The Man Who Writes the GRAMMYs Tells His Behind the Scenes Stories: Co-producer David Wild shares what he’s learned from 15 years writing the show
David Wild has written THE 57th ANNUAL GRAMMY AWARDS show since 2001, along with a bunch of other variety and live shows you’ve probably seen. We sat down with him backstage at the THE 57th ANNUAL GRAMMY AWARDS rehearsals and asked him to tell us how the show is made, and what some of his best stories and insights from the experience have been. Here’s what he told us.
So, you are the head writer for THE 57th ANNUAL GRAMMY AWARDS!
Yes! The book says “writer/co-producer” but I just call myself the ugly pretty face of the GRAMMYs. I am LL COOL J. Well, I’m his understudy, and boy would America be disappointed.
A lot of people would be like, “Wait, someone writes the GRAMMYs?” What do you write exactly?
The words that people say, everything from what LL says as our host, to what the presenters say. I don’t write acceptance speeches. Some of the best moments are not written, when things just happen.
But I’ve worked on all the shows — Oscars, Emmys, GRAMMYs — I’m an EGOT in terms of payroll, but not for winning anything! I lost my Emmy this year for the Beatles GRAMMY tribute, so I’m a two-time Emmy loser.
But yeah, the stuff is written, and then it becomes collaborative. Some people want to write with you, some people want to try something themselves and then show it to you. It happens all different ways.
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When you’re working with LL COOL J on the show—
He is taller than me, yes.
Do you sit and brainstorm ideas and jokes together?
Well, LL doesn’t do a lot of jokes. We have some humor and wit and smiles. We were talking yesterday: it’s about smiles for us. He’s a funny guy but he’s not a comedian and he doesn’t want to be. This is a music show. Different hosts are different ways. I do the CMAs with Carrie Underwood and Brad Paisley, and we do like a fifteen minute comedy monologue with songs. You do it to suit every host differently.
LL is just this incredibly warm, credible, charming host. So there are a couple jokes, and we actually were playing around with him yesterday; we’ll talk about what we want to do this year, how to make it a little different every year.
And then sometimes everything changes, like four years ago, Whitney Houston passed away the late afternoon before the show. We had a monologue, and he had rehearsed. He was sick and had already gone to bed, and he said to me, “David, tell me we’re locked and loaded, I’m going to get some sleep.” And I said “We’re locked and loaded.” Then half an hour later I got the call about Whitney Houston, and I had to call him and say, “We are unlocked and unloaded and I’m going to send you a whole new monologue.”
We worked on that and he famously said, “I think it’s great. I think it needs a prayer.” That was a lot of discussion — can we pray at the GRAMMYs, and how do we pray at the GRAMMYs? We got through it, and he’s amazing at what he does, and I told him then: I feel like I’m a football team with a great quarterback. Ken Ehrlich and LL — working with them, we can get through anything.
I think it taught me something about how TV works. You have to address the moment. But I hope we don’t have to address anything like that ever again.
This is an unusual job. How did you end up doing this for a living, what’s your background?
I come from journalism at Rolling Stone. I was the music editor at Rolling Stone, I was a writer for Rolling Stone and other magazines, I worked at Esquire. I fell into this just about the time journalism crapped out. I’m still a journalist, I’m still a contributor at Rolling Stone. I write all kinds of books but I mainly now have fallen into writing TV, special events and speeches.
So how do you go about making a show like this fresh every year, while still feeling kind of familiar, if that makes sense?
The good thing that has nothing to do with me is that it’s the nature of the show to be refreshed by the artists who come and bring different energy. Like, we have AC/DC this year. I started 15 years ago on the GRAMMYs, and one of the first things I said to Ken was, “Can we get AC/DC?” because I’m a 70s kid. So this year at the GRAMMYs we have AC/DC, who’ve never been at the GRAMMYs.
Every year music replenishes itself… you do try to keep it fresh, but fortunately the world keeps it fresh too.
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To your point, one of the great things about the THE 57th ANNUAL GRAMMY AWARDS is that it always brings in new generations pretty much by definition because it’s bringing new generations of musicians. With those new generations come different ways of watching and experiencing the show. Has the emergence of social media changed the way you approach the show?
Ironically I was way ahead of the curve on Twitter. The interesting thing is my Twitter connect me — and connected hosts — with hosts! Like, it will go down in history that LL COOL J and Brad Praisley, who are two hosts I’ve worked with, met on my Twitter. I’ve used the power of Twitter and written it into shows. At the CMAs this year, as part of a comedy bit, we revealed Carrie Underwood’s baby’s gender. It was a boy, and I wrote into the script the hashtag because I realized, with the power of social media, you can use a hashtag to get world attention.
So I’m absolutely a believer in the power of social media. Personally I’m a Twitter guy, but we try to account for all of it.
What’s something that you would love people to know about what goes into making a show like this that they don’t already know?
Ken Ehrlich, who’s the executive producer, year after year gets these combinations of people to do some things they want to do, some things that they have to have their arm twisted slightly to make these things happen, and it’s always really exciting. This year we’re going to see Kanye, Paul McCartney and Rihanna together. And right in the same show, you have Brandy Clark, who’s a lovely country singer and songwriter, who very few people in this TV audience will probably know, singing with Dwight Yoakam.
There’s a lot of thinking in the TV world that you can’t do everything, you’ve got to limit it to what 14-year olds want. What this show has always done, is we are always looking for the way to make it true broadcasting, where we’re hitting everyone.
There are moments where like... I can’t tell you how the show is going to begin or end, but when you look at the bookends, you’ll see there’s a weird story being told about the range of music, and the range of what one show can contain.
With this show, I think the multi generational nature of it is the key. My kids are coming to rehearsal in a little while, and this is a show that every year engages me, it engages my mother. Every year, there’s always something for everybody to be excited about. Literally you have Tony Bennett and Ariana Grande on a show.
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How does it feel to know that the stuff that you’re going to be writing is going to be watched by a massive portion of America of every year?
I’ve been doing this now for 15 years, and every once in a while that will hit me, but I can’t let that hit me too much or it will be daunting. It’s amazing.
I was a head writer for the Tribute to Heroes after 9/11, which was the all-network telethon that raised $250 million. Three or four days after 9/11 I got a call from a producer, and he said, “I want you to be the head writer for this telethon.” And I said, “What kind of telethon?” I actually had to be part of the team figuring out how you reflect what this moment is and try to do some good and try to make some positive contribution in this time that is so bleak.
And that just taught me that it’s like a public trust. It’s good to use the airwaves to communicate things that people need to hear. You have to think seriously about what is needed at any given moment. Sometimes it’s a dick joke, and sometimes something heartfelt, and I’ve written both.
I remember on this stage, Chris Rock saying, “This is the best dick joke I’ve seen in a long time!” I was very complimented! And another time, I wrote a prayer with LL COOL J, and that’s rather different. That’s the nature of the gig. I think that’s why they call it “variety TV.” There’s a lot of variety.
Why should people watch live this year?
What we’ve seen in the last five years is that for all the challenges and changes in the TV world, the hunger to be a part of a live event, and to connect with people keeps growing and growing. Social media helps that.
Stuff will happen that we know people will be tweeting about, and Instagramming about, but there’s also stuff we don’t know. On every show, stuff happens, and people love to go, “Did you see that?” Sometimes people will watch it later that night, but in our world, for one night, things like the GRAMMYs are like what they used to be in the days of the Sullivan show, where a lot of the country is watching one thing and talking to one another.
As a music fan, I like a lot of different sorts of music, and I hate that we divide off into our own shows. I like the big tent, so this is very much a big tent experience.
THE 57th ANNUAL GRAMMY AWARDS air on CBS and online on CBS All Access this Sunday, February 8, at 8/7c.
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