by Mike Sacks
No, not at all. In fact, the odds are against it. Studios and networks buy a ton of scripts each pilot season. A fraction of those will get shot, and only a small handful will get episode orders.
Does it work differently with movie scripts?
It’s complicated, but in general, the odds are always stacked against getting something produced. And the less commercial the idea, the lower the odds. It’s a tough business, but I think it’s always been that way. The people putting out money expect to make money. It’s a pretty square deal. It’s logical. Still, creative people, like myself, will never stop bitching about not selling something or not getting a project produced and crying, “How can they make that other piece of shit when my thing is so much better?” That’s normal. You can’t think logically when it comes to something you’re passionate about. All you can do is keep trying. And write a lot of projects you’re not passionate about to pay the bills. [Laughs]
Over the years, you’ve sold two other movie scripts, not including Cabin Boy, that were produced: Lucky Numbers [2000] and Death to Smoochy [2002]. Were you happy with the way either of those films turned out?
No. But this goes to what I was kind of just rambling about. I sold those as pitches. And the end result was extremely painful for me— embarrassing even—but sometimes I have to make myself stand back and look at the business transaction I entered into: I sold an idea, essentially. After I gave them the script, it had nothing to do with me anymore. I got paid; that was the deal. Any further creative involvement was at the discretion of the director—and, of course, the writer doesn’t get to choose the director. In the case of those films, I was brought into the process, but it was nothing like a true collaboration, and the directors saw those movies differently than I did. I can bitch all day long about how much better the scripts were, and, believe me, I did plenty of that, but in the end, you have to accept what the rules were going in. It’s not easy, though.
You know what? Maybe it’s time for a blow-off question. [Laughs] I can feel my serotonin levels plummeting.
What’s the current status of the worm farm script?
I haven’t picked it up in awhile, but I’m going to do another pass on it. I’ve done several, which is always a good sign. Darren Aronofsky [the director of The Wrestler and Black Swan] read my last draft and really liked it.
And does he want to make it?
Oh, God no.
We never got a chance to discuss your HBO show, The High Life.
Let’s save that for the new volume. I can’t stand to hear the sound of my voice any longer.
Any last words?
I mentioned I wasn’t a fan of the Brat Pack movies, right? Look, here’s the thing—if you’re in this business and you can cover your overhead by writing exactly what you want, you’re living the dream. And if you’re getting rich by writing what you want, you’re in an enviable position. But for most writers, it’s usually a compromise. The good news is, there’s always a chance that everything will click on some project and you’ll be happy creatively. And that’s what keeps you writing, I guess. For me, every day that I’m not living back in Harrisburg is a victory.
Thanks for doing this, and please give my best to the prostitute.
Oh, I’m going to give her a little something more than that, if you know what I mean. There you go—comedy.
ULTRASPECIFIC COMEDIC KNOWLEDGE
PAUL FEIG
Creator/Writer, Freaks and Geeks; Director, The Office, Arrested Development, Bridesmaids, The Heat; Producer, Peanuts movie; Author, Kick Me, Superstud
Writing a TV-Series Bible
In 1999, you wrote a series bible for Freaks and Geeks. Sometimes called a “character bible” or a “show bible,” a series bible is a reference guide that a writer puts together when pitching a new show to networks. It includes details about the show’s characters, setting, plot points, and other minutiae. Can you talk about how yours came about?
The bible for Freaks and Geeks was for the executives, of course, but I mostly wrote it for me. When you’re thinking of something for so long and you have a million thoughts in your head and you keep taking notes—and especially when a show is based on truth, something you actually went through—a series bible is almost this stream of consciousness way to dump all that stuff out and then organize it. As a writer, all you can really do is to write honest work. You have to really put yourself in the head of your characters, so anything that helps you do that is great. And this really helped me do that.
It was also really a great way to show the writers for the show what I was imagining, what I wanted the show to be. I wanted to let the writers see the continuity of it all. Also, it was for production design, wardrobe, and the sound of the show; I wanted to portray a very specific look and sound. I went through all my old seventies yearbooks and put Post-it notes in them. I still have the yearbooks and they still have all the Post-its.
At the time that I wrote the bible for Freaks—this would be the late 1990s—there was a tendency for Hollywood to think, Oh, everything was crazy in the 1970s. It was all leisure suits and disco and all that. And I was like, “No, that’s not how it looked. That’s not how it sounded to me.” So it was really important to me to kill that mentality. By writing this character bible, it was my way of saying, “Here’s the guide to the seventies that I knew.”
I had never been in charge of a show, and there was a terror for me of pitching to the executives and not having an answer or an opinion when they asked—or of having the wrong opinion. So it also became a way for me to sort it all out.
The details in the series bible are incredible, to the point where you write that the geeks are the ones listening to Electric Light Orchestra and the freaks are the ones listening to Rush.
[Laughs] Right! I mean, it was kind of a fun way to do it. I was surprising myself that all of this was coming out of me, and I was able to go, “Oh, yeah. I remember who liked this. I remember who didn’t like that.” It was all about defining who were the freaks and who were the geeks. For me, these were the two groups who had never been explored. Even when nerds were in movies, they were always the valedictorians; all they cared about was schoolwork. In reality, the geeks I knew liked music; they liked pop culture.
I went into this show so afraid of all that had gone before us, and really wanting to have a defense against the network, or anybody else, who was going to try to force me to do things that had been done before in all those high school shows and movies. And so I really needed to have real-life answers.
Executives will sometimes—but not always—ask to read a series bible when a writer is pitching a TV show. They want to get a sense of who the characters are and what this world will be like. But is it always worthwhile for the writer to create one? It seems like a tremendous amount of work.
Absolutely. It is a ton of work, but it’s incredibly helpful to any writer. I’d recommend any writer do it, only to get his or her thoughts in some semblance of order. As a writer, you really need a solid foundation when creating a show—in essence, you’re creating an entirely new world, inhabited by characters coming from your imagination. If the foundation isn’t solid, everything will collapse. It’s a very difficult process. Now, that’s not to say that details won’t change as the show progresses. But by getting everything down onto paper, and by then organizing this world into a cohesive form, it can only help you if the show is bought and later produced.
When you ultimately got the go-ahead for Freaks and Geeks and were hiring writers, what were you looking for? The show is infamous for having one of the best writing staffs for any nineties TV show, and included Mike White, who wrote the 2006 movie Nacho Libre and created HBO’s series Enlightened.
When we were hiring writers for the show, I was not very interested in reading their spec scripts for other shows. I felt that I wouldn’t learn anything about a writer if I was reading a Buffy the Vampire Slayer script because I’d j
ust be seeing how they could copy somebody else’s style. Plus, they would already have these characters at their disposal. I preferred to either read somebody’s original pilot or original play or original screenplay in order to see the invention they were able to come up with.
But, keep in mind, that’s just me. Most TV shows find writers from spec scripts for their shows. I think it is good to write a spec script, but to always include something original, too. That is really the hardest thing: creating characters from scratch and creating a situation from scratch.
As a writer, what do you prefer to come up with first? Characters or situations?
What happens with a lot of writers when they develop a TV pilot is that they come up with the context first, and then they fill in the characters. That’s slightly dicey for a new TV show because the concept is only going to be interesting for so long. What the show really hangs on are the characters and what kind of a life they have. I’d much rather see a writer come up with, “I knew somebody like this.” Or, “What would it be like if these three people got mixed together?” At that point, you can then ask, “Okay, what’s the best context for them to be in? What situation?”
Are your scripts meant to be performed verbatim, or do you allow for improvisation?
I think the main problem I see with comedy is that a lot of it is overwritten and it’s created by people who are very precious about their words. You get that a lot in television, especially with sitcoms where writers are very religious about, “You can’t change this; you can’t change that.” So, what happens is, there’s no life to it.
I do use improv, but sometimes that’s just as simple as loosening the wording of a written joke or a sentence to create a kind of naturalness. It also has to do with rehearsal and how you adapt the script to the actors’ personalities and how you shoot and how many different ways you have to shoot a scene. Actors are great and they can do scenes over and over again, but, at the same time, there’s always going to be a freshness about the first time someone says or does something. You want to get to the point where you’re capturing lightning in a bottle. That is the key to comedy as far as I’m concerned: lightning in a bottle. You have to capture that moment when it first happens, because that’s when it’s funny.
How difficult is it to capture that lightning?
It’s hard. Sometimes it’s hard just because of the technology involved with making movies and television, like not being able to shoot both actors at the same time. Sometimes it’s hard because an actor’s not good at doing it. But you also learn from the actors you work with. Some are amazing at being in the moment and others aren’t. Some don’t know how to handle it correctly, and, if that’s the case, you adjust and find a way to make them fresh when it’s their turn. Some are better right out of the gate. Others need to warm up. Everyone’s different.
When you direct, your head is spinning. That’s why shooting comedy is absolutely exhausting. That’s why when you come to the end of a full day, you’ll have one last scene, and you sometimes feel, My God, I don’t know if I can get through it. The temptation is to just shoot it exactly like the script and be done with it. But whatever you do in that one moment is captured forever—you’ll always have it—so you have to force yourself to make what is hopefully magic happen.
“Freaks and Geeks: The Series Bible”
(Written by Paul Feig, last revised May 20, 1999. What follows are excerpts.)
General Notes About the Series
This show must be real. The teens in this series will talk like real teens. They will never be too clever or grown up sounding. We don’t want a bunch of teenage Neil Simons spouting off wittily. These kids generally engage in teenage put-downs, they overextend their language (“Oh, yeah? Well, you’re a . . . uh . . . big idiot, that’s what you are”) and never talk in that writers’ “Now that I’m in my thirties, I know what I’d say in that high school situation, so I’ll give this kid a snappy comeback” style of writing. These kids have to deal with each other with whatever is in the lexicon of a teenager and nothing more (and despite the fact that most of us think “if I knew then what I know now, I’d really be cool and in control” the sad truth is that if we knew what we know now when we were in high school, we’d probably get beaten up on a regular basis because teenage bullies don’t respond well to clever put-downs at their expense).
What They Listen To
Here are some of the bands that the freaks and geeks would be listening to in the Midwest in 1980 (the great thing is that, even though the groups divide pretty cleanly on what they listen to, there’s lots of spillover in what they like, partly because of their siblings and parents and partly just because they’re kids who are easily persuaded):
The Cars—geeks
Chicago—geeks
Asia—geeks, some freaks
Bee Gees—geeks
Black Sabbath—freaks
Blue Oyster Cult—freaks
Blood, Sweat & Tears—geeks
Eric Clapton—freaks, some geeks
Alice Cooper—freaks and geeks
Cheap Trick—freaks and geeks
Doobie Brothers—freaks and geeks
John Denver—geeks
Eagles—geeks, some freaks
ELO—geeks
Fleetwood Mac—geeks, freak girls
Foghat—freaks
Peter Frampton—freaks and geeks
Foreigner—freaks and geeks
Genesis—freaks
Jimi Hendrix—freaks
Iron Maiden—freaks
Elton John—geeks
Journey—freaks and geeks
Judas Priest—freaks
Kiss—geeks
John Lennon—freaks and geeks
Lynyrd Skynyrd—freaks and farmers
Marshall Tucker Band—freaks and farmers, some geeks
Meat Loaf—geeks
The Steve Miller Band—freaks and geeks
Van Morrison—nobody
Moody Blues—geeks
Tom Petty—geeks, some freaks
Prince (early)—nobody
Rolling Stones—freaks for early stuff, geeks for “Some Girls”
Rush—freaks
Roxy Music—nobody who’d admit it
Santana—freaks and geeks
Carly Simon—teachers
Simon & Garfunkel—teachers
Patti Smith—“Creem”-reading freaks
Bruce Springsteen—not very big in Midwest, some cooler geeks
The Police—freaks, a few geeks
Supertramp—geeks, some freaks
Jethro Tull—freaks
Queen—freaks and geeks
James Taylor—geeks, some freak girls
Jackson Brown—geeks, freaks who smoke lots of pot
Van Halen—freaks
Paul McCartney and Wings—geeks, some freaks
Yes—freaks, some geeks
ZZ Top—freaks, some geeks
Frank Zappa—only the coolest of freaks
Billy Joel—geeks
Bob Seger—geeks, some freaks
J. Geils Band—freaks for early stuff, geeks for “Centerfold” era
Led Zeppelin—freaks
April Wine—freaks, some geeks, lots of Canadians
Jeff Beck—cool freaks
Robin Trower—freaks
Three Dog Night—geeks
B-52s—nobody
Devo—very cool geeks
Elvis Costello—moody geeks, some freaks
Talking Heads—some geeks, some freaks, mostly no one
The Romantics—geeks, a few freaks
Sex Pistols—no one knows about them
The Ramones—them either
What They Wear
Overall note is that all the students will have about four or
five outfits they will wear all the time. Pants can stay the same a lot of the time, shirts change daily (except for some poorer kids). Even cool kids and rich kids shouldn’t have a lot of different changes. Bottom line, all these kids are blue collar or lower end white collar.
The Geeks
In general, the geeks try to dress well but just don’t quite pull it off. Maybe if they were better looking or cooler guys, their clothes would make them attractive. But on them, no matter what they wear, it somehow doesn’t work.
Sam
Overall look: Sam looks like a kid who cares about how he looks but only up to a point. He dresses more for comfort and his fashion sense is limited to knowing what other kids are wearing and then trying to approximate their look. He thinks he looks better than he does in his clothes (everything looks fine to him from head-on in the mirror but he doesn’t see that what he can’t see doesn’t really hang well). He’s not so much rumpled as the victim of poorly made clothes.
Shirts: Pullover Velour V-neck shirts with collar (a little baggy and ill-fitting), short-sleeved knit pullover with zipper V-neck and collar (white stripe on edge of collar and sleeves), terrycloth pullover with two- or three-button V-neck and collar (shoulder pieces are darker color than rest of shirt, with a stripe on each upper arm), not usually tucked in.
Pants: Brown, green, burgundy jeans, never denim blue jeans (until second season), occasionally polyester slacks.
Shoes: Tan suede earth shoe hybrids with rimpled soles (remember those things? The soles were shaped like two “w’s” and the whole shoe looked kinda pumped up like a loaf of bread—see Paul Feig for details), dark suede tennis shoes (occasionally).
Coat: Parka, faux–Members Only jacket (maybe), windbreaker with stripe or father’s sporting goods store logo embossed on back (cheap, low-end looking).
Accessories: Always a belt, sometimes with a large copper novelty belt buckle (like a train or Model T car or a tennis racket).