Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeff Reno.
Jeff, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was born in Davenport, Iowa, the legendary breeding ground of Hollywood success stories, moved to Des Moines when I was a year old (my parents decided to come with me), and stayed there until I graduated high school. My mom and especially my dad were huge movie fans and we used to see everything that came to town when I was growing up – I remember coming home from movies and writing stories about things that happened to the characters after the movie ended, in retrospect my first stab at “writing for the screen”. But after high school, when I came out west for college, writing hadn’t even occurred to me as a viable career path and I started out pre-law as a political science major. It took me about a year to realize that I’d slid into law without giving any real thought to what I’d actually love to do for the rest of my life, and after some soul-searching I switched colleges and majors and decided to pursue a dream rather than simply a practical course of action. I got my degree in English and packed up for Los Angeles to write for tv and film. I had $140 and everything I owned in my ’70 Mach 1 Mustang, slept on Santa Monica beach for four nights while I looked for a job and a place to live found both just before the money ran out and started writing. I worked at a hotel in Westwood, front desk clerk, from 3-11pm, wrote at the beach during the day and snuck in a little more during slow nights at the hotel. I got into a tv comedy-writing class at a place called Sherwood Oaks Experimental College, it was above a bookstore on Ivar & Hollywood Blvd., the teachers were industry professionals and I learned a lot about the business and the craft of writing for tv.
I also met Ron Osborn there, the guy who’d go on to be my partner of 40 years and counting. We each wrote scripts in the class, his was for “Taxi”, mine for “MASH”, then gave each other notes, put both our names on both scripts, and sent them into the marketplace. We’d each found agents separately, a woman I’d met at the hotel gave my script to her agent and the agent liked it, but Ron’s agent was more connected to the tv world and I ended up signing with his so we could be sold as partners. My MASH script got us several offers from tv shows, the best of which was to join “Mork and Mindy” as staff writers. And we were off! A few more sitcoms, then “Moonlighting”, which catapulted us into movies like “Meet Joe Black”, and it just kept going from there.
Has it been a smooth road?
Things happened more easily for me at the beginning, more quickly, than is usually the case, the first full script I wrote (I’d written half a sitcom script to get into the class) having launched us into the business. But there aren’t many completely smooth roads for writers in Hollywood, and my partner and I definitely hit some potholes along the way. The most universal struggle for tv and movie writers is learning to cope with rejection, and like everyone else we’ve had our share. We were fired from a couple of jobs – one early one because we probably weren’t good enough yet, another because the star of the show was too coked up to handle the amount of dialogue we gave him and forced us out. And we’ve had any number of scripts turned down, rewritten, thrown out, or rejected by producers, studios, and networks. We’ve spent the last several years battling the industry’s attitude toward writers of a certain age. Alongside another universal Hollywood roadblock, people in charge asking “What have you done lately?”, often preceded by the same people stopping you from doing anything lately. But if you love it enough, and I do, you just keep going.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I’ve written for tv shows and feature films, with the bigger chunk of my career spent in tv. My partner and I grew through the ranks, from story editors (another title for lowest-rung writers on the staff of a show) to showrunners, the writers in charge of any given tv series. As showrunners/executive producers we’re responsible for every aspect of a show’s production – writing, rewriting, and guaranteeing the scripts, overseeing the casting, hiring the directors, and supervising post-production elements like editing, music, sound mixing, etc. As well as perhaps the most “challenging” of all our duties, dealing with the studio and network who finance and air your series, their notes, comments, and demands for the show. It’s difficult to speak to what might set us apart from others in our field – looks, personality, all the obvious things, of course – but I’m really proud of the fact that we’ve always tried to run an open and drama-free production, we like everyone to be able to share their opinions, cooperate and get along with each other, and we’ve done everything we can to make high-quality shows while still encouraging people we work with to have fun doing it. More specific to the writing, I guess we’re most well-known for the kind of fast-paced banter we wrote on “Moonlighting”, whether romantic-comedy or buddy-comedy, I’m a big fan of smart-funny dialogue and more often than not that’s the kind of thing I shoot for in my scripts.
What were you like growing up?
I had what I’d have to call an idyllic childhood in Des Moines, thanks to amazing parents, a wonderful sister and brother, and friends who remain among my closest friends to this day. My mom was loving and incredibly welcoming to everyone in our lives, so smart and such a big heart, my house tended to be the center of activity for our friends to gather, and she was a second mom to all of them. My dad was the biggest radio and tv personality in the state, he had a morning radio show and local tv shows and was recognized and stopped and talked to everywhere we went, the local version of a Hollywood star. But he was always so gracious and outgoing and upbeat with whoever he talked to, a truly good man and terrific role model who had a smile for everyone he met. And he was one of the funniest people I’ve ever known, a gift for funny voices and telling stories. So I was happy. And in all immodesty, a pretty well-rounded kid. I was outgoing, loved making people laugh, both best student in the class and class clown at once, loved sports and played several throughout school, and as I mentioned earlier a huge fan of movies. And music. I grew up with the Beatles and the rest of the 60’s and early 70’s golden age of rock and was just as into it as everyone else was, and sophomore year in high school did my finals essay on the shootings at Kent State, so the counter-culture was creeping into my psyche. An amazing time in so many ways, tumultuous out in the world but fairly perfect for me at home.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
Suggest a story: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
