HRTS eNews - 03/23/2009 (Plain Text Version)
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Ali LeRoiHRTS Member - Executive Producer,
A Member Profile by Chris Davison, davison@intellcap.com Ali LeRoi is Executive Producer of hit show “Everybody Hates Chris”. Ali began his career as a journalist and has since worked in many areas of the business, from stand-up to sketch comedy to sitcoms. I recently had a chance to speak with Ali to discuss Chris Rock, the Marx Brothers and Bernie Mac.
Around 1991, I was on the road with Chris Rock, who I had known from stand-up since 1987. Chris had done SNL and “In Living Color”, and it was just a few years later that he did “Bring The Pain”. After that he called me up and said “I'm about to do this show on HBO” and he asked me if I wanted to come out and write for him. This laid the foundation for my TV writing career. I had dabbled in other things, but moving to the "The Chris Rock Show" and winning an Emmy there solidified the transition. My work on “Everybody Hates Chris” resulted in an invitation to a Newsmaker Luncheon. I was aware of the HRTS but I hadn't really participated in the past. The panel I was on was David Shore, Marc Cherry, Peter Tolan, Meredith Stiehm and myself. After the luncheon I joined the HRTS because I'm not the most social guy in the world, I go to work and I spend a lot of time by myself when I am creating. I do not do a lot of out-of-work social functions so the best way for me to meet people in the business is to join a group like the HRTS. I've been to other panels since then just to sit and watch, it's a great way for me to be involved in the community.
We then began to restructure and take some poetic license, the character on the show is really younger than Chris was at the time period of the show, and being in the 1990s gave us the hip-hop landscape to play with. It was Spring 2005 before we got on set and started shooting something. While the project was at Fox it never got on the air. They had another show with Method Man and Red Man that eventually got on the air and so they didn't pick us up. The project sat on the shelf over there and we thought it was going to
Unfortunately the UPN then became the CW and some of the networks priorities shifted and I believe that affected our momentum somewhat. We had solid numbers and did very well internationally and so we got a lot of support from the studio and from the network as well, I know that Les Moonves was a fan of the show. This was one of the times that being good actually made a difference. It would have been great had we had “Two and a Half Men” numbers, but we’ve had four great seasons, so I can’t complain.
It isn't incredibly difficult to have real and sensible integrations on the show but it has to be carefully discussed with the advertisers, showrunners and the network and studio. I don't have a problem with it, it just needs to be organic. In “30 Rock” they make fun of the product integration, it's very organic and it works. I think that we may be going back to a time like in the 1950s and 60s where we have Texaco Star Theater and you just buy the hour.
Unfortunately, I don't think that some executives know the gradations of comedy but most all are willing to listen to a creator that talks about the show's style, tonality, the audience they are shooting for. “30 Rock” and “The Office” do entirely different things, they are entirely different tonalities, so what is funny? What's funny to me is different, I have a very eclectic sense of humor. I love the Marx Brothers and Benny Hill, I watched “The Office” when it was on the BBC, “30 Rock” is hilarious, and being an idiot can be funny, “Jackass” is funny. Is “Jackass” the same subtle comic tonality as “Desperate Housewives”? No. But it is relatable to an audience, and sometimes just dumb is funny. It's a broad question and I don't think that most people are learned enough in the distinctions of comedy to know that it's not always just 'funny is funny'. Blue is not just blue, there are 800 different shades.
I am forming a venture with Orlando Jones called "F. Mass Media" and we are starting to develop content. It's multiplatform for television, web, for phones, some of this has the ability to upsell. There is content created for TV that can be exploited on the web and on the phone, because at the end of the day, all of these platforms are going to need things to show. They are going to need things that are cost-effective to produce and are of a certain quality. Coke is not going to put their ads behind a clip where a guy clamps electrodes onto his balls. Television is not interactive, but on the web I am in control of how I am taking in this content - do I go to a destination site, do I have things delivered to my Inbox, do I get a podcast? If there's some quality quotient then you may be able to develop some sort of following. How do I measure the success of that content? Who's watching? Are you using banner ads or imbedded advertising on the web? Coke says that they want to tag a 15-second ad onto the front of that content, there's a countdown bar for the ad so I know when it will be over and I therefore have a control since I know how long to wait. It's not like television where you don't know how long it will be until the commercials end.
Television has been severely damaged by vertical integration but it isn't going away. When independent producers can't go to a studio or network and sell the best show to the right buyer, then the whole business suffers. If you can't sell it to one network then you may not be able to take it somewhere else and it just sits on a shelf, so your product won't get made and they won't sell it to someone else. Networks are not creative entities, they are distributors; do you want the product in blue, green or red? The networks bit off more than they could chew, there shouldn't even be development departments at networks, they should just be buyers of content. I hope that some of the conglomerates are broken up, that the vertical integration comes to an end. If and when that occurs, I think that television and film will become much more viable businesses again. While one guy might not be able to make a movie for $200 million, five guys might be able to make movies for $40 million each, it's like Crazy Eddie's in New York, how do we do it? Volume!
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