“Take your favorite [television] show from the 80s—I promise you it sucks. So much of the writing has fled movies because it doesn’t take any wit, or intelligence, to write ‘more shit blows up…only bigger.’ They don’t want Paddy Chayefsky.”
Producer/Writer/Director Frank Darabont
Zürich Film Festival 2012
Writing for feature films vs. television is the Super Bowl of dramatic writing. Sure writing plays has been around for centuries, webisodes the new kid on the block, and thousands of short films are made every year, but the two big dogs are still feature films and television. (Though one could easily make a case for storytelling-centered video games as well. Maybe it’s all just a big cage match.)
In the eight years of writing this blog one of the biggest shifts in the entertainment business is the explosion of quality writing in television. One of the key factors for this is the wake following the success of The Sopranos which ran from 1999 to 2007.
In 2013 Tv Guide ranked that David Chase created program as the best series of all time. The Wire (2002-2008) came in sixth, Breaking Bad (2008-2013) ranked ninth, and Mad Men (2007-2015) at 21. The thing that jumps out with those shows is they aired on cable TV (HBO & AMC), not network TV (ABC, NBC, CBS, etc).
“[Network TV is] in the business of selling products basically, and telling stories that don’t make the audience think or feel disconcerted or challenged in any way. The networks are doing just fine, assuming that that’s the business model. They’re not trying to rock the boat; they’re trying to make everybody feel like everything is great. They caught the murderer, everything is under control, buy this soap, everything’s happy. You look at the numbers and see 20 million people watching some of these procedurals.”
Terence Winter
Boardwalk Empire creator
I grew up in not only the pre-internet era, but the pre-cable TV days. (MTV debuted the year after I graduated from high school, and I bought my first VCR player the year after I graduated from film school.) So my early sensibilities were shaped by what is now considered classic TV: All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, TAXI, Sanford and Son, Barney Miller, The Odd Couple and reruns of The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Leave it to Beaver, I Love Lucy, Gilligan’s Island, The Andy Griffith Show, The Fugitive.
By in large TV was silly fun. And at the same time my sensibilities were being shaped by some serious films during my high school and college years; Apocalypse Now, The Verdict, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Deer Hunter, Midnight Express, Kramer vs. Kramer, Tender Mercies.
Yes, I learned that movies could also be silly (Animal House, Slap Stick, Airplane!, Smokey and the Bandit, The Jerk, Blazing Saddles), and TV could be serious (Roots, Brian’s Song, 60 Minutes). But if you remove the mini-series, the movies of the week, and news, it’s fair to say that TV in the 70s (and 80s) was more Three’s Company than 3 Days of the Condor.
And my tastes where eclectic enough back then to enjoy them both. To paraphrase Jimmy Buffett, there are times when I can be very serious and times when I can be very silly. But from film school on (studying On the Waterfront, A Place in the Sun, Sunset Blvd., Citizen Kane) my general tastes in the arts were more serious. Mix in a few years of studying acting and playwriting (Death of A Salesman, A Long Days Journey Into Night, Enemy of the People, The Glass Menagerie) in my twenties and seriousness had a serious upper hand.
Embracing the work of Ibsen, Chekhov, Arthur Miller, Clifford Odets, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams and Mamet tends to favor more seriousness. And much of the new explosion in quality Tv programing flows from great dramatic work. (Mad Men has a foundation in of Death of a Salesman, Empire has been called a hip hop version of King Lear, and Sons of Anarchy an extension of Hamlet.)
So it’s no surprise that much of TV writing that has attributed to what’s being called the modern golden age (or second/third golden era) of TV is more serious that silly. At least true of American Crime Story, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Better Call Saul, Hannibal, House of Cards, Fargo and the newer shows like Public Morals and Billions.
So the the seriousness business is good in television. (And film as well as all eight of the best picture Oscar nominations are on the serious side.) And at the same time, personally, I’ve been tapping into my silly side. The side that used to laugh as a kid at John Travolta in Welcome Back Kotter and Johnny Fever in WKRP in Cincinnati.
Starting last year after some way too serious events in my life, I started binge-watching Modern Family. (Albeit also going through the entire Breaking Bad series as well.) Mixing silly and serious once again. Then I heard the Scriptnotes podcast episode 218 in October of 2015 where John August and Craig Mazin spent some time talking about the differences of writing for film and television that several ideas popped into mind that I realized were more TV ideas than film idea.
I read some books and blogs on TV writing (that I’ll talk about tomorrow) and then spent a few weeks at the end of the year writing a draft of my first tv pilot. And get this—it’s a sitcom. Kind of caught me by surprise. Some sort of Yin and Yang thing—dark and bright—going on.
I soon found myself going back and watching (and studying) old episodes of Seinfeld, 30 Rock, Everyone Loves Raymond, and Taxi. My silly side wanted to come out and play—and write.
Tomorrow I’ll look at 10 differences of writing for feature films and television.