Richard Levine

After a brief onscreen appearance as a judge on the seminal series "Law & Order," Richard Levine broke into the television-writing business in 1995, imbuing an episode of the in-law-from-hell sitcom "The Five Mrs. Buchanans" with a healthy dose of volatile humor. In 1999 and 2000, Levine widened his repertoire of dark comedy as a producer (and sometimes writer) of the eccentric-horror-novelist series "Stark Raving Mad," on which co-stars Tony Shalhoub and Neil Patrick Harris helped make morbidity and mental quirks appealing. After trying his hand at hour-long dramas with two scripts for the Naval legal adventure "JAG," Levine boarded the lurid plastic-surgery soap "Nip/Tuck" several episodes in, writing and producing the story of a young man seeking an operation to make him look Japanese in order to impress his girlfriend's parents. As he continued to pen provocative "Nip/Tuck" episodes dealing with various bodily desires, Levine steadily rose to the rank of executive producer, serving as a recurrent director until the show's end. In 2010, the writer-producer brought his unconventional sense of moral complexity to the family-of-criminals dramedy "The Scoundrels." In addition to scripting episodes the sitcom "Normal, Ohio," Levine made his feature-film debut as the writer and director of "Every Day," a dark comedy about a couple in the midst of more than a few rough patches.