On the topic of television pilots, I remember you were acting in a pilot for a US version of Man-child, what ever happened to that?

KS: Yeah, we did it and then I don't think Showtime is picking it up. They made three pilots and I think they only picked up one and Man-child wasn't one of them. It was weird because they tested it twice; first the production company, Sony, tested it and it tested through the roof and then Showtime tested it and it tested even better. So it seemed like a virtual no-brainer - it had a great cast with John Corbett and James Purefoy, Paul Hipp and Laura Ford - but for whatever reason Showtime decided to go with a more serious half-hour drama with David Duchovny in the lead and didn't go with Man-child.

But he's already had a series!

KS: Yeah, but, I mean, maybe that's why you go with him because he's already had a series! I had a call from one of the Cullen brothers - Mark Cullen who with Rob Cullen were the two guys who did the show - and I was on the first day of Reaper up in Vancouver and he left a message saying Showtime wasn't picking it up. He sounded so despondent and I just thought it was a joke. I was thinking at the end of the call he'd be like, "I'm just kidding, we start shooting in May." But I called him back and he was like, "No they didn't pick it up."

And it had such a pedigree, man, it was a Darren Star production, had Corbett and Purefoy both who had been on successful shows, but they didn't pick it up, which was a shame because it was a really, really funny show. I saw it all put together and it was funny, and the fact that it tested as well as it did... That just led us to believe, like, "How can they say no? What excuse can they possibly give?" They can't pick the show up because it's really funny and it tested through the roof twice?

They test with fifty people and hold fifteen back to do a focus group. And twelve out of fifteen women - and the show is so not geared towards women, it's very-much a guy show - twelve out of fifteen women said that they would drop what they were doing to watch the show on a weekly basis. The guy doing the test was like, "We haven't seen numbers like that since Desperate Housewives." Showtime decided to go another way. I'll never understand TV.

You mentioned it in the same breath as Weeds, and I love that show.

KS: It would have been a great companion piece to Weeds.



In general I think cable shows tend to be a cut above what the networks are producing.

KS: Totally, and that was the thing about Man-child which turned out to be a negative because the only place it could have thrived would have been on cable TV. It was very candid, very frank and loaded with vulgarity. In a world where Showtime says no to it, Showtime won't let it go to offer it to HBO and at HBO it'd kind-of be a no-brainer because you've got Corbett who was on Sex and the City for them and Purefoy who was on Rome for them. But when Showtime nixes something they don't want to give it up in case HBO does pick it up and it becomes huge and successful and then Showtime looks stupid.

So even if Showtime was willing to let it go and say HBO passed there's nowhere to go after that because where can you air it in America that could let the show be what it is?

TV seems to be a tough medium to break. I would imagine that you wouldn't, at this stage of your career, have any struggle getting a movie made.

KS: Well, I think if I had an insanely ambitious, for me, type movie where it was like I need fifty, sixty million I think it'd be way more difficult. It would be cast dependent at that point. But the stuff I do is generally small budget so based on the audience that we have, in almost every case the Weinstein's just know they're going to make their money back at the very least and at the very most turn a nice profit off it as well. Keeping the budget small has kind-of worked for us inasmuch as we've never had trouble getting something done.

But on TV it seems it doesn't matter how much money it's going to cost or more importantly the pedigree attached to the show, it's much harder to get anything out there. Joss Whedon, for example, has an incredible writing pedigree and he's got to be one of the best writers working today and yet he gets a show greenlit and it gets cancelled after a handful of episodes air. He's turning to film because he can't get anything made on television. It's bizarre that it works like that.

KS: Yeah. There was a guy who worked on Reaper, the show-runner named Tom Spezialy, he was the show runner on Desperate Housewives and he said, "First season, three episodes in, clearly the show was a big-time hit, even then we were still getting notes from the network on how to make it better." They delivered a number one show and still they would note it to death. I can see how it's a frustrating process for anybody involved. I don't honestly know how people do it in TV. Now I know why people drink and do drugs because it's such a soul-killing, against-all-odds process.

You think about the number of pilot scripts that are written every year, only a portion of those scripts are selected to be developed, and then out of those selected developed few, only a marginal percentage of those will actually go forward to a pilot stage. And out of those pilots that get made even a smaller percentage make it to network. So I've kind-of learned through the process of Man-child and Reaper that when I see something on TV that I'm like, "This is absolutely dog-sh*t, how did this get on TV?" I will now treat it with a modicum of respect because it ran some insane gamut to get to where it got, to get on TV. Even the bad ones won an absolute lottery to find a slot.