美国国家公共电台 NPR 'I Create Worlds': 'Feud' Showrunner Ryan Murphy On Making TV

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Ryan Murphy, the producer behind TV shows like "Glee" and "American Horror Story" debuts 1 his latest series Sunday on FX. It is called "Feud 2: Bette And Joan." And it's based on a legendary 3 rivalry 4 in old Hollywood. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans says the show also highlights Ryan Murphy's influence on today's Hollywood.

ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE 5: When Ryan Murphy actually explains what he does as a TV series showrunner, even he admits it kind of makes him sound like a supervillain.

RYAN MURPHY: The greatest thing that you have when you're a showrunner is this opportunity to create worlds. It always sounds so insane when somebody says, well, what do you do? And you say, I create worlds. It does sound like a supervillain profession.

DEGGANS: What Murphy means is that he's the top creative voice on the TV series he executive produces.

MURPHY: What I do is sort of I come up with an idea like "Feud." And then I cast it. I go out to Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon. And I gather a writing staff. And we wrote eight episodes. And then I directed three of them.

DEGGANS: And his track record is impressive, from the sexed-up Miami plastic surgeons in "Nip/Tuck"...

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "NIP/TUCK")

DYLAN WALSH: (As Dr. Sean McNamara) Tell me what you don't like about yourself.

DEGGANS: ...To the crooning, dysfunctional Ohio high school students in "Glee"...

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "GLEE")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (Singing) Just a small-town girl....

DEGGANS: ...And a hot-tempered O.J. Simpson in "People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story."

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE PEOPLE V. O.J. SIMPSON: AMERICAN CRIME STORY")

CUBA GOODING JR.: You want to make this a black thing? Well, I'm not black. I'm O.J.

DEGGANS: Through it all, Murphy has used touches of camp, horror and sex to talk boldly about race, sexual orientation 6, gender 7, women's issues and much more.

MURPHY: What I'm interested in doing now is to go and give voices that are not being heard a platform and to sort of bring people into people's homes that you think you may hate or despise. But the truth of the matter is if you just sat in a room, A, I think you would admire them, and B, I think that you would have a lot more in common with them than you think.

NORMAN LEAR: So he'll go deeper to try to understand everything he cares about.

DEGGANS: One friend, "Glee" fan and "All In The Family" executive producer Norman Lear said Murphies key capturing the zeitgeist is how much he cares.

LEAR: I wouldn't call it rule breaking pushing boundaries. I would call it, you know, raising a magnifying glass to the foolishness of the human condition.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

DEGGANS: Like some of Murphy's other shows, viewed as an anthology series, it features a new rivalry every season. First up, the feud between Bette Davis, played by Susan Sarandon, and Joan Crawford, played by Jessica Lange.

It's the early 1960s. And the two Oscar-winning actresses are struggling as aging stars. Joan asks her longtime enemy to join her on a film about a crazed former child star abusing her wheelchair bound sister called "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?"

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FEUD: BETTE AND JOAN")

JESSICA LANGE: If something's going to happen, we have to make it happen. No one's looking to cast women our age. But together? They wouldn't dare say no.

MURPHY: I think people think it's going to be campy or lighthearted or dishy and it really isn't that. It's a - I think a much more sad look at these two women who were national treasures who were not treated well.

DEGGANS: Murphy's connection to Bette Davis goes all the way back to his days as a 10-year-old growing up in '70s era Indiana.

MURPHY: I only wrote two fan letters in my life. One was to Bette Davis. And one was to Ron Palillo, who played Horshack on "Welcome Back, Kotter." And Ron did not write me back (laughter) but Bette Davis did.

DEGGANS: That's actually Ron Palillo who played Horshack. But Murphy's connection paid off a decade later, when he interviewed his occasional pen pal 8 for nearly four hours while working as a journalist, not long before her death.

MURPHY: And the thing that struck me about her when I got to meet her was how real she was. You know, and when when you think of her at the end or in some of her later movies, you know, she's pure exaggeration.

DEGGANS: Murphy has a passion for featuring mature women in his shows that Hollywood often overlooks. And he's formed an organization called the Half foundation to ensure women get jobs behind the camera as directors.

MURPHY: And I'm reaching out to all sorts of women - young women, gay women, women of color, older women who feel like they don't have a way into the system. In the first year of operation, we've actually - our goal was 50 percent women. We've sort of hit the 60 percent of all of the slots have been filled by women.

DEGGANS: As a married man who's had a tough time growing up gay in Indiana, Murphy's ready for our modern political moment. He's got a second season of "American Crime Story" planned on Hurricane Katrina and a second season of "Feud" centered on Princess Diana and Prince Charles.

He hopes to start conversations between liberals who might love the gay characters on "Glee" and conservatives who elected a vice 9 president from Indiana who has opposed same-sex marriage.

MURPHY: I look at the election like, OK, well, we can get mad. But the truth of the matter is this was a group of people that we weren't listening to for a long time or they to us for that matter. So I think the best thing that we can do is launch a cultural dialogue.

DEGGANS: However that dialogue goes, I'm betting it's going to make for some really good television. I'm Eric Deggans.

(SOUNDBITE OF HINT'S "SHOUT OF BLUE")