[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: Can you tell us about the moment before your Hollywood career where you were working day jobs and a voice inside of you said “This isn’t right. I’m supposed to be writing.“
Paul Chitlik, Author/Screenwriter: It was a little bit more complicated than that. I was a college administrator at the time, the assistant director of the Indo-Chinese Refugee Assistance Program at Long Beach Community College.
I had 15 no, I had 18 instructors working for me and 45 student aids but one day somebody was sick so I had to take over their class. I was standing at the chalkboard (we still used chalk at the time) and I was writing something on the board. Then the little voice inside my head said:
This is not the plan.
I had planned to be a writer when I graduated from college. So I decided at that time I was going to make a change in my life. I thought optimistically that 6 months savings would be great and so I saved up some money. I thought I had enough living expenses for 6 months but it took me two years to make a living as a television writer after that.
Film Courage: You went to school in Berkeley?
Paul: Part of the time and I did undergraduate work at Berkeley, got my degree there, spent a year abroad my junior year at the University of Madrid. I learned Spanish there, then I went to undergraduate school at UCSD. I was in the comparative literature program and I wanted to do my dissertation as a novel instead of as scholarly work and they said…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Paul Chitlik has written for all the major networks and studios in English and in Spanish. He was story editor for MGM/UA’S “The New Twilight Zone,” and staff writer for Showtime’s sitcom “Brothers.” He has written features for Rysher Entertainment, NuImage, Promark, Mainline Releasing, and others. He has directed episodes and been coordinating producer for “Real Stories of the Highway Patrol” and “U.S. Customs Classified.” He wrote and produced “Alien Abduction,” the first network movie shot on digital video for UPN. He wrote, produced, and directed “Ringling Brothers Revealed” a special for The Travel Channel. (He had been a roustabout for Circus Vargas years earlier.) Most recently he wrote, produced and directed “The Wedding Dress,” for Amazon Prime. He received a Writers Guild of America award nomination for his work on “The Twilight Zone” and a GLAAD Media Award nomination for “Los Beltrán,” a Telemundo show. He won a Genesis Award for a Showtime Family movie. He has taught in the MFA programs of UCLA, the University of Barcelona’s film school ESCAC, Cuba’s film school EICTV, Chile’s film school UNIACC, The University of Zulia in Venezuela, The Panamerican University in Mexico City, The Story Academy of Sweden and as a clinical associate professor at Loyola Marymount University. Now writing full time again and living near his grandson in Chapel Hill, NC, with wife, Beth McCauley.
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