One College Drop-Out Makes It Big

A college degree isn't the only mark of achievement.

Peter Lenkov is one of CSI: New York's executive producers, but he wasn't always successful. Lenkov left Concordia University 22 years ago, three credits shy of getting his degree. One of the reasons he didn't finish his education was that he was at odds with his teachers. "They wanted me to do overly arty stuff and they felt I wanted to be writing Indiana Jones. They weren't far wrong," Lenkov told The Gazette. "So I went to Hollywood. I felt I had no other options. I knew this is what I wanted to do. I also had blinders on."

His parents didn't exactly encourage him to run off to Los Angeles to pursue his dreams. "They wanted me to become a lawyer. Like my two brothers," he said. "Writers don't make money - lawyers do, they would tell me." But Lenkov made the move anyway. "My mother gave me a diary before I left," he said. "I recently looked back at my early entries. Many of them said: 'Exhausted. Fingers are killing me. I'm writing 18 hours a day. I'm running on fumes.' When not writing, I checked the trade papers and took note of everyone who was anyone. I was desperate. I even snuck on to the Paramount lot and left a note on the car windshield of the Fonz, Henry Winkler. I had one completed script in hand and was determined to show it to everyone I could."

One imaginative way Lenkov tried to get his script into the right hands was to call Steven Spielberg's office and pretend to be well-known script-writer Chris Columbus--it didn't work. "Oddly enough, three years later, I was invited to Spielberg's office," Lenkov added. "Demolition Man had just come out and they were interested in perhaps me writing something for them. I mentioned the stunt I pulled and Spielberg's assistant checks on her computer. Sure enough, I was on their security list as another lunatic to watch out for."

Lenkov said a writer doesn't have to compromise his or her values to work in Hollywood, and he said he has managed to get social messages into projects like CSI: NY. "Still," he added, "one must understand it's called show business and realize the business goes hand in hand with the show." However, that isn't the biggest lesson to be learned, Lenkov explained. "Most important of all, though, is that you have to know how to deal with criticism and rejection," he said. "I've been rejected by the best. Even though I'm executive producer of the show, my scripts get scrutinized by everyone on the writing team. I encourage that, even though it can still be a paralyzing experience."

He detailed a typical day in his life, starting at 5:00am. He writes from 5:30am to 8:30am and then makes breakfast for his family (a wife and three--soon to be four--kids). "Then I go to my day-job, where I write and produce the next 10 hours. I don't have to dress up for the job, but, make no mistake, it's work," Lenkov said. "The key is to face that blank page and write every day. It's like working out a muscle. You can't stop."

The original interview is from the Montreal Gazette.

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