On navigating the the challenges of having a main cast member pass away (in the show Silicon Valley)
On navigating the the challenges of having a main cast member pass away (in the show Silicon Valley)
The loss of CEW was fucking hard. I saw him with @rosepetalpistol at a place on the east side days before he passed away, his wife and beautiful daughter were there and we talked for 40 minutes about life, the show, and him. It was a huge blow to the show, he was the funniest person on it. So he's irreplaceable and I think that everyone felt that, and I felt worst for the writers and editors, seeing him over and over, writing him out of the show, the whole lot of it. But in the most disgusting and at the same time beautiful way, "the show must go on."
I think that saying means something bigger than most people think. The show is the most important thing in many ways, because it is for the w...
Related posts tagged 'Making a show'
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producing the music is maybe my favorite part of the whole thing. I go into a studio with Matt Kelmer and a handful of great musicians that work under the title "Sweet pro" and we just fuck around. I get to cheat and make music without the training. I ask them for different moods and sounds and they try it. or we'll say let's go with cello and piano for a while and try a few things there. The cello player, wish i fucking knew his name, is tremendous. he creates whole pieces by himself and I use them ALL.
Intuition mostly. I trust the writers I work with and my own instincts. If we all feel like something is hilarious or fresh, I have to assume it is. And those are the things that tend to be well received.
On season 1 I had an editor and we shared it about half. But season two i edited without any help. It was fucking hard. and yes, i sit at the macbook and just put it together from start frame to finish.
the poker scene in season 1 was very written but then i let the guys go off and fuck around. i used some of that. I don't generally let people improvise though. That works for shows where you have two cameras that are just sort of following the action. i shoot my show like a movie and it would be all fucked up if folks just said things.
Her name was Tracy and I accidentally named Traci Reardon the same name - I came into the studio planning to name Traci Reardon Brittney Reardon and I just told Scott my name was Traci on accident! I did the original "tracy" again but changed her name to Amanda Calzone. You can hear her on the first Betsy Sodaro ep of WSGLL.
Best job ever. The excitement of starting a whole new show to replace my hero Letterman's, of doing it with one of my best friends hosting it, and working with hilarious young writers, it far outweighed how hard it was and how many people tore into it. Too many memories to list but Louis CK used to throw shit out the 30 Rock window a lot. He would throw money, and attach a note to it - stuff like "You fucking pathetic moron." So we got to watch people scurry to pick up dollar bills and the read the note. Even though they were ant-sized, their body language was enough to have us laughing for hours.
Oh man there were so many. I actually had butterflies in my stomach during a lot of those dates. Rachel, who doesn't like wearing socks, was tough to get a read on. But a fascinating person. LA, the lady who was trying to promote her album, was also a delight. Lais, who tried to kiss me.. that was a really intense one for me. It was very surreal how seriously competitive the women were getting. Actually, a fight broke out (verbal, not physical) between two of the women over how much time they were getting with me. We ended up cutting it from the episode because it felt a bit too much like a moment you'd actually see in The Bachelor, but it was a very crazy moment and a very surreal night.
Question: How on earth were you able to gain the incredible amount of authorial control that you have over Louie? Have you had to battle with FX over any particular jokes/concepts/creative choices?
Answer: I got it by demanding it and refusing to do the show any other way at all and by having the leverage that I was completely willing to walk away without doing the show and by agreeing to an extremely low budget so that they could offset the risk of giving me this freedom becuase they are risking less money.
I have had conversations with them about very few moments in the show but zero battles.
Related posts tagged 'Death'
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Related posts tagged 'Death'
i think having kids and getting into my mid 40s and some minor health issues have focused my thinking on the subject of death a little more than when i was younger.
Cervantes. I found Don Quixote transformative. I mean, I never read anything like that before. Well, I'm reading this norwegian guy and I can't remember his goddamn name. I'm trying to remember! I know what it's called, the book is called My Struggle. By Karl Ove Knausgaard. No wonder I couldn't remember it. The title is even very daring, but it's an unflinching look into mortality, which I like to do. I like to look into mortality, in an unflinching manner.
Some days, I'll flinch. Some days I'll be honest with you Victoria, I'll stare into my own mortality in that abyss. I'll flinch. But I can't say the same for Horgalveyeysbadlobad. I'm sure he flinches too, but he writes it down and pret...
Q: What’s the best book on the subject of death other than the works of Becker?
A: Wow, this person knows the works of Becker? Well that's probably the best one, Becker's Denial of Death. There's a book by Otto Rank, the trauma of Birth, he talks about death in that one a lot. You probably don't want to read about death, but if you do want to read about death, it's a good "summer read."
i like what ramana maharshi said when he was dying: "Where could I go?" the question isn't what happens when we die, it's "Who is dying?" The universe certainly seems to be into recycling, so while i don't think my ego makes it persay, i think our essence isn't going anywhere!
Well, the toughest part is questioning the relatives of the victims of a death - a child who was murdered, and you have to talk to their parents, or children who are missing. Those kind of emotional things are always the hardest, you don't like doing them, you have to do it, and it's always, always hard.
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