Creative Gumbo and Genesee Street Films
Television and Feature Film Production
Creative Gumbo and Genesee Street Films
Television and Feature Film Production
Richard Wentz
My Bio
- Richard’s varied career in Film, Television and Video production includes working with Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Kermit The Frog and a host of others (human and non) in between. Richard began in the late 80s by working on independent films with outstanding directors including the Coen Brothers, John Sayles and Louis Malle. In the early 90’s as a First Assistant Director he worked on over 100 commercials and music videos before transitioning to multi-camera television. During this period, he primarily worked as a production stage manager for the Sesame Workshop and Jim Henson Productions on Sesame Street, Ghostwriter and Bear in the Big Blue House. It was at this time Richard took his first steps as a writer selling his first story idea to Sesame for Ghostwriter when the series transitioned to CBS. He also wrote a script for the Grosso/Jacobsen series The Big Easy and optioned his first series, “The Nail Files” to Lifetime in '97.
- In 2000, life circumstances found Richard searching for work when opportunity opened the door to the infomercial industry where over 8 years as a highly successful Creative Director, he wrote and directed 14 half-hour infomercials and earned his clients more than 700 million dollars in total sales. After infomercials Richard decided to return to creative writing full time, first with the novella “A Tropical Depression” published in 2008, then several works for the theater. His first NYC theatrical production was a collection of one act plays entitled “Night of the Working Dead”, produced Off-Broadway by the New Perspectives Theater Company.
- Richard has written two full length musicals: “4 Days In May” about five students caught up in the turmoil at Kent State University in the Spring of 1970 and featuring the music of period including CSNY, Joni Mitchell, Chicago and The Guess Who. “Straighter Than Narrow” with Logan Medland is based on the life of singer songwriter Harry Nilsson and is under option to Donnie Kehr and The Path Fund.
- Since 2018 Richard has focused his writing on film and television including a comedy about the infomercial industry created with friend and co-worker Chris Bonanno entitled “But Wait, There’s More”, film adaptations of King Lear and Uncle Vanya and two one-hour drama pilots “Something Better” about a disillusioned young surgeon from New York who joins Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan and “The Undiscovered Country”, about an Afghan/Iraq War Vet's motorcycle trip across the U.S. as he seeks to find himself, his former comrades and why they fought in a war.Currently Richard has completed a film adaptation of the above mentioned "4 Days in May". Richard is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America and lives in Auburn, New York.
4 Days in May - a film with music
"worse than the brownshirts and the communist element and also the nightriders and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America."
Ohio Governor James A. Rhodes, May 2, 1970 referring to protesting Kent State students.
A fictional story based on true events featuring the music of Crosby, Stills Nash and Young, Joni Mitchell, Chicago, The Guess Who and more...
Lear of Hell's Kitchen
A younger Lear (60s) as the modern day leader of the Hell's Kitchen Irish Mob, battling early onset dementia, voluntarily cedes control of his territory to his rebelious daughters.
But Wait There's More
A new 30-minute situational comedy set in the insane but all too real world of infomercials.
"An earnest, naïve documentary producer is forced to join the family infomercial business, where she tries to restrain her two morally flexible half-brothers, please her famously infamous father and keep her sanity in the chaotic world of advertising’s side show."