Creativity: Inspiration & Business

Every year in the weeks leading up to the Emmy Awards, The Hollywood Reporter conducts a series of TV Roundtables, in which a couple of THR staff writers interview 6-8 people who work within the same category (i.e. comedy actresses, dramatic actors, etc.) to talk about the current state of television, often with a focus on both the business and creative aspects of the medium. As I'm sure you gleaned from my previous post, I'm something of a television fan, so I tend to watch many of these each year. After our weekend on creativity, I thought that watching a group conversation about the creative process in the field of television, and then sharing my thoughts on what I saw, might make for an interesting blog post.

Below is the hour-long 2014 Comedy Showrunners THR Roundtable. The conversation was moderated by Stacey Wilson and Lacey Rose, and featured the following creators and/or executive producers, all of whom play a major hand in developing or overseeing the creative content of their shows, and are all also eligible for a comedy Emmy nomination in 2014:

Armando Ianucci, Veep (HBO)

Mike Judge, Silicon Valley (HBO)

Jenji Kohan, Orange is the New Black (Netflix)

Jenni Konner, Girls (HBO)

Chuck Lorre, Mom (CBS)

Marc Maron, Maron (IFC)

Michael Schur, Parks and Recreation (NBC)

I was struck by many different notions about creativity is, and the creative process in general (particularly for television) while watching the Comedy Showrunners Roundtable. The biggest takeaway for me was how many of the showrunners were not only inspired by other shows that are currently airing on television, but how many of them are dramas, or exist in completely different tonal registers than their own. I kept track of how many shows were mentioned unsolicited that nobody at the table was involved in; how many were mentioned unsolicited but that somebody at the table had been involved in; and how many were brought up in response to the question of: "What shows make you laugh or make you jealous that you didn't create?" Here is what I found:

Shows Nobody Worked On (brought up unsolicited) 

Game of Thrones, Good Wife, House of Cards

Shows People Worked On (brought up unsolicited) 
Dharma and Greg, Saturday Night Live, Weeds, The Comeback, Beavis and Butthead

Shows People Admired (answering a direct question) 
High Maintenance, Justified, The Sopranos, Louie, Breaking Bad, Top of the Lake, The Americans

What I think is so interesting about this is how sometimes this inspiration for showrunners about the creative process helped them realize the parameters of their own work, or what they didn't think they would necessarily know how to do, or even be able to pull off. For instance, Jenni Konner of Girls mentioned The Good Wife and how she knew she couldn't (or didn't even know how to) hit those dramatic narrative beats and plot turns, but but knowing this helped invigorate her, and enabled her to better focus on what she is doing and trying to accomplish with Girls.

Another useful takeaway for me was about how the showrunners balanced the business aspect of the creative process. Although the last 15-20 years have seen an onslaught of critically beloved shows that have elevated the status of television as a creative and artistic medium, television is intrinsically a commercial medium. Shows are produced to make money for the companies that are paying to make it, and paying to get it out to viewers (which are not necessarily one in the same). Many of the showrunners were careful to say that they tried not to let business concerns seep into their creative processes, but that often that reality was unavoidable. The first topic of discussion at the roundtable was the issue of ratings, which of course is the traditional (although increasingly obsolete) metric by which the success of a television show is measured. Jenji Kohan of Orange is the New Black talked about how having that kind of information was useful when it came to negotiate, which is another issue that marries the creative and business aspects of putting a TV show on the air (or on the web) week to week (or all at once.)

One of the funnier examples of this hybrid issue of creativity/business that many of the showrunners related to (and had good anecdotes about) was the extent to which they incorporate real elements from their lives into their shows, including characters inspired by real-life people. Almost every showrunner had a story about their networks' legal departments cautioning them against naming a character after their real-life model, demonstrating the microlevel of creativity that goes into creating and developing television shows. Mike Judge, who initially rose to fame for creating the iconic '90s characters Beavis and Butthead on MTV, talked about how almost everyone he knows from his high school days have said that they think the characters of Beavis and Butthead are based on them, when in fact they are both based on one specific guy he went to high school with, and who has never said anything to him or anybody (at least as far as he knows) about being the source material.

I found so much of the roundtable incredibly interesting, and although they didn't talk quite as much about some of the ideas we discussed in our first class, I still found that by watching creative people interact with other creative people was not only entertaining, but got my juices flowing and was definitely a worthwhile activity.