Television Without Pity | Chuck TV Show - Chuck Recaps, Chuck Reviews & Chuck Episodes | TWoP

So one of the perks of covering Veronica Mars for TWoP is that I got to develop relationships with some of the people involved in making the show. One of those people was writer Phil Klemmer, who I can tell you is a mean tennis player on top of being a super-nice guy. When VM unfortunately got canned, Phil took another job on the new series Chuck. He accommodated my lately-rather-crazy schedule to tell us all about it.

Couch Baron: Tell me a little bit about where you grew up, your school experience -- stuff like that.

Phil Klemmer: I was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and lived there until I was school age. We moved to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, the lovely place between the Blue Ridge and Appalachia, where you're close to West Virginia, and lived there until I left for college at Stanford. I came immediately down to Los Angeles afterward with a bunch of buddies who were like, "Yeah, we're gonna come to Hollywood and become PAs!" And I didn't know what "PA" stood for. But it sounded really cool, and I was a Classics major, so I didn't have a lot of prospects, because I'd sort of washed out of any academic track -- well, I didn't really wash out, I did fine, but…

CB: Was it more that you didn't commit to a track?

PK: Yeah, I guess I didn't have the courage. I liked it a lot, and I did a semester in Rome and was really fired up, but I was just a wimp about it for some reason -- I just couldn't imagine eight years of additional schooling and unemployment. So I just sort of chickened out, which took me down to a job where I didn't know what it was, and tried to follow what my friends were doing. One of them had put in for an internship at Propaganda Films. In the mid-90s, it was the really hot commercial and video house, and they had just signed a deal with PolyGram to have feature money too, and they had this crazy roster of hip music video directors, like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, and commercial guys like David Kellogg -- like, anyone who's making blockbusters now cut their teeth there. So my roommate got an internship there, which he didn't wind up taking, so I was able to get that instead of doing the PA thing, and that was the start.

CB: So did you do any sort of creative writing in either high school or college?

PK: When I was in high school -- it's not that it wasn't academic, but it wasn't really a hothouse of a school -- it was just a normal high school. There was one creative writing class senior year, and I enjoyed it and did well in it and had a good teacher, but in college, I never did -- I just found it too intimidating. I mean, you know -- you went to Princeton with Joyce Carol Oates there.

CB: [laughs] Yeah, I stayed away from the English Department.

PK: Actually, one of the Veronica Mars editors was briefly a Princeton creative writer. But in college, that always sort of freaked me out, and, you know, the limited freshman English I had was fine, but I guess I was more a student of language.

CB: So how did you get into scriptwriting?

PK: Well, I was a reader at Propaganda, which is, um…

CB: You wrote coverage. ["Sort summaries of scripts with recommendations as to whether the film should be made." -- CB]

PK: Yeah! Which is a fantastic job, so I did that for a couple years, and then I worked for Michel Gondry for three years, and sort of just read a lot of scripts, and, you know, at some point just decided that it was a bad idea to continue reading ten or twenty scripts a week, just because you start getting hardened, because you start looking at them like slabs of meat. So I stopped doing that, quit working for Michel, and then I was just trying to ghost-write things -- commercial treatments and video treatments for directors, visual people who…well, many of them are functionally illiterate. So you start ghost-writing these things, and it's cool because you get to talk to directors who are neat guys, and sometimes it's interesting. Other times it's sort of sales work, which is kind of cheesy, but you can make a semi-decent living just writing somebody else's version of a Target commercial, or a video for Johnny Cash or something.

CB: So what's the raw material you would work with in that situation?

PK: A lot of times, you'll be sort of listening on the call, and like, praying that the moderator doesn't introduce you because you can't explain your presence as like, the guy that's going to be writing this document. Once you get in with the director, and you sort of get down with his shorthand, then you know, there are very cool guys -- like I worked for Kinka Usher, the guy who did Mystery Men, which didn't turn out to be a claim to fame, but a really cool guy who sort of talks about his visual approach, and there are guys like Michel, who have great director's gifts that they're unable to convey because they're, like, French and insane and brilliant. Other times, you're just churning out a sort of generic thing to prove to an advertising agency that a director cares enough about a job to write a three- to five-page document.

CB: So when you say you would write for Michel, would he be pitching something to a studio?

PK: It would be pitching to an ad agency -- they bid these commercials out to multiple directors. Michel wouldn't be the best example, because he would be able to write a totally unintelligible paragraph and land the job just because his name did all the heavy lifting for him. Younger directors, or guys who are trying to get that Super Bowl spot, will spend five hundred or a thousand bucks to get a ghost writer to come in and sex it up for them.

CB: So what do you consider your first big break?

PK: Well, it sort of came out of that -- one of the guys that I'd been writing for wanted to adapt a screenplay -- he had this story about these kids in Cuba, like on a Guantanamo Bay base, who joined up with Che and did a little revolutionary action in the sixties. So he had bought the rights to this and wanted somebody to adapt it, and I was able to get a couple grand out of this guy to adapt something under the table. And I spent, like, two weeks doing it -- it was the second screenplay I'd ever done. I had done one feature on my own before that, and didn't have an agent.

CB: So how did you get your agent?

PK: I got my agent when I got Veronica Mars, because I had given Rob Thomas the Cuba script when he was pretty into running Playmakers. I was burning out on doing freelance stuff -- I was approaching thirty or whatever and not feeling good. So he read that, and getting work on Playmakers didn't work out, but then the year, I think I ran into him at an Academy Awards party -- I'd known him first as a friend of a friend. And we'd run into each other at his annual crazy Halloween party, and so we started hanging out, and at one point he was like, "Have you ever considered writing television?" He remembered thinking that the Cuba thing was decent, and he told me about Veronica Mars, which was then a theoretical possibility. And my wife was getting pretty pregnant at the time [laughs], so I decided to do a Six Feet Under spec, in like, a week, because he was getting ready to go to upfronts, and then he was going on a tour of the world or whatever, so there was a tiny window -- you know, my wife was nine months pregnant, so it was sort of a Hail Mary thing. So I did the spec, and…I guess he was on his tour of the world first, he was in Istanbul or something, and he had brought the script with him and I guess he read it poolside, and he was very relieved that he hadn't sort of gone down an awkward path with a friend and a guy who was extremely desperate. So he called and was very excited, and was like, "All right! I'm gonna pitch you to Warner Brothers!" And that worked, and literally in the week, my wife was having a baby and I was getting calls from the upfronts, from like, agents that I didn't know -- it was just one of those crazy Hollywood stories of your last chance to take a stab at a career there working out.

CB: So because the show didn't exist at that point, was he able legally to take your script, or did he sort of bend the rules for you? ["Basically, these days, because of past lawsuits involving intellectual property, almost no one will take material that wasn't submitted through an agent or entertainment attorney." -- CB]

PK: It was a total gentleman's agreement. It's kind of an argument for why it's so lame that you have to play the game of getting an agent before you can submit a script. I mean, so many people have these sort of sideways entrances into Hollywood. And that's what happened to me, and I'm certainly grateful for it. I certainly had hustled to get other people to read my stuff, and no one had found it that interesting. And of course, when Rob Thomas finds you interesting, then all of a sudden…

CB: …everyone finds you interesting.

PK: [laughs] Yeah. Exactly.

CB: So how did you get the job on Chuck?

PK: Well, we didn't know about Veronica Mars -- I suppose we still don't technically know. Maybe we're still alive in some alternate universe, but we never actually heard that we were canceled.

CB: Well, with Kristen Bell on Heroes, it may be tough to revive.

PK: [both laugh] Yeah, and I have two Gossip Girl editors, one on either side of me. I hear her voice, like, every day. I'm like, "Oh my God, it's still going! ...Oh, right." But yeah, I was sort of obliged to do the mad dash of meetings, as everybody on a bubble show does, and in years I was foolish and ballsy enough to just be like, "Aaah, we're comin' back!" But this year, we all had sort of bad feelings, so you spend all of hiatus first meeting executives. We did get a bit of hopeful news about a week before the upfronts when, I think, we heard that Gilmore Girls wasn't coming back -- it was like, the thing that we were afraid to hope for might happen. But I'd been a good client, read all my pilots, and Chuck was right at the top of the pile -- one that really made me laugh, and it really felt like I could take my tools from Veronica Mars and travel with them -- a lot of shows are kind of heavy, and turgid -- like, professionals doing bang-up jobs in law and medicine and crap like that. I really liked Chuck from early on and kept my eye on it, and then I got the job offer without having heard about Veronica Mars getting canceled yet, so I was terrified that I was going to be stuck in this position. But they're both Warner Brothers shows, so some really nice people were like, you're safe to take it, and if a miracle happens, you'll be able to go back to your office in North Hollywood and your twice-a-week tennis with John Enbom ["another VM writer "-- CB] and those other things I'd come to rely on over three years. So I was able to take the job without feeling too conflicted.

CB: How long was it before you took the job and the upfronts?

PK: Oh, it was really fast. Television all sort of plays out like a card game, where everybody's got insufficient information, and you're all sort of slapping cards on the table trying to, like, map out your professional life, and it's really fucked up and insane, with some awful moments. So, you know, for a while I thought I was going to be able to work with Enbom -- there was a rumor going around that he was going to get an offer on Chuck as well, and that would have kicked ass. ["Enbom is now on The Sarah Connor Chronicles." -- CB]

CB: So is your work well-known enough now that you don't have to audition, so to speak?

PK: Oh, you definitely do. I still had to go through…you never know until you've got the job how much work to put into it, so you kind of have to bust your ass. Like, even if you are way more established than I am, until you're a franchise sort of person like Rob, you never really know. A huge portion of the [Writers] Guild is not working on a show at any one time.

CB: So you wrote another spec script, then?

PK: Yeah. I gave them a Veronica Mars, and I wrote another spec pilot which…I don't know if it made it to them or not. I think the strength of Veronica Mars went a long way this year, just judging from the fact that most everyone from the show was able to find a quick job at a, you know, prestige show. How long that will hold out…people come off shows like The Shield and, you know, back in the day, Sex And The City, and you're sort of guaranteed a job, and despite our lack of success, people were always excited in meetings.

CB: So as far as submitting those scripts, it seems to me that ethically, you would have had to submit a script you wrote before anything was done to it.

PK: Oh, right, right, right. That's a huge deal. You always want to make sure you give a true writer's draft, because it happens all the time that people don't, and it's really a bad thing.

CB: So you save everything you do through every stage.

PK: Yeah, you do, because it can really give you a pretty bad black eye.

CB: So did you get any other offers?

PK: Actually, I got a job offer from Supernatural as well, and that was another complication. But that show is also Warner Brothers, and Wonderland was the key company that produced both shows. Originally, they came at me and were like, "Okay, we need to know in fifteen minutes whether you're going to take a job on our show." And then other people stepped in. But you know, the showrunner, Eric Kripke, was great, we had a great meeting and he's a super-cool guy, and it seemed like it was going to be a fun show to work on. But honestly, a big part of me was looking forward to doing a major network. I hadn't met Josh Schwartz before Chuck, but I'd met Chris Fedak ["the co-executive producer" -- CB] and really got along with him, but it was sort of weird, taking a job where you didn't know the showrunner yet. But I loved the script and loved the idea of being on NBC and getting to do something that was sort of goofy and cool, and thank God it worked out. I took a job with a cool guy.

CB: So what's your typical day on Chuck been like so far?

PK: It's…you know, we're centered around a room. We have more writers than Veronica Mars, and most days you're obliged to go in and sort of break whatever story is being broken in the room. We're just sort of…for the first couple months, you're just in the honeymoon phase, where production isn't really up and you haven't aired anything, and so it's just this weird sort of bubble of theoretics where you figure out your big-season stuff, and that's really fun, and obviously working on Veronica Mars really helped with that because we broke season-long mysteries, and then gradually the production behemoth sort of catches up to you, and suddenly you're required to be turning in outlines, scripts, and then you're shooting and you're getting cuts, and then all of a sudden you've got six episodes in six different stages of production. You know, you've hopefully got enough of a lead that you'll make it to Episode 21 ["most shows count the pilot as Episode Zero" -- CB] and get through your first season. But you know, getting a new show started takes a lot of time in the room, like figuring out the Lilly Kane murder mystery, it's really an exciting time, and in a weird way the couple weeks we did that stand out so much more clearly than months and months of sort of workaday stuff. And the same is true of Chuck -- getting to know people is very much like your first days at school, where you're trying to make friends and just figure out where you fit in.

CB: Tell me about the show. How would you describe it?

PK: Well, I was sort of pitching it to my parents as Mr. And Mrs. Smith meets The Office. And I showed it to them, and they both told me it was going to be a hit, and I couldn't tell if that was a good thing or a bad thing in their minds. [both laugh] I think they found it, like, very flashy and commercial and young, which, um, they're not. But they have very good taste, they like fine film, but they're not television fans. But you know, the thing that really appealed to me from the page, and now, is it's got, you know, a pair of guy friends at the center of the show, Chuck and Morgan, and that's a dynamic that's always been a huge part of my life, from actual adolescent relationships with my friends, to sort of, now that I'm an adult, maintaining the adolescent quality of those, that sort of humor, and certain levels of interaction, even though I get slowed down by the wife and kids and everything. [laughs] I really am sort of touched by the Morgan-Chuck thing, and I knew that I could write it, and thought that it was really well-written by people who shared my way of thinking. And Veronica Mars wasn't that way -- when I read it I was like, holy shit, this is so well-written, Rob's such a talented guy, and what on earth possessed him to write about a girl who just got raped and is tumbling through social classes in a fictional city? That struck me as odd, but I came around to it.

CB: So you found that more of a challenge, then.

PK: I guess…his voice is so strong, it's also easily imitated -- not easily equaled, necessarily, but you can get the ring of the show. There would be nothing worse than writing a show that's neither here nor there, where you come in and you go, "I just don't even know where this is coming from." Whereas Chuck, love it or hate it, has the same quality -- I read it and felt like I'd be ready to jump in with an episode, and I just finished shooting my first episode, and I'm hoping my read is right! [laughs] I'm hoping I'll have scenes like the pilot, and it was really, really fun to write.

CB: Cool! So it seems like with a new show, one of the things that goes with the job is waiting for news about renewal.

PK: Right.

CB: Are there any standards about when the network has to let you know about ordering more scripts?

PK: I'm not sure if it's set in stone, or if it's just a matter of not wanting to sort of derail the production train. Like right now, we've turned in Episode 7 and we've broken 8 and 9…

CB: Was the initial commitment thirteen?

PK: Um, twelve plus the pilot. By the time my episode, 1-05, airs, which is six chronologically, we'll definitely know, so if worse comes to worst, I've still got another writing sample.

CB: [laughs] Is there any pressure for you to do things that you think will get the network to order more scripts, or is it just a question of doing the best you can?

PK: It's really just doing the best we can. And the studio has been, like, extremely excited about the show, as has the network, so there are times you think, oh my God, nothing can stop us, we're totally a hit. But then you think, maybe we're so shitty that they're just not even getting involved. That's like, the five percent paranoid part of you. But I do feel like we've got a fighting chance…the back nine, it feels like -- I would be surprised if we didn't get it, and NBC has shown faith in shows like Friday Night Lights, so I'd be pretty shocked if we didn't get those sort of numbers at least. But I remember when the first Veronica Mars aired, and Jed Seidel, who was the co-EP and like, sort of the senior writer beneath Rob, saw the numbers, and I was like, "What does it mean? What does it mean? I don't understand Nielsens." And he was just like, you know, "Oh my God, this is like, the worst thing I've ever seen."

CB: [laughs] Well, the numbers were a little different on that network.

PK: Yeah. Somehow we survived that.

CB: So, I think one of the keys to your job is to give audiences information while still telling a good fluid story.

PK: Yeah. Definitely.

CB: Are there ever times when you're forced to, so to speak, "write down" so that audiences will "get it," so you'll get more exposition out there?

PK: Um…I don't think so, but…

CB: Let me put it another way: Have you ever gotten network notes that were like, we don't get this, you've got to make this clearer?

PK: Yeah, I have gotten those, but it's never been a point where I've like, looked at the final script and been like, oh my God. It's funny, like, on Veronica Mars, everything got pushed through with very little network or studio interference, just because, at least from the network's point of view, we were the only critical acclaim they'd ever had, and Rob is an extremely forceful guy, so you get on a conference call with him, and he's somehow able to convince people, so by the time you're done with the call, what you have to change is sort of minimal. If he believes in it, he'll fight for it, which is not my personality, and so I was totally happy to let him sort of clear the way for my scripts. And every show isn't like that, and you know, I was dreading working on a new show that either didn't have a Rob or the built-in critical acclaim, like with a third-year show, but so far, it feels like everyone's on board for Chuck. And having such a marquee showrunner I'm sure is part of that, but you know, having a show that's functional is essential. Once you start crumbling and once the vultures are circling and everybody panics, I think you just…everybody has a solution for how to fix things. So, I mean, just showing a united front as a group of writers is key, and once we see our numbers we'll know where we stand. Either we'll be a hit and they'll probably want to get involved, or we'll be a flop and they'll want to be involved, or we'll be in between and be told not to change a thing, which…I don't mind the status quo, but I also wouldn't mind being on, like, the new Heroes.

CB: Just to flip the question around, have you ever written anything that ended up being too subtle, where the audiences just didn't get it?

PK: I don't know. There are certain jokes that you realize are appealing to such a small percentage of your audience that they're probably not worth it, but you know, Rob always encouraged those, and if they made him laugh, they sure as hell were going on air. [laughs] And you know, Chuck is a much poppier show, but…if a joke feels too lofty or esoteric, it kind of makes me cringe, because I find absurd and quirky things funny, but I like making the room laugh, instead of like, a couple nerds in the corner. But I do like making Enbom laugh. He sort of is the nerd in the corner. [both laugh]

CB: Well, let's say, as we all hope will happen, the show is great, everyone loves it, and you have a multiple-season job. In that scenario, are there contractual benefits for you that are built in, or is it a matter of renegotiating every season?

PK: Yeah, most writers, I think, sign a three-year contract that has your pay-scale increase and title increase built into it. If you're a senior writer, you can get a one- or two-year thing. And that usually entails not developing new stuff, at least for a season. Basically, the only way you can get promoted in television is to be on a returning show.

CB: So if Chuck were to come back for a fourth season, could you be expected to be an executive producer or something of that level?

PK: Yeah, for a fourth season, I would have been something like a co-EP, and then you're looking at a renegotiation. That's what I was hoping for, which is why when shows get canceled in the third season, like Veronica Mars, there are a lot of really bummed people. That's your chance to sort of jump the ranks. But, you know, I am much more interested in the continuity than the quantum jump in terms of employment. It's hard to string together a whole career, and every year I'm doing it just makes me really grateful. You do start imagining, like, what am I going to be doing at fifty? Which is a hard question in television or entertainment. But yeah, I would love to be on another show that gets three seasons.

CB: So by that, are you saying that television writers tend to skew younger?

PK: Um…yeah. Yeah. There aren't a lot of people, like, your parents' age in a writers' room. I mean, you have your David Chase and Milch who are sort of the wise old men of television, but that's the top of a pyramid, and the bottom of the pyramid is lots of scrappy staff writers, and below that, there are a million people just trying to get into the Guild, so you're always very grateful to be in it, but you're always aware that you're sort of being pushed up by your talent agents and your Guild, so you're kind of being heading toward a sort of unemployable title and quote, where either you're a Milch, or you're not worth it. Whereas instead of hiring you, they could hire half a dozen thirty-year-olds, and from a business standpoint, that probably makes sense. Like unless you're creating and developing stuff, it might be difficult to be one of these journeyman staff writers, unless you're a guy who's sort of proven himself to run a show. I mean, if you're a fifty-year-old who makes a gazillion dollars an episode, who wants that guy? That's one part about television that I find a little frightening, so I think everybody is either looking for a colossal payday, where you could not have to worry about working later on, or you think about, what else can I do, which is nothing of course. [laughs]

CB: So on Veronica Mars, there were a number of episodes where you had a co-writing credit. When you're co-writing an episode, what are the logistics?

PK: Well, those were all broken in the room, so the partnership would begin at the outline phase, and on Veronica Mars, we'd have one person doing the A-story, which was the Mystery of the Week, and the other doing the B and C, the B being the secondary mystery, and the C being the season mystery. And so John and I did probably close to ten of them together, although credited it was probably only six or seven. And we would just alternate who did the A story and who did the B and C. There were definitely times when you'd get a big juicy A-story, but we're very good friends, so we were always able to sort out whose name would come first in the credits and who would get the really fun story of, you know, finding the body in the ice machine, which was one of the sort of hairy ones we were trying to decide in Season Two. And then John and I, we'd spend three days to a week doing our halves, and then we'd throw it all together and make sure we'd have the page count under control, and then we'd normally take, like, a day to just sit down and do a polish, which was always a really fun time, sort of the connecting the stories deal, and making your B-plus jokes into A-minuses.

CB: Did you ever have a major creative difference with a co-writer?

PK: Um…no, I mean, there were times when…it makes you worry in a way, just in general, not recalling any specific instances, but you know, when you're writing with somebody and your name is on it, you sort of want everything to be good enough that you'd be proud of it. And I think John is a fantastic writer and everything he's done is good enough for my name, and I think he's bringing something that I couldn't offer. So we've never had that problem -- only in jest, where one of us wants to do one dumb thing, and the other one wants to do another dumb thing, and we laugh and joke about which one is dumber. But it's never been something like where I cringe watching an episode -- I think we were able to turn things around fast and good and we had a lot of fun doing it. That's something else I really liked about Veronica Mars -- we had a very efficient room where we'd go in and work for five or six hours and then knock off to play tennis. Having a showrunner who shows up at five in the morning and takes that much of the responsibility for himself is sort of an insane luxury. But by the same token, I'm excited that on Chuck I'm getting the chance to do some things that normally fell under Rob's purview. Now I'm a producer on the show, and I feel like I'm producing, so I'm back on a steep learning curve, which is always fun.

CB: So what does that entail for you, then?

PK: Well, you'll do anything from casting to taking production meetings, you'll meet with the department heads and talk about, when you say you want a gun to be in the script, what gun were you talking about? Or if you wanted somebody dressed as a pickle, were you thinking a dill pickle or a bread-and-butter pickle? I've never really had the chance to do this, because Veronica Mars was down in San Diego, so we would just have one phone call with the director, and then we'd start seeing dailies. It would be like, "Cool pickle costume," or "You idiots! I was talking about the other pickle."

CB: That's interesting -- I would have thought on a smaller show, you guys would have worn more hats. But, like you say, you were in L.A. and production was in San Diego.

PK: Yeah, and you know, Dan Etheridge ["VM's supervising producer" -- CB] was sort of the eyes and ears of the writers' room, and the arbiter of taste and tone, and he would just do all that stuff down there, and if anything felt off, he would just call Rob or the writer. But you know, when you're shooting on the stage right to your writer's office, it's exciting that you can walk over, but also, it's a real responsibility, because if somebody is dressed as the wrong pickle, then it's your bad. I spent eight days on my first episode working terrible hours that I never had to work on Veronica Mars, and you realize that, you know, if you're on location, you have a chance to jump in, and you have to be willing and you have to sort of know how to participate until the show is aired. This is all stuff I'm learning to do, still.

CB: You mentioned John Enbom a few times, which won't surprise a lot of our readers who know that you were considered a team, to the point where you were known as "Klembom" around the office.

PK: Yeah.

CB: How did you guys forge this close working relationship?

PK: Well, he worked at Propaganda as a reader as well, and he was college roommates with a guy who became my, like, first good Los Angeles friend, this guy named Marty Yu, who was Mr. Wu.

CB: Ah! Mr. Wu!

PK: Mr. Wu! So they were college pals, and Marty was also a reader at Propaganda, so I fell in hanging out with Marty first, and then John needed a place, so I hooked him up with the apartment above mine when it opened up, like, six or seven years ago. And we became pals and tennis buddies, and after the first half of the first season of Veronica Mars, we needed a writer, and Rob offered it to John, and I pressured him to take it. Neither Rob nor I thought he would, because he was coming off some crazy feature success, but he took it. It appealed to him.

CB: Do you guys still talk shop at all?

PK: Yeah, I mean, on our weekly tennis night, there's a lot of television talk now between sets, which is very funny, but we're just also in similar places in life -- he just had a kid, I have a couple of little kids, you know. And we had a pilot together last year. He's the sort of guy that…you know television, from a business standpoint, is totally brutal and scary and dehumanizing, but you sort of find these people -- if you look at anybody, if you sort of play IMDb games with anybody, you can isolate this great corps of people. I hope that whatever came out of Veronica Mars, the clumping of Diane ["Ruggiero" -- CB] and Rob and John and me, I hope that's something we'll come back to. They're pretty incredible people.

CB: Tell me a little more about the differences between the setups on Chuck and Veronica Mars.

PK: Well, Chuck is a larger-budgeted operation, which I thought was going to solve every problem we ever had on Veronica Mars. But I sort of realized that doing action and comedy at the same time, they're both really demanding genres, so pretty much all the fat I thought there would be on Chuck didn't exist -- instead, we're back to the Veronica Mars mindset where you as a writer are thinking about your number of scenes, and which ones you're going to get on your standing sets, and how you can sort of save money here and streamline story there, which is cool, you know? That's what a producer is supposed to do. But I just thought we'd be rolling in money and be like, "Oh, we'll fix it in post!"

CB: Such a good epitaph for a lot of productions.

PK: [laughs] Yeah.

CB: So moving on, when you have a team of writers, it seems like everyone is going to have his or her own personal stamp on each character. For example, when I was recapping Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which was on for seven seasons, some of the more attentive viewers could pick out which writer was writing which character which way. I know it's one of the responsibilities of the showrunner to make sure that each character's voice is reasonably consistent, but has there ever been a situation where the showrunner told you or someone else that the voice of the character was getting a little off, or where you disagreed about it?

PK: Um…well, I wrote one of the Chuck characters a little dumb in my last episode, and got that note and sort of agreed with it, but it's a sort of Dick Casablancas temptation, where you've got this character who's sort of…there's no person in this life, I hope, like Dick Casablancas. But you sort of get fixated on them to explore that sort of character, where it just becomes a sort of alter ego for nice-guy writers to explore their sexism and everything-else-ism. [both laugh] So yeah, I wrote a Captain Awesome scene where I had to pull back a few lines --

CB: Captain Awesome is one of the characters?

PK: Captain Awesome is one of the characters. And you get it and you realize, oh my God, we can't do that to a person in Episode 5. We have to maintain that they're human beings. I think that's just so much in the spirit of what we did with Dick, because our actor Ryan Hansen was able to pull it off. But I've never felt confined in how I write the characters.

CB: Cool. So how far ahead do you guys plan on Chuck as far as plot in concerned?

PK: Well, we've got the mileposts for Season One pretty well mapped out, so we are planning on getting the back nine, and that's part of our long-term planning.

CB: How much attention do you pay to foreshadowing future arcs and plot points?

PK: Hmm.

CB: I mean, is there ever a situation where you're like, "We know this is coming up in Episode Thirteen, so we'll give the audience a hint of what's to come"? Or is that something the showrunner will ever tell you?

PK: I mean, I can't think of an instance. I've only done one Chuck so far, so it's hard to say.

CB: Well, the reason I thought of this question is that on Veronica Mars, there was an episode -- I think it was "Clash Of The Tritons," Weevil made this reference that seemed extremely pointed to this girl in his neighborhood named "Marisol Reyes," who had disappeared, and all the posters were like, "When are we gonna hear about Marisol Reyes?" And that never came to pass, but had it been planned to, at least potentially?

PK: I don't…I don't know if it had. That was my episode, or, well, half my episode, but the B and C story was something that Rob and Diane rewrote. And yeah, I always thought that very cryptic as well.

CB: Sure. I mean, you could easily pass by it as him just having a little emotional episode, but everything on Veronica Mars seemed so mystery-centric, you couldn't help thinking that that was going to pop up later, and then it never did.

PK: Yeah, I don't know if Rob had that in mind. I mean, I know with simpler things, there were times…like we knew Beaver was going to be the bad guy, so we'd sort of try to show the messed-up psyche, to the point where we'd see the episode and be like, "Oh no, we've gone too far," like we'd revealed the bad guy. But, you know, the story of Chuck, the mythology is lighter, so as a result, there's less need for what you're talking about.

CB: Sure. Maybe this is a better example -- in "Rashard And Wallace Go To White Castle," there's a big subplot about the nightclub in the city. And in the episode prior, Veronica ran into the big guy at the sheriff's department who was like, "Oh, I work at this club!" And then that was dropped until the episode. So, I mean, that was not really organic to that episode.

PK: No.

CB: But it was necessary for the episode, so how was that planned?

PK: You know, sometimes you get lucky and the episode's prepping, or it hasn't gone to production draft, so that while you're outlining or finishing up breaking your own, you can sort of take stock, and have somebody insert something behind you so that your own episode will make sense. It's really cool when it works, and it's such a drag when somebody asks you to do it, because it's like, "Why do I have to write this line in the Sheriff's Department?" But it's really cool that you mentioned it, because that's exactly how it happens -- it's just like this mad scramble, it's like, "Oh my God, have you shot the scene in the Sheriff's station? You have to do this for me!"

CB: So you guys threw in this sort of afterthought that maybe felt a little bit off, in order to solve a problem in the episode.

PK: Yeah. Exactly.

CB: Cool. Well, I was going to ask you if you, as a writer, ever pay attention to casting, but you mentioned you're doing casting. But going back to when you didn't do that, when you were in sort of the ivory tower of the writers' room, did you ever pay attention to the casting, or did it ever…once you saw the actor, did that influence how you wrote the character at all?

PK: Well, I mean, we would still get to go along for sessions…we'd audition people in Los Angeles, so on our own episodes we'd get to go along for that. But, you know, you're not casting somebody until your script is…not locked, but there's a production draft out, so you're not able to hugely write to their strengths and weaknesses. The thing that happens more often is that somebody shows up and does something extraordinary -- that's the sort of Ryan Hansen model.

CB: Sure, and I'm talking more with recurring characters.

PK: Yeah…it's weird working on Episode 5 of Chuck where you really haven't seen your cast of characters interact outside of the pilot, you don't really know people's strengths and dynamics that you enjoy.

CB: Sure, it seems very abstract -- I'd imagine it's a lot easier once you can match a face to the name. But I guess you do your best until you get to see dailies and episodes and things take shape in your mind.

PK: Right. And there are simple things that you wouldn't even think of -- having never been on the set before, if you've never been to Chuck's bedroom or workstation, you write these little things like, say, a walk and talk of two people going down the hallway, and then you show up to the set and realize it's totally uncinematic or it's boring or it would work better here. I think once you get the chance to see what works and doesn't work, it's a lot easier. I sort of burdened Production with my first script before I knew actors or standing sets or what tended to work or not work, and you sort of hand them your little wish list of what you'd like to see, and then they just have to sort of deal with all the problems. But figuring out these problems is part of the fun of having a new show.

CB: So when you see the final version of the episode, does that help you see what you wrote in a new light? Or, to put it another way, do you find that a useful tool for developing your game, so to speak?

PK: I…guess so. It's pretty hard, it just goes through so many phases.

CB: Sure, and obviously, everything you see on screen is not your doing as a writer. But at the same time, seeing what happened from script to screen, you might be like, "Oh, time if I do this, that's what it will look like." But maybe not?

PK: It's really hard. By the time it's aired, it's hard not to concentrate on the battles you've lost. Obviously I'm talking about Veronica Mars now, but it's really difficult not to get fixated and have this microscopic vision of things that you wish were better. The best thing would probably be to go back and watch it now, so you're not just sort of waiting for the thing that rubs you the wrong way. [laughs]

CB: So you mentioned the cancellation. After being so well-acclaimed for three years and yet fighting this Sisyphus-like and ultimately unsuccessful battle, were you sour on the industry, or did you not even have time to think about it at that point?

PK: Not the industry. I guess...I read a lot of Television Without Pity at the time, sort of like, turning to you to see the Hope Springs Eternal thread ["the ratings thread" -- CB] actually because I don't feel plugged-in in Hollywood, and I don't feel like the intel I was getting was unbiased and accurate. So I would totally read that stuff, and I guess at a certain point I really came away with what I think was a consensus, the strong voice being that it was a miracle that we had lasted that long and we should be grateful for it, and the numbers didn't support a fourth season, or even a third or second. You know, I didn't come away from it bitter, although if I hadn't gotten a job on Chuck, I'm sure I'd be incredibly bitter. But I don't know -- I don't know if there's a world in which Veronica Mars could have been a hit show. The people who produced it did an amazing job with what they were given. I wish it had been promoted better, but that's not something you can really expect as a writer. The fact that the network picked up the show in the first place was really auspicious, and maybe they were thinking they could become something better -- I don't know if they still feel that way, but it was a courageous pilot to pick up, and to, if not nurture, to let sort of slide by as unencumbered television for three seasons. So, Dawn Ostroff -- she's a genius.

CB: So what further aspirations do you have in the industry? Like, would you ever want to be a showrunner?

PK: Well, you know, I would like to spend a few years continuing on a show that I really enjoy. After that, or concurrently with that, I would like to…as I said, John and I had a pilot, and I would like to have a pilot again with him. I don't know if I have the showrunning personality, but I could certainly co-showrun -- the sort of effort that guys like Josh and Rob muster for their job is just staggering and awesome, and I'm confident that I could do half of that. And if someone like John or Diane or someone else I think is really groovy wanted to do it with me, I think I could be a showrunner, but right now I'm really happy just turning in scripts.

CB: And would you ever want to do any more feature work, or do you think television is your bag?

PK: I don't know. Right now, television seems like where it's at.

CB: [laughs] I guess as long as you're being hired, there's no reason to do anything else.

PK: [laughs] Yeah.

CB: Well, that's all I've got for you, Phil! Thanks a lot for all the time and for accommodating my schedule.

PK: You're welcome!

CB: So did you do any sort of creative writing in either high school or college?

CB: [laughs] Yeah, I stayed away from the English Department.

CB: So how did you get into scriptwriting?

PK: Well, I was a reader at Propaganda, which is, um…

CB: You wrote coverage. ["Sort summaries of scripts with recommendations as to whether the film should be made." -- CB]

CB: So what's the raw material you would work with in that situation?

CB: So when you say you would write for Michel, would he be pitching something to a studio?

CB: So what do you consider your first big break?

CB: So how did you get your agent?

CB: …everyone finds you interesting.

PK: [laughs] Yeah. Exactly.

CB: So how did you get the job on Chuck?

PK: Well, we didn't know about Veronica Mars -- I suppose we still don't technically know. Maybe we're still alive in some alternate universe, but we never actually heard that we were canceled.

CB: Well, with Kristen Bell on Heroes, it may be tough to revive.

CB: How long was it before you took the job and the upfronts?

CB: So is your work well-known enough now that you don't have to audition, so to speak?

CB: So you wrote another spec script, then?

CB: So as far as submitting those scripts, it seems to me that ethically, you would have had to submit a script you wrote before anything was done to it.

PK: Oh, right, right, right. That's a huge deal. You always want to make sure you give a true writer's draft, because it happens all the time that people don't, and it's really a bad thing.

CB: So you save everything you do through every stage.

PK: Yeah, you do, because it can really give you a pretty bad black eye.

CB: So did you get any other offers?

CB: So what's your typical day on Chuck been like so far?

CB: Tell me about the show. How would you describe it?

CB: So you found that more of a challenge, then.

CB: Cool! So it seems like with a new show, one of the things that goes with the job is waiting for news about renewal.

PK: Right.

CB: Are there any standards about when the network has to let you know about ordering more scripts?

PK: I'm not sure if it's set in stone, or if it's just a matter of not wanting to sort of derail the production train. Like right now, we've turned in Episode 7 and we've broken 8 and 9…

CB: Was the initial commitment thirteen?

PK: Um, twelve plus the pilot. By the time my episode, 1-05, airs, which is six chronologically, we'll definitely know, so if worse comes to worst, I've still got another writing sample.

CB: [laughs] Is there any pressure for you to do things that you think will get the network to order more scripts, or is it just a question of doing the best you can?

CB: [laughs] Well, the numbers were a little different on that network.

PK: Yeah. Somehow we survived that.

CB: So, I think one of the keys to your job is to give audiences information while still telling a good fluid story.

PK: Yeah. Definitely.

CB: Are there ever times when you're forced to, so to speak, "write down" so that audiences will "get it," so you'll get more exposition out there?

PK: Um…I don't think so, but…

CB: Let me put it another way: Have you ever gotten network notes that were like, we don't get this, you've got to make this clearer?

CB: Just to flip the question around, have you ever written anything that ended up being too subtle, where the audiences just didn't get it?

CB: Did you ever have a major creative difference with a co-writer?

CB: Such a good epitaph for a lot of productions.

PK: [laughs] Yeah.

CB: Captain Awesome is one of the characters?

CB: Cool. So how far ahead do you guys plan on Chuck as far as plot in concerned?

PK: Well, we've got the mileposts for Season One pretty well mapped out, so we are planning on getting the back nine, and that's part of our long-term planning.

CB: How much attention do you pay to foreshadowing future arcs and plot points?

PK: Hmm.

PK: I mean, I can't think of an instance. I've only done one Chuck so far, so it's hard to say.

PK: No.

CB: But it was necessary for the episode, so how was that planned?

CB: So you guys threw in this sort of afterthought that maybe felt a little bit off, in order to solve a problem in the episode.

PK: Yeah. Exactly.

CB: Sure, and I'm talking more with recurring characters.

Television Without Pity | Chuck TV Show - Chuck Recaps, Chuck Reviews &amp; Chuck Episodes | TWoP

Television Without Pity | Chuck TV Show - Chuck Recaps, Chuck Reviews & Chuck Episodes | TWoP