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SHREWSBURY Real estate agent also does film, high techBy Peter Schworm, Globe Staff Correspondent, 3/21/2002 For both length and intrigue, Peter Bohush's resume is a page-turner. He's worked for start-ups and as a stand-up, consulted dot-coms and penned sitcoms. He appeared in the Tom Hanks movie ''Bachelor Party,'' and he's MC'ed hundreds of weddings. He's taught ballroom dance and he's sold ballpoint pens. He even had a turn as a carousel operator. In a varied and successful career, Bohush, 42, has plied trades as a filmmaker, screenplay writer, journalist, high-tech management consultant, photographer, and cartoonist, just to name a few. Before moving to Shrewsbury in 1994, where he now lives with his wife and two children, Bohush spent a dozen years in Hollywood, working on both sides of the camera on more entertainment projects than he can recall. ''The only ones I remember are the ones where I didn't get paid,'' quipped Bohush, a mild-mannered type with a dry, self-deprecating wit. Now a real estate agent in Westborough, among his other projects and pursuits, Bohush attributes his peripatetic professional life to a restless intellectual curiosity, a general willingness to try new things, and an ability to get by with little sleep. And though his career path may appear unconventional, Bohush says there's a consistency to his conversions. ''There's a logic behind the madness,'' Bohush said. ''The path isn't as radical as it appears, since I've really been doing the same job for 20 years. They've all involved the same type of creativity and freedom, and allowed me to work largely for myself.'' Many career switches, Bohush points out, were the natural result of his contact with various fields. After covering the business community as a business and technology reporter for Antelope Valley Press in California, he joined it. And his work in the entertainment industry sharpened skills he then put to use as an e-business architect, which entailed developing Internet projects for businesses. ''Managing a project is a lot like directing a film,'' he observed. ''You have to have a script, and you have a lot of the same personality types doing pretty much the same things.'' His versatility was also prompted by practical concerns. His struggles to break into show business framed the relationship between work and food in particularly stark terms, he said. Being a jack of all trades meant more chances for work. ''When you're self-employed in the entertainment industry, the more you can do, the more opportunities you have to work and put food on the table,'' he said. Bohush's latest project, a television show called ''Wicked Good Homes,'' debuts tomorrow on Shrewsbury's local cable access channel. The program, which Bohush describes as ''a cross between `This Old House' and `Hardball,''' will focus on home maintenance, real estate news, and general interest stories. Bohush will conduct interviews in the studio and shoot home tours on location. Bohush moved into real estate two years ago, weary of the constant travel consulting required. ''Some days, I would have breakfast in Boston, lunch in New York, and dinner in Atlanta,'' he said. Having grasped the commercial potential of the Internet early on, Bohush grew impatient with corporate inertia and companies' reluctance to modernize their operations. ''It was very frustrating. I could see the future so clearly, and I was jumping up and down trying to tell companies what this could mean to them,'' he said. ''A lot of times, it was like talking to an oil painting.'' His work in the high-tech sector gave Bohush an inside perspective on the dot-com collapse, which he said was caused in part by an excessive focus on technology for its own sake. ''A lot of companies spent too much, too fast, on the wrong things,'' he said. ''People care about technology for the lifestyle change it brings. They don't care if it's made with chips or chipmunks.'' Bohush now uses his technological bent to create virtual home tours for prospective buyers on his Web site. In contrast to consulting, he said, selling homes usually provides happy endings. ''With real estate, you see the end result,'' he said. ''With consulting, the process never ended.'' To satisfy his creative impulses, Bohush maintains a presence in many fields. He writes articles and reviews on technology products, and has continued filmmaking. He recently wrote, cast, and directed ''Geezers,'' a 30-minute digital movie about an elderly widower and his Army buddy who travel to find a long-lost sweetheart. Perhaps Bohush's greatest coup in filming ''Geezers'' was persuading state officials to close the Allston-Brighton tollbooth on the Massachusetts Turnpike for two hours during filming. ''It took some time; I wound up speaking to nearly everyone except the governor,'' he said. Bohush has filmed movies since high school, when he would shoot low-budget action comedies on Super 8mm film. Today's digital cameras give independent filmmakers a far cheaper, more sophisticated medium, he said. Bohush hesitates to predict where his professional path will lead, but said he never tires of finding new creative outlets. ''It's been a lot of small, radical steps,'' he said. This story ran on page W1 of the Boston Globe on 3/21/2002.
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