the imagination will be televised: showrunning and the re-animation of authorship in 21 st century...

The Imagination Will Be Televised: Showrunning and the Re-animation of Authorship in 21st Century American Television

David Lavery

Merz AkadamieStuttgart, Germany,January 2010

Quality TVCult TV

Matt Hills (University of Cardiff)

Fan-scholarScholar-fan

The Imagination Will Be Televised

The Imagination Will be Televised

Television Auteurs. A book and web resource, edited by David Lavery (under contract with the University Press of Mississippi).

The Imagination Will Be Televised: Showrunning and the Re-animation of Authorship in 21st Century American Television

Introduction [You are here]

The Death of the Author & the Death of the Auteur

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny: The Still-Birth of the Television Auteur

The Showrunner as Author

An Embarassment of Riches: Brief Looks--Fontana, Gilligan, Kripke, Moore, Olsen & Scheffer, Ryan, Simon, Weiner; Deep Focus—Chase, Lindelof & Cuse, Milch, Sherman-Palladino, Whedon

What Lies Ahead: Television Creativity


The Death of the Author

David Lavery


Death of the Author

Barthes, Foucault

William H. Gass, "The Death of the Author”(Habitations of the Word: Essays. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. 265‑88)

“[W]hen, in 1968, Roland Barthes announced the death of the author, he was actually calling for it.”

The death of the author is comic, not tragic; it "signifies a decline in authority, in theological power, as if Zeus were stripped of his thunderbolts and swans, perhaps residing on Olympus still, but now living in a camper and cooking with propane. He is, but he is no longer a god.”

Death of the Author


François Truffaut, "Une Certaine Tendance du Cinéma Français" ("A Certain Tendency in French Cinema"), Cahiers du Cinéma (1954)


Andrew Sarris (US): Auteurism’s American champion

The America Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968


Auteurism "implie[d] an operation of decipherment . . . reveal[ing] authors where none had been seen before.”--Peter Wollen


“In its more extreme incarnations auteurism can be seen as an anthropomorphic form of ‘love’ for the cinema. The same love that had formerly been lavished on stars, or that formalists lavished on artistic devices, the auteurists now lavished on the men—and they largely were men—who incarnated the auteurists’ idea of cinema. Film was resurrected as secular religion; the ‘aura’ was back in force thanks to the cult of the auteur.”

--Robert Stam


John Caughie, “Authors and Auteurs: The Uses of Theory.” In Donald, J. and Renov, M. (Eds) Handbook of Film Studies. Sage (2007).

“[A] theory is also a historical event: it is a discourse that comes on the scene at a given time, in a given place, and by its very presence is capable of defining the ambience in which it appears. In this sense, it is a historical reality, something that reflects the path (or even the error) of thought.”--Franceso Casetti (1999)

“In the effort to win academic respectability, film scholars could best show their work to have significance if there were a powerful theory backing it up. Auteurism was a connoisseurship that required a staggering knowledge of particular films. In an academic context, such knowledge could seem mere buffery, so auteur studies could not justify studying movies “seriously.” An analysis of Hitchcock that purported to demonstrate a theory of signification or the unconscious was more worthy of academic attention than an analysis of recurring authorial motifs.”—David Bordwell


“It was not the author who spoke, but ideology, an ideology which could be detected in the gaps, ruptures and contradictions of the text. The method inherited from auteurism remained the same, a detailed reading to uncover the text’s hidden places, but it was no longer the personality of the author which was hidden there, but ideology—of which the author was the bearer rather than the creator. It is at this point that the author becomes—almost literally—a shadow of his former self, leaving traces in the text rather than dominating it with his unique signature; shading into structure, inscription or function; an object of desire for the cinephile, a subject whose subjectivity is an effect of the text.”--John Caughie


Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny

David Lavery



After Barthes, the search for the author “was driven underground for a fairly brief period to the place where unfashionable ideas regroup.” (Caughie 18-19)

The Parallel Courses of Cinema & TV


“[B]ecause of the technological complexity of the medium and as a result of the application to most commercial television production of the principles of modern industrial organization . . . , it is very difficult to locate the ‘author’ of a television program—if by that we mean the single individual who provides the unifying vision behind the program.”

Robert C. Allen


TV Authorship

“[Newcomb and Alley] demonstrated that despite the gigantic constituent corporate bureaucracies of this most massive of mass media—networks, advertising agencies, production companies, ratings organizations, federal regulatory authorities—the autobiographical visions of individuals did manage to break through onto the television screen, just as the personal visions of artists had managed to reach expression in the older, preelectronic arts. Were these visions mitigated or, in effect, edited by television’s trilateral nature of industry, technology, and art? Certainly. But when and where had an art ever developed independently of other factors?”David Marc & Robert Thompson, Prime Time, Prime Movers


TV Authorship

“A self-conscious creative producer may be able to take what appears to be a mundane idea, a cast of no distinction, or writing that seems to be ordinary and conventional, and transform it into a better sort of television. When the happy circumstance arises in which the producer is able to assemble the best writers, actors, directors, and film editors, and is able to impress upon them a central concept that speaks his vision, then the potential is present for exceptional work. It can be created because art is mastery, discipline, and vision. It is the ability to mold constraint into a creative contour.” (Newcomb and Alley, xii-xiv)


TV Authorship


[S]lowly vanishing from academic debate, the auteur is everywhere else—in publicity, in journalistic reviews, in television programmes, in film retrospectives, in the marketing of cinema.

Sometime around the point at which Film Studies began to be embarrassed by its affiliation to the author, the film industry and its subsidiaries began to discover with renewed enthusiasm the value of authorial branding for both marketing and reputation.—John Caughie


The Showrunner

David Lavery


“[W]hat most showrunners really want is a writer who has a fresh and distinctive voice; but at the same time, they want a writer who can suppress his or her fresh and distinctive voice and conform to the voice of the show.”

—Jeffrey Stepakoff (Billion-Dollar Kiss: The Story of a Television

Writer in the Hollywood Gold Rush)


I'm responsible for all the shows. That means that I break the stories. I often come up with the ideas and I certainly break the stories with the writers so that we all know what's going to happen. Then once the writers are done, I rewrite every script. . . . Then I oversee production and edit every show, work with the composers and sound mixers. Inevitably every single show has my name on it somewhere and it is my responsibility to make it good. . . . Every week that show is on, I'm standing in the back row, biting my nails, hoping people like it, so I feel a great responsibility. The good thing is that I'm surrounded by people who are much smarter than I am. So gradually I have been able to let certain things take care of themselves, because my crew, my writers, my post-production crew, everybody is so competent, that I don't have to run around quite as much as I used to.

--Joss Whedon

(From ET Online's 2000 interview with Joss Whedon)

The ShowrunnerThe Showrunner


Every single word that's on the screen, I oversee. There's nothing that's shot, I'm not involved in. The scripts go through multiple drafts, and I work with the writers on all these things. And I'm extremely involved in the writing process. As far as casting, I'm there for every single person that's cast. Even if it's one word, I'm there for their auditions. I'm involved in the props, a lot of which are written into the scripts. I'm involved in the costumes, which are all shown to me before they go on. I write some things in, but it's another one of these things where it's like, at this point, [costume designer] Janie Bryant comes and tells me "I'm doing this," and unless I hate it, we do it. But I'm involved in it. A lot of it, these details are written into the scripts. The scripts are very specific. What kind of drinks people have, where they're sitting, those kinds of things. I'm involved with the directors. We have tone meetings where I explain to them the script, page by page and word by word, and often perform it, which is embarrassing but true. I do a great Joan. Then on the set, I visit the set for a lot of the rehearsals, and there's always a writer on set. And then I'm involved in post-production, very intensely involved in editing, and the sound mix and color timing. Really, I have about nine jobs.

--Matthew Weiner

(From the Onion AV Club interview with Mad Men's Creator)



“[Y]ou have to have thick, thick, thick skin. You can't be a baby. Don't get upset when people do negative things to you because they know you're a woman. The only thing you can do about it is to just be better. Work harder and be better because, in the end the best script will get noticed. If your writing is too good for someone to ignore, then someone will want that product. Also, you have to fight for your vision and what you believe in. . . . Hands down, female showrunners do not get the repect or receive the good will that a male showrunner gets. I am a big girl and I can take it. You acknowledge it and keep moving forward, just put on another coat of lipstick and keep walking.”--Amy Sherman-Palladino to Stephen Priggé 192



“David Chase does not have 20 people telling him what to do on The Sopranos. Bright, Kauffman, and Crane did not have 20 people telling them what to do on Friends. David E. Kelley does not have anyone telling him what to do because no one can get into his office. . . . When you don't have a hundred people telling you what to do, it gives you the chance to do something good.”--Amy Sherman-Palladino to Stephen Priggé 147)



An Embarrasment of Riches

David Lavery

Merz Akadamie

Stuttgart, Germany,January 2010


“While it may have been self-evident that film was an art and that directors were its primary artists, it was not self-evident which directors were artists, the true auteurs; which were metteurs en scène, the craftsmen capable of producing meritorious films but without a consistent personality; and which were mere tradesmen, more or less competent but seldom rising about the meretricious.”--John Caughie

Brief Looks

Tom Fontana—The Tailor

Vince Gilligan—Bad Boy

Eric Kripke--Hellhound

Ronald D. Moore—The Absinthe Drinker

Mark V. Olsen & Will Scheffer—The Partners

Shaun Ryan—Bad Cop

David Simon—The Journalist

Matthew Weiner—Mad Man

Deep Focus

David Chase—The Veteran

Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse—The Odd Couple

David Milch—The Man of Words

Amy Sherman-Palladino—The Impossible Girl

Joss Whedon—Fanboy

An Embarrasment of Riches

Tom Fontana (US, St. Elsewhere, Homicide, Oz, The Borgias)


Tom FontanaTom Fontana

The Tailor



The Tailor

“David Chase assumes he’s an artist. I’m a tailor.”

--Tom Fontana (Thursday night in Stuttgart)



The Tailor

Vince Gilligan (US, The X-Files, Breaking Bad)


Vince GilliganVince Gilligan

Bad Boy



Bad Boy


Eric Kripke (US, Supernatural)

Eric KripkeEric Kripke

Hellboy



Hellboy


“I'm sitting in a laundry-mat, reading about myself . . . sitting in a laundry-mat reading about myself. My head hurts.”Dean Winchester


Hellboy


Jumping the Shark (according to Chuck) “The way I look at it, it's really not jumping the shark if you never come back down.” --Chuck, author of The Supernatural Gospels in "The Real Ghostbusters”


Hellboy


Ronald D. Moore (US, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Carnivale, Battlestar Galactica)

Ronald D. MooreRonald D. Moore

The Absinthe Drinker



The Absinthe Drinker (Edgar Degas, 1859)



Moore delivered his usually brilliant and often too honest web commentaries on Battlestar from home, always announcing his bourbon of the week. In one commentary he reveals that he is drinking illegally imported absinth.




Ronald D. MooreRonald D. MooreThe Absinthe

Drinker

Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer (US, Big Love)


Olsen & SchefferOlsen & Scheffer

The Life Partners


David MilchDavid Milch

The Life Partners


Olsen and SchefferOlsen & SchefferOlsen & Scheffer

The Life Partners


Scheffer and OlsenOlsen & SchefferOlsen & Scheffer

The Life Partners


Shaun Ryan (US, The Shield, The Unit, Lie to Me)

Shawn RyanShawn Ryan

Bad Cop


Shawn RyanShawn Ryan

Bad Cop

Vic Mackey, The Shield

Bad Cop


David Simon (US, Homicide, The Wire, Treme)

David SimonDavid Simon

The Journalist


David SimonDavid Simon The Journalist


David SimonDavid Simon

“We’ve been stealing from the Greek tragedies.”--David Simon to Terry Gross (Fresh Air)

The Journalist

“America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can’t ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can’t lose what you lacked at conception. Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight. … It’s time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It’s time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time. Here’s to them.”—James Ellroy, American Tabloid

“We are bored with good and evil. We renounce the theme.”—David Simon

One of the definining characteristics of HBO dramas like The Wire (and Deadwood, The Sopranos, Big Love) and quality drama generally, is a firm reluctance to separate the good guys from the bad guys. The quote from novelist James Ellroy could be taken as their mission statement. David Simon echoes it.

Omar Little, The Wire

The Journalist


Matthew Weiner (US, The Sopranos, Mad Men)

Matthew WeinerMatthew Weiner

Mad Man



Mad Man


The Cast of Mad Men


Mad Man


Jon Hamm (Don Draper)


Mad Man


“The truth is, I think the biggest difference between [Mad Men] and a lot of what’s on TV now is—and I will tell you right now, it hasn’t always been this way—TV is an escape for people in a different way. It’s an escape that reconfirms [that your life is OK]. I am not reconfirming that you are OK. I am reconfirming that you are having a hard time.

--Matthew Weiner, Interview with Maureen Ryan


Mad Man


“[W]hen you’re telling people a story that they don’t know—they find it frustrating if they’re not paying attention. What I’m trying to do when I draw them in is say, put your checkbook down, turn off the phone, watch it on TiVo when you know the kids won’t be around. And really let yourself go into this world but take it seriously.”

--Matthew Weiner, Interview with Maureen Ryan


Mad Man


“I loathe and despise almost every second of [network television].”—David Chase, Interview with Allen Rucker

“I’m not bashing TV. I have every kind of Law & Order on my TiVo.”—Matt Weiner, Interview with Maureen Ryan


Mad Man


Written By: Will it be possible to replicate [The Sopranos’] writing experience?

Weiner: That’d be insane to think there will ever be another Sopranos. I will tell you this: I have tried to take everything good that I can about it. I got to sit here and watch how good ideas happen. I’d like to think that in some ways I will carry as much as I can from The Sopranos, but The Sopranos is a beacon.


Mad Man


David Chase (US, The Rockford Files, Almost Grown, I’ll Fly Away, Northern Exposure, The Sopranos)

The Veteran


David Chase had worked in network TV for over twenty five years—for series like before HBO took a chance on him.

The Veteran

“I had a bad reputation. ‘He’s very talented but he’s too dark. His material is too dark.’ You know, it’s that thing out there that once you’re in the club it takes you a while to wash out. And so even though I had deal after deal after deal, in which nothing happened, I still kept getting hired because something had happened once.” --David Chase, Interview with Mark Lawson

The Veteran

“[Northern Exposure was] propaganda for the corporate state . . . it was ramming home every week the message that ‘life is nothing but great,’ ‘Americans are great’ and ‘heartfelt emotion and sharing conquers everything.’”--Interview with David Chase on National Public Radio

The Veteran

Bonnie: Livia, ever hear the old Italian saying my aunts used: col tempo la foglia, di gelso divena seta?Carmela: What does that mean, Bonnie?Bonnie: Time and patience change the mulberry leaf to silk.

From “46 Long” on The Sopranos, written by David Chase

The Veteran

“[A]ll of us have the freedom to do story lines that unfold slowly. We all have the freedom to create characters that are complex and contradictory. The FCC doesn’t govern that. We all have the freedom to tell stupid, bad jokes that may actually turn out to be funny. And we all have the freedom to let the audience figure out what’s going on rather than telling them what’s going on.”--David Chase on National Public Radio (responding to network complains about The Sopranos’ unfair advantage on HBO)

The Veteran

“You know,” Chase insisted to Martha Nochimson, “when it comes down to it, I just try to entertain myself and solve creative problems. My major impulse is to try never to do the same thing. To run away from what was done. To run away from what other people are doing.”

The Veteran


The Veteran

“I’m still . . . too angry. I . . . shouldn’t be this angry. I shouldn’t be this volatile for my age and for the . . . for, basically what’s been a really great life. I have a great family. I have a great career. And I . . . you know, and what am I so pissed off about?” (Lawson 220).

Lindelof & CuseLindelof & Cuse

The Odd Couple

“Darlton”—Damon Lindelof & Carllton Cuse (Lost)

Crossing Jordan (NBC, 2001-2007). Cuse and Lindelof both worked together on this series created by Tim Kring (Heroes)The Odd

Couple


Damon Lindelof (left) & Carlton Cuse (right)


The Odd Couple



The Odd Couple


Damon LindelofDamon Lindelof

The Odd Couple

“I write because I can’t help but make things up.

I write because I love to tell stories.

I write because my imagination compels me to do so.

I write because if I didn’t, I’d be branded a pathological liar.

Oh, and also because I’m still trying to make my dead father proud of me.

But that’s none of your goddamn business.”

Damon Lindelof, “Why We Write”

The Odd Couple



The Odd Couple

The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (Created by Carlton Cuse, FOX, 1993-1994)

The Odd Couple

Carlton Cuse: [Dickens]'s getting a lot of play on Lost, isn't he?

Damon Lindelof: He is indeed. He's a favorite writer of ours. He wrote serialized stories just like we did. He was accused of making it up as he went along, just like we are.

Cuse: That's right. . . . He didn't even have a word-processor.

Official Lost Podcast, Oct. 3, 2006

The Odd Couple

The Odd Couple

Cuse: And Charles Dickens was also a wonderful inspiration, because here he was, writing these great, wonderful, sprawling, serialized books . . .

Lindelof: Also, Dickens, the master of coincidence. Y'know. . . . His stories always hinged on the idea of interconnectedness. . . . in a very strange and inexplicable way. (Official Lost Podcast, Nov. 6, 2006)


David Milch (US, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue, Deadwood, John from Cincinnati)


The Man of Words



The Man of Words


Robert Penn WarrenDavid MilchDavid Milch

The Man of Words


Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) (left), who predicted that Milch (below) would become one of the great novelists of the 20th Century.

David MilchDavid MilchThe Man of

Words

Narrative Genres on Television: Police Series

The Man of Words


NYPD Blue

Created by Steven Bochco & David Milch

Began: 9/21/1993

Ended: 3/1/2005

Aired on: ABC (USA)

The Man of Words

David Milch (above) and Steven Bochco (right), co-creators of NYPD Blue

The Man of Words


NYPD Blue and

Controversy

The Man of Words



The Man of Words


“David had more miles on him the day I met him than I'll probably have the day I die. He'll wrestle his demons forever, but I've never known anyone else who has learned to put his demons at his service in quite the way he has. I think that's his real genius. And David is a genius in the literal definition of that word. He is truly unique, truly original. NYPD Blue allowed him to exorcise some of his demons or, certainly, to turn a light on in the room where they reside. None of this was done from a distance. He took on addiction, alcoholism, racism—things that are just so fundamental to our nature and things that are dangerous in society he found a way to explore cold-bloodedly. In a medium that is utterly fearful, he has been a fiercely brave writer.”

Steven Bochco


The Man of Words


Amy Sherman-Palladino (US, Roseanne, Gilmore Girls, The Return of Jezebel James, The Late Bloomer’s Revolution)

Amy Sherman-PalladinoAmy Sherman-PalladinoImpossible Girl


Amy Sherman-PalladinoAmy Sherman-Palladino Impossible Girl


Amy Sherman-PalladinoAmy Sherman-Palladino

Impossible Girl


Lorelei’s Dad: “Impossible girl!”

Lorelei: “”That was my native American name!”--from “Twenty One is the Loneliest Number,” Season Six episode of Gilmore Girls written by Amy Sherman-Palladino



Let’s face it: I’ve peaked. This is it. It’s all down hill for me or after this show. To be able to create a show that they let you do what you want to do, they let you write what you want to write, they let you put your crazy references in, to be able to work with really top-notch actors . . . it happens once. Once! Seriously. It’s all over. . . . It’s just me under a bus after this.--Amy Sherman-Palladino, “Welcome to the Gilmore Girls,” Season 1 DVD



Many people in the business will refer to a woman who did something or acted a certain way as "crazy." I then say, "You have to define what 'crazy' is." To me, crazy is not someone who has a creative vision and will fight for it.--Amy Sherman-Palladino (Prigge 192)

Amy Sherman-PalladinoAmy Sherman-PalladinoImpossible Girl


“Now that there's so much cable, so many different outlets to go to—FX, Showtime, HBO—it's becoming a different world, because there are so many levels on which to compete. . . . It's kind of an interesting time to be in TV, because if you have an idea you love and it's not right for a network, there's actually a place to take it now, and there didn't used to be. You can go to cable, not just to say ‘fuck,’ but to do other things that the networks aren't as hip to do.”--Amy Sherman-Palladino, Onion TV Club Interview

Amy Sherman-PalladinoAmy Sherman-Palladino

Impossible Girl


“To be really good, you have to be willing to have everybody in the world [of Hollywood] hate you.”--Amy Sherman-Palladino to Virginia Heffernan



“Audiences are as smart as you will allow them to be.”--Amy Sherman-Palladino, “I Jump, You Jump, Jack” DVD Commentary



Joss Whedon (US, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Dollhouse)

The Fanboy

The Fanboy“I didn’t want to say ‘Look, we’re better than a TV show.’ I wanted to say ‘You can do all of this in an episode of television. It just depends on how much you care.’ . . . I love TV. I love what you can do with it. . . . It’s not better, it’s just TV in all its glory. The way I celebrate musicals I celebrate this medium.”--Joss Whedon, DVD commentary to “Once More with Feeling,” Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Season Six)


The Fanboy


Whedon (and Jeanine Basinger)

The Fanboy


The Fanboy

The Imagination Will Be Televised The Fanboy


The Fanboy

I am the fan that gets to have the most fun. I get to walk the set every day. I totally get to be there when the story's broken. I get to do all of the fun bits. Every day is fan day for me. That's who I am. I'm the fan that got the closest.—Joss Whedon (“Pop Culture Q & A”)

The Imagination Will Be Televised: Television Creativity

David Lavery

Stuttgart, Germany, January 2010


“A theory of creativity and the creative imagination in film and cinema is complicated, of course, by technology, industry, commerce and collective production, but without it film and cinema are impoverished and it is difficult to account for those cinephiliac moments which give us glimpses of the ‘kingdom of heaven’ and which make studying film an ‘affair of the heart’ as well as a quest for knowledge.” (Caughie 32)


“There still remain fields, however, which require a more sophisticated theoretical, as well as historical, understanding. One of these is the constantly shifting field of imagination and creativity, raising issues of art and authorship which the anti-humanism of earlier film theory has constantly avoided and for which Bordwell’s systematic rationality has not delivered satisfactory answers.” (Caughie 32)


“The significance of authorship theory for Film Studies lies in its productivity: its production and institutionalization not simply of a ‘knowledge field’, but also of a community within which that field could be shared and contested: a field on which sides could be taken, theoretical battles fought, and solidarities formed and reformed. It was a field of debate in which the members of an emerging community began to identify themselves and define their studies and their terms of engagement.” (Caughie 6)

the imagination will be televised: showrunning and the re-animation of authorship in 21 st century...

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