Skaaren, Warren, 1946-1990

American screenwriter; first director of the Texas Film Commission.

Screenwriter Warren Edward Skaaren, son of Morris and Pearl Skaaren, was born in Rochester, Minnesota, on March 9, 1946. He graduated from Rochester Community College in 1966 and enrolled at Rice University in Houston, Texas. There he met Helen Griffin, whom he married on March 7, 1969 (separated, 1989). Upon his graduation from Rice in 1969 with a degree in art, Skaaren, who had served as student body president during his final year of college, moved to Austin to work for Texas governor Preston Smith first as a human resources program analyst and then as an urban development coordinator. Skaaren lived in Austin for the remainder of his life.

In 1971, while working for Smith, Skaaren wrote a formal proposal to establish the Texas Film Commission and was influential in its creation. He served as the Commission's first executive director and remained in that position until March 1974, when he resigned to form the Skaaren Corporation, a media consulting firm. At the same time, he was a founder of FPS, Inc., a Dallas-based television and film production company, and later served as chairman of its board of directors. Skaaren also worked on documentaries, commercials, and various other projects. Breakaway, a documentary about Walter Yates' life in the Alaskan wilderness which Skaaren wrote and directed, was released in 1978.

In 1983, under the sponsorship of Fred Fox, Skaaren completed the script Of East and West, about the Nepalese soldiers the Gurkhas. Although the script was never produced, it gained Skaaren an agent, Mike Simpson at the William Morris Agency, and attracted the attention of Dawn Steel at Paramount, who hired Skaaren to rewrite the screenplay of Fire with Fire . Following that, Skaaren was hired to rewrite the script of Top Gun ; its box-office success established his reputation as a script doctor. Skaaren went on to work on the scripts of Beverly Hills Cop II, Beetlejuice, and Batman .

Skaaren and his wife had seven foster children, and he was a founding director of the Travis County Foster Parents Association. In addition, he served on the board of directors of the Deborah Hay Dance Company. Skaaren established the Laurel Foundation, a private charitable trust, in 1986, and was also involved with the East West Center, a macrobiotic dietary provider.

Skaaren died of bone cancer in Austin, Texas, on December 28, 1990. His papers were donated to the HRHRC in 1993.