Sheldon Pinchuk Dies: Producer Of ‘Reality Bites’, ‘Any Day Now’ & Numerous TV Movies Was 84

Sheldon Pinchuk, a partner in the Finnegan-Pinchuk Company, which produced more than 40 TV movies during the genre’s 1980s-90s heyday as well as TV series Any Day Now and Northern Exposure and features Reality Bites and The Fabulous Baker Boys , died August 28 of Parkinson’s disease at his home in Calabasas, CA. He was 84.

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After getting a Bachelor’s and law degrees from UCLA, Pinchuk began his career as a business affairs executive at NBC. While working there, he earned an additional degree from UCLA’s film school and segued into a programming role. Stints at David Dortort’s company and as Head of Development at Warner Bros followed before Pinchuk made another Hollywood career shift, becoming an agent at CAA. There, he represented the husband-and-wife producing team of William and Patricia Finnegan. Based on his lifelong love of aviation, Pinchuk pitched them an idea that became his first TV movie, 1984’s Flight 90: Disaster on the Potomac , and the trio launched a producing partnership that flourished for more than two decades.

Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, the Finnegan-Pinchuk Company, housed in the iconic building at the corner of Coldwater Canyon and Ventura Boulevard, produced 50-some MOWs, features and TV series. Five of them were nominated for Emmys, and 12 have been accepted into the Library of Congress as works of cultural or historical significance. These include 1985 TV movie Amos , starring Kirk Douglas; 1985 miniseries The Atlanta Child Murders , featuring Morgan Freeman in his first leading role; and 1988’s Lincoln , starring Sam Waterston and Mary Tyler Moore, which won an Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries.

William Finnegan died in 2008, also of Parkinson’s.

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Pinchuk is survived by Barbara, his wife of 57 years; his three children, including TV executive Julie McNamara; four grandchildren; and a slew of friends and former colleagues who remember him as a kind and graceful man known for his great wit, intelligence and integrity.

The funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. September 8 at Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the John and Julie McNamara Fund for Leukemia Research at City of Hope at cityofhope.org/Sheldon .

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