Executive Reads: Leanna Crouch

Leanna Crouch is the President and Executive Producer of Lively Media, which she launched five years ago after two decades in the business. She’s currently working a docudrama series about wrongful convictions airing on Discovery and narrated by Chris Noth, titled I Didn’t Do It, and draws much of her inspiration from the following pages…

Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski
A simply astonishing travel memoir, brilliantly written by one of the best writers of the 20th century. He interweaves his travels across the globe with the writings of Herodotus, who may have been the world’s first foreign correspondent and who pre-dated Kapuscinski by about two thousand years. Don’t let the premise fool you, it is an engaging read. As a student of structure, his storytelling was instructive and provocative for me. TV producers get their inspiration from many places – film, art, magazines and popular culture – but some of the best ideas have come from books. It was so engrossing that I actively mourned when I read the last page.

Bossypants by Tina Fey
The stories of wildly successful women in media always cheer me up. Especially when the books are hilarious and deceptively subversive. Sheer talent combined with being exactly at the right place at the right time may not be always duplicated, but the narrative of how she prevailed is fascinating and the impact she has had on popular culture is undeniable. But what I may have loved the most is her truthful account of trying to juggle work and her family life – a feat she admits is an impossible task.  

Working: People who talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do by Studs Terkel
Could quite possibly be in the running for the longest title of a book anywhere. Television producers have been influenced by Terkel whether they know it or not. The master of the oral history technique, he concentrated on the stories of ordinary people who filled in the blanks of history. Famous historical figures get all the ink. Terkel concentrated on the remarkable stories, in this case, of so called ordinary working people. These are great stories in their own right. His radio show and his books woke up a generation of academics, writers, filmmakers and story tellers across the board. He taught me to look for the hook in the most unexpected places and do it with a sense of ethical responsibility. Yes folks, that can be done.