Any tips on running a staff?
A. One of the fun and strange things about working in show business is how people with certain personalities are drawn to certain professions, so that if you spent fifteen minutes talking with someone, you could probably guess from their personality alone whether they’re a director, producer, writer, editor or production staff. Writers are hyperarticulate. But they are not, by nature, friendly, sociable people. Writers are by nature people who observe other people being friendly and sociable and then go home and make fun of them. On paper. Sometimes immediately, sometimes years later. In other words, they’re fundamentally anti-social. TV writers have to be much more friendly and sociable than novelists; TV writers have to have the most social skills of any writers alive, really, except for gossip columnists. If they’re successful, they’ve generally conquered their shyness to the point where they might even appear extroverted; but they’re still fundamentally shy. They are also egomaniac
