David Mirkin

David Mirkin is an American feature film and television director, writer and producer. Mirkin grew up in Philadelphia and intended to become an electrical engineer, but abandoned this career path in favor of studying film at Loyola Marymount University. After graduating, he became a standup comedian, and then moved into television writing. He wrote for the sitcoms Threes Company, Its Garry Shandlings Show and The Larry Sanders Show and served as showrunner on the series Newhart. After an unsuccessful attempt to remake the British series The Young Ones, Mirkin created Get a Life in 1990. The series starred comedian Chris Elliott and ran for two seasons, despite a lack of support from many Fox network executives, who disliked the shows dark and surreal humor. He moved on to create the sketch show The Edge starring his thenpartner, actress Julie Brown.

Mirkin was born and raised in Philadelphia and graduated from Northeast High School in 1973. His father was a computer engineer until his death in 1960. Mirkins older brother Gary worked as a television engineer for the Philadelphia NBC affiliate, KYWTV, now a CBS ownedandoperated station. Throughout his childhood, Mirkin had an interest in film, and explored both writing and filming. Mirkin has described himself as a nerd and was often in trouble as a child because he was in another world. At high school, he felt the teaching was too slow and was allowed by his teachers to skip class two to three days a week.

Source: Wikipedia