What About Me - Frederick Gooltz

Creative Development – Film & TV

Formerly a playwright in New York theatre, my work appeared at P.S. 122, Lincoln Center Theater / HERE Festival, Prospect Theatre, and Looking Glass Theatre. I was fortunate to see my scripts performed by wonderful collaborators across the country. My political satires drew me into writing actual politics in Washington DC.

I wrote political speeches and devised strategy with a boutique agency founded by Howard Dean for President campaign alumni. As Director of Strategy, my clients included advocacy nonprofits, campaigns, and Senators with a national profile. I innovated multi-platform digital messaging strategy for political and cause marketing campaigns.

After leaving Washington, I began working in creative development for Film & TV with production partner Alan Cumming. I also became an independent writer with representation by Industry Entertainment Partners. Now in Los Angeles, I run development at Some Assembly Required, an inventive theatre company.

Some of my short fiction, plays, and nonfiction have been published in the US and UK. Most importantly, I live with my amazing wife close to the beach. If you want to collaborate, or contact me, you can.

Okay,
Fred

Media Bio

I am a writer / producer based in Los Angeles, working at the intersection of technology and storytelling – primarily in Film and Television. With an LA-based theatre & film production company called Some Assembly Required Productions, I built and led our web-powered creative development pipeline. Through apps that I created, hundreds of user-generated loglines became dozens of award-winning shorts.

Previously, I worked in TV and technology development with a multimedia production company based in New York City. We were called Itsasickness Productions; I helped develop TV projects which featured fully-integrated online experiences working in tandem with the shows. One notable example was our obsession project starring Alan Cumming – a branded-content TV docuseries that gathered segment leads from user-generated content at a Pinterest-like website which I also created. Here is more about that project:

Crossmedia programming across TV / Film, internet, and book publishing.

My creative career began in New York City theatre. I wrote stageplays and devised numerous theatre projects in New York City, including with experimental multimedia-heavy companies like Les Freres Corbusier (Dir. Alex Timbers). My work has appeared with Tax Deductible Theatre, Looking Glass Theatre, P.S. 122, Prospect Theatre, Lincoln Center Theater / HERE Festival. I was a member of Dysfunctional Theatre Company, Point of You Productions, and Quest Theater Ensemble.

Outside of New York I also worked in regional theatre at Playhouse on the Square, and The Circuit Playhouse in Memphis, Tennessee as well as Regent’s Park and Little Angel Theatre in London.

In Los Angeles, I work as a screenwriter and development consultant with representation by Andrew Deane & Lars Theriot at Industry Entertainment. Several of my projects have featured creative collaboration with top directors and writers such as James V. Hart (Hook, Contact).

Or, see my political bio.

Politics Bio

Playwriting led to speechwriting, which was a springboard to strategy consulting – where I focused on new media innovations. I wrote speeches and strategy for an array of clients and causes.

During most of my time in politics, I was Director of Strategy with Advomatic, LLC – an award-winning boutique agency in New York and D.C. Founded by Howard Dean for President alumni, Advomatic clients include labor unions, progressive causes, and candidates ranging from City Council to U.S. President.

Most past projects are acronyms: ACLU, UNITE-HERE, SEIU, PFAW, NRDC, UFT, Sony BMG, as well as Progress Now, The Courage Campaign, Empire State Pride Agenda, New York State Senate, New York Observer, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, and many more. With Advomatic, I also created a Click-to-Call advocacy tool for people to lobby Congress online.

I pioneered using online social networks to conduct volunteer recruitment and political coordination in 2005. By adapting educational and marketing theories to online social networks and focusing on the storytelling aspect of politics, I was able to conduct audience generation, targeted message delivery, and political coordination in a decentralized fashion. Online leads were carefully mobilized for multiple offline purposes… like winning elections.

I presented these research and strategy innovations at PoliTech conferences across the country. Some of these strategy innovations appeared in journals such as “Person to Person: Harnessing The Political Power of Online Social Networks and User-Generated Content,” Institute for Politics Democracy & The Internet —George Washington University. My campaign tactics have been reviewed by MacArthur Foundation Reports, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Nation, and others. I still write sometimes about advocacy and cause marketing here and at Huffington Post.

Several election cycles of experimentation and refinement later, a decentralized team-based network organizing model, powered by internet tools, was famously adopted by Senator Barack Obama’s campaign. It worked okay.

Look at my Media Bio.