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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.
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
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.
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
exactly enough energy
to accomplish 90% of that schedule.
And the last 10% of it
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
on their show
or else you're gone.
We go to a bunch of people
and ask them to give us
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.
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?"
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,
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...
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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"Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Aug. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/showrunners:_the_art_of_running_a_tv_show_18064>.
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