Gary Goldberg was a producer and writer for television and film. His TV sitcoms included the 1982 hit show Family Ties, starring Michael Fox, as well as Brooklyn Bridge and Spin City. Gary was the author of the memoir Sit Ubu Sit. Ubu Productions, founded in 1981, was named after his black labrador retriever Ubu.
Gary spoke with Jessica Harris about how he launched his writing career, from scratch. He died shortly after this recording in June, 2013.
Listen to the interview
Interview Transcript
Host, Jessica Harris:
00:06
I’m Jessica Harris. This is from scratch. My guest is Gary Goldberg, a producer and writer for television and film. His TV sitcoms include the 1982 show Family Ties starring Michael Fox as well as Brooklyn Bridge and Spin City. Gary has written a memoir called Sit, Ubu, Sit. Ubu was the name of his production company, which he founded in 1981 named after his black Labrador retriever, Ubu. Welcome.
Guest, Gary Goldberg:
00:34
Thank you. It is really a pleasure to be here.
Jessica Harris:
00:36
You fell into a career in writing accidentally and you didn’t know that you wanted to become a writer until you were in your 30s. How did that discovery happen?
Gary Goldberg:
00:47
It really was based on the fact that I had been this giant failure in the eyes of the world from the time I was, I would say 20 to 31 I was actually 31 at the time and I had, so I had never graduated college. I, I had been asked to leave more than one, but less than four, uh, universities. And my wife, who was a super student of all time, was going on to get like a triple master’s degree on the way to her PhD. And I was just tagging along at San Diego state, uh, university and just taking care of the baby and the Labrador, you know, Ubu. So that was really it. So I needed credits everywhere. I needed a thousand credits. And so I took a beginning writing class and it happened that the writer was a gentleman name of Nate Monaster, who was a past president of the Writers Guild. The assignment was to write a television commercial, and I was older and I just hadn’t really no interest in that, but I thought, well, I’m in this class and I, maybe I should try to write something. So I went up to Nate. Uh, I said, you know, I, I’m not trying to get out of the assignment, but I don’t want to do a commercial. Can I just try to write something? And he said, great. So I started to write about when I was a waiter at the village gate in New York during the sixties, late sixties which was kind of a turning point in my life. And it was interesting to me as I sat down to write, I could transport myself back to the village gate, I could hear dialogue, I could hear individual voices, I could hear, you know, silverware, you know, drinks being poured. And it was startling.
Gary Goldberg:
02:16
And I wrote, and I had a good time, so I hand in these pages and we were not economically solvent at this point, so we couldn’t afford a telephone. Our phone was in our neighbor’s apartment. So he came over and he said, Hey Gary, there’s a guy from the college wants to talk to you. And I walk across the yard and it’s Nate Monaster. And he said, um,
