BACK IN THE ROOM

I'm back with my writers on Monday to begin breaking season four of Sons of Anarchy.  Crazy, right?  Feels like yesterday that I started this blog about the process of running a show.  Wow.  Once again, I'm reminded that I have the coolest job in the world and that even though I blow hard, I'm a lucky and grateful motherfucker. 

I have a pretty good sense of where we will begin season four and a half-complete sense of where we will finish.  Basically, I know the mile markers, I just don't know how or when we will get there.  That's the meat that I hang with my very talented writers.  Who are my writers, you ask?  They are, in order of sexual favors, Dave "Squeaky" Erickson, Chris "The Cleaner" Collins, Regina "Tornado" Corrado, Liz "the scarier twin" Sagal, Marco "Polo" Ramirez, and Brady "I'm not your fucking" Dahl.  Like their showrunner, they are the most dangerous scribes in Hollywood.  Most of them I've pulled from prisons and asylums, except the ones repped by CAA, those I found masturbating in public restrooms.

Where was I... This season, I'm trying to approach the room with a looser grip on story.  Season three, the story drove the characters more than the characters drove the story.  That was my intention.  It's still up for debate as to whether it was better or worse than previous seasons, but I knew coming into season three most of the details of the Ireland narrative.  This season, although there is a big story that will drive a lot of the episodes, I'm hoping that character will move the episodes forward as much as story.  By character, I mean the emotional lives of Jax, Clay and the others, and their relationships to one another.  So the season will be about the shit they feel, as much as the shit they do.     

I always knew our guys would be heading to jail at the end of season three or four.  Most of the bikers I've met in the outlaw life have done prison time.  I always thought it would be a cool, organic device to have a long passage of time.  One that allowed us to reboot the narrative and prevent the mythology from folding into itself too soon.  I felt one of the story traps we faced on The Shield was that Vic's machinations began to turn inward on him after season three.  So we were always faced with the dilemma of keeping his karmic history ever present and yet not so close that it inhibited him from being proactive.  I mean, when you begin a series by killing a cop, there's already a steep, downward trajectory.  Of course, Shawn navigated the show brilliantly so the story never collapsed, but it was a big writer challenge in the later seasons.  We had nearly as many charts and graphs as Lost.  Okay, that's an exaggeration, but you get the point... a lot of dirty details and dead bodies.

So this season on SOA, I am not encumbered by any narrative loose ends (like a baby in a boat).  Yes, there are historical, emotional and familial connective tissue, but story-wise, I get a reboot.  It's a blessing and a curse really.  It's much easier, creatively, coming into a season with a narrative that's already on the ground running.  You plug in and pick up where you left off.  Rebooting means that you have to really do the homework on each character's life over the passage of time we've missed.  What happened, how have they changed and how do you communicate those changes to the audience without belaboring a premier with buckets of exposition?  But I'm really looking forward to that game.  Anything can happen in fourteen months.  Bobby grows an afro, Tig decides celibacy is the answer, Happy smokes so much weed he thinks he's both Simon and Garfunkel, Juice gets booty implants and a weave, Gemma becomes a Scientologist and decides she's gotta "clear" Tara... it's fucking endless.  

Stay tuned...

WRITERS WRITE

I often get asked, via social networks, if I have any advice for aspiring writers.  

This is what I know:

My path to writing was incredibly circuitous, so I wouldn't recommend my career approach.  It took me a long time to find my voice and realize that my need for expression could be expedited through a keyboard.  I had a dozen careers before I landed on The Shield and as a result I was a generation older than most of my peers.  I think those "wasted years" (and by wasted, I mean, I was literally fucking wasted) fueled my need for success.  I've always felt like I've had to "catch up" to everyone else.  Truth is, I still feel that way.  I'm not one of those writers who can feel good about the success of others.  When I read about a writer getting a gig or an award that I covet, I burn with envy.  That burn fuels my desire to win, to produce, to take action.  And I do.  Which brings me to my first and most important piece of advice -- writers write.  

Every loser douchebag in this town has a screenplay in their back seat.  Or an "amazing idea" for a movie or TV show they want to share.  If you want to be a writer, don't worry about selling your shit, that will happen.  If you are a writer, you write.  Every fucking day.  You generate a body of work like any artist.  Screenplays, TV specs, pilots, etc.  If you are good, if you have a voice, you'll work.  Trust me, the industry needs original voices.  A substantial percentage of working writers in this town are hacks who keep failing upwards.  They bounce from show to show after one season and for some reason showrunners keep hiring them.  Why?  I'm not sure.  I think we get lazy and seduced by credits instead of looking for an original voice.  I know I'm guilty of it.  Although my last three hires on SOA have been uncredited writers with more diverse voices.  And my show is better as a result of it.

My second piece of advice is to stop reading the trades to find out "what's selling".  That's creative death.  If your writer friends or agents are encouraging you to write the next Inception, Lost or Modern Family, tell them to go fuck themselves.  Write what excites your imagination not your wallet.  Find something that inspires you, that makes you feel something, that pushes your primal buttons.  This process will lead you to the discovery of your instinctual themes -- the emotional motifs that identify you as a human being and an artist.  A few of my themes are redemption, fatherhood and the identification of manhood.  These are the emotional pulls that fuel my need to create and guide my creative choices.  Find yours.

My last piece of advice is to stop buying ridiculous fucking books that teach you "how to write".  Most are written by writers who couldn't get a job.  If you want to learn how to write screenplays, read great screenplays.  If you wanna learn how to write television, read TV scripts from shows you admire.  

Those are a few random thoughts off the top of my head.  I hope it helps.  And no, I will not read your spec Sons of Anarchy. 

GLOBED

First, let me say that I'm still quite shocked by the win.  Of course I felt Katey was deserving of the award, but I held zero expectation that her talent would be recognized.  I think that was obvious if anyone saw the telecast, I was fucking stunned.  And I was equally as surprised and happy to see Boardwalk Empire and Buscemi get the gold as well.

It's interesting that almost every article on Katey's win also mentioned my past remarks about the Golden Globes and the Emmy's.  Reviewers wondering (and hoping) if the win would fly in the face of my heated point of view.  First of all, my beef with the Globes last season had nothing to do with the HFPA members or their process, it was simply a heated outburst about being snubbed.  I do that occasionally.  Clearly my comments didn't affect foreign press member's opinion of Katey or the show.  Who knows, maybe my vitriolic response in some small, insidious, subconscious way helped motivated them to look beyond the obvious.  Most likely they were just too busy or too smart to read my blog.

As far as the Emmy's... I'm sorry Solberg, my opinion remains the same.  It's an award driven by popularity, familiarity and buzz.  I've said this before -- most Academy members are too busy to invest the time to actually watch shows and make fair and accurate decisions about what television programs are truly superior.  Instead they vote for shows they themselves watch (popularity), shows they or their friends work on (familiarity), or shows that everyone else has said is terrific (buzz).  I still feel it's a broad and inaccurate process that inspires tired, lazy and blind decisions.  This is not to say that shows and talent that win don't deserve it, I'm just suggesting that it's a pretty much a crap shoot.  That's why the day after the award nominations are announced there is more coverage about the absurd snubs than the actual nominees.  

And no, it will never change.  Nor do I have any constructive input to help.  So yes, I'm just fucking beefing.  Sometimes I feel like my service to the industry is to say the things that others are thinking but have too much self-control and self-respect to say out loud.  I'm not sure if I'm proud of that.  Probably not.

In my mind, the Television Critics Association Award is still the most accurate judge of quality (which I clearly do not expect to be nominated for this year).  The TCA's are voted on by people whose job is to watch, analyze and review the quality of television.  My only beef with the TCA's is that I wish they had more categories.

Will SOA get any Emmy love this year?  Who knows, perhaps Katey's Globe win may generate enough buzz to land her on the ballot.  Most likely my fellow sheep will wander into the same pasture and eat the tall, familiar grass.  Then like clockwork, expunge the same old shit.  But after Sunday night, I must admit, I hold out a small remote hope that perhaps, this year, there will be fecal enlightenment.