Hacking Hollywood: The Creative Geniuses Behind Homeland, Girls, Mad Men, The Sopranos, Lost, and More Page 2

  13 Conan live-blog: “Larry had to leave at the commercial break to get married again.”

  14 Conan live-blog: “In all honesty? Tracy’s interview was 100% scripted. Thank you Doris Kearns Goodwin.”

  15 Sweeney: “There’s recrimination. There’s crying.”

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  Fast Company, June 2011

  MAD MEN ’S MATTHEW WEINER ON FAILURE AND DEFIANCE

  By Ari Karpel

  AS THE ANTICIPATION PEAKS for season six of the critically acclaimed culture bomb that is Mad Men, it’s worth noting that the pilot script for the show was famously rejected by HBO and Showtime. It languished for years until AMC picked it up and helped it become a culture-shifting event. You’d think that after its wild success, producers and studio heads would be clamoring for Matthew Weiner, its creator and executive producer, to make his first movie for them, right? Nah. In Hollywood, proven success in TV means pretty much zip in movies.

  But Weiner did recently manage to write and direct his first feature film. You Are Here stars Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis, and Amy Poehler and is in postproduction now in preparation for a hoped-for year-end release. Getting the movie made took nearly as many years of rejection and false starts as his TV series went through. Now, as Weiner awaits the debut of Mad Men season six, the multiple Emmy winner reflects on what kept him going through the rough times.

  WE ALL HAVE A LOT OF FAILURE IN COMMON

  “A lot of the business people and creative people that I’m fascinated by all have something in common, which is a lot of failure—a lot of dramatic failure—and a lot of rejection. All of us face conflict in our life and obviously no one just gives you anything—that might create its own problems. I don’t know about that. But you get to a point where you’re like, Okay, I can be bitter and just stop or I can keep going because I really don’t have a choice. The key thing in all of that is that most of us have people in our lives who keep us afloat. Part of what kept me determined was not some amazing agent who said ‘you can do that’—because I really didn’t have that—but a family and a creative community of six or seven people who had read the pilot of Mad Men. My wife, in particular, was like, ‘This is good. You know it’s good. Don’t give up on it.’ “Or,” he continues, “ ‘You’re good but people haven’t found out yet.’ There is a string of failures that typify success. The weirdest thing is it’s kind of shameful to be rejected a lot, and a lot of people become dominated by that. It’s so embarrassing. You feel delusional.”

  And then there’s a shame that might be unique to Los Angeles, land of screenwriters. “When you go to Starbucks and you see people working on their screenplays, there’s a kind of judgment that comes in. Everybody’s doing it and you’re like, Look at that guy. All I can tell you is I was one of those people and I still do it sometimes. That part of my creative process is just a kind of defiance.”

  THIS IS A $10 MILLION MOVIE; THIS IS NOT WHAT MY CLIENT DOES

  The success of Mad Men did help Weiner get his feature script into the hands of some actors who were fans of the show. But actors don’t necessarily decide their next moves; that’s what agents are for. “It’s harder than you think,” says Weiner. “The actors are very important to the financing of the movie and getting them is not just something that happens. Some representatives were very excited to get material from me, and some representatives were like, ‘This is a $10 million movie; this is not what my client does.’ So you hope that they’re going to make some gigantic movie that will pay them a lot of money and then they’ll want to do this just so that they can work with you.”

  So Weiner went around the agents. He met Owen Wilson through his old Sopranos buddy Peter Bogdanovich. “Peter is close friends with Owen, and had turned him on to [Mad Men]. Owen loved the show and wanted to meet with me. We went to dinner. I said, ‘I know we’re supposed to have 20 meetings and become friends before doing this, but I have a script I’ve been trying to get to you for eight years. It’s written for you. Do you want to look at it?’ Now, he’s a writer, too—an Oscar-nominated writer—so I was nervous. He read it and loved it. The rest was all that business stuff that happens: How much money? When does it happen? I was a producer on the movie, but I tried to keep my nose clean and just focus on the creative side.”

  Similarly, Weiner met Zach Galifianakis socially three or four years ago, before the actor’s career really took off. “I realized he was a real actor, in addition to being incredibly funny, who could play this role. It was a matter of, When’s the right time? Is he a big enough star for someone to pay for it? Of course, he just got bigger and bigger and bigger, and I kept saying ‘I’m here! I want to do this movie! Don’t forget about me!’ ”

  I’M ALWAYS GOING TO BE IN THE POSITION OF TRYING TO WIN PEOPLE OVER

  “Here’s the weird thing,” Weiner says. “Other than allowing me to get [my film script] to actors who knew who I was, the show didn’t really help me much. I still had to go directly to most of the actors and find a producer who wanted to pay for it. I had to keep reminding myself that the journey to making the film was going to be the same experience as Mad Men on some level. It wasn’t like I walked into a studio and they were like, ‘Let’s make the movie.’ You might expect that having some success in television would change all that, but honestly there’s a kind of movie they might have done that for but You Are Here is a very personal movie; it’s not a big tentpole or genre movie. If you want to make something that’s hopefully as interesting as Mad Men, you’re going to go up the same road. I don’t know if you ever get to be in the place comedians talk about: getting to be so established that you go on stage and the audience is expecting you to be funny, whereas until then you go onstage and it’s like, Who the hell is this guy? I don’t know if that ever happens in writing or in television. I think maybe you can bring an audience, but in the end every piece of work is its own journey.

  “I’m always trying to do something different, something that’s interesting to me. So until I’m just repeating myself and delivering exactly what I’ve done already, I’m always going to be in the position of trying to win people over.” And maybe that’s a good thing. “There are people I’ve admired, like Mike Nichols, Larry Gelbart, Norman Lear, who had more than one success. They’re people who don’t repeat themselves, they don’t want to get bored. That’s my own observation. Also, if you do something for money or because it’s easy, that reflects in the work. I think you’ll pay for that another way.”

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  Co.Create, April 2013

  JUDD APATOW AND LENA DUNHAM ON TURNING REAL LIFE INTO COMEDY

  By Rick Tetzeli

  JUDD APATOW most recently directed This Is 40. He is also executive producer of Girls, the HBO series created by Lena Dunham, which just scooped up the Golden Globe for Best TV Series in time for the start of its second season. Dunham and Apatow tweet a lot, work a lot, and talk endlessly with each other and a recurring set of actors. We asked them to discuss, via Skype, how the heck they manage to get anything done.

  JUDD APATOW: I hate looking at people when I chat. I never Skype. I never feel the need to be seen on the phone, and I don’t want to see anybody.

  LENA DUNHAM: But you look so nice since you rested for your birthday.

  APATOW: Well, I got a haircut for my run of publicity. How is your hair going, Lena?

  DUNHAM: You gave me my plan for my hair, and I’m sticking to it: You said I should grow it out and then we can noodle with it.

  APATOW: Well, you know, there’s a long history of people cutting their hair and ruining the show.

  DUNHAM: Like Felicity?

  APATOW: Felicity…people lost their minds. It’s a big deal. If your haircut is too fashionable, it ruins the affect of your character [Hannah, on Girls] being lost. Someone who knows how to get a good haircut can get a job.

  Anyway, Skype doesn’t really work because the camera is above the image. If I’m looking into the camera, which m
akes me look kind of normal, I can’t see you. But if I look at you, I look like I’m not looking at you. It’s just a mind-fuck. We need the technology of a camera in the center of the screen, but invisible. That’s what Steve Jobs would be doing if he were alive—working on an invisible, middle-of-screen camera.

  DUNHAM: So, the two of us do most of our work on the phone.

  APATOW: Most of the time you’re in New York and I’m at home after my family goes to bed. So we talk late at night and…

  DUNHAM: You and my dad are the only people who have my home number.

  APATOW: Even the boyfriend doesn’t have access. We don’t know why.

  DUNHAM: Nope, never given it to him. You and I also do a lot of email. You’re the king of email notes. You write something that looks like an epic poem and it’s actually notes on a cut.

  APATOW: I like to watch cuts on a computer with the Microsoft Word file open and take notes as I’m watching. When we write episodes together, we stay up late talking. And then your pass [at the script] is so good that I can just go, “Wow, that was really easy.”

  DUNHAM: I hope we’ll write more together. In the first season, we wrote episode 6, and in the second season, we wrote the season finale together. You inundate me with so many ideas that I can just be like a scribbling secretary. I think we each think the other one is doing the bulk of the work.

  APATOW: Sometimes I’ll say something profound like, “Maybe we should show Peter Scolari’s penis.”

  DUNHAM: Mmhm.

  APATOW: And you will email back, “Yes, that seems like a good idea. Do you think he’ll do it?” And then I say, “Yes, I think he will do it.” And then he does do it.

  DUNHAM: Bigger and better than we had even imagined.

  APATOW: You know, the show is run differently from other shows because we’re trying to really filter everything through you. My goal is to have you do as much work as possible without getting killed. So part of what I’m trying to do is pace you so you don’t collapse. For me, a lot of the work is just having a very fresh brain and set of eyes to read things and look for where there are holes or trouble and then trying to help fix that.

  DUNHAM: I feel like you’re constantly monitoring my brainpower and body power, even when I’m not able to tell what I’m feeling.

  APATOW: I try to think months in advance, When will you collapse?

  DUNHAM: And you’ve been a pretty good judge so far.

  APATOW: This type of show is an auteur’s vision. It isn’t collaborative in the same way as other shows. We are probably closer to Curb Your Enthusiasm than we are to something like Friends. So it’s similar to The Larry Sanders Show, where other people could write good episodes. But it can’t just be good, it has to be good in a way that makes sense and feels right for you.

  DUNHAM: Well, there have been times where someone has written a script and I’ve gone, “This is structured beautifully, has tons of great jokes, and in many ways has more integrity as a script than something I would write—but it just doesn’t feel like the thing that we’re doing.” At first I didn’t understand that that was allowed. But you’re constantly letting me know what’s allowed, because you spent so much time learning the boundaries and then defying them.

  Another way you help me is in blocking out the massive amounts of Internet noise. You’re so involved with gauging public reaction, but you’re also really good at putting yourself on media fasts. You’ve emailed me a few times when I’ve been on vacation, and you’ve been like, “Stop tweeting or you’re not gonna get anything out of this vacation.”

  I have a question: On This Is 40, there were so many people whom you’d worked with before and so many people who had played versions of those characters before. Did you give them real script input?

  APATOW: The script process starts with Leslie [Mann, his wife and a star of This Is 40], because I have to first get her to like the idea of the idea. And then I need her sign-off to allow the kids in the movie. And then we start having what is a very intimate conversation over several years about how we feel about our lives, pitching scenes for our characters. What we’re really doing is having a conversation with each other, one that’s easier to have than if we, say, were talking about the characters.

  I’ll say, “Why do you think Debbie does that? Maybe that’s her issue, right? She’s controlling.” And she’ll say, “Yeah, but maybe you should have a scene where Pete admits that he knows he’s acting like a dick.”

  We do allow everyone else in the process once we get to rehearsals. I call Paul Rudd on day one and say, “How are you doing in your marriage? Are you getting along? What’s annoying each of you about each other?” Then we have dinner with him and his wife, Julie, and he pitches scenes. We do that for every character.

  DUNHAM: To my own detriment, everything that happens to me becomes fodder. Sometimes I wonder if I would be a bit happier if I were more in the moment, and less trying to translate the moment into a piece of writing or a piece of film. I have never known another way to express myself, whether it was writing weird confessional poetry in fourth grade or my first play, which was closely based on what I thought the relationship between my mom and her two sisters was. It’s just the way that I think.

  APATOW: Watching you create the first season of Girls had a big impact on me. In some unconscious way, it got me in the right groove to do This Is 40. It’s weird, but I do feel like Girls and This Is 40 are cousins.

  DUNHAM: I do too. If we were to train this same kind of eye on the Girls characters in 15 years, we might experience something like This Is 40.

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  Fast Company, February 2013

  LOST, HEROES, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, AND BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: THE GEEK ELITE LEADING HOLLYWOOD INTO A NEW (TRANSMEDIA) ERA

  By David Kushner

  ON A STARRY NIGHT in Los Angeles, there’s no shortage of conversation inside a dimly lit Sunset Boulevard restaurant called Eat. On Sunset. Just a few hours ago, news leaked of a deal to end the Writers Guild of America strike that shut down much of the film and TV business for three months. Everyone in Hollywood, it seems, is begging to know what the future holds. And in a windowless private room behind the bar, a group of scruffy dudes drinking vodka and munching on calamari have some answers.

  Tim Kring, the lanky, goateed guy at the head of the table, created Heroes, NBC’s hit television show about superpowered people. To his right, in a black hoodie and narrow black-framed glasses is Damon Lindelof, cocreator of Lost, ABC’s island-fantasy juggernaut, as well as producer of next year’s eagerly anticipated Star Trek movie, directed by J.J. Abrams. Across the way is Lindelof’s buddy Jesse Alexander, co-executive producer of Heroes (formerly of Lost and the pioneering she-geek hit Alias). Nearby is Rob Letterman, the self-described nerdy director of DreamWorks’ next mega-franchise movie, Monsters vs. Aliens. He’s chatting up video-game creator Matt Wolf, who’s developing a project with Alexander.

  “In five years,” Kring is saying, “the idea of broadcast will be gone.”

  “Right,” says Lindelof. “Instead of watching Heroes on NBC, you’ll go to nbc.com and download the show to your device, and the show will be deleted as soon as you finish watching it—unless you pay $1.99; then you get audio commentary. You enhance it. It’s like building your Transformer and putting little rocket ships on the side.”

  These guys are part of a closely intertwined, wildly influential unofficial 21st-century rat pack—call them Hollywood’s Geek Elite. Just as Star Wars’ George Lucas and Star Trek’s Gene Roddenberry influenced them, they’re making iconic franchises for the YouTube generation. Separately and together, they have forged a new golden age of science fiction and fantasy, and they’re reinventing the entertainment economy in the process. Why them? Because their inherently dweeby shows are the most extensible brands in the industry, playing out seamlessly across platforms from TV to video games, websites to comics.

  In the analog era, such efforts mi
ght have fallen under the soulless rubric of “cross-promotion,” but today they have evolved and mashed up into a new buzzword: “transmedia.” The difference is that cross-promotion has nothing to do with developing or expanding an established narrative. A Happy Days lunch box, in other words, does nothing to advance the story of Fonzie’s personal journey.

  While such merchandising campaigns still exist, transmedia offers one big plot twist: X-ray vision. Today’s audience, steeped in media and marketing, sees through crass ploys to cash in. So the Geek Elite are taking a different approach. Rather than just shill their products in various media, they are building on new and emerging platforms to expand their mythological worlds. Viewers watch an episode of Heroes, then follow one character’s adventure in a graphic novel. They tune in to Lost, then explore the island’s twisted history in an online game. It is this “transmedia storytelling,” as Alexander puts it, that ultimately lures the audience into buying more stuff—today, DVDs; tomorrow, who knows what.

  “We are literally making up the parameters of the intellectual property that will take the networks into the next generation,” Kring says. The others nod in agreement. “We’re the beta-testing ground. It’s a Wild West: There are no rules. Just take something that sounds cool and go try it.”

  KRING AND HIS PALS aren’t the first to boldly go where Hollywood has not gone before. As they’re quick to point out, the big bang happened a long, long time ago, with two of the most extensible brands ever, Star Wars and Star Trek. To understand how Hollywood’s heavy hitters are harnessing the power of transmedia for a new generation, you have to teleport to the planets that spawned them. Star Wars and Star Trek taught them the most valuable business lesson of all: what it is to be a fan, and, more important, what fans want.