"od Reporter"..." "I mean, there's a giant monster right behind you that's chasing you and you just have to run as fast as you can, and really try not to die." "One of the little tricks that I use, is I go," ""Well, culturally speaking..." and they really don't want to argue." "Stacey Wilson:" "We'll hear the showrunners behind year's best comedies..." "(music playing)" "Welcome to "Close Up with the Hollywood Reporter."" "I'm Stacey Wilson, awards editor and your host." "With me is Lacey Rose," "television editor and expert on all things TV." "Thanks for having me." "Wilson:" "Right now we're talking to the showrunners, who've crafted the year's most hilarious comedies." "You guys have shows that have struck a chord, and they're for specific audiences that you're speaking to while also speaking to broader audiences." "Why do you think these shows have resonated so profoundly?" "It's interesting." "I just got the demographic breakdown of our show, and not as many black people as I thought watching it." "We have a slightly higher demographic than "Modern Family" which comes on before us, but I think the thing is that, in a crazy sort of way, we made America say, "Oh, they're kind of like us"" "You know?" "And that was what "Modern Family" did in a lot of ways, and we were lucky enough to come on after that show." "Really, it was taking from our families, and really using an aggregate of a really eclectic group of people and taking their stories, and saying," ""How can we tell the most honest version of this, in a way that hasn't quite been done before?"" " What's that?" " Oh, the mouth wash?" "It's oral hygiene, fresh breath." " Have you ever seen this stuff before?" " No, I mean the pregnancy test." "Oh, the pregnancy test." "Oh, you know, I just..." "My symptoms are all over the place, so I just wanted to..." "rule it out." "( laughing )" "Yeah, I know it's silly, right?" " Yeah, so silly." " Yeah." "You know, I read some place that sometimes vasectomies, they don't take." "Oh, God, not Pam's." "Pam is known for the fascial interposition and cautery." " Is she?" " Yeah, it's the whole snip and burn." "Correct me if this isn't how you think of your shows, but it ends up being a prism for other people to look at their families," " as specific as your premise..." "Just make sure you say prism, because I've said prism in interviews before and it always gets printed as prison." "He said prism." "So, you're in this jail, as in prison..." "Maybe you don't think of your show that way, but it is as specific as the premise is, it's about a family at the end of the day." "And I think it doesn't work if the people don't see that larger." "I'm curious Jay, and a show like yours is a good example." "What is it about a half-hour that has the advantage of dealing with issues that we aren't necessarily seeing all the time in dramas?" "It's weird." "I come at it from such a microcosmic approach." "Like, we write scripts and they turn out to be 36 pages and they get edited to 28 pages and we try to change it and we can't do it, we are just tackling the material we want to tackle," "but when I look up into the world and out of my little lens," "I'm just happy people seem to be more open and excited about drama and comedy being blended and I just feel a lot of our shows are doing this." "Sadness is tied to comedy, and everything political is actually all infused and comedy seems to be a fun way to explore the deeper issues." "My brother and I have always been trying to get to truthfulness and the simplicity about our storytelling that is analogous to life, how things happen in real life." "When you have a breakup, it is usually not down by the river well lit, it's like, you're picking out dental floss at Rite-Aid, and you now know this is the beginning of the end of your relationship." "It's very unceremonial the way it happens." "To have an audience key into that and know that this is happening right now, on aisle 12 of Rite-Aid, is so..." "I don't know what it is, it's exciting to us." "What are you fiddling with under the covers?" "You were squirming and playing with your boobs..." "I'm not, I'm just..." "Clothes pins?" "Why do you have cloth pins on your boobs?" " I don't know!" " You know what?" "I've been depriving myself of the internet in hopes that we can make love at some poi" "Oh, come on!" "You've not been depriving yourself of the internet." "The cache is always cleared!" "Does the freedom of comedy and the ability to let an audience laugh, and perhaps breathe a little bit new shows, allow you to tackle certain topics that perhaps you wouldn't in the prism of drama?" "Yeah, the trans thing in an hour show could so easily get so heavy." "I think Tambor is brilliant, but for us to let the transness be over here, and let the comedy be at the center," "I think that's the message, which is," ""Yeah, transness is part of the background, it is a quality of a person"." "The comedy is about the family." "I mean, it's weird, the whole idea of the binary, the trans parent challenges the binary, but I really think that a half-hour is a comedy and an hour is a drama, and it's also a binary we're used to," "and it seems like, in the next few years, people are going to have to split up those maybe new names..." " Yeah, the Emmys tried to figure it out this year." "I know, but then people..." "So, some one hours ended up appealing, and they became comedies and others didn't, and..." "Levitan:" "It's really strange." "It's so unfortunate that we're put in the position to compete." "Let's just say that, because otherwise who would care what it is?" "It's the only time that actually matters." "As long as we all got rich, who would care?" "( laughing )" "But it's a very strange thing, because we'll approach a subject very differently." "There are shows like yours, where I think, at least, forgive me if I'm wrong here, but we start with, "How is that funny?"" ""How is it funny?"" "I think that at the same time, we are asking, "How is this real?" "What's real about this and what is the truth here?" And all that." "We're absolutely doing that, but if it doesn't feel like we can get some good comedy out of it, we'll go," ""This is just getting dark and getting serious, and let's let it go for now, until we come up with a funny take on it."" "It's tricky, because you are then put into these competitions where you are competing against a show that might approach it very differently." "It doesn't make one better or worse than the other, it just means it's just a completely, utterly different" "Although statistically yours always seem to be better." "What I'm saying is, don't mess with the system." "It's funny how yours got" "Don't even waste your time, Gloria." "Johnny Law has got no chance with that baby." "You're looking at a Freeling Cloud Gazer with aftermarket frequency scrambler." "Untraceable." "As you can guess, I'm a droner myself." "Yes, you're droning right now!" " It is getting closer!" " Mom, maybe you should cover up." "No!" "That's crazy, we can just knock it out of the sky." "Manny, grab the hose!" "I'll use this to blind it." " My eyes!" " My eyes!" "Wilson:" ""Kimmy Schmidt,"" "who seems to be perfectly embodied by Ellie Kemper." "It's as if she were born to play this character." "How much input did she have in the creation of..." "We reverse engineered it from her really." "Her name was floated to us as someone to develop for, and it was the first name that kind of popped for us." "That happens a lot when you are between things, people pushing names, and we met with her, and she just confirmed our sense of who we thought she was on screen, and that's a weird thing to be able to communicate" "and have any intelligence behind it and she has a lot." "As showrunners or producers, we have to interact with everything." "'Have to' is the wrong way to put it." "It's great to be able to put your finger in every pie, even the ones you don't deserve to have any opinion about." "So, we work very closely with our actors, and..." "Ellie was on board immediately and she is just game." "We, ourselves, or some close representative of ours, is always on the floor." "Someone who knows the script and knows our intention, and their job is to make sure the directors and actors understand what we're trying to say, often that's us." "What do you want to do tonight?" "Honestly?" "Listen to Diana Ross albums alone while I do my stretches to alleviate my gas." "We should go out to celebrate." "I mean I got a job today, I got an apartment, I met you." "I envy you." "I've never been able to meet me." "Come on!" "We should go dancing some place cool like Club Bombay from Moesha!" "(condescending scoff) Things are behind in Indiana." "It's interesting because I'm a fan of all these guys, and the one thing I've got and learned is that it's character." "You know, you could put Larry David in any situation and you know how he is going to react." "It builds from there." "So, when you have strong characters, and you know what those characters are, the writers know who they are, you can build a lot from that." "When I started out as a writer, you would write a character and your hope in the casting process was," ""I want to find somebody who is exactly this."" "And people would come in and you go," ""Oh, they are amazing, but they're not this"" "I wasn't around for the pilot of "Silicon Valley,"" "but Mike is a genius at casting, it's one of his true strengths, and he did an amazingly smart thing." "He auditioned every one of our principles for the role of Erlich." "And he loved the way they each played it in a different way and he was super smart about it and just thought," ""That guy is really funny and that guy is really funny, and that guy is really interesting and that guy is interesting." "I think this is my favorite version of Erlich, but I want those other people in this show."" "So, if you go back to the original pilot script, the other four guys are very different on the page than they are now." "They were each an interesting voice and an interesting note, and when he put those people together, they kind of worked as a group so he reverse engineered the characters in the script from that group of people." "When we were kids, I was the one with good grades," "I was the one who was planning for my future," "I would bring gifts for my teachers because they worked so hard, you know, cool stuff." "He was always getting in trouble, he got caught smoking opium in the tool shed, he crashed my uncle's motorbike..." "And you think you're the cool one?" "Yeah, it's different in Pakistan." "I've never been, but I know it isn't." "During that casting process it's so important to be able to say," ""Well, it's not exactly who we had in mind, but they're so good."" "At the same time, you can't lose the dynamic that could be the engine for the show." "Because suddenly you fall in love with someone, and think," ""It's not who I wanted, but I love this person, and they did so many good things that I love before,"" "and then you get them in the piece and they don't have the right bite, and they are suddenly playing something that you're having to force the character and push the character because it's not there inherently in the actor." "It's very important to balance that the whole time." "Because those dynamics are what's going to drive the show in the long run." "I think actors are like magic people." "And the great ones..." "Laurence Fishburne had never done comedy before, gets in there, and I call him the night before, and I'm like "Fish, so..." " You know, we haven't..."" " He said, "Don't call me that!"" " "Who are you talking to?"" " It's Fishburne." "I said, "Do you know how you're going to play this character?"" "He said, "No, it'll come to me tomorrow." And I said, "Okay."" "♪" "Go get help, boy." "Go get help." "Go get help!" "Right now!" "If you're a cat, you ignore people." "It's what you do." "If you want to save fifteen percent or more on car insurance, you switch to GEICO." "It's what you do." "Go on kitty, kitty..." "America, your Do Us A Flavor finalists are here." "Introducing Lay's Southern Biscuits and Gravy." "mmmmm" "Lay's Kettle Cooked Greek Town Gyro mmmm" "Lay's New York Reuben mmm hmmm" "And Lay's Wavy West Coast Truffle Fries." "mmmmm" "Try all four and vote to save your fav" "My man friend that I've been seeing..." "Your man friend." "Like, as I was leaving I was like," ""Goodbye, I love you," and like... (laughs) What'd he say?" "I said, "Don't say anything!"" "Oh God!" "(laughs)" "'Cause now like, this is the cliffhanger, so we don't know if he loves you." "What's gonna happen if he doesn't?" "♪" "Welcome back to "Close Up with the Hollywood Reporter."" "We're talking with the showrunners behind the year's hit comedies." "At the risk of getting a little bit bleak, what were this year's low points?" "The points at which you may have even said," ""I don't know if I can do this." "I don't know if I want to."" "And how did you turn it around?" "We were just talking about how the subject of this should be called the inhumanity, because it is." "We're all talking about how we feel, we're right on this edge, where you almost want them to cancel the show 'cause it's so hard, and you're barely surviving and barely getting through it," "and you are using every fiber of your being just to be there." "I don't know about you guys, but I just feel like the word trauma comes to mind." "I'm in trauma at all times and it's good in a lot of ways, 'cause it brings all of your top stuff to your forefront." "Like all your deepest fears are coming up and... you're putting them into the characters." "I feel like it's always the lowest point, highest point..." " You're living your lowest point!" " I'm reliving the lowest point and the highest point right now." "When I worked with Larry David on "Curb,"" "he wouldn't call HBO and say he was willing to do a season until he had most of the season written already." "So, functionally, we were writing a hit show on spec." "( laughing )" "He didn't want to put a deal in place because he had searing memories of those days back at" Seinfeld" where they would call and go," ""Congratulations!" "You're doing it again."" "And he would look at an empty board with 22 empty slots on it, and he would break down." "He had to get ahead of that." "Yes, he just never wanted to be in that situation where he owed this mass of information that he didn't have." "What's that thing they say after a pilot season?" "The winners, those who got picked as the winners, get to embark on the toughest journey of their lives, work incredible hours not sleep, not eat well, and the losers get to go to Hawaii." "Rose:" "Jill, was there a low point?" "Yeah, for the first showrunner job," "I kept hitting my head against the ceiling where it became like..." "you rub the genie and say," ""If I could have anything, what would it be?" "To be a showrunner." "Oh sorry, can I have you back genie?" "I want to be a showrunner for a show I created."" "Because then you can't really be used in that political way." "There is a triangle that happens if you didn't create the show, with the producer, director and the writer." "I really wanted to create my own show, and just felt like I couldn't get a show made." "I had a pilot passed on, and another pilot passed on, and I was kind of out of money, and just eating what was in the cabinets basically, which I know lots of regular Americans do." " Not us." " But for me..." "What is this regular American we speak of?" " Soloway:" "I was using the cabinet just to stay there." " What is a cabinet?" "But actually for me, it was seeing "Girls" get picked up, and seeing "Tiny Furniture" and going," ""Who the heck is Lena Dunham?" ""Where did she come from?"" "Everybody was saying to me, "Have you seen this girl?" "She's just like you!"" "And I was like, "Oh..."" "Soloway:" "I've been here for a long time and she is younger and much more successful, and she is living her vision and you're not." "This is what I heard." "So..." "Awesome cabinets everywhere, full of food." "So, I decided to make a movie, so that I would be able to have that sort of calling card about" " what my voice was, it helped" " It helped get the actors you wanted for your show." "Yeah, one great thing was making the movie, another great thing was my parent coming out as trans." "That helped." "The two things together..." "I'd made the movie, and then I felt that I was ready to walk into a network and say:" ""I know what the tone should be, I know how to actually edit now, and now I know what cinematographer I want." "I know how to cast."" "And then at the same time my parent came out." "And pretty shortly after that phone call I was like:" ""I think I've got a show."" "I'm sorry, Dad, I'm just trying..." "Can you just help me out here?" "Are you saying you're going to start dressing up like a lady all the time?" "No, honey, all my life." "My whole life, I've been dressing up... like a man." "This is me." "Barris:" "How did your family react to the story?" "It's weird, you know when you write stuff, and you think it's never going to be get made, and then you almost dare the universe to make it before you tell the person it's about them?" "Because when you first start out you start telling people," ""I've written a character and it's based on you."" "And then it never comes on and you've wasted a conversation." "And so I...." " You look delusional." "So, I did call my parent, and say:" ""I've written something, it probably won't happen."" "And when I called my parent," "I also said:" ""I'm writing a show based on our family, and I think there's going to be somebody based on you in it."" "I didn't say:" ""The show is called 'Transparent.'" "It's about a parent who transitions."" " I just kind of..." " I never got it until just now." "Oh, you didn't?" " Jeffrey Tambor..." " Just got that." "So wicked, I just got "Black-ish."" "Levitan:" "Okay, that's weird." "People tell me they thought it was a show called..." " "See-Through or Clear."" " About being open, it's great." "Okay." "It's such a bad name for a show, if you don't get it." "It's the worst name for a show, if you don't get it." "That's what I was worried about, because I didn't feel it really worked in both ways." "I only felt like it worked as "Transparent."" "But I'm glad it worked for you as "See-Through, the Show."" "For sure, at first, my parent was really nervous about what it would mean to have that kind of publicity and over the past year," "I think the way that the trans community has been evolving and the trans story in our culture has been evolving this past year so strongly, has made it feel like it was the time and place for this show." "Our family happens to have found itself at this moment as part of this movement, and it's good for the world, it's good for the movement, and so the unwanted publicity..." "Actually, my parent went from saying:" ""I really can't imagine that the whole world would know my story,"" "to being at events in Chicago and taking pictures like a real-life moppa." " Hilarious" " Yeah." "In the moments in between the low-points when you're looking for jobs, is there something you did that was daring or crazy to land a writing job that you really wanted?" "You don't want to do anything crazy to land a writing job." "You almost want to be the least interesting person." "You know, the interviews we have with writers are mainly," " in my experience, to make sure they're not crazy." " Soloway:" "Yeah." " It is kind of amazing how people can blow it." " Yeah." " And reveal they are crazy." " Yeah." "What did you do early on to get your work noticed?" "Because those first two years are the toughest." "When I moved to L.A., I was working with my then partner Jeff Schaffer, and we just called everyone we could call." "We were sensitive not to put too many scripts in too many people's hands, and say, "Can I have seven hours of your time?"" "You know it was just, "Do you have ten minutes?" "Tell me how you did it."" "And we just spoke to anyone who would spend any amount of time with us, and eventually that lead from one person, to another person, to another person..." "We were lucky enough to get to pitch ideas to somebody who had a show on the air and then that show went under, but they ended up working at "Seinfeld" and we submitted ideas to them." "I remember the actual day we got that job." "We were sitting at home and the phone rang, and our friends called us and said:" ""Hey, how long would it take you to get over to CBS Radford?"" "And we were like: "Why?" He said: "Larry and Jerry want to meet you."" "And I'm standing there in my underwear... 45 minutes later, we're sitting with Larry and Jerry, and 20 minutes later, we've got a job." "There was no time to be nervous, and no time to be like:" ""Okay, you say this, and I'll say this and we'll do that clever thing"." "It was just like..." "We just went in and..." "That first job is so important because you start realizing that every job you have, really starts becoming about relationships." "You get in certain people's crew." "And so you are in that room and you start saying:" "This dude will never work again." "He does not understand that this is about" "Does someone pull someone aside at that point and say:" ""Just so you know..."" " Sometimes they do." " Sometimes." " But the bus needs the people under it." " That's true." "It's strange because it's easier to say to somebody," ""Hey, we need you talk a little bit more, whatever."" "That's something that somebody can work on." "It's when you're saying to somebody, something they can't work on." "Don't be an ( bleep )" "You know the essence of who you are?" " Yeah." " Don't be that." "Your personality annoys us." "Like, it's..." "And you only know that until the 2:00 a.m. 16-hour marathon..." " Sometimes you know." " Day one." "Even after the meeting." "No, as managers, it's a really hard thing." "Because I think we're paid to be empathetic and we put ourselves in those people's shoes." "They have the same dream that we have, and you always feel like, "What if I say the wrong thing?"" "I take someone aside, and say:" ""Do you feel like you're being heard?" "We'd love to hear more." "You were so funny in the interview."" "I'm kind of talking in a code because I'm afraid to just say:" ""Do you think it is working?" "Do you think your voice is fitting this?"" "How many times has that kind of conversation actually worked?" "Have you actually taken someone aside and said:" ""I need you to be better," and they actually got better?" "I feel like I'm better." "( laughing )" "So, you got what I was saying?" " I think I came up like 10%." " I was being very coded." "That's a good question." "I can think of people whom I had that conversation with, and I thought:" ""I'm going to have to fire them,"" "and by the end of the season they were valuable." "I don't know if the talk had anything to do with it, any more than that they found their rhythm." "I also feel I'm firing someone I don't want to not have tried" "A warning shot." "Sometimes, is this too oblique?" "Is it not coming through?" "I've seen this a lot, where people say, "Don't say it to him, because you're just going to freak him out more."" "And then I say, "But I don't want to be sitting here in March, saying," ""We're not bringing you back, you didn't talk more," and they're like," ""I just wish I had known that because I was trying to be respectful..."" "And so, I will err on the side now of, look, it is not quite happening yet, but I believe in you I know it is there, I have read it," "I've seen glimpses of it, we just need to see more of it." "Or one thing I'll say is:" "I knew the higher batting average from you, which is I don't want you to just talk more to talk more." "I want to see more of the things you say get into scripts, and that's just a specific thing to work on." "If you feel like you are talking and things aren't getting in, ask yourself at the end of the day:" "Did I get things in?" "Because I'll often wonder, does that person go home and say I had another great day?" "Sitting around the table." "They don't." "They know, you know." "I hope so." "( laughing )" "I feel there is some very basic points of etiquette in a room." "People saying:" "I don't like that joke." "That's pointless." "I guess that's why people think they are helping by pointing out bad things." "There is always the "my only thing" guy in the room." "You have the scene all done and then they are like, "My only thing..."" "( laughing )" "You don't want to be the "my only thing" guy." "Or the person who repeats," " what has been said." " Somebody else's joke." " Louder." " Yeah." "The real picture." "Logic please." "Then there is people who don't laugh at everything I say." "( laughing )" "It's awful." " Not why I hired you." " Laughing's important." "I notice when people don't laugh and I always like to make sure that people are generous with each other." "You have to be willing to laugh at each other's jokes." "Yeah, the culture of a writing room is so different from anything else." "When you were describing the firing of a person, it's a breakup." "That's what we are talking about because we are talking about the inner being of people." "Welcoming them in, enjoying their humanity." "Coaxing it, like we're talking about, out of them." "Like saying, be open, be free, this is a safe place." "Never mind." "we don't like what you have." "It is just a crushing blow." "It's like group therapy too, you know, writers rooms, sometimes we recall it the day room when there's food everywhere like the day room at the institution." "Where you are just sitting around and being your loosest, least boundaries, best, craziest, funniest self." " So it is really vulnerable." " It's personal." "It's a team too." "Everybody does different things." "Sometimes during the season, you're like this guy is not doing it." "A draft comes in, and you're like "Oh, my god, he's a draft writer."" "Or this person hasn't talked too much, but they have great story pictures." "It's almost fantasy basketball." "You're given a certain amount of money, and you hire a rebounder." "You have to hire someone who hits threes and you do this, and you put this together with a certain amount of budget." "Sometimes this happens occasionally for sure that you'll let somebody go because it didn't click in your room and they'll do well somewhere else." "It could be because they came away from that experience and they took something from it." "How important do you think new voices are every year?" "Do you like to bring in someone at least?" "Yeah, we love to, we haven't always, but we are always trying to take stories from our lives, as much as possible, so we've run out." "( laughing )" "But you know, hopefully our families are generating new ones because otherwise why have them?" "( laughing )" "We're looking for people with new stories and new family dynamics, all the time." "I always like to hire one person who has just gotten to town." "Because it keeps everybody young to hear their stories about parking." "( laughing )" "You know." "♪" "To the battle of the band-ers," "and the behind the scenes crew, to the fashion bloggers," "♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ and the skaters true, be yourself." "Kohl's" "Welcome back to "Close Up with the Holiday Reporter."" "We are sitting down with the minds behind TV's funniest shows." "I had a crazy moment, and Steve's part of it actually." "Upfronts, I had gotten picked up never having a show before, unbelievably inebriated." "The weirdest club ever." "I walk in with agents and there's rap music playing" "There's all these white agents I'm like," ""Where are we?" "How is this happening?"" "Steve is there and I'm like I'm super drunk." "I'm like, "Oh, my God." "I'm such a fan."" "He's like, "Dude, It's going to happen so just go with it."" "And he said in a way to just say it's just happening." "You're gonna do what you're gonna do." "And it was such a gracious moment because it stuck with me even after I woke up with a hangover the next day." "This is real and if you fail you will get another chance, but make the best of this and that really stuck with me." "I was completely drunk and remember none of this." "( laughing )" "You struck out in a slow pitch softball game." "What I lack in speed, fitness..." "I make up for in incredible confidence." "(laughs) Did you think you were the best player on the team?" "But you, yeah, I don't know..." "I had been thinking that I was, like, probably the best one." "(laughs)" "BREATHTAKING PEPPERMINT..." "RICH DARK CHOCOLATE..." "YORK PEPPERMINT PATTIE." "GET THE SENSATION." "Now at LensCrafters you can update your vision and your look." "Because there's 50% off lenses with frame purchase, including bifocals, no-lines and even prescription sunglasses." "So hurry in!" "LensCrafters loves eyes" "Welcome back to "Close Up with the Hollywood Reporter."" "We're here with the showrunners behind the year's smartest comedies." "Was there a moment in your long lustrous careers as writer-producers where you felt totally in over your head and how did you overcome that feeling?" "When do we not feel that." "Right" "( laughing )" "I don't recall a day where at some point I wasn't desperately terrified somebody was going to call somebody, and take away my job and the fraud would be revealed and it's all going to be over." "How heightened were those feelings when you took over Seinfeld ?" "That was just being thrown into the deep end." "I was there for four years." "The first two years Larry David was there." "Larry was the hub of the wheel, everything went through him writing-wise." "Jerry did an amazing job, but Jerry was on the stage," "Jerry was out promoting." "Larry was really the head writer of that show." "Then he left, and there was no plan." "We just sort of went, we'll keep doing what we were doing," "The wheels would keep turning, but there's no hub." "So we just had to figure it out." "One way or another, isn't that how it always happens?" "I mean it's not like you pass the showrunner bar, and suddenly you're a showrunner." "You get thrown into it." "And I don't know how I got to run "30 Rock,"" "And then Tina insisted." "But I didn't have experience doing that." "On the next day, you are in charge of a room, and you in charge of a budget," "and you just hold on to that." "How do you prepare for that stress?" "How do you not let them see you sweat as it were?" "I don't know that you can, I think you just have to." "There's a giant monster right behind you that's chasing you and you just have to run as fast as you can and really try not to die." "Duplass:" "Because nobody knows what it is." "That's another thing too, showrunning is different in every scenario." "Even when my brother and I came into our HBO show someone asked us who is the showrunner and I was like, "I don't know."" "And someone next to me said, "You are."" "( laughing )" "And Mark went, "Yeah, we're the showrunners."" "I got partnered with a guy when I did my show, Larry Wilmore, and I was like: "You know, it's only a show, they are not going to fire you."" "He was like, "No, they will fire you."" "( laughing )" "Larry speaks from experience." "It is now their show, right?" "On my first show that I was a showrunner on was "United States of Tara" and I wanted to be a showrunner" "And I was like:" ""I've got my patch." "I've got my cap."" "And it's different when you create your own show and you're a showrunner and when you are on somebody else's show." "One of the things I've noticed," "I've heard people get thrown under the bus." "I realized that the bus runs on people underneath it." "The bus won't go unless there are people under it screaming." "It's the gas." "So you're always trying to make sure that you are not the person under the bus and if you are not throwing somebody under the bus, you probably are under the bus." "Craig Zisk was my producer/director and he said something to me early on, which is, "People just want to feel like they're being heard."" "So even I had no idea what was going on," "I would just practice listening, and smiling." "( laughing )" "And acting like I heard people." "And then, if you have conflict, if you want to figure it out, if you think they are dead wrong, you do that elsewhere, you do that in private." "It is a political job, it is like captaining a ship." "The collaboration piece is a huge piece of that and that can be challenging." "How do you figure out how to tackle that kind of challenge, that piece of collaboration?" "Well, when I worked on "Six Feet Under,"" "Alan Ball actually led by example and it was a room much like this and a table much like this and he really acted as though the Fisher family lived in the center of that table." "The Fishers didn't live in his heart or his brain." "So we all gathered together to listen to the Fishers, and I do the same thing on "Transparent"" "where I let everybody knknow." "It's so funny to see Jay here." "Hi!" "How are you doing?" " I'm not lying, am I?" "No." "We tried to salute and listen to and respect the Pfefferman family." "And I'm always helping people to listen rather than attempting to get my way, because you can never win trying to get your way." "A big part of the collaboration is not just with the writers." "As a showrunner, you have to collaborate with every department and you're often talking about stuff that you don't know anything about." "You try to know a tenth of what those people do, but that's a big part of it." "Getting what you want through mechanisms you'll never fully understand." "Imagine trying to go light a scene." "It would be terrible." "But you've got to try to understand what that person's needs are and make it work for you so you are often in the role of being the person coming into the writers room giving bad news." "This can't happen or he won't say this or we don't have this actor." "which is always fun." "It's a very strange transition also when you are used to being one of the guys in the room just pitching and trying to solve that problem, and then you have to turn on a completely different part of your brain" "where you now have to think about it, and, of course, second guess yourself and wonder if you are right in this, or if everybody thinks I'm an idiot." "And at the same time hear what everybody is saying because ultimately you have to stop and go," ""Okay, that's great, let's do that." "Let's move forward."" "If you are too much in your own head thinking about solving this problem." "you can often miss a really good pitch that would have solved that problem." "so it's a very strange dynamic that suddenly changes the minute you become in charge." "You can't believe there is just a time where you utterly can't believe that what I say goes." "( laughing )" "It is so shocking to you, and at first, it's terrifying." "But they build the thing you tell them to build." "Yeah." "I remember many cases like that." ""Wow, this was just a little idea in our heads three days ago and suddenly people are working on to build something for you."" "That's a very strange feeling." "How long does it take you to get into that groove of like," ""Ok, I am in charge, this is working."" "Well, I think, in the beginning you just have to fake it." "And if you fake it and look confident..." "Frankly, I think that for the most part, when I've talked to other writers who have dealt with what they consider to be frustrating showrunners, their number one complaint might be that they're indecisive." "You know, we are sitting there and it's 11:00 at night and he cannot decide between "a" and "the"" "and I took that to heart and just try to say:" "This may not be right, but this is a decision, and I gotta pick a way." "This one feels better to me, so let's go on this road and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong."" "I learned more from all the showrunners who did bad things than I did from good ones." "Because they were the reason the show wasn't working." "Sometimes a show is just not going to work." "But in general when the room sucks, half the time it is because of the showrunner." "He kind of sets the tone, like the coach sets the tone for what kind of team it's going to be." "You want to come in there and make sure everyone feels comfortable, especially when you are doing jokes and comedy to feel comfortable to say what they are going to say and believe that they are heard, and especially on my show we want to make an aggregate" "of everyone's family situations." "People have to feel comfortable to say whatever they feel and not feel like you are going to be a dick because you are having a bad day or something like that." "That was one of the big things I liked." "Stay tuned for more from this year's funniest showrunners." "♪" "What do you think of when you think of the" "United States Postal Service?" "Exactly." "That's what pushes us to deliver" "Smarter" "Simpler" "Faster" "Sleeker" "Earlier" "Fresher" "Harder" "Farther" "Quicker" "And yeah, even on Sundays." "What's next?" "We'll show you." "♪" "To the battle of the band-ers," "and the behind the scenes crew, to the fashion bloggers," "♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪ and the skaters true, be yourself." "Kohl's" "♪" "Welcome back to "Close Up with the Hollywood Reporter."" "We are sitting down with the minds behind the year's wittiest comedies." "Sometimes the least funny part of the process are the notes that come with what you are doing." "What was the last note you received from a network executive that made your eyes roll?" "I've got to say, I'm in a situation now at HBO where they've done such a ninjutsu thing on me." "Just in my bones I have such a cringe whenever notes come up." "The last couple of years on "Silicon Valley" they've flipped it on me where now I am like:" ""I want to show this to them, I want to know what they think."" "Maybe they have a good idea." "They're so helpful, they're so unobtrusive, and they're so smart." "Is that kind of scary not having the constant back and forth with the network?" "Well no, we have the back and forth, but it's in a very constructive, helpful way." " It must be alarming to you." " It's like, oddly enough, they are the partners that every other network and studio has always claimed to be." ""We're your partners"" ""So, we are going to muck that up and you are going to fix it."" "That's our partnerships work." "They are presented as opinions." "I'm sure we're having a similar experience." "It's like: "I'm feeling this but in its individuals, they don't necessarily collate all of their notes into these bulleted things that you have to hit six out of nine."" "I was confused by this." "What am I going to say?" ""No, you weren't?"" "I mean, I've been very lucky, even my network time of having pretty thoughtful and not stereotypical executives." "But even a bad note, or a note that is poorly the articulated or that you don't understand," "Tina and I always try to step back and treat that like an audience member." "Because, what are they trying to say?" "And yeah, I can think of some, if I had a little longer, think of some ridiculous notes we've gotten." "But still, there is something that they're reacting to." "And I would miss it, I think, on some level, if that weren't there." "And as we're in Netflix now, it's something we think about and talk about." "Because it is a different back and forth with them." "Do you guys get notes still?" "It's been so minimum, minimal I should say." "It's been so minimal, and again, we were in an unusual situation where we had edited half the season for NBC." "Do they say things like, "I think it would stream better if..."" "( laughing )" "It's been very hands off and very big picture, thoughtful kind of stuff." "So I feel, and tell me if you'd feel this way, as you have this slightly different experience," "Do we now need to play that role of being... you always have to be your own worst critic." "That's what we did on our show, we hired producers." "I hired somebody to be a consulting producer and I treat them like the studio." "We have dates that they get stuff before the network." "The good thing is, we hired them, so we can either take the notes or not, but we definitely want that process of vetting stuff." "And actually, we've learned something on "Transparent"" "that has been totally revelatory for me as a showrunner, which is we basically turn things in now to both our producing department, that we call them, as well as the network, earlier than I would have in the past." "And then we continue working." "So, I turn something in when it is 75% ready." "Are you talking about scripts, outlines, etc.?" "All of it." "Outlines, scripts, all of it." "And then over the next few days, while they are waiting to read and you're waiting for your call, you, as a room, are fixing it, and it's getting better, and then you get the call" "and you have already done it, and then you pretend like you haven't." "( laughing )" "And you say: "Amazing!"" "And if the note is good, you probably already thought of it." "You can see it." "It rises, that this scene isn't working." "And everybody can feel it, the producers, the network, the room, and it has changed by the time that you get the notes, but you don't tell them that you have already changed it." "It's a way of keeping everybody feeling included." "And it's a way of vetting everybody's notes again." "You could get a little blinkered when you are in the room." "You know, it can become its own little bubble." "Yeah, I know." "It's great to get outside feedback." "And writers look at things differently than audience members do." "I think we suffer from that quite a bit where things get very writerly and it is all about the construct of this as supposed to what's the experience of someone with very fresh eyes." "Just that letting it wash over them the way that an audience member does." "Not: "I wish we had gone the other way here." "We now have to go back this way because now I don't understand why he is doing this."" "And whatever, which we all do." "I've definitely gotten into arguments with people who've enjoyed certain episodes and I have tried to explain to them why they shouldn't." "You are not right for enjoying that because, structurally, the show wasn't ready." "The whole backend just didn't work." "My friend Andy Gordon, who is now writer on our show, tells this great story about back in the "Friends" days." "One of his friends was a writer on "Friends"" "and he said:" ""Oh, I saw the episode last night and it was so funny."" "And the guy said, "Oh, my gosh, thank you so much." "I can't tell you how much that means to me because we stayed up so late that week we were there every night the way that the stories intertwined and the way that they came around something at the end" "what she was thinking in the beginning is what he started thinking by the end, and then how those two lined up."" "And Andy is like: "No, no, I thought the monkey was really funny."" "( laughing )" "And then you could see this person just go:" "Hmm." "But that was Andy's experience:" "I enjoyed it because the monkey was funny." " Marcel was a great actor." " Yes." "Kenya, you are sitting here as a first year network show." "Are you incredibly envious of these stories about the lack of notes?" "It's interesting because the hardest thing for us is being a family show that comes on after the shows have been on for so long and being so successful because our biggest note that we'll get is:" "That's already been done." "Are you complaining about "Modern Family" being in your league?" "( laughing )" "That's the biggest note we have to do." "One of the little tricks I use is that I always go," ""Well, culturally speaking..." And they really don't want to argue." "( laughing )" "And we had to realize very quickly that, being a 6'3" black guy with a neck tattoo, they stopped wanting to do note rooms." "It started being all phone calls really quick." "Someone took a picture of us getting notes and we were like this." "And I had to learn to change my demeanor." "I wasn't purposely doing it." "But, you are hearing someone give you notes that you think are going to tare your story apart." "And I'm sitting there like this, and it sort of changed a little bit as the show went on." "After it came on when it was all in a vacuum, the notes were a lot more." "Once there was a little bit of audience resonance and some calls and feedback," "I feel like people started to let us go, and we get very few notes." "But in general, we've been really lucky." "Duplass:" "We had an interesting experience, though, because this was our first show, we came from feature film making, and HBO had to break us in a little bit to TV world because we kept closing these story lines." "We were in feature mode, when you set stuff up and you are already thinking:" ""Okay, this is how I'm going to end this stuff," and they were like:" ""Guys, don't end this." "Just open it."" "And we've been talking about it now." "It's like an open universe, and they were incredibly helpful." "They were very gentle about it, but ultimately, it was really freeing." "Now I think back on feature filmmaking," "I love the form, it's how I came up." "I still want to be the Coen Brothers." "I just want a brother." "( laughing )" "So I'd be happy, yes." "Don't need to do anything good." "You get five more hours of sleep." "Kind of good to hang out with... ( laughing )" "♪" "It takes a lot of work..." "to run this business." "But I really love it." "I'm on the move all day long... and sometimes, I just don't eat the way I should." "So I drink BOOST® to get the nutrition that I'm missing." "BOOST Complete Nutritional Drink has 26 essential vitamins and minerals, including calcium and vitamin D to support strong bones and 10 grams of protein to help maintain muscle." "All with a great taste." "I don't plan on slowing down any time soon." "Stay Strong." 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"Sprint will pay off your old phone and contract so you can switch." "Goodbye ATT!" "Everybody's switching to the best family plan from Sprint." "Get 4 Lines with unlimited talk, text and 10 gigs of high-speed data to share for only $100/mo." "And now get your new phone delivered" "♪" "Welcome back to "Close Up with the Hollywood Reporter."" "We are sitting down with the minds behind TV's funniest shows." "Jay, you've infused a lot of your personal experiences into the show and I am wondering, is there a moment that you have watched after it has been completed that you have just cringed that you decided to include, and what was this moment?" "Duplass:" "Well, I think they're all cringe-worthy." "Everyone in our lives is fair game." "They kind of know that their stories will come up in our shows." "Honestly, everything is something from our lives and that is happening" "It weirdly empowers me to do it." "It is interesting to see something that you've done show up and then people talk about it on Twitter and they judge it, but they also laugh and there are arguments about it." "To see people argue about how you operate in your life is a really interesting thing." "It's a unique experience for sure." "It's never like:" ""Oh, obviously Jay did that."" "So I never feel like I'm busted on anything necessarily" "But it is interesting to reveal yourself." "Mostly, I have to say, it is just very validating because you release these things that are very scary and embarrassing, and if you are doing your job well, it's resonating with people." "The best compliment is when I get feedback like:" ""I feel like you had a tape recorder in my bedroom this is like verbatim, this is verbatim."" "And I'm like: "Oh, God."" "Because at a certain point it just looked like banal dialogue for a second there." "Which is very much like real life, by the way." "Yes, exactly." "Have the rest of you had those moments where something you wanted to infuse from your real life, you ended up seeing and thought:" ""Maybe I didn't want to share this after all."" "On "Transparent,"" "the kids are slightly based on my family." "My sister and I are both writers on the show and people are constantly saying that the children are horrible human beings." "( laughing )" "And they are doing a lot of the same stuff that I do." "Yeah, it is hard to ignore that stuff." "My wife pooped herself when she was having our first daughter." "It was the first time having a kid and I was so embarrassed that I started to apologize." "The doctors were like:" ""Oh, my God." And I was like:" ""I'm so sorry, so sorry."" "And my wife was like:" ""Are you apologizing?"" "And I put it on the show." "And we watched it as a family and I didn't tell her." "And she was like," ""Are you kidding me?" "Did you really do this?"" "So that was one I probably shouldn't have done." "So now do you have to vet the storylines through her?" "I'm a little bit more careful." "( laughing )" "I think Steve has a story, I can see it." "No." "What I'm thinking of is all the times where I'll pitch something that I think one of the characters will do thinking that's what I would do." "And then half the people in the room are horrified." "Like, "Oh, you are such a jerk." "I'd hate him if he did that."" "And I'm like: "Oh, okay."" "( laughing )" "And finally, if you had a temporary reprieve from your show and you could write for any other show currently on television, what would you like to write for?" "The sort of scariest and most fun things that are in my career are going from sketch to multi camera, to single camera." "I think I would try to go right for drama like "Better Call Saul" or some of those guys who know how to do drama stories and learn something new." "I think that would be kind of fun to write an hour." ""SNL" has always been my dream job." "I've heard the hours are horrible and all that." "But it just seems like I grew up watching it." "( laughing )" "I was on "SNL."" "That's always been my dream job." "I think the Kardashians." "I just want to hang out with the sisters." "Jay, how about you?" "I'd probably would go drama, too." "I would probably write for "The Americans."" "The fact that they are doing high espionage and family drama at the same time" " it's just a really fun show." " It's very similar to "Togetherness."" "Yeah, it's the same thing." "Steve?" ""Archer" looks like fun." "What are your favorite dramas?" "What am I watching these days?" "This is terrible." "I'm not hooked into it." "I've got to remember the one that I am watching all the time." "At 3:00 in the morning." "I know, it's really going to hit me." "Come back to me in two seconds." "Alec?" "I have such a huge respect for "The Simpsons" and "South Park."" "Those people are just..." "Having been doing those shows as long as they are," "I'm not at a point in my life where I can watch every episode every week, but every time I come back to those shows" "I'm always just blown away by just the skill level." "I mean "The Simpsons" is an institution." "To write an episode of that and just feel like I had some involvement in that iconic show, that would be cool." " Steve?" "Still nothing." "( laughing )" "I don't watch dramas." "( laughing )" "Well, thank you all." "That's all we have time for today." "I'm very honored." "We learned a lot." "I appreciate you being here." " Thank you." " Thanks for having us." "♪"