Team Players

Author and filmmaker Jim Hemphill demonstrates a nearly encyclopedic critical appreciation of individual directors’ styles and an exhaustive enthusiasm for contemporary TV.

The Art and Craft of TV Directing By Jim Hemphill Routledge, $39.95

THE 20 Q&AS MAKING UP JIM HEMPHILL’S mine a rich vein of creator Julie Plec’s admission that she broke the glass ceiling from above by hiring herself. (“I’m six years into a series that I’m the showrunner of,” Plec says. “If I want to direct, I can just direct.”) Recalling the painful lessons of his first day on his own set, feature editor–turned– director Norman Buckley offers my favorite of the many vocational axioms Hemphill extracts from his interviewees: “Humiliation is good for the soul.”