2008 Woodie Awards
Miami alumnus co-writes episode of 'According to Jim'
Mary Wehbie
Issue date: 2/15/08 Section: Campus
Michael J.S. Murphy graduated from Miami in 2001 with a mass communication degree and a film studies minor, hoping to follow his childhood dream of becoming a writer.
Seven years later the Brunswick, Ohio, native is residing in Silver Lake, Calif., in the east side of Los Angeles, and works as a script-coordinator for ABC's According to Jim. He co-wrote Tuesday's episode of the series with regular writer John Schwab, titled "Period Peace."
Murphy and Schwab were given an outline and each wrote on a different section of the script, combining their efforts to come up with the final product.
"Overall, it is great to get a credit, as far as writing with Schwab," Murphy said. "It was the first time that we wrote together and it went very smoothly."
The script for "Period Peace" was a freelance script, which means it could not have been written by members of the current writing staff. "Period Peace" was completed before the Writers Guild of America went on strike in November and was produced in the midst of the strike.
Murphy has only done one script and is not officially a member of the guild, so the strike left him out of work for only a month.
The writers prepare scripts further in advance than the production team, so at the start of the strike there were still six episodes to be shot, "Period Peace" being one of them, so he continued to work until all of the scripts were produced, Murphy explained.
"My job on the show was not as writer, and since they stayed in production, I continued to work until all the scripts we had written prior to the strike were produced," Murphy said.
Murphy also emphasized the importance of the rights of writer.
"The strike sets a base-level precedent so writers are getting paid something-precedent for the Internet," he said. "We don't know what the future holds but (the Internet) is what it is."
The passion to write began at a young age for Murphy. He entered and won various writing contests through his school, which opened the door to meeting renowned authors, including children's book author Judy Blume.
Seven years later the Brunswick, Ohio, native is residing in Silver Lake, Calif., in the east side of Los Angeles, and works as a script-coordinator for ABC's According to Jim. He co-wrote Tuesday's episode of the series with regular writer John Schwab, titled "Period Peace."
Murphy and Schwab were given an outline and each wrote on a different section of the script, combining their efforts to come up with the final product.
"Overall, it is great to get a credit, as far as writing with Schwab," Murphy said. "It was the first time that we wrote together and it went very smoothly."
The script for "Period Peace" was a freelance script, which means it could not have been written by members of the current writing staff. "Period Peace" was completed before the Writers Guild of America went on strike in November and was produced in the midst of the strike.
Murphy has only done one script and is not officially a member of the guild, so the strike left him out of work for only a month.
The writers prepare scripts further in advance than the production team, so at the start of the strike there were still six episodes to be shot, "Period Peace" being one of them, so he continued to work until all of the scripts were produced, Murphy explained.
"My job on the show was not as writer, and since they stayed in production, I continued to work until all the scripts we had written prior to the strike were produced," Murphy said.
Murphy also emphasized the importance of the rights of writer.
"The strike sets a base-level precedent so writers are getting paid something-precedent for the Internet," he said. "We don't know what the future holds but (the Internet) is what it is."
The passion to write began at a young age for Murphy. He entered and won various writing contests through his school, which opened the door to meeting renowned authors, including children's book author Judy Blume.
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