Todd Holland

Fledgling director Todd Holland got the kind of big break many would trade anything for when he was discovered by Steven Spielberg in 1985. Born in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, Holland was an honor student who started writing comedy screenplays in high school in which he parodied the popular movies of the day. After graduating UCLA in 1985, Steven Spielberg saw Holland's thesis film, "Chicken Thing," and offered him a job directing an episode of his short-lived anthology TV series "Amazing Stories" (NBC 1985-87). Considering Holland didn't even have an agent at the time, it was clearly an enormous jumpstart to his career. Holland clearly gained a reputation as someone comfortable with oddball material, as he then moved into directing episodes of cult favorite "Max Headroom" (ABC 1987-88), David Lynch's "Twin Peaks" (ABC 1990-1991), the cable horror anthology "Tales From the Crypt" (HBO 1989-1996), and the spooky teen series "Eerie Indiana" (NBC, 1991-92). He moved into more conventional comedy with his association with "The Larry Sanders Show" (HBO 1992-98), where Holland was especially prolific, directing fifty-one episodes of the acclaimed Gary Shandling comedy and becoming a co-producer on the show as well. Holland won Emmys for both "Sanders," and the dysfunctional family comedy "Malcolm in the Middle" (Fox 2000-06), for which he directed twenty-six episodes. Holland then created the quirky comedy-drama "Wonderfalls" (Fox 2004), which garnered enormous praise from a devoted cult following but did not perform well in the ratings, being canceled before its 13 completed episodes could air. (The entire series was quickly released on DVD, where it continued to find new fans.) In addition to his prolific television work, Holland also made several feature films, including the fantasy "The Wizard" (1989), which starred Fred Savage of "The Wonder Years" (ABC 1988-1993); the academic comedy "Krippendorf's Tribe," starring Richard Dreyfuss and Jenna Elfman; and the family comedy "Firehouse Dog" (2007), starring a young Josh Hutcherson. Though none of his films were particularly successful either critically or commercially, Holland's continuing work in television remained his primary artistic focus.