Co-founder of MIT Center for Future Storytelling, President of Paramount Pictures, Production Chief of Walt Disney Studios, naturalist, optimist, and author.
David Kirkpatrick has been a storyteller all his life. When he was twelve years old, his 8 mm film was lauded by Walt Disney who provided him with a four-year scholarship to Disney’s new college, California Institute of the Arts. At sixteen, David sold his first screenplay to Paramount Pictures. Over his thirty years in the movie industry, he has worked on more than one thousand motion pictures including the Star Trek and Indiana Jones franchises and Oscar best-picture winners— Reds, Forrest Gump, Terms of Endearment and Ordinary People. His most notable positions were: President of Paramount Pictures and Production Chief of Walt Disney Studios. He is the co-founder of the MIT Center for Future Storytelling and lectures at media departments at colleges and universities throughout the USA. He is a top-listed writer in culture, science, film, health and science for the internet magazine platform, Medium which is funded by Ev Williams, the co-founder of Twitter. He is the father of two, divorced, and lives on a farm in Central Massachusetts with his dogs, horses, and pygmy goats. He is the author of two novels, The Address of Happiness and The Dog. He is currently finishing his seven-year-effort on his novel about the legendary wizard, Merlin. He has traveled extensively for research to England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland in preparation for the novel.