On this week's episode, I have Writer/Executive Producer, Jonathan Collier (Bones, The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Monk, and many many more) and we dive into the origins of his career. We also talk about his side hustle and how that came about! Tune in as we have so much more.

Show Notes

Jonathan Collier on X: https://twitter.com/collierjonathan 

Jonathan Collier IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0171927/

Jonathan Collier on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Collier

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Autogenerated Transcript

Jonathan Collier:

It was after season eight, and I thought they were trying to get me to go to King of the Hill, and I had whatever, I had the chance to stay at Simpson's. And I thought, well, there's no way it goes past season 10.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Or any show goes past season 10.

Jonathan Collier:

It just doesn't happen. And so I left. I thought, I kind of felt badly leaving, but I thought, what's much better? Do you want to show with some like in it

Michael Jamin:

You are listening to What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about conversations in writing, art, and creativity. Today's episode is brought to you by my debut collection of True Stories, a paper orchestra available in print, ebook and audiobook to purchase. And to support me in this podcast, please visit michael jamin.com/book and now on with the show.

All right, everyone, welcome back to What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? My next guest is an old colleague of mine, old friend from my days on King of the Hill before I let him talk his name's John Coly or welcome to the show, but let me tell you what he's done. The Sky's credits are pretty incredible. So you sit back and relax. Lemme tell you what he's done. So he wrote on The Simpsons. Okay, we've heard of that show and I'm only giving some of the highlights, some of the highlights, some Scooby dos, which I did not know. King of the Hill Monk, the Good Family Bones, the Good Cop Law and Order. I mean, this guy has done well. He's done a lot. But thank you so much, man, for doing the show.

Jonathan Collier:

Oh, it's a pleasure, Michael. Thank you for having me.

Michael Jamin:

Let me tell you about who you are because I remember very clearly walking to my, on my way to my office on King of the Hill. Yours was, I would always walk past you and I would often stop and say hello. Or sometimes I would just sit and you always had a big smile. You're always so happy to greet me and have me there. And I never felt like I was getting in the way you Yeah, come on in. Come on. You're always very kind.

Jonathan Collier:

I am endlessly in search of distractions.

Michael Jamin:

Well, I do remember walking past you on days when you're on script and just looking miserable. I

Jonathan Collier:

Am. Thank you. Nope, that's exactly it. Well observed. I am never more miserable than I am alone in writing.

Michael Jamin:

But why is that? Do you feel?

Jonathan Collier:

Oh, it's a horrible thing to do. TV writing is one of the most fun, engaging, productive things you can do if you're with other people. And I love that part of it. And the small portion of the job that relies on you being alone entails, I should say, you being alone and actually writing something without people around is misery for me.

Michael Jamin:

But is it the comedy part? You also do drama now? Which one is harder?

Jonathan Collier:

Comedy is harder.

Michael Jamin:

Okay. But yeah, I would agree with that as well. But is it miserable to write drama as well?

Jonathan Collier:

I find the process of keeping stuff alive and interesting and propulsive is really, really hard.

Michael Jamin:

And how do know? You know when it's alive?

Jonathan Collier:

What, sorry?

Michael Jamin:

How do you know?

Jonathan Collier:

How do I know when it's right?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. How do you know?

Jonathan Collier:

Part of what makes it so miserable is you can always second guess yourself. And even more so when there's jokes involved.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Well, for jokes for sure. And what was that transition like for you? I'm amazed that anyone can do it.

Jonathan Collier:

Oh, I got very lucky. What happened was that King of the Hill was, we got canceled. You remember? It was time. The show got canceled. It was canceled two times.

Michael Jamin:

We left after the first time.

Jonathan Collier:

Yeah, left. So it got canceled. And I really realized it was for real when they started moving our furniture out of the office

Michael Jamin:

Because you were going to squat there.

Jonathan Collier:

I had every intention of squatting.

Michael Jamin:

You thought it was all Big bluff until they moved at the furniture.

Jonathan Collier:

And so that was happening. And I had done comedy for about 17 years at that point. And I didn't love doing for camera comedy. I liked doing animation and there were no real single camera comics, comedies on the air at the time, and I didn't quite know what to do, but I knew I stopped watching comedies. I kind of could feel the sweat on them and the work on them because I worked in so many comedy rooms. And I got really lucky, which is that Andy Breckman, who was running Monk at the time, who created the show, he used to have three guest writers come in every season. And he did that because he felt like he kept him on track. If you came in as a guest to the room in New York, it made him concentrate and work harder and make sure that in five days you would break a story.

Michael Jamin:

Why? Because people flew in, you mean?

Jonathan Collier:

Yeah, because the network would fly, the studio would fly you into New York and put you up and they would only keep you there for five days.

Michael Jamin:

Okay, that's interesting.

Jonathan Collier:

I got one of those. So I got one of those guest shots. And the other thing I got way I got lucky was

Michael Jamin:

Wait, but how did you get that guest shot?

Jonathan Collier:

I got that guest shot because this is embarrassing. My agent at the time who I didn't think was doing enough for me, got me a meeting with Andy Breckman, and I thought it was just one meeting with Andy Breckman, who's a great guy, and I love the show, but who knows if it's going to turn into anything. I fired my agent, moved on to another agent, and then Andy called me up and said, oh, we want you to do this episode a month.

Michael Jamin:

Right.

Jonathan Collier:

But there was no,

Michael Jamin:

But I've already fired my agent.

Jonathan Collier:

That was done. What happened was that, anyway, Andy used to only hire comedy writers to do guest episodes.

Michael Jamin:

Why?

Jonathan Collier:

Because his theory was that he could teach a comedy writer how to write a procedural. He could not teach a procedural writer how to be fun. So anyway, they flew into New York, I was in the room, we broke a story and I wrote it and it went well. The whole thing went well, and I got very lucky again because no one had ever really left the show or been added to it. This was the fourth season and one writer was leaving and Andy offered me the job. So I came in and went on staff the next season.

Michael Jamin:

How many seasons did you do there?

Jonathan Collier:

I did two more seasons and then the writer's strike of 2007 happened. And when that happened, I didn't know how long that would go on. Mike and the Good Family was starting up and they got what was called a strike waiver, and there were certain production companies and one was MRC, media Rights Capital, and they made a deal with the