David J. Rosen Promises “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed”: Crafting the Tonal Tightrope of Apple TV’s Dark Comedy

Screenwriter David J. Rosen (Sugar, Citadel) was browsing through his spam for any incorrectly filed emails that should have landed in his inbox. Then he saw an advertisement for “supplements” with MAXIMUM PLEASURE GUARANTEED in the subject line in ALL CAPS. It stuck with him and became the title for his TV series which wasn’t about an online pharmacy selling supplements.

Rosen’s Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is about a newly-divorced soccer mom Paula Sanders (Tatiana Maslansky) who’s convinced she’s witnessed a murder while chatting with her online, partially-clothed companion. Her life spirals out of control when she’s implicated in a murder investigation while trying to secure custody of her daughter.

David Rosen spoke with Creative Screenwriting Magazine about his intention and creative process for his TV series.

What Is Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed Saying About The World Today?

The same technology that allows us to talk to each other silos people in their homes alone. The show is about someone who tried to reach out through the internet, through the windows that we all stare into, to try to find a little bit of hope and happiness, and ended up getting slapped down and stuck in her own rear window plot.

It is about is about the truth and how a lot of it unavoidable now that everyone has their own truth. Truth isn’t one objective thing anymore. It’s obsolete.

Paula is searching for truth on the show. She’s a fact checker, a job that also is becoming obsolete as magazines are scaling back on their staffs. So, I thought it was really interesting to put someone here whose life is the truth, and having to find the truth or her version of it.

It’s about who you can trust, but also it’s about parenting and having a North star. Paula’s North star is her daughter Hazel (Nola Hazel). I have kids and thinking about all the sacrifices we’re willing to make. Some of the mistakes Paula makes because she doesn’t want to take any chances with losing her kid.

David J. Rosen

I think she would have handled things in the beginning differently if custody of her daughter wasn’t something that was on the line.

The Initial Pitch For The Show Was ‘Soccer Mom Meets Cam Boy.’ How Did You Flesh Out The Idea?

I started once the writer’s room began. Everything was a mishmash.

As I started in the development process of it, I went linearly. The first scene I wrote was the first scene of the pilot, and then I tried to logically move forward. I don’t always do that. Sometimes I’ll step back and say, ‘This is the story.’ But I didn’t do that in this case. I put the character in this position and then I asked, ‘What would the next step be? What would actually happen from here? These are the pressures on Paula.’

I mentally composed some music while I wrote the first two episodes. Once we were picked up to series and had a writers’ room, we stepped back. I didn’t really change much in the first two episodes, but we used that as a base. And then we talked about what might happen later and those kind of puzzle pieces.

Discuss The Energy and Tone Of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed.

I feel like the pilot’s a little bit slower than the other episodes because because most of the time we spend juggling the normal world and the abnormal worlds. I guess you want to call it the caper world. We spend a little bit of time setting up Paula her office, in her day to day, before we drop the bomb of her seeing the attack during a “chat session,” which then starts to spiral.

It is pulpy and propulsive by design. By making it a half hour as opposed to an hour show, it meant we’re not going to cut away to slower stories like someone else who worked at the job or who had a romance happening. That might slow things down.

We really wanted to stay within what it feels like to be this single working mom juggling all that stuff as well as being involved in a murder. So by staying with Paula more, it made my foot go down on the accelerator harder and kept us in the juicy bits more.

What Aspects Of The Writing Did You Need To Focus On The Most In The Writers’ Room?

The development process took quite a while. I had a rough map of where we were going. I didn’t know how we were going to get there, but I knew some of the things that we would do.

The way that it worked with the writers was telling them the things that are important to me. I don’t care how we get there, but the story needs to feel naturalistic – like these things could happen. Paula’s a regular person in irregular circumstances.

We want to be able to empathize with that part. She doesn’t have some special skill we didn’t know about and and we want to be surprising to the audience. But if we can’t be surprising, then let’s be really satisfying.

I think really early on we realized comic thrillers or ‘comic slash anything’ is very fraught. If you make it too funny, you take all the air out of the balloon of the thriller and the stakes because it feels like a comedy. You might also make the thriller too thin to be a good enough thriller.

We decided we’re going to write the best thriller we can write, and populate it with characters who we all know, that make us laugh, are cynical, are the worry warts or whatever. The comedy will come from those characters.

As we wrote more, we asked what would each character do in this situation. They might do something funny.

Paula (Tatiana Maslany) and Webcam Model Brandon Flynn. Photo courtesy of Apple TV

Raising The Stakes With Two-track Stories – Murder and Custody Case

One of the ideas of having this custody battle was that we could put it on the same track as what’s happening with the crime. You had the stakes of the thing that she cares most about in the world, her daughter, being on the same timeline as her having to prove that she has nothing to do with a murder, and also not get killed herself.

It was very strategic to start with Paula getting pulled into this world by finding the body. In the next episode, we find out she was there when the killer was there. She escapes, and, by the end of episode, she feels like everything is okay. But the audience realizes, the killer isn’t going to give up.

So, at the end of the second episode, the police think there might be something more with Paula. And there’s the dramatic irony of the killer trying to find her. So immediately going into episode three, we’ve raised these stakes quite a bit.

And then, we have to have some fun and games where the killer can’t get there immediately. But we can’t not let them ever get there.

We have ten episodes. We’d always kept thinking about how can we use the things that we have to do to tell a good story and not be cheating to escalate. What’s the small twist or turn we can do? We kept looking at the different pressure points, from all three sides. Prison is a possibility for Paula.

The way to unify these two storylines was by making sure the stakes were kept really high. The stakes of  a good thriller murder mystery usually are, ‘I don’t want to die or I don’t want to go to jail.’ Here, the stakes were both of those plus the biggest one, ‘I could lose my daughter.’

Paula could immediately call the police and tell them what’s happened, but she chooses not to because she’s just gotten off the phone with her ex who is threatening to take custody of their daughter.

Paula knows that if he knew about her with sex workers and being  at the scene of a murder, it would be game over for her. She makes a mistake early on, because of the custody story, that puts her in the spotlight with the police in the murder story. From the beginning, they start breeding themselves together.

Paula (Tatiana Maslany) and Karl (Jake Johnson) Photo courtesy of Apple TV

How Has Paula Evolved As A Person During The Season?

When we start with her, she says, ‘I’m barely treading water.’ We see her at work and she really would like that promotion. By the seventh episode, she’s in the bathroom with her boss insisting,‘ I deserve that promotion.’

As awful as this thing that’s happening to her is, it’s also making her realize she can fend for herself. She can figure things out. She’s gaining confidence as she goes. We talk about the first season as the coming of age of a mom. She’s always loved her child who is number one in her life. But now, she’s willing to fight.

She’s gaining confidence and becoming more true to herself. It’s a trip of self-identity. The whole series will take us to the end of that. But it is the first big steps on that journey that count.

by Staff Writer

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