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Fax Bahr

Co-owner

Bahr Small Productions

Age: 38

Fax Bahr has worked on some of TVs biggest recent comedy hits, including “In Living Color” and “Mad TV,” the latter of which he co-developed. But comedy sketch writing was hardly where Bahr envisioned himself when he set out to become a writer. His first stop after graduating from the University of Michigan in 1982 was not Los Angeles, but New York.

“I think I still … wanted to be Ingmar Bergman,” he said. “I thought I would make great art films.”

In fact, Bahr did make a brief trip to L.A., where he decided Los Angeles was not for him. It was during his short stay with some friends at a USC fraternity that he decided to show his short student film “Nuclear Beach Party” to the frat members.

“We thought it was pretty funny,” recalled George Zaloom, who has worked with Bahr on some of his more recent projects. “It was about post-apocalyptic people from Southern California who live underground.”

After several years in New York and a brief stint in Detroit, Bahr realized he would have to move to Los Angeles to get anywhere in the business. He went through the compulsory assortment of odd projects including a production of Bertolt Brecht’s “Mahagony” performed in a parking lot near downtown L.A. before he landed a spot with partner Adam Small on “In Living Color.”

The pair’s company, Hollywood-based Bahr Small Productions, is now developing a claymation series, “Lewis and Clark,” based on the historic pair, that is being developed for 20th Century Fox.

And what about his unusual name, Fax? No, he wasn’t named after the ubiquitous fax machine, which didn’t even exist when Bahr was born.

“It’s an old family name, William Fairfax Bahr,” he said. “They called my great grandfather ‘Fax,’ so I got called that, too. I get tons of s— about that.”

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