Former WWE head writer Brian Gewirtz recently spoke with Wrestling Inc for an interview covering all things pro wrestling and WWE.
During the discussion, Gewirtz revealed what goes through his mind while watching changes behind-the-scenes and on the shows themself play out in WWE.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview.
On what goes through his mind when watching the changes in WWE play out: "Well, the first thing that goes through my mind is like, "Oh, my God, I can't even imagine what it must be like in that company" ... From just a creative team standpoint, pitching to one particular person and having everything funneled through that one person [is] arguably one of the big advantages that WWE has had, in which you always know where the buck stopped, you always know, okay, this is the person in charge. I might not always agree with it, but if that's what we've decided on doing, we're going to make this as good as it could possibly be ,and now all of that is changed. It's not necessarily changed for the worse, but it's changed, and now you're pitching to somebody else. But the advantage of it is, you're not pitching to someone like, "Hey, I'm the creator of some Netflix show and I've never watched wrestling before, so what do we got?" It's Triple H, who is as steeped into that culture and as big a fan of wrestling than anybody there, really. So, again, it's not necessarily better or worse, it is different, and I think, watching it, yeah, that's what my mind goes as a former member of the creative team. It's like, 'Wow, I wonder, is there a long three-hour gap of your waiting for a meeting to start, or are you just seeing that person right away, or are things signed off on much, much earlier and you could start writing the script much sooner? Is it reviewed before you actually get to TV?" In my day, sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't. So those are all the things that are going through my mind just from a creative team member thinking about how the process of the show goes. That's what goes through my head when I think of the upheaval."
On reports of torn up scripts: "Well, first of all, if you're live on Friday on "SmackDown," the script should be done by end of Thursday. It should probably be done earlier if possible. I always take those reports of script done here and Vince ripping up script here, I always take that with a tremendous grain of salt. No script was ever ripped in my presence when I was there. I remember in 2012, when I was able to take a part-time job at WWE, the process was far less dramatic than what some reports might have you believe. There was this great line that was attributed to Vince screaming this upon my "dismissal," which is like, "I want results or I want resignations." And granted, that's an awesome line, bone-chilling line, he never said, it was never once uttered in a production meeting nor anywhere. It's a great line, though. But that's one of those things. Yes, ideally, when it comes to ... "SmackDown" on Fridays and "Raw" on Mondays, some version of the script, and hopefully one that remains intact, is done before you show up to the arena, because it's all about time. From a writing perspective, it's all about time. The sooner the script is solidified, the faster the production meeting goes, the faster the production meeting is finished, and that leaves you just much, much more time then to get with the talent, get with the wrestlers, let them start to make the promo in their own words in some respects. And other respects, if they have questions and want to change it, you have time to get those answers and give them the tools that they need to get the promo in their head and add to it, take out of it if need be. It's very difficult to do that if the script is being finalized hours, literally two hours before you're live on the air. So, in my opinion, the sooner these things are done, the better."
Check out the complete interview at WrestlingInc.com.
