René Balcer (born February 9, 1954) is a Canadian-American television writer, director, producer, and showrunner. Early life He was born in Montreal, Quebec, and attended Lower Canada College in Montreal. He studied creative writing at Concordia University under noted Canadian poet Deborah Eibel, and earned his BA magna cum laude in Communication Studies from Concordia in 1978. While a student, he took a six-month lecture-seminar with Jean-Luc Godard and worked as director John Huston's personal assistant during the filming of Angela. He began his media career covering the 1973 Yom Kippur War as a cameraman. He later worked as a reporter, editor and film critic for various Canadian publications, and made documentary films at the National Film Board of Canada. In 1980, he moved to Los Angeles, where he collaborated with cult film director Monte Hellman on a number of film projects. He later wrote screenplays for a variety of film producers including Francis Coppola, Lawrence Gordon, Steve Tisch, Michael Gruskoff, Martin Poll and Mace Neufeld. In 1988, he helped adapt Miguel Pinero's play Midnight Moon at the Greasy Spoon for KCRW radio, starring Ed Asner and Peter Falk. In 1989 he wrote his first television project, the movie of the week Out on the Edge which won the American Psychological Association Award of Excellence. This led to writing assignments on other movies of the week and for the series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Capital News, Veronica Clare and Nasty Boys. Career Balcer is noted for writing and showrunning the television series Law & Order, and for creating and showrunning its spin-off series Law & Order: Criminal Intent. He was hired as staff writer on Law & Orders first season in 1990, becoming showrunner in the show's seventh season in 1996. During his tenure as showrunner, Law & Order won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series; became a Top Ten drama in the Nielsen ratings; was syndicated to TNT Network in a deal which at the time was the most expensive off-network series sale ever to cable; received an unprecedented five-season pick-up from NBC; and tied Gunsmoke for longest-running TV drama. Balcer won an Emmy in 1997 as Showrunner and Executive Producer of Law & Order. He has also won a Peabody Award, a Writers Guild of America Award, four Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America (three for his writing for Law & Order, and a fourth