187 | Writing For Multi-Cam Sitcoms (w/ Lopez vs Lopez Showrunner Debby Wolfe)

The Screenwriting Life with Meg LeFauve and Lorien McKenna

Meg LeFauve & Lorien McKenna

Tv & Film

4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Even though Debby Wolfe began her career writing "edgy, brooding feminist shorts" (her words), but really found her lane as a writer when she wrote a Modern Family spec that launched her career. Since then, she's written on a number of multi-cams, eventually arriving on Lopez vs. Lopez, which she's currently showrunning. Today, Debby discusses how she manages to produce at the pace Network TV requires, how she staffs, and the importance of character-driven comedy. Watch Season 2 of Lopez vs Lopez starting on Tuesday, April 2, 2024 with back-to-back episodes at 8/7c and 8:30/7:30c on NBC. New episodes air next day on Peacock. It will continue in those time slots going forward — which means, yes, you'll be getting two new episodes of the show per week! JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone welcome back to the screenwriting life. I'm Meg Lafour.
0:07.6	Loring can't be here today and I know she's totally bum because we've been so
0:10.8	looking forward and are thrilled to welcome to the show
0:13.4	the co-creator executive producer and showrunner of Lopez versus Lopez Debbie
0:18.6	Wolf. She's a comedy writer and a director who has written and produced for network cable and
0:23.7	streaming shows including Whitney one day at a time and love Victor among others.
0:27.8	Hi Debbie it's so wonderful to have you on the show welcome. you. Thank you for having me. Now we can't
0:35.2	wait to chat with you about all your work but first we're going to talk about
0:38.2	our weeks or what we like to call Adventures in Screenwriting. I'll go first because it's short and sweet. Well, it's not sweet. But I am in a
0:48.0	rewrite for a movie that the notes basically said, so let's say it was a movie about a family on a ski trip with a wolf.
1:00.0	And now their notes are literally like, does it have to be about a family?
1:03.5	Does it have to be a ski trip?
1:06.6	And what about that wolf?
1:08.1	And I'm like, this is everything,
1:11.0	like everything that was there from your original IP. So of course I've just spun into with my writing partner a slight ring of hell because we're trying to use IP that they don't want to use really and yet we need to use it.
1:26.0	And what I've learned is two important things about myself.
1:29.7	One is I cannot compartmentalize when I have anxiety about a story not working.
1:35.0	It doesn't it's not like I'll just put that to bed and I'm not working now so I won't think
1:40.0	about it. I'm waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning with literal thoughts about what's not working. I'm waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning with literal thoughts about what I could do or what's not working even though I'm sleeping. I'm clearly thinking about it in my sleep.
1:50.0	Part of my kid because I'm very tense because until the story works my brain is just going to
1:57.6	and I'm sure on a three camera you guys are going so fast I don't know how you do it. But my anxiety, though I did also realize a good thing, which is I was beating myself up for this, the fact that I couldn't
2:09.6	comprehend mentalize and that my anxiety was spinning me out.
	...

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