Trich on PK Simonds

I enjoyed talking to PK Simonds, a former screen writer and producer in LA. He was a producer and screenwriter of four TV shows that were very popular. I learn a lot from him about the process by which a TV episode is made. How it works and single person first types up an outline for an episode by himself. He hen shows his outline to people in a conference room and they give him "notes," which are ways by which the episode can be improved. When everyone in the conference room has read the outline, the writer than turns the outline into a script based on the notes. When done, the script is presented to the people in the conference room again. The people in the conference room read the script and give the writer more notes or flaws to fix. The writer then goes back to make edits to the script once again. This process continues until the writer and all members of the conference room believe they have a relatively flawless script. Simonds explained that it is very important in this process that the editors in the conference room be honest and professional about bad ideas. It is important that when bringing up a bad idea they are as constructive as possible and not rude to the writer. "Honesty is believing" said Simonds. He said that his willingness to learn about comedy was one of his inspirations to go into screen writing. He said that he learned that "people fighting is the best context for a joke." During fighting there is tension, and a joke told during fight releases the tension. He claims "the funniest jokes are a release of tension.