Written by David Marshall Grant & Cliff Olin
Directed by Bethany Rooney
We hope you all enjoyed last night's episode. Writers' Intern Miriam Parks recently sat down with writers David Marshall Grant and Cliff Olin for a brief interview about the process.
Miriam: When it comes to writing your episodes, what's the most challenging part and what's the most fun?
David: The most challenging part is trying to figure out the story. That's really the hardest thing, breaking the episode.
Cliff: I agree.
David:
You really have to struggle to understand what the story is. And once
you have the story, it's usually fun after that. The characters are in
you after a while-- by now, we've been doing this for a long time--and
you're able to just have fun with all the voices and stuff like that. But
if you don't have a story, you may as well be writing in the sand.
Miriam: And with every episode, it takes a different amount of time to kind of come up with that story?
David:
Yes, some come up really easily, and some are a little bit harder to
break. This one was a little bit harder to break than some of the
others were, actually--
Cliff: One tough thing is having the responsibility of resets. We always
have to reset where each story was and each character is at in case, by
chance, we have a new audience member tuning into B&S for the first
time or someone who missed the previous episode, or just to jog
peoples' memories...
Miriam: You don't just stick it in the "...previously on Brothers & Sisters?"
Cliff:
We cannot rely on the "...previously on Brothers & Sisters." I
actually don't think there is one anymore.
David: Yeah, there isn't.
Cliff: But there might be this week because we've been off the air for a few weeks.
David:
Yeah, that's always a challenge in writing a one-hour show is that
really the show has to work if it's the only episode you saw. You have
to be able to follow the plot. So you can't rely on information that's
in other episodes if it's intrinsic to the plot or to the characters'
catharsis or something, the story has to have a beginning, a middle and
an end in the episode. You have to know all the information that makes
that story work in the episode.
Miriam: This
episode specifically I thought it was really interesting that two men
wrote it because it's about Kitty struggling with becoming a mother and
the fears of that and balancing a career, and I was wondering what that
process was like for two men sitting down and trying to...
Cliff: I'm not a man, I'm a boy-- and David's gay.
David:
[Laughs] I can't believe you outed me! Actually, I think that the
episode's about coming to terms with the truth about the fact that you
might
have a baby. It's about Kitty finally accepting the fact that this
isn't just some hypothetical fantasy-- it's the moment you go, "Oh
my God, all my fantasies about being a parent are actually going to
become real. This is all going to be real."
Cliff: Right.
David: And as a three-time prospective parent with open adoption-- and once it didn't happen because the birthmother changed her mind just a week before we had
the baby-- I had already gone through those kind of parental attacks
where you realize that having the baby isn't going to be this fun fantasy. It's like,
"What am I gonna do?" So this episode was very much about stuff that I had
actually gone through.
Miriam: Do you think that male couples wanting to adopt go through the
same kind of having to choose between a family and career like women do?
David: Yes, I mean if there's two men or two women or
one man and one women, someone still has to sacrifice. So, yeah-- the
idea of, no matter if you're a father or a mother, or two fathers or
two mothers or whatever it is, you still have to think about how much
you owe to the baby and how much you owe to your career.
Miriam: So these themes were pretty universally felt...
David: Well, they were very particular to what I had been going through.
Miriam: In this episode, what was your favorite scene to write?
Cliff:
Well, it was fun writing the shower games. It's funny every time
the Walkers are in that kind of... "everybody's going wild" dynamic.
Miriam: Truthfully, have either of you ever been to a baby shower?
David: My own.
Cliff: Yeah, I went to that.
David: I still have all the baby toys. All the cradles. All ready to go. No baby, though.
Miriam: Did you actually come up with baby shower games to play in this episode?
David: No, Cooper [Supervising Producer Sherri Cooper-Landsman] came up with the baby games. Actually, the game we liked was Smell the Diaper--
Cliff: Yeah, we had originally written that they were playing Smell the Diaper, where they put chocolate sauce and honey on the diaper...
David: They made us cut it.
Cliff: Apparently, because so many people hate [poop].
David: We had to cut it, everyone was mad, but--
Cliff:
--It was too disgusting.
Miriam: At the shower we finally get to meet Saul's boyfriend, Henry.
Cliff: Oh yeah, the Henry stuff was fun.
David:
We liked writing the Henry stuff. Henry being introduced to the family, that was fun. He's played by John Glover, who everybody loved. John
Glover's a wonderful, wonderful actor from NYC.
Miriam: Did anything really exciting happen during filming?
Cliff: When we were shooting on location in Pasadena, the
scene with Justin and Chelsea are on the steps of outside the AA place,
production was postponed by like an hour while the set was
attacked by a flock of wild parrots.
David: Wild parrots? Is that true?
Cliff: That is true.
David: Wow, tell more about that. I like that.
Cliff:
We heard a screeching in the distance that sounded like a high-pitched
apocalypse, and everybody took off their headphones and looked to the
sky. There were a thousand birds going AAAHHH and screaming above
us, and then they decided to land in the trees directly above where we
were shooting and scream for an hour.
Miriam: And you just had to wait it out I guess, right?
Cliff: Yeah.
Miriam: Oh. Fun. So, if you weren't on Brothers & Sisters, what shows would you guys love to write for?
David: If not Brothers & Sisters, I would love to write for Mad Men or Friday Night Lights.
Cliff: I would want to write for...
David: He would want to write for the vampire one [True Blood].
Cliff: ...If I couldn't write for this show I'd like to write comedy, so I'd like to write for 30 Rock or Weeds...
Miriam: Well, luckily we have you here! Thanks so much for sitting down with me.
