photo of Donick Cary

Donick Cary

Filmmaker
Good Trip Studios

Emmy-winning Writer, Producer, and Director Donick Cary got his start writing for Late Night with David Letterman. He continued writing for Dave at The Academy Awards and served as both Head Writer and “The Guy in the Bear Suit” on Late Show with David Letterman.
After five years in late night, Cary moved to The Simpsons, where he served as a Co-Executive Producer for seasons seven through eleven, winning an Emmy and penning many memorable episodes including “D’oh-in in The Wind,” “In Marge We Trust,” (Mr. Sparkle) and “Hell Toupee” (Homer gets the hair transplants of a killer).
Cary has since served in the same capacity on New Girl, Silicon Valley, AP Bio, Bored to Death, Just Shoot Me, and Parks and Recreation where he also played the character Vern Palletta. Cary has produced pilots for and developed with: Brillstein Grey, Sony, Happy Madison, Conaco, ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, FX, HBO, the WB, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central (where he was EP on The Naked Trucker and T-Bones show) and MTV where he had a hand in creating The Osbournes.
In 2004 Donick created the animated series Lil’ Bush for Ampd mobile cell phones. The show was quickly picked up by Comedy Central and became the first web series ever to move from the internet to television. Over it’s 16 years Sugarshack produced and aired hundreds of hours of animation for everyone from Fox’s “New Girl” to Netflix’s “Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics” to music videos for the likes of Moby and Yo La Tengo.

In 2007, after a rash of teen suicides in his hometown of Nantucket Island, Donick founded Musack.org, a 501©3 charity that provides musical instruments and classes to under-served youth around the world. Donick also serves on the boards of The Nantucket Film Festival, The Nantucket Comedy Festival, and The Songbirds Foundation.
2020 brought the release of Cary’s feature directorial debut: “Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics,” which was selected by SXSW and debuted on Netflix in May of that year, peaking at number one on the platform. Cary is currently EPing the Fox TV series “Welcome to Flatch” with Paul Feig and Executive Producing the animated show “Carol” with Dan Guterman for Netflix. Cary is also in production on a new documentary, “Hail to the Breadsticks!” a very personal look at team mascots, fatherhood, racism and what it means to be Native American in America today. Production has just begun on Have a Good Trip 2 for Good Trip studios.

Programming descriptions are generated by participants and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SXSW.

Events featuring Donick Cary
Events featuring Donick Cary