Career
After leaving school, Lorre toured the United States as a guitarist and songwriter. He wrote Deborah Harry's radio hit single "French Kissin' in the USA" for her 1986 Rockbird album. Lorre also composed the soundtrack to the 1987 television series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with Dennis Challen Brown. Lorre shifted into writing, being a writer on the show Roseanne. Lorre's first show as creator was the ABC sitcom Grace Under Fire, starring comedienne Brett Butler. It premiered on ABC in 1993, and was nominated at the 52nd Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy.
Lorre's second show was Cybill, starring Cybill Shepherd. The show aired for four seasons on CBS and received critical acclaim, winning a Primetime Emmy Award in 1995 for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for co-star Christine Baranski. The show also won two Golden Globe Awards in 1996 for Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy and Best Actress in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy for Cybill Shepherd. Lorre's third show was Dharma & Greg, which was premiered one year before the end of Cybill in 1997. The show starred Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson as the title characters, whose characters were felt by loyal watchers to smolder with warmth and tension as they grappled with challenges of conventional couple-dom for the show's duration.
Lorre's fourth show was Two and a Half Men with co-creater Lee Aronsohn. The show focuses on two Harper brothers, Charlie and Alan (Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer). Charlie is a rich, successful Hollywood composer/producer and womanizer who owns a beach house in Malibu. When Alan gets a divorce, he is forced to move into Charlie's house. Alan also has a growing son, Jake (Angus T. Jones), the "half" who comes to visit the brothers on weekends. The show premiered on CBS in 2003 and has become the highest-rated sitcom in America. In 2011, however, CBS canceled the production of the rest of the show's eighth season following several incidents of production shutdowns allegedly due to Sheen's problems related to drug and alcohol abuse, which culminated in his verbal attacks directed at Lorre during a radio interview. Sheen was officially fired from the show, and later filed a $100 million lawsuit against Lorre and Warner Bros. Television for wrongful termination. Afterwards, CBS and Warner Bros. hired Ashton Kutcher as Sheen's replacement, and the show currently aired on its tenth season.
Lorre's fifth show was The Big Bang Theory with co-creator Bill Prady. The show follows two nerdy physicists living next door to an attractive young woman. Each episode usually focuses on the daily lives of the men and two of their equally nerdy friends, with a dose of absurdity from the relationship with their non-scientist neighbor. The two main protagonists, Sheldon and Leonard, are named after the actor and television producer Sheldon Leonard. The show premiered on CBS in 2007 and is the second highest rated comedy series in America.
Lorre's most recent production Mike & Molly premiered on CBS in September 2010.
Read more about this topic: Chuck Lorre
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)
“Work-family conflicts—the trade-offs of your money or your life, your job or your child—would not be forced upon women with such sanguine disregard if men experienced the same career stalls caused by the-buck-stops-here responsibility for children.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)