Biography

Reuben Gonzalez was born and raised in New York City. BA, Fordham University, 1981. NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Graduate Writing program, 1985-1986. MFA, screenwriting, UCLA, 2009. Reuben's articles and short stories have appeared in Black Art Magazine; Mestizahe Magazine; Aries Magazine; Hispanics in America; Bilingual Press and Arte Publico Press, among others. NEA grant recipient for playwrighting.

Reuben's award winning two-act semi-autobiographical play, The Boiler Room, has received numerous productions, including off-Broadway, San Diego's Old Globe Theatre (premiere), Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, Venezuela, Spain, Puerto Rico and Tel Aviv where it was translated into Hebrew. The Boiler Room is continuously produced at high schools and colleges throughout the U.S. and Latin America. Among Reuben's other plays are Tato and Louie on Fourteen' Street; Dues, Changing Scenes and One Son Lost, which he directed at New York at the American Folk Theatre, the Henry Street Theatre; and the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, among others.

In television, Reuben was working on his M.F.A at N.Y.U's Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Writing Program when he was hired as a writer by the Cosby Show to help write a spin-off show for Tony Orlando. Also in television, Reuben has written for the Wonderful World of Disney, Nickelodeon, PBS' Great Performances, MGM TV, Fox, HBO, Showtime and NBC. At Fox Studios, Reuben wrote the pilot as well as served as the Supervising Producer for "Empire," a 110 episode series, a coproduction for Fox's FX Channel and Mexico's Televisa. While at Fox, Reuben also wrote a sit-com pilot to fulfill a blind script commitment which resulted in Reuben receiving an over-all deal from Twentieth TV President, Peter Roth (presently President of Warner TV).

Reuben has written screenplays for director/producer Marty Brest (Scent of a Woman) at Universal, as well as Columbia Pictures, MGM, Disney (the Roberto Clemente story), New Line Cinema, Universal, 20th Century Fox, Limelight Films, RKO, ShadowCatcher Entertainment, Interscope Films, TYC Records, and HBO. Reuben's short film, Por Vida (for Life) was an official entry at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. Reuben's independent feature, Once Upon A Wedding, starring Esai Morales and Rosana Desoto, was produced in 2005 by Scott Rosenfelt (Home Alone, Mystic Pizza) for LaBoca Productions. Reuben also wrote and directed the feature, Mambo Café, starring Danny Aiello, Paul Rodriguez and Thalia for Kushner/Locke Entertainment.

Presently, Reuben just completed the feature Tumble Falls and served as script consultant on the independent feature Road to Juarez, produced by Scott Rosenfelt which is scheduled for release in 2014.
- IMDb mini biography by: C. Swift