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‘St. Elsewhere’
now streaming on Hulu
"a binge-worthy watch that reveals a show far ahead of its time"
Read the article here
31 October 18
Tom Fontana & Oliver Stone Team For ‘Dolce Vita’ TV Series About 1950s Rome
Read the details at Deadline Hollywood
7 August 18
Buffalo's Hollywood connection is starring in
'That (Almost) '70s Show'
2 August 18
Tom Fontana Named Showrunner of Showtime’s
Affleck-Damon Drama ‘City on a Hill’
Written by Chuck MacLean (Boston Strangler) and based on an original idea by Affleck,
City on a Hill is set in early 1990s Boston when the city was rife with violent criminals
emboldened by local law enforcement agencies in which corruption and racism was the norm,
until it suddenly all changed. The drama is a fictional account of what was called the
“Boston Miracle.”
Read the article here: DEADLINE Hollywood
25 May 18
See the Facebook live recording of the event HERE
16 February 18
Homicide: Life on the Street: A Reunion
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Time: 6:30 pm
The
Paley Center will reunite key members of the cast and creative team of
one of the most influential and acclaimed dramas in television history
including: Richard Belzer ("John Munch"); Andre Braugher ("Frank
Pembleton"); Tom Fontana, Creator and Writer; Barry Levinson,
Executive Producer.
Tickets
go on sale for Paley Center Individual Members onFebruary15 at noon,
and to the general public on February 16 at noon. To learn more about
the benefits of Paley Membership, including the ability to purchase
tickets ahead of the general public, please visit
paleycenter.org/join-us.
26 October 17
THE GREAT OZ
20 October 17
"You
know, it’s funny because when you do something and then you go and
revisit it 20 years later, you’re sort of terrified that it’s going to
be crap. And I just watched the pilot again for the first time in 20
years and I was happy to see, most of all, how incredible the cast was
and about the diversity in the show. Which I think 20 years ago was
fairly unheard of. "
12 July 17
20 years ago, Oz locked down the prestige-drama formula
This
series premiered in the late ’90s, featured an expansive cast, and
juggled humor and realism in a gritty setting. There were
capital-letter themes, lots of nudity, and warring factions, not to
mention Edie Falco in a starring role.
7 June 17
Tom invited William Daniels and friends for a get together to
celebrate the publication of
“There I Go Again”.
“Bless you, Bill Daniels! Thanks to your wonderful book, I get to live
the best years of my life over again—the magical ’80s when we did St.
Elsewhere. And not just those wonderful times—I get to relive Two for
the Road, The Graduate, and 1776 in the bargain. What a treat!”—Ed
Begley Jr.
6 June 17
20 Years of 'OZ': The Show That Changed TV Forever
At
the end of the last millennium, HBO gave the green light to a prison
drama with a difference, and television hasn't been the same since.
6 June 17
HBO’s Joe Paterno
Movie Gets Green Light With
Al Pacino Starring & Barry Levinson Directing
Almost two years after HBO hit pause on its film about the
Penn State football scandal starring Al Pacino, the project is moving
forward with a green light and a new director. Barry Levinson is set to
direct and executive produce the movie, reuniting with Pacino and HBO.
3 August 16
15 June 16
Tom Fontana – A
Conversation at ATX
BY JARED MUNSON
Fontana
stresses that ratings shouldn’t be the main indicator if a show should
be renewed or not. It should be about more about what is actually good.
read
the article here
11 June 16
Credit: Omar L. Gallaga / AMERICAN-STATESMAN
How
HBO’s ‘Oz’ and ‘The Wire’ changed the game...
Three
showrunners of some of the most influential TV dramas of the so-called
golden age of TV shared the stage at the ATX Television Festival
Saturday morning at Google Fiber Space, describing the birth of HBO’s
original dramas, what it was like to create iconic shows such as “The
Wire” and “Homicide: Life on the Street” and why despicable characters
still make for great
TV. read
the article here
30 March 16
Dramas
like 'Game of Thrones' and 'Orange is the New Black' owe a great deal
to HBO's original ambitious prison drama
When HBO produced Oz in
1997, American audiences had never seen anything like it on television.
The show was ruthlessly violent — criticizing the penal justice system,
portraying both rape and homophobia, interrogating race relations and
pitting Muslims against Christians. What’s more, it was heavily
stylized, beginning each episode with a prelude from wheelchair-bound
prisoner Augustus Hill (Harold Perrineau), who waxed poetic on larger
themes affecting the prisoners in Oswald State Penitentiary.
Read the Inverse article by Emily Gaudette here
3 March 16
You Married Them Once, but What About Twice?
After 22 years, the
divorce didn’t work out for Sagan Lewis and Tom Fontana.
They tried to maintain a severed union. And for more than
two decades, they were successful. Ms. Lewis, a former actress, lived
in the verdant tangle of Hawaii and then Arizona; he moved to the
cobblestones of the West Village.
She had a child on her own; he wrote and produced some of
the most hard-edge, violent shows on television. They saw each other on
occasion and still loved each other, but were not, emphatically, a
couple.
And yet, something kept bringing them together again.
Finally, as if orchestrated by a Hollywood show-runner, in July, the
woman who found comfort in the red rocks of Sedona and the man who
lives in a 10,000-square-foot building in Manhattan, remarried.
16 February 16
‘Killing Fields’ Season Finale Clocks 2.5
Million Viewers On Discovery Channel
By Lisa de Moraes
The season finale of
Discovery’s first true-crime series Killing Fields clocked 2.45 million
viewers in Live + 3 Day viewing – a 44% growth from its debut crowd of
1.7M. The series, from Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana, also delivered a
season high in the 25-54 demographic, 1.3M v its first episode’s 762K
viewers in the demo. Over its run, the series grew in the demo every
week, as it took viewers inside an active criminal investigation.
(read the article here)
23 December 15
How a 1980s TV show became the glue that
connected 'I Love Lucy' to 'Law & Order: SVU'
When Tom Fontana was a producer
on the show “St. Elsewhere” in the 1980s, he loved to push the
boundaries of weirdness — at least as much as he could get away with on
network TV...
21 November 14
Rise of Epic TV
Series: Tom Fontana, Creator of "Oz"
The WZB
is proud to welcome the recipient of three Primetime Emmys and multiple
other awards, Tom Fontana, for an event charting both the artistic and
the economic revolution that changed the face of TV over the last one
and a half
decades.
See the interview here
11 November 14
The TV Legacy
of St. Elsewhere's
"Tommy Westphall Universe"
read the article by Jim Vorel here
The show’s
one truly lasting and iconic contribution to pop culture stems from its
bizarre and totally unexpected ending, and the sprawling web of
theories that ending implies. And it all starts with the imagination of
an autistic boy named Tommy Westphall.
20 April 14
À NU le spectacle au Vingtième Théâtre
click on the image to see a
video promo for the play
Earlier this year an adaptation of “Strip
Search” was presented in Paris.
À NU was adapted and directed by Marc SAEZ
More images from the production here
TV
profile and extended interview
12 April 14
11 April 14
Tom Fontana & Chris Long share
showrunner secrets.
Two of today's best-respected TV creators shared
production stories at MIPTV.
By Angela Natividad
Read the story here.
Watch the video here
past TomFontana.com entries
are in the Archive
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