Film is a director’s medium, and TV belongs to writers -- except during pilot season.
This pilot season features a barrage of directorial talent including James Mangold (“Walk the Line”), Jonathan Demme (“Silence of the Lambs”), Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”), Phillip Noyce (“Salt”), David Slade (“The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”), Stephen Gaghan ("Syriana") and Mark Romanek (“Never Let Me Go”).
So when A-list film directors work with A-list TV writers, who gets the last word?
Also read: From Demme to Deschanel: Top Names Tied to TV Pilots
“I can’t imagine a worse scenario than for the writer and director on a television show, on a pilot, to not agree on what the show is,” Veena Sud, the show runner for AMC’s “The Killing” (above), told TheWrap.
Sud worked with “Monster” director Patty Jenkins, and was grateful that they were “attached at the hip” creatively.
Also read: The Writer's Room: Veena Sud
But not all her colleagues have the same fortune, she said. “People absolutely disagree creatively about what the story is,” she acknowledged. “The worst things I’ve heard are just silly things, like they’re on location scouts together and they’re not talking to each other -- and they’re sitting in the same van.”
A new golden age of television has drawn many top directors to the medium in recent years. But the influx has required the writers who created that golden age to cede some of their control.
That issue was thrown into relief for former “Sopranos” writer Terence Winter, the show runner of HBO's acclaimed "Boardwalk Empire," when he watched Martin Scorsese direct the prohibition drama’s pilot.
On the first day of shooting, Winter noticed that actor Michael Pitt’s character was wearing a hat in a room full of women -- which 1920s men would never do. Winter sat through two takes and realized he had to say something.
“Finally I said, look, I’ve got a note for Marty. How do I do this?" Winter recalled telling the assistant director. "He said, ‘I don’t know, no one’s ever given him a note before.’
“I said, ‘Oh, s---, well this is awkward.’”
As an executive producer of “Boardwalk Empire” (left), the legendary director was no hired gun. He invited Winter to the project.
Show runners -- the people responsible for guiding the writing and overall direction of a show -- usually have the last word on their sets, barring intervention from network executives.
And the emergence of show runners with the same kind of creative freedom as auteur directors has led to an explosion of celebrated shows, from "The Sopranos" to "Mad Men" to "Curb Your Enthusiasm" to "Breaking Bad."
That in turn has drawn top film directors who usually have the last word on their sets, barring intervention from studio suits.
Successful TV writer-director collaborations -- like the ones between Winter and Scorsese, and Sud and Jenkins -- begin with mutual admiration.
