6 posts tagged insider

Noah Hawley is a novelist (The Good Father) and screenwriter (Lies and Alibis) who created and ran two TV shows for ABC (The Unusuals and My Generation). In this exclusive post, Hawley offers an insider’s perspective on television development season:

Technically speaking, Development Season 2012 began on May 21st. That was the first Monday after the upfronts. Now all the new and returning shows are staffed, all the shiny new overalls have been handed out, and for those of you who didn’t get a chair in the game of staffing musical chairs (or who made pilots that didn’t get picked up), it’s time to think about development. But how? What strategy should you take?

Here are two suggestions for how to jump in:

Start taking general meetings

The networks won’t officially open their doors to hear pitches until after Independence Day, but if you plan on pitching a pilot this summer, your agent should already be setting general meetings with producers and studio and network executives. Even if you’ve created and run a show, as I have, it’s never a bad idea to meet new people.

Television producers — from small shingles to big companies like Bruckheimer, Bad Robot, etc. — are always looking for material (books, magazine articles, foreign formats) that they think would make good TV shows. They are also always on the lookout for writers to adapt them. So get yourself out there and make relationships. This way later — if you have an idea, or they find some great material — the door is already open.

My last show, My Generation, started as a Swedish half hour that producer Warren Littlefield and ABC Studios optioned. They brought the format to me. I responded to it and dived in.

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Noah Hawley is a novelist (The Good Father) and screenwriter (Lies and Alibis) who created and ran two TV shows for ABC (The Unusuals and My Generation). In this exclusive post, Hawley offers an insider’s perspective on what it’s like to have your show selected for a network’s fall schedule.

Yesterday, Hawley broke down the first five of 10 critical things to consider as your race through the next four months until your show is on TV. Here’s the final five, including some crucial career advice as well as thoughts on branding and the freak-outs you can expect to experience.

#6 Don’t be difficult. Don’t argue the notes. Say yes as much as possible so that when it matters, when you’re asked to do something you simply can not do, you have earned the right to say no.

Now you may think that when you “discuss” their notes you’re simply “talking through” them, but what they hear when you debate notes is that you’re difficult. You are proving to be a resistant and confrontational person. My advice? Instead of discussing the notes, simply say “we’ll take a look at that” and move on.

It is absolutely critical that the tone of your relationship with your corporate partners stays positive. You don’t want to be the showrunner they dread talking to, because you need these same corporate partners to go out and fight for your show, championing it in-house throughout the launch and beyond. Don’t be a pushover. That’s not what I’m saying. There’s a difference between being a “yes” person and being a Yes Man. But you have to treat the network and studio as partners whose opinions you desire and respect.

This increases their sense of ownership of the show (which you want). Because, though you created it, the show is not YOUR show. It is a collaboration between you and your corporate partners, and you must make the network and studio feel appreciated, so they will fight for you when it matters. Which brings us to:

#7. Figure out your brand. It’s 2012. Your show isn’t just a story on TV. It’s a multiplatform, international brand, and you are it’s primary sales force. No one knows the show as well as you, the characters, the story lines. So get out there. Ask the studio and network how you can help them sell the show to affiliates and foreign buyers. For example, directly following the upfronts is the international upfronts, where buyers from all over the world come to Los Angeles to watch all the new pilots and decide which to buy for their markets. There will be cocktail parties. If you attend, you will be expected to be the show’s ambassador. Don’t be shy. Shake hands and get to know people. Help convince foreign buyers that your show is perfect for their market. The more foreign sales you have the better your chances for survival.

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Noah Hawley is a novelist (The Good Father) and screenwriter (Lies and Alibis) who created and ran two TV shows for ABC (The Unusuals and My Generation). In this exclusive post, Hawley offers an insider’s perspective on what it’s like to have your show selected for a network’s fall schedule.

First of all, holy crap. You’ve already accomplished six impossible things. You sold a pilot idea. You navigated the development process and wrote a script that got the pilot shot, and you made a pilot that got the show picked up to series. Okay, three impossible things.

So what happens now? In a word, everything. First of all, even though your show just got picked up, you’re already 2 to 4 weeks behind schedule.

What? No, you heard me right. It’s May 15th. You need to be shooting by July 15th in order to premiere in late September. Which means you need to have your first script done in 6 weeks. And since you want at least ten weeks to hire writers and start breaking episodes, you’re 4 week behind right there.

Plus, you have to build sets. Which will take at least 8 weeks, but first you have to hire a production designer and supporting crew, which takes 3-4 weeks. So you’re about 5 weeks behind there. Why are you wasting time reading this?

So, what should you do first? Go to New York for the upfronts. The network won’t pay for you to go, but you should go anyway, because it’s cool to sit in Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall and see people talk about your show, and also to go to the parties.

Celebrate, in other words.

But while you’re there you should hire ten writers, a production designer, a post producer, a producing director, three editors, find office space and start breaking
episodes. Just kidding! You’ll have two or three days to do all that when you get back.

What’s next? Here are 10 critical things to know/think about as you race through the next four months until your show is on TV. (Holy crap, your show goes on the air in four months!)

#1 - You are now the CEO of a $60 million dollar corporation. Let that sink in for a moment.

In addition to hiring writers and running the story department, you are in charge of a crew of 200 people, responsible for every physical production and postproduction decision. You are also the main liaison between your show and the studio who pays for it, and the network that airs it, and you will be talking to both of them several times a day. Which brings us to point #2.

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Noah Hawley is a novelist (The Good Father) and screenwriter (Lies and Alibis) who created and ran two TV shows for ABC (The Unusuals and My Generation).

In this exclusive guest post, Hawley offers an insider’s perspective on the potential creative costs of lucrative overall deals.

There have been a flurry of posts on Deadline Hollywood in the past month about TV writers landing overall deals. In television, an overall deal is a multiyear agreement that pays a writer a six- or seven-figure salary, and guarantees them at least one pilot script in exchange for the writer agreeing to work exclusively for that studio.

For decades the overall deal has been the holy grail for television writers. These big-money deals are offered to very few writers. They are a sign that a writer/producer has reached the top tier in the business. Not to mention they offer something rare in the tumultuous world of television. Stability.

So if you’re a TV writer you want an overall, right? Wrong.

At least in my opinion. And here’s why. Ownership. When you make an exclusive deal with a studio they own you. And in my experience once a studio owns you, your value to them actually goes down.

Say what? That doesn’t make sense. You’re telling me I’ve just signed a deal worth a million dollars, and the first thing that happened is that the studio I’m working for
suddenly loses interest in me?

Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. The fact is, there is a strange inverse equation in Hollywood that goes like this: The thing you can’t have is always more exciting than the thing you can have or already have. It’s about coolness. This is Hollywood after all.

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Animal House, one of the most-loved movie comedies of all time, is hotter than ever. There’s a Broadway show in the works and a new, behind-the-scenes book called Fat, Drunk, & Stupid by producer Matty Simmons, who talks to us about what Hollywood first thought of the script (hated it!), what got cut, and why there was never a sequel.

Some highlights from the interview:

On Hollywood’s initial response to the script: The Chairman of the Board of what was then Warners, now Time Warner, had been a friend of mine for many, many years. His name was Steve Ross. I called Steve up – now remember, the National Lampoon was red-hot, the biggest humor magazine in the history of publishing – so I called him up and said, “Steve, we have this movie treatment and I want to bring it to Warner Bros. And he said, “Great, we want to make a movie with you. Look, I’m going to Hollywood tomorrow and I’ll give it to Ted Ashley (who was the chairman of Warner Bros.). I said, “Well, I really think I should bring it in and discuss it.” He said, “Matty, I’m his boss, let me bring it to him because I want to make this movie.” He hadn’t even looked at it. He called me about three days later and said, “Matty, I’m really sorry to tell you this, but Ted Ashley said it will never make a movie.” Then, by pure coincidence, a guy calls me and says, “Mr. Simmons, I work with Ned Tanen, the head of Universal Studios and I just want you to know I’m a huge Lampoon fan, and if you ever have a movie idea, please let us know.”  And I said, “Well, it just so happens. …”

On getting the green light: My junior partner at the time was Ivan Reitman and we went into Tanen’s office and he said, “I hate this movie. Everyone’s drunk or having sex or getting beat up. Do you think you could make it for less than $3 million?” Now I had never made a movie. Ivan had made a couple of movies in Canada for about $8. I said, “Absolutely.” And I didn’t know what I was talking about. We made it for $2.8 million, and overall, everything in to date, it’s grossed about $600 million.

On the audience response: We screened that movie in Denver … and at the end of that movie, the audience was standing on chairs and screaming and applauding and yelling. No one had seen anything like it. And then when they brought it back to Hollywood, they did a test screening and it got the highest rating in the then-history of the ratings system.

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