Carl Kurlander
Carl Kurlander is a writer/producer whose credits include the film "St. Elmo's Fire", television shows including The Louie Show, "Saved by the Bell: The New Class", "Hang Time" and "Malibu, CA", and award winning documentaries including "The Shot Felt 'Round The World" about the Salk polio vaccine, "Burden of Genius" about transplant pioneer Dr. Thomas Starzl, and "The Chair", a 10 part Starz TV docuseries following two directors making different movies from the same script.
Kurlander's career began when he received the Duke/MCA-Universal Scholar Award which included a ten week internship with then president of production Thom Mount. Kurlander won the scholarship based in part of a short story he wrote in college "St. Elmo's Fire" which he subsequently led to him writing his first movie with director Joel Schumacher.
In 2003, Kurlander appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on a program about people who changed their lives for moving back to his hometown to teach at the University of Pittsburgh. This journey led to the documentary "My Tale of Two Cities" which Kurlander wrote and directed featuring Franco Harris, Teresa Heinz Kerry, Dr. Tom Starzl, former Treasury Secretary Paul O' Neill, Joanne Rogers, David Newell (Mr. McFeely) and Pittsburghers from Broadway to Times Square singing "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" It played in over 25 North American cities including at the Capital Hill Visitor's Center.
Kurlander co-founded the non-profit Steeltown Entertainment Project which helped the City of Pittsburgh become a player in the entertainment industry. He is Senior Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh and the founding director of the Pitt in LA program which he taught at Lionsgate in 2019.
Kurlander also appeared in the pioneering Fox reality television show "3000 Miles, 21 Days, and 10 Cents" hosted by Bruce Jenner in which three teams worked their way across the country on a dime. Kurlander went with his mother.
The polio movie "The Shot Felt 'Round the World" began as a class Kurlander taught after filming the University of Pittsburgh's 50th anniversary of the polio vaccine. The film was re-cut for broadcast on the Smithsonian Channel as "A Shot To Save The World" with new footage featuring Bill Gates linking the Salk vaccine to present day efforts to eradicate polio around the world. That program won the CINE Golden Eagle Award for best science and technology program. It also aired in prime time on the BBC as "The Polio Story: The Vaccine That Changed The World." and was used in a viral video contest called "Take a Shot At Changing the World" to inspire high school students to make their own video on the polio vaccine.
That film helped Kurlander persuade Dr. Thomas Starzl to let his life be told in a documentary about how Starzl took what was science fiction when he was growing up-- the idea of organ transplantation-- and turned it into a reality which has saved countless lives and changed modern medicine.
Kurlander is an adviser to the George A. Romero Foundation and helped bring the Romero archives to the University of Pittsburgh.
