HBO’s Carolyn Strauss

October 2006

By Anna Carugati

HBO series like The
Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Deadwood and The Wire changed the vernacular of TV
dramas. Carolyn Strauss, the president of HBO Entertainment, has been with the
company since 1986 and was part of the team that first thought of offering
subscribers something more than movies and sports. She oversees the development
of all of HBO’s acclaimed and award-winning series and mini-series.

WS: When HBO first started thinking about doing
original productions, what was the goal?

STRAUSS: HBO was pay television, so we wanted to do what
you couldn’t do on network television. We had nothing to lose because no one
was watching or cared. Now, we’re very much in the limelight. There’s a
different risk-taking mentality, but you still have the same goal in mind,
which is to be the best. There are just different ways to do it.

WS: What do you want to offer your viewers?

STRAUSS: What we really want to get, obviously, is stuff
that’s worthy of pay television—provocative, complex, layered original
stories. Characters and scenarios that really are unique products of unique
creators.

WS: What kind of environment do you want to give
creators and writers?

STRAUSS: We try to lay the groundwork as much as we can to
ask the hard questions up front, so that when we get into the heart of the
matter, we can stay out of the way as much as possible and let them do what
they do.

WS: Are there certain things you look out for when you’re
hearing writers and producers pitch their ideas for shows?

STRAUSS: We look for something that is certainly an
original voice, a point of view. We look for something that’s about “something.”
A show about a bunch of guys in a garage doesn’t really do it for us. But if it’s
two guys in a garage reflecting on the meaning of life in some sort of way,
that has a larger resonance. That may interest us. But, you know, there’s not
one answer to that question. The right show can present itself in a variety of
ways.

WS: How do you feel HBO has affected the prime-time
dramas on broadcast networks?

STRAUSS: I think it has
affected them a lot, actually. Our shows have taught people it’s okay to have
flawed heroes. There weren’t a lot of those prior to The Sopranos. I think they’ve taken the gloss off of prime-time
drama and really opened the way to do some of the most interesting storytelling
in our culture right now. It’s being done on television right now; I’m not sure
that it’s being done in other places.

WS: Do you feel that you’re in competition with the broadcast
networks?

STRAUSS: The nature of the beast is that since they are all
shows delivered in the same medium, people will always conspire and plot
against one another, but I think there is enough room at the table for all of
us.

WS: Does the cost of producing an hour of drama at HBO
come within the ballpark figure of what it costs at a network?

STRAUSS: The difference
between the networks and us is the fact that we don’t license our shows, we own
them. We probably spend more in . . . production values. This all goes into who
we are as a network. We are not about selling soap, we are about selling
ourselves. People come to expect a certain amount from the production value of
HBO shows, and so, this is something we pay a lot of money for.

WS: What new project is Alan Ball [the creator of Six
Feet Under] working on?

STRAUSS: It’s called True Blood. He has taken Charlaine Harris’s best-selling
novels and he is adapting them into a series and it’s really exciting. He’s
working on a film right now and he has a play. So as soon as he is done with
all that I think we’ll start shooting early next year.

WS: What upcoming projects can you talk about?

STRAUSS: We are working with David Milch [the creator of Deadwood] on a show, which we’re all really looking forward
to. It’s a show about a family of surfers in Imperial Beach, California. David
is an amazing creator for us. He’s one of the master storytellers of our time,
and the fact that he has chosen to tell his stories on television is really an
incredible gift. We’re also shooting a new show about the connection or
disconnection between sex and intimacy in couples, called Tell Me You Love
Me, and that’s going to be on in
the fall. And we’re shooting a pilot with Linda Bloodworth-Thomason that is
really funny. It’s about a matriarchy in Dallas, Texas, called 12 Miles of
Bad Road.