Sunday, June 27, 2010

GLEE is a rare bird among writing rooms. It’s just Brennan and Ryan and Brad. “We don’t have a writing staff, which is not typical. I know on OVER THERE it was Bochco and one other guy. But I don’t understand how you do it differently. We co-write everything. We’re credited sort of randomly on the show. But we all do passes. Ryan has a really good sense of what plays in Peoria. If I wrote it, one million people would really f***ing love it.” [Note to Canadian readers: that’s a very small number of viewers.]

“Now that we’re picked up for season three, hiring writing staff would probably actually slow us down. There would be almost a learning curve – how would someone come in to write for us? Anyway, writing the show is getting easier. The show tells you what it wants. And now that people like it, you don’t think ‘I’m writing a turd.’”

One of the audience members asked if the characters were going to write original music, but Brennan didn’t think so. “The secret to how our show works is two things for me. First, people singing for no reason. I don’t, ironically, like musicals. Unless I’m in them. My sister and I when we were very young were watching THE SOUND OF MUSIC, and we were, like, ‘how do they know all the words?’ With our show, it makes more sense that people are singing. And it’s music you know, so there’s an endorphin rush from the moment you know what song it is, you’re already going there. I mean, now we can stretch the boundaries a bit, but don’t just have people just burst into song.”

A reporter asked about a NEWSWEEK article about whether gay actors can play straight people. “I don’t feel I have that much to contribute. I guess we are still obsessed with where people put their genitals
We still all giggle at that. The generation behind us is officially not going to care. They already kind of don’t care. You’re going to have to apologize to your children or grandchildren, ‘Yeah, it used to be bad, gay people couldn’t marry and all this stuff.’ I mean, are we really talking about this?”

“The tour beat all expectations. We just wondered, could we do a live tour? Would it be good? We threw out a trial balloon — and all the venues sold out in 30 seconds or something insane.”

“We get calls all the time from people who want to be on our show, but you don’t want it to be THE LOVE BOAT. I mean, ‘Who would you be?’”

“I keep hearing that there are budget cuts in high schools everywhere, but because of the show, now they don’t dare cut Glee Club. So the show is a snake eating its own tail. But I hope it isn’t reserved for music. I wouldn’t be here if not for the theater department. I’m 100% a product of American public school system; this is the logical endpoint of my arts education. Public education works – it did for me. Don’t cut all that arts stuff. If not for that, I’d be a veterinarian in Chicago.”

“I can only make sense of the world through making fun of things. For me the show is always funny, but the humor has to cut against something. A grounded foundation of story and character and heart. Oddly enough we kind of learned early on that the episodes that read the funniest on the page aren’t that funny. It’s the sad episodes, the ones that key into that sanguine earnest soft feeling that you had when you first fell in love... those are the ones that really make you laugh.”

Labels: Banff, interviews

1:52 PM

4 Comments:

Alex u rocks thanks for sharing Brennan at Banff, Part Two" tv show

By  Unknown, at 5:45 AM  

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By  Unknown, at 5:46 AM  

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By  Anonymous, at 6:09 AM  

I actually saw Ian Brennan 7 or 8 years ago in Rumors at Loyola University in Chicago. My wife was attending Loyola at the time and was in the theater there as well. Ian was an AWESOME stage actor. My wife and I watched the pilot of Glee not knowing he had anything to do with it until we saw his name in the credits.

Anyhow, good for Ian, I'm glad he struck gold as it were. :)

By  Ryan C. Finley, at 12:52 PM  

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