Writer on Aaron Sorkin Series Was 63

David Handelman, a print journalist turned TV author who labored on the Aaron Sorkin collection Sports activities Evening , The West Wing , Studio 60 on the Sundown Strip and The Newsroom , has died. He was 63. Handelman died Aug.

15 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York from issues of Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, a uncommon blood most cancers, producer David Van Taylor advised The Hollywood Reporter . Handelman additionally wrote for the 2006 CBS collection Love Monkey ; for season six (2008-09) of The CW’s One Tree Hill ; for season two (2013-14) of ABC’s Nashville ; and for season three (2015) of DirecTV’s Rogue . Most lately, he was a employees producer and author for nearly a decade on CNN’s Smerconish , which paid tribute to him on the air within the days after his demise.



Earlier than tv, Handelman was a employees author at Rolling Stone , overlaying everybody from Beastie Boys and Speaking Heads to Sam Kinison, people artist Howard Finster and the AIDS activists ACT UP. He additionally edited points dedicated to comedy. He then labored as arts editor for Vogue and wrote for publications together with The New York Occasions , New York journal, GQ , Particulars , Premiere and Spy .

Born in Scarsdale, New York, on April 23, 1961, Handelman broke into TV by writing a spec script for HBO’s The Larry Sanders Present with Children within the Corridor member Mark McKinney. (Handleman had penned a narrative in regards to the Canadian TV present for Rolling Stone in 1988.) Sorkin learn that and employed them to put in writing a contract script for ABC’s Sports activities Evening , which turned the 1999 season one episode “The Sword of Orion.

” The next yr, Handelman turned a real-life disastrous expertise interviewing Michael Jordan into the season two installment “The Candy Odor of Air.” In 2002, Handelman joined the employees of The West Wing for season 4 — Sorkin’s remaining yr — on the NBC drama, then labored on NBC’s Studio 60 on the Sundown Strip in 2006-07 and HBO’s The Newsroom in 2012. His experiences as a journalist knowledgeable many Sorkin plotlines and particulars.

He additionally wrote for the syndicated The Jane Pauley Present , ABC’s Good Morning America and CNN’s Within the Enviornment , hosted by Eliot Spitzer. (A lot of Handelman’s behind-the-scenes tales about his profession — together with one the place he bought his mom on the telephone with Bruce Springsteen — could be discovered right here.) Lately, he turned a frontrunner within the on-line neighborhood that fashioned across the band Wilco throughout the COVID shutdown.

Final yr, he served as a picket captain throughout the WGA strike. Handelman’s life was celebrated Saturday on New York’s Higher West Facet throughout a service that was attended by greater than 400 individuals, together with many trade professionals. One eulogy was delivered by McKinney.

Survivors embrace his spouse, Syd Sidner; his daughters, Helen and Nancy; and his brothers, Dan and Matt..