More Friday Questions? You keep askin’ ‘em/I keep answerin’ ‘em.
YEKIMI asks:
I was watching MASH the other day and opening credits said the story was by McLean Stevenson (but written by the writers). My question is how often did the actors suggest story lines? If it was a really awful idea, did you shoot them down gently or just said the heck with it and go with what they suggested? And if they suggested the story and it was made, did they get a little extra in their paycheck?
It doesn’t happen often (thankfully) because it’s almost always an awkward situation. Most of the time their story suggestions are not great and you do have to gently let them down easy. Knowing Larry Gelbart & Gene Reynolds, if they did a story suggested by McLean it had to be a damn good story. They would never do a story just to appease anyone – an actor, the studio, the gardener who offered to trim their trees for free.
Alan Alda was very serious as a writer. It wasn’t just a fun moonlighting thing. When he started (during Gelbart’s years) his first couple of scripts were heavily rewritten. Again, Larry wasn’t going to shoot something he didn’t feel was up to snuff. But over time, more and more of Alan’s drafts were making it into the shooting script.
In thinking about it, it had to be weird for Larry to rewrite Hawkeye lines and tell Hawkeye he wouldn’t say something that Hawkeye himself had written.
I accidentally deleted the questioner’s name. But it’s a good question. So you get an answer and an apology.
As a writer do you think it would help/hinder to go to meetings in a suit and tie? I'm pretty much suit and tie but find myself usually dressed much smarter than my fellow writers who generally turn up looking like hobos.
What does a writer dress like?
A tie is a little much. Go "Business Casual" (whatever the hell that is). I’d say wear a nice collared shirt, sports jacket, or a sweater. I don’t wear sneakers. I don’t wear jeans. I don’t wear shorts. I generally bathe.
A writer I knew pitched a pilot to the president of CBS once wearing workout sweats. He did not sell the pitch, nor was asked back. (Note: apart from CBS, that particular writer should never wear workout sweats.)
How appropriate for the season. Here’s a question from Holly:
Do you think that laugh tracks should continue to be used in new sitcoms? Or, has television comedy evolved beyond the need to tell audiences when to laugh?
I’m not a fan of laugh tracks, especially on single-camera shows. They’re intrusive and artificial.
One other note about laugh tracks. Many of them were recorded sixty years ago. And they’re still being used. So essentially, dead people are laughing at your show.
Happily, networks are finally letting producers back off or eliminate laugh tracks. Literally, may they rest in peace.
DyHrdMET wraps it up.
From what I understand, and please correct me if I'm wrong, TV sitcoms usually air on television a couple of weeks after being "filmed in front of a live studio audience" (what is it, 3 or 4 weeks later?). How do they handle explaining important plot points to the studio audience from episodes sequentially before the one being filmed that haven't yet aired?
Before the filming the audience is either shown the pilot (if it’s a new show) or a package of scenes from unaired episodes that they’ll need to fully appreciate the show they’re about to see filmed.
But it tends to be harder for shows to get laughs when the audience is unfamiliar with it, despite having seen the pilot. Case in point: on CHEERS when we would do Norm entrances in the first six or seven episodes they would just die in front of the audience. They didn’t know this was a running bit. By the end, the set-ups were getting big laughs.
What’s your question? I’ll try not to delete your name. Mahalo (I'm still in Hawaii).
34 comments :
KEN - Thank you so much for responding to my question!
Aside from the unsettling idea of using dead people's laughter, I can't help but wonder...
If a laugh track was recorded now, would it sound differently than it did back then? People's accents and inflections have changed over the decades, and I wonder if the sound of their laughter would be different, too...
Wow. I'm amazed you kept the Norm bits in if they died the first six or seven times you used them...
Question: If a show's creator is fired early in the run of what goes on to become a hit series (like the creator of Roseanne), does he receive some kind of compensation/residuals for the entire run of the show? Does he get part of the syndication money?
What is your viewpoint on shows like "Community," which have a large cult-like following, but do poorly in the ratings? And have you ever written for a show that you really thought was a success, but had issues with the ratings?
Ken,
How does a network prevent a showrunner from running his/her show into the ground. I'm not talking about trying to keep a show running in its 8th year (Roseanne), I'm talking about a showrunner who makes creative decisions that really hurt the show. Example, last night's Community, a satire of Glee, that while funny as a satire of Glee, really destroys, in my mind at least, fragile suspension of disbelief that allows me to watch the show.
Another example, Sons of Anarchy. Sutter really spent two years building his world, but is now, again in my mind, making decisions of plot an character that are ruining what was before good work.
What does a network executive do when he sees something like that happening?
Speaking of laughs and audiences, do studios plant professional laughers in the audience anymore?
Your answer about suggested storylines being thoroughy vetted leads me to my longtime question....
Why on earth was Loretta's desire to make Hot Lips a fierce and empowered feminist accepted/tolerated?
The character was ruined and y'all introduced a farcical level of fancy into the Army of 1953. I get that people grow and mature. But, the metamorphosis of HL was ludicrous in that setting. Why couldn't it have been enough that despite her personal peccadilloes she was always one hell of a nurse?
To what degree, if you know, did Loretta's very public campaign to portray a more enlightened HL sway the powers that be on M*A*S*H?
I thought Margaret's transformation from Hawkeye and Trapper's enemy to Hawkeye's and BJ's friend seemed credible enough. Of course, this was over an 11 year period. In the MASH universe, that would have been just a year or two. But even that's not beyond the realm of possibility. Even in MASH's first season, there are some hints that she could grow. My theory is that even though Hawkeye and Hot Lips diasagreed on all things pertaining to the military, there was still a professional respect between them. He was an excellent doctor, and she an excellent nurse. Frank Burns, on the other hand, was a lousy doctor, and that in time eroded Margaret's respect for him.
Incidentally, in the novel MASH, from which both the movie and TV show was based, Hot Lips is the main antogonist. Frank Burns appears in only one chapter.
If all laugh tracks were recorded 60 years ago, I'd like to think that my immigrant grandparents came up with the kissing "woooooo!"
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What about the Cheers episodes where it said directed by John Ratzenburger?
Is it really the case that laugh tracks use the 60 year-old laughs? You hear this everywhere, but I always figured it wasn't true ever since shows switched to stereo -- the audience laughter is the only stereophonic thing on most multi-camera sitcoms (since they don't usually have music during scenes). I'm not sure how a mixer could use an I LOVE LUCY laugh now.
Also, bad shows are always accused of using fake laughter, as though no real person could find this funny, but of course real people often did, and the producers didn't realize that they still had a problem. I heard some fake laughter on WHITNEY but the worst jokes get obviously real laughs, which is true of many shows.
Following up on the above comments about Hot Lips/Margaret:
Last night I was inventorying files on a 10-year-old Power Mac G4 tower (still very functional but, with only a 733-MHz processor, becoming too slow for modern-day web surfing).* I came across a PDF of the script of Ken and David's first MASH episode, in which Hawkeye is blinded. Houlihan is called "HOT LIPS" throughout. Question: by the end of the series, were scripts referring to her as "MARGARET"? If so, was it a sudden or gradual change, and about when did it occur?
*In preparation for migrating to a new (Apple-refurbished) iMac that just arrived today and is still in its box, but I had to attend to this site first - one of the few I visit every day.
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Tried all day to think of a topper, but this pretty much says it all....
Great questions. Interesting answers. Thank you for being here, Ken. (Enjoy Hawaii!)
You never wear shorts? You mean you go commando to pitch meetings, Ken?
(thank heaven you didn't for that meeting where your pants gave out)
Note: I didn't want to mention this sooner, due to Harry Morgan, but another recent passing was of singer Dobie Gray, of "The In Crowd" and "Drift Away" fame.
Great! Now the spambots have found you!
On another note, thanks for answering my question.
WV: Forst=How a dyslexic reads Frost.
Wow. According to this, How I Met Your Mother is a multicamera show shot in an empty studio... Yes, that's right, with NO STUDIO AUDIENCE.
Any thoughts on this, Ken? It seems to be a weirdly futile exercise, and it throws up all kinds of questions...
http://nymag.com/arts/tv/features/laughtracks-2011-12/
Ah, having thought about it, the flashbacks would of course make it unwieldy to shoot in front of an audience. Hmmm.
Ah, the communication conundrum. One of best representatives of how this works (or doesn't) is in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers where he shows how missed cues in conversation between air traffic controllers and Korean Airline pilots just before the crash became the problem....Interesting, indeed.Yes, impossible to decipher what other person means without understanding their perspective and point of reference....and even then, it's difficult since nuance is another potential problem. Hubby and I are always launched in these communication morasses, with me usually shaking my head at what he means, clarifying...clarifying, while he just thinks I'm being bitchy.
The thought of anyone editing Alan Alda is a bit scary to me. But it just shows to go ya...
I have a friday question but have no idea how to contact you. Do I just place it in the comments. I can find no place on your blog to ask a question (or am I just dense?)
I just learned that on the videos of MASH one can drop the laugh track and that is such a joy as I missed many when the shows were first run.
HIMYM is shot without an audience for, as I understand it, two reasons. The over fifty scenes-per-episode average (lots of flashbacks and cutaways) make it impossible to shoot in sequence, so a studio audience would be very confused and the laughter wouldn't be very genuine anyway. The second reason is that Pamela Fryman said she discovered early on that most of the cast didn't want an audience and was more comfortable without one.
The finished episodes are played to a live audience to record their laughs, as was done for the last two or three years of The Phil Silvers Show and the last year of All in the Family.
Legendary, thanks for your response. The article I linked to implies that the laughter is ALL faked -- just incredibly well, but it makes a lot more sense for them to screen it and record the audience, if you ask me, so I hope that's closer to the truth.
It's especially odd to me because, as I understand it, the multi-camera format was invented specifically to allow the recording of studio audience laughter. It seems very strange to me that any show should be filmed without a studio audience, but not utilize any of the benefits of a single camera.
It says a lot about the power of multiple cameras going beyond the ability to capture audience laughter. Clearly the format allows a different language to be used that goes far beyond its original intentions. It makes me wonder if there's other formats/languages that we haven't even thought of yet.
I'm writing a pilot and for the first time, I've decided to incorporate a narrator (who happens to be one of the lead characters). It's a device I've always been hesitant about but I think it works for this idea. My question is, in trying to set up the protagonist's backstory--a few details vital to appreciating/understanding why she is where she is today--is it too cheap to just have the narrator run down a list (in a humorous fashion, of course)? I want the audience to have a 30-second cliff notes version of her life up to that point to get everyone on the same page right off the bat but I want to be careful as to how I go about that.
Your answer about actors writing scripts leads me to one about actors directing episodes. When an actor directs an episode he's also appearing in, who directs the scenes he appears in? I would assume an AD does the scenes he appears in and the actor does the rest. But if that's the case, wouldn't you share the directing credit, particularly if it's an episode in which the director's character appears in half (or more) of the scenes?
Quick follow-up: I've noticed a lot of times sitcom episodes being directed by actors on the show tend to happen later in the show's run? I've noticed it on shows ranging from MASH (I'm not thinking Alan Alda, who was directing throughout; I'm thinking people like Harry Morgan and David Ogden Steirs) to The Office. Why do you think this is? Is it actors becoming a little bored and wanting to do something else with the show?
Yes, Johnny, I had read that article too and their rule seemed to be that if they like the show, the laughs are real and if they don't, they aren't. I have no inside knowledge as to how much HIMYM sweetens, but they do have audiences sitting and watching it.
Very good point about the "language" of multi-cam. Barney Miller is another example of a multi-camera show taped without an audience. (At least after the earliest episodes.) And unlike these other examples, they just used laugh tracks rather than live responses. One difference you can spot with that choice is that the dramatic moments don't yield some of the nervous, inappropriate laughter you get on the Norman Lear shows of the same era.
As I understand it, HIMYM switched to a laugh track a few years ago, made up of the responses they'd recorded during the years when they played it back to an audience.
Probably part of the reason HIMYM is shot multi-camera is just that it's on CBS, which has mostly multi-camera shows. Single-camera shows do not tend to do well when paired with multi-camera shows, and vice versa (witness Whitney's problems after The Office and the single-camera Man Up bombing after the multi-camera Last Man Standing). So even though HIMYM doesn't use an audience, the multi-camera look and the laughter help it fit in with the rest of the network's comedy lineup. Even in an era when many people don't watch TV live, "flow" is important, having shows fit with each other.
Jamie is correct that the laugh tracks in use today are mostly newer ones, done for the reason he cites, that they needed to be in stereo. Also because television audio has gone from low-fi to hi-fi in recent years, and tracks lifted from a 1950s Red Skelton show just don't cut it. Something to keep in mind about laugh tracks is that they do serve a legitimate function--their original one. When a show filmed in front of a live audience is edited, scenes are shortened, multiple takes are cut together, etc. The result of this editing is that audience reactions don't always match up. One of the ways to deal with this is to use prerecorded laughter and applause tracks to smooth over those rough patches. That's the reason why laugh tracks are sometimes heard even on shows like CHEERS and FRASIER, which otherwise had no use for them. That was, as I said, the original function of laugh tracks. Dann Cahn, film editor on I LOVE LUCY, once told me that it never occurred to them back then to use them to sweeten, or to boost laughs that somebody felt weren't big enough.
Filming a show without an audience and playing it back to one to record their reactions for the soundtrack, as HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER DOES, was a very popular alternative in the 1950s to filming in front of a live audience. THE GEORGE BURNS AND GRACIE ALLEN SHOW did it, as well as I MARRIED JOAN, MY LITTLE MARGIE, AMOS 'N ANDY, and OZZIE AND HARRIET. The technique fell out of favor in the 1960s because it was easier and cheaper to use an entirely prerecorded laugh track. Which is why every episode of most sitcoms filmed in the 1960s sound like they're being played to exactly the same audience.
On laugh tracks...I don't know if I mentioned this before here, but..
Was in the Netherlands, sitting in a hotel doing other things and had the tv on some german channel. I wasn't paying much attention to it, but they had "Married with Children" on, dubbed in german.
After a time, it dawned on me...there was something weird about the laugh track, and as I listened a little closer I became absolutely convinced, they had redone the laugh track with german laughs instead of the original ones. Seriously, you never heard a laugh track like this on in the US. I can't pinpoint the differences, but they definitely were there which means they spent the money not only to dub into german, but also must have cost a good deal to redo the laugh track?
"Jajajaja!"
@Jaime J Weinman
Yes, some of the original Charley Douglass 60-year-old laughs are still around. I've noticed that some of the recognizable parts of certain laughs have been edited out over the last 10-15 years, but other parts still remain.
JEOPARDY! is one of the few that still uses not only the Douglass laughs but also the applause and the occasional "gasp." You are correct in reasoning that those laughs are not in stereo, so the Douglass tracks are no longer widely used.
Since stoopid ol' me couldn't find where I should officially ask my FRIDAY QUESTION, I hope Mr Levine finds it here:
As a German scribe and filmmaker, I often read or hear about the meeting etiquette of Hollywood. You touched the topic briefly. It sounds like a bastard version of "THE CODE" or "THE RULES". But how could a newbie decyphre that? What does a Wednesday one-on-one breakfast meet at Musso's&Frank's mean? Or if the producer/agent/unknown wannabe bigwig meets you in a coffee franchise shop? It would be fun and enlightening if you could decode the between-the-lines of the Hollywood business restaurant meetings.
And who is paying the bill?
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