Inside the Writers Room - HOUSE

Thursday, June 2, 2011
WGF/WGA headquarters, 7000 W 3rd St, Los Angeles, CA 90048

Free parking & reception included.

GET TICKETS NOW

This in-depth interview will feature a panel interview with David Shore, HOUSE creator and showrunner, and writers Thomas L. Moran, Russel Friend, Garrett Lerner, Eli Attie, Liz Friedman, Peter Blake. They will discuss the origins of the show, its evolution and the dynamic of the writers’ room, where stories are hatched, broken and pinned down.

http://www.wgfoundation.org/wow.aspx

только я не очень поняла - это встреча с кем? со зрителями? с журналистами? с владельцами канала?

May 4, 2011 | 4:31 pm
Co-executive producer Eli Attie wrote Monday's episode of "House," called "Changes," with a story assist from Seth Hoffman. Here's the behind-the-scenes skinny from Attie:

Talk a bit about collaborating on this episode. You and Seth Hoffman wrote the story, but you wrote the teleplay. How does that work?

EA: The initial idea for the patient in "Changes" -- a lottery winner trying to turn his miserable life around, to end up something other than a destitute, drug-addled cliche -- was Seth's. He'd picked up on something that ("House" creator) David Shore has always been very interested in, a fairly well-known happiness study from the 1970s that showed that within a year, both lottery winners and paralyzed accident victims are about as happy as they were to begin with. Then Seth and I worked together to develop all of the story threads, and we co-wrote several drafts of a very detailed outline -- a lot of sitting in a room together, brainstorming, arguing, and most importantly procrastinating. Seth's responsible for a lot of great stuff in the episode. But he'd already started co-writing Episode 22 and couldn't do both, so I wrote the actual teleplay -- the scenes, the dialogue -- by myself. Though "by myself" really means "with David Shore," who oversaw it and made it better and funnier at every turn.

The strain between House and Cuddy seems to be near the breaking point. How do you write for characters who are basically the love of each other’s lives, but have broken up and have to see each other at work every day? It can never go back to the way it was before, can it?

In some respects, it did go back to the way it was before -- the kind of cat-and-mouse sparring that's defined their relationship since the pilot of the series. Of course, every jab now has a slightly deeper meaning -- cuts a little more, you might say -- and we wanted to see both House and Cuddy go further, be more destructive, than they had in the past. The wonderful thing about working with those two actors is that they took what we wrote and invested it with a lot more subtext on their own. Generally to make the scenes tougher and less glib. But it was fun to get back to some aspects of their old, pre-romance relationship: the gamesmanship, the snarkiness, the love-mixed-with-not-so-thinly-veiled-hostility.

Who came up with the idea of an elaborate deception of the lottery winner? I have to admit, when the first Jennifer shows up, I didn’t trust her. But I also didn’t suspect Phil.

We wanted our lottery winner to be aware of the cliche, that lottery winners usually end up "naked and penniless in a strip club parking lot," to use House's phrase -- so that we could ensure we'd do a version of the story people hadn't seen before. Seth came up with the idea of Cyrus looking for a long-lost love, instead of squandering his winnings on custom-painted Bentleys and fur-lined sinks. But we wanted to give the story a properly House-ian point of view, to show that people can't change, can't turn their lives around. So I came up with the idea of having the long-lost love turn out to be a grifter and a fraud, in cahoots with the only true friend the patient ever had. No warm, fuzzy endings on this show!

Did any of this story come from incidents that had happened to either of you in real life?

Well, I've certainly had experiences reconnecting with long-lost loves that showed me how impossible it is to go backward. If Seth's ever won $42 million in the state lottery, then I think he should start buying me lunch. Someplace with tablecloths.

Since Thirteen returned, we’ve gotten thrown some nuggets about her back story. What kind of an agenda is involved with what’s happened to her and where she’s headed? She’s starting to sound as jaded as House.

In Episode 18, when House meets Thirteen at the prison gates, we see a new level of understanding and connection between them. In this episode, we were trying to show a continuation of that connection -- that they think similarly, are perhaps even similarly broken. Jaded's just the start of it, I think.

Arlene was trying to encourage Huddy to reconcile—I guess she doesn’t know House is married, technically?

For a true yenta like Arlene, a marriage license is a mere technicality. Plus, I don't think we were ever meant to take House's wedding vows particularly seriously.

How did the Chase versus Foreman competition evolve?

We wanted all of our characters to be engaged in the broader theme, which was change, in particular trying to change one's level of happiness. We actually started with Chase's side of the story. I'd written an episode much earlier this season in which Chase reveals that he's sleeping with four women at once. It seemed like the perfect analogue to now make him a "supermonk," in Foreman's words, trying to reform himself after a wild post-breakup-from-Cameron phase. It was much tougher to figure out how Foreman might be trying to change, and how to turn this into a bit of a competition. Foreman has a lot roiling beneath the surface, given his background, he clearly buries some anger and emotion, but in early drafts of the script, I kept trying to bring the anger to the surface. It was David Shore who pointed out to me that Foreman never shows much of anything, so the only way to measure his relative level of anger or calm was to hook him up to medical equipment. Fortunately, we knew where we could find some.

Talk a bit about the process of weaving plot and theme: There is talk of money (lottery winner, Arlene’s lawsuit and threatening to cut Lisa out of her will), betrayal (Phil scamming a cousin for money, Thirteen hooking up with a high school BF’s sister), and loss (Cyrus searching for a woman he hasn’t seen in 23 years, the rift between House and Cuddy).

We always tend to start with a central question or theme -- in this case, is happiness circumstantial, or built into our DNA -- and then try to design stories that comment on it in different ways, and from different directions. What you really want is for the patient of the week to affect our own characters' lives, to spark some kind of discussion and action. Then it becomes a question of continuing the various plot threads that the show's left dangling from previous episodes, and making the individual stories work, and making all of them say what we want them to say. It's an awful lot to juggle. So some of the connections you mention (like money and loss) were a bit incidental. Of course, we'll take credit for them anyway.

How difficult is it to come up with a Disease of the Week that will keep people watching for the entire hour? How did you come up with the “when is a cancer not a cancer” twist?

I won't lie, it's extremely hard, especially for someone who can barely stand the sight of blood. We have a lot of great help from a lot of smart doctors, and we tend to call them 500 times a day. It was Dr. Lisa Sanders, one of our wonderful medical consultants, who wrote a column for the New York Times about the teratoma. I discussed it with her and loosely outlined it more than a year ago, but just never got around to using it last season. Lisa told me back then that teratomata could theoretically cause multiple and completely different cancers at the same time. That seemed so weird and interesting that we knew we'd want to use that. But it was Dr. David Foster, a fellow writer-producer on the show and a true master of the show's medical plotting, who helped us figure out how tumors could appear and then disappear, leading us to realize that cancer was a symptom and not an underlying disease. The doctors deserve credit for the substance, but -- not to brag -- I think the writers deserve quite a bit of credit for calling them at all hours and waiting outside their offices.

Talk about being on call! Thanks Eli.

-- Linda Whitmore

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtra....t=89281

Ramon: Faith is not a disease.
House: No, of course not. On the other hand, it is communicable, and it kills a lot of people.

'House' writers' room: The fix is in

Executive producer Thomas L. Moran co-wrote the teleplay (with creator David Shore) of Monday night's episode of "House." Here's the inside story.

First, congratulations on the show being renewed for an eighth season. What’s the atmosphere like over on the lot?

TM: Thank you very much. Right now the atmosphere on the lot is quiet because the "House" writing staff is on hiatus and hopefully enjoying some much needed rest and relaxation (and hopefully not renovating their house like I am).

House is a genius. I can understand a genius sliding into addiction (Vicodin), because, after all, he’s trapped in a human body like the rest of us. But it’s a big step for him to do something like experimenting on himself. That’s an intellectual choice, not a physical reaction. How did he get to this point?

TM: House is obsessed with keeping up to date on the newest medical breakthroughs and discoveries, even going so far as to read medical journals in foreign languages. He’s also clearly not someone who feels the need to wait for any “official” seal of approval before using what he concludes is a promising new theory or treatment, on his patient or himself. So he’s been following Dr. Riggin’s research for a long time, fully understands the risks, and decided to roll the dice. And I’m not sure I blame him. Thankfully, I have never had to deal with the kind of constant pain House has been struggling with for so many years, but I can guarantee if I had I would be willing to do almost anything to make it go away.

House becomes obsessed with why a boxer had lost the last five of his bouts after winning his first 20. But Patient of the Week Wendy Lee (the weapons designer who collapses before the credits) presents with enough symptoms to stump even him. Lee is hovering near death, while the boxer is safe enough, mopping floors at the gym. Why stalk the boxer?

TM: That’s a good question. House is definitely not a guy who always makes good choices. I prefer not to intrude on our audience’s interpretation of some of House’s decisions, other than to say that complicated people in complicated circumstances often make complicated choices, and it’s often the most confounding to the people who are closest to them (I’m one of the few writers on the "House" writing staff with teenagers at home. Quite a few of the others will soon know what I’m talking about).

House really takes a powder on the Lee case, not even answering his team’s pages. Yet Cuddy washed her hands of the situation. Why weren’t there more severe repercussions?

TM: I’m not sure Cuddy has any good options when it comes to dealing with or trying to control House. She’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. It’s kind of like dealing with a teenager, but I digress…

Is Thirteen becoming the moral compass of the team?

TM: No, I don’t think so. Personally, I don’t think we have a singular moral compass on our show. We have a bunch of different individuals who each have individual moral compasses that often come into conflict with the moral compasses of the people they are forced to deal with on a daily basis. This, by the way, is not at all like raising a teenager because in that case there is a clear moral compass. Mine. I just wish I could get my kids to understand that. (Or at least my wife).

What was the purpose of the bar scene?

TM: Hmm. That was one of my favorite scenes in the script (written by David Shore), but I guess since you’re asking that I can assume its allure was lost on you. It had a sort of Cyrano quality to it that I really enjoyed, and I guess we were hoping the audience would enjoy it as well.

So House has pinched several cellophane envelopes of CS-804 and no one has noticed. Seems a pretty lax trial, even if it is just on rats so far. Is this an indication that Cuddy is no longer running a tight ship?

TM: I guess I would say that I’d like to think that Cuddy is a brilliant administrator; Dr. Riggin is a brilliant research scientist; and House is a brilliant thief and experienced con artist. I think we should assume House knows enough about the Research Center’s record keeping and clinical procedures that he is able (and willing) to take the necessary steps to cover his tracks.

Spanish Fly? I haven’t heard that in years. Where’d that idea come from?

TM: You know, I too thought Spanish Fly was a myth, but I was wrong. One of our medical advisors, Dr. John Sotos, set me straight when he pitched the idea. The concoction is made from extracting the active ingredient cantharidin from blister beetles. It’s nasty stuff; clearly doesn’t live up to its advertiser’s claims, but can in fact cause your genitals to become painfully engorged before it kills you. Not cool at all. And that’s something on which my kids and I completely agree.

It's good to know the teen years haven't changed since I was there ... at least, I think it's good to know. Thanks for your time, Tom, and good luck with Season 8. And those kids.

-- Linda Whitmore

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtra....in.html

New article tomorrow on BC: "In depth on "The Fix" combined with a preview of "After Hours". Katie Jacobs interview up probably Sun. or Mon.

http://blogcritics.org/video....Fk6HgBR

потому что остальные были заняты. на дармовшинку чего ж не проехаться?))