Tom Fontana is an American screenwriter, writer and television producer. An Emmy winner, Fontana worked on NBC's and created HBO's Oz.
TV career
Fontana has been a writer/producer for such series as Oz, Copper, The Jury, The Beat, The Bedford Diaries, ', St. Elsewhere, and The Philanthropist. Fontana was born on the west side of Buffalo, New York, and is the fourth of five children in an Italian-American family; he is a cousin of actress Patti LuPone. He attended Cathedral School, Canisius High School, and Buffalo State College. He worked at the Studio Arena Theater in Buffalo in various capacities before moving to New York City in 1973. Fontana began writing plays when he was about 9 years old; his early efforts were recorded into a reel-to-reel tape recorder with the neighbor kids as performers. At least one of his plays was produced when he was a student at Buffalo State. His college stage debut as an actor was in a production of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, directed by his frequent mentor, Warren Enters. Fontana's efforts as a playwright never proved financially successful. It was while working at the Williamstown Theater Festival in the early 1980s, that he was offered the opportunity to write for television – the offer coming from Bruce Paltrow who was launching St. Elsewhere on NBC. Fontana wrote the HBO film Strip Search, directed by Sidney Lumet, as well as contributing two pieces to the September 11 special, '. He was the executive producer of American Tragedy for CBS, Shot in the Heart for HBO Films, the independent film Jean and the documentary The Press Secretary for PBS. Fontana also created the historical drama TV series Borgia for the French premium-pay channel Canal+, produced by Atlantique Productions and EOS Entertainment. The series recounts the Borgia family's rise to power and subsequent domination of the Vatican during the Renaissance. Fontana also co-created Copper an 1860s police procedural set in the turbulent Five Points neighborhood of New York. Fontana has received three Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, three Writers' Guild Awards, four Television Critics Association Awards, the Cable Ace Award, the Humanitas Prize, an Edgar Award, and the first prize at the Cinéma Tout Ecran Festival in Switzerland. In 2003, Fontana was the recipient of the Austin Film Festival's Outstanding Television Writer Award. Fontana does not own or use a computer and writes all of his scripts longhand on a yellow legal pad.
Personal life
Fontana grew up in an Italian-American family in Buffalo, New York, and was raised in the Catholic faith. He lives in New York City's West Village in a building that was formerly a branch of the New York Public Library. The book-lined, two-story main reading room is now a living room where he often hosts fund-raisers for arts and civil rights organizations. Fontana was married to actress Sagan Lewis for twelve years until their divorce in 1993. Sagan and Fontana remarried on July 10, 2015, and remained together until her death on August 7, 2016.
He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Producers Guild of America, and the WGA, East, from which he received the Evelyn F. Burkey Award for lifetime achievement. Fontana served as vice-president of the Writers Guild of America, East from 2005–2007. He is President Emeritus of the WGAE Foundation, commonly known as the Writers Guild Initiative and serves on the boards of The Acting Company, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, DEAL, The New York City Police Museum, Stockings With Care, among others. Detective Joe Fontana, Dennis Farina's character on Law & Order, was named for Tom Fontana, who became close friends with Law & Order creator Dick Wolf while working as writers in the same building, at the same time, on the series St. Elsewhere and Hill Street Blues.
