Film Courage: Can you take us to the first day as the showrunner for HOME IMPROVEMENT? What was
that like? How are you interacting with the writers?
Bruce Ferber, Author/Showrunner: Well I knew all the writers. I had either worked with them in previous years or had
hired them myself and chances are if I hired them myself I had worked with them
maybe on other shows so that was all easygoing but you know home improvement
was like a juggernaut it was a huge show and it was a huge responsibility to be
the showrunner and it was my first job as a showrunner once I found out that I
had the job I had spent a ton of time prepping for that firsthand job about
how I would handle it what I would do what my approach to show running would
be and I was lucky because I had had a good mentor the showrunner before me was
Elliot Shoenman (Maude, The Cosby Show, Annie McGuire, etc.) and he had a very precise way of doing it and so I took a
lot from him and my goal in running a show was to get people excited about
their own ideas everybody else's ideas and really make it a fun room and when
you make it a fun room and you value the other writers ideas great stuff can
happen and so because I had been in the worst of writers rooms and the worst of
writers rooms go like this where they have eight writers and one showrunner
the showrunner wants to rewrite everything so that all the showrunner
wants is people around to spit out stuff and and kind of tell them how great he
is and this happens way too often and at the end of the day no matter how much
work they do in that room the showrunner is going to take it home by himself and
rewrite every word and so you have a demoralized staff I had no interest in
having the moralized staff I wanted other people's contributions because in
comedy that's what makes it better you know
just one person alone can really make it as good as a group there are exceptions
this show fleabag is apparently written by one person and she's very talented
but who knows maybe fleabag would be even better if she had a staff you don't
know so how long we the showrunner for office three years okay
and what was the latest you and your group worked your team of writers you
know there would be occasional really late nights and for me for us a really
late night might be midnight there are rooms that go later than that and but we
always my kind of the thing that I strove for is a showrunner
was no weekends no weekends in the room because I had a family I wanted
to spend time with them and when I was doing shows even working for other
people I didn't really mind that much working the late nights during the week
if I could get those two days off with my family so that was that was important
would you also look at feedback from the audience and how would you integrate oh
it was fantastic they had come up before I even gone the show they had this whole
system now nobody else did this at the time for the Wednesday run-through we
would read the script on Monday run through the show on Tuesday afternoon
and then run through it again for the network on Wednesday afternoon and when
we did our run-through we would bring in 20 people from the universal tour in
folding chairs to watch the run-through so those those people told us what was
working and what wasn't working and then by Thursday night camera run through the
show was in great shape and we were good to go on Friday night how would they
deliver that would you sort of do a QA let them afterwards he was all based in
their laughs it's all business it's not hey you like this if they're
laugh and they like it that's true he was fun it's not a sympathy laugh that
you could tell they were oh no you can tell what's going on sure having worked
on other television shows you knew you didn't want to quote demoralize of the
other writers I wanted to make them feel a part of the process true so what were
you telling the fellow on home improvement while you were the
showrunner well I tell them first of all to come in with stories because that's
part of their job the main thing in a show that I run or any show that is run
well is that nobody from your staff should just shoot down an idea and say
that's not good that is cardinal rule number one of
working on a television show comedy you always have a fix and even if your fix
is not the final one or maybe not even the best one that you're going to get to
if somebody says you know that jokes no good that everybody's not going to last
in my room because that writer has to pitch another joke that's their job or
if they don't like a story they need to think of something that that they think
is better so in other words you just don't be negative it's all you come at
it to be constructive so let's say we're two writers and writers room and you
pitch a joke and say and then she follows down at the end and instead if I
was thinking wow that's really bad instead of me saying it I would be like
or if that's what if okay what if the key two words are what it yeah because
that way you're not necessarily insulting the last person who pitched
who might be insulted because they might say oh wait a minute mine was great but
if they've got to understand that that I'm coming into writers room people are
gonna have a lot of different ideas and the what if is so much better than the
that so I would trade out the bad for
the wife and so then how would the joke went out if then another writer over
here said wait what if she does this or whatever
at what point that's the showrunner job you decide when it's good enough when
you like it and you know you you have to be the final word so that really what it
really is what it means to be a showroom somebody somebody has to have the final
word and somebody's got to take the heat when
the network and the studio don't like the show or the star doesn't like the
show so the showrunner makes a decision and the star may say that and then
you have to face the music how you're going to fix that but that's part of the
gig did you ever get feedback what let's suppose you wear the final say on the
joke and you thought it was great and you were so proud and it backfired on
you and you got letters or people who were upset you know when I did this it
was before you know Twitter and all this stuff the letters went to the studios I
never saw the letters but you know we would we would do a final pass the whole
room would do a final pass on a script before it went to the actors at the
table on Monday and we turned in a script that we thought was great the
actors could eat it the studio could dislike it the network anybody you know
because it's a subjective business anybody can like or dislike anything and
I've been on shows where the actors if they read the script in advance or as
they're reading it at the moment if they see a line they don't like they will
tank it so in other words they don't even want this line to have a chance of
winding up of the show so they read it in such a way to make sure you know they
don't like it and that nobody at the table laughs so so they sabotage it
crispin are you almost grateful that social media that instant feedback
wasn't available or do you guess so yeah no yeah I know I don't need social media
feedback for pretty much anything I mean because remember we live in a world
today where everybody is a pundit okay so you have you know millions and
millions of experts on what this place should be doing and
what that one person should be doing and you know if you think about our lives
before social media you might read an editorial by a really experienced column
this analyzing the situation and saying you know here's what we should do and
then maybe the next week you read something by another really
well-informed person saying you know I don't think so
now we're getting advice from every single person who has a phone and you
know what we don't need that we we have plenty of experience and talented people
and it's great that everybody gets a voice and a part of the conversation but
at a certain point it becomes like white noise and and that's why so many people
get to a point they say we're turning it off this week or we're turning it off
forever I'm off Facebook I don't have a personal
page anymore or whatever and and they just get burned out on it and if you
know and I've experimented with this and not using it for a while and I would say
and they've done scientific studies that people who get off social media are
happier so there you go
you