Biography
Playwright Robert Eisele enjoyed a successful and critically acclaimed career as a writer and producer for film and television, including the award-winning Denzel Washington drama "The Great Debaters" (2007), the Showtime series "Resurrection Blvd." (2000-02) and "3: The Dale Earnhardt Story" (ESPN, 2004). Born June 9, 1948 in Altadena, California, Eisele began writing plays while a student at UCLA, including "Animals Are Passing from Our Lives," which earned him a playwriting fellowship at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, California. Following his tenure there, Eisele taught acting and playwriting at Rio Hondo College in Whittier, California while continuing to write new plays, including "A Dark Night of the Soul," which was produced at David Mamet's St. Nicholas Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. The production happened to coincide with one of the city's worst winters in two decades, which prompted Eisele to head to warmer climates and focus on writing for film and television. His first small screen effort, a 1985 episode of "Cagney & Lacey" (CBS, 1981-1988), won the Humanitas Award, and brought Eisele to the attention of producer Michael Mann, who tapped him to serve as story editor for his critically acclaimed but short-lived "Crime Story" (NBC, 1986-1988). When the series ran its course, Eisele moved to CBS, where he made his debut as supervising producer for "The Equalizer" (1985-1989). This, in turn, led to a writing and producing deal at both Warner Bros. and Paramount, for which he penned and produced the critically praised TV movies "Last Light" (Showtime, 1993) and "Lily in Winter" (USA Network, 1994), both of which earned Writers Guild Award nominations. In 2000, he was executive producer for the Alma Award-winning drama series "Resurrection Blvd." (2000-2002) and earned the highest ratings for any cable movie of 2004 for ESPN's "3: The Dale Earnhardt Story." His most successful feature project to date - the education drama "The Great Debaters" (2007), starring and directed by Denzel Washington - captured the prestigious Paul Selvin Award from the Writers Guild and Stanley Kramer Award from the Producers Guild, which he shared with co-story writer Jeffrey Porro Two years later, he reunited with "Debaters" co-star Forest Whitaker to write and co-produce "Hurricane Season" (2009), a sports drama about a New Orleans high school basketball team's race for the state championship in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
