Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show Page #8

I was, you know,

first in and last out.

And if you're doing that,

I think people

are a little more forgiving.

The first year of Buffy

was like, uh, was like

everybody was on ecstasy,

everybody hated everybody,

everybody loved everybody,

and nobody wanted to go home.

That was how I described it.

And my wife just quietly said,

"I think the crew wanted to go home."

There's a part of me

that has a very, very fond

sense of nostalgia for the show.

But, the weight of...

for those six years,

it never left me.

It was all that I thought about.

When I woke up in the morning,

I realized that I had been

thinking about it through the night.

I basically proposed marriage

in May, right after the pilot

was picked up, thinking that the show

would probably be canceled

after a few episodes.

And then I got married

three days after the season one finale.

And then I had my son

right around the time

that Locke and Jack were

going into the hatch.

So, those are...

The fact that I...

The benchmarks of my life

are measured by the show.

Shouldn't it be the other way around?

I did Lost for six years

and that was all I did.

My friend, Heather,

was an executive at ABC.

And she called me on a Friday night,

and she said,

"Do you wanna meet with J.J. on Monday?"

And I said, "yes,"

and in saying yes to that question,

I basically

completely changed my destiny.

And... And if I had said yes,

and then Heather had said to me

"Listen, this is gonna be

the next six years of your life.

"It is going to define you.

"The word next to your name

when you die

"is going to be Lost.

No matter what you do,

"it's going to say Lost writer,

you know?

Um, how do you feel about that?"

I would have said,

"Forget it, I'm not taking the meeting."

The burnout rate

for showrunners is 100%.

100% of the people who do this

stop by their mid to late 50s,

whether in success or failure.

So that's the problem:

it's too good to quit,

and it's too hard to do.

If you said to them, the only way

that I'm gonna be able

to produce the next episode

is on a hospital gurney

with an IV running into my line,

they would say,

"Great. What kind of gurney

"do you like,

'cause here are three choices.

And what would you like in the IV?"

There's so much

literally to do every step of the way.

If we didn't have each other to do it,

I think we'd go crazy.

And there are showrunners...

single showrunners...

that run multiple shows, and I...

I literally

have no idea how that...

I actually think that you can't.

I mean, you have to

hand it off to someone...

We're having

a little conversation about this,

if you guys wanna leave for a minute.

Yeah, because some people say

they can run more than one show.

I actually don't think you can,

without giving up on one of them.

I mean, I'd love to

know how they did it.

The year I had three shows, um,

I had a lot of focus.

56 episodes, did them all.

I don't want to do that again.

But, there was a grandeur to it,

because it was the last year of Buffy,

so I couldn't drop the ball there.

It was the first year of Firefly,

so I couldn't drop the ball there.

And it was the fourth year of Angel

where I thought

everybody knows I'm gonna

drop the ball here,

so I can't drop the ball here

because that's where

they'll be looking for it.

And the emotion

that we were going through on Firefly,

which was terrible, but so bonding.

There is an element of,

once you get them all spinning

they kind of balance a little bit.

You can go from here

to here to here a little bit.

But, only for a certain amount of time,

and then you die of extreme old age.

Please tell me you got a warning.

What is this?

A documentary film?

If a show is in its third year,

it's a hit.

You can replace "behind the camera",

you cannot replace

"in front of the camera."

So, if there's a huge fight,

if you're not getting along

and it comes to who's gonna stay,

the actor will probably win.

The Bochco quote I heard was

"The first year,

"they work for you,

second year, you're partners,

and the third year,

you work for them."

This is dressed up.

Monitored.

This is such a good idea.

Yeah, new shoe...

Are those new shoes?

Are those your...

Look how new they are!

They're triple-tied!

You're trying to look decent.

Triple-tied, those are triple-tied.

Uh-huh, you don't even know

what he usually looks like.

Oh, okay, okay.

When I'm dealing with my cast,

the occasional hot tempers

is impossible to avoid.

If you're lucky,

the arguments that you have,

it's all based in character and story

and trying to do the best

show that you possibly can.

I try to focus on what's constructive,

'cause generally,

there's a note to be had

inside... inside a vicious

throwdown argument.

I really, you know,

try to not bring poison onto my set.

And if an actor has a reputation

of being poison

I don't bring 'em on.

I don't care

how f***ing good his work is.

I don't want somebody

undermining the energy

that we have on the set

that ultimately feeds

the work and,

and what the show is

and how... and how people

perceive the show.

Action!

He threatened her in front of you?

We were casting the Shield pilot.

I was very proud of that script.

And then actors started to come

in and read for Vic Mackey.

And all of a sudden,

it didn't sound so good,

and I started to get really

depressed about it.

And I remember one day,

I turned to Clark Johnson,

our director, and I said,

"Maybe the script

isn't as good as I think it is."

And I remember the next day,

Michael Chiklis came in,

and he sat down,

and he had about a six

or eight minute audition

that just from beginning to end,

he was Vic Mackey.

And he got up and he left the room,

and I turned to Clark and I said

"No, I'm a great writer."

And it's a... It's

a good example of, you know,

when you feel so great

when you find that actor

that just embodies a role.

Cut!

Don't have to be so mean, Booth!

It's their job to do

what's written for them.

And of course,

they're invested in their characters

in a way that we're just not

because they spend

all their time with it,

whereas we're spending time

with seven characters

at a minimum.

On big things,

like whether or not the character

should be in a relationship,

well, we know where we're going.

Mm-hmm.

And they don't.

They trust us.

When they get a script,

usually we'll get a phone call

of them saying, "Wow, this is wild.

I mean, how am I supposed to do this?"

You know, and you're like,

"Well, what do you think?"

And then that's when

the conversation begins.

Our lead actress, for example,

she's hit these challenges

that even ourselves, we're like,

"Well, this is gonna take

a long conversation."

But, I mean, like nothing:

"Okay, guys, that sounds great,"

you know,

"Let me take a crack at it."

And you know, we're just

sitting here flabbergasted

because... I would have

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