Interview: Gillian Horvath (part two)

In part two of our interview with Gillian Horvath, Consulting Producer on the SciFi Channel series Flash Gordon, talks about getting into writing television, the awesome power of Doctor Who, and female science fiction writers coming together to form the Pink Hat Brigade on the WGA strikeline.

PRG: I was looking through your credits on IMDB and you have a ton of genre shows to your credit from Forever Knight to Andromeda to Painkiller Jane and some episodes of Xena. I was going to ask if you were a fan of the genre you’re writing.

GH: Oh, yeah. It wasn’t something that I planned, but also didn’t resist it. My first two credits, one was science fiction – Quantum Leap – and the other was teen drama -Beverly Hills 90210. My 90210 script won a prize and I could have continued in that genre as well.

Then when I did Highlander and Forever Knight simultaneously, it created a bit of a niche for me as the action writer girl. I’m happy to be in that niche.

There might be other writers who would have said, “Oh god, I’ve got to do a Law and Order quick or I’m gonna write science fiction for the rest of my life”. But for me, since I grew up on science fiction television and reading comic books and going to conventions, the notion that I was going to spend the rest of my career writing science fiction TV was not a problem.

PRG: What are some of your favorites?

GH: I was a Spider-Man reader growing up. In the Superman-Batman-Spider-Man continuum, I always gravitated to Spider-Man because his life was so screwed up by being a superhero and I found that fascinating. The wish fulfillment doesn’t always work out the way you’d think it would. As a kid you might think you’d love to be Superman or Batman, but the fact is it messes with your life and it’s not so easy to be that guy. In the last few decades more and more comics have gone in that direction – Batman’s no longer a happy camper, either. But, when I was a kid, Spider-Man was the one who hated being a superhero and would have traded it back for being a regular guy. That was the appeal of that for me I think.

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I was a huge Quantum Leap fan before I ever got to write an episode. Writing an episode was a dream come true because, to me, that was a perfect science fiction show. I also like Eureka, which I admire very much today, it crossed the line into the main stream. People watched it who didn’t identify themselves as science fiction viewers. To me it bridged that gap and it was a show that made you think. A good episode of Quantum Leap would cause people to discuss What would I do in that situation? Did Sam do the right thing? What would you do if you had the chance to go back and change things? What would you change? Would you change nothing? I loved that about that show and I felt very lucky because of my contact at Universal and because I got fortunate and because they were great people over there, I got a chance to do one while it was still on.

Usually when you’re starting out your career – and I tell this to young writers all the time – if you have a favorite TV show and you decide to be a TV writer, you won’t get to write for that show. It takes too long to get in. So, if there’s just one show you want to write for, don’t pin your hopes on that because by the time you get to pitch, that show will have been canceled. The show that made me want to write television was Remington Steele and that had been off the air for seven years by the time I pitched a show, but it got me thinking about what if I was the one coming up with stories for the show.

These days, I watch Eureka pretty regularly. And I watch Medium, which is another cross over genre show. And Doctor Who and Torchwood religiously. Doctor Who is a big favorite of mine.

PRG: I just discovered Doctor Who recently – and it was because of Torchwood.

GH: I’ve heard that Torchwood has brought people in the other direction. I guess Doctor Who is a bit daunting for people with all it’s history and implications of geekdom, Torchwood is the gateway drug for Doctor Who. I think this new incarnation of Doctor Who these last three seasons has been amazing. I like Torchwood, but Doctor Who, I would hand them awards if I was in charge of giving awards. There have been so many episodes I wish I had written. There’s something interesting that happened for me having worked on Highlander.

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There’s a character in Highlander called Methos, the world’s oldest man, who was created on my watch – myself, David Tynan and David Abramowitz put him into the show – and he was this sort of cynical immortal who had a very realistic and sarcastic view of the world. When I watched this new incarnation of Doctor Who, I said to a friend who has been a Doctor Who fan since forever, “I never realized The Doctor was so much like Methos with that thousand year stare and that cynical view.” My friend said, “Oh no. The Doctor has not been like that before – that’s this Doctor”. So this is kind of a reinvention of Doctor Who along those lines of what I think a guy who has that much life behind him would be like. He’s humorous and he’s charming, but at the heart he’s seen too much and I’m drawn to that. It’s heartbreaking, but it’s great literary material

PRG: You mentioned that your first writing credit was Quantum Leap. That’s an impressive first job. How did you break into that?

GH: I worked as an intern when I was in college in a couple different departments at Universal. I had interned at Drama Development and I had been on the set of some of the shows. So, when I came out here after college and started working as an assistant, I knew some people from my internship summer who were above the level I would have met as an assistant. These were high level executives I met as an intern and still had the ability to call them up and say, “Do you want to get some lunch?” which was a very nice contact base for me.

One of those execs is the one who made the call to one of the producers at Quantum Leap to ask them to read my Quantum Leap spec. Normally, they didn’t read Quantum Leap specs because of legal issues, but he vouched for me that I wasn’t gonna go crazy and try to sue. That’s how that door opened. Then they actually liked my spec, which was the amazing part.

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But, it was through contacts I’d made through working as a low level person that I got someone to hand the script to someone else and vouch for me that I was non-crazy and talented, then they liked that script. They didn’t want to make that story, but that’s when they invited me in for a meeting and actually liked one of my ideas and hired me to write the script. Looking back I don’t know how much of that was due to wanting to do a favor for an executive, but I’d like to think that it’s due to the fact that they read my script and said, “Sweet. She understands our show. Lets get her in here”.

Everyone is always looking for young people who get it. There’s such a huge influx of new writers every year and many of them are not ever quite going to click. Some people just have it. That’s not just about writing ability, because some may go on to be feature writers and write other things, but in terms of writing television episodes, the ability to grasp what a show is about both on the surface and on a subtextual level and replicate that in a spec script is a rare skill. So I’m happy to report that when you see someone who has it, you’re thrilled. No one is trying to bar the door against people trying to get in. If you find someone who’s good, you throw open the door and tell all your friends, “I found this great kid. Who’s got an opening?”

PRG: From your perspective as a woman, has the atmosphere in the writer’ rooms on those genre shows changed since you started?

GH: I haven’t noticed a difference and that’s either because I’m oblivious to that sort of thing or because I’ve been very fortunate all along in who I’ve worked with. I’ve never been in a room where my gender was an issue. I know people who have, so I’m not denying that this ever comes up. David Abromowitz who ran Highlander is one of the best showrunners and room runners you will ever meet and he promoted me into that job because he saw that I could do it. In terms of the room, I never felt it was an issue.

It’s not even that unusual anymore. Flash Gordon was 60% women. Melody Fox was there, Sheryl Anderson and then James Thorpe. I guess maybe that’s unusual enough to cause comments like, “That’s a pretty female room”. But when we were hired, it wasn’t like, “Let’s hire a bunch of chicks.” It was, “Let’s hire people who can write”.

These days, on the strike line we have a group called the Pink Hat Brigade. It started out because I had six pink cowboy hats in my closet and nothing to do with them. So, we started picketing on the line together – female science fiction writers wearing pink hats so we could spot each other. It’s a big group and growing every day. There are fifteen of us who picket regularly, but there’s plenty more female science fiction writers who have other pickets they want to go to and haven’t picketed with us.

(If you’re viewing this in Internet Explorer, don’t stop reading here…there’s something wonky going on and the article continues after a little bit of white space below. Sorry about that.)

There’s Amy Berg on The 4400. Lisa Klink from Voyager and Painkiller Jane. Holly Harold from Smallville. I’ve met two women from Eureka. Alison Lea Bingeman, Antoinette Stella, Jane Espenson and Anne Cofell Saunders walk with us. So Antoinette Stella from Joan of Arcadia, Ethlie Ann Vare from Andromeda, Nicole Dubuc – who’s a SAG member and an animation writer – and Shea Butler who’s a script supervisor as well as a writer, and Kerry Glover, who’s written Stargate: Atlantis and worked as a script coordinator on shows like The Dead Zone and Bionic Woman.

PRG: At what point did you realize that you had made it and writing for television was now your actual career instead of what you hoped would be your career?

GH: That takes a long time. I used to give a panel at conventions called “Oozing into Screenwriting”, because you don’t break in. You sell your first script and that doesn’t make you a writer. I sold two scripts and continued to work as an assistant and freelance typist for 11$ an hour for two more years. Selling a script doesn’t change your life.

But, when was I sure this was what I was going to do and I was never going to do anything else again? Knock wood! I was on Highlander for four years and when that ended I went straight to Baywatch. After Baywatch, I didn’t go immediately into another show – I was out of work for almost two years. So, even at that point, after working on three shows I wasn’t sure that I had a career as a writer. I went back to work as a typist during that period of unemployment because I was that unsure as to where my next job would come from.

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I think it was when I did MythQuest. I was an executive story editor on that show when it started and we all went to Canada with the show. The writing office was in the same building as the production office. We were on set with our episodes and we were in all the production meetings instead of if being long distance via phone, email, fax. I started that show as a writer, and ended that show as a writer-producer, really knowing my way around making a television show, not just writing a script. I think that’s the show that changed my life and made this what I do.

The Flash Gordon episode “Cold Day in Hell”, penned by Gillian Horvath, airs this Friday, January 25th, on the SciFi Channel (seriously, watch it). On February 6th you can show your support for the Pink Hat Brigade at the WGA SciFi Channel picket at NBC Studios. For more information, please click here.

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