Blum, Len, 1951- : Len Blum is a highly successful Canadian scriptwriter, who began his career writing the script for "Meatballs", which became the highest grossing Canadian film of its time, and who went on to write scripts for films made in the United States by the Canadian producer Ivan Reitman.
Len Blum was born in Toronto in 1951, the son of Sidney Blum, a social worker. He was raised in Hamilton, where he spent his youth playing in rock and roll bands, including "The Brass Union" with which he wrote a rock opera "Fairy Tale". Among Blum's fellow students in high school was Dan Goldberg, who played in another band with Martin Short; Goldberg later became a scriptwriter with whom Blum was to collaborate on many projects. In 1972, Blum enrolled at McMaster University, where he worked on student film projects with Ivan Reitman, an older student who had already established himself as a budding filmmaker using Blum, Goldberg, Eugene Levy, and Andrea Martin, among other performers. Blum graduated from McMaster with a degree in sociology in 1975. During the next years, he pursued a career in music, working as a session guitarist and producer with the Sound Canada Recording Studio in Toronto, along with Dan Goldberg. He also wrote commercial jingles.
Ivan Reitman began producing television shows for CITY-TV in Toronto in 1975. Blum worked as a musician on one of Reitman's shows, while Dan Ackroyd was an announcer and Dan Goldberg worked as a film editor. Reitman went on to produce "Spellbound" with Doug Henning and then the "National Lampoon Show" starring John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray. In 1977, Blum wrote a two-man cabaret, "Midnight Opera", which was produced at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. In 1978, he wrote "After the Opera", which was produced by Theatre Passe Muraille.
In 1978, Blum was contacted by Reitman to come up with a scenario for a film about a summer camp, which became "Meatballs", shot in Haliburton, Ontario, with a script by Blum, Goldberg, Janis Allen, and Harold Ramis, and starring Bill Murray. "Meatballs" turned out to be an immensely popular film, setting records for the revenues it grossed. Blum, Goldberg and Allen won a Genie Award for their screenplay. Blum was invited to work on Reitman's next project, "Stripes" (1981), whose screenplay Blum co-wrote with Goldberg and which starred Harold Ramis and Bill Murray. At the same time, Blum and Goldberg wrote the script for Reitman's "Heavy Metal", a futuristic animated film which was created by animation studios in Ottawa, Toronto, and elsewhere.
Blum and Goldberg began work in 1983 on a script called "G-Men", which became the film "Feds". To develop the project, they moved to Los Angeles (although Blum's wife, Heather, continued her studies in Canada). In 1986, Blum returned to Canada, while Goldberg decided to stay in the United States and take out American citizenship. "Feds" was released in 1988, starring Rebecca DeMornay and Mary Gross. In 1989, Blum's wife became Dean of the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto. Although Blum and his family moved back to Los Angeles briefly in 1991, so that Blum could work on the Disney picture "Beethoven's 2nd", another Ivan Reitman film, they have continued to make their home in Toronto.
In 1995, Reitman asked Blum to take on a screenplay adaptation of the autobiography of the controversial American radio host Howard Stern. The resulting film, "Private Parts", was released in 1997.
