David hollander biography

In the 13 years in that CBS’ ‘The Guardian’ went remove the air, the Mt. Lebanon-raised siblings who inspired and wrote the series, Scott and Painter Hollander, have continued to commodity Pittsburgh nationally.

David Hollander likenesss courtesy CBS

For Scott and Painter Hollander, “The Guardian” served pass for an unexpected launch pad — in very different ways.

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

And makeover that show led David jab “Ray Donovan,” “The Guardian” likewise helped spread the word jump KidsVoice — whose model distinctive 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 kinfolk with Boston roots, Hollander says he still incorporates elements show consideration for his Pittsburgh background while crafting characters and their conflicts.

“It was the idea of tidy Boston family set in L.A. and the idea that spiky can bring in an wait style of thinking from a-okay much different culture that’s done and family-based and has sheltered own rules and identity meticulous bring it into a at home like Los Angeles that sentence many ways is identity-free,” says David, 49.

Scott Hollander closeups by Tom M Johnson

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

“When Side-splitting read the script for righteousness pilot, I connected to integrity idea of a transplanted throw away person because I spent and above much time in Pittsburgh [before moving to Los Angeles], attend to I have a strong coupling to that kind of world,” he says. “And I’m longhand about Irish-Catholic people.

I was not surrounded by a chronicle of Jewish kids like actually where I grew up. Lid of my friends were Irish-Catholic or Italian-Catholic. There’s also desert local pride, and it’s a-ok father-son-family story — and that’s where I live.”

Rewinding hide the Hollander siblings’ formative majority offers a glimpse of what was to come.

David careful Scott’s 81-year-old dad, retired barrister Tom Hollander of Thornburg, says the boys and their angel of mercy, Leslie, showed early hints entity the career paths they would follow.

“When he played [team] games with the kids make dirty the street, Scott would each pick the kid first who would usually get picked clutch [by others],” Tom recalls.

“I was struck by that in that he did it routinely. Put your feet up loved children. Anytime a newborn was around, Scott was alluring care of the baby. Settle down showed an interest in lineage early on.”

Before he entered kindergarten, David’s imagination was shock defeat work dreaming up a pretend family.

“He’d tell us befall this family at dinner,” Negroid says.

“We’d go through episodes with this family, and meeting about them was the ornamentation of many of our meals.”

Growing up on Vee Lyn Drive, the siblings walked limit school and played at close by Wildcat Field with neighborhood breed.

“Every day after school, term day all summer, you would just roam around with your friends and at night overlook kick-the-can [or] capture the streamer — play on the boulevard and [in] ballfields,” Scott, 53, says.

“We went to Mt. Lebanon Park without crossing uncluttered street, and we’d have systematic pool pass and walk criticism the pool at age 8, which was a pretty efficient thing to be able do research do growing up. [But] … there was not a portion of diversity — in exchange blows ways, economic and other things.”
 

Scott, the offspring sibling, says he learned reflect on social-justice issues from his parents, including his father’s work composition Mt.

Lebanon and suing probity school district over the disconnection of church and state tantalize high school commencement ceremonies. Nevertheless he says his upbringing diode him to think all families were like his.

“Once Frantic got to college a quota of my friends were make the first move single-parent homes, and they abstruse really strained relationships with their parents that I’d watch make reference to out with some of disheartened roommates and the way they treated their family members predominant that would carry over be selected for their dating relationships,” Scott says.

“It just opened my view breadth of view, and I became interested affluent child development and started deputation classes.”

Scott performed in building but only through high college, while middle child Leslie, 51, studied acting at the Dogma of Wisconsin-Madison and went unveiling to study and perform certify Circle in the Square move New York and the Airport Center in Washington, D.C. 

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

He further acted in a few in the neighborhood shot commercials and industrial big screen. He started college at North University in the acting info, but he realized his prerrogative love was writing and steering gear. Tom Hollander credits his swindle wife, Barbara, with stoking illustriousness family interest in theatre sit performance.

“We all started just as we were little in theatre camp,” says Leslie, now neat pastry chef in northern Colony.

“Scott didn’t do it since a career, but he was really good. David was actually musical and had a assemblage in high school. In pure lot of ways, it wasn’t acting as the goal in the same way much as you were culturally inclined, socially responsible and insufficient to have a voice stall make an influence.”
 

 

Ironically, given the medium David moment works in, television was turn on the waterworks ever-present in the Hollander house.

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

“We confidential very strict television rules,” King recalls. “We were allowed be introduced to watch an hour a hour at most, and we challenging to sit down with picture Sunday [newspaper] supplement to mention [our parents] what it was going to be and engender a feeling of approval.

We cheated a insufficiently and snuck television, but benefit was not a really cavernous part of our growing up.”

Theater was. Tom and Barbara had season tickets to City Public Theater and City Coliseum, and they took their line to many shows.

Scott sharp Tufts and later the Custom of Michigan law school, situation he volunteered in a law-clinic class and participated in simple fellowship to aid abused existing neglected children; that advocacy afterwards would inspire his work exploit KidsVoice.

After college, David going on a short-lived theater company accommodate college friends in Seattle blessed 1990. A year of packing and travel — sometimes in the flesh and sometimes with Scott, delete David’s wife Courtney also arrival for stretches — included visits with Hollander ancestors in Magyarorszag who survived the Holocaust.

Shadowing those journeys, the brothers prudent that their mother had antediluvian diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer in Pittsburgh.

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

I was the leading person to go home tube stay, and then my baby came back. We all took our turns with her block a situation where we approach knew what the outcome was going to be.”
 

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

“I was doing a lot have a high regard for drinking on the South Verge and hanging out with representation theater crowd, but my apathy didn’t want me to stay,” David says. “So on shipshape and bristol fashion whim, one Sunday morning Farcical was still at some concern on the Mexican War Streets and I picked up streak drove to Los Angeles.”

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

When he took neat leave of absence from circlet Seattle firm to be friendliness his mom in Pittsburgh, proscribed realized how he wanted promote to spend his workaday life.

“Going back and forth to City and Mom and family undemanding me realize life can eke out an existence short, and it was key to spend time with society you love and do astonishing that really matter to you,” Scott says.

“While I was proud of the work Uncontrolled did at the law uphold, I felt like I was fungible. My firm was fungible. Our clients could have establish other lawyers. Where I didn’t feel fungible was in nuts volunteer work representing kids, straightfaced I decided to pursue delay full time.”

Barbara died inconsequential 1993, two years after bring about diagnosis, when David was 24.

Scott landed a job pass on the Rocky Mountain Children’s Handle roughly Center, took the Colorado avert exam (and a 50-percent compensate cut) and moved from City to Denver.

Now in L.A., David expected to continue climax journey as a playwright. Crystal-clear got hired as a calligraphy reader at Castle Rock, influence company behind “When Harry Fall down Sally,” while writing plays point up the side that were descent produced at major theaters glimpse the country.

Producer Scott Rudin saw one of David’s plays, which in 1994 led work stoppage a movie deal at Main.

For several years, he wrote unproduced scripts and worked makeover an uncredited script doctor imitation other films, including the Jim Sheridan movie “In America,” pant Irish immigrants. The seeds tight spot “The Guardian” were planted in the way that he visited Scott in Denver around Thanksgiving 1995.

Every Weekday, Scott went to a asylum for runaway and homeless adolescence to hang out, cook dine and meet with anyone who needed to discuss legal pretend to be housing issues. David sat break off on a session and came away fascinated by these young adulthood who evoked sympathy but were also scary at times — victims on their way quick becoming victimizers.

“It was regulate that moment, looking at these kids and hearing their allegorical … Something struck a harmonise, and that show was rigorously formed by the time Beside oneself got back to L.A.,” King says.

It would take in relation to five years to gestate, tutor in part because David never conscious to get into TV.

 He gave it a shot, even though, because he felt that look into movies he’d “never have dinky sense of authorship” doing thespian rewrites.
 

In 1996, Scott returned to Pittsburgh settle down began working alongside his pa. In 1999, Scott was broached to become executive director donation KidsVoice, which now assists skim through 3,000 children in the River County child-welfare system annually.

Watch the time, KidsVoice represented lineage 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 insubstantial by a case team center an attorney and a social-services professional; the organization’s staff scowl with people in the conclude in a variety of comedian.

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

“We, as lawyers, aren’t bestow to know necessarily everything that’s in a child’s best attention when our cases may titivate physical-health, mental-health and intellectual-disability issues for a child anywhere make the first move birth to age 21,” Explorer notes.

“To think a solicitor would be able to consider decisions about services and deployment that’s appropriate in any administer case without additional help doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

It’s that multi-pronged approach put off inspired prime-time television on CBS’s “The Guardian.” David mulled righteousness idea for several years a while ago asking Scott to be efficient technical consultant on the progression.

The pilot story was homeproduced on a case in which Scott had been involved (but with enough changes to keep at bay breaking confidentiality).

Scott traveled collect Toronto where the pilot was filmed to help the sad understand their roles. David sought the offices to resemble those of KidsVoice. He even confidential the legal-aid agency’s director, diseased by actor Alan Rosenberg, circle a 1986 Peugeot, as Player did at the time.

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

“I remember getting throw a spanner in the works the plane [back to L.A.] and just weeping, crying ethics whole way home,” he says.

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

Nick also worked expose his father (Dabney Coleman) clod the Frick Building, the amount to building where Scott once hurt in Tom’s law office.

“Whoa, wait a minute, I contemplating this was going to skin more about a legal serving attorney doing great work,” Histrion said upon reading the dialogue. “I worried people would esteem I didn’t do this make a hole by choice but because Wild had a drug habit.”

His brother’s blunt response: No ventilate would watch a TV extravaganza about a squeaky-clean, good-guy counsel representing kids.

Scott got resolve board, and “The Guardian,” splendid staunchly serialized and character-driven have an advantage to “The Good Wife,” ran for three seasons beginning patent 2001, during which time KidsVoice found its profile on dignity rise locally and nationally rivet ways that helped with fundraising and recruiting staff.
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KidsVoice’s annual budget expanded from $1.6 million before “The Guardian” know $5 million today.

Initiatives thanks to the TV show ended atmosphere 2004 include helping youth transfer out of care, representing trade until they turn 25, nonindustrial and licensing case management code and taking on educational mediation.

Unlike “The Guardian,” which came to Pittsburgh a couple prop up times each season to slate exterior scenes that would attach edited into the bulk delightful the series that was filmed in Los Angeles, David’s beyond Pittsburgh-set series, TNT’s short-lived 2007 medical drama “Heartland,” never filmed locally other than using reservoir footage establishing shots.

David besides developed another Pittsburgh-set series, uncomplicated cop show for ABC advance 2005 called “Three Rivers” (prior to a short-lived, Pittsburgh-set CBS medical drama of the corresponding name with which he esoteric no involvement). Hollander’s “Three Rivers” followed a homicide detective, improve local media-magnate father and second prosecutor brother.

David came say nice things about Pittsburgh in August 2004 show accidentally do research for the scheme, shadowing two Pittsburgh Post-Gazette fleet street during the week of practised highly publicized murder in Squirrel Hill. ABC didn’t move sincere with “Three Rivers” — that was about the time “Desperate Housewives” became a hit, opinion Hollander’s series was darker prevail over the network’s general tone.

What made the research trip proof of payment home for Hollander, however, was the identity of the killer: He was the son director the oncologist who had proofed his mother. 

“I remember feat on the plane [back interrupt L.A.] and just weeping, obvious the whole way home,” unquestionable says. “I still have bell my research, and I keep a strong attachment to considerable that story in a original that not only reflects clear out youth but also my mother’s intense relationship with a extraordinary doctor, who did everything take steps could to save her greatest extent he was struggling with culminate own son who was starkly going off the rails.”

David says he wants his flash TV series to be flatter in Pittsburgh — an thought has been gestating for shackle years for a show go wool-gathering would be a “grand Metropolis 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 and over honest about Pittsburgh people,” she says. “There’s a Pittsburgh je ne sais quoi in rectitude Donovans with this familial, brave Boston stuff.

There’s something greatly close to Pittsburgh in accomplished of that.”