Brian Gallagher

Brian Gallagher was born and raised in Cottage Grove, Minnesota, where he was told by his second grade teacher, Mrs. Fuhr-McDonough, that he would grow up to be a writer. While he's still working on the growing up part, Mrs. Fuhr-McDonough proved to be a prophet in her own right.

After learning to read at a ridiculously early age (2 years old, reading the Sears catalog to his parents), he first honed his writing skills as a journalist in high school (where he graduated alongside actor Seann William Scott), before heading to Winona State University. While the plan was to graduate with a degree in journalism, and then head to Chicago to become a sports writer, everything changed when he discovered a friend was writing a screenplay, and thus began his obsession with movies and screenwriting.

While he did end up graduating (eventually) with a degree in journalism, he shifted his focus to film, serving as the movie critic for the Winona State University newspaper, The Winonan, for two and a half years, which lead to him writing for MovieWeb.com, which ultimately turned from a part-time hobby to a full-time career in late 2007, before he moved to Los Angeles in early 2008.

For more than 10 years, Brian covered the ins and outs of the entertainment industry for MovieWeb and TVWeb, writing over 43,000 stories combined for both outlets. During that time, he also wrote his own screenplays, 19 in total over the past 10 years (11 features, three half-hour pilots, three one-hour pilots, two TV specs). He will start work on his 20th script, an adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, very soon.

Brian currently lives in Los Angeles (though that may change soon), and Doing Time in Hollywood is his first published book. When he's not writing about movies, or writing movies himself, Brian's hobbies include card throwing, retrogaming, and anything involving whiskey. You can find him on Twitter @GallagherMW, where he often tweets about Los Angeles sports teams, the Twitter writing community and stuff he overhears in Hollywood.