Speech By Steve Katz's Brother at his funeral.

Comments on Steve Katz for his October 21, 2005 Memorial Service:

When I visited Steve last week, which was my final time with him, the first thing he said to me was:  “I want you to understand why I’ve done this…there’s no fun for me any more.”  I cut him off, assuring him he didn’t have to justify his decision to stop fighting a disease that had put him through a living hell and left him a shell of his former self.  I told him I doubted I could have fought as long and hard as he did.  The very next thing he mentioned, again apologetically, was that he’d asked his best pal Jody to speak first at this service, but he wanted me to speak after him.  Again, I assured him this was fine, that Jody knew him in very different ways than I did, and I was honored to be his second act.  Then Steve issued a simple instruction, and said it with such honesty and dignity that it was heart-breaking:  “Let them know the kind of person I was….”

It’s not an easy task, but here’s what I came up with.  Stephen Brad Katz was born in Lebanon Hospital in the Bronx on July 4, 1946.  A classic “baby-boomer,” he was the first child of Bronx-born World War II veteran Rudy, who saw combat in Europe and earned a Purple Heart for a shrapnel wound to his lower back, and his wife Diane, born in New York City but mostly raised in Akron, Ohio.  Maybe because of his illustrious birthday, Stevie early on exhibited great spirit, a sharp tongue, and a desire to enjoy life.  Although we teased each other mercilessly as kids, first in a housing project in the southeast Bronx, then in a middle class co-op apartment in Queens, and even fought each other at times, we were never sworn enemies and always wished the best for each other.

He nicknamed me Elroy and I called him S.K.  I was three years younger and we never had the same set of friends, but I knew some of his pals – like Jody, and took almost as much pleasure in hearing about his crazy exploits as he did telling me about them.  Like our father, who enjoyed telling us tales from his youth and especially from the war, Stevie was a natural storyteller.  Often, he told about episodes involving girls, and I came to realize that one of the reasons he loved hanging out with Jody, whom we both called J.H., was because the little guy was a stud athlete, a talented graphic artist, and very attractive to the opposite sex.

I’ll share one story, which is my favorite because it’s so oddly endearing.  We used to rent summer apartments in Far Rockaway in order to escape the city heat, and a big part of beach culture was learning how to smoothly pick up girls.  The summer when Steve and Jody were 18, they decided the best way to score was by becoming lifeguards.  When I first heard about it, I thought it was wacky because they were not big and buff like the lifeguards we’d grown up with; Jody may in fact have been too short, and Stevie for sure didn’t have good enough vision.  But they had a dream and what you have to call crazy energy.  They began preparing in earnest to pass the various lifeguard tests by hook or by crook.  Steve somehow got hold of eye charts and memorized several of them, so that he could fake 20/20 vision.  Jody actually slept on a board because they’d read somewhere that this was a way to stretch your lower spine a tad, increasing your height by maybe an inch.

After weeks of preparation, they finally went to a city pool where they were tested.  The written test was easy enough, as they were veteran beach-goers who’d boned up sufficiently on hand signals and rudimentary lifesaving techniques.  Then Jody was measured, and possibly with the help of supports in his socks (I can’t recall this detail with certainty), he topped out at the bare minimum.  He was also too light, but got around that hurdle thanks to fishing weights in his pockets.  And Steve lucked out when he was tested on a familiar eye chart.  The guy who’d worn eyeglasses at age three was suddenly an eagle-eyed 20/20. 

They were almost “in like Flynn,” to use a term from an earlier era generated by one of Steve’s favorite movie stars – big-time Hollywood adventurer and playboy Errol Flynn.  There was only one test left.  They were told to strip down to their bathing suits, hop in the Olympic-sized pool, and demonstrate their power strokes.  Steve Katz and Jody Hillenbrand jumped in and gave it their best.  When they emerged from the pool, the veteran lifeguard administering the tests told them “Sorry, guys, but you look more like victims than lifeguards.”

I love this story because it’s crazy and true, and because Steve had the courage to tell me about it in great detail, without a hint of shame.  Like many of the comic novels he enjoyed reading growing up, this was a singular, memorable event, nothing to hide, but a weird demonstration of his “chutzpah.”  All these years later, as I think about it, I realize I would never have done it if I knew in my heart I wasn’t a power swimmer.  But they were less practical, maybe for the better.  If you don’t chase this kind of crazy dream when you’re young, when will you ever do it?

Steve was a solid, cooperative student at P.S. 119 and Henry Hudson Junior High School in the Bronx, and at Martin Van Buren High School in Queens.  To my great surprise, he struggled with the trombone for a year in junior high, and also fenced for a year, again pursuits which I found strange but admirable.  When we moved to Queens, he bought an acoustic guitar and a how-to-play book but never gave it the required time.  He was into music, but never big on rock’n’roll.  His favorite at the time was Johnny Mathis, known for his silky love ballads, but he also delighted in show music, especially MAN OF LA MANCHA.  It now occurs to me that he probably really related to Richard Kiley’s crazy quest and inspiring theme song – TO DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM.  Steve also saw non-musical plays, and on his recommendation I went to the Village one time and saw an astonishingly excellent and disturbing off-off-Broadway play called ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST.  He had a good eye, Steve did.

When it came time for college, Steve went to LIU – Long Island University, where he studied English and business.  He made a pal there named Michael Katz, who lived in a big mansion on Long Island and saw a shrink even though he seemed perfectly sane.  Absent firm plans, Steve stayed as LIU and earned a Master’s Degree in education.  When he got out, the draft for the Vietnam War was in high gear.  His old LIU pal Michael Katz easily got a 4-F deferment based on his “psychiatric” history.  Steve hadn’t planned that far in advance, and achieved a more honest deferment by accepting a teaching position at a low-performing Bedford-Stuyvesant public school. It was during this period that he started writing, awkward short manuscripts at first under the pen name Stephen Beckett.

Steve spent several summers in upstate New York as a camp counselor, a fun but low-paying gig.  We were counselors at the same camp twice, and it was revealing to me.  His kids adored him because he treated them as individuals and his supervision was relaxed and informal.  He kidded, teased, encouraged, and taught to the best of his abilities, and I’m sure many of his charges were mind-blown by his style.  At one camp – Tagola, we helped to organize a counselors basketball tournament which we called The Tagola Invititational Tournament, or TIT.  Although the starchy head counselor wasn’t happy about it, it gave the boys cover to scream TIT before and during the hotly contested games.  Steve wasn’t a player, so my team made him our manager, and he was a great wheeler-dealer behind the scenes.  When we took first place, he was every bit as proud as we were.

After I went to the Midwest for graduate studies in film, Steve got engaged to Barbara, who was six years younger and an undergraduate at Brooklyn College when he first met her.  I remember flying back for the wedding from Madison, Wisconsin, and how happy Steve was to have found the right girl.  Our Mom Diane was in Heaven, of course, and had a special spot in her heart for her first-born child throughout her life.  Tragically, she died of bone cancer in 1991.  It hit all of us hard, but Steve the hardest.

I was still in graduate school when Steve informed me he was applying to the American Film Institute in Los Angeles as a Screenwriter Fellow.  I knew he was a lifelong movie fan, a habit we got from our father Rudy, who caught the bug visiting silent film sets on rooftops of tall Bronx buildings as a child.  I also knew he thought of himself as a writer based on various unpublished manuscripts, but I was nonetheless shocked.  As a longtime graduate student in film, I’d discovered an enormous seventies sub-culture of ultra-knowledgable film geeks.  I imagined he’d be in competition for a spot at the prestigious AFI with characters like this from film schools all over the country and doubted he’d get in.  But he was accepted, which prompted him and Barbara to move to North Hollywood.  FYI, his affectionate nickname for her at this time was “Twitty or Twit,” often preceded by “the,” as in “I’ll run it by the Twit.”

Steve was good enough in his first year to be accepted as a second-year Screenwriting Fellow.  Even cooler, for his thesis project he adapted a novel from the 1940s, Lillian Smith’s Southern racial drama STRANGE FRUIT.  It was directed by his then-pal Seth Pinsker, starred Esther Rolle, and was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Live Action Short Film category.  It didn’t win, but the nomination was a tremendous honor.  When it didn’t launch his career immediately, Steve worked as a researcher at Paramount’s story department for a couple of years, during which time he wisely gave up manuscripts and started writing spec television episodes.  In time, and lasting for over a decade, he launched a solid career as a one-hour episodic writer, occasionally earning story editor credit as well.  He made excellent money, spent generously, and accumulated three dozen credits on shows as varied as HART TO HART, KNIGHT RIDER, THE A-TEAM, HARDCASTLE AND McCORMICK, THE BRONX ZOO, and L.A. LAW. 

He also sold two low-budget genre scripts outright for $50,000 apiece, and each film got made.  Later, he optioned a Joe Lonsdale novel with his own money, adapted it, and sold it to Universal for almost $200,000.

More important than his career, however, was his family.  Barbara and Steve had their sons Eric and Jeremy in L.A., and Steve couldn’t have been a prouder or more involved Dad.  Fortunately, his writing career gave him lots of time with his wife and kids and they were one happy family.  They had a great backyard at their Chatsworth home, with a big swimming pool and spa, and Steve and Barbara generously had my family over for  dozens of long, lazy Sundays, which culminated in excellent tri-tip dinners prepared by Chef Steve.  There were also holiday gatherings presided over by Barbara’s lovely parents Hy and Pearl Koppel.

When TV work started to dry up for him (Hollywood is extremely youth-oriented), he relocated to Plano because Jody and his wife Evelyn lived there and had shown them its attractions during earlier visits.  Ironically, Steve found his greatest success as a screenwriter in Plano.  Early on, he taught an adult-extension course in screenwriting and was approached by an out-of-work attorney named John Darrouset who proposed they write something together.  After nicknaming him “Plano John,” they proceeded to noodle ideas.  They wound up writing three scripts together.  One was a dud, but another sold to a company on the Disney lot for $750,000 upfront against $1 million if it got made.  It didn’t get made, but was a huge score for both guys anyway. 

Another script they wrote together hooked Bruce Willis, who thought it maybe could be the basis of a new-look DIE HARD sequel, but Fox didn’t agree.  It languished for years, during which time Steve became a communications teacher at Plano East High School, where he wound up thoroughly enjoying himself and forming real bonds with most of his students.  Thanks to the diligence of his agent, that picture is currently in post-production.  It was directed by Bruce Beresford, whose films include BREAKER MORANT, TENDER MERCIES, and DRIVING MISS DAISY, and stars John Cusack and Morgan Freeman.  Not too shabby for a “failed” novelist who could very easily have wound up a career teacher in New York City’s public schools if he didn’t chase his crazy dreams.

I’ve run on, and apologize for it.  But a powerful, vital individual named Stephen Brad Katz ordered me from his death-bed to “Let (people) know the kind of person I was.”  I hope I’ve done him partial justice.  He was fun, zany, teasing, big-hearted, and a dedicated family man.  He loved reading and writing, trips to Vegas and cruises.  And he loved playing poker.  We’ll miss you, Stevie, big time.  You had a good, adventurous life but deserved many more years.  You will live in our thoughts.