Armchair Commentary

Amazon Pilots Inside Story: Creators Evan Endicott and Josh Stoddard on "Betas"

Friends with a dream of creating something amazing, something that the public can’t get enough of – this could describe the characters in Betas, a new comedy set in the world of Silicon Valley startups. It also could describe the guys who created the show, Evan Endicott and Josh Stoddard.

They met while working at Alexander Payne’s production company, and started writing together. Their first optioned work is Betas, one of 14 Amazon original pilots now playing for free at Amazon Instant Video and LOVEFiLM. Viewer response will help determine which of these children’s shows and comedies return with full seasons.

Amazon Studios Hollywonk blog contributor Sean Wicks asked Evan and Josh about their show, what they learned from working at Alexander Payne’s production company and how they tapped into the impact that social media has made on our culture as a whole:    

Where did you come up with the idea for Betas?

EVAN:  I worked with a producer named Michael London on the film Sideways and he called me out of the blue and asked if I would be interested in doing TV and this was right after Josh and I had just finished writing a pilot together.  We spoke with him about the idea for a ½ hour comedy about an Internet startup.  We both thought that was a fascinating place to spend some time mentally and we were shocked that nobody had done it yet.  Right away the idea of it being a social media startup was both obvious and important to us, especially to explore that aspect of our culture where so many young people are connected – more so than any time in history – yet how that creates its own isolation and set of problems.    It just seemed of the moment. 

You met while working at Alexander Payne’s production company. Did your background in the development world affect the way you approached writing the show?

EVAN:   Absolutely.  I’ve written a lot of notes and deconstructed a lot of scripts that it was extremely helpful.  We made fewer mistakes as a result of reading so much material and deconstructing it.

JOSH:  For me I have a tendency to be very precious with my writing and being partnered with Evan has been good in that regard as he’s able to get us to take two steps back and shuffle things around in new and interesting way than I am less willing to concede and try initially.

Tell us about the pilot.

JOSH:  It’s about 4 unlikely friends who are trying to launch a social media startup in Silicon Valley.    We watch them try to find new ways to improve and engineer other people’s social lives while they fail in their own lives and engage in relationships.

Our two leads are Trey and Nash, who are friends from Stanford.  Trey is the visionary of the group; he’s the one with the big ideas, the big picture, and the guy who could very well be the next [Mark] Zuckerberg.  Nash is the engineer of the group and not a social being at all.  He does not relate to people or emotional issues very well.  He is perfectly happy to have his headphones on and the world is an alien place to him. 

JOSH:  It is surprising how social media and that lens changes the way as to how we perceive people and the concept of friends and relationships in general. 

EVAN:  And identity, just how these people like to project themselves online because they have all these tools to project an image.  …  It’s a complex and fascinating issue.

JOSH:  That mentality that in a way these are the people that are engineering our social life and they are the least social and that irony was also very appealing. 

Tell me about the genesis of the title, Betas?

JOSH:  They are starting out in “beta” mode and trying to work out the kinks but then we have these young people in the show that are effectively in beta, they are still trying to figure out who they are.  Also it’s a male-driven show and these guys aren’t the alphas – they’re the betas.

This is your first option, and your first production.  Did you make any adjustments to the script once you had actors on set and saw them bringing your characters to life?

EVAN:  Once it was cast we started doing rewrites and started writing things specifically for actors and that’s just a different headspace to be as a writer just to know who is going to embody this and what their strengths are and what they might add to a line.  It’s kind of ruined writing for myself because it’s so much more interesting to write for other people.  I think all my characters sound the same in my head and it was a lot of fun to see other people bring them to life.

JOSH:  We got a fantastic cast from top to bottom.

EVAN:  I hope people like the show.  We’re proud of how it turned out and hope people want to see more of it.

Learn more about Amazon's pilots at the Amazon Studios blog, Hollywonk.

Amazon Pilots Inside Story: David Javerbaum ("The Daily Show") on "Browsers," Bebe Neuwirth, Music and More

When the characters in Browsers feel something, they don’t just say it. You don’t just see it. They sing it. They even dance it. And they do it with such wit – almost like an 11-time Emmy award-winning writer for The Daily Show is putting words in their mouth.

And one is: David Javerbaum. He’s actually got a dozen Emmys, having picked up one for the song “Broadway: It’s Not Just For Gays Anymore,” which so memorably opened the 65^th Tony Awards. And he’s also an author (The Last Testament: A Memoir By God; What to Expect When You’re Expected: A Fetus’ Guide to the First Three Trimesters).

Browsers, one of 14 Amazon original pilots now playing for free at Amazon Instant Video and LOVEFiLM,  is about four interns at Gush, a content-aggregating website (a la The Huffington Post or The Daily Beast) founded and run by the charismatic but mysterious Julianna Mancuso-Bruni (Bebe Neuwirth). “The show pokes fun at modern workplaces, the media, and more specifically Gush — starting with its penchant for deriving most of its content by cutting and pasting material from other websites,” Javerbaum said.

We asked Javerbaum about the setting of Browsers, the terrific cast, and the challenges of mixing comedy and music.

Why this world, why these characters?

I’ve long considered The Huffington Post the quintessential cultural artifact of our time in terms of what it covers, how it covers it, and why it remains popular. It literally provides a window into the state of the world, and so I thought setting a show there — and making the entirety of its universe fair game for our show — would provide an enormous amount of material.

As for the characters, as soon as I began formulating ideas for musical television shows, I knew I wanted the leads to be young people in their 20s, because that’s the age where you have the most energy, passion, uncertainty, and all that other good interesting quirky singable stuff. 

How does having music in the show adds to the experience/story?

The songs serve a different purpose here than they do in shows like Smash and Glee, not only because they are original, but because they are not “actually” happening. Rather, the songs are internal, taking place inside the character’s heads, meaning they are bound only by the laws of imagination and not by reality. 

Tell me about your awesome cast, and what they brought to the show.

Bebe Neuwirth (Julianna): The consummate professional. Hilarious on take one, still hilarious on take five.

Brigitte Davidovici (Kate): A beautiful person inside and out. Instantly winning from the moment you see her. Also an excellent baby-sitter.

Dustin Ingram (Josh): Gets more comedy out of one word than most people get out of a book. (Even the Bible, which is pretty funny.)

Constance Wu (Prudence): Beautiful. Intense scene presence. Funny and smart. Extremely fun to be around.

Marque Richardson (Gabe): Brings an inherent likability to a serious, sometimes humorless character. And man, can he tap dance. (For a later episode…)

Chris Wood (Justin): The interns’ supervisor. Half-man, half-douche, all-awesome.

Writing songs is hard enough – how much does it increase the degree of difficulty to also make them funny?

Actually, writing funny songs — at least songs I think are funny — is not that difficult once you come up with a single solid comedic premise for each one. The songs are for the most part much shorter than songs in either pop music or musical theater — two minutes tops, with the one-time exception of the opening song in the pilot episode — and, like a Monty Python sketch, we’re free to stop them at any time as soon as they no longer feel funny. But the good thing about writing songs in this format is that the burden of comedy is shared by not only the song and the performer, but by the visuals and the directing, and that is where a director of Don Scardino’s skill comes in and makes a song that was good on paper look amazing on screen.

How has the Amazon experience been so far?

I would not want Browsers to be anywhere else on TV — not network, basic cable or premium cable. The amount of freedom and trust I’ve been given, the commitment of money and resources, the directness of the communication with the powers-that-be and the quality of their notes, the possibilities entailed in a show about a website being aired on one — I couldn’t ask for anything more.

Check out the Amazon Studios Hollywonk blog for a song-by-song look at the Browsers soundtrack, available for free at Amazon MP3.

Kids' Pilots at Amazon: "We Want to Create Characters that Are Worthy to Have a Playdate With"

 

See how the kids' shows produced by Amazon (available at www.amazonoriginals.com) have been created with a commitment to educating children as well as entertaining them. And be sure to share your thoughts — viewer response will help determine which pilots return with additional episodes.

 

"Those Who Can't" Creators and Stars on TV, Comedy, and Making a Pilot for Amazon

Adam Cayton-Holland, Andrew Orvedahl, and Ben Roy, the co-writers and stars behind Amazon’s new original pilot, Those Who Can’t, recently sat down with one another in Adam’s living room in Denver, Colorado to talk about their show, which is now available for free on Amazon Instant Video. It went a little something like this:

Adam: So I’ll start with the first question: Who are you guys and what are you doing in my house?

Andrew: Adam, it’s us. Your early-onset dementia is getting the better of you again.

Ben: Alright, are you guys excited about the premiere of Those Who Can’t?

ADAM SCREAMS UNINTELLIGIBLY.

Andrew: I’m very excited. … I don’t know what the average daily visitor count to Amazon’s website is but I’d imagine it’s quite a few. To think of that many people being able to watch our show for free is kind of intimidating.

Andrew: What other sitcoms inspired you guys in writing this?

Adam: I was watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia a fair amount during this. I was watching The League a little bit too. I was also watching The Larry Sanders Show a lot. That’s a great show.

Ben: I watch a lot of older sitcoms. Now that my son is old enough I’ve been re-watching some of my old favorites with him — The Wonder Years, Freaks and Geeks, a few others…

Ben: We definitely were influenced by Strangers With Candy. We all mentioned that one when we started brainstorming the show.

Andrew: Probably one of my favorite shows ever. We all like high school shows and high school settings so it was really fun to make one of our own.

Adam: Andrew, what was your favorite part of filming?

Andrew: Anything other than getting hit in the face with a kickball over and over again. Not that for sure.

Ben: That was my favorite part.

Andrew: The most fun part was watching other people’s scenes, because then you could just sit back and it was kind of fun to watch. I don’t know, pretty much every scene I was in with Rory was pretty fun and really hard not to laugh. I broke like forty times.

Adam: Rory Scovel is hilarious in this episode. He plays the principal of Buchanan High School, where the show is set and where we’re all teachers.

An Inside Look at The Onion's "News Empire"

Truth. Ethics. Teamwork. It’s obvious which of these things drives the Onion News Network team — none of them. (Unless by "truth" you mean "truly amazing ratings.")

Will Graham and Dan Mirk tell the story of these fine journalists in Onion News Empire, one of 14 Amazon original pilots now playing for free at Amazon Instant Video. Viewer response will help determine which of these shows return with full seasons.

We asked Will and Dan about their show, their terrific cast (including Jeffrey Tambor, Cheyenne Jackson, and Chris Masterson), and what the future might hold for their characters.

How do you describe your show?

"Onion News Empire" is about ambitious reporters and anchors working for the world's most terrifying cable news channel. It's a comedy that thinks it's a very self-important drama — so it looks and feels like a combination of an Aaron Sorkin show and a Shonda Rimes show, but it's wall to wall ridiculous jokes. 

Why this world, why these characters?

We started The Onion News Network web video series in 2007 and almost from the beginning we'd been talking about how fun it would be to do a narrative show set behind the scenes at the network. As for the characters, we basically wanted to see the network from its lowliest employees (like our new reporter Sam West who is fresh from a two-bit local news station) to the very top of the corporation (like our evil CEO Helena who is personal friends with dictators and keeps a flesh-eating falcon in her office).

Tell me about your awesome cast, and what they brought to the show.

The cast is extremely talented and physically attractive. Jeffery Tambor takes every line and makes it so much funnier, more compelling, and weirder than you'd ever expect. Cheyenne Jackson looks and acts like he's from a superior species that will gradually replace humans because they're just better than we are  — he's so handsome, so kind, and so funny. Chris Masterson was a real prince  — he came onto the pilot about 48 hours before we shot and knocked it out of the park. He took a role that could have been a little boring and made it really funny and compelling. Aja Naomi King is just such a committed and talented actress  — a show like this get so ridiculous, that it needs someone incredible like Aja who can make even a silly joke about riding roller coasters by yourself somehow simultaneously hilarious and very sad. Bill Sadler is like a God to both of us, because we loved him in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. And Laila Robins — there's not much to say except that she's perfect in every way. She brought a scariness to the comedy that elevated the whole show.

What is the appeal of fake news?

We wouldn't know anything about that. The Onion News Network is real news. 

Writing hilarious headline jokes is hard enough – how much does it increase the degree of difficulty to create it as a part of a show?

Writing the headline jokes is always hard  — for every single headline that gets into the show, we have written pages and pages of others that all get thrown away, which is how The Onion has worked from the beginning. So that process is staying the same, but now we are also adding in the challenge of working those headlines into what we hope is a compelling narrative with characters people want to watch. So basically it is one hard thing plus another hard thing, which equals a harder thing. But at the end of the day you are still writing jokes which is a very fun job. We have nothing to complain about.

What inspires you?

The real news and regular dumb life are always our biggest inspirations. 

What does the future hold for your characters?

A lot of intrigue, back-stabbing, passion, and tragedy. The show is really an intensely serious drama that just happens to be filled with dumb jokes, so expect a lot of dramatic twists. Characters might get killed off, allegiances will change, a guy might go to space.

Amazon Studios Greenlights Zombieland Pilot for Prime Instant Video

Grab your weapons: It’s time for another trip to Zombieland. Amazon Studios has added a series based on the hit movie to its slate of pilots in production. The show joins six other comedies (and six children’s shows) in Amazon’s pilot lineup, and will premiere this spring on Amazon Instant Video and LOVEFiLM.

“Zombieland is a fan favorite and we can’t wait to see where this story line goes in a serialized format,” said Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios. “We’ve been announcing a lot of exciting exclusive content for Prime Instant Video, like Downton Abbey, Under the Dome, and Justified and we think adding original shows to that lineup is going to make Prime even more enticing for customers.”  

Zombieland finds four survivors outwitting zombies and searching for a place to call home. The Zombieland pilot comes from the feature film’s original creative team, writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (G.I. Joe: Retaliation, The Joe Schmo Show), and producer Gavin Polone (Gilmore Girls, Curb Your Enthusiasm). Eli Craig (Tucker and Dale vs. Evil) is directing the series.

“Zombieland will strive to break the rules—action, adventure, thrills, chills and laughs and all packed into a half hour format, said creator Paul Wernick. “This is not your average show but Amazon is not your average network.”

The part of Tallahassee will be played by Kirk Ward (The Island), Maiara Walsh (Desperate Housewives, Switched at Birth,) is cast as Wichita, Tyler Ross (Milkshake) will play Columbus, and Izabela Vidovic has the role of Little Rock.

Once completed, all 13 of Amazon’s pilots will be posted on Amazon Instant Video for Amazon customers to watch for free. Viewer feedback will help determine which series Amazon Studios should produce. Completed seasons will be exclusively available to Prime members through Prime Instant Video and LOVEFiLM in the UK for free.

Should These "Test Movies" Become Real Movies? Amazon Studios Wants to Know What You Think

Dad finds a costumed crimefighter’s secret HQ and decides to don the mask in For Sale By Superhero.

A mission goes awry, and mercenaries must fight for their lives in Burma Rising.

These aren't movies yet — they're "test movies," visual rough drafts of a script created by Amazon Studios to make it even easier for film fans to offer their opinions. Would you like to see these stories produced as full-budget feature films?

The test movies are now available to watch for free at Amazon Instant Video and at the Amazon Studios site.

For Sale By Superhero, directed by Brett Jubinville of Tinman Creative Studios, is a colorful comedy the whole family will enjoy. Burma Rising, directed by Sung-Jin Ahn at Titmouse Animation Studio, is an intense thriller intended for adult audiences.

Learn more about Amazon Studios, and test movies, here.

Amazon Studios Adds a Horror Novel to Its Movie Development Slate

Amazon Studios is pleased to announce that it has optioned Seed, a gothic horror novel by acclaimed author Ania Ahlborn. This is a first for Amazon Studios, which up to this point has optioned only movie scripts and episodic series projects.

Seed is a top-selling title of 47North, the science fiction, fantasy, and horror imprint of Amazon Publishing. It’s the story of a man who miraculously survives a violent car crash only to face a profound evil from his past — a dark force hungry for his angelic youngest daughter.

“Our primary objective at Amazon Studios is to develop great, commercial projects that our customers love,” said Roy Price, Director, Amazon Studios. “Ania Ahlborn’s Seed has been a top seller for Amazon Publishing’s 47North so we already have a sense of the mainstream attraction of the story and are excited to keep the project in-house for movie development.”

The novel was recently the subject of Amazon Studios’ first book trailer contest. Check out the winner  – “Grinning Demons” – selected by Ahlborn herself.

“The enthusiasm of the folks at Amazon Studios is infectious, and I can’t wait to see where that inspiration will lead us,” Ahlborn said. “Having Seed made into a movie is nothing short of a dream come true.”

Seed was released in mid-2011 as a self-published title and reached the No. 1 spot on Amazon bestselling horror list. The book was re-released in 2012 after Ahlborn restructured certain plot points and added more than 6,000 words to the manuscript.

More about the project:
Seed
By Ania Ahlborn
Logline: When Jack, his wife Aimee, and their children survive a violent car crash, it seems like a miracle. But Jack knows there’s a profound evil from his past that won’t let them die…at least not quickly. It’s back, and it’s hungry for Jack’s angelic youngest daughter.
Genre: Horror
Why we optioned it: It’s impossible not to be drawn into Ania’s story of a man struggling to save his daughter from the evil that he himself brought into her life. The characters are rich, the visuals arresting and it explores the fear we all have as parents – that we might pass the worst of us on to our children. This is the kind of slow burn, insidious horror story that Stephen King was known for in his heyday.

The Amazon Studios open-development process remains focused on movie and series scripts. However, the Amazon Studios development team will from time to time take a look at Amazon Publishing and Kindle Direct Publishing books.

Learn more about Amazon Studios.

Clive Barker Exclusive: “Why Do You Choose Any Story to Tell? Because It Excites You”

Clive Barker — writer, artist, and master of the horror genre — speaks exclusively with Amazon Studios about the true nature of fear, finding the right arena for his stories and his Neverland dreams.

What separates great horror from the things that go spatter in the night?

Clive Barker: Metaphysical despair. That the world is meaningless and we’re just bouncing around on it and when we’re finished we die and that’s the end of it. That’s scary. That’s existential. When Sartre put the idea of existentialism in front of us at the beginning of the 20^th century, the idea of human hope was possibly at its lowest ebb. The bombs were going off. Europe was trashed. Economies were in ruins. And worst of all, we’d learned new ways of killing each other. Existentialism arose from the ashes of Auschwitz and Hiroshima and we had to address that very seriously.

There are horrific moments in movies (and not necessarily horror movies either) when something is evoked that has an awe-inspiring emptiness. When we are imbued with the sense that the cosmos is huge … and empty.

Pascal says, “We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.

What that phrase evokes is the sense of a limitless empty meaningless space we as human beings have no control over and a total inability to impress meaning upon.

We think we have the power to impress ourselves upon the world in some fashion — through having a family, through feeling love, through our associations with political parties or to a church — and when we feel those connections we feel momentarily safe. And that’s horror; it is only momentary. It’s about reducing our sense of importance. Most horror says, “You think you’re fine and fancy, don’t you. Well you’re not. You’re meat.”  That I can be so easily erased.  In my estimation, all of that is as far from a simple ‘boo’ as it gets.

You tell stories in so many different arenas (books, movies, comics, video games) … how do you decide which is the right one for a particular idea?

Barker: I don’t. They choose it for me. I’ll start something with the intention of being a novel for example, and through one circumstance or another, it will end up a comic book. Or a movie. I’ve found that the story will end up being the format it wants most to. I just try not to get in the way of that.

If you could create a mashup with one of your worlds with one of someone else’s, which would you choose?

Barker: Neverland and my very real, very personal world. As a child it was always Neverland that caught my imagination. I didn’t read Narnia till quite a lot later by which time some of its charm had waned. I was rather too old for it.  I was a very shy kid. A very solitary kid. I couldn’t play games in the play yard. I wasn’t the kind of guy that played war. You have to remember this was twelve years after the second world war. It’s all everyone still talked about. And the cleanup is going on all around us. And we still had ration cards. It’s bizarre to think this, but that’s what was going on. So there was me feeling like a solitary little kid and when the wind came along, I was just carried away. I’ve always loved the sound of the wind. The sound of the wind to me is about the far away.  And there was just something about Neverland that I adored. As a child I used to see myself as Peter Pan and still do to some extent, I suppose.

What has been the hardest story for you to tell?

Barker: My life story. It’s an ongoing story, and I don’t know what happens at the end yet.

Read more from Barker, and learn more about Barker's work with Amazon Studios.

One Opinion on the Emmys

The 2012 Emmy Nominations have been announced. Time for couch dwelling, idiot box watchers everywhere to argue far too passionately over who should  and shouldn't be recognized. So, myself being one of those have decided to share my qualified opinions on the matter as well. Qualified you ask? Yes, I'm qualified. I watch TV.

First observation is that like certain political offices, Emmy nominations need term limits. I mean, merit aside, don't you get tired of seeing the same people nominated over and over again? I love Alec Baldwin, I really do. His performance as a rage filled, out of control, abusive father on "The Call to His Daughter" will never be forgotten. OK, that was low, really Alec is best when he's flexing his comedic muscle in movies like Outside Providence. But does he need to be nominated every year. His ego is healthy. This goes for everyone's sweetheart Tina Fey too. Jon Cryer is also very likeable but six nominations for Two and a Half Men? Really, it has a laugh track. Stop it. Charlie Sheen is smart enough to know this show doesn't work without him.

Then there are the shows that were cancelled but the actresses received nominations. Congratulations! Ashley Judd and Kathy Bates, your performance was so strong we decided no one should watch it anymore. It's a clear case of big screen envy. You used to be in movies so clearly your acting is superior to these small screen hacks. Don't get it.

Modern Family, it's a funny show the whole family can watch. Yaaay!! But nominating four men for Best Supporting Actor and two women for Best Supporting Actress is a joke. Maybe there's just a serious lack of good traditional comedy on TV right now. The mainstream just isn't ready for shows that are actually funny like Wilfred. Or maybe recognize that there are four actors on Parks & Recreation, Nick Offerman, Rob Lowe, Aziz Ansari and Chris Pratt, that are deserving.

 

 

Enough of the negativity you say! Alrighty then, let's mention some folks that should be recognized. I realize not everyone loves it but when will Sons of Anarchy get the recognition it deserves. It's Shakespeare on Harleys with guns and sex. It's America. There are a number of brilliant performances in this show that aren't recognized including Charlie Hunnam.

 

 

I know Louie C.K. received a nod for individual honors but it's a shame to not have the show recognized once again in Outstanding Comedy Series. This will all be rectified when I begin constructing life size Louie C.K. statues across the country with gold plaques reading, "The Funniest Man on the Planet". This is a more prestigious title than Emmy winner.

 

 

I would like to recognize the Emmys for getting one unexpected nod right. Bill frickin' Hader! I'm just glad others are noticing. I've come to expect any time this guy comes into frame that my sides will hurt. Just his presence and expressive, built for comedy face, is enough to be entertaining. Cheers Bill and thank you.

 

 

 

And for the softer side. I love NBC's Parenthood. I do, it gets me every single time. I can make it through an episode for 53 minutes without tearin up and then BOOM!, they hit you with the heaviest moment at the end. It's acted superbly, everyone on the cast; kids included do a fantastic job. With vets like Craig T Nelson (Remember Coach?, loved that show too), Bonnie Bedelia, Peter Krause, Lauren Graham, hell even Dax Shepard is great, the sometimes heavy drama is made believable. Congrats to Jason Ritter for his nomination but I think some others are being looked over as well as the show as a whole. How Erika Christensen didn't get recognized for her emotional roller coaster this season is a shame.

 

 

And a few more things you should be watching Justified, Workaholics, The River (Oh, it got cancelled?), Falling Skies and anything with Nicolas Cage. I know he isn't on TV but we can dream can't we. A few more straight to DVD projects and he'll be there soon, don't worry. Weekly Cage.......

 

--Adam