Rosenberg Interview continued
TKTV: How did you first get involved in writing for television?
MR: After college, I went to work as a copywriter at an ad agency in New York, which I hated. Every sentence I wrote, it seemed, had to end: "...and more." "Price, performance... and more." There was no more. There probably wasn't even that. I decided to quit, but I still had this bourgeois middle-class Jewish upbringing telling me I had to have a profession, so I applied to law school and got in to a good one. But while I was waiting to go, I saw "Star Trek: Next Generation" for the first time. I'd loved Star Trek as a kid (showed up at Hebrew School wearing pointy ears once, which continues to be embarrassing because those Hebrew School kids turn out to have pretty good memories) and I hated the new version. I told the friend who introduced me to the show that I could write a better one, and he challenged me to do so. I did, got an agent with it, got meetings at Star Trek, and realized that this would be much better than becoming a lawyer. I took a sitcom writing course in New York sponsored by TIP-East and the Writers Guild, and moved out to Los Angeles, where the struggle began.
TKTV: How did you end up writing for "Titus" in particular?
MR: After a few years of trying to break in, I realized that writers' assistants on shows were getting all the low-level staff writing jobs and so I became a writers' assistant. My second such job was on Fox's short-lived "Holding The Baby," where I met Jack Kenny and Brian Hargrove, who were Supervising Producers there and later co-created "Titus" with Christopher. They asked me to be their writers' assistant on the pilot and we had the understanding that if the show went to series I'd be hired as a staff writer.
TKTV: Christopher Titus has said that much of his show is based on his own real life experiences. How does this affect your job as a writer for the show, since you don't share those experiences?
MR: It makes it easier. Whenever we're stuck for a story point, we'll just ask Christopher or his wife Erin what the truth of the situation really is and they'll always give us something we can use. Though the rest of the staff doesn't share his particular experiences, I think if you polled comedy writers you'd find we have weird childhoods in common. While the show is based on Christopher's real life and family, we do take some liberties to make it funnier and give it more of a narrative structure.