My family and I have needed that health insurance more times than I can count. Over the length of my career, I’ve been able to get married, buy a house and, with the lion’s share of the work being done by my wife, Mary, raise three kids. The writers’ strike means the boom has finally gone bust. Television’s most recent ‘Golden Age’ set off a gold rush that transformed Hollywood. Television Column: Streamers profited when ‘the idiot box’ became art. Luckily, Netflix blinked and the offer got real - I was paid my customary per-episode fee. In spite of Kevin Spacey’s and David Fincher’s star power and a $100-million budget, my agent was told it was a “web series,” a new era of guild jurisdiction not yet subject to the minimums writers earn today. The first offer from Netflix that came through my agent was for less money than I had been paid in my first job 12 years earlier. In 2010, I was hired as a writer and co-executive producer on Netflix’s first big original content production, “House of Cards.” This was streaming television in its infancy. I learned the ropes of television production, going from co-producer up the ranks to executive producer, earning five more Emmy nominations along the way. In the days before the Writers Guild of America called on members to strike, the creators of hit shows, including ‘Shrinking,’ ‘The Last of Us’ and more, gathered to discuss the state of the industry.īy then I had not only written scripts, but helped cast them, worked with directors and supervised production on set and in editing. After that I did stints on “Mad Men” and “Nurse Jackie.”Ĭompany Town ‘It’s just pure chaos’: Top Hollywood showrunners explain the writers’ strike Later that same year, I went to work on “Six Feet Under” during its first season, and I stayed with the series through its finale in 2005. It was only my second episode of television. In 2000, I shared an Emmy Award for outstanding writing for a drama series with Aaron Sorkin, the show’s creator. My second job writing for TV was for Season 1 of “The West Wing,” and my title on that series was co-producer.
That movie got me my first TV writing job, a summer replacement series for ABC titled “Maximum Bob.” Three years later in 1998, I adapted an original stage play of my own as a screenplay, and that movie, “Jerry and Tom,” earned a spot at the Sundance Film Festival.
In 1995, I graduated from the University of Iowa’s Playwrights Workshop, and that same year Universal Studios optioned a screenplay I had written, earning me a union card in the Writers Guild of America.įor the first time in my adult life I had health insurance and a pension plan and an office in Barry Kemp’s production company (creator of “Newhart” and “Coach”).
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