Latest / How To Talk To Humans / Anne Flett-Giordano Interview: Inside Sitcom Writing & TV Comedy (Part 1)

Transcript

Anne Flett-Giordano Interview: Inside Sitcom Writing & TV Comedy (Part 1) · How To Talk To Humans

• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Hi, this is Larry Wilson.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Thanks again for joining me for another episode of How to Talk to Humans.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: This is a very special episode today because I have an extraordinarily esteemed guest.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: She's one of those behind the scenes people, a powerhouse of creativity.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: She has a new wing built on her home to house the voluminous number of Emmys she has won for her work in television sitcom writing.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: She's um indefatigable.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: She just writes and writes and writes.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: She's incredible.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: You've seen her work, you've enjoyed her work as far back as Kate and Allie, the hit television show.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: I think of that as a breakout experience for her.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: She may tell us that there were other things that she felt were more formidable.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: But uh she went from that to the incredible, long-running Fraser as a producer, and she'll tell us how that also fits into the concept of producer-writer.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: And then more recently, she did a long stint on the hit show Mom, where she brought her incredible gifts there.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: But we also hear about her amazing background in science fiction writing that even she doesn't know what the heck I'm talking about.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: But we'll we'll find out shortly.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Please welcome my very special guest, Anne Flet Giordano.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Hi, Larry.
• 3:03
  Larry Wilson: Hi, how are you?
• 3:04
  Larry Wilson: Well that sounded really silly.
• 3:06
  Larry Wilson: Hi, I'm fine.
• 3:08
  Anne Flet Giordano: No, it sounded good.
• 3:09
  Anne Flet Giordano: Of course, there should be laughter.
• 3:11
  Anne Flet Giordano: Laughter should be the order of the day when you're talking to someone who has spent their entire life writing stuff that makes people laugh.
• 3:22
  Anne Flet Giordano: For which I was very lucky because it was lots of fun.
• 3:26
  Larry Wilson: Now, I'm hoping that people who are listening to this are regular listeners to this podcast, because what you just heard there was a very interesting example of being self-effacing.
• 3:39
  Larry Wilson: That of course is a very important element in Wilson method training.
• 3:44
  Larry Wilson: This woman, who has five Emmys to her credit, just said she was very lucky.
• 3:51
  Larry Wilson: I would dispute that.
• 3:53
  Larry Wilson: I think there's some luck involved.
• 3:56
  Larry Wilson: In all of show business, luck plays a factor.
• 3:59
  Larry Wilson: But I can also tell you, I remember way, way back before she was famous, her incredible work ethic, writing, writing, writing.
• 4:12
  Larry Wilson: And there's a lot of writers I've met in my life who have problems who are blocked sometimes and they can't.
• 4:21
  Larry Wilson: This woman, Ann Fled Giordano, have you ever had any kind of writer's block?
• 4:27
  Anne Flet Giordano: Um, well, yes and no, I suppose, but when television you're just faced with if I don't write something, he'll be dead air for half an hour.
• 4:40
  Anne Flet Giordano: So some we always used to say that about uh a third of the episodes were great, and a third of the episodes were okay, and a third of the episodes were just on the air.
• 4:53
  Anne Flet Giordano: And um that that's true of most shows, I think.
• 4:57
  Larry Wilson: Well, that again is very modest of you.
• 4:59
  Larry Wilson: Those of us who are fans of these shows, Frasier is almost played continuously in my household, it's on all the time.
• 5:09
  Larry Wilson: And my son, from when he was very small, would be quoting stuff from Fraser all the time.
• 5:17
  Larry Wilson: And he I consider it like introducing him to the classics of literature.
• 5:24
  Larry Wilson: He sees what makes great sitcom writing, he sees when the characters' personalities are so clearly delineated that you can get a laugh off of them raising an eyebrow or uh just pausing before they answer because we the audience know them so well.
• 5:48
  Larry Wilson: Um, so it's very modest of you to say a third of them were good.
• 5:53
  Larry Wilson: We think they were all good, but I I understand what you're saying.
• 5:58
  Larry Wilson: Let me ask you something I bet no one's ever asked you before about this kind of work.
• 6:04
  Larry Wilson: One of the reasons I wanted you here on this podcast is because when we communicate, it's because we have some message or something we're trying to get across.
• 6:17
  Larry Wilson: Now, I know that you're a very pragmatic woman, you're a professional woman with an incredible work ethic, and so I'm sure you approach this like a job.
• 6:28
  Larry Wilson: This is my job to write these episodes of this sitcom.
• 6:33
  Larry Wilson: There's something very clever about the writing.
• 6:37
  Larry Wilson: For example, I love all your stuff, but on Frasier, the writing is extremely clever.
• 6:44
  Larry Wilson: And I wonder if you can speak to that idea of did you did you go into episodes thinking, oh, this is the unspoken subtext that we want to get across here?
• 7:00
  Larry Wilson: Or did you approach it like, nope, we want to start with a funny premise.
• 7:04
  Larry Wilson: This is just a funny premise.
• 7:06
  Larry Wilson: We don't even know what it's about yet.
• 7:08
  Larry Wilson: Tell me about that.
• 7:10
  Anne Flet Giordano: Most all the stories come from writers' lives.
• 7:13
  Anne Flet Giordano: And we would come in and just tell stories about things that happened to us and translate that into a show.
• 7:23
  Anne Flet Giordano: So almost everything you see is things that actually happen to someone in the writer's room, and then you build on from that.
• 7:32
  Anne Flet Giordano: And once the I and also I will also say about Fraser, I'm very good friends with with the creators, David Lee and Peter Casey and um David's angel is gone now.
• 7:45
  Anne Flet Giordano: But they were all terrific guys, and they allowed you to be smart and they allowed you to do what we called ten percenters, which meant we thought, well, ten percent of the audience will get this joke, and that was okay.
• 7:58
  Anne Flet Giordano: And then you also had, you know, somebody hit somebody in the head.
• 8:01
  Anne Flet Giordano: So you had something for everybody.
• 8:03
  Anne Flet Giordano: But I would say, especially on Fraser, uh, because of the nature of it, a family kind of dynamic, um, almost every episode was based on someone in the writer's room.
• 8:16
  Anne Flet Giordano: That was true of mom, not that we were all alcoholics, but you could be.
• 8:22
  Anne Flet Giordano: But we certainly we certainly did our best.
• 8:25
  Anne Flet Giordano: Um and I did.
• 8:29
  Anne Flet Giordano: Um but but what you're saying about, you know, once people love the characters, and I certainly didn't create Fraser, the Charles Brothers did, that was unsuited.
• 8:38
  Anne Flet Giordano: Um which Peter and David came from.
• 8:40
  Anne Flet Giordano: But um once people like the characters and if the actors are terrific, um David Hyde Pierce, one of my favorite people in the world, um at the Emmys, he won an Emmy and he said, I want to thank the writers because without them, and then he was just quiet.
• 9:00
  Anne Flet Giordano: And I thought that was the sweetest thing an actor ever did.
• 9:03
  Anne Flet Giordano: I uh and I I work with great actors, I mean just really nice people, Alice and Jenny and and Kelsey and everybody.
• 9:10
  Anne Flet Giordano: But I I would say the same back to him because those eyebrows, what gets you through is the third of the episodes that we don't think are really our best work, is good acting.
• 9:23
  Anne Flet Giordano: And David Hyatt Pierce is the one who can raise an eyebrow and that is is why you're laughing because he knows when to do it and he knows how to do it, and it it really they save your ass.
• 9:34
  Anne Flet Giordano: So that's why a third of those episodes you still enjoy, but we don't think they were our I enjoy all of them, my family enjoys all of them.
• 9:42
  Larry Wilson: Uh I know so many people who quote lines from the show because they think they're so funny.
• 9:48
  Larry Wilson: But I want to say, you know, you brought up a really interesting thing there because it clearly is collaborative.
• 9:53
  Larry Wilson: The actors have nothing to say unless somebody writes lines for them.
• 10:00
  Larry Wilson: And by the same token, the writers need really skilled actors to be able to bring these lines to life.
• 10:08
  Larry Wilson: So it's kind of synergistic.
• 10:11
  Larry Wilson: Like the the when you get that kind of combination, great writers, great actors, the writers are developing these characters so clearly.
• 10:20
  Larry Wilson: We know that uh that Niles character is a feat.
• 10:27
  Larry Wilson: You know, we know he's never done anything uh macho or manly.
• 10:33
  Larry Wilson: And so any suggestion of it, we're gonna start laughing already.
• 10:37
  Larry Wilson: Even if it's even if it's not a joke, just a setup is gonna start us laughing.
• 10:42
  Larry Wilson: In that same way, I would imagine.
• 10:45
  Larry Wilson: I mean, uh David Hyper is an incredible actor.
• 10:49
  Larry Wilson: Obviously, you've made that character so clear to him that he can really build on that and take that ball and run with it.
• 11:00
  Larry Wilson: And and you also said something I don't want to gloss over because I think it's so important uh vis-a-vis this podcast.
• 11:08
  Larry Wilson: And just said that all of the stories are coming out of real people's lives in the writer's room.
• 11:16
  Larry Wilson: Um this is so important because I think a lot of people think that there's some kind of weird, uh heavily intellectual, detached brain machine that just comes up with these things.
• 11:34
  Larry Wilson: But you're saying that these come from real people's lives.
• 11:38
  Speaker: On a show like Fraser, absolutely.
• 11:40
  Speaker: On a show like Futurama, no.
• 11:43
  Speaker: What there's no total brilliance.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: But there's no there's no uh one-eyed recyclops women in real life?
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: All right, be that way.
• 11:52
  Anne Flet Giordano: But certain things are just very inventive and they're that by nature, but um but on a show like Fraser, yes, they did all come from our lives.
• 12:01
  Anne Flet Giordano: On a show like mom, they must have come from our lives.
• 12:04
  Anne Flet Giordano: Um but uh in terms of communication, one of the best things that makes the show good is that the writers and the actors are friends and on the same page and like each other because on a Frasier we stopped when we did rehearsals, we stopped after every single scene and talked to each other and said, What did you like in this?
• 12:26
  Anne Flet Giordano: What did you not like in this?
• 12:27
  Anne Flet Giordano: And they learned to trust you and they learned that if we could see it didn't work, if it didn't work, we were gonna give them something different tomorrow.
• 12:36
  Anne Flet Giordano: And that kind of trust and that kind of uh communication is really important.
• 12:41
  Anne Flet Giordano: Um, there were times when we were tired.
• 12:44
  Anne Flet Giordano: I remember once when we were just it was about three in the morning and we were just all uh you know, the train was off the track.
• 12:51
  Anne Flet Giordano: So we we just threw in a blow from last week and we knew the actors would know that means the end of this show and the joke.
• 12:57
  Anne Flet Giordano: And we knew the actors would know that that meant something else was coming, but we were exhausted and they're cool with that.
• 13:05
  Anne Flet Giordano: And that kind of thing, and they would let us know what what they liked and what they didn't and what worked for them.
• 13:11
  Anne Flet Giordano: So the development of the characters is a it it's really, yeah, symbiotic.
• 13:17
  Anne Flet Giordano: It takes two.
• 13:17
  Anne Flet Giordano: It's not just you telling them who they are or them telling you who they want to be.
• 13:23
  Larry Wilson: Oh my god.
• 13:23
  Larry Wilson: Do you know who's a genius, Sam?
• 13:26
  Speaker: Uh Albert Einstein?
• 13:29
  Anne Flet Giordano: No, me.
• 13:30
  Anne Flet Giordano: I'm a genius.
• 13:31
  Anne Flet Giordano: Do you know why?
• 13:33
  Larry Wilson: Um, well, I always thought so.
• 13:38
  Anne Flet Giordano: Why why do you think so?
• 13:39
  Anne Flet Giordano: I think so because I was smart enough to ask you to be on this podcast.
• 13:43
  Anne Flet Giordano: That's what shows my genius.
• 13:46
  Anne Flet Giordano: Because you just said stuff that I would venture to say nobody's ever heard before in any interview anywhere.
• 13:55
  Anne Flet Giordano: Now, you may think, what?
• 13:57
  Anne Flet Giordano: What did I say?
• 13:59
  Anne Flet Giordano: But you said something so fundamentally important to the power of expert communication.
• 14:08
  Anne Flet Giordano: I didn't know this, Anne.
• 14:10
  Anne Flet Giordano: I didn't know that there were writers who would stop after every scene in rehearsal and talk with the actor.
• 14:17
  Anne Flet Giordano: I didn't know that.
• 14:18
  Anne Flet Giordano: I thought they'd hand in the pages, they'd go and do it, and then maybe after it was all done, some would say, Do anyone have any ideas?
• 14:25
  Anne Flet Giordano: But that level of communication is clearly responsible for such a superior product that you produce.
• 14:37
  Anne Flet Giordano: That was um actually, well, a couple of shows I worked on did work that way, but that was mostly Fraser.
• 14:43
  Anne Flet Giordano: On Mom, um, we would they would we would let them do the entire rehearsal and then we would talk.
• 14:51
  Anne Flet Giordano: So it it varies between shows.
• 14:53
  Anne Flet Giordano: Um but again we were really good friends with the actresses.
• 14:57
  Anne Flet Giordano: They were all terrific, they were really fun.
• 14:59
  Anne Flet Giordano: Um Jamie Presley's really good.
• 15:01
  Anne Flet Giordano: I mean, we just had an incredible staff uh on uh on a Ferris was terrific, and Allison is just incredible.
• 15:09
  Anne Flet Giordano: Um we had a different thing, so that but that was Chuck Flory's choice, and we would uh what just watch the entire thing and then go back.
• 15:19
  Anne Flet Giordano: But every night you do a rewrite.
• 15:21
  Anne Flet Giordano: I mean, there's you're there, your life is you have to have a really compassionate spouse because you do a rewrite every night.
• 15:30
  Larry Wilson: Um where do you quit where do you purchase these spouses?
• 15:34
  Anne Flet Giordano: Where do you help to have somebody else is in the industry because they understand and they're used to working too.
• 15:42
  Larry Wilson: Well, you're saying it it sounded like it was mandatory to have one, and so I thought if someone's listening who wants a career, they're gonna have to go out and get an understanding spouse, which is of course a good thing to have.
• 15:53
  Larry Wilson: Um everything you're saying, Ann, of course, only proves how smart I am for asking you to be on the show.
• 16:01
  Larry Wilson: Um what you just said that you take for granted, and I've I've talked about this before on this podcast, when someone's an expert, they frequently take for granted their expertise.
• 16:14
  Larry Wilson: They think, well, yeah, it's no, I do this all the time, it's no big deal.
• 16:18
  Larry Wilson: Everyone knows this, except we don't know.
• 16:20
  Larry Wilson: When you just said you do a rewrite every night, do you realize, Anflet Giordano, that the majority of people watching these shows think that you write a script, hand it in, and then you're done.
• 16:37
  Larry Wilson: They they just think, well, you're done.
• 16:39
  Larry Wilson: In in Wilson method, I'm always telling them, because we're talking about spoken as well as written communication, I'm always telling them that writing is rewriting.
• 16:51
  Larry Wilson: And that the more you rewrite, the better it gets.
• 16:55
  Larry Wilson: And to be able to see people perform your material is an incredible benefit, obviously.
• 17:02
  Larry Wilson: You see, oh that worked, that didn't work, oh I can see how to make this funnier, oh I'm not so sure about that.
• 17:08
  Larry Wilson: Or am I putting words in your mouth?
• 17:12
  Anne Flet Giordano: No, that is that is true.
• 17:15
  Anne Flet Giordano: Um a couple of things I will address.
• 17:18
  Anne Flet Giordano: Um the first is I'm really shy.
• 17:22
  Anne Flet Giordano: I think a lot of writers are, and a lot of writers actually wish they were performers.
• 17:26
  Anne Flet Giordano: So that's that's the two really sides of it.
• 17:30
  Anne Flet Giordano: Um even when I was in grade school, I I I remember in sixth or seventh grade or something, I started writing little plays for the class or something, but but other people would perform them because I was shy.
• 17:46
  Anne Flet Giordano: And uh that it's just a great way and it really does it when you see it done, it it really does tell you what works and what doesn't.
• 17:54
  Anne Flet Giordano: Usually if everybody in the writer's room laughs at a joke, it's gonna work.
• 17:58
  Anne Flet Giordano: Sometimes everybody laughs and on the floor it doesn't work and you're surprised.
• 18:02
  Anne Flet Giordano: But that is what tells you.
• 18:04
  Anne Flet Giordano: So I learned at a very age that young age that the way to get across to people, communicate with people, was not that I was going to be a great communicator, like I don't think I'm great on this podcast.
• 18:16
  Anne Flet Giordano: But um but that other people like, well, if you had David Hyde Pierce just doing what I told him, you think he was really good.
• 18:25
  Anne Flet Giordano: Um I would think David still I have.
• 18:29
  Larry Wilson: I would think that David Hyde Pierce was an amazing performer, almost makes me laugh before he said anything.
• 18:36
  Speaker: Yes.
• 18:36
  Larry Wilson: Uh because he's you know, but that's different.
• 18:40
  Larry Wilson: And again, I chalk it to your modesty.
• 18:42
  Larry Wilson: Um I think you're fantastic.
• 18:44
  Larry Wilson: Well, I know it doesn't seem to you, but I'm here to tell you you're wrong in this particular instance, because you're so clear in your communication here on this podcast.
• 18:57
  Larry Wilson: You're so clear in the thinking that you have.
• 19:02
  Larry Wilson: Your thinking is organized.
• 19:04
  Larry Wilson: Uh and again, I know that to you, you're thinking it should have more razzle dazzle.
• 19:10
  Larry Wilson: No, we don't want razzle dazzle here.
• 19:14
  Larry Wilson: We want real knowledge that we can use to communicate with humans better.
• 19:22
  Larry Wilson: And what you're telling us, you're telling us in the context of writing for a sitcom, but this is mind-blowing the stuff you're saying.
• 19:31
  Larry Wilson: The fact that you're pointing out all the things that apply in other facets of life apply just as much to what you're talking about here.
• 19:43
  Larry Wilson: Wait, wait, wait, wait.
• 19:45
  Larry Wilson: This is too unbelievable.
• 19:47
  Larry Wilson: I want to interrupt this interview.
• 19:49
  Larry Wilson: This is something I don't do, but this is so incredible and has so much valuable information that she's sharing so freely.
• 20:01
  Larry Wilson: I'm going to make this into two separate episodes.
• 20:06
  Larry Wilson: So I want to stop here, let you catch your breath, try to digest some of the incredible things she said so far.
• 20:14
  Larry Wilson: Join us next week on How to Talk to Humans, and we'll have the second half of this extraordinary interview with one of Hollywood's very top producer writers of sitcom and Sweat Joe's Donald.