Eliot Glazer

FILM/TV Out Take: Eliot Glazer

Media and TV writer, musician

Web: EliotGlazer.com

Contact: Heidi Vanderlee, HV@
SharkPartyMedia.com

Most Recent: Haunting Renditions

Eliot Glazer’s new live concert creation, Haunting Renditions, offers “an intimate night of bad music made good” once a month, in which he takes low-brow pop songs––anything from Avril Lavigne to Shaggy––and transfigures them into classically arranged productions.

Glazer says. “These songs really tickle the audience, and they remember the lyrics. I like doing these songs that are just left-of-center, just off the radar, and present them in a funny context.”   

Glazer’s most well-known job might be as executive story editor of the popular Fox series New Girl. Glazer broke into the world of script writing while studying in New York, where eventually one of his scripts landed on the desk of Darren Star, who hired Glazer to write for his TV Land series, Younger. That led Glazer to bigger things, including the writer’s room for New Girl.

One of the biggest challenges of entering the profession, he says, is learning to market oneself without “driving people away or pissing your friends off.”

“Getting the word out is really difficult. It’s a crowded marketplace, and with social media it’s difficult to make a splash. The challenge is figuring out how to do that appropriately,” he says. “If you’re modest, you have to learn to be more aggressive.”

Glazer also writes for such projects as Comedy Central’s Broad City, and he developed an original half-hour comedy for Comedy Central with Executive Producer Will Arnett, and created the viral video Shit New Yorkers Say, which has four million YouTube hits. He also created a comedic web series that addresses gay issues, culture and stereotypes. Through it all, Glazer has avoided a pigeonhole, which he attributes to tenacity and simple friendliness.

“It’s a matter of really being thoughtful and being a self-starter and also ingratiating with the community,” Glazer says. “Whatever community you want to be part of, figure out the way to get in there. A lot of that comes from just being nice.”