Jim Gray on set with agents and production designer for his latest pilot, Poor Richard’s Almanack.
ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
Q&A with Jim Gray
Orange is the New Black, Writer/Producer
By Victoria Romejko, Second-year IIC Student
Jim Danger Gray is most acclaimed for his career as an established writer and producer
in Hollywood, but his status as a University of Denver alumnus is nearly as exciting to
our department.
Examples of Gray’s work include Orange is the New Black, Hannibal (TV Series), High
Moon, Torchwood, In Plain Sight, Pushing Daisies, and Crossing Jordan. In his
upcoming project, Poor Richard’s Almanack (currently in post-production), Gray takes
the roles of executive producer and writer.
Gray attributes a lot to DU professors Tony Gault and Sheila Schroeder. He took as
many courses with them as he could and says, “I learned everything about good
storytelling from them. They laid the foundation for me to understand character-based
storytelling, which is the key to success as a writer. I thank them both silently in my head
every day”.
In transitioning from DU to a career in the highly competitive film industry, Gray started
out as a waiter in Los Angeles. He scrambled to make income with hopes, “to make
some connection, somewhere, sometime, with someone somewhat involved in the
industry.” After many unsuccessful emails and attempts to obtain a job as a writer, Gray
landed a role as Production Assistant (PA) on a reality clip show through his dad’s
friend’s son-in-law’s producing partner.
The reality program was characterized by individuals submitting footage of themselves
narrowly escaping death. As part of his PA duties, every week Gray examined the
countless VHS tapes rolling in. However, most of the candidates unfortunately, “missed
the part where we asked for people who ESCAPED death. I was watching people die on
camera for a living. It still haunts me.”
When the show was “unsurprisingly cancelled,” Gray ditched the Hollywood scene and
had plans to join the Marines. However, he happened to cross paths with a fellow DU
graduate, introduced to him by Sheila Schroeder. This fellow DU grad offered him a PA
job in the writer’s office for the hit TV series Crossing Jordan. Over the course of several
seasons Gray worked his way up to pitching episodes until the show agreed to let him
write a script.
Fortunately, once the show had run its course, Gray had made enough of an impression
in the industry and had written sufficient sample scripts that he was able to collaborate
with other writers, including the creator for Pushing Daisies, Bryan Fuller.
Gray says about Fuller: “He gave me my first staff writing job on the show and the rest
has been history. I landed great agents and have been making a living as a writer ever
since.”
Gray draws the majority of his creative inspiration from old movies.
“I grew up watching a lot of John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart movies. Before the era
of quippy one-liners and amazing chase-em-blow-em-up sequences every two minutes,
there was really interesting dialogue being spit out by really interesting characters. Giant
budgets have kind of ruined movies, in my opinion. Which is why the most interesting
characters are on TV. You can’t afford all the bells and whistles so you actually have to
sit there in a cheap-ass Winnebago watching Walter White cook meth and listening to
what he has to say.”
When asked about the writing process Gray confessed, “because writers are such
weirdos, they’re granted a lot of leeway for their ‘creative process’. I know one very
successful writer who can’t put a word on the page unless he’s at his favorite table in the
food court in the Encino mall. For me, working mostly in TV, I usually go into an office full
of other writers where we fight for 8 to 10 hours about what each scene in each episode
should be. TV is a pretty collaborative process, because it has to happen so quick. A two
hour movie can take months to write. In the same amount of time, like, six million
episodes of TV are expected to be done.”
Gray’s advice for students pursuing careers in the film and entertainment industry is to,
“think outside the box, learn to take criticism, watch as much TV and as many movies as
you can — and read the scripts! Actually, read the script and then watch the
show/movie. See what happens from inception to execution. Oh, and relish your time at
the bottom of the food chain because that’s where nobody expects much and you can
learn the most.”