Chris Offut talks about writing for Treme

Friend of the Blog Chris Offutt and Ole Miss writing professor Chris Offut talks to the Washington Post about leaving behind writing for televison:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Chris Offutt doesn’t have HBO, so he’s going to head over to a neighbor’s house Sunday night to watch “Treme.” It just might be his last chance to see his name in a television show credit roll and, to be honest, he’s OK with that.

He’s felt the lure of Hollywood, heard the Sirens in the distance. And the 54-year-old Kentucky native has experienced enough success as a screenwriter and story editor on TV’s brainiest shows that it felt real. But he’s ready to leave all that behind.

“When I was working on ‘Weeds,’ I got depressed, and then I realized I wanted a big house in the Hollywood Hills, and I wanted a Jaguar,” Offutt said. “I mean I really wanted these things. And I thought, ‘OK, this isn’t me. I gotta get out of here, because A, it’s obtainable, and B, it don’t mean a goddamn thing.’ So I left and I moved to Mississippi.”

In addition to writing for television, Chris has published two story collections, a novel, and two memoirs.  Folks in the Oxford area have learned that his readings are always brilliant.  The Post goes on:

On “True Blood,” he wrote a nutria into an exorcism in the script, only to have the production department question the creature’s existence. So he switched it to a possum. When he arrived on the set he found an animal handler holding two of the creatures by the tail: “I love possums. So I went up to her and asked, ‘Why’d you bring two?’ She said, ‘Sometimes the first one’s not cooperative.’ So they had a stand-in possum.”