Sitcom showrunners get a dose of reality in front of the cameras.

By Michael Wood

Today's TV landscape is crammed with so-called reality shows, but Bravo's newest foray into the reality realm has a mission. Situation: Comedy doesn't cram pseudo-celebrities into confined living situations, or follow people around the world, or even have them eat worm-and-snail pizza. Sean Hayes, the Emmy Award-winning star of Will & Grace, and his producing partner Todd Milliner organized a contest to find fresh voices outside of Hollywood that could perhaps pump fresh air into the stale state of a nearly extinct species: the TV sitcom. Comedy first stages a screenwriting contest, a la Project Greenlight, capturing the creative process on film, and then has the American people choose their favorite.

As with any reality experiment, viewers will be privy to high-drama; this time, the drama of what it's like to get a TV comedy off the ground and into production. Guiding the contest winners and Hollywood newcomers through the choppy, shark-infested production waters are veteran show-runners Stan Zimmerman and Maxine Lapiduss, TV stalwarts with enough hit shows under their collective belts to intimidate even the most confident writer (Gilmore Girls, The Golden Girls, and Roseanne, for starters).

So how did these two professionals get involved with la-la land neophytes to save the sacred TV sitcom? "Sean's agent called me. I assumed he was going to be pitching me actors to be on Gilmore Girls, and he said, 'No, I want you!' After I picked myself up off the floor, it was just 'Where do I sign?'," remembers Zimmerman. Lapiduss quickly quips, "Also, he's been a frustrated show girl for years."

And we're off.

Zimmerman then called LapidussÑheck, Stan then called MaxineÑwhom he had known through friends, and asked her to partake. "It's great because we've wanted to work together and we've known of each other. It was kind of like we were two ships passing in the night," Maxine recalls. "We'd almost worked together about 600 times, once at Roseanne, and it just sort of never happened. So when his partner had the smarts to bag out of this 'cause he didn't want to be on camera at five in the morning with no makeup (I should have taken heed), I decided, 'What the hell? It'll be a gas!' And it was. It really was."

"They filmed us every day," Stan stresses. The reality show crew cut together seven complete episodes. In September, the cameras will roll again for the eighth episode, where the winnerÑchosen by the audience via the InternetÑwill be announced. But how did two behind-the-scenes producers feel about being in front of the cameras?

"I had fun with it actually because I've seen every Real World episode ever made," Stan declares. "So it was kind of my training for this. And really you just have to forget that the cameras are there ... It's so difficult making one pilot and here we were making two pilots, so we really didn't have time to stop and be worried about how we look. I was told, 'Just don't be shiny,' so I got to powder my own nose. Well, I would make Maxine powder me every minute ..."

Maxine interjects: "I was powdering you constantly!"

"I was constantly pulling the hair from her face because she had some hair issues."

"But you didn't do it well enough, Stan, really I have ..."

Stan won't let her finish. He wants the spotlight: "I was creating a 'look.' I'm hoping that everyone will be wearing it on Halloween: 'The Maxine Hairdo.'"

"It's fright wig, in other words, that's what he's trying to say."

"I'll be selling them on Santa Monica Boulevard."

Stan and Maxine's rapport is natural and genuine. These two deserve their own sitcom, but maybe we'll have to settle for a talk show:

Stan: "We're talking about pitching to Logo a gay Regis and Kelly, except Maxine is Regis ..."

Max: "Yeah."

Stan: "And I'm the pretty one!"

Max: "Now, c'mon, hold on!"

Stan: "We just fell madly in love and we're talking about doing other projects."

Max: "We've both learned so much through this process."

Stan: "Yes, we learned that we need a stylist."

Max: "Definitely we need a stylist, but also maybe," she is gentle with her word choice, "better writers. Because it's not just having one good script. It's being in there every day and being able to rewrite and have a vision. I think one of the teams did have a strong vision and the other really didn't. And in television, the writer is king."

Hayes and Milliner hired a company that used readers to pare the 10,000 submissions down to 50 scripts. Then both Maxine and Stan perused these choices, and even asked to see others. "We thought, 'There's gotta be better ones out there,'" Maxine remembers. "We asked for another 50 and we got it down to 20, then 10, and then we took five to NBC. Then it was up to NBC and Kevin Reilly [NBC Entertainment president] to pick the final two."

So how did they take on such a massive project? "We're looking, first, very broadly at who can write, who's funny, who can tell a story, and what has good characters," says Maxine. "But ultimately you do have to serve the beast. NBC has a very specific style and voice, and we're hoping that's going to broaden, which is why one of the shows we chose is a family show. NBC really hasn't had a family show since Cosby."

Working with new writers outside the so-called Hollywood system proved to be its own challenge for the TV vets, but both Maxine and Stan took it in stride. "We both have worked in really pressurized situations ..." As if on cue, Maxine's cell phone cuts out. "Is she drinking martinis again?" Stan quips. "I mean, look, there can't be any more high pressure than working with Roseanne." Maxine's cell phone behaves and she saves Stan from further disclosure: "Well you know, it was interesting for us with these neophyte writers because there were a couple of episodes that came up ..." she hesitates. "There are shenanigans that go along with it."

"When you're a television writer, the big goal is to get your show on. Therefore you really have to become a producer," Maxine says. "I think for new writers that's really tough because you think, ' I'm going to be able to just sit in a room and write, and they're going to love every word and make it.' They have no idea that 760 people come in and say 'Well, this actress doesn't want to say this and the actress' maid thinks this.' ... It's endless, so you really have to learn how to take notes and heed the people that sign the checks, but at the same time try to retain your vision. And that's really what it's all about."

"I would love, in the next season, to get a larger diversity of the kind of writers," Stan admits. "More women. More people of color."

"I think there's a lesson here. I think people are obviously hungry to laugh. The fact that 10,000 people took the time, just sat down and wrote a script ... it's not like American Idol and just going and auditioning and singing. This takes weeks of work, to think it up, to write it down ..." Stan chimes in: "William Hung could not get up and write this." Maxine swears, perhaps in jest, that Hung did submit a script "about a talking lasagna."

So what makes Situation: Comedy stand out? "I think there's a big wish fulfillment," says Stan. "I can't tell you how many times people come up to me at parties and say, 'My life could be a sitcom' and I'm like, 'okay, what is it?' 'Well, I work in bank.' It takes more than that."

Maxine's turn: "It feels like there obviously is a fascination with all the magazines, Entertainment Tonight. My mother, who is 85, calls me from Pittsburgh and knows the grosses of War of the Worlds. It's insane. It's all this obsession with behind the scenes of how things work ... Now, they're really the ones who are going to alter the decision-making process at NBC as to what could win." Adds Stan: "It's like America gets to play network executive."

"I think what's cool with what Sean and Todd were trying to do with this is saying, 'You know, we don't have the answers, but here's one new venue," Maxine offers. "If we can open it up a little so it's not the same five people getting in every year to pitch, and the same three people getting the deals, that would be really great."

So what did two veterans learn from the experience? "The honest answer to that is how headstrong you can be. I was very headstrong when I started. And very opinionated. And got fired a lot," says Maxine. "I was trying to kind of impart my wisdom on how you have to 'not do that.' How you can be a little bit more politic, more thoughtful before you speak or whatever, But there's no right way or wrong way to get a hit. It's really hard to say, 'I know better than you,' so all you can do is give them your experience and hope that they dig it, and get it, and learn from it."

Stan?

"Hire a stylist."

Situation: Comedy premieres on Bravo on Tuesday, July 26, at 8 p.m., and another episode immediately follows at 9 p.m. Check local listings for repeat airings and future episodes.