The Showrunners
From left: Mike Judge, Jenni Konner, Armando Iannucci, Marc Maron, Mike Schur, Jenji Kohan and Chuck Lorre were photographed March 25 at the SmokeHouse restaurant in Burbank.
From left: Mike Judge, Jenni Konner, Armando Iannucci, Marc Maron, Mike Schur, Jenji Kohan and Chuck Lorre were photographed March 25 at the SmokeHouse restaurant in Burbank.
Mike Judge's Silicon Valley is HBO's latest comedy hit, while Mike Schur, who has two comedies contending for Emmys this year: NBC’s Parks and Recreation and Fox’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine, on which he serves as an executive producer.
Like his Veep writing staff, Armando Iannucci is based in England but spends a good portion of the year stateside shooting the HBO series in Maryland.
Lorre on something executives do that annoys him: "If it succeeds, they take credit. If it fails, it's your fault. So you might as well go ahead and do your show and risk their displeasure."
Kohan on the downside of shows straddling comedy and drama: "I f– myself during awards season. My shows are all weird hybrids. I wish there was just 'half-hour' and 'hour.' Let's vote on those categories!"
Mike Schur revealed that his weirdest pitch meeting was when he "pitched a feature, and the executive was so bored, he was laying almost upside-down. The second my writing partner and I finished, he said, 'You guys should do this as webisodes for Pop.com.' This was 1998. We were like, 'OK, thank you!'"
"The biggest fight we've ever gotten in with HBO was about a cum shot, a money shot. They thought it was really gratuitous. We obviously did a prop thing with an injector, a sprayer," says Girls showrunner Jenni Konner.
Mike Judge explained that King of the Hill probably wouldn't have succeeded in primetime today. "You'd have to have nudity, I think. We started working on that show in 1996, and things have definitely changed."
Marc Maron said the current golden age of niche comedy is "great for me. I wouldn't have had a shot five years ago to pitch a show about me interviewing people in my garage. I'm actually here today to find out what it's like to produce a show with money," he joked.
Mark Maron’s popular WTF podcast, which inspired his IFC series Maron, logged its 500th episode in May.
Mike Judge told THR that he based his new HBO series Silicon Valley on his experience as a software engineer in Northern California.
Chuck Lorre, Jenni Konner, Mike Schur and Mike Judge shared some of the most memorable moments from their shows. "[HBO] begged us not to do it," said Konner of an explicit sex scene in Girls.
Marc Maron, Jenji Kohan and Armando Iannucci bonded over a checked tablecloth and a lone cornbread muffin at the SmokeHouse restaurant in Burbank.
Two and a Half Men's Chuck Lorre revealed that even he isn't immune to dealing with executives. "There's always someone somewhere who's frightened."
Veep's Armando Iannucci said when it comes to comedy: "Netflix and HBO are all about actually getting bigger and bigger and sort of meeting the networks somewhere in the middle."