After living the first year-and-a-half of his life in historic Cowpens, South Carolina (best known as the site of a pivotal battle during the American Revolutionary War), Richard O'Sullivan moved to Forest City, North Carolina in 1970 following the tumultuous breakup of his parents' marriage.His dad, Ronald, a volatile ex-Green Beret who volunteered for two tours of duty in Vietnam, later remarried and fathered a second son, Terry. His mother, Barbara, raised Richard alone until he was ten years old, at which point she remarried as well, this time to a former police officer. Known for his sardonic wit even as a child, O'Sullivan rejected the Disney fare he was force-fed and embraced such films as Take the Money and Run (1969), Young Frankenstein (1974), and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). It was his love for those movies that inspired him to beg his mother for a Super-8 millimeter camera.Growing up in what he would later term "A very 'Wonder Years'-like neighborhood," O'Sullivan lived across the street from Jim Bishop , an actor who appeared in such films as Keep the Change (1992) (TV), Montana (1990) (TV) and The Last Game (1980). In addition, O'Sullivan's mother was friends with the then-wife of filmmaker Earl Owensby, a producer best known for converting an abandoned nuclear power plant into a giant underwater set for the Oscar-winning James Cameron film, The Abyss (1989).In 1978, while still a fourth-grader, O'Sullivan wrote a feature-length screenplay called 'Hot Water' and passed it along to Owensby. The producer was amused but opted against buying the script. Undaunted, O'Sullivan continued writing throughout his teen years, finding no shortage of inspiration in Forest City, a town once dubbed "Little Detroit" because of its abundance of used car dealerships.As he approached his twenties, O'Sullivan - buoyed by the works of heroes like author George Orwell, filmmaker Alex Cox and musician Bruce Springsteen - dropped out of college and began a career in radio. Both revered and reviled for his on-air antics, O'Sullivan was fired numerous times due to his behavior during live broadcasts.In the early 90s, O'Sullivan became a free-speech activist, battling against religious groups who were attempting to have the Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) removed from video store shelves. He would often times have his yard littered with religious propaganda and receive phone calls at all hours of the day informing him that he was "going to hell."In 2001, the O'Sullivan-penned screenplay, 'How to Suck the Brain of a President's Daughter' garnered attachments from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1997) star Anthony Head and actress Lindsay Felton, the star of Nickelodeon's "Caitlin's Way" (2000) and the film Grind (2003). The following year, O'Sullivan made his debut as a director, filming two independent projects, 'Poor Sense of Direction' and 'The Rejection Letters of Dan Lashley.' Then, in 2003, he co-wrote the screenplay for a psychological thriller entitled AfterLife (2003) (V) with David W. Richardson, the writer who penned the Tom Savini flick Blood Bath (2002) (V). That same year, O'Sullivan crafted a series of segments for NBC's Emmy and Peabody Award-winning "The More You Know" (1989) series.
