| Dan Greenburg | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 20, 1936 Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Occupation | Writer |
Dan Greenburg (born June 20, 1936) is an American author, screenwriter, humorist, journalist, and playwright.[1]
He was born in Chicago, Illinois, got his B.F.A. from the University of Illinois and his M.F.A. from U.C.L.A. His 72 books have been published in 20 languages in 24 countries. His best-sellers for adults include How to be a Jewish Mother, How to Make Yourself Miserable, Love Kills, Exes, and How to Avoid Love and Marriage. He writes four series of children's books, The Zack Files, Secrets of Dripping Fang, Maximum Boy, and Weird Planet.[2]
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Raised to be an artist like his father, Dan studied design at the University of Illinois. While there he read Catcher in the Rye, which turned him towards being a writer. His first piece of professional writing was "3 Bears in Search of an Author," a retelling of the same story in the voices of J.D. Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. The piece was picked up by Esquire Magazine, and Esquire commissioned a sequel: Hansel and Gretel in the styles of Vladimir Nabakov, Jack Kerouac and Samuel Beckett.
Dan got his B.F.A. degree and moved to Los Angeles, where he received UCLA's first M.F.A. in industrial design. Dissatisfied with industrial design, Dan spent three years in Los Angeles advertising agencies. Meanwhile, Dan's first editor at Esquire had started a new national magazine convinced Dan to move to New York and become its Managing Editor. In New York, Dan began to write a satirical non-fiction book entitled How to be a Jewish Mother, which became the bestselling book of 1965 and allowed him to become a full-time author, journalist, and script writer.
Greenburg's first wife was writer and film director Nora Ephron. After seven years, their marriage ended in an amicable divorce. His second wife was writer Suzanne O'Malley, with whom he had a son, Zack O'Malley Greenburg, and for whom Dan's best-selling series of children's books, The Zack Files, was named. At age five, Zack played the title role of Lorenzo in the film Lorenzo's Oil. Zack O'Malley Greenburg is a staff writer at Forbes Magazine and the author of a business-oriented biography of Jay-Z, Empire State of Mind. Dan is currently married to Judith C. Wilson, who as J.C. Greenburg writes children's books, including the 18-volume series Andrew Lost. They live in Westchester, NY with many cats.[3]
Greenburg claims he had over-protective parents and grew up scared of everything. "So I've spent much of my adult life undertaking risky adventures and writing about them," he says, "trying to convince myself I wasn't a coward. Now my adventures are more about adrenaline than fear." Writing of Greenburg's escapades, George Plimpton once said: "I wouldn't dare to try many of Greenburg's adventures...but I have always envied him his forays into other people's worlds and his wonderful and comic skill at describing them."
Greenburg says his adventures had to fulfill two criteria: "(1) They had to take place in worlds that were exotic to me, with unfamiliar rules and vocabularies, and (2) they had to frighten me physically, emotionally, or both." He has given examples including: accompanying New York homicide cops as they capture a killer, flying upside-down over the Pacific with a stunt pilot in an open-cockpit plane, and learning to discipline tigers and lions in Texas.
Greenburg's plays have been performed on Broadway, Off Broadway, at the American Conservatory Theater, Yale University, and at the Actors Studio, where he was a member of the Playwrights Unit led by Norman Mailer.
Greenburg has also written two dozen sitcom pilots for CBS-TV and NBC-TV, including a fireman sitcom for producer-comedian Alan King (which Greenburg researched by spending months with NYC firefighters) and a cop sitcom for producer and cop-who-broke-The-French-Connection-case Sonny Grosso (which Greenburg researched by spending months with NYC homicide cops).
Greenburg has also been a frequent talk show guest on such programs as the Today Show, the Tonight Show, Larry King Live, and Late Night with David Letterman. With fellow author Avery Corman, Greenburg has also appeared as a stand-up comedian on TV talk shows hosted by Sir David Frost, Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin, as well as at the New York Improv comedy club.
More than 150 of Greenburg's articles and humor pieces have appeared in such periodicals as The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Time, Life, Newsweek, Ms. Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, Readers Digest, and have been reprinted in 44 anthologies of humor and satire in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.
Greenburg has had small acting roles in several films he's written, including Private Lessons, Private School, and I Could Never... He had ten speaking scenes in Doc, the Frank Perry remake of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, playing the role of John Clum, editor of the Tombstone Epitaph. The New Yorker film critic Penelope Gilliatt mentioned Greenburg favorably in her review.