Robert Tolz
Bob Tolz was born in 1950 and grew up in the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia, attending the same high school from which Nancy Meyers (Private Benjamin, Father of the Bride, Something's Gotta Give, What Women Want) graduated the year before he did and from which Marshall Herskovitz (Thirtysomething, Nashville, The Last Samurai, Traffic, Shakespeare in Love) graduated the year after. Kobe Bryant later passed through those same high school doors.
Fun fact: Bob exchanged brief pleasantries with Akiva Goldsman (too many credits to list) in the late 1970s as the young Akiva was heading uphill from an afternoon of fishing in Nova Scotia. Akiva will not remember that conversation, but he will doubtlessly remember his summer in Nova Scotia.
A New York resident since 1968, Bob has been practicing law in Manhattan for over 4 decades.
He first discovered that he had a real talent for reaching people with his writing when, in the 1990s, he posted on now defunct Compuserve some unsolicited fan fiction for the popular PC game X-Com: UFO Defense. Shortly thereafter, a publisher asked him to write a short story to be included in a strategy guide for the upcoming X-Com sequel. They asked for 4 pages. Bob gave them 10 and invited them to edit it down, but the publisher said, "We're not changing a word."
Bob's statement:
I typically write all day, every day, but mostly stuff like operating agreements and promissory notes (I'm a lawyer in my "day job").
I figured I had something to say and decided to do so through writing screenplays. Maybe, some day, bunches of people will be able to enjoy my words and images, feel like they had a good time, and then continue to resonate with the movie long afterward.
Renaissance Man won 6 screenplay contests in 2016. and I thought it was a perfect reflection of our social and political climate leading up to the 2016 election. It was optioned by a relatively under-the-radar production company, and is now back in my hands.
Many revisions later, here we are back facing another election, and the story has become more clued into our social situation than ever.
In the words of one judge: "Renaissance Man is a sweet, fun script with a strong premise. It feels like a very classic romantic comedy, with two people on fundamentally different sides of an issue finding common ground and falling in love. What makes this story stand out is the relevancy of their positions to conversations we're having today - sure, rich vs. poor has been done before in a rom-com, but I don't think I've ever seen one that explicitly questions class disparity in this way."
So, let's get some more awards for Renaissance Man in 2020, build some more credibility, and find a producer who can take this movie all the way to the finish line.
Fun fact: Bob exchanged brief pleasantries with Akiva Goldsman (too many credits to list) in the late 1970s as the young Akiva was heading uphill from an afternoon of fishing in Nova Scotia. Akiva will not remember that conversation, but he will doubtlessly remember his summer in Nova Scotia.
A New York resident since 1968, Bob has been practicing law in Manhattan for over 4 decades.
He first discovered that he had a real talent for reaching people with his writing when, in the 1990s, he posted on now defunct Compuserve some unsolicited fan fiction for the popular PC game X-Com: UFO Defense. Shortly thereafter, a publisher asked him to write a short story to be included in a strategy guide for the upcoming X-Com sequel. They asked for 4 pages. Bob gave them 10 and invited them to edit it down, but the publisher said, "We're not changing a word."
Bob's statement:
I typically write all day, every day, but mostly stuff like operating agreements and promissory notes (I'm a lawyer in my "day job").
I figured I had something to say and decided to do so through writing screenplays. Maybe, some day, bunches of people will be able to enjoy my words and images, feel like they had a good time, and then continue to resonate with the movie long afterward.
Renaissance Man won 6 screenplay contests in 2016. and I thought it was a perfect reflection of our social and political climate leading up to the 2016 election. It was optioned by a relatively under-the-radar production company, and is now back in my hands.
Many revisions later, here we are back facing another election, and the story has become more clued into our social situation than ever.
In the words of one judge: "Renaissance Man is a sweet, fun script with a strong premise. It feels like a very classic romantic comedy, with two people on fundamentally different sides of an issue finding common ground and falling in love. What makes this story stand out is the relevancy of their positions to conversations we're having today - sure, rich vs. poor has been done before in a rom-com, but I don't think I've ever seen one that explicitly questions class disparity in this way."
So, let's get some more awards for Renaissance Man in 2020, build some more credibility, and find a producer who can take this movie all the way to the finish line.
