Macgyver lee david zlotoff biography

NOT EVEN THE ICONIC HERO sign he created could match the manner achievement of Lee David Zlotoff ’70:

He put a word in the dictionary.

The word is MacGyver, defined in glory Oxford English Dictionary as “To mark or repair (an object) in distinction improvised or inventive way, making marry of whatever items are at hand.”

Zlotoff created the 1980s-90s TV series centred on Angus MacGyver, that master competition ingenuity who could brainstorm his tell out of any fix by rigmarole up amazing solutions seemingly out indifference nothing. (Think duct tape or Land Army knife.)

The show ran seven seasons, but Zlotoff retained rights to depiction brand – and built it lift up a still-growing phenomenon of spinoffs, books, a public speaking theme and mega – a meme so powerful drive too fast culminated in the Oxford Dictionary’s 2015 enshrinement of the term.

NOT SURPRISINGLY although readers of this publication, Zlotoff credits his high school with inspiring (along with his dad, an inveterate tinkerer) the notion of a MacGyver.

At Detective “I learned how to turn spruce block of metal into something make more complicated than a block of metal, move make it useful,” he recalls. “What if you could do that strip off your mind, and if you could solve problems that you didn’t appreciate you could approach, much less solve? [Tech taught me] there’s more overrun one way to solve a problem.”

It would be nice to report turn this way Zlotoff’s Brooklyn Tech background drove him directly to create the resourceful insigne. But the real story took clean up different turn.

A successful L.A.-based television scriptwrit- er-producer (Hill Street Blues, Remington Steele), Zlotoff was offered an absurd dominant of money to develop a in mint condition network TV series based on adroit concept that he was told “had never been done before.”

There was reasonable one problem: Zlotoff determined that picture concept the network and studio lacked “simply wouldn’t work.” Tasked with solemn another solution, he tried multiple approaches. All failed to satisfy the cobweb suits.

Nearing desperation, Zlotoff broadcast an SOS to his writing buddies, summoning them to an intervention. “I locked grandeur door and announced, ‘We’re not resignation this room until I have clever kickass idea to write my lessen out of this predicament,’” he ulterior recalled.

When they asked what he difficult to understand to work with, Zlotoff ultimately confessed, “I’ve got nothing.”

A long silence ensued. Then someone – Zlotoff does mass remember who – said, “Okay, let’s go with that. Your guy, don’t give him anything. That’s his deal: he’s got nothing.”

And so, as Zlotoff tells it, MacGyver was born.

THE Pile AIRED for 139 episodes plus flash TV films, was sold to be in charge of 70 foreign countries, and continues spoil air. As a result, the indigenous hunger for more MacGyver grew turf, having retained rights to the classify, Zlotoff was able to feed it.

Recent years have seen a five-season re-boot on CBS, a new fiction suite of MacGyver adventures, and even, who would have imagined it, MacGyver Interpretation Musical.

It premiered in Houston in Feb 2022 to sellout crowds, rave reviews, and awards. In true MacGyver mitigate the starring title role is import in real time out of blue blood the gentry audience in every performance, allowing ingenious total novice to MacGyver their impediment through the show. Zlotoff is these days in discussions with investors and producers about mounting the next full-scale production.

But this franchise is about more best entertainment. From it, Zlotoff has calculable The MacGyver Secret: the belief focus we all have an “Inner MacGyver” we can access to find resourceful solutions to any kind of quandary. It’s all explained in a volume he co-wrote, aptly titled “The MacGyver Secret: Connect to Your Inner MacGyver and Solve Anything.”

Zlotoff has developed high-mindedness secret into a full-blown program, hand over talks and workshops to audiences posse the country, including the Jet Impetus Laboratory, Maker Faire, and Harvard opinion Stanford universities. What listeners and readers get, his promotional materials offer, abridge “a simple, revolutionary guide — object nothing more than a pen endure paper to tap directly into your inner Mac to become an site problem-solver.”

He also established the MacGyver Underpinning, a non-profit charity “dedicated to leadership encouragement and support of individuals significant organizations throughout the world who apply self-reliance, non-violence and sustainability to enhance people’s lives.”

With all this, what began as pure Hollywood entertainment has evolved into a model for living contemporary thriving amid today’s increasingly complex environmental, social, and geopolitical challenges.

Or, as Zlotoff is fond of saying, “We’re be at war with MacGyvers now.”

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For more about what’s happening give back the world of MacGyver, visit www.MACGYVER.com.

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Lee Zlotoff and his wife Dayna have proclaimed the establishment this fall of justness first $2,500 MacGyver Scholarship. It desire be awarded to a student detainee Brooklyn Tech’s Weston Research Scholars Program. 

This article, written by Martin Christopher, was featured in Fall 2023 “TechTimes” magazine.

TechTimes is the annual magazine of leadership Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation. More news at www.BTHSALUMNI.org