Michael Lazarou

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Michael Lazarou (born March 17, 1963 in Wiesbaden, West Germany) is an American film and television writer/producer.

[edit] Biography

Recipient of Writers Guild of America Paul Selvin Award. Nominated for Writers Guild of America Award - Outstanding Achievement in Original Long Form for Heat Wave, a fact-based drama about the 1965 Watts Riots. Lazarou began his career as story editor for the half-hour television comedy Doogie Howser and the one-hour drama The Untouchables. Lazarou moved back and forth between long-form television - Heat Wave, Possessed, Bad Blood, A Superbowl For the Kremlin, Slamdunk Mom (2008) and feature films Take the A Train, Satin Doll and others.

He adapted his semi-autobiographical novel Criminal Law into a film for HBO. This was followed up with The Stanford Prison Experiment originally developed for television for HBO but later acquired by Artisan Entertainment as a motion picture.

Lazarou, is dyslexic and dysgraphic and was unable to read or write until he was nearly ten years old. He is a graduate of UCLA, New York University and the AFI Center For Advanced Film Studies and teaches at California Lutheran University.

After a four-year career absence due to a kidney ailment which nearly ended his life, he returned to establish High Road Productions with music manager Susan Munao and wife Charisse McGhee, a former Vice President of Primetime Series at NBC and Lifetime television.

[edit] Personal life

Lazarou was married to Melissa Tucker from 1981 until 1983, when they were divorced. Lazarou remarried in 1991 to Charisse McGhee, and they have since had four children together.