Buddy Sheffield

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Morris Taylor "Buddy" Sheffield is an American comedy writer, producer and composer. He is probably best known as Emmy-nomiated head writer on Fox TV's breakthrough sketch comedy series, In Living Color, having written such favorites as "Homey Claus", "Homeboy Shopping Network", "This Old Box" and "Men On Books". Sheffield, who is white and was raised in the rural south, won an NAACP Image Award for his work on the show. Prior to that he had spent 10 years writing for dozens of performers ranging from Dolly Parton to the Smothers Brothers.

Sheffield co-created the teen hit Roundhouse (TV series) on Nickelodeon in the 1990s, often cited as revolutionary for its frenetically paced staging and sophisticated satire involving real teen issues.^[1] Roundhouse was shot in real-time before a live audience and was described by one critic as "like seeing all the high points of a smash Broadway show in half an hour."^[2] Sheffield created the show with his former wife, Rita Hester, with whom he had founded a children's theatre company when they were students at The University of Southern Mississippi. That venture, Sheffield Ensemble Theatre, lasted 13 years and had become the number one touring children's theatre in the country prior to going bankrupt as a major contractor to the failed New Orleans World's Fair. Sheffield paid off his cast and crew and moved to Los Angeles. His years in live theatre are apparent in "Roundhouse" and all his work.

In 1982, his musical Cleavage, for which he had written book, music and lyrics, opened on Broadway.^[3] Though it had been playing successfully in New Orleans, it closed after one performance.

As of 2007, Sheffield is again targeting Broadway with a musical send-up of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! called Idaho!

On August 23, 2007, Sheffield sued The Walt Disney Company in Los Angeles for breach of implied contract and other causes of action over a musical sit-com called "Rock and Roland" that he pitched to the Disney Channel in late 2001. Sheffield's detailed pitch was about a Jr. high kid with a widowed parent who is a regular kid by day and secretly a pop superstar by night. The lawsuit claims that Disney executives showed great interest, requested more material, passed on the project and then misappropriated it.^[4] Disney did little more than switch the genders of all the main characters, an option Sheffield states in his lawsuit that he gave them during the pitch. Disney produced the show, calling it Hannah Montana and it has become a worldwide mega-hit generating millions for the company.^[5] An August 26, 2008 court date has been set in Los Angeles Superior Court.^[6]