Industry Pro: Writer Eric Rogers
Today’s profile subject is a current (January 2012) nominee for the Writer’s Guild of America Award for Animation for an episode of ”Futurama” he wrote as an assignment while he was a writer’s assistant on the show. He was not new to “Futurama,” though, nor was he new to the television business, and his path to becoming staffed on a TV show demonstrates just what kind of trial and error (not to mentione perseverance) can be involved in getting one of these coveted spots.
Current position: Staff Writer, “Futurama”
Hometown: Middletown, Ohio
College/Degree: Miami University in Oxford, Ohio/English Literature
Did you have any internships when you were in school? No. I was always working to pay for my schooling and make sure that my mom and dad had to cover as little as possible.
What were your favorite TV shows when you were a kid? To go back to the fantastical elements of my imagination, I loved “The A‑Team” and “Dukes of Hazzard.” I also was always into bawdy comedies. “Three’s Company” was my favorite show as a kid even though I know now I didn’t get half of the stuff that was happening on the show.
What was it that made you want to be a writer? What made you want to work in television? I knew from the time I was 12 that I was going to write. I had a very active imagination as a kid. I was one of those kids who preferred being alone making up stories with GI Joe action figures more than learning how to hit a baseball or throw a football. Once I got to junior high and high school, I had teachers who encouraged me and pushed me to pursue it. And so I did.
What was your first job in the business? When I was a high school senior, I found out my mother used to work for this man whose daughter is Ann Donahue, a TV producer who has since co-created the “CSI” franchise. I met Ann at her dad’s retirement party. When I heard that she wrote for television, I just thought that would be the greatest gig in the world. I had no idea what the execution was or formatting or anything like that. But just the idea of telling stories on TV just sounded so cool. So I told her that I would love to do that. She told me to go to college and get my degree and, when I got to my senior year of college, if I still felt that way, to call her before I graduated and she would see what she could do.
So mid‑way through my senior year of college, I gave her a shout and she said, “All right, here’s what you need to do: You need to save your money. You need to be prepared to be poor and starve and you need to live in LA; but if you get here, I will do whatever I can to help you out.” So three months after I graduated from college, I moved to LA with nothing. But I lucked out. Ann was a producer on a new show called “Murder One.” Just before I arrived, a kid who was a PA on the show left and there was a position available. Ann got me in for an interview with Steven Bochco, who is the executive producer of the show and I got the job. That started my TV career.
As a PA, you get to see how everybody does everything, which I think is the most valuable job in production, whether it’s in film or TV. You also get to meet everybody and see what they do. That experience really solidified for me how much I wanted to write television. I have always had a blue collar work ethic and TV writing really is a day‑to‑day grind. Having a job to go to every day really makes me a better worker and a better person and, you know, just gives me some real focus.
Where did you go from “Murder One”? I stayed at Steven Bochco’s company for three years. When I wanted to start working in the writer’s offices, I asked the producers if I could learn to be a script coordinator for a pilot called “Total Security.” They let me do that, which was really cool. That was my first job working directly with writers. “Total Security” only lasted about six month, though.
And then I had a six month period of unemployment. I thought, “Maybe this isn’t going to work out for me.” I was planning on becoming a teacher, but then I got a call out of the blue from someone associated with “Futurama,” which hadn’t begun production yet. The writers had started to convene and they needed a writer’s assistant. Somehow, they’d gotten my resume. I still don’t know how. I was the first writer’s assistant for the show and that began my relationship with the writers, most of whom still work on it. I did that for two years, which ended up being about three seasons. I got my first writing credit when I co‑wrote the season two finale.
I got a little burned out after that because we were working so hard and there was no time for anything else. I had just recently met my future wife, who was moving over from Australia. I knew if she was coming here to be with me, I needed a different job so I could have time with her. I stepped away from the show to concentrate on writing, which worked out because while I was working on “Futurama,” I had started writing for Matt Groening’s comic book company, Bongo Comics, which does “The Simpsons” comics and “Futurama” comics. I was lucky in the sense that I could afford to leave a full‑time job and just write freelance comic books and pay the bills while I got to know Katie.
Eventually, though, I realized that I needed insurance and the kind of day‑to‑day grind that I enjoy. That started to gnaw at me again. I wanted to be back in TV. “NYPD Blue” called me and they were looking for a script coordinator for the seventh season of the show. I stayed for the show’s final five seasons, during which time I got a produced writing credit on the show, which was great. So I bounced back and forth from comedy and drama quite a bit, which was really valuable because it allowed me to figure out what type of writer I wanted to be, what type of writing excited me, and what kind of writer’s room or writing experience I wanted. After “NYPD Blue” ended, I took a slew of script coordinating jobs on shows that either would last a season or two or just weren’t very fulfilling experiences, like “Raising the Bar” and “The New 90210.”
“Futurama” was picked back up in the spring of 2009. As soon as I heard it was coming back, I called David Cohen, the show runner, and told him I wanted to write for the show. I’d been writing the “Futurama” comics for almost 10 years at that point, so my ‘sell’ was that I was still immersed in the world. I knew the voices. He could hire me and I’d come in and not miss a beat. But he couldn’t bring me on as a staff writer because he’d already spent his writing budget on the higher level guys that came back. But he really wanted me on the show so we agreed that I would come back as a writer’s assistant, but I would get my own produced script. So I came back to the show in 2009, and we did 26 episodes; one of which was my first full writing credit on a sitcom or animated show. And after those 26 episodes, we got picked up for another 26 more. And then that’s when I got promoted to staff writer, which is the middle of the writing season that we’re in right now. So far, I have written two scripts out of the episodes that we’re working on. I may be doing another.
You were just nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award. Was that for the episode you wrote for last season? Yes. “The Silence of the Clamps,” the episode that I asked for when I was a writer’s assistant is the one that I am nominated for, which is just craziness. It’s just been an amazing ride since I’ve been back with the show. It just keeps getting better. The awards will be given out in February.
What do you consider your big break? Writing that “The Silence of the Clamps” episode. That script led the team that I work with to trust me. If they give me an assignment, they’ll get a good draft back for us to do to rewrite in the writer’s room. It’s been such a spring board for my career. It’s one thing to have a freelance episode under your belt and on your resume. But once you are on a staff full time and you start to accumulate credits, everybody starts to take you seriously.
Did you have representation when you went back to “Futurama”? I had a manager who I had started working with just before I went back. But it was mostly for the feature side of the industry. I did not hook up with an agent until I got promoted last March. I’m currently repped by Gersh.
What’s the best career advice you ever got? The best career advice I have ever received or that I can give is that you need to always be writing. You can’t just write one script and think that that’s it. Your career is not going to be built on one screenplay sale or one staff writing job or one comic book script. It can be very easy to get frustrated, after a year’s time of nothing happening. And there’s a tendency to think that somebody like J.J. Abrams just became a monster show runner, director, writer out of the blue or that Aaron Sorkin wrote one great thing and then was suddenly a rock star. That’s not the case. So once you’re done with the one script, start working on the next.
Now I’m looking for a “eureka” moment when you realized you did or did not want to do something or that you should do something different. I had one particular job. I won’t name names but I worked for a particular producer as an assistant during that period after “NYPD Blue” and before I went back to “Futurama.” I was brought on under the pretext that I would be working with the writers and learning things in the writer’s room. The job turned out to be purely a personal assistant job and I was unceremoniously let go just because the guy just did not like me. He said I wasn’t prepared to work in production, which I had been doing for 10 years prior to that. But him firing me was the absolute best moment of relief in my career because I
knew at that moment I would never again take a job like that.
Describe a typical workday in your current position. We get to work around 10:00 and convene in the writer’s room. Typically, we’re either rewriting a script a writer has turned in, breaking a new story assigned to a writer to go out and write on their own or rewriting animatics or colors of scripts that have already been recorded. We usually work to about 7 or 7:30. We’ve been doing it long enough that it doesn’t require work until 2:00 in the morning to get it right.
We may have already covered this. Worst job or worst day in the entertainment industry? Assisting that producer was the worst job hands down. The worst job I’ve ever had. [LAUGHTER] Not only in this industry. It was worse than when I worked at McDonald’s as a 16 year old. Flipping burgers to make extra money in high school was twice as good as that job. That’s how bad that was.
Conversely, the best job or best days in the entertainment industry? I think the best job is the one I’m in now. I am so lucky to be here, to have a job that I absolutely enjoy going to and that I look forward to every day. And some of the stuff that has come from this job, I never dreamed about; namely the Writer’s Guild Award nomination. I didn’t think I had a shot in hell of ever getting nominated for that. I had such little hope that I thought I was going to get nominated that I didn’t even know what day the nominations were announced. My wife called me. She said, “You didn’t tell me you got nominated.” “I was like, ‘Nominated for what?’” So I go to the WGA site and start scrolling through the nominees. My phone starts getting texts. Facebook starts getting these messages. I was like, No way. I could not even fathom that this was happening. It’s pretty easy to say that that was like the best moment of my career thus far.
What’s the best thing about your current job? The guys I work with. I have learned so much from them. I continue to learn so much from them. They are all fantastic professionals who understand that there’s a way to write a great show and produce a great show and that there’s also a time to call it a night and go home and be with your family. They are my heroes and I keep working to be them one of these days.
What’s the worst thing about your current job? I am going to tell you right now. There’s nothing bad about this job. I mean, honestly. That is the best answer I can give you.
I’m looking for a brush with greatness. It can be a celebrity encounter or just being exposed to someone being brilliant at what they do. My first year in the business, when I was working on the Fox lot as a PA on “Murder One,” Tom Hanks was working on “That Thing You Do” at the Darryl Zanuck stage. I had noticed that he drove this pickup truck and I knew where he parked. Being very ballsy, I left the first (crappy) screenplay I had ever written on the windshield of his truck. I didn’t think anything would ever come of it; he’ll just throw it away or whatever. About a week later, I get a call from CAA and they’re like, “Hello, Mr. Rogers. Mr. Hanks sent your script over to us. We wanted to know how you came into contact with him.” I just told them straight out, “I don’t know him. I just put my script on his car.” They were very polite. They told me they couldn’t accept unsolicited scripts but thought I’d be happy to know he sent it over for me.
The next day I saw him sitting outside of the Zanuck Theater taking a break. And I got the guts to walk up to him. I put my hand out and said, “You know, I’m the kid who put the script on your car. I just want to say thanks for not throwing it away.” He was very, very kind and gracious. He said, “Well, there are certain ways we do things in this town. Now, you’ve learned that that’s the way this works. Next time we’ll do it differently, right?” I was like, “All right, sir.” That’s my one fun story with a megastar in this town.
That’s wonderful. Okay, so what’s the one thing you wish you would have known when you started? This kind of goes back to something I said earlier. No matter how successful someone is or how quickly they become successful, success is never overnight in this industry. Especially back in the day, you would read about people selling scripts for millions of dollars or, you know, getting two shows on the air. In a sound bite, it seems like they just stepped off the bus and the town suddenly put their arms around them and threw them a bunch of money. It would have been great to know that it takes a lot of years of writing and getting to know people in this industry and developing relationships. You know, all those things come together to build a career and, you know, that’s the kind of thing that I wish I had known. You know, that you just can’t write a crappy screenplay and put it on Tom Hanks’ car and sell it for a million bucks.
Last question. So what’s your next move? I would love to ride out the “Futurama” train as long as Comedy Central keeps picking it up and as long as the guys in the room don’t get sick of me. Outside of “Futurama,” I have an animated feature I’ve written that I’ve got pitch meetings set up for. It’s been a pet project for three years and finally being able to send it out and meet people about it is pretty exciting. I’m also optioning a book about the creators of “Superman” called “Men of Tomorrow.”
If you want to read about other TV writers, check out these profiles of Amanda Segel and Sterling Anderson.
Know anyone who could use an entertainment industry insider? Encourage them to sign up on the YII home page to receive our Mogul Mindset eBlasts today!
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Tags: Eric Rogers, Futurama, Murder One, NYPD Blue
