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Crusader Chronicles
Meredith Lavender, ‘00
By Mary Ellen Eagan, ‘75
Associate Music Professor Jessica Waldoff, who was Meredith Lavender’s advisor remembers thinking, “There’s a student I want to watch” when she met a young Meredith Lavender. At ease on stage in musical theater, Meredith Lavender, class of 2000, studied opera at Holy Cross and relaxed by performing a cappella with 8 Track, a group she helped form first semester of her freshman year. Professor Waldoff recalled that Meredith encouraged 8 Track’s daily rehearsals so its members could remain attuned to each others voices. Professor Waldoff said, “The result was the sounds from those eight students blended to become a single voice.”
After college, Meredith and a girlhood friend wrote and performed Roommate Wanted. The play ran in Los Angeles and then in Chicago where Professor Waldoff, hosted by the Holy Cross Club of Chicago, saw a performance of the two-woman show. “It was funny, quick, and at times, very touching, and best of all it gave me the chance to hear Meredith sing again”, said Professor Waldoff. Now, Meredith Lavender had stepped off stage to work as a writer, and her current project, a single-camera comedy has been picked up by The CW.
Did studying English at Holy Cross spur your career in writing?
No, I studied music at Holy Cross, but I did take two English classes. One was Critical Reading and Writing; the other was Creative Writing. That one may have been helpful.
Then, how did you become a comedy writer?
Because I was a music major, I was always involved with singing and acting, and I went to Los Angeles after college to pursue the singer-songwriter side of the business. During those early days of seeking my fortune, Jessica Sullivan, my oldest friend and I wrote a play called, Roommate Wanted that we performed and anyone looking for a roommate could relate to. Naturally, it had some musical elements to it, but it was only 65 minutes long. We took the strategy that if we could bring the audience in, we could entertain them for that length of time. It opened in Los Angeles then we took it Chicago where we were both from. The entire process of finding a theater, doing our own promotions and marketing, building our own set, and starring in the show was eye-opening. The show had a very successful three month run in Chicago.
What was next?
I returned to California, and in 2004 I landed a position as the assistant to the president of MGM. I sat at a desk with two computers, eight phone lines and an incredible view of the marketing, creative, and financial sides of the movie business. I also met everyone who met with my boss. I then decided I wanted more exposure to production so I accepted an opportunity as an assistant to an actress on location. Meanwhile, my brother, Jay Lavender’s screenplay for The Break-Up with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn was moving into production in Chicago, my hometown. I wanted to work on that movie and became my brother’s assistant. That was the first time in the entertainment business when I could say, “I want my boss’s job.” I knew I wanted to write and to produce.
At that point did you climb into a garret to write?
Though I see those people in Starbuck’s, I knew I didn’t want a solitary life because I had written successfully in the past with a partner. I had the conceit for a television show and asked Marcie Ulin, a friend and fellow assistant from my time at MGM, if she would be interested in working on a script with me. We took the plunge in January, 2006 and wrote our first script, “Story of My Life”. My brother, the screenwriter, read it and loved it. His agent—now our manager—sent it around town, but then he returned to us with a request for other ideas that we could pitch. We pitched them a show called Gatekeepers and it became what is now Eight Days a Week, a show about four friends who are assistants to high-powered New York City executives. We’ve tried to paint the warp speed that these people work at during days that stretch into nights while living in cramped New York apartments.
The whirlwind that followed the proposal to write Eight Days a Week has left me humbled. The show was pitched to Hazy Mills, a production company run by Sean Hayes of Will & Grace and Todd Milliner, who grabbed our idea. In January 2007, after reading our script, the president of the CW (Columbia Warner), Dawn Ostroff, asked if we would change a few words. We inserted her edits and our script became one of the last pilots picked up in town, but we had to hit the ground running because its shooting would begin in April. We cast the last member of the ensemble on Friday night when filming was to begin the following Monday. We then waited until the end of May for the fate of the show. Dawn Ostroff called on May 31 telling us that the show would be launched in mid-season, but now with the strike, the show is in limbo.
What does a new screenwriter do during the strike?
Back in June I braced myself and prepared because I suspected writers would strike and that a strike would last a while because the Internet is too big for either side to take for granted. My research also told me that neither side had jurisdiction over the Internet. Right now, I am working for an Internet company.
Does that mean taking a break from screenwriting just as you’re starting?
No, I am working on a show, The Reinvention of Eve, for the Internet site, FirstWivesWorld.com. It’s a new format, a web-based show with seven-minute episodes, instead of 30. This website targets divorced women, and based on its own programming and content, it realized it was not representing the younger demographic of divorced women between the ages of 25-35. I am working again with Marcie Ulin (who is now my business partner), and we’re telling the story of starting life over, not the one that life is over. I like to write about smart, fun, positive women, and these shows will be hope-filled.
You seem to have a very good side of the business side of entertainment.
Frequently, people on the talent side have little interest in the business side, but Hollywood is always changing; nothing is a 100%. In the end I work in the entertainment “business”. Because I went to a really good school, I believe I had the ability to take a clinical look at what’s driving that world I am in and that allows me to be to be adaptive and to continue to work in the entertainment side. After all it was working as an assistant that fueled the reality that I could bring to Eight Days a Week.
Did going to Holy Cross help your career?
There was so much of what I did at Holy Cross that has been instrumental in my career. The academics were phenomenal at Holy Cross. Surprisingly when I arrived in Los Angeles, I came with experience in entertainment production from Holy Cross as well as my music degree.
I studied opera at Holy Cross, but for a musical release, I wanted also to sing something lighter, and I didn’t want to perform with the all-female a cappella group, The Delilah’s. That desire led Kim Harrison ’00, and me to form 8 Track, a coed and at that time Holy Cross’s third a cappella group. The College didn’t say we don’t need another a cappella group. We were told find out what is involved and go do it. Under the direction of my advisor, Jessica Waldoff, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Music, I stepped into entrepreneurship. We produced three CDs and developed a concert schedule that included performing my original song for the 25th anniversary of women on campus and fundraising events such as for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Professor Waldoff also encouraged my collaboration with the Medieval Studies Departments to produce a madrigals concert where 8 Track performed Elizabethan music. To this day, I remain grateful for the interest Professor Waldoff took in me as a student, an opera singer, and as a member of 8 Track.
While I attended Holy Cross, The ACT Theater became a student-produced show, rather than faculty-produced. In my senior year, I performed in Joseph and the Amazing Dream Coat, but I also acted as the musical director of the show so I was able to see both sides of the performance. I also had experience in film because for my deaf studies classes at Holy Cross, I produced a short film on deaf seniors in Worcester.
Holy Cross put a lot of trust in the student body. I felt the administration said, this is your college, so make it your own.
Do you have any advice to give to students who want to pursue a writing career?
I always give the same basic and simple advice. If you want to be a writer, write. The next thing you write will be better. Save your work because among your discards you’ll find a paragraph that’s very good and you may be able to use that paragraph in the future. Plus, when people ask you what you’re working on, you’ll have something to talk about. You also need to read to know your competition and to know what worked before. If you know what was successful in the past, you will know how your experiences can make a story relevant for today. Be a scholar of your arena.
To hear the singular sound of 8 Track including an original piece composed for the 25th anniversary of women at Holy Cross, click on the links below.
Woman (4MB .mp3)
Traffic Jam (2MB .mp3)
Jack and Diane (4MB .mp3)
Their song list includes, Change In My Life, Seasons of Love, MLK, Traffic Jam, Least Complicated, Woman, Jack and Diane, and Desperado
The original members of 8 Track were Meredith Lavender, ’00, Kimberly Harrison,'00, Jessica Racioppo, '00, Lauren Leonard Tallarine, '00, Brian Riley, '00, Colin Blair, '00, Steve Williams, '00, and Lou Ryan, '99. They were joined by Ted Lombardi, '01, Lauren Bourque, '04, Meagan Connolly, '00, and Matty Gregg, '00.
Mary Ellen Eagan, ’75 is a member of the GAA Board of Directors Communications Committee.