Cort Cass AB ‘03 self-describes as a “television nerd, with a heavy emphasis on nerd,” as evidenced by the fact that while in high school, he once translated an episode of SEINFELD into Latin for an AP assignment. Freshman year of Harvard, he was introduced to the LAMPOON by an older student. “I was not as talented as some of my friends who were on staff, and so I took a shortcut to get on staff my freshman year and comped business.” Cort laughs. “It turned out to be a really smart move.” He did an internship at MTV during his freshman summer, and even though he says he spent the summer organizing a press closet, it didn’t prevent the producing bug from biting him by senior year. 

“BJ Novak [AB '01] asked me to produce a big show that he was doing on campus called 'THE BJ SHOW',” Cort recalls. “We recruited Bob Saget to host, put together this amazing variety show at Sanders Theater, and raised a bunch of money. After that, I realized, ‘Oh, shit! This was so much fun! Could I really do this for a living?’”

After graduating, Cort held a creative writing internship followed by a yearlong stint at CAA (where he quickly realized representation wasn’t the path for him). After a few interviews, he ended up as an assistant at Touchstone Television, the television studio within Walt Disney Studios. “And somehow I'm still here, twenty years later, which is absolutely insane and both impressive and mortifying,” Cort smiles.

Although it’s rare within the entertainment business to remain with the same company for so long, Cort says that he’s been able to stay energized and inspired in all the different areas he’s been involved at Disney over the past two decades. “Every time I felt like I stopped growing, a different opportunity presented itself,” he says, the most recent of which was a pivot from half-hour comedy to hour-long drama. “There were not a lot of people out there who would take a VP of comedy and just immediately anoint them VP of drama with no experience, and of course I was nervous making that leap.” Luckily, Patrick Moran, who was in charge of the studio, and Patrick Maguire, who was in charge of drama at the time, saw something in Cort. And he gladly rose to the challenge.

“It turns out that that transition, at least for me, was pretty easy… I actually find drama easier than comedy, at least from an executive standpoint. Because in comedy, you not only have to tell a compelling story, but you have to make it funny. And it's really hard to tell somebody that something's not funny enough. So I just find the one-hour world a little bit easier to navigate. And it's been humbling, learning the 2,000 additional names of writers and directors who live and thrive in that space… but it is important, I think, to feel like you're continuing to grow in this industry and that you are being challenged,” Cort explains.

The pivot from comedy to drama is easier not only for executives, Cort has observed, but also for writers. Although the script length is only half that of a drama, comedies face the challenge of having to actually be funny, which is not as easy to execute. “The reality is, if you study under the best comedy showrunners, they are so disciplined about story,” Cort says. “And I think that surprised me, just how essential that element was in the half-hour space, that it's not just about... jokes per page.” That’s not to say the transition should be discouraged; in fact, Cort notes that working in one medium helps you in the other: “We've had a lot of success and fun working with people who have only worked in one genre and then pivoting them to the other, because they've been able to do something surprising and innovative.”

That kind of surprise and innovation is key to crafting a compelling script. Right now, it’s particularly important that “any script or idea or pitch stand out and be noisy to cut through the clutter,” Cort explains. “But there is some tension, because you have this counterweight where it also needs to be recognizable or packaged in a form that knucklehead executives like me can understand. And so it is a really unique challenge… How do you take a genre that feels familiar and elevate it in some way?”

In terms of the different genres and mediums that Cort has worked across, there is still an underlying message driving the work he tries to involve himself in. “Almost every show that I've worked on hasn't taken itself too seriously. And maybe that's aligned with my worldview… I think that the best comedies that I've worked on have had dramatic elements, and the best dramas that I've worked on have had comedic elements, and I think that they've worked for a reason. Because that encompasses the human experience, and the closer that we can get to helping somebody feel less alone, or having something kind of hit for somebody in a way that makes them feel, but also not wallow in like the state of the world.” This comes down, in part, to a writer’s voice. “Voice is paramount… There are certain creators out there, whether it's Kenya Barris or Michael Waldron, who have a unique way of looking at the world and have something to say. Voice, to me, always wins. You can't teach somebody how to have a voice. They either have it or they don't. It's apparent in the first five pages of reading a script, usually,” Cort says.

That means the key for aspiring writers is to start developing their voice now. But across the industry, a piece of advice Cort offers is to understand that this industry is not always a meritocracy. Unfortunately, jobs don’t always go to the most competent or the most capable applicants. “So much of this industry, especially at the assistant level, is about fit and intangibles, and sometimes, it just becomes about a cadence that they're responding to, or just like a vibe that they're responding to more so than just pure smarts or talent…. Can you really fit into a culture and organization that's really specific to the desk or role that you're applying to?” But one thing that always helps in preparation for any role in the industry is reading and watching everything about it. “Listen to industry podcasts, and just be really well versed in what's going on… and also find a lane that you can really make your mark in as you're coming up… Make yourself an expert in a specific genre or type of storytelling or brand,” Cort concludes.