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Report from 4th day of Worldcon (8/26/06)

Three Whedon-related events Saturday at The 64th World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim, CA, USA

Part 1 of 2

(Please note: I make no claim that these notes are complete or 100% accurate. I have left out or summarized some discussions for which I didn’t take notes, and my notes were hurried and incomplete – as well as somewhat interrupted by a short migraine visual disturbance. If anyone feels that their words have been misrepresented, I am happy to make changes, as long as it jives with my memories. However, anything in quotes can pretty much be relied upon as being a direct quote.)

I carpooled to & attended the con with dreamlogic from whedonesque.com – she kindly drove as I don’t have a license (don’t ask).

So as not to make ourselves too crazy, we decided to skip Saturday’s panel “TV & the fan community” with Jane Espenson (among others), and target as our first the later “Running TV Shows” with a panel that included Marti Noxon & Tim Minear. Though traffic from L.A. to Anaheim was nuts, we made it to Anaheim in time to get good seats at this first event.

At the top they announced that “not everyone scheduled” would be appearing (this referred to Marti) and apologized, but offered no explanation. Michael Cassut stepped in to replace her; the other scheduled panelists (Tim Minear, Gillian Horvath [Mod], Rockne S. O'Bannon) were in attendance.)

They each gave their TV credits – all had been showrunners, producers and writers on various SciFi or related shows. (Go to imdb.com for full credits – several of them also have their own sites.)

They tried to define a "showrunner (SR)" and said the actual credit/job name varies greatly from show to show. One might be a "supervising producer" or an “executive producer” or “headwriter” so there’s no uniform title.

Gillian said the position of SR is analogous to a feature film director, overseeing every department. Tim said, yeah to that, and that it’s often held by the series creator. He said the SR is responsible for seeing that the show’s stories, characters and tone are maintained & “keeps it all together” – they additionally must deal with studio and network notes. They could also be referred to as the “Head Waiter.” Rockne said the SR “carries the vision.” He said it used to be that you worked your way up to SR, but currently, many SR are directors brought in from feature world and have little or no TV experience. Michael said the SR “takes the blame.” They make final decisions and set the tone. He said, “If you’re the guy that everyone’s calling, then you’re probably the showrunner.”

Gillian asked if being a SR was better than being a writer? If so, why? Michael said being a SR meant you had a chance to “control the field” and mentioned Orson Welles’ delight at being handed “the greatest toy store in the world.” Tim said it is better; it “eliminates the middle man.” As a SR, “I don’t have to convince people I’m right.” As a SR, “no one re-writes me. It’s good to be the king.” Rockne said, “You’re the one behind the desk. You say yes or no to ideas.” You don’t have to endure ‘no’ from the boss. You can say, “This is gonna be in.”

Tim said, “Not to be glib, but writers are petty, ugly people, running after power.” As a SR, “your stuff gets made,” and “there’s not enough time to screw with it.”

Gillian said you get to be in every loop. When you’re running a show, “you’re in every meeting,” “you’ve been in every room,” and “there are no surprises.”

Gillian asked who does a SR answer to? Who do they have to please? Tim said, “The audience.” Someone in the audience demurred, and Tim said, “And, of course, the network and the studio.” Gillian asked how does a SR negotiate this?

Tim said, “Well, I’ll tell you a story about a show… called Firefly.” They made a 2-hour pilot, explaining very complicated plot lines, which the studio, “in its infinite wisdom,” ultimately “decided to air at the end of the season – which we felt was revolutionary.” He said he thought that no matter what he & Joss said, the studio just wasn’t getting it. They saw the original pilot and were surprised that there “were cowboys.” He said, “I think they thought they were getting a comedy.” When the execs didn’t like the pilot, they re-shot it, addressing every studio note, and then could not get the execs to watch it. His point being, of course, that sometimes the SR is not able to negotiate with the studio execs.

Rockne said that on Farscape, he had a very strong co-executive producer, who they agreed would go to the studio execs, suss things out, blast past certain criticisms, and they held Rockne in reserve, as the more laid-back “Man Behind The Curtain” who would come out at the end and make final remarks – they found that strategy fairly effective. Rockne said using his co-exec thusly was like sending in “Soviet shock troops – punishment battalions.” He said as a SR you had to move people around like chess pieces” although sometimes “you could be a chess piece yourself.” The only help for that feeling was plenty of “medicinal vodka.”

Gillian asked how does a SR choose one’s people (writers, crew & such)? Michael said some SR are are very methodical in this process, and some are not. It depends on your style and personality. He said he looks for writers first, and if you’re smart, you’ll look for someone “as good or better than you are.” You should have plenty of good writers to choose from, and that way you’ll always have “one or two people who’ll dive on the grenade,”; i.e., re-write a bad script over the weekend or other such onerous writing tasks.

Rockne said on Farscape they had lots of writers at the beginning, and by mid-season one they had found the show’s voice. There was attrition, as there always is, and they got some new writers in for season two – some of whom just didn’t jell with the show. He said you can have great writers – like one who he felt wasn’t good at Farscape and went on to be a SR on another show – but they can’t write the show –- good writers can’t necessarily write all shows.

Tim said, yeah, it took Joss quite a few years before he pulled together “the best staff on TV.” Tim hired Mere Smith as a script supervisor, who wanted to be a writer. When an Angel script that came in was bad, he asked Mere to try and fix it “as a writing exercise” – he said “It was great and I hired her as a writer.” He said that just as he likes to “recycle” actors – use his favourite ones over and over -- he feels the same way about other staff. He said that the “Inside crew was essentially the Angel crew put back together.” He said that writer-attrition is a fact of life, that the writers you have in your first year will most likely not be the ones you have in your third.

Gillian opened it up to the audience for questions.

(A question resulted in a whole thing about the difference between creating for a large studio and a smaller company, which I didn’t take notes on – I didn’t find it terribly interesting. Tim said some funny stuff about when a small studio doesn’t get what you’re doing, they can be both stupid and cheap – although a large studio with money doesn’t necessarily turn out better product if they’re clueless. Then there was some stuff that led to a question about what can you do about studio interference in your project and/or when do they stop interfering with you?)

Gillian said when she worked on Highlander, if the suits are impressed with something, they start to leave you alone. They will back off if it’s working. (I’m not sure everyone agreed with this.)

Tim said that the studio’s job was to sell the creation to the network. He said that there were talented execs in both places. (I think he was getting a little uncomfortable at what he perceived as just too many network & studio criticisms, including his own...) He said one way to deal with execs is to try giving them pre-emptive notes – if you know your show’s weak areas, point them out before they do when they’re giving notes, and say what you’re gonna do to fix them – it can make a huge difference in how the criticism unfolds.

Rockne said that on Farscape the execs told them upfront that they didn’t want any two-parters or prolonged story arcs, and yet when they produced some shows that basically violated this caveat, the execs didn’t come down on them because it worked.

Someone asked if one could have a family or home life and be a SR – that it seemed like it was so demanding that it would be almost impossible.

Gillian said that the SR themself sets the tone of the working environment – that if they kept reasonable hours, that would help enable the rest of the staff to keep it shorter and have a life. “That said, no, I just have a dog.”

Michael said he had a family, and that it was difficult, and that he’s walked away from several projects 'cause they were going to be too demanding of his hours.

Tim said he had “two dogs and no family. Some showrunners do have families, and I think that’s why they keep hiring me.”

Rockne said he had a family, and that it could be very hard to spend quality time with them while showrunning, that it can be “all-encompassing.”

Michael said that he was making a small commercial announcement – that he had just put his daughter on a plane for college, hat he had an “empty nest” and that his wife was already tired of looking at him, and that he was available for a “family-killing” job.

(There was some stuff about the difference between the various families & relationships of some studios – 20th Century Fox and Fox TV… There were some cracks about Fox...)

Someone asked a question about the spectrum of tasks as a SR – what are most important/biggest and what are inane things that we wouldn’t think would be part of SR job?

Gillian said that as a SR you spend more of your day on the phone than you can imagine. She looks forward to working on the weekend as the best time to get actual work done. Everyone seemed to agree with this.

Michael said that you spend so much time in prep and making decisions that you find it hard to get time to write a script – so much time is eaten up. That, and making decisions about lunch…

Tim said, “I hate frikkin’ lunch! Eat whatever!” He said picture the scene in Star Wars when they’re in the trash compacter. As a SR, you’re involved in so many aspects of about four shows at once that every moment feels like the one where you shout "shut down the trash compacter on level 4" (or whatever). You’re doing so many things at once – breaking stories, writing, production and post-production – you’re in the thick of it. He said you do sometimes have to deal with silly things like, “We used yellow goo in the last demon.” For his current project, Drive, he said he had to go shopping with an actress for women’s lingerie at Sack’s 5th Ave and stay on the phone throughout because some execs had some very definite ideas about what the lingerie should be like.

Gillian said very definitely you’d get landed with things you didn’t think were part of your job – especially when you’re on location and everyone’s together and they know what your hotel number is. She got a call once on location from a cast member who had a mysterious infection and she wondered just exactly she was being asked to do – she thought that kind of task would have been delegated.

Someone asked why there were so many producing credits on TV shows – they couldn’t all be producing?

Tim said it’s because “producers have no union.”

Gillian said frequently many are producing, and that’s how you learn.

There was some discussion about unions, and union agreements limiting the number of writers, etc. you could give credit to for a show, and Tim reiterated, “It really is because producers have no union.” That you were able to give credit to writers that otherwise would not be able to receive credit on a show – though he pointed out that not all producers were writers, by any means. He also said that folks receiving a producing credit may have done nothing on a show, like those folks on Buffy (the Kuzuis) – it could just depend on the deal negotiated. And he noted that producer Kelly Manners on Angel, while creatively very involved with the show in a “daily nuts & bolts” way, was not a writer.

Rockne said one can give out the producing credit very easily. He also would begrudge no writer a producing credit.

There was a question about how SR communicate to writers – what commonly is the way that SR let writers know what they expect from them?

Michael (I think) said that some SR can’t judge other writers’ stuff, and some can communicate extremely well. Sometimes as a writer, you may be met with “it’s crap” or stony silence from a SR, which isn’t all that helpful.

Gillian said that what really helps a writer understand the tone of a show are sample scripts – they really help in generating new material.

Tim said that Joss would sit down with you and go through it – he’d re-write it with you. He said that Wonderfalls was weird, and that he and (one of Wonderfall creators) Bryan Fuller got it, but they found it sorta impossible to explain to writing staff. “I’d act it out.” Once they had scripts, he could point to the sample scripts and say, “Do it like that. Why do you suck? Do it like that.”

He said that (Angel producer & co-creator) David Greenwalt once read one of Tim’s Angel scripts and said he “liked half of it but wanted to wipe his ass with the other half.” Tim said he should be sure to “leave the brads in.”

Rockne said some stuff I missed & then that the level of humour in the writer’s room was important – frequently that humour itself could be incorporated directly into the scripts.

They wrapped up, with a couple of closing remarks. Gillian said a great SR she once worked for -- David Abramowitz – was calm, good, really knew his shit. He protected his staff from knowing things that would make you crazy. She then had what she called at the time a crazy boss who told you too much, and who she thought had very up-and-down moods. Once she had her own SR job, she understood that he wasn’t a crazy boss – she had to call him up later and tell him she knew how hard it was – that she got it. Being a SR, “you’re lucky if you don’t actually shoot someone on any given day.”

(I seem to have missed Michael’s closing remarks.)

Tim wanted to point out that he is, in fact, fond of David Greenwalt. Also, that “we’re incredibly lucky to do what we do.” The TV business takes all this stuff seriously, and they should, but he thinks it’s cool that “we get to take all this money to play in spaceships, so thanks – I’m very grateful.”

Rockne said that he’d grew up on TV, so he loved that he got to do it.

(That’s it for “Running TV Shows” – I hope to update this soon date with “Crafting the Whedon’verse” with Jane Espenson, Tim Minear & Loni Peristere – although I took only a few notes -- and a little bit more about attending the Hugos & watching the Serenity win – hopefully, I can get the text of Joss’s acceptance speech.)