About the author
KEN PISANI lives in Los Angeles and writes comedy for television, something that's not always evident by the time it airs. With a background in sports, including Sports Illustrated magazine and two Olympics, Ken has used that arena to tell stories both large and small that reflect the human condition and feature lots of sweating. His documentary short film “War Games,” narrated by Academy Award-winner Jack Palance, told the story of the forgotten P.O.W. Olympics of World War II and won the Silver Award at the WorldFest International Film Festival; his original adaptation of that true story, “Teodor’s Fire,” was named one of four finalists for the IFP Screenwriters Award. Oddly, no one is rushing to make this movie.
Most recently, Ken’s script adaptation for a true sports biopic, “Two Ton Tony,” another feature nobody in Hollywood wants to make, won Best Screenplay at the 2012 Garden State Film Festival. Ken has earned two Emmy nominations, a Silver Telly Award, and has been a winner or finalist in numerous writing competitions, including The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, The Julie Harris Playwright Award, Slamdance and Scriptapalooza. Ken is also a published fiction author; his original short story “My Brother Died and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt,” was published in the U.S. and U.K. in the anthology “More Tonto Short Stories 2007.” His writing has also appeared in numerous online publications including Stymie Magazine, Defenestration, Flashfiction.com, and Carve Magazine, dedicated to the writing of Raymond Carver.
Ken is also a former stand-up comic, cartoonist, and unpublished novelist. He is currently working on a variety of film and television projects, including a feature adaptation of “Two Ton Tony” (visit: www2tontony.com).