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How Did Both
of Us Wind Up Here?
How did a prepster---whose prosaic parents put him and his siblings
in The New York Social Register— who graduated from Yale
College in 1962 with a BA in English and from Tulane University
in 1967 with an MA in Theatre & Speech----wind up covered in
tattoos, writing a terribly tacky but horrifically successful
horror flick and spend the next 20 years of his life engineering
hot-sheet roulette for serially adulterous soap characters?
And what is it about my career/life that brought you here? What
follows is who I am and how I got here. If you want to turn
into me or learn how to make a comfortable living as a writer
for hire, be my guest. I'll do my best not to lie to you.
The Bare Facts about Victor Brooke Miller:
Born: May 14, 1940 in New Orleans, LA to John D. and Barbara
Miller---the third of four kids, older sister Adair, older brother
John, younger brother Keith.
Kindergarten: Metairie Country Day, 1945
1st Grade: Clay County School, Green Cove Springs, FL (and home-schooled
because I had nightmares about my teacher for three months)
2nd Grade: Lawrence School, Hewlett, L.I., NY (I had a nice
Finnish teacher named Miss Khanti who caught me cheating with
an open spelling book in my lap.)
3rd-7th Grades: Lloyd Harbor School, Lloyd Harbor, L.I., NY
(Puberty hit me like a ton of 2000 lb bricks. I ballooned up
to 142 pounds at 5'2".)
8th-12th Grades: Milton Academy, Milton, MA (I stayed 142 pounds
but grew up to 5' 11" and I still didn't understand puberty,
but I hid it better. It was at Milton where I perfected my ability
to use humor and a keen sense of the absurd to protect me from
bullies, pain of all kinds and complex emotions such as love
and fear and hate and jealousy. I also began a lifelong affair
with language as a means to escape the negative consequences
of my actions. I also learned I could write with great flair—
unfortunately flair was not what Milton wanted out of me. They
were training us in critical exegesis and academic analysis.
Milton taught me how insidious the passive voice can be.
Yale College, New Haven, CT (1958-1962) B.A. in English. I took
every creative writing course Yale had at the time---from Daily
Themes with Harry Berger, Jr., to short story writing with Edward
Gordon, to fiction with the celebrated Robert Penn Warren. As
soon as I graduated I stopped writing anything. One other thing
I did as soon as I graduated was to marry Elizabeth (Tina) Couzens
Thurston whom I had met and fallen in love with the fall of
my senior year. (Note: Despite all odds and through no brilliance
on my part, we are still married forty years later.)
Benton & Bowles Advertising, 666 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY (1962
to 1963). I worked in TV Programming for Lee Rich, Irwin Segelstein,
Stuart Erwin and Phil Capice, all of whom went on to major careers
in nighttime TV or the recording industry. I got so bummed by
the venal, brown-nosing world of advertising that I ran to:
The Hill School, Pottstown, PA, where I taught English and Public
Speaking for three years under the direction of the renowned
Headmaster, Edward T. Hall, a legend in his own time. One of
the students I didn't teach while we were both there was soon-to-be-famed
filmmaker and conspiratorialist Oliver Stone. I began to realize
that I needed more education and so I got an NDEA grant to get
a PhD in theatre at—
Tulane University, New Orleans, LA. This was 1966 and the anti-war
sentiment was boiling over. I was almost finished my Masters
Thesis in theatre & speech when the faculty got in a fight with
the not-too-bright President of Tulane and most of them resigned,
making the chances of my getting a PhD dicey at best. Sensing
that I would make a less than inspired teacher of theatre arts,
I took an offer that came to me by means of a recommendation
by my Dept. Chair, Dr. Monroe Lippman, to Ms. Mary Hunter Wolf
of The American Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford, CT,
to head up the brand new Title III Program between the Theatre
and the CT State Department of Education's Vocational-Technical
School Division. Tina and I moved North with our stuff to Guilford,
CT from whence I commuted to—
The Connecticut State Department of Education in Hartford &
The American Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford, CT (1967-1972).
Our job was to help train the teachers and students so that
they might better appreciate their visits to the Theatre's Student
Audience Season. At that point a much-too large number of schools
simply bused their kids to The Theatre w/o any preparation.
Some of the kids, frustrated and bored, would slingshot paperclips
at the actors. The actors would get angry and scared. The results
were not good. By the time we were finished training teachers
and students, we had kids who'd never dreamed of going to a
classic play enjoying the plays and defending the actors from
kids who were not in our program. Working with notables in the
theatre/education field (Bob Alexander from The Arena Stage,
Martin Kushner and David Shookhoff from the Yale School of Drama,
and Frank Wittow from Atlanta's Academy Theatre) Mary Wolf and
I came up with our own approach to using theatre games and improvisation
to teach content in fields as diverse as English and Physics.
1968: Tina gave birth to our first son, Ian Dabney Miller.
At The American Shakespeare Festival Theatre I worked with Milan
Stitt, who was, at the time, Director of Development. (As a
graduate of the Yale School of Drama's playwrighting program,
Milan wrote the prize-winning play, The Runner Stumbles.) While
we worked in CT together he gave me a wonderful tutorial in
playwrighting---things he had gleaned from his teacher, the
legendary John Gassner. I began to write plays under Milan's
tutelage. When he left to work in NYC, I took a semester at
HB Studios' playwriting unit. Herbert Berghof hated my work,
but I learned a great deal from him. It was Herbert who insisted
that I stop judging my characters and simply let them act and
react on the stage.
1972: Our second son, Joshua Galleher Miller, was born.
In the early 70's Robert Mandel came across my play, Manchineel,
while he was a reader at Joe Papp's Public Theatre. Joe didn't
want to do it, so Bob took it to The Cubiculo where Manchineel
had a showcase for several nights. After the experience of working
with actors and my text (arguing about everything) I decided
I would be a novelist. (I decided a lot of things in those days---I
would cop a major resentment and go boomeranging off in the
opposite direction.) I wrote a detective novel, Fernanda, about
a female private eye who only handled rape cases. I knew nothing
about detectives except what I'd heard on the radio as a kid
or seen in the film noire as I grew up. I knew even less about
the workings of The New York City PD, which makes Fernanda quite
possibly one of the least researched novels ever written. It
was bought by Pocket Books' Bernard Shircliff who thereupon
asked me if I'd like to novelize three Kojak episodes from Television.
He figured I could handle the first- person, side-of-the-mouth
narrative style of Det. Kojak. Sure, I said, my eyes flashing
at the idea of making $2,700 from my very own writing. I sat
down at my typewriter and began immediately. I also gave notice
to Ms. Wolf at The American Shakespeare Festival Theatre that
I was now a professional writer and I'd be quitting. (Thank
God she gave me odd consultant jobs over the next five years
or we'd have starved. Writing Kojak novelizations was not going
to be the fountain of cash I had imagined even though Mr. Shircliff
gave me six more scripts to novelize.)
From the mid-70's to 1980: Karen Hitzig introduced me to Brud
Talbot who introduced me to Saul Swimmer and Sean Cunningham.
For Saul Swimmer and Brud Talbot I did the screenplay for The
Black Pearl, a novel by Scott O'Dell. The movie got made but
it was, from what I hear, a disaster. I did a number of projects
for Brud, one of the most unlucky people I've ever worked with.
He could not get out of his own way and died much too soon.
But he hired me to write the screenplay for bank robber Willie
Sutton's life. I got to sit and talk with Sutton for hours even
if the screenplay project never got picked up or made.
Sean and I hit it off right away and started hanging out and
working on ideas together. Sean had made Last House on the Left
with his pal, Wes Craven. I wrote Here Come the Tigers for Sean,
a low-budget kid-flick about a screwed-up baseball team. We
then moved on and made Manny's Orphans, a low-budget kid-flick
about a screwed-up soccer team. The operating theory at the
time was that America craved good family fare. The theory was
incorrect, as Halloween quickly proved. Sean suggested we leave
the G-rated universe and move boldly into the world of chair-jumpers
and emotional roller-coasters. I went to see Halloween, learned
the genre and figured out the following truths:
- Begin with an historical evil, some event in the past
that threatens the present (Jason's drowning at the hands
of shtupping counselors)
- Create a landscape in which post-adolescents are on their
own, beyond the help of the grownups (summer camp before
it opens)
- Kill anyone who makes love out of wedlock.
Friday The 13th opened in May of 1980. Six months earlier my
wife (who was working as a legal secretary) and I were flat
broke. I tried to sell my blood for $30 to a Bridgeport drug
research firm, but they told me I didn't have enough antibodies.
By June I was waltzing into the head of Columbia Pictures' office
(Frank Price at that time) and making a deal for a picture I
called Asylum— a one-sentence pitch I made to Mr. Price.
I was paid handsomely for that screenplay, but the picture was
never made and soon I learned what it was like to be hot for
a very brief time.
Sean asked me to help with his next picture, an adaptation of
Mary Higgins Clark's A Stranger is Watching, for MGM. I got
co-screenplay credit and the film did so-so in its release.
Sean's next idea was to make a film based on a title he'd come
up with---Spring Break. He wanted to grab the audience which
was spending millions on the recent success, Porky's. I wrote
a couple of drafts, but, as so often happens in this industry,
Sean wanted to go another way (which can mean almost anything
from, "Your drafts are awful" to "My backer has another writer
he wants us to try"). That was the last time we spoke. In a
few short years we'd gone from dreaming about making the blockbuster
film to making it and losing a friendship that was very special.
(There are several lessons in there if you have been paying
attention.)
1982-1984 ABC-TV, Associate Head Writer for One Life To Live.
Jackie Smith, Head of Daytime Programming for ABC-TV, The Queen
of Daytime (as she liked to be known---in direct opposition
to Agnes Nixon who really was The Queen of Daytime) was looking
for new blood in her stable of daytime writers. Thanks to Richard
Blumenthal, an attorney with Mike Lynne (Blumenthal & Lynne
represented Sean), I had lunch with Ms. Smith. I drank way too
much wine in the ABC executive dining room, but Jackie and her
sidekick, Eleanor Timberman, and I laughed and had a great time.
The next thing I knew I was working under Head Writer Sam Hall
at OLTL.
1984: Victor is represented by Rick Hashagen, the agent with
whom he will stay until 2002. The Miller family moves from Stratford,
Connecticut to Milford, Connecticut.
1984-1986 ABC-TV, Associate Head Writer for All My Children.
When Sam was let go at OLTL, I was moved over to AMC where I
worked under Wisner Washam and wrote some of my best stuff for
the character played by Michael Knight, Tad Martin. Wisner taught
me the real craft of daytime, but I was rankling and wanted
to get out from under his thumb, so, when I got a call from
Mary Ryan Munistieri at Guiding Light, I went. But, by the time
I got there, P&G had let Mary go and suddenly I was—
1986-1987 P&G, Associate Head Writer for Guiding Light under
Joe and Sherry Manetta, an odd couple if ever there was one.
They made it very easy to take the offer to return to—
1988-1989 ABC-TV, Associate Head Writer at All My Children for
Lorraine Broderick and Agnes Nixon. That period saw The Writers'
Guild Strike of 1988, a six month walk-out driven by the screenwriters
which just about devastated the daytime writers. Inasmuch as
we were on salary, we lost six months of income, never to be
regained. The screenwriters, by contrast, were sometimes on
the picket line and sometimes at home writing screenplays which
they sold for tidy sums after the strike was over. Somewhere
in that period of time Jozie Emmerich, then Head of Daytime
for ABC-TV, made me co-head writer with Lorraine. (That was
the only time I was actually a head writer. It was fun, but
I found being an associate head writer much more fun and more
relaxing during my 20-odd years in the groves of serial writing.)
Lorraine and I were suddenly replaced by Maggie dePriest, talented,
eccentric, and funny. Somehow we all got along in what should
have been a nightmare of hurt feelings and strange dynamics.
I was fired at the end of that contract and went to—
1989-9?-Another World, as Associate Head Writer again, this
time under Donna Swajeski, Peggy Sloan and Carolyn Culliton.
These were good times for me, even if Another World was doomed
to go under, which it eventually did. We went through a regular
merry-go-round of producers until my old friend from All My
Children days, Megan McTavish, asked P&G to trade me to their
other show,
199?- 199? Guiding Light, to work for her. 1996: Tina and Victor
Miller moved to Trumbull, Connecticut. Victor took refuge at
The Center for Dzogchen Studies in New Haven, Connecticut.
Guiding Light was fun until Megan was fired and re-hired at—
199?-2001 All My Children where she took me along. Megan was
replaced by Richard Culliton and so she took me over to—
2001-2002 General Hospital where I finished my career in daytime.
2001: Tina and Victor Miller moved to Alameda, California to
be near their sons.
[Looking back at this strange autobiography, I see that I raced
through the last few decades. Daytime TV can be really boring
to those whose lives are not ruled by it. Writers are hired
and fired regularly whenever the ratings go down. That would
be a logical concept if the writers were totally responsible
for what the audience sees on air. Instead, what happens all-too
often is that network executives and producers (depending on
the executive or the producer) make the ultimate decisions which
the writers must carry out and be blamed for. Oftentimes stars
on the various shows become so powerful that they have the power
to accept or decline storylines. Most actors are not all that
good at story decisions—which explains why so many good
actors make so many horrific films. ]
The most important thing out of all this is that Tina and I
are really happy with the people we have become. Even better,
we really love our sons and their wives and our grandchild.
You'd have to ask them, but I get the impression that they love
us back.
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