by Neil Landau
So I read all seven of them. (Yes. I overprepare. I did this when I was a reporter, too.) The hardest part of an adaptation is you feel like it isn’t yours. Like from the beginning, you’re wearing someone else’s clothes to something important—think your wedding. And you have to ask permission to cut off the sleeves or take up the hem. Or tear the whole thing apart and make a new outfit. I have a lot of respect for other writers—plus the fans of any adapted book will inevitably be disappointed. I’m an avid reader—but I’m also a screenwriter. What you envision in your head when you’re reading a book is different from what makes a good TV show. The biggest difference is probably that Tess’ books aren’t funny—they’re dark mysteries. In fact, I do believe the original mandate was to write something tonally that was more like The Silence of the Lambs. Fortunately, Tess Gerritsen is an extremely nice person—and, lucky for me, she’d had her books optioned before (don’t ask me which ones)—and nothing had ever even been developed past a pitch. She was so grateful that I was actually writing a pilot script that she gave me tacit permission to make it my own. Once I stopped worrying about the “other” writer, I made it mine.
NL: How does your conception of Jane Rizzoli (Angie Harmon) and Maura Isles (Sasha Alexander) differ from the books, and why did you choose to make those changes?
JT: Tess is a doctor—and she has a meticulous style—her books are dense and well-researched. They’re also page-turning, layered mysteries. But the mysteries and the forensics, not the characters, take center stage. I wanted the women and the supporting characters to be the reason people tuned in. It was important to me that the two women—Jane and Maura—be very, very different. Drama is conflict. I wanted them to not only look different, but to be very unlikely allies. They’re site-specific friends—they would never have become friends if they hadn’t been thrown together in their work. It was important to me to mine the organic humor that emerges when you have a job like Jane has (homicide detective) and like Maura has (medical examiner/coroner). They see plenty of dark shit. But they’re also people—and they take themselves and their lives with them to work every day. When I was a reporter, I covered some really terrible, sad dark stuff—I’m talking serial killers and school shootings on any given day. You’re committed to what you do, but you also have to find a way to do it every day—and survive the darkness. Laughter in this context is a coping mechanism, a pressure-release valve, a bonding agent. You hear humor all the time in police stations—it doesn’t mean they aren’t deadly serious about their work.
NL: How much of your life experience as an ex-journalist, wife, mom, and woman informs your series—especially when it comes to family, love, loss, and justice? Can you provide any specific examples of a real life event that impacted your storytelling?
JT: I said my head was in a strange place because of a failed pilot, but there was personal trauma, too. My best friend had been killed [in a car accident] right before I started writing Rizzoli & Isles. I wasn’t thinking about it at the time because so much of writing is your subconscious working things out, but what I was really doing by making a female buddy show was mourning the loss of my best friend. The loss of her was very raw. The unexpected piece of this show was their friendship—Jane’s and Maura’s. When you’re a writer and you’re grieving, you don’t really know how it will manifest. We should know what we’re writing, but we don’t always know where it’s coming from or why it’s finding its way on to whatever page we’re in the middle of writing. I spent ten years covering all sorts of crime stories and spent a lot of time around cops, FBI agents, and victims and their families. It was important to me that the people who populate the show feel real and are like the people that I came across all over the country. It was also important for me to come up with smart mysteries that could actually happen. If you talk to my husband or either of my daughters, they’d probably complain that’s it’s hell living with a writer … little bits and pieces of my life and their lives are all over this show. Steve and I were having one of those “we’ve been married forever” fights— and I went to the laundry room because that’s what I do when I’m upset: I clean. I was trying to find mates to socks. And so many were missing their mates. I felt a sudden pang at the thought of losing Steve—and that “sock” moment turned into a beautiful scene with Angie Harmon after her lover leaves. And yes, props used my family’s socks (which they complained about).
I steal their lines, too. Julia, my younger daughter, was in a really terrible “I hate middle school” mood one night. I tried to soothe her and said, “I’ll make you something. What do you feel like eating?” She said, “People.” Lorraine Bracco [as Angela Rizzoli] and Angie Harmon had this exchange in one of my favorite episodes.
It’s a Herculean task to come up with fifteen mini-movies in a short amount of time. The show chews through material. They are very densely packed scripts—potentially too dense; I’m sometimes forced by the format to give short shriftto things. But the one thing that has always been front and center is Jane and Maura’s friendship. It took me a year of producing the show before I realized how deeply the loss of my best friend had influenced this relationship on-screen. My friend and I had the kind of friendship that I’ve worked to build for Jane and Maura (another thing that really isn’t in the books at all). She wasn’t competitive. She didn’t judge. She embraced my flaws. She knew me. There was a purity to the relationship. She celebrated everything that I did. That’s a really hard thing to replace. I had also known her for seventeen years—I met her when I was pregnant with my first daughter. I knew there were things I didn’t want to do with these two women. I didn’t want them to be fighting over boys. I didn’t want them desperate to be married. I didn’t want them to be doing the “tick-tock my biological clock is ticking and the eggs are getting old” thing. I just thought that would be a big yawner for me. I’ve had really wonderful friendships with both men and women, but there’s something that happens when you’re with your own gender. You have that closeness even if you don’t see each other often. You pick up where you left offand you drop the mask and you are who you are. So Jane could be tough and a tomboy, but she could also be awkward and insecure. Those are the types of things that people close to us allow us to see. I’m also very interested in the extremes of the human condition. When do people snap and why do they snap? I do believe that a lot of that research about the brain is spot on: in the right situation, people are capable of anything.
NL: It seems like there’s a shiftback to doing more serialized stories on broadcast network television, probably from the influence of cable series, like Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Did you ever consider serializing Rizzoli & Isles with ongoing cases versus closed-ended crime stories that start and resolve within each episode?
JT: I would love to serialize this show. Writers in general love to serialize. But those shows are harder to sell—and harder to get people to “sample.” It’s like showing up late to a play or a movie—you don’t want to go at all if you feel like you’ve missed too much. Non-serialized shows also tend to sell better to foreign buyers because they then have the freedom to run the episodes out of order or even blend seasons. It’s purely a business decision that gets made for you. This was always a “closed-ended procedural.” And the fact is, it’s not my money. I feel creatively like it’s “my show,” but it’s not really “my” show. I work for people. Warner Horizon is the studio and TNT is the network. We’re in a funny period where I do have to think about the mandate and the series’ future resale value. Or I have to stop making this show.
So far, the total number of series that started on cable and made it to domestic syndication is zero. So we could make a hundred episodes and it may not syndicate. And the hope with Rizzoli & Isles is that the people who pay for it (and are essentially my clients) will eventually be able to syndicate it. Hart Hanson [creator of Bones] taught me how to find my way in and how to turn the car in the direction that I felt it needed to go while also infusing the characters
with humor and life. Finding a way to keep both art and commerce in the same “car” isn’t easy.
But you have to. If your “buyers” can’t find a way to finance the show, then you can’t make it. People love these characters, so I can’t not serialize or “continue” their stories to some extent. How much that happens is part of the collegial push–pull process of making the series. My hope is to someday write a show that does not have five commercial breaks. It’s a bit intrusive for me as a storyteller and for you as the viewer. It creates challenges because my goal is to maintain the natural flow of the narrative. An interruption breaks that flow. But I’m used to writing to act breaks.
NL: So you’re a teaser and five acts or is it a teaser, four acts, and a tag?
JT: Cold open and five acts, yes. Our network execs like a very long first act. So that cold open can be anywhere from seven to ten minutes. The title sequence floats around, and I decide when I’m in post where it feels most appropriate. TNT is a wildly pleasant place to work, and I’m not just saying that because one of them may see this interview. They have given me a lot of autonomy in how I build the show within very general constraints—they have allowed me to make this show what it is.
NL: Are there rules on your show for when you’re breaking story? Like the A story has to end the act?
JT: Not as such. If I made myself actually chart and dissect it, I would probably find there are certain structural elements that feel “right” in our show and others that don’t—but there is no “set of rules” manual I hand out to prospective writers. But pretty strict “rules” have developed. I think my writers would tell you they’re hard to get a handle on because a lot of them are in my head. I need freedom to dance on the page, but my brain finds a way to organize all of it.
The fact is when I did sit and analyze it so that I could get better at communicating what I needed from my writers, I discovered that every story has, on average, thirty-two beats. So is that a formula? Maybe. I figured out that I almost always have a fifty-fifty split in my act breaks: half are character act breaks, half are story act breaks. That stuff wasn’t planned, but my guess is it’s my training (working on other people’s shows), my natural inclination, and my subconscious striking a balance between crime and character stories.
Now that the audience is engaged with these characters, I’m not afraid that they won’t come back. The lovely thing is that people do care about what happens to these characters in a very real way. Of course they want our characters to solve the mystery, and it’s our job to make the mysteries tight and complex, but as savvy viewers, they know the mystery of the crime will get solved at the end of the episode. It’s the more personal stories where the real surprises are. That’s true for me as a writer, too.
NL: Given your extensive background as a journalist, how is being a showrunner similar and how is it different than being a journalist and/or news editor?
JT: There are definitely similarities, but to answer the question you have to understand the disparate operational structures. I’ve worked in print for both newspapers and magazines. I’ve worked in broadcast news on weekly newsmagazine shows and daily live event coverage. I’ve worked on long-form narrative programming as a writer, a writer-producer, a producer-writer (essentially), and now as a showrunner. How much space do you have here?
Maybe the best way to explain it is that anyone who comes to be in a position of serious responsibility like this is only able to do it because of the specific set skills and experience they bring to it. I’ve done all the aspects one would imagine in journalism: thinking of the story, researching the story, setting up and conducting the interviews, the door kicks and ambush interviews, the backgrounders, shooting stills and/or video, acquiring other source material, understanding the equipment and all of the technical aspects, hiring and managing people, blah, blah, blah. But you are always thinking story. That’s first in your brain. And along the way, you have to continually shake the themes and facts and emotional elements in your working bag while asking, “Is this the best it can be?” There was so little space—and so much to tell when I was a news reporter. I feel the same way when I’m writing a screenplay. Everything has to matter.
I’ve always done a ton of research. I’d generate a small mountain of material as a reporter, so that by the time I’d shot, written and edited my piece, it was a tightly formatted, cohesive finished product that hopefully engaged, informed and, when appropriate, entertained. I always think it’s like an iceberg—you may just see the tip but you know there’s a hell of a lot under it. It also feels so similar to what I do now because as was true when I was a reporter/producer, there are so many hats to wear as a show-runner.
Being in charge of a series from prep through production to post-production is a bigger version of my life as a broadcast journalist. It turned out to be great training, though I never (never) intended to leave news to do this. I value that experience and draw on it all the time whether in planning, actual production or seeing the show through the many stages of Post. Clearly, it’s not the only path to becoming a showrunner, but it was mine. And none of those really valuable skills would matter if I couldn’t write—studios and networks will only throw you the keys if you’ve demonstrated the ability to turn blank pages into truly compelling and shoot-able scripts that turn into shows people want to watch.
I could always write. Journalism taught me how to write quickly. It also taught me the near magical value of research. In the narrative world where there is generally more value placed on just “making stuff up,” it’s important to remind ourselves that writers need to experience what we’re writing about. When I write Rizzoli & Isles, I don’t think of Angie and Sasha on TV. I think of Jane and Maura at a murder scene, I will go to the fish warehouse to listen to the sounds or smell the smells. When Jane and Maura are in a mud bath or hanging from an inverter, I do that stuff myself. What does it feel like? What are you thinking when you do it? Verisimilitude is not just a goal, it’s the foundation—and since we’re deep in the world of crime-solving, I’m pretty anal about getting it right. The actors and the crew really, really appreciate it. They do their homework, too.
When I was writing the pilot, I reached out to friends from graduate school (Columbia University) and tapped a Boston Globe reporter. I said, “Give me a homicide detective who’ll talk to me.” He made the introduction, and four years later, this cop went from full-time tech advisor to a writer on my staff.
No line or prop or action is too small because everything contributes to how the show feels. “Would our bad guy toss or burn bloody clothes? Why did he use a gun? What kind of gun?”
These things mattered as a journalist covering crime stories; they matter as a writer creating crime stories. The devil is in the details, but you also can’t let that run your life because as the showrunner, you’ve got a factory to run. I’m always thinking: “What’s been shot? Can we change this or hide it?” It’s about punting and being creative—as a writer and a producer—all day long. I love that. Reminds me of doing live news: you have to think on your feet or you’ll look like an idiot in front of a lot of people.
I have a couple hundred very talented people, but we all work under very stringent time/money resource parameters. Showrunners have to make sure the assembly line keeps moving, and if any one of the hundreds of components breaks down, the whole thing grinds to a loud, painful, expensive and sometimes very public halt.
Our overall goal is that no matter what aspect of the production you examine, you’ll see the money and time was spent wisely in service of the story, and that the end result is something that engages, entertains, and maybe even informs and inspires. So it’s not all that different in qualitative terms. It’s more a question of scale and the natural pressure that comes with having a lot more at stake.
NL: What gives a fictionalized crime story on Rizzoli & Isles the dramatic juice for you as showrunner/arbiter to have a eureka! moment in the writers’ room? And what might cause y
ou to kill a story for not meeting those specific needs?
JT: I see it in my head as the writer pitches it. And what I’m thinking is: “Is this the show? And how badly do I want to write this?” The question I ask myself is simple: “Am I dying to write this?” If the answer is yes, then it’s something we’ll pursue. There are stories that are perfectly good stories for other shows—that just don’t excite me. Kind of like people at a cool gathering: some you’re drawn to; some, not so much.
And then when you decide to proceed, it’s a lot of time and thought and experimentation: go this way or this way? Trial and error. If you don’t have a story turn or a line or a resolving moment that gives you the kind of resonant tingle every viewer rightly seeks, you keep at it until it comes. I think I’m like other writers in that I never really stop writing this show—even when I’m sleeping. So sometimes that story-saving idea comes very late at night, or while I’m working out at the gym or yeah, while I’m vacuuming. That messy creative process drives us all nuts—writers included. But I learned all about deadlines from my news career: if you don’t meet the deadline, there’s dead air or a blank page … and you don’t work again.
I also really like to push it—myself, my writers and most especially the story. I don’t want your first idea—or my first idea. I want the idea we haven’t thought of yet. That’s hard.
NL: It seems like it’s a very thematically driven show. How important is theme to you?
JT: I think theme emerges. I think you find your way to things that when you’re done make a whole lot of sense. As I said, I didn’t realize until I was a year and a half into this project that my grief about my friend created a celebration of friendship between Jane and Maura. That to me is the writing process and why I want theme to emerge from the work—you don’t go out trying to hit the beats of a pre-conceived “theme” (or at least I don’t). Your writer’s mind finds and makes all of those connections as the story forms.
