If the Green Bay Packers lost the Super Bowl, he’d stay home in Cedarburg, Wisconsin. But if they won, he’d move over 2,000 miles away to Los Angeles in pursuit of a screenwriting career. On Jan.
, 26, 1997, the Packers defeated the New England Patriots 35-21. Dick Grunert didn’t hesitate. He packed up his things and moved to the place where so many dreams do not come true.
“So, without a lot of money,” Grunert said, “and thankfully with a very supportive family who really helped out, I moved out here. And I did a lot of odd jobs.” Santa Clarita resident Grunert, now 50, was born and raised in Wisconsin.
He grew up loving movies, devouring them with his parents, his grandparents and others. He also loved reading Stephen King books. When he was about 6 years old, Grunert’s dad showed him two films back to back: George Pal’s 1960 film “The Time Machine” and Howard Hawks’ 1951 film “The Thing from Another World.
” “I just remember thinking, ‘This is what I want to do,’” he said. “I didn’t quite understand what the jobs were, I just wanted to do something like that.” Grunert said he saw his dad taking great joy in writing short stories and novels for himself.
That’s what gave young Grunert the idea that perhaps he, too, could write. “I remember in fourth grade, I wrote a short story and read it to the class,” he said. “Didn’t really go over that well.
Of course, I got teased. But, I mean, everybody knew this was my passion.” Yes, everyone knew it was his passion.
Even the Cedarburg High School drama director at the time, Janet DeJean Newton, who spoke with The Signal over the telephone about it. “I met Dick when he was a junior, and he said he wanted to do film and write scripts,” DeJean Newton said. “We traditionally did an annual senior class play, and at the beginning of his junior year, I said, ‘Well, how about you write next year’s play for your senior class?’ I didn’t expect him to, but he really did.
It was called ‘The Substitute,’ and it was a really sweet little show.” Grunert said the experience changed his life. He loved seeing something he wrote come to life and be performed by others.
He loved how the crowd responded to the material with laughs and cheers. And he loved the local press coverage. DeJean Newton said she’d ask Grunert to write other plays for her over the years, even though Grunert had already graduated.
“He has such an uncanny ability to write for adolescents,” she said. “He puts himself in their shoes, and they just absolutely love to perform his work.” After high school, Grunert went to Chicago to study film at Columbia College.
He got his degree in 1996, then went home to Cedarburg and spent his days working as a marketing assistant at a factory where his mom worked, while spending his nights watching movies and writing screenplays. Soon after the outcome of Super Bowl XXXI, Grunert moved to Los Angeles. He got right to work.
“I was like, ‘I’m not going to wait tables or anything like that,’” he said. “‘I’m going to try to just stick with jobs in the industry.’” He was a production assistant, worked the craft services table, and, among other jobs, he was even a personal assistant for Joanna Lee, the actress from “Plan 9 from Outer Space,” who’d gone on to become a producer, writer and director.
Grunert said he assisted her on her memoir, which would eventually become the 1999 book “A Difficult Woman in Hollywood.” While a production assistant on a UCLA Extension film, Grunert stood in for actor Dante Basco (who had played Rufio in Steven Spielberg’s “Hook”) in a scene with actor Troy Evans (who played the guy at the front desk in the show “E.R.
”). In the scene, Evans gives Grunert CPR, and it was in doing that scene, Grunert said with a chuckle, that he knew, without a doubt, he’d made it. After wrapping that project, one of Grunert’s friends from the shoot got a job at Sony Pictures Animation on “Men in Black: The Series.
” This friend immediately called. “She’s like, ‘They need another P.A.
You should apply,’” Grunert said. “And I said, ‘I don’t know anything about animation. I’m not even a big cartoon guy.
’ But she’s like, ‘It’s a job. You need a job. I’ll get you the interview.
’ I got the job. It was a P.A.
job, so I’m making copies and filing stuff, but I learned the whole process and pipeline of TV animation.” All this within the first six months in town. Grunert continued working as a production assistant in animation, but he’d climb the ladder to production coordinator on other series like “Liberty’s Kids” and the TV movie “Madeline: My Fair Madeline,” both in 2002.
He was a writer on the 2001 animated series “Alienators: Evolution Continues,” a production coordinator, writer’s apprentice and eventually a writer on the hit series “Adventure Time” between 2010 and 2018, and a writer on the 2016 movie “Monsterland,” the 2018 series “Apple and Onion” and the 2020 series “Yabba-Dabba Dinosaurs!” Grunert even tried his hand at voice directing on the “Craig of the Creek” series between 2018 and 2023, and the “Craig Before the Creek” TV movie in 2023. One highlight of his career was the 2003 short film that he co-wrote called “T for Terrorist,” which the Farrelly brothers produced. Grunert said he learned much from Peter Farrelly, who, he said, went through the script with him line by line.
While doing all that, Grunert was always toiling away on spec screenplays that he hoped to sell. One of those projects was a movie script called “Curfew,” which he wrote in 2014. Here’s Grunert’s abbreviated timeline of that project once he finished what he called his final draft: A producer became attached, they worked together on the script; rewrite, rewrite, rewrite; in 2017 the script made the Bloodlist (an annual published list of the best unproduced horror scripts), his producer sent it out, people passed, people gave feedback, Grunert totally rewrote the thing from scratch, and that’s when new producers came aboard and they began shopping the script around.
Finally, in 2019, Grunert had what he called “the best day.” He said he was coming out of a movie theater after watching Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” when he got the call. His manager and his producers told him they’d gotten a Paramount Pictures offer to make “Curfew.
” But then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and everything came to a screeching halt. During that time, the option period ended, but Paramount renewed the option for another 18 months that was, according to Grunert, part of a clause for COVID. “So, they got an extra six months out of it,” Grunert said.
“And then they re-optioned it for another 18 months. After that, they (Paramount) said, ‘We’re not going to renew the option.’ Now the producers are trying to find somewhere else to set it up.
” The project, Grunert said, has been on and off for 10 years. It’s seen probably 20 drafts, not including work from other writers. “It’s just a crazy business,” he added.
“And that’s probably way more common than not.” Mandy Grunert, who Grunert met in an online chatroom about a year after moving to L.A.
, then marrying in 2001, said her husband is a positive person. Despite the crazy ups and downs, he’ll push forward. But he gets discouraged at times.
“He’s his own worst critic,” she said. “I see that he’s talented, and I see that he’s really good at what he does, but I get frustrated when he starts doubting himself.” Grunert said, “I’m always trying to be optimistic and positive.
Like, I don’t put anything negative out into the universe because I feel it’s bad karma, and I’m a little superstitious when it comes to that stuff. But sometimes I’ll sit here and bang my head on the desk because of how crazy this business is.” It’s Grunert’s love for movies, nonetheless, that keeps him going.
He’s nuts about movies, his wife said, so much so that he even speaks in movies. “A lot of life scenarios and situations he relates back to movies,” she said. “He’ll say, ‘You know, it’s like when this happened in this movie.
’ I’ll say, ‘Honey, we’re talking about real life here.’” His wife pointed out that her husband even has an ever-changing stack of videos near the TV, which are things he wants to watch for his writing work or for the two of them to watch as a couple. And then there are the movie nights, which became a thing with what Grunert called a “small horror-film-group kind of community” out here in the Santa Clarita Valley.
Grunert and his wife moved here in 2004. Some of his filmmaker friends did the same soon after. According to friend and filmmaker Elric Kane, before he and his wife moved out to Santa Clarita, he hadn’t even heard of the place.
“I had gotten to know Dick through horror events in L.A.,” Kane said, “and we were looking at a house in SCV, so I asked if he knew anything about the area, and of course he did.
He lived there. When I heard that, I realized I would be OK living further from L.A.
, as there was another horror fanatic. And movie nights would follow.” Kane added that over the years, he and Grunert convinced other filmmaker friends to move out here.
Their viewing of “bizarre, unloved genre films” has been growing ever since. Grunert said, “It’s kind of like, on a Saturday, ‘Come by at 7, we’ll order pizzas, and then we’ll go through three movies.’ Well, two, typically, but sometimes we’ll do three.
” Lately, however, the group’s movie picks, Grunert admitted, haven’t been the greatest. “It’s the thrill of the hunt,” he said about choosing what they’re going to watch. Grunert’s wife, who’s not in the business, is still into movies and will sometimes join the watch parties, though she said she appreciates that her husband has this thing with his friends, and more times than not will opt to go out and do her own thing, especially if the movies aren’t good.
“He likes to watch all sorts of stuff, bad and good,” she said. “Although he probably wouldn’t say bad. He likes to say things are entertaining.
‘It was fun. It was entertaining.’” Nevertheless, Grunert’s wife loves her husband’s passion.
And she also loves that his passion carries over to others. “He’ll mentor people, meet with younger people who are looking to either be in animation or something in the entertainment industry,” she said. “He has a few friends that teach, and he’ll speak to their classes and answer questions, and he’ll be available to them after they meet.
” DeJean Newton said Grunert will Zoom with her film students back home, going out of his way to make himself available. And then there’s the work itself that’s inspired people. According to Grunert’s wife, her husband has received much fan feedback for his work, specifically the work he’s done in cartoons.
“He’s had people reach out,” she said, “and share their stories about how they (the cartoons) have helped their kids or them, and how they spoke to them and bring them joy and entertainment.” It’s very satisfying to him, she added, and it seems to make all the down times worth it. Grunert currently has a few projects in the works that are in various stages.
He said the recent writer’s strike and pending teamsters strike has slowed work, but he foresees things picking up in the coming year. “Overall, I’ve been lucky. And even though I haven’t written and directed a feature, I’ve written TV shows and my name is on TV.
” In the end, Grunert is doing what that Packers Super Bowl win serendipitously sent him out here to do. And maybe life would’ve turned out this way no matter what happened in the game. Because, after all, Grunert really has no other choice.
“(He’s the) most loyal and supportive guy you could meet in this industry,” his friend Kane said. “Reads all his friends’ stuff, and just loves movies.” Know any unsung heroes or people in the SCV with an interesting life story to tell? Email [email protected] .
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