THE HOUSE THAT DAVE BUILT - University of Toronto Magazine

eaking the news to his law partners. “I announced, ‘I’m
leaving in three or four months to go to L.A. to be funny.’
And it got the reaction you’d expect from everybody. They
thought I was insane. They said, ‘You’re not that funny.’”
Shore negotiated the opportunity to return to the firm if
things didn’t work out within two years.
At 31, Shore rented a tiny one-bedroom apartment, one
block from Hollywood Boulevard and not far from Mann’s
Chinese Theatre. He didn’t take writing classes; instead, he
read plenty of scripts. His first writing attempt was a film
screenplay. “I showed it to my friends who were down there,
and then I didn’t show it to anybody else. It wasn’t very
good,” he claims. Then he wrote a spec episode of Seinfeld –
which his friends did like. He found an agent based on the
strength of that and a spec L.A. Law script, and continued to
develop his knack for TV writing. And approximately two
weeks past his two-year deadline, he was offered a freelance
writing gig for the TV show The Untouchables.
A year later, Shore landed his first staff-writing job, on
Due South, the comedy-drama that followed Canadian
Mountie Benton Fraser (Paul Gross) through his investigative
exploits. Shore moved back to Toronto for the show, and in
1996 picked up a Gemini Award for Best Writing in a
Dramatic Series for his work. That same year, Shore became
head writer on and supervising producer of the Canadian
show Traders. He then headed back to L.A. and wrote for
some of TV’s biggest hits, including NYPD Blue and the first
season of The Practice. After garnering two Emmy nominations
in 1998 and 1999 as a producer on Law & Order, he
served as executive producer on Family Law and Hack. House
came along in 2004, and Shore has been putting caustic lines
into his main character’s mouth ever since.
Writing for television is a pressure cooker.
Consider, the average film shoots two pages
of a 100-page script a day and takes
months to complete, while a weekly TV
show shoots six to eight pages per day – and wraps up in eight
days. The House crew works on multiple episodes at once:
while one is being shot and another prepped, writers are completing
the next script.
Ninety per cent of Shore’s job is writing – and rewriting.
He heads a team of 13 writers, who work individually or in
pairs on an episode. Shore meets with them about the stories
they’re working on, then provides extensive feedback on their
initial outline and first draft. On the second draft, he polishes
or rewrites – a process that takes one to four days. Before an
episode is shot, Shore walks the director through the script,
telling him what each scene is about and the moments he
wants to capture. And about half-a-dozen times a day, he’s
called to the set to watch a rehearsal and give his input before
the shooting takes place. So, even though Shore’s name may
not be on the script, it always contains his voice, ensuring the
show has a consistent look and feel.
And, of course, the character of House has its own particular
challenges – such as creating those outrageous House
moments without being gratuitous. “The audience is expecting,
‘What crazy thing is he going to do that’s going to shock
me this week?’ And how am I going to shock somebody who’s
expecting to be shocked? I’m hiding in the closet about to
jump out and yell ‘boo,’ and the audience is standing outside
the closet waiting for the door to open. But you’ve got to keep
it organic, it’s got to be true to the character. Internally, what
I say is, ‘The punishment may not fit the crime, but there’s
always a crime. If House is giving somebody crap, there’s a
reason he’s giving them crap.’” Otherwise, laughs Shore, “he
becomes a jerk as opposed to an interesting jerk.”
Despite the inventive writing in many shows, TV
is vilified in a manner that other creative mediums
are not. Perhaps it’s because shows get
lumped together with the lowest common
denominator – if, say, Dancing with the Stars is accruing the
highest audience numbers, people tend to link TV with
Marie Osmond lurching around in tights. Or, perhaps it’s
accessibility that breeds contempt. As Shore says, “It’s a mass
medium, and I think there’s a tendency for us to dismiss anything
that, ‘oh well, everybody’s enjoying it, it must not be
that good. It’s not just for us smart people.’”
Shore recalls a dinner party at his brother’s house, where a
guest announced he had sworn off television. “It was a big
dinner party, I was just sitting there and nobody knew what
I did, and he said, ‘I got rid of my TV. I haven’t watched TV
in six months.’ And everybody around the table was like,
‘Good for you! Excellent! Oh God, I know how hard that is!’
It was literally like the guy said he had given up heroin. And
I’m sitting at the end of the table, the guy who is outside the
schoolyard, going, ‘Hey kid, come here.’”
Despite the analogy to TV writer as dealer, Shore believes
that perceptions of TV are changing – partly because it has
become so diffuse, with so many channels and shows targeting
niche audiences. “I do think television is storytelling. I’m
in the storytelling business, and when did that become bad?
Why is TV somehow worse than books – OK, because books
make you use your imagination. Well, why is TV worse than
movies? Why is TV worse than plays? You know, theatre – my
God, you’re a playwright, that’s so tremendous. But if it’s
something that’s getting filmed, somehow you’re a hack.”
And House, with his inherently rebellious nature, offers
plenty of fodder for a storyteller. After all, he’s the guy with
the chutzpah to say everything you think – and much, much
more. Does Shore share some of the same rebelliousness as his
fictional creation? “I’m a rebel in the sense that I do look at
things and, like anybody does, go, ‘Oh God, give me a
break,’” he says. “I am just in a situation where I’ve got a pulpit
to actually say ‘give me a break’ to 19 million people.”
Stacey Gibson is the managing editor of U of T Magazine.
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