PERSON: Gary Trudeau

Garretson Beekman “Garry” Trudeau (born July 21, 1948) is an American cartoonist, best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Doonesbury comic strip. Trudeau is also the creator and executive producer of the Amazon Studios political comedy series Alpha House.

Today Doonesbury is syndicated to 1,000 daily and Sunday newspapers worldwide and is accessible online in association with The Washington Post at doonesbury.com. The strip has been collected in 72 hardcover, trade paperback, and mass-market editions, which have cumulatively sold over seven million copies worldwide.

In 1975, Trudeau became the first comic strip artist to win a Pulitzer, traditionally awarded to editorial-page cartoonists. He was also a Pulitzer finalist in 1990, 2004, and 2005. Other awards include the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Comic Strip Award in 1994, and the Reuben Award in 1995. In 1993, Trudeau was made a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Wiley Miller, fellow comic-strip artist responsible for Non Sequitur, called him “far and away the most influential editorial cartoonist in the last 25 years.” A regular graduation speaker, Trudeau has received 34 honorary degrees, including doctorates from Yale, Brown, Colgate, Williams, University of Pennsylvania, Tufts, Johns Hopkins, Duke, and University College Dublin.

In addition to his creating his strip, Trudeau has worked in both theater and television. He was nominated for an Oscar in 1977 in the category of Animated Short Film for A Doonesbury Special, created for NBC in collaboration with John Hubley and Faith Hubley. The film went on to win the Cannes Film Festival Jury Special Prize in 1978. Collaborating with composer Elizabeth Swados in 1984, he wrote the book and lyrics for the Broadway musical Doonesbury, for which he was nominated for two Drama Desk Awards. A cast album of the show, recorded for MCA, received a Grammy nomination. Trudeau again collaborated with Swados in 1984, this time on Rap Master Ronnie, a satirical review about the Reagan Administration that opened off-Broadway at the Village Gate. A filmed version, featuring Jon Cryer, the Smothers Brothers, and Carol Kane, was broadcast on Cinemax in 1988.

Also in 1988, Trudeau wrote and co-produced with director Robert Altman HBO’s critically acclaimed Tanner ‘88, a satiric look at that year’s presidential election campaign. The show won the gold medal for Best Television Series at the Cannes Television Festival, the British Academy Television Award for Best Foreign Program, and Best Imported Program from the British Broadcasting Press Guild. It also earned an Emmy Award, as well as four ACE Award nominations. In 2004, Trudeau reunited with Altman to write and co-produce a sequel mini-series, Tanner on Tanner, for the Sundance Channel.

In 1996, Newsweek and the Washington Post speculated that Trudeau wrote the novel Primary Colors, which was later revealed to have been written by Joe Klein.

In February of 2000, Trudeau, working with Dotcomix, launched Duke2000, a web-based presidential campaign featuring a real-time, 3-D, streaming-animation version of Duke. Nearly 30 campaign videos were created for the site, and Ambassador Duke was interviewed live by satellite on the Today Show, Larry King Live, The Charlie Rose Show and dozens of local TV and radio news shows.

In 2013, Trudeau created, wrote and co-produced Alpha House, a political sit-com starring John Goodman that revolves around four Republican U.S. Senators who live together in a townhouse on Capitol Hill.[8] Trudeau was inspired to write the show’s pilot after reading a 2007 New York Times article about a real D.C. townhouse shared by New York Senator Chuck Schumer, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, and California Representative George Miller.[9] The pilot for Alpha House was produced by Amazon Studios and aired in early 2013. Due to positive response, Amazon picked up the show to develop into a full series, streaming eleven episodes for its first season.[10] On March 31, 2014 Amazon announced that Alpha House had been renewed.[11] Production began in July 2014, and the entire second season became available for streaming on October 24, 2014.

While writing Alpha House, Trudeau put the daily Doonesbury into rerun mode. On March 3, 2014 the “Classic Doonesbury” series began, featuring approximately four weeks of daily strips from each year of the strip’s run. He continues to produce new strips for Sundays.