Epidemic Film Festival 2012: Interviews

The king of the television pilot, Robert Butler

YAM: You’ve directed a lot of great pilots for television in your career, from the original Star Trek to Hill Street Blues to Moonlighting to Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. How is that as a job, since a pilot essentially sets the tone for a series?
Robert Butler: I’m told that that’s one of the major things a director on a pilot does, to set that tone, to set the degree of reality that we’re doing, as opposed to fantasy or comedy. Set the tone. Set the reality. Set what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.

YAM: Do you feel that is what you do personally when you do a pilot? Do you set out with a specific tone or do you just go with how you interpret the script?
RB: The pages yell at me to do whatever it is I do. The pages dictate whatever kind of a piece it is. A little frothy, a little serious, a little too frothy, a little too comic, a little whatever. Significant, I mistrust significant. So any time I see it, I try and duck it. That comes from the words. That comes from the author’s original intent.

Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting

YAM: Do you think it’s a very different job, doing a pilot rather than a feature film? Do you think it’s similar?
RB: I think it’s similar and in a way better and in a way not as good. You don’t have as much money, so you can’t be as lavish. But somehow the rhythm and the force of it, the speed, the delivery date coming up gives the director a lot of power because he’s the one that controls that velocity, so he is respected and looked to for the containment of the whole operation.

YAM: Any last thoughts on directing pilots?
RB: Pilots are a great job because you’re fairly alone as a director and you love that because you have the freedom to do what you think should be done with that project. It’s not without input, not without other influences, but largely it’s a solo performance. It’s a very, very good way to work, a very good way to work.