Our show is more than a little autobiographical. We've depicted a more dramatic version of our real lives. Most of the moments in the show are things we've experienced ourselves, or to someone we know. The dialogue in one or two scenes is as close to verbatim to actual conversations we've had as memory will allow. There was actually a time during the writing process where I turned to my co-producers and said, "we have to go out tonight so I can write an episode this weekend." This isn't a new phenomenon. People write what they know and most of the time what they know is themselves.
What I didn't expect was how an episode we wrote that was a total dramatization or pure fiction somehow manifested itself in real life. Talk about weird. Now I don't want to give anything away, because some of these moments are too funny to believe. But here's a moment or two worth sharing. There's a scene where someone is watching a mindless wedding show, and as I was sitting in my living room compiling scripts for shooting that scene the next day, I was actually watching the very same wedding show. And I wasn't the only one on the production team doing the same thing, at the same moment. Weird, right?
Another example? We're shooting a scene where we're venting about how kids can be difficult sometimes. What teachers haven't had that conversation before? The hilarious part? While we're shooting we, hear a kid down the hall, in the pool screaming bloody murder during their swim class. Real life people. You can't script this stuff. Well, I guess you can...
I think balancing the show loosely based on my life while I continue to live my life, has made the whole process that much funnier. I live my life Monday-Friday and then film that life on Saturday and Sunday. Frequently, I live a moment that I wrote months before within days of filming it. As recently as this past weekend, I actually found myself quoting the show in a real-life conversation that was incredibly similar to a situation that my character had already experienced. That was freaky. It was like an out of body experience. I saw myself in the situation I had written and couldn't help but respond the way I had already acted. Talk about dejavu. Of course, then you think, which came first? Would I have naturally responded in that way had I not already written the scene for my character? Or did I write the scene because that's how I would've responded (and eventually did) in real life?
The downside of this is, of course, that our real lives sometimes bleed into the characters. With any creative team there are moments of tension throughout the production process and ours is no different. The key is to find solutions and channel that energy. Last week there was a particularly tense moment between myself and the lead actress, Kate. Boy did we channel all those emotions. Ironically, the scene we were filming directly after our disagreement was where our two characters are meeting up at work to apologize for calling each other out on our sh!t in an earlier scene. Oh the irony. You could cut the tension on set with a knife. The only problem was, our characters were supposed to make up and be friends again by the end of the scene, and we were clearly not ready to do that in real life. At least not by the end of the first take. Enter our acting skills. The weird part? By apologizing to each other's characters, the tension that had existed between us in real life also subsided.
Along the filming process we're also coming up with all sorts of material for season 2, should that come to be. I mean, at the very least there will be a script of season 2. (I already have 3 pages of notes and an outline for another 12 episodes.) In addition, as the actors are bringing the characters to life in their own ways, they're giving me so much to think about for their characters' futures. Side note: I believe writers should always be on set to observe the filming process of their material if they plan on doing future episodes/seasons. There are organic moments that happen that you may not be able to create with just your mind and a laptop. It is truly fascinating.
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