Brent Forrester (Love, The Office, The Simpsons, King of the Hill) talks about the TV comedy writers’ room, story development, and character and plot in comedy.
We talk about:
- Plot vs. plotlessness in TV comedy
- Planning and writing the season’s scripts for Love
- Differences between creating a series for Netflix vs. the networks
- Working with Judd Apatow – The Apatow Touch
- How Brent runs his writer’s room on Love
- The writer’s room on The Simpsons
- Writing comedy for emotion/behavior more than plot
- Brainstorming episodes/breaking story
- The uses of psychotherapy for TV writers
- To not be sitcom-y
- Paul Rust
- Leslie Delfine
- pilot script vs. final shooting script
- Upright Citizens Brigade
- writing parts for great comedy actors.
- Larry Sanders influence on TV comedy
- Avoiding and/or embracing story in writing comedy
- Contemporary comedy tone – jokes vs. naturalistic comedy
- Comedy as trial and error
- Attention surplus disorder
- Audience seeking story as they watch a show move forward
- Story pace in network shows vs. contemporary cable comedy
- Authenticity vs. cleverness
- Danger of writers room – cleverness competition
- Plot twist vs. authenticity
- Stories lacking drive
- Performance over story
Quotes:
“A really interesting element of this show, and part of the tone that people are responding to, is that we have prioritized authenticity of behavior over plot.”
“Emotion in performance is aided by slowing things down.”
“Carl Reiner would say to the writers, ‘I want you to tell me the situations you got into over the weekend. Where did you make a jackass out of yourself? That’s going to be our show.’”
“A danger of the writer’s room is that it becomes a cleverness competition that affects the authenticity of the lines.”
“Actors will always prioritize authenticity of performance, over cleverness of line. They’re correct about that.”
“You’re trying to be sophisticated about character, about human beings. Offering our flaws, those quirks that don’t correlate with the standard of human perfection.”
“If you can look somebody in the eye and tell them the story, that’s the version that you end up translating into a half-hour script”
“Pace and energy.” – Paul Witt
“The drive is life” – Paul Rust