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Name: Richard Gold
Hometown: Hilliard, Ohio
Year Graduated: 2001
School: School of Media Arts & Studies
Major: Video Production
Current job title and location: Senior Vice President of Development at Paramount Television in Los Angeles, Calif.
What do you do? I read books, scripts, articles, hear pitches, and so on, and try to figure out which projects we at Paramount should develop for television. Once we invest in those projects, I work with the writers and producers on those development projects to try and develop them so that they can get sold to a distributor and then get into production so that they go from theoretical TV shows to real ones. Essentially I'm like an in-house producer for the studio, and making sure there's a constant pipeline of creative content for us to produce. At Paramount Television, we've produced "13 Reasons Why," "The Alienist," "Maniac," "The Haunting of Hill House," "Maniac," "Jack Ryan," "Boomerang," "Grease Live," "Berlin Station" and "Shooter," amongst other shows over the past few years, with many more on the way!
What made you come to Ohio University? Were there other places you considered? I liked that it was just far enough away from home (Columbus) to help me learn to be independent, but still wasn't too terribly far away that I couldn't come home and visit when I wanted. I liked the atmosphere of the campus, which I thought was really pretty and idyllic, I knew Ohio University had a really strong communications school, and the vibe also felt a bit more liberal and progressive than some of the other Ohio schools, which was important to me. I've always had a fairly good instinct for where I want to be and what I want to be doing at any given time, so I checked out a few other schools but I had a sense that OHIO was where I was supposed to end up.
How did the Scripps College of Communication equip you with the skills you needed to succeed? I had some great teachers who pushed me to think critically and helped me built up a thick skin towards constructive criticism, which was and is very important.
What about your experiences here was so memorable? It's just a wonderful, safe, nurturing, beautiful place to transition from being a kid to an adult, and made some of the best friends of my life there. Also very important: Casa Nueva/Cantina, which was and is still incredible, and I had many wonderful late nights drinking coffee and eating pie at the original Union Street Cafe (where that Thai place is now). I also really loved working as a barista at the Front Room (the original version, in the old Baker Center which is now Schoonover). It's weird to me how these places like the Front Room and Union Street Diner still exist today but in different forms than the versions I knew. The new versions are much nicer, but the slightly grungier originals had a charm that I think has been lost a little, but maybe I'm just old!
Tell us about your career path.
I hit the pavement in LA and didn't know anyone or anything, so I got a job as an assistant at a real estate company just to make ends meet and pay rent. I met someone who started forwarding me the UTA job list, a sort-of "insider" list of Hollywood assistant jobs, and I applied for every job on the list until I finally got one, which was working as an assistant at a then start-up indie film finance and production company called the Yari Film Group. I then worked several different assistant jobs until I got promoted to a junior creative executive position at Warner Independent Pictures (which got shut down shortly after I got promoted!). From there I was a development executive at Heyday Films (which made the "Harry Potter" movies, "Gravity," and the "Paddington" films), and then was an executive for many years at Fox Searchlight Pictures. While at Fox Searchlight, I started to get the TV bug, and that's when I made the move from film to Paramount Television, where I've now been for nearly 4 years.
What advice do you have for current students? If I can do it, you can, too! I am firm believer that if you have enough grit, determination, patience, and a certain amount of savvy, you can do anything you want to do; you just have to be smart and calculated about how you go about it, and you have to be patient with yourself and the universe in your path to getting there. It's an old cliche, but many things in life are indeed a marathon and not a sprint, so a lot of it is just hanging in there. The other old cliche I love is that it's about the journey and not the destination; I have no idea where I'm going in my career or where I'll ultimately end up, but I've certainly had a fun and wild ride in figuring it out, and I think that's probably a lot of what life is about at the end of the day. One of the things I love about Hollywood is that everyone's path is unique and that there isn't just one pathway to success.