The producer and writer of shows such as “Gotham,” “The Vampire Diaries,” “Krypton” and “One Tree Hill,” Chad Fiveash ’94 remembers sitting in his Shipp Hall dorm room watching “Reservoir Dogs” and imagining what it would be like to be a writer in Hollywood.
“Admittedly, a lot of the success in this business is luck. But while luck is out of your control, what you can control is how hard you work in order to capitalize on lucky breaks when (and if) they come around,” says Fiveash.
He and his writing partner decided while they were still in film school at Columbia University that they would put in the extra hours and hard work to ensure that their material was as good as it could be.
“You have to be your own toughest critic, which isn’t always fun,” he says. “But if a piece of writing can make it past both of us ... it’s got a decent shot at making the higher-ups happy.”
Fiveash can write anything — teen soap, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, family drama, action and adventure. “I will say that the day I got to type ‘General Zod’ into a script was a personal highlight. Fellow comic nerds will know what I mean!”
He enjoys living in Los Angeles with his wife, Moe, also a writer (she wrote the movie “You Again”), and his daughter, Parker, who Fiveash calls “the coolest kid.” According to Fiveash, Parker loves to read, draw and write, “and she’s a lot more prolific than I am.” She’s also the inspiration behind Fiveash’s YouTube Lego stories of “The Vampire Diaries.”
“Really as a joke, I made a little vignette featuring Lego versions of the two vampire brothers, Damon and Stefan, and the other writers loved it,” says Fiveash, who also did a few Lego stories for “Krypton.”
Writing in Hollywood means a life of intoxicating ups and career-questioning downs.
“I don’t think that’s unique to just writing. Everybody goes through that in their lives in some form or another,” says Fiveash. “Recently I had a pilot for a show that was THIS CLOSE to getting on the air. … And suddenly, this thing that’s been your entire life every day for the past nine months just goes poof! That’s the business.”
Hard work and quality, however, keep the jobs coming.
“People actually pay me to write stories!” says Fiveash. “So, I’m not complaining.”
By Jo Ann Mitchell Brasington ’89