Javier Grillo-Marxuach (HS‘91) is a man who knows how to keep a secret.
As a writer and supervising producer on ABC’s hit drama Lost, Javier was constantly peppered with questions from people desperate for clues about the show, whose plot centers on plane crash survivors marooned on a mysterious island. The first season came to a close with two of the main characters peering down a strange hatch.
“I spent a whole summer not answering the question ‘What’s in the hatch?’” recalled Javier, 36, now a co-executive producer on the NBC series Medium.
His writing talent brought him to Carnegie Mellon, where he majored in Creative Writing and Literary and Cultural Studies and met his future wife, Darra Bishop (TPR’93).
After graduation, Javier earned an M.F.A. in screenwriting from USC School of Cinema-Television. He was making ends meet working at Kinko’s when he applied for a job at NBC in a junior executive training program. “I looked at their job offer and thought I really wanted to own a laser disc player and I’m not going to get that working at Kinko’s,” he recalled.
According to Javier, television experienced a creative renaissance during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Shows like Homicide: Life on the Street, NYPD Blue and ER turned TV into a writers’ medium. So, on the fast track to becoming a network executive, he decided to try his hand at writing for the small screen.
“I took a huge leap of faith to leave NBC and begin screenwriting professionally,” he said.
His first break came as a writer on the NBC series seaQuest. At NBC, he had been a current executive on seaQuest, and had impressed the showrunner—the person responsible for the show’s day-to-day operations—with his input.
“The real challenge,” he remembered, “was getting the job after seaQuest. It had been cancelled abruptly and I had to start again. But thanks to the guidance of a good agent and some very hard work, I was able to get the job on The Pretender that same year and establish myself as a working writer.”
Javier’s path to becoming a television writer was atypical, and this presented its own problems when he was getting started.
“In my early career I was considered ‘politically suspect’ for having been so close to ‘the man’ in my previous employment,” he said. “The relationship between network executives and the creative staff can be contentious. Since then I’ve been blessed with a steady stream of employment.”
In February 2004, Javier was working on a UPN series called Jake 2.0 when it was abruptly cancelled. A few weeks later, his agent got a call from ABC, inviting him to write for Lost, then in development at the network.
Javier joined the writing team to develop the show’s mythology and the characters’ back-stories, which are crucial to every episode. His work on Lost earned him an Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series and a Writers Guild of America Award for Dramatic Series.
“It was pretty cool. To some degree you can put on your artist’s cloak and say it’s not about the awards. But it rocks. It’s awesome,” he said.
In the spring, he left Lost to become a writer and co-executive producer on NBC’s acclaimed show Medium.
“The challenge has been to continue moving up, to continue improving my craft and to avoid burning out,” he said. “I am fighting very hard to create my own series at some point and when the time comes, I want to be at the top of my game.”
Related Links:
Javier Grillo-Marxuach
Comics Podcast
LOST
Medium
College of Humanities and Social Sciences
