Brian Koppelman: recommendation

Transcript context

…Well, art, as you know because you’re such a dedicated consumer and thinker about great art, you care a lot about it. You can hear a piece, and it does something to you. Yes, if we look at the music, if we look at Bitches Brew just for a second, how it was received in its time and how people think of it now. On one hand, we could say, “Well, music can be reduced to just frequencies. These frequencies, for whatever reason that we don’t yet understand, are pleasing to us.” You may say, “Well, one has to come to Bitches Brew with an understanding of bebop, hard bop, this whole thing.” Or I might say to you, “I don’t think so. I think you could put that record on, in fact, to somebody who doesn’t come in expecting jazz to be something. They might be hit with it in a way that, suddenly, it nails them.” Which is to say that the effect that storytelling art has is, in a sense — because we don’t understand why — it’s magic. When you ask why there’s not more that’s better, it’s like it always comes down . . . Of course, as an economist, you might say, “Well, how are we incentivizing people to make this stuff? How are we drawing the best people into it?” I do think, on the whole, television is a writer’s medium, and that you need to incentivize and reward writers to be willing to turn themselves inside out to create amazing stuff. But I might flip it and say, “How much truly amazing stuff is there in any given art form at any given time you might take a snapshot of it?” Because so much stuff has to come together. The writing has to be incredible. First of all, the concept has to be one that nails the moment in time, you know, the way Franzen was talking about the duty you have to write the great American novel. It’s one that takes in and, in some way, processes the world that you’re living in. That could be a science fiction novel, right? It could be a historical novel, but in some way, it is hitting off the times in which you live. A great piece of television — whether it’s Mad Men, whether it’s the Larry Sanders Show, whether it’s NYPD Blue that I was talking about earlier, or if it’s The Sopranos — it needs to, conceptually, be something that the times want to engage with. It needs to have a writer or writers with an incredibly clear sense of purpose, and they have to be talented enough and ready to give what it takes. Then the magical alchemy of their words, the camera, and that group of actors has to take flight. You can hire really talented people, and sometimes it doesn’t work, and sometimes, suddenly, almost miraculously, it really does work. This is why someone like David Milch — that’s another book I would recommend. It’s Milch’s book, which is one of the best, maybe the best book ever written about television, the one that came out last year. s why someone like David Milch — that’s another book I would recommend. It’s Milch’s book, which is one of the best, maybe the best book ever written about television, the one that came out last year. When you think about a guy like that, who was able to write some of the best episodes of Hill Street, then NYPD Blue, and then create Deadwood — that does feel to me, as somebody who does this stuff, miraculous. Why has Israeli TV been so good in the last 10 years? Srugim, Shtisel, Prisoners of War. There’s a lot more, actually.…

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