We recently connected with Scott Gray and have shared our conversation below.

Scott, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I moved to Los Angeles from Phoenix in 1995. I wanted to become a professional writer, but was an audio-visual technician at the time, working in the Biltmore Hotel downtown doing things like setting up stereo systems in Eddie Murphy’s room and running spotlight for George Carlin. I’d gotten an agent in upstate New York that a friend from high school was with and hooked me up with. One of her clients was a staff writer on “Rugrats”, and she got me a meeting with him after I moved to LA. By then I’d switched jobs and was now a video editor working for a former ER doctor in the Hollywood Hills, editing videos mainly about various types of cancer.

So one day on my lunch break I drove down from my little video-editing shack in the Hollywood Hills to the Klasky-Csupo studios in Hollywood and pitched them 40 ideas for Rugrats. They took none of them! But they were impressed with how many ideas I had and gave me a shot on a script anyway. That led to me freelancing on Rugrats for three years. I also wrote many Rugrats videogames, and was the main writer for the Rugrats national comic strip. Despite that, I still wasn’t making enough money to quit my video editing job! During that time the Phoenix newspaper interviewed me for a “local boy does well” article called “Rugrats to Riches”. Little did they know I did that interview during my lunch break, between editing videos about breast and colon cancer. Finally, after three years Rugrats hired me as a staff writer, which was the start of my career. It took five years from the time I moved to Los Angeles.

Scott, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Sure, I always knew I loved writing. I wrote plays about gangsters versus aliens in grade school and forced my classmates to perform them, and also won essay contests. In college I wrote and performed in a weekly sketch comedy show at Arizona State University’s “The Farce Side”. That helped me know I could write, and that I was funny. Plus I’ve always been a huge TV watcher, especially sitcoms. At age 10 my favorite show was already “The Dick Van Dyke Show:” (about TV writers!). I’ve always loved animation as well, and grew up on Warner Brothers cartoons and Tom & Jerry. For me, the peak of high art is still the Coyote and the Roadrunner!

In my career I’ve been lucky enough to work on some great shows, including the original Rugrats, Handy Manny, The Backyardigans, The Not Too Late Show with Elmo, Paw Patrol, Curious George, and Arthur. I’ve also  done development work for Disney, Nickelodeon, Netflix, Sesame Workshop, Saban, DreamWorks and many other companies. In addition I’ve written comic books and videogames for many well-known properties, including SpongeBob Squarepants, The Fairly Oddparents, and The Muppets. I’m lucky enough to be a five-time Emmy nominee, and won for my work on Rugrats. I also won a Writers Guild Award for Disney’s “Imagination Movers”.

What I’m most proud of is being able to write for a lot of shows that make kids (and parents) laugh. Even the more educational shows I’ve been on have all realized the best way to keep a kid’s interest is to make them laugh. A spoonful of laughter helps the curriculum go down! Kids are more savvy than they’re given credit for, and shows should never write down to them or patronize them, that’s my philosophy.

I’ve written a self-published ebook about some of the experiences I talk about in the interview, called “Courier to Emmy Winner in 3 Months! (The Ups and Downs of Life in Hollywood)”. Here’s a link to it on Amazon:

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

My first full-time writing job was on probably the most popular cartoon in the world at the time, “Rugrats”. It was a blast and I worked about a year-and-a-half full-time on the show. Then the show ended… and I could not get a second full-time job to save my life. There’s a saying that the second job in showbiz can be even harder than the first, and it can be true. I ended up having to become a courier for a handful of months to make ends meet. One time I even had to make a delivery to someone I’d worked with on Rugrats! It felt humiliating, and was very hard. But I persevered and didn’t give up or wallow in self-pity (well there was a little wallowing, ha!). I kept sending out resumes and working any contacts I could, until I finally got enough work to write full-time again. Three months after I quit my courier job I won an Emmy for “Rugrats”. I had to buy a suit from a thrift store, I was so broke. That’s the highs and lows of showbiz in a nutshell! It was such a rollercoaster period of time I was inspired to write a book about it, “Courier to Emmy Winner In 3 Months: The Ups and Downs of Life in Hollywood”, which is on Amazon. There have been hard times since then, but you learn to pack away money for the lean times.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think there’s a perception among the general public that every “Hollywood writer” is rich. But the vast majority of us are just getting by, especially in the area of animation which pays much less than live-action prime-time shows. Yes the money is still relatively good, but the cost of living in Los Angeles is also astronomical. And jobs rarely last more than a year or two, unless you’re on the rare hit show. About half of my career has been spent as a freelancer. It’s good and bad. It’s stressful because you’re always hustling for the next job, but in my case it was also a blessing because I was able to spend a lot of time working from home and seeing my kid’s grow up firsthand, and spending time with them.

Contact Info:

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-gray-59455025/
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1414808/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_0_nm_8_q_scott%2520gray