David Shore on How a Non-Profit Inspired an Episode of ‘The Good Doctor’
By Danielle Turchiano
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – David Shore has worked out of his mint-green Shore Z Prods. office on the Sony lot in Los Angeles for nearly six years, but he hopes it looks like he just moved in. “I believe that I should be able to clear out of my office with one cardboard box with a moment’s notice. That’s my basic philosophy to my workspace,” says Shore, executive producer of “The Good Doctor.” Although Shore claims he is “not a nostalgic person,” looking closely at his space reveals a secret sentimental side.
Functional Feng Shui
You watch a film horizontally, but you read a script vertically, Shore notes. That’s why his computer screen is flipped from the norm. “I can get a whole page of dialogue on there,” he says. Having two monitors with one keyboard is also important because when rewriting, he can change something on the document on one screen and have it mirrored on the other, which the episode’s writer uses as they work.
Legal Brief
Before he worked in television, Shore practiced law in his native Canada. He keeps the suitcase he used as a briefcase back then on a shelf just adjacent to his desk. “It looks like it’s from the ‘30s, and it feels like it could have been my dad’s, but I can’t say that for sure,” he says. Attached to the case is a business card from his time as a lawyer, and just above it on a top shelf is a Rubik’s cube that took him “months” to finish during his third year of law school.
A Man of Public Record
In 1989 Shore was a part of an “important legal precedent” that made its way into the official record. The case, now framed on his wall, centered on a man who owed $250,000 in taxes and sent in his return without a check. Years later, the government was trying to collect $500,000 in interest. Shore argued that since there was no specific time within which the payment had to be assessed, the interest payment was unfounded. “Not only did he not have to pay the interest, but they didn’t collect on his back taxes either.”
Hometown Boy Makes Good
Shore has been nominated for seven Emmy Awards but only won once — for writing “House.” After he won, he made the front page of his hometown newspaper in London, Ontario, Canada. “This is two days after the Emmys because it took them 24 hours to realize I was from [there],” he jokes. “This should have been the Monday paper, but it’s the Tuesday paper.”
Save the Children, Save the World
Shore’s wife is president of Israeli-based charity Save a Child’s Heart, which flies children from third-world countries to Israel for life-saving heart surgery. “Mothers from all over the world were sitting there in that room, waiting for their children, and they can’t speak to each other, but they’re connected,” Shore says of visiting the medical facility. He keeps a mug with the charity’s logo on his desk. The work they do inspired the ninth episode of “,” in which the team from St. Bonaventure tries to save a young African boy with severe heart abnormalities.
