by Neil Landau
NL: Do you map out the season arcs in advance so you’re building to “sweeps” episodes or cliffhangers—or do you generally break stories episode to episode?
CB: We always map out our seasons. It makes the writing easier, and while I also think there’s some value in figuring it out as you go along—making an improv game out of it—in our case, we have a narrator who knows how this story ends. And everything he says is pertinent to that story, so we need to know where he’s going with it. As far as “sweeps” goes, it’s funny, we’ll still reflexively say things like, “Oh, that’s a big idea, we should do that in sweeps,” even though, from what I can tell, nobody cares about sweeps anymore.
The big thing we try to do is to structure the storytelling around the gaps in the season. There are usually a few multi-week stretches in the late winter and spring when we’re not airing new episodes. It’s nice to have a good cliff-hanger going into one of those stretches, to entice the viewers to come back three weeks later.
CT: HIMYM is very arc-ed out each season, almost more like a drama. We like the show to have a memory of itself week to week—events have consequences, one thing leads to the next. Again, that’s just how we like to write. Yes, we’ve done plenty of stand-alone episodes along the way, but we look at those as fun pieces of candy to be consumed between larger, more nutritious meals! And we like to write drama within the comedy. Each season we try to come in with an overall shape—what are the big emotional milestones we know we’ll hit, what is this season about, what do we want the characters to go through, where do we want them to end up?—and remain as faithful as we can to that plan.
NL: From where do new episode ideas emerge?
CB: The best episodes always come from real stories. Like, 100 percent of the time, without fail. And conversely, the worst episodes are the ones that have never happened to anyone ever. We try not to make those episodes, but sometimes they slip past the goalie and get on the air.
But the good ones come from someplace real. The original “Naked Man” was actually one of our writers, who was bold enough to share that story with the room. A friend of mine named Justin Dickinson gave me the story that became “The Three Days Rule.” Barney running a marathon without training, getting to the finish line, then sitting down on the subway and discovering his legs no longer work and not being able to get up so he keeps riding it all day long? True story, or so I’ve been told.
CT: The best ones are usually from real life, and then you build on that kernel of truth (I can’t not salute when I write “kernel of truth”—a joke stolen, appropriately, from real life!). Carter and I encourage our writers’ room to be as honest and therapeutic as possible—we want real life stories, dynamics, observations to ground the comedy. Even when something on HIMYM is insane, it usually originates from something recognizably human. That is to say, our best episodes usually do.
NL: What makes a worthy A story for you?
CB: Usually the thing that separates an A story from a B story is the emotional backbone. If it’s a story that’s dynamic enough to be more than just funny, and gives the actors somewhere to go other than comedy, it gets the headliner slot. If it’s too silly or stupid or weird to carry any emotional weight, we make it a B story.
CT: We love it when all there is is an A story. We never approach an episode with, “What’s the A, B and C story?” We love it when one idea can launch everyone’s story in an episode, so that even if several characters diverge, they’re all on one theme. Sometimes a story naturally takes an A-B-C theme, but we don’t seek that out and sometimes we even try to avoid it.
CB: Honestly, we do try to avoid it. The best kind of story to me is one that’s big and funny and variable enough to engage the whole cast. Since our show is a story being told by one guy, we like to structure it like a real story. And when you’re casually telling someone a story, you don’t break it up into A, B and C stories. You just tell one tale at a time. If I’m being honest, I think we were much better about doing that in our early seasons. “The Pineapple Incident,” “Drumroll Please,” and “The Naked Man” are all good examples.
NL: What is the comedy “sweet spot” of the series to you?
CB: I think we’re one of those shows that’s at its best when you relate to it as a viewer, and it illuminates something real in your own life. That’s what was great about Seinfeld. As much as it was “a show about nothing,” wasn’t really about nothing. On a tangible level, it was more about something that most other shows. You know, you take a show that’s “about something,” like The West Wing. It’s about the president. Have I ever met the president? No. Have I been put off by someone standing too close to me when they talk? Yes, absolutely. That’s something.
CT: Our sweet spot—to me, HIMYM at its best—is when we can create a tone that is silly and funny and stupid that then turns into something poignant or even surprisingly dark/real/honest. One of the themes of the series is that everything in life is happening at once. We knew from the pilot that our season 1 finale would be Ted finally getting the girl (Robin) and then discovering Marshall sitting alone in the rain, holding a returned engagement ring on the stoop. To me, that is HIMYM at its best—a guy at his high point silently putting his arm around his best friend, who’s at the worst moment in his life and wondering, where do we go from here?
NL: Do you work from beat sheets and outlines? If so, what’s the basic length for your show’s typical outline?
CB: There’s usually an eight- to ten-page outline that serves as the basis for the script. Plus many, many pages of room notes. But the outline is a good way to whittle it down into what’s important and fundamental about the episode. It’s a good skeleton.
CT: After breaking the story in the room on dry-erase boards, we go to a detailed outline (usually seven to ten pages) and then write the script from there. We like the story to be as clear as possible, the structure the themes, the emotions—we’re much more concerned about that than jokes. The jokes can come later.
NL: Do you group write episodes as a team, or assign and go write solo (unless a writing partnership) and then reconvene?
CB: No, we’ve never done the group-writing approach. There’s always a first draftthat someone has gone off and written independently. Room rewriting can be somewhat extensive, and often once we’re done punching it up as a group, there’s not much left from the original draft. But we always give people the opportunity to feel like writers, and go offand see what they can come up with on their own.
CT: We almost never group-write an entire script. Maybe once or twice in the entire series, and even then we were at least working off a rough draft. Carter and I both love being off on script—finding the quiet time to dig a little deeper and find an extra twist, an extra emotion, an inspired moment that could only be found by one person at a computer rather than ten people in a conference room. So we try not to rob our writers of that experience.
NL: How do you run your writing room? Do you and Carter each have a different leadership role on the show? How do you delegate and keep the room functional?
CB: It’s funny, I have no idea what Craig’s room-running style is! I assume he’s pretty good at it, since he’s been doing it for eight years and comes up with consistently amazing stuff. I’m not really sure what my style is either. It’s a pretty safe, non-confrontational environment, and people are pretty unfiltered, but I try to keep it moving and focused on the task at hand. There’s not a lot of delegation in the story-breaking department. From our perspective, that’s the most important thing Craig and I can be doing at any given time. Everything else—punching jokes, shooting, editing—can be handed off. But story is job one, so one of us is usually leading that room. I think it’s evolved into a thing where, from my perspective, I’m trying to figure out the story and these guys are helping me do it. That’s how I approach it. It makes it easier than saying, “What do we as a hive mind think this story should be?” Craig and I have pretty specific tastes, so it’s maybe not
as democratic as it could be. But we have some great writers, so every voice is definitely heard and listened to.
CT: I don’t know how anyone could ever run a show without a writing partner! Carter and I are best friends—in many ways like brothers—and having someone you trust that much to co-run the show seems so crucial. We almost always have two writers’ rooms going, working off an overall plan/season shape that Carter and I come into the season with and keep refining as we go. We can be so much more efficient this way, as long as we can build in time to meet up, just the two of us, to talk about the overall story we’re telling—sadly, that time can be hard to find! We each weigh in on the script or outline that the other one is working on—usually scribbles in red pen in the margins—so we each contribute to every story and script.
NL: So you’re a hybrid sitcom—part multi-camera/part single-camera? Or …?
CT: Yes, we are most certainly a hybrid. We shoot multi-cam, but we take three days to do so. And we often do more stylized, cinematic pieces where we are single-cam (or two camera). It’s a bit odd, actually. A straight up single cam show with many location shoots is much more expensive and hard to produce than HIMYM, but a multi-cam audience show didn’t fit the story we wanted to tell. So we found a weird middle ground that just sort of worked!
NL: You generally do not shoot in front of a live audience, so what’s your barometer to know if something is funny?
CB: We have a pretty merciless crew. If they don’t laugh, you know it’s not funny. Plus we have a table read and a run-through, and there’s network people and studio people and department heads watching those, so you can gauge their reactions as well. But mostly, the barometer for what’s funny has to come from within. And I think that’s a good thing. When you have a live audience, the funniest joke will always be the joke that has the word “poop” or “boobs” or “penis” in it. If you just go by that, you’ll have a great tape night, but then you’ll get into the edit room and it’ll be “The Poop Boobs Penis Show,” and … well actually, it’ll probably go on to be a huge hit and make you very successful. So maybe we should get a live audience.
NL: How much rewriting comes from first draftto first table read and what’s actually shot?
CB: A whole lot. I mean, it depends on how good the first draftis, but no matter what, the writers’ room will change it quite a bit. Actually, that mostly just applies to the comedy. The dramatic moments I try to not mess with or punch up in the room. Drama needs to feel personal, and can’t be written by committee.
CT: We definitely rewrite, but it’s rare that we tear a script apart after the table read. We try to get it as close as we can by the time it table-reads— the goal is to basically just be beating jokes, making it funnier, not asking the question, “What story are we telling?!” That part needs to be figured out sooner, because the process of making a TV show just moves so fast. Cameras are rolling before you know it—so the story needs to be solid.
NL: What’s your basic production schedule from script thru post?
CT: We break a story in the room on dry-erase boards (well, sometimes Carter or I come in with a two-three page beat sheet of a rough story idea and then go to the big boards). Then we send the writer out to do a rough outline, just to get the shape down, and usually have them come back into the room with that outline, which we fill in a bit more, answer questions that have come up from the process of putting it on paper. Once that is as clear as possible, we send the writer out for a week to do a first draftof a script. They turn that in, and Carter or I give them notes on it. Then they take a few more days to write a second draft. Then, we bring that into the writers’ room and do a group rewrite prior to the table read. We table read it on a Monday, rewrite it, then do a run-thru onstage on Tuesday and rewrite it again. Then, Wednesday morning at 9:00 a.m., we start shooting until Friday.
NL: How much fine-tuning to jokes occurs right up ‘til the last minute?
CT: We are always trying to beat the jokes, find the extra twist or surprise or a way to call something back that we never thought of until Tuesday night before shooting on Wednesday morning. And Carter and I also always have the writer onstage paired with either one of us or another writer watching every take so that they can tweak jokes and try out alts.
CB: Often, we’ll fine tune jokes in the edit room, too. If a joke is too wordy, for instance, and could be funnier if it was faster, there’s ways to shorten it through editing. And likewise, if a joke isn’t landing because there isn’t enough setup, you can use the narrator, or even record some off-camera dialogue, to make it clearer.
NL: Will your characters ever change, or will they continue to follow the golden rule of sitcoms that characters don’t change, their situations do? Or am I wrong about that?
CB: I think there’s an even bigger philosophical question there: do people change? Obviously the goal in creating any character is to make them feel real. Now, is the reality that after eight years of hooking up with random babes, Barney can become a new man who wants to settle down? Or is the real reality that a zebra can’t change its stripes? I truly don’t know the answer to that. I guess it depends on the person. So I don’t know if I can even answer that question on a conscious level. Maybe the characters have changed over the course of the series, and maybe they haven’t. If they have, it’s probably because the people writing them have changed, and the actors playing them have changed, and to some degree even the people watching have changed.
Ultimately, I guess the answer is: If you’re writing something that tries to draw from real life, you can’t worry about how much or how little the characters change. You just write it and see what happens.
NL: Now that your show is a certifiable hit, how hands-on is the network with notes? Or do they leave you alone and let you and Carter do your thing?
CB: They’re great. Really, really great. It took making a show for another network to really grasp that. The truth is, they don’t leave us alone—they give us notes, and they’re usually good notes at that—but they also trust us, and trust the process, and know how not to make a good show. If you try to micromanage the writing from outside the writers’ room, you might as well just leave show business. That never, never, never works.
NL: Do you have a favorite episode of HIMYM?
CB: “Ten Sessions,” aka the Britney Spears episode. I think thematically the episode encapsulates everything we try to do with the whole series. It’s just about a guy trying to get a girl to fall in love with him. Trying over and over, failing over and over, but not giving up. And then when he does give up, his friends pick him up and give him the strength to keep going.
I love the last scene of the episode, in which Ted takes Stella on a two-minute date. It’s a cab ride, a dinner, a movie, a cup of coffee and some cheesecake, and a walk home, all in one shot, on a sidewalk, in two minutes. What you don’t see is everything going on off-camera—an entire crew working like a clock in perfect synchronicity making the shot work. It was one of those moments that makes TV writing feel like NASA in the 1960s. You come up with an idea that seems like it can’t be done, then figure out how to do it, and have some really talented people work together to pull it off. Fifty years from now, that’ll be the two minutes of How I Met Your Mother that make me smile the most.
CT: I always love the episodes that are surprisingly dramatic. I love that finale to season 1, with Ted comforting Marshall out in the rain on the stoop. That image gives me such a chill. I love the two episodes around the death of Marshall’s dad. And purely comedically, I love all the Robin Sparkles episodes—Carter and I first started working together by writing music, so any episode where we can write a crazy song is extra joy.
NL: What’s the worst/best thing about being a showrunner?
CB: The best thing by far is getting to write things that go out to a huge audience in very short order. It’s not like any other medium in that respect, except perhaps journalism or blogging. In the movie business you spend years working on
a movie that, if it does get made, lives or dies in a weekend. In TV, you have millions of people sitting around an enormous campfire waiting for you to start spinning a yarn, every single week. That’s a beautiful thing.
The worst thing is the stress. It’s stressful to the point of physical danger, and that’s why I’m not sure I want to keep doing it after How I Met Your Mother ends. And that’s also why, again, having a studio and network that doesn’t support what you’re doing makes it absolutely not worth doing. Because the blank page is stressful enough.
CT: The worst thing about being a showrunner is the pressure of the clock—come Wednesday morning, they’re gonna shoot whatever we write. The best thing about being a showrunner is that come Wednesday morning, they’re gonna shoot whatever we write.
See interview with Don Roos and Dan Bucatinsky on the companion website: http://www.focalpress.com/cw/landau
Notea
1 See the companion website for interview: http://www.focalpress.com/cw/landau
2 I recommend Writing Television Sitcoms by Evan S. Smith (Perigree Trade).
3 Comedy series with a sketch comedy format, such as Saturday Night Live, Port-landia, and Inside Amy Schumer, follow an entirely different format than sitcoms and are categorized as “alternative programming” (not addressed within the scope of this book—sorry). Most animated series are structured similarly to single camera sitcoms—minus the cameras and live audience.
Index
