A story about Tim Minear
During his shoeless, cotton-picking youth in the Carolinas, people didn’t expect much from Tim Minear. Maybe a liquor-store robbery and a stint upstate, but certainly not a merit scholarship to Morehouse, Atlanta’s historically black men’s college.
Although he grew up in a fundamentalist Baptist church and music was forbidden in his home, Minear fought for and eventually won a starting position on Morehouse’s award-winning marching band. It’s here that he learned the true meaning of hard work, he often says; tubas are pretty heavy.
After graduating cum laude with a BA in Art History, Minear moved on to graduate work in early Romanesque architecture at the Sorbonne in Paris. A short-lived marriage to a Spanish exchange student failed after it was revealed that Minear’s gut-wrenching aversion to paella was permanent.
Returning to the States in 1994, Minear soon accepted a teaching position at Cal State Northridge, where his habit of riding a unicycle to work initially drew stares but soon became a familiar sight on campus.
In fall of 1996, Minear decided that what he really wanted to do was direct, and his self-financed short film “Nine Squirrels: A History of Manhood” played to rave reviews at nearly two local film festivals.
Minear currently resides in North Hollywood with his Labradoodle, Buckworth. He’s working on a feature-length screenplay, tentatively titled “Burbank Confidential”.
