Carl Kurlander is a screenwriter (St. Elmo’s Fire, TV writer/producer (Saved by the Bell) and award winning documentary and docu-series film producer (A Shot to Save the World, Burden of Genius, The Chair) who has divided his time between working in film and TV industry in Los Angeles and teaching in his hometown at the University of Pittsburgh and working in the non-profit sector using media for advocacy on important social issues.
His journey out to Hollywood began when he won a Duke University/MCA-Universal Studios Scholar Award which included. ten-week internship to the head of film production. In his application, Carl expressed his desire to tell stories about his generation. While interning, Carl adapted a short story he had written in college about a waitress he met while working as a bellhop at the St. Elmo hotel into his first screenplay, St. Elmo’s Fire. During that time, he also got a lunch order for a meeting studio heads were having with director Joel Schumacher who was directing D.C. Cab with Mr. T. After getting Joel “gazpacho, no croutons, no sour cream, and chopped egg,” a year later he became Joel’s assistant and when D.C. Cab stalled at the box office, Joel read Carl’s script and asked him to collaborate with him about a movie about life after college. Today, St. Elmo’s Fire continues to burn brightly for reasons Carl described in this piece for deadline.com.
Carl would go on to write screenplays under contract for Columbia, Orion, Universal, Paramount and Disney, as well as TV pilots and over 150 episodes of television for NBC’s popular Saved By the Bell franchise. He was a Showrunner and co-creator for fifty-two episodes of Malibu, CA which Carl would later describe as an “unholy cross between “Saved By the Bell” and “Baywatch.” Having had multi-decade career in Hollywood, but no longer involved in trying to tell stories about his generation, Carl increasingly. felt like Holden Caufield’s older brother who wrote one good short story and sold out. This led to Carl accepting a serendipitous journey to teach at the University of Pittsburgh for what he thought would be a one year Hollywood sabbatical.
Carl’s journey back to Pittsburgh led to an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show after his story was featured in Po Bronson’s bestseller “What Should I Do With My Life? This and an op-ed Carl wrote on “Pittsburgh’s Next Industrial Revolution: Entertainment.” led to the feature documentary “My Tale of Two Cities,” a story about the once great city of Pittsburgh which built America with its steel, conquered polio and invented everything from aluminum to the Big Mac. The film featured iconic Pittsburgh’s neighbors like Steeler great Franco Harris, Fred Rogers’ widow Joanne Rogers, philanthropist Teresa Heinz Kerry, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht, transplant surgeon Thomas Starzl, and historian David McCullough. But it also became about Carl’s own personal comeback story and why he and his wife Natalie had decided to stay in Pittsburgh to raise their daughter Campbell with appearances from everyone from his brother actor/musicain Tom Kurlander to his dermatologist and old gym teacher Bob Grandizio. The film ended with Pittsburghers from Broadway to Beverly Hill singing “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” led by Mr. McFeely aka David Newell. My Tale of Two Cities played in theaters in 26 cities across North America including being the first movie to screen at the Capitol Hill Visitor Center with a panel moderated by political journalist Howard Fineman (NBC/Newsweek.” Fineman called the film “A wry and funny tale about the fulfillment found in coming home… A cross between Woody Allen and Fred Rogers, (Kurlander) reminds us that our cities are the real America in which we can best renew ourselves, our country, and our hope for all humanity.“
Carl is a teaching professor at the University of Pittsburgh where he is the founding director of the Pitt in LA program which gives students exposure to the entertainment industry and producer of the Pittsburgh Lens at Pitt’s Center of Creativity. Courses Carl has taught include screenwriting, producing, film analysis, film comedy, and documentary filmmaking classes which have resulted in films on the Salk polio vaccine, transplant pioneer Dr. Tom Starzl, filmmaker George Romero, and one currently being done on the formative years of playwright August Wilson and The Hill District which inspired him. Carl is proud of the dozens of students he currently has working as screenwriters, directors, producers, television writer/producers, cinematographers, production managers, customers, and network and studio executives.
Upon his return to Pittsburgh, Carl produced the short film “Hollywood’s Best Kept Secret: Pittsburgh” and the Pittsburgh Entertainment Summit at the Fred Rogers Studio which the Post-Gazette called “the greatest assemblage of talent and hustle this town has ever seen.” Carl did this as the co-founder with Ellen Weiss Kander of the Steeltown Entertainment Project, a non-profit which helped Pittsburgh become a regional production hub and developed innovative “youth and media” programs in dozens of Southwestern Pennsylvania schools.
He is the co-author with his friend Louie Anderson of The F Word: How To Survive Your Family and has written numerous articles that have been published including The L.A Times, Pittsburgh’s Post-Gazette and Tribune-Review, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Scientific America, and Deadline.com. He has appeared on CBS’ Sunday Morning, NPR, PBS, and numerous local television and radio stations.
He is grateful that this all began with the first job on his resume working as a bellhop at the St. Elmo Hotel in Chautauqua, New York.
