Wondercon: Fan-Favorite Showrunners
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WonderCon: Fan-Favorite Showrunners 03.26.2016 There was an embarrassment of TV riches on display during the second day of WonderCon for TV Guide's fifth annual Fan Favorite Showrunners panel. The panelists included Ali Adler (Supergirl), Craig DiGregorio (Ash vs. Evil Dead), Scott M. Gimple (The Walking Dead), Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers), Melissa Rosenberg (Marvel's Jessica Jones) and Paul Scheer (Party Over Here), and the conversation drifted from showrunner duties, the adaptation process, and tackling death and fan reactions. To start, they each described their jobs. "It's a different job for all of us. We do it in different ways, but the best way of describing it is you are the net," said Lindelof. "If the show is walking the high wire and it's going to fall, and it will, you're the person who's there to catch it. It's a terrible job really. I go to bed worried and wake up worried." "It's like parenting, you're the Mom or Dad," said Adler. "You are everything to everyone." "You can't check out of any step," said Scheer. "From the inception to if this color gray is the right gray for TV." Rosenberg highlighted the differences between writing for features and for TV. "Features are very much a solitary place, and not as much fun as a writer," she said. "With showrunning, you're in every frame of that show. It's incredibly overwhelming, but it's your vision and a much happier place to be." "What most people assume a director of a big movie does, that's a showrunner," said Scheer. "We also deal with the business of it," said Scott Gimple (The Walking Dead). "We get X amount of resources for the show, how much on VFX, and there's negotiation and politics." "They told me there's no math, but there's a lot of it," said Adler. Given that The Walking Dead, The Leftovers and Ash vs. Evil Dead deal in the apocalypse or dystopia, Gimple addressed why it clicks for audiences. "Apocalypse has captured people's imagination because you get to peel away all the artifice, the nonsense. You don't have to worry about the Internet, Twitter and your job," he said. "It's just you and hopefully your family staying alive, and staying you and not changing into the monsters that you're fighting." The Walking Dead and The Leftovers deal with death constantly, and had several notable fakeouts this past season. As host Michael Schneider describes, it's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't situation" for writers. "It's an immensely complicated issue. We do process the storytelling as fans first and it's a bit surreal to be in control of life or death decisions on your show. We have conversations of should we kill so and so, and it models very closely what the fan reaction is going to be," said Lindelof. "Without stakes they would be utterly boring to watch if you didn't kill anyone. The question becomes how do you kill those characters, accepting that fan reaction would be vitriolic, but hopefully fans would understand. But if we sat there worrying about fan reactions to everything, we'd never do anything." "When you kill a character, you're striving to not do the same thing and subvert expectations," said Lindelof. "We're not doing it for ratings, right Scott?" "Fans do really care, and that's unbelievable. It's a privilege. We're not playing around with that," said Gimple. "With reality TV, people watch it and it's about you being you, laughing at that crazy housewife. With a show like the ones we do, we want you to feel like the characters, go through the things that the characters go through, and want to be part of that group. We're asking to put the audience through something." All save Scheer's comedy show are adaptations, and Rosenberg talked about her experience with Marvel. "Marvel and Netflix have done a number of things really well, and one of them is to give each one of their four series their own voice," said Rosenberg. Because of the long, convoluted production schedule of the Netflix Marvel shows, "it's gonna be awhile," before Rosenberg and company write season 2. DiGregorio has no such downtime, revealing that Sam Raimi won't be directing any episodes in season 2, but will be heavily involved in the show. He also talked about balancing gore and comedy on his Starz show. "Gore is part of the comedy. I happened into something where the humor comes from an age-old friendship of Sam [Raimi], Bruce and Rob," said DiGregorio. "Sam only did this to torture his friend Bruce. I get to now help torture Bruce." Scheer has a different target with one of his upcoming parodies: teen dramas. The show is called Filthy Preppy Teens and is exactly what it sounds like. "It used to be 'Filthy Sexy Teens' but if you google that our show would definitely not come up," said Scheer. "We created a world of hot young kids who can murder and do drugs." Lindelof addressed why he decided The Leftovers' upcoming third season was its last. "It goes to the metrics of our business: how much does the show cost, how many people are watching. It became pretty clear as storytellers, while we really like what we're doing, that this was going to be one of those bubble shows. Instead of writing the show with the attitude of this could be the series finale, let's take control of this thing," said Lindelof. "Which is a way of going, I think you're going to break up with me, but I'm breaking up with you first." "There's no reason to go on a MASH-level 12-year run unless you can really reinvent the wheel," echoed Scheer. "That said, I can watch Walking Dead for another 20 years," said Lindelof. "And AMC will make sure that happens," said Schneider. There are many examples of strong, complex, flawed women characters from the shows represented on the panel, and now on TV, which Rosenberg talked about. "For many years, we had these really incredible characters: the Tony Sopranos, the Vic Mackeys, the Walter Whites, who are all white guys," said Rosenberg. "Audiences weren't as ready to have a woman in that role. Shows started breaking ground like Jenji Kohan's Weeds and Linda Wallem's Nurse Jackie. I don't think Jessica Jones exists before those." "It's great for all the incredibly talented actresses out there to play something other than the noble wife or the sassy cop," said Rosenberg. To that end, Scheer's Party Over Here is a comedy ensemble featuring three female comedian sketch artists, another breakthrough in a panel full of breakthrough hits on a crowded TV landscape. [Images courtesy of Netflix, AMC].