Joe Keenan (writer)
Encyclopedia
Joe Keenan is an award-winning screenwriter
, television producer
and novelist and openly gay
American
.
, Massachusetts
. His family is Irish American
and Roman Catholic. He has a twin brother, John, and two other siblings Ronald and Geraldine. He grew up in the blue collar
neighborhood of Cambridgeport. Keenan attended Cambridge public school's Academically Talented program for 6th-8th grade. Boston College High School
and Columbia College
.
that charts the course of a seventeen-year marriage between Liz, an actress, and Ted, a writer, won the Richard Rodgers Awards for Musical Theater, awarded by The American Academy of Arts and Letters
. In 1993, the lyrics for The Times won the Edward Kleban Award
.
as an executive story editor
in 1994 for the series' second year. His first produced script for the series, "The Matchmaker," received an Emmy Award nomination, a GLAAD Media Award, and the 1995 Writers Guild Award for Episodic Comedy. He won a writing Emmy Award in 1996 for being one of eight writers of the classic Season 3 episode, "Moon Dance," and also received Emmy Award nominations for "The Ski Lodge" episode in 1998 and, with Christopher Lloyd, "Something Borrowed, Something Blue," in 2000, which won the 2001 WGA award for Episodic Comedy. During his six-season tenure on Frasier he rose through the ranks from executive story editor to co-producer, supervising producer, co-executive producer, and finally, executive producer. He was executive producer
when the series ended in 2004. He also wrote the series finale
, "Goodnight, Seattle
." Keenan won five Emmy Award
s during his tenure on the show. He was nominated for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series five times, and won once. He won the Outstanding Comedy Series award four times for his work as the show's producer. He also won two Writers Guild of America Award
s for his work on the series.
as a writer and executive producer for the third season of the television show. Although his work received good critical response, including having one of his episodes,"Bang", named the best of the season by many critics, he chose to leave the series after one year. However he is still credited as being a consulting producer and even wrote the Season 4 episode Distant Past
.
Keenan also created two short-lived comedy series with fellow Frasier producer/writer Christopher Lloyd
: Bram and Alice in 2002 and Out of Practice
in 2005. He also co-wrote the 1994 film Sleep with Me
as well as the screenplay
for the 2007 Annie Award
-winning animated feature Flushed Away
.
". As of 2007, he has written three novel
s:
Putting On the Ritz won the Lambda Literary Award for Humor in 1991, and My Lucky Star won the Lambda Literary Award
for Humor in 2006. In October 2007, the novel also won the Thurber Prize for American Humor
.
, and does not drive a car. Since 1982, he has been partnered with Gerry Bernardi.
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
, television producer
Television producer
The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...
and novelist and openly gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Early life
Keenan was born in CambridgeCambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
. His family is Irish American
Irish American
Irish Americans are citizens of the United States who can trace their ancestry to Ireland. A total of 36,278,332 Americans—estimated at 11.9% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau...
and Roman Catholic. He has a twin brother, John, and two other siblings Ronald and Geraldine. He grew up in the blue collar
Blue collar
Blue collar can refer to:*Blue-collar worker, a traditional designation of the working class*Blue-collar crime, the types of crimes typically associated with the working class*A census designation...
neighborhood of Cambridgeport. Keenan attended Cambridge public school's Academically Talented program for 6th-8th grade. Boston College High School
Boston College High School
Founded in 1863, Boston College High School is an all-male Jesuit Roman Catholic college preparatory secondary school with historical ties to Boston College. It has an enrollment in grades 7-12 of approximately 1,500 students and is located on a campus on Morrissey Boulevard in the Dorchester...
and Columbia College
Columbia College of Columbia University
Columbia College is the oldest undergraduate college at Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1754 by the Church of England as King's College, receiving a Royal Charter from King George II...
.
Early career
In 1991 Cheers creators James Burrows and Glen and Les Charles, having read Keenan's novel Blue Heaven, invited Keenan to create a new sitcom for their production company. The resulting pilot, Gloria Vane, starring JoBeth Williams, was not picked up by a network, but it led to a writing post on Frasier. In 1992, his first play, The Times, a musicalMusical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
that charts the course of a seventeen-year marriage between Liz, an actress, and Ted, a writer, won the Richard Rodgers Awards for Musical Theater, awarded by The American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 250-member honor society; its goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Located in Washington Heights, a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan in New York, it shares Audubon Terrace, its Beaux Arts campus on...
. In 1993, the lyrics for The Times won the Edward Kleban Award
Edward Kleban
Edward “Ed” Kleban was an American musical theatre composer and lyricist.Kleban was born in the Bronx, New York in 1939 and graduated from New York's High School of Music & Art and Columbia University, where he attended with future playwright Terrance McNally. Kleban is best known as lyricist of...
.
"Frasier"
He joined the staff of the sitcom FrasierFrasier
Frasier is an American sitcom that was broadcast on NBC for eleven seasons, from September 16, 1993, to May 13, 2004. The program was created and produced by David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee in association with Grammnet and Paramount Network Television.A spin-off of Cheers, Frasier stars...
as an executive story editor
Story editor
Story editor is a job title in motion picture and television production, also sometimes called "supervising producer". A story editor is a member of the screenwriting staff who edits stories for screenplays....
in 1994 for the series' second year. His first produced script for the series, "The Matchmaker," received an Emmy Award nomination, a GLAAD Media Award, and the 1995 Writers Guild Award for Episodic Comedy. He won a writing Emmy Award in 1996 for being one of eight writers of the classic Season 3 episode, "Moon Dance," and also received Emmy Award nominations for "The Ski Lodge" episode in 1998 and, with Christopher Lloyd, "Something Borrowed, Something Blue," in 2000, which won the 2001 WGA award for Episodic Comedy. During his six-season tenure on Frasier he rose through the ranks from executive story editor to co-producer, supervising producer, co-executive producer, and finally, executive producer. He was executive producer
Executive producer
An executive producer is a producer who is not involved in any technical aspects of the film making or music process, but who is still responsible for the overall production...
when the series ended in 2004. He also wrote the series finale
Series finale
A series finale refers to the last installment of a series with a narrative presented through mediums such as television, film and literature. In many Commonwealth countries, the term final episode is commonly used in regards to a television series...
, "Goodnight, Seattle
Goodnight, Seattle
"Goodnight, Seattle" is the title of the series finale of the long-running American sitcom Frasier. It aired on May 13, 2004, in the 11th year of the series...
." Keenan won five Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
s during his tenure on the show. He was nominated for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series five times, and won once. He won the Outstanding Comedy Series award four times for his work as the show's producer. He also won two Writers Guild of America Award
Writers Guild of America Award
The Writers Guild of America Award for outstanding achievements in film, television, and radio has been presented annually by the Writers Guild of America, East and Writers Guild of America, West since 1949...
s for his work on the series.
"Desperate Housewives" and beyond
In 2006, Keenan joined Desperate HousewivesDesperate Housewives
Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama series created by Marc Cherry and produced by ABC Studios and Cherry Productions. Executive producer Cherry serves as Showrunner. Other executive producers since the fourth season include Marc Cherry, Bob Daily, George W...
as a writer and executive producer for the third season of the television show. Although his work received good critical response, including having one of his episodes,"Bang", named the best of the season by many critics, he chose to leave the series after one year. However he is still credited as being a consulting producer and even wrote the Season 4 episode Distant Past
Distant Past
"Distant Past" is the 78th episode of the ABC television series, Desperate Housewives. It is the eighth episode of the show's fourth season and originally aired on November 25, 2007....
.
Keenan also created two short-lived comedy series with fellow Frasier producer/writer Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Lloyd (screenwriter)
Christopher Lloyd is an American TV screenwriter and producer of Wings, Frasier, Out of Practice, Back to You, and Modern Family...
: Bram and Alice in 2002 and Out of Practice
Out of Practice
Out of Practice is an American situation comedy that was originally broadcast on CBS from September 19, 2005 to March 29, 2006. With producers Joe Keenan and Christopher Lloyd at the helm, the show was about a family of five doctors who had little in common and usually did not get along...
in 2005. He also co-wrote the 1994 film Sleep with Me
Sleep with Me
Sleep With Me is a 1994 film starring Meg Tilly, Eric Stoltz and Craig Sheffer who play good friends who become involved in a love triangle, a relationship complicated by the marriage of Tilly's and Stoltz'es characters...
as well as the screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
for the 2007 Annie Award
Annie Award
The Annie Awards have been presented by the Los Angeles, California branch of the International Animated Film Association, ASIFA-Hollywood since 1972...
-winning animated feature Flushed Away
Flushed Away
Flushed Away is a 2006 computer animated British film directed by David Bowers and Sam Fell. It is a partnership between Aardman Animations of Wallace and Gromit fame, and DreamWorks Animation, and is Aardman's first completely computer-animated feature as opposed to the usual stop-motion.The film...
.
Fiction
Keenan is also a published author, and is commonly referred to as a "gay P. G. WodehouseP. G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
". As of 2007, he has written three novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s:
- Blue HeavenBlue Heaven (novel)Blue Heaven is the first book by novelist Joe Keenan. It is a gay-themed comedy about four friends who get caught up in ill-fated attempt to scam a Mafia family by faking a marriage and absconding with the cash and gifts that the prospective in-laws will shower on the lucky couple.-Plot...
(1988), - Putting On the RitzPutting on the Ritz (novel)Putting on the Ritz is the second book by novelist Joe Keenan. It is a gay-themed comedy about three friends who become involved in the New York City magazine publishing industry.-Characters:...
(1991), and - My Lucky StarMy Lucky Star (novel)My Lucky Star is the third book by novelist Joe Keenan. It is a gay-themed comedy about three friends who get caught up with the movie business, blackmail, and handsome male closeted movie stars....
(2006).
Putting On the Ritz won the Lambda Literary Award for Humor in 1991, and My Lucky Star won the Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Award
Lambda Literary Awards are awarded yearly by the US-based Lambda Literary Foundation to published works which celebrate or explore LGBT themes. Categories include Humor, Romance and Biography. To qualify, a book must have been published in the United States in the year current to the award...
for Humor in 2006. In October 2007, the novel also won the Thurber Prize for American Humor
Thurber Prize for American Humor
The Thurber Prize for American Humor, named after American humorist James Thurber, recognizes outstanding contributions in humor writing. The prize is given out by the Thurber House. It was first awarded irregularly, but since 2004 has been bestowed annually....
.
Personal life
Keenan lives in Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, and does not drive a car. Since 1982, he has been partnered with Gerry Bernardi.
External links
- Keenan, Joe - GLBTQ Encyclopedia