Michael Chase Walker Remembers Dan Blatt

Wow, so sad to learn of it. I’d rarely known someone so firmly in my camp when I was starting out. It was just 2008 when I last spoke with him about collaborating on a few new projects. He had just successfully put together a remake of Pelham 1,2,3 and was riding high. I knew Dan from the old Palomar days when we first met. He was dear friends with my uncle Ben Klein. I guess I never thought the day would come we’d lose him, at least not so soon. I remember Raid on Entebbe when it first aired, and how proud, indeed, he was of it. Ben Klein once told me Dan got his first deal by signing the PGA for television. He had pursued them for years trying to bring them to the network but was rejected repeatedly. One time after a meeting, the story goes, he pilfered a letterhead off one of the executive’s desk, and wrote a letter of interest on it. He brought the letter to ABC with whom he had a relationship, and that gave him the leverage to bring the two to together. Don’t know if it’s true or not, or just legend. But I remember him fondly and through many, many producing adventures together.