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I OPEN 7 DAYS—SUN:THURS 1110 Os ASTED I FRI-SAT. 11.11 `Cji .(T) x w O 118 SOUTH WOODWARD • ROYAL OAK JUST NORTH OF 10 MILE NEXT TO ZOO 1 72 544-1211 FRIDAY, MARCH 16, 1990 ■ 11111 ■ 111.1091 111 QUALITY AND CONSISTENCY IS OUR PRIORITY! 0 0 was the greatest thing I ever studied," Burnstein explains. "If you read them, you would love to write them!" However, after graduating from U-M, Burnstein, newly married, traveled to the University of Wisconsin to begin law school. On his way there, he says, "I was already saying, 'What am I doing? This is not what I want.' " During Burnstein's first legal writing assignment, he quoted Lady Macbeth to prove that someone could collect damages for emotional pain and suffering. "The teachers thought it was great stuff," Burnstein says. "But for me, I'm trying to somehow sneak Shakespeare in there." Burnstein left Wisconsin before the end of his first year. He returned to U-M, where he earned a master's degree in English, with the intent of moving on to the Ph.D. pro- gram. The question that plagued him, and the English Department, was what good is a Ph.D. in English in the real world? The answer was not much. So in 1974, Burnstein declared his academic career closed. "Just making that decision, finally breaking out of school, it's like, somehow you're being rewarded for doing what you want to do," Burnstein says. "Everything I tried started to work!" Detroit's Jewish Communi- ty Council had a grant from the Institute for Jewish Life to produce a 30-minute Chanukah story for television. Burnstein submitted a script about a young corporate lawyer ("which shows you where my mind was," Burns- tein says) who takes in a homeless man during Chanukah. His script was chosen and the drama was aired. "It wasn't a lot of money;' Burnstein says. "But what the hell, the first thing you write is going to be syndicated na- tionally, and all this publicity — this is easy. Who would've thought it would be this easy." But Burnstein soon found out that writing drama profes- sionally was not that easy. He supported himself with various freelance writing pro- jects for several years, in- cluding advertising and magazine writing. But he was a dramatist at heart. "Every- time I'd do an article, I'd see a screenplay," he says. Meanwhile, Burnstein found a job with North- wood Institute, teaching Shakespeare at Selfridge. "I always wanted to teach Shakespeare to somebody whom you didn't think you could teach Shakespeare to!' The classes have since been opened to the public and are no longer offered exclusively to the air base's personnel. Burnstein also teaches on-site at a Ford plant. When Burnstein decided to tackle Hollywood, he went through his cousin, who is Ed Asner's lawyer. Burnstein wrote a script for the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" and sent it to Asner. "Ed liked it," says Burns- tein. However, "my timing's impeccable. It was the last season of the show!' Burnstein wrote another script for Asner's next show, "Lou Grant." Again Asner lik- ed it. But another Hollywood trap thwarted Burnstein's hopes: the show had a contract with union writers and ac- cepted no outside scripts. Burnstein then tried to write a TV movie for Asner. Although the script was never bought, it did earn Burnstein his first agent. Then the agent When Burnstein decided to tackle Hollywood, he went through his cousin, who is Ed Asner's lawyer. took a job with a production company. It took Burnstein a year to land another. "Now I realize the truth about Hollywood," Burnstein says. "The hardest thing is getting an agent." The original "Learn to Fall" script, written as a TV movie, earned Burnstein his second agent. The script was soon op- tioned by the Raystar Com- pany, which made a deal with CBS to air it. Timothy Hutton agreed to play the lead. Negotiations with Hutton lagged, and when he was finally offered the money he had originally asked for, Hut- ton, through his new agent, announced that he no longer did TV work. Without Hutton, CBS would not close its deal. "Learn to Fall," fell. a got "Everybody's Hollywood story like that," Burnstein says. "But when it happens to you, you don't know what the hell hit you." Burnstein began rewriting the script as a play. "Learn to Fall' is based on a childhood friend of Burnstein's — the now-famous Buffo the Clown — who dropped out of school to attend clown college. It was recently optioned again and may yet become a TV movie. Burnstein met another Detroit-based writer, Kurt Luedtke, before the first "Learn to Fall' TV deal collapsed.