E6 SUNDAY, AUGUST 25, 2019 S LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR
Writer-producer Marc Guggen-
heim is launching Amazon’s epic
fantasy drama “Carnival Row,”
starring Orlando Bloom. He’s also
on the verge of wrapping up one of
the CW’s popular superhero
shows, “Arrow.” But he’s quick to
point out he should be a lawyer
right now.
He had been, for some years,
working as a commercial litigator.
But what began as an unexpected
favor — while in law school at Bos-
ton University, his brother, Eric,
then in film school at New York
University, asked him to help write
a couple of scripts — turned into a
sustained interest as he became
disillusioned with the legal system
and his competence.
“I was 29 years old. I was in my
fifth year of practice, which is when
you have to start thinking about
fishing or cutting bait on the whole
partnership track,” Guggenheim
says. “And two things were hap-
pening: I was developing more and
more of a following for the writing I
was doing, and I was appreciating
the law less and less. The bloom
was really falling off that rose. So, I
thought, ‘You know what? If I’m
ever going to do this, now is the
time.’ ”
Fittingly, his first official TV
writing gig came on a series from
another ex-lawyer: David E. Kel-
ley’s legal drama “The Practice.”
Other credits eventually included
“Law & Order,” “Eli Stone” and
“DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” the
latter of which he co-created. Then
there’s his current slate: He’s the
executive producer and showrun-
ner of “Carnival Row,” a Victorian
fantasy drama, which rolls out on
Amazon on Friday; and he co-cre-
ated “Arrow,” which heads into its
final season beginning Oct. 15 after
an eight-year run that spawned a
televisual universe for the CW. He’s
also running for one of the WGA
West Board of Directors seats in
the union’s election as part of the
slate opposing the current strategy
in the standoff with Hollywood’s
talent agencies.
Amid framed Billy Joel album
covers and superhero memorabilia
at his home office in Encino,
Guggenheim talked about how his
background in law has informed
his work, the challenge of breaking
in as a young writer today, and the
“Game of Thrones” shadow that
now hangs over every new fantasy
drama on TV.
Why “the next ‘Game of
Thrones’ ” label is “low-hanging
fruit”
[T]he frustrating thing is,
everyone’s comparing it to “Game
of Thrones.” [But] anyone who
sees the show I think instantly
knows, for good or ill, that “Carni-
val Row” has as much in common
with “Game of Thrones” as “Star
Wars” does to “Star Trek.” It par-
ticularly vexes Travis Beacham
because Travis wrote [the feature
film spec script] “A Killing on
Carnival Row” 17 years ago, long
before there was even “Game of
Thrones” the novel. So it’s a bum-
mer to be compared. I always said
comparisons don’t serve us well.
We’re our own thing.
But people have to write re-
views, people have to write arti-
cles, and it’s the low-hanging fruit.
It’s funny. I think with every proj-
ect I do, there’s some barrier to
entry. With “Eli Stone,” the barrier
to entry was this is a really weird
show. Oh, and by the way, we’re
premiere during the writers’
strike. No one was watching televi-
sion. With “Arrow,” the barrier to
entry was it’s a not well-known
comic book character, who in the
comics wears a Robin Hood hat
and has a goatee and has a boxing
glove arrow. With “Carnival Row,”
clearly the barrier to entry there is
this pall that “Game of Thrones”
casts.
On saving “Arrow” from
“jumping the shark”
A couple years ago, I think it
was the end of Season 4, I realized,
“Oh, I know how to keep the show
on the air for 20 years,” at least as
far as some of the fans. Each epi-
sode would be self-contained. It
would just be Oliver, Diggle and
Felicity in the bunker, or solving a
case of the week, with a billed
supervillain of the week. ... The
problem was, that was never the
show any of us were interested in
doing. I don’t think the actors were
interested in doing a show where
their characters didn’t evolve and
change. I know I certainly wasn’t
interested in writing a show with
characters [who] didn’t evolve and
change.
Once you make the decision
that the show is going to be con-
stantly changing and not be the
same thing, week in week out,
year in year out, you are immedi-
ately building in an expiration
date, because then you always
have to do something new. At
some point, you do run out of
RUNNING THE SHOW
Twists in a fantasy career
Marc Guggenheim went
from lawyer to writer. It’s a
skill set that’s served the
‘Carnival Row’ head well.
By Yvonne Villarreal
“MY SECRETweapon is I write very fast,” says Marc Guggenheim, “Carnival Row” showrunner.Photographs byAl SeibLos Angeles TimesMEMORABILIAat Guggenheim’s office includes a figurine from “Arrow,” which he co-created.FRAMEDBilly Joel paraphernalia and superhero items take up space at producer’s home office.things that are new, and that’s
when the show starts to lag and
become ... that’s when you risk
jumping the shark.What “Carnival Row” has in
common with “Star Trek”
One of my oldest memories
was sitting on the floor in my
bedroom and flipping through a
Superman comic. And my mother
came in and she’s like, “Oh, my
God, you can read!” She thought
she had a savant on her hands,
and I’m like, “No, I’m just looking
at the pictures.” I didn’t even
know where I got the comic from.
So yeah, genre’s always been a big
part of life, but for the longest
time it wasn’t a part of my writing.
It wasn’t until I was in my fifth
year in the business that I started
writing comic books profession-
ally. And it wasn’t until like the
end of my seventh year in the
business where I started merging
the comic-book side of my career
with television. “Eli Stone” was
what I would call soft genre, but
the first true genre show I worked
on was “FlashForward,” and that
was my seventh or eighth year in
the business.
I like the ethos of genre stories.
On the one hand, genre stories
tend to be very black and white.
There’s a protagonist, an antago-
nist, a good guy and a bad guy. On
the other hand, one of the great
things about genre is that you can
really delve into issues in a way
that’s more freeing than a non-
genre show can do, and “Carnival
Row’s” a perfect example of this.
“Star Trek,” of which I’m a huge
fan, is another great example. So I
love the fact that this medium
allows for both a lot of clarity and
a lot of gray, but it’s hard to articu-
late why something speaks to you
at such an early age.How being a showrunner is like
being a lawyer
I would say it informs me on a
thematic level, and it also informs
me on a practical level. Themati-
cally, one of the things I think
that’s great about law school is I
can’t really think of any other
academic endeavor where you’re
not just learning facts, you’re
learning how to think, and you’re
learning how to think differently.
And you’re mainly learning empa-
thy. You’re learning how to view
an issue from more than just your
own perspective. And that is an
absolute boon when it comes to
writing, where you need to write
from various different perspec-
tives. From a practical stand-
point, as a showrunner, it’s invalu-
able. Negotiating, problem-solv-
ing, thinking logistically, learning
how to write fast. My secret weap-
on is I write very fast, and that’s
because having to write a 50-page
brief in a night is not unheard of
when you’re a litigator. So you
learn very quickly not to be pre-
cious about your writing. You also
learn how to make decisions fast.Why it’s so much harder to break
into the TV business today
For one thing, there’s far more
writers. The competition is huge.
For another thing, I was able to
break in by virtue of my law career.
My first two jobs were on law
shows. That’s another genre
headed to the West — that has
gone away, for the most part. So it
would be incredibly, incredibly
challenging. Someone once said
to me, “Breaking into television is
a lot like breaking out of prison.”
The methodology that one person
uses doesn’t work for everybody
else.
I’m a big believer in reading
and writing. People ask, “Should I
go to film school? Should I take a
writing class?” and as someone
who didn’t go to film school and
didn’t take a writing class, I al-
ways impose my own experience
on them. I always say, “I really feel
like you learn by doing and you
learn by seeing it done, and even a
bad script will be educational.”
The next thing I say is, “Develop
and hone your craft.”
Unfortunately, I feel like nowa-
days in America we’ve replaced
ambition with entitlement, and
the thing that I see in a lot of
young writers who ask me advice
are, “I wrote the script. Why can’t I
get an agent?” Well, write more
than one script. Keep writing
scripts. Very, very, very few people
nail it the first time out.
It really does take time to
master the form, and it’s only
when you master the form that
you can start injecting some
artistic expression into it. And
that artistic expression needs to
be unique. ... The town is filled
with competent writers. Some
competent writers will get work,
but the vast majority won’t be-
cause writers are not hired for
competency. They’re hired for
their voice. It’s the one unique
thing that you have to offer that
no one else that you’re competing
with can. So what I always tell
young writers is, “Hone your craft.
Work to find that script that says
who you are as a writer. What
makes your voice so unique that it
has to be heard?” And that’s hard
to do. It’s really, really hard to do.
But when you can do it, you will
never lack for work.