Kurt Sutter, creator, executive producer and showrunner of the FX 'biker' dramatic TV series "Sons Of Anarchy", focusing on an outlaw motorcycle club of killers and gun-runners, recently talked about securing audience ratings with 'violence' including his own show and AMC's 'gore-fest' "The Walking Dead" :
"As the viewing audiences get more specific and more demanding in terms of how much there is to watch and when they're gonna watch it, there seems to be that need for some kind of big hook," said Sutter.
"Having a great script or having great characters sometimes just doesn't cut through. There's a network buzzword for it : they like things to be 'noisy', meaning that it has something that can cut through everything else that’s similar to it.
"There needs to be something, whether it's life or death – something with high stakes. Something that can distinguish it from other things on the air.
"The great thing about 'The Walking Dead' - not that it's enough to just have this, but it's a very specific genre piece. People love 'zombies'... Then you have to have good storytelling and interesting characters. But I also think the gore and the violence on a show like 'The Walking Dead' is – and this is not to suggest that the drama is this way, but definitely the violence and the gore — because it's supernatural, it almost crosses into the cartoonish.
"It gives you a certain amount of distance from it, where it may gross you out. But you don't have a visceral sense of 'I feel awful for that zombie'..So it allows people a certain distance from the gore and the violence because of the genre of it all....
"You know the chances that you’re gonna walk out of the house and get eaten by a zombie are pretty slim. Not to sound ludicrous but I think that allows people a certain amount of buffer to the brutality.
"You know the chances that you’re gonna walk out of the house and get eaten by a zombie are pretty slim. Not to sound ludicrous but I think that allows people a certain amount of buffer to the brutality.
"Clearly I’m a guy who has a little problem with boundaries to begin with but I can’t speak for anyone else’s process. There's a sense out there for some shows to try to generate some heat or some buzz and perhaps pump up the level of gore or violence.
"For me personally and creatively, I’ve always had a very broad sense of the absurd...I've always had that creative bent to do that, and as a storyteller I’m always looking for the most interesting and the most provocative, and how can we be organic to the story, organic to the character, yet do something that we’ve never done before or no one’s ever seen before.
"How can we be a little bit of a provocateur with all this? Coming from theater I have a real awareness that I'm creating something that is going to be viewed by an audience. I’m not up in my ivory tower writing my drama for myself. I do have a sense of entertainment value. I do have a sense of how can I make this compelling and exciting for an audience.
"As a storyteller I have an obligation to the mythology, the characters and the world of 'Sons of Anarchy'. But I also have a moral and ethical responsibility to keep my characters and their circumstances real..."
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