6. It is infinitely better to write fewer hours every day than many hours one day and none the next. If we have a crowded weekend, we choose a half or quarter hour as our time, put in that time, and go on with our day. We are always trying to minimize our resistance, and beginning an hour on Monday after two days off is a challenge.
7. When the hour is up, we stop, even if we’re in the middle of a sentence. If we have scheduled another hour, we give ourselves a break before beginning again—to read, eat, go on errands. We are not trying to create a cocoon we must stay in between hours (the old “I’m sorry, I can’t see anyone or leave my house—I’m on a deadline” method). Rather, inside the hour is the inviolate time.
8. If we fail to make our hours for the day, we have scheduled too many. Four hours a day is an enormous amount of time spent in this manner, for example. If on Wednesday we planned to write two hours and didn’t make it, we schedule a shorter appointment for the next day. We don’t add an hour to “make up” or “catch up.” We let the past go and move on.
9. When we have fulfilled our commitment, we make sure we credit ourselves for doing so. We have satisfied our obligation to ourselves, and the rest of the day is ours to do with as we wish.
10. A word about content: This may seem to be all about form, but the knowledge that we have satisfied our commitment to ourselves, the freedom from anxiety and resistance, the stilling of that hectoring voice inside us that used to yell at us that we weren’t writing enough—all this opens us up creatively.
Good luck!
Don Roos
Don’t you hate it when one of your friends starts dating someone fabulous, or gets a cool new job or an unexpected promotion, and they’re so excited and happy and they can’t stop talking about how lucky they are and how amazing everything in their life is, and generally just won’t shut up about it? That’s what me telling you about the experience of doing the show Parenthood is going to be like.
Lauren, please. You could never be as annoying as that.
But allow me to try.
We already know that I have a very special relationship that blossomed at work, which may seem like good fortune enough, but it doesn’t stop there. I also fell in love with every other cast member there. As TV siblings, we didn’t really resemble one another, but I so enjoyed the days we spent together, and the dance parties on the set with Peter and Dax Shepard and Erika Christensen. My pretend in-laws Monica Potter and Joy Bryant and Sam Jaeger were, as people and actors, a fun and impressive bunch. The kids of Parenthood were gracious and sweet and smart, each and every one. Craig T. Nelson and Bonnie Bedelia were perfect as our fearless leaders—I grew up admiring their movies, so getting to work with them was even better. And I have a very special bond with my TV children, Mae Whitman and Miles Heizer; when we go out to eat, we still call it “family dinner.”
I loved the writers and directors and my boss, Jason Katims, who was the person responsible for establishing this wonderful environment in the first place. Our assistant directors (ADs) kept the schedule running smoothly, and were kind and funny and pretended not to notice if I was late for my call time. Larry Trilling, one of our executive producers, is a guy I knew from college, and he became an even better friend at work. The whole place truly had a family feel.
Our cameramen were also vital to the success of the show. They helped illuminate our work by focusing on behavior they found interesting: someone’s hands drumming nervously on a table, a subtle eye roll between spouses, Zeek puffing gleefully on his cigar. In most cases our scenes were shot proscenium style, meaning the action took place on one plane, with two or three cameras filming across from us, almost as if we were on stage. This gave the actors an incredible amount of freedom—much more than a regular television setup allows—and it made room for a great deal of collaboration.
Well, the people may have been great, but we’ve all watched enough Access Hollywood to know that the work hours that go into making a sixty-minute show are grueling, right?
Sorry. Can’t help you there. The hours on Parenthood were some of the best I’ve ever had. Within the excellent framework of the scripts we were given, we were also allowed some freedom with regard to dialogue. This meant we never got bogged down in having to do take after take, needing to say every single word exactly as written. This was especially helpful during our large family dinner scenes, and added to the texture of what a big family sounds like—people talking over each other in a messy, authentic way. We were aided in this by the work of our excellent sound department. I had to go in and rerecord a line maybe three times in six years, which is remarkably rare. In fact, everything ran so well, and we finished early on so many days, that in our last two seasons they actually cut a whole day out of our production on each episode, yet we still managed to finish at a reasonable hour. I wrote an entire book in my trailer during my free time. Monica Potter launched a beautiful line of home goods. Dax Shepard wrote and directed a film. Joy Bryant started a clothing line. Erika Christensen cycled seventy million miles across the city. We had satisfying jobs that also gave us room to grow, travel, and have lives.
To an exceptional degree, there was thought and care put into our well-being. The catering was excellent. Some days we had a vegan chef, on other days a Hawaiian poke bar. There was a smoothie station and freshly baked cookies every day at lunch. Once in a while we’d have an In-and-Out truck (awesome burgers), Kogi truck (Roy Choi’s tasty Korean fusion tacos), or Van Leeuwen artisanal ice cream cart as a special treat. There was a costume parade on Halloween, carol singers at Christmas, and on our last day of the year a mariachi band during lunch to send us off.
Harrumph. This is somewhat irritating. They do not do these things at my job.
But wait, there’s more! As part of the season five finale, a few of us got to go to Hawaii and stay at the Four Seasons hotel in Maui! Peter and Monica filmed for a few hours while I sipped mai tais by the pool!
Okay, you’re right, this is starting to be a little sickening.
I’m not finished! Add to that the incredible stories we got to tell. Our show was about family and relationships, subjects that are about to become against the law on network television unless the family is also full of tattooed serial killer zombie firefighters who live in Chicago. Plus I got to work not only with my incredible TV family but also with fun guests like Billy Baldwin and Jason Ritter and Ray Romano. Which reminds me: I have a fear that I’ve already gone through all the tall actors in Hollywood and there may be none left to play my love interests in things. It’s unusual to find very tall actors here—more of them than you might guess are really handsome shorties secretly standing on apple boxes. I’m five foot nine, so this is a serious matter of career survival for me, and I’m afraid I’ve already worked with more than my fair share of guys I can literally look up to: Dax and Peter and Craig and Sam from Parenthood are all unusually tall, Scott Patterson and David Sutcliffe and Scott Cohen on Gilmore Girls could have started a basketball team, and Joel McHale, whom I did A Merry Friggin’ Christmas with, is a hilarious and muscly giant whose massive arms could double as legs. How long can this lucky streak really continue? I think Liam Neeson might be the only suitably sized actor left. Talk about turning tables, Mr. Neeson; this time it is I who will be coming after you!