[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] On Story is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.
"On Story" is also brought to you in part by the Bogle Family Vineyards, six generation farmers and third generation winemakers based in Clarksburg, California.
Makers of sustainably grown wines that are a reflection of the their family values since 1968.
[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.
This week's "On Story," creator and executive producer, Rob Thomas, discusses his process behind the hit series, "Veronica Mars."
- Here's what teaching high school gave me that has been very fortunate for my career, is I got to listen to high school girls talk.
As a yearbook advisor, you're working late into the night after school and I became a piece of furniture to them, and so I just got to hear rich dialogue that I would go on to use for five novels and two TV series.
[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [Narrator] In this episode, writer, creator and executive producer, Rob Thomas, joins us for a live taping at Austin Film Festival's "On Story" premiere party to discuss his process behind the hit series, "Veronica Mars," "Party Down" and "iZombie."
Thomas deep dives into the art, craft and business of creating successful and beloved television series.
[typewriter ding] For those of you who weren't aware, he actually went to school here and played football in San Marcos and then at TCU and then came to UT, so kind of back home.
So, welcome home.
- Oh, thanks.
- Can you talk a little bit about the journey that took you essentially to teaching?
- I was going to school out in Westlake.
My dad here was the vice principal of Westlake High School at the time and I was going to junior high out there, and my seventh grade counselor said, "What do you want to do when you grow up?"
And I said, "Well, I wanna be a writer," and to me, that felt like that meant I wanted to be a novelist, I wanted to write books.
And by the time I was in high school, that thought, it seemed like such a pipe dream to me, and I got into journalism and I became the editor of the high school paper and I thought I'm gonna be a journalist.
And I started thinking about teaching as a career and I'd have summers off.
- How much were you mining those years, the in-between years when you were teaching?
- Here's what teaching high school gave me that has been very fortunate for my career, is I got to listen to high school girls talk.
You know, I was a high school journalism teacher and you know, as a yearbook advisor, you're working late into the night after school and I became a piece of furniture to them.
[audience laughing] And so, I just got to hear rich dialogue [audience laughing] that I would go on to use for five novels and two TV series.
Yeah, that was a very fortunate period in my life.
[typewriter ding] - I'll kick it off with really kind of talking about Veronica Mars.
I'm really interested in how you were thinking about that show.
I know you started writing in a different format and then all of a sudden you're, you know, you have this idea and it's like, okay, now we've gotta pitch it, but that show's actually a really complicated show.
It's, you know, you've got a big overarching mystery, you've got individual episode mysteries and then you have a lot of raging hormones in each episode that it's like ping pong back and forth, who's gonna be with who.
- When I signed my second book deal with Simon and Schuster, they bought two new novels from me just based on log lines, and so, I'd written two for them.
I owed them another two, and one of them was just called "Untitled Teen Detective" and it was set here in Austin.
What became Neptune High was originally going to be Westlake High School.
It was the high school where the rich kids went, and the main character was gonna be a teen boy named Keith Mars, and so, I had that idea in my head, but then I got my first job on Dawson's Creek and went out to LA.
It's not gonna surprise you to hear that TV pays better than writing young adult novels.
And so, that idea existed and I wanted to get back to it but the show that I think left my own sort of taste that I would've done.
I wanted to write Freaks and Geeks.
I wanted to do just a straight coming-of-age show, you know.
I just wanted to write about teenagers and their lives, and when that brilliant show got canceled, I thought well, if that show can't make it as good as it is, there's no way right now I'm gonna be able to sell that sort of show, and it got me thinking about my teen detective idea and I thought suddenly that I could sell it on two words, like it's a two word pitch, "teen noir."
The other thing that began to interest me was, I really was...
I felt like this generation that I taught, you know, the kids who are 10 years younger than me, and I think it's even more true now but at the time, I thought it is such a generation that experiences a loss of innocence quicker than mine did, that they know more stuff earlier and that's not always good, and suddenly it just became more interesting to me to write a show about a teenage girl being stripped of all of that.
It felt like it was just a, had a better dramatic hook, which is when Keith Mars became Veronica Mars.
- Where's Lily?
[suspenseful music] But everyone knows this story, the murder of Lily Kane.
It was on the cover of People Magazine.
It made Entertainment Tonight.
The town flooded with journalists.
[person crying] Duncan, talk to me please.
[dramatic music] And of course, everyone remembers reading about the bungling local sheriff, the one who went after the wrong man.
[dramatic music] Oh my God.
That bumbling sheriff was my dad.
[dramatic music] - It's the way that I Trojan-horsed a coming-of-age story onto the air, because at the time, I was not particularly interested in noir or mysteries, I didn't know how to break a mystery, and now it's like my stock and trade.
If there is a blonde woman solving a mystery on television, I'm probably attached to that show.
[laughing] [typewriter ding] - To me, it was, especially season one, it was very much all's fair in love and war and it definitely had some "Game of Thrones" moments in it, pre-"Game of Thrones."
It's very not freaks and geeks, [laughing] and so that was your first showrunner show, right?
- No, actually I had, my first one was a show called "Cupid" in 1999- - Oh, "Cupid."
- that starred Jeremy Piven as a character who you didn't know whether he was actually the Roman God of love or crazy, and we played it sort of like "Miracle on 34th Street" and we did 15 episodes of that show.
- So, that was a great show.
- I was really proud of that show, and you know, the one thing it did do is, David Kelly who saw the show and asked me to run his new show, and "Cupid" was still on the air and I thought, "Well, this is very weird.
He's asking me to run his new show."
I have my own show on television but apparently, David Kelly knew how to read the Nielsen ratings and I did not, [laughing] and I became available.
- There's so much of that still same tone throughout all your stuff.
I mean, it really feels consistent.
You know, there's a lot of sarcasm.
- The thing that I'm looking for is sort of the blend of drama and comedy.
I would never be like, I don't have the ability, the talent to write set up punchline, set up punchline, and yet I'm bored if I'm just writing straight drama.
So, I want writers who manage to, in a rhythm of a normal conversation, have some wit to what they're saying.
You know, what I'm really looking for is delicious language.
[typewriter ding] - You probably wrote the first script.
How much did the show change by episode 22 from your original intent for Veronica's character and Logan and all the other people that sort of grew as you're working with this writer's room?
- I knew who killed Lily Kane, you know.
I knew how Veronica was raped, and then once you know those things and you know the details of how those things happened, you build the whole city, the whole season trying to not step on anything, and then you can develop red herrings.
And at the time, on the internet, there was television without pity before Twitter and it was such an interesting device at the time because, you know, we could see, we could actually read in real time who is the leading suspect and can we divert attention away from that person?
And there were certainly changes that we...
I had...
There was no plan to make Logan a romantic interest.
He was going to be the obligatory psychotic jack[bleep] that she describes in episode one, and yet we're all watching dailies when those two are on screen going, "Oh my God, we need to write that.
We need to make that happen."
[dramatic music] [Veronica] And let's not forget Logan Eckles.
His dad makes 20 million a picture.
You probably owned his action figure.
Every school has an obligatory psychotic jack[bleep].
He's ours.
- So, the goal was to not step on the long arc mystery and everything else was much more organic.
As long as we didn't step on that, we could just sort of break each episode on its own.
- The mystery element part of it, which of course, I mean, I think that's just as interesting as the high school shenanigans, you know.
So, that part of communicating with your room like when you're sending somebody off to write an episode, is each individual mystery in each one, like for instance, the one where they're all taking the teen test.
- Listen to this.
Not that innocent?
Buy the results of anyone's purity test.
Ten dollars will let you know if you're dating an angel from heaven or a hottie from hell.
- That's crazy.
You could go on there and buy anyone's test?
- I never thought I'd say this but I kind of can't wait for school tomorrow.
- Were you sending that person off like in a typical room where they've pitched their idea and then they're gonna go beat it out?
- The mysteries are all broken in the room and that's one, it is the one issue with the way I staff a show, where I try to find all these funny character writers and then force 'em to write a procedural, is that none of us are trained in it.
I had never written a mystery before.
We've sort of learned along the way.
We spent a lot of time in those writers' rooms trying to break mysteries and where do you lay in clues?
Where does the McGuffin comes in?
Are there any red herrings?
We're practically having to look up noir in Wikipedia to figure out what we're supposed to be doing.
We're now practiced at it.
I sort of...
It comes a bit easier now, but it is... "Veronica Mars" is one of the hardest shows you can imagine to break a mystery every episode and a 22-episode mystery at the same time, you're keeping so many storylines in the air that it felt like such a relief once, if you're the writer, to get out of the story-breaking stage and just get to write it.
That's the fun part.
It's the sweating it out of breaking the mystery that is the hard part of that show.
- So, how did you also deal with that tonality in it?
You had an episode like "Hot Dogs," which was surprisingly, though you think you kill the dog in the beginning, it's surprisingly funny and kind of heartwarming and then you have an episode like "Ain't No Magic."
That was really another one that was lighthearted and fun and turned into a kind of Nancy Drew.
- Right.
- You know, it felt like.
But then you have "Trip to the Dentist" and "Leave it to Beaver" and they're super dark, you know?
So, how was that working with not just the staff but also with the network, you know?
- The network was great once the reviews started coming in.
They were very tough at the beginning of the show and trying to determine what the proper tone is.
They wanted adults to be more important characters.
That was one of our big fights.
I do want to give 'em credit.
They gave me a...
They gave me a note in the pilot at the very last moment that I...
It took a while for me to get my head around it but I think it was a very smart note, and in that pilot episode, we find out that Veronica has been raped.
Her best friend has been murdered.
Her boyfriend is broken up with her.
She's been ostracized by all of her friends at school.
Her mom has deserted the family.
And in the final scene, Veronica breaks into her dad's safe and finds that there are a stack of postcards from her mother that her dad has kept from her which puts her on the outs with Keith.
- What are you doing back here?
I saw the light.
I forgot a few of my books.
- What's up and Adam [indistinct].
Come on, it's family fun night.
I called out to Mama Leony's I rented the South Park movie.
- My favorite.
- Hey, who's your daddy?
- You are.
I have to make a stop, so meet you at home?
- Okay.
Hurry up.
I worry about you.
- Yeah, you do.
[playful music] - And I mean, it was a dark pilot and the network came to me and said, "Can she at least have her dad in her corner?"
[laughing] There were some episodes where the case was comedic, like Betty and Veronica or, you know, stealing the rival mascot's goat or "Leave it to Beaver" being somewhere on the opposite end of the spectrum.
I mean, we felt like the show could handle both those tones, and part of it is Kristen Bell being such a fantastic actress that she can deliver on that sort of thing.
There was a moment in the pilot of "Veronica Mars" where, you know, and understand, when you audition an actor, you see them read this, you know, three or four scenes a handful of time.
You don't see them read the whole script or perform the whole script.
And so, we're in day six or seven of filming the pilot and we're shooting the scene where Veronica wakes up in a strange bed, sees her underwear on the floor and weeps, and I'm watching Kristen perform this scene and it is so mind-boggling to me how powerful, how good she is in the scene, and it does seem like she's a machine.
Like, okay, how many tears and out of which eye, like, that was how good she was in that scene and then interestingly, in the editing process, the network kept making me trim up that scene because they felt like the sorrow was too much, like the audience might not recover from that level of, whereas I thought, "Wow, now this is a teen drama."
So yeah, that was a battle but ended up with a pilot that I was proud of.
Yeah.
[typewriter ding] - Not many people get the opportunity to bring their character back at, you know, their teens, their twenties, their thirties, and look back at the person they're now gonna create, right?
And I know it was getting canceled that gave you that opportunity but at the same time, it was kind of a cool experiment- - Right.
- I think, in looking at how you envisioned this person would really have grown, and in season four, there were some really great moments, especially with her and Logan where it's clear he's moved on to try to fix himself and she kinda really hasn't spent a lot of time reflecting, and to your point, I think that's what made it such an interesting season, how maybe she had to learn to reflect a little bit more on some of what she did.
So, how was that for you, just in each opportunity, both, you know, the first couple of seasons and then the movie, looking at it, that was a different time period and then again, years later for another show?
- We've seen so many shows about men of that age sort of struggling with growing up, struggling with the notion of commitment.
I was interested in seeing Veronica struggle with that.
You know, we did a couple Veronica Mars novels that I would help break the story with another writer and she would write the book and she did a fantastic job, but in that second book, I really wanted to play this, this flirtation with Deputy Leo.
- Hey.
So, as luck would have it, they're playing "The Big Lebowski" at the Orpheus tonight.
I'm ready to write this wrong if you are.
- Why would I watch it at that moldy dump when I have the directors cut and the ingredients for white Russians at home?
- Sold.
What time should I be there?
- That wasn't an invitation.
- Ooh, sounded like one.
- You are not coming over to Lebowski and chill.
- You're turning this into something Todrey.
Uh, what's wrong with a couple of cinephiles watching what you consider to be a classic movie?
Unless, unless you were thinking there was something more.
- I wasn't.
- Are you afraid to be alone with me?
- I'm leaving now.
- And I felt like she did not want to write it going as far as I wanted it to go and so I sort of, in the series, it was like I want to see Veronica tempted.
I want to see Veronica struggle with monogamy.
I want to see the woman in that position.
So, that was one of the elements that was interesting for me to explore in the Hulu series.
- Yeah, I think that was pretty cool, but you did it again with "Party Down" too, so it was like looking back at where somebody goes and creating this whole missing years story.
Were you creating the missing years story?
- The crazy thing is, I even did "Cupid" twice.
[laughing] We did it in 2000, we did in 1999.
It was my first show, and then they brought back a version of Bobby Cannavale in 2009.
So, I end up doing a lot of shows twice.
At some point, one of them is gonna be a hit.
That is the goal.
- Were you developing a whole backstory in your head for the last 10 years of her life?
- It was fun for me right before writing the Veronica Mars movie, because I really hadn't watched the series since we had finished it, and my daughter was born in season one of "Veronica Mars" and I think we did the movie when she was 12, and she watched it with me and it was so cool.
It was like, this is the show I wrote for my daughter that I didn't know I was gonna have.
She was... Yeah, she was very into it.
The process of watching it, you know, was the process of trying to develop, okay, what has she done in the interim, and interestingly and almost healthily I think, my daughter landed on Team Piz, which... [laughing] Good, that means we've raised you well, honey.
[people laughing] Piz is a good, decent, gentle soul, and so the notion of her having a, you know, a solid relationship, having completed law school, I wanted to keep her somewhere within the legal world.
That all sort of came to me as I was re-watching the series and sort of just trying to imagine where she landed and yeah.
- But it was all, it all felt like it was, yeah, I could totally see this character doing all these things- - Right.
- and then making this other choice.
- When I wrote the original "Veronica Mars" script, I thought it was for cable.
So, the original script which was, you know, and I mentioned the one thing with her dad, it was, it was another degree darker, and, you know, some of the arguments, I mean, there is a movie called "The TV Set" that Jake Kazan directed and David Duchovny stars and then he stars as a showrunner, and in that... And it's about pilot season and he's making a pilot based on his brother's suicide, and that is what the show is about.
And at a certain point, Sigourney Weaver playing the network president says, "Do we need that suicide?
It's kind of a bummer."
[audience laughing] And, we had shot "Veronica Mars," we had screened "Veronica Mars" and the network president came to me and said, "Do we need that rape story?
That's kind of a bummer."
I mean, it was as though they wrote that completely about my experience.
[typewriter ding] [Narrator] You've been watching a conversation with Rob Thomas on "On Story."
On Story is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story project that also includes the "On Story" radio program, podcast, book series, and the "On Story" archive accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.
To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.
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