Secrets to Success and Sanity: "You can't run a show based on focus groups."
Greenstein's previous credits are half-hour sitcoms including Dream On, Friends, and Will & Grace. The man whose input remains a foundation of the popular Friends FAQ has seen television's web-based fandom evolve from being a "strange little cadre of people" to the near-ubiquitous force it is today.
"I used to pay a lot of attention to it and now I pay absolutely no attention to it," he said about the Internet chatter. "As a creative person who operates in the public sphere, you always have to figure out how to deal with people reviewing what you do and talking about you as if they know you. They start to imbue motive to you based on reading your IMDb entry."
"You have to learn how to disregard anything that isn't complimentary," he added, tongue in cheek.
Greenstein thinks writers can't completely ignore the reception to their work, but neither can critical and fan reaction dictate to them. "There is a little bit of a feedback loop where you try to be tuned in to what people think, but ultimately it's the show we want to do, it's the show we feel is right. If you try to let the fans dictate where your show goes, you're dead," he emphasized.
"Ultimately Desperate Housewives is the show we feel like doing and the show that is meaningful and funny and important to us. The fact that people embrace it is kind of miraculous and wonderful."
Season five of Desperate Housewives premieres Sunday, September 28 at 9 pm on ABC.
Article comments
1 - Maggie
Jeff's doing a great job, I love DH, though they could work on a couple aspects of the show. By the way, found the Desperate Housewives "starter kit" on ABC's site.
2 - Why Greenstein?
Does Marc Cherry not have anything intelligent nor believable to say? Can he not keep his stories straight?
Is Greenstein covering for Cherry?
This seems to be a foot in mouth disorder. Why else would ABC pull a nobody out of the woodwork to speak on the creator's behalf?
3 - Why Greenstein?
Does Marc Cherry not have anything intelligent nor believable to say? Can he not keep his stories straight?
Greenstein must be covering for Cherry.
There seems to be a foot-in-mouth disorder. Why else would ABC pull a nobody out of the woodwork to speak on the creator's behalf?
Is control-freak Cherry in hiding? Or has ABC silenced him?
It's so nice to see how incredibly wonderfully generous ABC is to men like Greenstein and are giving him development deals on a silver platter. He must be serving their needs very well indeed!
4 - Diane Kristine
Wow, so this is how conspiracy theories get started. ABC had nothing to do with it. I interviewed Jeff Greenstein because I heard him speak at the Banff World Television Festival and he was nice enough to agree to an interview with me. Check Google News for Marc Cherry and you'll see he had a whole lot to say during the TV critics press tour, and will probably have a lot more to say prior to the show's premiere at the end of September. I get bored of hearing from the same people about the same things all the time, so I love talking to other behind the scenes people.