Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show Page #10

sense of authorship there.

The internet was sort of just becoming

a thing when we were doing Felicity.

You know, on specialty websites

we would sort of see

early stages of consensus

of what people were

thinking of episodes.

And it really did become clear to me

that this was... TV was becoming

a little bit like theater,

where you would perform something,

and almost in real time,

you'd be hearing

the laughter or the applause,

or the absolutely painful

deafening silence.

And what was kind of great

was you could use that

as one of your tools.

I love Twitter,

I feel like I was born to tweet.

It's a way for me to sort of

let people know who I am.

You can tell when the fans

are tracking the story.

You can tell when they're confused.

You don't want confused fans.

You can tell when they're bored.

You don't want bored fans.

So, it does give you a way

to take the temperature.

But, Twitter can be

kind of dangerous.

If the writers of Cheers

had had Twitter,

they would have been

besieged by people going

"Get Sam and Diane together."

And you know, like,

sometimes what the fans want

is different than what

they really want.

Very rarely do I interact

with the very negative criticism.

But, sometimes

there's something so egregious

that I just have to comment.

And I've gotten into a dust-up,

twice now

that I can think of,

where I found out later

I was actually in a yelling match

with like a 12-year-old.

Some shows are much better

suited to a digital presence,

to a web presence, than others.

Lost is probably the best example.

Lost found itself

riding this wave where suddenly

they realized

people wanted more information,

and they were very savvy

about it, and they began

to create all sorts of

branded merchandise,

not just on the web...

they also had a game and a book.

But, at one point,

Carlton Cuse said, "You know,

"sometimes I don't feel

like a showrunner,

I feel like a brand manager."

There was this demand

for us to constantly get out

and explain things.

And we felt like

if we denied our audience,

if we basically said,

"Sorry, the show speaks for itself,

and we're not gonna talk

about the show at all,"

that actually would have

hurt the show.

And so, by making ourselves

sort of available,

ultimately sometimes to

criticism as well as praise

or questions or anything,

we felt that

that was in the best interest

of the show.

That evolved to, by the end

of the first season of the show,

Carlton and I were asked

to do a special

where we explained

"Here are all the things

that you need to know

in order to enjoy the finale."

So, suddenly, I'm just a writer

who occasionally does

interviews with the press.

And then I turn on ABC,

and there's my ugly bald head,

you know, trying to explain

what the black rock is.

And Carlton and I just

turned to each other

and said

"How the hell did this happen?"

We are at the forefront of a new era,

and it is an era with some

really distinct differences

from the way TV has been done before.

When we started Husbands,

my first thought was,

"Okay, we put this up

on the web, we demonstrate

there's an audience for this,

and then TV will want it."

Now, I realize, like, no,

why would we wanna go there,

when we've demonstrated

there's an audience for it

right where it is?

Right now, what the internet

is capable of providing is growing.

What TV is capable of

holding onto is shrinking.

But, they haven't met in the middle

in any significant way.

At some point,

I think they will have to.

I feel like what I do is secure

in that I'm a writer,

first and foremost.

I'm gonna want to write

something for somebody

and someone's gonna wanna make it.

You know, and if I am

writing for something

that's just on the internet,

and we're performing

like just on something.com,

if I'm happy doing it

and I can feed my family,

I'm happy doing that, too.

We can do it in the

way the consumer most wants it.

Get it directly to them,

they can help us fund it.

There are a lot of people

invested in a big TV show.

Web show, you're invested in it,

which is fantastic.

The profusion of platforms

of channels of distribution,

it's all kind of exploding,

and it used to be

that you could understand

I think the television universe

as a solar system,

and the sun was broadcast television...

the three or four networks...

and everything else

was a satellite that

traveled around the sun.

And that clearly no longer

is the model.

The sun has exploded.

And there are a lot of little

solar systems being set up,

and the idea that we'll

ever have a coherent whole

like that again,

I'm not sure we will.

He's up there right now.

There he is.

He's up there in his private G6

and he's coming here,

to our tiny company

up in his fat f***ing belly.

So, what we need to do, Douglas,

is we need to get Adam.

It's a little bit heartbreaking

being in the editing room,

because there's only

so much you can make better.

There are really so many things

that you have to be on top of

on the day that you're shooting

that you just, you know,

pay for in the editing room.

What did you think about

the idea of breaking it up

into two sections, one after 10

and one after 13?

'Cause I watched it last night

like a, you know,

like a third grader.

No, it was totally...

I was like,

"Wow, that's cool!"

'Cause I've been writing

so many episodes,

I have not spent enough time in here.

So now, I'm doing a lot of catching up.

... just like this one,

and tell them how to fix their sh*t.

Well, this week it's us.

Right, Jeannie?

Both The Chicago Code

and Terriers being canceled

were hard, in that I thought

we'd made good shows.

I get that if you make

something that isn't good,

it's... it's gonna fail.

The hard thing about Hollywood is

that good things

can fail, too.

When The Shield was in the middle

of all its critical acclaim,

I knew that not everything

would go that way.

So, for me, I was like,

"Okay, The Shield

kind of gives me permission

to fail at this point."

And fail I did.

Um...

You know, I made the shows

I wanted to make.

We had a horrible name for Terriers.

We never could properly

explain to an audience

what that show was gonna be.

Chicago Code certainly had its shot.

Got a big premiere,

the night after the Super Bowl.

Got a lot of ads during the Super Bowl.

I can't say that anybody screwed us.

Self-doubt creeps in,

not about my ability

to make what I think a good show is,

but where are my tastes

aligning up to America's taste?

I've learned the lesson

as a showrunner

that you can control

the things you can control.

And unfortunately, you can't control

300 million people and what dial,

you know, what channel

they turn the dial to every night.

Any time you do anything

and you put it out there

and it fails, uh, it's of course

a depressing thing.

Undercovers is

an especially painful disappointment.

I sort of did the show

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