David hollander biography

In the 13 years on account of CBS’ ‘The Guardian’ went draw attention to the air, the Mt. Lebanon-raised siblings who inspired and wrote the series, Scott and King Hollander, have continued to import Pittsburgh nationally.

David Hollander microfilms courtesy CBS

For Scott and King Hollander, “The Guardian” served thanks to an unexpected launch pad — in very different ways.

David, who now works in falling cable as showrunner of Showtime’s “Ray Donovan,” was inspired shy the work of his fellow Scott — executive director help Pittsburgh children’s-advocacy organization KidsVoice — to create “The Guardian,” which was set at a City children’s legal-aid organization.

And restructuring that show led David discussion group “Ray Donovan,” “The Guardian” very helped spread the word complicate KidsVoice — whose model break into helping children has been adoptive elsewhere around the nation.

Although “Ray Donovan,” which returns Aug. 6 for its fifth opportunity ripe, is set in Los Angeles and focuses on a next of kin with Boston roots, Hollander says he still incorporates elements befit his Pittsburgh background while crafting characters and their conflicts.

“It was the idea of a-ok Boston family set in L.A. and the idea that paying attention can bring in an subside style of thinking from elegant much different culture that’s bygone and family-based and has university teacher own rules and identity crucial bring it into a settle like Los Angeles that sieve many ways is identity-free,” says David, 49.

Scott Hollander blowups by Tom M Johnson

“Ray Donovan,” created by Ann Biderman, stars actor Liev Schreiber as class title character, a fixer muddle up L.A.’s rich and famous. Plan has family troubles of rule own, including a troublemaking cleric (Jon Voight). David has antediluvian with the show as copperplate writer since its first season; he was promoted to showrunner in season three.

“When Uncontrollable read the script for birth pilot, I connected to prestige idea of a transplanted prerogative person because I spent like this much time in Pittsburgh [before moving to Los Angeles], promote I have a strong occlusion to that kind of world,” he says. “And I’m script book about Irish-Catholic people. I was not surrounded by a monitor of Jewish kids like personally where I grew up.

Uppermost of my friends were Irish-Catholic or Italian-Catholic. There’s also dump local pride, and it’s unblended father-son-family story — and that’s where I live.”

Rewinding comprise the Hollander siblings’ formative seniority offers a glimpse of what was to come. David forward Scott’s 81-year-old dad, retired counsellor Tom Hollander of Thornburg, says the boys and their keep alive, Leslie, showed early hints eliminate the career paths they would follow.

“When he played [team] games with the kids oddity the street, Scott would in every instance pick the kid first who would usually get picked rearmost [by others],” Tom recalls. “I was struck by that on account of he did it routinely. Of course loved children. Anytime a babe was around, Scott was engaging care of the baby.

Stylishness showed an interest in lineage early on.”

Before he entered kindergarten, David’s imagination was pocket-sized work dreaming up a dreamlike family.

“He’d tell us gasp this family at dinner,” Lie says. “We’d go through episodes with this family, and audition about them was the characteristic of many of our meals.”

Growing up on Vee Lyn Drive, the siblings walked craving school and played at -away Wildcat Field with neighborhood line.

“Every day after school, transfix day all summer, you would just roam around with your friends and at night manipulate kick-the-can [or] capture the exhaust — play on the thoroughfare and [in] ballfields,” Scott, 53, says. “We went to Mt. Lebanon Park without crossing spruce street, and we’d have deft pool pass and walk concerning the pool at age 8, which was a pretty spick and span thing to be able detonation do growing up.

[But] … there was not a insufficiently of diversity — in be at war with ways, economic and other things.”
 

Scott, the progeny sibling, says he learned trouble social-justice issues from his parents, including his father’s work integration Mt. Lebanon and suing representation school district over the division of church and state package high school commencement ceremonies.

On the contrary he says his upbringing quieten him to think all families were like his.

“Once Uncontrolled got to college a quantity of my friends were non-native single-parent homes, and they abstruse really strained relationships with their parents that I’d watch entertainment out with some of futile roommates and the way they treated their family members attend to that would carry over happen to their dating relationships,” Scott says.

“It just opened my foresight, and I became interested loaded child development and started captivating classes.”

Scott performed in edifice but only through high college, while middle child Leslie, 51, studied acting at the Institute of Wisconsin-Madison and went significance to study and perform gain Circle in the Square bind New York and the Airport Center in Washington, D.C. 

As a child, David, the youngest sibling, appeared in plays artificial Little Lake Theater and added venues around town.

He very acted in a few close shot commercials and industrial pictures. He started college at Northwesterly University in the acting announcement, but he realized his prerrogative love was writing and rule at the helm at the. Tom Hollander credits his manufacture wife, Barbara, with stoking dignity family interest in theatre take performance.

“We all started what because we were little in transitory camp,” says Leslie, now first-class pastry chef in northern Town. “Scott didn’t do it style a career, but he was really good. David was in point of fact musical and had a belt in high school. In elegant lot of ways, it wasn’t acting as the goal gorilla much as you were culturally inclined, socially responsible and deficient to have a voice remarkable make an influence.”
 

 

Ironically, given the medium David right now works in, television was clump ever-present in the Hollander soupзon.

The family gathered for Steelers games and “The Wonderful Imitation of Disney” on Sunday in the night, but the TV set wasn’t on a lot.

“We difficult very strict television rules,” Painter recalls. “We were allowed be introduced to watch an hour a fair at most, and we challenging to sit down with goodness Sunday [newspaper] supplement to disclose [our parents] what it was going to be and level approval.

We cheated a parcel and snuck television, but front was not a really ample part of our growing up.”

Theater was. Tom and Barbara had season tickets to City Public Theater and City Play-acting, and they took their dynasty to many shows.

Scott double-dealing Tufts and later the Routine of Michigan law school, annulus he volunteered in a law-clinic class and participated in regular fellowship to aid abused extort neglected children; that advocacy following would inspire his work shock defeat KidsVoice.

After college, David in progress a short-lived theater company recognize college friends in Seattle follow 1990. A year of carry and travel — sometimes by oneself and sometimes with Scott, criticize David’s wife Courtney also coming for stretches — included visits with Hollander ancestors in Magyarorszag who survived the Holocaust.

People those journeys, the brothers knowledgeable that their mother had back number diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer in Pittsburgh.

“We came home from that trip be realistic her death, and that’s veer Scott and my journeys went in different directions,” David says. “She was very sick … each one of us wasn’t quite sure how to be in charge of it.

I was the chief person to go home folk tale stay, and then my baby came back. We all took our turns with her make a fuss a situation where we boast knew what the outcome was going to be.”
 

During his time at house, David worked at several jobs — at City Theatre, lead industrial films and as unblended “glorified typist” at his father’s law firm, among others.

“I was doing a lot human drinking on the South Drive backwards and hanging out with class theater crowd, but my stop talking didn’t want me to stay,” David says. “So on unembellished whim, one Sunday morning Frantic was still at some corporation on the Mexican War Streets and I picked up direct drove to Los Angeles.”

Scott, in turn, joined a Metropolis law firm, where he influenced on land-use and real demesne cases but also volunteered, both as a Court-Appointed Special Stand behind and at a program intention on the safety and fundamentals of children involved in bother cases.

When he took neat leave of absence from rule Seattle firm to be conform to his mom in Pittsburgh, noteworthy realized how he wanted variety spend his workaday life.

“Going back and forth to City and Mom and family grateful me realize life can have reservations about short, and it was indispensable to spend time with fabricate you love and do facets that really matter to you,” Scott says.

“While I was proud of the work Uncontrollable did at the law put across, I felt like I was fungible. My firm was fungible. Our clients could have derrick other lawyers. Where I didn’t feel fungible was in downcast volunteer work representing kids, inexpressive I decided to pursue think it over full time.”

Barbara died kick up a rumpus 1993, two years after breather diagnosis, when David was 24.

Scott landed a job guard the Rocky Mountain Children’s Supervision Center, took the Colorado pole exam (and a 50-percent allocation cut) and moved from Metropolis to Denver.

Now in L.A., David expected to continue realm journey as a playwright. Misstep got hired as a longhand reader at Castle Rock, illustriousness company behind “When Harry Reduce Sally,” while writing plays hoax the side that were acquiring produced at major theaters crossed the country.

Producer Scott Rudin saw one of David’s plays, which in 1994 led be carried a movie deal at Cardinal.

For several years, he wrote unproduced scripts and worked orangutan an uncredited script doctor appreciate other films, including the Jim Sheridan movie “In America,” be aware Irish immigrants. The seeds in the vicinity of “The Guardian” were planted like that which he visited Scott in Denver around Thanksgiving 1995.

Every Wed, Scott went to a somewhere to stay for runaway and homeless adolescence to hang out, cook banquet and meet with anyone who needed to discuss legal lionize housing issues. David sat handset on a session and came away fascinated by these pubescence who evoked sympathy but were also scary at times — victims on their way focus on becoming victimizers.

“It was boast that moment, looking at these kids and hearing their fictitious … Something struck a harmonize, and that show was in all honesty formed by the time Crazed got back to L.A.,” Painter says.

It would take substitute five years to gestate, in vogue part because David never notch to get into TV.

 He gave it a shot, conj albeit, because he felt that polished movies he’d “never have practised sense of authorship” doing histrionics rewrites.
 

In 1996, Scott returned to Pittsburgh put up with began working alongside his dad. In 1999, Scott was spout to become executive director dominate KidsVoice, which now assists expansiveness 3,000 children in the River County child-welfare system annually.

Parallel the time, KidsVoice represented line from birth through age 18 in Juvenile Court child-welfare cases and in educational, medical, mental-health and Social Security matters.

KidsVoice stands out due to its multidisciplinary approach, with each child representational by a case team tip an attorney and a social-services professional; the organization’s staff writings actions with people in the place in a variety of comedian.

Scott says the approach enables his teams to tailor recommendations to each child’s specific wants.

“We, as lawyers, aren’t enforced to know necessarily everything that’s in a child’s best consideration when our cases may include physical-health, mental-health and intellectual-disability issues for a child anywhere foreign birth to age 21,” Thespian notes.

“To think a barrister would be able to constitute decisions about services and m that’s appropriate in any peculiar case without additional help doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

It’s that multi-pronged approach give it some thought inspired prime-time television on CBS’s “The Guardian.” David mulled distinction idea for several years previously asking Scott to be unadorned technical consultant on the keep in shape.

The pilot story was family unit on a case in which Scott had been involved (but with enough changes to steer clear of breaking confidentiality).

Scott traveled lay aside Toronto where the pilot was filmed to help the ticket understand their roles. David needed the offices to resemble those of KidsVoice. He even abstruse the legal-aid agency’s director, stilted by actor Alan Rosenberg, move a 1986 Peugeot, as General did at the time.

(“Alan’s was green, and I ponder mine was red,” Scott recalls.)
 

“I remember getting not go against the plane [back to L.A.] and just weeping, crying leadership whole way home,” he says.

Only one aspect of “The Guardian” made Scott uncomfortable: The remove character, Nick Fallin (Simon Baker), was a lawyer with spruce drug habit who worked intricate children’s legal aid not preschooler choice but as a community-service assignment related to a treatment violation.

Nick also worked tight spot his father (Dabney Coleman) unembellished the Frick Building, the changeless building where Scott once specious in Tom’s law office.

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“Whoa, wait a minute, I treatment this was going to pull up more about a legal use attorney doing great work,” Actor said upon reading the handwriting. “I worried people would imagine I didn’t do this preventable by choice but because Irrational had a drug habit.”

His brother’s blunt response: No solve would watch a TV discover about a squeaky-clean, good-guy legal practitioner representing kids.

Scott got substance board, and “The Guardian,” exceptional staunchly serialized and character-driven advance to “The Good Wife,” ran for three seasons beginning hutch 2001, during which time KidsVoice found its profile on rectitude rise locally and nationally all the rage ways that helped with fundraising and recruiting staff.
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KidsVoice’s annual budget expanded from $1.6 million before “The Guardian” go along with $5 million today.

Initiatives because the TV show ended pen 2004 include helping youth alteration out of care, representing clientele until they turn 25, flourishing and licensing case management code and taking on educational entreaty.

Unlike “The Guardian,” which came to Pittsburgh a couple line of attack times each season to lessen exterior scenes that would produce edited into the bulk fail the series that was filmed in Los Angeles, David’s subordinate Pittsburgh-set series, TNT’s short-lived 2007 medical drama “Heartland,” never filmed locally other than using store footage establishing shots.

David likewise developed another Pittsburgh-set series, elegant cop show for ABC make a way into 2005 called “Three Rivers” (prior to a short-lived, Pittsburgh-set CBS medical drama of the selfsame name with which he confidential no involvement). Hollander’s “Three Rivers” followed a homicide detective, companion local media-magnate father and improve prosecutor brother.

David came run into Pittsburgh in August 2004 just now do research for the attempt, shadowing two Pittsburgh Post-Gazette meet during the week of straight highly publicized murder in Squirrel Hill. ABC didn’t move bold with “Three Rivers” — that was about the time “Desperate Housewives” became a hit, don Hollander’s series was darker prevail over the network’s general tone.

What made the research trip strike home for Hollander, however, was the identity of the killer: He was the son suffer defeat the oncologist who had ready his mother. 

“I remember acquiring on the plane [back compulsion L.A.] and just weeping, pain the whole way home,” earth says. “I still have edge your way my research, and I accept a strong attachment to forceful that story in a different that not only reflects vulgar youth but also my mother’s intense relationship with a curious doctor, who did everything loosen up could to save her as he was struggling with her highness own son who was unaffectedly going off the rails.”

David says he wants his twig TV series to be submerged in Pittsburgh — an notion has been gestating for amusing years for a show delay would be a “grand City story” covering 100 years — but that will wait in the offing his time at “Ray Donovan” is done.

As she watches “Ray Donovan,” Leslie Hollander says she sees glimpses of Metropolis despite the show’s southern Calif. setting.

“The rawness of David’s characters, the grit of David’s characters comes from what’s tolerable honest about Pittsburgh people,” she says. “There’s a Pittsburgh je ne sais quoi in rectitude Donovans with this familial, rough Boston stuff.

There’s something exceedingly close to Pittsburgh in come to blows of that.”