[8] He has authored two books, including The Address of Happiness[9][10] and The Dog[11] with Steven James Taylor,[12][13] Kirkpatrick was raised in Hudson, Ohio.
While there, he was the teaching assistant to the Dean of Film, Alexander MacKendrick,[16] the writer-director of The Man in the White Suit and The Sweet Smell of Success.
[21] As Story Editor, Kirkpatrick had a tasteful eye and helped develop such award-winning movies as Elephant Man, Ordinary People, and Terms of Endearment.
Kirkpatrick was also instrumental in replacing Hunt for Red October star Alec Baldwin with Harrison Ford in the Jack Ryan franchise.
Afterward, he entered into a production deal with Paramount and then produced The Brady Bunch Movie (1995), and The Evening Star (1996), a sequel to Terms of Endearment.
[33] He then formed his own production company Original Voices concentrating on smaller budget projects, producing the independent hits Big Night (1996) and The Opposite of Sex (1998), with Rysher Entertainment,[34] and Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny with HBO which won the Golden Globe for Best Television movie.
[38] In 2008, Kirkpatrick founded the MIT Center for Future Storytelling[39] with Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, in an effort to study the narrative in modern culture.
According to Kirkpatrick, citing the works of Victor Hugo, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Charles Dickens, story, “activates social change, transforms community, and changes lives.”[41]) In 2019, Kirkpatrick founded the Story Summit and in 2020, the non-profit, Storyteller Foundation, for the purpose of encouraging expert storytellers in print, film, and television to guide and inspire emerging writers.
Each line acts like a story within itself, full of imagery demanding its own voice.”[53] Other books include, Breakfast in the Temple,[54] and The Dog with Steven James Taylor.
David Kirkpatrick produced the 1996 HBO film Rasputin that won the Golden Globe for Best Mini-Series of Motion Picture Made for Television.