Television shows, like any kind of production, involve so many different people. For the most part, everybody involved in the production of a television show are there to help execute the idea that the show’s creator pitched to the producers and network executives. One of the biggest parts of producing a television show, especially one that involves a story, is writing the episodes. Without anything for the actors to read, it’s very hard to go on with the production.
NEXT: How To Be Rich Like Danny Zuker
I have always enjoyed learning about the process of creating a television shows. There’s something about the entire production aspect that interests me a lot. I guess it has to do with my fascination of a certain live sketch comedy series. Seeing an episode be made in just four days still seems like such an undertaking.
A lot of scripted series take a few weeks to produce. For the most part, the scripts have already been written for the entire season at that point. There will be some rewrites during the production of a schedule. Sometimes they overlap production for two different episodes just so that they finish wrapping as quickly as possible.
But normally, it takes a few months for the show’s creator, often the showrunner, and the rest of their writing staff to come up with ideas for how the season should go. They often have the arc for that season mapped out a whiteboard or on some sticky notes. The writers would then have to write an entire script for that particular episode.
For sitcoms, a lot of the writers contribute jokes into the script even if there are one or two people involved in the writing the outline for that episode. Writers rooms for comedies are often very collaborative because they have the same end goal: To make the show the funniest it can be.
There have been so many different writers who have worked on multiple productions for a number of sitcoms over the years. There are some names that stand out because they are often the creator of that particular show. But, unless you run in the same circles as the other writers for that show, you may not really know much about.
That sort of presents a bit of a struggle when it comes to writing about them. Since they don’t get interviewed a lot, it’s hard to find any type of resource that could tell more about their background. You just kind of have to find creative ways to tell a story based on the limited details you can find about a certain person.
There wasn’t really that much I could find about Danny Zuker’s life prior to the start of his career in writing for television. I mean, it’s all fine and good. Not everyone is willing to disclose that much about themselves especially regarding their personal lives. All I could find is that he graduated from Syracuse University and that’s it. I guess him working ad an intern for the Howard Stern Show is a bit relevant to the career he would pursue.
Looking at his IMDb page, it didn’t seem like he did a lot of work as a writer. One of his first major credits was a writer for The Arsenio Hall Show. It seems that he has written for most of the show’s run before he left in 1993. From then he would contribute to a few sitcoms here and there. Most of them I don’t really recognize. Aside from being a writer, he also had producer credits for two of the sitcoms that he wrote for, namely “Grace Under Fire” and “Just Shoot Me!”
He seems to have had steady work in the late ’90s and early 2000s. He managed to get a show of his greenlit in 2001 called “Off Centre” that he co-created with brothers Chris and Paul Weitz. The show managed to run for two seasons. He still had some shows that he wrote for after that but it was sparse. His last major credit was for the sitcom “Modern Family.”
He hasn’t really had any other projects after “Modern Family” ended. At that point, he had a net worth of $1,200,000. Somehow, he managed to get into a Twitter feud with former president Donald Trump before he even ran for president. It’s a weird tidbit to include but it’s real. What a weird timeline we all live in.
