Tom Fontana
Encyclopedia
Tom Fontana is an American
writer
and producer
.
(which he also created), The Jury
, The Beat, The Bedford Diaries
, Homicide: Life on the Street
, St. Elsewhere
, and The Philanthropist
.
Fontana was born on the west side of Buffalo, New York
, and is the fourth of five children in an Italian-American family; he is a cousin of actress Patti LuPone
. He attended Cathedral School
, Canisius High School
, and Buffalo State College
. He worked at the Studio Arena Theater
in Buffalo in various capacities before moving to New York City in 1973. Fontana began writing plays when he was about 9 years old; his early efforts were recorded into a reel-to-reel tape recorder with the neighbor kids as performers. At least one of his plays was produced when he was a student at Buffalo State. His college stage debut as an actor was in a production of George Bernard Shaw
's Saint Joan
, directed by his frequent mentor, Warren Enters. Fontana's efforts as a playwright never proved financially successful. It was while working at the Williamstown Theater Festival in the early 1980s, that he was offered the opportunity to write for television — the offer coming from Bruce Paltrow
who was launching a series called St. Elsewhere
on NBC.
Fontana has written and produced such groundbreaking television series as St. Elsewhere
, Homicide: Life on the Street
, and Oz
, for which he has received, among others, three Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, three Writers’ Guild Awards, four Television Critics Association Awards, the Cable Ace Award, the Humanitas Prize
, an Edgar Award
, and the first prize at the Cinéma Tout Ecran
Festival in Switzerland. In 2003, Fontana was the recipient of the Austin Film Festival
's Outstanding Television Writer Award.
Fontana wrote the HBO film Strip Search, directed by Sidney Lumet
, as well as contributing two pieces to the September 11th special, America: A Tribute to Heroes
. He was the executive producer
of American Tragedy
for CBS, Shot in the Heart
for HBO Films
, the independent film Jean and the documentary The Press Secretary for PBS.
Fontana is the creator of a forthcoming historical drama TV series Borgia due for broadcast in 2011 for the French premium-pay channel Canal+
, produced by Atlantique Productions and EOS Entertainment. The series will recount the Borgia family's rise to power and subsequent domination of the Vatican during the Renaissance.
According to his website, Fontana does not own or use a computer and writes all of his scripts longhand on a yellow legal pad.
, TV Guide
and Esquire
and has taught at Columbia, Syracuse, Rutgers and the State University College at Buffalo, his alma mater, from which he received the Distinguished Alumni Award and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters.
and McCarter Theatre Company.
, and the WGA, East
, from which he received the Evelyn F. Burkey Award for lifetime achievement. [Source of this paragraph: Biography published in awards program.] Fontana served as vice-president of the Writers Guild of America, East
from 2005-2007. He is currently President of the WGAE Foundation and serves on the boards of The Acting Company, the Williamstown Theatre Festival
, DEAL, The New York City Police Museum, Stockings With Care, among others.
Detective Joe Fontana, Dennis Farina
's character on Law & Order
, was named for Tom Fontana, who is a close friend of Law & Order
creator Dick Wolf
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and producer
Television producer
The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...
.
TV career
Fontana has been a writer/producer for such series as OzOz (TV series)
Oz is an American television drama series created by Tom Fontana, who also wrote or co-wrote all of the series' 56 episodes . It was the first one-hour dramatic television series to be produced by premium cable network HBO. Oz premiered on July 12, 1997 and ran for six seasons...
(which he also created), The Jury
The Jury (TV series)
The Jury is an American legal drama television series that was broadcast by the Fox Network in 2004. Each week, in the same New York City courtroom, a new 12-person jury deliberates over a criminal case...
, The Beat, The Bedford Diaries
The Bedford Diaries
The Bedford Diaries is an American television series that premiered March 29, 2006 on The WB and concluded its first season on May 10, 2006. It was canceled on May 18, 2006. The series was created by Tom Fontana and Julie Martin....
, Homicide: Life on the Street
Homicide: Life on the Street
Homicide: Life on the Street is an American police procedural television series chronicling the work of a fictional version of the Baltimore Homicide Unit. It ran for seven seasons on NBC from 1993 to 1999, and was succeeded by a TV movie, which also acted as the de-facto series finale...
, St. Elsewhere
St. Elsewhere
St. Elsewhere is an American medical drama television series that originally ran on NBC from October 26, 1982 to May 25, 1988. The series is set at fictional St. Eligius, a decaying urban teaching hospital in Boston's South End neighborhood...
, and The Philanthropist
The Philanthropist (TV series)
The Philanthropist is an American action drama series that premiered on NBC on Wednesday, June 24, 2009. The program is a limited summer series, principally filmed in South Africa. It opened to strong ratings, but saw a drop in viewers in subsequent weeks. The Philanthropist is a Carnival Films...
.
Fontana was born on the west side of Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
, and is the fourth of five children in an Italian-American family; he is a cousin of actress Patti LuPone
Patti LuPone
Patti Ann LuPone is an American singer and actress, known for her Tony Award-winning performances as Eva Perón in the 1979 stage musical Evita and as Madame Rose in the 2008 Broadway revival of Gypsy, and for her Olivier Award-winning performance as Fantine in the original London cast of Les...
. He attended Cathedral School
Cathedral School
Cathedral School is a school established and administered by the Catholic Diocese of Lucknow, India, a religious and charitable society engaged in educational, medical and social work in eight districts of Lucknow. It is registered under the Registration of Societies Act No. XXI of 1860. The school...
, Canisius High School
Canisius High School
Canisius High School is a Roman Catholic Jesuit private high school for young men. Canisius located at 1180 Delaware Avenue in Buffalo, New York, United States, just north of the Delaware Avenue Historic District. Founded in 1870, the school has historical ties to Canisius College...
, and Buffalo State College
Buffalo State College
The State University of New York College at Buffalo, referred to as Buffalo State College, often referred to colloquially as Buff State, is a public, liberal arts college in Buffalo, New York, United States and is part of the State University of New York. Buffalo State was founded in 1871 as the...
. He worked at the Studio Arena Theater
Studio Arena Theater
- History :Founded in the 1920s in Buffalo, NY by a group of local enthusiasts, the Studio Theatre evolved as both a theatre and a theatre school into Western New York's only professional regional theatre....
in Buffalo in various capacities before moving to New York City in 1973. Fontana began writing plays when he was about 9 years old; his early efforts were recorded into a reel-to-reel tape recorder with the neighbor kids as performers. At least one of his plays was produced when he was a student at Buffalo State. His college stage debut as an actor was in a production of George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
's Saint Joan
Saint Joan (play)
Saint Joan is a play by George Bernard Shaw, based on the life and trial of Joan of Arc. Published not long after the canonization of Joan of Arc by the Roman Catholic Church, the play dramatises what is known of her life based on the substantial records of her trial. Shaw studied the transcripts...
, directed by his frequent mentor, Warren Enters. Fontana's efforts as a playwright never proved financially successful. It was while working at the Williamstown Theater Festival in the early 1980s, that he was offered the opportunity to write for television — the offer coming from Bruce Paltrow
Bruce Paltrow
Bruce Weigert Paltrow was an American television and film director and producer. He was the husband of actress Blythe Danner, and was the father of actress Gwyneth Paltrow and director Jake Paltrow.-Life and career:...
who was launching a series called St. Elsewhere
St. Elsewhere
St. Elsewhere is an American medical drama television series that originally ran on NBC from October 26, 1982 to May 25, 1988. The series is set at fictional St. Eligius, a decaying urban teaching hospital in Boston's South End neighborhood...
on NBC.
Fontana has written and produced such groundbreaking television series as St. Elsewhere
St. Elsewhere
St. Elsewhere is an American medical drama television series that originally ran on NBC from October 26, 1982 to May 25, 1988. The series is set at fictional St. Eligius, a decaying urban teaching hospital in Boston's South End neighborhood...
, Homicide: Life on the Street
Homicide: Life on the Street
Homicide: Life on the Street is an American police procedural television series chronicling the work of a fictional version of the Baltimore Homicide Unit. It ran for seven seasons on NBC from 1993 to 1999, and was succeeded by a TV movie, which also acted as the de-facto series finale...
, and Oz
Oz (TV series)
Oz is an American television drama series created by Tom Fontana, who also wrote or co-wrote all of the series' 56 episodes . It was the first one-hour dramatic television series to be produced by premium cable network HBO. Oz premiered on July 12, 1997 and ran for six seasons...
, for which he has received, among others, three Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, three Writers’ Guild Awards, four Television Critics Association Awards, the Cable Ace Award, the Humanitas Prize
Humanitas Prize
The Humanitas Prize is an award for film and television writing intended to promote human dignity, meaning, and freedom. It began in 1974 with Father Ellwood "Bud" Kieser — also the founder of Paulist Productions — but is generally not seen as specifically directed toward religious...
, an Edgar Award
Edgar Award
The Edgar Allan Poe Awards , named after Edgar Allan Poe, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America...
, and the first prize at the Cinéma Tout Ecran
Cinéma Tout Ecran
Cinéma Tous Ecrans , is an international film festival held annually in the city of Geneva, Switzerland since 1995. The current Artistic and General Director is Claudia Durgnat....
Festival in Switzerland. In 2003, Fontana was the recipient of the Austin Film Festival
Austin Film Festival
The Austin Film Festival was started in 1994 in Austin, Texas and is claimed to be "the first organization of its kind to focus on the writer’s unique creative contribution to the film and television industries"...
's Outstanding Television Writer Award.
Fontana wrote the HBO film Strip Search, directed by Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
, as well as contributing two pieces to the September 11th special, America: A Tribute to Heroes
America: A Tribute to Heroes
America: A Tribute to Heroes was a benefit concert created by the heads of the four broadcast networks. Joel Gallen was selected by them to produce and run the show Joel Gallen. Actor George Clooney wrangled the celebrities to performed and to man the telephone bank . The marketing and public...
. He was the executive producer
Executive producer
An executive producer is a producer who is not involved in any technical aspects of the film making or music process, but who is still responsible for the overall production...
of American Tragedy
American Tragedy (film)
American Tragedy is a 2000 biographical television movie based on the true story of O.J. Simpson's trial for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ron Goldman in 1994...
for CBS, Shot in the Heart
Shot in the Heart
Shot in the Heart is a memoir written by Mikal Gilmore, then a senior contributing editor at Rolling Stone, about his tumultuous childhood in a dysfunctional family, and his brother Gary Gilmore's eventual execution by firing squad in 1977 for a convenience store murder he committed in Provo,...
for HBO Films
HBO Films
HBO Films is a division of the cable television network HBO that produces feature films and miniseries. While much of HBO Films' output is created directly for the television market, such as the film Witness Protection and the mini-series Band of Brothers, Pacific, Generation Kill and Angels in...
, the independent film Jean and the documentary The Press Secretary for PBS.
Fontana is the creator of a forthcoming historical drama TV series Borgia due for broadcast in 2011 for the French premium-pay channel Canal+
Canal+
Canal+ is a French premium pay television channel launched in 1984. It is 80% owned by the Canal+ Group, which in turn is owned by Vivendi SA. The channel broadcasts several kinds of programming, mostly encrypted...
, produced by Atlantique Productions and EOS Entertainment. The series will recount the Borgia family's rise to power and subsequent domination of the Vatican during the Renaissance.
According to his website, Fontana does not own or use a computer and writes all of his scripts longhand on a yellow legal pad.
Personal life
Fontana grew up in a Catholic family. He lives in New York City's West Village in a building that was formerly a branch of the New York Public Library. The book-lined, two-story main reading room is now a living room where he often hosts fund-raisers for arts and civil rights organizations.Articles
Fontana has written articles for such periodicals as The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, TV Guide
TV Guide
TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...
and Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
and has taught at Columbia, Syracuse, Rutgers and the State University College at Buffalo, his alma mater, from which he received the Distinguished Alumni Award and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters.
Plays
Fontana has had numerous plays produced in New York City, where he lives, and at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre, the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, the Buffalo Studio Arena Theatre, Williamstown Theatre FestivalWilliamstown Theatre Festival
The Williamstown Theatre Festival is a regional summer stock theatre on the campus of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, founded in 1954 by Williams College news director, Ralph Renzi, and drama program chairman, David C. Bryant. The theatre was conceived as a way to use the Adams...
and McCarter Theatre Company.
Membership
He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Producers Guild of AmericaProducers Guild of America
Producers Guild of America is a trade organization representing television producers, film producers and New Media producers in the United States. The PGA's membership includes over 4,700 members of the producing establishment worldwide...
, and the WGA, East
Writers Guild of America, East
Writers Guild of America, East is a labor union representing writers of television and film and employees of television and radio news. The 2006 membership of the guild was 3,770....
, from which he received the Evelyn F. Burkey Award for lifetime achievement. [Source of this paragraph: Biography published in awards program.] Fontana served as vice-president of the Writers Guild of America, East
Writers Guild of America, East
Writers Guild of America, East is a labor union representing writers of television and film and employees of television and radio news. The 2006 membership of the guild was 3,770....
from 2005-2007. He is currently President of the WGAE Foundation and serves on the boards of The Acting Company, the Williamstown Theatre Festival
Williamstown Theatre Festival
The Williamstown Theatre Festival is a regional summer stock theatre on the campus of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, founded in 1954 by Williams College news director, Ralph Renzi, and drama program chairman, David C. Bryant. The theatre was conceived as a way to use the Adams...
, DEAL, The New York City Police Museum, Stockings With Care, among others.
Detective Joe Fontana, Dennis Farina
Dennis Farina
Dennis Farina is an American actor of film and television and former Chicago police officer. He is a character actor, often typecast as a mobster or police officer. His most known film roles are those of mobster Jimmy Serrano in the comedy Midnight Run and Ray "Bones" Barboni in Get Shorty...
's character on Law & Order
Law & Order
Law & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series, created by Dick Wolf and part of the Law & Order franchise. It aired on NBC, and in syndication on various cable networks. Law & Order premiered on September 13, 1990, and completed its 20th and final season on May 24,...
, was named for Tom Fontana, who is a close friend of Law & Order
Law & Order
Law & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series, created by Dick Wolf and part of the Law & Order franchise. It aired on NBC, and in syndication on various cable networks. Law & Order premiered on September 13, 1990, and completed its 20th and final season on May 24,...
creator Dick Wolf
Dick Wolf
Richard Anthony "Dick" Wolf is an American producer, specializing in crime dramas such as Miami Vice and the Law & Order franchise. Throughout his career he has won several awards including an Emmy Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.-Early life:Wolf was born in New York City, the son...
.
External links
- Official Website
- New York Magazine Tom Fontana profile and The Jury preview
- Board of Advisors, The Buffalo Film Festival, Buffalo, NY, United States
- Tom Fontana interview at Archive of American TelevisionArchive of American TelevisionThe Archive of American Television is a division of the non-profit Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation that films interviews with notable people from all aspects of the television industry....