CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 8/22/08

A Quirky Character:
Monk's Andy Breckman

By jason davis

CS Weekly delves into the neurotic details of USA's veteran mystery series Monk with creator Andy Breckman.

A folk singer before he abandoned the stage for the writer's room, Andy Breckman carved out a niche for himself as a comedy scribe for shows like Late Night With David Letterman and Saturday Night Live. After scripting a series of films including Arthur 2: On the Rocks, I.Q., and Rat Race, he took the unexpected plunge into dramatic television with Monk. Now in its seventh season, the USA series chronicles the crimes solved by Adrian Monk (Tony Shalhoub), a former homicide detective plagued with copious neuroses and a substantial case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Aided by his assistant, Natalie Teeger (Traylor Howard), Mr. Monk uses his obsession with detail to aid the San Francisco PD with investigations that would stump less sensitive investigators.

Why did you give up folk singing for writing?
It was not my decision. I might still be doing it if things had gone a little better for me. I did it in my 20s…toured a bit writing these semi-folk songs…and by the end of my run, I was starting to get jobs writing comedy and they were paying a lot more than any folk gig. I had a young family, and it was just time to hang up my spurs. I was being paid well for one job and not being paid anything for the other, so the decision was made for me.

You spent much of the '80s doing sketch-oriented comedy and films, how did you get involved with a series like Monk?
I wasn't looking to do television. I was writing crappy failed movies—that was my trademark. When people wanted a crappy failed comedy, they'd come to me. Some failed worse than others, some broke even, a few I was even proud of, but I had a string of movies produced, and that's what I thought my life would be. About eight years ago, I had a meeting with David Hoberman, who I knew as a movie executive. He used to run Hollywood Pictures, and when that folded, he was producing features and had a television development deal with ABC. He was looking for television ideas to satisfy that part of his contract. I met with him and pitched some movie ideas and we didn't spark to anything. Then, he mentioned this idea he had for a television series about a cop who suffers from OCD. Since he's alive, I'll have to give him credit. If he dies before you publish this story, I'll have to amend it that version of it—I'll take full credit for the idea.

How did you develop his idea into a series?
Well, it had comedy elements and it also had mystery elements. The comedy stuff I'd done well and often in my career, but nobody had ever hired me to write mysteries before. I had been a mystery fan my entire life—I grew up reading John Dickson Carr, Arthur Conan Doyle, and all the classic mysteries. It was my first opportunity to mix my two passions: comedy and mystery. I had been preparing my whole life for this job.

What sort of research into the OCD portion of the concept did you do?
The truthful answer is embarrassingly little. I talked to a doctor. I must have gone online for a few minutes. I read a book called The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing. Sometimes, I'm contacted by medical groups who are working with OCD patients and they're always disappointed—I don't know much about it at all, to be honest, but I knew it was very real and I knew that everyone, including myself, had some symptoms. I knew people could relate to it easily—everyone has a small obsession or eccentricity, so they can relate to what we put Monk through.

How do you break a typical episode of Monk?
I had never worked on a scripted series before, so I didn't know what the process was. We taught ourselves how to break these stories. I don't know how other shows do it, but we kind of gang-bang it. We have five or six writers on staff—sometimes there's a freelance writer in the room—and we sit around a big table in a southern New Jersey office and we talk through it. It takes us five or six working days and a lot of three-by-five cards on the board to work through the mechanics of the story, and we generate a 15-page outline in a week. Then, it's given to someone on our staff or a freelancer to go out and write a writer's draft.

Some shows, dramas especially, the writer meets the executive producer one on one. It's not really done as a big group like we do. I think it certainly helps with the comedy element. We write it more like a sitcom—everybody in the room chiming in. It's not only more effective; it's more fun, and is, by far, my favorite part of the process.

Where do you start the story?
We start with what I call a "nugget"—a cool mystery that feels fresh to me. They're usually not whodunits, they're usually whydunits or impossible crimes —locked-room mysteries. We always start with that—a cool way to kill somebody or a cool problem that the killer is facing. Unlike Law & Order, they're not ripped from today's headlines, and unlike CSI, they're not high-tech. They're actually very low-tech. My favorite stories are ones that could have been written 120 years ago by Arthur Conan Doyle.

The stories do have a Sherlock Holmes quality to them.
Exactly. We never get credit for it. We work hard on these stories, and then when people give their feedback, it's always about some moment Tony Shalhoub had as an actor, which is fine. It's a little frustrating for the writers who have worked so hard on these stories. We have been nominated for four Edgar Awards, and we have fun bragging about that.

When Monk's original assistant, Sharona (Bitty Schram), was replaced with Natalie by season three, how did you refine the relationship between Monk and his closest associate?
The challenge there was to replace Sharona and bring a fresh voice to the mix, but, at the same time, not shake up the formula that had gotten us where we were. She was familiar, but fresh. At the end of the day, she had many qualities that Sharona had, but, over the years, Traylor Howard has made the character her own.

Monk's ongoing investigation of his wife Trudy's (Melora Hardin) murder has been a component of the show since the beginning. Do you have a timeline and resolution for that story, or is it something you just develop as you go?
I have been saying since we began that I know who killed Trudy and I know how to end the series, but it hasn't been true until very recently. The answer is the same—yes, I know who killed Trudy—and this time, it is true. No one else knows—just the writers and myself. Even Tony Shalhoub does not know.

Is it an ending you devised during last year's finale, "Mr. Monk is on the Run," when you killed off the primary suspect?
No, I've had it for a few years. I know exactly the note to end this thing on. I don't want to say I can't wait, because I'd love the show to go on another year or so, but when the time is right, I'll be ready.

What do you look for when you hire writers for Monk?
I have found that comedy guys have been able to learn how to write a mystery, but mystery guys have trouble learning how to be funny. You can't learn how to be funny—either you were beaten up in first grade at recess or you weren't. The formula that we have for Monk is so quirky and unusual that even veteran mystery guys—guys who've written mystery shows and novels—have trouble pitching us stories. Most of the stories have been generated in house. We've been doing the show for seven years—over 100 episodes—and I have only bought two pitches. Heard hundreds; bought two.

What's your proudest achievement on the show?
All the elements were there in the pilot. I got the pilot right. We look at the pilot like our Constitution. Whenever we have a question of whether a tone for something is right, we can go back to the pilot and use it as our compass even to this day. I'm also proud that it's a show families can watch it together.

What advice do you wish someone had given you when you started out writing?
My three rules for writers are:

One—Live below your means, because there's not any security, and God knows it's not a tenured position.

Two—Don't read Variety, because it can only depress you—someone younger than you is doing better than you every day.

Three—Don't believe a word they say until the big check clears—it's all bullshit 'til the check clears.

So, those are my tree rules: live below your means, don't read Variety, and don't believe a word they say. I don't follow them all, but those are my rules.

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.

Monk courtesy Universal Studios Home Entertainment

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