Why Uncool Is Cool: An Interview with Paul Feig

Paul Feig: But I know that people go into stuff that way! You don’t get very far because places won’t let you do it. I mean, that’s what the Internet is great for. You can make whatever you want and put it out there. That’s something I never grew up with.

That may change the way people think and it will result in more pure things being made, but at the end of the day, but when you’re making a TV show—

Popshifter: It’s a different world [in terms] of response.

The cast of Undeclared
© Alison Dyer

Paul Feig: Yeah, then you’re gonna have to toe the line, “toe the line” is a little too strong. . . right after Freaks, I had a lot of studios come to me and make a deal to do more TV shows. Because it was always like, “We love your voice; we want your voice.” So then you write a pilot and then it was like, “Oh, well, we want your voice, but not doing this.”

Popshifter: (laughs)

Paul Feig: Or, “Well, we want your voice, but can it be a more commercial version of that?” I developed television for a couple of years after Freaks and then bailed out because TV was in a weird place at that moment and they didn’t want my voice at all.

You know, Judd had trouble with Undeclared, which was a great show. But TV wasn’t in that place. So then I went and did movies, and my movies were two huge failures. (laughs) But I’m proud of them.

Popshifter: (laughs)

Paul Feig: And suddenly, in the last couple years, working in television (directing) and still trying to get movies made, I was like, “Wait, hold on, TV is actually in an amazingly great place right now.” I really think we’re in kind of a “golden age.” The amount of great shows on the air; it’s higher than it’s been in a long time.

When I was developing my comedies after Freaks and Geeks, I wanted to do single-camera half hour shows. And there was an edict: you could not do it. I sold a half-hour Sci Fi comedy show to NBC and they loved the idea. They bought it but they would not let me write it as a single-camera comedy; it had to be written as a multi-camera, in-front-of-an-audience show.

And suddenly, there I am writing a sitcom, and it’s like, “This isn’t what I do!” (laughs). I was really happy with it and they really liked it and they just went, “We love it and we have no idea what to do with it, where to put it on our schedule, or how to promote it.” But one day maybe I’ll pull it out again, because now you could do it as a single-camera show.

The cast of 30 Rock
© NBC/Mitchell Haaseth

The only scary thing is there’s a lot of single-camera shows on right now, but it’s not particularly going through the roof, like The Office. Even 30 Rock is not up in the ratings. And so you feel them getting a little “nervous cattle” about it. Still, the biggest money-making comedies on TV are multi-camera.

That said, I think that the tone of comedy and drama right now are in a place where they were not five years ago. And that’s exciting. So I actually find that’s kind of brought my head back to TV and I have no desire to do movies right now. But I still want to do books; I’ve got a book coming out.

Click to read more from Paul Feig on. . .

Directing Freaks and Geeks
Directing Arrested Development
His obsessive knowledge of laugh tracks
More on laugh tracks, plus the “comedy of innocence”
Dealing with Internet jerks
The outsider, plus embarrassing fanboy encounters
“If it’s fun, it’s fun.”
Music of today vs. music of yesterday
The Hollywood version of funny
What’s cool and uncool
Listening to “the notes”
Where television is today
The fallout from Unaccompanied Minors
His new show Kath and Kim and his upcoming book

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