by Neil Landau
At CBS when I was doing Joan of Arcadia and Judging Amy, the network was comfortable with no outlines. I would call and pitch the stories to them. It would take five to ten minutes. I would say here are the beats while I was looking at a beat sheet. They would say fine, and the writer would go off. FOX wants to see the outlines and it’s their call. Here’s what generally happens. The guy who runs the room right now is Jon Collier, co-executive producer, who is just awesome at it. I don’t spend a ton of time in the room. I get pitched arenas, and then we discuss with Jon what the personal B stories might be in that arena. Then we go upstairs and the writer pitches six acts with the act endings. Stephen and I respond and give notes. That takes maybe an hour and a half to two hours. Then they turn that into an outline. I don’t look at outlines, neither does Stephen, but Jon and another co-executive producer, Kim Clements, produce the outline and send it to the network. Sometimes it comes back with questions, and then we beef it up. Then the writer goes off to write the script. And the faster they write the script, the faster they will get notes. Every once in a while, we will hand over a script from a junior writer to a co-executive producer to do a pass with our notes, so that the rewrite doesn’t have to be as big.
NL: Is the outline about ten pages?
HH: It’s twelve pages long.
NL: One of the things that was tough for me when I was first on staff on Aaron Spelling’s shows was that they required fifteen- to twenty-page single-spaced outlines which included everything. Then, what I learned when I went to other shows is that if the draftwould come following the outline, the co-executive producer would say, “It’s the outline”—and that was not a compliment. Because the script needs to transcend and elevate.
HH: Elevate is the word. It needs to get better.
NL: I think a lot of writers starting out don’t understand that and that’s the danger. If you spend all your time on the outline, you’re not going to make those discoveries later in the script.
HH: Because once you have people talking and interacting, what looked right in the outline can and should change in the script. Doing a procedural, certain things tend to stick like when you discover stuff, but how and who’s there can change radically. New writers should also know that if I give notes on a script and all that writer does is insert the notes—that’s not useful. It’s also not a good script. The notes should change everything. You can give three little notes, but it often means that every line of dialogue needs to change. To me, a real writer is someone I give a note to like: “You know, this scene should be a funnier take on this—not so melodramatic. And up here, I don’t know does she hate her mother or not?” and he or she goes ahead and changes the whole script to adopt those notes. The better a writer is, the more that that happens. And it takes courage because the outline’s been approved.
NL: There’s been some evolution with your characters with Temperance softening and getting into a relationship and having a baby. Do you have any comments on that and do you know instinctually when that evolution is supposed to happen?
HH: The changing of characters is the trickiest element to a network show. Twenty-two episodes a year, and if you’re lucky, five years—that’s 110 episodes. You have to keep the thing that makes the audience watch. I refer a lot to taking care of your story engine. If you knew that a show was going to last three seasons, and the question was, “Will they or won’t they?” you’d know where to parse it. We didn’t think we would last until Christmas the first year. We were always on the bubble,1 so it was, “How do we keep two young, healthy, unattached people in a free society from going to bed?” I’m okay with the audience screaming and yelling and being unhappy, as long as they keep watching. I’ve said that out loud a few times and gotten into trouble for it. They hear, “You don’t like us. You don’t mind us being unhappy.” I don’t mind the audience being unhappy if I’m doing it on purpose and they’re still watching. What I really mind is the audience being bored or going away. The story engine on our show was the chemistry. First and foremost, it’s a procedural. We have to have good cases. There’s another question with network shows which is, “Do you try to get new audiences or do you try to hang on to the audience you have?” In the case of Bones, I was trying to hang on to our loyal, loyal audience, and it was a function of real life because we were bouncing around the schedule. For me, to turn my efforts into getting a new audience each night, I think we would have been dead. It appears that that was a good plan.
NL: Yeah—seven years on the air.
HH: We’re still bouncing around the schedule. FOX has never felt the desire to turn us into a hit. We mostly survived. They put us on after American Idol, and we could talk a lot as to whether that was a hit-making position or not. But we had to keep the story engine between those two to keep our loyal audience coming back week after week. I went as slowly as possible. At the end of season 5, I just thought, “Okay, they will take one more year. We are going to have them together by the end of season 6.” I knew how it was going to happen. I knew that a beloved character would die and that they would go to bed. The little giftfrom heaven was that Emily came to me and said, “I’m pregnant.” And I said, “Okay, we know what to do.” The horrible uncertainty went away. I don’t know exactly how we would have gone into season 7 if she wasn’t pregnant. I just knew they would have slept together. I had about five or eight things written out for what that arc could be, but none of them delighted me. My favorite one was not too far offfrom what we did—which is that they were going to try to get together.
And by the way, I think the real story engine to Bones is a very simple, time-honored one, which is the rational versus the spiritual, the empirical versus the humanist in just those two people. That’s our sweet spot.
No matter what they are doing—ours happen to be solving murders and raising a child now—they’re going to give you two different views of the universe.
NL: You also have your ensemble, and they get to weigh in with their points of view.
HH: I’ve ranked them on a line for rationality—the mystic over here and the rational over there. So oddly enough, her best friend, Angela [Michaela Conlin], was the farthest over to the mystical, humanist side of things. Booth is probably next to her. When we started, there was even someone more rational than Brennan, but that didn’t work out. But it was so that everyone would have a stance on everything they were going through.
NL: When you created the pilot for Bones, I know that you started with the books by Kathy Reichs and her experience and background as a forensic anthropologist. You hear a lot with pilot development about whether it’s a premise pilot, a non-premise pilot, or a hybrid. It feels like with Bones that it was not a premise pilot because they had already known each other when he picked her up at the airport. How did you make some of those choices and why?
HH: Some of it’s out of your hands. At that point, I think it was both studio and network—and certainly network—did not want a premise pilot. They just didn’t. I never understood this by the way. I love premise pilots. It was a thing for years.
NL: They were afraid that if the audience missed the first show, you would never get them hooked.
HH: I always thought that was faulty logic because then you’re starting as if it’s the second episode or the tenth. The math didn’t make sense to me, but I accepted it. I got as close to a premise pilot as I could. They knew each other and they hated each other from something in the past. It was a year later from the last time they had a disastrous outing as partners. I also had to explain why a scientist would be out in the world with a cop because in real life that wouldn’t happen. It had to be her insistence for some reason. We had all sorts of rationalizations: “I need to make sure the evidence isn’t … I’m a cultural anthropologist.” We just needed them to be together.
NL: Given the real science and verisimilitude, where does the show rest?
HH: I am delighted and surprised that either Popular Mechanics or Popular Science did a ranking o
f the procedural shows in terms of reality, and we won. Bones won. I think it’s because I don’t know enough to lie. We do lie. Angela’s machine did exist. There were seven of them when Bones started, but they were not being used for forensic things. They were doing things like climate mapping. It’s a multi-gazillion-dollar machine, and you can’t program it in five minutes. The rest of the forensic stuff is rooted in reality. We take out a million steps and we compress the time. You can get DNA evidence in an hour, but it takes two months in real life. The monstrous expense of what our team would actually do—you can’t do that. But our science is good. If we have a legitimate criticism in the writers’ room or from us [the executive producers] on a plot point or on the science, we say, “That’s not true. I call bullshit.” Anyone can say that and say why they don’t believe it. We all have to feel like it could really happen.
NL: Bones has been a great training ground for showrunners: Josh Berman, Noah Hawley, and Janet Tamaro. I know Josh had a lot of experience when he came here, but now he’s running two shows.
HH: He just had another one picked up. Josh is a force of nature and so is Janet.
NL: Besides “quality scripts on time,” what else would you say are the most important skills for a showrunner to have to be effective?
HH: There’s a few things I’m a fanatic about. One is that the director of the episode have a prep-able script the first day of prep [preproduction]. They are not wasting two or three days trying to work off an outline that might change. I think that’s the first responsibility. We have some kind of responsibility to our actors as well—to respect them. They are the face of the show. They have to go out there and say this stuff and make it work. They have to make it work. They have to feel listened to. You have to get trust with your actors over time. I put that right up there amongst the things you have to do. I think the toughest thing about showrunning is that, if you are doing your job well, everybody is a little bit annoyed at you, but doesn’t hate your guts. So if you’re someone like I am who likes to be liked, it’s not a perfect job because it’s very high pressure. Janet Tamaro, Josh Berman, and Noah Hawley—these are very, very good writers. Any number of the people I work with—Stephen Nathan, Jonathan Collier, Karen Usher—can be show-runners, but this is my job. Any one of them may be more right at any time than I am or have another way to do it, but it’s my job to be the showrunner. I could easily go work for any of these people and then they would have that job. And I’m telling you that the best job in the world is second in command on a show. Noah Hawley said a great thing to me when he came back after The Unusuals, which I think, aired on ABC about four times, but was critically acclaimed. He said to me that he had stood there right beside me when I was running Bones. And he used to think, “I wouldn’t do it that way. Oh, what an asshole.” He said that the shock of all of a sudden being that guy is like a tornado coming at you. I remember being this guy by the way, being second in command, and thinking I would do it way better and what an asshole my showrunner was. And then you step into the job, and everything is noisier and there’s yelling and a huge amount of chaos. It’s just so noisy all the time. Constant decisions. If you take the money and the credit, you have to do the job. It’s better to be second in command, it’s a little quieter. You can hear yourself think.
NL: Well, what’s the best part of being a showrunner then?
HH: Last year, I ran a new show called The Finder and we were getting there … we were getting there.
NL: I loved how irreverent everything was.
HH: That guy’s [Geoff Stults] a star. He deserved it. By the season finale, I said, “Give us one more. I’m telling you we know this show. We know how to use these actors.” I was very tired, and when it finally went down, I literally said to my wife, “We can go somewhere.” The most time I’ve had off since Bones started was nine days. And now there was three weeks that we could go somewhere. So we went to Europe and when we came back, I was immediately pitching another show. I don’t know why. I need to go to therapy and find out why. It’s so much work. You don’t get all that much more money for doing two shows instead of one. I have enough money. When The Finder went down, I felt terrible for my hardworking crew, but they’re all working now.
NL: So what drives you—do you know?
HH: Here’s what it is: I’m all excited about the next world. When I think about doing the series, I go, “Oh, my god.” When I think about the creative part of this character, it’s called Backstrom for CBS, I get all excited. I think about who might get cast in that role—and I have three or four people in mind. Each one of them changes the series in a way that’s very exciting to me. You get to create a world.
NL: And then run it. What could be sweeter than that?
Note
1 When the series is on the cusp between renewal and cancellation by the network.
17
Pay Off the Setups
I’m a pilot junkie. I love reading the teleplays and later watching the premiere episodes to see how they’ve translated from page to screen. It’s like unwrapping a giftand finding either a wonderful surprise or a well-intentioned disappointment.
I’m always filled with anticipation as to how the pilot will open: will it be an origins “premise” pilot or of the drop-me-into-the-world-already-in-progress variety? How will the voluminous exposition be doled out? Where is it going to be set? Who’s in the cast? What’s the X-factor that makes it fresh and exciting? How is it structured, at what pace and style? Will there be voice-over? Flashbacks? Flash-forwards? Will it be genre bending, innovative and break the mold, or will it follow a well-established formula for other shows of its kind? With each new show, there are so many variables to behold.
The “Aha” Moment
When I think about all the pilots I’ve read/viewed over the years, there seems to be a common denominator between the pilots that transcend my expectations and those that underwhelm. To me, the most satisfying pilots deliver an unexpected “aha moment” by the end—and provide me with a sense of discovery and wonder. It’s that final trump card that I should have seen coming—but didn’t.
Several years ago I was fortunate enough to see the great mystery author Walter Mosley speak at a writers’ conference. Mr. Mosley is a charismatic orator and his talk was peppered with lots of valuable guidance and wisdom for writers. But the three words that remained indelibly etched in my brain are these:
Plot Is Revelation
This was such a revelation to me because it so succinctly articulated what all writers are mining for: unexpected but earned discoveries about their characters. Mosley was mainly addressing novelists in his talk, but his words resonated deeply with me as a screenwriter. My interpretation of plot is revelation is that as the story progresses, we’re learning more and more about what makes a character tick. We’re also actively finding new information that changes our perception about the characters as they get into and out of trouble.
Think of a Pilot Story as a Puzzle to Be Solved
Remember, audiences are usually more compelled by what they don’t know than by what they do know. So don’t tell us everything in the pilot. Create intrigue and suspense (even in a comedy) by withholding crucial information—until the final card is dealt. The audience may presume that they understand exactly what’s going to happen next, so switch things up with a well-earned plot reversal to keep them on their toes and surprise them.
A Subtly Foreshadowed Plot Twist Can Be a Potent Game Changer
Ideally, the viewer has patiently waited for something unexpected to happen that brings the whole pilot full circle, so give them what they want—but then leave them dangling, so that they’re impatiently waiting to discover more in the next episode and the next and the next…
There are myriad strategies for writing a pilot, but the ending is usually the clincher. It’s the last impression that the agent/producer/studio/network executive is left with—and it needs to deliver. There are three basic strategies to wrapping up a p
ilot.
Launching the Franchise
This pilot ending shows us how the protagonist’s role in a new setting is solidified toward future episodes—and in service of the show’s (week-to-week) franchise—and the central question/mystery/conflict/relationship/premise of the series comes into focus for the viewer.
In the pilot for Cheers, Diane Chambers (Shelley Long) snaps out of denial that her professor/fiancé is coming back for her, and she woefully accepts a waitressing job at the bar despite her love/hate feelings for proprietor Sam Malone (Ted Danson).
At the end of the pilot for Girls, struggling twenty-four-year-old, self-absorbed, aspiring writer Hannah Horvath’s (Lena Dunham) parents have financially cut her off. Hannah is devastated, forlorn, and a little bit terrified. But she dusts herself offand goes back to her tenuous existence in Brooklyn— and as she crosses the street, the spring in her step lets us know that she’s (probably) going to make it after all.
By the end of the Once Upon a Time pilot, outsider Emma Snow (Jennifer Morrison) decides to stay put in Storybrooke and the second hand on the town square clock starts moving again—as if by magic. Change is in the air and fantasy and reality are on a collision course.
By the end of the pilot for The Killing, the police locate a stolen car believed to contain the body of the disappeared girl. And seasoned Seattle homicide detective Sarah Linden (Mireille Enos) delays her early retirement and an impending move with her son to Northern California to start their new life with her fiancé, because she is compelled to solve the mystery of “Who Killed Rosie Larsen?” In the pilot script, Sarah instructs the uniformed officers to open the trunk of the car. As Sarah looks into the deadened eyes of Rosie Larsen, we can see that from her POV it’s as if the girl is imploring her to stay on the case. The last two words of the pilot script read: “Find him.”