Brian Mann, a former WWE Creative member, was a recent guest with John Pollock and Wai Ting on The LAW. You can find the full interview here and some highlights below:
The chain of command on the team: At the end of the day, the show has one writer, and that’s Vince. So, you can have a team of 12-15 people, and they’re being delegated certain responsibilities at certain times, but ultimately what ends up on TV is, of all the ideas and everything that Vince hears, what he decides to go with. Ultimately, when it goes to Vince, there’s no writer credit, nothing like that. As far as the hierarchy, it sort of gets thrown out the window. People have various responsibilities, but it’s nothing that interesting to really talk about. As far as the creative aspects, at the end of the day, the show has one writer. A lot of the preconceived notions that I had going into it, as far as various egos and why certain things are done, I was wrong about a lot of it. Just coming out of the experience, I certainly view the product much differently, and I would certainly say that I left the process having a whole lot more respect for everybody involved.
I’d say one of the biggest misconceptions that goes out there, and this is something I felt sometimes the Internet communities are a little too harsh on the creative team…being able to look at it from the scripting phase and the brainstorming phase, and finally what ends up on television, the things that are on TV that maybe sometimes don’t necessarily come across as the best written are rarely due to poor writing. A lot of times I’d say it can be poor execution, sometimes it can be just be simply poor response. Other times, you have a really great, solid idea, and when you just get so many opinions and ideas being thrown it, it waters it down. This is something I was told in the very beginning – for every idea that comes up, there’s a fantastic reason to do it, and a fantastic reason not to do it.
