Rick Cleveland

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Rick Cleveland is an American television writer, playwright and monologist, best known for writing on the HBO original series, Six Feet Under and NBC's The West Wing.

Cleveland, a graduate of the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, is also a founding member of Chicago's American theater company.

In 2000, Cleveland and The West Wing creator, Aaron Sorkin won an Emmy and Writers Guild Award for their episode "In Excelsis Deo" an episode which originally aired during the 1999–2000 season.

Cleveland worked on the HBO original series Six Feet Under throughout the show's five season run. Cleveland joined the crew as a writer and producer for the show's first season in 2001. He wrote the episode "The Trip". He was promoted to supervising producer for the second season in 2002. He wrote two further episodes - "Driving Mr. Mossback" and "The Liar and the Whore". He remained a supervising producer for the third season in 2003. He scripted two more episodes - "Nobody Sleeps" and "Death Works Overtime". He was promoted to co-executive producer for the fourth season in 2004. He wrote two more episodes - "In Case Of Rapture" and "Grinding the Corn". He was promoted again to executive producer for the fifth and final season in 2005 and wrote his last episode, "Eat a Peach". He wrote eight episodes in total for the series.

Cleveland won the Jury Award for Best One Person Show at the 2006 US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado for his performance in "My Buddy Bill", about his friendship with President Bill Clinton, a monologue play filmed on June 15, 2007 for a Comedy Central Special and DVD.

Cleveland, Brian Koppelman, David Levien, Matthew Chapman all co-wrote the 2003 film Runaway Jury based on the book by John Grisham. He also wrote a 1998 screenplay for the independent film, Jerry and Tom.

In 2005, Cleveland inked a 2 year deal with NBC Universal Television in which he will produce and develop drama projects for the network. Also, he is writing a "Frankenstein" movie for Will Ferrell.

He served as writer for the AMC television drama Mad Men for the show's second season in 2008. He was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2009 ceremony for his work on the second season.^[1]

Cleveland currently serves as a consulting producer and writer on the Showtime series, Nurse Jackie.

Filmography

Six Feet Under

• "The Trip", (2001)
• "Driving Mr. Mossback", (2002)
• "The Liar and the Whore", (2002)
• "Nobody Sleeps", with Alan Ball (2003)
• "Death Works Overtime", (2003)
• "In Case of Rapture", (2004)
• "Grinding The Corn", (2004)
• "Eat a Peach", (2005)

The West Wing

• "In Excelsis Deo", with Aaron Sorkin (1999)
• "Enemies" (1999) (story) with Patrick Caddell and Lawrence O'Donnell

Nurse Jackie

• "Tiny Bubbles" (2009)
• "Pill-O-Mattix" (2009)

Other

• "Rick Cleveland's My Buddy Bill", (2008)

References

• Rick Cleveland. "I Was the Dumb Looking Guy with the Wire-Rimmed Glasses". Fresh Yarn. http://www.freshyarn.com/10/essays/cleveland_iwas.htm. Retrieved 2007-01-17.