Photo courtesy of Ed Baran Publicity Del Shores, left, Georgette Jones, Leslie Jordan and Damian Ganczewski all work on a Logo Network show called "Sordid Lives," picked up for a 12-week run.

Photo courtesy of Ed Baran Publicity Oxnard native Damian Ganczewski, who won an Emmy last fall for the HBO movie "Broken Trail," is executive producer of a Logo Network show called "Sordid Lives: The Series," to debut Wednesday. He is shown with Caroline Rhea, who plays Noletta Nethercott in the new show.

Damian Ganczewski has gone from "Broken Trail" to broken lives.

That's only in TV-speak, which the Oxnard native and Hollywood veteran knows well. Ganczewski, who last September won an Emmy as producer of the AMC Western miniseries "Broken Trail," has now turned his attention to "Sordid Lives: The Series," which follows the shenanigans of an off-kilter and dysfunctional Texas family.

The show tips Wednesday night at 10 on MTV's Logo Network and will have 12 half-hour episodes in its first season.

"It's kind of a white-trash black comedy," Ganczewski said. "It's kind of crazy. It's a really fun show."

Ganczewski made his comments by phone a week or so ago from a pizza joint in New York, where he was munching on some of the city's trademark thin-crust delights and hanging out while awaiting a charity benefit for the show's premiere. A similar event took place over the weekend in Los Angeles, giving him a chance to visit his parents in Oxnard.

The new show is based on the same-named 2001 film and play by director-writer Del Shores, and is loosely based on his family life growing up in west Texas (though the TV series actually shot in Shreveport, La.).

Characters include a lesbian ex-con country singer, a guy who dresses as the late country singer Tammy Wynette, a soap opera star and a trailer dweller. If that sounds like a stew of zany eclecticism, that's kind of the idea, indicated Ganczewski, the show's co-executive producer.

"They get into all kinds of crazy situations," he said, "but it's a show with a heart, too."

The ensemble cast includes Rue McClanahan ("The Golden Girls"), Caroline Rhea ("Sabrina, the Teenage Witch"), former pop star Olivia Newton-John, Leslie Jordan (Emmy winner for his role on "Will & Grace"), Beth Grant, Bonnie Bedelia and Wynette's real-life daughter Georgette Jones.

Ganczewski, 47, has more than 20 years in the entertainment business. He was born and raised in Oxnard and is a member of Oxnard High's Class of 1979. After two years at Ventura College, he transferred to Loyola Marymount University, where he studied film production and business.

His producing credits include films such as "U.S. Marshals," "Twister," and "Blue Sky," and for TV, behind-the-scenes retrospective looks at such shows as "Three's Company," "Dynasty" and "Diff'rent Strokes."

In the biz, producers typically come up with concepts, sell them to a network or studio, secure financing, oversee creative and production aspects, and deliver the final product.

Up next for Ganczewski is "Prayers For Bobby," a Lifetime movie shot in Michigan that is slated to air in February. It concerns a religious woman (played by Sigourney Weaver) who comes to grips with her homosexual son's suicide.

Ganczewski's also touting some TV work that hasn't crystallized yet and is "hoping for a second season of Sordid Lives.'"

These days, he calls Santa Monica home "when I'm not living in Michigan or Shreveport," he cracked. "You never know where you'll find me."

That includes New York, not that he was complaining. It's a fun town, the shopping's delightful and that thin-crust pizza he was working on was "really good."

Life, in his case, is far from sordid.