Here are my questions for the fabulous Mr. Clark (which I hope will make
some kind of sense, and which are probably all really the same question,
when you get right down to it):
When writing an episode, were you free to tell whatever story you wanted to,
or did TPTB give you a general (or specific) storyline that they wanted you
to work with?
--We came up with story lines then had to negotiate if we were allowed to go forward with them. They had to go through whichever executive producer was the show runner at the time, then through the studio, then through the network. Then we got to go to outline, then script. The entire time, of course, all TPTB had input. My all time favorite that was approved, then was un-approved so fast was Gary has to re-unite feuding lingerie designers in time for them to work together to jury rig a giant bra to hold the two round 9-1-1 transciever balls and keep them from falling after a bizarre construction malfunction... okay, it was a bit out there, that with another one that involved a disgraced bull-fighter who ends up thwarting a NBA game box office robbery where the main perpertrator was in the Bull mascot outfit... it's probably for the better neither of those saw the light of the tv screen...
Along those same lines, were you assigned specific episodes or a specific
number of episodes throughout the series?
--Sometimes we broke stories in general, then someone would warm to it. Sometimes an Executive producer would fall inlove with a story area and we would have to make it work (one that never worked, but we tried for three years, was one where Gary knows a plane will crash and nothing he can do can stop it but the story says it's not mechanical so he's has to get on a plane he knows will crash. None of us was really in love with it, but, my god, did we work to solve it.
Did you have a show "bible" to work with? Did you watch the previous
episodes to get a feel for the characters?
--I started with season two, so I watched the first season, then dug in and began to work. As for a bible, there was one, but once you're into a show on staff, it's all in your head.
How long were you given to write each episode? Was there some lag time
between writing an episode and when filming would begin?
--Ideally you have two weeks. I took one, as a rule, writing an act a day, then one day for my re-writes. Depending on what time of the season it was, you might have a script in the can for a month, or you might be writing right up to the start of shooting. The director was supposed to have 8 days to prep, and you wanted to make sure that had as much of that as possible, so that was our deadline, to get it to prep. There was some episodes that got into trouble for whatever reasons and we would actually have to rewrite the script completely, using locations and actors that had already been scheduled. I loved that kind of stuff. Shake and bake.
Were there any overarching elements of, say, season three, that you found
difficult to work into the episodes? For instance, the supposed Gary/Erica
relationship.
--Erica was something the network wanted from the start of year two --single mom, yuck. We didn't like it and we didn't like writing it. It was actually harder to write Henry because he really didn't belong in the series. So, the powers that be wanted a group of writers to work with a character(s) that a group of writers really didn't like, and frankly, got in the way of the stories we could really cook with...
For "Crumb Again," were you given any guidelines on how the Gary/Erica and
Gary/Brigatti relationships were expected to pan out?
--I don't remember. I do think we might have come up with Brigatti to give Gary someone interesting to spar with -- Carla Kettner created Brigatti and I always thought she was a great Howard Hawks type female character. When I wrote Crumb, Again, I asked Carla to go over Brigatti and make sure the character's voice was true to what she created.
Do the fans of the show sometimes frighten you with our... attention to
detail, shall we say? Hee!
--Yes, yes, you do. I recall once running into a bunch of trivia questions on-line and none of the staff could answer them...