Creator of The O.C

Background:

“The timing, I think, absolutely. The support that we have from the network in terms of watching us at an unusual time in the year and playing our episodes three times in a given week until we built an audience. I think the cast is exceptional. I think, aside from being extremely attractive, they're also really talented and can do humor and drama and are really amazing in that way. I think the tone of the show surprised people. I think, maybe from the early ads, people thought they were going to get a kind of melodrama. I think what we've done instead is do something a little bit different, something that has a little bit more irony and a little bit more self-awareness and maybe is a little more successful because of that.” Josh Schwartz on top factors that made “The O.C” successful

American screenwriter and television producer Josh Schwartz is best recalled for creating and executive producing the popular Fox drama “The O.C,” which ran for four seasons from 2003 to 2007. With the show, he made a history of being the youngest person ever to create his own one-hour drama for network television. At the time, he was 26 years old. In a more recent time, Schwartz created two new television series, the CW's “Gossip Girl” (2007-?) and NBC's “Chuck” (2007-?). The young screenwriter, who mentions Cameron Crowe and Woody Allen as his inspirations, also has contributed to two unaired TV pilots and two unproduced screenplays. He wrote the screenplay of 2008's “Looking for Alaska,” based on a novel by John Green.

Schwartz has kept in touch with his alma maters, The Wheeler School and USC. In 2005, he returned to the Wheeler School to give the graduation speech. The same year, he empowered USC with its first television writing scholarship called The Josh Schwartz Scholarship. It is intended to be given annually to a student or students focusing on writing for television and in demand of financial assist, who have completed a TV pilot script and first season synopsis. Schwartz also has worked with a number of USC alumni.

Providence Boy

Childhood and Family:

In Providence, Rhode Island, Josh Schwartz was born on August 6, 1976. His parents, Steve and Honey Schwartz, were both toy designer for Hasbro Toys in Rhode Island. Along with his younger siblings, Danny and Katie, he grew up on the East side of Providence, Rhode Island. Josh graduated from Providence's private Wheeler School, a coeducational independent day school, in 1994, and then attended University of Southern California film school, where he became a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. He dropped out of college in 1999 in order to pursue a professional career as a writer.

Josh now is a resident of Los Angeles.

Chunk

Career:

Josh Schwartz knew that he wanted to become a writer since early childhood. When he was 7, he won an essay-writing competition at sleep-away camp for a review of the newly released movie “The Goonies” (1985), written by Steven Spielberg. In the opening line, young Schwartz wrote “Spielberg has done it again,” and the piece of writing proved outstanding amongst the pile of work from the other kids. By age 12, Schwartz had had a contribution to the showbiz newspaper Variety.

Upon high school, Schwartz fulfilled his childhood dream of attending film school to study screen and television writing at USC. He was an outsider there, and met a number of kids from Newport Beach. It was while at USC that he tried his hand in stand-up comedy at a talent show, but soon found uncomfortable with the profession. Schwartz wrote an autobiographical screenplay called “Providence,” about his senior year in high school, in his sophomore year as a homework assignment for school. He submitted it into a contest for the prestigious Nicholson Award in Screenwriting, the highest honor given to undergraduates, and ended up winning the award. Unfortunately, the prize was soon annulled. Commenting about it, he said, “I dropped it in a box - I was a sophomore. And I got a call over the summer saying I'd won, and I'd won five thousand dollars. I was like, 'This is awesome!' Then they called back, like, the next day and said you had to be a junior to enter and not a sophomore, so they were rescinding it. I was pretty pissed.”

Thanks to the help from connection through his fraternity, Schwartz was able to sell his screenplay in Hollywood. In 1997, Sony's TriStar Pictures purchased it in a bidding war for a contract guaranteeing $550,000 and worth up to $1 million. It was never realized, although it did open Schwartz's doors to television. After getting an agent, he soon wrote a TV pilot called “Brookfield” (1999), which was produced by ABC/Disney. Starring Amy Smart and Eric Balfour, it was a boarding school drama about affluent children in New England.“Brookfield” was never aired. After leaving college, Schwartz decided to work more professionally. He penned another TV pilot in the following year called “Wall to Wall Records,” this time for The WB/Warner Bros. A drama about working in a music store, “Wall to Wall Records,” like its predecessor, was also produced but never broadcast.

Schwartz's luck started to change in 2003 when he penned “The O.C,” a pilot for Warner Bros. TV and Wonderland Sound and Vision which was produced with him as creator and executive producer. At the age of 26, he became the youngest hour-long show creator ever with “The O.C,” a fact that did not pleased Fox executives who sent a series of seasoned pros accompanied with traditional ideas about how to lead the show and a rancor about sharing power with someone so young. It was soon changed, however, after Bob DeLaurentis signed on. With the TV veteran, Schwartz worked together in supervising and evaluating the work of editors on every episode in post-production.

Debuted on August 5, 2003 on the Fox network, “The O.C” was an instant hit among teen audiences and popularized its setting, Orange County, which led to such copycats as Bravo's documentary series “The Real Housewives of Orange County” and the MTV reality show “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County.” Also famous for its music, which was selected by Schwartz himself based on his own musical tastes and designed to indicate who the characters were, it also brought a consideration to independent rock bands like Roone and Death Cab for Cutie. Schwartz received a Writers Guild of America nomination for the pilot in 2004 and a nomination from People's Choice Award in the category of Favorite Television Drama in 2005, while the show was dubbed “Guilty Pleasure of the Year” by VH1. In early 2007, after four seasons, “The O.C,” whose cast included Peter Gallagher, Mischa Barton, Adam Brody, Rachel Bilson, Melinda Clarke and Kelly Rowan, was axed because of a major ratings fall.

Despite the success of “The O.C,” Schwartz has maintained his contribution of stalled projects. In 2004, he served as a script doctor on the J.J Abrams “Superman” screenplay that was finally discarded by Warner Bros. “Alphabet City,” a pilot he sold to Fox about a New York tabloid, was never produced. He also worked on a never-produced drama for Fox called “Athens,” which was described as an “OC” companion.

In 2005, Schwartz signed with Paramount to adapt John Green's young adult novel “Looking for Alaska,”produced by Mark Waters. Now in pre-production, the film is set to be released in 2008. In late August 2006, it was announced that Schwartz would create and executive produce a new series for the CW TV network called “Gossip Girl” (2007), adapted from a well-liked book by Cecily von Ziegesar. He currently is also known as the creator and executive producer of “Chuck” (2007), a comedy-spy show for NBC.

Awards:
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