Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Boomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.
Speaker 1: His name is Dave Gesh and he is or was
Speaker 1: the executive producer of The Big Bang Theory as well
Speaker 1: as a comedy writer for that show and Third Rock
Speaker 1: from the Sun a number of other shows. If you
Speaker 1: are at all interested in anything having to do with
Speaker 1: television entertainment, screenwriting, scriptwriting, comedy, you will find this to
Speaker 1: be an absolutely fascinating conversation. So, with no further ado,
Speaker 1: here is my interview with Dave Gesh. My extra special
Speaker 1: guest this week is David Getch. He is the executive
Speaker 1: producer and writer of television's highest ranks sitcom, The Big
Speaker 1: Bang Theory. He has been with the show pretty much
Speaker 1: from the very beginning right through the season finale which
Speaker 1: is taking place in May. He was also a writer
Speaker 1: at Third Rock from the Sun. Dave Getch, Welcome to Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: Thank you, very welcome, So great to be here. So
Speaker 1: you have a really fascinating history. How did you start
Speaker 1: out writing for Third Rock from the Sun. How did
Speaker 1: that come about? And for some of you who may
Speaker 1: be a little younger, Uh, that was a show with
Speaker 1: John lift Gowen and um Joseph Gordon Levitt was a
Speaker 1: pretty popular sitcom and it stay how did you find
Speaker 1: your way there? Well, I first had to learn that
Speaker 1: you could be a sitcom writer, that that was a job.
Speaker 1: You didn't know that. Up in Connecticut, I loved watching television,
Speaker 1: but I never thought about who wrote that stuff, who
Speaker 1: was filming that stuff, what was that business like? And
Speaker 1: so when I was a senior in high school, there's
Speaker 1: a guy who just had graduated from college and he
Speaker 1: came back and he taught for a year my school,
Speaker 1: and we ended up doing We had a little radio station,
Speaker 1: nothing like this recording studio, and we did a little
Speaker 1: show there with another teacher and it was these guys
Speaker 1: are hilarious, and it was sitting around like this and
Speaker 1: just making each other laugh. And he then left that
Speaker 1: year to go to film school, and within a year
Speaker 1: and a half he was a writer on Cheers. So
Speaker 1: I stayed in touch with him. His name is Rob Long,
Speaker 1: and a couple of years later he was executive producer
Speaker 1: of Cheers. So as I thought about going to college
Speaker 1: and being a lawyer or doing whatever, in the back
Speaker 1: of my mind, I always remembered what he described being
Speaker 1: a sitcom writer was like, which is sitting around in
Speaker 1: a room with ten people who are funnier than any
Speaker 1: of your friends and trying to make them laugh and
Speaker 1: write a little play and put it on TV and
Speaker 1: your grandparents can watch it and that ideally along with
Speaker 1: a few million other people. And so um. There were
Speaker 1: a bunch of other things that I thought about doing,
Speaker 1: but ultimately, after an inner you at Goldman Sacks for
Speaker 1: the fix with the fixed Income division, um where I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna go be a sitcom water
Speaker 1: So I moved to Los Angeles. By the way, you
Speaker 1: should know the fixed income desk at Goldman Sacks. Those
Speaker 1: guys are hilarious. That meeting was unbelievable because I put
Speaker 1: on my uncle's I didn't have a suit. I put
Speaker 1: on my uncle's tweets suit in the middle of August,
Speaker 1: and I went down there to Wall Street and I
Speaker 1: sat and talked to this VP and I literally didn't
Speaker 1: know what fixed income was. You know, you just like
Speaker 1: you go to Yale, you get interview, you know you
Speaker 1: gotta fix it, you gotta fix it perfect. And I
Speaker 1: remember her saying, um uh, you know, when was the
Speaker 1: last time you read the Wall Street Journal? And I said, well, honestly,
Speaker 1: this has been a pretty crazy time for me, like
Speaker 1: twenty two. I don't have a job, there's nothing going on.
Speaker 1: She's like, I can't believe you're going to Goldman Sax
Speaker 1: and having a meeting and you haven't read the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journals. Like well, like, like I said, things with me,
Speaker 1: my girlfriend are crazy. So so that didn't work so
Speaker 1: that they offered me a job. In fact they did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then but I also really liked you because they
Speaker 1: don't sound like it was a bad start in strategy. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I apologize, are crazy? Do you have any other questions?
Speaker 1: Any other things? Um? And so? Um? So you So,
Speaker 1: the way you get into the old way of getting
Speaker 1: into Hollywood and being a TV writer as you write,
Speaker 1: you wrote sample scripts and then you try to get
Speaker 1: an agent and that agent gets you a job on
Speaker 1: during staffing season. Now that spec process has changed, it
Speaker 1: has changed a lot. The first thing that's changed is
Speaker 1: that people don't write old shows like you would write
Speaker 1: a friend. You know, if you wanted to get on
Speaker 1: a show when Friends is on, you'd write a sample
Speaker 1: of Friends and then that would show even if you
Speaker 1: weren't applying to friends. Ideally, the people of friends would
Speaker 1: never read it. It would just be Okay, I know
Speaker 1: this guy can write in the voice of other characters,
Speaker 1: and you can be a team player on staff. And
Speaker 1: now what everybody wants is an original um and so
Speaker 1: uh there. So that process has changed, and in fact,
Speaker 1: now I teach this webisode's class at USC and I
Speaker 1: recommend that people just shoot stuff and make it and
Speaker 1: have a trailer, make a video, make make a It's
Speaker 1: hard to get anybody to read anything. But if I
Speaker 1: said to you, will you read my screenplay or will
Speaker 1: you watch my two minute video? You might watch my
Speaker 1: two video. But from that two minute video you'd get
Speaker 1: a sense of hey, this guy he knows that right,
Speaker 1: knows that to direct, even if he's in it. He's
Speaker 1: pretty funny. I'll take a meeting, then I'll read the script.
Speaker 1: So there's the technologies allowed people to break in a
Speaker 1: new way, but for me, it was the old fashioned way.
Speaker 1: It was get a get An agent had a writing
Speaker 1: partner at the time, and he and I um went
Speaker 1: and met Bonnie and Terry Turner, who are the creators
Speaker 1: of the show they're married, they're wonderful and uh, we
Speaker 1: had one of those just great meetings where we left
Speaker 1: and left and in the sun and then um, and
Speaker 1: then we got hired at the end of the first
Speaker 1: season and how that ran a good couple of seasons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that ran for six years and um, we started
Speaker 1: as staff writers and on the last year we were
Speaker 1: the executive producers and show owners with Christine Sander. So
Speaker 1: let's break these titles down because they are interesting. Executive producers,
Speaker 1: show runner. Everybody kinda knows what a writer is, what's
Speaker 1: the showrunner due, so they're The way to think about
Speaker 1: it is that there are people who make suggestions and
Speaker 1: there are people who decide. So the show runner decides,
Speaker 1: and all the other writers were pitching how about this,
Speaker 1: how about this, how about that? And you might start
Speaker 1: as a staff writer and then become a story editor,
Speaker 1: executive story edor co producers, supervising producer, executive producer. But
Speaker 1: those are just different steps of virtually the same thing,
Speaker 1: which is you're still in the room, you're still pitching,
Speaker 1: and hopefully you're getting paid a little bit more as
Speaker 1: you go up the way, and eventually the showrunners, the
Speaker 1: person who ultimately as responsible for saying they're the managing
Speaker 1: partner of the show exactly. And um, you know, the
Speaker 1: way I think about TV development is really in that
Speaker 1: VC model, which is where you you write a pilot
Speaker 1: and that's a business plan. You say, we think we're
Speaker 1: gonna be able to make two hundred of these widgets,
Speaker 1: these funny shows, but we need some money to we
Speaker 1: need some angel investing to make a pilot. And then
Speaker 1: you make that first pilot, the network says, okay, go
Speaker 1: ahead and do that, and then you maybe get your
Speaker 1: series A. That's your first season, right, and then you
Speaker 1: have to get the second season in thurd season and
Speaker 1: in the old days, by the fourth season you could
Speaker 1: syndicate and that would be your I p O. By
Speaker 1: the old days you can syndicate after four or five
Speaker 1: seasons anyway. Well, so big bank theory certainly is the
Speaker 1: exception to that, and it did very well in syndication. Um,
Speaker 1: in if you're selling to the new streamers like Hulu
Speaker 1: and Netflix, they don't have syndication. They own their own
Speaker 1: your content forever, so they have some different models where
Speaker 1: they'll say, we'll give you a bonus in the fourth season,
Speaker 1: and what you're seeing a lot is that shows get
Speaker 1: canceled in the third season makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: So could a show like Third Rock from the Sun
Speaker 1: or even Big Bang get off the ground today with
Speaker 1: the political correctness with the environment today make that more challenging.
Speaker 1: It's such an interesting question, and I ultimately have to
Speaker 1: say probably, there's so many places where you could put
Speaker 1: it out there, and there's just so much chance. There's
Speaker 1: so much The role of a hit show is there's
Speaker 1: so much luck involved. And you think about the stories
Speaker 1: of how Seinfeld was just six episodes and then was
Speaker 1: almost canceled, Cheers was oppd Cheers was almost canceled at
Speaker 1: the end of the first season, and then it won
Speaker 1: an Emmy. We got lucky in the first season where
Speaker 1: there was a writer strike, so we did I don't know,
Speaker 1: seven or eight episodes and then we went down and
Speaker 1: that meant that they repeated all of those eight episodes.
Speaker 1: And then when the strike ended. Because we're multi camp sitcom,
Speaker 1: we could get up faster and shoot more and so
Speaker 1: people were looking for new stuff and and we had it.
Speaker 1: And so to what degree we think that helped. But
Speaker 1: you know, there's so many variables in all this, it's
Speaker 1: hard to know. So Um, later this month, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go see John Lithgow on Broadway. He's got a new
Speaker 1: play out. You got to work with him, and there
Speaker 1: was what what was the experience like on Third Rock
Speaker 1: from the Sun some really huge subsequent names out of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a it was a magical experience from top
Speaker 1: to bottom. I got to just see the play this
Speaker 1: past weekend, which is wonderful to Clinton play, and it was.
Speaker 1: It was so cool because there's an episode of Third
Speaker 1: Rock from the Sun that my partner and I wrote
Speaker 1: where Laurie Metcalf, who plays Hillary in this play, Um
Speaker 1: falls in love with John Lethgo's character and they speak
Speaker 1: to each other only an I ambig pentameter. So and
Speaker 1: she got nominated for Emmy for that, you know, twenties
Speaker 1: something years ago, and then later she has in her
Speaker 1: many many roles. She's also played Sheldon's mom on Big
Speaker 1: Nank Theory. So seeing them up on stage, I just
Speaker 1: had I had flashbacks to working with them two decades ago.
Speaker 1: Working with John, Yeah, it's he He is so remarkable
Speaker 1: and I could spend the whole time talking about out
Speaker 1: what what a mens she is but probably the best
Speaker 1: example of that is you know your star, you don't
Speaker 1: need to know everybody's name. Right. He not only knew everybody,
Speaker 1: all the writer's names, all the cruise names. There's a
Speaker 1: Christmas gift that I have framed and it's an illustration,
Speaker 1: a cast and crew photo, but he drew it. So
Speaker 1: he drew every person's face. Really, so imagine so you
Speaker 1: not only know your name and who they are, but
Speaker 1: what they look like, how to draw them. And then
Speaker 1: for each person he colored in that person and said
Speaker 1: to Berry, happy holidays. Loved. Really, that's amazing, you know,
Speaker 1: I almost met him. Just a quick digression. I'm at
Speaker 1: an event in Vancouver. This has to be like ten
Speaker 1: years ago, eight years ago, and I love ethnic cuisine
Speaker 1: and there is like a crazy top ranked Indian restaurant
Speaker 1: in Vancouver called I want to say ve something like
Speaker 1: that v I J no reservations, But when you get there,
Speaker 1: they just start feeding appetizes and drinks while you're waiting.
Speaker 1: And we sit down at the two top and right
Speaker 1: next to us is John Lithgow and the food was
Speaker 1: so good. Nobody paid attention to him like he was
Speaker 1: a big star. Then, like in New York or in
Speaker 1: a place like this, there's like the vibe is, hey
Speaker 1: don't right, you don't. It's always bad for him to,
Speaker 1: you know, scream it at celebrities. Um, and that's a
Speaker 1: very New York attitude. But I was surprised to see
Speaker 1: that in Vancouver. I didn't know if it was the
Speaker 1: town or because the food. Yeah, crazy delicious. Let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about your really terrible relationship with money
Speaker 1: as you have described it when you were growing up.
Speaker 1: Explain that. So I, Um, my parents were teachers, and
Speaker 1: so we always had enough money, but there wasn't money
Speaker 1: that was being saved. And uh so when I started
Speaker 1: to work in Hollywood, I had some money and I
Speaker 1: didn't know what to do with it. And I think
Speaker 1: from the very early days, I would always read the
Speaker 1: business section to try and get worked up, to look
Speaker 1: think about what's bad stuff could happen, and and there's
Speaker 1: lots of bad stuff, and there's screens and screens of it.
Speaker 1: And so I would I describe myself on the writing
Speaker 1: staff as like the chief Warrior, because I would because
Speaker 1: I knew enough to get scared about the Asian currency
Speaker 1: markets or what's going to happen and I how is
Speaker 1: the Asian currency market? I don't know. The good news
Speaker 1: is it doesn't matter my new philosophy. I'm a long
Speaker 1: term investor, so I don't care right what happened. So
Speaker 1: in other words, what happened last Tuesday is not relevant
Speaker 1: to your retirement. And so for me, it's a it's
Speaker 1: about if I have what's your time? You must talk
Speaker 1: about your clients all the time, What's what's your what
Speaker 1: are your goals? What's your time horizon? If you are
Speaker 1: thinking about twenty years from now, then what happens in
Speaker 1: today's markets. I'm so fond of telling people look at
Speaker 1: a long term chart of the market, the single worst day,
Speaker 1: the nineteen seven crash, one day crash on a bit
Speaker 1: long term chart, it's like a little wiggle. You barely
Speaker 1: even see it, although while you're in it, in it, well,
Speaker 1: the world is coming to an end. But that's just
Speaker 1: a function of perspective exactly. And I think that there's
Speaker 1: this um problem that I had, which is even after
Speaker 1: I knew that, I didn't internalize it. There's kind of
Speaker 1: that aha moment when you start to see how all
Speaker 1: this stuff fits together, and that's when you have the
Speaker 1: ability to start feeling better now, not just that not
Speaker 1: feeling like, Okay, I have enough money or I've I'm
Speaker 1: going to be okay. It's more like I have confidence
Speaker 1: in this approach that I've taken and also being comfortable
Speaker 1: with the uncertainty. So let's talk about that, because there's
Speaker 1: a line that you wrote, quote the markets haven't changed.
Speaker 1: They still go up and down the differences. I don't anymore.
Speaker 1: So how did you get from that process of worrying
Speaker 1: about where the end was to Hey, markets are volatile,
Speaker 1: they'll fluctuate, but I can't be bothered. So I was
Speaker 1: a mess. So I had my I had my retirement
Speaker 1: in cash, and the O eight oh nine happens and
Speaker 1: it starts. Everything starts to tank, and I think to myself,
Speaker 1: I've been waiting since I'm thirteen for this. This is
Speaker 1: the end of the world. I knew it was going
Speaker 1: to happen, but it wasn't the end of the world.
Speaker 1: And it was around that time that I read this
Speaker 1: article about Gordon Murray who was writing a book called
Speaker 1: The Investment Answer in his race against cancer. He was
Speaker 1: trying to finish the book before um I think it
Speaker 1: was brain cancer, and so it was extremely moving article.
Speaker 1: I ordered the book on Amazon before it came out.
Speaker 1: I read it and things clicked for me in a
Speaker 1: different way. This I understanding how the market works being
Speaker 1: a long term investor, and no one ever talked about
Speaker 1: having a fiduciary investment advisor. And once you realize that
Speaker 1: there's somebody who's on your side, who's not trying to
Speaker 1: make extra money in every single trade, and they're beating
Speaker 1: a part for the long term. I sought out an
Speaker 1: advisor and it's funny. I once I met with him,
Speaker 1: I said, Okay, I'll give you a year to see
Speaker 1: how it is. So it proves I didn't really know.
Speaker 1: I wasn't really allowed months. Months is enough? I heard something,
Speaker 1: um amusing you had you had your agent and his
Speaker 1: brother was an advisor, and you said, I've given enough
Speaker 1: that family enough money. Exactly right. So c A is
Speaker 1: one of the leaders of c A is Brian Lord
Speaker 1: and his brother Blaine Lord, his name is also an advisors. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm already given ten cent to the to the Lords,
Speaker 1: I don't need to give a leven that. That's really uh,
Speaker 1: that's really funny. So so you're you're looking at, um,
Speaker 1: what is at least by traditional standards, a fairly substantial salary. However,
Speaker 1: there's always the risk, hey, we could get canceled any time.
Speaker 1: Who knows if this show is going to get picked up.
Speaker 1: How do you deal with that sort of uncertainty? You
Speaker 1: have to be fairly risk embrace sing if that's the
Speaker 1: career choice. So this is what I realized, which is
Speaker 1: when I became a secum writer, because I saw my
Speaker 1: friend get a job on Cheers after a year and
Speaker 1: a half. I totally misspriced risk. I thought going into
Speaker 1: Hollywood was going to be a lot easier and a
Speaker 1: lot more stable than it was, And once I got there,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, this place is a mess.
Speaker 1: I went to meeting accountant once and he said, okay,
Speaker 1: well what's your what what kind of income can you
Speaker 1: expect over the next five years? And I said, well, well,
Speaker 1: I might never work again, so zero, or I might
Speaker 1: syndicate a show, so two million dollars, So can we
Speaker 1: budget for somewhere in between that? And that is paralyzing
Speaker 1: for it was paralyzing for a long time. And the
Speaker 1: difference for me is getting on their side of it
Speaker 1: and saying hold on a second risk, we no risk
Speaker 1: and reward or related. We can to be afraid of
Speaker 1: that or we can try to make a little peace
Speaker 1: with that. And so much of my life, so much
Speaker 1: of everyone's life, is how do you reduce risk, mitigate
Speaker 1: how do you try to make everything seem to make
Speaker 1: more sense? And as a storyteller, um, I was always
Speaker 1: telling myself stories either to get racked up and nervous
Speaker 1: or try to calm down. And it's hard, but I
Speaker 1: think trying to get comfortable with that unknown is is
Speaker 1: it really powerful? I can imagine. So before we leave
Speaker 1: the investing space, I have to ask, you have a patent?
Speaker 1: How on earth did that happen? So I have a
Speaker 1: couple of friends from college and this was we graduated
Speaker 1: in the early nineties, and uh, we had this idea.
Speaker 1: We always wanted to start a company, and so all
Speaker 1: of us were at the beginning of our career and um,
Speaker 1: John Zitrain, who's now this Internet law of professor at Harvard,
Speaker 1: he's a big, big deal. He had this idea, which
Speaker 1: was what he was a colleague our friends. If he's
Speaker 1: a friend from college. So so it turns out it's like, uh,
Speaker 1: this guy Sherman Min who he just so this company
Speaker 1: to target um and uh uh, Zack Meanen who runs
Speaker 1: a neuroscience institute in Portugal, and me and Zach and
Speaker 1: Mary Lambert who another college friend who worked at Google,
Speaker 1: and the thing that was incredible a couple of things
Speaker 1: that were fun. It was a great chance for us
Speaker 1: to all be together. And this idea for the patent was,
Speaker 1: could there be a way to communicate without having to
Speaker 1: talk and without having to type? Could there be a
Speaker 1: touch based way of communication? So if you and I
Speaker 1: had a bracelet, you know, and we give it a squeeze,
Speaker 1: you say, you know what when this interview, rather rather
Speaker 1: than me giving you a sign when we want to
Speaker 1: break to go get a snack, just give me a squeeze.
Speaker 1: And so you give me a squeeze. Or you'd be
Speaker 1: able to tell your your kid would say when I
Speaker 1: get to school, I'm gonna give you a squeeze. And
Speaker 1: so it was a haptic way of communication. And we
Speaker 1: were gonna use page networks to do it, and we
Speaker 1: ended up getting a patent, but all of our lives
Speaker 1: got busy, and it turns out this is actually a
Speaker 1: pretty hard thing to build, especially in the nineties. Well,
Speaker 1: Apple didn't have a hard I'm building it exactly and
Speaker 1: technically it is part of the Apple Watch. So we
Speaker 1: kept waiting for Apple to call us, and they still
Speaker 1: haven't called. So if Tim Cook is listening to this podcast,
Speaker 1: send checks to absolutely. So you guys never tried to
Speaker 1: enforce the patents or never tried to do something we
Speaker 1: um we were like open to it, but um see,
Speaker 1: Apple should come by the patent so you don't sell
Speaker 1: it to Samsung. I agree, I agree, I think that's
Speaker 1: a really good idea. Okay, thank you very much. I
Speaker 1: also recall hearing that you set up your own defined
Speaker 1: benefits plan. You didn't even know that was an option
Speaker 1: for someone who was technically self employed. Right. The structure
Speaker 1: is all the writers and producers work for either themselves
Speaker 1: or a separate LLC, so it's like a pass through
Speaker 1: when they're all partners. Yeah. So what happens is after
Speaker 1: you become a certain level of a writer, your accountant
Speaker 1: will say time to make a loan out. And so
Speaker 1: for a writer that says, what am I going to
Speaker 1: call my name? As a writer, you think, okay, what
Speaker 1: do I call my corporation? And some people have really
Speaker 1: goofy dumb names for corporations on the I r S
Speaker 1: calls that you regret that you have this really dumb name.
Speaker 1: But the funny thing is, when you go to file
Speaker 1: an LLC through the corporate paperwork, most of the names
Speaker 1: have been taken. You have to really work to find
Speaker 1: a name that any common one or two word combination.
Speaker 1: Somebody's filed it already. Yeah, exactly. So what happened is
Speaker 1: now that I had a financial advisor, he said, hey,
Speaker 1: you don't know what your future is. These are good
Speaker 1: earning years. Can you put a chunk of it away
Speaker 1: to create your own pension? And that sounded great to me.
Speaker 1: I love that idea, and I end up mentioning this
Speaker 1: to lots of people too, because I feel like it's
Speaker 1: surprising how many of my colleagues don't have financial advisors,
Speaker 1: how much they would benefit from it, and they you
Speaker 1: know that what you guys do, you get a bad
Speaker 1: rap from all the other guys who aren't doing what
Speaker 1: you do. Well, it's not clear who's a transactional commission
Speaker 1: broker who are allowed to call themselves advisors versus a
Speaker 1: fiduciary registered investment advisor who basically are like your accountant
Speaker 1: or your lawyer are obligated to do what's in your
Speaker 1: best interest. And that's been an ongoing debate in Congress
Speaker 1: for a while. The President Obama, his Department of labor
Speaker 1: Um past that, hey, for retirement accounts they must be fiduciary.
Speaker 1: That rule was just overturned by the new administration, and
Speaker 1: so it's very ambiguous. It's very and even worse, there
Speaker 1: are now hybrid broker dealer r I A So what
Speaker 1: had am I wearing? Am I wearing a a fiduciary
Speaker 1: hatam or I'm wearing a commit So it's really it's
Speaker 1: so complex and so unclear, when really we could just
Speaker 1: clean this up and say either everybody needs to be
Speaker 1: a fiduciary or if you're not a full blown fiduciary,
Speaker 1: you can't call yourself a plan or an advisor. You
Speaker 1: have to be either a CFP or an r I
Speaker 1: A blah blah blah with all the acronyms. But this
Speaker 1: could be cleaned up. There's too much money at stake
Speaker 1: from people who don't want it to be cleaned up.
Speaker 1: I think the estimate was just for retirement accounts was
Speaker 1: seventeen billion a year in fees, So of course there's
Speaker 1: a lot of opposition to that. Yeah, And the upside
Speaker 1: of having a fiduciary advisor is that your things keep
Speaker 1: changing in your life. You have kids, you lose spouses,
Speaker 1: you inherit money, I think you have health challenges. Things
Speaker 1: change all the time. And there I mean you spend
Speaker 1: all your time. I spent all my time with all
Speaker 1: these writers in all these rooms, and we don't talk
Speaker 1: about money because it's too scary and stressf I eyone
Speaker 1: talked about different things. But you want to be able
Speaker 1: to call up somebody and say, hey, I need some help.
Speaker 1: What is this? And so I'm super grateful for my
Speaker 1: advice are and um, hey I need a trust in
Speaker 1: the state's lawyer. I need somebody who can help me
Speaker 1: with this. They have that network. Yeah, exactly. And I
Speaker 1: know markets are going to go down. I know there's
Speaker 1: gonna be sometime in my lifetime. Things are probably Historically
Speaker 1: things go down some giant thing again like eight seven
Speaker 1: or whatever, or or oh eight or nine it was.
Speaker 1: And it's going to be really good to have somebody
Speaker 1: that I can talk to you to say, I know
Speaker 1: we said this is gonna happen. I'm freaking out, are you? Uh,
Speaker 1: Let's let's talk this out before I do something reckless.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a smart approach. Let's let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the show. It's been the top rated
Speaker 1: sitcom for how long? Now? For a really long time,
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure. For years. Yeah, we've We've had
Speaker 1: a great run. And there are a ten writers that
Speaker 1: all work together in this really unique way. And you
Speaker 1: say unique because I always think of um, my framework
Speaker 1: is shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is also its
Speaker 1: own thing, or or Seinfeld, where one or maybe two
Speaker 1: people would write a script and then we'd go to
Speaker 1: the writers and the jokes would be added. You guys
Speaker 1: do a very different approach. It's not a single writer
Speaker 1: and then it's punched up. It's a whole group discussion,
Speaker 1: right right. The standard model is to have you break
Speaker 1: the story around a big table and then and come
Speaker 1: up with an outline and send one or two writers
Speaker 1: off to write it and then come back and get notes.
Speaker 1: But with Chuck LORI noticed in his long storied career
Speaker 1: was that when those scripts came back, you spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time rewriting them. So what if we just
Speaker 1: had this borg and had everybody's eyes on the script,
Speaker 1: and we went through it. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that happened when you go off to write a script is,
Speaker 1: of course it sounded great when you were talking about
Speaker 1: it sounded awesome in that little outline, but now it
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense. Or even better, you came up with
Speaker 1: a twist that is better for the story, but you've
Speaker 1: got it approved, and you've got to kind of stick
Speaker 1: to the outline and you don't want to bug the
Speaker 1: show runner. And what we've been what we've been able
Speaker 1: to do is uh, sit around the room, come up
Speaker 1: with it together, write the script together, and then have
Speaker 1: that freedom to pivot and turn and follow the story.
Speaker 1: So sometimes people will say, oh my gosh, I didn't
Speaker 1: see how that was gonna happen at the end, and
Speaker 1: we said, we neither did we. We discovered it along
Speaker 1: the way. There'll be more fun to go this way
Speaker 1: or to go that way. Now, now we're in the
Speaker 1: Chuck Laurie era of television where the laws were passed
Speaker 1: and no sitcom to beyond unless it's either created or
Speaker 1: produced by Truck Laurie. Is that is that more or
Speaker 1: less true? He? Uh? He if you think about all
Speaker 1: of his shows, right, it's um, It's Two and a
Speaker 1: Half Men, was so It's Sybil, Grace, under Fire, Dharma
Speaker 1: and Greg, Two and a Half Men, Big Bank Theory, Mom,
Speaker 1: Mike and Molly, and you just want a golden globe
Speaker 1: for Kaminsky, which I love Netflix, And and now his
Speaker 1: new show just got picked up, Bob Hart's Abashola, which
Speaker 1: is going to be on CBS, and I saw the pilot.
Speaker 1: It's really really funny. And so it's no, he's he's
Speaker 1: incredibly talented. But he also in addition to that, he
Speaker 1: has this process for making a show which is different
Speaker 1: from the way other people make shows, and that and
Speaker 1: that ends up having a big impact on how successful
Speaker 1: the show, or at least that's the correlation that seems
Speaker 1: to exist. He touches something and it I mean, has
Speaker 1: he had many shows that haven't worked out, especially well
Speaker 1: you have to think about it to know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is a there's there's a story that a long
Speaker 1: long time ago some network bought a show with him
Speaker 1: and Tyler Perry. Right, those are like the two most popular,
Speaker 1: those guys that that that show didn't get on the air.
Speaker 1: But those two guys but he I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: has the track record like it's astonished so one of them.
Speaker 1: So my wife literally started watching The Big Bang Theory
Speaker 1: from the first show, and I watched more or less
Speaker 1: what she watches other than a handful of Project Runway
Speaker 1: or Flip This House. And I will specifically notice how
Speaker 1: the show has iterated over what is it twelve season,
Speaker 1: two seventy nine episodes, which is slightly more than your episodes.
Speaker 1: You're like two fifties something. I'm coming up on two
Speaker 1: fifties soon. Soon, you'll pass. But it's only taking me
Speaker 1: five years to get that. That's the beauty of once
Speaker 1: a week and and that's the beauty of two it's
Speaker 1: sitting and talking in a room as opposed to a
Speaker 1: whole television productive. So I've noticed in the beginning the
Speaker 1: thing that was so appealing to me. I don't watch
Speaker 1: a lot of television, um, but I got pulled into
Speaker 1: the show because everybody was pretty dysfunctional. This was a
Speaker 1: group where most of the main characters, certainly the four
Speaker 1: male characters, were at various points on the spectrum. Certainly,
Speaker 1: it's implied that Sheldon is either autistic or Asperger's or
Speaker 1: somewhere on the spectrum, and over the years that's kind
Speaker 1: of moderated a little bit. We've mainstreamed them. Tell us
Speaker 1: about how this has evolved and how do you stay
Speaker 1: true to those original characters. Well, I think it's a
Speaker 1: testament to Bill Pretty and Chuck creating this show, which
Speaker 1: was those characters were inspired by Bill Pretty's experiences here
Speaker 1: in New York working at a computer company and really
Speaker 1: brilliant people, not exactly the most socially exactly so depth
Speaker 1: so brilliant people who are not socially not the geniuses
Speaker 1: socially that they are in other ways. And so the
Speaker 1: amazing thing about television is how you can tell such
Speaker 1: a long story and how people can change at at
Speaker 1: a rate that is a little bit more consistent with
Speaker 1: how things happen. It's hard in a movie to have
Speaker 1: how do these these movies where it's like you tell
Speaker 1: the story of somebody's life in ninety minutes, he's a
Speaker 1: jerk and now he's enlightened, and what a great guy exactly,
Speaker 1: And so for us, the way it's always been is
Speaker 1: to follow the characters and not necessarily know where we're going.
Speaker 1: Like when mine Bi Alex showed up to be to
Speaker 1: go on a date with Sheldon. I think she had
Speaker 1: two lines in her. It was a season finale of
Speaker 1: maybe season three or something. This is because Howard had
Speaker 1: set them exactly without without Sheldon knowing, set him up
Speaker 1: on a web dating website exactly and basically just made
Speaker 1: Sheldon a complete and total accurate depiction of somebody again
Speaker 1: pretty much on the spectrum, and lo and behold, here
Speaker 1: she comes, Here she comes, and she was um. She
Speaker 1: was great to work with, and then we brought her
Speaker 1: back for another episode and then another episode. And I
Speaker 1: don't think the plan was ever Sheldon's in the ten
Speaker 1: years from now, Sheldon's going to marry her? Was it
Speaker 1: the second season? Was it that early? I remember? I
Speaker 1: think it was the It's all blurs together, but I
Speaker 1: think it was season three because what ended up happening
Speaker 1: with her introduction was it went from a story about
Speaker 1: four dysfunctional guys too pretty much for dysfunctional couples and
Speaker 1: how they manage their lives in spite of the fact
Speaker 1: that they're all a little wacky. Melissa Row, who plays
Speaker 1: Bernadette and my biolic could play Amy, deserved enormous credit
Speaker 1: for what they brought to the show, and what they
Speaker 1: the stories they allowed us to tell, so it didn't
Speaker 1: just be still be about four nerds who were trying to, um,
Speaker 1: you know, go to the comic bookstore as much as
Speaker 1: they can use Google maps to find um I forgot,
Speaker 1: what was the Bachelorette or one of those shows where
Speaker 1: where all of the America's top martin us top a
Speaker 1: bunch of beautiful women with low self esteem because they've
Speaker 1: been rejected and they figure out how to go set
Speaker 1: up their WiFi. Yeah, and that is a part of
Speaker 1: the show and it's that's so fun. And what became
Speaker 1: even more fun was just to just to be able
Speaker 1: to tell more stories. Did you ever get any did
Speaker 1: the writers or the producers ever getting me pushed back
Speaker 1: from any advocacy groups that had um autism or aspergers
Speaker 1: or anything like that because of the way, uh they
Speaker 1: were being uh depicted. So we never um what it is,
Speaker 1: said what it is and but anyone with Google and
Speaker 1: Wikipedia can figure it out. Well. We we had some
Speaker 1: really uh meaningful, wonderful connections where people have come to
Speaker 1: us and said, you know, um, my son identifies with
Speaker 1: Sheldon and we every day we sit down and we
Speaker 1: watch an episode and then and we talk about it,
Speaker 1: and we talked about what Sheldon is going through when
Speaker 1: we talk about my son's going through, and that we
Speaker 1: didn't intend to do that, but it's something that we're
Speaker 1: so proud of as a group. And I think that
Speaker 1: we certainly the you know, among the ten writers, everybody
Speaker 1: is protective of the characters, and I think that Shower
Speaker 1: Steve malaro Um in a ways is the most protective
Speaker 1: in a in a really wonderful way. And what's going
Speaker 1: to make sure that Sheldon never did anything that would uh,
Speaker 1: you know, cross the line or be objectionable, and so, uh,
Speaker 1: we we really care about these characters and they they
Speaker 1: are alive to us. I can I can totally see
Speaker 1: see why that would be Um. I mentioned the show
Speaker 1: has iterated over the years. Because it's on syndication, I
Speaker 1: frequently will see like a first or second or third
Speaker 1: season show. It was really edgy in the beginning. I mean,
Speaker 1: he had had some really sharp elbows like where you gasp,
Speaker 1: like wow, that's hilarious, but oh my god, nobody else
Speaker 1: on TV says anything like this, Yeah, and what happened
Speaker 1: is around So when the show syndicated around season four.
Speaker 1: It's normal that when the show syndicates, the audience grows,
Speaker 1: more people find it and they say, hey, I want
Speaker 1: to check out the name. It's a commercial for the
Speaker 1: current show exactly. But what we found is that families
Speaker 1: love to watch the show together and they would people.
Speaker 1: We have an audience that of two or fifty people
Speaker 1: that comes on Tuesday night to watch live studio audience
Speaker 1: and it's not laugh track. We have microphones in the audience,
Speaker 1: and so those people would stand up and and and
Speaker 1: thank us or tell us that this is the only
Speaker 1: show I get to watch with my family. And that
Speaker 1: was really stuck with Chuck. And you know, he had
Speaker 1: created two and a half Men, and that's not necessarily
Speaker 1: a show that you can watch with your children, with
Speaker 1: your kids, and that wasn't intended to be that way.
Speaker 1: And so we we heard how the audience was growing
Speaker 1: and moving and and then and as I as I recall,
Speaker 1: even a lot of us have kids, and we started
Speaker 1: watching the show with our kids. And so it was
Speaker 1: more of just a gut check, which is do I
Speaker 1: want to that joke is funny? But do I want
Speaker 1: my honestly next to my daughter? And and hear that,
Speaker 1: and so it became I think a little broader and
Speaker 1: broader appeal in that way. Right, So in the early
Speaker 1: days there would be the wood jokes with Sheldon and everybody.
Speaker 1: He has to be doing this on purpose, all the
Speaker 1: double on andres yes that he was oblivious to, you know,
Speaker 1: leading up to the series finale. That had to be
Speaker 1: a bitter sweet experience. This has been twelve years of
Speaker 1: your life. Yeah, I have a picture I'll show you
Speaker 1: of twelve years of all the scripts because we have.
Speaker 1: The way a multicam works is we do a table
Speaker 1: read on Wednesday and we rewrite all the jokes that
Speaker 1: don't work. On Thursday, we do a rehearsal, we see
Speaker 1: the actors perform it just like a a We fix
Speaker 1: all the things that don't work on Friday, same thing.
Speaker 1: We appreciate some stuff on Monday, and then on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: in front an audience, we film the whole thing. So
Speaker 1: so that's the third So when you see what's what's broadcast,
Speaker 1: that's really the third time everybody's going through it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that is a difference from Modern Family or Arrest
Speaker 1: of Development, which is like a movie. Maybe, And because
Speaker 1: they'll do a table read if they're lucky, and then
Speaker 1: they are. They board it, and then they're shooting it
Speaker 1: in pieces all over town, some in sound stage and stuff,
Speaker 1: and that is It's incredible how they make that look
Speaker 1: like a movie. What I love about the multi camp
Speaker 1: is that you have these chances to watch it and
Speaker 1: watch it like a play and tweak the jokes and
Speaker 1: listen to the audience and have that interplay. And so
Speaker 1: that became as we went through season twelve and getting
Speaker 1: to the final episode, these filmings became so emotional because
Speaker 1: our audience was going through it too, and in the
Speaker 1: last episode that we shot, people started waiting out the
Speaker 1: night before to try to get tickets, and um, it was.
Speaker 1: It was festive and joyous, but but also really emotional.
Speaker 1: And the only thing I could compare to is I
Speaker 1: got to go. One of the great things about the
Speaker 1: show is how scientists like it and people from JPL come.
Speaker 1: And so I got invited to go to JPL for
Speaker 1: when Cassini Show into the Cassini Mission, and that was
Speaker 1: like at four o'clock in the morning and everybody, hundreds
Speaker 1: of people were there. But I got to sit in
Speaker 1: the room with all these scientists who had worked on
Speaker 1: it over the last twenty five years, and these guys,
Speaker 1: who are quite reticent, we're just watching the satellite and
Speaker 1: their tears were coming down their face, not not because
Speaker 1: they were sad, it was just this is the conclusion
Speaker 1: of a big part of your life. Years. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a really long time. So last question about The
Speaker 1: Big Bang. Are people watching this live as a broadcast,
Speaker 1: or they're d V ring it, or they streaming it
Speaker 1: as an on demand You have to have seen how
Speaker 1: that has evolved over the because you guys launched right
Speaker 1: into the start of really a totally new era in television.
Speaker 1: The iPhone hadn't come out when Sish when The Big
Speaker 1: Bang Theory started, YouTube was about two years old, and
Speaker 1: so it is fascinating to think about how much the
Speaker 1: world has changed, and also how this show has been
Speaker 1: so popular despite being made the same way I Love
Speaker 1: Lucy's made. So we talked about how there's so much innovation,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, this way of making things
Speaker 1: still worked. So it's been fascinating to watch how it changes.
Speaker 1: We we used to look at the ratings and then
Speaker 1: we then they started to do plus threes for three
Speaker 1: days and plus seven and see how it continues to
Speaker 1: be because after because those ratings, you would say, wow,
Speaker 1: the ratings are going down compared to two years ago,
Speaker 1: but within three days their way up and within seven
Speaker 1: days their way up. And so it's not just that
Speaker 1: there's one way of consuming any of this stuff and
Speaker 1: you have to be prepared to to get it out
Speaker 1: to everybody. One thing that is different, though, is this
Speaker 1: idea of watching something every week versus if you made
Speaker 1: twenty episodes on Netflix and just dumped it, people will
Speaker 1: burn through it. It's it's a different kind of an experience,
Speaker 1: and so as it's fascinating as storytellers to think about
Speaker 1: how to tweak those episodes, because I remember somebody being
Speaker 1: on the plane and watching an episode of House and
Speaker 1: saying like, oh my god, I've never seen the show.
Speaker 1: Was amazing, and then they I'm watching another one, and
Speaker 1: they watched another episode like that was really good. It
Speaker 1: was quite like the first episode. The episode they were
Speaker 1: like that was remarkably like the third episode. But the
Speaker 1: point was because it wasn't intended to be watched. It
Speaker 1: was every week, we give you something that you like,
Speaker 1: which is different, but within the confines of it being weekly.
Speaker 1: It's fine, but you're not gonna watch twenty six episodes
Speaker 1: of House in the Road. So a couple of shows
Speaker 1: is that. Um I started binging when MS. Maisel came
Speaker 1: out and when Jack Ryan came out Day one. I
Speaker 1: started watching both of them, and I found that if
Speaker 1: you you only have a finite supply of it, you
Speaker 1: have to pat yourself otherwise you're gonna watch it in
Speaker 1: a in three weeks and now you get to wait
Speaker 1: forty nine weeks until the next one comes. And it
Speaker 1: does you know, just banging through a bunch of them,
Speaker 1: it does lose a little something when you watch it
Speaker 1: and you get to think about it and digest it
Speaker 1: and wait a week and then next so we The
Speaker 1: Expanse is another one that I like to I don't
Speaker 1: want to over binge, although I'll watch one or two
Speaker 1: of them in a row, and but you want to
Speaker 1: give it a little time to settle in. It's it's
Speaker 1: not great to to just I know people who will
Speaker 1: kill the whole season in a in a weekend, and
Speaker 1: I think it loses a little bit of something or
Speaker 1: am I You know, it just depends on what that
Speaker 1: show is. I remember watching the first season of twenty
Speaker 1: four in less than twenty four hours. It was back
Speaker 1: going with the blockbuster and was just like get them
Speaker 1: and watch them and burn through them all. So it's
Speaker 1: more like is it a giant movie? Is that the
Speaker 1: novel you want to just can't put down, or is
Speaker 1: it something that you want to like incorporate into your life.
Speaker 1: So it's as I think, as writers, how you want
Speaker 1: this to be consumed is relevant, and the Sopranos is
Speaker 1: maybe the extreme version of that, which is or Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones. Waiting two years between those shows didn't help
Speaker 1: you forget, like, wait, what's that connection? Could we make
Speaker 1: control like the Big Bang going forward? Or is that
Speaker 1: era now over? Well I'm such an idiot because I
Speaker 1: remember telling Bill Prady at season one this, you know,
Speaker 1: we live in a new era of television. Syndication is over.
Speaker 1: There's no way I love this show. I hope it,
Speaker 1: I hope it's successful, but there's no way you're ever
Speaker 1: going to make any money in syndication. And I was
Speaker 1: very wrong. It was very very wrong. So it seems
Speaker 1: like it's never too late. There's there's always audiences like
Speaker 1: these shows. I love multi camps because their characters that
Speaker 1: people want to invite into your house and and have
Speaker 1: a relationship with them. Uh. Let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the entertainment industry. There are so many interesting things,
Speaker 1: uh that are going on. But first I have to
Speaker 1: ask you about the Emmy's. The show and its actors
Speaker 1: and writers have been nominated. I don't know ninety seven
Speaker 1: times for Emmy's. Do you go to the Emmy's. What
Speaker 1: is that experience? Like? If you get nominated, you go
Speaker 1: to the Emmys. You just go, You just go. And
Speaker 1: there's our editor, Peter Chacos was started getting Emmy's on
Speaker 1: Cheers and nominations on Cheers and on Will and Gray's.
Speaker 1: And by the time he started getting them on a
Speaker 1: Big Bang, it was his twentieth nomination and no win.
Speaker 1: So you know it's so he went, well, he just thought,
Speaker 1: he's Susan Lucci. He's never gonna happen. It's never gonna happen. See,
Speaker 1: I believe in me and reversion. Eventually he has to win,
Speaker 1: and he did. Was he reverted to the means. So
Speaker 1: he won I think three or four in a row. Uh,
Speaker 1: the and then that's it again. No, No, I hope
Speaker 1: he will keep winning and winning he the the Emmys
Speaker 1: are really fun. And what's interesting is when you go
Speaker 1: on different years and see, like whose show it is.
Speaker 1: So one year we got to sit in the row
Speaker 1: right with Homeland and that was the year the I
Speaker 1: think it was the first season, and they won, and
Speaker 1: they won big, and it's you know, first of all,
Speaker 1: it's like really looked down here, like, hey, there's Manny Patankan.
Speaker 1: You know, that's fun. Claire Danes is great in that.
Speaker 1: Clara Danes is wonderful in that show. And then and
Speaker 1: then they win and they go up on stage and
Speaker 1: it's amazing, and so, uh, it's fun no matter what.
Speaker 1: And but it's fun to win, isn't it. It's I've
Speaker 1: never won an Emmy, so I don't know, but it
Speaker 1: seems really fun and it's been. It's interesting to think
Speaker 1: about Chuck Glory, who, well he hasn't won an Emmy ever,
Speaker 1: how is that possible? It is not one of writing Emmy,
Speaker 1: but almost all of his characters have. And I think
Speaker 1: it's a testament to how he creates shows that are
Speaker 1: so focused on characters that an actor can have a
Speaker 1: great script to really knock get out of the park.
Speaker 1: And it's it's an it's you know, you think he's Alison.
Speaker 1: Janny just won when Jim Parsons won forever every year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but didn't the show wasn't the show Best Comedy Emmy
Speaker 1: for long? Doesn't It isn't that really the creators so
Speaker 1: that we got nominated I think three or four times,
Speaker 1: but it was during the run of Modern Family. So
Speaker 1: Modern Family run won a lot, and then we went
Speaker 1: a couple of times for The Rock from the Sun,
Speaker 1: but that was when Fraser was winning and those guys,
Speaker 1: you know, Frasier one like eight years in a row.
Speaker 1: Modern Family went six years in a row. But you
Speaker 1: guys started long before Modern Family, right, We were a
Speaker 1: couple of years before Modern Family for sure. So so
Speaker 1: that's that's the army. That's kind of interesting. Um, have
Speaker 1: you noticed any changes in Hollywood since the me too
Speaker 1: movement began? And specifically within your show? So I think
Speaker 1: that around Hollywood people are people get it now. It's
Speaker 1: what I've been hopeful that this time would happen, and so, um,
Speaker 1: I think the culture is changing and it's not that
Speaker 1: hard to do, you know. There when you're in a
Speaker 1: writer's room, it's important to have everyone be able to
Speaker 1: speak freely, and so there was even a friend's lawsuit
Speaker 1: years ago where the California Supreme Court guaranteed the right
Speaker 1: of the writers to cross the line. Because the line
Speaker 1: is if you start self editing yourself in a creative format,
Speaker 1: you're going to really radically cut back what what can
Speaker 1: be done right. And there is a way to speak
Speaker 1: freely but also be respectful of everyone in the room.
Speaker 1: And in fact, if you're trying to get the most
Speaker 1: out of everybody, if you're pitching jokes that might hurt
Speaker 1: people's feelings or or you don't want to do anything
Speaker 1: that silences other people in the room, you know. So
Speaker 1: I think that the I think this is all positive
Speaker 1: for making better shows, and we're going to see, i think,
Speaker 1: in the next few years, just more at what we've
Speaker 1: seen already, which is just more diversity of voices, which
Speaker 1: is terrific and it's gonna it's going to make better content. Well, well,
Speaker 1: we'll be looking forward to that. So, as executive producer,
Speaker 1: how much responsibility do you take for the financial success
Speaker 1: of The Big Bang theory A most none so um,
Speaker 1: I certainly, Uh yeah, I'm just so grateful to be
Speaker 1: a part of this show, and you really started pretty
Speaker 1: much from the what was it the second episode? Yes,
Speaker 1: so the pilot is the first episode, and then you know,
Speaker 1: the first episode of season one is uh is episode two.
Speaker 1: So Steve Miller and I were there from the beginning,
Speaker 1: and um, the there are so many people that deserve
Speaker 1: credit way ahead of me, and I think that it's
Speaker 1: been so cool to just watch how this has grown
Speaker 1: and evolved and nobody, really, I don't think people I
Speaker 1: knew that this show, a show about four nerds, was
Speaker 1: going to be connect with people and be so popular
Speaker 1: with them. And when did you start to think, hey,
Speaker 1: this thing is becoming a monster? How long did it take?
Speaker 1: There was a press tour that the cast took and
Speaker 1: I think it was maybe at the end of season one,
Speaker 1: between season one and season two, or between season two
Speaker 1: and season three, so that what you guys went to
Speaker 1: Comic Con. So we went to Comic Con and that
Speaker 1: was that was definitely a moment where like, wow, people
Speaker 1: are into the show. Yours for sure, yes, but these
Speaker 1: and then you guys write it into the show, which
Speaker 1: was hilarious. And we always had every year of Comic
Speaker 1: Con we'd have a little real so we would have
Speaker 1: all the nerdiest jokes and the superhero references and references
Speaker 1: to Comic Con, and we always wanted to shoot at
Speaker 1: Comic Con, but it's in July, and it never It
Speaker 1: was always too hard to do um And so the
Speaker 1: I think the moment for me was when the actors
Speaker 1: came back from a press tour in Mexico City and
Speaker 1: they were all the eyes were wide open and they
Speaker 1: were just like we were the Beatles, like it was,
Speaker 1: you know, there was security and there were hundreds of
Speaker 1: people waiting at the whole tell and they didn't even
Speaker 1: know the show was. They thought they were promoting that
Speaker 1: the show was going to be in Mexico, but it
Speaker 1: had already become a huge hit. And there was a
Speaker 1: moment for me also where I met somebody, a Chinese
Speaker 1: person who said, um, I learned English watching your show.
Speaker 1: Really that's kind of interesting. And it's the number one
Speaker 1: comedy in China too. Let me think about that. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering what cultural things wouldn't translate, but I guess it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. It's just a quirky family and so that's
Speaker 1: kind of universal, even though the specifics are so unique
Speaker 1: to the show, right that you know, jokes about Pasadena
Speaker 1: aren't going to play in Beijing, but you can. You
Speaker 1: know what it's like, Uh, that it's that core dynamic
Speaker 1: of friendship, about relationships, about trying to find love, trying
Speaker 1: to find career success, and that has been able to translate.
Speaker 1: So when you look at around what's going on with Hollywood.
Speaker 1: You have giant mergers, you have related to the show,
Speaker 1: all the superhero stuff just going ballistic. When when Disney
Speaker 1: starts cranking out Marvel comics after that purchase Marvel Comics
Speaker 1: movies four times a year, what do you think the
Speaker 1: future of this is going to be in the entertainment space?
Speaker 1: I don't mean just from the Four Guys perspective, but broader.
Speaker 1: Is it becoming a nerds entertainment world? It's such an
Speaker 1: interesting question. I feel we're in this wild moment where
Speaker 1: within three weeks of each other, Um, the Marvel arc,
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones, big bang, they're all ending, and so
Speaker 1: will we look back just the Avengers arc is ending,
Speaker 1: Marvel is going to have a million comics they haven't
Speaker 1: even touched into. You know, that's true, that's true. Um,
Speaker 1: I do you think it will? It will have to
Speaker 1: continue to innovate, right, you have to find you can't.
Speaker 1: There weren't. There'd never been an arc like Avengers in
Speaker 1: a movie. You've never seen anything like Game of Thrones
Speaker 1: before Big Bang, you're heading out a show like that.
Speaker 1: And so that's kind of like why Reality TV was hot,
Speaker 1: where you're like, oh wait, I've never seen a show
Speaker 1: with guys stuck on an island, and but I thought
Speaker 1: that was cheap. That's why that was so well. Those
Speaker 1: ratings were great. Those ratings were really great. And so
Speaker 1: it's I will I will admit to watching the first
Speaker 1: couple of seasons of Survivor and then it kind of
Speaker 1: got repetitive. It's interesting people on staff still love that
Speaker 1: show like they they still love it and there's something
Speaker 1: special about it. The So it's just about being able
Speaker 1: to innovate and entertain an audience. And as you have
Speaker 1: fewer giant corporations, are they to become more risk averse?
Speaker 1: Are they going to say, well, we know Avengers worked,
Speaker 1: so let's make more marvel. You know? It's they just
Speaker 1: did that with Star Wars, right, They cut back on
Speaker 1: a Star Wars movie because the one before it didn't
Speaker 1: do as well. Well. They were cranking out, cranking out
Speaker 1: too fast and too too much. Um. Although when we
Speaker 1: look at risk aversion look at Disney, all right, So
Speaker 1: they buy Star Wars and they buy Marvel and they
Speaker 1: buy Fox and they said, oh yeah, Netflix, We're gonna
Speaker 1: put out Netflix at half the price they seem to
Speaker 1: be taking. We're embracing risk. I don't know if everybody
Speaker 1: else is, but when a giant company like Disney has
Speaker 1: figured out, if we don't throw stuff up against the wall,
Speaker 1: we'll never know what. You know, it's a great Jeff
Speaker 1: Bezos quote. If we don't fail, we're not taking enough
Speaker 1: chances to see what might work. Yeah, exactly. And they
Speaker 1: just took a big write down on Vice so that
Speaker 1: you know, like that's the thing you take big right
Speaker 1: down for them. It was a couple hundred million dollars,
Speaker 1: which is really Ah, I thought you don't track all
Speaker 1: this stuff? Or is that Hollywood enough? That's entertainment? Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: yellion dollar right down for Disney's. Like I had a
Speaker 1: fight out of Bill. I can't find where to go,
Speaker 1: where to go? It's um, you know, I I think
Speaker 1: the stuff to me that's so interesting is how people
Speaker 1: are able to build businesses outside of that model. So
Speaker 1: watch how sitcoms, you know Ray with Insecure, or the
Speaker 1: guys that made High Maintenance, they started as web series,
Speaker 1: they did proof of concept. Uh, there's a moment where
Speaker 1: these shows can live on their own or come into
Speaker 1: the corporate structure. And so how for people breaking One
Speaker 1: of the things I say is that to this the
Speaker 1: students at USC that I teaches that part of breaking
Speaker 1: into Hollywood might not be breaking into Hollywood. That you
Speaker 1: might if you can be entrepreneurial and think about new platforms.
Speaker 1: And you know, TikTok is this huge thing that's happening
Speaker 1: right now that if you're under twenty five you'd love it.
Speaker 1: And so how can you become a great content creator
Speaker 1: for TikTok or how can you how can you monetize that?
Speaker 1: How can you do new things people haven't done before?
Speaker 1: So last question about this, what is the entertainment industry
Speaker 1: you're gonna look like ten or twenty years from now?
Speaker 1: Is it going to be what we think of as
Speaker 1: Hollywood or as you are implying, it's going to be
Speaker 1: far more vulcanized and far more spread out, and not
Speaker 1: the old studio system remotely well this The simple answer
Speaker 1: is nobody knows. But the stuff that's interesting to me
Speaker 1: is that there we're going to be more and more
Speaker 1: like Spotify, where everything is available all on demand, and
Speaker 1: for me, that makes me want to Actually, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just something older. I don't want to. I don't want
Speaker 1: to listen to more music. When I have access to
Speaker 1: more music, it's kind of overwhelming, Like I want to
Speaker 1: go to my record collection and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll play that. That's the beauty of Pandora versus Spotify
Speaker 1: is that you can seed a playlist with your favorites
Speaker 1: and yet stuff that's similar. And that's the most interesting
Speaker 1: thing about Spotify is that it will have these recommended
Speaker 1: lists with is a great way to find new music.
Speaker 1: So for me, it's like the Netflix algorithm suggesting what
Speaker 1: shows you want is fascinating. But also, are we just gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, to do the economic parallel? Are we gonna
Speaker 1: have too much faith in models? And so what is
Speaker 1: the role of humans being able to kind of create
Speaker 1: and innovate? And then the the other thing that I
Speaker 1: wonder about is how you see it in every family
Speaker 1: where it used to be one TV screen and everyone's
Speaker 1: got a tablet, and everyone complains about that, but from
Speaker 1: a content creator standpoint, it means, hold on a second.
Speaker 1: We just went from needing four shows at the same
Speaker 1: time one showed at the same time, to four shows
Speaker 1: at the same time. And as you get to driverless cars,
Speaker 1: what are people gonna do? They're gonna watch TV. So
Speaker 1: so when you think about you twenty years from now,
Speaker 1: you're in a driverless car, that's super luxurious. You get
Speaker 1: to live far out of town because it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: You commute in for an hour back you've planned, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna watch Game of Thrones Part nine on that ride
Speaker 1: in and on the ride out. How you can consume
Speaker 1: this content is going to drive a lot of what
Speaker 1: it's going to be and how long it's going to
Speaker 1: be and where it's going to go. So so I
Speaker 1: agree with you, except I think they're going to spend
Speaker 1: more time listening to podcasts. I agree people. I love
Speaker 1: podcast I love driving. I drove to uh Sacramento and
Speaker 1: listen to your podcasts and it's much more engaging than music.
Speaker 1: It's it's so different because it's a whole long story.
Speaker 1: We're gonna a little bit. Can you stick around a
Speaker 1: few minutes. I have a bunch of more questions for you.
Speaker 1: We have been speaking with Dave Gush. He is a
Speaker 1: writer and the executive producer for The Big Bang Theory,
Speaker 1: which just had its season finale. If you enjoy this conversation,
Speaker 1: we'll be sure and stick around for the podcast. Actually
Speaker 1: is where we keep the tape rolling and continue discussing
Speaker 1: all things television related. You can find that at iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher, Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: wherever your final podcasts are sold. We love your comments,
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Check out my daily column on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com. You can follow me on Twitter at Riolts.
Speaker 1: I'm Barry Hults. You're listening to Masters in Business on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Dave, Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for doing this. I say this every week, um,
Speaker 1: and it's always true, but it's especially true this week.
Speaker 1: I've really been looking forward to having this conversation. We've
Speaker 1: been trying to do this for a while and it
Speaker 1: just worked out great that we're recording this on a Monday,
Speaker 1: and the by the time this drops either the same
Speaker 1: day or the night before the finale um will have aired.
Speaker 1: So the one question I didn't get to that I
Speaker 1: have to ask you, what's next for Dave Gesh? What
Speaker 1: are you gonna do after this? I know you probably
Speaker 1: the assumption is, oh, he doesn't have to do anything again.
Speaker 1: This shows when it's indication forever. But you're young guy.
Speaker 1: You don't want to not work for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life, do you. I definitely want to keep working
Speaker 1: and paranoid not to work. Yeah, I know for sure,
Speaker 1: and um and I didn't create the show, so so
Speaker 1: if I greeted the show, I'd be in a floating
Speaker 1: on a hovercraft or something. But I want to take
Speaker 1: the lessons of the last twelve years and apply them
Speaker 1: on new shows. I think this multi cam world where
Speaker 1: you get the chance to rehearse for a couple of
Speaker 1: days and tweak the jokes and then do it in
Speaker 1: front of a live audience, is it's old It is
Speaker 1: old fashioned, But I the success of The Big Bang
Speaker 1: is testament that people like it, and even bringing back
Speaker 1: Full House on Netflix that has been a big hit
Speaker 1: for them. I would not have guessed that I was
Speaker 1: never a full House. Yeah, me neither. So I have
Speaker 1: to ask so you're a comedy writer, what comedy shows
Speaker 1: do you like to watch? So I don't like to
Speaker 1: watch much because it all feels like work. So when
Speaker 1: I'm watching, you can't help critique and take notes or
Speaker 1: feel jealous and have low self esteem. That that's such
Speaker 1: a good joke that I wish I'd come up with it. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I thought thirty Rock was flawless, and I
Speaker 1: was obsessed with it. What they did in there, especially
Speaker 1: the first two seasons, it's amazing. I remember I had
Speaker 1: like the worst flu a couple of years ago, and
Speaker 1: having seen it all when it broadcast, I just binged
Speaker 1: all three seasons or the first whatever it was, and
Speaker 1: you could see when it starts to change, like at
Speaker 1: a certain point you could tell different writers. Well, but
Speaker 1: the first two seasons were so fresh and so hilarious.
Speaker 1: They're amazing. It's like there there are special seasons, right,
Speaker 1: It's like, what is that? The Office seasons two and three,
Speaker 1: And a lot of just has to do with kind
Speaker 1: of where those characters are and where they're going. Um,
Speaker 1: I have I have been able to watch and see
Speaker 1: how hard it is to make television that I have
Speaker 1: a lot of forgiveness for when people say like, oh,
Speaker 1: that show stinks and my don't you understand it's it's
Speaker 1: so hard that they got that on TV, Like do
Speaker 1: you know how many they got notes from the studio
Speaker 1: and the network on every outline and every rewrite and
Speaker 1: then they still had to get there and just Chuck
Speaker 1: Laurie's shows still get notes or can you guys do
Speaker 1: what you want? He has earned this uh place where
Speaker 1: he does not get notes, and that is an extraordinary
Speaker 1: luxury for us as writers to work in that world.
Speaker 1: So the story with Seinfeld and Larry Davis, no notes
Speaker 1: were not interested. Somehow they managed to carve that out.
Speaker 1: And obviously Curb doesn't seem to get a whole lot
Speaker 1: of notes because it's so improved. Do you what what
Speaker 1: shows do you find interesting that way? Do you watch
Speaker 1: either of those? Yeah? I think what they did on
Speaker 1: Curbed is is great and it's fascinating how they do that.
Speaker 1: It's improvised, but heavily it's really interesting. Ever read if
Speaker 1: you ever read one of those outlines where it's really dense, Um,
Speaker 1: the I have students who think, oh, well, since Curb
Speaker 1: is improvised, I'm gonna go do an improvised thing, and
Speaker 1: if you ever shoot an improvised thing, it's just a
Speaker 1: nightmare because they all spin off on all these prejudections.
Speaker 1: You have to be really focused on and that's annailing
Speaker 1: those story beats. And that's an amazing cast. It's incredible cast.
Speaker 1: It's really stop and think. Everybody on that show is
Speaker 1: a rock star. It's it's just astonished. Any other comedy
Speaker 1: shows that tickle your fancy. I think the Arrested Developments
Speaker 1: it was hilarious and um, I'm really excited about I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to just uh like promote the other Chuck
Speaker 1: lay world, but I think this new Bob Heart Savashola
Speaker 1: is a really cool show, which is about a Billy Gardell,
Speaker 1: who was Mike from Mike and Molly in the pilot,
Speaker 1: has a cardiac event and goes to the hospital and
Speaker 1: wakes up and there's a nurse and she's a Nigerian
Speaker 1: immigrant and he falls for her and it's such a simple,
Speaker 1: sweet story. But you you watch this pilot and you're like,
Speaker 1: I want to see more. I want to see these characters.
Speaker 1: I want to see what's going on. So I'm really
Speaker 1: excited for that. So I only have you for a
Speaker 1: finite amount of time. Let's jump to our favorite questions
Speaker 1: that we ask our guests, sort of our our speed round.
Speaker 1: Tell us the first car you ever own? Your making
Speaker 1: model in nine seventies six AMC White Hornet, which might
Speaker 1: P's got from the telephone company, and meaning it was
Speaker 1: a fleet car, a fleet car, and they got it
Speaker 1: for five dollars and they paid too much, They paid
Speaker 1: too much, and then that's a pos for sure. I
Speaker 1: hit a telephone pole because I uh it was Connecticut
Speaker 1: in the spring and too much sand from the snow,
Speaker 1: and and uh, I totaled the car because it would
Speaker 1: cost six to fix it, so cost more just a
Speaker 1: simple repair, clustmas the whole car. Um, what's the most
Speaker 1: important thing? People don't know about Dave Cash, Well, they
Speaker 1: know about the patent, that's really so that's the I
Speaker 1: was that's thing. But I tried to start a chocolate
Speaker 1: company in the first season of Big Bang Theory. At
Speaker 1: the same time, while Um Quantum Candy, it was gonna
Speaker 1: be called r X Chocolates, and the idea was it
Speaker 1: was gonna be apothecary bottles and it was going to
Speaker 1: have the amount recommended of dark chocolate every day and
Speaker 1: you pop it in your mouth. Okay, that's a good
Speaker 1: idea for Yeah, and what happened to that, Well, it
Speaker 1: turns out I'm much better at coming up with ideas
Speaker 1: i am at starting businesses. It's it's concept versus execution exactly.
Speaker 1: That's why I need a partner for that stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: Who were some of your early mentors who really gouted
Speaker 1: your career in television? Well, I mentioned Rob Long, Who's
Speaker 1: this guy who showed me that there was actually a path?
Speaker 1: And the other guy in that radio station was a
Speaker 1: teacher named Craig Thorne, and he has since passed away,
Speaker 1: and he just couldn't have more of an impact in
Speaker 1: terms of how to live your life, how to help people. Um,
Speaker 1: the power. He is one of the funniest guys in
Speaker 1: all the years in Hollywood, one of the funniest guys
Speaker 1: I've ever met, and just how to how to live
Speaker 1: your really how to live your life. And then working
Speaker 1: with Bonnie and Terry Turner on th Rock from the Sun,
Speaker 1: they were they created a family in their running staff
Speaker 1: and uh, I'll I remember working that first night that
Speaker 1: first year, maybe a Friday night, and they'd say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, we have to work past dinner, and I
Speaker 1: would think to myself, great, I don't want to go home.
Speaker 1: This is so funny. So you're an investor and have
Speaker 1: been for a while. Who has influenced your approach to
Speaker 1: either investing um or thinking about markets? Well? I mentioned
Speaker 1: that Gordon Murray book, which had a really profound impact
Speaker 1: on me. And you know, I think the work of
Speaker 1: Gene Fama this. I wish everybody knew more broadly about
Speaker 1: this efficient market theory. If only he would win a
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize for that, people would find out, then it
Speaker 1: would get out. I took I took macro econ with Nordhouse,
Speaker 1: and I took a winner. And then I took microth
Speaker 1: with Gianna Copolis. Who might win it some day? And
Speaker 1: didn't he win? Um? What did he win? The Bates?
Speaker 1: You want something big? And they they didn't talk about
Speaker 1: personal inventor. They should. I wish they would just say,
Speaker 1: be a long term investor, keep fees low, Uh, invest
Speaker 1: in a broad basket of stocks. Yeah, and and um,
Speaker 1: what are they gonna do for the next sixteen weeks
Speaker 1: of the class? Exactly right? And so it's so simple,
Speaker 1: But I feel like, um, there's just so much noise
Speaker 1: pushing the other way for sure. Tell us about your
Speaker 1: favorite books. What do you like to read? Comedy, non comedy, fiction, nonfiction.
Speaker 1: So John Irving had a giant impact on me growing up,
Speaker 1: and sider House Rules is still one of my favorite
Speaker 1: books of all time. And um, there's a then this
Speaker 1: guy Rob Long wrote a great book called Conversations with
Speaker 1: My Agent And so if you ever want to know,
Speaker 1: like what Hollywood's like, that's a good little little book
Speaker 1: to follow. And um, tell us about a time you
Speaker 1: failed and what did you learn from the experience. I
Speaker 1: fail all the time. I mean, pitching is failure, right,
Speaker 1: You're pitching ideas, you're pitching things. Uh, there's so many
Speaker 1: pilots that I've written and sold that that never got made.
Speaker 1: But what I what I realized is that you really
Speaker 1: can't define failure for five or ten years because what
Speaker 1: comes from that As a result of not getting that thing?
Speaker 1: What else happens? And it's happened when I was dying
Speaker 1: to get on Spin City and I didn't get a meeting,
Speaker 1: and then I got the Third Rock from the Sun job,
Speaker 1: which was a dream job. I was so excited to
Speaker 1: try and get a job on thirty rock and I
Speaker 1: had a meeting and then I got canceled because they
Speaker 1: hired their friend, and then that led to big bank theory.
Speaker 1: So failure, it's easy to make failure one thing. But
Speaker 1: I think if if you're a long term investor, if
Speaker 1: you have a long time horizon, you you can redefine it.
Speaker 1: You have to look at it across the continuum. I guess,
Speaker 1: what do you do for fun outside of the writer's room?
Speaker 1: By the way, I imagine that the writer's room is
Speaker 1: just hilarious and I know it's worth but it must
Speaker 1: be just so much so entertaining. It really is so entertaining.
Speaker 1: And when you when people make fun of you on
Speaker 1: when they're professional comedy writers who do it, it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: that was so so good. Yeah yeah, you can't. You
Speaker 1: can be frustrated or embarrassed. Whevery you're just like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's so good and so uh that is a it's
Speaker 1: a joy to hang out with those guys. It still
Speaker 1: works so stressful there, people get mad at each other,
Speaker 1: things happen. You still have to do your job. But
Speaker 1: but the way to have those funny people around you
Speaker 1: is amazing. And really the thing that's so fun for
Speaker 1: me to do is to teach, and I teach every
Speaker 1: fall at USC and this webisode's class and it's so
Speaker 1: fun to take these things that I've learned in my
Speaker 1: career and television but then apply them to this new
Speaker 1: medium and give say to these kids, you have all
Speaker 1: the power to make your own TV show, which I
Speaker 1: never had. You know, for years and years into my career,
Speaker 1: what are you most excited about within the entertainment industry?
Speaker 1: What you can do just with your phone is more
Speaker 1: than Martin Scorsese and Ted Turner could ever do in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. That that's amazing. Um. So, if a
Speaker 1: millennial or a college student came up to you and said,
Speaker 1: we're interested in a career in television or entertainment, what
Speaker 1: sort of advice would you give them if you're a writer,
Speaker 1: if they're a writer, I'd say there are three kinds
Speaker 1: of writing. There's writing on the page, there's writing when
Speaker 1: you're working with an actor and how you change it
Speaker 1: to fit that actor's voice. And then there's the writing
Speaker 1: you do when you edit. And you used to have
Speaker 1: to be a shot runner to do all those things,
Speaker 1: but now you can do it. So how you write
Speaker 1: is different now, and you can post and get feedback
Speaker 1: and build an audience, make your webisode and have a
Speaker 1: discipline so that you're able to fit it into your schedule,
Speaker 1: so that you can say, one week in a month,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shoot and I'm going to make one minute episodes,
Speaker 1: but I'll make four of them and every Monday, just
Speaker 1: like Barry rid halts On, I'm gonna drop my I'm
Speaker 1: gonna drop my episodes. And by the time you've made
Speaker 1: fifty of them, you're gonna say I've learned so much.
Speaker 1: I'm such a better writer. And number thirty six is
Speaker 1: the best thing I've ever done, and it's the one
Speaker 1: thing I want to show somebody. And our final question,
Speaker 1: what do you know about the worlds of producing and
Speaker 1: writing and comedy today that you wish you knew twenty
Speaker 1: years ago when you were first getting started Almost twenty
Speaker 1: years ago. Uh, not more than years ago. I would
Speaker 1: say that it is the one of the lessons from
Speaker 1: Chuck Lory is he treats writing with a group of people.
Speaker 1: Someone described it like jazz, where you sit down and
Speaker 1: you don't know where it's going to go. There's a structure,
Speaker 1: you know in a jazz thing. You do eight bars,
Speaker 1: and I do eight bars, and we go around. There's
Speaker 1: a structure to the scene and a goal to the scene,
Speaker 1: but being open to that freedom. It's kind of being
Speaker 1: comfortable with uncertainty that we're talking about. The being being
Speaker 1: able to execute, but being able to be open to
Speaker 1: that stability of maybe not knowing where you're going to
Speaker 1: go and drawing the best out of people is absolutely
Speaker 1: magical and just have faith in that process quite quite fascinating.
Speaker 1: We have been speaking with Dave Gesh. He was the
Speaker 1: executive producer and writer for The Big Bang Theory as
Speaker 1: well as other shows. If you enjoy this conversation, we'll
Speaker 1: be sure and look up an Intra down an Inch
Speaker 1: on Apple, iTunes, Stitcher, Overcast, Bloomberg dot com wherever final
Speaker 1: podcasts are found, and you could see any of the
Speaker 1: other I don't know, let's call it two d and
Speaker 1: thirty eight episodes we've done previously. I'm just ballparking that. Um.
Speaker 1: We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us
Speaker 1: at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I would
Speaker 1: be remiss if I did not thank the crack staff
Speaker 1: who helps put out this conversation each week. Medina Parwana
Speaker 1: is my producer slash audio engineer. Michael Boyle is our booker.
Speaker 1: Attica val Broun is our project manager. Michael Batnick is
Speaker 1: my head of research. I'm Barry Hults. You've been listening
Speaker 1: to Master's in Business from Bloomberg Radio