Interview: Jeffrey Lieber

Jeffrey Lieber is a screenwriter (Tangled, Tuck Everlasting) and TV writer-producer (Miami Medical, The Whole Truth, Pan Am, Necessary Roughness). He also received co-writing credit for the pilot episode of “Lost”.

Here are inks to the six installments of the entire interview:

Part 1: “I credit having an acting background as an actor for having a pretty deep understanding of how structure works, both within a scene and within a script. That’s most of my training.”

Part 2: “So it was the wrong actress and the wrong script for the wrong project, and it was basically an unwatchable film, but it was my education into film writing in terms of having to rewrite it and rewrite it and change it and alter it and rewrite it and do all the things that need to be done.”

Part 3: “A studio executive may have five shows to worry about. A network executive may have seven shows to worry about. You’re the one who’s in charge of keeping your thing alive, and pleasing the many masters that are around you.”

Part 4: “Television writing is very tough on writers, but it’s writer‑friendly in the sense that you are making the calls. It’s the inverse of the way film works in the sense that the last cut is yours.”

Part 5: “I work on note cards… For a film, I will go from 100 cards, to a 40‑page outline to a script. For a TV show, I’ll go from 40 cards, to a 25‑page outline to a script. If you nail parts one and two, part three should be fairly easy. Then you’re going to rewrite, and rewrite and rewrite, but the hardest part is really getting to the first draft, I think.”

Part 6: “If the end of the scene is obvious from the beginning of the scene, there’s no point to having the scene. If the beginning of the scene is we’re going to dig for treasure, at the end of the scene you find the treasure, you don’t have much of a scene.”

Jeff is repped by CAA and Madhouse Entertainment.

Twitter: @JeffLieber.

Comment Archive