‘Lost’ and ‘Dark Crystal’ Writer Javier Marxuach-Grillo on AI in Hollywood and Why TV Writers Must Be on Set
Selome Hailu Seven years ago, Javier Grillo-Marxuach got drunk with his fellow writer-producer Jose Molina and made a list of “made a list of all the sociopathic abusers [they’d] worked for, and a list of the good ones. One list was was significantly longer than the other.” While he didn’t specify which of his TV jobs he was referring to — though “Lost” comes to mind thanks to recently surfaced accounts about its “toxic” writers room — Grillo-Marxuach spoke on ATX Festival’s Beyond the Page panel about how resources and mentorship for younger writers began dwindling when the industry shifted to a streaming model. One of the major responsibilities a writer has aside writing scripts is to make sure those scripts retain their integrity throughout the production process. For any number of practical reasons, a scene that works on the page doesn’t always translate in front of the cameras, and it used to be universally acknowledged that TV writers were there to provide on-the-fly guidance about how to make adjustments that stay true to showrunner’s vision. But these days, writers are much more rarely paid to come to set at all.