By Ramona Zacharias.
Matthew Carnahan. Image: Bil Zelman
In his hit television series House of Lies, Matthew Carnahan gets to inhabit the cutthroat world of management consulting, week in and week out. Based on real-life consultant Martin Kihn’s book House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Tell You the Time, the half-hour comedy from Showtime stars Don Cheadle as Marty Kaan and Kristen Bell, Ben Schwartz and Josh Lawson as members of “The Pod”, his team of associates willing to say (and do) anything to land their next big client. The show is fast-paced and energetic, featuring slick, dark comedy, and is full of all of the things you wish you could say (and do) in the business world.
Now embarking on the show’s fifth season, Carnahan (also a playwright and novelist) is finding new ways to enjoy the experience. This time around he was able to arrange to film an episode in Havana, Cuba, making it the first American scripted series to be shot there since diplomatic relations were restored last year.
Creative Screenwriting spoke to Carnahan breaking the fourth wall, the importance of taking risks as a showrunner, and giving characters the voice you wish you had.
House of Lies, by Martin Kihn
Tell me about when you first encountered Martin Kihn’s book and the interest it sparked to turn it into a television series.
I actually went to meet with Jessica Borsiczky (who is one of the executive producers on the show) about a directing assignment on Flashforward, a different show she was running at the time. She told me that she had been wanting to work with me and handed me Marty Kihn’s book “House of Lies”.
My brother is a senior partner at a big consulting firm, and I read the book that night. I called Jessica the next day and said “I know this world and I know how to make this show”. So we started working on it and pitched it to Showtime maybe six weeks later. They bought it, so we wrote a draft.
That was the moment that Showtime changed presidents – so I thought it was dead. But David Nevins called me about a week after he had taken over and he said “This is the best script I’ve read and I want to make it”. It was really exciting. I’ve known David for a long time and he’s very straightforward – so it was really nice to get that call.
Did you have to do any other research to get into the mindset of a cutthroat management consultant? What kind of a resource was it to have a family member in the industry?
It’s interesting because my brother is one of the good guys. He’s very honest and ethical and moral…kind of the opposite of our characters.
So I dug a little deeper. We started talking to people who were out-in-the-world, boots-on-the-ground management consultants, doing the four days on the road every week and just grinding it out every day.
Their stories were bloodcurdling! And really funny. But also terrifying in how much they essentially proved the thesis of Marty’s book, the subtitle of which is “How management consultants steal your watch and then tell you the time”. So it’s essentially the “hustle” of consulting – and billing and creating Powerpoint presentations and regression models that generate a result that the client already wants. An elaborate, expensive “Yes Man”.
I studied a lot of that. I also have a good friend who was a junior analyst – he was completely set up and betrayed and sacrificed in a violent and brutal way. So there were a lot of great stories about the darker, funnier, more dramatic side of the business that were not the same as my brother’s stories.
Josh Lawson as Doug Guggenheim, Don Cheadle as Marty Kaan and Ben Schwartz as Clyde Oberholt in House of Lies (Season 5). Image: Michael Desmond/SHOWTIME
It’s such a fast-paced show, particularly the dialogue. How do you approach each episode in terms of generating and maintaining that pace?
I think the first thing is that you have to have actors who can handle that. We’re extremely fortunate that number one on the call sheet, Don Cheadle, is just so remarkable. Forget the acting – even just his ability with text, he’s almost like a Shakespearean actor. He has a remarkable ability to take a piece of text, commit it to memory, make choices, make it funny, do all those things that go into it.
And then right down the line, Kristen Bell really has that kind of Preston Sturges leading lady thing. She is able to just rip into dialogue. As well as Ben Schwartz and Josh Lawson…it’s a real A-team. So that’s where it begins – their ability to take the material and completely own it and tear it up.
I think that the model is that Preston Sturges vibe of “how many times have we left the room having not been able to say the thing we wanted to say?” Because of introversion or even just a lack of verbal acuity. That terrible feeling of l’esprit de l’escalier where somebody insults you and, as you’re leaving the building, you come up with the perfect retort.
We give the characters all of that ammunition up front so that they can be the voice that we don’t have, as the writers or the audience. It’s really fun; real fantasy fulfillment that people can be so incredibly whipsmart and verbose and cutting.
It’s a very interesting portrayal of both men and women and the different kinds of power they wield. As writer, how do you approach the male and female characters in this type of world?
I think the gender politics of the workplace have evolved so much just in the years we’ve been doing the show. It’s become very interesting.
Both Jeannie Van Der Hooven (Kristen Bell’s character) and Monica Talbot (Dawn Olivieri’s character) are what the Jungians would call animus-driven characters. They’re both very “male” in their appetites and in their presentation – meaning their swagger and the kind of assumptions that they make about other people on a daily basis in the workplace.
I think that we’ve had fun going there and then back into “well, who are they as women?” Who is Jeannie as a woman and what are her concerns? What are the ways in which she can’t escape by acting like a man? She has to also bring her feminine to the table…so what does that look like? How is that met by these incredibly sexist a-holes in the workplace?
Kristen Bell as Jeannie Van Der Hooven and Don Cheadle as Marty Kaan in House of Lies (Season 5). Image: Michael Desmond/SHOWTIME
Tell me about breaking the fourth wall and having Marty often directly address the audience. It’s a stylish technique but also seems very practical given your 30-minute timeframe. What does it help you accomplish?
I’ll just give a tiny bit of backstory on that. When I was around 10 years old, I saw Laurence Olivier’s film version of Richard III. You can still watch it and it’s awesome. I will never forget the moment when Olivier looks into the camera as Richard III and starts doing the “Now is the winter of our discontent” speech. It was thrilling. Even thinking about it now is thrilling.
This character who was such a villain…after he turns and talks to you (and he talks right to you), you will let him get away with anything. Now it obviously doesn’t end well for Richard III – but I think from then on, since I was 10, I haven’t written a play where there isn’t a character speaking directly to the audience.
It’s a device I use a lot because I think it’s powerful. And in terms of the progression of the filmic arts, we’re to the point where we know there’s a camera there. I just think it’s interesting to use the audience as a participant in the story and to implicate them in the actions of the protagonist – or the antagonist.
In terms of the practicality of it in House of Lies, it began as a way to introduce the audience to the whole idea of “what is a management consultant?” What is this job they do? Because really, House of Lies began as kind of a vocabulary list of ridiculous jargon that consultants use.
And it became “I’m going to share with you the definitions of this absurd jargon. I’m going to let you in on how I am swindling these fat cat bankers. So we’re going to do it together.” I think this technique allows the audience a certain amount of access to this otherwise pretty dry world.
Laurence Olivier in Richard III
Tell me about the Cuba shoot and, on a larger scale, the importance of taking risks as a showrunner. Where did the idea come from and did you face any resistance when you first suggested it?
The taking risks part I think was important. Basically, you have this show. It’s a successful show, but it’s going into its fifth season – and just on a practical level, with Season 5 you’re not going to get the same level of marketing love that you’re going to get with Season 1, when you’re launching a new show.
So in terms of the risk-taking, one of the considerations was “How can we make a story out of Season 5?” How can we make something that people will want to cover? Since we’re not getting as much marketing, how can we get publicity?
Cuba was very much in the news when we were breaking the story as the travel ban had been adjusted. The embargo certainly was – and still is – in place, but there was the beginning of a dialogue going on in Cuba. So as we were beginning to work on Season 5, I asked our line producer (Lou Fusaro) and our unit production manager (John Radulovic) if there was any possibility of shooting there and if could we begin to explore that.
Lou and John, who are very unlike most line producers, were just like “Yeah. Let’s try. Let’s see what happens!” The usual knee-jerk is to say “Oh God, no – that’s going to be expensive and I’m going to get in trouble somehow”. They’re extremely willing and adventurous. Lou took Drew Carey’s show to China…just amazing stuff.
So a week later we were on the phone with the State Department and began the talks. It didn’t look great in terms of making it happen…but we thought, “OK, we’re going to break the season as if we’re going to Cuba and we’ll figure it out. Worst-case scenario, we’ll wind up shooting in Colombia or Puerto Rico…or Burbank!” But we decided to just go for it, push all the chips into the middle and see if we could make it happen.
Matthew Carnahan with Ben Schwartz, Josh Lawson and Don Cheadle filming in Cuba for House of Lies Season 5. Image: Michael Desmond/SHOWTIME
It was pretty miraculous that it did happen. I think the State Department was initially caught off guard and surprised that we asked. Cuba, on the other hand…it was as if they were waiting to grab the baton and run. They were just amazing and completely embraced the idea, the script, and the story.
So we got in touch with a joint production company based in Miami and Havana. There were a lot of hurdles but we just went through them, one by one. I think the day before we left for the scout, we got word that we had been given permission to shoot.
And it was a big risk for sure, but anytime you turn a camera on in Cuba it’s going to be amazing. It’s really a beautiful place and there is nothing that looks like it. There’s nothing like that quality of exquisite neglect that is Cuba.
It was down to the wire, but it did work out.
Featured image credit: Michael Desmond/SHOWTIME