My Lincolnwood Story- Bob Levy

“My childhood in Lincolnwood has completely informed and inspired everything I’ve done as an adult and stays with me in the most wonderful, positive, warm ways."

Bob Levy was born in 1961, and lived in Lincolnwood until 1977. In this interview Bob shares his memories of growing up, attending high school at Niles West, where he did theater, and discusses his career in Hollywood.

The views and opinions expressed in interviews do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Lincolnwood Public Library, including its Board of Trustees and staff.



TRANSCRIPT:

Lev Kalmens  0:00  
My name is Lev Kalmens. I'm an Information Services Librarian here at the Lincolnwood Public Library. Today is July 12, 2019, and I am interviewing Bob Levy for My Lincolnwood Story, our oral history project. Bob, welcome. What is your Lincolnwood Story?

Bob Levy  0:17  
Lev, I don't know what that question means. I have a Lincolnwood life. 

Lev Kalmens  0:21  
Ok, what is your Lincolnwood life?

Bob Levy  0:25  
My instinct is to answer that factually, and we'll start with some of the facts. I was born in 1961, and I was brought home from Michael Reese Hospital to Lincolnwood. My family lived at 6841 North Keating, and my parents had bought the house in 1957, a couple months after my brother Michael was born. We lived in Lincolnwood and I lived in Lincolnwood from birth until the family moved in 1977. We moved down the road to Skokie. For my first 16 years I lived in Lincolnwood, and it's an incredibly fond, warm, wonderful, free childhood in Lincolnwood that I remember.

Lev Kalmens  1:10  
What is your family's history? Where did they come from, to Lincolnwood.

Bob Levy  1:14  
That's an interesting question. Specifically, my parents had lived in an apartment, their marriage apartment. My parents were married in 1955, and moved into an apartment in a neighborhood of the north side of Chicago called Budlong Woods. You're nodding your head, which means you've heard of Budlong Woods.

Lev Kalmens  1:30  
[Overlapping] Yes.

Bob Levy  1:30  
I had never heard of Budlong Woods until I asked my mother where they lived before they bought the house in Lincolnwood. That was my parents first home together. My father was a born Chicagoan, grew up on the West Side, the JVC, the Jewish 'Vest Side,' the JVS. Then when he was a teenager, the family discovered that it wasn't cool for the Jews to live on the West Side, that the cool Jews lived on the North Side. So I think they moved to Albany Park. He lived there until his 30s when he met my mom, and they moved to Budlong Woods, and after a year and a half, and my brother was born, they moved to Lincolnwood. My mother had grown up in Milwaukee, and moved to Chicago in the early 1950s, primarily because she had lost hope of meeting an eligible husband in Milwaukee, and hoped that Chicago was fresh territory. She succeeded and met my dad and they got married in 1955.

Lev Kalmens  2:34  
What are your parents? What were their professions? What did they do?

Bob Levy  2:38  
My mom really didn't work until I was a teenager, probably when we moved to Skokie, and she began working for the Council for Jewish Elderly. She worked for the Council for Jewish Elderly for 17 years primarily at the Lieberman Center in Skokie in the accounting department. She was the accounts payable person for Council for Jewish Elderly for 17 years. My father did a bunch of different things. I guess he sort of had a peripatetic career path. When I was a little kid, he owned kiddie rides. You're too young to really remember what kiddie rides are. Kiddie rides were you put a nickel into the mechanical horse outside the drugstore. And your kid got a horsey ride on the kiddie ride for 30 seconds or a minute.

Lev Kalmens  3:33  
I remember those. 

Bob Levy  3:35  
My dad owned kiddie rides all over the city. I remember him coming home at night with sacks of coins, and running the coins through a coin counting machine. Recently, somebody told me that the people who ran the kiddie rides in Chicago in the 50s and 60s had to have been Jewish mob. I find it impossible to contemplate the scenario that my father was somehow involved in the Jewish mob. I don't think he was, and I've had no evidence that he was. My father was born in 1918 and died in 1991. He did kiddie rides, then he sold that business. Then he had a business called Door Popcorn Company, and they sold restaurant supplies. He did a lot of that kind of stuff for many years. Eventually, he owned and operated hot dog restaurants in Chicago. He had a hot dog restaurant near Comiskey Park on 35th Street that he and my older brother Michael would drive down to every morning and sell hotdogs. That's it.

Lev Kalmens  4:52  
What are some of your earliest memories of growing up in Lincolnwood?

Bob Levy  4:56  
It just feels like an incredibly free place for a kid to have lived in during that period. Kids had so much more independence in that era than kids do today. I remember my dad -- I remember riding a two wheeler with my dad for the first time. I'd been in my tricycle, riding up and down the sidewalks of Keating for several years. And he took me to the church on Pratt. Do you know what that church was? I don't know. We were a Jewish family. We never went to church. It was, I don't know, Pratt. It was on the south side of Pratt, near Keating, Kilpatrick, that area. I believe it's still standing. I believe it's a Korean church. 

Lev Kalmens  5:02  
Yes, that's exactly. That's the only one that I can...

Bob Levy  5:08  
[Overlapping] I think it was...

Lev Kalmens  5:17  
[Overlapping]...right next to the restaurant.

Bob Levy  5:21  
I don't know; the restaurant wasn't there. People will know what the church was in the 60s on the Lincolnwood Memories [Lincolnwood Time Machine] Facebook page. There was a great section about memories of that church. As a Jewish kid, my one memory of that church was my dad walking me over with my first two wheeler. I don't know if it was a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday afternoon; the parking lot was completely empty. He put me in the seat of the two wheeler, and he walked me around. Suddenly, I realized he wasn't holding on to the bike, and I was riding the bike. That was the first time I ever rode a two wheeler. My memory of Lincolnwood as a kid is riding my bike everywhere around Lincolnwood, and just feeling the incredible freedom of riding your bike around Lincolnwood. Ranging outside of Lincolnwood, as I got older, was always a new adventure. But, basically childhood in Lincolnwood was riding your bike through the streets of Lincolnwood to what was then known as the big park. You know, years before it was Prosel Park, it was the big park. We would ride to the big park, and meet and do stuff, and play Little League, and go to the summer camp, which I went to for years, and loved; the big park summer camp, the Lincolnwood Rec summer camp, and that was life.

Lev Kalmens  7:24  
Do you remember who your friends were, and what type of stuff would you guys do besides riding your bikes around Lincolnwood? 

Bob Levy  7:32  
One of my good friends lived a block and a half away on Pratt, Dan O'Brotman. His mom still lives in that house. His mom is a Holocaust survivor. She was a substitute teacher in the Lincolnwood schools when I was a kid, and then eventually I remember her also substituting at Niles West. Dan O'Brotman's family lived on Pratt. One of my best friends from childhood was another kid, Steve Brown, who's now a lawyer in Phoenix. Dan is a tech guy in Silicon Valley now. Steve Brown -- God, I can't remember where he lived; I can't remember the name of the street he lived on. What did little kids do? We would hang out in my basement. I grew up on Keating. In 1968, when I was seven years old, the family moved to 6705 Kostner. We moved a few blocks east, and we went on the other side of Pratt. We were on the north side of Pratt; now we're on the south side of Pratt. The great thing about being on Kostner was it was even closer to the big park. Riding my bike or walking to the big park was even closer. Dan and Steve would come over. We would hang out in my basement and do dumb little boy stuff, which inevitably involved some kind of like wrestling, fighting with pillows. That's my memory. As I got older, it was going to camp at the Lincolnwood Rec. It was playing Little League, B League, A League, then national league, then American League, then Senior League. I played all through Senior League. I was good as a little kid and then I was terrible once I hit puberty, and started becoming neurotic and wearing glasses. That pretty much killed any hopes I had of baseball, but I still loved playing in Lincolnwood baseball.

Lev Kalmens  9:19  
Yeah, it's interesting. I've heard a lot from just talking to people that a lot of people grew up playing baseball in Lincolnwood. I didn't realize it had such a big presence here.

Bob Levy  9:29  
I mean, for me, it was the centerpiece of my summers. The school year was school: Todd Hall, Rutlidge Hall, Lincoln Hall. Summers was baseball and the Lincolnwood Rec park during the day -- the Lincolnwood Rec camp during the day. Lincolnwood between Little League and camp provided great opportunities, particularly for boys in that era. I don't think there was girls' softball. This was before the pool. 

Lev Kalmens  9:59  
Okay.

Bob Levy  10:00  
There had been a political movement for years to try to get a pool built at the big park. The pool came at the perfect time. Do you know what year the pool came?

Lev Kalmens  10:11  
I don't know, actually.

Bob Levy  10:12  
We could look it up. It must have been when I was around 11, 12. It was right on the cusp of puberty, which for me in my life, was the perfect time to to be hanging out at the pool. Once the pool was in Lincolnwood, I think I probably was done with the day camp. The pool days were hanging out at the pool with all the friends from school, and Little League in the evenings.

Lev Kalmens  10:39  
That must have been in the early 70s?

Bob Levy  10:43  
Yeah, so I was born '61, right. So, it would have been '72, '73, '74 is my guess. We were so happy to have the pool. The pool felt like it was the answer to all of our hormonal needs. And everybody from my class of Lincoln Hall was hanging out at the pool.

Lev Kalmens  11:11  
Even though you moved to Skokie, you still went to Niles West, right?

Bob Levy  11:14  
Yes. Which was an issue. We moved, I think, after my sophomore year at Niles West, and theoretically, I should have moved to Niles East. We moved out of the Niles West school district, but I begged and pleaded with everybody at Niles West with the faculty and staff and administration at Niles West to let me continue going to Niles West because all of my friends were there. I was very active at Niles West, working on the school paper, acting in school plays. I was the PA announcer and it would have been a horrible situation for me to have to move to Niles East. I had terrible fears of mean people and bad, tough guys at Niles East. Fortunately, the Niles West administration grandfathered me. They found some loophole to quote unquote grandfather me into remaining at Niles West. Even though I lived in Skokie, outside the Niles West school district for my last two years, I graduated from Niles West.

Lev Kalmens  12:17  
Niles East closed in....?

Bob Levy  12:20  
I think the year after I graduated. I think was '89. 

Lev Kalmens  12:23  
Late 70s. 

Bob Levy  12:24  
Yeah. I think Niles East still existed when we graduated in June of '79. I think it was the next year.

Lev Kalmens  12:34  
You did theater at Niles West. 

Bob Levy  12:36  
I did theater at Niles West.

Lev Kalmens  12:37  
Because I did theater at Niles West. I'm a little a little bit younger. 

Bob Levy  12:40  
[Overlapping] A little bit younger, yeah.

Lev Kalmens  12:41  
What are your memories of that? I believe the teacher was Robert Johnson, right?

Bob Levy  12:46  
Robert Johnson directed the musical, which was the biggest show of the year. I had been acting in the spring plays with Jim Batts. James Batts, was he not around? Does that name ring a bell to you? 

Lev Kalmens  13:01  
Not at all. No. 

Bob Levy  13:03  
There were three shows in my era. The Fall show was Pow Wow. Did Pow Wow exist when you were there?

Lev Kalmens  13:09  
No. 

Bob Levy  13:09  
That's right. You guys weren't the Niles West Indians.

Lev Kalmens  13:11  
Yeah. I mean, I was in there in the early 2000s.

Bob Levy  13:13  
We were still the Niles West Indians. The fall show, Pow Wow, was the student written play. It was the Niles West equivalent of Northwestern's WaMU show, right? 

Lev Kalmens  13:24  
Right, right. 

Bob Levy  13:25  
I think my senior year I wrote the Pow Wow show. The winter show was the big musical directed by Robert Johnson. In the spring was a straight play; drama or comedy directed by the English teacher, James Batts, Jim Batts. My freshman year, I didn't believe that I could sing, and no one believed that I could sing. My friends believed that I was inherently non-musical. So I was -- it was inconceivable for me to audition for the big Robert Johnson musical, so I auditioned for the Jim Batts drama in the spring of my freshman year, and I was cast in the lead. It seemed like an unheard-of, kind of big deal for a freshman to be cast as the lead. It was The Crucible. 

Lev Kalmens  14:20  
Oh, okay. 

Bob Levy  14:21  
So I was, who's the... 

Lev Kalmens  14:23  
[Overlapping] John Proctor. 

Bob Levy  14:23  
I was John Proctor. A senior woman...Deborah Rich ? No, I think that might be her little sister's name. Something Rich. She was so much older than I was, and so much more confident and mature. She was the female lead.

Lev Kalmens  14:32  
She was Abigail?

Bob Levy  14:41  
She was Abigail.

Lev Kalmens  14:42  
We did The Crucible in 2003 or 2004.

Bob Levy  14:52  
Honestly, I didn't even understand The Crucible; I didn't even understand what I was playing. But we pulled it off, and people seemed to think I did a good job. The second year, my sophomore year, James Batts did Barefoot in the Park. Again, I was cast as the lead. I was the Robert Redford role. And I can't remember her name. Oh, I do remember her name. Should I mention her name? 

Lev Kalmens  15:15  
Sure. 

Bob Levy  15:15  
Opposite me was another senior this time. I was a sophomore. She was a senior. Sandi Lucanbach was Miss Morton Grove. The play, as you may know, involves kissing. I was this dorky sophomore. I think at that point, I probably had never kissed a girl. Here I was kissing Miss Morton Grove onstage in Barefoot in the Park. I don't know if you know who Risa Brannon is? Risa Brannon was the queen of theatre. She was the Meryl Streep of Niles West theatre in my era. She played my mother in law, the Sandy Luchanbach character's mother, and it was an amazing experience to get to work with Risa. Risa is now I think the chairman of the theater department at UC Santa Barbara. 

Lev Kalmens  16:04  
Oh, wow.

Bob Levy  16:06  
She directs plays around the world, and is brilliant and successful theater director today. My junior year I had achieved enough in Niles West theater to have the standing to audition for the winter musical. I was cast in the one non-singing lead role in that year's winter musical, which was Mame. Risa, the Meryl Streep of Niles West theater in that era, played Mame, of course. And I played... oh God, the name of the character escapes me. It was her lawyer.

Lev Kalmens  16:51  
I'm not familiar with it.

Bob Levy  16:53  
My senior year, I sang for the first time. We did Pippin. 

Lev Kalmens  16:58  
Okay. 

Bob Levy  16:59  
Daniel Blackman, who I've recently reconnected with, who lives in New Jersey and works in New York, and is incredibly bright and talented, and has wonderful children, played Pippin. He was a sophomore. It was unheard of for a sophomore to get the lead, the titular lead, in a Niles West winter musical. But Daniel was awesome. What's her name? It's escaping me. A woman was cast as the emcee; isn't that the name of the role?

Lev Kalmens  17:31  
The Lead Player, I think.

Bob Levy  17:32  
The Lead Player, thank you so much. I can't think of her name. The woman who played the Lead Player eventually moved to L.A. and is now a successful character actress in Los Angeles. I'll think of her name, hopefully, before this is over. And I sang. What's bizarre is Daniel Blackman, who at the time was known as Danny Blackman, his family videotaped on one night of the production of Pippin, and it's posted on Vimeo. I go back and I listen to it now. I watched the video of the performance of Pippin now, and I'm the only one singing on key. I'm the only one singing in tune in the show. The notion that like I was the non-singer, turns out with with the hindsight of Vimeo, to be completely incorrect. I wore a fake beard. The following year, I was a freshman in college after I graduated from Niles West. I grew my own actual beard, which I pretty much still have today.

Lev Kalmens  18:36  
Maybe we can post that link --

Bob Levy  18:43  
It is password protected. 

Lev Kalmens  18:44  
Oh, it's password protected, so maybe not.

Bob Levy  18:46  
Maybe not. But we can post photos of some of the shows. I've great photos of me and Risa and Miss Morton Grove from the Spectrum yearbook. 

Lev Kalmens  18:58  
Yeah. 

Bob Levy  18:59  
From what would have been like 1977.

Lev Kalmens  19:02  
Yeah. We can probably find that.

Bob Levy  19:04  
And some photos from Pippin. I'll send you those.

Lev Kalmens  19:08  
So I understand that you live in Los Angeles, right?

Bob Levy  19:12  
I live in Los Angeles. I've lived in Los Angeles for 30 years.

Lev Kalmens  19:14  
So did you go to college here in Chicago?

Bob Levy  19:18  
I wanted to get as far away. It seemed in my era that smart kids in high school from Niles West went to Northwestern. The summer between my junior and senior year in high school, I did the Northwestern Summer Program, the Cherubs program in radio/tv/film, and had a wonderful experience. I'd never gone to sleepaway camp because I went to the Lincolnwood Rec Camp --

Lev Kalmens  19:39  
 [Overlapping] Right.

Bob Levy  19:39  
-- at the big park. It was my first time away from home, and it was an amazing experience. I kind of assumed that I would go to Northwestern where smart kids from Niles West went. I met a kid that summer whose sister was going to Brown University. I never heard of Brown University. I had heard of the Ivy Leagues -- of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, of course -- but I'd never heard of Brown. When it came time for me to apply to college, I applied to Northwestern, of course. I applied to some fallback schools like the University of Illinois. But my goal was to go as far away from Lincolnwood as I possibly could. Amazingly, I got into Brown University, and so I went to Brown University.

Lev Kalmens  20:19  
Why did you want to get as far away from Lincolnwood, and what were you looking to study: theater or radio, film?

Bob Levy  20:27  
My dream was to spend my life working in television and movies; to work in entertainment. But I sort of felt like, okay, these are the last four years of academics that I have. I kind of wanted to not spend the last four years of academic opportunity studying what I would spend the rest of my life doing. That seemed like a waste of an opportunity. Even though Brown offers what was then called semiotics, I didn't do any of those courses. I did straight liberal arts. I double majored in English and history. And the answer to your earlier question: as much as I loved my childhood in Chicago, my childhood in Lincolnwood and growing up as part of the Chicago area, it seemed like there was a bigger world out there. It felt time for me to discover some part of the bigger world. I really believe that young people should spread their wings when they can; when they have the opportunity; when they can afford to move away from home and spend their college years living in a different part of the country; and experiencing a different cultural part of the country. That was a great experience for me. It was an incredibly challenging experience for me. Literally my first or second day at Brown, which as listeners probably know, is in Providence, Rhode Island in New England, I was walking across the campus green, and I met some young woman. We began talking and 10 or 15 seconds into the conversation she said, "Oh, what part of the Midwest do you come from, Bob?" And I said, "How do you...?" She said, "Well, you kind of have an accent." I found that so embarrassing that I spent the next two months at Brown working extremely hard to lose my Lincolnwood accent. When I come back here and hang out with my old friends who never moved away, which also includes my mother, I'm surrounded by the SkokiWood Twang, is how Robert Johnson actually used to refer to it.

Lev Kalmens  22:45  
How would you define that?

Bob Levy  22:48  
I don't know how to define it, and I'm not going to try to imitate it. 

Lev Kalmens  22:53  
[overlapping] I won't ask you to imitate it.

Bob Levy  22:56  
Suffice it to say, as someone who has lived in other places of the country, it's not good. There are some charming regional accents in our country. I wouldn't say that the SkokieWood Twang is one of them, unfortunately,

Lev Kalmens  23:13  
Is that the Midwest Chicago accent, or is a little bit different from that?

Bob Levy  23:18  
It's a cousin of the Chicago accent. But it's definitely a North Shore, northern suburban accent onto its own. And it's not good.

Lev Kalmens  23:30  
I mean., talking to you, you sound --

Bob Levy  23:35  
You don't have it.

Lev Kalmens  23:36  
I don't know.

Bob Levy  23:38  
You're a theater guy. You were a theater nerd. Yeah, you don't you don't have it.

Lev Kalmens  23:44  
Even though I've lived in this area for most of my life, I'm not originally from here. So maybe that's why.

Bob Levy  23:48  
That's probably why.

Lev Kalmens  23:50  
Yeah.

Bob Levy  23:52  
It's something that occurs in early formative years. 

Lev Kalmens  23:55  
Interesting.

Bob Levy  23:56  
It's is very hard to lose. Most of those people who were born here in Lincolnwood, in Skokie and the northern suburbs, have it and never lose it.

Lev Kalmens  24:09  
Hmmm. I'll have to listen for it next time. 

Bob Levy  24:10  
Yeah. Yeah.

Lev Kalmens  24:10  
Yeah, talk to folks around here. So you moved to LA in the late 80s, early 90s?

Bob Levy  24:17  
I came home to Chicago after Brown, and worked for Channel 11. 

Lev Kalmens  24:20  
Right.

Bob Levy  24:21  
I got an amazing internship, the Irving B. Harris Internship in Public Television, which I was lucky to get. It was a year long paying internship that Channel 11 offered at that time. I was one of two interns that year, in the fall of 1983. I stayed at Channel 11 for six years. I was one of the three founding producers of Chicago Tonight, which is on the air many, many many years later. Six years after I came home, when I was 28 years old, I realized that as much as I enjoyed working at Channel 11, my real dream was always Hollywood. On the cusp of 30, if I didn't do it then I was never going to do it. I met my parents for dinner at the old Bagel Restaurant on Devon Street. I sat them down, and I said, "Mom, Dad, I want to move to Hollywood." My parents were amazing and said, "We knew that was your dream. We support it entirely. We'll help you however we can." That fall, in the fall of 1989, I moved to Los Angeles.

Lev Kalmens  25:32  
What was it like when you first moved?

Bob Levy  25:35  
To L.A.?

Lev Kalmens  25:36  
To L.A. Yeah.

Bob Levy  25:37  
I think I had six months of savings. I didn't make a lot of money at Channel 11, I can assure you. But I had money. I had savings that would sustain me -- rent, car, food -- for six months. Within three months I got my first job, which was a two-week freelance vacation relief gig at NBC. It was the Christmas vacation relief. It was Christmas 1989, three months after I got to L.A., and I wound up working at NBC for 10 years.

Lev Kalmens  26:17  
Usually you hear moving out to L.A., there's -- I mean, maybe it's more so for actors -- the struggle, getting eaten by the whole Hollywood system. Did you? It doesn't sound like you experienced that.

Bob Levy  26:37  
No, I can't say that I did. The first few months, it was a struggle to find my first job. As someone who after 10 years at NBC has now spent 30 years in working in entertainment in L.A., I'm a huge Hollywood booster. I think the entertainment industry is a great and amazing industry. The entertainment industry in Los Angeles is a wonderful life for people to choose. As much as it can be competitive and difficult to get your first toeholds in Hollywood, because it is a dream for so many people, it is competitive. But it's an amazing, successful, flourishing industry. L.A. is the world's capital of popular culture. There is so much activity and so much productivity. I always encourage young people who have a Hollywood dream to go for it, to pursue their Hollywood dream. As I say to young people when I talk about it, because I teach and I lecture and I'm actually lecturing to this year's class of Northwestern University Cherubs in two days, the film and video cherubs; I explain that I moved to Hollywood with a great Hollywood dream, and I completely failed at my Hollywood dream. The reason that I can stand in front of a roomful of 17 year olds, and proudly proclaim that I failed at my Hollywood dream is because you know what happened when I failed? I found a different Hollywood dream. And I managed to succeed at that different Hollywood dream. It turned into an incredibly awesome, fun, lucrative, wonderful career. There is so much activity, that if you arrive with one dream, and stumble into another dream it's the living example of John Lennon's great line, "Life is what happens while you're making other plans" because there is so much happening in the entertainment industry, in Los Angeles. There are so many different kinds of opportunities, and opportunities that we don't even know exist until we're there and they happen to befall us.

Lev Kalmens  29:00  
Why do you say that you failed at your original Hollywood dream?

Bob Levy  29:03  
I moved to Hollywood to become a screenwriter. Unfortunately, I happen to suck. I happen to be a terrible screenwriter. I wrote really bad screenplays that nobody liked. I was lucky to be working at NBC while I was pursuing that dream. Working as a writer/producer of promos -- the 10 to 30 second commercials for NBC shows -- was my day job while I was working on my Hollywood dream of being a screenwriter. So I had a backup. I had a day job that was covering my rent and my expenses, and allowing me to save money for the first time. Ironically, the day job led me to my big break, which was an opportunity that I was offered to transition out of the NBC on-air promotion department, and into NBC's programming department where I became a program executive and eventually a development executive working with writers and producers and studio executives to oversee the development of new TV series at NBC, which, in retrospect, turned out to be my big break in Hollywood. So, I failed at being a screenwriter and became what's known in Hollywood as a suit, a network suit, who tells writers how to write their scripts. Becoming a network suit at NBC in 1993, four years after I moved to Hollywood having sufficiently failed at my dream of becoming a screenwriter turned into a new career of being a network suit, which ultimately led to the career that I've been doing for the last 20 years, which is working as a TV producer.

Lev Kalmens  30:51  
Would you say that you ultimately did reach your dream?

Bob Levy  30:57  
In a general sense, yeah. The dream of moving to Hollywood, the goal of moving to Hollywood, was to work and succeed in some capacity in Hollywood. Early on, that took the specific shape of being a screenwriter. But, you're absolutely right, the overall dream was to become a working, thriving, successful, functioning member of the Hollywood entertainment industry, which I succeeded at doing.

Lev Kalmens  31:27  
What would you say were some of the biggest lessons that you've learned throughout, transitioning from one dream to the next?

Bob Levy  31:37  
Hollywood is such a personal, people industry. It's about building relationships. I happen not to be very good at that. Learning either intuitively being good at that and maxing out your skills at building relationships with people, building professional and quasi-personal relationships with people. And if you're not good at it, working hard to become good at it. Spending a lot of time and energy focusing on making the most of the relationships that you happen to be in proximity to; and making the most positive relationships you can. Because it's those relationships that are going to create new opportunities for you down the road, or allow you to achieve your best career goals. I mean my first and primary lesson in response to your question: is to work very hard at the relationship side of your job.

Lev Kalmens  32:50  
What would you say you're most proud of, whether it's professionally or personally?

Bob Levy  32:59  
Those are two separate areas that overlap because professional is personal so much in Hollywood. I was lucky to be a producer of three successful shows. I was the executive producer of Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries, and Pretty Little Liars. Shows primarily aimed at young females, at teen girls and young women, which was the mandate of the company that I worked for at the time. Some people have problems with those shows, but being a part of projects like those that really had an impact on our culture, had an impact on American popular culture, that somehow touched a nerve with a lot of viewers; not viewers of all demographic ranges. Men, my own age, many of them who never heard of those shows - but for the demographics that we were targeting, all three of those shows really seemed to strike a deep nerve, and engender a very avid fan base. To be part of something like that, that did strike a nerve, that will last a long time, those episodes are still very popular, and those TV series will last a long time in our culture. Having been a part of the process of creating those shows was a great life experience, and it's something that I look back on very fondly. Frankly, some of the relationships that I formed on those shows, the creator of Pretty Little Liars, Marlene King, is an amazing person. The intensity of the experience of creating a show like that or birthing a show like that is so powerful, is so strong, that either you will never work with a person again after an experience like that, or you are friends for life. That's how I feel about Marlene King, the creator and Lesli Linka Glatter, the director of the pilot of Pretty Little Liars, and many of the other relationships that I made during the process of creating those shows. I'm going to the wedding of one of the actors from the Vampire Diaries, who remains one of my closest friends. Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec, the co-creators of the Vampire Diaries, are still very close friends and colleagues in Los Angeles. Those are those are some of my highlights.

Lev Kalmens  35:27  
What are some projects that you're most excited about right now?

Bob Levy  35:32  
I'm mostly semi-retired. My last producing partner and I agreed in the most amicable way to go our separate ways. He's 20 years younger than I am, and he found a new deal to continue producing. I'm pretty much sort of heading in the opposite direction into semi-retirement. I teach part-time at the UCLA film school. I just wrote and published my first book, which is the first textbook on TV development, the process of creating new TV series. But interestingly, one of my former partner and my project is sort of getting a second wind, and all of a sudden, appears to be poised to potentially be a thing again. It's an amazing project. While I'm heading towards retirement, I feel like a little bit like Michael Corleone in Godfather III; they keep pulling me back in. If this project does move forward to pilot, or hopefully better yet series, it would be an incredible experience to have one last series. I promise it would be my last series, and then I would retire.

Lev Kalmens  36:47  
Bob, I want to thank you for coming down to the library and sharing your Lincolnwood Story with us.

Bob Levy  36:53  
Lev, we talked more about my years after Lincolnwood. But honestly, my childhood in Lincolnwood, going to the Lincolnwood Rec Park, hanging out at the pool, going to Niles West, doing theater at Niles West has completely informed and inspired everything I've done as an adult, and stays with me in the most wonderful, positive, warm ways.

Lev Kalmens  37:23  
Thank you.

Bob Levy  37:24  
Thank you.