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TV writer, producer and director
David Mandel is a television writer, producer and director.
PROFILE
David Mandel
Guest
FROM David Mandel
The Business
Finding a home for stories we cut for time We have interesting guests on The Business, and sometimes our conversations are too long to fit into one show. So a few months ago, we decided we'd save some of the best stuff that didn't quite make the cut and we would find a home for it. First up is writer-producer David Mandel, the showrunner of HBO's Veep, which just won another Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. He tells us what Larry David taught him about writing for sitcoms while working on Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. We also hear from David Simon, creator of The Wire and co-creator of The Deuce about why he was -- for a time -- labeled “the angriest man in television,” and how he was able to use that to his advantage. Then, producer and director Shawn Levy defends his movie Real Steel, and tells us what went wrong with the marketing of that film. Finally, filmmaker Matt Reeves shares the crazy story about the time he and JJ Abrams were called in to repair Steven Spielberg's very first home movies when he and Abrams were just 15 years old.
The Business
Showrunner David Mandel on 'Veep' The beginning of Season Six of the HBO comedy Veep finds Selina Meyer, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, assuring the nation in a morning news interview that her post-White House life is going really well. In reality, she's had to spend some time getting over her election defeat at what she insists was a spa. The season follows Selina and her luckless staffers as they try to cement her legacy through a memoir and a presidential library celebrating her very brief tenure in the oval office. Our guest today is David Mandel, the Emmy-winning showrunner of Veep. He took over for series creator Armando Iannucci at the beginning of Season Five. Mandel got his start on Saturday Night Live, and went on to write for Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. He tells us about overseeing Veep in the age of Trump, keeping track of the show's relentless torrent of vicious insults and how his wife's hands inspired one of the most famous episodes of Seinfeld.
Recommended
The Organist
The New World Where do speech balloons come from? How does time move from panel to panel? This week we explore the techniques of comic-book storytelling through Chris Reynolds’s graphic series, newly anthologized as The New World. Join us as we travel deep into the artist’s world to find the source of these bizarrely mundane comics’ depth and beauty.
Martini Shot
Microdosing This is Rob Long and on today’s Martini Shot I hypothetically and with names changed, explore some of the ways writers get scripts written, from Adderall to ten micrograms of LSD, everything but just sitting down and doing the work.