Schiff mostly sticks to business with his staffers, but they all know that he was a movie buff long before he became the congressman from Hollywood. (Several years ago, his holiday gift to each staffer was a DVD of “The Big Lebowski,” which Schiff often quotes.)
It’s less known that, like many lawyers in Los Angeles, Schiff has been writing screenplays on the side for years, which together amount to a kind of autobiography.
The first was a post-Holocaust story called “Remnant.”
As Schiff recalled, “I had an agent at William Morris tell me it was good but no one would want to see it — too depressing. Then ‘Schindler’s List’ came out, and I was, like, ‘Come on!’”
His next, written when he was a prosecutor, was a murder mystery called “Minotaur.”
“I had a friend who was a producer, and he said there were two answers in Hollywood — ‘Yes,’ and ‘Here’s a check.’ I was getting lots of yeses.”
But perhaps there is hope for his third.
“It’s a spy drama,” he said. “That one is a work in progress.”
