‘The Good Place’ Creator Michael Schur Forgets Nothing — Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast 55
Michael Schur says showrunner Greg Daniels taught him how to write for TV — first as a writer on “The Office,” and then as co-creators of “Parks and Recreation.” However, one lesson serves as his guiding principle: The difference between good and bad long-term storytelling boiled down to what Daniels called “institutional memory.”
“It really annoyed him when characters seemingly didn’t learn anything,” said Schur on IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast. “[Characters] would do something, act in a certain way, and then eight episodes later there would be a different story and act in the same way they did the first time. [It’s] as if their memories were erased and they didn’t learn anything. They didn’t grow and they weren’t real people who had lives.”
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With “The Good Place,” Schur explores how people grow and better themselves. In season two, this is complicated by the demon (Ted Danson), who constantly reboots their afterlives.
“In ‘The Good Place,’ that idea is taken to sort of an extreme,” said Schur. “Not only are the characters trying to emotionally learn things, we [also] want them to progress as people — but then there’s a weird variable that their memories are constantly being erased. It’s sort of an extreme-sports version of this lesson I learned writing for Greg, which is not only do the rules need to stay the same, but everyone’s memory needs to be additive as you go along. If you don’t do that, you’re going to write a bad show.”
Schur also talked about how after the show’s season-one finale, which had a huge, world-altering plot twist, it was vital to ensure the audience wasn’t anticipating the next big turns in the story. Schur held up filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan as a cautionary tale — who, after a couple of movies, fans would guess the film’s twist after seeing a two-minute trailer. It’s one of many aspects of creating a world-building, plot twisty, philosophy-fueled, 30-minute sitcom that gives Schur sleepless nights, but that has also lent itself to creating one of the richer, more layered stories on network TV.
The Filmmaker Toolkit podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Stitcher, SoundCloud and Google Play Music. Previous episodes include:
- “Atlanta” and “This Is America” Director Hiro Murai
- “First Reformed” Director Paul Schrader On ‘Cracking Open the Audiences’ Skulls’
- “The Rider” Director Chloé Zhao Treats Non-Actors Like Pros
- ‘Lady Bird’: How Greta Gerwig Found Her Unique Rhythm in the Written Word
- Darren Aronofsky: ‘Keeping Audiences on the Edge of Their Seat’ in ‘mother!’
- Jordan Peele Talks About His Worst Fear in Making ‘Get Out’
- Call Me by Your Name’ Director Luca Guadagnino Hates Actors Who ‘Act’
- ‘Mudbound’ Director Dee Rees Breaks the Rules of Narrative
- “The Florida Project” Director Sean Baker
- Andrea Arnold on “American Honey”
- Barry Jenkins on “Moonlight”
- Ezra Edelman on “OJ: Made in America”
- “The Witch” director Robert Eggers on adapting “Nosferatu”
- Eric Heisserer on adapting “Arrival”
- Mia Hansen-Love & David Ehrlich’s Top 25 Video Countdown
- Damien Chazelle and Editor Tom Cross on “La La Land”
- James Gray on “Lost City of Z”
- ‘Black Mirror’: Why Charlie Brooker Wrote ‘San Junipero’
- Sam Esmail on Shooting “Mr. Robot” Like an Indie Film
- David Lowery on simplicity and time in “A Ghost Story”
- Kogonada on Transitioning from Video Essays to ‘Columbus’
- Safdie Brothers on Building “Good Time” Around Robert Pattinson
- Kirsten Johnson discussing her life as a “Cameraperson”
The music used in this podcast is from the “Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present” score, courtesy of composer Nathan Halpern.
