We were lucky to catch up with Javier Grillo-Marxuach recently and have shared our conversation below.

Javier, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

In 2016, I was hired to co-executive produce “Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.” Henson’s original film was a tremendous influence for me, and one of my memories was reading an article about the making of the film in a magazine and seeing a picture of Jim Henson, Frank Oz, and Gary Kurtz (who also produced “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strike Back”). At the age of twelve, I looked at that picture in awe; and at those men as wizards.

When the writers room for the show opened, the Jim Henson archives framed and hanged some images from the original production for inspiration. One of them was THAT very same picture. I remember standing in the room with a massive grin on my face: at that moment I knew that I was now one of the wizards… and the show we made is the one of which I am proudest. I consider “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance” a true work of televisual art and to this day cannot believe that I helped expand Jim Henson’s legacy.

Javier, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

When I was seven years old and living in my homeland of Puerto Rico, my parents took me to see “Star Wars” and I experienced what I can only refer to as a damascene conversion experience. From that day forward, I was singleminded in my desire to create film, I read everything I could and set my sights on the University of Southern California. After I earned my BA in creative writing, cultural studies, and playwriting at Carnegie Mellon, I made it to USC and earned my Masters. In the thirty-two years since, I have become a writer, producer, and showrunner.

The job of a showrunner is basically CEO of a startup: you create a series and have to build the entire infrastructure from hiring the production staff to overseeing the writing and all the other logistical challenges involved, all the way to post production and delivery to the network/streamer. Showrunners are basically artists and senior managers of organizations that usually have over 200 employees and budgets that can go into the hundreds of millions, so the CEO analogy is not an inaccurate one.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

The current environment of the television business – on all levels – is a complete disruption from the long-standing, stable, and robust method of making TV with which I came of age professionally. In the last twenty-five years tit has gone from primetime network tv being the gold standard and there being only three networks, to there being three major and three minor broadcasters and cable becoming the gold standard for quality drama, then the streamers rose and pretty much demolished the networks and their twenty-two-episodes a year model, I have marched with the Writers Guild in two strikes because of issues centering on fair compensation for online and streaming content, and I have had to adapt to a sea change in how writers create, execute, and are compensated for work.

If the first five years of my career, from 1995 to 2000 took place in a stable ecosystem, the last twenty five have been one ongoing, unending storm, and the one thing you learn as a writer is this: it all begins and ends on the page. You want to pivot to another genre (I went from doing mostly sci-fi and fantasy to working on procedurals and back again)? You have to write your way into it. You want to move to another type of content (I am currently working in live action drama, and both adult and kids’ animation whereas before I was strictly live action drama)? You have to write your way into it. You want to be come an essayist and publish books (i have two self-published books of essays about screenwriting)? You have to write your way into it. You want to create a comic book IP and sell it to TV (this is how I got my first series “The Middleman” made)? You have to write your way into it.

When you are a writer it doesn’t matter what storms rage outside your window, what matters is what’s on the page.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

When I was young I wanted to rule the world and have all the fame and fortune. As I have gotten older and wiser, I have two major goals. The first is to create an undeniable work of art. When I look at “The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance” or the first season of “Lost” I feel that I helped in the creation of two truly stand-out pieces in this art form… but neither one of them was my creation.

The second goal is to give away as much of my knowledge as I can for free. I an co-creator and co-host of a podcast on screenwriting, I have written books and essays about it, I have offered scholarships for writers, and I have taught at universities. Artists are too parochial and cagey about their skills and experience – we can’t give our creativity away, but we can teach the process to as many people as we can in order to collectively raise the standards – the baseline ability – for everyone entering out art form. This is how the art form evolves and how we move it forward generationally.

If you visit my website (www.OKBJGM.com) you will see that I have posted scripts, pitches, bibles, and outlines for shows I have worked on, pilots I have sold, and pilots I have failed to sell: i do this so that other people can see how I did it… i would never claim to have any definitive knowledge, but I hope that when I share my journey openly and transparently, others can start a little bit further ahead than I did.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.okbjgm.com
• Other: OKBJGM.bsky.social (bluesky)

Image Credits

middleman staged reading – aaron epstein