Len Richmond

With an extended television background that includes writing work on such popular shows as Three's Company in the U.S. and Agony in the U.K., writer-turned-director Len Richmond honed his storytelling skills on the small screen for just over two decades before opting to step into the director's chair for the 1998 comedy Merchants of Venus. Though the Santa Monica, CA native's earliest professional writing experience found him penning episodes of the classic American sitcom Three's Company, Richmond soon opted to branch out overseas with the BAFTA-nominated U.K. comedy series Agony. A subsequent move to Paris found Richmond lending his pen to the French detective series Le Chinois in 1989, with a stint on the U.K. beauty salon comedy Split Ends following later that same year. In the decade following his work on Split Ends, Richmond eschewed television writing in favor of penning articles for such well-known magazines as Cosmopolitan and Forum -- where he served an extensive stint as a popular sex-advice columnist; and though his editorial work on The Gay Liberation Book may have signaled a shift away from his original career as a television writer, film reviews for The Time Out Film Guide as well as celebrity profiles in Time Out Interviews showed a writer still very much taken by the entertainment industry. In 1998 Richmond cemented his devotion to the screen by writing and directing the comedy feature Merchants of Venus. An independent comedy starring Michael York as a Russian entrepreneur in search of the American dream, Merchants of Venus (aka A Dirty Little Business) offered a gleefully irreverent behind-the-scenes look at the American sex industry and featured a bouncing pop soundtrack by London techno-pop duo Erasure.

~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide