Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show Page #4

there was action,

there was just a lot going on there.

Something that you'd just always

keep in mind, you know,

first and foremost,

you're putting on a television show.

No matter what else I do in my career,

that will be the experience

that I compare everything else to.

I started dating this girl

who worked at

Star Trek:
The Next Generation.

And she said, uh, you know,

I could probably get you

a tour of the sets.

Turns, in retrospect, that

that was the key moment of my career,

because I just decided,

what the hell,

I'm gonna write a spec script

called "The Bonding."

There was this young man

who was giving me the tour,

and I conned him into reading it,

and it turned out, he liked it.

And he was one of Gene

Roddenberry's assistants.

And he gave it to the late

Michael Piller, who bought it.

And then I got this call

one day, just saying,

"I need a staff writer.

Can you start working tomorrow?"

And I said, "yes,"

and showed up and...

I was there ten years.

When I started at Star Trek,

it really was the fulfillment

of a lifelong dream.

I was a very serious Trekkie as a kid.

I loved the old show.

And then I killed Kirk.

I co-wrote Generations

and killed my childhood hero.

I mean, I literally killed

my childhood hero.

I wept when I wrote it.

It still moves me

when I think about it.

I don't know anyone else

who has that experience.

I don't know how to take it in

and understand what it means

for my life, what it says

about me, you know, what...

what insight it gives into my soul.

You know. It's a...

It's a unique experience

that I don't quite know

what to do with.

I never thought

I'd be writing television.

What I loved about journalism,

what drew me to it

is eventually

what repelled me from it.

What got to me about

covering real events is,

that body on the floor

doesn't get back up.

And it got to be relentless

and... and really

profoundly disturbing.

In October of 1977...

I was doing a third school shooting,

and I just had this moment

where I walked away,

and I just thought,

I can't do this anymore.

You said that you cried about

shooting Larry Flynt.

And that was the moment I thought,

well, then what the hell

am I gonna do with my life?

But with that very first script,

it was like a whole new world

opened up for me and I thought,

I get to fictionalize

all these things that I've seen.

Reporting live from Los Angeles,

I'm Janet Tamaro for ABC News.

As a former standup comic,

I think that comedy

is harder than drama...

I'll just say it.

You know, when you're writing,

it's like eight hours

of being in a hole and then, oh,

oh, oh, here we go, you know?

I mean, sometimes there's days of,

oh, all right, great, you know?

But sometimes there's days of, like,

I don't know, man.

I just don't know.

Nothing is happening.

You know? This is horrible.

And it seems to not matter

how often you can conquer

a writing problem.

The next time

there's a writing problem,

that becomes the one

that will kill you.

When you're done with writing,

you have the "I'm awesome" feeling.

Look at what I did.

Oh, my god.

Of course, I've had that

after writing, like,

a one-line email, too.

"Wow, that was pithy.

Whew, wow, nice work."

I think the

challenge that comedy presents

that drama doesn't

is moving people

into ridiculous situations.

Our slang in the room is,

you have to close

all the other doors so that

the only door available

to this character is the door

that leads to the big block

comedy scene you wanna do,

and that's difficult.

The more episodes you write,

the more stories you've told

and can't tell again.

And that becomes harder

with every episode.

It's harder on the second

episode than on the first,

harder on the third than the second.

But the storytelling within

the episode doesn't change.

You have to get to the point

where the audience would say,

"You know what?

"If I were in that situation,

damn it, if I wouldn't do

the exact same thing."

The show was really born of the fact

that common heist shows, I felt,

weren't doing

what they were supposed to do,

which is to give you the magic trick.

They were being highly serialized.

Chris was talking about Rockford files.

Yeah.

And where were the shows

like Rockford Files

that was good, smart, crime drama

that you could watch with your dad?

Right, and it seemed like

there were a lot of shows

about serial killers on the air.

Probably more serial killers

have been captured

on network television than ever existed.

- In one season.

In one season. Yeah, there is...

As far as America is concerned,

scraggly white loners

are roaming the streets,

uh, dropping baroque clue paths

in the path of private investigators.

Talking to some of my friends

who write on

more traditional procedurals,

once they have an arena

where they're gonna be...

it's a murder at a circus,

it's a, you know,

murder at a microchip plant...

they're in heaven.

But it's finding a new clue path

that they haven't done before,

that's what they spend

the bulk of their time on.

And for us, the clue path is these...

is the heist.

And the con.

- Yeah. And the con.

I had lunch with an ex-FBI agent

and we were struggling with, uh,

what are we stealing this week?

This is sort of the endless struggle.

He said, um,

"Uh, well, you know, you hear about

"calibration weights for

centrifuges to make nuclear,

uh, to make nuclear weapons?"

And I was like,

"I wanna kiss you on the mouth."

If you weren't armed right now,

I would kiss you on the mouth.

You're telling me

that a tiny weight this big

could calibrate a centrifuge

to make nuclear weapons

for a rogue state

and you have to steal this tiny item?

That's the size of something

you put in a belt pouch

on someone who is rappelling

through a ceiling.

That's perfect!

Somebody said,

where did this come from?

Why did you wanna do this show?

I thought about, well,

I didn't wanna do an adaptation,

and it's an adaptation.

I really didn't wanna do a procedural,

it's a procedural.

I really didn't wanna do a mystery,

it's a mystery.

I knew I wanted to do humor

because I like to be funny.

I hope I am funny,

I hope I'm not the only one

laughing at my jokes.

But I think what it was about

for me on a deep level

and this is where...

why writers pick stuff that,

that, that they respond to.

I had...

My best friend of 16 years

had been killed in a, in a,

in an accident.

If you don't wanna go there...

You know, it's funny,

I don't go there on the show, um...

But I do.

This relationship

between these two women

who were really different

was in some ways

my relationship with my best friend.

And you know, it's...

it's horrendously awful that, um,

you know, my life,

my personal tragedy became fuel

for this show, but I think

that's what happens to writers,

and I think that's why

nobody wants to be married

or related to a writer,

uh, even a television or film writer,

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