Inside the Room

by Linda Venis

  Thankfully, Ethan has some experience with this stuff, so you’ve elected to listen more than talk and only speak up when: (a) someone asks you a question; or (b) you have a halfway decent idea. You’re trying to find your place in this postscript-centric world. And all the questions you have can be boiled down to one basic question: When should I insist on something?

  You’ve always had this vision in your head of the powerful, artistically driven writer/producer. In your imagination, this person knows everything he wants ahead of time, is never in doubt, and most importantly, must constantly wage war with everyone to maintain the creative integrity of the piece. This philosophy presumes that everyone you work with is actually a covert adversary. The network, studio, director—and every other person involved in the production of your pilot—is secretly plotting against you to undermine your creative vision and to defeat you personally. There is a handy showbiz term for this kind of thinking: paranoia. Okay, so maybe they’re not consciously trying to destroy you and your career. Maybe they are all just so incompetent and obtuse that they will destroy you and your career by accident. There’s a handy showbiz term for this sort of thinking, too: narcissistic perfectionism. You don’t want to be a jerk, but you don’t want to be a pushover either. Someone has even told you that the first thing you should do when you walk onto the set is fire someone. That will let everyone know who’s boss.

  Ethan has some advice, and it’s brilliant in its simplicity: “State all your concerns in the form of a question.” For instance: Let’s say you got a bad feeling from the line producer you’ve all just interviewed. To you, he seems brusque and a little arrogant, and uses pragmatism as a bludgeon to shut down interesting ideas. First, wait and see if anyone else brings this up. If no one does, you can broach the subject by saying, “I wonder, is this the most collaborative guy we can find?” Usually this is all it takes to get a conversation started. The outcome of that conversation is always up for grabs. But really, a conversation is all you can reasonably ask for.

  You’ve always prided yourself on your ability to be collaborative and open-minded. The next three months are going to put that to the test….

  Week Thirty-seven: Wednesday, February 15, 10:01 A.M.

  There is nothing—nothing—like the first day of auditions. It’s a day you will remember for the rest of your life. Real live actors, several of whom you recognize from other shows you love and hate, are walking into this small, poorly lit room. And they nervously introduce themselves to you, and they compliment you and tell you how much they love your script, and they begin speaking the lines that you wrote. It is infatuating and intoxicating. You have never felt more honored. Or important. And when they leave the room, Ethan and the director (more on him later) and Barbara L—, the casting director, look at you like an equal and the four of you share a few words about what you think of the actors and their performances. That first day of auditions will never be matched.

  Because by the third day, the fun is over. You have heard your lines read one hundred times, and by now, they all sound terrible and dull and unfunny. And every single actor mispronounces the name of the street where the character lives, and if they all mispronounce it, that makes it your fault—not theirs. And people you would have loved on day one you hate on day three. And the worst part is that you realize that no matter how difficult you used to think the life of a writer was, there is no more hellish existence than that of an actor. You thought sitting in judgment of others would finally allow you the opportunity to assess others fairly and generously, in the way you always wished others would assess you and your work. And now, you realize what a fool you were, because there is no way to judge these actors fairly. It is physically impossible for you to hear your lines with the same degree of enthusiasm and bigheartedness on day three as you did on day one.

  And guess what? You’ve got four more weeks of this. With each passing hour, you trust your instincts less. You find yourself dismissing people the very first second you see them. They walk in the room and you wish you could say, “Just walk back out. You’re simply not right for the role.” But you can’t say that. So you try to keep the door in your brain and your heart open just enough to actually hear magic if it happens. You owe it to these people, who are walking in with nothing other than their bodies and their voices to work with. There is something shameful in the process, something that shames you. You’re judging people for all the things you’ve always been told not to judge people by: their looks, their voices, and the most superficial aspects of their surface attributes.

  But what choice do you have? You can’t “get to know” these people. There are too many and there’s not enough time. They’re all reading your terrible lines in more or less the exact same way. And the ones who try “novel” interpretations are invariably the worst of all. And besides, will the average TV viewer be any more forgiving? Won’t they instantly respond to—or reject—the person on their TV screen based on some instantaneous assessment that they are not even fully aware of? Won’t they be just as unconsciously harsh—even more so? So maybe you should just go with it. Trust your demoralized soul to react to whatever makes it happy without thinking about it too much. Pretend you’re watching TV and simply wait for someone—anyone—to pop.

  And while you’re at it? Forgive everyone you have ever hated for dismissing you based on a first impression.

  Week Thirty-nine: Tuesday, February 28, 3:58 P.M.

  Your show no longer takes place in a beach town. It takes place in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. Turns out it’s more “cost efficient” to film your show in Vancouver.

  Money has become an everyday concern. It seems like from the moment your pilot was green-lit, your relationship with the studio has turned oddly adversarial as far as money is concerned. They’ve told you and Ethan how much money is available and that’s that. The budget they’ve given you has nothing to do with the actual needs of the show. It’s just a pile of money. And according to the way everyone figures it, including Kevin and Tamara, your studio partners, it’s about 20 percent less than you need. Kevin and Tamara are “lobbying” their bosses for a budget increase, but with every passing day, it’s becoming clear: There will be no more money.

  Other pilots have more money. Other pilots at the very same studio have more money. But for reasons you don’t know (and will never know), yours has been budgeted with less. And what this means is that, for the first time, you will be doing a rewrite based on monetary concerns.

  First, the script is too long. At least that’s what the director keeps telling you. You have eleven days to shoot your pilot, and the assistant director has it boarded at fourteen. (You learn that each scene has been allotted a certain amount of time to film. For every scene you cut or reduce, you save time. And money.) So you’ve already changed some night scenes to day scenes, cut certain locations to save time on crew moves, and cut the overall page count by 10 percent. A new board is released. Now it’s down to thirteen days. You still have to cut two entire days of shooting. At six pages a day, that means cutting twelve more pages. That’s 20 percent of your script.

  It’s impossible. You have until Thursday.

  Week Thirty-nine: Thursday, March 2, 12:12 P.M.

  You have cut ten pages from your pilot. It still works, but barely. It’s injured. You send the script to the studio and the network. The studio has approved the cuts. (Of course they have; they’re the ones demanding them.) You have a phone call with the network. And get this: They do not approve the cuts. They know full well how much money you don’t have. They know exactly what the studio is putting you through. They know the impossible situation you are in. But are they kicking in any money? Are you joking? They are simply telling you that these cuts are not acceptable and that this is not what they asked for when they selected your pilot. And the problem is handed back to you. Find some other way to make the money work without making these changes.

  It is impossible. You have until Monday.

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nbsp; Week Forty: Friday, March 10, 1:29 P.M.

  Welcome to Vancouver! You flew first class—first class—and you’re staying at the greatest hotel ever! (Not that other Vancouver hotel where everyone always stays. This one is right on the water, and it has an aromatherapied lobby, and everyone here is beautiful.) You feel like a big deal, maybe for the first time ever. And it’s a great feeling.

  There is an actual production office set up north of the city where people you have never met are employed in various capacities to produce your written work. They treat you with respect and behave as if you are their boss. And you kind of are. You have never felt luckier in your life.

  But you have trouble getting to sleep at night. With each passing day, the scope of the pilot and the number of people involved grows. There are too many factors, too many variables to be actively in control of all of them. And you try to remind yourself that you don’t have to control them. All you can do is try to be aware of them and step in when necessary. At this early stage in your pilot-making career, you know that the less you speak, the more you will be heard. That doesn’t mean be silent. It does mean don’t talk just to be saying something. Pick your battles.

  Week Forty-one: The First Day of Shooting, Tuesday, March 14, 11:23 A.M.

  And here it is, your first battle. A crew of a hundred people stand in the rain on the streets of Vancouver. You’ve been shooting one scene for just over three hours. Which puts you one hour behind schedule. One of your lead actors is having trouble with his lines. You and the director have shared worried looks for the past hour. Finally, your director says he thinks he has enough to work with and decides it’s time to move on. And you suddenly feel dread rise in your chest. Because you don’t think there’s enough to work with. What can you do? You have to speak up now or forever hold your peace. So you approach the director on the set and express that you are a little worried about having enough usable coverage of the lead. And you ask, in your most diplomatic tone, if he thinks it’s maybe a good idea to do one more take, just to be sure.

  And your director says no, he does not think it is a good idea. He quietly points out that the takes have been getting progressively worse. The actor is freaking out. He knows he’s blowing the lines, and he’s becoming more stressed with every take. It’s getting to a point of diminishing returns. Going for one more take isn’t likely to do anything other than push your actor farther into his own head, magnifying his self-consciousness. Your director has a different idea: Move to the next location (indoors, where everyone will be happier), and change the order of coverage in subsequent scenes so that the lead is filmed last, giving him time to get comfortable with the scene, the set, the other actors—and his lines.

  You feel weird. Heard—but chastened at the same time. It takes a while to figure it out, but it finally dawns on you: Now that production has begun, the director is in the driver’s seat. Sure, you (or the studio, or the network) can step in and insist on pretty much anything you want. But on a set, the director is still looked at as king, and to undermine that authority is to take a huge—and unnecessary—risk. If the cast or crew loses confidence in the director as the “boss” during production, things can get out of hand very quickly. You’ve hired this director for a reason. If you just intended to use him as a proxy for each and every one of your ideas, you’re cheating yourself out of his artistic contributions and the benefit of his experience. Once again, you’ll have to walk a tightrope balancing between overaccommodation and micromanagement. The best piece of advice comes from Tamara at the studio: Discuss all your ideas, concerns, and suggestions with the director in private, come to a decision, and then let the director implement the changes on set.

  Week Forty-four: The Director’s Cut, Wednesday, April 5, 3:55 P.M.

  This is a very difficult day for everyone. It’s difficult for the director because he is turning in his “first draft” of the pilot to you, the writer/producer. And he wants you to love it as much as you wanted the studio and network to love the first draft of your script, all those months ago. And it’s difficult for you because you just finished watching it, and you think it’s awful.

  Somehow every performance feels false, the timing is off, and the weaknesses in the script have been highlighted to a point of embarrassment. Worst of all, it’s boring. Every plot twist just kind of lies there like a beached whale in the hot summer sun, drawing flies and generally stinking the place up.

  Ethan sees the look on your face. He suggests you both take a walk around the studio lot, get some air, and have a frank discussion about your reactions. So you do. You take a walk, and you spill your guts. You freak out. It’s not the first time, and Ethan is used to it. And he surprises you by not disagreeing. Wait a second: Isn’t he supposed to disagree? Isn’t he supposed to tell you that you’re wrong and the pilot is fantastic? Well, he doesn’t. Instead, he tells you something unexpected: “First cuts always suck. Not because they’re bad, but because you are finally seeing what the pilot is instead of what you always hoped it would be.” He explains that the feeling of being simultaneously underwhelmed and panicked is very common. He tells you it will never look this bad again. From here on out it will only get better. You pray to God he’s right….

  Week Forty-six: Thursday, April 20, 4:58 P.M.

  As far as the TV year is concerned, April truly is the cruellest month. You have moved into a new phase of intense paranoia, because all around you, all you hear are rumors. Rumors about the other pilots. Which ones are fantastic and which ones are terrible, which ones are “a lock” and which ones are “dead.” And every time you hear a rumor, you know that somewhere in town the same conversations are going on, but in those, your pilot is being discussed. You haven’t felt like this since high school, when people talked about who liked who and who was dating who and who was going to prom with who. It all seemed so important, so exciting, so scary—and so out of your control. The studio has assured you that the network loves everything they’ve seen of your pilot. And the network has actually been very forthcoming about how much they like it. But one thing becomes very clear: Liking your pilot and picking up your pilot are two very different things.

  Everyone has a story. The director, the studio executives, the actors, the editor, the post-production supervisor; they all have a story of the “golden pilot” that was an absolute favorite until the middle of May, just before upfronts, when it suddenly died. You also hear stories of long-shot pilots declared dead way back in February that suddenly surge to the forefront out of nowhere and win the day with a series order. So, it’s both a warning and a reassurance when everyone reminds you, “Nothing means anything until you hear from the network in May.”

  You have been told more than once that you will not hear a definitive answer until May 17, because that’s the day CBS announces its fall schedule at upfronts. That’s where the networks get the advertisers excited about spending their money buying commercial time on these wonderful new shows. It’s a party for the advertisers, who get treated to big shows and private dinners and meetings with celebrities. But for you and the other writers and directors and producers, it’s the final phase of a grueling, ten-month worry-fest that only ends when you know for sure your pilot’s fate.

  So, for now, you spend your days in the editing room, cutting and recutting and selecting music and adjusting the few special-effects shots you have, and basically trying not to think about the fact that all this might be for nothing.

  Week Forty-seven (Part One): The Series Document, Monday, April 24, 9:53 A.M.

  You knew this was coming. Everybody’s been talking about it for months. The “series document.” And frankly, you could have started working on it weeks ago, but you didn’t. Hey, you were busy watching actors audition, and having dinner with your director so you could discuss how he would bring your brilliant script to life, and enjoying first-class flights to Vancouver, and hanging out with the actors you finally cast, and watching dailies, and…doing anything but writing. Bec
ause let’s be honest: Writing is hard, but producing is pretty fun. Sure, it has its challenging moments, but mostly you’ve had a blast. Well, the producing part of your job is winding down and now the writing part is coming back. And guess what? If they pick your show, there will be so many writing chores dropping down on your head, it just might kill you. So you might as well get back into the swing of things.

  The series document is an informal, nonpaid, yet absolutely essential part of your responsibilities as pilot writer. In this document, you will recap the concept of your show—but now you will also map out what the first season might look like. How will the characters develop? How will their relationships grow? What will happen to them over the course of the season? You don’t have to go into tremendous detail, but you do have to give a general sense as to the direction the series and the characters are heading. You are also expected to provide anywhere from four to eight “sample story lines.” In other words, what will be the main story line of, say, episode five?

  The series document is a vexing task this late in the game. You can’t help but feel that, rather than increasing your odds, this document will kill your chances of a series order completely. The network will love your pilot, but then they’ll read what you have in mind for the rest of the season and hate it. You picture them tossing down the document and breathing a sigh of relief: “My God, can you believe we almost ordered this piece of crap?”