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.

 

The Inside Story on Zombieland's TV Roots, What the Future Might Hold, and Post-Apocalyptic Upsides

What fans of Zombieland may not realize is that the 2009 hit movie, written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, was originally imagined as a TV series.

“We wrote it in 2005 as a spec pilot and sold it to CBS and – this was pre-Walking Dead – and the idea was that zombies had been so successful on the big screen but they have never really been tapped on the small screen,” Paul said.  “The success of Zombieland in some ways paved the way for The Walking Dead to be on-air, and The Walking Dead is obviously a huge success. We’re so happy to be back on TV.”

Zombieland: The Series, is one of 14 Amazon original pilots now playing for free at Amazon Instant Video and LOVEFiLM. Viewer response will help determine which of these shows return with full seasons.

We asked with Paul and Rhett about zombies, their cast, and what the future might hold for their characters.

There are a lot of zombie stories out there, but you  but you guys have taken it in a direction that I think is more humorous than one might expect, post-apocalypse. 

Rhett:  Well I think what we wanted to do is to treat the post-apocalypse like an escapist fantasy.  There are a lot of post-apocalyptic stories like The Road and similar movies that treat the post apocalypse as a grim experience as it likely would be in real life, but we thought we wanted to turn it on its head a little bit and imagine the post-apocalyptic landscape as a fun one, and one where you could be free and do the kind of things that you wanted to do.  Maybe you were the last guy on Earth and maybe there was a cute girl who is also alive, and what would that mean?  So we wanted to look at the post-apocalyptic world as a playground full of toys and full of zombies to bash over the head and full of fun experiences and that was a jumping off point for us.

Paul:  It’s kind of like Los Angeles during the holiday season when everyone goes out of town, and traffic is a lot less and the air is cleaner and people are happier and we thought my God, that feels a little bit of what it would be like in the post-apocalypse, except you’re being chased by zombies.  So the wish fulfillment of that world is something that we really wanted to tap into that really sets us apart from all the other zombie projects, the idea that again you can drive Lamborghinis.  You can just go to the Lamborghini dealership and grab a yellow Lamborghini if you wanted to.  And you could get the hot girl because, you know, there aren’t a lot of choices out there.

What do you say to those who are nervous about seeing Zombieland as a series?

Paul:  Well I would say that they are in the best hands that they could be in.  The reason this was and is an original idea, it wasn’t based on a graphic novel it came out of our heads and it is now in our hands where it belongs and we have the utmost respect for the world and the franchise and the fans and we’ve captured the tone and feel of the movie.  We have cast wonderful actors who are playing characters – not replacements for other actors. 

Rhett: It bears mentioning that when we wrote Zombieland, we wrote the character of Tallahassee based upon an actor we knew, a friend of ours and an actor we had worked with named Kirk Ward, and he really inspired the character.  We wrote it for him intending for him to play it but when it became a movie, we needed a star and we went to Woody Harrelson, we found a phenomenal guy who left an indelible mark on that character and obviously brought it to life in a way that it will never be forgotten that will always set the bar of excellence.  That said, when it came time to turn it into a TV series again we desperately still wanted to work with Kirk Ward and to have him be our guy and it was a long circuitous casting process but we got our wish so people will be seeing in him our original vision for that character and I think that the other cast members are equally wonderful and are wonderful discoveries.  It’s true in theater that characters get passed on from one great actor to another and it’s almost like a legacy and we hope that it will be the case in this case.  There are also a lot of good examples of movies becoming Television shows, something like The Odd Couple – you know Jack Lemmon, Tony Randall, two wonderful actors playing the same part.  There’s Billy Bob Thornton and Kyle Chandler on Friday Night Lights.  I think there is certainly precedent for what we are doing and we hope to catch lightning in a bottle again. 

Rhett:  We really believe that we are holding the standard of the movie and it will be up to America and the world to decide. It’s not for us to decide, but we have confidence in it. 

Great zombie stories – like yours – have a unique way of helping people understand humanity. Is that kind of thing in your mind at all?

Rhett:  A little bit.  To some extent we don’t want to take ourselves too seriously.  I do think that zombies are a stand-in for all of our collective fears; you know each of us fears different things in life.  Zombies are a nice way within the world of fiction to embody those fears into something then bash it over the head with a baseball bat.  I think there’s something to that; it’s a kind of cathartic kind of movie or TV show.

If the series goes forward, how do you envision it unfolding over time?

Paul:  Inherent in the movie and in the pilot is this idea that they are on the road, it’s a traveling circus and we would like to embrace that.  As we are heading out of California and heading east, these adventures will take place in Vegas and Graceland and Mount Rushmore.  We want it to take advantage of the landscape and America and all the fun that awaits them on the road.  That would be what I say most.  They’re all looking for their own sense of home and peace and I think that Tallahassee is looking for love and hopefully will find it and Columbus will hopefully find it in Wichita.

Rhett:  And a show like Battlestar Galactica a real endgame, that being let’s get back to Earth, let’s get back home.  As they had that, and I think we also have the idea let’s ultimately try to find a place of safety, a home and a community for the future.  That won’t be reached right away because then there wouldn’t be a show, but I think in the long run we’ll try to take our guys to that mythical place of safety and renewal.

- Stephanie Reid-Simons

 

"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.

MODs of the Week: Mysteries for Valentine's Day with William Powell, Steve Martin, Harry-O and more

Mysteries for Valentine's Day? Well, the ways of the human heart have always been a bit of a puzzle, whether in regards to romance or malice, and both Warner Archives and Columbia Choice Collection have a slew of crime cases for you and your beloved (or intended) to deduce over a Whitman's sampler or two. The best of the lot is David Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner (1997), a swell Chinese box of a thriller with Campbell Scott (The Amazing Spider-Man) as a naive developer whose priceless but unpatented industrial process makes him the target for an array of nefarious upscale types, including his own boss (Ben Gazzara), a tart-tongued secretary (Mamet's wife, actress Rebecca Pidgeon) and a wealthy stranger (Steve Martin, playing well against type). Though Mamet's dialogue strikes an odd balance between a sort of meta-hardboiled grit and the distinctive language of his stage work, the picture's key appeal is the intricate curves and hard corners of the plot, which enfold and entrap Scott, placing both his invention and life at risk. The cast is also top-notch (though Pidgeon remains an acquired taste), with the great magician/author/actor Ricky Jay, Ed O'Neil and Felicity Huffman all offering quality support.

Walking Dead Showrunner Glen Mazzara on Midseason Finales, Pushing Limits and the Appeal of Daryl

Showrunner Glen Mazzara is merciful — OK, maybe not to the characters on The Walking Dead, but to fans. His belief is that midseason finales should be managed with care, not leaving too much hanging for too long. “Sometimes I worry about cliffhangers, that they can be frustrating to the audience,” he said in an exclusive interview with Amazon Studios.

Which isn’t to say that Mazzara won’t put beloved characters in peril — he’s done it plenty this season, the show’s third, and delivered monster ratings in the process (the midseason finale attracted 15.2 million viewers in December).

We talked with Mazzara shortly before news broke that this season, which resumes in February, will be his last as showrunner and executive producer for The Walking Dead. Be warned, spoilers abound in this interview. Don’t listen or read further until you’re caught up.

Some highlights, including Mazzara's take on finales, humanity in a zombified world, the freedom the setting provides, and how far he'll push characters:

On midseason finales vs. season finales:

We come together as writers and producers and the studio, network executives and we design with that midseason finale in mind. We really want to make sure that we’re paying off some of the arcs that we established, and really setting up the back half of the season. So last year, we had an arc to pay off about “Where’s Sophia?,” and that really could have played as a season finale. …

This year, I really wanted to concentrate on setting up the back part of the season. So what we did in these eight episodes was introduce a lot of new characters. We introduced Michonne, re-introduced Merle, the Governor, Milton, these two worlds. We needed eight episodes to bring everyone together in a plausible, believable way. Now that everything’s crashed together, everything’s all set up for the back half of the season. There was a lot of plotting required to get it done, and what was interesting about this midseason finale is that we do have this cliffhanger.

Sometimes I worry about cliffhangers, that they can be frustrating to the audience. I would not want to do a major cliffhanger like this at the end of the season because on cable sometimes you’re off for six months to a year, and I do feel that would be frustrating.

On what makes the zombie apocalypse such an effective tool for revealing humanity:

The world is so incredibly high-stake. Every decision you make is the decision you make is between life and death, and our show now is a show about making decisions. It’s not necessarily a show about discussing philosophy. All the pressure is on. There are zombies over there, there are zombies over here, there’s no food, there’s no water, there’s no ammo. We now have the Governor and his group out there, what are we going to do. I think the audience watches that and they feel the pressure, they buy into the reality of the show … and they in a sense play along at home by making decisions as well: What would they do? How would they get out of this? Who would they be willing to sacrifice?… In any drama, you reveal character through the choices they make, so I think people really believe in this world and believe in the characters.

On the appeal of Daryl:

Daryl’s just the everyman. Norman [Reedus] does a great job of playing that character just as cool as possible, just understated. Norman’s just a wonderful actor, and his biceps look great when he’s running around holding a crossbow. He’s also just a guy who doesn’t get rattled. He’s the guy you want by your side in this zombie apocalypse. He has a heart, he’s smart, he’s a survivalist. He’s the perfect person to have by your side. People just trust him and are rooting for him. …

He could lead this group. Now here comes his brother, who’s going to complicate his life and possibly undo everything he’s worked so hard for. It’s a very, very good challenge for him.

More from Mazzara at the Amazon Studios Hollywonk blog.

Writer/Director Callie Khouri on Creating "Nashville," and the Role Music Plays in the Show

Oscar-winner Callie Khouri (Thelma & Louise) this year made the jump from feature films to series, creating Nashville for ABC. Not surprisingly, music is at the heart of the show, but it’s about much more, operating at the crossroads of art, business, technology, and politics, in a world where many of the old rules no longer seem to apply. There are a lot of players in this game, but the two at the core are singers at opposite ends of their careers: Connie Britton as Rayna James, the established star working to remain relevant, and Hayden Panettiere as Juliette Barnes, the hot newcomer reaching for respect — and grabbing hold of Rayna’s guitarist and former lover, Deacon Claybourne (Charles Esten).

Khouri took some time out from production to talk about the story, the setting, and the biggest differences between working in feature films vs. series. “It’s kind of like riding a horse,” she says. “You get on, they shoot a dart into its ass and you’re just heading out into the great unknown and it’s running as fast as it can. You’re learning to ride, and the whole thing is ‘just don’t fall off.’”

Some highlights:

What made you want to tell this particular story about these particular people?

It kills a lot of birds for me. Starting with the obvious, it talks about a time in our business where all the models are changing, the business has just gone through this drastic shift, and I think everybody is struggling to find their place and figure it out. It feels like there’s a changing of the guard in a way, and the old business models, to quote myself, “are no longer relevant.” That was a line I wrote in the pilot. It’s just a challenging time for people in all kinds of businesses obviously, but certainly this one, where the way it’s been working for however many years has suddenly become extinct almost. People aren’t making a living the way they used to.

There’s a few cities where stories about business changes could be told ... why Nashville?

Well, one, Nashville is a place that I love and adore, so anytime I can find a reason to be here, I do it. But two, it’s a town that is so full of incredibly talented people, just amazing music everywhere you go — almost too much not to have a lot of pain and heartbreak attached to it. Not just the music, and the songs can be about that, but with so much talent here, and such a narrow conduit to get it out in the world, there’s a lot of people here who probably should have made it and didn’t and great, great songs that you’ll never hear. … It’s a town that really loves and respects its traditions and history, for good and bad, so it’s just a really fertile ground for me for storytelling. And I have family here, and I just have a deep attachment to the place.

How does the music affect the storytelling process?

The first thing is that I’m constantly looking for the song that I feel is the right song for the character, whether it’s something they’ve written … how does the song fit into the narrative of the story? Unlike a lot of the other shows [featuring musical performances], we get to show the inception of a song, and the birth of a song, and the trajectory of a song … because here we’re at ground zero, where the song is being written or the event happens in somebody’s life that gives them the idea to write the song that they go on to write. … To me, that’s just a great device for revealing character.

I’m now in a world that’s so different from what I’ve been doing most of my life, which is feature films, where you’re telling a story with a beginning, middle and end. This is an ongoing thing, I hope — I hope it’s ongoing for a long time. And it’s a new way of storytelling for me. It’s kind of like you’re writing a novel and you just have to let everybody read it as you go along. There’s a lot of risk involved in that. And because it’s not just a singular endeavor.  There are 11 writers, and we’re doing it at at breakneak speed. And it’s an incredibly demanding show.

Basically, if you were just doing a show that had five songs, and that was the show, nothing but five songs, nothing in between, it would still be kinda hard. And we’re doing both of those things. And it’s moving way more quickly than anything I’ve ever done. There’s very little time for reflection. … It’s a whole new way of thinking for me. And it’s really exciting, and really fun, and really embarrassing and really terrifying. Everything that making art is supposed to be, I guess.

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