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Panel highlights: TV development
“Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof, “Freaks and Geeks” creator Paul Feig and late-night comedy writer Chuck Sklar met Saturday afternoon in the ballroom of the Driskill Hotel to discuss how pilot scripts written on speculation become successful prime-time television shows.
It turns out the panel’s premise was kind of faulty: While Sklar has sold three pilot scripts, none was ever produced; as Feig pointed out, “freaks and Geeks,” while a cult favorite, could hardly be classified as successful, having been cancelled after it’s freshman season; and “Lost?” Lindelof called it “an unmitigated disaster.”
Here are some highlights of the discussion:
On “Lost”: “Lost” was an unmitigated disaster. I am the worst person to be on this panel,” Lindelof said. Outgoing ABC Entertainment Group President Lloyd Braun decided to make the most expensive pilot ever as a (expletive) you.” The network had a pilot script called “Nowhere,” that was basically pretty, shirtless people romping around on a beach, Lindelof said. ABC liked the idea of a plane-crash, island show, but wanted it re-written. “Our idea was that it would be a mystery show. Heavy serialized and supernatural.” He says the show wasn’t his and co-creator Carlton Cuse’s idea, but they tried to make it their best. “They tested it and it tested well; they picked it up,” he said.
“As we were writing the pilot, the network wanted us to create the show’s ‘bible’, but until you’re actually doing it you don’t know what’s going to work and not work,” he added. “That’s like asking somebody on the morning of their wedding day, ‘How are you going to raise your kids?’ One of these days we’ll let the public see this ‘bible’ and they can see how quickly we deviated from it.”
On “Freaks and Geeks”: Feig wrote the “Freaks and Geeks” pilot as a spec script. He had sunk all of his money into making an independent film “that never went anywhere.” While he was shopping it around, he decided to write a spec script to kill time. That became “Freaks and Geeks.”
“Over two weeks of driving around the Midwest, it just poured out of me,” he remembered. One of Feig’s best friends was current comedy golden boy Judd Apatow. Feig’s wife said the “Freaks and Geeks” spec was right up Apatow’s alley. He took it to Dreamworks, who bought it. A pilot was made and the series got picked up. “I went from worst year of my life to suddenly having this thing,” Feig recalled. “I told Judd, ‘tell NBC we’re not going to cast this with beautiful people. And I don’t want geeks with tape on their glasses’.”
Sklar’s story: “My advice would be ‘get a famous comedian and then set up a meeting’,” Sklar joked (he wrote for the sitcom “Everybody Hates Chris”). “I’ve sold 3 pilots over the past 7 or 8 years. I’ve been lucky, I’ve sold some pilots, I’ve written them. None of them got made, but they have all served me well as writing samples.”
On writing “safe”: “Nobody knows what safe is,” Lindelof said. “If anybody knew, there would be no pilots and no failures. People are always asking me, ‘Do you have another “Lost” in you?’ That completely ignores that (‘Lost’) was a fluke. People are always saying something is the the next ‘blank’ to create an illusion of safety.
“The public and television executives all say ‘we want something new,’ but (the executives) anesthetize it — make it the same,” he added. “If you can get your pilot made without compromise you’re good.” He uses “Lost” as an example … one character was a torturer, another a fugitive, the hero cries all the time and he’s a man. These are all things that would have been changed had the series beginning followed the original spec script, pilot, pickup route.
“Really be original, don’t be beholden,” Feig said. “Don’t mute your voice; write what you’re passionate about. If they love the idea, it blasts through. (TV executives) are not ultimately creative people, but they know what they want, and they want good content.”
On television vs. movies: “If I were you guys I would concentrate on TV,” Feig said. “It’s an amazing place right now. Think of how many good shows are on. The people taking over cable stations want prestige shows. They can bring in a much smaller number of viewers and get attention. That’s the place to do edgy stuff.”
“If you can come up with the show that puts Starz on the map like “The Shield” did for FX, you’re golden,” Sklar added.
Lindelof agreed. “We have ten times as many jobs as the movies,” he said. “Your odds are much higher of being successful in the television business. The movies are now looking to TV and asking, ‘Do you want to do a movie?’ (Lindelof co-wrote this summer’s hugely successful “Star Trek” reboot).
We really need to break the old prejudice we have against TV,” Feig added. “Because it got so crappy, but it’s not anymore. There is crap, but there’s crap everywhere, in movies, too. People get much more attached to something like a television series that goes and goes. You’re creating a world that people are invested in and it keeps going and going.”
On casting: “We did not have a script when we started casting (‘Lost’); we just had an outline. Yunjin Kim came in to read for the character of Kate … we just had to create a character for her. We made a suit tailored to the body. That’s entirely different than pulling suit off the rack and trying to find most perfect fit. If I ever do another TV show I’d do it the same way.
Feig talks about a youngster coming in for an audition. “Smart show runners go, ‘this kid is so great, there’s nothing in the script that’s so good that we can’t change it’. It makes it easier to write the show. You need the blueprint, but then you need to be open to the human beings who are bringing it to life. There’s nothing worse than the inflexibility of saying, ‘well, this is how I heard it in my head’.”
On opportunity: “Every great success story has 2 things in common: right place, right time — also called luck, which you have no control over; and you knew somebody — that you do have control over,” Lindelof explained. “I was in LA for 5 years building up my network of somebodies. Talented is the other important part, of course.”
Feig suggested creating a variety of content. “Don’t just walk around with that one thing you have,” he advised. “Have the goods. You want to be undeniable. Have a voice, have content, make them need you. If you want to write … write, write, write! Generate as much as you can.”
On the Internet and the democratization of technology: Lindelof pointed to the Internet as a useful tool to find out what’s working with audiences. “The only way you used to be able to tell was by ratings,” he explained. He said it’s easier now to know when a mistake has been made. He uses the unpopular introduction of “Lost” characters Nicky and Paulo as an example. “We realized we messed up and we were already fixing it. It’s hard to say we made a mistake, but we all make mistakes.” He compared the debacle to Clark Griswold’s itinerary in “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” saying that movie would be less interesting if everything went Clark’s way. He says today’s TV viewers are still the water cooler generation, but that blogging or twittering or updating Facebook pages replaces standing in front of the water cooler.
The point came up in this panel, as in many, that just about everyone in the room had access to the technology to create their own pilot — to produce a more or less finished product to use in a pitch. There was some disagreement amongst the panelists about the wisdom and efficacy of that strategy. Sklar talked about a Web series he had created called “Come to the Net” and suggested that he might have been more successful pitching an idea instead of a completed video. “If you show (the executives) a finished thing, they’re like, ‘Where do we come in?’ ” he said. “They want to hear your ideas first, and then ruin them.”
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