James Andrew Miller talks about HBO highs and lows in the new book covering the cable service's history; Credits: Yahoo News

HBO, a cable service that has been in demand from the year 1975, under the wing of Charles Dolan and the name The Green Channel. Written by the author of ESPN, Saturday Night Live and 2016’s Powerhouse: The Untold Story of CAA, Tinderbox: HBO’s Ruthless Pursuit of New Frontiers is a 975-page book dealing with the history of HBO. The cabler has come up with some of the most critically appreciated TV productions of all time ranging from The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones, Veep, Watchmen, Lovecraft County, and Succession.

Talking with Deadline about his motivation to write the book, author James Andrew Miller shared, “I think that when you have big personalities like Michael Fuchs, like Chris Albrecht, Richard Plepler, I think it’s interesting to understand and see how that materializes in terms of the actual operation of the company.” 

The book talks about everything beginning from the mega-billion WarnerMedia and Discovery alliance, followed by David Zaslav’s taking over of the studios, featuring comments by Ari Emanuel, Sue Naegle, Tom Fontana, and Shelia Nevins, the ex-USA Network EVP of Original Programming revealing what the future could hold for HBO. 

While a book could also have been written on the recent history of Netflix and its almost complete take over of streaming websites and traditional TV cable services as we knew them, and yet Miller chose to write on the history of HBO. Miller answered the question saying, "Well, for so much of its history, HBO just did a great job of managing its image. One of the things that HBO did very well throughout its existence is it was kind of an iceberg, right? If there was controversy, it was sometimes about something going on with some of their shows or maybe two actors not liking each other, or there was an early cancellation or whatever."

Enunciating his reasons, the author shared, "I’m not saying that people in the industry didn’t cover some of the discord that was going on inside the company, but I think they did a very good job, and they’re proud of it for keeping a lot of that underwater."

Revealing that HBO has done a great job of keeping its entire cast and crew team along with its production handlers inline, and devoid of any controversies, Miller appreciated the cabler's extreme regard for a clean TV environment. He said, "You know this probably better than I. They didn’t hang out their dirty laundry."

The book features everything from the brilliance of Sopranos to GoT; Credits: Amazon

Sharing the aspects of writing the book that he was not aware of earlier and topics which surprised him the most, Miller said, "I think that when you have big personalities like Michael Fuchs, like Chris Albrecht, Richard Plepler, I think it’s interesting to understand and see how that materializes in terms of the actual operation of the company. And so, those things were surprising to me." 

Relating the element of surprise to his own works, which he has managed sufficiently well in his other books, Miller said, "I mean, look, my job is to surprise the reader and to make sure that I am uncovering and reporting new material so, I’d better be surprised throughout the book, or else I think I’ve failed."

The CAA author further went on to compare the background environment of the HBO productions to Game of Thrones. He said, "The two are inextricably linked because when you’re in a company like HBO, it is a political environment."

Talking about how everyone at HBO is not short of an artist, he said, "There are incredible nuances that have to be considered and addressed during the course of a given day, even in a given meeting, to be effective. I’m not saying that these executives deserve the Medal of Freedom, but these jobs can be much more complicated than they appear, and the people who survive in them and do well and make some of these decisions. … It’s almost like an art form because there is no specific rule book, so you have to be very careful about how you operate."

And yet, not everything works like a smoothly oiled machine. HBO has to deal with its very assortment of cast and crew firings, which could range anywhere from cast to crew members, to the highest-ranking officials holding the reigns of the company. 

He said, "Of course, you had a myriad of firings and dismissals, some of them at the highest levels of the company, some of them incredibly shocking, and you know, I was fortunate to get the people that were involved in those episodes to talk about it because it remains very emotional for them for people 20, 25 years later, 30 years later, even 35 years later. I mean, it’s extraordinary how visceral those moments were."

And these specific alterations to the big cable house made it the TV mammoth that it is today. A cast as talented as in the Game of Thrones certainly saw the genius which HBO is, which translated that they worked with honor and vigor for having landed such a deal. Miller explained, "In the course of the 49 years, to your point about Game of Thrones, there were a lot of battles and there’s a lot of sharp elbows, and somehow there remains this powerful duality throughout HBO’s history where people were very, very proud to work there and there was a lot of esprit de corps."

Tinder Box by James Andrew Miller details the strong points of HBO as a streamer, Credits: Twitter

HBO today leads the world of television with a cable house that has created some of the TV shows of the modern world that are synonymous with cinematic excellence. Changing the face of TV cinema forever, Home Box Office continues to work towards extensive brilliance.