Rob Thomas, a Texas native, now resides in the Hollywood Hills. Sightseers can find his house by purchasing a Star Map and locating the residence right in between the former homes of Richard Simmons and Jan-Michael Vincent -- a map point as metaphoric as it is geographic.
Thomas is the former executive producer and creator of the ABC television series Cupid. Immediately upon becoming a television producer, Thomas installed a jacuzzi at his house and had his office couch Scotch-guarded. So far, these aphrodisiacal measures have borne no fruit. Thomas has, consequently, begun looking into rhinoplasty and BMW convertibles.
The early death which befell Cupid, left a number of unproduced scripts for the show. With no more use for them Thomas put the scripts on his web site. Wondering what had happened to my beloved show I stumbled upon Thomas' site and three scripts. All of which I believe to be some of the best episode I'd seen (or read) yet. After reading them I started to think, "Hey maybe I could do this." And thus my interest in screenwriting began. In omage in all my scripts there is a refrence of some kind to Cupid.
Thomas taught high school journalism for five years, advised the University of Texas student magazine, Utmost, and worked for Channel One, a Los Angeles-based television news show aimed at teenagers nationwide. Thomas has toured the country in several marginally talented rock bands. A practicing Renaissance man, his baseline fade-away has been described as Olajuwonesque. Thomas' lean prose style reflects a lifelong alphabetical stinginess also expressed in his personal relationships (his ex-girlfriend is named Ed, his father Bob), early rock influences (U2 and REM), favored musical instrument (bass), dominant basketball skill (D), and the names of his pet cocker spaniels (Owen and Everett, inevitably foreshortened as O and E).
Karen Hall grew up in south-central Virginia and attended the College of William and Mary, where she majored in English and minored in Religion and spent most of her time in the Department of Theatre and Speech. She studied playwriting under her mentor, Dr.Louis E. Catron, and several of her one act plays were produced by Premiere Theatre. In 1979 she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in television. Since then she has written for and produced many of the most acclaimed television shows of the 1980s and 1990s, and received Emmy nominations for her work on
M*A*S*H, Hill Street Blues, Moonlighting and The Women of Brewster Place. She has also written for Northern Exposure and I'll Fly Away and is currently working as a writer and series consultant on Judging Amy. In 1996 Random House published her novel Dark Debts, which was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. She is a member of the faculty of the Act One Screenwriting Program. She is a member of the Humanitas Foundation
Board of Trustees. She is founder and president of The Foundation for All God's Children. She is married to her high school sweetheart, Chris Walker. Together they have a web business called Sacred Images, which specializes in vintage religious collectibles. They divide their time and three kids between Los Angeles, Atlanta and Orlando.
Hall also wrote an episode for Cupid, entitled Matters of the Heart. That episode I consider to be the best of series and the reason I remembered Cupid in the way I did. Then in the end when I started to sneak out Cupid, Karen's episode was a driving force. Her influance can be seen in a lot of my work.
