Some people get to college with an exact plan for where they’d like to be after graduation. Others seize opportunities as they come by, until they land their dream job. Binghamton University alumnus Gary Levine followed the second path, and is now responsible for bringing “Dexter,” “Shameless,” “Weeds” and other shows to primetime television.
Levine’s journey to the big leagues of the entertainment industry wasn’t always in the cards. At Binghamton, he graduated in 1974 with a major in theater and a minor in music. He shone here as a multifaceted actor, aspiring operatic singer and, in his free time, a director of fellow alum, actor Paul Reiser (’77) in his first theater piece — at HPC (previously the Hinman Little Theater). He also served as president of Harpur Chorale, and played on the basketball team as a freshman, to boot. Levine’s packed schedule eventually forced him to choose between the arts and athletics, and he opted for the former.
When graduation approached, Levine planned to take some time off and explore Europe. But the School of Management offered an opportunity he couldn’t turn down.
“Senior year, the School of Management put up signs [about] a new program the next fall — an MBA in Arts Management,” Levine said. “Here suddenly was this thing that actually struck a chord, because I not only performed, but I did run a few of those student arts organizations.”
Offered a scholarship to the program, Levine spent a bit more time in Binghamton until he received an MBA in Arts Administration, graduating in 1976 as part of the program’s first class.
“It absolutely opened my eyes to this entire field,” Levine said. “And even led to a job [at] an off-Broadway theater in New York that was desperate enough to call SUNY Binghamton to get fresh meat.”
Levine described his time at the Roundabout Theatre Company pre-Broadway, “when it was under siege in Chelsea,” as having been his “first experience on the firing line.” He spent a decade in the nonprofit world, eventually moving to the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, and spent five years as managing director at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where he still holds a board position.
According to Levine, nonprofit theater is a great place to start where “you are given all kinds of responsibility right out of the gate because of the desperation of the nonprofit organizations.” Levine said that he was passionate about his work there, but his career ambitions lay outside of the nonprofit theater world.
Through an entertainment industry contact, Levine was given an opportunity to work on a show in Los Angeles, which was a launching pad for him to eventually become a creative executive in television.
“That was about 29 years ago,” Levine said. “It’s been a good ride.”
We can thank Levine for the last seventeen years of great TV. At Showtime, Levine has served as the executive vice president of original programming since 2001, a role similar to his former positions as the head of drama at ABC, and as vice president of creative affairs for television shows at Warner Bros.
“The process [at ABC and Showtime] is somewhat the same, where I was always the one guiding the projects,” Levine said. “At ABC it was much more complicated because there’s just a lot more cooks in the kitchen … The process at Showtime is much, much more intimate, much more streamlined and much purer — which basically is that there’s a few of us that work on it and if we love it, we make it. And if we make it and we still love it, we order a series.”
However, because Showtime is a premium subscription network, Levine can get away with riskier shows.
“The needs of ABC are very different than the needs of Showtime [which] can do much more complicated, sophisticated and risky material, which is why I’ve been here for thirteen years,” Levine said. Showtime’s litany of recent series definitely fits that bill, with shows like “Nurse Jackie,” “House of Lies” and “Ray Donovan.”
While he isn’t singlehandedly responsible for the inception and manifestation of every series at those networks, Levine is a key player.
“The ideas don’t begin with us,” Levine said. “We’re the ones who hear them, we choose between them, we then cultivate them, we develop them and work with the writers and the filmmakers to make them as good and as interesting and as complicated and high-quality as we can.”
On weekdays, he works at Showtime, but on weekends, Levine pours his creative energies into his job as a cantor at a local synagogue. When asked what he think would have happened if he hadn’t stayed in Binghamton, Levine said that life’s twists and turns had a funny way of getting him to the right place.
“When I went to Harpur, all I did was spread my wings,” Levine said. “What were my interests, what were my talents that I wanted to hone, what parts of life did I want to experience now that I was out of my parents’ house and on my own for the first time, and I did all of that and, as I said, I had a great time there — met my wife there, and found my voice there in more ways than one—my singing voice, and probably my own true voice. So, it couldn’t have been a better experience.”
And his favorite Showtime series? Levine can’t pick just one.
“It’s like all my children, and I love ‘em all,” Levine said. “I love the variety and the range. I love the bawdiness of ‘Californication.’ I love the riskiness of ‘Dexter.’ I love the danger of ‘Nurse Jackie.’ Love the thriller aspect of ‘Homeland.’ Love the intense character drama of ‘The Affair,’ which we just started. It’s all over the place, but I’m very lucky that I get to work on such exciting shows with such talented people.”