Chapter 13

Emerging Voices in the Digital Realm (and beyond)

The digital television revolution has created unprecedented new opportunities for screenwriters, directors, producers and actors. There has never been a higher demand for new scripted content with fresh, authentic voices.

Here are 2 case studies, which are very different but equally inspiring.

· Amazon Studios’ Open Submissions Policy ·

Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street on Amazon

David Anaxagoras:
Creator/Co-Executive Producer

While this book isn’t about me, I’m proud to tell you that David Anaxagoras was one of my students more than 15 years ago in the UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting. Back then, his talent was evident as he honed his craft and refined his voice. He might characterize himself as lazy, but from my perspective, he was always remarkably prolific. And yet, screenplay after screenplay led to rejection after rejection. Notwithstanding little professional validation, David went on to successfully enroll in the MFA in Screenwriting Program in UCLA’s Department of Film, Television and Digital Media—my alma mater and a place I’m also proud to call home as a faculty member for almost 20 years.

After graduating, David and I stayed in touch via Facebook and his blog, Man Bites Hollywood, where he’d post about the movie business and self-deprecatingly vent about his inability to gain any traction in the biz. The following interview is a Hollywood success story, based on tenacity, talent and timing. Of all the interviews I’ve conducted for this book, this one is the most personally gratifying. I’m thrilled and delighted for him beyond words.

Neil Landau: You’re one of the first benefactors of Amazon Studios’ online open submission policy for your Gortimer pilot script. Can you walk me through the process?

David Anaxagoras: Originally, Amazon’s open submission policy was only for movie scripts. But then I saw on their website that they’d opened up to TV shows. Really, just at the time I’d decided I wasn’t going to do this any more, I thought, “Well, why not? I’ve got nothing left to lose. I don’t really care.” I had no idea what Amazon’s brand was; they hadn’t really established anything. It wasn’t like they were Disney or Nick, so maybe they would be open to something really kind of different? So, Gortimer is the one idea I always thought I’d write, and for whatever reason, it came out pretty good when I wrote it. It probably helped that it was on the backburner for 15 years.

NL: What were your influences?

DA: Stuff I loved: Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine or Something Wicked This Way Comes, and shows like Eerie, Indiana and Voyagers.

NL: Did you have the plot for the pilot in mind—with the frog and the blind woman?

DA: The hardest thing was to have an idea of the world but not have a plot for anything. So, I did what I always do, I reached back into my childhood. Because this was about Gortimer, this was childhood from his point-of-view, I was like, “Well, OK—what was that like for me?” So, there’s just little snips and bits and pieces of stuff that I remember that went into the stew. And thankfully, it just all connected up.

I grew up in Orange County, and would go down to the Santa Ana River bed, which was always dried up. We were there exploring, and I came across a broom handle that had a fork strapped to the end of it. I asked my stepdad what it was for, and he’s like, “It’s for hunting frogs!” And I was like, “I WANNA GO KILL A FROG WITH A FORK!” [Laughter] “This is the coolest thing ever!” I never found a frog at all! I would never think that now, but for some reason as a kid, you have that bloodthirsty edge, I guess. You want to be the warrior. That stuck in my head, and I think I wanted to do something like a creepy Tell-Tale Heart ¹ type story, where there would be kind of the head-fake, where you think you’re helping this sweet old lady, but really there was something much scarier going on. And I just hooked it up with some kind of fairytale retelling of something, and put it in the microwave and set it for a few minutes, and it all came out great.

NL: And that gave you the structure for your franchise, each week it was Gortimer versus something supernatural?

DA: It did. It really was, in my mind, an anthology, but with the same characters every week, a Twilight Zone -y sort of setup. When we started seriously thinking about making it a series, we did have to answer questions like, “What’s the mechanism for starting the story every week?” It wasn’t a procedural, so there wasn’t going to be, like, a murder every week on the street, but—“What’s going to generate that story?” I was like, “It’s just Normal Street. You just go for a dog walk, and then something extraordinary happens. Whatever the normal thing is you’re doing that week, it’s just going to lead to something extraordinary. And, like The Twilight Zone, it would be this magic realism. So whatever your inner conflict is, it’s going to end up being expressed, somehow, externally. I always thought that was enough. Convincing other people sometimes, it’s a little harder.

NL: Did you have a voiceover, initially?

DA: Yeah, I had even more voiceover that ended up in the pilot, and with the series it’s been streamlined, even more. There was just a ton of voiceover! Because really for me, it was always very much about Gortimer’s [Sloane Morgan Siegel] point of view, and who we’re seeing the world with. But when you have Fionnula Flanagan [as mysterious neighbor, Miss Hudspith] in your pilot, you don’t mess with that moment. It was a lesson for me, in how little voiceover you really need. And how much you can get across with an image, or let the actors act and do their job. So, we cut back a lot just in the editing on the pilot. As the series went on, we really only needed opening and closing VO. And maybe, occasionally, a little sprinkle in between. I think a lot of the VO also was because I was a feature writer, and I was writing a half-hour show. I only knew how to write features, so I wrote a feature and squished it down into a half hour, but I needed something to connect up all the parts you skip over. The voiceover helped a lot with that, in terms of the narrative. And expediting, introducing characters, and that sort of thing.

NL: Did you create a structure? Because Amazon doesn’t have commercials, did you think, “I have to structure this in 3 acts,” or … ?

DA: I really depend on structure. I love structure. Every feature I wrote has a serious structure underlying it. I really rely on that. There’s no way you can make it through the second act without a structure. You need something to hold on to. And so, when it came to the pilot, I literally condensed it, I was like, “OK, I’m going to have my midpoint and my low point,” and it was going to be the tests and the allies, and everything was going to happen—in really compressed time.

NL: So, you did a 3-act structure with a midpoint?

DA: I totally did a 3-act structure with a midpoint

NL: And it came out to about 30 pages?

DA: I did a lot of drafts, and initially it came out to be … 33 pages? I don’t remember. I didn’t even use the right font! [Laughter] I was so done with screenwriting, I was daring them to reject me. I was like, “Well, this font looks really different, I’ll use this!” The only reason I didn’t stick with it was because it looked really shitty on an iPad, or when it was printed. But I have a wacky title page with really big words on it. I think every day, “That poor reader, who pulled me out of the pile. Thank god they didn’t just look at my stupid font, and decide, you know, ‘Fuckin’ amateur,’ and throw me back in the pile.” But it was like daring them to reject me.

NL: But this time you got the good news! How long did it take, from when you first emailed the submission to getting some feedback?

DA: I submitted it over the web on July 4, 2012—Independence Day! Believe me, I had zero expectations. That’s not true: I expected it to do what all my other scripts did, I expected it to boomerang back and go in my drawer. And they called 3 weeks later and said they really liked the script. They were interested, and promised they’d get back to me within 45 days. Basically, what happens is, you give them a free option for 45 days. Which gives them time to review it and talk about it and argue over it and whatever they want to do. And for 45 days, you can’t shop it around anywhere else. It’s theirs. I figured, no big deal. It was the fastest turnaround for anything … Usually, what you get is just ignored. You don’t even get an answer. So, I was looking forward to 45 days, it was like: in 45 days I would get a rejection and I’ll know for sure. And they started sending me messages. You have a project page on Amazon when you submit, and something came through on that, and on my blog they found a contact page. One of the execs was like, “We don’t have your phone number, could you …?” This was 2012, there were 10 different ways to reach me electronically. They did all but tweet me. So I was like, “Well, they’re probably not desperate to talk to me to reject me … ”

When we connected, right away, they were just gushing. They wanted to option it. Everybody who read it loved it, and Roy Price [Vice President of Amazon Studios] loved it—and he never loves anything! And they just went on and on and on—not that I minded, mind you!

NL: What happened next?

DA: My big fear was that there would be this be shitty, half-baked, partly animated sock puppet thing for audiences to feed back on. Because they had done this on their first round of “presentation pilots.” Especially for the animated shows, they were literally half finished, if that. Even for Annedroids— which used to be Annebots— which was supposed to be live action, they did an animated presentation, and then 2 minutes of live action. Nobody knew what the hell it was supposed to be. They just confused everybody. And audiences are supposed to watch this, vote on it, comment on it! And they take that very seriously! It’s not a good thing, if you’re depending on that audience feedback, to confuse everything. Lucky for me, that trainwreck happened before it was my turn to go. I asked them, at our first production meeting, “Is this going to be one of those, like, animatics?” And they were like, “No, no, no! We won’t do that!”

NL: So they were going to shoot a pilot?

DA: Fully produced pilot, and every step along the way I’m like, “Oh, man, who does this happen to? How lucky can I get? They optioned it, now they’re going to produce it all the way, no matter what happens, I’ll have a fully produced, half hour of television. With characters that I wrote! This is going to be amazing!” It was pretty thrilling just to get to that point.

NL: I remember you posting about it on Facebook, “It’s getting good reviews, do I quit my day job?” Because you were still in between. So they optioned it, how long did it take after that to say, “OK, we’re going to start casting and budgeting?”

DA: After they optioned it, July 2012, there was a year-long development process, just on the script. Part of it was because Amazon’s children’s department was basically 2 people. It was the Senior Vice President, Tara Sorensen, and another exec, who has since left. And that was it! When I met with them for the first time, I met with the entire children’s department. Which was great. But also meant they were producing their preschool pilots first, so I kind of had to get in line. Which gave us a year to work on the script. I would get a batch of notes, do the notes, 2 months go by, another round of notes. So, maybe it was 3 or 4 rounds of notes, over the course of the year.

NL: And were they paying you to do these rewrites at this point?

DA: They were paying me. They were such pros.

NL: That’s great!

DA: I was totally ready to be screwed. I was like, “I will rewrite for free! Just produce my pilot!” It’s unheard of, really, you know? And you’re supposed to option it for a dollar, but no, they were professional. It was never a question, they totally paid me to rewrite it, a draft as I said. And you know, they were typical notes. Some of them were really good, some of them were baffling. Some of them were terrifying!

NL: How different was your original draft from the final aired pilot?

DA: I have to say, it’s strangely exactly the same, but different. It really is, so much, everything I’d intended. There’s nothing I would divorce myself from, from that pilot. I’m really proud of it. If anything, the script got better at the end of that development process, and stronger, than going in. I think the biggest change was, I had done a frog-prince thing, but also a Faustian bargain deal with the devil. A mash up with the frog prince, and there were a lot of references to the devil and to hell, that’s where the heat wave came from. When Gortimer falls into the pit, he’s going to hell, to fight the devil. And at the time we were doing it for 9–12, really ‘tweens. I don’t even think they have that category any more. We’re really going for 6–11, we wanted to broaden up the scope, and take some of the dark, devil, satanic streak out, that I had. I just referred to it as the “demon frog” or “devil frog” through the whole thing. When I was asked to change that, “Frog of Ultimate Doom” was almost my snarky response. I was like, “Well, I’ll just call it ‘The Frog of Ultimate Doom’! How does that sound, Amazon?” But it actually ended up being perfect for the tone of the show. And everything went like that. You know, the worst note is the one you hate, but is ultimately right. You have to surrender yourself, it’s like, “Oh, my god, they were right the whole time.” Every note is wrong, I think, initially. You just have to get the note, and eat something really bad for you, and go to sleep. And you wake up the next morning and start writing—and it just usually works.

NL: What changed the most?

DA: In the pilot and episode 2, the little brother, Gardner [Ryder Cohen], was totally an add-on towards the end of the process. Originally, it was supposed to end with the ring sitting on top of the pile of coins at the bottom of the well. That was the last image, FADE OUT. “Don’t be blind to love. THE END.” And the execs were like, “We really want to end strong on Gortimer.” That makes sense, right? “We need to go back to him and we need to see how he’s learned, what he’s come through this process learning.” Usually what happens is, he’s got his 2 best friends—the conflict is between him and Mel, and they have this running argument through the whole episode and, at the end, they find out—oh, they were both right. Oh, it was just point of view. The thing is, I was very determined that these friends be friends, and the conflict not come from interpersonal strife. That the show would be about friendship, and maybe not realistic, but aspirational, that you could have a show about friends, where they’re not constantly putting each other down, competing with each other, being sarcastic, cheating on each other, I didn’t want to do “tween drama.” We’ve got enough of that. So, I was like, “Who can he have a conflict with? I’m just going to have to make it the little brother.” Because it’s no longer Mel.

And with adding a “Cousin Oliver,” I was like, “I can’t believe we’re sticking this kid in here!” I was a preschool teacher and I used to go home at night, and I’d take off my pants and flower petals would fall out, because the kids would sneak up behind me and stuff flowers in my pockets. And I was like, “Those little shits! Constantly putting stuff in my pockets!” But it’s because they loved me. So, thematically I thought, “OK, I’m going to relate it to Gortimer not getting along with his little brother, and learning that those are kinds of signs of love from him.”

NL: What I love was, when he said to his little brother, “Hey Gardner? Love ya,” and when Gardner gave him the raspberry back, that’s your tone right there. Because it wasn’t sentimental, it was just that little twist at the end—which I thought was great.

DA: That was me holding on to something I felt about being true to the script. Because the execs were like, “Gardner’s great, but can’t Gortimer tell him he loves him?” And I was like [gagging noise], “OK … ” So in the script Gortimer doesn’t say, “I love you,” he says, “Love ya.” I couldn’t get the whole “you” out! And for the raspberry, the kid who blew the best raspberries got hired and cast as Gardner.

NL: So, you went through the year of script development, and did part of that year start to address production concerns as well? Or, was it all just script?

DA: It was crazy. At one point, the script was 45 pages long. And the junior exec, I remember being in a meeting, turned around and said, “This is 45 pages long!” Tara said, “That’s fine! We’ve done scripts that long before.” She was like, “This is going to be as long as it has to be.” That didn’t last! Once it was time to go into production, it was, “Oh, we’ve really got to cut the script back, guys.”

For practical production reasons, I was told that when we go to series, we’re going to have to have a B-story with adults. Because we can’t have the kids [for long hours due to SAG/AFTRA union rules for minors]. For the pilot, we had been filming 1 week in the summer, and during rehearsals, we went to schools, we banked a lot of school time and we managed it so they didn’t have to miss school. But our producer, Richard King, was like, “We can’t do this all the time. We’re going to have to have a B-story about the adults [Gortimer’s parents are played by Robyn Lively and Benjamin Koldyke], so the kids aren’t on screen the whole time.” And we did none of that! The kids are always in everything. It was really tight, really hard to do. But it wasn’t a B-story, C-story kind of narrative.

NL: Once they green-lit the pilot, how present were you? Were you at casting, were they asking your opinion on a lot of production issues?

DA: I didn’t have to have anything to do with it, Amazon could have just bought the pilot and kissed me goodbye—if I was lucky, a kiss! But they kept me involved. I remember—15 years ago!—either you were quoting someone or this was something you said: “You be you until you is who they want.”

NL: That’s true!

DA: That’s the most valuable piece of advice!

NL: And 15 years later …

DA: 15 years later, but that’s the reason I was still on the show! Because who the hell else could write or rewrite that show?

NL: It’s your vision.

DA: Nobody. It was so distinctly my voice, that there was no reason to try to go anywhere else. If I’d just tried to do some cookie cutter thing or something, they would have gone, “OK, this is a good attempt, we see where it’s going, let’s get the real guy who can actually do this and bring him in.” But no, they wanted me in on it.

I was in Orange County, working full time, so I was kind of consulting from a distance. But, you know, for casting they would send me everything online. Each one of those things should not have worked. So many points where it should have all fallen apart. Trying to find a director who wasn’t doing all the typical kids’ stuff that’s out there now, who could nail the tone where it wasn’t too sweet, it wasn’t too cynical, it had a nice kind of suburban, homey feel but it also had a touch of the magical—and how you balance all that out? It was already impossible. I didn’t know how we were going to do it. Our pilot director, Luke Matheny [God of Love] turned out to be the sweetest guy in the world. He fell in love with the script, really wanted to do it, and believed he could do the job.

NL: Once they shot the pilot, can you talk about Amazon’s unique online testing process?

DA: They encourage people to visit their website, watch all the pilots [which are made available during their summer “Pilot Season”], provide feedback and rate them, 1 to 5 stars. Somehow Amazon knows who’s watching, what house, how long they’re watching for, and if someone turns it off in the middle and never goes back to it. They’ve got a lot of metrics, a lot of numbers going.

NL: It’s all done through algorithms.

DA: We finished shooting in September, post-production happened really quick, we had a screening in early November, for cast and crew at AFI, which was amazing. That’s the thing, every time something happens, it wasn’t even part of my success fantasy!

NL: They had a red carpet premiere!

DA: Which pretty much blew me away. After the AFI screening, the cast and crew, people were coming out pretty much in tears at the end of that. People were excited about it. Just seeing it with a live audience. And it’s cast and crew, we’re all predisposed to like it, but I don’t love every script I’ve written, you could come out embarrassed, it doesn’t necessarily mean just because you worked on it you would love it. That was pretty amazing.

Then we had to wait. Early February was when they put it up on Amazon. That went on, and the interesting thing is, I don’t see the numbers, they’re like trade secret, a big secret. You’ll never know the numbers. And they don’t have to reveal them, because they don’t sell advertising. But audience response … I get to see the comments and the ratings as it goes up on the website. Everything started trickling in that morning. Our first 100 were all 5* reviews. I read every single review, and my friend’s like, “You read the reviews?” I’m like, “But they’re all 5 stars!” Then I worried, “Isn’t there anybody out there who hates me, who just wants to give me a 1* review just to spite me? Where are the Internet trolls?” Eventually there were some 1* reviews, but as Luke says, it’s reassuring, because the 1* reviews are never complete sentences, poor grammar, spelling—and easy to dismiss!

NL: So, Amazon let the reviews come in for about a month, and how long before they said they would pick up the series for a full season?

DA: Unofficially, day 2 that the pilot was up. It was pretty clear that it would take something extraordinary for it not to go to series. Like, Jeff Bezos [Amazon’s CEO] would have had to be scared by a frog in his youth, or there would have to be just some weird reason somebody would block it, because you could tell by the movement on Amazon, it was huge.

Still, I didn’t know if I should bet the house on it. I was still working full-time, and was exhausted. I was really burned out; I’d been a preschool teacher for 23 years. And 23 years of Circle Time was enough! [Laughter] Love the kids, I’m a much better human being for having been a teacher than I ever would have been otherwise. I’m really glad that I fell into that profession even though I never intended to do that. And perhaps I was really ready to be done and to be a writer, which is something that I’d intended to do, all my life. I was eager, but afraid to quit my day job.

NL: And then Amazon confirmed they were going to order 12 episodes?

DA: Well, they ordered 12 episodes right away, but first they all went to Seattle, to argue for whatever pilot they wanted to go to series with. They’re in, like, Enter the Thunderdome with Jeff Bezos, you know? And some of the pilots would come out victorious. They all loved Gortimer, so I knew they would fight for it. When they called with the official pickup, it was almost anticlimactic. When I told my mom and she cried, the emotion became real. You need someone else to fully experience it. And I finally quit my day job.

NL: When they ordered more episodes, was that when they said you needed a writing staff and a showrunner? Or did they just say you’ll write all of them?

DA: We were going into production so fast, there’s no way. You have to have 6 scripts ready to go at the same time when you start production, because you have to build sets, hire actors, and there’s just no way that I could do that. Unless I had a year to just solely work on scripts. They knew, as soon as we got the green light, we had to write them. Because the ticking timeline is the kids, they’re getting older every second, you can even see from the pilot to the finale how much older they are. Sloane’s voice is also deeper. We had no time to waste, so we had to jump into production right away. And it still felt like it took too long. But it didn’t—as soon as we got the green light, we were putting together the writers’ room, hiring a showrunner, hiring staff writers, looking for studio space, and it was go, we had to hit the ground running and get going.

I’m a creator and credited as Co-Executive Producer, but I had no experience producing a show. It’s pretty typical I think, especially these days, for the creator to be the Co-EP but not be the showrunner. They either pair you up with a showrunner, or they find an experienced showrunner to run the show. Because you just can’t put a novice in charge—it’s like a million dollars an episode, and that’s for our small production. Hundreds of people’s lives are depending on this production! Everybody that’s employed on it, you can’t screw with it. I had no problem with that, from the beginning I didn’t expect to be the guy in charge. All I wanted was to be able to have a collaborative relationship with the showrunner. And have a voice, if not necessarily the voice. People were really respectful. It’s really weird, after struggling for so long, to have people just automatically respect you.

NL: How did it go in the beginning, did you map out arcs for episodes, or did you just start talking about story ideas?

DA: At the beginning, we were all getting to know each other. It was very casual. We were just going over what the world would be like and the stories we wanted to tell, and there were a couple of ground rules I wanted to get off right away. Like, we don’t mess with the friendships between Gortimer, Ranger [Drew Justice] and Mel [Ashley Boettcher]. We’re not going to have them falling out every episode. They stay friends. Everybody was already on board with that. We’re not going to do teenage romance; Gortimer and Mel are not going to fall in love or have a crush on somebody. And everybody agreed, “Yeah, we don’t want to do that.” It was like everybody already got it, in a weird way we were already on the same page. We just wanted to tell really good stories. It was like a pitching free-for-all, we were just throwing out half-baked ideas. “Mind Eraser” for instance was an episode where Gortimer reads something in Mel’s diary, and wants to forget about it, meets this guy who has a magic pencil, you write down what you want to forget, then you erase it and it’s gone out of your mind. That started out as a time travel story. [Laughter]

NL: Would it be about a week to break each one, just in terms of getting the outline? And you had whiteboards, and … ?

DA: It depended, but it was maybe a day to break one.

NL: Then did you do outlines?

DA: Yeah, the writer would do an outline and bring that back, then we would do another round of notes and sometimes have to re-break it, and Amazon would be approving things every step of the way.

NL: Were you structuring them in 3 acts?

DA: We were, and then at some point Amazon was like, “Stop breaking the scripts into acts. It doesn’t matter!”

NL: Now you’re picked up for Season 2, and the kids are getting older …

DA: Season 2 is just a big, scary thing. The kids are older, so the stories have to be slightly different. They’re a little more mature. We’re going to have them for less time, the kids will probably be separated, they’ll split off and do their own thing. I don’t know, but there’ll be more production realities we’ll have to face. But I’m not complaining. Every day I go to work and think: I’m the luckiest guy in the world.

Casual on Hulu

Zander Lehmann:
Creator/Executive Producer

Casual is an edgy, half-hour dramedy that centers on a commitment-averse bachelor 30-something, commitment-averse brother, Alex, played by Tommy Dewey (The Mindy Project) and his newly divorced therapist sister, Valerie (Michaela Watkins) as they navigate the erratic world of dating while living under the same roof—for the first time since high school. Tara Lynne Barr plays Valerie’s teenaged daughter, Laura, who, by default, assumes the role of the adult in the house. Francis Conroy (American Horror Story, Six Feet Under) plays Dawn, Alex and Valerie’s emotionally calculating, laissez-faire mother. Newcomer Nyasha Hatendi plays Leon, a newly single African-American man looking for love—who becomes Valerie’s first one-night stand and subsequently close friends with her brother, Alex.

Casual landed a 10-episode straight-to-series order from Hulu in October 2014. The series is under the creative auspices of Academy Award winning director, Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air, Young Adult), who serves as Executive Producer, and directed the first 2 episodes. The series has been picked up for Season 2.

In 2014, Zander Lehmann’s spec screenplay—The Beautiful Game— made The Blacklist and was purchased by Focus Features. In 2015, Zander was named to Variety’s 10 TV Writers to Watch. Pre-Casual, Zander Lehmann had begged his agents for a staff job on a TV series—any TV series—as he puts it, “So if Casual sells and goes, I’d know what I’m doing, and not be a complete novice.” He managed to land a coveted gig as staff writer on the MTV show The Shannara Chronicles, an epic teen fantasy series, based on the book of the same title. The MTV series is Executive Produced by A-list film and TV mogul Jon Favreau, who, among a plethora of credits, directed the Iron Man movies, wrote and directed Chef and Swingers, and served as EP on the Avengers movie franchise.

During his 2½ months on the Shannara writing staff, Lehmann got a crash course in how a writers’ room operates from seasoned showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Smallville, the Charlie’s Angels reboot). And talk about synchronicity: “I literally got the Hulu offer for Casual the first day I started as a staff writer on that show,” enthuses Lehmann. “It was like having a few months of grad school on how to function in a writers’ room—the politics and mechanics of it all.”

I sat down with Zander Lehmann in his makeshift office at the Casual production facility deep in the east San Fernando Valley. Despite its A-list director, the enterprise felt more like a low-budget indie film than a big studio or major network TV shoot. I would describe the vibe as refreshingly unpretentious and, well, casual.I’m now an avid viewer of the Hulu series, one of my favorites.

Neil Landau: Is this your “big break”—your dream come true?

Zander Lehmann: It is the dream!

NL: What was the genesis of the project?

ZL: I’m very close with my younger sister. She’s a creative executive at Lorne Michaels’ company [Broadway Video], and she was living with me for 3 years. One day I introduced her to one of my best friends (we were assistants together) and they had this mutual attraction and they started dating. And now they live together and have a dog, and, who knows, may get married. But basically, I decided to write a television show as if I was living with my sister, again—15 years after the fact. At the time, I found myself in a quasi-love triangle between my best friend and my sister who was now his girlfriend. As brother and sister roommates, we were really open with each other and had honest conversations about our relationships. And I’d never seen this kind of family dynamic explored on TV. It took about a year to get it all down and get it right. I went through many drafts, but what came out was an episode of TV that I thought felt very true to who we were and our complicated relationship. Obviously, it’s the heightened version. We’re not quite as open about everything.

NL: After you finished the pilot, what happened next?

ZL: I gave it to my agents. And they got it to Jason Reitman, who also has a good relationship with his sisters, and Helen Estabrook, our producer, has 5 brothers. It was this collection, as a producing crew of people, who had good brother-sister relationships, and I think they just related to it. The show deals with divorce, being single, trying to find love, trying to maintain a family connection—things that we all thought hit close to home. The script spoke to that, and at that point I don’t want to say it was easy, but we took it out to 4 places between the 3 of us, and we sold it to Hulu. It was a quick process, comparatively, to a lot of these things. I think a lot of people wanted to know my background, my family history. When I did these pitch meetings, the first thing everyone asked was, “How was your relationship with your mother?”

NL: These days, everyone wants the personal story. Your series delivers. Even though Casual is your big break; you already had an agent—which is a feat in itself. How did you secure your rep?

ZL: I pushed a mail cart at ICM for 2 months, and then I was a development assistant for 3 years. And my last stop on the development assistant train was working for Josh Donen [Gone Girl, House of Cards, Spartacus], who was Sam Raimi and David Fincher’s producing partner.

NL: You networked, you made contacts. Plus you come from a showbiz family. Your father is Michael Lehmann who directed the cult classic film, Heathers. [He’s also a big time TV director now.] Don’t worry; I’m not going to cry “nepotism.”

ZL: I’m sure plenty of people will. But I’ve been writing on my own for many years. I had to try and fail a 100 times like everyone else.

NL: It’s not nepotism. It’s genetics. Talent is in your blood. And, no, I’m not related to Martin Landau. Great. Now we’ve set the record straight. Moving on. What were you writing before Casual?

ZL: I wrote an hour-long dark comedy called Game Show— set behind the scenes of a 1980s game show. It was in the tone of a Paul Thomas Anderson movie [Boogie Nights, Magnolia]. And I gave it to Josh Donen, because I was interviewing to be a studio executive at a couple of places. And just asked him, “Can I write? What do you think I should do?” And he said, “You should definitely be writing. I just sent this to David [Fincher], and he likes it. We’re going to take it to HBO.”

They took it to HBO and we sold it to them, and I got my agents off of that—even though HBO never made the show. But that was my first job as a 23-year-old, basically writing a show with David Fincher at HBO.

NL: Another ridiculously impressive achievement, right out of the gate.

ZL: It was good experience that I think helped Hulu give the go-ahead, because this is my first “go” project, but I’d done development before.

NL: I know you’re just starting production, but what’s your involvement going forward into series? Is there a writers’ room? Are you going to write all the episodes?

ZL: There was a writers’ room. It’s a 10-episode order, and when we came into the room, I had written the first 3 already. When we sold the project to Hulu, it wasn’t just the pilot; I had written the first 2 episodes on spec, sold them on that, and then wrote the third 1, brought the room together, and ran a room of 5 other writers, for about 2^½ months. That’s where we broke the remainder of the episodes as a group. I wrote episodes 4 and 8, and I’m writing Episode 10 this weekend.

At this point, we have 8 scripts done, and every writer besides me got 1 script. I ran the room with a writer/producer named Liz Tigelaar [Bates Motel, Nashville, Once Upon a Time], who has experience in TV and is fantastic. And she basically held my hand throughout it, and between Liz, Jason, Helen and I, we sort of were able to get our vision down on paper. Thankfully Hulu and Lionsgate Television (our production company) have been very supportive. They’ve basically given us very doable notes, and when we’ve pushed back, they’ve said, “You know—whatever your vision is,” so they’ve been fantastic. And yes, it’s been a charmed process. It helps that Helen Estabrook, the other Executive Producer, works as hard as I do, or harder, and basically I am in constant contact with her from sunrise ‘til sundown, and together we’re working 15-hour days, every day. So, that helps get it done. I’m mortally afraid of getting kicked off or doing something that messes up, so basically I’m just going to work until all the scripts are done, the show is shot and we’re into post.

NL: The pilot script is just great. I love characters that say things that are supposed to be inappropriate. How the siblings are dissing people at the funeral—which turns out to be a dream sequence, but then when we get to meet them in reality, they’re pretty much the same way. It’s refreshingly irreverent and so real. How does Hulu want you to structure the episodes? Act breaks for commercials, or are they going to also offer the show commercial-free on-demand for their premium subscribers?

ZL: It’s interesting working with Hulu, because—I’ll just throw this in there—they are unsure, I think, of how long our episodes should be, and if there will be commercials, and how they’re going to release it. It’s all sort of coming together at this one time.

NL: I have a feeling Hulu’s hybrid SVOD and AVOD model is going to change very soon to keep up with their competition.

ZL: I think you’re probably right. I never wrote to act breaks. I don’t like having to constrain any material into what feels like a false commercial-motivated chopping of an episode. So I wrote the pilot and second episode without any of that in mind. They were too long to start, but I just basically wrote as much as I wanted to write, and let it come out, and obviously we cut it down and made it manageable.

NL: So when you were in the Casual writers’ room, were you even referring to things as A, B and C stories, or were you more just tracking characters?

ZL: We didn’t really talk about it like that. We have 3 characters—Alex [Tommy Dewey], Valerie [Michaela Watkins] and Laura [Tara Lynne Barr], and we wanted to make sure all of them had a story that was serviced throughout the episode, with as much overlap as possible, because the show works best when our characters are together, with their sort of unique perspective.

We never wrote to act breaks; we never talked about them although, by the end of it, we had general ideas of, “Okay, something should happen around here, around here … ” But we didn’t want to structure it as a “normal” television show. We wanted to do episodes that didn’t have acts. Our episodes are essentially a 1-act play—which I think is going to be really fun! And yes, we figured we have 30 minutes, or 28 minutes, I don’t know—whichever Hulu will give us, to tell a story, and we’re just going to put out something interesting, and see how it comes together.

NL: Did you know where you were going to take each character by the end of Episode 10?

ZL: Yes. When we went in to pitch the show, I had a pretty good season outline, of what I wanted to happen. And we’ve stuck largely, pretty close to that. I mean, certainly the first 3 or 4 episodes, and the last 3 or 4 are what I’d imagined. The middle 2 or 3 are different, but yes, we did structure it in the same way. The first 3 or 4, you’re meeting these characters and we want you to fall in love with them, even though they’re a little crazy. Then the plot picks up through the middle and things start to happen to get them at odds. And by the end, we want them to come back together, but with a different perspective, and more tension and drama than they started with first.

NL: Right. Keep it open-ended.

ZL: Right. I will say, with Jason, one of my favorite endings to any movie is the ending to Young Adult. Where Charlize Theron’s character [Mavis] essentially goes back, and has learned something but not changed. And I think in this season, what I’ve been trying to do is have an ending that’s similar to that, where these characters have learned something, but remain still stuck in the same patterns. We bookend the last scene of Episode 10, with the first scene of the pilot, and I think it’s going to be elegant, and hopefully will work, and have that similar, Young Adult feeling at the end. I don’t want huge changes in 1 season. Hopefully we have the longevity to go 5 or 6 seasons, and then they can change, you know, by Season 3.

NL: Can you talk about some of your influences—perhaps Six Feet Under on HBO?

ZL: I really liked Six Feet Under. But I have to admit I didn’t watch a lot of television growing up. I fell into the camp of people who thought that television was sort of the lower of the two, compared to film. My father directed all movies when he was coming up, and has since transitioned to television. And his stuff in TV is as good, or better, than any of the movies he was making. I had the shift, myself, where I realized, “Oh wow, the movie business does not exist any more to service these types of stories. They’re there to make internationally viable tent-pole action figure pieces, and the really good stuff now is obviously the dramas on the premium cable networks, and the comedies on the cable and premium cable networks.” So Six Feet Under wasn’t as much of an influence on me as Enlightened— which came years later. Californication was also an influence. Tonally, I wanted to have a hybrid of those 2, but with a realistic “Jason” bent.

NL: Have you seen Transparent?

ZL: I have seen Transparent— well, I’ve seen the first 4 episodes. It’s really good. And I’m afraid, if I watch a full season, or 2 seasons, I’ll start to sort of appropriate the characters into my own stuff and steal from them!

NL: No, I agree with you!

ZL: So, 4 episodes: I get what it is. I love the show. I will watch the show when my show is done. But I was watching it and felt a little concern, because tonally there are similarities and I don’t want to have anything in the back of my brain that’s coloring my own writing of the scripts.

NL: That makes sense. I interviewed Beau Willimon about House of Cards and he also said he can’t watch any 1-hour dramas when he’s in the writing process. Because it’s not even about appropriating, it just messes with his head.

ZL: Yeah—yeah yeah! You have too many stories up here anyway. It’s like there are so many good things out there, you can get lost and sucked into these other worlds, and then suddenly you come out and say, “Wait, what am I writing about again?”

NL: I bring up Transparent because of tone, even though I haven’t seen what Jason’s going to do, but because of the siblings and it deals very frankly and very authentically with sex, and with very small conflicts that feel very large, because they dig deeply into them—which is what I really love about your pilot. But with Transparent, there is a strong, provocative marketing hook—dad becoming mom, and every family member’s identity crisis. But with Casual, there isn’t that hook. It’s not “high concept.”

ZL: You’re right. It’s more like “no concept”! [Laughter]

NL: To me, it’s about promiscuity and the issue of over-sharing within a friendship and within a family. It’s a show about boundaries, and people who are “therapized,” and know the language of how they’re supposed to express themselves, how to feel, at least intellectually. And yet, ironically, none of that helps them in their relationships. In many ways, it hinders them. Was there ever any pressure placed on you to find a clear-cut marketing hook or to make it like more of a “high concept?”

ZL: The low or no concept was never a concern for me, although, to be fair, when I write any script, I know there’s a very small chance it’s ever going to get made. But at the very least, it has to be a good writing sample. I felt like writing to a concept and trying to shoehorn it into a marketing-friendly thing was going to be a disservice to the show. That said, we’re having marketing conversations now, and I often don’t know how to answer the question of how to market this show. “Well, I think it’s a good show and it’s funny and I like these characters, but how do you key in to what the show is about?”

NL: And … what’s your answer?

ZL: I think it’s about people trying to find their way in the world. But I wouldn’t say there’s sort of a golden high concept that we can go off of. That said, the marketing hook for this show is Jason Reitman, one of the best living directors, and really, really a visionary guy.

NL: In terms of Jason’s involvement, did he initially have any substantive script notes?

ZL: No larger things, but Jason was in the writers’ room 4 hours every day for the first 2 months. He was another writer on staff, which was amazing. He’s done punch ups to a lot of the scripts, and he’s been really involved. He has totally earned his Executive Producer title in a way that most directors do not get involved. I’ve loved collaborating with him. He makes me look better than I am. At the end of the day, the words are half his and half mine, based on what’s being said on camera. And I am very happy that is the breakdown because every time I hear one of my scenes that doesn’t work, or his scenes that does work, I just say, “Please help—let’s punch these up together,” and he’s really collaborative. I think he’s learning TV as well, which is the realities of a budget and a schedule and shooting on stage. He’s never really shot on a soundstage before. We do 10 days block shooting 2 episodes, half on location. It’s doable, but also grueling. We’ve got 10 weeks of this and then cut it all together, and see how it plays.

NL: What have you learned from production?

ZL: I would say writing to production is always something that people don’t really think about, until they’re in it. You know, “This is a great scene, and totally impossible to shoot given our schedules and our budgets.” So, just being cognizant of everything that you write, and every time you write a new scene heading, someone has to set that up and light it and either company move or do it in a different part of the stage. That stuff—when you’re imagining a show or when you’re imagining an episode, you see the scenes play out but you don’t think, physically, how they’re actually going to be done. And that is something I’ve had to come to terms with, which is, the realities of production and budget. And we have fantastic budgets and fantastic production people, but look, if it were me, I would be out 5 days on every episode, and the budget would be twice as high as it is now! But a lot of it is just making it so everyone can do their job in the amount of time, and making the page like, manageable, and that stuff. Those are things you don’t think about until it is the first day and you have a one-liner people are saying is too difficult to make, so cut out 2 scenes.

NL: Sometimes limitation can spur on creativity.

ZL: Yes, and what it does is, it streamlines the process, so that you don’t end up with fat scenes that you don’t have to shoot, you know, you just leave them on the floor before editing. It’s basically just like being in the editing bay before you even get in there. So, yes, that’s been a good experience. Also, it’s a collaborative process, maybe not to the degree that I expected, but, there are 5 or 10 creative brain trust people here who make the show run and make it all happen—and I’m just 1 piece of that. Eventually, some day, I like the idea of being a showrunner, and then directing little movies and an episode here and there, and I feel that’s a satisfying life for what I’m trying to do. You know, I’m 27, so hopefully I have a couple more years of this.

Writers on the Rise in the Streaming Stratosphere

Gaia Violo

Gaia was born in Italy, moved to London as a teenager and graduated in Classics at Christopher Nolan’s alma mater, UCL (University College, London). While in Europe, she worked on several Italian TV shows and British commercials. Gaia attended USC for screenwriting and has just graduated from the UCLA MFA Screenwriting Program, where she won the UCLA Writers’ Showcase for her 1-hour drama pilot (Absentia), which was also a recipient of the Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award, 2015. After receiving the awards, 2 of her TV pilots were sold to Sony Television and Sony Crackle. She just finished her series of lectures at UCLA for the Professional Program in Producing. She is repped by CAA, Madhouse and Myman Greenspan. Both pilots were developed in my writing workshops in UCLA’s Department of Film, Television & Digital Media, but Gaia’s remarkable work ethic, extraordinary talent and singular voice deserve all the credit. Her pilot, The Wolfpack, was written under the auspices of Sony Crackle, who sponsor a course at UCLA, specifically designed to develop 1-hour dramas to fit their current mandates.

Hannah Macpherson

Hannah Macpherson is from the high desert of New Mexico and knew she wanted to be a filmmaker at a young age. She graduated in Film Production from Loyola Marymount University. In 2014, Hannah attended the UCLA Professional Program for TV Writing where she won the Advanced Teleplay award for her pilot The Chilling. In early 2015, she sold a digital series to AwesomenessTV which she will also direct. t@gged is an edgy look at 3 teenage girls who must figure out who tagged them in a violent online video before the killer comes after them. Hannah is repped by CAA and Madhouse.