CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 6/20/08

Taking Another Hit:
Weeds' Jenji Kohan

By jason davis

Before Showtime lit up the fourth season of its drug-dealing dramedy Weeds this week, CS Weekly talked to creator Jenji Kohan to get the goods on creating and running a hit series on pay cable.

The daughter of Emmy-winning comedy writer Buz Kohan (The Academy Awards) and novelist Rhea Kohan, and the sister of Will & Grace co-creator David Kohan, Weeds creator Jenji Kohan agrees that there's "certainly a genetic imperative to write." That drive propelled her career through hit series such as Tracey Takes On…, Sex and the City, and The Gilmore Girls before she sold the pitch to Showtime that finds her deep in the minutia of the drug trade four years later.

Why did you become a writer?
I had an ex-boyfriend who said I had a better chance of being elected to congress than getting on the staff of a television show. So, I guess, spite. [laughs]

How did you land your first writing job?
I got my first job on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. I had written a Simpsons and a Seinfeld spec, which had got me my agent. And for my agent, I wrote a Roseanne and he sent some combination of those three as specs and that's what got me my first job.

How did the idea for Weeds occur to you?
I wanted to do an outlaw show. I went looking for an illegal behavior. The theme of the show—the outlaw notion—preceded the pot thing. Marijuana became a really good vehicle for the things I wanted to talk about.

Why did you choose marijuana?
It was a big topic. At the time, Prop 215 had passed in California. The clubs were coming in. It was also an illegal activity, but it was funny. It wasn't taken seriously. Best of all, it was something that crossed all lines—gender, political, racial—there was a pot smoker in every family.

Where did the suburban aspect of the story come from?
My mother always used to say that all the good stories are in the Valley. I think she's right. As I was seeing how much more homogenized people's lives were looking, I felt like there was more effort being made to make your life interesting when your surroundings weren't. I found that compelling.

As a career-oriented person with three kids, how does your life relate to Nancy's struggle to be a businessperson while raising two children?
I certainly have a much better support system. I don't think what I do puts my children at risk. It's not autobiographical. I'm not a danger junkie. I lead a pretty conventional life outside of the show, and this is my fun. This is my sport, my excitement, and my entertainment. Whereas Nancy goes out in the world and finds things that are really dangerous, I can be edgy and dangerous on the page and then go home and walk the dog. I certainly take issues from my life, but I think I'm very different from Nancy. Also, since Mary-Louise began inhabiting this character, she brings a lot to it too.

Was Weeds a difficult series to sell?
No. It was surprisingly easy. I think Showtime was looking to make noise. I pitched it in five words: suburban widow pot-dealing mom. They went for it. Then I had to write the pilot—which freaked me out because I didn't know what I was doing.

As a new showrunner, what did you have to learn?
It wasn't really my first time. I'd had two other pilots shot. What was really interesting was that it was my first single-camera [show] that I was in charge of. What I learned with that was how editing is a third rewrite. It's an opportunity to re-invent the show or make up for things you might have skipped along the way. Being given the keys to the store is a lot of responsibility. It's exhausting. Ultimately, everything falls on your head, and you have to be responsible for it.

What sort of research do you do for the drug-dealing elements of the show?
Extensive research. The show started as a notion that stemmed from theme, more than the subject of pot. Truthfully, given my choice, pot's not really my drug [laughs]. So, I had to do a lot of research. There's no shortage of people who are willing to talk about their experiences or hook you up with their dealers and have them talk to you. Then, there're books and the internet—we were very thorough.

Weeds revels in the economic aspect of the characters' lives. Is that something you set out to do?
Absolutely. No one talks about money. We want to talk about everything that people won't talk about: race, money, politics. There are really no sacred cows here, and this is our opportunity to step up on our little soapbox—hopefully not preaching—to express what we're thinking and talk about it.

Every character on this show is a master of self-delusion. Is there a challenge to writing people who are deluding themselves?
No. To a certain extent, everyone deludes themselves. It's a necessary thing to function these days. There are these standards that are set for behavior and the way to be that no one can realistically live up to or achieve. So, on some level, everyone is failing and everyone feels that. It's comforting to know that it's a universal thing you're going through.

The series straddles the divide between comedy and drama—do you see that muddying of the waters as the future of TV?
As a viewer, it's something I enjoy, and as a writer, it's something that I relish. I don't know what the future of writing for television is, but I love the model we've set up. If we want to be funny, we can be balls-out funny. And if we want to take a moment and get dramatic, we can go for it and not have to follow any specific structure or adhere to three jokes a page. It's very freeing.

How does working with Showtime differ from working in broadcast television?
They don't micromanage. They know we're good at our jobs and they let us do them. That's so rare.

Each season finale seems to obliterate what has gone before and spins the next year off in a new direction—is that an intentional mechanism to reinvigorate the show?
Absolutely. It's really important to me to keep it interesting for myself and for the writers. No one's in here to do the same thing over and over again. We set up the finale every year as a pilot for the new season so we can feel invigorated and excited.

What changes do you have in store for season four?
We're in a whole new location—down south by the border in a beach town. It's a life that I think Nancy thought she should be living. She's out of her little box. The room was really excited [about] the election year, immigration, world trade policies, and language barriers and all the stuff that was going on at the border. So, we took a field trip down there and there were just so many stories that we were dying to tell.

Will L.A.-based characters like Heylia and Conrad be reduced to recurring characters?
No, they're gone. We like, as much as we can, to reflect life. Certain relationships in your life wax and wane or peter out. Heylia and Nancy have certainly worn each other out. There was too much water under the bridge and too much had gone on. Nancy and Conrad weren't going to be. It wasn't working as a couple and, realistically, they would have drifted off. I wouldn't mind doing a spin-off with them. I'd love to do a show set in a pot club or something. But, for where our characters are going—where the story was going—they were a chapter in her life and she's exploring new worlds now.

How long do you see the show lasting?
I don't know. My contract's up this year. As long as my team is still enthusiastic and wants to keep going, we've got a good thing. Part of why we changed this season up so dramatically was people were getting restless last year.

What do you look for when you hire writers for Weeds?
Talent. I read everything that gets submitted…only through agents, so I'm not open to lawsuits. If they're a great writer, it doesn't necessarily have to be in the voice of the show, I think talent will out. I have two playwrights and a short story writer on my staff and the staff's only six people. They're really good at what they do.

Can you describe the process of plotting a season and breaking an episode?
We meet a few months before production starts, as a group, and we talk about what we want to do this season. We get a very general arc of how the season's going to be going. Then we start getting more specific and break down what's happening in each episode. We do a loose room outline. Then I'll assign episodes to individual writers and they will either puff up the outline or just go to script, depending on how much we've talked about it. They'll do a draft, and usually the draft will go back to the room and everyone will throw in their two cents. Then it comes back to me and I do a final rewrite on every script, just for consistency of voice—I'm a little bit of a control freak. [laughs]

What advice do you wish someone had given you when you started out writing?
You're as good as your last script. You've got to keep doing it. You have to be in the world—a lot of writers go from writer's room to writer's room and they don't have life experience to pull from. Their scope gets small.

Be good. And if you're not good, do something else.

Jason Davis has been the DVD Manager for CS Weekly, a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and has written for Cinescape.com, MSN.com, and created the TV series Studio 13, which ran on Lorne Michaels' Burly TV network. He lives in the small space left over by his ever-expanding library of books, movies, and music.

Jenji Kohan, Weeds courtesy Showtime Networks

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