 'Television Writing From The Inside Out: Your Channel To Success' and 'Turning Points in Television. Currently (as of July 2007), Larry is a regular columnist for 'Movie Scope' magazine, and writes 'Live! From Paradise!' a syndicated newspaper column and blog about the life of a city writer who moves to the country.
