 |
Screenwriter
Katie Ford has always had her eye on Hollywood.
Driven by childhood acting aspirations, Ford was doing
stand-up comedy as a teenager and had a story editor credit
on a hit television show at the age when most of us were
buying our first (legal) drinks. She went on to write
for a number of different shows before co-writing the
hit comedy Miss Congeniality and working on the
wildly successful Desperate Housewives.
From
an early age, Ford had the good fortune of being encouraged
in that direction by her family. Her twin sister, Jane,
shared her desire to act and was her creative collaborator.
|
"We
lived in New York, and one of the first things we wrote were
sketches and submitted them to Saturday Night Live.
My father’s best friend was an announcer at NBC, so we
would go hang out there and watch all of their rehearsals. It
was so fun. We met John Belushi in the hallway and gave our
material to Dan Ackroyd. It was pretty amazing."
Ford's aunt, actress Constance Ford, had found success as Ada
on Another World, which made the sisters’ dreams
seem more tangible to their family and the lure of stardom more
appealing to the twins. Ford remembers, “She made it feel
like it was part of our blood. I remember
a couple of times she sent us scripts and Jane and I acted them
out in the living room. And certainly having Aunt Connie take
us to Sardi’s was fantastic.”
When her family relocated to Toronto, her sister Jane pursued
music while Katie began doing stand-up in a local comedy club
at the age of 14. "I thought it would be way into my Canadian
child-acting career." She shared the bill alongside another
talented teenager, a young Jim Carrey. Ford counts among her
early comedic influences Gilda Radner, Lily
Tomlin, Robert Klein, and films like 9 to 5 and
Tootsie.
The ambitious teenager even wrote a television pilot for herself
as a vehicle to stardom. "It was called On Our Own,
or Being It or Moving On—one of those
things. I was the teenager with the mother.” She laughs,
“I guess it was like a two-person One Day At a Time."
Ford eventually moved to Los Angeles, found
representation and wrote a spec script for Family Ties.
"My agent and manger called me screaming. [Executive producer]
Gary Goldberg said that they definitely want to hire me for
a script, then they would see about the rest of it. Then I went
in and met all the other writers at a breakfast and that was
it. I was hired as a story editor in the first year."
For the young Ford, the Family Ties experience was
extremely positive. "There were only five of us and it
was a great atmosphere. Gary Goldberg is a great guy and taught
me a lot. And as you wrote your script, Gary wanted your voice
in there, as opposed to other
shows where you are sometimes feeding the machine of the show
and your voice gets lost a little bit. He also really emphasized
writing dramatically. He always said, 'The funny part is easy
to do.' So I thought that part of the training was brilliant."
She has happy memories of working on the show, especially with
the show’s comely maternal figure. Ford recalls, “I
was really shy at the time, so I was a little
intimidated to go right up to Meredith Baxter Birney and tell
her how much I loved her. Michael J. Fox was a huge star and
it was fun to see him, but the first time I saw her, it was
like [cue choir of angels], ‘I love you!’”
Ford was never called upon to write any Very
Special Episodes with gay content for the progressive family
program, but she had already conceived of bringing a lesbian
theme to network television.
"When
I was 19 or 20, I wrote a spec script for Cheers in
which a woman comes on to Shelly Long. Ted Danson thinks
she’s there for him, but she comes on to Shelly Long.
Then Shelly Long is trying to get a water stain off the table
for 20 minutes because she’s so freaked out. So I did
have it on my agenda."
Page
1 / 2 - Next
