Is TV The New Film?

If you haven’t seen Band of Brothers or The Pacific, stop reading, buy the box set, and come back in 20 odd hours one step closer to finding meaning in life. They’re that good. Executive producer and head writer Bruce McKenna took the Second World War stories of the 101st Airborne Division fighting from France to Germany, and the 1st Marine Division battling their way through the deadly Pacific theatre to HBO and created some of the most memorable TV series to date.

Starting out as a journalist, corporate report writer and off-off Broadway producer, it took six years before Bruce sold his first script idea to Working Title Films. Now he’s a highly successful and sought-after scriptwriter, has worked with Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg and won Writers’ Guild, Golden Globe and Emmy awards.

But why does he write for TV instead of film? Why not make Band or Pacific for the silver screen? I caught up with Bruce to talk about just that.

Epic WW2 TV at its best: Band of Brothers

Bruce explains that the reason for his ideas never being able to work as films is all down to the stink potential.

“Most ‘outsiders’ don’t realise how collaborative the process of film making is,” he says. “Your producers influence the script, the studio, the director and the actors.” So that’s why many modern movies stink. Big budget 3D messes or anything from Michael Bay leaps to mind.

“Usually the bigger the budget, the higher the stink potential,” Bruce adds.

But that’s not all. There’s also the problem of what Bruce calls the “Hollywood studio mentality” that uses the business model of making a “really expensive film and releasing it in as many theatres as possible” to try and break the box office record.

“Story has become secondary to spectacle because they have to get as many butts in the seats as quickly as possible.” It’s the age-old problem of corporations trying to take the money out of your wallet and the story out of your film. It’s just what Mark Kermode said about movie studios making stupid films to sell seats.

But with TV Bruce had much more control over the whole process. Although they were made to sell well, he says that the aim was never to make a show that was “bland, clichéd and destined to appeal to the broadest number of people. Like Cheerios.” He did pick commercial material to be “broadly appealing” but that also requires a good story. Apparently that is the key, “Band and Pacific were full of spectacle, but only in the service of the characters,” he says, something that a lot of recent films lack.

Maybe that’s why Band and Pacific are both masterpieces and are still flying off the shelves. Somewhere along the way, writing corporate reports and producing off-off Broadway paid off, and in a big way.

The amazingly successful Pacific

So what’s next for Bruce? There’s a classic western series set in 1870s New Mexico airing on TNT and an HBO pilot about the world of petroleum that we’ve got to look forward to. He’s also back in the Pacific theatre risking the stink with a film about the Battle of Midway, and an adaptation of the Chinese Epic The Water Margin, with Wolfgang Peterson attached to direct.

And how does he feel about remastering Band in 3D? “I would disembowel myself before I ever remastered Band into 3D,” he says. Fair point.