David Scott Milton
Encyclopedia
David Scott Milton is an American author, playwright, screenwriter, and actor. His plays are known for their theatricality, wild humor, and poetic realism, while his novels and films are darker and more naturalistic. As a novelist, he has been compared to Graham Greene
, John Steinbeck
, and Nelson Algren
. Ben Gazzara
’s performance in Milton’s play, Duet, received a Tony nomination. Another play, Skin, won the Neil Simon Playwrights Award. His theater piece, Murderers Are My Life, was nominated as best one-man show by the Valley Theater League of Los Angeles. His second novel, Paradise Road, was given the Mark Twain Journal award "for significant contribution to American literature."
to a working class Jewish family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
. He's of Romania
n descent with his grandparents having immigrated from a small village near Botoşani
, Romania. His father, Si “Lefty” Milton was a prize-fighter whose career was abruptly ended by the great Fritzie Zivic. He became a truck driver, then a yeast salesman, and finally a bakery owner. Milton’s work as an apprentice baker contributed to his play, Bread, which debuted at The American Place Theater in New York and had a successful run at the Municipal Theater in Dortmund, Germany. Duet which opened on Broadway in the mid-seventies also had productions in German at the Kreis Theater in Vienna, Austria. In the spring of 1996, it had its premier in Germany at the Düsseldorf Schauspeilhaus. A new play, Catching a Cab, under the auspices of Gustav Kiepenheuer, has also been optioned for German production.
Milton was an early member of the avant-garde Theater Genesis, along with Sam Shepard, Leonard Melfi and Murray Mednick
. He has had more than a dozen plays performed Off-Off-Broadway including The Interrogation Room, Halloween Mask, The Metaphysical Cop, and Scraping Bottom. Scraping Bottom, under the title of Born to Win, became the Czech director Ivan Passer's first American film, and starred George Segal, Karen Black and Paula Prentiss. Pauline Kael has characterized this title change as perhaps the most extreme in the history of American cinema.
Other plays were Duet for Solo Voice and Bread at the American Place Theater and a revised version of Duet for Solo Voice, re-titled Duet, on Broadway with Ben Gazzara. Mr.Gazzara's performance earned him a Tony nomination.
In Los Angeles, Skin, for which Mr. Milton won the Neil Simon Playwrights Award, ran for nearly a year at The Odyssey Theater.
He has had five novels published: The Quarterback (Dell), Paradise Road (Atheneum), Kabbalah (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich), Skyline (Putnam's), The Fat Lady Sings (iUniverse). Paradise Road was given the Mark Twain Journal award "for significant contribution to American literature." His plays, Duet, and Skin are also in print.
Mr. Milton’s short stories have appeared in The Southern California Anthology, The Pearl River Review, The Southern (Lafayette, Louisiana) Anthology, among others.
His adaptation of David Hare's Knuckle was seen on PBS television. Other television work includes a stint as story editor on Starsky and Hutch and scripts for the John Houseman syndicated show, Tales of the Unexpected.
He has written screenplays for directors, Peter Bogdanovich
, Ivan Passer, Sidney Pollack, Dick Richards, and Irv Kershner.
Since 1977, he has been a Senior Lecturer in Drama and Adjunct Professor in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California
. He also teaches screenwriting in the cinema department.
He has been a special lecturer at Goddard College and at CalArts, as well as consultant to the creative writing program at The University of South Alabama and literary consultant to Scott, Foresman Publishers, and Warner Books. In the recent past he has conducted screenwriting seminars at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin and the Duke University Film and Television Program. Last year he was appointed to the advisory board of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation along with, among others, David Hockney, Michael York, John Schlessinger, and Armistead Maupin.
For thirteen years, until 2004, he ran a writers' workshop on the Maximum Security Yard of the California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi where his class consisted of a dozen murderers. He mounted a one man show, “Murderers Are My Life”, based on his prison experiences which ran for four month at The Two Roads Theater in Studio City, CA. It was also seen at The Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls, New York in October of last year and The Studio Theater in Manhattan. It received a nomination as best one-man show by the Valley Theater League of Los Angeles.
Television: Hill Street Blues, Police Story, Starsky and Hutch, Nero Wolf, Julie Farr, M.D.
, Kaz, Charlie’s Angels, Strike Force, Dillinger
Theater: New York-- Gorky’s Lower Depths, Giraudoux’s Song of Songs
(with Delphine Seyrig), Saroyan’s The Cave Dwellers, Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (with Nina Foch). Stratford, Conn., The American Shakeskpeare Festival— King John (with Mildred Dunnock and Fritz Weaver), Measure for Measure (with Nina Foch), Taming of the Shrew (with Foch & Pernell Roberts), Othello (with Earl Hyman and Alfred Drake), The Merchant of Venice (with Katharine Hepburn and Morris Carnovsky) Much Ado About Nothing (Hepburn & Alfred Drake) National Tours—Much Ado About Nothing (with Katharine Hepburn and Alfred Drake)Lamp at Midnight (directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie)
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
, John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
, and Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren
Nelson Algren was an American writer.-Early life:Algren was born Nelson Ahlgren Abraham in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Goldie and Gerson Abraham. At the age of three he moved with his parents to Chicago, Illinois where they lived in a working-class, immigrant neighborhood on the South Side...
. Ben Gazzara
Ben Gazzara
-Early life:Gazzara was born Biagio Anthony Gazzara in New York City, the son of Italian immigrants Angelina and Antonio Gazzara, who was a laborer and carpenter. Gazzara grew up on New York's tough Lower East Side. He actually lived on E. 29th Street and participated in the drama program at...
’s performance in Milton’s play, Duet, received a Tony nomination. Another play, Skin, won the Neil Simon Playwrights Award. His theater piece, Murderers Are My Life, was nominated as best one-man show by the Valley Theater League of Los Angeles. His second novel, Paradise Road, was given the Mark Twain Journal award "for significant contribution to American literature."
Early years
Milton was born during the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
to a working class Jewish family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
. He's of Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n descent with his grandparents having immigrated from a small village near Botoşani
Botosani
Botoșani is the capital city of Botoșani County, in northern Moldavia, Romania. Today, it is best known as the birthplace of many celebrated Romanians, including Mihai Eminescu and Nicolae Iorga.- Origin of the name :...
, Romania. His father, Si “Lefty” Milton was a prize-fighter whose career was abruptly ended by the great Fritzie Zivic. He became a truck driver, then a yeast salesman, and finally a bakery owner. Milton’s work as an apprentice baker contributed to his play, Bread, which debuted at The American Place Theater in New York and had a successful run at the Municipal Theater in Dortmund, Germany. Duet which opened on Broadway in the mid-seventies also had productions in German at the Kreis Theater in Vienna, Austria. In the spring of 1996, it had its premier in Germany at the Düsseldorf Schauspeilhaus. A new play, Catching a Cab, under the auspices of Gustav Kiepenheuer, has also been optioned for German production.
Milton was an early member of the avant-garde Theater Genesis, along with Sam Shepard, Leonard Melfi and Murray Mednick
Murray Mednick
Murray Mednick is an American playwright and poet. He's best known as founder of the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop/Festival, where he served as artistic director from 1978 to 1995...
. He has had more than a dozen plays performed Off-Off-Broadway including The Interrogation Room, Halloween Mask, The Metaphysical Cop, and Scraping Bottom. Scraping Bottom, under the title of Born to Win, became the Czech director Ivan Passer's first American film, and starred George Segal, Karen Black and Paula Prentiss. Pauline Kael has characterized this title change as perhaps the most extreme in the history of American cinema.
Other plays were Duet for Solo Voice and Bread at the American Place Theater and a revised version of Duet for Solo Voice, re-titled Duet, on Broadway with Ben Gazzara. Mr.Gazzara's performance earned him a Tony nomination.
In Los Angeles, Skin, for which Mr. Milton won the Neil Simon Playwrights Award, ran for nearly a year at The Odyssey Theater.
He has had five novels published: The Quarterback (Dell), Paradise Road (Atheneum), Kabbalah (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich), Skyline (Putnam's), The Fat Lady Sings (iUniverse). Paradise Road was given the Mark Twain Journal award "for significant contribution to American literature." His plays, Duet, and Skin are also in print.
Mr. Milton’s short stories have appeared in The Southern California Anthology, The Pearl River Review, The Southern (Lafayette, Louisiana) Anthology, among others.
His adaptation of David Hare's Knuckle was seen on PBS television. Other television work includes a stint as story editor on Starsky and Hutch and scripts for the John Houseman syndicated show, Tales of the Unexpected.
He has written screenplays for directors, Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich is an American film historian, director, writer, actor, producer, and critic. He was part of the wave of "New Hollywood" directors, which included William Friedkin, Brian De Palma, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino, and Francis Ford Coppola...
, Ivan Passer, Sidney Pollack, Dick Richards, and Irv Kershner.
Since 1977, he has been a Senior Lecturer in Drama and Adjunct Professor in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. He also teaches screenwriting in the cinema department.
He has been a special lecturer at Goddard College and at CalArts, as well as consultant to the creative writing program at The University of South Alabama and literary consultant to Scott, Foresman Publishers, and Warner Books. In the recent past he has conducted screenwriting seminars at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin and the Duke University Film and Television Program. Last year he was appointed to the advisory board of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation along with, among others, David Hockney, Michael York, John Schlessinger, and Armistead Maupin.
For thirteen years, until 2004, he ran a writers' workshop on the Maximum Security Yard of the California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi where his class consisted of a dozen murderers. He mounted a one man show, “Murderers Are My Life”, based on his prison experiences which ran for four month at The Two Roads Theater in Studio City, CA. It was also seen at The Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls, New York in October of last year and The Studio Theater in Manhattan. It received a nomination as best one-man show by the Valley Theater League of Los Angeles.
Family
Milton married Sheila Kuester, an intensive care nurse, in 1981. They have two children, Abby and Kyle. They were divorced in 1991.Recent Life
Milton lives on the 230 acre (0.9307778 km²) Hawk Mountain Ranch in the Southern Sierra Mountains of California. At present he is at work on a new novel, Iron City, and a film version of his last novel, The Fat Lady Sings.Acting
Film: Born to Win, Rollercoaster, Mask, Ruby and Oswald, Billy Jack Goes to WashingtonTelevision: Hill Street Blues, Police Story, Starsky and Hutch, Nero Wolf, Julie Farr, M.D.
Julie Farr, M.D.
Julie Farr, M.D. was a short-lived American television show that aired on the ABC network in 1978. It followed three television movies called Having Babies which aired from 1976-78, and was not renewed after its initial run of episodes aired in March-April 1978...
, Kaz, Charlie’s Angels, Strike Force, Dillinger
Theater: New York-- Gorky’s Lower Depths, Giraudoux’s Song of Songs
Song of Songs (Giraudoux)
Song of Songs is an English adaptation of the play Cantique des Cantiques written in 1938 by French dramatist Jean Giraudoux.-Plot summary:The President is at a table of in Parisian cafe waiting for his young lover, Florence...
(with Delphine Seyrig), Saroyan’s The Cave Dwellers, Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (with Nina Foch). Stratford, Conn., The American Shakeskpeare Festival— King John (with Mildred Dunnock and Fritz Weaver), Measure for Measure (with Nina Foch), Taming of the Shrew (with Foch & Pernell Roberts), Othello (with Earl Hyman and Alfred Drake), The Merchant of Venice (with Katharine Hepburn and Morris Carnovsky) Much Ado About Nothing (Hepburn & Alfred Drake) National Tours—Much Ado About Nothing (with Katharine Hepburn and Alfred Drake)Lamp at Midnight (directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie)