By Mike Reynolds
The “busiest man/woman in show business” tag has been used frequently in the entertainment biz, and while he (like everyone else) is taking a COVID-enforced break right now, Hollywood producer/writer/creator Howard Gordon (of X Files, 24, and Homeland fame, among others) surely held that title for a few years.
Between 2013 and 2016, he was responsible for 125 episodes from 11 different projects airing on U.S. television. That’s an average of 31 each year — an incredible record! Not bad for a soccer player who dropped out of Princeton to become a ballet dancer!
Reflecting on those four hectic, yet fruitful years, Gordon admitted, “I think about that a lot. When I look back I seem to have been able to do something that I probably couldn’t do anymore. I don’t know what mania — hyper mania — may have allowed me to do that. It was challenging, but for some reason it was O.K. It did, however, almost drive me into the ground and prompted my mini-sabbaticals to Madrid.” (Gordon temporarily moved to Madrid for a while in 2016 to refresh.)
Asked how he managed the juggling act of so many simultaneous stories, Gordon explained, “I can’t describe how, but for some reason I was able to jump tracks from one to another. I just had a more encyclopedic brain. But I can’t do that anymore. I look back and I can’t (even) remember character names… At any one moment I was breaking — as they say — one story, editing another, and writing another, so all the stories had to be sequenced, and I did it across several shows.”
Gordon came from a family with a history in law, but didn’t feel any pressure to follow in those legal footsteps.
“From the time I was young I was writing stories. I probably had a hyperactive imagination, and I really was a TV kid. I was raised in many ways by television. It was always on and I made a study of it — not through any professional design — but I just loved television. I always tell people I liked movies, but I loved TV — the intimacy of it — and I had a pretty wide range of tastes, whether it was Star Trek or All in the Family, or Mary Tyler Moore or Batman for that matter, so I had a pretty eclectic [range]. But I didn’t think it was anything anyone did for a living. It only took me sabotaging the other careers that I thought I might pursue [TV]. Which I promptly did.”
Those other possible careers were far from television, he admitted.
“When you’re young, you’re trying on your identity and trying to figure out who you are. When I was at Princeton I played soccer in my first year there. I was having a bad season and a friend of mine, who actually played American football, mentioned he was taking this ballet class that was helpful to him. I took the class and I fell in love with it. I stopped playing soccer and eventually left school to pursue that. I was good but I recognized that I would never be a Baryshnikov — but I actually won a scholarship! For the same mania I later had for carrying and tracking all those stories at the same time, and for the same sort of reasons, I probably went deep — obsessively and recklessly — into that but I regained my senses soon enough… But it was an adventure.”
That “adventure” nearly led to not one but two unlikely choices.
“Dropping out of Princeton to become a ballet dancer and my move to Hollywood to become a television writer, both moves were probably met with the same exasperated sigh” from his family, he said.
One other possible career path might have met with more positive approval.
“In the realm of trying on different identities for size I did consider applying (for a position) at the State Department,” he admitted. Luckily for TV audiences to come, he gave that up “because I was intimidated by the entrance exam,” he confessed.
On reflection Gordon stated, “One thing I’ve learned from writing about diplomats and spies is that I’m really glad I’m not one and I’ll leave it to the professionals.”
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