In 1975, he moved to Dallas where he worked as a police officer and took graduate film classes at Southern Methodist University.
[1] After the making of these films he was offered the opportunity to direct commercials near the Dallas area, but he decided against this and moved to Los Angeles to attempt movie screenplays in 1978.
[1] While these low budget screenplays did give him experience in the business, it did not pay a great deal, so he needed another income.
[1] He worked on films such as Touchstone's Shoot to Kill (1988), Warner Bros’ Little Giants (1994) and My Fellow Americans (1996).
[1] More recently he adapted a novel written by Turk Pipkin into a film called When Angels Sing.
The film received universal acclaim and it ranked seventh in Premiere's list of the 100 best movies of 1999, which was a summary of the critics’ picks for the year.
It starred Robert Duvall, Michael Caine, and Haley Joel Osment in a story about a young boy staying with his strange uncles for the summer.