We were lucky to catch up with Scott Shapiro recently and have shared our conversation below.

Scott, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful project I ever worked on was a pilot called GOODMAN I sold to Warner Brothers in 2020. It was based on the true story of my Grandfather, a conservative Jewish man, who turned his run-down dive bar on Chicago’s Whiskey Row into one of the city’s first underground Gay bars, back in the mid-1950’s.

After having staffed on shows like USA’s NECESSARY ROUGHNESS and CBS’ NCIS: NEW ORLEANS, GOODMAN was the first project that I had created and it was an incredible experience from start to finish. The research and interviews that I did with family members about the bar and the LGTBQ movement in Chicago at the time were really eye opening experiences and helped make the pilot as authentic as possible. I truly fell in love with that script and the themes that resonated as much with today’s world as it did back in the time it was set.

But writing the script was only the beginning of the process. I then got to experience attaching an Executive Producer to the project and I was blessed when Viola Davis’ production company Juvee loved the script and came aboard. The development process with them took the script to another level which helped us eventually attach LaVerne Cox to star in one of the lead roles. To say I was exhilarated working with these icons would be an understatement and once again, with LaVerne’s help, the script went to yet another. Then, armed with that package and the best script I’d ever written, we were attached Marcos Siega to direct and that got us a deal with Warner Brothers.

Unfortunately, the project never got from script to screen, but working with such an incredible team was such a learning experience that I’ll never forget and taught me so many lessons moving forward. And this town is full of many tales of scripts that were passed on or languished in development hell before finally breaking out years later, so hope springs eternal that GOODMAN will one day do the same.

Scott, 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?

My story started with a little boy with a camera in his hand, making his best friends film a movie where Rocky Balboa and John Rambo were smushed together in a science experiment gone horribly wrong called… RAMBOCKY. I was that kid… a dreamer, hoping to one day write for Hollywood, putting all the weird stuff in my head on screen, for all to see.

But getting there was a roller-coaster. I somehow found myself in Law School instead of Film School, only for my boyhood dream to come back to life in my second year. I dropped out, moved up to LA and started working every odd job one does as they try to break into the impenetrable fortress that is Hollywood. After four years, I was lucky enough to start working with Jeffrey Lieber, an incredibly gifted and successful screenwriter, who not only gave me a job, but really helped hone my craft to the point. 5 years, 4 pilots and 3 back surgeries later, Jeffrey eventually elevated me from assistant to actual writer on shows like MIAMI MEDICAL (CBS), NECESSARY ROUGHNESS (USA) and NCIS; NEW ORLEANS (CBS). The experience of seeing your words leap from the page to an actor’s mouth and eventually on to screens is better than any drug known to man.

Since then, I’ve been working primarily in development of my own material, working with companies like Warner Brothers, Viola Davis’ company JuVee and Doug Liman’s digital shingle 30 Ninjas, to name a few. And my mission there is grounded in bringing authenticity to the page. Whether that was doing exhaustive research into my Grandfather’s Gay Bar in Chicago back in the 1950’s for a pilot I developed with Warner Brother’s… or personally going undercover into the 2016 Trump Presidential Campaign to see how the other half of the country lives for a pilot I was developing called THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, I strive to write something real. Something that hopefully says something about the world we live in today and how we can make it a better place.

To that point, over the years, that mission has expanded. During the pandemic, I found myself wanting to give back a little and ended up starting a Script Mentoring business, where I help voices young or old craft their own. That started with running a 4 week Pilot Workshop with The Big Apple Film Festival that then morphed into a one-on-one program, passing down what I’ve learned over the years, helping writers with pilots or feature films. Having learned as much as I did from Jeff all those years ago, it’s incredibly gratifying to pay that forward to the next generation… especially when I get an emails from one of my students excited about winning a screenplay competition. Makes me feel like a proud papa.

I’ve also learned that to stay afloat in today’s ever changing media landscape, you have to roll with the changes. That means diversifying and being open to learning new tricks of the writing trade, which I’ve done over the last four years where I’ve started freelancing and writing sketches and branded content for influencer Adam Rose, who has over 16 million followers across social media.

But more than anything, what I’ve learned in my time writing and working in the industry is you need to have the drive to survive. Success is not a straight line and thick skin is a must, especially when times are thin, which brings this all back to Rocky Balboa, who I’ll let close with my favorite quote that I believe accurately describes my experience in Hollywood:

“Life ain’t about how hard you can hit. It’s about how hard you can GET HIT and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning’s done!”

Keep moving forward, folks!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I think the best story that illustrates my resilience happened from 2008 to 2009. At that point, I had already been in LA for 8 years, working every odd job in the city, from rolling calls on big producers desks to running tapes around the city, getting B-roll of red carpet events to entertainment shows in the middle of the night to being a rainy day short of suicide while working as an extra on various movies and TV shows. Luckily by 2004, I started working for Jeffrey Lieber (mentioned earlier) and that was a shot in the arm in so many ways I couldn’t even begin to count. But after 8 years of working my ass off and honing my craft, after a couple of close calls on some of Jeff’s pilots that almost made it to air, I was emotional and physically spent… burned out and started to doubt if my dream of becoming a writer would ever come true. And in May 2008, the proverbial straw literally broke the camel’s back as I suffered as a massive disc injury that required two emergency laminectomies on my spine, forcing me to move out of LA and back in with my parents for months and months of rehab.

It was the darkest moment of my life at that point, much less my career. I didn’t know if I strength, physically or emotionally, to come back to LA and start banging my head against Hollywood’s wall. But the longer I was away, the more I became resolved to come back. I had unfinished business in Hollywood and I was damned if my back was going to keep me from doing it. So… I worked harder than I even knew I could, rehabbing, retraining myself how to walk, putting myself in the right frame of mind… for eight months.

In month 9, Jeff got a pilot picked up, called me and asked if I was able to come back yet. The truth was I wasn’t… but I didn’t know if I’d really ever be, so I threw caution to the wind, moved back to LA, grit my teeth, bared the residual back pain and was eventually rewarded when Jeff got his first show on the air (MIAMI MEDICAL on CBS) and I was made the Showrunner’s Assistant. And even better, when it came down to the last episode of the season, Jeff gave me the opportunity of a lifetime, asking if I wanted to write the Story with him for the Season Finale. I was beyond grateful and jumped at the challenge, attacking the job with everything I had. From leading the room, to writing the script to being on set and finally seeing my words come to life, my life felt like a dream, which was truly incredible after such a close brush with it being a nightmare.

Have you ever had to pivot?

During the pandemic, I learned the most valuable survival lesson for those in this industry… the necessity to take your greatest talent and diversify what you do. For twenty years leading up to 2020, I saw myself solely as a writer and had tunnel vision for that goal, finding unbelievably rewarding success, working on multiple TV shows and selling pilots. But since the pandemic, I’ve been able to use that skill to grow who I am and what I do in the entertainment business and not a moment too fast. Over the last four years, between Covid and the WGA/SAG Strikes, my industry has seen so many slow downs or shut downs, that it’s a miracle many of us have been able to survive.

And I credit my survival to looking outside of the traditional models of TV/Film and that all started during Covid. I was still pitching and selling shows, but during that period I also used my writing skills to create my own business where I offer one-on-one private script consulting. But I also dove head first into the world of writing for social media, working on various brand marketing campaigns and skits with my good friend/social media savant Adam Rose (16 million followers across all platforms), as well as jumping into the producing game as I’m gearing up for an indie feature that we hope to start shooting next year.

The industry is at a very precarious point right now, with questions abound surrounding what the hell the landscape is going to look like not just next year (“Survive Till ’25!”), but more importantly, what it’s going to look like in TEN years. So, keep your eye on the ball, continuing to make strides with whatever it is you’re passionate about, but also, keep the other eye focused on the future, because I believe we’re in an adapt or die moment.

Contact Info:

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-s-00b6a0244/
• Other: For information on my 1-on-1 Script Consulting Sessions, you can reach me at [email protected].