Hundreds of summer school students mobbed the Science Center on Monday to hear Todd A. Kessler '94 field questions about his career as a writer and producer for HBO's "The Sopranos."

In the presentation sponsored by the Harvard Summer School Writing Program, Kessler also screened one of this year's episodes of the hit cable television show.

"There's no one path to take [into show business]," said Kessler, who did a special concentration in dramatic literature and playwriting as an undergraduate and wrote a screenplay for his senior thesis.

"I went to New York after college planning to be a bartender or waiter while I wrote," he added.

He soon got a job working as a script reader for director Spike Lee. But when he was offered a full-time position with Lee, Kessler turned it down.

"I told him my heart's not in it, reading scripts full time," Kessler said. "He said, 'You have something on your plate that's better than working for me?'"

Kessler said he wanted to go into screenwriting, so Lee hired him to write a screenplay. Kessler took him up on the offer and adapted his senior thesis into a screenplay.

After his work with Lee, Kessler went into television, becoming a writer for the short-lived science fiction series "The Visitor" on Fox and then NBC's "Providence."