This is the original interview my friend Andrea and I did to Des Doyle, director of a really interesting indie project: a documentary about showrunners.
Q: Let’s get to know you folks better: when and how did you come up with the idea to make this documentary?
A: I’m a lifelong TV fan – primarily American drama and comedy – it’s what I was raised on as a child here in Ireland. I’ve also always had a fascination with how TV and Film are made, which is what led me to working in the film industry for the last 15 years. The combination of these two things is what got me interested in showrunners because that job is the very definition of where creativity meets production. You can dream as long as you dream responsibly!! Couple that with managing a crew of 300 people and the management of an annual budget of $70-80 million dollars, dealing with the cast and steering a show creatively – it’s both amazing and fascinating that anybody can do it! Who wouldn’t want to make a film about these people!
Q: How would you introduce Showrunners to someone who has not even a clue of what a showrunner is?
A: If I were to use an analogy I guess you would describe the Showrunner as the captain of the ship on a TV show . You have a huge crew of people working for you but at the end of the day all the final decisions come down to you. And you can either get that ship safely to a harbour called renewal or you can slam it into an iceberg called cancellation!
Q: Do you think this documentary can be useful to someone who dreams about being a showrunner or you decided to address your work to a more generic audience?
A: I have tried very hard from the outset to make a film that can appeal to both hard core TV junkies like myself and also to the more casual viewer who may simply enjoy watching one or two of the shows our featured showrunners work on. For people interested in trying to work as a writer and specifically as a showrunner there are certainly many words of wisdom from the guys that I think they would find illuminating.
Q: How many people, including showrunners, writers, producers and actors, did you interview and how much did that take?
A: We’ve interviewed over 50 people for the film and on top of that there was additional shooting on sets, in writers rooms etc In total we ended up with about 100 hours of footage. I started developing the film almost 2 and a half years ago and we started shooting in LA in November 2010 and completed filming in October 2012. It’s been a labour of love and very challenging in many ways but I’ve had a great team of people around me both in LA and in Dublin to help!
Q: How many hours of material did you shoot in these months, and how many minutes do you think will end up in the final cut of the documentary?
A: As I said in the last answer we have about 100 hours of footage and for the feature length cut what we are aiming for will be somewhere between 90 minutes and 110 minutes. However the footage that doesn’t end up in that cut will be appearing in other forms – but can’t say more than that yet!
Q: Are there two or three sequences you want to tell us about that won’t make to the final cut but that, in your opinion, would have deserved to?
A: There are many reasons that certain sequences may not make the final cut – it’s not always a case of them “not deserving too”. The main contributing factors to deciding what makes it in is – what sequence explains the point I’m trying to make the best, but does so in an entertaining way that an audience can easily relate to. Those are the criteria I’m using in cutting the film.
Q: Was there someone you wanted to interview but you couldn’t meet?
A: Yes there were a few people we couldn’t get too mainly due to scheduling issues. For example David Benioff and DB Weiss who run “Game Of Thrones” – I really wanted to talk to them and they were trying to work things out with us but we could never make the schedules work. Showrunners are pretty busy people 99% of the time!
Q: Only television fanboys may want to produce a documentary like this. Who was the showrunner you really were looking forward to interview, just so you could tell them “thank you for producing the most awesome hours of television I have ever seen”?
On second thought: did you make this documentary just to have a good excuse to meet a showrunner?
A: When I started developing the film I drew up my Top 10 list of people I really wanted to talk to – many of those were people whose work I was a huge fan of and incredibly I got to interview 7 of those 10. They included people like Joss Whedon, JJ Abrams, Ron Moore and Damon Lindelof. But I have to say I genuinely enjoyed every interview we did for the film and I learnt a huge amount about what the job is really like and I am hugely grateful to everyone who gave up some time to talk to us and especially to Hart Hanson from “Bones” and Matthew Carnahan from “House OF Lies” who opened the door to their world and let me in for an extended stay!!
Q: When you come up with an idea for a documentary, usually you know where you want to go in terms of aspects and themes. However, was there an aspect you never thought about but turned out to be very important in the end?
A: One of the themes I always wanted to include was an examination of the showrunners job from the networks point of view which is why we have the heads of TNT and SHOWTIME in the film to give us their perspective. I kind of expected a lot of the showrunners to consider these guys as “the enemy” to some extent but the degree to which they felt that network execs contributions are both valuable and necessary was somewhat surprising.
Q: Ironically, producing this documentary makes you showrunners, in a way: which things did you experience yourselves, among the one you were told about during your interviews?
A: Budgets and logistics – trying to make a film from Ireland that completely shoots in America on a low budget was very challenging. I basically spent 2 years sleeping on couches or floors and eating junk food in order to make it happen. Like I said before this film is a labor of love and it’s a film by TV fans for TV fans. So I hope you enjoy it!
Q: According to IMDb you are used to work behind the scenes in different roles, what did push you to sit on the director chair?
A: Most of my work has been as part of the Camera Department which unless you’re the Director of Photography on a film is a purely technical field. I have wanted for the last few years to try and branch out creatively so when the opportunity to make a film about a subject I was passionate about presented itself- I jumped at it!
Q: Every showrunner has a huge problem: the end. How many times did you change the ending of this documentary and how did you end choosing that particular footage?
A: I’ll let you know when we get to the end!!
Q: OK, now the final and most important question: what do you think about the series finale of LOST?
A: The finale of LOST is something we discuss with both Damon and JJ in the film and I don’t want to spoil any of that – I think you might find their answers a little surprising!
Q: I think we gave our readers many reasons to convince them to support your Kickstarter project, there are some perks too though, if you were a potential backer which one would you be more interested into?
A: We introduced a new reward tier just recently where you can download the complete unedited interview of 3 of your favourite showrunners – so you get to see and hear everything they said to us not just the pieces we use in the film. As a fan that would be very appealing to me – I think I would go for that one!
Come on, 12 hourse left to fund this project and only a few bucks left to the goal, what are you waiting for? [Showrunners on Kickstarter]
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