The times when he gets riled up, though, are what everyone talks about. Then the ponytailed, tattooed, 46-year-old creator and executive producer of the hit drama Sons of Anarchy can be as rude and abrasive as they come.
His Twitter account (@sutterink) is a launch pad for four-letter tirades. After Sons of Anarchy was snubbed in the Emmy race, Sutter filed a blog post calling TV academy voters "lazy sheep".
Last year, when an executive was trying to nail down budget details for Sons of Anarchy, Sutter instructed him to back off, except in more colourful language that can't be printed in a family newspaper. The resulting letter from a Fox lawyer, admonishing Sutter for routinely behaving in "an abusive fashion", now hangs framed in Sutter's office.
Sutter doesn't apologise.
"I can be arrogant, I can be insufferable," he admitted in a recent interview on the Sons of Anarchy set, located in a studio complex in a hardscrabble, heavily industrialised North Hollywood neighbourhood.
"You really have to have a big ego and a strong personality to do this job."
You also have to be a shrewd marketer, and Sutter's rants and serial misbehaviour demonstrate that he can play that role quite well too. Like, say, Marc Cherry on Desperate Housewives, Matt Weiner on Mad Men or Sutter's own mentor, Shawn Ryan on The Shield, Sutter has become a "celebrity show runner", a writer-producer who's become almost as famous as the series he or she oversees.
While as recently as five or 10 years ago fans knew little or nothing about the people who made their favourite programmes, celebrity show runners have become vital in a TV world packed with niche programmes and fans connecting through social media.
Off camera, Sutter flips off authority just like his bikers do on Sons of Anarchy. And the fans - on Twitter, at Comic-Con, on blogs - eat it up.
Season two of Sons of Anarchy drew an average of 4.5 million United States viewers, a stunning 72% hike from the previous year, according to the Nielsen Co.
Which is not to say that Sutter's whole life is a pose. A recovering addict, he still struggles with finding the right balance.
"I got clean and sober about 17 years ago and really try to live my life by those principles" of recovery, he said. But the notion of "exorcising the demons" frequently crops up in conversation. He's not telling off "The Man" simply for the marketing payoff.
"I don't struggle with the desire to do drugs and alcohol any more, but I struggle with the obsessive and compulsive behaviour that sometimes accompanies people with addictions."
The third season will be the most ambitious yet for Sons of Anarchy. Described as "Hamlet on motorcycles", the series tells the story of Jax Teller (played by British actor Charlie Hunnam), a member of the outlaw biker gang run by his stepfather, Clay Morrow (Ron Perlman), that rules the fictional central California town of Charming. (Sutter was a regular motorcycle rider in his youth but had fallen out of the habit until he developed Sons of Anarchy.)
"He's a guy who's impulsive," Sutter said, "but he's also a guy who's probably too sensitive and too deep a thinker for the world." He was referring to Jax, but he might as well have been talking about himself.
In the season two cliffhanger finale, Jax's newborn son was kidnapped, and this season propels the hero through a complicated web involving an Irish motorcycle gang connected to the crime.
Meanwhile, Jax's tough-hearted mother, Gemma (Katey Sagal, Sutter's off-screen wife), on the run after being framed for a murder, reconnects with her dementia-addled father, played by Hal Holbrook.
Sutter downplays the autobiographical elements to the show, but bits of his life do have a habit of creeping into scripts. A New Jersey native, Sutter had a tense relationship with his family and left home in his late teens and later pursued an acting career (he turns up in Sons of Anarchy as the imprisoned gang member Big Otto).
He patched up some old family wounds in recent years just as his father, from whom he had long felt estranged, was in declining health.
"My dad was really a vital cat.
"He broke his arm at 82 because he was standing on a ladder trimming hedges," Sutter said. But the family was forced to come together when the old man attempted a driving trip to see one of his daughters on the East Coast.
"He was missing for two days and nobody knew where he was. He was too proud to call somebody up and say, 'I'm lost'."
Sutter used the experience in building the scenes between Gemma and her octogenarian father, who suffers from similar confusion.
Sometimes the parallels between life and art crop up at odd times, giving the drama a sudden burst of eccentric humour. When he was growing up, Sutter was unsettled by his mother's collection of Hummel dolls, which formed the basis of a lifelong aversion.
"When I first started dating Katey, she had these wooden dolls on her mantel piece that just used to freak me out," Sutter explained. "She would leave the room and I would turn them over.
"She never knew!"
The doll phobia has materialised in Tig (Kim Coates), the violent lieutenant in the Samcro gang in Sons of Anarchy.
Sagal and Sutter married in 2004 and have a 3-year-old daughter. Famous from her work 20 years ago on Married ... With Children, she's a full decade older than her third husband and more philosophical about the of show business
"He's just very honest," Sagal said of Sutter. "He just kind of tells it like it is, in his mind. He's an emotional guy, that's what I would say."
She takes a similarly no-nonsense view of Sutter's blog and Twitter rants. The dust he kicks up ultimately helps the show, at least in terms of profile. And isn't that what matters in the end?
"You have to think of other ways of getting the word out because it's such a different advertising climate," Sagal said. "And that is his motivation for doing all that."
It took Sutter some time to grasp the possibilities.
At first "I didn't get Twitter," he said. "I was like, 'Why do people wanna know when I'm going to Starbucks?
' ... Then I realised what the potential was as a marketing tool."
But in his case, Sutter sees the need for caution as well. His outraged Emmy post (cheekily accompanied by a photo for Marlon Brando's outlaw biker epic The Wild One) was followed by another item that seemed intended as a sheepish apology, explaining that "the blowback is affecting more than me", he wrote.
"Twitter is just a dangerous device for a guy like me," he said in the interview. "I try to use it to a good end. But ultimately, me having instant access to anything is probably not a good idea. I'm ...," he said, his voice trailing off, "just very impulsive."
That's fine when it's all about the work.
"You really have to be obsessive to move forward and make it good, in my opinion," he said. "But at a certain point that can cross the line and it doesn't serve you.
"There's not a lot of grey in my life," he concluded. "It's pretty black, it's pretty white."
- The third season of Sons of Anarchy premieres Wednesday at 9.30pm on 3.
