Questions

1. What did politics teach you about Hollywood before you even knew it, and how much has your political career helped you survive the early years of being in Hollywood?
2. You have a creative mind and soul, but this crazy legal and political background. For the average actor out there express the professional value of having legal understanding of your profession as a writer even though you don’t necessarily need to use it?
3. When you’re writing for television how many days or weeks prep time are you typically given to produce a finished teleplay?
4. In your personal experience writing for television have you ever made a casting request and if so, how much influence would you be granted in that request?
5. Do you actually attend callback sessions with the actors on an episode you’ve written? If yes, always, or if now why not?
6. As a staff writer on a TV Series, are you at every table read or creative meeting with your producers or are you only around when it is “your episode?”
7. So this week’s episode is written by you and during shooting you have a creative request for the Producers above you? What percentage of the time do you get what you want?
8. As a writer on a TV Series, are you asked to watch the recorded auditions? Is it a choice, or do you even care?
9. How do you, as a well-respected TV writer, handle disputes with the Series Regular stars and in the end who typically gets their way?
10. Please define in today’s world, exactly what the term Showrunner means, and do you want that position?

About the Guru

Roger Wolfson is a professional television and film writer, having written for CBS’ “Century City,” NBC’s “Law and Order: SVU,” and TNT’s “Saving Grace,” and “The Closer,” where one of his episodes earned Kyra Sedgwick an Emmy Nomination. He has developed three pilots of his own, “Shanghaied” and “Zoo Law” for Sony Studios (both with Original Films), and “Mind Games” for Paramount Studios, CBS, with Apostle Films. Formerly, Wolfson worked as counsel and speechwriter for four United States Senators – Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, Paul Wellstone, and Ted Kennedy. He has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, and AirAmerica, and has lectured to forty different major organizations, bar associations, unions, and think tanks. Wolfson is also a blogger for the Huffington Post. As an attorney, Wolfson has worked for several law firms, including Lieberman, Segalof, and Wolfson, the firm his mother and Senator Joe Lieberman founded. He earned his law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the Associate Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Comparative Labor Law Journal, his Masters in Writing from Johns Hopkins, and his Bachelors in Theater from Vassar with highest academic honors. He is a member of the bars of New York, Connecticut, Washington, DC, and the United States Supreme Court. Wolfson lives in Marina del Rey aboard the ’42 sailing catamaran, Kinship II, which he helped sail from Connecticut to Los Angeles in 2003.