Meet Professor Karen Hall!
From Playboy Mansion parties, to briefly living with Betty Ford’s family, to writing and working on major TV shows, Karen Hall is a real celebrity living among us here in Boone. Karen moved out to L.A. and started her writing career after college. She’s worked on TV shows such as Eight is Enough, M*A*S*H, Hill Street Blues, Roseanne, Grace Under Fire, Judging Amy, and The Good Wife. She currently teaches my Narrative Stories: TV and Film class where she casually mentions some of her great adventures. Her phone rings in class and she looks at it and says oh-so-casually “oh it’s just someone in California. I’ll let it go to voicemail” as if it’s normal to get calls from people in Cali. Then very briefly mentions she once went to a party at the Playboy Mansion. Her life has been anything but ordinary, and she’s had some adventures I could only dream of having.
College: William and Mary
Major: English, but most of her time was spent in the Theatre Department studying playwriting.
Q: What made you decide to go out to L.A.?
A: I knew that if I wanted to be paid for writing, I was going to have to write for TV and/or film. I knew that my choices of places to go to look for work were New York and L.A. I figured that if I was going to starve, I didn’t want to also freeze, so I chose L.A.
Q: How did you get your first big break?
A: I met Alan Alda (who played Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce in M*A*S*H) through a seminar that I attended and I talked to him about my writing. He asked to see something, so I gave him a one act play. He liked it and told me to keep sending him what I wrote. One day he called me and said that M*A*S*H was looking for another staff writer and he had recommended me. I went in for an interview and I got the job. (The Executive Producer had read a script that I submitted before the interview.)
Q: What’s your favorite episode of a show you wrote and why?
A: My favorite episode was an episode of Judging Amy entitled “The Frozen Zone.” The protagonist (Amy) was a family court judge and the script was about a custody case involving a child who lost his mother on 9/11. It’s my favorite because it turned out so well and also because I needed the catharsis of writing it.
Q: Tell me more about this Playboy Mansion Party you went to!
A: I was invited because my roommate was the receptionist for the modeling division of Playboy. I went with her and my other roommate, both of whom were actresses and gorgeous. I was reasonably attractive, but in a room full of Playboy bunnies, I looked like “who let the dogs out?” I have never felt so out-of-place in my life. There was a screening of a movie, and I was so glad because at least the lights would be off for two hours and I wouldn’t have men staring at me wondering what I was doing there.
Q: Who do you consider the most famous person you’ve met?
A: I wrote a TV movie called “The Betty Ford Story.” I spent three days staying with the Fords in their house in Colorado. I also worked with Bruce Willis, but he hadn’t made Die Hard yet, so he wasn’t super famous at the time.
Q: What’s your current favorite TV show?
A: Right now I only watch two shows; Madame Secretary and The Good Wife.
Q: If you could write for any current TV show, what would it be?
A: I have written two scripts for The Good Wife and I would love to write another one. My sister runs Madame Secretary and I wouldn’t mind writing a script for them, but she hasn’t asked me because she knows I hate politics, which is most of what the show is about.
Q: What made you decide to move to Boone?
A: My husband was my high school boyfriend. He went to a boarding school in my hometown. His parents were high society folks from Miami. They had a private plane and spent their summers and most holidays at their second house in Little Switzerland. I flew up here for Thanksgiving in 1972 and that was when I first became aware of the North Carolina High Country. Chris (my husband) and I went our separate ways and married different people who, as he puts it, “made us appreciate each other.” Twenty-five years later we reconnected, found that we were both single again, and got married. At that time, I owned a farm outside of Atlanta. Chris hated the summers there because it was so hot. He asked me about relocating the farm to the High Country of North Carolina. I told him I’d only do it if he would get a kilt. We bought the land and built the farm in 1999. He still doesn’t own a kilt. I told him that I was going to bury him in one for breaking his promise.
Q: What are you currently working on?
A: I have three projects in the works right now. One is a novel that was first published in 1996. I rewrote it. I’m doing the copy editing right now and Simon & Schuster is going to publish the new version in May, on its 20th anniversary. I’m also working on a mini-series to pitch to BBC. It’s about the unsightly years of St. Ignatius. And then I’m working on a Kung Fu movie for some Chinese producers. I don’t know what will become of that project because the stock market in China has been collapsing, and the investors are very nervous. I currently own Black Bear Books at the Boone Mall and I’m always trying to make the bookstore the best it can be.