Glen Mazzara (born July 6, 1967) is an American television producer and writer. He is most well known for his work on The Shield, The Walking Dead and Damien.
That's the holy grail as a TV writer, to work on a story that you care about and to put it out there and for it to find the audience and connect with fans and connect with critics.
People tweet me all the time and tell me how much they love it, how they can't wait for the show to come back on, that they're addicted to the show. So that's really rewarding. As an artist, we're all looking for that connection to an audience and when you find people as diehard as our fans are - it's sort of like finding the holy grail.
Don't forget, I've been fired by studios; I'm not the studio's guy. I'm a guy who can work with studios, but if you ask any studio, I stand up to these people.
There are very few horror shows, where you have a long running arc. Most horror shows play as a sort of an anthology. Buffy - a terrific show - had the-demon-of-the-week. Twilight Zone - X Files - these things had an anthology approach. Our show is a long running drama with the same creatures every week.
A lot of what I do as a showrunner is anxiety control. People get nervous when they don't know what's going on, so a big part of my job is making sure everyone has all of the information all of the time.
It's better to grow your employees, steer them into a place that they can learn and succeed, and want to work hard and be loyal, than to have a revolving door of employees. That's demoralizing.
I usually dive head first and am really excited about that changes.
I created a show called 'Crash' for Starz, which was their first original drama, and that was not a good experience. I had a great time working with the cast and crew, but it was a young network and an intrusive studio, and to be honest I didn't really enjoy the movie 'Crash.
I think horror films always have to be as simple as possible.
Sharing information with employees makes them feel invested.
The key things I learned as a hospital administrator are to be organized, communicate, and be flexible.
I went to NYU undergraduate, then for a Master's in English, and got a summer job at St. Vincent's. I was a ward clerk handling everything in an intensive care unit.
The comic book, and I've said it before, is a treasure trove. It's a grab bag. We certainly have characters and story lines that we really want to do - but to get there in a TV series, you have to take your time. Sometimes you can't get right to it. They're two different mediums. So we make it our own and really own the material. I like to think of it as an alternate universe.