Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show Page #7

as it is of anything else.

I have an amazing

non-writing executive producer,

Jessika Borsiczky, to just understand

administrating people

and budgets and hot costs

and all of that stuff

that I kind of glaze over at.

The skill sets to be a good writer

and to be a good manager

are almost diametrically opposite.

I think writers tend to

be skeptics, critics.

They're fueled by anger, um,

by a curiosity, by outrage.

Whereas when you're managing,

you have so many different

aspects of production

to be concerned about.

The writers are your most immediate,

but then you've gotta deal with actors,

and you've gotta

deal with your directors,

and you've gotta deal

with everybody else.

Those skills are not innate.

Steadicam, in-camera freeze.

Yeah, we'll get that

either right before or right after

we get the walking in master.

When you spend a lot

of time just trying to steer

your own boat as a writer,

the idea now that

you have to be doing

all of these other tasks,

is um... can be overwhelming.

A list of the ordered breakaways,

and see if we're in the ballpark.

One or two...

Showrunning has this kind of

glamorous patina to it.

You know, the guys who run Lost,

and you know,

it sort of seems like

one fabulous party

of, you know, being creative

and fooling the public,

and being, you know, brilliant.

For me, a lot of it is

the grind of selling the show,

pitching the show,

getting the outline approved,

going to scripts, handing in a draft.

It's just a f***ing grind,

is the truth.

Because we're doing a period piece,

everything is exponentially

more complicated

and time consuming.

Uh, every actor,

every extra, needs a haircut.

Every set has to be dressed.

I mean, I'm talking about

locations particularly.

If you're doing a contemporary show,

you just pull up and shoot.

This, we pull up, it takes three days

to get a simple street scene ready.

Air conditioners,

lights that aren't correct, doorknobs.

I mean, every little thing

has to be changed and fixed.

This is the scope of this thing.

Our network hour of television

is 43 minutes long.

An episode of our show

is typically between

55 and 60 minutes,

so that's days and days of extra work.

So, it all adds up to a much

greater shooting schedule.

There are six typical

days in the production

of a four camera,

half hour television comedy.

Five of them are your

five production days.

And the sixth is a hiatus.

We produce 24 episodes

in the course of a season,

and we do them in blocks.

A block of three is three episodes on,

and then a week down from production.

During those down weeks,

you catch up on scripts.

You start writing scripts before the...

before you start shooting.

So, we start shooting in August

because America needs

new television in September.

And in order to

start shooting in August,

the writers start working in June,

and we wrap in April.

And, um, I think that if you

would bring in scientists

to study this, they would discover

that human beings have

exactly enough energy

to accomplish 90% of that schedule.

And the last 10% of it

is a Bataan Death March

to the wrap party.

Mirror my situation exactly.

Right, right, right.

I just mean,

you are married with kids.

There she is.

Ah, sh*t.

That's my wife telling me

I have enough money.

If this show goes down the tubes,

you gotta make a living

right away somewhere.

That's for you guys.

'Cause I got a lot of money,

so I don't care.

Well, while we're on the subject,

we might not be in

this room for six,

seven months from now.

- Nine... Nine months.

- Yeah.

We've got to have a talk

about that, but yeah.

That is a...

We met with a couple networks,

and then TNT...

When we met with Michael Wright

and the way he took to it

and the way he responded to it,

we just felt, you know,

this is a good fit, yeah.

The main thing is they...

they have their opinions

and sometimes we disagree,

but they don't come down

with an edict.

The critics have been helpful,

'cause we got great reviews.

Oh yeah.

Season one.

Then we got even better

reviews this season.

If that doesn't happen, maybe they...

- No, of course.

- They stick their hand in there more, yeah.

I can speak for him.

I can say why

he's been in a hit show,

and then another show.

So, you're assuming

this show is a hit.

There's a number at which you survive,

and there's a number at

which you don't survive.

Um, you get feedback,

it's called ratings.

We respect that aspect

of the business

and we understand that

the network has to maintain

a certain number of eyeballs

on their show

or else you're gone.

We go to a bunch of people

and ask them to give us

a couple million bucks a week

to tell our little pretend-y stories.

That...

The idea that they should do that

with no strings attached is madness

Right.

You know?

It's other people's money.

There's stockholders

out there somewhere.

I don't know who would

invest in television now,

that's a horrible idea.

If you pay too much

attention to the things

that are completely

out of your control,

like when they're airing you,

when they're preempting you.

How many people watched that night,

or whether or not it went

up or down from last week.

If you start doing that,

then you start losing

control of the things

that are within your grasp.

All I can do is tell a better story.

Obviously,

if there's a clear drop-off,

then you should look at that.

But, I do read other people's ratings.

The thing that men do...

women do this, too,

but I don't tend to do this...

they focus on the number.

"What's the number gonna be,

what's the number?"

And I poured myself into it,

about it, midnight,

the night that we aired,

I couldn't even watch it

on broadcast television...

I shouldn't tell anybody that.

I didn't watch my own show air.

I've been on so many

failed, canceled shows.

And I just thought,

"Oh, god, please be good enough

to stay on the air."

I went to bed, and you know,

six hours later,

my husband is poking me

and he has his computer with him,

and he says,

"I think you want to get out of bed."

And I had, of course,

slept through the early Nielsen

and all the phone calls

and the texting.

And I said, "No, I don't wanna know,

I don't wanna know,"

which is very cowardly of me.

And he said,

"Yeah, I think you might wanna know

you're the most successful show on...

in basic cable history."

And I said,

"F*** you, that's not funny!"

Which is not nice of me

to say to my husband.

I really thought he was kidding.

And I looked at it

and I stared at it.

And I'm not being

humble here, I thought,

"How is that possible?

How is that possible?"

You don't go into a

TV show expecting good hours.

You go into a TV show

expecting the worst.

Somebody is always staying up.

I think there are a lot of shows

where everybody is always staying up.

For the longest time...

really until

because of the family I couldn't...

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