FORSHER MEDIA GROUP
MY HOLLYWOOD JOURNEY
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My journey started when I was a small kid who found himself in the midst of the Presley organization. Here is my mom’s first boss, Elvis with her in 1956. The second picture is my mom, me and Colonel Parker in 1958, who took my gun and held me hostage.
During my middle school days, I watched my mom and her film production partner Adolph Zukor 2nd produce some shows. His grandfather started Paramount Studios and I learned a lot about the history of the town from watching Adolph and my mom work together.
After college I started producing documentaries. My first feature was created during my mid 20’s, Ticket to Hollywood which was hosted by Jackie Cooper, who inadvertently also found himself my career mentor.
I would go on to produce dozens of projects about Hollywood that would be licensed by the Discovery Channel, A and E, Cinemax, Starz/Encore, PBS, Pearson Education and multiple sales abroad. My second feature doc was Hollywood Ghost Stories. My third feature documentary, Hollywood Uncensored (1986) looked at how Hollywood tried to avoid dealing with racial and sexual issues during its ‘golden age’ and how it sometimes couldn’t avoid it, with censorship battles being fought in print, radio, by morality groups and the government.
In 1989, as part of my series, Hollywood Chronicles for the Discovery Channel, I did an episode on the subject of race in movies and how censorship battles occurred from coast to coast..
After nearly two decades of producing, I got tired of the Hollywood shuffle, and began to teach communication and filmmaking courses at the college leveI in 1997. One advantage my students had was my background as a producer and I found myself taking classes to Hollywood and showing them how the town operated.
I retired from full time teaching in 2012 and began producing again. Over the past few years, I revisited the subject of censorship in my hour documentary Censoring Star Trek (2019), which focused on the challenges Gene Roddenberry faced by showing a future with a mixed racial group during the same time Jim Crow was alive and well in America’s deep south. I also had the opportunity of developing and narrating a show about my mom and Elvis for the Austrian TV Network ORF, Elvis und das Madschen aus Wien ( Elvis und das Mädchen aus Wien (Doku) - YouTube
After a lifetime of experiencing our pop culture first-hand, I realized I have collected enough evergreen material in my archives to entertain the public for many years to come!
Jim Forsher
