Touchstone TV producer
started at Kalani High

Barry Jossen's career began
with an art class here, and he
now produces ABC's "Lost"

It began with a Film as Art class at Kalani High School, then an Academy Award and now a top executive post at Touchstone Television, which produces the hit ABC series "Lost."

Barry Jossen: Fell in love with the process of movie making at Kalani High

"I want to thank Ms. (Jane) Abe for that class I took in my junior year at Kalani," Barry Jossen said in an earlier interview with the Star-Bulletin. "It was so much fun that I decided to make filmmaking my life's work."

Jossen, who graduated in 1977, a senior vice president of production for Touchstone Television since 2002, went on to produce "Dear Diary," which won the 1996 Oscar for Best Achievement in Live Action Short Films. He oversees all Touchstone series, including "Lost," pilots and miniseries.

He described the Kalani class as "very, very basic about how movies are made, but I absolutely fell in love with the whole process."

At Kalani, Jossen made an eight-minute film with three other students called "Things Go Better with Coke," shot on Super 8 with the soundtrack on a regular audiocassette.

"Of course it had a very, very local story line," Jossen said. "It was about a half-man, half-beast who lived on Tantalus. It was crude at best."

In contrast, "Dear Diary," written by partner David Frankel, was a 22-minute urban comedy revolving around a New York magazine art director played by Bebe Neuwirth which cost $1 million to $2 million to make and used 44 sets and a crew of 78.

Ironically, the "Dear Diary" pilot had been rejected by ABC, where Jossen now accepts or rejects projects.

After ABC turned down the show, Jossen discussed the idea of entering the pilot in film festivals with Stephen Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, "who told me to go for it," he says.

"I just didn't want the show to die," he said. "We had made a great film that just didn't work as a short film; the network was probably right in not picking it up."

Maybe to show ABC the error of its ways, DreamWorks gave "Dear Diary" a short theatrical release in November 1996 to qualify for Oscar consideration. This happens frequently with TV movies, notably those that run on pay cable, but it's rare for a failed TV pilot to get Oscar buzz, much less actually win an Academy Award.

Four months later, Frankel and Jossen had a new statuette for "Dear Diary," which may have had some influence on the changing face of TV comedy.

That included the idea of being inside a woman's head, and fantasy sequences that have influenced shows like "Sex and the City" and "Ally McBeal." Jossen helped launch "Sex and the City'" on HBO.

"I'm sure Steven and Jeffrey thought the film festival idea was crazy, but they let us run with it because they believed there was a possibility of something good happening with 'Dear Diary,'" Jossen said.

Jossen and Frankel booked their short film into one Los Angeles theater where it played with "Shine."

"The rest is history," Jossen said laughing. "Well, our history."

Jossen, now 43, went on to become head of TV production at DreamWorks SKG -- the studio owned by Spielberg, David Geffen and Katzenberg -- before moving to Touchstone Television.

JOSSEN'S FATHER moved his family to Hawaii in 1972 after retiring from the gas station business. Jossen attended the University of Hawaii for a year after graduating from Kalani, then followed his girlfriend to Raleigh, N.C., where her parents had retired. Two years later he moved to Los Angeles to attend UCLA and start his film career.

"I had worked at the public broadcasting station in Raleigh and as a cameraman at the local television station," he said. "Then (in L.A.) for six months I hit all the studios, learning quickly how to sneak by studio guards to get inside without an appointment.

"I went to every writer's office, every producer's office, every director's office, basically talking to anyone who would talk to me and handing them my rˇsumˇ."

That tenacious attitude got Jossen an eight-week production assistant job on a Jonestown cult project, which turned into a six-year job as head of production.

"My apprenticeship," he said.

After that, a producer with "an impossibly low budget" offered Jossen the producer's post for the $2.1 million, four-hour miniseries "Home Fires" on Showtime. His first task was to put together a workable budget for the project.

"It took me three weeks," he said. "Then he talked to me for five minutes, put it down, asked if I thought I could do it. I said yes. He said, 'Are you sure?' I said yes. 'But are you really sure?' he said. 'Yes.'"

"OK, you're the producer, now go hire a director," he told the then 26-year-old Jossen.

"I had never produced a thing before," he said. "I was scared out of my mind."

Time magazine would name the miniseries, which was Juliette Lewis' first film, one of the year's 10 best television shows.

How did he succeed?

"I had the benefit of naivetˇ in that I didn't know what I didn't know," Jossen said. "Every day was on-the-job training."

Jossen understands Hollywood and its tremendous premium on youth.

"Many executives believe that if they haven't made it while in their 20s, they never will," he said. "I learned that different things come to different people at different times in their life, and you have to keep working at it and keep believing strongly in your dreams. Then you'll achieve the things you desire."

Jossen has produced several TV productions and films, including "Sex and the City" (1998), "Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco," "Miami Rhapsody" (1995) and "Vietnam War Story: The Last Days" (1989).

Shortly after winning the Oscar, Jossen told the Star-Bulletin that "I always" wear two hats as a producer.

"As a studio executive I'll give you all the industry buzz words: It must be as commercial as possible and really speak to the 18-to-49 age group." He said. "But as a filmmaker all I want to do is just make great films."