He has since worked with Pulitzer Prize winners including Michael Chabon, Donald Margulies and Jules Feiffer, and acclaimed screenwriters such as Joan Tewkesbury, Barbara Turner, John Sacret Young, and National Book Award recipient Denis Johnson.

In features, he executive-produced and developed the Cannes Film Festival Special Jury Prize Winner Birdy (1984) starring Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Manson, through Sarabande, executive-produced a number of television movies, including Rising Son (1990) starring Matt Damon in his first major role, the Christopher Award-winning NBC film, Eye on the Sparrow (1987), and Nightjohn (1996), directed by Charles Burnett, which was the recipient of a Special Citation Award from the National Society of Film Critics and which The New Yorker named the best American movie of the year.

Manson entered into the series business as co-creator/executive producer of Against the Law (1990) for FOX and made his directorial debut with the ABC television movie, Those Secrets (1992).

He also executive-produced two films for TNT: Thicker Than Blood (1998) with Mickey Rourke, based on Bill Cain's award-winning play, Stand-Up Tragedy; and Baby (2000), starring Farrah Fawcett and Keith Carradine, for which Manson received his first Writers Guild Award nomination.