by Chuck Salter
So was he surprised by the reaction of Hulu’s owners? “Not in the precise, no,” he says, before muddying his answer. “Because, I think, in the aggregate, based on conversations I had, frankly, there were a lot of people who said, ‘That makes sense. That’s a great summary of the landscape and where you’re going.’ ”
An unlikely opportunity for all parties to save face emerged in June 2011, when Yahoo reportedly made an unsolicited bid to buy Hulu. Hulu’s board opened up the sale process to any company that wanted to make a bid, and Google, DirecTV, Verizon, Microsoft, Apple, and Kilar’s alma mater, Amazon, all were rumored to have at least considered an offer. But the talks collapsed for the same old reason: Hulu’s owners refused to commit to long-term licensing agreements. The company was taken off the market in October, and a happy ending seemed ever less likely.
IT’S 9 P.M. ON A Friday night, and Kevin Smith is lecturing a group of young men and women who have volunteered to participate in Spoilers With Kevin Smith, the movie-review show that the Clerks director hosts for Hulu. The group has just seen a screening of The Bourne Legacy at Universal CityWalk and they’re about to be shepherded into the Spoilers studio, where they’ll discuss the movie with Smith as cameras roll.
But Smith needs to clarify a few things first. “The likelihood of you saying, ‘This movie’s for cocksuckers’ and getting that on the air isn’t good,’ ” he says, dressed in baggy jean shorts that fall well past his knees and an orange-and-blue hockey jersey. “What are we? PG-13 or something?” he calls out to a huddle of Hulu executives off to the side of the room.
He goes through a few more rules (smile like crazy during his opening monologue) and scolds an audience member. “Sunglasses,” he barks, “you can rock those in your pockets,” before sauntering off stage. “Now I’m going to go upstairs and make myself pretty. Have more hairs put in my head.”
Spoilers, which debuted in June, is part of Hulu’s ambitious foray into original programming, Kilar’s plan at forging a new identity for the streaming service. By investing $500 million into content, which includes coproducing new episodes of British cult favorite The Thick of It, and licensing foreign programs such as the Israeli drama Prisoners of War (the forerunner of Showtime’s acclaimed Homeland), Kilar is hoping to follow in the footsteps of HBO, or, for that matter, AMC. “Four or five years ago, AMC was known for just showing The Last Starfighter over and over again, or Some Like It Hot,” says J.D. Walsh, the writer-director of Hulu’s first scripted original show, Battleground, a mockumentary about political campaign staffers in Wisconsin. “Then they started making TV shows, and with Mad Men and Breaking Bad, now they’re legit.”
The strategy is anything but a sure thing. For one, Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube are pursuing the same path, armed with far more cash. Netflix, for instance, is spending $100 million alone on 26 episodes of House of Cards, a remake of the British miniseries directed by David Fincher and starring Kevin Spacey. YouTube, which has poured several hundred million dollars into seeding scores of original channels and is sharing advertising revenue with its partners, has lined up a roster that includes Ashton Kutcher, Amy Poehler, and Madonna.
Kilar describes Hulu’s initiative as more of an indie thing, akin to Robert Redford’s creation of the Sundance Film Festival, a place to “house storytellers and incubate their stories.” And he has attracted idiosyncratic talent, like Richard Linklater and Armando Iannucci, the acclaimed writer-director of The Thick of It, by giving them great creative independence. But both he and his company have strong techie DNA and lots to learn about dealing with the egos and protocol involved in making, and not just distributing, a Hollywood production. (This is true for Hulu’s rivals as well: Netflix and Fincher have reportedly been feuding about the budget for House of Cards.)
“I think Jason has to green-light shows, but he’s not a development exec, so that’s new territory for them,” says one agent who was still waiting to hear on a project he pitched. “Things are just dragging. I’m told, ‘We want to present it to Jason and Andy [Forssell, Hulu’s SVP of content] in the right way, but they’re not so great at reading scripts.’ These are things you don’t hear out of network TV.”
So far, Hulu lacks the kind of breakout hit that defines a network. Forssell says that this will take time, since, unlike the networks, Hulu isn’t papering Sunset Boulevard with publicity billboards. The idea is to spend less money more efficiently, and mostly online, and to patiently develop a larger audience. And to use the new Hulu redesign to expose viewers to its originals. “I want to look at these shows on a two-year basis,” he says. But that assumes Hulu still has a couple of years ahead of it.
“HULU IS EVERYTHING we hoped it would be but were never really sure it could be,” says Zucker, who now produces Katie Couric’s daytime talk show. “It’s almost shocking how successful the company has been.” Chernin, Hulu’s other founding father, is less bullish. “The world changes so fast,” he says, pointing to the fact that at the outset he didn’t have to worry about Hulu paying content creators exorbitant retransmission fees. While he still praises Kilar and still believes the entertainment business must invest to avoid the path of the music industry, he admits to a certain sympathy for the worries of old-line media companies. These business-model debates, he says, “are age-old and appropriate questions, which the media business should grapple with.”
The leaked “transition plan” suggests that Hulu’s current owners are doing a lot more than grappling. After Providence sells its stake, the media companies will supposedly revamp Hulu in a way that could prove intolerable for Kilar. The proposed changes include doubling the number of ads that run on Fox shows streamed on Hulu (not Hulu Plus) and letting competitors like YouTube have equal access to current-season shows. It’s deeply ironic that the networks would now turn to YouTube, given that they created Hulu to fend it off. But YouTube is believed to generate six times more revenue than Hulu and remains the most popular hub for online video. Hulu regularly falls out of the top 10 list of most-visited Internet video sites, as ranked by comScore. No wonder the studios won’t prize Hulu at the expense of their bread and butter—cable subscription fees and advertising.
Ultimately, Hulu might well get diminished to a site that’s the equivalent of fox.com, which only makes episodes available for a limited time. Hulu Plus, with its dual revenue stream, might be protected. But while the subscription service could reach 3 million subscribers by the end of the year, “that’s just not that impressive,” says Dan Rayburn, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan. As ratings dip, TV production costs soar, and video-streaming competition increases, the networks may well wind up having less command of the digital future of content than they did when they launched Hulu in 2007. And while Kilar still believes, deeply, in the future of a digital content warehouse that satiates millions of customers, much of his vision has been co-opted by others who are doing things bigger—if not necessarily better—than Hulu.
In the wake of all this drama, assessing Kilar’s future has become one of Hollywood’s favorite parlor games. “I don’t think he has any intention of leaving until this plays out more,” says a former Fox executive, “unless he gets forced out—though I very much doubt that, because it would look real bad.”
But another source who knows Kilar says, “It’s just a matter of time” until he decides his job has become too compromised. The consensus seems to be that Kilar and team will hang on until his network partners make things truly untenable. And with Providence gone, that time could come very soon. Still, Kilar’s professional future remains bright: He’s a star CEO in his early forties with five years’ experience in one of the most challenging jobs on earth.
When I press Kilar on all this, he’ll only say that he is not a “dabbler.” The ruthless world of entertainment hasn’t smothered his optimism. “So much ground has been covered since those first days when most everyone had a fear of the unknown,” he says. “We’re not yet at the stage where all
content producers and executives think of online video distribution as naturally and obviously as they think of traditional television distribution, but we’re certainly getting closer. If history is any guide, we’ll get there.”
For now, Kilar still seems to be enjoying the ride. At Hulu’s Friday afternoon “wind down,” he plops onto the floor amid a roomful of Hulugans as Lonn Lee, Hulu’s director of product development and this week’s wind-down host, welcomes the crowd. Goofily dressed in a Canadian Olympics hat with furry earflaps and a Team U.S.A. jersey, Lee gets the “Intern Olympics” started, joking that, “The most interesting thing about speed-walking is that it’s a real sport.”
Kilar claps his hands in applause and laughs. Here in the thick of what he’s created, he seems genuinely happy, not to mention relaxed and unscripted. His vision may be battered, but it’s not dead yet.
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Fast Company, November 2012
ACT 4
MASTER CLASS
Sage advice from a top director,
a top editor, a hot comedian,
and an expert on, well, everything.
INSIDE HOMELAND : DIRECTOR LESLI LINKA GLATTER ON HOW TO SHOOT DIALOGUE
By Jessica Grose
LESLI LINKA GLATTER’S list of credits is almost identical to every critic’s listicle ranking the best dramas from the past two decades. The veteran TV director is behind pivotal episodes of Twin Peaks, Freaks and Geeks, The West Wing, E.R., House, and Mad Men. Linka Glatter’s also responsible for the standout installment of this season of Homeland: the terse, thrilling, and brilliantly acted interrogation episode called “Q&A,” in which bipolar CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) breaks the object of her romantic and professional obsession, ex-Marine turned terrorist turned congressman Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis).
Though the talents of Danes and Lewis in “Q&A” have been amply and deservedly praised by recappers and reviewers, Linka Glatter’s no-frills direction is what elevates the episode to instant classic. New York magazine TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz perfectly described Linka Glatter’s brilliant technique, writing, “As Carrie bears down on the truth of Brody’s existential predicament—as she pushes his buttons and gets him to open up—the direction becomes primordially simple: an exchange of tight close-ups; lines answering lines, faces answering faces.”
That Linka Glatter was able to wring so much tension and pathos from two actors in an empty concrete bunker speaks to one of her great skills: directing dialogue. Linka Glatter spoke to Co.Create about how to set a scene, whether it’s against the backdrop of Mad Men’s fainting couch or one of The West Wing’s infamous walk-and-talks.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK
When I got the script [for “Q&A”] I figured I better look at interrogations in different movies and TV that have worked. There wasn’t anything that paralleled [the scene in Homeland]. I watched Marathon Man, that amazing scene between Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman. I also watched Reservoir Dogs. I watched many, many scenes from movies, and the one TV scene I looked at was an episode of Homicide: Life on the Streets [“Three Men and Adena,” from season 1]. That whole show is an interrogation, and it’s extraordinary. What it helped me do is realize that two people sitting in a room can be totally interesting, especially when it’s Claire Danes and Damian Lewis.
My background is in modern dance. I was a dancer and a choreographer before I was a director, and in dance, you can’t cheat. Your leg goes up in the air or it doesn’t. So when I direct, I’m a big preparer. I think about the text and the subtext. I don’t ever want to impose something on the story. I want the story to tell me.
REMAIN OPEN TO SURPRISES FROM YOUR COLLABORATORS
First I prepare alone, then with the director of photography [DP], and then with the actors. When you’re working in a collaborative storytelling medium, every step of the way, you’re opening yourself up. I love when an editor finds something on tape I didn’t expect, because they’re bringing their particular point of view to it.
When we were shooting the Carrie and Brody interrogation scene [in “Q&A”], we did three completed takes. Take two was the take we used. We did cross-coverage, shooting Carrie and Brody at the same time. That’s really hard for a DP to do, and Nelson [Cragg], our wonderful DP, did it. I felt it was really important that we do that—that scene is so complex. Both [Danes and Lewis] were completely exhausted from using so much physical and psychic energy. Most takes are three minutes long, but we shot this scene like a play, and the takes were 25 minutes. You need amazing actors to shoot scenes like these. Take two was so tense and alive, I was sitting with the writer Henry Bromell, and we were holding onto each other.
REMEMBER THAT YOU’RE A GUEST IN A CREATOR’S WORLD
The creators of a quality show have built a tremendous working environment. I’m someone who has worked as a producing director, and you go into all these different worlds with their different creative environments. Every creator sets up their world differently. That’s what’s so amazing about someone like Aaron Sorkin and his writing. It’s like how an actor needs to learn Shakespeare to rise above the material—if you don’t know the dialogue cold, you can’t do it justice. The first time I directed West Wing, I had a scene in the Roosevelt room with 13 characters in it. It was like an eight-page scene, and the only description in the scene was “he enters.” There was no other stage direction. As a director, that’s so exciting. You start to break it down, realize what the scene is really about, and to stage it wherever you want it to be. Another brilliant writer, Mad Men’s Matt Weiner, his detailing of stage direction is down to the minute detail—so what could be more different? That, for me, keeps it interesting.
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Co.Create, November 2012
SCORSESE COLLABORATOR THELMA SCHOONMAKER ON HOW TO EDIT A CAPTIVATING SCENE
By Ari Karpel
TOWARD THE END of Martin Scorsese’s 3-D movie Hugo, the title character, a little boy who lives in a Paris train station, jumps onto the tracks to retrieve a key, unaware that a train is barreling at him. The scene, which—spoiler alert!—turns out to be a dream, follows a pattern set out across 10 pages of illustrations in Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the basis for the film.
“It was very important for Marty and the visual effects team to follow the book,” explains Thelma Schoonmaker, who has edited every Scorsese film since Raging Bull and is up for her fourth Oscar this Sunday (this is her seventh nomination). “But I like to read the book and read the script and then put it away and not think about it anymore. I then watch how the film is developing before my eyes, in the dailies.”
Co.Create asked Schoonmaker to break down how she put the sequence together, bringing it to life on-screen.
FOLLOWING SCORSESE’S VISION
“What Marty wanted to do there was have the audience slowly realize that they were in a nightmare, but not right away. Ordinarily the way you would cut that scene would be the boy would get on the track, he would pick up the key, and then you would cut to the train, coming toward the track. The boy would turn in horror and run off the track. The way Marty directed it was the boy does not react even though the rail beside him is shaking with the vibration of the approaching train. He keeps looking at the key, and then finally the engineers in the train are realizing the boy is on the track, and they’re going nuts trying to stop the train, and yelling at him to get out of the way. But he’s not responding. And finally he looks over, but slowly. He doesn’t jump up and run off the track. He just looks over. And then finally he turns, but again we still cut to the train. And he still hasn’t run off the track. And then we cut to him actually reacting.”
CRAFTING THE AUDIENCE’S EMOTIONAL RESPONSE
“Now, what that does is it should give you a gradual strange feeling, like, Why isn’t this boy reacting? And then gradually it should begin to dawn on you that maybe this isn’t real. But the way Marty [shot] it you get this very stra
nge feeling, you can’t quite figure out what’s going on. And then it gradually dawns on you. And of course it particularly dawns on you when the train crashes through the window onto the street and the boy sits up [in bed]. Then you know it was a nightmare. It was very important for me to cut it in a way—we had many options—to cut it in a way that we’re giving you this very slow, strange…something’s wrong here. It’s not classical editing at all, and that was a lot of fun to do. We fooled around with it for a long time.”
INTELLECT VS. GUT FEELING IN EDITING
“The way all of that is framed, lit, and how it’s cut is so critical. It’s a very hard thing to describe. The intellectual idea was Marty’s idea of how to direct it. He could’ve directed it just as the boy sees the train and runs off the track. But he didn’t. When we’re editing it, it’s kinetic, it’s a feeling from your gut…running it over and over again and feeling, Oh, no, we’re waiting too long on the boy here, or not.”
THOUSANDS OF DECISIONS
“Many, many, many thousands of decisions, that’s what goes on every day in an editing room. It’s hard to track it unless you’re sitting there. It was a matter of, How long are we going to let this go on? How many times are we going to cut to him, and what should he be doing each time we cut to him? And when should we show the track shaking? And how quickly should the engineers react? And how long can we get away with the boy not jumping off the track as he sees an approaching train? It took a long, long time to really come to exactly the right pace for that—how long to hold on each shot, and what shot to put in between the shots of the boy.”