Not all aspiring screenwriters can go to Hollywood. Luckily for UW–Madison, Communication Arts alum Jason Rothenberg (’89) is bringing the Hollywood TV Writer’s Room to them.
By Maggie Ginsberg, Division of the Arts
COLD OPEN, FADE IN: Hollywood, 2013. We’re inside the writer’s room — day one, season one, episode one — of a new post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi TV drama called “The 100.” JASON ROTHENBERG, a plucky, sleep-deprived, bespectacled former Badger, enters for his first-ever gig as executive producer. Sliding a nervous finger between his collar and damp neck, his eyes dart from the dozen or so writers around the table to land on the young room assistant in the corner. He recognizes her, but we don’t know why.
ROTHENBERG
(silent, inside his head)
I have the same amount of experience as that room assistant did on her first day. I know nothing.
NARRATOR
(voice over)
Of course, Rothenberg knows far more than nothing. He’s earned this moment one job at a time in the 24 years since he arrived in Hollywood after graduating from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1989. Still, there are things he can’t possibly know. Like how in a few short months, 2.7 million people will tune in to the episode they’re about to write together. Or that he will stand in this very spot, week after week, as the official showrunner while they “blue-sky” countless possibilities to fill storyboard after storyboard, ultimately breaking, rewriting and polishing 100 episodes of “The 100” for seven seasons.
But on this day in 2013, Rothenberg finds himself at yet another unknowable beginning.
ROTHENBERG
(aloud, forcing a confident tone)
Alright, guys. Let’s get started.
FADE OUT.
Bringing the writers room to Wisconsin
Jason Rothenberg (’89) has come a long way since those heady days of his early TV writing career. This April, he’ll be back on campus to share some hard-won wisdom as part of the third-annual Wisconsin Screenwriters’ Symposium, a unique conference hosted by the Department of Communication Arts with support from the International Screenwriters’ Association. Last year, Rothenberg was a presenter. This year, in the four days leading up to the symposium, he will lead a special class he developed just for this: The TV Writers’ Room Workshop, which attempts to replicate a real-world TV writing room experience for a small group of pre-accepted participants.
“I want them to get what feels like real working experience, to really see how the sausage is made,” Rothenberg says. “Because you really have no idea until you’re in that room with other writers.”
Symposium co-founder and Communication Arts Associate Professor Aaron Greer is thrilled to add Rothenberg’s workshop to the lineup this year, calling it right in line with “the spirit of the Wisconsin Idea.”
“While it’s clear that successful writing and writers come from everywhere, including Wisconsin, the reality is that our students and community don’t have many opportunities to engage directly with people in the film and TV industry,” says Greer, noting that while the symposium is free for registered students, 40% of last year’s attendees were non-students from all across the state. “In addition to being a successful, prolific, and active screenwriter, Jason is both enthusiastic about supporting his alma mater, and enthusiastic about sharing his experience.”
From UW–Madison to Hollywood
That experience began in 1985, when the suburban Detroit-raised Rothenberg chose UW–Madison after visiting a close friend on campus.
“My mind was blown. That was it, it was a done deal, I didn’t want to go anywhere else,” Rothenberg says. “And I had the greatest four years of my life.”
Rothenberg was particularly influenced by great professors, a 16mm film production class, and the Creative Writing short story workshops that both challenged and encouraged his craft — and also gave him practice with receiving group feedback, something that would prove useful in the future. But for all of its valuable charms, one crucial thing was missing: As far as he knows, UW had nothing resembling a screenwriting class.
“When I got to L.A. after school, I’d never even read a script. I just wasn’t prepared for a career as a screenwriter,” says Rothenberg, who soon wrote the script that got him accepted into a UCLA Extension class. “By the end of the class, the professor asked to be my manager. The script didn’t sell, and it took me another six years before I started making money, but it was a great experience.”
Rothenberg built his network and gained invaluable professional experience writing features that, for one Hollywood reason or another, never got made into movies but came with increasingly bigger-name directors and paychecks. “Still, nothing that I wrote got made for 15 years,” Rothenberg says. “When we finally sold the one that put me on the map and got me high-level assignment work, it looked like I was an ‘overnight success.’ But it took me a decade.”
It was this movie feature writing experience that allowed him to step into TV writing at a higher level than most. In 2009, he made a pilot called “The Body Politic” starring Minka Kelly, Jay Hernandez and Gabrielle Union. It failed to get picked up, but Rothenberg was hooked. “Two pilots later,” he says, “was ‘The 100.”
Pilot of a Workshop
Obviously the true writer’s room experience will be tough to replicate in a four-day workshop, so Rothenberg is approaching it as a pilot of a workshop — pun intended. “It’ll be fun,” he says. “I even plan to use a pilot I wrote that never got picked up for the group to practice breaking actual episodes.”
That said, he is open to teaching an expanded version of the course for credit in the future. Today’s UW Communication Arts program has certainly evolved to embrace screenwriting and other professional aspects of the business, as evidenced by the curriculum and the symposium.
“From what I’ve gathered from my conversations and relationship with Aaron [Greer] and [Department Chair] Derek Johnson, it’s a different world at UW–Madison now,” Rothenberg says. “You can come out of Comm Arts now with the tools.”
Still, he adds, there’s no substitute for the struggle. “Let’s be real, it’s hard, it’s a business of failure, you’ve got to have thick skin, and it’s gonna take time,” he says. “But had I come out of school with a script or two in my pocket, I would have been so much further along.”
That’s why Rothenberg tells college students to get as much writing experience as they can so that they can shorten that time to publication or landing that first job. “I think the most important thing while you’re in school, if you know you want to be a writer, is to write,” he says. Secondly, study those further along than you because “success leaves clues.” Finally, make sure to build a network as early as you can. You’re going to need them to navigate the cyclical nature of a tough business that has seen multiple writer’s strikes and one pandemic, along with unforeseeable challenges like AI and streaming.
“All of the friends I made when I first moved to L.A. were struggling together. Now many of them are running things,” says Rothenberg, adding that it goes both ways. The reason he knew how little experience the room assistant had on the first day of “The 100” is because he’d hired her after she impressed him so much when she was his assistant on “The Body Politic” pilot.
“And by season seven?” he says. “She was my number two, and an executive producer.”
These days Rothenberg has several projects in the works, including writing the pilot for a show he sold to FOX a couple months ago, and a mid-career surprise that brings him back to his creative writing workshop days: He’s shopping a novel. He’s also got another reason to visit UW–Madison fairly soon: His 17-year-old is applying to colleges.
“Wisconsin is definitely on her list, mainly because of how much I love it,” he says.
Just like when he graduated in 1989, or in those years of close calls trying to get features made, or when he stood there in the writer’s room for his first executive producer job, there’s no way to know what future seasons of Rothenberg’s life will bring.
We’ll just have to watch to find out.
To learn more about the Wisconsin Screenwriters’ Symposium, including information about the TV Writers Room Workshop and the screenwriting competition, visit UW–Madison Department of Communication Arts.