Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah
Back in 1991, our Beloved Leader Larry Brody decided he’d had it with showbiz and drastically changed his life, packing up the belongings that meant the most to him – um, that would be cowboy boots, his Ludwig drum kit, his comic book collection, and his best friend, The Navajo Dog – threw everything into a teeny little Mitsubishi 4×4 and headed for, New Mexico to, well, to live with Indians, actually.
Even while residing on the Santa Clara Pueblo, just north of Santa Fe, LB couldn’t quite call it quits and ended up teaching screen and TV writing and production at The College of Santa Fe. After a few years, to the joy of fans everywhere (and the dismay of executives everywhere also), a more enlightened and relaxed LB (we think it was the ‘shrooms) came back to L.A. and set about revolutionizing Saturday morning animation with shows like THE SILVER SURFER.
One of the highlights of our Boss’s college teaching career was his first class, which included one Karen McCullah, who partnered up with LB for awhile (professionally, we mean), and helped him develop the series of seminars and workshops that later evolved into this site and its classes. Since then, Karen’s come a long way, having co-written (with Kirsten Smith) such films as 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, LEGALLY BLONDE, and THE HOUSE BUNNY, as well as the TV series GETTING PERSONAL and 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU. (Yeppers, kids, that concept really had wings.)
Here, as part of a series of video interviews by the Motion Picture Academy, Karen and Kirsten talk about their writing…and their writing lives: