On Story—The Golden Ages of Television
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On Story
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The Golden Ages of
Television a u s t in f il m f e s t i va l e di t e d b y
Maya Perez and Barbara Morgan for e wor d b y
Noah Hawley
u n i v er si t y of t e x a s pr e s s
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aus t i n
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Copyright © 2018 by Austin Film Festival, Inc. Foreword © 2018 by Noah Hawley All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2018 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 utpress.utexas.edu/rp-form The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Perez, Maya, editor. | Morgan, Barbara, editor. | Hawley, Noah, writer of supplementary textual content. | Austin Film Festival (Austin, Tex.) Title: On story : the golden ages of television / edited by Maya Perez and Barbara Morgan ; foreword by Noah Hawley. Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2018. Identifiers: lccn 2018003960 isbn 978-1-4773-1694-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn 978-1-4773-1695-5 (library e-book) isbn 978-1-4773-1696-2 (nonlibrary e-book) Subjects: lcsh: On story: presented by Austin Film Festival (Television program) | Television authorship. | Television—Production and direction. | Television producers and directors—Interviews. | Television writers—Interviews. | Television programs—History. Classification: lcc pn1996 o67 2018 | ddc 808.2/25—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018003960 doi:10.7560/316948
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Contents
Foreword by Noah Hawley vii Acknowledgments ix Biographies xi Introduction by Maya Perez 1 1 . com e di e s Up Close with Garry Shandling (2004) 7 Up Close with Greg Daniels (2008) 11 Arrested Development: A Conversation with Mitchell Hurwitz, Moderated by Paul Feig (2009) 19 A Conversation with Alec Berg, Moderated by Pat Hazell (2011) 31 Orange Is the New Black: Up Close with Jenji Kohan (2013) 43 Web Series to HBO: Up Close with Issa Rae (2015) 45 A Conversation with Carl Reiner, Moderated by Barry Josephson (2015) 50 A Conversation with Marta Kau man, Moderated by Barbara Morgan (2016) 56 New Girl: A Conversation with Elizabeth Meriwether, Moderated by Beau Willimon (2016) 65
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Up Close with Paula Pell (2016) 74 Up Close with Alan Yang (2017) 77 2 . dr a m a s Oz: Up Close with Tom Fontana (2003) 91 The X-Files: A Conversation with Chris Carter, Moderated by Damon Lindelof (2012) 94 A Conversation with David Chase, Moderated by Barry Josephson (2012) 100 Lost: Up Close with Damon Lindelof (2012) 107 Up Close with Marti Noxon (2012) 116 Breaking Bad: A Conversation with Vince Gilligan, Moderated by Barry Josephson (2013) 120 A Conversation with Vince Gilligan, Moderated by Álvaro Rodríguez (2013) 128 Rectify: A Conversation with Ray McKinnon, Moderated by Barbara Morgan (2013) 133 House: Up Close with David Shore (2013) 141 Justified: Up Close with Wendy Calhoun (2014) 144 The 10-Hour Movie: A Conversation with Cary Fukunaga and Noah Hawley (2014) 147 Mad Men: A Conversation with Matthew Weiner, Moderated by Robert Draper (2014) 161 Better Call Saul: A Conversation with Peter Gould, Moderated by Barbara Morgan (2015) 171
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Foreword noah hawley
Is a story about a story ever as interesting as the story itself? Or do magicians have the right idea: never show them how the trick is done? Because then they’ll see it was all just a trick. There was no magic after all. And yet we are curious beasts. And greedy. When we love something we want more of it. All of it. This explains The Fast and the Furious 91, Furiosity! It also explains the hunger for insight into how the stories we love to watch were made. We study photographs of Kubrick and Nicholson as they divine madness in the subterranean hallways of the Overlook Hotel. We look closely, trying to discern the moment when art was born. Filmmaking is a collaborative art, requiring hundreds of conspirators. This means that the architecture of every great fi lm and television show was the product of a process—spoken out loud, schematics drawn up, proofs reviewed, decisions made. Actors had to be cast and coached: the things they did to get into character, their feuds and affairs all part of the DNA of the object we love. What does it mean? we find ourselves asking directors on junkets, forcing them to turn subtext to text. And yet the magic of the trick we love—my god it’s full of stars—stubbornly refuses to be decoded. We watch these stories again and again—not because their every secret has been revealed, but for the opposite reason. In this way every great film is the Zapruder fi lm, in which a president is assassinated before our very eyes (each shot documented with a timecode), and yet no matter how many times we watch it, we still don’t know what happened. And so we watch it again. Sometimes, however, the act of research, the inquest into how the thing we love was made (and why) broadens the experience of watching vii
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it. The context of its creation—the details of the fi lmmaker’s influences— makes us say aha! Something important clicks into place. Something that doesn’t ruin the magician’s trick, but enhances it. You hold that something in your hand. It’s called a book, but you should think of it as a key. It will unlock many rooms, inside of which lie the truths you seek. Art, you see, is not the film itself, but the experience of watching it. It is a relationship between fi lm and viewer—the magic happens in the air between your eyes and the screen. You are the magician, is what I’m trying to say. Not a passive viewer, but a fi lmmaker yourself, working intimately with the director, the writer, the cast. So read on, and do your tricks.
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Acknowledgments
Foremost, we wish to thank the exceptional screenwriters whose conversations make up this book: Alec Berg, Wendy Calhoun, Chris Carter, David Chase, Greg Daniels, Tom Fontana, Cary Fukunaga, Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, Noah Hawley, Mitch Hurwitz, Marta Kauff man, Jenji Kohan, Damon Lindelof, Ray McKinnon, Elizabeth Meriwether, Marti Noxon, Paula Pell, Issa Rae, Carl Reiner, Garry Shandling, David Shore, Matthew Weiner, and Alan Yang. These artists generously shared their experiences, their writing and business practices, and their advice, and we are indebted to them. We also wish to thank the moderators who guided the conversations so deftly: Robert Draper, Paul Feig, Pat Hazell, Barry Josephson, Damon Lindelof, Álvaro Rodríguez, and Beau Willimon. Thank you to Sonia Onescu and Trey Selman for their readiness, editing, and organization; this book would not have come together without them. We are grateful to the following people for diligently transcribing hours of panel conversations: Shere Daniels, Caleb Dobbs, Jane Flores, Alex Gadway, Catherine Gillam, Colleen Hoofard, Felicia Jaramillo, Gabrielle Lindgren, Yus G. Marto, Sonia Onescu, Amy Marie Smith, Jeff Storms, Logan Ann Taylor, Paul Vance, and others. In particular, we’d like to recognize Travis Neeley, who has painstakingly transcribed the lion’s share of panel discussions for the On Story Project. We are so pleased to again be working with the University of Texas Press, and we are thankful to David Hamrick, Jim Burr, Sarah McGavick, Lindsay Starr, Lynne Chapman, Nancy Bryan, Lena Moses-Schmitt, Cameron Ludwick, and Sarah Hudgens for their assistance in putting this book together and getting it out to the world. ix
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Thank you to Rocky Schenck for allowing us to use his stunning photograph for our cover. Thank you to Deena Kalai, Esq., for her friendship and legal guidance with the On Story Project. Thank you to the following individuals for their help with and continued commitment to the On Story Project and this book: Miguel Alvarez, Katy Daly, Nan Foley, Jo Huang, Erin Hallagan, Colin Hyer, Eva Mikes, Brian Ramos, and Roy Rutngamlug. Thank you to our family and friends for their encouragement and unwavering support. Thank you to Fred Miller, Marsha Milam, Mary Margaret Farabee, Bill Wittli, Rick Pappas, and Barry Josephson for being there from the beginning. Finally, we thank everyone who, over the past twenty-four years, has helped to make the Austin Film Festival and the On Story Project what they are today: screenwriters, ďŹ lmmakers, moderators, interns, volunteers, attendees, sponsors, festival members, and board members. We are grateful for your stories, curiosity, encouragement, and enthusiasm. The world will never tire of great storytelling.
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Biographies
Alec Berg’s television credits include Seinfeld, where he was a writer and executive producer; Curb Your Enthusiasm, where he was a writer, executive producer, and director; and Silicon Valley, where he currently serves as a writer, executive producer, and director. His feature fi lm work includes writing the screenplays for The Dictator for Sacha Baron Cohen, The Cat in the Hat (which was made into a terrible fi lm), and Eurotrip (which he produced and co-directed and is excellent). He has also done extensive rewriting, having worked on fi lms for Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell, Will Smith, Ivan Reitman, and Robert Zemeckis. Alec has been nominated for numerous Emmy Awards, a WGA Award, a DGA Award, and a Razzie (yes, for The Cat in the Hat; it’s that bad). Wendy Calhoun is a series creator developing content at multiple broadcast and cable studios. She’s currently writing and executive producing FX’s No Place Safe, a miniseries about the Atlanta child murders to star Emmy winner Regina King. Her past credits include co-executive producing and writing for the historic first season of Fox’s hit series Empire. In addition, she’s written and produced for ABC’s Nashville, FX’s Justified, ABC’s Revenge, and NBC’s Life. Calhoun wrote and directed the virtual reality short Left Behind, sponsored by Google and honored as “Best in VR” at Digital Hollywood 2016. She received a 2010 Peabody Award and WGA Best New Series Nomination for Justified. She received her second WGA Best New Series Nomination in 2012 for Nashville. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, Calhoun studied fi lm and television at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
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Described by Time magazine as a “televisionary,” Chris Carter created one of the most successful television franchises of all time with his awardwinning The X-Files. The show ran a remarkable nine seasons on Fox and spawned two feature fi lms, several comic book and video game adaptations, and a six-episode limited series in 2016. The X-Files is still seen today in over sixty countries. The impact of Carter’s series is such that in 1997, Time named him one of “The 25 Most Influential People in America.” Chris also created the shows Millennium, Harsh Realm, and The Lone Gunmen. In 2018, The X-Files returns to television once again with ten brand-new episodes on Fox. David Chase has produced, written, and directed critically acclaimed television shows such as the influential, Peabody Award–winning HBO drama series The Sopranos. Inspired by William Wellman’s The Public Enemy and his early years in New Jersey, Chase created and developed The Sopranos. It is the most financially successful series in the history of cable television and is acknowledged as one of the greatest television series of all time. The show, which premiered January 10, 1999, won a multitude of awards, twenty-one Emmys and five Golden Globes among them. Chase’s directorial feature fi lm debut, Not Fade Away, was selected as the centerpiece of the fiftieth New York Film Festival in 2012 and was released by Paramount Pictures in December 2012. Chase’s writing and producing credits include the classic NBC show The Rockford Files, the acclaimed television movie Off the Minnesota Strip, the eighties incarnation of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Northern Exposure, and the civil rights drama I’ll Fly Away. Greg Daniels is a prolific television writer, producer, and director. He was awarded for his writing on Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld, and The Simpsons. He co-created or developed and showran the first seasons of King of the Hill, The Office, and Parks and Recreation. Daniels is currently producing and he directed the pilot for People of Earth, and he is producing and writing a new animated series with Louis C. K. and Albert Brooks. Robert Draper is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and National Geographic and a correspondent to GQ. He is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush. A Texas native, he now lives in Washington, DC.
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Paul Feig is a multitalented creator, working successfully as a filmmaker, writer, producer, and author. Feig’s most recent film was a reboot of Ghostbusters with a female-led cast, which Feig directed from a script he cowrote with Katie Dippold. Before Ghostbusters, Paul wrote, directed, and produced the female spy comedy Spy, Feig and McCarthy’s third collaboration. Feig’s other recent fi lms include the buddy cop comedy The Heat and the hit comedy Bridesmaids. Earlier features he wrote and directed include I Am David, based on the Danish book of the same name by Anne Holm, and Unaccompanied Minors, based on an episode of Ira Glass’s This American Life. A three-time Emmy-nominated writer/director and DGA Award winner, Feig is also known for creating the beloved and critically acclaimed series Freaks and Geeks, and for serving as director and co-executive producer of The Office. For his work on Freaks and Geeks, Feig was nominated for two comedy writing Emmy Awards, one for the pilot episode and one for the series finale, which he also directed. Feig has directed multiple episodes of the television series Arrested Development, The Office, Nurse Jackie, Bored to Death, Weeds, 30 Rock, and Mad Men. He has served as a co-executive producer on both The Office and Nurse Jackie. In 2008, his work on The Office earned him an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Direction in a Comedy Series for the hour-long episode “Goodbye, Toby,” and in January of 2009, he won the DGA award for Direction in a Comedy Series for the episode “Dinner Party.” Feig directed the hour-long episode “Goodbye, Michael,” Steve Carell’s last episode. Tom Fontana has written and produced such groundbreaking television series as St. Elsewhere, Homicide: Life on the Street, Oz, The Philanthropist, Copper, and Netflix’s Borgia. He has received, among others, three Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, three Writers Guild Awards, four Television Critics Association Awards, the Cable Ace Award, the Humanitas Prize, a Special Edgar, and the first prize at the Cinema Tout Ecran Festival in Geneva. Fontana serves on the boards of Stockings with Care, the WGAE Foundation, the NYPD Police Museum, DEAL, The Creative Coalition, The Acting Company, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and Center for Creative Voices in Media. Cary Joji Fukunaga’s work as a writer, director, and cinematographer has taken him from the Arctic Circle to Haiti to East Africa. His television
Biographies
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work includes directing and executive producing the first season of HBO’s acclaimed mystery drama True Detective, for which he won an Emmy for outstanding directing. Fukunaga made his feature fi lm writing and directing debut with the critically acclaimed Sin Nombre, followed by the fi lm adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, both released by Focus Features. His third fi lm, Beasts of No Nation, released by Netflix, was an official selection at the Venice, Telluride, and Toronto film festivals and earned Idris Elba Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for Best Supporting Actor. Fukunaga is currently in production on his upcoming Netflix series, Maniac, starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill. Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and co-creator of Better Call Saul, was born in Richmond, Virginia, and raised in Farmville and Chesterfield County. He received the Virginia Governor’s Screenwriting Award in 1989 for his screenplay Home Fries, which was later turned into a fi lm starring Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson. As a writer and executive producer on The X-Files, Vince shared Golden Globe Awards in 1996 and 1997 for Best Drama Series. After writing and directing the Breaking Bad pilot, Vince received the 2009 Writers Guild Award for Episodic Drama. The series went on to win five more WGA Awards and was twice honored by the prestigious Peabody Awards. Over five seasons, Breaking Bad won sixteen Primetime Emmy Awards, including the 2013 and 2014 Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, and fifty-three nominations, including Vince’s three nominations for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series. Widely praised by fans and critics alike, the debut season of Better Call Saul garnered seven Primetime Emmy Award nominations and was named Outstanding New Program by the Television Critics Association. Peter Gould began his fi lmmaking career at the USC Graduate Film Program, where he won the Nissan Focus Award for his student film. He went on to write screenplays and pilots for HBO, USA, Showtime, TNT, CBS, and FX. For all five seasons, Gould was a writer for the Emmy Award– winning series Breaking Bad, also serving as executive story editor, producer, supervising producer, and eventually, co-executive producer. In Season 2 of Breaking Bad, Gould wrote the episode that introduced criminal attorney (emphasis on criminal) Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk). As Breaking Bad concluded its run as a series, Gould and co-creator Vince Gilligan decided they weren’t finished with the shady lawyer; together they con-
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ceived the spin-off prequel—Better Call Saul. A New York native, Gould now lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter. Noah Hawley is an Emmy, Golden Globe, PEN, Critics’ Choice, and Peabody Award–winning author, screenwriter, and producer. He has published five novels and penned the script for the feature film Lies and Alibis. He created, executive produced, and served as showrunner for ABC’s My Generation and The Unusuals and was a writer and producer on the hit series Bones. Hawley is currently executive producer, writer, and show runner on FX’s award-winning series Fargo and Legion from FX Productions and Marvel Television. His most recent novel, Before the Fall, debuted at number two on the New York Times Best Seller list. Pat Hazell is one of the original writers for NBC’s Seinfeld, a Tonight Show veteran, and a critically acclaimed playwright. He is recognized for his genuinely funny Americana humor in his productions The Wonder Bread Years, Bunk Bed Brothers, A Kodachrome Christmas, and My Life in 3D. He is currently working on an original musical about being the victim of your own circumstances entitled Grounded for Life. Mitchell Hurwitz is an Emmy, TCA, and WGA Award–winning writer and producer possibly best known for creating and executive producing the genre-breaking television show Arrested Development. Initially made for Fox, the series returned to television as one of the original madefor-streaming series for Netflix in 2013, and it is currently in preproduction again for the streamer. The show has topped many lists of the best shows of all time, and through its four-year run it received twenty-five Emmy nominations—of which Hurwitz took home three, two for writing and one for producing. Currently Hurwitz’s production company has a multiyear first-look deal with Netflix to produce and create original series for the internet TV network. So far, the pact has yielded Lady Dynamite, a show Hurwitz co-created for Maria Bamford, and the Will Arnett series Flaked. Prior to his work at Netflix, Hurwitz co-ran Tantamount Pictures—a production pod under Sony Pictures Television—where he executive produced several shows and created others, including Running Wilde with Will Arnett and Sit Down, Shut Up for Fox. Prior to that he co-created The Ellen Show, and created the NBC comedy Everything’s Relative, where he first worked with his comedy hero Jeff rey Tambor.
Biographies
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Barry Josephson is a veteran of the entertainment industry with a wealth of diverse experience in fi lm, television, and music. Josephson’s credits include the international hit comedy Dirty Grandpa, starring Robert De Niro and Zac Efron, and the critically acclaimed box-office smash Enchanted, starring Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey. Josephson is also preparing a number of feature projects, including Circle of Treason at Focus Features with Massy Tadjedin (Last Night) directing, The Dive at Twentieth Century Fox with Francis Lawrence (Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2) set to direct, and Enchanted 2 at Disney with Adam Shankman (Rock of Ages) set to direct. For television, Josephson produces Bones on Fox, the AMC period drama Turn: Washington’s Spies starring Jamie Bell, and The Tick on Amazon. Jenji Kohan began her writing career on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air after graduating from Columbia University. Her series writing credits include Mad About You, Tracy Takes On, Sex and the City, and Gilmore Girls. In 1999, she was honored with an Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series for her work on Tracy Takes On. She has developed and produced multiple pilots and series, including Showtime’s Weeds, which ran for eight seasons and garnered her the Writers Guild Award for Best Episodic Comedy for the pilot entitled “You Can’t Miss the Bear.” Her latest project, Orange Is the New Black, is now streaming on Netflix. Kohan is the daughter of thirteen-time Emmy Award–winning television writer Buz Kohan and accomplished novelist Rhea Kohan. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, journalist/author Christopher Noxon, and three children, Charlie, Eliza, and Oscar. Damon Lindelof was born in New Jersey to a schoolteacher and a banker. He was also born a writer, although it would take over twenty-five years to figure that out. In 2004 he met with writer-director-producer J. J. Abrams to create a television series about the survivors of a mysterious plane crash—Lost. After six years, 120 episodes, and many unanswered mysteries, Lindelof finally left the island. Since then, he has worked as a writer and producer on Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, World War Z, Star Trek, Star Trek Into Darkness, and Tomorrowland. He is currently writing and producing the third and final season of HBO’s critically acclaimed The Leftovers, which he fiercely defends as “not as depressing as everyone says.” He also wrote this bio.
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Ray McKinnon is a writer, actor, director, and producer. He has served the last four years as creator, executive producer, writer, and director of the Peabody Award–winning Rectify. In a career spanning two decades, McKinnon steadily built an impressive resume, including memorable roles on FX’s critically acclaimed Sons of Anarchy and the award-winning HBO series Deadwood. He’s also appeared in series such as NYPD Blue, The X Files, and Matlock. Big screen credits include The Blind Side, Footloose, Mud, Take Shelter, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Apollo 13, and Bugsy. As a fi lmmaker, he produced and starred in the critically praised indie feature That Evening Sun and garnered an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. McKinnon has frequently collaborated with his friend Walton Goggins and his late wife, actress Lisa Blount, under their Ginny Mule Pictures banner. Their debut fi lm, the McKinnon-penned The Accountant, won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short in 2002. Their first feature, Chrystal (written and directed by McKinnon), was selected for the Sundance Film Festival’s prestigious Dramatic Film Competition in 2004. Elizabeth Meriwether is creator, executive producer, and writer of New Girl. The single-camera series has received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Television Series—Comedy or Musical, a Writers Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Achievement in Television—New Series, a Critics’ Choice Television Award in the category of Best Comedy Series, and a Television Critics Association Award in the category of Outstanding New Program. Meriwether wrote the feature fi lm comedy No Strings Attached, which starred Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher and was directed by Ivan Reitman. In addition to her screenwriting, Meriwether also has written several off-Broadway plays, including The Mistakes Madeline Made, Oliver Parker!, and Heddatron, a robot version of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. Barbara Morgan co-founded the Austin Film Festival in 1993 and has served as the sole executive director since 1999. Barbara developed and produced the film Natural Selection and co-produced the feature documentary Antone’s: Home of the Blues. Both films were released internationally. Most recently, she produced the documentary feature Portrait of Wally and the narrative feature Spring Eddy. She developed and produces the TV and radio series Austin Film Festival’s On Story, currently airing on PBS stations across the country as well as on Public Radio International. Barbara co-edited the books On Story: Screenwriters and Their Craft and On Story:
Biographies
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Screenwriters and Filmmakers on Their Iconic Films, both published by The University of Texas Press. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her daughter. With hundreds of hours of television under her belt, Marti Noxon is one of the most prolific writer-producers in television today. Currently, Noxon has several television series on the air, including Bravo’s Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce, Lifetime’s UnREAL, and CBS’s Code Black. Up next for the multihyphenate is the highly anticipated drama Sharp Objects for HBO, which is an adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s bestselling novel of the same name and will premiere on the cable network in 2018. She is also in the works on the series Dietland for AMC, based on Sarai Walker’s bestselling novel of the same name. Among Noxon’s past television credits are some of the most beloved and critically acclaimed series of the past two decades, including Buff y the Vampire Slayer, Grey’s Anatomy, Mad Men, Private Practice, Brothers & Sisters, Glee, and Prison Break, to name a few. Additionally, Noxon made her feature directorial debut in 2017 with the powerful fi lm To the Bone, for which Noxon also penned the screenplay. Loosely based on her own personal experience with eating disorders, the fi lm premiered in competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival to strong reviews and quickly sold to Netflix for $8 million, making it one of the highest sales to come out of the 2017 festival. Paula Pell was a writer for Saturday Night Live for twenty years, starting in 1995. She also wrote for the sitcom 30 Rock. Pell has collaborated numerous times with Judd Apatow, providing additional writing for the films Bridesmaids and This Is 40. She is currently teamed with Judd in a recurring role on the Apatow-produced series LOVE on Netfl ix. Pell has appeared in several episodes of 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation. She has also appeared in dozens of SNL sketches. Pell voices Gadget Gal in the Hulu original series The Awesomes and voiced a character in the Pixar film Inside Out. She also had cameos in the fi lms Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues and the Oscarwinning Birdman. Sisters, starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, was Paula Pell’s first produced original screenplay. With her own unique flare and infectious sense of humor, Issa Rae’s content has garnered over twenty-five million views online and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress for her hit show, HBO’s Insecure. Issa’s web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl was the recipient of the
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coveted Shorty Award for Best Web Show, and her first book, a collection of essays, is a New York Times Best Seller. Issa has graced the cover and pages of major national media outlets, including Essence, The Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, CNN, Vogue, and Time, with appearances on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Good Morning America, The View, and more. Twelve-time Emmy winner Carl Reiner is best known as a co-star on the legendary television program Your Show of Shows; the creator and co-star of The Dick Van Dyke Show; and director of such feature fi lms as The Jerk, All of Me, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, and Where’s Poppa? As an actor, he has starred in such fi lms as The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming and the Oceans movies with George Clooney and Matt Damon. He teamed up with Mel Brooks on the Grammy-winning 2000-Year-Old Man comedy albums. Reiner has written twenty-two books, including the three volumes of his memoirs, I Remember Me, I Just Remembered, and What I Forgot to Remember, and eight children’s books, including Tell Me a Silly Story, Tell Me a Scary Story (a New York Times Best Seller), Tell Me Another Scary Story, and You Say God Bless You for Sneezing & Farting! His most recently published book is Too Busy to Die, and two books due for publication in the near future, Carl Reiner, Alive at 95, Recalling Movies He Loved and Approaching Ninety-Six, the Pix I Love Viewing and Loved Doing, bring the total to twenty-four. Reiner was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1999 and received the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize in Comedy in 2001. Austin Film Festival regular Álvaro Rodríguez is a writer whose credits include the fi lms Machete and Last Rampage as well as From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series and Chicago Fire for television. His interview with Oscarwinning screenwriter Ted Tally appears in On Story: Screenwriters and Filmmakers on Their Iconic Films, also from The University of Texas Press. Garry Shandling began his show business career in 1977 as a writer for Sanford and Son and Welcome Back, Kotter. In 1981, he made his first appearance on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson and went on to guest host the show many times. Shandling made his first cable comedy special for Showtime in 1984, and two years later he created his first television series, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, for the network. Running for four years, the show
Biographies
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was nominated for several Emmys and won many Cable Ace Awards. In 1990, Shandling did his first HBO special, Stand-up. In 1992 Shandling created The Larry Sanders Show for HBO, which ran until 1998 with a recordbreaking seventy-eight Emmy nominations. Shandling won the Emmy for Best Writing in a Comedy Series the final season of the show. Shandling hosted the Emmy Awards in 2000. The show received critical acclaim and its highest rating in fourteen years. He returned to host the Emmy Awards in 2004. He has also hosted the Grammy Awards a total of three times. Most recently, in 2014, Garry reprised his role as Senator Stern in the Marvel blockbuster Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which was directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. Shandling first joined the Marvel Universe in 2010 for Iron Man 2. Shandling’s fi lm credits include What Planet Are You From?, Hurlyburly, Love Affair, Town and Country, Over the Hedge, and The Jungle Book. David Shore was born in London, Ontario. He received a law degree and pursued a legal career before becoming a writer and moving to Los Angeles. Shore created and ran what was at one point the world’s most watched television program, House. He is married with three children. Matthew Weiner has been entertaining audiences for two decades, most recently as writer, creator, executive producer, and director of Mad Men, one of television’s most honored series. He also worked as a writer and executive producer on The Sopranos and several comedy series, and he made his feature fi lm debut in 2014. Weiner studied at Wesleyan University and earned an MFA from the USC School of Cinema and Television. Playwright and screenwriter Beau Willimon earned an Academy Award nomination for his work on The Ides of March, adapted from his play Farragut North. He made his first foray into television as the creator and showrunner of the Emmy- and Golden Globe–winning House of Cards. Through his company Westward Productions, he is currently producing several fi lms. Alan Yang is the co-creator, executive producer, and a director of the Netflix series Master of None, for which he received the 2016 Emmy Award for Best Writing in a Comedy Series. The show was nominated for four Emmys, including Best Comedy Series, and was the recipient of a Peabody
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Award, an AFI Award, and the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Comedy. Previously, Yang was a writer, co-executive producer, and director for Parks and Recreation, for which he was nominated for an Emmy in 2015. He can also be seen on-screen in episodes of Parks and Recreation playing bass in Mouse Rat, the rock band fronted by Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt).
Biographies
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On Story—The Golden Ages of Television
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Introduction m aya p er e z
We are delighted to continue our On Story book series with this new book, On Story—The Golden Ages of Television. We’ve planned for this book since the beginning of our relationship with the University of Texas Press in 2012, and having just wrapped the seventh season of our TV show, Austin Film Festival’s On Story, which airs on PBS-affi liate stations across the country, we thought the timing right. Additionally, we have begun the process of digitizing and transferring our archives of almost twenty-five years of Austin Film Festival panels and post-fi lm Q&A recordings to The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, making them accessible and free to the public, and launched our On Story podcast and radio show, the latter in partnership with Public Radio International (PRI). We were ready to move on to this next project. David Chase (The Sopranos) was the recipient of the inaugural Austin Film Festival Television Writer Award in 2000, and since then our audiences have been the fortunate recipients of insights, stories, and advice from such influential television creators and writers as William Broyles Jr. (China Beach), Glenn Gordon Caron (Moonlighting), Gary David Goldberg (Family Ties), Howard Gordon (24), Hart Hanson (Bones), Mike Judge (King of the Hill), Callie Khouri (Nashville), Norman Lear (All in the Family), Thomas Schlamme (The West Wing), David Simon (The Wire), Darren Star (Sex and the City), Rob Thomas (Veronica Mars), Kriss Turner (The Bernie Mac Show), John Wells (ER), Larry Wilmore (The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore), James Wong (American Horror Story), and so many more. So, how did we select the final twenty-four transcripts included in this book? It wasn’t easy. From hundreds of recorded panels, we pulled those
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that focused on a sole TV creator or writer discussing his or her show and/or work in television. Hence, no John Ridley on American Crime chapter, as when he attended he mostly discussed his work on Twelve Years a Slave, and no Phil Rosenthal on Everybody Loves Raymond chapter, as the AFF panels on which Rosenthal participated have been group discussions. From this reduced group of transcripts, we whittled the stack down further to have a good representation through the years of television, so as not to be too past or current heavy, and we wanted a balanced number of transcripts representing drama and comedy. It was important that the content be diverse, both in creators’ voices as well as in genres and styles, so that further helped us determine which transcripts to keep. Finally, UT Press reminded us that there was a word count limit. Our next decision was how to organize the collection. Dividing it into two sections, Comedies and Dramas, seemed like a no-brainer until we considered that shows like House, Better Call Saul, Orange Is the New Black, and others terrifically combine both. We briefly considered adding a third category of Comedy/Drama, or Dramedies, but ultimately decided to let the Television Academy’s Emmy Awards be the arbiters of genre and so have grouped the shows and their writers in the category for which they received nominations and wins. Finally, what accounts for the order of the interviews? We debated ordering the conversations chronologically, either in order of the writer’s most notable work or in order of main years of professional impact. But then where would that have put Issa Rae (creator of Awkward Black Girl and Insecure), Vince Gilligan (creator of Breaking Bad and co-creator of Better Call Saul), and Marta Kauff man (co-creator of Friends and Grace and Frankie)? Their respective iconic shows are years apart. As you’ll see, we went with neither, instead organizing them in order of the date of the conversation. We hope this doesn’t confuse you, but in reading (and rereading) the transcripts, we saw that the writers often reference other shows and events that weren’t on air or occurring at the time of their show. In addition, they sometimes reflect on a show that is many years behind them, and we wanted that passage of time to be more clear. In putting together this book, we noticed that the most significant shift in the conversations about writing for television is that it now includes online streaming outlets like Netfl ix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and others. With these new outlets, not to mention the gratifying, quick development-toproduction process afforded by television, more fi lm writers and directors
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on story
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are flocking to TV, the prestige of the medium has increased dramatically, there are more distribution opportunities, larger budgets are allocated, and show creators have more creative control. But what hasn’t changed is the power and importance of writing a compelling story that holds the viewer, creating characters whom audiences enthusiastically welcome into their homes (and mobile devices), putting together a writers room, and, of course, the disappointment of getting cancelled. The following chapters are transcripts from recorded conversations and interviews at past Austin Film Festivals. We edited them for clarity and length, and, when possible, each of the participants then reviewed and made corrections and edits as they saw fit. We are grateful for their time in person and on the page. Any errors are ours. This collection of conversations—spanning the decades from the 1950s to today—explores what writing for television looks like through the eyes of the creators and writers of some of the best shows on the smaller screen. How did they get their start in television? How have they dealt with themes and subjects important to American audiences? The content covers everything from breaking racial barriers to creating mythologies to the impact of fans’ feedback on the storytelling to the frustrations of binge-watching. There is nothing quite like the experience of hearing great writers talk about the works that have moved us, shaped us, and reflected us. In this book, these illustrious creatives explain the process and practice of writing for television and offer invaluable advice through example on how to build a career in television. We hope you get as much out of this book as we did in putting it together.
Introduction
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