MMF Q&A: John Lehr (10 Items or Less)
TBS’s 10 Items or Less premiered on the network for five episodes back in December of 2006. The series, which focuses on the employees and perhaps not-too-competent manager of a family-owned grocery store, was co-created by and stars John Lehr. Lehr first showed up on my radar back in the mid-nineties as characters in those first three Noah Baumbach films (Kicking and Screaming, Mr. Jealousy, Highball), and would always be one of those actors who would appear in a series causing me to point at the screen and say, “Oh, hey!” (He played Christina Applegate’s brother on Jesse, hosted ABC’s reality show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here, and has appeared on Friends and Once & Again amongst others). With 10 Items or Less, which returns to TBS for a second season on Tuesday January 15th, Lehr seems to have found the perfect project to play off of his rather extensive background in improvisation. Last week Lehr took some time to talk with MagneticMediaFed about the show’s second season, why he prefers improv to scripted dialogue and the type of audience he hopes his show will reach. Read the full interview after the jump…
MagneticMediaFed: Having a TV site during the middle of a writer’s strike can be a somewhat dubious task, so thanks for having some new content for us this winter.
John Lehr: No problem, my pleasure. I mean, I wish we had planned it, but it just worked out that way – I’m very happy.
MMF: Has it gotten in the way of anything you’re working on now?
JL: Oh yeah, sure, I mean everything has basically stopped here in Hollywood, so my whole focus is on the show.
MMF: What drew me to 10 Items or Less originally was the idea of a series set in a grocery store. There is something very visually interesting about it. What was it about that setting that really attracted you?
JL: I think what Nancy [ed. Nancy Hower, series co-creator], and our cast really like to do is stuff that’s absurd but grounded in an environment that is kind of mundane, and a grocery store seemed like a perfect place for that. If you put it on Mars it’s hard to be both crazy and on Mars, but if you set it in a grocery store it creates a good contrast, and makes it funny.
MMF: Why do you prefer improvising the series compared with going off a script?
JL: We don’t see [improv] as a way to show off how clever we are, but we think it’s a great way to generate material. When you’re out with your friends and somebody says something spontaneous that cracks everybody up that kind of humor isn’t something you can make up in a writer’s room.
MMF: When you were conceiving the show did you start with the characters or did you start with the setting?
JL: We started from the setting. We knew we wanted with the character of Leslie to explore a character that’s a bit of a goof-ball and maybe says what’s on his mind a little too freely – still lovable, but also says the wrong thing and does things incorrectly but with cocksure confidence. I just love that idea. [Nancy and I] did a movie together called Memron. I played a character in that movie that kind of has some similarities with Leslie and Nancy directed that movie. We knew we wanted to do a workplace comedy and we wanted to do it at a place that everyone goes to and Nancy was the one who came up with the idea of doing it at a grocery store. We were sort of shocked that no one had done a show in a grocery store before.
MMF: There are a lot of interesting different types of people in the cast. Were there actors that you had in mind beforehand or was it all auditioning from the beginning?
JL: We knew we wanted Chirstopher William Moore who plays Richard the cashier. He and Nancy have known each other for a long time and he was in Memron and is a cracker-jack improviser and Nancy had worked with Bob Clendenin before so she wanted him. But a lot of the actors we had got from a straight audition process. It’s weird because people who can improvise are a different sort than just straight actors. They have interesting backgrounds because they have something to talk about. We were really lucky. We knew the audition process was going to be really hard because it’s hard to find people like that, and so we had this really rigorous workshop approach to auditioning. We had everyone come in and improvise with me. We had them fill out applications for the grocery store at their auditions. We told them which positions we were accepting applications for, but they came up with their own names – the great thing about improv is the actor is really involved in the creative process and they build these characters from the ground up. Granted, we guide them and we know what we want from them, but they have a lot of input too — their character’s background, their likes and dislikes. I think then the characters become really grounded because the actors own them – they know them inside and out.
MMF: Right before your show premiered there was this show on Lifetime called Lovespring International which Jennifer Elise Cox was on. I’m curious if you found her from that show or if the two were happening at the same time?
JL: It happened at the same time. Sony and TBS were the one’s who told us to bring Jennifer in. We knew her from The Brady Bunch movies and Six Feet Under and we were like, “Hell, yeah,†and she came in and totally kicked ass, but this happened to coincide with her being on Lovespring International so it was a total coincidence.
MMF: When you watch a finished episode how close is it to what you originally pictured when you began your outline, and are there times when you say, “Man, I wish I would have thought of this other line, or would have reacted differently.�
JL: Our hope is that whatever those actors come up with on the floor is going to be far more interesting that whatever three people might come up with sitting around a table. We see it less like, “here’s out plot and let’s try to get them to hit our plot and here are some funny things we’d like them to get†– there are those things, but more often we kind of see it like a coach for a basketball team. We come up with the plays, but if the shot is open, take it. There are a lot of things these actors come up with on the floor that are really great and we’ll just augment our writing to include that. Now, as far as the episode’s being similar to what I was thinking initially the weird thing is it usually kind of becomes almost exactly what we wrote if we’re doing a good job of writing. If the scene is set up so that it’ll go a certain way – if it’s written correctly – then actors will end up taking it the way that we wrote.
MMF: Right, without words written down, I suppose there really isn’t any to directly compare it to.
JL: Right, the actors never even see the script.
MMF: So it isn’t something that’s handed out at the beginning of production to everyone?
JL: Nancy and I have the [outline] and the actors can see it if they want but most of them choose not to. You just show up and kind of wing it.
MMF: Is it difficult to improv a scene where you don’t have a live audience reacting, or is that where editing comes into play?
JL: Well first of all we have this crew around and they kind of become the audience. I don’t know if you know this but the store we’re shooting in is open for business while we’re shooting so a lot of the customers you see in the background are actual shoppers so there are people around watching it and cracking up. If you listen you can hear laugher in the background of a lot of our shows. We try to cut it out but you can’t always get it all. It’s a really lively set. We roll lots and lots of tape. We shoot, like, 30 hours per episode. So it has a real feeling of people cracking each other up.
MFF: How has it been working for TBS? Over the past handful of years they’ve been trying to rebrand themselves as a comedy network and really in the past year things have started to congeal. Is it a good place to have a show?
JL: We initially sold the show to Sony and we did a presentation pilot for Sony and then shopped the presentation pilot around. The only place I wanted to go was TBS. I had grown up watching the Superstation and I really loved the idea of being one of the first two shows on the network – that was just really exciting to me. I also think the way TBS promotes is better than anybody. More than anything it’s a network that reaches a lot of people in the middle of the country. I mean, I’m from Kansas. I’m not interested in doing a show where people in New York and L.A. like it but that’s it. There are a lot of shows like that – shows that get terrible ratings but people on the urban coasts really dig it. I want a show that has a broader appeal – that doesn’t feel like we’re making fun of people in the middle of the country. Yes, the characters are totally ridiculous but doing it with a tone that people in the middle of the country might say, “I get this, I’m into this.â€
MMF: How would you compare those first five episodes from last December with this next season – is it even a different season or is it just a continuation in a way?
JL: It is a continuation, but I think we’ve gotten a lot better at what we do. Any business when you first start you’re just flying by the seat of your pants, but as you do more and more you’re getting a lot better at it. We’ve gotten a lot more efficient and that means we have more time to do more. I think the episode are thicker with comedy, the plots are a lot stronger, a lot clearer. Production-wise, I think Nancy has done an amazing job this year with the director of photography — they really look a lot better. I think it’ll show. We’ve figured out what works and what doesn’t and I think these [episodes] are better than last year.
MMF: As someone who is also from the Midwest I’m always kind of interested in which direction people go. When you decided to move to a city that could better facilitate a career in entertainment what made you decide to go west instead of east?
JL: I went to college at Northwestern in Chicago and that really changed my life. I started doing theater in Chicago and that’s where I discovered improv. I was doing a show, a two-man improve show that was well-received at the Organic Theater and a talent scout from LA discovered us and asked to fly us out to LA and that’s just where my career took me.
MFF: One last questions. About a year ago I got a copy of the Criterion DVD for Kicking and Screaming and on it there is this short film called Conrad and Butler take a vacation. In the liner notes Noah Baumbach says that the goal was to make Conrad and Butler and modern-day Laurel and Hardy so I’ve got to know, what are the odds of us seeing those characters again?
JL: I would love to in a second. I love those [characters]. In fact Noah is in town and he and I are getting together hopefully tonight before I fly out tomorrow. I’m very close and stay in touch with both Carlos [Jacott] and Noah. I would love to. I think that would be awesome.
10 Items or Less returns to TBS on Tuesday, January 15th and 11:00PM
Pictures via Turner Broadcasting
Tags: 10 Items or Less, Interviews, John Lehr, TBS
