Niles Goodsite joined the Directors Guild of America in 1979, and he has been involved in show business ever since. He has worked on some of the most prestigious television productions in the history of the medium.
Niles Goodsite has amassed considerable experience as an assistant director on a variety of projects. He has been a First Assistant Director and a Stage Manager on such television productions as Live From Lincoln Center and Sesame Street. In 1986, Niles Goodsite was the Stage Manager for a TV special called Pavarotti Plus!, a celebration of Luciano Pavarotti's then-silver anniversary as a performer. The renowned opera star sang a concert of solos, duets, and ensembles, and the program was telecast from Avery Fisher Hall in New York.
Niles Goodsite has also worked on some of the most popular shows in the history of TV, including Married With Children and 227, for which he was Stage Manager over several seasons. In 1990, he served as Associate Director for an episode of 227, a TV series that lasted six years and centered on an apartment building numbered 227. More recently, Niles Goodsite held the title of First Assistant Director on the short film Blood on the Backlot. His responsibilities on that horror/murder mystery included oversight of the various technical aspects of the show, and constant communication with director Michele Deal.
Many industry outsiders, Niles Goodsite has learned, do not understand the role of a stage manager. He says that a stage manager is like a traffic controller of a live theater or television production. In a typical production, the stage manager assumes command of the production area once the director has issued his or her final notes to the cast. At that point, he says, the lighting, sound, props, and other crews report directly to him. Stage Manager is, in sum, a position of great responsibility, and one that Niles Goodsite has performed with distinction for many years.
It is a job, Niles Goodsite goes on, that requires both artistic and technical stagecraft skills, since it often requires dealing with creative temperaments and technical glitches at the same time. In addition to Pavarotti Plus!, his stage managing credits include a remake of the game show To Tell the Truth, and I'm Home.