"This place looks like Johnny Sack's office," Seth MacFarlane noted at the outset of our comedy showrunner panel. It was the first of many obscure TV references during the hourlong discussion, during which Ryan Murphy revealed the only two artists to deny their songs to "Glee" and Doug Ellin admitted he takes notes on "Entourage" from bloggers. Below is our conversation with Chuck Lorre, "The Big Bang Theory," "Two and a Half Men" (CBS); Doug Ellin, "Entourage" (HBO); Steven Levitan, "Modern Family" (ABC), run with Christopher Lloyd; and Ryan Murphy, "Glee" (Fox).
The Hollywood Reporter: You're all pulled in so many directions. How do you decide where to focus your energy?
Chuck Lorre: It's all about the writing. If the script doesn't work, the show doesn't work. So most of my attention is on that. The jokes have to work. After that, it's not that tough if you have a great cast.
Ryan Murphy: (I do) all of it, really. I choose all the songs. That's my favorite thing about the gig. There are different kinds of showrunners, but what I really love is choosing the vase and the buttons and really getting in there and creating a world. The hard thing about ("Glee"), production-wise, is that you have to choose things four months out because you have to clear the music and get the dancing going. That's been the tricky part. None of us really knew what we were doing when we started. I feel like I just figured out how to do a musical.
Steven Levitan: Your job will get so much easier next season when you can have any song you want because it lifts sales so much.
Seth MacFarlane: Companies deny songs just to be d***s, though.
Murphy: At the beginning, a lot of people didn't know what we were and asked to see pages (in advance) but I refused because I didn't want to set precedent of them having any involvement. My favorite rejection was Bryan Adams. Coldplay and Bryan Adams were really the only rejections. But Coldplay called a week ago and said, "We're sorry, you can have our catalog."
MacFarlane: So even on the phone, they're whiny. (Laughs.)
Doug Ellin: Our first season, we tried to get an Usher song and his label actually said, "Send over a $300,000 Bentley and we can talk." I'm not even kidding! Now it's gotten much easier. But, like Steve said, the first year was very difficult because no one knew what the show was. Now they come to me and want to break artists.
Lorre: We had trouble clearing the cha-chunk from "Law & Order." I had to call Dick Wolf. He actually said, "That's not my call. I'll try." And we got it, but it was ridiculously expensive. It was $5,000 a note, and it's only two notes!
Levitan: We just paid a ridiculous amount of money for "Eye of the Tiger."
Ellin: I guess Survivor needs the cash.
Murphy: Did you have to pay a lot for the "Lion King" stuff (in the "Modern Family" pilot)?
Levitan: Yes. It was (ABC head) Steve McPherson actually calling Elton John and making the personal plea. We never would have had a prayer had it not been ABC.
MacFarlane: We don't even bother trying to clear Disney songs anymore. We just get the finger.
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