INTERN VENTURES ... creator notes
Robert Khoury, author of the new Intern book series that our INTERN VENTURES Cable Series is based on, found me through a Princeton Alum writing group. I had almost no experience with interns, but Rob quickly got me up to speed, sharing his unique approach to mentoring college interns in his corporate environment. Rob is a deep thinker and good-hearted executive with important insights into how a company can best approach the whole intern process – and several nonfiction books are now emerging to spread his insights and methods to all types of internships.
That said – I almost immediately began to see the cinematic potential of Rob’s intriguing intern stories. The theme itself is universal – we all must start our life careers as novices seeking guidance and support as we learn to perform successfully in a new job or profession. Unfortunately most intern positions are a bit boring and unchallenging – but dramatically the whole dynamic of a young nervy intern dropping suddenly into an exciting work situation is rife with potential.
And so we decided to continue our writing relationship past nonfiction into the wonderous realm of drama, where we are free to play with reality and make it both entertaining, instructional, provocative and inspiring. There has been so much un-great programming related to interns – our challenge was to create a script formula that would guarantee audience-pleasing episodes, one after the other for many seasons.
Following a year of intense experimentation we have developed an in-depth Series Proposal that covers seven core aspects of this type of entertainment. The series formula we came up with is evident in our pilot episodes and series bible, demonstrating that this is a series which can run for years on end – there are literally hundreds of challenging, exotic and insightful work situations that we can suddenly drop intriguing young interns head-first into.
Rob adheres to a set of universal human virtues that are the invisible cement holding civilizations (and families and businesses) together. His books highlight these virtues, and the Cable Series scripts likewise aim to dramatize how an intern’s evolving values can determine the outcome of any dramatic situation. In every INTERN VENTURES plot we introduce a gutsy appealing intern character with lots of room to grow, and plunge her or him into romantic, career, philosophical and sometimes life-threatening challenges – from which our intern emerges a wiser, more compassionate, and ultimately successful modern hero.
Tone-wise Intern Ventures runs much deeper and mores serious than such shows as Emily In Paris, but throughout the mood of the characters keeps bouncing back up from trauma and suspense into exploration, passion, humor and even pure delight in life itself. The show in fact is an ode to life, with each episode leaving the audience feeling hopeful about our future, and thankful for each new moment.
Three words say it all: deep / fun / uplifting!
