Howard Gordon

This interview appeared in the MIPTV 2013 issue of World Screen.

 

Howard Gordon worked on a number of innovative series, including Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but he grabbed the TV industry’s attention as executive producer of the award-winning series The X-Files. He was the showrunner on 24, a groundbreaking series that changed traditional storytelling methods. He then co-created Homeland, the series on Showtime about terrorism and espionage that has won multiple awards and that viewers and critics just can’t stop talking about.

 

WS: When starting a project like Homeland, are you able to sense that a show will be successful?

GORDON: You have to be humble enough to recognize that success is a bit of a lightning-in-a-bottle thing. You have to have a sense, not of a show’s success, but of something that is really exciting and interests you as a writer and as a producer. When you get that sense it certainly makes it easier to [go through] what turns out to be a very long and challenging process on so many levels: from selling the idea to creating a script to casting and [dealing with] all the people who weigh in on these decisions. But if you have a strong sense and an excitement about a project, and Homeland certainly fit that criteria, you can’t predict success, but you know that you are going for something and even if it takes you 30 drafts and you have to recast, you understand the target you are trying to hit, the emotion you are trying to create and what kind of contract you are establishing with the audience.

 

WS: Many say 24 was one of the series that raised the level of quality dramas.

GORDON: 24 is part of a number of shows that can be pointed to as water­mark shows. 24 was a show that aspired to be as good as we could make it. In other words, no one looked at the prospect of doing 24 episodes in real time and said, “Well, it’s an impossible thing to do,” which in retrospect it was! I don’t know quite how we did what we did, but everyone took it very seriously and aspired to make it really exciting and good. In all of these processes you bring your judgment and your taste to bear at every step of the way, but all of that doesn’t guarantee you anything. You still have to get lucky. For example, Kiefer Sutherland was cast instead of Jeff Goldblum, who was also in consideration—you could say it was the road not taken. You have to realize that that casting decision and other very lucky things happened to make the show work.

 

As far as being part of a legacy of the improved television landscape [goes], 24 also benefitted immensely from something that turned out to be a harbinger of the kind of tele­vision we are talking about, which is the serialized story. When we started out on 24 we were in no uncertain terms told to make every episode standalone just to keep ourselves on the air, because the traditional model was that audiences don’t watch every episode. In a way, people were programming shows defensively, anticipating that people would miss a couple of episodes along the way rather than feel compelled, and hopefully even addicted, to watching every single moment of every single episode. So our [goal was to] get people; grab them by the neck and never let go. I always say the contract with the audience on 24 was adrenaline. Joel Surnow and Bob Cochran, who created the show, and all of us—I was lucky enough to be there at the very beginning of the process, so I considered myself not a creator but a midwife of the show—were [focused on making the show compelling]. In a way, we benefitted from a technology that allowed serialization. The DVD really hit its stride around the time of 24, and the foreign market as well really allowed 24 to stay on the air when it had less-than-spectacular ratings.

 

WS: Homeland exists in a completely different TV landscape; there are myriad ways of watching and catching up with shows. It has an addictive quality that is not seen in too many other shows.

GORDON: It is very gratifying to see how seriously people take Homeland. To grab an audience is probably about as satisfying for a dramatic storyteller as it is for a comedian to make the audience laugh. I love watching my wife or my kids watching the show; they are my first test audience. But then to hear the critics, who very intelligently reflect back what we have tried to do and have judged us largely successful; and then to hear the audience and the accolades, it’s all terrific. I do think we are beneficiaries of these different platforms that have sprouted, and their accessibility and user-friendliness, to reach a wider group.

 

WS: Take us inside Homeland’s writers’ room. Is the level of decision-making and debate just as passionate as the discussions viewers have about the show?

GORDON: It is, and there is not enough that can be said by Alex Gansa [Homeland’s showrunner] and me about our colleagues, all [of whom] are extremely talented. I don’t know who coined this, but someone called it the murderer’s row of writers. Everybody has either created or run shows in the past. Everybody is a veteran of the business, roughly Alex’s and my vintage, so the good news is that there is a level of discourse and collaboration that is completely extraordinary. It reminds me of a band of very experienced musicians who can riff off each other. Also, one of the benefits of having some experience and being a little bit older is that some of the ego and insecurity that is a corollary of [being younger] wears off. And by lowering the temperature of that discourse and keeping it about the work, which everyone manages to do beautifully, the result is a product that is all-around great. Alex runs the show, so when [there] is some sort of disagreement that needs to be settled, Alex can certainly make that decision, but it is largely a consensus-built and -driven show. The writers’ room is its own living, breathing thing. Sometimes all the writers are in there and sometimes three writers are in there, but you enter the room and it is kind of a sacred space where the story gets told, sometimes in very large, seismic jumps and sometimes in beautifully observed detail of a character. But it is largely a consensus process among very, very smart, talented people.

 

WS: Is it fair to say that producing 12 or 13 episodes is more freeing in terms of storytelling than churning out 22 or 24 episodes for broadcast?

GORDON: It’s more than fair, it’s just a fact that time [helps the storytelling process]. Not only is the time we allow ourselves to tell the stories in a season longer, but so is the refractory period between seasons. I remember on 24, wrapping the last episode in May and prepping the next season three weeks later. So you had to get off of one season, and before you have the chance to catch your breath and rest, you’re back at it—and then do that for eight seasons. Fortunately at the time, we were interrupted by the writers’ strike; without it, I don’t know if we would have gotten through those eight seasons!

 

Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Homeland or Mad Men—it’s not an accident that those shows have 10- to 12-episode orders.

 

WS: When creating a show, do you map out all the episodes in advance, or do you let some of the plot unfold along the way?

GORDON: It’s a bit of both. You want to know enough not to get lost. You want to map out some of the big moves and even the small moments, but you also want to keep loose enough. By overprogramming and over-outlining a season, you can cut off some of the invention that a really great story needs to have, the elasticity and the discovery that comes from digging into a scene and figuring it out. But you also don’t want to not know anything about what will happen, so it’s a fine line.

 

WS: Tell us about your collaboration and friendships with Alex Gansa and Gideon Raff. They have been very fruitful.

GORDON: They really have been, and it’s like marriage or friendship—not everybody works well with everybody else. Alex and I were friends. We went to Princeton together and forged a relationship out of a mutual love of Saul Bellow. We work really well together and we split up for 15 years before we came together when Alex joined me on 24 for season seven. I was lucky enough to be smart enough to reunite with someone who a) is a friend, and b) is as talented as Alex [is]. Both of us have matured to a point where that initial impulse to collaborate really found a wonderful target in Homeland.

 

And with Gideon, the project Hatufim [Prisoners of War, the Israeli show upon which Homeland is based] was brought to me by my agent, who also represents Gideon. Gideon is a little bit younger than me, so I enjoy being more of a mentor, and it’s been terrific. The moment Gideon pitched Tyrant [a new show about an American family drawn into the turbulence of a Middle Eastern country] to me I felt connected to it and had that feeling that this could be something very special. It’s interesting how, even when you have that very primitive impulse—before you have broken the story, before you have even gotten through what turns out to be dozens of drafts, often very, very different drafts—the same sense of excitement and of possibility informs every one of those drafts. So you may not have a perfect map on how to get to it but you understand the destination. And with Tyrant I have that feeling and we are very excited about what the show can be. Of course, I know a thousand things can go wrong, and it just takes one of them to go wrong to mess up the whole enterprise, but at this point it remains pristine and promising.