Mike Horelick

Mike Horelick got his start as an entertainment writer working as an outsider with a critical eye: in the early 1990s, he wrote the tongue-in-cheek guidebook "How to Talk Like a California Dude in Only Two Weeks." Its sprightly tone managed to charm the right people, and soon Horelick--a graduate of the University of Southern California School of Film and Television--was hired as a screenwriter. His first significant credit was in 1998 for "Mob Queen," a characteristically scathing farce involving an oddball mix of mobsters and transvestites. Horelick's next screenplay was for the wincingly titled "Pee Stains and Other Disasters," which received somewhat better reviews. In this endearing coming-of-age comedy, teenage best friends Ben and Thomas embark on a series of misadventures as they try to navigate the stormy waters of puberty. Horelick used the same characters for his following work, aptly titled "Ben et Thomas"--except in this version he used French actors to play the roles. When his reinvention succeeded, the short was transformed yet again, this time into a French TV show with the same title. This sojourn in the land of Napoleon and La Tour Eiffel, however, did not last long: the series was cancelled after only a single season.