Bill Oakley

40

Bill Oakley : biography

February 27, 1966 –

The show was put out on a Friday, a night on which the WB had never broadcast before, at 8:00 pm, a time Oakley felt was inappropriate, and aired in front of The Wayans Bros., The Jamie Foxx Show and The Steve Harvey Show, all shows with which Oakley felt it was "incompatible". The show’s poor reviews and ratings of an average of 1.8 million led to its swift cancellation. Oakley concluded that the pair had been "very naive" with regard to producing the show, and that it "would’ve been better on cable anyway because it would never have appealed to a broad enough audience due to the subject matter." The 13 completed episodes were later aired on Cartoon Network’s adult swim block and the show garnered a worldwide cult following. After lobbying from Oakley and Weinstein, the WB eventually released the series on DVD.

From 2001 to 2002, the two served as consulting producers on Futurama. They worked for two-and-a-half days a week, contributing jokes and helping with stories. They worked most substantially on the episodes "That’s Lobstertainment!" and "Roswell That Ends Well". They produced The Mullets for UPN in 2003. Oakley and Weinstein have written and produced several television pilots. These include a CBS dramedy entitled 22 Birthdays, Business Class, a comedy for NBC about two traveling salesmen, The Funkhousers, an off-the-wall comedy for ABC about a close-knit family which was directed by Frank Oz and The Ruling Class for Fox, about a high school class who all got along, regardless of their social group. They have written two feature film screenplays: The Optimist for New Line Cinema, in which Seann William Scott was slated to star as a man born with no unhappiness gene, and Ruprecht, a Santa Claus-related comedy for Disney.

Along with Weinstein, Oakley was to serve as an executive producer on the Fox television series Sit Down, Shut Up in 2009. Oakley ended his involvement with the show due to a contract dispute between the staff and Sony Pictures. Sony refused to offer a contract which operated under the complete terms of the Writers Guild of America. Weinstein continued working on the show. His two subsequent projects have been without Weinstein. In late 2009, NBC commissioned a pilot for Oakley’s sitcom about "the youngest judge in a circuit courthouse." He wrote the 2010 episode of The Cleveland Show "Gone with the Wind". Amongst other projects, Oakley planned a live-action show where the characters are all robots, which would be made by the same people who produce the children’s show Yo Gabba Gabba!. Oakley began writing for the sitcom Portlandia in its second season. He became a co-executive producer from the show’s third season, co-writing every episode with Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein and Jonathan Krisel. He and his fellow writers shared the Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Achievement in Writing Comedy/Variety (Including Talk) – Series in 2013. Oakley and Weinstein will again team up to co-write and co-executive produce 22 Birthdays, the failed pilot they originally produced for CBS, as a pilot for Bravo. Doug Liman and Dave Bartis will also be co-executive producers. It is set to air in 2013.