David Shore
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Shore is a Canadian-born lawyer-turned-writer, best known for his work writing and producing in television. A former lawyer, Shore became known for his work on Family Law and Law & Order. Shore also produced many episodes of the hit cult television series Due South, before creating a show of his own, House, M. D..
[edit] Biography
David Shore was born on July 3, 1959 in London, Ontario, Canada. He is the only member of his family involved in television, as his twin younger brothers—Philip and Robert—are rabbis.
Shore attended the University of Toronto and worked as a municipal and corporate lawyer in his native Canada before he moved to Los Angeles to break into television. He sees this as a lateral move, as he does not consider being an attorney an uncreative occupation. He wrote for the cult series Due South—about another Canadian transplanted in America, albeit a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Force—before he became a producer on the long-running NBC drama Law & Order. He was nominated for two Emmys for his work on that series.
He then moved on to the series Family Law, Hack and Century City, but did not hit the commercial success he had found with his earlier work. In 2003, producer Paul Attanasio—who had previously worked with NBC on such shows as Homicide: Life on the Street and Gideon's Crossing—approached Shore to request a procedural, as he knew the network was looking for another one to follow up on the success of Law & Order and to imitate CBS's success with CSI and NCIS. Attanasio's idea was to apply the police procedural genre to a show about doctors. While in most procedurals the characters are secondary to the mystery, Shore claims to have realized that a medical procedural should place the mystery secondary to the hero. He therefore conceived of a hero similar to the iconic detective Sherlock Holmes—although many who know him well have suggested the character also bears resemblances to himself, and the final character is not entirely dissimilar from Dr. Ben Gideon, hero of Attanasio's previous television misstep, Gideon's Crossing, although Shore's hero was much more acerbic.
That hero was Dr. Gregory House, hero of House, M.D. Although NBC took a pass on the series, FOX picked it up, and by the end of season one, it was their biggest new hit of the 2004–05 season. Shore wrote or co-wrote five episodes of that first season, including the Pilot and the season one pre-finale, "Three Stories", in which he intricately weaved the stories of three patients whilst also revealing the reason for Dr. House's limp and hydrocodone (Vicodin) addiction. For writing the latter of these he won the 2005 Emmy for "Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series."
Shore made his directorial debut on the series, House by directing the season 2 finale "No Reason".
Due to the success of House, Shore has recently been granted a generous contract for a third season. He lives in Encino Hills, California, with his wife Judy and their three children.
