Features
Hung
By Ryan Patrick Hooper
Jul 14, 2009, 13:14

Filling Out The Sock
Hung Creator Colette Burson Talks About Detroit Fitting The TV Show's Package

On a sunny day in Los Angeles, Colette Burson is sitting outside of her trailer as two inexperienced male assistants attempt to feed her eleven-month-old child. “They know nothing of babies,” laughs Burson, “but they are definitely doing their best.” She is surrounded by baby equipment and piles of scripts — whether it be motherhood or working on her latest HBO series, Hung, the workday is hardly ever finished. “We’re heading off to the editing room soon,” says Burson, her manner of speech one of great speed, enthusiasm and educated articulation. “We just finished sound mixing episode six, and we’re going to try and get a closer lock on episode eight.” Burson is anxious about sending the episodes to American Academy Award-winning director and screenwriter (Sideways)and current Hung executive producer Alexander Payne to look over, as she is quick to point that Payne has “a real eye for editing.”

Burson herself, along with co-creator Dmitry Lipkin, has a real knack of storytelling. Hung, which is set and filmed in Detroit and its surrounding suburbs, follows Ray Drecker, a man permanently trapped within his high school glory days as he suffers through a job as a high school basketball coach along with the curveballs of life the forces that be are known to throw — family despair, house on fire and becoming the ire of your very own kin. Within these dark contexts, Ray (played by Thomas Jane) is forced to look deep within (or just down) to understand his ultimate meaning and purpose — an amateur male escort stalking the hotels and bungalows of women in need for Ray’s massive tool. Real Detroit recently caught up with Burson — as she plowed through her rather busy day — to pick her brain on her impressions of going from NYU playwright graduate to writing for television, her impressions of Detroit and the impact of a particularly powerful monologue unleashed in the pilot episode of Hung.

Often, the perception is writers are rather hands off once the script is finished, but you seem to be extremely hands on with Hung.
I went to school at NYU for dramatic writing, and they taught us playwriting, screenwriting and television writing. Of those three, television writing was definitely the ugly little stepchild. In fact, I just manipulated my way out of those classes and never took one. Ironically, those three are very divided in terms of how much the writer stays involved. The writer stays involved the least in screenwriting, because you write your screenplay and someone options it or purchases it. Unless you direct it, you instantly lose all control and power and involvement in 99 percent of the cases. In playwriting, it is sort of a mixture ... where the playwright is often very present and the playwright works during the workshop process and has a real control over his words. Really, of them all, being a television show writer, you have the most control over what your final product is — you do determine the casting, the editing, the director, the sound and the words.

After trying to run away from it in college, what brought you back?
It was not that I was trying to run away — I just tried to dodge it because I was more interested in being a screenwriter. It was more casual than running away. But it was really moving to Los Angeles and … realizing that if you see a nice house up in the hills in Los Angeles, you think, “Oh, a really famous actor probably lives there.” But it is usually television money. Television money really runs this town. Your friends are involved in television. You go to parties and everyone is involved in television. Television is a very tactile creature in Los Angeles. In New York, it was a badge of honor — none of us playwrights or screenwriters watched TV. But in Los Angeles, it is the polar opposite. I was a little scared when I moved to LA, but obviously, I tend to be influenced by my surroundings.

Hung is set in Detroit. What was your idea behind having it set here and what were your experiences while staying here?
The first thing we were attracted to was how Michigan deals with its lakes. We wanted the house to be on a lake; we wanted direct access; we wanted a wealthy house next to a rundown house. Michigan is very wild, really. The more we thought about it, Detroit seemed to be the perfect metaphor for Ray himself — Detroit has fallen on its hard times, people always talk about its golden past — and that was a real direct connection. And, we always wanted it to be set in the Midwest, the heart of the country…

I think downtown Detroit is surprisingly lovely. The image of Detroit you have before you visit is one that is really outdated as a place that is in deep trouble. Yes, as you are driving in, you can tell there are problems, but the core of the city is very lovely and has great production value. Overall, it is very diverse. And, it may just be Los Angeles, but I feel there is an incredible amount of people that grew up around Detroit. We would be shooting and you’d ask, “Where’s Joe?” and they’d say, “Oh, he is spending the night at his mom’s house.” That would happen a lot! All of these people were spending the night at mom’s house!

During the opening monologue of the pilot episode, vivid shots of a torn up Detroit and Ray’s powerful depiction of a glorious town gone bad is the audiences’ first glimpse into the world of Hung. The monologue itself seemed to be written from an insider’s perspective — one that certainly didn’t upset the natives, but truthfully connected with Detroiters and left them quite emotional.
[Alexander] Payne influenced that opening a lot. He is someone who really connects to place. When you try to write true, you try to write true to your characters. Even though we are not from Detroit, Ray is and the more we absorb the city, the more it goes into Ray. In writing that opening monologue, I don’t think of it as being written from the outside — I see it as something that has meaning for Ray. The more that we see Ray as a complete being separate from us the better the show is. Interestingly enough, I’ve had several people from Detroit say that it was very emotional for them. Not that they were offended, but that they felt nostalgic and very moved by it.  | RDW

Get sprung: Hung airs on HBO Sunday nights at 10 p.m.



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