 |
Tom Fontana | |
|---|---|
 Fontana at the Montclair Film Festival in 2014 | |
| Born | September 12, 1951 Buffalo, New York, United States |
| Alma mater | Buffalo State College |
| Occupation(s) | Screenwriter, playwright, producer |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 1 |
Tom Fontana (born September 12, 1951) is an American screenwriter, writer, and television producer. Fontana worked on NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street and created HBO's Oz. [1]
Fontana was born on the west side of Buffalo, New York, and is the fourth of five children in an Italian-American family; [2] he is a cousin of actress Patti LuPone. He attended Cathedral School, Canisius High School, and Buffalo State College. He worked at the Studio Arena Theater in Buffalo in various capacities before moving to New York City in 1973. [3]
Having started out as a playwright, Fontana was hired by Bruce Paltrow as a writer for St. Elsewhere . Fontana has been the creator/showrunner for OZ , Copper , The Jury , The Beat , The Bedford Diaries , The Philanthropist and he was also the showrunner on Homicide: Life on the Street .
Fontana wrote the HBO film Strip Search , directed by Sidney Lumet, and contributed two pieces to the September 11 special, America: A Tribute to Heroes . He was the executive producer of American Tragedy for CBS, Shot in the Heart for HBO Films, the independent film Jean , and the documentary The Press Secretary for PBS. Fontana also created the historical drama TV series Borgia for the French premium-pay channel Canal+, produced by Atlantique Productions and EOS Entertainment. The series recounts the Borgia family's rise to power and subsequent domination of the Vatican during the Renaissance. Fontana also co-created Copper, an 1860s police procedural set in the turbulent Five Points neighborhood of New York.
Fontana has received three Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, three Writers' Guild Awards, four Television Critics Association Awards, the Cable Ace Award, the Humanitas Prize, an Edgar Award, and the first prize at the Cinéma Tout Ecran Festival in Switzerland. In 2003, Fontana was the recipient of the Austin Film Festival's Outstanding Television Writer Award.
Fontana has written articles for such periodicals as The New York Times , TV Guide , and Esquire , and has taught at Columbia, Syracuse, Rutgers, and the State University College at Buffalo, his alma mater, from which he received the Distinguished Alumni Award and an honorary Doctorate of Letters.
Fontana has had numerous plays produced in New York City, where he lives, and at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater, the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, the Buffalo Studio Arena Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and McCarter Theatre Company.
Fontana's sister is a nun. He lives in New York City's West Village in a building that was formerly a branch of the New York Public Library. The book-lined, two-story main reading room is now a living room where he often hosts fund raisers for arts and civil-rights organizations.
Fontana was married to actress Sagan Lewis for 12 years until their divorce in 1993. [1] Sagan and Fontana remarried on July 10, 2015, and remained together until her death on August 7, 2016. [1] [4]
Fontana has a tattoo of the Oz logo on his upper right arm, which he is shown receiving in the opening credits of the series. [5]
Fontana does not own or use a computer, and writes all of his scripts longhand on a yellow legal pad. [6]
Tom Fontana was the graduation speaker at Buffalo State College in 1983.
He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Producers Guild of America, and the Writers Guild of America, East, from which he received the Evelyn F. Burkey Award for lifetime achievement. Fontana served as vice president of the Writers Guild of America, East from 2005 to 2007. He is president emeritus of the WGAE Foundation, commonly known as the Writers Guild Initiative, and serves on the boards of the Acting Company, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, DEAL, the New York City Police Museum, and Stockings with Care, among others.
Detective Joe Fontana, Dennis Farina's character on Law & Order , was named for Tom Fontana, who became close friends with Law & Order creator Dick Wolf while working as writers in the same building, at the same time, on the series St. Elsewhere (Fontana) and Hill Street Blues (Wolf). [7]
| Year | Title | Credited as | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Writer | Producer | |||
| 1985 | The Fourth Wise Man | Yes | Yes | |
| 1993 | New Year | Yes | Yes | |
| 1996 | The Prosecutors | Yes | Yes | |
| 1997 | Firehouse | Yes | Yes | |
| 2000 | Homicide: The Movie | Yes | Yes | |
| 2004 | Judas | Yes | Yes | |
| 2004 | Strip Search | Yes | Yes | |
| Year [8] | Title | Network | Credited as | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creator | Writer | Producer | ||||
| 1982-1988 | St. Elsewhere | NBC | No | Yes | Yes | |
| 1988-1999 | Tattingers | NBC | Yes | Yes | Yes | Co-created with Bruce Paltrow and John Masius |
| 1992 | Home Fires | NBC | Yes | Yes | Yes | Co-created alongside Bruce Paltrow and John Tinker |
| 1993-1999 | Homicide: Life on the Street | NBC | No | Yes | Yes | Showrunner |
| 1997-2003 | Oz | HBO | Yes | Yes | Yes | Creator/Showrunner |
| 2000 | The Beat | UPN | Yes | Yes | Yes | Creator/Showrunner |
| 2004 | The Jury | Fox | Yes | Yes | Yes | Co-created alongside Barry Levinson and James Yoshimura/Showrunner |
| 2009 | The Philanthropist | NBC | Yes | Yes | Yes | Co-created alongside Charlie Corbin and Jim Juvonen /Showrunner |
| 2012-2013 | Copper | BBC America | Yes | Yes | Yes | Co-created with Will Rokos/Showrunner |
| 2011-2014 | Borgia | Canal+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | Creator/Showrunner |
| 2019-2022 | City on a Hill | Showtime | No | No | Yes | Showrunner |
| 2024 | Monsieur Spade [9] | AMC & Canal+ | Yes | Yes | Yes | Co-creator/Co-showrunner with Scott Frank |
Barry Lee Levinson is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Levinson won the Academy Award for Best Director for Rain Man (1988). His other best-known works are similarly mid-budget comedy drama and drama films such as Diner (1982), The Natural (1984), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Bugsy (1991), and Wag the Dog (1997). In 2021, he co-executive produced the Hulu miniseries Dopesick and directed the first two episodes.
Richard Anthony Wolfgang is an American film and television producer, best known for his Law & Order franchise. Since 1990, the franchise has included six police/courtroom dramas and four international spinoffs. He is also creator and executive producer of the Chicago franchise, which since 2012, has included four Chicago-based dramas, and the creator and executive producer of the FBI franchise, which since 2018, has also become a franchise after spinning off two additional series.
Nick Gomez is an American film director and writer. He has directed for a number of television and film. His first feature-length film was the 1992 movie Laws of Gravity, which won awards at both the Berlin International Film Festival and the Valencia International Film Festival. Gomez's next film was the 1995 crime drama New Jersey Drive, which was screened and competed for a Grand Jury Prize during that year's Sundance Film Festival.
Rick Cleveland is an American television writer, playwright, and monologist, best known for writing on the HBO original series Six Feet Under and NBC's The West Wing. His 2011 play The Rail Splitter premiered at Carthage College as the third production of Carthage's annual New Play Initiative. The production also traveled to the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in 2012.
David Leland was a British film director, screenwriter and actor who came to international fame with his directorial debut Wish You Were Here in 1987.
Željko Ivanek is a Slovenian-American actor. Known for his work in film, television, and theatre, he is the recipient of a Primetime Emmy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Drama Desk Award, as well as three Tony Award nominations.
The first season of Homicide: Life on the Street, an American police procedural drama television series, originally aired in the United States on NBC between January 31 and March 31, 1993. The show was created by Paul Attanasio, with film director Barry Levinson and television writer and producer Tom Fontana serving as executive producers. Adapted from David Simon's 1991 non-fiction book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, the season followed the fictional detectives of Baltimore Police Department homicide unit and the murder cases they investigate. The show was broadcast on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. EST, with the exception of the series premiere, which aired immediately after Super Bowl XXVII.
Terence Patrick Winter is an American writer and producer of television and film. He was the creator, writer, and executive producer of the HBO television series Boardwalk Empire (2010–2014). Before creating Boardwalk Empire, Winter was a writer and executive producer for the HBO television series The Sopranos, from the show's second to sixth and final season (2000–2007).
Matthew Hoffman Weiner is an American television writer, producer, and director best known as the creator and showrunner of the television series Mad Men, and as a writer and executive producer on The Sopranos.
Christian Taylor is a British-Argentine-American screenwriter, director, and producer known for his work on the American television series Lost, Six Feet Under, Teen Wolf, Clone Wars, Resident Alien,Eye Candy and the Award-winning independent film SHOWBOY which is codirected and starred in. Christian is a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community and actively works to encourage representation across Film and TV storytelling.
George Vincent Gilligan Jr. is an American screenwriter, producer, and director. He is best known as the creator, primary writer, executive producer, and occasional director of the AMC crime drama series Breaking Bad (2008–2013) and its spin-off prequel series Better Call Saul (2015–2022). He also wrote, directed, and produced the Breaking Bad sequel film El Camino (2019).
Halley Feiffer is an American actress, playwright and television writer, known for her award-winning plays I'm Gonna Pray for You So Hard, Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City, and for showrunning and writing the entire season of American Horror Story: Delicate starring Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian.
James Yoshimura is an American writer and producer, best known for his screenwriting work on the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street and the short-lived Fox series The Jury, for which he served as a co-creator. He also co-wrote Homicide: The Movie, a made-for-television film that came out in 2000, after the series ended. Yoshimura has received two Emmy Award nominations: one for Homicide: The Movie and one for the Homicide episode "Subway", which also won a Peabody Award for excellence in television broadcasting.
Jim Finnerty is an American television producer. He worked on all seven seasons of the NBC police drama Homicide: Life on the Street. He often works with Homicide executive producer Tom Fontana. He also worked on HBO's Oz.
Peter Gould is an American television writer, director and producer. He worked on all five seasons of the AMC drama Breaking Bad. He was nominated for four Writers Guild of America (WGA) Awards for his work on the series. After Breaking Bad ended, he went on to become the co-creator and co-showrunner, with Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, of the show's spinoff, Better Call Saul. He became the series' sole showrunner after Gilligan left the writers room.
Bonnie Mark is an American former television writer and producer. She worked on the ABC crime drama NYPD Blue and the NBC crime dramas Third Watch and Homicide: Life on the Street. She was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for her work on Homicide.
Julie Martin is an American television writer and producer. She has worked on the NBC crime dramas Homicide: Life on the Street, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She won a Humanitas Prize and was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for her work on Homicide. She has also been nominated for an Edgar Award for her work on Criminal Intent.
Jorge Zamacona is an American television writer and producer. He worked extensively on the police drama Homicide: Life on the Street and wrote the series' crossover episodes with the crime drama Law & Order. Zamacona co-created the police dramas 10-8: Officers on Duty and Wanted.
Susan Jane Lewis was an American actress, best known for co-starring as Dr. Jacqueline Wade on the NBC medical drama St. Elsewhere. Her other television credits included a multiple-episode recurring role as Judge Susan Aandahl on NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street during the 1990s, and the television films Cocaine: One Man's Seduction (1983) and Full Ride.
Kyle Bradstreet is an American television writer and producer. From 2015 to 2019, Bradstreet worked on the USA Network series Mr. Robot. He is the creator and the executive producer of the Disney+ miniseries Secret Invasion.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
