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Television is most certainly here to stay. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:04 | |
New eyes, new vision for the world. | 0:00:28 | 0:00:31 | |
Primetime is the showcase | 0:01:01 | 0:01:03 | |
for the best that American television can be. | 0:01:03 | 0:01:06 | |
And so, when America sits down to watch, | 0:01:06 | 0:01:08 | |
it demands more than stock characters going through the motions. | 0:01:08 | 0:01:12 | |
To flourish in primetime, | 0:01:12 | 0:01:14 | |
these shows have to reflect America in all its individuality, | 0:01:14 | 0:01:18 | |
diversity and eccentricity. | 0:01:18 | 0:01:20 | |
And that's how some of the most high-risk characters | 0:01:20 | 0:01:24 | |
in the primetime crowd are born. | 0:01:24 | 0:01:26 | |
This is the awkward squad, | 0:01:26 | 0:01:28 | |
the ones who can't, or won't, | 0:01:28 | 0:01:31 | |
or aren't allowed to fit in. | 0:01:31 | 0:01:33 | |
Geeks, freaks, misfits. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:36 | |
But though they may march to a different drummer, | 0:01:36 | 0:01:40 | |
in primetime, they become one of us and we become one of them. | 0:01:40 | 0:01:46 | |
Hey. | 0:01:50 | 0:01:52 | |
I think TV has always been a fantastic medium | 0:01:53 | 0:01:56 | |
for taking characters who, yeah, they're outrageous.... | 0:01:56 | 0:02:01 | |
I'm passing a gallstone as we speak. | 0:02:01 | 0:02:03 | |
..they're slightly inappropriate. | 0:02:03 | 0:02:06 | |
People who are socially awkward | 0:02:06 | 0:02:08 | |
or people who are missing an etiquette or a filter. | 0:02:08 | 0:02:11 | |
Schlubs. Nerds. Weirdos. | 0:02:11 | 0:02:14 | |
It's not a normal person. | 0:02:14 | 0:02:16 | |
Someone who has almost zero self-awareness. Kind of zero wisdom. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:23 | |
Expressing things that they've thought of, but would never say. | 0:02:23 | 0:02:27 | |
Someone who doesn't fit into the world that the audience belongs to. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:30 | |
In television, for some reason, they've all found homes. | 0:02:30 | 0:02:35 | |
Whether you are pushing that to comedic extremes for laughs | 0:02:35 | 0:02:40 | |
or reaching for a kind of drama, both things are appealing. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:45 | |
They are, in fact, misfits with a capital M. | 0:02:45 | 0:02:48 | |
It's fun to see institutions undone in some sort of inappropriate way | 0:02:48 | 0:02:54 | |
by somebody who just dares to be there doing it. | 0:02:54 | 0:02:58 | |
Comedy by its very nature is derisive. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:09 | |
You are picking on somebody - some body. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:12 | |
It doesn't matter who it is. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:14 | |
It can be an ethnicity, it can be a physical feature, | 0:03:14 | 0:03:17 | |
it can be bald people, fat people, short people. I've got all three. | 0:03:17 | 0:03:20 | |
It can be just about anything, but in order to get a laugh, | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
you are actually pointing at and shining a light on | 0:03:24 | 0:03:28 | |
some sort of either generic or specific foible. | 0:03:28 | 0:03:33 | |
When you do it with the misfit, and the misfit doesn't crumble, | 0:03:33 | 0:03:38 | |
everybody feels better. | 0:03:38 | 0:03:40 | |
Knock off that smile. Tighten up that face. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:43 | |
I want to see them lips white, I want to see them tight. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:47 | |
"That guy has it worse than me, he's being treated worse than me. And he's not dying." | 0:03:47 | 0:03:50 | |
-I don't like you. Do you like me? -Yes, sir. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:55 | |
Misfits in television shows, | 0:03:55 | 0:03:57 | |
that's like every show I ever watched. | 0:03:57 | 0:03:59 | |
You can't be too careful these days. | 0:03:59 | 0:04:01 | |
There are a lot of strange people in this world. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:04 | |
I'm a big fan of just the classic TV shows. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:07 | |
What does that sign say? | 0:04:07 | 0:04:09 | |
It says Beverly Hills! | 0:04:09 | 0:04:12 | |
Did you hear that, Granny? | 0:04:12 | 0:04:14 | |
I don't even care what the episode is about, | 0:04:14 | 0:04:17 | |
I just like to see those characters be those characters. | 0:04:17 | 0:04:20 | |
Gilligan was a misfit. He was this kind of knucklehead. | 0:04:20 | 0:04:23 | |
I'll save you! | 0:04:23 | 0:04:25 | |
Corporal Agarn in F Troop was an idiot. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:29 | |
There have been so many versions | 0:04:33 | 0:04:35 | |
of a certain kind of a comedy character who just doesn't get it | 0:04:35 | 0:04:40 | |
and in an exaggerated, comedic way, | 0:04:40 | 0:04:42 | |
kind of relates to how a lot of us feel. That's what's funny. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:46 | |
People love a character who is needy or hapless | 0:04:50 | 0:04:56 | |
or is kind of evil or horny or greedy. | 0:04:56 | 0:04:59 | |
I'll get it. Allez-oop! | 0:05:02 | 0:05:04 | |
Gomez Addams, he was horny and greedy and multilingual. | 0:05:04 | 0:05:11 | |
That was living, mon ami. | 0:05:11 | 0:05:13 | |
Whoooo-oooh! Tish! | 0:05:15 | 0:05:16 | |
When you speak French, you drive me wild. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:19 | |
Speak some more French. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:21 | |
Anything. Tout alors! | 0:05:21 | 0:05:22 | |
La plume de ma tante! Mademoiselle from Armentieres! Anything! | 0:05:22 | 0:05:26 | |
When I was a little boy, | 0:05:26 | 0:05:30 | |
I was probably bothered by my strangeness. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:33 | |
And one day, someone laughed | 0:05:34 | 0:05:38 | |
and I thought, "You know, let's go for it." | 0:05:38 | 0:05:42 | |
-Wonderful. -For a minute there, I thought I was going to miss. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:51 | |
The Addams Family was a world that operated by its own set of rules. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:04 | |
People talked a certain way, there was a certain style. | 0:06:04 | 0:06:07 | |
BELL RINGS | 0:06:07 | 0:06:09 | |
There was a certain mystery, | 0:06:09 | 0:06:11 | |
you just never knew what was going to happen next. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:13 | |
It's kind of like Alice In Wonderland in the form of a TV show. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:17 | |
These businessmen, always in such a hurry. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:24 | |
When we look at the '40s, '50s, '60s, | 0:06:26 | 0:06:32 | |
the '40s were filled with war and its aftermath. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:36 | |
The '50s, everybody wanted to be very straight. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:40 | |
There were efforts to force conformity. | 0:06:44 | 0:06:48 | |
'Yes, indeed, both Don and Sue look like the kind of people you would like to know, don't they?' | 0:06:50 | 0:06:55 | |
The ordinary '50s television family, they're unnatural. | 0:06:55 | 0:06:59 | |
The people were a little bit phoney. A little too perfect. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:03 | |
A little too stiff. And they begged for loosening up. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:08 | |
The premise of the Addams Family was they were insane, | 0:07:10 | 0:07:14 | |
but tried to live this suburban life. | 0:07:14 | 0:07:16 | |
I think some of them were in different states of being alive. | 0:07:16 | 0:07:20 | |
Was Lurch alive? | 0:07:22 | 0:07:23 | |
They're misfits, but they have a confidence about who they are | 0:07:23 | 0:07:26 | |
and the fact that they are so different. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:28 | |
You just absolutely adore those characters. | 0:07:28 | 0:07:31 | |
While they seem to have a strange exterior, | 0:07:31 | 0:07:35 | |
underneath, they are the healthiest family on television. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:40 | |
Parents really doing something with the children. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:44 | |
Sending a rocket through the roof. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:50 | |
It went right through Uncle Fester's room. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:52 | |
Too bad he's not home, he'd have got a bang out of it. | 0:07:52 | 0:07:54 | |
That's an activity. | 0:07:54 | 0:07:56 | |
Any show, I don't care if it's Star Trek, or a Western, or a cop show, | 0:07:56 | 0:08:01 | |
or set in the office or set in the taxi depot, is about a family. | 0:08:01 | 0:08:06 | |
Taxi was amazing in who it brought together. | 0:08:11 | 0:08:14 | |
Thank you very much. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:16 | |
You had this melting pot of all these different characters. | 0:08:20 | 0:08:22 | |
They weren't a family, but they became a family. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:25 | |
Taxi was about this family of misfits | 0:08:30 | 0:08:32 | |
who had dreams that were greater than working in this garage. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:37 | |
It's going to be OK. | 0:08:37 | 0:08:38 | |
Take your application to the counter and they'll give you the test. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:42 | |
It was this beautiful metaphor for life. | 0:08:42 | 0:08:45 | |
< Pssst. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:46 | |
(What does a yellow light mean?) | 0:08:49 | 0:08:52 | |
(Slow down.) | 0:08:52 | 0:08:54 | |
OK. | 0:08:54 | 0:08:55 | |
What ... | 0:08:56 | 0:08:57 | |
does...? | 0:08:57 | 0:08:59 | |
You look at that show and there's a wild card, a crazy character. | 0:09:01 | 0:09:05 | |
Your friend Wheeler is a loser, Reiger! | 0:09:05 | 0:09:07 | |
And I'm going to tell him he's a loser! | 0:09:07 | 0:09:10 | |
And I'm going to love telling him he's a loser! | 0:09:10 | 0:09:13 | |
Louie De Palma is like the gnat that's always in somebody's ear. | 0:09:13 | 0:09:17 | |
The guy that's really pushing and egging him on. | 0:09:17 | 0:09:21 | |
You never saw anybody on television be that nasty. | 0:09:21 | 0:09:25 | |
This is the worst boss, teacher, friend, relative. | 0:09:25 | 0:09:29 | |
The reveal of him in the pilot, yelling these nasty things, and that cage opens and he comes down... | 0:09:29 | 0:09:34 | |
Hold everything! OK, I'm going to get tough with you guys. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:38 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:09:38 | 0:09:40 | |
Ye-eah! | 0:09:52 | 0:09:54 | |
Mostly broadcast networks were strongly suggesting | 0:09:54 | 0:09:56 | |
that every character needed to be likeable | 0:09:56 | 0:09:58 | |
and they can't do anything that is going to upset anybody | 0:09:58 | 0:10:01 | |
because we need to root for them. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:02 | |
I always use Louie De Palma's example of...when I get the note, | 0:10:05 | 0:10:09 | |
"This character is not likeable." | 0:10:09 | 0:10:12 | |
"Really? Have you seen the show Taxi? | 0:10:12 | 0:10:14 | |
"Did you see Louie De Palma? Was he likeable to you?" | 0:10:14 | 0:10:19 | |
He was lovable. | 0:10:19 | 0:10:20 | |
Because he was really funny. | 0:10:20 | 0:10:22 | |
They played up just how unlikeable he really was. | 0:10:22 | 0:10:25 | |
Just a great, great sitcom villain. | 0:10:25 | 0:10:27 | |
And then they did a brilliant thing where they began showing episodes | 0:10:27 | 0:10:32 | |
where you began to sympathise with him. | 0:10:32 | 0:10:35 | |
I would be on my way to some event and I would have to change. | 0:10:35 | 0:10:40 | |
He's peeping at Elaine's character | 0:10:40 | 0:10:43 | |
dressing in the locker room and gets caught. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:45 | |
-It's absolutely untrue. -Oh, yeah? So why are your eyes tearing? | 0:10:45 | 0:10:49 | |
Because I'm hurt. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:51 | |
I'm hurt that you would even think that I could do such an awful thing. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:55 | |
So how come only one eye is tearing? | 0:10:55 | 0:10:56 | |
Well, it's not the end of the world. | 0:10:56 | 0:10:59 | |
It's like, "I'm sorry." And I go, "Haven't you ever been violated?" | 0:10:59 | 0:11:03 | |
And he tells this heartbreaking story | 0:11:03 | 0:11:05 | |
of having to buy clothes in the children's section. | 0:11:05 | 0:11:08 | |
The only way I can get anything to fit me is, er... | 0:11:08 | 0:11:11 | |
..I have to go to a men's store | 0:11:13 | 0:11:17 | |
and walk straight to the boy's department. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:21 | |
That made me feel for him in such an interesting way. | 0:11:21 | 0:11:25 | |
He says, "Is that how I made you feel?" And I say, "Kind of." | 0:11:25 | 0:11:29 | |
So then we had this really sweet moment. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:32 | |
God, I'm sorry. | 0:11:32 | 0:11:34 | |
It's OK. | 0:11:38 | 0:11:40 | |
And of course, he grabs me on the butt. | 0:11:42 | 0:11:44 | |
I think misfit characters succeed | 0:11:44 | 0:11:47 | |
when they say something very true, | 0:11:47 | 0:11:50 | |
almost by accident, about everybody who fits. | 0:11:50 | 0:11:54 | |
Comedy often is meant to provoke, to agitate a little bit, | 0:11:56 | 0:12:00 | |
to push some buttons. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:02 | |
Certain characters entertain us in that way and they actually, | 0:12:02 | 0:12:07 | |
in their own way, they do provoke some thought. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:10 | |
Using misfits to break taboos, | 0:12:15 | 0:12:17 | |
to shout the things that the mainstream thinks but never says, | 0:12:17 | 0:12:21 | |
was deployed to greatest effect in a sitcom | 0:12:21 | 0:12:23 | |
that, according to its creators, was about nothing. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:27 | |
What's the matter? | 0:12:29 | 0:12:31 | |
My mother caught me. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:34 | |
-Caught you? Doing what? -You know. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:38 | |
I was alone... | 0:12:42 | 0:12:43 | |
If the misfit can ask the question that nobody else can | 0:12:45 | 0:12:48 | |
because they're either dumber | 0:12:48 | 0:12:50 | |
or from other land or whatever it may be, | 0:12:50 | 0:12:53 | |
then clearly the Seinfeld four could talk about masturbation | 0:12:53 | 0:12:56 | |
when nobody else on television could talk about masturbation. | 0:12:56 | 0:13:00 | |
I tell you this, I am never doing that again. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:04 | |
What? In your mother's house or altogether? | 0:13:04 | 0:13:08 | |
-Altogether. -Give me a break. | 0:13:08 | 0:13:10 | |
-You don't think I can? -No chance! -You think you could? | 0:13:13 | 0:13:17 | |
Well, I know I could hold out longer than you. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:20 | |
Care to make it interesting? | 0:13:21 | 0:13:22 | |
It was absolutely brand-new territory. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:28 | |
I was convinced they would not let us get away with it. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:31 | |
The Contest had us absolutely scratching our heads going, | 0:13:31 | 0:13:35 | |
"OK, no-one gave us advance warning of this." | 0:13:35 | 0:13:40 | |
NBC had no inkling that The Contest was coming | 0:13:40 | 0:13:44 | |
because I didn't disclose it until the day of the read-through. | 0:13:44 | 0:13:49 | |
Everybody was madly trying to get up to speed with the subject matter | 0:13:49 | 0:13:54 | |
and, "Can we do it, should we do it?" | 0:13:54 | 0:13:56 | |
Did you make it through the night? | 0:13:56 | 0:13:58 | |
Yes, I'm proud to say I did. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:01 | |
-So you're still master of your domain? -Yes. Yes, I am. | 0:14:01 | 0:14:05 | |
Master of my domain. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:08 | |
I worked myself up into this lather | 0:14:08 | 0:14:10 | |
where I was actually intending to quit the show | 0:14:10 | 0:14:14 | |
if they did not put it on the air. | 0:14:14 | 0:14:16 | |
-There is a naked woman across the street. -Where? | 0:14:16 | 0:14:20 | |
-Second floor from the top. See the window on the left? -Wow. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
"I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. If they don't let me do this, I'm done." | 0:14:25 | 0:14:28 | |
I'm out. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:31 | |
I was shocked when they said, | 0:14:34 | 0:14:37 | |
"Hey, we love it. Just have a couple of things." | 0:14:37 | 0:14:39 | |
-You're out? -Wow, that was fast! | 0:14:39 | 0:14:43 | |
Seinfeld was an experiment. It didn't have traditional structure. | 0:14:56 | 0:15:00 | |
It certainly didn't have traditional characters. | 0:15:00 | 0:15:03 | |
Writers somehow felt they had to present characters that were | 0:15:05 | 0:15:10 | |
more honourable, more respectful and somehow they weren't nearly as real. | 0:15:10 | 0:15:15 | |
It used to be that the misfits had a certain..."I am who I am, | 0:15:17 | 0:15:20 | |
"but I have to fit into the real world." | 0:15:20 | 0:15:24 | |
The Beverly Hillbillies did try to adjust to Beverly Hills. | 0:15:24 | 0:15:28 | |
The Seinfeldians and, you know... | 0:15:28 | 0:15:33 | |
the newer groups are not trying. | 0:15:33 | 0:15:36 | |
The world has to work according to them. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:39 | |
I'm not sure television dared to do that before. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:45 | |
PROLONGED BELCHING | 0:15:45 | 0:15:48 | |
We like to think of ourselves | 0:15:53 | 0:15:55 | |
and our society as being a lot smarter than it is, maybe. | 0:15:55 | 0:15:58 | |
Do you want to be expelled outright? | 0:15:58 | 0:16:01 | |
Er... | 0:16:01 | 0:16:02 | |
Kicked out of school for good? | 0:16:02 | 0:16:04 | |
Condemned to a life of stupidity? | 0:16:04 | 0:16:07 | |
-Er...OK. -Yeah, me too. | 0:16:07 | 0:16:10 | |
When can we start? | 0:16:10 | 0:16:12 | |
I remember reading a statistic, | 0:16:14 | 0:16:15 | |
it was something like 30 percent of high school students in America | 0:16:15 | 0:16:19 | |
can't locate the United States on a globe if it's not marked, | 0:16:19 | 0:16:24 | |
and people being horrified and surprised and I was thinking, | 0:16:24 | 0:16:27 | |
"Yeah, that sounds about right." | 0:16:27 | 0:16:29 | |
Now, remember the rules. | 0:16:29 | 0:16:31 | |
I throw it at you, then you throw it at me. | 0:16:31 | 0:16:34 | |
I don't get it. How do you win? | 0:16:34 | 0:16:38 | |
It is easy and good practice to use the misfit | 0:16:51 | 0:16:55 | |
which is, again, the person that is lesser than us, | 0:16:55 | 0:16:59 | |
they're the ones we can look down on in some way, that is the misfit, | 0:16:59 | 0:17:03 | |
to use them, as Shakespeare said, hold the mirror up to society, | 0:17:03 | 0:17:06 | |
and ask people to take a look at themselves. | 0:17:06 | 0:17:08 | |
What do we do now? | 0:17:08 | 0:17:10 | |
Er, we could do homework. | 0:17:11 | 0:17:13 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:17:13 | 0:17:16 | |
Audiences can connect with that behaviour because we are flawed. | 0:17:22 | 0:17:28 | |
We are all flawed and, in fact, the offensive, creative material | 0:17:28 | 0:17:34 | |
is that which doesn't acknowledge our flaws, | 0:17:34 | 0:17:37 | |
where people behave well and are perfect. | 0:17:37 | 0:17:40 | |
Would you like a copy of my butt? | 0:17:40 | 0:17:42 | |
A lot of the '80s television was very kind of, um, there was | 0:17:42 | 0:17:46 | |
a lot of very goody-goody stuff. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:49 | |
I mean, I liked The Cosby Show, but everybody's going to Princeton | 0:17:49 | 0:17:54 | |
and everybody is smart and good. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:55 | |
Beavis and Butthead to me, | 0:17:55 | 0:17:57 | |
maybe it was partially a reaction to all of that. | 0:17:57 | 0:18:00 | |
And now you should be able to see | 0:18:00 | 0:18:02 | |
the inherent beauty of the Dewey decimal system. | 0:18:02 | 0:18:05 | |
-I see the beauty. -Oh, yes. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:08 | |
Some characters have no desire | 0:18:08 | 0:18:10 | |
to get better, or they're just stupid. They're just dumb | 0:18:10 | 0:18:14 | |
and they just can't get it. | 0:18:14 | 0:18:16 | |
Cracks me up. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:18 | |
DISTORTED SPEECH | 0:18:29 | 0:18:30 | |
Mark Frost and I got together and would have coffees... | 0:19:05 | 0:19:11 | |
I think we started at Du Par's on Ventura Boulevard. | 0:19:11 | 0:19:15 | |
And... | 0:19:17 | 0:19:18 | |
Somewhere along the line, this idea came of this kind of setting | 0:19:18 | 0:19:24 | |
in a small town in North Western United States of America. | 0:19:24 | 0:19:29 | |
Twin Peaks, this town has a mood. | 0:19:31 | 0:19:34 | |
It's near the woods. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:36 | |
It's a small town bunch, so there's people in a diner, | 0:19:37 | 0:19:41 | |
people at a gas station, people in school. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:43 | |
BELL RINGS | 0:19:43 | 0:19:44 | |
They're all normal, but just like when you get to know people, | 0:19:44 | 0:19:48 | |
you discover many, many, many peculiarities. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
-Who's the lady with the log? -They call her Margaret. | 0:19:56 | 0:20:00 | |
My log has something to tell you. | 0:20:00 | 0:20:02 | |
Do you know it? | 0:20:02 | 0:20:04 | |
I don't believe we've been introduced. | 0:20:05 | 0:20:08 | |
Creating these people and this world, it's just, | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
you know, first blush, that's just insanity. | 0:20:23 | 0:20:26 | |
You could say we all have a television set in our brain. | 0:20:35 | 0:20:39 | |
And you can turn the channels and see what comes on. | 0:20:39 | 0:20:42 | |
You just, it's just there. There it is. | 0:20:42 | 0:20:46 | |
It's not as crystal clear as the story, | 0:20:46 | 0:20:50 | |
finally when it's finished, | 0:20:50 | 0:20:52 | |
but it's like that, it's so much like that. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:55 | |
David Lynch's use of Americana, | 0:20:55 | 0:20:59 | |
that disparity between the dark underbelly | 0:20:59 | 0:21:04 | |
between our expectation of what that world is like | 0:21:04 | 0:21:07 | |
and what it's really like, you know, there are murders in small towns, | 0:21:07 | 0:21:10 | |
people have been killing teenagers and jealous wives | 0:21:10 | 0:21:13 | |
and drug use and all of that, | 0:21:13 | 0:21:15 | |
behind that Norman Rockwell painting for ever, he just zeroed in on that. | 0:21:15 | 0:21:19 | |
In my dream, Sarah Palmer has a vision of her daughter's killer. | 0:21:19 | 0:21:23 | |
Deputy Hawks gets this picture. | 0:21:23 | 0:21:24 | |
I got a phone call from a one-armed man named Mike. | 0:21:24 | 0:21:28 | |
-The killer's name was Bob. -Like in Bobby? | 0:21:28 | 0:21:31 | |
No, it's a different Mike and a different Bob. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:34 | |
They lived above a convenience store. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:36 | |
They had a tattoo, "Fire... | 0:21:36 | 0:21:39 | |
"Walk with me." | 0:21:39 | 0:21:41 | |
Twin Peaks is a constant frame of reference in writers' rooms. | 0:21:41 | 0:21:44 | |
You will constantly hear people bring it up. | 0:21:44 | 0:21:46 | |
What? | 0:21:47 | 0:21:49 | |
The feeling of it was just... | 0:21:51 | 0:21:55 | |
You felt it viscerally. | 0:21:55 | 0:21:57 | |
Twin Peaks was not that you felt emotions like sadness or happiness, | 0:21:57 | 0:22:01 | |
you just felt this visceral feeling of dread and strangeness. | 0:22:01 | 0:22:06 | |
The dream sequences... | 0:22:08 | 0:22:11 | |
You know, I just... I give up. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:14 | |
'I bow down to that. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:34 | |
'I couldn't, I could not believe those dreams.' | 0:22:34 | 0:22:37 | |
They just seemed like real dreams. | 0:22:37 | 0:22:40 | |
Nightmares. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:41 | |
And we did a lot of dream sequences on The Sopranos, | 0:22:44 | 0:22:47 | |
we never got close to that. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:48 | |
'Twin Peaks showed that outsider-dom | 0:22:51 | 0:22:53 | |
'could be fuel for drama as well as comedy.' | 0:22:53 | 0:22:57 | |
It's so heartening that Twin Peaks is now considered a classic, | 0:22:57 | 0:23:00 | |
because it's one of those shows that is so strange | 0:23:00 | 0:23:03 | |
you wouldn't have thought audiences would be able to swallow, | 0:23:03 | 0:23:07 | |
you know, surrealism in prime-time television and they did | 0:23:07 | 0:23:10 | |
and they loved it. | 0:23:10 | 0:23:11 | |
'I really, am not really interested in characters who AREN'T outsiders.' | 0:23:15 | 0:23:20 | |
I think I sort of grew up with an outsider's perspective | 0:23:20 | 0:23:23 | |
for a variety of reasons and I still have it. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:26 | |
As a writer, I love writing about characters who are misfits, | 0:23:26 | 0:23:29 | |
whether they know that they are misfits or not. | 0:23:29 | 0:23:32 | |
I find characters who are insiders who are getting it right, | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
who are doing the right thing, who are | 0:23:35 | 0:23:37 | |
well-adjusted and organised, and motivated.... | 0:23:37 | 0:23:41 | |
Life's winners are... | 0:23:41 | 0:23:42 | |
not that interesting to me. | 0:23:42 | 0:23:44 | |
I just think they're really boring. | 0:23:44 | 0:23:47 | |
Stop, stop. | 0:23:48 | 0:23:51 | |
'David Fisher in Six Feet Under is a gay man,' | 0:23:51 | 0:23:55 | |
afraid to acknowledge who he is, so he's living | 0:23:55 | 0:23:57 | |
in a sort of outside bubble. | 0:23:57 | 0:23:59 | |
I'm gay, so of course I take those struggles seriously. | 0:24:02 | 0:24:05 | |
Please, God, help me. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:07 | |
Take this pain away, please. | 0:24:07 | 0:24:09 | |
Fill this loneliness with your love. | 0:24:09 | 0:24:12 | |
'I felt a sense of responsibility | 0:24:22 | 0:24:24 | |
'when I was cast in the role of David because I did recognise' | 0:24:24 | 0:24:26 | |
he was totally unique at that point... | 0:24:26 | 0:24:30 | |
a fully fleshed out, central... | 0:24:30 | 0:24:33 | |
gay character with a... a complex relationship, | 0:24:33 | 0:24:38 | |
a complex relationship to his work, to his family, to his sexuality. | 0:24:38 | 0:24:43 | |
He wasn't incidentally gay, he wasn't comic relief, | 0:24:43 | 0:24:46 | |
he wasn't the neighbour upstairs with the little dog. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:49 | |
He was David. He was, | 0:24:49 | 0:24:51 | |
he was right there in the middle of it all. | 0:24:51 | 0:24:54 | |
Mom? | 0:24:54 | 0:24:55 | |
Mmm? | 0:24:55 | 0:24:56 | |
You do have to write what you know, because then you can bring this, | 0:24:56 | 0:24:59 | |
you bring a knowledge to it and a depth to it | 0:24:59 | 0:25:03 | |
because those emotions are real. | 0:25:03 | 0:25:05 | |
Are you OK? | 0:25:05 | 0:25:07 | |
I have a terrible headache. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:11 | |
Well, maybe we can talk later. | 0:25:11 | 0:25:13 | |
What? | 0:25:13 | 0:25:15 | |
What? | 0:25:15 | 0:25:16 | |
I'm gay. | 0:25:17 | 0:25:19 | |
My relationship with death and characters' relationship | 0:25:23 | 0:25:26 | |
with their own mortality has been a big theme for me. | 0:25:26 | 0:25:29 | |
My sister was killed in a car accident | 0:25:29 | 0:25:31 | |
when I was 13 years old and that sort of, you know, cut my life in half. | 0:25:31 | 0:25:35 | |
I've been very fortunate in that I have been able to... | 0:25:35 | 0:25:39 | |
you know, focus that through my work. | 0:25:39 | 0:25:42 | |
'TV writers today have seized on the drama of the minority position. | 0:25:51 | 0:25:57 | |
'Maybe that's because so many Americans these days | 0:25:57 | 0:25:59 | |
'feel that they're in a minority of one. | 0:25:59 | 0:26:02 | |
'Prime time has a reassuring message... | 0:26:03 | 0:26:06 | |
'Everyone's got rights and even a vampire's got feelings.' | 0:26:06 | 0:26:10 | |
Humans are usually more squeamish about vampires than you are. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:14 | |
Who am I to be squeamish about something out of the ordinary? | 0:26:16 | 0:26:19 | |
I always think it's interesting when somebody has a knee-jerk | 0:26:19 | 0:26:22 | |
reaction of fear towards something that is different. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:27 | |
What do you have? A death wish? | 0:26:27 | 0:26:28 | |
No, I don't have a death wish, | 0:26:28 | 0:26:29 | |
I just happen to think that judging an entire group of people based on | 0:26:29 | 0:26:33 | |
the actions of a few individuals within that group is morally wrong. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:36 | |
Well, I will not let you put yourself | 0:26:36 | 0:26:38 | |
or this bar in danger, I won't. | 0:26:38 | 0:26:39 | |
I guess that is why horror as a genre can be such a potent | 0:26:43 | 0:26:47 | |
arena in which to explore these kinds of things. | 0:26:47 | 0:26:50 | |
Vampires often turn on those that trust them, you know? | 0:26:50 | 0:26:53 | |
We don't have human values like you. | 0:26:56 | 0:26:59 | |
Well, humans turn on those who trust them, too. | 0:26:59 | 0:27:01 | |
True Blood is about what is normal | 0:27:13 | 0:27:15 | |
and why do we fear people who are different than we are? | 0:27:15 | 0:27:18 | |
The American people, they know these are creatures of Satan. Demons. | 0:27:18 | 0:27:22 | |
Literally, they have no soul. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:24 | |
But Reverend Newman, you must be aware of polls that show consistently | 0:27:24 | 0:27:28 | |
-growing support for vampire rights? -Those polls are fixed. | 0:27:28 | 0:27:31 | |
It challenges the idea of what's normal. | 0:27:32 | 0:27:35 | |
But what's your idea on a world where there's vampires | 0:27:35 | 0:27:38 | |
and werewolves and shape shifters. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:42 | |
BARKS | 0:27:42 | 0:27:43 | |
There is a running theme in the show about vampires | 0:27:43 | 0:27:45 | |
struggling for assimilation, which I think makes it fun to | 0:27:45 | 0:27:49 | |
sort of look at that struggle in a way that is not really earnest | 0:27:49 | 0:27:54 | |
or heartfelt about the real struggles that minorities face. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:57 | |
A lot of Americans don't think that you people deserve | 0:27:57 | 0:28:00 | |
-special rights. -They are the same rights you have. | 0:28:00 | 0:28:03 | |
-I'm just saying there is a reason things are the way they are. -Yeah? | 0:28:03 | 0:28:06 | |
It is called injustice. | 0:28:06 | 0:28:08 | |
It is a supernatural world. | 0:28:12 | 0:28:13 | |
It makes you think about how often people don't feel | 0:28:13 | 0:28:16 | |
exactly in synch with everyone else. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:18 | |
It's about being an outsider, being different. | 0:28:20 | 0:28:24 | |
The big theme in my work is the struggle to be | 0:28:24 | 0:28:27 | |
authentic in an increasingly inauthentic world. | 0:28:27 | 0:28:30 | |
United States of Tara is about a woman who is a wife and mother | 0:28:33 | 0:28:37 | |
who also happens to have dissociative identity disorder. | 0:28:37 | 0:28:40 | |
Which is also known as multiple personalities. | 0:28:40 | 0:28:42 | |
SHE SIGHS | 0:28:44 | 0:28:45 | |
Oh, God. Oh, Jesus Christ, it's happening again. | 0:28:49 | 0:28:53 | |
It's happening, I'm losing time again. | 0:28:53 | 0:28:56 | |
There are a lot of rules pertaining to mothers on television. | 0:28:56 | 0:28:59 | |
People like to see good mothers. And it's a note that you get a lot. | 0:28:59 | 0:29:03 | |
I'm, I want to, I want to up my medication but I don't want | 0:29:03 | 0:29:05 | |
Max to think that there is anything wrong with me. | 0:29:05 | 0:29:08 | |
So, to me it was kind of revolutionary to be able to | 0:29:08 | 0:29:11 | |
say this woman is deeply flawed and she is also a good mother. | 0:29:11 | 0:29:15 | |
Deal with that. | 0:29:15 | 0:29:16 | |
I want my real mother | 0:29:16 | 0:29:17 | |
and only my real mother and none of you other freaks. Just her. | 0:29:17 | 0:29:21 | |
Everybody else, go away. | 0:29:21 | 0:29:23 | |
Tara obviously realises that she is unusual. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:28 | |
She is definitely struggling to fit in. | 0:29:28 | 0:29:31 | |
We always jokingly call ourselves a traumatic comedy, | 0:29:33 | 0:29:37 | |
because it is a funny show | 0:29:37 | 0:29:39 | |
but it is rooted in something that is really quite disturbing. | 0:29:39 | 0:29:42 | |
Wonderful, now I have got Tab on my dress. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:45 | |
There is this belief that characters on television need to be extra | 0:29:45 | 0:29:48 | |
relatable and extra sympathetic | 0:29:48 | 0:29:50 | |
because they are coming into your home week after week. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:53 | |
The idea of normal has definitely been skewed. | 0:29:53 | 0:29:56 | |
I think now we are realising that abnormal is normal. | 0:29:56 | 0:30:00 | |
We really are in the age of the nerds. | 0:30:03 | 0:30:06 | |
The people that we all look up to, | 0:30:06 | 0:30:07 | |
someone like Bill Gates, | 0:30:07 | 0:30:10 | |
you know, one of the most famous Americans. | 0:30:10 | 0:30:13 | |
He is this dorky kid from Seattle with a computer start-up. | 0:30:13 | 0:30:18 | |
The nerds are kind of revered in new and different ways. | 0:30:18 | 0:30:22 | |
I mean, you ask people like, oh, are you really popular | 0:30:24 | 0:30:28 | |
and you fit in and you got along with everyone? | 0:30:28 | 0:30:30 | |
It is a pretty small percentage of people that go, yeah! | 0:30:30 | 0:30:33 | |
We relate to that - it is a universal experience. | 0:30:33 | 0:30:36 | |
-You should get one of these. -No, thank you. | 0:30:37 | 0:30:40 | |
I grew up in suburban Seattle as quite a nerd. | 0:30:40 | 0:30:44 | |
For instance in my sophomore year of high school | 0:30:44 | 0:30:46 | |
I was playing Dungeons and Dragons, I was on the debate club, Model United | 0:30:46 | 0:30:50 | |
Nations, computer club, marching band where I played the bells. | 0:30:50 | 0:30:54 | |
BELL RINGS | 0:30:54 | 0:30:56 | |
Whoosh. | 0:30:56 | 0:30:57 | |
I know that nerd world pretty well. | 0:30:57 | 0:31:01 | |
America and Britain, as someone once said, | 0:31:07 | 0:31:10 | |
our two nations divided by a common language. | 0:31:10 | 0:31:13 | |
And so the translation of Wernham Hogg in Slough into Dunder Mifflin | 0:31:13 | 0:31:18 | |
in Scranton, Pennsylvania was always going to be a major undertaking. | 0:31:18 | 0:31:23 | |
Not least was the delicate question of how you turn a plonker... | 0:31:24 | 0:31:28 | |
Pow, pow, pow... | 0:31:28 | 0:31:31 | |
..Into a nerd. | 0:31:31 | 0:31:32 | |
Dwight to me is the most bizarre character. I mean, | 0:31:37 | 0:31:39 | |
he could exist in so many different times. | 0:31:39 | 0:31:42 | |
One of the great things | 0:31:42 | 0:31:43 | |
that we did was to incorporate some of Rainn's life story. | 0:31:43 | 0:31:48 | |
PUFFS | 0:31:48 | 0:31:50 | |
He brought in, I remember a photo album of relatives of his who | 0:31:50 | 0:31:55 | |
were pretty rural. | 0:31:55 | 0:31:57 | |
And that helped - | 0:31:57 | 0:31:58 | |
we passed that around and we really saw what his stock was. | 0:31:58 | 0:32:02 | |
When we discover, | 0:32:02 | 0:32:03 | |
on around season two or three that Dwight is actually a farmer. | 0:32:03 | 0:32:08 | |
Welcome to Schrute Farm! | 0:32:08 | 0:32:10 | |
It all clicks, it all falls into place, because I don't know how much | 0:32:10 | 0:32:13 | |
time you have spent with farmers, they are kind of weird people. | 0:32:13 | 0:32:16 | |
We think, oh, farmers are salt of the earth, you know. | 0:32:16 | 0:32:18 | |
I have a lot of family that are farmers. | 0:32:18 | 0:32:20 | |
Not really salt of the earth, they kind of are, | 0:32:20 | 0:32:23 | |
but they can be just weirdos. | 0:32:23 | 0:32:25 | |
And just as you have planted your seed in the ground, | 0:32:25 | 0:32:28 | |
I am going to plant my seed in you. | 0:32:28 | 0:32:32 | |
The nerd, the social misfit, the antagonist, | 0:32:32 | 0:32:37 | |
the clannish person that comes from a very Germanic love of rules. | 0:32:37 | 0:32:44 | |
I have decided to shun Andy Bernard for the next three years. | 0:32:44 | 0:32:47 | |
Which I'm looking forward to. It is an Amish technique. | 0:32:47 | 0:32:51 | |
It is like slapping someone with silence. | 0:32:51 | 0:32:53 | |
I love The Office characters. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:54 | |
I think they are, they are all of us and none of us at the same time. | 0:32:54 | 0:32:58 | |
HE PUFFS | 0:32:58 | 0:33:00 | |
-OK, you know what? How much is that? -It's only 25 bucks. -Wow. | 0:33:00 | 0:33:06 | |
Um...OK. | 0:33:06 | 0:33:08 | |
AIR HISSING | 0:33:11 | 0:33:13 | |
I used to make this joke where I said, you know, | 0:33:16 | 0:33:18 | |
I love The Bourne Identity. | 0:33:18 | 0:33:20 | |
But I would like it more if it starred George Wendt. | 0:33:22 | 0:33:25 | |
-Norm from Cheers. -Why don't you sit down, Norm? | 0:33:25 | 0:33:29 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:33:29 | 0:33:31 | |
I just think that it is funny to see people trying to succeed in life | 0:33:32 | 0:33:37 | |
and they have bigger obstacles. | 0:33:37 | 0:33:39 | |
Man, I hate high school. | 0:33:41 | 0:33:44 | |
# I don't give a damn about reputation... # | 0:33:45 | 0:33:48 | |
I had a friend recently, whose son is very nerdy, | 0:33:48 | 0:33:53 | |
doesn't really fit in school. | 0:33:53 | 0:33:55 | |
I had my DVD box of Freaks And Geeks, I was like, I tell you what, | 0:33:55 | 0:33:58 | |
I will give you this box, you sit down with your son, | 0:33:58 | 0:34:01 | |
you watch Freaks And Geeks from beginning to end, | 0:34:01 | 0:34:04 | |
watch all 17 episodes, and I guarantee you things will change. | 0:34:04 | 0:34:08 | |
High school is a time that one has to start to face | 0:34:08 | 0:34:11 | |
whether they fit in society. | 0:34:11 | 0:34:13 | |
Why are you always the one who is out of step? | 0:34:13 | 0:34:15 | |
Is there something the matter with you? What makes you the outsider? | 0:34:17 | 0:34:21 | |
That's what I always found interesting about high school, | 0:34:23 | 0:34:27 | |
it is this kind of great social, I don't know, | 0:34:27 | 0:34:30 | |
experiment in which you lump all these kids into a building | 0:34:30 | 0:34:34 | |
and the only thing we all have in common is we are the same age. | 0:34:34 | 0:34:38 | |
Well, if you were one of the popular people in high school, | 0:34:39 | 0:34:43 | |
you were in the centre of the action and you weren't observing it and | 0:34:43 | 0:34:47 | |
you weren't having thoughts about it really, because you were living it. | 0:34:47 | 0:34:51 | |
And the envy and resentment and all these emotions | 0:34:51 | 0:34:56 | |
kind of make the creative person want to do a satirical take on it. | 0:34:56 | 0:35:02 | |
You are dead, weird. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:05 | |
I'm sick of being called a geek. | 0:35:09 | 0:35:12 | |
I mean, what is so geeky about us anyways? We are just guys. | 0:35:12 | 0:35:15 | |
To me, it is all about rooting interests. | 0:35:16 | 0:35:19 | |
You want to root for the person who has the least chance to succeed. | 0:35:19 | 0:35:23 | |
Freaks And Geeks was my attempt to recreate my actual experiences in high school. | 0:35:29 | 0:35:34 | |
Paul Feig grew up as a nerd in Michigan, | 0:35:48 | 0:35:50 | |
so he wanted to make a high school show that was about what his high school life was about, | 0:35:50 | 0:35:56 | |
which was a lot of beatings, apparently, a lot of humiliation. | 0:35:56 | 0:36:00 | |
Oh, I'm sorry, did I crush your twinkies(?) | 0:36:02 | 0:36:05 | |
What I did was on the first day I created this questionnaire | 0:36:05 | 0:36:08 | |
that I handed out to the writers and it said, | 0:36:08 | 0:36:10 | |
"What was the most humiliating thing that ever happened to you in high school? | 0:36:10 | 0:36:13 | |
"What is the worst drug you took? | 0:36:13 | 0:36:15 | |
"What's the maddest your parents ever got at you?" | 0:36:15 | 0:36:17 | |
We literally sat in a room for two weeks | 0:36:17 | 0:36:19 | |
and just told personal stories and mined that for the whole season. | 0:36:19 | 0:36:23 | |
It became a collective spewing of pain. | 0:36:23 | 0:36:28 | |
Buy this garment and I guarantee you will be | 0:36:28 | 0:36:30 | |
perceived as a man of distinction by the ladies. | 0:36:30 | 0:36:33 | |
The Parisian jumpsuit was actually something that I really did. | 0:36:33 | 0:36:37 | |
He claims that when he was a kid, | 0:36:39 | 0:36:41 | |
he thought it would be cool to have this Parisian night suit. | 0:36:41 | 0:36:44 | |
I think he wore it and he was humiliated. | 0:36:44 | 0:36:46 | |
The minute I walked in the door I knew I had made a horrendous | 0:36:46 | 0:36:50 | |
mistake and I was stuck in that thing all day and I couldn't get out. | 0:36:50 | 0:36:54 | |
It does seem that you have to go through | 0:36:54 | 0:36:56 | |
a bath of pain to become a professional comedy writer. | 0:36:56 | 0:37:00 | |
Most stories ended with, and he was humiliated. | 0:37:00 | 0:37:05 | |
(COUGHING) Homo! Homo! Homo! | 0:37:05 | 0:37:08 | |
Homo! Homo! Homo! | 0:37:08 | 0:37:10 | |
Hey, hey, hey! Now, Sam wearing something different | 0:37:10 | 0:37:15 | |
to express his individuality makes him a homo? | 0:37:15 | 0:37:19 | |
Well, then, I guess we should all be proud to be homos. | 0:37:19 | 0:37:25 | |
Now, you go ahead, Sam. | 0:37:25 | 0:37:26 | |
Problems we have as teenagers, | 0:37:26 | 0:37:28 | |
we continue to have through our whole lives of trying to figure out, | 0:37:28 | 0:37:31 | |
who am I? How do I fit in? What am I doing? Am I doing the right thing? | 0:37:31 | 0:37:34 | |
It seems like everything turned out all right. | 0:37:34 | 0:37:36 | |
But when I go and drop off my kids at school, | 0:37:36 | 0:37:40 | |
just even interacting with the parents, | 0:37:40 | 0:37:42 | |
I feel as goofy and worthless as I did when I was 11 years old. | 0:37:42 | 0:37:47 | |
I can feel that while people are APPLAUDING me. | 0:37:47 | 0:37:50 | |
You know, in the middle of it I can just go, I'm a piece of crap. | 0:37:50 | 0:37:53 | |
CHEERING | 0:37:53 | 0:37:54 | |
People assume that if you succeed in this business, | 0:37:55 | 0:38:00 | |
let's say like a Letterman or a Leno, and have tremendous success that | 0:38:00 | 0:38:04 | |
you'd have every reason to think that you are going to be secure. | 0:38:04 | 0:38:09 | |
How do you feel about that Haiti situation? | 0:38:09 | 0:38:13 | |
Erm...where's that? | 0:38:13 | 0:38:16 | |
-That is right next to the Dominican Republic. -Oh, right, right. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:21 | |
That's a great shop. | 0:38:21 | 0:38:24 | |
Those people are inconceivably insecure. | 0:38:27 | 0:38:30 | |
That curtain is a perfect metaphor for how someone wants to be | 0:38:30 | 0:38:36 | |
seen when they come through the curtain, it's like how we are in | 0:38:36 | 0:38:39 | |
life when we want people to think of us a certain way, | 0:38:39 | 0:38:41 | |
and then on the other side of the curtain is | 0:38:41 | 0:38:44 | |
when we are our real selves. | 0:38:44 | 0:38:46 | |
It's all over. You did good. You did good. | 0:38:46 | 0:38:48 | |
Oh, God. I hope we beat Leno. | 0:38:48 | 0:38:52 | |
What he's doing, how he's doing it, how he's saying the line, | 0:38:52 | 0:38:55 | |
it is just...just the vanity of the whole thing. | 0:38:55 | 0:39:00 | |
It is just the inflation of ego that needs to be deflated. | 0:39:00 | 0:39:04 | |
Beverley, somebody has been sitting in my chair. | 0:39:04 | 0:39:07 | |
Did they also eat your porridge too? | 0:39:07 | 0:39:09 | |
-You know, like Goldilocks And The Three Bears? -Oh, right. | 0:39:09 | 0:39:12 | |
Beverley, somebody has been sitting in my chair. Would you please | 0:39:12 | 0:39:15 | |
-send out a memo to tell them not to? -I certainly will. | 0:39:15 | 0:39:17 | |
Thank you. | 0:39:17 | 0:39:18 | |
'Going past the joke into what is a character' | 0:39:18 | 0:39:23 | |
and these are very vain characters and very driven and very human. | 0:39:23 | 0:39:28 | |
Which one of these do you like the most? | 0:39:32 | 0:39:35 | |
-Oh, this one. -Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. | 0:39:35 | 0:39:38 | |
Larry Sanders is one of showbiz's sacred monsters - | 0:39:51 | 0:39:54 | |
attractive and repulsive in equal measure. | 0:39:54 | 0:39:57 | |
A rampant egotist with low self-esteem. | 0:39:57 | 0:40:01 | |
An insider with all the insecurities of an outsider. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:04 | |
'I played myself when I came on the show.' | 0:40:04 | 0:40:07 | |
I had had sex with his wife after they got separated | 0:40:07 | 0:40:09 | |
and he found out about it. | 0:40:09 | 0:40:11 | |
Listen, you don't have a problem that she and I, you know, | 0:40:11 | 0:40:14 | |
-after your divorce? -No, I have no problem with that. | 0:40:14 | 0:40:17 | |
The phrase be my guest comes to mind. Know what I mean? | 0:40:17 | 0:40:19 | |
-Everything is OK with you and me? -It couldn't be better. | 0:40:19 | 0:40:22 | |
-I'm thrilled you're here. -Fantastic. -Don't worry about it. | 0:40:22 | 0:40:24 | |
Listen, let's not bring this thing about Francine up on the show, | 0:40:24 | 0:40:27 | |
-all right? -Wouldn't dream of it, Larr. | 0:40:27 | 0:40:29 | |
And try to talk up when you're out there on the air. | 0:40:29 | 0:40:32 | |
'Rip Torn was his boss' | 0:40:32 | 0:40:34 | |
and when they broke for commercial, | 0:40:34 | 0:40:36 | |
'Garry looked at me and said, "I'll be right back," | 0:40:36 | 0:40:39 | |
'and he walked over to Rip, and he said,' | 0:40:39 | 0:40:41 | |
"Every time I look at him, I keep seeing him having sex with Francine | 0:40:41 | 0:40:46 | |
"and Francine is on top," and Rip Torn goes, "The lazy bastard!" | 0:40:46 | 0:40:52 | |
And I just remember that they... | 0:40:52 | 0:40:55 | |
'That show...I mean, Larry just has this' | 0:40:55 | 0:40:58 | |
really sophisticated level of patheticness. | 0:40:58 | 0:41:01 | |
-Larry, you and I have something in common. -Yes. Yes, we do. | 0:41:01 | 0:41:06 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:41:06 | 0:41:09 | |
A lot of you probably don't know that Alec and I... | 0:41:09 | 0:41:12 | |
Well, Alec used to actually date my ex-wife Francine. | 0:41:12 | 0:41:15 | |
AUDIENCE: Oooh! | 0:41:15 | 0:41:18 | |
No, I was referring to our charity work with multiple sclerosis. | 0:41:18 | 0:41:23 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:41:23 | 0:41:25 | |
I know. | 0:41:25 | 0:41:27 | |
People would say, "He's such a fool." | 0:41:27 | 0:41:29 | |
I never thought he was a fool. I just thought he was terribly needy. | 0:41:29 | 0:41:32 | |
Let's take a little commercial break. | 0:41:32 | 0:41:34 | |
I was there for about five years and everything I learned | 0:41:35 | 0:41:38 | |
about storytelling | 0:41:38 | 0:41:41 | |
I mainly learned from being around Garry, | 0:41:41 | 0:41:43 | |
and Garry used to say that The Larry Sanders Show is about | 0:41:43 | 0:41:48 | |
a group of people who love each other but show business gets in the way. | 0:41:48 | 0:41:52 | |
'So that was the secret. | 0:41:52 | 0:41:54 | |
'Those characters were all seeking love.' | 0:41:54 | 0:41:56 | |
They're just covering it because it is not safe. | 0:41:56 | 0:42:01 | |
-What's wrong? -Oh, nothing. | 0:42:01 | 0:42:03 | |
Nothing. It's not you it's just... | 0:42:03 | 0:42:06 | |
'It's safe to have an audience' | 0:42:06 | 0:42:08 | |
and you just... There's only so much of yourself that they can reject. | 0:42:08 | 0:42:12 | |
Maybe we should watch a little TV. | 0:42:12 | 0:42:15 | |
'But getting that love from a camera...' | 0:42:15 | 0:42:20 | |
-HE LAUGHS -..is awfully desperate. | 0:42:20 | 0:42:24 | |
For the iGeneration - that lonely crowd, each one lost | 0:42:26 | 0:42:30 | |
in an I world of their own invention - | 0:42:30 | 0:42:33 | |
dysfunction is the new funny. | 0:42:33 | 0:42:35 | |
There's certain elements of comedy that always... | 0:42:36 | 0:42:39 | |
They always have to be there. Narcissism is one of them. | 0:42:39 | 0:42:42 | |
Every character needs to have a fatal flaw, | 0:42:43 | 0:42:48 | |
or a series of fatal flaws. | 0:42:48 | 0:42:51 | |
It's an inability to see something about themselves. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:54 | |
The very definition of narcissism is you can't see beyond | 0:42:54 | 0:42:57 | |
the tip of your own nose. The centre of the universe is you and only you | 0:42:57 | 0:43:00 | |
and everything else revolves around you. | 0:43:00 | 0:43:02 | |
Take it back! If I wanted something your thumb touched, | 0:43:02 | 0:43:05 | |
I'd eat the inside of your ear! | 0:43:05 | 0:43:07 | |
I would say Arrested Development was very heavily informed | 0:43:07 | 0:43:10 | |
by the idea of narcissism as kind of a modern problem. | 0:43:10 | 0:43:14 | |
Every one of those characters was self-involved and they had | 0:43:16 | 0:43:19 | |
gotten there because they had had the finances to do that. | 0:43:19 | 0:43:23 | |
Bluth Development Company president George Bluth was arrested tonight | 0:43:23 | 0:43:27 | |
for defrauding investors using the company as his personal piggy bank. | 0:43:27 | 0:43:32 | |
It's all about greed. | 0:43:32 | 0:43:33 | |
It is how do I look, what do I have? | 0:43:33 | 0:43:35 | |
At the time, the big story in the news was Enron and WorldCom. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:41 | |
And they were just ugly, public | 0:43:41 | 0:43:43 | |
meltdowns where well-to-do | 0:43:43 | 0:43:46 | |
families were fighting each other, suing each other, | 0:43:46 | 0:43:51 | |
stealing from each other, lying about each other | 0:43:51 | 0:43:54 | |
and it was just horrible, and we thought it was pretty funny. | 0:43:54 | 0:43:58 | |
They are going to keep Dad in prison at least | 0:43:58 | 0:44:01 | |
until this all gets sorted out. | 0:44:01 | 0:44:03 | |
Also the attorney said they are going to have to put a halt on the company's expense account. | 0:44:03 | 0:44:07 | |
THEY GASP | 0:44:07 | 0:44:09 | |
Interesting, I would have expected that | 0:44:09 | 0:44:10 | |
after they're keeping Dad in jail. | 0:44:10 | 0:44:12 | |
It's interesting to think whether narcissism | 0:44:23 | 0:44:25 | |
will always be funny in comedy. | 0:44:25 | 0:44:27 | |
It might be a temporal thing, it might be right now. | 0:44:27 | 0:44:30 | |
I am absolutely consumed about narcissism. | 0:44:30 | 0:44:32 | |
It does seem to be a very, very strong voice in comedy right now. | 0:44:32 | 0:44:36 | |
I think this stuff about Twitter and Facebook is very odd. | 0:44:36 | 0:44:40 | |
I don't think it's about communication. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:42 | |
I don't think it's about communication | 0:44:44 | 0:44:46 | |
when you say, "I've just bought a grape." | 0:44:46 | 0:44:48 | |
Who cares if you bought a grape? | 0:44:51 | 0:44:53 | |
Narcissists never have any idea that they're, you know, | 0:44:53 | 0:44:56 | |
that they're raging assholes. | 0:44:56 | 0:44:57 | |
They have their logic, they see the world a particular way | 0:44:59 | 0:45:03 | |
and if you are as gifted as Mitch Hurwitz is, | 0:45:03 | 0:45:06 | |
you can present that in a way that is somehow still not only funny | 0:45:06 | 0:45:11 | |
but kind of appealing, kind of winning. | 0:45:11 | 0:45:14 | |
You've seen George Bluth on videotape. | 0:45:14 | 0:45:16 | |
You have got to learn to be alone. | 0:45:16 | 0:45:19 | |
I cheated and I lied and I whored around. | 0:45:19 | 0:45:22 | |
Caged Wisdom changed my life. | 0:45:22 | 0:45:26 | |
Now is your chance to own the entire George Bluth... | 0:45:26 | 0:45:29 | |
A lot of the comedy came from people truly not understanding | 0:45:29 | 0:45:32 | |
why their behaviour was antisocial. | 0:45:32 | 0:45:35 | |
I'm Jack Donaghy, | 0:45:39 | 0:45:40 | |
new VP of development for NBC/GE/Universal/Kmart. | 0:45:40 | 0:45:43 | |
We own Kmart now? | 0:45:43 | 0:45:45 | |
No. So why are you dressed like we do? | 0:45:45 | 0:45:48 | |
When a narcissist is not a sociopath, | 0:45:48 | 0:45:53 | |
not beyond redemption, not incapable of functioning in the world, | 0:45:53 | 0:45:57 | |
but is still a narcissist, still kind of out for number one. | 0:45:57 | 0:46:00 | |
I'll call Rebecca. Is she at the White House line? Great. | 0:46:00 | 0:46:03 | |
Tell them I need a 4am tee off time. | 0:46:03 | 0:46:07 | |
Five inches, but it's thick. | 0:46:07 | 0:46:09 | |
There is a correlation with how normal people relate | 0:46:21 | 0:46:25 | |
and interact, but it doesn't jibe completely. | 0:46:25 | 0:46:30 | |
I just swung by to see if we were still on for tonight. | 0:46:30 | 0:46:33 | |
-Oh, yeah, of course. -Good. See you tonight. | 0:46:33 | 0:46:37 | |
It is pretty interesting to see that somebody kind of vaguely | 0:46:37 | 0:46:40 | |
knows where the out of bounds lines are | 0:46:40 | 0:46:44 | |
and manages to stay on the playing field. | 0:46:44 | 0:46:47 | |
Well, well, well. Lemon, Steven is a good man, | 0:46:47 | 0:46:50 | |
he is on partner track at Dewey and he is a Black. | 0:46:50 | 0:46:52 | |
A black? That is offensive! | 0:46:52 | 0:46:55 | |
No, no, that's his last name. Steven Black. | 0:46:55 | 0:46:59 | |
-Good family. -Oh, yeah, of course. -Remarkable people, the Blacks. | 0:46:59 | 0:47:02 | |
Musical, very athletic, not very good swimmers. | 0:47:02 | 0:47:05 | |
Again I'm talking about the family. Black is African-American now. | 0:47:05 | 0:47:10 | |
Well, I don't care about that. | 0:47:10 | 0:47:12 | |
Well, I know that is the type of thing we tell ourselves but trust me, | 0:47:12 | 0:47:15 | |
when I was dating Condoleezza, there were genuine cultural tensions. | 0:47:15 | 0:47:19 | |
I mean, we would go to the movies and she would yell at the screen. | 0:47:19 | 0:47:22 | |
You know, Jack views sensitivity to other people, | 0:47:25 | 0:47:28 | |
I don't know where... "I have just exactly the right amount I need." | 0:47:28 | 0:47:32 | |
I call. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:33 | |
'There is a level of self-awareness that he could obtain' | 0:47:33 | 0:47:35 | |
that is a greater level of self-awareness. | 0:47:35 | 0:47:37 | |
He doesn't care about that. | 0:47:37 | 0:47:39 | |
And I will see that with... this thing. | 0:47:39 | 0:47:43 | |
-I call. -A pair of Jacks. -Ace high. | 0:47:48 | 0:47:52 | |
Three cowboys. | 0:47:52 | 0:47:53 | |
Oh, my God, my wedding ring. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. | 0:47:55 | 0:48:01 | |
-You should all learn from Pete's mistake. -My wife is going to kill me! | 0:48:01 | 0:48:04 | |
I think for Jack, America is like this big golf course, | 0:48:04 | 0:48:08 | |
and you play 18 holes and you have a good score, | 0:48:08 | 0:48:12 | |
and, "I want to go to the clubhouse and I want to put my feet up | 0:48:12 | 0:48:15 | |
"and I want to have a drink and I just don't want to have to | 0:48:15 | 0:48:17 | |
"worry about poor people and racism and pollution and recycling. | 0:48:17 | 0:48:23 | |
"I played a great round of golf and I want to sit back | 0:48:23 | 0:48:27 | |
"and savour my victory." | 0:48:27 | 0:48:28 | |
That has been the evolution of the misfit, is that they no | 0:48:28 | 0:48:31 | |
longer think little of themselves or think that they are odd. | 0:48:31 | 0:48:35 | |
They take it on. | 0:48:35 | 0:48:36 | |
The crown prince of misfits is Larry David, | 0:48:38 | 0:48:42 | |
a character played by, er...Larry David, | 0:48:42 | 0:48:45 | |
one of the creators of that grand opera of outsiderdom Seinfeld. | 0:48:45 | 0:48:49 | |
For Larry, being in a majority of one is the only way to roll. | 0:48:49 | 0:48:54 | |
Smile! | 0:48:57 | 0:48:58 | |
Hey, mind your own business! How about that? | 0:49:00 | 0:49:02 | |
"Larry", the character, sees himself as being right... | 0:49:02 | 0:49:07 | |
"I'm right, you're wrong." | 0:49:07 | 0:49:09 | |
..in almost all situations. | 0:49:09 | 0:49:12 | |
What is that banana thing? | 0:49:14 | 0:49:16 | |
These people they come here, and they get ten samples, you know? | 0:49:16 | 0:49:19 | |
And it's not right for the woman working back there. | 0:49:19 | 0:49:22 | |
She's got better things to do than just scooping out samples for them. | 0:49:22 | 0:49:24 | |
They're awesome! | 0:49:24 | 0:49:26 | |
He doesn't like to follow conventions. | 0:49:26 | 0:49:30 | |
-You've got a long wait. -Oh, could I try the tiramisu? | 0:49:32 | 0:49:35 | |
It's good. That's a good one. That's a good one. Get that. Get that. | 0:49:35 | 0:49:38 | |
-I think I will. Thank you. -Get that. | 0:49:38 | 0:49:41 | |
-And I think I'd like to try the banana, please. -Banana?! | 0:49:41 | 0:49:44 | |
It might taste like, let me guess, a banana?! | 0:49:44 | 0:49:47 | |
On the show, I have the freedom to say anything that I want, | 0:49:47 | 0:49:52 | |
anything that occurs to me, anything that I would never say in my life. | 0:49:52 | 0:49:56 | |
-You're like a sample abuser. -What is the matter with you? | 0:49:56 | 0:49:59 | |
You are abusing your sampling privileges. | 0:49:59 | 0:50:01 | |
One sample, two samples the most. | 0:50:01 | 0:50:03 | |
-You can't just go on sample after sample. -Yes, I can! -No, you can't! | 0:50:03 | 0:50:06 | |
You know what? I'm just going to have the plain vanilla, please. | 0:50:06 | 0:50:09 | |
-Thank you. -Oh, a decision has been made! We got vanilla! Enjoy. | 0:50:09 | 0:50:15 | |
Thank you. | 0:50:15 | 0:50:17 | |
That's not really who Larry is, | 0:50:17 | 0:50:19 | |
but I think it's like who Larry might like to be. | 0:50:19 | 0:50:22 | |
Vanilla! She winds up with vanilla, you've got to be kidding me! | 0:50:22 | 0:50:25 | |
How is the vanilla? | 0:50:27 | 0:50:29 | |
The person on the show is the real person. | 0:50:40 | 0:50:44 | |
This is the fraud, this one is the fake, this one's fake | 0:50:44 | 0:50:49 | |
and that one is real and it is as simple as that. | 0:50:49 | 0:50:52 | |
If you don't relate to a character, at first you just say, | 0:50:52 | 0:50:55 | |
"Oh, that's just a jerk. Just a jerk." | 0:50:55 | 0:50:59 | |
But if you stay with it long enough, | 0:50:59 | 0:51:01 | |
at some point I will guarantee you that the writing of that show | 0:51:01 | 0:51:05 | |
is designed to force you to relate. | 0:51:05 | 0:51:09 | |
A little travelling tip - try not to wear shorts. | 0:51:09 | 0:51:12 | |
It's not all that attractive to look at for five hours. Honestly. | 0:51:12 | 0:51:16 | |
-Are you kidding? -No, I am not. | 0:51:16 | 0:51:18 | |
I wear these on every flight when I travel because | 0:51:18 | 0:51:21 | |
it is very comfortable. These planes, if you notice, get very hot. | 0:51:21 | 0:51:24 | |
I'm sorry, I did not see where I had to check with the person | 0:51:24 | 0:51:27 | |
I am sitting next to what I should wear. | 0:51:27 | 0:51:29 | |
I am comfortable in pyjamas but I don't wear pyjamas on a plane. | 0:51:29 | 0:51:32 | |
I like to sing, I like to whistle, I like to play the bongos | 0:51:32 | 0:51:35 | |
on my leg, I like to imitate horses, but I don't do it, OK? | 0:51:35 | 0:51:38 | |
-Because there is somebody sitting next to me. -OK. | 0:51:38 | 0:51:40 | |
Larry's gift in life is that everything offends him, | 0:51:42 | 0:51:46 | |
everything challenges him, everything diminishes him. | 0:51:46 | 0:51:50 | |
He perceives everything as a threat. | 0:51:50 | 0:51:52 | |
-HE LAUGHS -Not everything offends me. | 0:51:52 | 0:51:57 | |
There is not a moment where you think that Larry David | 0:51:57 | 0:52:00 | |
the character on Curb Your Enthusiasm is over-thinking | 0:52:00 | 0:52:03 | |
what he is going to say and who he is going to be. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:04 | |
He walks through life and he has an experience and he reacts to it. | 0:52:04 | 0:52:07 | |
-It is not long distance even if it is in India. -So I am on the 14th hole. | 0:52:07 | 0:52:12 | |
OK, Lloyd has got these great Cuban cigars, | 0:52:12 | 0:52:14 | |
so we are smoking the cigars. | 0:52:14 | 0:52:16 | |
The Larry in Curb has actually become the bull in a china closet. | 0:52:16 | 0:52:20 | |
..I was trying to brush my teeth with an apple, it was horrible. | 0:52:20 | 0:52:24 | |
-Horrible. -Excuse me, who are you talking to? -Myself. | 0:52:24 | 0:52:29 | |
-Well, you are doing it really loud. -Oh, really? -Yes. | 0:52:29 | 0:52:32 | |
-You're kind of talking loud yourself. -To a person! | 0:52:32 | 0:52:36 | |
What's the difference? | 0:52:36 | 0:52:37 | |
'Instead of being the guy that walks into a situation' | 0:52:37 | 0:52:39 | |
perceiving some sort of an attack that was never there, | 0:52:39 | 0:52:43 | |
Larry on Curb now walks into situations and ignites the flame. | 0:52:43 | 0:52:46 | |
To the outside observer it is the same level of annoyance. | 0:52:46 | 0:52:49 | |
I need to talk to my friend, I can barely hear him. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:51 | |
If you talk lower to your friend, I'll talk lower to my other self. | 0:52:51 | 0:52:55 | |
-Great. Good plan. -All right. -Jesus Christ. | 0:52:55 | 0:52:57 | |
What a schmuck! He's been talking on his cellphone... | 0:52:57 | 0:53:00 | |
Sometimes, there are these outsiders who you would label as misfits | 0:53:00 | 0:53:04 | |
or dysfunctional, but really peel it away and you keep finding | 0:53:04 | 0:53:11 | |
very, very human relatable | 0:53:11 | 0:53:16 | |
aspects of that misfit's personality. | 0:53:16 | 0:53:19 | |
BELL RINGS | 0:53:22 | 0:53:24 | |
-She's got my vote. -She's such an inspiration. | 0:53:24 | 0:53:27 | |
It is nice to see someone like me on a poster for a change. | 0:53:27 | 0:53:30 | |
I have two boys, 14 and 16, and everybody is a freaking geek now. | 0:53:30 | 0:53:34 | |
It is great. | 0:53:34 | 0:53:35 | |
-What are you doing? -Hey, I am running for prom queen. | 0:53:35 | 0:53:38 | |
-As a joke, right? -Does it look like I am joking? | 0:53:38 | 0:53:41 | |
When your name appears on that ballot, everyone will think it's a | 0:53:41 | 0:53:44 | |
laugh riot and you may just get enough votes to win. | 0:53:44 | 0:53:46 | |
That is sort of the idea. | 0:53:46 | 0:53:48 | |
Look at what Glee has done. The normal kids are the oddball ones. | 0:53:48 | 0:53:53 | |
Hit it. | 0:53:53 | 0:53:54 | |
# ..Disabilities left you outcast Bullied or teased | 0:53:54 | 0:53:57 | |
# Rejoice and love yourself today Cos baby you were born this way... # | 0:53:57 | 0:54:01 | |
I think if you scratch anybody, we are all the misfits, | 0:54:02 | 0:54:06 | |
we are all the stranger. | 0:54:06 | 0:54:08 | |
There has been an evolution that is reflected on television that | 0:54:10 | 0:54:15 | |
people are starting to understand that humans are flawed. | 0:54:15 | 0:54:19 | |
That is why we like the oddball, the outsider. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:22 | |
There isn't as much emphasis on conformity as there used to be. | 0:54:24 | 0:54:27 | |
Now it is almost cool to be weird. | 0:54:27 | 0:54:30 | |
I don't even know what a misfit is any more. | 0:54:30 | 0:54:33 | |
# ..Right track Baby I was born this way... # | 0:54:36 | 0:54:39 | |
How many people actually relate to Brad Pitt? | 0:54:39 | 0:54:43 | |
You know, how many people look at him and go, "That's me!" | 0:54:43 | 0:54:46 | |
Thank heaven Thing is still normal. | 0:54:55 | 0:54:58 | |
In great storytelling, you feel close to the world, you feel close | 0:55:00 | 0:55:04 | |
to humanity and that is why we like these shows | 0:55:04 | 0:55:07 | |
because it reflects most people's struggle. | 0:55:07 | 0:55:10 | |
It has to have some element of truth that we recognise. | 0:55:12 | 0:55:16 | |
I had a pretty dysfunctional family | 0:55:16 | 0:55:17 | |
and we didn't really talk too much or interact too much, but the | 0:55:17 | 0:55:21 | |
thing that did bring us together was gathering around the television | 0:55:21 | 0:55:25 | |
after our dinners were done and watching television comedies. | 0:55:25 | 0:55:29 | |
That was really, really important to me, | 0:55:30 | 0:55:33 | |
the family sitting round and laughing together. | 0:55:33 | 0:55:36 | |
There is just something very intimate about watching television. | 0:55:38 | 0:55:42 | |
It is in your house, it is this far away from you, | 0:55:42 | 0:55:44 | |
you are in a relationship with what is happening on the screen. | 0:55:44 | 0:55:47 | |
It can, at its best bring, people together | 0:55:49 | 0:55:51 | |
and help define a culture. | 0:55:51 | 0:55:52 | |
We strive all our lives as writers, artists, actors | 0:55:52 | 0:55:56 | |
to connect with other people through what we do. | 0:55:56 | 0:55:59 | |
TV at its best connects with you directly, | 0:56:00 | 0:56:04 | |
personally because it is a small box in your house. | 0:56:04 | 0:56:09 | |
Maybe even in your room, maybe next to your bed. | 0:56:09 | 0:56:13 | |
There is no more intimate connection that you have with anything | 0:56:13 | 0:56:16 | |
other than the people next to you. | 0:56:16 | 0:56:18 | |
But the TV, because of its size | 0:56:20 | 0:56:22 | |
and because of the smaller nature of the stories that are being | 0:56:22 | 0:56:27 | |
told for the small screen, actually get in a little deeper sometimes. | 0:56:27 | 0:56:31 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:56:57 | 0:57:00 |