Glen Mazzara Interviewed By New York Magazine

Glen Mazzara got a chance to sit down with New York Magazine for an interview and suprisingly it’s not the usual puff piece because Mazzara talks about his early days, good and bad experiences in showbiz, shows he’s been a part of in the past, and what he thinks about negative fan reaction among other things. He also opens up about the Frank Darabont situation and clears up some of the false accusations that have been made about Darabont’s departure, most notably the budget fiasco which Mazzara says wasn’t accurate and the story that came out recently which revealed that Darabont wanted to do certain things with the Second Season that AMC didn’t want to do.

After Frank Darabont left The Walking Dead, you seemed to come out of nowhere. But you did come from somewhere, right?
I’m from New York. I grew up in Queens and my father was a physician at St. Vincent’s Hospital — which you know just closed — for 46 years. So I went to NYU undergraduate then for a Master’s in English, and got a summer job at St. Vincent’s. I was a ward clerk handling everything in an intensive care unit. I like to describe it as being Radar O’Reilly [from M*A*S*H*] on speed. Then I switched over to NYU Medical Center. We renovated their emergency room and then I coordinated construction projects. We built their ten-day surgery ORs. It was a very complicated job.

But not exactly where most English grads end up.
Well, I wanted to write, obviously, so I was trying to figure out what kind of writer I wanted to be. I wrote a play that was workshopped at Brown, and someone explained to me that hospital administration was a lot like television production. Tight schedules, people with different agendas, and of course there was no money, so you’re working with tight budgets, and you are always waiting for a cardiac arrest. You are on pins and needles. So I started writing TV scripts and harassing people in Hollywood. First I was calling people in New York: “Do you have a cousin in Los Angeles?” And then I’d call the cousin. And he’d say, “There’s this guy.” I did that for four years. And finally, in 1998, my first pitch meeting was at a show called Nash Bridges with Don Johnson. I walked into the room wearing a black suit and tie because that’s what you wear to a job interview in New York. I didn’t know you don’t wear that in Los Angeles. So I walked in and met Carlton Cuse, who went on and became one of the showrunners for Lost; John Worth, who just did The Sarah Connor Chronicles; and Shawn Ryan, who created The Shield. Shawn was actually wearing a hockey jersey. And I started pitching a very gritty, Sidney Lumet–style Nash Bridges. I [pitched that Nash had an old case that he fucked up on] and Carlton said, “Hold on a second, it’s Don Johnson, he doesn’t make any mistakes. What else do you have?” I started panicking. I literally had a panic attack. They took me to another office and put my feet up and they gave me an ice pack.

Seriously?
It’s true, it’s true. But they brought me back the next week and I sold them an idea, and I was on that show for two years. Then I was out of work for a year and a half, because I was always writing stuff like, “Nash is in the crack house.” And they’d say, “No, Nash is not in a crack house, he’s babysitting a celebrity chimp!” “Okay, well, you know, maybe the chimp’s in a crack house.” And they thought I was an idiot. I had moved my wife and child out and we had a second child, so I’m living on credit cards for almost two years. One night I was crying on Shawn Ryan’s shoulder, and he said, “If The Shield goes, you’ll be the first guy I hire.” And I just thought, What a pipe dream. We’re talking about FX, which was the M*A*S*H rerun network. But I hung in and Shawn kept his word and hired me onto The Shield. I was really his number-two writer for a long time — used a lot of my hospital experience to help him figure out how to run that show. Because Sean had no managerial experience and that was a strength that he needed on his team. So I sort of helped him find his way.

To read the entire interview click here!

-Dane
Gotham Knights Online: Your One Stop Shop For Everything Batman!

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