Latest / 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project / The Facts Didn’t Change, the Meaning Did. — Ryan Cunningham on ADHD, Identity & NI
Transcript
- Paige Williams: Welcome to 100 Stories, the Narrative Intelligence Project. I'm your host, Paige Williams. I am talking with 100 thinkers, creators, researchers, leaders, and people shaped by profound change as I explore the emerging field of narrative intelligence. At the center of these interviews is one question. How malleable are the stories we live by? What does it take to change one? What I learn is helping shape the field in the foundational book that I'm writing about it. This Is one hundred stories. Today I'm speaking with Ryan Cunningham, who is a writer, director, producer, creative strategist, dramaturg, meditation teacher. She wears many hats. And of course, I wanted to speak to Ryan about how she works with people and story, and then how she works with her own story. And I see that as the internal story and the external story that people tell for entertainment. And so, Ryan, welcome to the show. Thank you for doing this and being one of the one hundred. Ryan Cunningham: Thank you for having me. Paige Williams: Will you tell me about an experience that has most shaped how you see yourself and the world? Ryan Cunningham: I think a lot of my work is about taking people through stories and taking them through stories in a way that will help make things better for them. to facilitate them kind of going through something, if that makes any sense. And so I think you know, we were talking about meditation before we started recording, and I think one of the things that's that's interesting for me is that meditation was so profoundly helpful for me in a very dark time of my life. And I think I really like getting to take people through a narrative when I guide meditations because I think that if you can kind of give your brain something to focus on, it will help you know, keep you in the present. And one of my favorite ones to do is actually sound meditation where you close your eyes and you have to Basically almost with like echo location, like build a visual in your head of the room that you are in with all of the sounds that you hear, and you know, shape them and build them and create this environment around you that you are just existing within. And you know, there's storytelling in that as well. Paige Williams: can you talk about Ryan Cunningham: Okay. Paige Williams: how teaching meditation in your own practice has transformed or shaped or changed the narrative for you personally and perhaps for those who you take through the practice? Ryan Cunningham: For me, it's helped me to not be as reactive, Paige Williams: Mm. Ryan Cunningham: to kind of be able to sit with something in a moment and take it and then process it and think about it before I respond. that has been a just a really huge thing for me. I just recently directed a pilot in Kentucky, and you know, I think my sort of theory for how to run a set, I I've been on sets for over 20 years and I've kind of seen everything that can go wrong. And I know how quickly toxicity can grow and how directly the director can set up that environment for everybody and really set the tone and I think that's incredibly important. So in addition to always making sure that I know I've had like an at least an hour long conversation with every single person that's gonna be on my set down to the PAs. I because I I think that it's it's a crazy thing to just have people show up cold on the first day and just suddenly work together as a team. Like I think you have to do a certain level of team building as a job, as a director. and so one of the things that I do and that I did is on the first day of set, I led a meditation Paige Williams: Mm. Ryan Cunningham: at the very beginning before we started rolling camera and just asked everybody to come in close together. and to feel the collective energy of all of our bodies in this space together and how we are going to merge with each other and move as one team together and feel that energy and feel how it can feed us. Paige Williams: That's amazing. How d how do you think that shifted the whole production? Ryan Cunningham: I think it went well. I mean, we were we had a very complicated first day and I think, you know, it went about as smoothly as it possibly could. so, you know, I try. it's it's very, very important to me that my sets are very sort of as zen as they possibly can be, so that all of the work can get done and there's no distractions. Paige Williams: Yeah, I'm sure everyone loves working with you because y you believe that and carry that through. will you tell me a transformational moment in your life where you were living one way and just going along and then something happened, there was a big jerk and then you had to shift and adjust and then it changed your life moving forward? Ryan Cunningham: I mean I've had many, many moments like that. I think a a good recent one is getting diagnosed with ADHD and being able to sort of stop the internal negativity that I had been really projecting upon myself and sort of reshape and reframe the story of my life and understand how my brain worked. And I took this really fantastic class with Paulette Perhach. I think she's offering it soon again actually, but it was about sort of being able to like grab the reins of ADHD's horsepower and understand how your brain works down to like how the neurons connect and you know what the different sections of your brain are and how ADHD affects the different sections and you know, learning about vagal states and you know, as well as like strategies for how to get your brain to like work for you instead of against you. And that was really, really life changing to me. And it's not that it necessarily changed it it didn't like change the facts of my life but it kind of changed the story of my life in being able to look back and be like I am neurodivergent that's why I struggled with this or that's why I cannot respond to an email to save my life. You know email is the bane of my existence. everyone who's like important to me I'm like just text me. Just text me. I can't handle it. Yeah, so I think that that just helped sort of reframe things for myself. It helped regain confidence in myself, in knowing under and understanding how my brain works, was just incredibly powerful. and I feel the same way about parenting. I have an autistic daughter. we received her diagnosis right before she turned five, and you know, it completely reframed everything before it, which felt so much like a struggle. And instead I understood and I I got to like know and understand exactly how her brain works. You know, when you get a neuropsych report, you literally get like a a 20 page report on how your child's brain works. Like how amazing is that? And so Paige Williams: Yeah. Ryan Cunningham: that, you know, really reframed my parenting story. you know, and the ADHD diagnosis as well really helped to frame it to give it some context as well. Paige Williams: Talk about that moment of shifting of you know, and how it you said shaped the story of your life. Ryan Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean it's a it's a huge realization to Paige Williams: Yeah. Ryan Cunningham: suddenly have everything make sense. I mean, I think, you know, when you're neurodivergent you go through a lot of the world confused. Confused as to why people behave certain ways or why people do certain things and I I think you know having framework for understanding why these things are confusing to you suddenly feels the world makes a lot more sense. Paige Williams: So how has your relationship with yourself changed now that you have something to call that you identify with? I wanna call a label or like an understanding or a narrative. How has your relationship with self changed now that you have that? Ryan Cunningham: I'm so much kinder to myself. I'm so much kinder. Instead of being like, You stupid bitch, why can't you just respond to this frickin' email? it's like, Okay, this is something you really struggle with. We've discovered a way that I works for my brain that I can get my brain to actually do things. And so I just set time aside to do those things and and it it I'm just much kinder, much happier, much more in tune with myself, I think, rather than fighting myself all the time. Paige Williams: Yeah. You have so much well deserved accolades and awards. And so I wonder if you also look at that as your superpower. Ryan Cunningham: I do think ADHD is a superpower and I think when you can figure out what the awesome things about it are and how to tune into them and lock into them. it I do very much consider it a superpower. Paige Williams: Yeah. You have so many hats that you wear all in narrative and story, which I'm separating as two different things, which we can talk about Ryan Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: if you want, but writer, director, producer, dramaturg, helping people with their own story. Which one of those hats is your jam? Like you were just like, if I had 80 hours a week and I could just do that and maybe that's not fair question, but directing. Okay. Why? Tell me why. Ryan Cunningham: Directing. Directing, for sure, for sure. I just feel like it's what I'm supposed to do. I you know, I have a very overactive nervous system. My nervous system is always kind of crazy. And when I am on set directing, it is the calmest that I have ever felt. another thing that ADHD does is that it makes you awesome under pressure and under in sort of crisis situations and things like that. And so I think that ADHD you know, it was really interesting actually. The set I was just on that I mentioned, the pilot that I shot in Kentucky. it was very funny to me in getting to know everyone that worked on the crew and just observing people on the set. Of what a ADHD-friendly job production is. Because Paige Williams: Yeah. Ryan Cunningham: your job is different every day and you're doing something different every day, there is constant deadline and pressure to like kick make you you know hit that deadline dopamine and actually like do something you feel productive and you never get bored and and so I think that there and and you need to be you know incredibly creative and and think outside the box and so it was pr it was pretty phenomenal to me walking around set and just being like wow I think like eighty percent of my crew has ADHD Yeah. Paige Williams: That makes so much sense. Ryan Cunningham: Yeah, yeah. Paige Williams: It really does. You've said that you use humor to build empathy and storytelling to dismantle stigma. And can you talk about how humor allows people to see that a more serious story sometimes can't? Like how humor allows for that. Ryan Cunningham: when you laugh you become vulnerable. When you laugh you open up your heart to truth. And I think that comedy has like long been through many, many studies, proven to be the most effective form of social change. that you know, if you can disarm somebody and make them see that something is not as scary as they think it is, that that is a way of getting them to change minds. you know, I think it's very easy to make people cry. I think it's really hard to make people laugh, and people don't realize how difficult that is and how much precision and Puzzling goes into comedy and how specific it is. I I also think that I think being forced to look at the l at the world through a comedic lens has been The biggest gift that comedy has given to me, I started out my career in documentary and I took myself way too seriously. And Paige Williams: Ha ha Ryan Cunningham: even though I was really obsessed with comedy when I was a kid, like I used to watch stand-up all the time, I used to watch sitcoms, I was, you know, that was very much my jam. I by the time I got to college, I just took myself very seriously and I really thought I wanted to be this like very serious documentary filmmaker. And then I very accidentally fell into comedy. I'd been doing a bunch of shows for this network that decide and this that that were sort of documentary based, and then the network decided to green light a sketch comedy series and they really wanted me to work on it. I developed a good reputation with them, and it was and I was like, well, this will be interesting. I've never done comedy and I've never done scripted, and I ended up just like completely falling in love with it, and I think the thing with documentary is that you know, you're given all this material and you have to to, you know, take it and put it together and shape it and form it, and that's really fun. That's very fun to me. But it's also a form of writing. and but I think that With comedy and with scripted, it's like you're given much less material to work with. But because of that, making the tiniest change can make such a massive difference between whether or not something works or it doesn't, or what direction. And that those little tweaky tiny changes to me are for some reason very exciting. I think it's really amazing how much a difference of like five frames in an edit is whether or not you laugh at something. and finding that exact thing and how they lock in together, and then all of a sudden all the pieces come together and you no longer see the edges and you are suddenly it feels like this effortless perfect thing that just makes you open yourself up and of laughter. And I think comedy is also very universal, you know. And I I think it's really amazing that you can have two people with like diametric opposed views in a room, but if they see something funny, they are both going to laugh. And it's a way of like finding this commonality between us. And I think I'm very interested in that the more and more our country just gets so completely divided, like my family is so completely divided, you know. I'm interested in the ways that we can show people that they are all humans and they're all the same. Paige Williams: Yeah, it's so true. Like nailing comedy where anyone can laugh is like nailing poetry. It is the essence Ryan Cunningham: Yes, exactly. That is such that is such a good analogy to say it's like it's like novels and documentary and then like comedy and poetry. Like I think that's a really Paige Williams: Yeah. Ryan Cunningham: perfect example of s where it's like just the tiniest like one word can change makes such a huge difference. Paige Williams: Yeah. Ryan Cunningham: Yeah. Paige Williams: It's it's nailing the human experience of us all. Where Ryan Cunningham: Yes, yes. Paige Williams: we hear it and we identify. And then it's either funny or Ryan Cunningham: Yeah, and that's really nailing nailing the human experience and representing the human experience is just that's really the basis of my career and the work that I do. you know, I I think I find comedy is best when it comes from like observed behavior, as opposed to what you think someone should say. Paige Williams: let's talk about that more. Tell me more. Ryan Cunningham: comedy is best when the person in it doesn't necessarily know that they're in a comedy, but how they are reacting and what their behavior is is what makes it a comedy. I and I think that that that style of humor, that's really very much like what what my style of humor is. Paige Williams: Yeah, yeah. What did you learn about narrative and storytelling growing up? Ryan Cunningham: So much. I was a voracious watcher of all things and reader. I I I used to carry books with me at all times. I used to go to restaurants with my mom and my stepdad, and I would just sit there and like read under the table. And I was always watching movies. I was extremely opinionated about them. My mother was telling me from a very young age that she thought I was gonna be a movie critic. She always thought I was gonna go into film in some way. And I got very into visual arts and photography and you know, also wanted to be a writer and my mother kept being like, Well, you know what the next step is, you know, and you never want your mother to be right, 'cause like it's always really annoying when your mother's right, but I went to see the documentary film Fast, Cheap & Out of Control by Errol Morris in nineteen ninety-seven Paige Williams: Mm. Ryan Cunningham: in a movie theater in Philadelphia. And I had just never seen anything like it. And I walked out of the theater and I said, That's what I wanna do with my life and I called my mother the next day and she like wrote it on the calendar and was like, I was right, you know. Yeah, Yeah. She's a character. Paige Williams: I love your mom. That's hilarious. Yeah. you've spent a lot of your career telling stories about people who haven't always been centered in film and television. And what changes when people get to see themselves represented with complexity rather than as a stereotype? Ryan Cunningham: it's people seeing themselves, but I think it's also sharing the specificity of people's personal experiences with others that makes it more universal. Paige Williams: You spend a lot of your career giving people who don't normally have their story told and focusing on them, what changes when people get to see themselves and identify with someone like in a film or on a show and be like, that's me. Ryan Cunningham: I mean there's two movies that very much did that for me growing up, which were The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love and Ghost World. Both of those movies, I was like, that's me, like when I was in high school. And so those really kind of opened up a new world for me, new possibilities of opportunities that are out there. And You know, it it I think it really makes a difference to see how how people I here, I will actually give you a very good example here. when I was working on Inside Amy Schumer, I'd done a number of sketch shows and and comedy scripted shows up to that point. And it was at that time period where like all the writers' rooms were just like white men and and when I was working on Inside Amy Schumer the first season, I was just like, God, why do I like this so much? And then I realized because at least fifty percent of the writers' room is women and We had this one sketch that one of our editors, who's now actually like quite a big writer director, he came out, I was at the I was at the edit facility running running man, which I actually own, co-own, and he came out and he was like, Can you come look at a cut of this sketch? I just don't think it's funny. And I was like, okay, and it was this sketch called POV porn from the first season. And it was like this woman watching porn but from a woman's POV. And it was just like you know, a close-up of this like very sweaty man as he like as we like zoom in on his like armpit as he's like moving, you know, or like, you know, a a you get flipped over and like you just like see the pillow, you know, or or something like this. And it was just like the funniest thing in the world to me. and I was like falling down laughing off the couch. And he was like, okay, I guess I guess I don't get it He's like, I guess it's working. But I think, you know, I I got to work on Inside Amy Schumer and Broad City, and both of those shows really like opened up what like women's comedy can be, you know. I mean Paige Williams: Yeah. Ryan Cunningham: I I remember seeing this article when we were in the final season of Broad City and the the headline was like, Broad City made it okay for women to be gross. And I was actually like really proud of that. I remember showing it very proudly to Abbi and Ilana and being like, Look what you did. but you know, I think just if we can be real and who we really are versus the story that we try to tell the world about who we are. I think is always where humor lies and where you open up people to vulnerabilities and you can actually change people's minds. Paige Williams: Yeah. How do you choose the story you want to work on? Whether that's I'm creating it out of, you know, thin air and I'm the writer, or if are you only directing what you write? And then also in writers' rooms, when you get to choose what comes into the world new, how do you choose what to focus on? How do you choose the story? Is it something you lived and you're like, that'd be funny to write about? Ryan Cunningham: Yeah, I pull from my life a lot. I think there's a lot of different ideation sort of games that I play sometimes. I also really love when I'm trying to come up with ideas to go to very, very public places and just kind of walk around and like observe people and listen to them. one of my favorite places is Washington Square Park in New York City. And I like to just kind of walk, just keep walking. Don't spend a lot of time with them. But I like to just overhear snippets of conversations, one or two back and forths. And then something I like I do, I think, and it's just sort of like echolalia, but I I have to like repeat it to myself. I almost have to like do an impression of them to like hear their voice. And then I like to think like, okay, so what What kind of person was that? who was that? Who is that person? What is their story? And what the hell were they talking about? That I just heard this little snippet of conversation. And you can build out a world then of what that could possibly be. And that, you know, sometimes gives me ideas for characters or bits of dialogue and things like that. Yeah, I I do very much pull from my my real life. I try to really visualize myself in the story and just think about like trying to embody this character and who this person is. Like what would they say in this moment? Like what feels the most truthful? and that often to me is the funniest thing, like what feels Paige Williams: Yeah. Ryan Cunningham: most truthful. Paige Williams: you've said that in making Lone Wolves you were stopping waiting for permission and just creating the thing yourself. What had to change internally for you to be able to make that move and give yourself permission? Ryan Cunningham: have confidence. I think that after I turned 40, something just like flipped inside of me and I was just like, I can fucking do this. and why have I been relegating myself to a lesser position than leading the creative, I know what I'm doing. And it it just also, you know, unfortunately, kind of when I transitioned to directing, it was like the year before COVID. And so everything's kind of, you know, COVID really kind of shut things down. And I was working on a lot of development. I was working with this writer, Matt Foss. And he and Cora Vanderbroek wrote this amazing script together called Lone Wolves. And it would be relatively very simple to make because it's only two characters and it's like six locations. And he was able to get some grant money and he came to me and said, Would you want to direct this? We have $25,000 to make this, but we have a whole production a whole a whole production company on board and you know they're giving us the crew and the equipment and they're gonna build our sets for us and and he said that you know one of the reasons why he wanted to do it was he was particularly very frustrated that Cora Vanderbroek who co-wrote it with him and is a longtime friend, hadn't had the sort of boost in her acting career that he felt that she deserved. she had gotten a Tony nomination for Linda Vista on Broadway, which was in twenty twenty. So you know, COVID kind of I think took that momentum out and he wanted to help her very much and collaborate with her. They'd been they went to high school together, they'd been collaborating together since high school and so I had been developing some other projects with him, and we did we we were developing this TV show and he was like, Well, you're gonna showrun it, right? And I was like, Well, or you're gonna direct the pilot. And I was like, Well, I don't know if a network's gonna like I haven't showrun or directed a pilot. I don't I doubt that a network is gonna be like, yeah, sure. And so he was like That way we can just show them what we can do and what you can do and you don't have to ask for permission anymore. so I think it's really confidence. I think it's it's actually being confident in yourself and and not second guessing yourself and everything. Paige Williams: Yeah. As a filmmaker and a creative strategist, how do you help someone find the story underneath a complicated or vulnerable experience without simplifying it into something that doesn't feel true? Ryan Cunningham: think that's a really good question. It's something I do a lot. One of I work a lot with comedians, building their hours and I also work a lot with comedians, writers, performers who are doing like a one person show. And It's kind of a s specialty of mine actually is helping them figure out how to tell their story, how to frame things, how to pull it kind of pull it out of them. And I think the biggest thing I do is just listen and ask questions. because I think a lot of times people don't realize how important certain aspects are to a story. And they're just like, and then like this happened, but then but then this, let me tell you about this really meaty thing. But it's like what happened between point A and point B is actually really interesting, and it's the connective force that Brings these two ideas together, and I think that's something that a lot of people who are writing a narrative of their lives or their experiences don't understand is like how to make the connections between them and fill out the story. And so that that's something that I do a lot. I ask a lot of very like Pushing questions. Paige Williams: Yeah. what's the dream project? What's the thing you like really are pushing forward to happen next that you are obsessed with? Ryan Cunningham: Well, I just directed this pilot. it's called Whisper Sisters, and it's absolutely fantastic and I really, really want it to get picked up for a series. I think it would be incredibly fun to do. it's two sisters who kind of accidentally fall into a family moonshine ring. In Kentucky, that they were unaware that their family was involved in. but n now that their estranged father has died, they've inherited it. And it it's it's really fantastic. The title Whisper Sisters actually refers to during prohibition, if you wanted to find a woman who was like making bathtub gin or could get you you know, alcohol on the side, they were called or was making moonshine or something. they were called Whisper Sisters. And yeah. Paige Williams: Is there anything about story or narrative that I haven't asked you that you'd like to say? Ryan Cunningham: I think it's really interesting. How your relationship to your own story can change over time. how the the context of everything that happens to you. And I think that's always really important to think about and remember. there's also something really important about the stories that we tell ourselves and how the stories that we tell ourselves are our survival mechanisms, really. And that you can never really completely have a full story unless you hear from every perspective involved. Paige Williams: When you hear the term narrative intelligence, if you were defining it, how would you define Ryan Cunningham: it's like nothing about the facts of my past changed, but like the meaning of my past changed as I get older and I look at the story of my life. Another thing about narrative intelligence is learning how the goal is not to remove the complexity, it's not to simplify, but it's to create a structure that's strong enough to hold that complexity. I think that's really important. it's also just what I was just saying about the different perspectives. I think it's understanding the difference between What happened and the story that we've all constructed about what happened? And how do you represent those different perspectives? Paige Williams: You made me think of a question that I haven't thought of yet. Ryan Cunningham: Sure. Paige Williams: So as a writer director of television and film. Are all shows narratively intelligent? And if not, what would it mean for a show to be narratively intelligent? Ryan Cunningham: All shows are not narratively intelligent. I think there are quite a lot that really are. but I I don't think all shows are really narratively intelligent. I think something else with narrative intelligence is knowing when not to make something into a story. when something is a story and when something isn't. And I find that a lot of shows that I watch, I'm like Is this a story? is this did this need to be told? I don't know. I started directing and writing and develop working in development with other writers because I want to hear stories that we haven't heard before. And I think that there is a narrative intelligence in seeking out and finding stories and telling stories that haven't been told before. And I think a lot of what is happening in the media industry right now is that we're being made to tell the same stories over and over again. And I'm interested in something we haven't seen. Paige Williams: Hm. Ryan, I hope you get all the budgets and all the green lights because we need more of your stories. Thank you for being here today. Ryan Cunningham: Yeah, thank you. Paige Williams: Before we close, here's what I'm taking from this conversation about narrative intelligence. Ryan said something that stopped me. When she was diagnosed with ADHD, none of the facts of her life changed, but the meaning of those facts changed. Experiences she had interpreted as personal failures suddenly had context. And that changed not only the story she told about her life, but her relationship with herself. She became kinder to herself. Less interested in fighting who she was and more interested in understanding how she actually worked. That feels central to narrative intelligence. The work isn't necessarily to change what happened. We can't change what happened, but it may be to recognize that what happened and the meaning we made from what happened are not the same thing. Ryan also gave me language I want to keep. she said that narrative intelligence isn't about removing complexity or simplifying a story. It's about creating a structure strong enough to hold the complexity, and that matters, because sometimes the easiest story is also the least true one. A person can be hurt and loved. Something can be a failure and a beginning. Two people can live through the same event and carry away completely different stories about what happened. And perhaps narrative intelligence asks us to become capable of holding more than one perspective without rushing to collapse them into a single answer. Ryan added one more challenge I hadn't considered before. Maybe part of a narrative intelligence is knowing when not to make something into a story at all. We are meaning-making machines. We want coherence. We want the pieces to add up. But perhaps intelligence also means knowing when the story we have constructed is helping us understand our experience and when it is simply giving uncertainty a shape. So the question I'm leaving with today is, can I create a story strong enough to hold complexity without mistaking that story for the whole truth? Whew. This is one hundred stories.