Jason Katims
Jason Katims
Jason Katimsis an American television writer, producer, and playwright. He is best known for being the head writer and executive producer of both Friday Night Lights, on which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series in 2011 for his work on the series finale, and Parenthood. He has also worked on Relativity, which he created and wrote for; Roswell, which he developed, produced and wrote for; Boston Public, which he co-wrote; Pepper Dennis; About...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth30 November 1960
CountryUnited States of America
The shows I've been working on, especially 'Parenthood' and 'Friday Night Lights,' I think are completely character-driven stories. I think, for most writers, that's a privilege to be telling those kinds of stories. It's erroneous to me.
I feel like not only are 'Parenthood' fans passionate, but that passion has grown over the run of the show and people got more invested as the show has gone on. That really does help keep shows on the air.
What's great is that I keep hearing from people who are discovering 'Friday Night Lights' because of streaming and Netflix and Hulu and all of these things. Somehow... things don't get old as fast as they used to. They stay vibrant.
I came to NBC on 'Friday Night Lights' and they have supported that show and found ways - unprecedented ways - to keep it on the air for a long time. And when I came to them with the idea of doing 'Parenthood,' they not only supported me in doing it but also got behind it in such a way that we were able to put together this incredible cast.
I think that the one thing about 'Parenthood' is that, while it's never been a huge out-of-the-box hit, it's always been solid. We've always kept our audience.
Because of streaming, serialized television has become less of a dirty word when you're pitching shows. I had to fight for that for so long as someone who's always gravitated towards ongoing story lines with characters that evolved and changed and storylines that continued over longer arcs.
What's fun about comedy is you're pushing things a little further than you would in a drama; you're pushing reality a little bit more.
The stories in 'Parenthood' are so much the stories of our lives. And the people who have worked on the show feel very connected to these characters.
The environment in a writer's room, I've really come to feel, should be some form of democracy.
The 'Moonlighting' tension of the couple that obviously never can get together, there's an innate sort of fun and tension in that.
If nobody has really done a show about people in their twenties that has been successful, why?
My first job in television was on 'My So-Called Life.'
I'm not somebody who goes online after every episode airs because that would be, for me, getting too much feedback and too much information.
Something that I learned from 'Friday Night Lights,' sometimes if you have four or five scenes in an episode, it's not having less than having 10. It's what you do with those scenes.