Turk Pipkin
Screenwriter, author and actor Turk Pipkin is the NY Times best-selling author of ten works of fiction and non-fiction, director of three award-winning feature documentaries and an actor known for his work in The Sopranos, The Leftovers, Scanner Darkly and The Alamo. His Christmas novel, When Angels Sing, was adapted into the film Angels Sing, starring Harry Connick, Jr., Connie Britton, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson. Turk also plays a role in the film. A former stand-up comedian who toured with Rodney Dangerfield and many others, Pipkin has written over 100 hours of prime time television. In the third and fifth seasons of HBO's series, "The Sopranos," he played Aaron Arkaway, the born-again, narcoleptic, boyfriend of Tony's sister, Janice. Other television and film appearances include Showtime's Hello, Sucker!, the NBC sitcom, Night Court, Christopher Guest's Waiting for Guffman, Rick Linklater's Scanner Darkly He is the author of the coming-of-age novel Fast Greens which the New York Times Book Review said was "Endowed with a vivid sense of time and place." Published in numerous editions in this country and abroad, "Fast Greens" was optioned and developed by Warner Bros. but never produced. In 2005, Pipkin co-founded the non-profit organization The Nobelity Project working with Nobel Laureates and other leaders on a trilogy of feature docs (Nobelity, One Peace at a Time and Building Hope) about global problems and solution. Pipkin wrote and directed all three films which he shot in 27 countries and 5 continents. The Nobelity Project films and other outreach have raised over a million dollars in proceeds which have built classrooms, clean water projects, libraries and science labs in Kenya and Honduras, as well as education and health care projects in Nepal, Mexico and the U.S.