Showrunner Transcript: Michael Schur (“Parks and Recreation”)
In conjunction with the annual broadcast network upfronts, New York magazine is running a series called “Showrunner Transcripts.” We will feature one each day for two weeks on GITS. What’s a showrunner? For a primer, you can go here to Wikipedia. The short answer: “The person who is responsible for the day-to-day operation of a television series.” It’s more than just managing a series. Someone has to guarantee to a network they can deliver 12, 22, or however many episodes for which the series is contracted. That’s the bottom line of a showrunner’s reality.
Today: Michael Schur (“Parks and Recreations”).
So, do you think of yourself as a control freak or a collaborator?
I would like to think that I’m a collaborator in the writers’ room or on the stage with the actors, and a control freak in the edit bay. It’s like the showrunner equivalent of the Madonna-whore dichotomy. You spread yourself as a huge collaborator when you’re constructing the show and then once it’s in the can, then you just split every second into thirtieths and make it as perfect as you can make it.
You said there were two dangers, what’s the second?
It’s specific to the Internet, which is that the Internet is not at all a representative sampling of America, it just isn’t. If you care enough to comment on an Internet message board, you either really love the show or you really hate the show. And you’re not making the show for people who either really love it or really hate it. Those are the margins. And people who really love the show are great and you want to get more of them, but you can’t only do what they want you to do, because that is prohibiting you from welcoming new people into the fold. And you can’t listen to the people who really hate the show because, what do you care? They hate the show! You’re not going to win them over. I fully believe that my job is to entertain people. I don’t think that we’re operating in a vacuum. We write for a network TV show — like, our job is to make people happy and to entertain them and to give them something fun to watch. So if we’re really screwing up in some way, I’d like to know about it. But I don’t know that the way we’re going to find out that we’re screwing up in some way is by reading the Internet. I hope, that among me and the other writers, and producers, and cast members, that there’s enough checks and balances in the internal system, that we’ll know if we’re screwing up before the world will.
For more of the article, go here.