Emmy-Winning Writer And Producer Fred Graver Shares Garry Marshall’s Secrets To Staffing Success

Is it redundant to say “I’ve got an old story about Garry Marshall?”

I do. Around 1990, as word of a new film called Pretty Woman was filtering around the media world, my friend Terri Minsky and I came to the realization that its director, Garry Marshall, had probably worked with everyone in Hollywood. (This was before the days of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” Maybe we should have started “Six Degrees of Garry Marshall”?)

At a party one night, we hastily sketched out the Garry Marshall “solar system.” It included Ron Howard and Brian Grazer, Richard Gere, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, Robin Williams, and the newly minted star Julia Roberts.

We pitched the idea of doing an “oral history” of Garry Marshall to our friend David Hirshey at Esquire and he bought it (see how things worked in those days, kids?). For the next month, Terri and I spent delightful hours talking with Garry’s many co-workers, from Dick Van Dyke to Tony Randall, Carl Reiner to Robin Williams, Penny Marshall to Albert Brooks, as well as Garry himself.

Garry emerged as an exceedingly practical, down-to-earth and generous man, one with an enormous vault of comic knowledge and quite a few odd quirks. From writer Lowell Ganz, we found out that driving Garry refused to turn left (across traffic) and would be late for meetings because he’d need to do circuitous right turns to enter a studio lot. From Penny, we found out that Garry’s first question on being told he’d be filming in a strange city was “Where will we eat?”

From Ron Howard, I got this bit of Garry wisdom:

But the best piece of Garry Marshall wisdom came from the man himself. Somewhere in storage, I have a couple of hours of Garry talking about how to survive Hollywood. At one point, I asked him “How do you staff a show?” The answer he gave not only applies to creating a hit TV series — I think it’s actually a blueprint for management of any enterprise. Here’s how I remember it:

“First, you find a couple of guys who are living in their cars. They’re great writers, they just got here, and they will do anything for you, including living in your office because they don’t want to ‘go home’ to their cars.

“Then, you get two guys who were living in their cars last year, but they did pretty well, and now they have apartments. They won’t live in your offices. They’ll want to go home from time to time. And they’re constantly afraid that the two guys who are living in their cars want their jobs. So, they’re going to work incredibly hard for you, as well.

“Then, you get two guys who think they are ready to run a show, but they need another year or so. You can rely on these guys — they know how to turn out a good script. And they’re worried that the two guys who used to be living in their cars are going to show them up.

“Finally, you need a couple of showrunners. These are guys with a few years under their belts, they know how to make a good living at this, they know how to run a show. They’re afraid that the two guys who think they’re ready to run a show are going to take their jobs.

“You’re worried that those two guys are going to take your job, or they’re going to walk in one day and say ‘Sorry, we sold a show, we’re leaving.’

“FINALLY, you put all those guys in a room. They’re all trying to make the best show they can, and sometimes they’re arguing and they’re fighting and its going nowhere. That’s when you bring in your secret weapon — Phil Harris. (NOTE: Phil Harris is most famous as the voice of Baloo the Bear in the 1967 version of The Jungle Book. He was a radio and stage comedian, with a GREAT sense of humor.) Phil is standing outside the room while all these people are arguing, and he sticks his head in and yells ‘MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS! That’s the story you’re trying to write and it’s NOT GOING TO WORK!”

Here’s the deal: this advice is REAL. Not only have I been through those stages —I lived in the National Lampoon offices for 2 months at the start of my career, and I’ve been the show runner who had his job stolen from him by the guy who THOUGHT he could run the show— I’ve described this model to Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs, and watched as they staffed startups with two guys living in their cars, a couple of people who THINK they should be running the company, etc.

OH… and at this stage of the game, more often than not, I feel like Phil Harris. Although I’m usually saying something like “PRETTY WOMAN! That’s the story you’re trying to write… and it WORKS!”

A 4-time Emmy winner, writer and producer, Fred Graver (@fredgraver) is on the media team at Twitter, where he works to creatively integrate Twitter and TV.