Steven Levitan: How Modern Family Rewrote The Rules of Sitcom | How I Write | How I Write

Well, across Fraser, Just Shoot Me, Modern Family, you've written hundreds, hundreds of TV episodes.

Yes, I have.

And there's got to be a speed, a speed of writing that you've learned to cultivate.

How have you done that?

Well, it's actually interesting because my first job out of school, I was a TV reporter.

And I would have to go out to a location.

Something's going on.

I have to take it in the location.

I have to figure out what it is, who I'm talking to, shoot some stuff in my mind, know what I'm going to be saying on air and sometimes have to say it two minutes later live.

Sometimes I have to rush back, write a script, edit it in time for the six o'clock news.

And that was a pace that I got very used to.

So I remember when I got my first TV writing job.

They're like, oh my God, we're going to need the script so fast.

Can anybody write something really fast?

And I said, I probably can.

When do you need it?

They're like, in a week.

And I'm like, well, that's an eternity to me right now.

So I've always been kind of a fast writer.

Part of that is I just like to get it done.

I'm anxious to get the process over with.

So I jump in and I can't stop thinking about it until it's finished.

And then there's a giant relief for me when it's finished.

Do you feel like there's fast twitch and slow twitch riders and you're like a fast twitch rider?

A thousand percent.

Yeah.

I've worked closely with some slow twitch riders and it's both really good and at times really frustrating to have those different speeds, because sometimes I'm just like let's keep moving.

Let's keep moving.

You know there's a certain momentum, you know you gain when you're, When you're really moving towards something, and then you can go back.

My attitude is you can go back and fix and you can go back and look at it.

And other people are much more slow down.

Let's really think this through.

Let's be deliberate about this.

And I think that there's there are advantages to both.

And it's probably good for me to have at least somebody with that voice in the room.

So with that, I mean –

I presume that was kind of a big risk to take.

So are you just like, hey, I got this idea.

Let's go for it.

Did that idea come up and you're like, hey, let's make it happen?

Or was that something that you had been stirring on over some time where, like now, it's time to shoot the shot?

So I remember I had that idea to do.

One of you know how we also always had multiple storylines going on.

And I said, wouldn't it be kind of cool if we can do one storyline that took place just on the computer?

So it'd be like a third of the episode.

And I just thought that would be cool.

And it was in the back of my head.

And then I saw this short film that these guys had done, where it was a story told through, you know, totally on screen.

And I'm like, well, if they can do that, we can do that.

And so I came in one day with told everybody in my room, this is the goal, right?

Let's see if we can come up with a storyline that works.

And sort of miraculously, we stumbled upon an idea that really fed that really nicely.

You know the idea that we can't find somebody and there's a little bit of panic and she lost her phone and da-da-da-da-da-da.

And we worked really hard on that.

That was a very time-consuming episode, but I was really, really proud of the way that that turned out.

Well, this is a good chance to dive into the way that writing and directing kind of weave together, right?

So with that, how much of a script like that is done in the writing versus hey, now we're actually making it and all these new ideas are developing.

It was pretty much in the writing because it was a really production-intensive episode, because everything you saw on the screens had to be manufactured by us.

It wasn't like we were just taking screenshots.

Every little side thing that was on somebody's screen, every little background round behind everybody.

Everything had to be.

It says porn on her top right corner and that it's like her Pinterest board of organization porn.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All those jokes had to be written.

I mean, they had to be thought of.

I worked on that one.

You know, the room...

We worked on it together as a group and really broke it out.

And then I worked with Megan Ganz.

I sort of chose her to write it with me because she's prone to geek out the way that I am over those sorts of things.

And so she got really deep into populating the screens in a really impressive way.

So it was a fun process.

I had done so much by then.

That I was always looking for what's something that will both be a giant challenge.

That will be a giant challenge so that it'll keep me interested in doing this.

Like, oh, I like this.

This is going to be hard, but let's see if we can really pull this off.

And it was very fun to do.

Geeking out.

Tell me about that.

Well, I'm prone to geek out on things.

I'm very techie and I take deep, obsessive dives into really weird, obscure things.

And so I had noticed.

The idea for that one in particular came to me when I was having a FaceTime conversation with my daughter recently.

Who may have been in college.

And I just was, and then my I remember like my wife came behind me and then I was getting a text from somebody on my screen at the same time.

And I remember thinking like, boy, you can really tell a lot about my life by what's on this screen.

So that's how that originally started.

Yeah.

But I'm often looking at like, oh, new tech.

How can we work that in?

And how can we make that?

That seems like something Phil would do.

Like Phil was nerdy in tech the way I was.

Or in my first show, Just Shoot Me, that I created Jack Gallo.

I was into sharper image and all those stupid gadgets from there.

And I was at the time.

So it was a way for me to sort of indulge all my nerdy interests.

Well, the thing that's cool about Modern Family is obviously it's a fictional show.

But the thought that I had was this feels more real than reality TV.

Yeah, I mean, the idea for it came out of our lives.

So I wrote that.

I created that with Christopher Lloyd.

We were on a deal together at the time, and we were working on another idea that we liked.

But we would come in on Monday mornings and go, how was your weekend?

Oh, my God, I did this and this.

My son...

You know, it's crazy.

I'm on a phone call or some people came over and I walked out in the backyard and my son is bouncing naked on the trampoline with a box on his head and things like that.

You know you would just tell funny little stories.

An argument you got in with your wife or something that you're – some trouble your kids got into, or whatever.

And then we started to realize that those were in many ways – more compelling stories than the ones we were trying to figure out for this other show.

And then it occurred to us at that time, because Raymond had just ended, that there wasn't really a good family show at that point that we really liked.

There wasn't one that was sort of speaking to what was happening with families today.

So then we said, well, how has family changed?

And how can we play with that idea?

So the idea of like well family has changed because we have very different looking families now.

Thus a gay couple.

Raising a kid.

Immigrant.

Immigrant, cross-generational, cross-cultural.

Yep.

Families.

And then... Smartphones, technology.

Technology, the way that that all works and the way that that's changed the way that traditional families operate.

You were talking about the speed of developing episodes, but...

That show, I really thought about this in the episode in Vegas with the bathtub.

I was like, how did you keep all this in your head?

I ran, I oversaw half the episodes.

So that's kind of the way we did it.

Early on we realized, because Chris and I often saw things from very different points of view and there were only two of us.

So if there had been three of us, then we could solve arguments.

Tiebreaker.

Yeah, tiebreaker.

But we had two of us.

So we quickly realized let's just sort of decide that every week we alternate who wins the battle, you know, so we can move forward.

Because there's no right answers or wrong answers.

It's just like we got to pick a direction.

Otherwise, we can sit here and argue about this for an hour.

And that's not good for anybody.

So it started that way.

And then it eventually evolved into, you know, because it's also quite efficient, right?

We would shoot a show and let's say Chris was on set shooting his episode.

He'd be there with the writer of that episode.

And then I would be back with everybody else that's left. for that week at my disposal.

So we would come in, we would rewrite whatever script was going to be up that week.

We would be working on future stories.

Maybe there'd be a writer or two off doing their future episodes, but that's the way we kind of worked it.

And so the staff kind of mingled between the two of us and then it would switch the next week.

Right.

So then, the question behind that though, is there's still a lot of complexity in the episodes of just the different threads and how they come together.

So how did you manage that?

Did you whiteboard things?

You have pieces of paper.

How does that work?

One of the tricky things about Modern Family is we were juggling three or four stories in an episode.

And you realize, OK, well, who's not in this one?

And then, OK, well, we have an idea over here for a secondary story.

But wait a minute.

This story takes place.

It's got to be over two days.

There's no way to do it over one day.

We need that time or whatever.

And this one takes place over a week.

That doesn't work.

And so, OK, we'll save that one maybe for a later one or figure out a way to make this one longer.

It was a lot of math.

Yeah, that's what it feels like.

And you're weaving.

It's like TV rocket science.

Yeah, we had 10 characters or more.

And we had to make sure that everybody had something to do and had a point of view.

And how are they working into this story?

And I think that's what gave Modern Family its pace and its energy and made it feel a little bit along with, I hope, writing that was modern and observational and all that.

But it gave it a more contemporary feeling than a more traditional show.

Tell me more about pace and energy.

We try to keep it moving.

I mean, when you're telling three or four stories in an episode, you've got to get to it.

And you've got to be very, very economical.

And at the same time, you don't want to race through it.

And that was also a challenge.

I feel like many of the episodes in the later part of the show became too frenetic.

And I wanted to sometimes do less story so that we could settle in and just enjoy a moment and stop for some dialogue.

And, as I would always say endlessly, we need to let it breathe a little bit or just stop for some real conversation.

So it was always finding that balancing act.

But you know, Modern Family was a network sitcom or a network comedy, and it was 21 minutes and 30 seconds, including our little main title, I think, which was 10 seconds.

So, you know, that's a short amount of time to tell three or four stories.

You're basically, you know, you're telling a seven or eight minute story every week.

I mean, for, you know, in a particular episode.

And so you just have to keep it moving.

And, you know, the talking heads, they're a wonderful device.

I mean, I remember one of the things we said early on is like let's do everything we can to make this easy on us, to write it well and to produce it well.

So let's do talking heads, even though the office had already been doing them.

We're going to do them more as couples, right?

And that'll make ours a little bit different, because it's more about the dynamic than it is just about Michael Scott sitting there talking.

Right.

And let's set it in LA so we don't have to fake everything.

We don't have to hide the palm trees or the license plates that drove by or whatever.

Like, let's just set it where we live.

And that's another sort of an interesting little thing, which is we took it really from our lives in many many, many ways.

Well, that's why I feel so real.

Yeah.

So, for example…

I thought in my head that Jay had gotten divorced.

He probably lived in a traditional house when he was married to Shelley Long's character.

And she probably had tchotchkes everywhere.

And when he got divorced, he just wanted something very, very different.

So he went out and he probably doesn't have a great taste.

And he went out and he bought a modern house.

And so I said, it's just like a modern house.

So they brought me some pictures.

I'm like, no, no, no, not like that.

I go, there's one down the street from me.

I described where it was.

Something like that, so that they can see it as an example.

Well, they went to that house.

That's the house we used.

For example, the little circle where he taught Gloria to ride a bike.

That's where I taught my kids to ride a bike.

Exactly.

Exactly the spots.

And there were many, many places.

There was, you know, all sorts of little...

Little bits that were just so real based on what we were going through at that time.

Kids getting driver's licenses or things happening at school.

We just were constantly stealing from our wives and kids.

I read somewhere that I guess one of your daughter's friends said hey, be careful what you say around the house.

It might end up in Modern Family.

Well, we had some – yeah, there were things that happened.

Like I had two daughters older and then a son.

So it was very much Dunphy-esque in terms of the ages and all that.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

I'll get the sweater and da-da-da-da.

And then in the first couple of years when it first came on, we had a tradition where My whole family would watch it live.

Oh, wow.

And then I could remember one particular time where Alex and Haley are coming down the stairs in a major fight over something.

And it's literally the lines that my kids would say.

And I just look over and they're both looking at me like this.

Giving you a desk there?

Yeah.

So we did things like that all the time.

And there was another time where I...

Probably crossed lines.

I used a kid's name that my daughter was worried everybody would think she has a crush on him.

Because I just liked his name.

And I'd heard his name.

So I used that name as a character in an episode.

And she was worried that everybody was going to think that she liked that kid at school.

Or...

I gave my son some advice about how to break up with a girl.

And he did it.

And then it didn't go so well.

And so then I told that story on, you know, as part of an Alex story.

And that didn't go over well with my son that that was eventually on TV.

But by and large they did well love it, because it was a show that their friends watched and really liked.

So I think it felt very special to them.

How do you do this?

The show has a sense of character and you're not the only one writing.

There's a writer's room.

So, as you are a leader of this team, what do you tell writers so that they can understand your vision and your voice?

How do you make that explicit?

Well, what was tricky about that, let me just say, is that they had two masters.

You know, they had me one week and Chris the next week.

Right.

And we had very different tastes.

So...

I favored things that just felt extremely real, extremely natural.

I would come in and say – by the way, the stories came from everybody.

Like all the writers came in with great ideas.

Some of the best episodes came from the writers' lives.

And so that – I don't say it like I always came in with the idea.

But I'd come in with a particular notion.

This happened to me this weekend and I had this thought.

And I think there's an episode there.

And that to me was typically enough just to start.

I liked it coming from a real place.

I'm thinking about this.

This is the idea that I like here.

And then it's just fine.

It's a matter of taste.

I always say tone is set by 10,000 little decisions.

No, we don't want to do that.

That feels too jokey.

No, that makes the character unlikable if they do that.

Oh, I love that.

Oh, my God, that little thing there brings a sense of hope, which I like in that moment.

That's how tone is set.

You know, Tom Ford was once asked how he built his company.

And he said something to the effect of, I just said yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, 100,000 times.

And that's how Tom Ford became Tom Ford.

Yeah.

It's just a bunch of yes and no decisions.

I mean, that's it.

You've got to have just sort of a sense of instinct.

I always tell people, if you're ever hiring a second in command, you know when you're putting together a staff.

The most important quality that that person can have is that they share your tone.

That they get what you're trying to do like intuitively, or that they understand it over time and they can adapt to it.

Well, you don't always know, but it's best if they just share it.

They naturally go that way some people naturally, and there's nothing wrong with it.

They naturally like something that's more broad.

Chris tends to like things that are very um I don't mean this in a pejorative way at all like very clever.

Like oh, isn't it clever that that thing that was there comes back later on, and then it builds to this moment.

And that's how I sometimes came at that.

Yeah.

It didn't have to be super logical, because life sometimes takes these weird turns and you have to be open for that.

Like that ending for that episode that's so poignant.

Just came out of nowhere there, but in a way that felt like it would happen to me in real life.

I, you know, I can remember certain episodes where I was like, I think this will work.

And people weren't sure.

And I felt like, no, let's just go on this ride with me.

And then you said, that's what you have to do.

And I always would tell people, like when you would be debating things, I'd say, I may not be right.

But we have to make a decision.

We have to move forward.

And this is what my gut's telling me.

And I don't want to have to second guess it tomorrow.

Right.

So if I'm wrong, we'll fix it.

But this is the way we're going to go.

And let's just get on board.

Can you paint a picture for me of any given Tuesday?

Like what is a Tuesday like for you as a writer in the writer's room?

What is going on?

On Modern Family.

Yeah.

When you first start the season, you're doing, you know, eight weeks or more, ten weeks of story breaking.

And you're just breaking stories and sending off writers and start to get scripts.

So what's that, story breaking?

You're just going, what if, what if, you know, what if this happens, what if that happens?

Okay, we have a good, oh, okay, that's a good Phil and Claire story.

We need a Jane and Gloria story to go here.

And you're doing it for the entire season at once?

No, you're just doing it one episode at a time.

There were certain seasons that we would talk about.

Let's have a seasonal arc like Mitch and Cam getting married or Gloria's going to have a baby or whatever that is.

Things with Haley and her boyfriends and things.

But we were kind of in that old school of being somewhat episodic.

So we just need a good story.

Like, who's got a good story?

And so you just start like this.

We need another one.

And stories are gold.

Stories are everything.

There's an old story about two screenwriters talking, and one of them says you know how's your new screenplay coming?

And he goes.

Well, I just finished the outline and I'm about to start the first draft, so I'm 90 done.

And that's the way I think we all looked at it.

Like the drafts are easy.

It's just coming up with what happens here.

And so it all works.

And when you feel like you have a great story, like oh my God, that's going to be so funny that the script is in some way.

It's not secondary, but it's just like the story works and you can feel it.

That's everything.

The hardest part of the job.

So I'd come home.

Do most screenwriters feel that way or is that really particular to you?

That's surprising to me.

I think that's more the case than not.

Wow.

I remember coming home, you know, in that time it always equated it to sort of we'd start in like June 1st and it would be the summer.

So it was a terrible way to spend the summer because it was just endless story breaking.

And it felt like doing math problems.

All day like word.

You know math, word problems.

You know if he's got.

He's six dozen miles away from this and he's two thirds.

And that's what it felt like.

So I'd come home at the end of the day and I would be like my brain would just be throbbing fried, fried.

And my wife would say, you know, how's it going?

What are you working on?

Tell me about what you did.

Don't get me started.

I just need to not think about it for, you know.

And then I'd go to – I'd watch TV.

I'd do whatever.

We'd go out, whatever.

And I'd wake up at 3 in the morning and I'm thinking about that story because we didn't fix it.

We can't get it.

And sometimes you would –

A story would break really quickly, you know, occasionally.

And sometimes it'd be five days and you have nothing.

And it's really frustrating and it's by far the hardest part.

So to answer, go back to your first question there.

I mean, a week I would tell you is, let's just say that...

I'm in the room.

Chris is on stage shooting an episode.

Monday we start rewriting the script that we're going to read on Wednesday at the table.

So Monday, we'll do a rewrite on that.

That will quite often go into Tuesday.

Typically, because we had a pretty large writing staff, I was able to take half the people.

You guys are going to do the rewrite with me.

And this group is going to go break story, try to break some stories for the upcoming episodes.

So we'd have six or seven people doing the rewrite in the room.

And we go through the script.

That would typically take two days.

And or it had it had to be finished in two days because we would read it on Wednesday.

You had no choice.

Yeah.

So Wednesday lunchtime, we always did a table read.

And then you would you would do that.

You'd come back.

We would all talk.

Everybody give each other notes like here was what we're thinking.

That's how it felt good.

Then we would start the rewrite.

And that had to be done by Friday when we left.

And then we would shoot that on on start shooting that one on Monday.

So there would be production meetings going on and there's editing of a previous winter shooting.

So you're running around, just bouncing around and putting out fires.

And what do you think about this car for, you know, Jay's car in the next episode?

And, you know, it's just constant decisions.

How do you think about the relationship between story and comedy?

Like.

The thing that surprised me most about talking to comedy writers is they're like dude, story is king.

Over and over and over again.

And I don't know why.

This is me just being naive.

I was like, oh, no, joke is king.

You're a comedy writer.

No.

The best jokes.

The best laughs.

Come out of character, first of all, so that it's just natural behavior.

You just know.

Now, there's going to be good, clever turns of phrase.

And I think that that sort of thing was a little bit more in vogue a few years ago than it is today.

What do you mean?

I think, you know, I always say comedy is like fashion and music.

It really evolves.

It changes.

It's just – it's very different.

Like the old, you know, set up punchline, set up punchline.

Right.

That's – Like, oh, shucks, 1960s, 1970s stuff.

Yeah, it really feels old now.

That's true.

It really feels old.

And there is a generation of comedy writers who – are really allergic to jokes.

Like, they don't want jokes because they say it feels sitcom-y.

Yeah.

And I understand that.

I do, because a bad joke or a joke that feels a little bit forced or whatever, just takes you out of the moment where something that's much more naturalistic.

I think that just came along.

Larry Sanders I think was much more trying to be much more natural.

You know than Frazier was very much about the joke.

A beautifully written, well-crafted you know.

And when it's beautifully written and it's well-crafted and it's smart, those actually kind of hold up.

They do.

It's the ones that don't.

That are a little bit like set up punchline.

Set up punchline.

That age terribly.

Story is the thing that moves you along.

Like, I'm interested in this.

I'm caring about this.

Ooh, I want to see what happens next.

Oh, my God, I did not see that twist coming.

That's funny.

You know, just walking in and seeing you know that person, Mitch and Cam.

They're going to apply to a private school and they realize that, Oh my God, they're gay and they have an adopted Asian daughter.

And they realize that they're for the first time in both of their lives, very much in demand.

As Mitch, as Mitch, who was like, always picked last and playground, you know, like at these private schools he, they're a goal, they're told, Oh my God, you can get in anywhere.

And then they're sitting in the, in the um, in the waiting room of the private school, thinking they got it locked.

And then in walks or in comes a lesbian with a black baby.

And then the partner comes in and she's in a wheelchair.

And they just look at it going, oh, my God, you know, with the handicap kicker, she wins this hand.

That's just like that's just good.

It's just it's story.

It's a twist in the story that that suddenly they went from being on top to oh my God, we just.

You know we're in second place.

In came the royal flush.

Yeah.

So that those kind of moments are are very important.

Tell me about how character leads to laughter.

Like.

One of the things that comes to mind is in the pilot episode when one of the dad comes in to present the adopted baby.

And we have the Lion King in the background.

So the music.

And then his husband says, turn it off.

And he goes, I can't.

It's just who I am.

Like that's all out of character.

It's exactly what you're saying.

It's not a joke.

But it just reveals so much.

And there's all these different layers there.

And you kind of bring that all together and kind of get the laugh from that.

Yeah, there's very sweet things, like in that moment, Jay saying something along the lines of well, let's see the little pot sticker.

Yeah, exactly.

And Phil, in that moment, going.

When he learns that her name is Lily, he goes.

Isn't that going to be hard for her to say?

So you're getting little character insights in those moments.

Originally we had written a scene in that involved, if I'm not mistaken, Claire and Mitchell going into the baby's room to change the baby.

And the Lion King thing wasn't in it at all.

And there was a baby monitor on, and everybody was out there listening to their conversation.

And that was originally what we had written.

And it was well-written and all that.

And I remember thinking, I wish this was more visceral.

Visceral.

Yeah, like I just I wish there was something we could do that just has like a bigger feeling to it, that captures the characters without it being a talky scene, you know.

And then we just started talking about well, what could it be?

What could it be?

And I don't, I don't know how, I don't remember how the actual Lion King thing came up.

But it felt like, like it just, it built, it built.

I mean, I remember when Modern Family was going to, we had shot the pilot and We were in contention for the fall.

They told us they were going to pick it up and I went to New York for the upfronts which used to be such a big deal.

It was a big thing.

That's where you would sell the show?

Yeah.

They would show the lineup to all the advertisers.

It was a giant gathering.

Oh, so that's when advertisers would buy it.

Yeah, and a lot of press would see it for the first time.

It was going to be at Lincoln Center, full Lincoln Center.

And I got a call.

I'm in the streets of New York.

And I got a call from Steve McPherson who said hey, we're not going to show clips from Modern Family and The Upfronts.

I'm like, you're not?

What?

We're going to show the entire pilot.

Oh, wow.

And that had been done very few times in history of The Upfronts anywhere.

The last time it had been done was for the show Joey, which was a friend spin-off.

And it didn't – apparently it wasn't there.

It didn't play well.

And –

And so it was a scary thing.

So I remember, you know, I'm very nervous.

I come in.

The lights dim.

We come in, and then Ty Burrell and Sarah Hyland came, and we all sat together.

And so we get to this.

They start showing the Modern Family pilot.

And we're worried.

Like, you know, it's not built for –

The studio audience, are the laughs going to step over things?

Are there going to be any laughs?

Can they hear it?

Is it going to play?

It's not really a punchline setup thing.

Is it going to play?

Anyway, it just started to build.

The laughs just started to build.

And you can just tell people were laughing and they were into it.

And then they were into it.

And it was just rolling.

And it just kept – and we're looking at each other like, holy shit, like this is – It's working.

It's working.

And then we get to the Lion King moment.

Yeah.

And he goes like this.

And the place erupts.

Like I've never heard an upfront erupt before.

Like massive applause.

Like people, this is during the show.

And people were like laughing and massive applause.

And that's right near the end.

And it ends in huge ovation.

And that's our lineup, everybody.

Let's go party.

And we get up.

And Sarah Hyland and Tyrell, who had walked in anonymously, Celebrities.

Everybody wanted to congratulate them, take their pictures.

Oh my God, that was amazing.

I watched their lives change before my eyes.

It was crazy.

But that is truly one of like sort of the great moments.

Tell me about making a pilot.

There must be...

This is my best summary of what a pilot is.

You, basically you make one episode so that then you can show the studios.

Hey, this is the kind of thing we're going for.

And it's concrete enough that it can then become the first episode of the show if it's good.

And then you use it to basically get the money to finance the first season.

Is that right?

Essentially.

Okay.

Essentially.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, the studio is financing it, but yes, they'll make a bunch of pilots.

And then of those pilots, a select few get picked.

And then of those select few that get picked, even more select couple survive.

And every once in a while, one of them becomes a giant hit.

Okay.

So there were many pilots.

But then for that one...

What I want to get a sense of is how do you think about the character development coming into it?

Because with this show in particular, there were a lot of different characters to develop.

And also I know that that's something that you kind of learned to do over the course of your career.

That isn't something that you had at the beginning.

But then I think you nailed some of the characters from Modern Family.

It's just so good.

We spent a lot of time on it.

We...

Chris and I probably spent six weeks doing nothing but talking about the characters and their dynamics.

Was that math brain too?

Part of it is.

Okay.

Part of that is.

Because I talk about this a lot when I'm talking to people about doing a pilot and whatever.

And I'm always sort of surprised that people don't think about it in these terms.

Typically, or many people don't.

But the most important thing you're doing is you're establishing dynamics that will play for hopefully, hundreds of episodes.

Dynamics.

Yes.

The way I look at it now is I have this sort of theory.

I call it two points and a line.

And you start with a point, and that's a character.

So let's say that's Oscar.

And Oscar is messy and he's single and he doesn't care about much and he's got a lot of other habits.

Okay.

And now we're going to have somebody move in, and it's going to be about their relationship.

So we need to make that clear.

That line between them.

I always say I want that line between them to crackle like a high-power electrical line.

And if it's just like oh, he's got a friend and they're buddies and they like to hang out and they talk sports.

It's a line.

They're friends.

But is it crackling?

So how do you make it crackle?

Okay.

Well, Felix is –

Oscar's the messiest person you've ever seen.

Felix is the neatest person you've ever seen.

And persnickety.

And Oscar smokes cigars.

And Felix has allergies.

And on and on and on.

And you just keep adding more.

Attributes to each character to make it more alive, to make that line more alive.

OK, Sam and Diane.

OK, let's start by just reducing them.

You know, dumb jock running a bar, womanizing jock, a snobby academic jock.

Woman.

Okay, that's starting to feel like there's some.

You know she looks down on him for being a womanizer.

And she's smarter than him.

But yet he's more street smart than she is.

And that line is just getting better and better.

But now we're going to add some other characters there.

So we're going to add Carla, let's just say.

Well, Carla is...

We need to now we got to draw a line between Carla and Diane and Carla and Sam.

And those lines need to be crackling, too.

So how do you do that?

Well, Carla is kind of in love with Sam, idolizes Sam.

She's he's his he's her God, you know, and and and so.

What about Diane?

Well, she's got to hate Diane because Sam has a thing for Diane and she doesn't understand it.

So she's got to be very blue collar and to the next to the, you know, area diet academic.

So now that line is starting to get crackling and they don't like each other.

And then you add all these other characters and you do the same thing and you keep drawing lines between every character that you've added until it starts to look like this weird bicycle spoke kind of thing, and you're putting everybody there and you're connecting everybody.

And you need to understand if two of them are stuck in an elevator to use an old corny sitcom setup or just sitting there having a conversation about something that just happened.

Do I know what's going to be funny about the two of them before I'm even starting?

Because I know their points of view and I know their tensions and I know what's going on there.

And it doesn't have to be that they're always opposites.

It could be there's an unrequited love.

You know, Niles and Daphne.

You know, Niles is in love with Daphne.

There wasn't like conflict between them, it was just he was fucking in love with her and she didn't quite know it for a long time.

So any form, the line just needs to be compelling.

It could be compelling for love reasons, you know, pam and jim on the office.

Or it could be compelling for comedic reasons jim and dwight On the office.

And so that's a thing that takes time.

Premise.

So we've set up a nice premise.

You know, it's a pie.

Oh, he's a superhero.

And this is whatever, whatever it is.

Right.

That's going to get old.

Just premise – things that are based on premise get old.

It's not enough to sustain a show.

No, you got to care about the characters and you got to know –

I mean, we watched Sam and Diane evolve over time.

It was fun to watch them, that dance, because they came from such different places.

But at the same time, you could bring in somebody like Frasier, who was another version of Diane.

Or on the brilliance of the show Frasier, the brilliance of the setup, for that was the initial instinct, probably was Well, we'll give Frazier, you know, his father and we'll give him a brother who's sort of the same, cut from the same cloth as the father, and Frazier's the odd man out.

That would have been probably fine.

But the brilliance was, we're going to bring in Niles, who is more Frazier than Frazier.

And now they're competitive.

And now Frazier's really in the middle, weirdly.

And there's a snobby comparative thing here.

There's a competition for father's love, for who's more successful, who's more sophisticated, who's more knowledgeable.

And then you have the dynamic between Frazier and Niles and their father, who's blue-collared.

And how did this guy get these two kids?

So those dynamics were just there.

So we spend a lot of time working through that.

Like, what's the difference between Haley?

Like, oh, they have three kids.

Well, what are the difference between Haley, Alex, and Luke?

Yeah.

By the way, a choice.

Let's give them three kids.

Let's not give them two kids.

Let's give them one kid.

Let's make them two girls and a boy.

Whatever.

Well, Haley...

Is very kind of shallow and she's great, popular, great with boys, love her.

Very sort of street smart, but not book smart.

Right.

Alex is a book smart nerd.

And very tense, overthinks everything, whereas Haley overthinks nothing.

And then Luke is just sort of like the dumb kind of like in the beginning, just sort of the dumb funny comic relief kid who is the boy?

He's just a boy, very different energy from the girls.

And then, you know, how does Phil and Luke, how do they interact?

And what's the difference between Phil and Claire?

They're not just a couple that are raising two kids.

Phil's like the fourth child and she's got to always feel like she's got to be the responsible one.

And he's a little bit like.

He loves Claire and is impressed by Claire, but she's a little rigid and it's his job to make life more fun for Claire.

And therein lies that dynamic.

So round out my takeaway from what you've said, I want to, I'm going to.

It's really reductive because it's going to spark something in you.

That what you want is you want strong characters who have tension and harmony between them.

And it's an art to figure out how that tension and harmony works.

Yeah, because you're not just adding, oh, these two don't like each other.

That's the dynamic.

Okay, but now you got to go back to the two points.

What do you have to do to the two points to make them not like each other?

So that's interesting.

But you're trying to just not start a scene from zero.

We have nothing there.

I can remember I did a series a long time ago and I had a lot of the characters well thought out.

And then there was a bartender that was going to be who worked downstairs at the bar downstairs.

And I said, well, she's just going to be like a sort of a sarcastic, you know.

I can't tell you how hard it was to write that character once we got into it, because I didn't do the homework.

I let it slide.

And I could see when that happens.

And I watched certain shows and I go, oh, they didn't figure that character out.

And they're searching.

And I bet you that's the character that's keeping them two hours later every night, because you don't know what's funny afterwards.

What makes a character funny?

They could be anything.

Take a brilliant scientist and put him into a brilliant science lab.

Maybe he's not so funny.

Now put him in a bar.

So relationships really matter in terms of humor.

Maybe context.

That could be it.

Or maybe he thinks he's smarter than everybody in the room.

So yeah, that is funny because he has very little patience for everybody.

And he is maybe the smartest, but he doesn't hide it.

So everybody hates him.

But they also respect him.

Okay.

But this one's in love with him because of the way he is.

I mean, you could go on and on and on.

It's also just a funny point of view.

Like Phil...

It always had a funny take on anything.

Like Phil was.

You know, like I remember.

One of the first lines that we wrote that defined Phil was like I'm the cool dad.

That's my thang.

T-H-A-N-G.

Yeah.

You just knew, okay, this is a guy who thinks he's up to speed on everything.

And he's not.

He's a dad.

He's a nerdy, embarrassing dad.

You're a boomer, man.

But he thinks he's as cool as anybody, and that's part of it.

But Phil is like a puppy in a meadow.

He just was happy and open and on to the next thing.

And then that's a funny energy against Claire's energy.

He was trying to keep things controlled and, Phil, we need to control these kids.

Come on, huh?

I need you to watch the kids.

Yeah.

So, so many different ways that a character can be funny.

Yeah.

How do you think about the interplay between depth and then when things feel overly sentimental?

It's like, ah, it's cheesy.

That's part of the art of it is to earn those moments and not go too over the top.

You've got to earn them.

Yeah.

You want them to sneak up on you.

You want them to be understated and you want to feel them.

You just want to take those moments.

I mean, I think I tend to write that way.

My favorite kind of comedy is the comedy that has both big laughs, smart laughs, and heart that you feel.

So what's underneath that character like?

There's a great one of my favorite scenes of all time and, by the way, like two weeks ago i was at a charity event and Strangely, I'd never met Danny DeVito.

And I met him.

And I said, I have to tell you, I quote this scene all the time.

It's one of, in my mind, the best sitcom, TV comedy scenes of all time.

And it's when Elaine, he, you know, Louis had been a well-established character at this point.

Louis De Palma on Taxi.

Sorry.

So many thoughts in my head.

And he was the acerbic guy who ran the cab company and he was hateable and he was always hitting on everybody and he was insulting everybody.

And, you know, Danny DeVito, of course, is very short, so that's part of the joke and all that.

And he has to go to a wedding or something and he has Elaine help him go buy a suit at the department store.

And so Elaine goes with him and he reveals to her, in the midst of all this stuff going on, that the reason he's uncomfortable being there at the store is because he has to shop in the boys' department.

It's very painful for him.

And she's like, oh, my God, Louis.

Like this woman who's been the subject of all of his –

You know, advances and sexual comments and everything.

It's like, oh, my God, Louie.

And she gives him a big hug.

And it's like this unbelievably powerful moment.

And then he slowly reaches around and grabs her ass.

And it's the biggest laugh because you just took a ride.

You went from laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh to, oh, my God, that's so powerful.

I just learned so much about this guy.

And I'm feeling things I never felt before from this guy of all people.

And she felt it, too.

And then laugh again.

And he's back.

It just was perfect.

Yeah.

That's a North Star kind of a scene where you're looking to strike that, to really feel things.

Sometimes you don't have to cut it with a laugh, sometimes you don't have to.

But I can look back on certain modern family moments that we did and I don't watch the show very much, but my wife has it on from time to time and I'll stumble into a scene and I'll see something and I will immediately start to get teary eyed from a moment, or I can remember being on set and being, you know, like that really got me And often it was very understated.

An example would be Jay is going to take Gloria to Napa Valley, go drink wine, have a great weekend.

And Manny, his dad, is going to pick him up for the weekend.

So they're all ready to go, the whole thing.

And the dad's going to take him to Disneyland, and it's going to be great.

And take him for the weekend.

He gets a call at the last minute that dad's still in Vegas.

He's not coming.

And Jay has this moment where he's got to tell Manny.

And Manny's sitting on the curb waiting for his dad.

I still get choked up.

And he's got his little backpack on, and he goes out there, and he said, kid, I got some bad news.

You know, your dad can't make it.

And you could see it on Manny's face, because the father is not dependable.

And he goes, he's not coming?

He wanted to be here.

I can't remember the specific, but he was doing something, and he was doing something heroic.

He had to save somebody.

He had to do something.

And he couldn't get away.

It's killing him, but they needed him to fix this thing, and they can't get him away.

And you can see the sadness in his face.

And then the limo pulls up to take Jay and Gloria to the airport.

And Jay goes, but it's going to work out just fine, whatever it is.

And Jay.

You cut to Jay and Gloria taking Manny to Disneyland or coming home from Disneyland, whatever it was.

And he sucked it up.

Without saying anything, he sucked it up.

He did the right thing for the kid.

It was very understated.

It wasn't like, I love you, kid, and you're always a son to me.

He didn't say any of that.

He's just like, no, he wanted me to take you, so we're going to take you.

He even got you a limo.

Look at this.

He just did something that was beautiful, and it was within his character, and no more.

And it was a very poignant moment.

Yeah, you're really good at the father-kid dynamics because it reminds me at the end of the pilot for Just Shoot Me.

There's the conversation with the newspaper owner, dad and the daughter, and he's about to have a kid.

And then she says something to him almost like –

If you're scared that you're going to be a bad dad, then just don't do the things that make you a bad dad, or something like that.

And there's that beautiful, beautiful line where the daughter says she's going to want to push you away.

But she doesn't actually want that.

Yeah.

It took a lot to get to that.

And it was the key.

That scene was the key to the whole series.

Because...

I was having trouble.

The Just Shoot Me pilot went through a lot of machinations.

But I was a little bit worried about this adult child complaining to her adult dad about you're never this and you're never that.

Why?

Because it's annoying?

It's annoying.

And it's just like, you're an adult.

There's a part of me that's like, get over it.

You're an adult.

And part of that was also in the construction.

Originally, it was set in a modeling agency.

And you can't come into a modeling agency.

She, as a character who was a feminist, can't come into a modeling agency and say well, we're going to do this differently, so that it's more pro women's rights or whatever.

It's a modeling agency.

It is what it is.

So then.

Very late in the game, I changed it to like a cosmopolitan, Cosmo kind of a magazine.

And so then and she's a journalist, so then she could actually have something to aim for, which is to make a difference, to help steer it in a better direction, to be able to try to make it more substantial.

But with the whole device of him having this baby and it being sprung on her.

It wasn't her saying you fucked me over.

You weren't there for me.

You were never there for me.

She said...

Now, that's like a selfish kind of a way.

She got in a selfless way, said, be there for this kid.

Be there for her.

So she's both giving and revealing what she went through.

And that was the key to that character, to that moment, to that relationship.

She was always there to try to help him be a better person, not just to put him down.

If I were to show up, and now I'm on your writer's team and it's day one and you're like hey, here's some – these are some of the mantras, some of the frameworks that I'm always thinking about.

I'm always going to come back to these.

So know them by heart.

Get to know the examples.

What would those be?

Does it feel real?

First and foremost.

Are they talking the way people talk? are you tapping into what you're thinking about today?

Writing, it's so interesting because my wife had never seen this old sitcom from 1970.

That was a classic.

And she'd never seen it.

So I said, let me turn on the pilot for you.

You just watch the pilot.

And I think of it as a classic, beautiful, unbelievable pilot.

And it's so dated.

It's so dated.

It's so like there's things about it just in the way it looks, the way it's shot the way, sometimes like just the attitudes.

That's fine to do.

Be of the moment.

Tap into the zeitgeist.

But, at the same time, what are just – classic things that couples deal with or fathers and sons deal with.

What are timeless things that could live on always?

Let's not...

Let's not get over our skis.

There's a tendency – and I think this happens more in multicam than it does in single cam, to some degree where you get on the stage and something doesn't work and then you start pitching and start pushing and it gets bigger and bigger until you get a big laugh from that big hyped up audience.

And then you see it on film or on digital or whatever now on screen and it's big.

It feels big.

And I'm trying to think about.

I'm watching this three years from now and what's my attitude about it.

So, you know, like I said, things certain things don't change.

That's why I think.

So far, Modern Family is aging well.

I'm kind of happy with that.

It's aging pretty well because that stuff is still going on between parents and kids.

Until the end of time.

Yeah, until the end of time.

And by the way, across the world.

We were shocked at markets.

Here we are setting a show on the west side of Los Angeles, very affluent area and all that.

And it's resonating.

The guy who edits these podcasts, he's Brazilian.

Johnny loves Modern Family.

Thanks, Johnny.

Thank you.

Down in Sao Paulo, he's like, I've just watched so many episodes.

I just love that show, man.

Yeah.

Because family is universal.

So try to tap into those universal truths.

The thing that doesn't feel real is it's like the inverse of trying.

You know, a lot of what...

A lot of what you're kind of railing against here is we're going to be there on set and this thing, this thing, this thing.

And a lot of how Modern Family was written was just you're at the table.

You're just writing down.

This is exactly what they said.

This is just how it is.

And there's a kind of trust in the mundane parts of life that I think you've had to have and just be like –.

That's just how it is.

It's real.

And just trusting that you know what, because it's mundane, it's going to have a lot of relatability too.

Yeah, I think that much of really good writing like nobody's better than this, than Larry David is having your antenna up.

Like you, as a writer...

Your antenna needs to be up at all times because, if you're observant, there's almost nowhere you can't go where you just go.

Well, that's funny that they did that.

Or it annoys me that that guy was double dipping into the dip.

That's a thing that nobody else would see and make note of.

Right.

A great writer like Larry sees that and says, oh, that's funny.

Like that annoys me.

That's going in the book.

That annoys me.

That's going in the book.

Or wouldn't it be interesting if this happened here?

You know, and that's going in his little notepad and that's going to become something.

And so I would...

We would all say to each other in the room like be observant this weekend.

Find something that we can – we need a story.

And so that's part of it.

It was funny.

I was in Portland recently and I just finished the day and I went – I just love Guinness.

So I always – whenever I'm traveling, I try to get a nice pint of Guinness.

I was just in Ireland.

It's just the greatest drink ever made.

It's basically the only alcohol I drink, but I could just drink it over and over.

So good.

So I'm having this pint and I'm like, you know what?

I'm going to try something.

I went up to the bartender.

I go, hey, do you got a piece of paper?

He goes to the cash register, gets a long piece of paper.

It's probably five inches big.

And I did it.

It was just like, hey, the roses in Portland were like this.

These people are like that.

Hey, there are these weird fentanyl ads on the street.

And you just realize that under the register of conscious consciousness there's so many thoughts that you have that are just kind of there waiting to be mined.

But in the kind of the speed and the zap of everyday life, you just skip over those things.

Well, especially now, I think one of the problems with This moment we're living in is – we're all flooded with information.

It's just – it's never-ending.

Flooded.

It's exhausting.

They always say if you get stuck on something, go work on something else.

Because you'll get off of that... Creativity is connections.

You're making new connections.

We're going to do a family show, a classic family show.

We're going to mix it up with sort of a documentary-looking thing with interviews.

But we're also going to add...

You know, a gay couple, that's a new twist to that old thing.

And we're going to do this and this.

We're making new, we're just connecting things.

They've all been there.

You know people have talked about technology before but we're not maybe in the context of with the family and how it's affecting family lives or whatever.

And just being aware of all that's happening in the world right now and trying to turn down the noise.

And walk around and like, if you're writing about a couple, you're writing a love story or something, being aware, thinking about some of the people that you've known and the relationships you've seen.

Or you're at an airport or you're at a restaurant and you're look at that couple and you're just it's interesting the way that he keeps looking over at that relationship woman across the way and she seems completely annoyed by him or whatever that is.

Huh, I wonder if that's an interesting moment.

You know for something here.

So that's – it's hard to do.

It takes discipline, but, you know, staying very aware.

But when you take your mind off of something and then you're working on something else and you go oh wait a minute, you know that thing he just did in there, what if that guy – did something like that, that would change everything there.

That's how connections are made.

Yeah.

You said, does it feel real?

What else would you say to people?

I think knowing the theme is really important.

And you may not know it at the beginning, and it may change.

But to be able to have a theme.

Some of our best episodes of Modern Family, for example, when we had three stories and we would try to stick to a theme.

So it's about, like I wrote one called 15%, and it's about can people change?

The other one is caught in the act.

I think that one has the stain on the carpet and the kids walking in on the parents.

And so caught in the act actually refers to multiple things in the episode.

Yeah.

So we had that idea.

That came from a real life story.

And then we had the idea like, what's another version of getting caught in the act?

But you know, thematically we came up with the idea that I think if they try really, really hard, people can change maybe 15.

But that can be enough.

That was the idea of it.

Or sometimes being a good dad is just showing up.

Things like that.

What do we want to say with this episode?

And if you can have that, and then all three of those stories in some way feed that little voiceover at the end, which we didn't always do because we got worried about being too predictable that here comes the voiceover.

So we would try to mix it up.

But that really – knowing that, I think –

It strengthens everything.

I mean, I think you have to know it at some point.

It's best to know it from the beginning.

The theme.

Knowing what are you trying to say?

Are you trying to say here that you're never going to think about things the same way someone else is?

So you need to be more open to someone who completely disagrees with you.

Whatever that is.

Fine.

That's a theme.

Whatever it is.

It could be more heartfelt.

It could be more just a nice observational moment.

But what are we trying to say with this episode?

I think knowing that from the beginning is really, really helpful.

How much of writing a show like this comes back to the word joy?

It's I want to sit down for 21 minutes, 30 seconds, and I want to have a sense of joy.

And is that what you feel as the creator?

Because that is the one word.

It's like joy, which kind of mixes laughter, a sense of fun, and I don't know if you resonate with that.

It's funny.

I don't watch a lot of television.

And there have been some amazing shows that have been on that I haven't seen because they're angst producing.

They're really intense and you're on the edge of your seat and, oh, my God, I can't watch this.

And, like, I'm very –

Contrary to popular belief, I'm very sensitive.

And if I see something that I find very upsetting or I'm just uncomfortable and I want to change the channel, it just bothers me.

And I'm really not enjoying it.

So I tend to like to do shows that bring people joy, that make people happy.

I had so much fun prepping for the episode.

I woke up at 5 a.m. this morning.

I just watched Modern Family all morning.

It was so fun.

That was the word.

It is so much joy.

I watched no TV.

And it was just like... I was just smiling the entire time.

Yeah, it's.

I think that there's just something.

There's nothing wrong with those kinds of shows, and they're brilliant.

But at the end of the day, Modern Family was... supposed to be a joy-inducing show.

It was a show that made people happy.

It was a show that celebrated family.

It was a love letter to our families.

And I can't tell you... We've gotten a lot of, obviously, feedback over the years, and my two favorite versions of those would be the ones from either gay... teens or whatever, young people who said because of your show my my fam my parents who were very conservative they liked mitch and cam and they would laugh at mitch and cam and it opened the door for me to be able to tell them that um i'm gay and it saved my life or whatever that was or from the parents who would say i got used to having a the idea of having a gay kid through Jay, through what Jay was going through, because he wasn't entirely comfortable with it and we weren't.

And because of that, when my son came out to me, I handled it way better than I would have and it made us closer.

And so we got a lot of thank yous for that.

But the other one, which is just as meaningful for me, is I was going through hell.

I was sick.

I had just lost my parent.

I lost my job.

And I would turn on Modern Family, and I would smile for a half hour.

And I can't tell you how much that meant to me.

And I'm just like so proud and happy to be part of that, to put that into the world.

Yeah.

Because there's not enough of that.

Yeah.

You mentioned conflict and how core that is to a show.

Tell me about that.

Well –

Yeah, it's hard to have a good story without some conflict.

Yeah, it's kind of it's the tinder for the flame.

Yeah.

You need to have something go wrong.

You need to have somebody to have a goal and there is an obstacle in the goal.

And then that conflict or is where the comedy comes from.

Yeah.

You know, Jim and Pam and The Office are such an important part of that show for giving it depth and heart.

But there's not a lot of conflict between them.

In the beginning, there was the conflict of she was engaged to somebody else and there was that.

But once they were together...

You know, they were a loving couple and there wasn't a tremendous amount of conflict.

The conflict came from, you know, elsewhere in the show.

And that's where the – you know, someone has to – if someone is faced with conflict, they do extreme things.

They have to take extreme measures to – like sometimes you look at a story and you go, nothing happens.

There's nothing happening here.

The conflict is this big.

Like can we make the conflict bigger?

Yeah.

That's a big part of this.

Bigger.

Yeah.

Bigger and not in an over-the-top kind of way, but can we make it more core to?

Oh, this is really causing some problems in their lives.

Right.

Bigger not in terms of giant, but in terms of meaningful.

Meaningful.

Like, oh, this is not just an easy thing to go, I'm sorry.

You know, and it's over with.

It's, oh, no, I really think that this person did something wrong for me, and I'm going to say something to them, and then that's going to have ramifications, and then da-da-da-da-da.

Yeah.

How, over the years, have you gone about improving your craft and the arc there of I'm going to get better, I'm going to get better, I'm going to get better.

I've tried to be more— thoughtful about things and maybe now I'm probably slowing down a little bit in my Like I could, you know, in the beginning, just race through, and here's the draft, and now I'm trying to slow down and be a little bit more deliberate about it.

I think you just learn from doing.

You know, the job never gets old because...

There's just a new problem that you haven't faced every single story.

Oh, my God, how am I going to write myself out of this one?

And then you do or you see something that somebody did and you go, that's great, and you try to learn from that.

And so I'm trying to be more thoughtful about the setup of a series.

I mean, I was –

You know, Modern Family, we certainly were.

I think prior to that, sometimes I had been taking a couple shortcuts.

And so I'm really trying to put in the time in the beginning when it's not so sexy.

I sort of was on this idea that...

You know we're all professionals here and we're like writing and we got to write hard and you know you didn't deliver.

And, you know, I'm not going to sugarcoat it.

I didn't think this draft was very good and da, da, da, da.

And I probably was a bit too direct at times.

I can be better at getting what I want out of a writer better.

By taking the time to be more thoughtful about where they're coming from and what their particular psyche is is I think I come from an environment – I'm very tough on myself as a writer.

Very hard on myself.

The person who runs my production company or whatever, says I've never seen someone who's so hard on their own writing.

How does that show up?

I just am brutal about it.

Like, I don't like this scene.

I'm not happy with it yet.

Or I'm going to throw this whole thing out and start again.

I just do that all the time.

Okay.

And I am that way with other people because I demand it of myself.

But it doesn't – I'm tough.

Yeah.

Especially what's coming from me.

So I know it comes from a place of I just want this to be good.

And I think that sometimes other people don't.

They have trouble seeing that in that moment where they just feel like, I suck.

I've let them down.

I can undermine somebody's confidence as opposed to building it up to say hey, let's really talk about this.

Let's be more – and so I'm trying very hard to be more –

Open about like the process in the very beginning before we even start.

This is how this process is going to go.

The initial conditions.

Yeah, so that you don't know that if I'm going to say some stuff to you, it's not just because it's you or what I've read here.

It's because I do this for everything and just know this.

And then to be more effusive when I see something that I like, because usually I'm like zeroing in on here's some problems we have to fix, because that's what the mentality of like doing a network show for 11 years is like.

Let's fix the problems.

The rest of it works great.

So you might go through the script and go, that's a great joke.

Great joke there.

Okay, let's get to this.

You know, I got nothing on page three.

That means I like page three, but it should be like page three is great.

Page four is great.

I love this thing you did here.

And page five, I'm starting to have little questions about this, whatever.

So I think that that's, The area that I've been thinking about the most lately.

And how can I be a better... partner to writers coming up who could use the guidance.

Because I think I have a lot to offer in terms of just understanding how networks work, how a show needs to work to keep the trains running, how to ask yourself the hard questions in the beginning and then let them do what they do, which is to bring their particular vision, their language, their comedy, their excuse me music and fashion of them being 25 now, when I'm not okay, they're going to bring something to that which is different than what I'm going to do.

And I have to like, honor that and respect that and help them build that and make it stronger from underneath, not go well, I wouldn't do it this way.

I would do it this way.

Because I might do it a different way.

But let's make sure that the foundation is strong.

And then from that, you should say it the way you want to say it.

Tell me, how is writing comedy different when you have laugh tracks like Frasier versus no laugh tracks with Modern Family?

You know, it used to be every comedy was a multicam.

Can you explain the significance of the difference between single cam and multicam from the writing and the director's perspective?

That's not clear to me.

Okay, so multicam is shot in front of a live studio audience.

Got it.

It's a three-wall set.

So the audience is watching you from that fourth wall along with the cameras.

Got it.

So like when I went to go see Seth Meyers, it was sort of like that sort of thing where you're just there and you're laughing.

They got the cards, laugh now and stuff like that.

We don't do that.

Okay.

But there's an audience there and they're hyped up because there's a –

There's a stand-up warm-up guy there who's keeping the audience alive and they're laughing and everything's funny.

And it's all very much about the laughs.

Do we get big laughs?

Does that scene feel like the audience is with us?

Do they start to get bored and all that?

Yeah.

But you're writing jokes more.

Suddenly there was some single-camera comedies.

The single camera came around.

And then that's shot like a movie.

So on a stage, you're shooting it.

There's no audience.

There's no one laughing.

You're not leaving room for laughs, all that stuff.

And you're just doing the scene honestly, and hopefully it's funny.

In the beginning, the mistake –

I think that was made by many of those shows was, oh, we're single cam.

We don't need to have jokes.

We don't need it to be as funny because we're not that kind of a show.

And then you ended up with these sort of half comedy dramedy, half hour things that were not that funny.

What shows.

Like The Office did, and certainly what we tried to do We said no, we need to have even more jokes, even better jokes, smarter jokes, all throughout this thing.

And then I didn't have to really say this, but I do remember saying this to one of the actors, or some of the actors, in the very beginning.

Pretend like you're a drug dealer.

You're being chased by the cops.

And you have a bunch of drugs on you and you're just going to crack open the door and drop the drugs out on the street as the car is rolling along.

That's the way I want you to deliver the jokes.

Like just throw them away.

Yeah.

And like don't even let it – because sometimes, you know, you hit a joke.

Oh, here comes a great joke.

Well, maybe that's why you should have – I don't know.

Or you just go, you just say it and you just throw it away.

And so the audience goes, oh, my God, that was so funny.

And, you know, let's see the little potsticker or Lily.

Wouldn't that be hard for her?

You just throw them away.

The audience gets them.

They're little chuckles.

They appreciate it.

They love them.

They watch it.

They go, I missed that the first time through.

And they get it the second time through.

But that's a different way of performing that makes a big difference in the performance.

And the type of performance you're giving.

And the pressure of a joke.

Like if you go too many pages without a joke in a traditional multi-camera sitcom, people get nervous.

But Frasier was among the first shows to kind of break through that a little bit.

Like, no, we're going to purposely go three pages without a joke.

And then I would remember saying a lot of times, this is a half joke.

Let's get rid of it so that the real joke plays better.

We don't need a half joke just to get a chuckle.

When you watch bad comedy and it's kind of agitating you, what is it that you want to?

Say to the TV, shake the TV and be like, if you only understood this, it would be so much better.

Take it down.

I get annoyed by big.

I've said that before here, I think.

But it feels when things just feel heightened to the point where I don't recognize this as human behavior, or they're talking like they're on a stage performing to an audience.

It's really hard, by the way.

Doing a multicam well is very hard, because it is this weird hybrid halfway between theater and movies.

You're playing in front of an audience, so you tend to play to that audience, but it needs to be small enough that it looks good when that camera's on you like this, the way that 9999999 of the people are going to see it.

So take it down.

Be more natural.

Don't force it.

Don't go for the half jokes.

Just wait for the good joke.

Just talk like real people and then get to a good joke.

Why, at the risk of touching the third rail here, why is Hollywood...

So against AI as a culture.

You know, I get to come to Hollywood and it is just the hard line anti-AI stance.

I think people are very scared of it.

If the studios can do certain things for a lot less money just as well, then they're going to.

If they can do it for a lot less money, 90% as well, many of them are going to.

The good ones won't.

So I think everybody should be scared.

Everyone should be amazed.

And everybody should be frightened and cautious of it.

I mean, I'm a little obsessed with AI.

And I read a lot about it.

And I think...

The big danger, of course, is that the natural brakes that we would put on such a powerful technology we're not putting on because we're afraid to lose the race.

And then that result is that we've all rushed through before we put in the appropriate safeguards.

I think it could be an incredibly helpful tool, even in writing, to use it as research, to use it as I want to learn more about this character.

What are the kinds of jobs people do?

What would a person who is a whatever?

A roller coaster designer, what do they do?

Where do they work what?

What's their job?

Where does it?

What's their background?

You know asking things like that.

You could run your script through it and see like, put this against uh, joseph campbell's, you know hero's journey, and tell me what you know where i'm falling short, right.

Um, you know you could do things like that and and I don't think there's anything wrong with that if you're not a slave to it.

If you're discerning and you say okay well, that's nonsense, or okay great, but I'm not doing that.

But you know what?

That's actually a good point.

I don't do that here and maybe I could.

If you use it as a tool, it could be useful.

It can't do what we do yet.

I hope it doesn't.

Well, there's two things.

So the first thing is I'm going to go out on a limb and say it.

I think AI is funny now.

Ever since ChatGPT 4.5 came out, I laugh all the time.

I have to say it.

I think it's gotten funnier.

It makes me laugh so hard.

The thing that AI doesn't have, which you need for a TV show and I've really picked up on here is conviction.

There is a conviction that is required in order to push forward on a show and in a story.

And AI can't give you conviction.

It can give you ideas.

It's sycophantic.

But there's a conviction that only humans can have.

AI gives you volume, but it does not really do a good job of helping you chart your path.

Yeah, and it's not to say that it won't.

Again, it's staggering.

I think, listen, in production, there are some incredible uses for it.

I'll give you an example.

We have a set, and we need to find an exterior shot to match that set.

And in the old days, it's like, oh, fuck, these windows don't make any sense here.

There's a door there.

Where's the door in the inside house?

Well, we could literally say we need an exterior shot of this with this window configuration.

And we need a person riding their bike by and it's morning and get a stock shot, for example.

And do that.

That's available today easy.

That's nothing.

Does it take a couple people out of a job?

Probably.

And I think using AI for production to help make some very expensive scenes affordable is inevitable.

I just do.

We can all wish it away.

I think it's inevitable.

My hope is... that by doing that, we can produce more.

Oh, maybe we can even start producing more in LA.

And nothing gets filmed here anymore.

Yeah, because we need more shows to be made.

And instead of a show costing 11 million for a pilot, maybe we can do that show for six now, because of all the savings that we can do using AI.

Interesting.

And then...

Because a lot of that was all that post-production work and all that kind of stuff that again those people are going to be affected.

But you know, by the way, lawyers are going to be affected and illustrators are going to be affected.

Everybody's going to be affected.

So it's a little grand of us to say well, they should be, but we shouldn't be because we're artists.

It's going to affect everybody.

And so how can we use it to maybe make – more things, so that more people can go to work on more projects, instead of putting, like I said, 11 million into one thing.

Well, we were talking about the initial conditions, the time that you spend setting up characters early on in a show, and the web of relationships and the depth of the characters.

I mean when I think of humans and AI working together, if you can make that explicit.

You know, Gloria is going to be like this, Jay is going to be like that.

We're really going to spend time defining that, my goodness AI's ability to be a collaborative, sparring partner with you, to really understand what it is that you're going for.

What are the things that I might not be seeing?

That, to me, is the platonic ideal of what we're going for, which is you've created a show, you've defined the characters and now you just have this kick-ass writing partner, and even in groups, sometimes it gets harder and harder as the group gets bigger and bigger.

I just think that we're going to enter a time when writing groups will probably be smaller, more collaborative.

AI will be there kind of with you in real time giving suggestions.

And then a lot of the work is just going to be making things more explicit so that it can actually help you and understand what's going on.

What worries me, and it just might be because of Out of nostalgia and out of caring for other human beings at this point.

I don't like the idea of those three writers that were just eliminated from that group, that had a job and now don't.

I don't love that.

But the flip side is they can make films.

It's going to be cheaper for them to do it.

I think that if that's the case and that we're allowing more people to do more things, then great.

I like the idea of it. as a tool for humans and not a replacement for humans.

The way that a computer... When I started writing scripts, I was on a typewriter.

That's how old I am.

The idea of then going to a sophisticated word processor where I could then change and move things and move it around.

That was unbelievably important for my writing style.

It was so helpful for me.

That's what I'm hoping this is, that I can just sit there and go, God, I need a good way.

What's a good thing to do here?

And I'm using it as that partner sitting next to me all the time.

Would I still want the partner?

I would.

Will I get it going forward?

I don't know.

But I would like to have that because I think that humans so far – and again, I don't know what's going to happen in the future.

I'm so afraid of saying something like, yeah, I will never be as good as a good person.

And then two months from now, you look like an idiot.

It's getting so good so fast.

So far.

Unpredictable that I don't know that AI would have cut them up with that.

Yeah.

And the thing – that's why I come back to conviction because it requires a real sense of taste.

Even if AI came up with it to say that's the best idea and I'm going to –

Put my spine on that.

That's the first thing.

And then the other thing that is standing out is I have pretty high confidence that it's going to take a lot of jobs and put a lot of people out of work.

And then, at the same time, I have very high confidence that it means that people can make films with less budget, with smaller teams, and someone who used to just be a writer can now do all of these other things.

And they on their own can take –

A film, a sitcom, a documentary, whatever it is, from start to finish, way easier than they used to be able to.

I'm hoping that all those people – before I was talking about like the things that you can save by – with production to take the cost off.

Yeah.

I'm hoping those people who then you've put out of work – for the ones doing that can then be part of that movement to help those who are technologically challenged to make their movie.

Like now, the guy who is a special effects person today working in that can then become sort of the person who is the liaison between AI and the writer.

You know that there's a role for those kinds of people who are good technologically where many people just aren't.

They're going to be able to rely on somebody whose job is now a master of getting AI to do the things that you need it to do.

So I think there's room for that.

The people who are driving the trucks to those locations.

The people who are shooting that stock shot, et cetera, et cetera, I worry about them.

The musicians who are doing, you know, scoring, all sorts.

The job's up and down.

I worry.

Yeah.

And to go back to your original point, the thing about AI that makes it such a head scratcher is that the game theory is such between the different AI companies and between America and China and just the geopolitical game theory, that it has now gone full accelerationist, almost like a modern Cold War type thing in certain ways.

And because of that, it's all happening so much faster faster than our ability to process what's going on and ask wait, what's good for society?

And it's the technology that's leading the ship and not the humans themselves.

And that's like, ah.

I don't know if you read AI 2027.

No.

It's amazing.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

From Slate Star Codex.

Yeah.

You know it's about feeling the pressure to move forward and not putting in the proper safeguards.

And are we doing that?

Just from a self-preservation, like literally it's AI got to try to wipe us out at some point.

It sounds like science fiction, but it also, according to them, and they seem very smart, it's real.

We have to be careful.

We have to be thoughtful.

I don't think we can be.

In the last Writers Guild election or the strike, AI was a big part of that.

I was very nervous about that.

I'm like, how do you stop progress?

I don't know how you stop it.

If you said to any writer I have something here that can help you do a better job on your script and you know faster and better and it's available to you right now and you can work it, that writer is going to want to use that tool.

Or the vast majority of them are going to want to use that tool.

It's just like saying would you like to have a couple of smart people in the room with you to help you?

Some people are going, nope, I'm on my own.

I want to do this.

The pride is going to be from me 1,000% doing it myself.

But I think that it's inevitable that we will be using AI in some way.

So the idea of like we're going to stop.

Like everyone says, nope, nope, nope.

We're not going to do it.

I'm not going to do it.

I think you're being – those people are being naive.

Tell me this.

So when I talk to writers, I have one friend who's a novelist who has basically – he's using Cursor to do feedback on his novel drafts.

And he's like, I hired an editor.

They told me it's going to be a six-week turnaround.

It's been three months and they haven't gotten back to me.

I'm now in Cursor and I've gamed Cursor so they can give me really good feedback.

It takes about 20 to 30 minutes.

But what I notice with the writers is that the people who are anti-AI are very loud.

The people who are pro-AI are quite quiet because there's a sort of taboo.

So what you hear behind closed doors is very different from what people say in public.

Is it like that in Hollywood?

I haven't talked to a lot of other writers about how you're using it.

I should.

I should ask some friends what they're doing with it.

I'd be so curious.

I know that there is – there just are always two kinds of people.

The ones who are ready to jump aboard anything that's new and helpful and cool, and let's try it.

And let me see what this is all about.

And there are those who are just going to be –

The Luddites were going to be more inclined to just want to do it themselves and do it the old way.

And I don't say that in a derogatory way.

That's the way they want to work.

Well, we don't talk enough about it with AI.

I've seen hints at it is how demoralizing it might become.

Oh, I mean, it's already there.

I will look at stuff that AI writes and I'm like, that's better than I could have written it.

And it gives me way less pride in the skills that I have.

Yeah.

And the idea that you know, I saw someone's post that said you know, I spent a week on this presentation and I did it in five minutes and it was better.

It is demoralizing.

How do you attack the next presentation with the same amount of vigor?

I think that's something that worries me.

Me.

I mean there are many positives to it and there are many cautions or things that we should be cautioned or be afraid of.

I really enjoyed this.

Thank you.

My pleasure.

I really enjoyed this.

I hope this was not dull.

I always worry I get into the weeds, but thank you.

I'm glad to be here.

It was nice to meet you.

And I think that anybody who is focusing on writers and writing is a friend of mine.

So thank you.

Thank you.

[The Art of Storytelling and the Future of Creativity: Insights from a Veteran TV Writer]-[Steven Levitan: How Modern Family Rewrote The Rules of Sitcom | How I Write]

📋 Summary

The Architecture of Storytelling: Insights from a TV Writing Veteran

The Pace of Creativity: Fast-Twitch vs. Slow-Twitch

The "Modern Family" Blueprint: Realism and Dynamics

Story is King: The Evolution of Comedy

The AI Frontier: A Tool for Conviction

Final Takeaways: Joy and Observation

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[The Art of Storytelling and the Future of Creativity: Insights from a Veteran TV Writer]-[Steven Levitan: How Modern Family Rewrote The Rules of Sitcom | How I Write]

📋 Summary

The Architecture of Storytelling: Insights from a TV Writing Veteran

The Pace of Creativity: Fast-Twitch vs. Slow-Twitch

The "Modern Family" Blueprint: Realism and Dynamics

Story is King: The Evolution of Comedy

The AI Frontier: A Tool for Conviction

Final Takeaways: Joy and Observation

Deep Learning with ListenLeap

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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