VIFF Industry Conference: Specific Voices-Episodic TV from VIFF on Vimeo.
Moderator: Tim Goodman, The Hollywood Reporter.
Jack Amiel, co-creator and writer of Cinemax’s The Knick about early 1900s Knickerbocker Hospital directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Clive Owen as cocaine-addicted Chief of Surgery John Thackery. Modern Medicine Had To Start Somewhere. Not only did The Knick make countless Top 10 lists, it also scored a Writers Guild nomination for Best New Series.
Chris Collins, former executive producer of FX’s epicly violent SAMCRO motorcycle gang series Sons of Anarchy, who left before final season to pursue own projects. Named showrunner of upcoming series Rain starring Keanu Reeves.
Jack Amiel, co-creator and writer of The Knick on Cinemax: I’m an upper west side Manhattan New York liberal Jew…our holy grail is the New Yorker…that’s the tastemaker…that’s what your parents’ friends all read..we got all these wonderful reviews…the only one that stood out as a negative review was the New Yorker….this woman really took a shit on us…the thing was that’s the one that seemed to stick…for some people in my family…what’s interesting though is that she wrote a retraction..and you never get that….this woman very bravely said I now understand it….I didn’t get it the first time…I’ve now watched the whole thing in its entirety ….I didn’t understand how gritty it was…basically said I was wrong about The Knick…I don’t take any pleasure in it only because as [Steven] Soderbergh always says if you believe the good reviews you have to believe the bad ones…I have to look at it and go What do I think is an interesting story…what’s happened is the Internet has gotten so big and so crazy….and fantastic…people want to share the experience after watching the show…but what happens is they start forecasting what they think is going to happen…when you disappoint them because you’ve gone in a different direction……..wait a second I totally thought that was going to happen…well that’s why it didn’t happen… because you thought it was going to happen…that’s not my job to give you the thing that you want…my job is to do something within the context of the story that might be possible and also so you don’t go Huh saw that coming…for us, it’s been a very interesting experience to do television in this era…where you have to live-tweet your show….there are actual online television shows where people sit around like this and talk about the episode..no longer about premiere…and you got your reviews…and that’s it….every episode is dissected….oh my god I wish I’d thought harder about the writing of it.
Started in sitcoms…24 years old..greatest thing I ever did ….learn to write unbelievably quickly… learn to re-write 50 pages in a night… learn to be funny on the fly…learn to do 22 episodes, 24 episodes, A story, B story……as baby writer…co-producer…getting endless experience…you’re getting to see how it plays in front of an audience…4 camera sitcom….it was the 90s…..it was great…as sitcoms started to get saturated and die…do film…moonlighting in film…outgrowth of TV shows…romantic comedy with Kate Hudson…romantic comedy with Julia Styles…became romantic comedy guys…then the comedy guys..Disney said, will you redo the Shaggy Dog…this is my niche…not a snob..since our first episode of television have never been unemployed…working 22 years straight…every time my writing partner Michael Begler let’s write something just for us…we’re very good at hitting a demographic…just got sick of it…making fewer and fewer movies..making a lot more Batmans and Hunger Games and making a lot less of everything else…Sony used to make 16 movies now they just make 8 ..kind of a dying business..don’t want to be last buggy whip manufacturer.
The Knick: you have to show proof of concept …still astonished…Cinemax..HBO really…said OK guys go write 10….write document where you want the show to go…show that you’re the person with the voice…that is the show...I don’t have a writing staff….my writing partner and I are the complete and total voice of the show …it’s not because we want to be indispensable…reason we did it is because it’s our voice….we just didn’t have time cause we’re working on a very tight schedule to bring in other people to write episodes…The Knick came out of the fact that we said Let’s do something crazy. …and we happen to live in a world where HBO, Cinemax and other places are saying Great. Let’s Do It….studios are chasing audiences…proof of concept…it’s one thing to say I have this great idea…it’s all about the execution…you make a billion little decisions that add up to what you’re doing.…..you have to prove what you’re going to do…what’s the tone…who are the voices ..who are these people…where are they going…why am I interested…am I rooting…am I not rooting.
Started as staff writer…story editor..executive story editor…co producer…producer…supervising producer…co-exec…executive producer…learn your craft…you learn to ask the most basic questions in the world…when you can’t answer them you know you’ve made a mistake..what’s driving this scene…what’s the spine of this episode…what’s this based around…where am I going with this…is this driving our show.
The one thing about our show [Steven] Soderbergh does an extraordinarily good job of trying to see how little story he can get away with…how little he can give you because he really trusts the audience is smart…you find you’re combing stuff away…we’ll do a scene…crafted dialogue..we’ll be sitting on set…whose scene is it….I think it’s Lucy’s scene…Clive Owen’s running around being a movie star and being brilliant….the other actors…and there’s blood dripping…all you’re seeing is one character framed between all the others doing their thing …and the scene is so much more interesting because…it’s how that character is processing all the other stuff…always think of Dr. Zhivago…almost never see violence…show his face looking at the violence…his horror gets your mind going ….like the shark in Jaws…I can’t justify that….would have been a great scene…but it’s just not real, true…some characters are really over the top and you can take them places…for us, it has to be plausible..we did so much research at the beginning….1900 is such a fucked up time…you get the ability to say they did this…they hung you upside down by your feet for 4 weeks and then you got an aneurism..people are always commenting how racist our main character is……thing he’s a product of 1900 America….35 years away from emancipation..50 years away from Jackie Robinson getting to throw a ball with white people…that informs your world..look at the media of the time…everything so offensively racist…no one blinked an eye.
First season..only do 10 episodes. …most of the time in planning season one…we’ll save that… save that…you don’t want to blow your load….so grateful to HBO and Cinemax for you get this note that you don’t get at traditional networks…we started packing everything into the first two or three episodes….and they were like hey man just chill…hey take your time, spread it out….tease it out….episodes are really ramping up at the end of the season…we don’t run out…there’s always so much to do…having to pull stuff we love…when we’re looking at our characters….because we’re a very small brain trust…we write all of our episodes before the season…we have the benefit of that…we know where we’re going…we can really arc things the way we want to…and not paint ourselves into a corner…I feel for people….Good Wife… do 22…it’s a lot harder….with Thackery our main character …as long as we’re true to him we’re fine..started with this premise of a guy who’s experimenting medically…leaving massive body count behind him..it’s trial and error in the 1900s. .no penicillin…no MRIs…figuring out as they go along…screwed up about a billion times on an appendectomy…or a gall bladder removal…to finally figure out how to do it…what’s that guy like? …knowing you’ve killed 10 people…how do you go into the 11th surgery…in this era a lot of the doctors some were very religious…ours became a cocaine addict…gave him courage…gave him speed…endurance…he could keep pushing forward…I knew Clive got the character perfectly……after the eulogy there was a scene where he stops and talk to two characters…[Clive] said I don’t want to talk to them…Why….because he’s always moving…..I want people to know he’s not going to dwell on the death…came back and informed us…..a lot of our scenes started putting on the move….let’s leave our conversations three-quarters done and then he walks out at the end…in a lot of scenes he never finishes the conversation…he’s off to next thing…how selfish is he…is he doing it because he wants to save people or is he doing it because it’s about his ego….keep asking yourself basic questions.
Chris Collins, former executive producer of Sons of Anarchy: I left Sons of Anarchy because I had some pieces in development that needed attention..had to leave show…what’s happening in the industry is less films are getting made….in TV we can do…at least on the dramatic side…a lot of the stuff they were doing in movies….lot of feature guys and TV guys getting together…..the feature guys don’t have experience in TV…so they’re coming to us..saying.. show us what to do…how to get the show made..they’re used to telling these hour and half, two hour, three hour stories…and we’re really telling ten to thirteen up to 24…you have this big uber arc than can go five, six, seven seasons…that’s been my experience since I left Sons of Anarchy…had some development with pretty much all feature people…the tough thing about it they want to get in the game but their feature schedules, their development cycles are so much longer than TV….TV’s generally really quick..eventually when they learn it they’ll toss me out of the boat.
Tough to break into a [writers] room..there’s a couple of routes…be a writers assistant..being in a room..you’re spending a lot of time around a table with the same people every day…good opportunity for people to assess you as a personality and as a potential talent…I happened to get an assistant job…put me through this producing program…five drafts later…four interviews before I got to him…I’ll learn how to write…signed up as script coordinator…preparing scripts for production…door’s open…up to you to walk through it…why don’t you write voices for the show [The Wire]…last day of work season 3 called me into his office…invited me back season 4 as a staff writer [on The Wire]…that’s how I broke in..relationships are big…luck is big…I wouldn’t have got the job if I couldn’t write the show…end of season 4 he invited me back as a story editor…for season 5…gave me an episode…I’ve done every position…staff writer…story editor…supervising producer…co-EP to EP…important process…writing is a craft…really have to know how to craft television..working in a room you learn that….you learn where to begin at the beginning of the season…what do you talk about when you start a season…go into themes…talk about these bigger arcs and then you narrow it down for the episodes…that’s when
Sons of Anarchy: you have big ensemble cast…you have a lot of territory and lot of history to cover with these characters …and then you need action element, action engine…what’s going to happen this episode in addition to all emotional, history, character stuff….what’s going to drive it, add real punch to it..you do that over different stories, A, B, C, D, whatever you need to construct that episode…..in your best interest to be as collaborative as possible…starting with writers room…arguing story back and forth.