Interview with TV Showrunners Jenni Konner & Ali Rushfield
First, a bit of context: In the final days of Help Me Help You, I cornered the show's creators, Jenni and Ali, as they were leaving. Literally. They were in their car, the doors partially closed, when I called out "Hey, wait!". I asked them if I could interview them via email. They very graciously agreed, and below is the result.
These are things I really wanted to know, so I found all their answers fascinating. However, I think there are some good nuggets in there that anyone could enjoy -- I particularly like the lesson they share that Judd Apatow (40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN, KNOCKED UP) imparted to them during their time on his show, UNDECLARED.
INTERVIEW WITH JENNI KONNER & ALI RUSHFIELD, CREATORS OF ABC'S HELP ME HELP YOU
Devon DeLapp: How did you two come to be writing partners?
Jenni & Ali: We made up a story a few years ago that we met at a wedding where Jenni was a waitress in charge of handing out the jumbo shrimp and Ali was a person obsessed with jumbo shrimp. The story seemed too complicated so we went with the very cute truth which is that we became friends in seventh grade.
DD: When do you feel your writing career took off? What was the catalyst (a great spec, met the right person, etc.)?
J&A: We wrote a spec screenplay called “Wannabe” which got us an agent and a lot of meetings, but no job. A year later after realizing that if we had an agent and lots of meetings from our spec script we should probably be getting jobs, we switched to a different agency and within a few weeks had our first job adapting a photo book called “Fast Forward” into a screenplay for Sony. This began our feature writing career, but it wasn’t until 2 years later when we had an interview with Judd Apatow for his show “Undeclared” that we starting writing for TV.
DD: For Help Me, Help You, why group therapy? What drew you to it? And what do you think sold it to the network?
J&A: In group therapy no one edits themselves. They say the things you think, but never think you can say. We were drawn to the idea of six or seven people in a room together where they say whatever they want, have no social mores, like a dysfunctional family thrown together.
DD: I'm personally curious how you found out the show was ordered to series. I'd like to think it was something romantic, like your agent hired a sky-writer, or a singing telegram, but it was probably much simpler, like a phone call.
J&A: It isn’t a romantic story but when we found out the show was ordered to series we got a voice mail message that just said “Steve McPherson is calling for you,” and then the person hung up. There was no number of where to call back, as if there was an ABC Bat Phone you were supposed to pick up and immediately be connected to the president’s office. Needless to say, it was a very happy moment when we finally connected with the proper parties and found out the news.
DD: What did you look for in the writers you hired for the room?
J&A: People who had great writing samples that stood out from the pack and then, once we met, who seemed like good people to want to spend hours and hours a day talking with. We also hired writers we with from past TV show jobs who were exceptionally funny, strong writers.
DD: How do you like to run your room?
J&A: The first things we did when setting up the writer’s room was to dispense with the big conference table and just have a bunch of couches and coffee tables facing a dry erase board. This gave the illusion of just hanging out talking rather than doing any serious hard work. The writer’s room seemed somewhat informal. If one of us was not in the room then whoever was writing the episode took the helm in the room. It seemed to work really well.
DD: Describe the casting process? How did Ted Danson become involved?
J&A: We and our casting guys, who are amazing by the way, Brett Greenstein and Collin Daniel, auditioned people and went through the whole process. The network was very good about letting us use the people who we thought would be best, not shoving the “they have to be blonde and hot” thing at us which is usually what happens. We sent Ted Danson the script and he was interested so we had breakfast with him at the Polo Lounge and he grilled us about the show and the character for a couple of hours. We didn’t realize until we knew him later that he is not the serious and intense guy he was at that breakfast, he just had a lot of questions and wanted to find out what we were made of.
DD: I can only imagine the number of stresses and concerns you had to
handle as Executive Producers. What would you say is the toughest part of running a television show?
J&A: The toughest part of running a show (and there were actually three of us including exec producer Alex Reid who ran the set) was having to do a million different things at every moment and all of those things were completely different kinds of tasks from each other. We could be in the room working on beating out a story and then go to a meeting a few minutes later about what a set should look like and then have a call with the studio about what kind of on-line promotion we should try to get for any given week’s episode.
Before everything started we asked people for advice and everyone (including Aaron Sorkin who we accosted by the pool in Palm Springs) kept saying once everything got going it would become “a runaway train.” Everyone talked about this train. We had no idea what they were talking about. After the first day of shooting we felt like we had been run over by that runaway train. We definitely got used to the crazy pace and had a great time, but we had no idea how hectic it could be before starting. Luckily our cast was amazing and, led by Ted’s easy going nature, never diva-ed out once.
DD: I've heard network notes described as anything from "idiotic", to
"helpful", to a "necessary evil". Do you have any personal favorite network notes that have come your way?
J&A: This is going to sound cringy and ass-kissy, but the network on the whole had very few notes and the ones they did have were pretty good. We mainly dealt with Kevin Plunkett and Erin Horowitz and they were smart and had really good ideas. When we had any differences they were reasonable about listening to our side and letting us try what we wanted. Sorry this is not more disgusting lurid tale of stomped dreams and mangled vision, but we got lucky we had good people to work with.
DD: Looking back on the run of the show, would you have done anything different?
J&A: There was this insidious guy working in the production office named Devon who I would definitely not hire. That is something we would definitely do differently. That guy was creepy from Day One. I still get creeped out even thinking of that guy. I hope he moved away.
DD: What was your "favorite moment" out of the series -- maybe a joke, or a beat, or something that didn't even make it to air?
J&A: There is a story we did where the character Dave accidentally eats a pot brownie and wanders around the city and keeps going in and out of a subway stop making sure he is getting on the right subway. We wanted this to happen maybe 5 or 6 times to be as funny as possible, but for time we had to cut it down to 3.
Also in the group group we had where Bill sees his own group of group therapists we used guest members (Phil Rosenthal, Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, Seth McFarland, Larry Gilmore, and the leader Jane Lynch). These were hilarious scenes where they would go nuts with improvisation and most of the stuff never got in because of Time as well.
DD: You both worked on Judd Apatow's UNDECLARED. I'm a huge fan of his work (the collected scripts of FREAKS & GEEKS is on my desk right now). Is there any lesson or memory that sticks out in your mind from your time on that show?
J&A: A very valuable thing we learned from Undeclared as far as the writing process was to not be precious about your words and ideas. From the very first day we arrived at the job, Judd had the writers go off and write 50 story ideas in about an hour. When we came back he told us to each go off and write another 50 ideas. He said that most of the second 50 would be unusable, but there might be 1 or 2 great ones that were from the craziest part of your brain that you must mine to get the weird and original stuff that isn’t on the top of your head.
When we are writing now we very often will write a list of 50 different jokes for a montage, for example, as a way of getting to maybe 5 really good ones. It was especially a good lesson when writing TV to learn how to move very quickly and not agonize over anything too much, just shoot out a bunch of ideas.
DD: What is your advice to an aspiring comedy writer? How do you stand out? Or, perhaps more importantly, get representation?
J&A: Don’t try to anticipate what people in the TV industry want to read in a script. Write exactly what you want without second guessing yourself too much. No one reading scripts knows what they are looking for so if you write something that you think is great and that you love then it will stand out.
DD: What are some important mistakes you've made as writers/producers, and what did you learn from them?
J&A: Do not sexually harass people in the office and tell them they better not tell anyone and expect that they actually will not tell anyone. They will. People have very big mouths in this business. Also, they will make the incident sound about a thousand percent more aggressive and gross than it actually was. Not that we have ever done this.
See Also:The End Of Help Me Help You The People I Work For Found My Blog Poor Man's Process, Illustrated (poorly)
These are things I really wanted to know, so I found all their answers fascinating. However, I think there are some good nuggets in there that anyone could enjoy -- I particularly like the lesson they share that Judd Apatow (40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN, KNOCKED UP) imparted to them during their time on his show, UNDECLARED.
INTERVIEW WITH JENNI KONNER & ALI RUSHFIELD, CREATORS OF ABC'S HELP ME HELP YOU
Devon DeLapp: How did you two come to be writing partners?
Jenni & Ali: We made up a story a few years ago that we met at a wedding where Jenni was a waitress in charge of handing out the jumbo shrimp and Ali was a person obsessed with jumbo shrimp. The story seemed too complicated so we went with the very cute truth which is that we became friends in seventh grade.
DD: When do you feel your writing career took off? What was the catalyst (a great spec, met the right person, etc.)?
J&A: We wrote a spec screenplay called “Wannabe” which got us an agent and a lot of meetings, but no job. A year later after realizing that if we had an agent and lots of meetings from our spec script we should probably be getting jobs, we switched to a different agency and within a few weeks had our first job adapting a photo book called “Fast Forward” into a screenplay for Sony. This began our feature writing career, but it wasn’t until 2 years later when we had an interview with Judd Apatow for his show “Undeclared” that we starting writing for TV.
DD: For Help Me, Help You, why group therapy? What drew you to it? And what do you think sold it to the network?
J&A: In group therapy no one edits themselves. They say the things you think, but never think you can say. We were drawn to the idea of six or seven people in a room together where they say whatever they want, have no social mores, like a dysfunctional family thrown together.
DD: I'm personally curious how you found out the show was ordered to series. I'd like to think it was something romantic, like your agent hired a sky-writer, or a singing telegram, but it was probably much simpler, like a phone call.
J&A: It isn’t a romantic story but when we found out the show was ordered to series we got a voice mail message that just said “Steve McPherson is calling for you,” and then the person hung up. There was no number of where to call back, as if there was an ABC Bat Phone you were supposed to pick up and immediately be connected to the president’s office. Needless to say, it was a very happy moment when we finally connected with the proper parties and found out the news.
DD: What did you look for in the writers you hired for the room?
J&A: People who had great writing samples that stood out from the pack and then, once we met, who seemed like good people to want to spend hours and hours a day talking with. We also hired writers we with from past TV show jobs who were exceptionally funny, strong writers.
DD: How do you like to run your room?
J&A: The first things we did when setting up the writer’s room was to dispense with the big conference table and just have a bunch of couches and coffee tables facing a dry erase board. This gave the illusion of just hanging out talking rather than doing any serious hard work. The writer’s room seemed somewhat informal. If one of us was not in the room then whoever was writing the episode took the helm in the room. It seemed to work really well.
DD: Describe the casting process? How did Ted Danson become involved?
J&A: We and our casting guys, who are amazing by the way, Brett Greenstein and Collin Daniel, auditioned people and went through the whole process. The network was very good about letting us use the people who we thought would be best, not shoving the “they have to be blonde and hot” thing at us which is usually what happens. We sent Ted Danson the script and he was interested so we had breakfast with him at the Polo Lounge and he grilled us about the show and the character for a couple of hours. We didn’t realize until we knew him later that he is not the serious and intense guy he was at that breakfast, he just had a lot of questions and wanted to find out what we were made of.
DD: I can only imagine the number of stresses and concerns you had to
handle as Executive Producers. What would you say is the toughest part of running a television show?
J&A: The toughest part of running a show (and there were actually three of us including exec producer Alex Reid who ran the set) was having to do a million different things at every moment and all of those things were completely different kinds of tasks from each other. We could be in the room working on beating out a story and then go to a meeting a few minutes later about what a set should look like and then have a call with the studio about what kind of on-line promotion we should try to get for any given week’s episode.
Before everything started we asked people for advice and everyone (including Aaron Sorkin who we accosted by the pool in Palm Springs) kept saying once everything got going it would become “a runaway train.” Everyone talked about this train. We had no idea what they were talking about. After the first day of shooting we felt like we had been run over by that runaway train. We definitely got used to the crazy pace and had a great time, but we had no idea how hectic it could be before starting. Luckily our cast was amazing and, led by Ted’s easy going nature, never diva-ed out once.
DD: I've heard network notes described as anything from "idiotic", to
"helpful", to a "necessary evil". Do you have any personal favorite network notes that have come your way?
J&A: This is going to sound cringy and ass-kissy, but the network on the whole had very few notes and the ones they did have were pretty good. We mainly dealt with Kevin Plunkett and Erin Horowitz and they were smart and had really good ideas. When we had any differences they were reasonable about listening to our side and letting us try what we wanted. Sorry this is not more disgusting lurid tale of stomped dreams and mangled vision, but we got lucky we had good people to work with.
DD: Looking back on the run of the show, would you have done anything different?
J&A: There was this insidious guy working in the production office named Devon who I would definitely not hire. That is something we would definitely do differently. That guy was creepy from Day One. I still get creeped out even thinking of that guy. I hope he moved away.
DD: What was your "favorite moment" out of the series -- maybe a joke, or a beat, or something that didn't even make it to air?
J&A: There is a story we did where the character Dave accidentally eats a pot brownie and wanders around the city and keeps going in and out of a subway stop making sure he is getting on the right subway. We wanted this to happen maybe 5 or 6 times to be as funny as possible, but for time we had to cut it down to 3.
Also in the group group we had where Bill sees his own group of group therapists we used guest members (Phil Rosenthal, Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, Seth McFarland, Larry Gilmore, and the leader Jane Lynch). These were hilarious scenes where they would go nuts with improvisation and most of the stuff never got in because of Time as well.
DD: You both worked on Judd Apatow's UNDECLARED. I'm a huge fan of his work (the collected scripts of FREAKS & GEEKS is on my desk right now). Is there any lesson or memory that sticks out in your mind from your time on that show?
J&A: A very valuable thing we learned from Undeclared as far as the writing process was to not be precious about your words and ideas. From the very first day we arrived at the job, Judd had the writers go off and write 50 story ideas in about an hour. When we came back he told us to each go off and write another 50 ideas. He said that most of the second 50 would be unusable, but there might be 1 or 2 great ones that were from the craziest part of your brain that you must mine to get the weird and original stuff that isn’t on the top of your head.
When we are writing now we very often will write a list of 50 different jokes for a montage, for example, as a way of getting to maybe 5 really good ones. It was especially a good lesson when writing TV to learn how to move very quickly and not agonize over anything too much, just shoot out a bunch of ideas.
DD: What is your advice to an aspiring comedy writer? How do you stand out? Or, perhaps more importantly, get representation?
J&A: Don’t try to anticipate what people in the TV industry want to read in a script. Write exactly what you want without second guessing yourself too much. No one reading scripts knows what they are looking for so if you write something that you think is great and that you love then it will stand out.
DD: What are some important mistakes you've made as writers/producers, and what did you learn from them?
J&A: Do not sexually harass people in the office and tell them they better not tell anyone and expect that they actually will not tell anyone. They will. People have very big mouths in this business. Also, they will make the incident sound about a thousand percent more aggressive and gross than it actually was. Not that we have ever done this.
See Also: