Saturday, May 28, 2005

Here's the second part of my interview with Shelley Eriksen...

AE: You did a show about sex researchers. Did the sex get in the way of the funny?

SE: I guess what is sexy is as personal as what is funny. You invite a bunch of people into the room to talk about it... God help you if you get even one person agreeing with you.

Just in terms of my own point of view, going from Season One to Season Two to our plans for Season Three ... I don't care about the effing sex. I mean, rent a porno! In Season 2 we had a couple of sexual confessions that involved little or no nudity and were about the funny and my decision for Season Three was, let's be all about the funny.

Look at our home: on that particular show our home was Showcase, which at that point was the "sex network." Now they're renovating themselves. New people in charge. They said they'd never do a lawyer show and now they are.

AE: So what are they about now? They air Rescue Me, which is just sort of contemporary urban edgy, nothing to do with sex. But what they air and what they produce isn't necessarily...

SE: I'm going in for a meeting tomorrow, I'll let you know what they say. Thing is, networks never know what they want, just what they don't want.

AE: How do you make sure each scene propels the story into the next scene? When do you want a scene to "pop" (with a button, or by making a moment of the ending) and when do you want a smooth flow into the next scene?

SE: Every year I'm a bigger fan of CUT TO: My desire to linger longer in the scene is going away. Shows are moving more and more efficiently. Everything we've learned about storytelling is greater compression...

I was taking a look at Sex and the City which I hadn't seen... They would have scenes, and The Sopranos did this too, two lines and the scene is over.

AE: They do that on Corner Gas.

SE: But that's a gag. On Sopranos it's not even a gag ... a whole character beat or a story beat in 20 seconds. I'm a huge fan of it.

AE: Too bad we can't afford it on Canadian TV.

SE: Yeah, you always have those conversations, you can have that location if you have at least three scenes in it.

Labels: interviews

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