Richard Appel was a Harvard man for the 1980s. He graduated with a degree in history and literature in 1985, went directly to Harvard Law School, like many of his classmates, and later joined the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, a conventional step in a high-flying career.
And today? Appel is a Harvard man for the 1990s: he writes for "The Simpsons."Welcome to the other Hollywood. Without doubt, the movie industry continues to be the most visible and glamorous side of the entertainment field. But head over to the second most fashionable tables at the city's must-see lunch spots, or peek inside some of the biggest houses in Los Angeles' toniest neighborhoods, and you will find the frequently better-paid and at times better-educated writers and producers of television shows.
Prime-time television may be reviled in intellectual circles for its supposedly lowbrow sensibilities, but many people in the medium regard this as a second golden era, both in terms of money and the quality of writing. Few things demonstrate the growing attractiveness of the field more than the presence of dozens of Harvard graduates (as well as many other Ivy Leaguers), particularly in the realm of comedy. Writing staffs of shows like "The Simpsons," "King of the Hill," "Saturday Night Live" and "Late Show With Dave Letterman" have come to look like Harvard alumni clubs.
Many other shows, including "Party of Five," "Cracker," "News Radio," "Third Rock From the Sun," "Seinfeld," "Veronica's Closet," "The Larry Sanders Show," "Suddenly Susan," "Murphy Brown" and "The Naked Truth," have or have had Harvard writers and producers and even a few Harvard-educated actors.
It is a career path that, as many of these people admitted, at one time seemed declasse by Harvard standards, but has gained considerable cachet with the soaring salaries and numbers of graduates heading out here.
"It's like there's a conveyor belt of people now coming out here," said Appel, who added that many of them, like himself, had worked at The Harvard Lampoon, long a launching pad for television comedy writers. ("The Lampoon has been the end of many a promising career in cancer research," said David Sacks, class of '84 and a co-executive producer of "Third Rock From the Sun.")
These people are, of course, endowed with varying degrees of talent. But, more important, they tend to be exceptionally ambitious, and the world of television now has credibility as a place that bright young Ivy Leaguers can go to show off their skills, something they were far less likely to do a generation ago.
Jonathan Aibel, class of '91 and a writer at "King of the Hill," said he recently went to a reunion and spent time with two classmates who are currently law clerks to U.S. Supreme Court justices. He said he had feared some subtle sense of rejection but was pleasantly surprised.
"They said they enjoy the show," he said. "It was really good to hear that."
It is a business that pays huge sums even to very young people and is rising in prestige because of heavy media coverage. It requires not bursts of output and solitary efforts, as in writing screenplays or novels, but an ability to churn out consistently snappy scripts in collaboration with other writers, week in and week out.
"It's the same thing motivating these people that motivated graduates in the past, just in a new area," said Carolyn Strauss, class of '85 and a vice president for original programming at HBO. "The focus of money and power just shifted in a way."
At a show like "The Simpsons," fairly typical for sitcoms, a story editor, who holds one of the most junior positions, earns about $110,000 in a 22-episode year. (Payment is made by the episode.) The job of supervising producer, a mid-level writing position often reached after a few seasons, pays roughly $550,000 a year, and the top writing job, that of executive producer, $700,000 to as much as $3 million a year.
By contrast, the top salary for a first-year associate at a major New York law firm is roughly $86,000 a year, a figure that rises to about $170,000 in the fifth year, according to the National Association for Law Placement.
"I think we'd all be doing this even if it paid $16,000 a year," insisted Bill Oakley, class of '88 and a "Simpsons" consulting producer. "But it does help that you can make as much after a few seasons as someone who's been at a law firm for 40 years."
Steven Peterman, class of '72 and an executive producer of "Suddenly Susan," said, "This has become a fast-track place where a smart person can make a lot of money in a hurry."
It helps, too, many said, that television shows are run by writers rather than deal makers. This produces a work environment that many regard as more intellectual and more in touch with the craft than film, which some writers complain is an endless series of pointless meetings.
"In television you work for other writers," said Jonathan Collier, class of '83 and a consulting producer on "King of the Hill," which was created in part by another Harvard alumnus, Greg Daniels, class of '85. "In film, you work for people who want to have lunch with you."
Indeed, there is a sort of reverse snobbery now, with many television writers looking down on film as generally less interesting than good television.
John Romano, an executive producer and co-creator of "Michael Hayes," a one-hour drama series that made its debut this fall, was an English professor at Columbia University before coming to Hollywood. He said he had been drawn here in part because he felt that the literature of the medium was more interesting than movies, or even many of today's novels.
"Television dramas are genuinely intelligent and interesting in the complexity of the situations in which you can put your characters," said Romano, who attended Yale, not Harvard. "Television in that sense is rich in character and complexity, even in a way film generally is not. There are many writers who find film language poor. And the novel has really turned inward."
Heavy news coverage of the television industry has also added sex appeal to the business. "In the 1980s investment banking got the same media play that Jamie Tarses gets today," Strauss said, referring to the embattled young president of ABC Entertainment.
And one should not underestimate the draw of the relaxed character of the television writing business, in which a pressed shirt is as welcome as a tie-dyed T-shirt and dreadlocks in a corporate boardroom.
"There's a tremendous amount of work, a tremendous amount of competition, tremendous job insecurity," Sacks said. "There are lots of periods of unemployment. Nevertheless, just the opportunity to show up and work in jeans and a T-shirt is a huge electromagnet to young people."
Which is not to say there is not a knee-jerk defensiveness among Harvard grads.
"Yeah, I have had encounters with people recently who thought not only that television writing was for morons, but have said things like, `Don't you of all people wish you wrote for something more positive?' " Appel said.
Appel, who is married to novelist Mona Simpson, said he never felt a need to apologize for his work in her literary circles but added, "I guess you can't help but be a little defensive."
Some Harvard graduates said they had had to conceal their alma mater because of anti-intellectual attitudes just below the surface among some people in Hollywood.
Nestor Carbonell, class of '90 and an actor who plays Luis, the passionate Latin photographer, in "Suddenly Susan," said he had hidden his Harvard background at times because it led some directors to believe that he could play only highbrow parts, not street toughs.
But the name and the network can clearly help. Christopher Keyser, class of '82 (and class of '85, Harvard Law School), is the co-creator and executive producer of the drama "Party of Five." He said he had never obtained a job because of his Harvard connections, but he admitted that they could help get a young writer a second look, which can make a big difference. "The world is an unfair place like that," he said. But, he insisted, "there is not a secret handshake."