I’m a golden goose. I turn good books into Oscar- or Emmy-caliber scripts with wide appeal. Thirty scripts so far -- most based on true stories -- worth several billion dollars in revenue to a producer shrewd enough to see gold on the page. Anyone with my career path could do the same; my path is singular. I’ve logged more hours as a filmmaker than most writers, and more hours as a writer than any director. And I’m likely the most experienced film doctor on the planet. Story is the key to success and structure the key to story. I know story. ● I mastered structure in print by writing and editing hundreds of nonfiction magazine stories, then moved into TV. I’ve worked as an Emmy-winning writer and filmmaker for PBS, Nat Geo, Discovery, History, Animal Planet, Smithsonian, and major production companies on five continents. I’ve made the hardest films – serious documentaries for a mass audience – in the impatient arena of television. More than 400 films (IMDb lists a fraction) and not one flop. Who can say as much?

When I write a documentary script, I start with chaos: thousands of raw shots, facts, and sound bites. Shot by shot and line by line, I winnow chaos to crack the code of structure. I make thousands of choices about words and pictures, sound and music. As writer-director John Sayles says, I’m “thinking in pictures.” I’ve spent part of my career creating documentaries from scratch and the other part answering 911 calls. Hollywood has script doctors but virtually no film doctors; shoot a bad script and you’re stuck with a bad movie. In documentaries, we create the story after we shoot – so when a network exec asks me to salvage someone’s hopeless rough cut, I can. ● I don’t give “notes.” I wade in and fix the problems – from a light polish to a reinvention. Writers, directors, producers: I’ve saved more people than Lassie, and with their endorsement to boot. The Nielsens prove I not only hit the target rating, I typically surpass it -- sometimes astronomically.

All that experience in docs has given me a Midas Touch for drama: adaptation. And I succeed where others fail. ● A decade ago, Oprah wisely optioned "My Name Is Love": the bestselling memoir by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend Darlene Love. "Hidden Figures" meets "Dream Girls": the stuff of box office gold. Unskilled at adaptation, the screenwriter turned fact into fiction. The script was rejected, the option lapsed. Gold forfeited. I offered to adapt the book on spec; Darlene said yes, and liked the result. ● "Hellhound on His Trail" – Hampton Sides’ gripping saga of James Earl Ray, Martin Luther King, and America’s biggest manhunt -- bounced from one A-list writer-director to another: Noah Hawley, Scott Cooper, Barry Jenkins. None delivered a script. In three weeks I wrote an Emmy-caliber pilot, with Hampton’s blessing. ● Among my other scripts: a NASA drama to rival "Apollo 13"; a POW thriller to rival "The Great Escape"; a real-life "Rain Man" based on Daniel Tammet’s acclaimed memoir "Born on a Blue Day"; a real-life "Master and Commander" with a teenage hero; history’s greatest submarine mission; the world’s greatest treasure hunt; the true saga of the original American idol. And more. In development: dozens of movies and limited series.

The difference between a documentary and a drama is who’s in front of the camera. The challenge remains the same: entertain the viewer and reward the investor. I do. If I can turn a two-hour documentary about anthropology into a ratings gold mine, imagine what I can do with a drama about astronauts, pirates, or spies. ● What story can I tell for you?