Wyatt Ben Bernstein

The consummate underground outsider, an influential enigmatic and inspired avant-garde singer/songwriter, filmmaker and comedian, Wyatt Ben Bernstein was born on March 27, 1977 to Jerome D. Bernstein, a pharmaceutical salesman and Beatrice Hoge, a nurse. As a child, he was a voracious reader, music listener, and film fanatic, often spending a lot of time alone in his bedroom listening to old time radio shows like The Hitchiker with Orson Welles and "Sorry, Wrong Number," reading and listening to dozens of books on tape, and acting as the radio DJ of his own show, WWBS, to which he recorded episodes into a tape recorder. In grammer school, he was assigned the clarinet in music class, but was disappointed having initially wanting to be a saxophone player, however he excelled at the instrument, having made 1st chair in an all-county concert when he was 12 years old. Two years later, he would quit playing after losing interest in the instrument when he gravitated toward listening to early Mississippi Delta blues artists, Bob Dylan, and British bands that emerged in the late 1970s,--primarily Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, and Led Zeppelin. A friend of his brother, who had been writing songs, tried to teach Wyatt how to play the acoustic guitar but he struggled to get it and gave up. Despite scoring a low score on his SATs, he was an honors student throughout high school and college and was an actor in over ten high school plays and musicals. In May 1995, after performing with his high school choral class in Toronto, the tour bus stopped off in Deposit, NY. Wyatt bought a $1 blackjack scratch off ticket and won $2100. This would be the seed event which would lead to his lifelong obsession with poker and roulette. In 1996, during his second semester at Binghamton University, he suffered his first clinical depressive episode, nearly dropping out of college but recovered six months later. At Binghamton, for four years he was a radio DJ at college radio station WHRW. In 1999, his depression returned along with a rare bladder infection that kept him in debilitating pain for six months, having suicidal ideation at times. After graduating from college, he was helping his father find clients for his fledgling pharmaceutical sales company while making a documentary about an upcoming rap artist in the South Bronx. These life events would become the idea for his first screenplay, Dogs, inspired by the Pink Floyd song, to which he wrote a 180-page draft of the script in three weeks. It was also at this time, that Wyatt suffered through his first manic episode, and was subsequently diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the summer of 2000. He agreed to stay at home under the watch of his parents and older brother to avoid hospitalization. Wyatt spent a large part of his 20's living in uptown Manhattan in Washington Heights, trying to establish himself as a working experimental filmmaker and a standup comedian while working as a travel coordinator at Sony Pictures Entertainment and occasionally landing background work as an actor on SNL and other shows. Later that year, he left his job to attend an eight week certificate class in film production at NY Film Academy and spent $5000 shooting an extended trailer for his Dogs script as something to show investors. His work experiences during this period lead to the idea for his second script, -Visions of Johanna-inspired by the Bob Dylan song, a surreal story of a love sick television employee struggling with jealousy and obsession over a former colleague dating his love interest and the confines of reality crack when he finds a mysterious store called "The Celebrity Simulator" that allows one to become any celebrity they choose. At 27, having been primarily a singer covering Dylan, Pink Floyd, and Grateful Dead songs with a few of his college friends, his former college roommate David Ellenbogen, now a professional musician and Raga enthusiast, and George Estreich, a talented backpack designer and artist, gave him a few intro lessons on the acoustic guitar. For the next three months, he rushed back home from work and would practice and learn cover songs for about two hours a night while continuing to jam and cover songs with them. At this time, Wyatt was temping with odd jobs, substitute teaching and tutoring math and English at charter schools, prep schools, and Harlem Children's Zone in NYC, and taking the bus from NYC Port Authority to Atlantic City to play poker in the evenings at least 2-3 days a week. Struggling for years without much progress or a big break, during the housing crisis of 2009, he moved back home with his parents, switching gears and was on track to become a NYC English teacher while working for the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau, when through a stroke of good luck and timing, he landed a job as an audio video technician at Citigroup. From 2011- 2016, he was stable and successful in this career, working in this position and moving on to other contracted audio video technician jobs at various Wall Street firms during the day, and continued dedicating a few hours a night to his creative pursuits. In 2016, his bipolar illness resurfaced again in a life-threatening way, and he almost died after suffering through a severe episode of depression with severe suicidal ideation, serotonin syndrome, akathisia and conversion disorder brought on by an accidental anti-depressant overdose. His symptoms lasted for several months and he was in and out of the hospital for much of the year, and out on disability from his day job. Because of involuntary body movements, he lost over 40lbs in a short amount of time. In November 2016, he underwent nine electroconvulsive therapy treatments and returned as an outpatient over the next year for maintenance treatments. He made a miraculous recovery and has been nearly symptom free and in remission for over four years. He sticks to a strict medication regiment, healthy eating, meditation, surfing, and exercise. He has a habit of personally reaching out to other musicians, writers, and filmmakers when he has an idea or project that he is passionate about. Purely as a writing assignment for fun, he adapted the Dean Koontz novel "Lightning" into a screenplay but the rights were unavailable. He also expressed interest in adapting the John Irving novel, "The Water Method Man" but the rights were unavailable. In 2013, he wrote up a one-page treatment for a Ron Fox spin off movie, the outrageously racist and hilarious Homeland Security agent from Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanomo Bay, played by Rob Corddry. Also during this year, he seemed to be making progress on the development of the "Dogs" project, having pitched it to 50 Cent and Michael Cera, whom he met at events in NYC as well as to Roger Waters at an event in NY, giving him a copy of the trailer hoping there would be interest in producing it. The project stalled, possibly due to busy schedules or lack of interest. For the last five years, after going broke numerous times and experimenting with advanced strategy gambling systems, he finally found success consistently supplementing his income through poker, roulette, and day trading. Over the years, he has read over 15 poker books, spent hours watching Youtube videos, consulted with professional poker player Jonathan Little as a coach, as well as the books of Dr. Edward Thorp, the legendary gambler and hedge fund investor who created the blackjack card counting system and tried to beat the game of roulette. He never planned on going the professional route so he could keep his health insurance with his day job. In 2017, he returned to his career as an audio video technician and technology events specialist until getting laid off in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Also, during this time he continued writing protest songs, love songs, inspired songs as tributes to a few of his musical heroes through cryptic lyrics, and a few songs that were inspired by and written specifically for Lana Del Rey. With comedy, he stuck to performing sporadically in the North New Jersey comedy scene and writing a few satirical Onion-like articles for the website The Spoof. He self-produced three demo albums from a collection of 40 songs he has written. His initial plan as of June 2021, is to have the albums professionally produced and/or re-produced to sound more professional, and also plans on releasing a compilation album of his 48 shows from his college radio music and talk show, with all four albums to be released on Spotify by the end of 2022. Often private and guarded, he rarely gives interviews but is active on social media, often sharing outrageous and often-times hilarious opinions on topical news, politics, celebrities, film and music on Facebook and Twitter.