Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / Entertainment Series 9: D.J. MacHale/ Writing Pendragon / AI & Post Capitalism / Creative Processes

Transcript

Entertainment Series 9: D.J. MacHale/ Writing Pendragon / AI & Post Capitalism / Creative Processes · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of come together
• 0:15
  DJ McHale. What a pleasure I the 13 to 15
• 0:19
  year to 16 year old me is freaking out inside right now,
• 0:22
  and I'm very, very happy to be talking to you.
• 0:25
  How are you I'm. Happy to be here.
• 0:26
  I'm, I'm excellent. It's good to meet you.
• 0:29
  It's good to meet you too. So, you know, I started, I was
• 0:32
  doing, I was talking to a friend of mine who I told you I just
• 0:35
  texted at letting him know we're talking about, we're, we're
• 0:37
  recording together and we're talking about potential guests
• 0:41
  and great writers that I, you know, that we would like to talk
• 0:43
  to. And we, and then I said to him,
• 0:45
  I was like, dude, you must have read PED Dragon growing up.
• 0:48
  And he said, yeah, dude, he goes, I actually didn't know too
• 0:51
  many other, everyone knew about it, but not too many of my
• 0:53
  friends actually had read it. And I was like, yeah, well, I
• 0:56
  loved it. And, and I said I got to reach
• 0:58
  out to the author and then I did some homework other than other
• 1:02
  than the book. And I saw you had quite a
• 1:04
  incredible creative career in general on screen and in
• 1:07
  writing. And so, so I'm happy because
• 1:10
  that gave me a lot more firepower and things to talk
• 1:11
  about so. Right.
• 1:13
  Yeah, that's good. Well, it's kind of fun how when
• 1:16
  you when you make television, unless you're a big highfalutin
• 1:20
  star or whatever, most people don't know who makes television
• 1:23
  shows. They, they, it's the actors, you
• 1:26
  know, it's it's the it's the whoever show and they don't know
• 1:28
  who the writers are and whatnot. And it wasn't till but people do
• 1:33
  know who writes books because their name is right of the book
• 1:37
  And people, chances are they might not even know the title of
• 1:39
  the book, but they know the author.
• 1:41
  And so it's, it was fun, you know, to start a while ago, but
• 1:43
  it's fun where combination of being an author and getting my
• 1:47
  name on books and social media. So the people like putting two
• 1:51
  and two together, they're like, whoa, wait a minute, that's the
• 1:54
  same guy that I watched in that show.
• 1:57
  So it was, so it was really, it's kind of fun to get, oh,
• 2:03
  it's the right word without sounding egotistical, getting
• 2:07
  recognized or getting kudos for having done something that back
• 2:10
  when I did it, no one knew with or in front of the dark.
• 2:14
  No one had any idea. So I talk about it more today
• 2:17
  than I did back then. I feel a similar scenario
• 2:21
  happened with people like Ben Stiller where he directed that
• 2:26
  awesome show Severance. And I, you know, and someone
• 2:28
  told me like, hey man, you should watch Severance.
• 2:30
  And I said, I'm not crazy about Ben Stiller.
• 2:32
  And he's like, no, there's nothing to do with the Ben
• 2:34
  Stiller that you think you know or don't know.
• 2:36
  He's like, there's a whole another side of him that, that,
• 2:38
  that, that comes out here. And it's really good.
• 2:40
  And I have to say I was blown away.
• 2:42
  So I love when people and also who knows how long he could have
• 2:45
  been wanting to direct something serious, you know, or something
• 2:48
  a little bit more thought provoking and just never got the
• 2:50
  chance to because he was typecast for, you know, whatever
• 2:52
  reason or for however long, you know.
• 2:53
  Well, he's having a pretty good career without doing that.
• 2:56
  So whether he was feeling like he's missing something, I guess,
• 3:00
  but he was, he was doing quite fine before that.
• 3:02
  So this is just adds to it. So he's he's so good for him.
• 3:05
  He's he's doing fine. Definitely, definitely so.
• 3:08
  So I want to hear if you don't mind, I would love for this to
• 3:11
  kind of be a combination of me kind of picking your thoughts a
• 3:14
  little bit. Just in general.
• 3:15
  I want to hear a little bit about your creative process and
• 3:18
  the way that you come up with stories and your world building
• 3:21
  which seems which is really exceptional.
• 3:23
  And I also would love to hear just a little terms of narrative
• 3:26
  and little biographical aspect as to what, you know, parts of
• 3:29
  your life you were writing or working for television which
• 3:32
  came first, which was a passion and we kind of start wherever
• 3:37
  you prefer. But those are the two areas I
• 3:39
  would like to, you know, get to with our time.
• 3:41
  Yeah, the, the one of the things that's kind of fun for me is
• 3:48
  when I speak at schools, most because of the books, not just
• 3:50
  the TV, because of the books. And I have a speech, I've given
• 3:55
  it 8,000,000 times. But and it's I've it's, it's
• 3:58
  honed down. Believe me.
• 3:59
  It's I know exactly how to get, I can give it in my sleep.
• 4:03
  But one of the things that I start with that is absolutely
• 4:07
  true, but it also endears me to the kids, is that I start off by
• 4:12
  saying I hate to write. OK.
• 4:16
  And so you know who that gets everyone's attention?
• 4:19
  Like, oh really? Talk to some boring author and
• 4:22
  he who hates to write. Tell me more.
• 4:27
  But it was that hatred of writing that got me to become a
• 4:31
  writer. And, and as odd as that sounds,
• 4:35
  it's because when I was in school, when I well, throughout,
• 4:41
  you know, SEC first, but it's not secondary education.
• 4:44
  It's, you know, K through 12, let's say which one?
• 4:48
  Where were. You in New York, Connecticut,
• 4:51
  which is, which is actually suburban New York.
• 4:54
  I mean, it's it's, I mean, you can see Manhattan from my town.
• 4:58
  So it's so I feel like a New Yorker even though it's
• 5:01
  Connecticut. But it wasn't so much that I
• 5:05
  hated writing, as it turns out. It's that I just didn't have the
• 5:08
  discipline to do it. I just hated having to sit down
• 5:11
  and not running around outside and not watching TV or not
• 5:14
  playing, whatever it happened to be.
• 5:15
  So it was about 8th grade that for whatever amazing stroke of
• 5:22
  good luck. Now, this is a long time ago.
• 5:24
  This is the dark ages. This is like 1970.
• 5:28
  There's a media specialist on a school teacher who, I'm not sure
• 5:31
  what he did, but he was the media specialist and he came to
• 5:35
  me one day and I don't know why he did this, but he said, DJ,
• 5:39
  we, we just got this thing in, do you want to use it?
• 5:43
  And it was a, he called it a portable videotape recorder.
• 5:48
  Now, by today's standards, there's nothing portable about
• 5:52
  this thing. I, you know, it was between the
• 5:54
  cables and the cameras and the batteries and the, you know,
• 5:57
  it's, it's probably gas powered for all I remember.
• 6:01
  But black and white reel to reel, you know, really old
• 6:04
  school, horrible quality. And he said, you want to use
• 6:07
  this. And I said, no, what?
• 6:09
  I want to use it. But then a couple friends of
• 6:12
  mine and I who had the same mindset were like, hey, who?
• 6:15
  We came up with the best scam. We said whenever we have to do a
• 6:18
  report on something, an essay, whatever it is, rather than
• 6:23
  write a report that we hate because we hate to write, maybe
• 6:25
  we can make a videotape about it instead.
• 6:28
  Awesome. So you know, today that's
• 6:30
  commonplace if people, they're walking around in their pocket
• 6:32
  with the technology to do that. But no one was doing it back
• 6:35
  then. So we used to go to teachers and
• 6:37
  say, can we make this video instead?
• 6:40
  And they'd all have the same reaction.
• 6:42
  They have this look like I want to be supportive, but are they
• 6:45
  trying to get away with something like I don't, I don't
• 6:48
  know. If so, they'd say, I guess I'm
• 6:50
  like, OK, thank you, goodbye. And from from that like 8th
• 6:55
  grade, I guess that was from 8th grade until 12th grade.
• 6:58
  There are three or four of us that whenever a report came up,
• 7:02
  whether it's for our class or somebody else's class, they'd
• 7:04
  say time to make another show, time to make another video.
• 7:07
  And we're like, OK, And we made comedies, We made dramas, we
• 7:10
  made game shows, we made documentaries and.
• 7:12
  I loved. It everything and, you know, all
• 7:15
  horrible, but but and and we learned about whatever the thing
• 7:19
  was that we were doing it about and the thing that that also we
• 7:24
  didn't. Well, we thought we're so smart
• 7:27
  because we were having fun. We were getting out of writing
• 7:32
  because we hated to write and because it was so new, teachers
• 7:35
  had no idea how to grade these things, so we always got A's.
• 7:39
  So I was like, yeah, this is fine.
• 7:41
  It wasn't until I I'll jump ahead pretty quickly.
• 7:44
  When I graduated high school, I, I went, I didn't know what I
• 7:47
  wanted to do for life, but I knew I should go to college.
• 7:51
  So I went to a college that I'm going to be a pre law like yeah,
• 7:54
  right. That's.
• 7:56
  I did that too, English major. There's there's anything I
• 8:01
  learned at that, at that university, it was like, I don't
• 8:03
  want to be doing this. Yeah.
• 8:05
  So it was my girlfriend at the time who said, you know, you
• 8:07
  really liked in high school making movies.
• 8:11
  Why don't you go to film school? I was like, oh, isn't that a bad
• 8:14
  idea? OK, fine.
• 8:15
  So I replied to you in a church. I went to NYU film school and
• 8:19
  there was a a real moment that I had that I had to take a writing
• 8:23
  class because you have to take all these film type things
• 8:25
  that's writing. And I went to the professor and
• 8:27
  I said this is going to be ugly. And she said why?
• 8:31
  And I said because I hate to write.
• 8:33
  And she laughed at me and I was like, what are you talking
• 8:37
  about? She said, DJ, you come up with
• 8:39
  stories, right? Oh, yeah, she says, and you like
• 8:41
  telling these stories, right? Yeah, she says.
• 8:43
  And and you like getting feedback from people, see how
• 8:46
  they like. And if they based on the
• 8:49
  feedback, you either make it funnier, scarier, change or
• 8:51
  whatnot. Yeah.
• 8:51
  She was with Doofus. What do you think writing is?
• 8:53
  And I was like, oh, you know, just because I wasn't sitting
• 8:59
  typing it or writing on a piece of paper, whatever, that didn't
• 9:02
  feel like that was writing. But she said you for all the
• 9:06
  films you've made, you probably did more writing than any kid
• 9:09
  whoever went through that high school of yours, like, Oh my
• 9:12
  God, that's pretty good. So that's when I kind of
• 9:14
  realized that, Oh, maybe I, I can be a writer and, and to get
• 9:19
  into the film business. And back in those days, kind of
• 9:22
  along the same lines of nowadays you can make a feature film with
• 9:25
  your, your iPhone. It was very expensive to be
• 9:30
  actually making films back then. And so I thought I couldn't
• 9:35
  afford that. I was poor.
• 9:36
  So it's like, if I'm going to get into this business, it's
• 9:39
  going to be through writing. So that's kind of how I got into
• 9:42
  being a writer and writing screenplays and writing
• 9:45
  teleplays and things like that. So that was that was really the
• 9:48
  the beginning of it. That's awesome.
• 9:50
  That's really cool. And what's what's so cool about
• 9:52
  that is I guess it answers the question of which came first.
• 9:55
  And the answer is the word built the world building.
• 9:57
  You know, if you're, if you're going to be taking all the
• 9:59
  assignments that you're doing and there is a creative muscle
• 10:03
  that is being flexed or exercised when you're
• 10:07
  transmuting information or repeating information on your
• 10:10
  own that a teacher wants to hear, Especially if you're going
• 10:13
  to put, you know, your own spin on it, like making it to a game
• 10:15
  show or a drama or a comedy. And, and that, that's, that's
• 10:20
  the beauty of, of really a lot of writing.
• 10:22
  And it's funny because I try to get, I teach high school English
• 10:25
  and I try to get my students to break out of the formal writing
• 10:29
  at the moment they're, you know, they're used to it.
• 10:33
  And one thing that, and I'm, and I would love to get your
• 10:36
  feedback on this, but I said these students are, you know,
• 10:41
  9th through 12th grade. They know that I know rather
• 10:45
  that by the time they get into college, writing essays is going
• 10:49
  to be almost obsolete as far as AI goes, as far as skills go, as
• 10:54
  far. Yeah, unfortunately, yeah.
• 10:57
  And I try to emphasize instead that they've got to learn how to
• 11:01
  articulate their thoughts and express their own selves on
• 11:07
  paper, because that's the muscle that has to be exercised.
• 11:12
  And so I kind of focus more on reactions to information as
• 11:18
  opposed to summarizing informal paragraphs.
• 11:21
  And I try to encourage poetry and they, they look at the word
• 11:25
  like it's, you know, awful. I just show them the movie Dead
• 11:28
  Poet Society. I show it to my 12th graders.
• 11:30
  And it, it rocked that it really shook them to their core.
• 11:33
  You can see that how, how, how much of an impact it had on
• 11:35
  them. But they're learning that that
• 11:38
  writing is that writing is talking just, you know, I mean,
• 11:43
  it's pretty much the same thing. And except you have an
• 11:46
  opportunity to edit and revise what you're saying and really,
• 11:49
  really get to really get to have fun with it.
• 11:53
  Well, well, that's, that's where the art comes in it.
• 11:56
  It's putting your own spin on it, your own point of view, your
• 11:58
  own take on it. I have a debate with a friend of
• 12:02
  mine who is a, who's a very, very talented artist, a painter.
• 12:08
  And I mean, like amazing. I mean, he's one of those guys,
• 12:12
  like a criminal would want to hire him to do a forgery of a
• 12:15
  painting because that, that's how good he is.
• 12:17
  It it's, it's really remarkable and that's such a skill and he's
• 12:20
  worked at it and whatnot. But but it's not art.
• 12:25
  It it's the art is the person who created the original piece,
• 12:29
  who chose what the subject was, what the angle was, what the
• 12:33
  lighting was, what the colors are going to be.
• 12:36
  He is very skilled. I couldn't do it.
• 12:39
  He's very skilled in recreating it, but he's not putting his own
• 12:43
  voice into it. So it doesn't become art until
• 12:46
  you put your own voice to it. So with a script, with a story
• 12:49
  or whatever, until you your own voice comes through and that.
• 12:52
  And that's I think one of the big knocks on AI.
• 12:54
  It's like AI doesn't have a soul.
• 12:58
  It just takes what's there and extrapolates and whatnot.
• 13:02
  So that's why I hope AI will never well, God, I can't believe
• 13:07
  I'm thinking I'm an old guy. I'm like there's AII don't know.
• 13:09
  No, is it, Well, I mean, apparently you have the
• 13:12
  foresight or at least have thought about the, the, the
• 13:15
  notion of like, you know what, what is what this road's going
• 13:17
  to lead down and you know, it's it's not, it's not too pretty.
• 13:22
  I don't, I don't think potentially, but I think.
• 13:24
  I just had an experience the other day and literally just a
• 13:27
  couple days ago where it was on, I think it was on Facebook.
• 13:31
  And well, I get these things that notice that oh, my name
• 13:35
  popped up in something. And then I go to the article,
• 13:38
  see what it is, usually somebody selling something and I look at
• 13:40
  it. But every once in a while an
• 13:41
  interesting article pops up. And it was not an article, but
• 13:47
  it was, it was a verbal essay, whatever about my first
• 13:51
  Pendragon book about the merchant of Death.
• 13:54
  And it was clearly an AI voice that was saying it.
• 13:59
  But but the description of the book, it's like, wow, this is
• 14:06
  and it wasn't just this is what happened.
• 14:07
  And that's what happened. This was going into the
• 14:09
  philosophy behind it by the the essence of it.
• 14:12
  And it's like, wow, this person. I, I don't know if I, I even
• 14:16
  thought that through all the way when I wrote it, but wow, it's,
• 14:19
  this is pretty and it kind of dawning.
• 14:21
  It's like, wait a minute, this was AI.
• 14:23
  This wasn't somebody who sat down and wrote this.
• 14:25
  This is just someone who who did but interpret something that
• 14:29
  already existed. Yeah.
• 14:32
  The AI did not come up with something they interpreted
• 14:34
  something that already existed. And you can tell, you can tell
• 14:36
  when something's AI written. I could tell with my student,
• 14:39
  you know, and it's not judged that there's degrees of, you
• 14:42
  know, polished, you know, the AI has relative to my students have
• 14:46
  of course, but you can tell, you can tell with a lot of articles
• 14:51
  there is, there's even like some kind of soul that's missing to
• 14:55
  the writing. It's a weird way to put it, but
• 14:57
  I, I think that it's, it's if you translate that same idea
• 14:59
  over to music, it works really well.
• 15:01
  And that example that even you gave earlier.
• 15:06
  I'm a big Grateful Dead fan and I've been for a couple of years
• 15:09
  now, not my whole life. I'm not, but you know, it's,
• 15:12
  I've kind of tripped into it a little bit and I, and they start
• 15:17
  as essentially a cover band and when they first got their first
• 15:20
  record contract, they panicked because they didn't have any
• 15:23
  original songs to play. They, what they excelled at was
• 15:29
  playing cover songs their way and creating this whole new
• 15:33
  style of playing music. And I find that a lot of a lot
• 15:37
  of the great musicians that I, that I've really followed
• 15:40
  throughout the years and listened to real deep tracks and
• 15:42
  really, you know, listened to a lot of their live performances
• 15:44
  and stuff. They've, they too will often
• 15:48
  cover their influences. But you can find the, you can
• 15:51
  see their own spark and their own humanity and their own
• 15:53
  individual touch to a lot of it. And it, it turns that song into
• 15:57
  their own. I think that every single person
• 15:59
  that does that really takes, you know, so it and I guess that
• 16:04
  would be AI is missing that part where it's reforming it into
• 16:08
  something new. It's instead it's kind of just a
• 16:10
  cold summary or soulless summary, but it's but it's
• 16:14
  scary. It's really good.
• 16:16
  I, I heard this phrase, I shouldn't say what it was
• 16:19
  referring to, but I'll, I'll tell you the phrases is that
• 16:24
  when you listen to a song like that, let's say AI generated
• 16:26
  song like that, it all seems polished and correct for the
• 16:32
  most part and thoughtful. Thoughtful is probably not the
• 16:35
  right word. Polished, correct, technical,
• 16:40
  well polished, incorrect, incorrect factually.
• 16:44
  But somewhere in the mix, there's a dead hand.
• 16:47
  It's just that makes it fall off and it just takes away there,
• 16:51
  there isn't a soul in this thing.
• 16:53
  There isn't a point of view in this thing.
• 16:55
  It's just fact. And will that change?
• 17:00
  Will, will we get to Hal in 2001 and space and they'll take over
• 17:06
  or Terminator and then suddenly they're taking over the world?
• 17:10
  I don't know. It's quite possible.
• 17:13
  It's really scary when machines can start thinking for
• 17:15
  themselves. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 17:17
  Because we're getting at the point and I've been thinking a
• 17:19
  lot about this too. And I'd love to hear if you have
• 17:22
  any thoughts on this or just any, you know, kind of playing
• 17:26
  these might, you know, these, these thought these thought
• 17:29
  experiments out. But we're not too far from Elon
• 17:33
  Musk putting, you know, Grok into a Tesla robot or a Tesla
• 17:37
  humanoid robot and having it walk around essentially for.
• 17:40
  And I think he said the starting price that he wanted to charge
• 17:42
  was between 20 and 30 grand for this, these Tesla robots, you
• 17:47
  the cost of all labor and the cost of really everything is
• 17:52
  going to drop enormously. And it almost feels like we're
• 17:57
  snowballing and hurtling towards a post capitalistic society
• 18:02
  because capitalism is not going to be necessary.
• 18:05
  You're not going to need. It's going to be almost a world
• 18:08
  of meaning and relationships and adventure relative to, as
• 18:12
  opposed to a world of maintenance for an out of
• 18:16
  necessity. Well, you're you're right, but
• 18:23
  that that spells doom because unless what people do generate
• 18:32
  money, generate income or generate value, then where does
• 18:38
  value come from? So I don't know, I mean, I, I
• 18:43
  don't, I'm glad I'm closer to the end than the beginning of my
• 18:47
  life, so I won't have to worry about it.
• 18:49
  But I just read an article at that long ago that was talking
• 18:53
  about the viability of creating a robot like you just described,
• 18:57
  like a humanoid type robot. And I don't put anything past
• 19:01
  anybody. I believe at some point that's
• 19:03
  probably going to be viable, but it's a lot of.
• 19:06
  Have you seen it recently? Yeah, but but what they show are
• 19:13
  really controlled tests and whatnot that but apparently
• 19:18
  mechanically even not even not even the the software create
• 19:24
  recreating the human movement and whatnot unless they come up
• 19:27
  with robots that aren't human like which they do have too as
• 19:29
  well. Yeah, exactly.
• 19:32
  To try to emulate the ergonomics of a human being are a lot more
• 19:36
  difficult than creating Rosie the the the maid from the
• 19:41
  Jetsons. I don't know but that.
• 19:44
  But as I said to say that won't happen someday.
• 19:46
  I I don't know but but unless I take it in a much more
• 19:50
  rudimentary level, it's like how how many people no longer find
• 19:56
  jobs on assembly lines. I mean no one's.
• 20:00
  Using a wrench on an assembly line anymore that's, that's not
• 20:04
  new, that's been that way for 40 years or whatever.
• 20:07
  So it's like, what are people going to do?
• 20:09
  What, what, what's, what's going to be?
• 20:12
  How are they going to generate value in what they do in order
• 20:15
  to feed the machine that's going to give them the machine?
• 20:19
  You know, I I don't know the answer to it.
• 20:21
  So I think that I mean, what I would imagine in just playing
• 20:24
  this out, if you take away and I, I've asked the student this
• 20:28
  before and I think about this a lot because I've, I grew, I've
• 20:33
  grew up in a upper class world and I and I, and I see people, I
• 20:42
  saw people collect money for far more than they could possibly
• 20:46
  ever use it for, you know, and, and one of the benefits that
• 20:50
  obviously they get is this kind of social currency for saying
• 20:52
  that they have so much money or indicating somehow that they
• 20:55
  have a lot of money, that they create a lot of value.
• 20:58
  And when that becomes not as impressive because value or
• 21:03
  things that are monetary or things that are physical are
• 21:06
  going to be so cheap and so easily made, then the then our
• 21:12
  values for what we find important in life are going to
• 21:16
  have to shift from something that's currency based to
• 21:18
  something else. So for example, if you're in
• 21:20
  Russia or China, it's the motherland or the, or the, you
• 21:23
  know, or the, or the Chinese party or whatever it is.
• 21:26
  And if you're America, it's capitalism.
• 21:28
  But maybe the answer might be meaning and adventure.
• 21:31
  Maybe the answer is, you know, OK, let's go to space now and
• 21:34
  see what you see, what we could do from here.
• 21:36
  In other words, stop focusing on money being the yardstick that
• 21:42
  we're measuring our success in the time that we spend our lives
• 21:45
  with, and instead change the emphasis to adventure or, or
• 21:50
  life development or meaning and relationships and stuff like
• 21:54
  that. Because at the end of the day,
• 21:55
  that is what people live for. And, you know, no matter how
• 21:57
  much physical, how many, how many stories have we heard of,
• 22:01
  of wealthy people that are depressed, suicidal, that we
• 22:05
  just know that at a certain point it, it money is security.
• 22:09
  And money, you know, provides happiness in the sense that you
• 22:13
  feel secure and not anxious and concerned about where your,
• 22:17
  where your safety's going to come from.
• 22:19
  But beyond that it doesn't provide anything or as much.
• 22:24
  Yeah, absolutely. Well, unless you want to pay to
• 22:29
  go to outer space or or go out on an adventure or whatever.
• 22:34
  I mean, it's people have to eat and short of going out and
• 22:44
  hunting and gathering themselves, they're going to
• 22:47
  have to get someone to grow that food for them.
• 22:50
  So unless we go back to a total what what's the term agronomy?
• 22:55
  Yeah, it's society. It's I, I I just don't see it.
• 22:58
  I mean, it's it's I'd love to be able to be make money off of
• 23:02
  adventure, but or, or make a make a survive off of adventure.
• 23:09
  Exactly. You wouldn't be making money.
• 23:11
  I, I mean, I think that the cause of things would be so
• 23:13
  cheap that there'll be, it'll be effectively free to live.
• 23:17
  I mean, I, if, if you, if you scale any kind of robotics and
• 23:22
  any kind of AI and you stick them together and you scale
• 23:25
  that, think about how quick San Francisco can change.
• 23:29
  And then think about how quickly that can just ripple out.
• 23:31
  Think about how quickly and we've seen the impacts of, you
• 23:35
  know, it might take 15 years, it might take 20 years, it might
• 23:38
  take 50 years, but we've seen that we've seen the standard of
• 23:44
  living is higher now, especially in America than we ever than
• 23:47
  we've ever been. I saw a really interesting
• 23:48
  article that talks about a country that primarily that
• 23:52
  their primary resource that they create are services is a wealthy
• 23:58
  country and countries whose primary services are material
• 24:03
  goods is a developing country. And we've been, you know, and,
• 24:07
  and we've been providing, if you think about what we provide,
• 24:10
  it's tech companies, it's finance, it's banking, it's AI,
• 24:13
  it's software. It's a lot of this, it's a lot
• 24:16
  of the, it's Hollywood, It's, it's, it's, it's great
• 24:18
  entertainment. A lot of these aren't, we're
• 24:21
  not. And maybe cars, but we're not,
• 24:23
  we don't have sweatshops. You know, Nike doesn't make
• 24:26
  anything in America and Apple doesn't make anything in
• 24:28
  America. And so we're already the, the
• 24:32
  standard of living here is already higher because of
• 24:34
  technology. And I and I think that everyone
• 24:37
  in the world is hoping that, you know, we could just keep, we
• 24:40
  don't even know where it's going.
• 24:41
  It's just a freight train and it's just chugging along.
• 24:44
  Well, that's, I mean, that's a horrifying thought because, and
• 24:49
  I think it's an accurate one, because there there's still a
• 24:55
  baseline of need. People need shelter, they need
• 24:59
  clothing, they need food. And there there's a value in
• 25:06
  that. There's a value in providing
• 25:08
  that, whether you're a farmer or a, or a rancher or or whatever,
• 25:14
  whatever. So that will never go away
• 25:17
  unless, unless the healthcare for I'd say, you know how you
• 25:22
  know, or are doctors going to work for nothing?
• 25:26
  And, and as we live in an entirely bartering society, I, I
• 25:31
  just don't, yeah, I don't. And I'm the first one to be I, I
• 25:35
  don't want to say I'm anti capitalist.
• 25:37
  I'm I'm not. But where one side of the aisle
• 25:41
  they fear the government, on the other side of the aisle they
• 25:45
  fear on my side of the aisle, they fear big business.
• 25:49
  It's like at least the government at at least their
• 25:53
  charter says they're supposed to be there to help you business.
• 26:01
  No, their their job is to make money and and I've seen it again
• 26:05
  again, they will they will throw their mother under the bus if it
• 26:10
  raises the stock price. So I where it all leads.
• 26:13
  I I don't know. Yeah, I've talked a lot about
• 26:16
  that about that concept because I find myself kind of homeless
• 26:20
  as far as like I don't think either of them are very have
• 26:23
  been have proven to be very effective ways of of helping
• 26:26
  people. So I don't really know what it
• 26:28
  is, but I've been pretty I've been pretty black pill this as
• 26:34
  far as my understanding of of having optimism in either of the
• 26:37
  two parties at the moment. But I think rest I don't know.
• 26:41
  I don't know what I don't know where it's going to go from
• 26:43
  here. But I'd love to hear if you
• 26:46
  don't mind a little bit about so you came, you see, told me how
• 26:48
  you started writing. How did you come about the world
• 26:53
  building and the concepts? And I growing up, the first of
• 27:00
  all I loved, I think it was a second book with or the third
• 27:03
  book with the water planet. The whole the second book and
• 27:07
  that and the character Spader just for some reason had like a
• 27:10
  special place in my heart. But there's, I wanted to ask
• 27:13
  about a couple of things #1 the world building and also the
• 27:17
  characters, because you did a really cool job blending the
• 27:22
  main characters as far as jocks and nerds and someone straddling
• 27:28
  the line in between and, and the awkward teenage, you know,
• 27:32
  everything. And, and you captured that
• 27:34
  experience so perfectly. And it was because, and one of
• 27:38
  the things I was in in a kind of timeless way, I was talking to
• 27:41
  friends about of mine recently about Calvin Hobbes.
• 27:43
  And one of the things we were saying was even if you may not
• 27:45
  get the cultural, you know, the cultural references common thing
• 27:49
  on humanity. And like these human traits
• 27:51
  don't change on a day-to-day basis.
• 27:53
  Bill Waters can be writing in 2025 for anyone, for anyone
• 27:56
  knows, and it'll be just as funny and just as accurate.
• 27:59
  And I know that from my siblings and my students and and my
• 28:02
  friends. So.
• 28:03
  So can you tell me a little bit about your process and how this
• 28:06
  went? Yeah, it, it, I mean, if there's
• 28:09
  Boisele, I could answer there's a million different ways because
• 28:12
  it's not a it's kind of like the easy question that I got asked
• 28:18
  is So what were you inspired by? You know, it's just like, oh
• 28:23
  boy, that that answer is it's there's no easy answer to that
• 28:28
  because, because inspiration comes from multiple sources and
• 28:31
  they usually then coalesce and do a story or a character or
• 28:35
  whatever. If there's one thing and I I
• 28:37
  can't tell you why this is important to me.
• 28:41
  If I had a therapist, you could ask my therapist, But if there's
• 28:45
  one thing that is it consistent in all of my writing, whether
• 28:50
  it's the TV shows that I've written or the books that I've
• 28:52
  written, it's the concept of self empowerment where it's, and
• 28:59
  I, and I often I write about all ages, but often kind of hit that
• 29:02
  sweet spot of like around 1415 years old, which is what Bobby
• 29:06
  Pendragon started. And, and I love that age because
• 29:11
  it's an age where you're right in between, where you're, you're
• 29:15
  no longer joint at the hip to your parents.
• 29:19
  You can start having a little bit of, of freedom and
• 29:24
  independence yet you don't know anything yet.
• 29:27
  You think you do, but you don't. So, so you're just learning on
• 29:32
  your own about the world. And I we say how people always
• 29:39
  ask why, why in Disney films do the parents always have to die?
• 29:45
  And it's like, that's an easy one.
• 29:48
  I mean, yes, there's the sympathy factor.
• 29:49
  You want to feel sorry for the kids whose parents died.
• 29:52
  You know, poor Bambi, your mother got shot.
• 29:54
  But, but, but the, the, the real reason is that in order for the
• 30:01
  kid to go on the adventure of both the conflict and the
• 30:06
  learning whatnot, they have to do it on their own without help
• 30:09
  from outside sources. So I always put young people
• 30:12
  into difficult situations where the first thing they do was I
• 30:15
  looked at my parent for whatever reason, parents out of the
• 30:18
  picture. I, I did 91 episodes of Are You
• 30:20
  Afraid of the Dark and got rid of the parents in 91 times.
• 30:25
  They candy. They're not, for whatever
• 30:27
  reason, their parents aren't around.
• 30:29
  They'll go to the police. I can't get to the police.
• 30:31
  I go to a teacher, can't get to the teacher.
• 30:33
  Doors keep closing in front of them until they say like, oh, if
• 30:35
  I'm going to get out of this, I've got to do it on my own.
• 30:38
  And therein lies the growth and the adventure.
• 30:40
  So that's one kind of starting point with all my stories is
• 30:45
  about a person, no matter what the age is, whether they're
• 30:47
  really young or even adult, it's like, how are they going to see
• 30:52
  their way through the jungle here to to solve their issue
• 30:56
  and. With the character trajectory
• 30:58
  that you want to that you want to emphasize.
• 31:01
  Yeah, it's one of them. I mean, it's not necessarily the
• 31:03
  first, but it's one of. I said there are many things
• 31:05
  that that's one of them, but I always.
• 31:07
  You're saying like piece of paper and you're and you're
• 31:09
  like, where do I, I want to start something?
• 31:11
  Do you start with talking it out?
• 31:13
  Do you start like because I, I'm the someone, for example, that
• 31:17
  I, I start, I just start writing and I kind of see where I start
• 31:20
  writing. I'm very bad at planning ahead
• 31:21
  of what I'm going to write. A lot of times if I try to plan
• 31:24
  ahead, it all falls apart And that's why I'm bad at long form
• 31:27
  writing actually. Or I haven't must exercise that
• 31:30
  muscle. I see.
• 31:31
  Yes. Well, you know, it's funny
• 31:33
  there, there are two schools and and I get into this with other
• 31:37
  authors all the time. There are the people who like
• 31:41
  you where it's just like they'll sit down and like, OK, I have an
• 31:45
  idea, let me just start writing it and see where it takes me.
• 31:50
  Perfectly valid that that's fine.
• 31:52
  I can't do that. You can't read 10 books.
• 31:55
  Like that. Well, no, I, I outlined, I, I
• 31:59
  outlined those 10 Pendragon books in about two weeks.
• 32:02
  I, I, yeah, I mean, in broad strokes, it was yeah, yeah.
• 32:08
  And, and also part of that is because a lot of my stories, all
• 32:11
  my stories are very, they're plot heavy and there's a mystery
• 32:16
  involved that has to be solved. And so you can't really write
• 32:21
  about it until you know where it's going to end.
• 32:24
  In order to write a murder mystery, you have to know who'd
• 32:26
  done it. Then you work backwards as to
• 32:29
  laying in the clues or the misdirections or all that kind
• 32:31
  of stuff. So, so, so my process and
• 32:35
  actually this is, that's what I'm about to say.
• 32:37
  It's the second part of the process, but the first part of
• 32:39
  the process is kind of like they're like 3 different areas.
• 32:45
  1 is what kind of character do I want to write about, which you
• 32:47
  just talked about. It's like what kind of who are
• 32:49
  they, what kind of journey they're going to go on?
• 32:51
  What do they have to overcome? Because every good story is
• 32:54
  about someone who wants something that you come any
• 32:58
  story, what is it? What do they want?
• 33:00
  And the story is how they get it or not get it and what the, and
• 33:04
  the story is the impediments they have along the way to try
• 33:08
  to get that thing, whatever that thing is.
• 33:11
  You know, Wizard of Oz, Dorothy wants to get home.
• 33:14
  That's what's driving her the whole time.
• 33:17
  The fact that she meets the Scarecrow in a 10 minute, that's
• 33:20
  just, that's just. Yeah, step along the way.
• 33:23
  It steps along the way and impediments and victories and
• 33:26
  all that kind of stuff. So I start with a character that
• 33:28
  that wants something. Yeah.
• 33:31
  And, and, and, and this is kind of critical too.
• 33:36
  Usually my stories have a big hook to them, whether it's a
• 33:40
  science fiction hook or a supernatural hook.
• 33:44
  But I want a story about someone or some or a few people who
• 33:49
  whose story would be interesting even if they never came upon the
• 33:54
  science fiction boogeyman. Whatever it happens to because I
• 33:58
  want, I want a story about a kid, an adult, doesn't matter
• 34:02
  that they're going through a really relatable real life
• 34:05
  situation. Conflicts.
• 34:06
  Does that be hugely dramatic if it's a, you know, already afraid
• 34:09
  of the dark? But it's something that they've
• 34:10
  got to overcome that readers or viewers can relate to because
• 34:16
  we're going to care about what happens to them.
• 34:17
  And maybe our caring amounts to we hope they fail because we
• 34:20
  hate them. I mean that that's valid too.
• 34:24
  But they would be interesting to read about or or watch even if
• 34:29
  they never came upon the supernatural hook, because then
• 34:33
  now there's the second part of the story is of the process is
• 34:38
  what's the supernatural hook? What's the science fiction hook
• 34:40
  and whatnot. And that's equally important to
• 34:45
  come up with something that is interesting to me that I think
• 34:49
  will be interesting to people, whether it's a land entirely
• 34:52
  covered in water and there's a sunken city that they have to
• 34:56
  find in order to stop these underwater farms from from being
• 35:00
  poisoned. You know, that's the fun setting
• 35:04
  for it. That's that's the second one.
• 35:07
  The third one is I try to come up with some kind of theme that
• 35:12
  what are we really talking about here?
• 35:14
  It's not just about a kid who's being bullied.
• 35:19
  Whatever I made just made that up.
• 35:22
  What's the larger picture that I'm talking about here?
• 35:27
  And with each of the Pendragon stories, there's, there's a much
• 35:31
  larger thing and and there's, there's, there's a theme that
• 35:33
  runs with the whole thing that's, that is homogeneous to
• 35:36
  the whole thing. But then each book has its own
• 35:38
  particular theme that is plays out as the characters are
• 35:42
  playing out their individual conflicts and the conflict of
• 35:45
  that book. That's saying more about, that's
• 35:49
  speaking more than just, oh, here's a good guy and a bad guy
• 35:53
  and we got to try to beat the bad guy because he's bad.
• 35:56
  So, so I I try to have it a little deeper and more complex
• 36:03
  than just a superficial thing. And I do all that before I ever
• 36:09
  put pen to paper. It's all that's the fun part for
• 36:12
  me. And and.
• 36:13
  So how do you do that? Are you talking this out?
• 36:15
  Are you writing this in in a notebook?
• 36:17
  Are you with, are you with friends or family?
• 36:19
  Do you have a particular? Do you have a particular method
• 36:22
  that goes about that? In the beginning, it's, it's a
• 36:28
  three-step process in, in the beginning, it's just in my head.
• 36:32
  And the older I get, the more I have to take notes because it's
• 36:35
  like, what was that good idea that I had?
• 36:36
  Oh, damn, that was so good. I wish I could have remembered
• 36:40
  it. Oh man.
• 36:43
  But most of it's just in my head.
• 36:44
  I'm literally just thinking it through.
• 36:47
  And one of the talk about process I have, I've trained
• 36:51
  myself to, let's talk about writer's block for a second.
• 36:58
  Most people think writer's block is when you can't come up with
• 37:00
  ideas. To me, that's not writer's
• 37:03
  block, that's you can't come up with ideas.
• 37:06
  To me, writer's block is the impediments that keep you from
• 37:11
  working on coming up with those ideas, the distractions.
• 37:15
  And so, you know, I'm, I'm sitting here and I'm writing
• 37:19
  whatever I'm writing. I'm like, oh, I got to feed the
• 37:21
  dog. I got, oh, no, I can't do it.
• 37:22
  OK, let me go. OK.
• 37:24
  God, I'm so tired. I can't, oh, I can't do that.
• 37:26
  I'm thirsty. I better get something to drink.
• 37:28
  Those are all the things that are stopping you from being
• 37:30
  productive. So excuse me.
• 37:32
  I've trained myself when I first wake up in the morning, when my
• 37:37
  brain is clean slate, it is clear that I, I turn myself to
• 37:43
  whatever story I'm working on. And that's when I come up with
• 37:46
  so many of the ideas because I can focus solely on that I,
• 37:50
  that, that challenge that I meant that I, whatever it
• 37:52
  happens to me, it's, it's remarkable.
• 37:54
  I also will go for a run or go for a walk or something like
• 37:57
  that just to clear out all the blocks that allows you to
• 38:02
  somehow magically focus in on the challenge that you've, how
• 38:06
  am I going to get him to do this?
• 38:07
  And that story? I don't know.
• 38:08
  You could be beating your head against the wall.
• 38:10
  Then you go out for a run. You're like, oh, of course
• 38:12
  that's that's what it's going to be.
• 38:13
  Why didn't I think that was easy?
• 38:15
  And it seems so easy, but it wasn't.
• 38:18
  So in the beginning I just come up with ideas in general and
• 38:22
  whatnot. Then the first thing I do is I
• 38:25
  write an outline, and once I'm kind of have in my head where
• 38:30
  the story's going to go, who the character is, what the themes
• 38:32
  are, then I make it a little bit more concrete by typing out an
• 38:38
  outline. And the term outline is probably
• 38:41
  too formal for what I do. It's not like 11-A1B1C.
• 38:46
  It's not quite like that. It's just putting notes down to
• 38:50
  shape a story. And the beauty of that is that
• 38:54
  it's so easily changed because you're not sweating writing the
• 38:59
  right words that people will read.
• 39:02
  No one else is going to read this but me.
• 39:04
  So we can move things around. You can tell that shouldn't
• 39:06
  happen there. Well, that sucks.
• 39:07
  OK, You know, I can. I can move things around so
• 39:10
  easily and beat out the story in broad strokes all the way
• 39:14
  through to the end, so much so that I'm confident.
• 39:18
  OK, this works. I, I, I get it.
• 39:22
  Everything up to that point is fun for me and enjoyable.
• 39:26
  I should say it stops getting enjoyable instantly at that
• 39:29
  point. So when I write a first draft, I
• 39:34
  hate writing the first draft because you are writing words
• 39:37
  that people are going to read. So suddenly you're worried about
• 39:42
  rearranging deck chairs in the Titanic Where so, but oh, but by
• 39:45
  the way, at that point, I throw away the outline.
• 39:48
  It's like I, I don't even refer to it.
• 39:50
  It's just that I but the outline is forced me to go through a
• 39:52
  process. So I'm confident that as long as
• 39:55
  I hit these major points, it's going to work out in the end.
• 39:59
  And I often find that once I start writing, you know what, I
• 40:04
  imagined it was going to go like this.
• 40:06
  It really went like that. And but I always have in mind
• 40:10
  that I know I have to end up over here.
• 40:11
  So like that. And then I will get stuck and
• 40:13
  I'm like, well, what did I, what did I mean?
• 40:16
  What was, what was it going to be?
• 40:17
  So I'll go back to the outline and go, whoa, that's not at all
• 40:20
  what I had thought of before. Whatever, but it it the the only
• 40:25
  real. I think downside to writing an
• 40:27
  outline is that if you consider it etched and granite where
• 40:33
  you're writing it, you come up with the idea and you're like,
• 40:35
  well no, that doesn't go to the outline.
• 40:36
  So I can't do that. You can't do that because that
• 40:40
  stops you from coming up with better ideas Because just
• 40:43
  because that was your first idea, even if it was your 5th
• 40:45
  idea, it may not be the best idea.
• 40:47
  But as you actually go through the process and the story is
• 40:49
  really taking shape. I mean, actually in a nuts to
• 40:52
  bolts level, usually taking places that you better places
• 40:56
  that you never really imagined, you start going deep into
• 40:59
  things. And, and so eventually, you
• 41:01
  know, it's kind of like if you'll get it, I think of it as
• 41:03
  like a map, map of a forest and you have your starting point,
• 41:07
  you have like 4 or five places, you know, you're going to hit
• 41:09
  and you know where you got to go.
• 41:11
  But who knows what that trail is that's going to get you.
• 41:14
  You have to carve through that forest to get to these places.
• 41:16
  As long as you hit those major points, and you may even change
• 41:19
  those major points when you get there, it'll get to the end.
• 41:23
  So that that's really the then I get to the end of the first
• 41:26
  draft, thank God. And then it gets fun again,
• 41:31
  because then you can start playing with it and you go back
• 41:33
  to see what you wrote. And it's like, Oh, I could do
• 41:35
  this much better. Oh, it's that I love rewriting
• 41:37
  and it which is I say this to kids.
• 41:39
  I don't know. It's going to be the death of
• 41:40
  me. Well, OK, maybe you won't say
• 41:44
  this to your students, but, but. Every, every, every writer that
• 41:49
  I admire, every that I know personally that I admire, edits
• 41:53
  a ton and loves the editing process and I hate it and I
• 41:57
  can't stand it. And I'm the only one.
• 42:00
  I see it from the good writers and the bad writers, because all
• 42:02
  the good writers love to edit and I can't stand it.
• 42:06
  Well, it's hard because it's hard to get it down on paper,
• 42:09
  and it's like, I got to change it now.
• 42:10
  This is crazy, but I will tell you, people often ask how many
• 42:13
  drafts do you do? And I'm like, I couldn't even
• 42:18
  count because I'll write 7 pages in a day, let's say 7 single
• 42:24
  space type pages. The first thing I do the next
• 42:28
  day, I'll go back and I'll rewrite those pages because,
• 42:32
  because, because coming up with those words is hard.
• 42:34
  And you're, and you're worried so much about the, the micro
• 42:37
  that you may not be seeing the macro.
• 42:39
  So once, once you've got it down, then you go back and go, I
• 42:42
  kind of can't believe I wrote that and change it.
• 42:45
  And, and I say this to kids all the time.
• 42:46
  And, and you should say it to your kids, even though you don't
• 42:49
  believe it yourself. Well, you may believe it, but
• 42:51
  you may not like it. But I'll say it to you too then.
• 42:56
  OK, I'll say it to you that that when I say to kids, if they have
• 42:59
  to do a report or whatever, this is free, AII guess.
• 43:03
  But I was like, if you've got an assignment to write about the
• 43:07
  Titanic, whatever it happens to be, whatever or whatever it is,
• 43:11
  first of all, don't leave it till the last minute and say do
• 43:15
  do it soon. Do it right away and just get it
• 43:19
  done and then put it away. Forget about it, go on with
• 43:23
  life, do whatever else life brings to you, do your sports,
• 43:26
  do other things, do whatever. And then you know, a little bit
• 43:30
  before it's due, go back to it. Because then suddenly you'll
• 43:34
  look at it semi objectively and you'll be able to find out where
• 43:39
  the flaws are. That your teacher is then going
• 43:41
  to read and go, Oh no, because now you're reading it like them
• 43:44
  from their point of view, not 100% but but close to it.
• 43:48
  And you'll change it. I mean, believe me, I'm somebody
• 43:51
  who hated writing in school. So when, when the teacher would
• 43:54
  say, OK, you're going to write this thing, first you have to
• 43:56
  write an outline. Then then you write the, the
• 43:59
  paper, whatever. I'm like, well, wait a minute,
• 44:01
  you want me to write an outline? Then you want to write the
• 44:03
  paper. That's like 2 outlines.
• 44:04
  That's like 2 papers. I don't want to do that the.
• 44:07
  Response has not changed in 50 years.
• 44:10
  No, it's human nature. I get it.
• 44:12
  I I believe me, I get it. But if you want your writing to
• 44:15
  be good. I tell them to read out loud to
• 44:18
  themselves and that's typically what I do with myself is I'll
• 44:21
  actually read what I write out loud and then and then when it
• 44:25
  comes out of my mouth and my ear bounces off my ears, the things
• 44:28
  that don't, that aren't natural or don't flow or aren't organic
• 44:32
  will typically strike or are very striking.
• 44:35
  It's very quick to. Yeah.
• 44:37
  And your eye is easy. Your eye wants to just process
• 44:40
  it all quickly, you know. You it's like Paris and the the
• 44:43
  spring. You know that that old thing
• 44:45
  where it's Paris and the the spring and you don't read that
• 44:48
  there's two thes there. You just, you just blow by it.
• 44:52
  I do that too. I definitely do with
• 44:54
  screenplays. I mean that because that really
• 44:56
  is meant because I do dialogue and whatnot.
• 44:58
  You. Have to do that I want, I want,
• 44:59
  I want to get into that. I wanted to ask you one another
• 45:02
  quick question as far as drafts and writing stuff goes.
• 45:05
  I've heard this phenomenon that happens particularly with very
• 45:09
  character driven stories, is that at a certain point, once
• 45:14
  you've given the character enough personality or history or
• 45:17
  written a certain way, even if you have other plans for the
• 45:19
  character, he he or she will cut will take their own form of life
• 45:24
  and will almost despite whatever plans you originally had.
• 45:30
  Their character needs a different arc because of what
• 45:33
  they've become. Whether you've meant for that to
• 45:35
  happen or not is that. That you create that is.
• 45:39
  That's not it's, it's absolutely true.
• 45:41
  Actually, I'll tell you a story that and I won't mention the
• 45:44
  name, but when I was at NYU, this is going way back, I took a
• 45:50
  comedy writing class because I thought for a minute I could
• 45:52
  write comedy. I'm not a comedy writer.
• 45:57
  The I can write humorous. I can't write.
• 46:00
  I can't write funny. No one laughs away.
• 46:02
  The the best I ever get is, yeah, that's the most I'm going
• 46:05
  to get out of. But no, Bobby Pendragon says
• 46:07
  something wise. Podcast comedy.
• 46:10
  Yeah, I could. Well, yeah, I could.
• 46:12
  And I took a common writing class from a a very notable
• 46:15
  comedy writer. I won't mention names.
• 46:18
  And and this person had prior to the big job they had at the
• 46:22
  time, which was really cool. And I won't mention what it was
• 46:25
  because I don't want not not that they're going to see this,
• 46:29
  but but they'd also written on a notable sitcom prior to that
• 46:33
  with a notable sitcom character and that that show had been on
• 46:37
  for years. And this writer was talking to
• 46:42
  the class and saying how tough it is to be a writer, basically,
• 46:44
  and how especially when you're just a writer on a show as
• 46:46
  opposed to the showrunner on a show, you're at the mercy of the
• 46:50
  showrunner. So the showrunner is the last
• 46:52
  word, literally. And this person was writing this
• 46:57
  character that that the world knew, or at least the United
• 47:01
  States knew. And the showrunner definitely
• 47:03
  knew. And this person wrote a line of
• 47:07
  dialogue and turned the script in and the showrunner said, this
• 47:13
  is her telling the story. This is the writer telling the
• 47:16
  story. And the showrunner said this
• 47:18
  character would never say that. And the writers come back to us.
• 47:24
  I mean, I think, I think what the writer said to the
• 47:26
  showrunner was oh, OK, but what, what the because, because
• 47:31
  showrunner was the boss for. The classroom when you tell the
• 47:34
  story about it later. Yeah, telling how so how this
• 47:38
  writer felt about it was this is a fictional character.
• 47:42
  I I can they say what I tell them to say.
• 47:46
  And even as a kid who hadn't had that much experience, I'm
• 47:51
  thinking what you were just said.
• 47:52
  It's like, oh, no, that's not you're wrong.
• 47:56
  If you've created a character who has a voice who you know how
• 48:01
  they're going to act, they can't do things that go against that
• 48:05
  or you're going to lose your audience.
• 48:07
  So it so you are 100% correct and it shocked me that this
• 48:13
  really notable writer didn't believe in that.
• 48:16
  Like, OK, but you're right. If your character has a strong
• 48:23
  enough voice, thrown off personality, thrown off
• 48:25
  character, you're you're tied to that.
• 48:29
  You know they can grow. If you know if they can, they
• 48:32
  can, then what they should grow. So they may grow to the point
• 48:36
  where they would say something goofy like that.
• 48:39
  But you have to show that growth.
• 48:41
  You can't just have them out of the blue.
• 48:43
  Yeah, say something that doesn't matter.
• 48:47
  I I was listening to a Joe Rogan podcast the other day with Ben
• 48:50
  Affleck and Matt Damon and they were pushing there they were
• 48:54
  pushing the new Netflix film that that that just came out a
• 48:57
  couple of days ago. And I started adding it, adding
• 48:59
  it around to watching yet. But one thing that they
• 49:01
  mentioned in the in the interview was that Netflix is
• 49:04
  acutely aware of the fact that people are, are typically not
• 49:08
  paying attention while they're writing.
• 49:10
  And so they'll push the writers to repeat and re emphasize plot
• 49:14
  points throughout the throughout the script, whether or not the
• 49:18
  writer wants to put it there because they know the audience
• 49:20
  might not be paying attention. You know, they're scrolling for
• 49:23
  what? The first time you say 10
• 49:24
  minutes in and then they're scrolling the second time you
• 49:26
  say 30 minutes in. And so for, you know, an hour,
• 49:28
  an hour and 20 minutes in, you got to re summarize everything.
• 49:31
  And the issue with that becomes the same kind of issue as what
• 49:35
  we're talking about now, which is a kind of it, it ruins the
• 49:37
  organic flow of what a show was even supposed to be.
• 49:41
  And I even, and again, just to give the Dead Poets Society
• 49:45
  example, again, there were so many scenes in that movie and I
• 49:49
  told I had to prepare my students for the movie.
• 49:51
  I said, this movie's a genre. There used to be a genre called
• 49:54
  dramas, and they used to be that used to act and express things
• 49:59
  without necessarily saying something.
• 50:01
  So the director would do something with the camera
• 50:03
  worker. the OR the actor would say would specifically not say
• 50:08
  something. Or Jerry Garcia used to say the
• 50:10
  chord unstruck, the the note unstruck that you would not
• 50:13
  play. And as a lookout for that and
• 50:16
  lookout for moments that make you think and that are like
• 50:18
  that. And there are several moments in
• 50:20
  the film where half the students weren't sure whether to laugh or
• 50:24
  to cry or like, they weren't sure what emotion to feel.
• 50:27
  And there was nothing directing them in any particular way.
• 50:30
  It just sat with them. And that's such a lost art.
• 50:35
  But that's, I feel the real. What was such a beautiful art of
• 50:38
  storytelling and filmmaking. And even, you know, especially
• 50:41
  with books, cause books, you have your brain as the as the
• 50:44
  imagination, as the, as the projector.
• 50:46
  Your brain is the projector. And so while you're reading in
• 50:48
  your and you're and you and I've and I dove in and I'm on the
• 50:52
  couch for 45 minutes or an hour straight, just turning pages
• 50:55
  over and over and my my brains going on like a like a, like a
• 50:59
  movie projector. I feel like with because we're
• 51:05
  aware of human behavior, we're trying to compensate for how far
• 51:11
  our attention span has fallen and how far our ability to
• 51:14
  appreciate the arts are. And instead of trying to pick
• 51:17
  people back up, we're adjusting. We're we're, we're moving the
• 51:20
  yardstick down instead, instead of trying to raise people up.
• 51:25
  Well, you know, I'll tell you. I've heard that about Netflix
• 51:29
  from other sources too. Where from other writers who
• 51:34
  said not necessarily that you have to repeat it every 10
• 51:37
  minutes or whatever, but that was very specific, but it's just
• 51:40
  more like they know that people are distracted on their phones
• 51:44
  and what not. This one particular writer said
• 51:47
  so they don't care that it sucks because people aren't paying my
• 51:49
  close attention. One thing I've noticed, and this
• 51:53
  is this is a little positive in here too.
• 51:57
  I found that where that phenomenon occurs is with these
• 52:04
  made for streaming movies. There are some big movies, they
• 52:09
  aren't cheap movies, big cast, big budgets and they're just
• 52:15
  terrible. The the writing is just terrible
• 52:17
  and. It it seems like, well, Temple
• 52:19
  does a lot of them. And you think this is this is
• 52:22
  going to be good and you're like, this sucks, this is
• 52:25
  horrible. The good part is it's almost
• 52:28
  like we're we're topsy turvy world now.
• 52:31
  What's really being elevated is television writing, not movies,
• 52:37
  episodes. Oh yes.
• 52:39
  That's where all the good stuff is and, and it's and you're it's
• 52:45
  the short attention span is built in.
• 52:46
  It's not a 2 1/2 hour movie. It's a 45 minute episode.
• 52:50
  So you don't have to, they don't feel like you have to repeat it
• 52:53
  or, or be stupid. So there's some really, really
• 52:56
  smart series on that are really impressive where the movies are
• 53:02
  just horrible, but but the series are really good.
• 53:06
  The limited series too. I love the limited series.
• 53:09
  In particular the limited series.
• 53:11
  Because, because what they do is they take something that would
• 53:13
  have been too short for a television series that, that,
• 53:16
  that that is the typical station would have, would have wanted to
• 53:20
  kind of, you know, make 20 seasons of or something like
• 53:24
  that. Or, you know, it's not quite
• 53:26
  there and it's not quite in the two hour movie and it's
• 53:28
  somewhere in between, but it's still a real and you can get a
• 53:31
  grade writers, directors, whatever to tell and it's name
• 53:35
  and it's an A+ story. I I read a great book by a
• 53:38
  gentleman named Ben, Ben Fritz, who actually I spoke to I meant
• 53:42
  to start another podcast before I started this one a couple of
• 53:44
  years ago and he was going to be my first guest.
• 53:46
  But he wrote this a great book called the Big Picture about why
• 53:50
  particular genres are not in film anymore, or at least in
• 53:54
  movie theaters rather anymore. And one thing he said was the
• 53:57
  fact that global markets now don't, you know, dictate the the
• 54:03
  business decisions that studio executive make.
• 54:06
  Because you depend so heavily in the box office.
• 54:08
  And if something doesn't convert to a Chinese audience or to a
• 54:10
  European audience or whatever, then it's they're missing out on
• 54:15
  potentially hundreds of millions of dollars that they could be
• 54:18
  making. And so he says that's why you
• 54:22
  see such a enormous rise in franchises for for theaters,
• 54:26
  whereas streamers specifically want to be as eclectic as
• 54:30
  possible because they want as many different types of people
• 54:32
  signing up for their service. And so they're green lighting
• 54:36
  all sorts of genres and all sorts of movies because they
• 54:38
  know even if one out of every 50 people watch it, that's a lot of
• 54:42
  that, that put that across the world.
• 54:45
  I mean, that's, that that's significant.
• 54:46
  And, and if you think and, and what I, what I've always noticed
• 54:50
  is, but I'm, I'm in an Airbnb right now, you go to, you log
• 54:54
  into the Netflix and you look at the algorithm and you look at
• 54:57
  the, at the potential of what you could watch.
• 54:59
  And none of it is the same thing as the thousands of stuff that's
• 55:04
  on my Netflix account. You know, I mean, there's no
• 55:07
  overlap. So it just showed how, how, how
• 55:11
  personalized a lot of this content is and they just keep
• 55:13
  making it. It's incredible.
• 55:16
  And, and fortunately, from a, from a economic point of view,
• 55:20
  it's not good for the people making it because these short
• 55:26
  series, you know, 8 episodes, you can't make a living doing
• 55:31
  that. It's and to get a second season
• 55:36
  on some of these things is huge. To get a third season is unheard
• 55:40
  of. I mean, it does happen
• 55:40
  sometimes, but it's unheard of. So it, it, it's really changed
• 55:44
  the paradigm of, of being someone working in this
• 55:47
  industry. I, I see it also with there's so
• 55:51
  many big stars that are in, suddenly they're all over the
• 55:56
  place. It's like Harrison Ford is like,
• 55:58
  I, I think he's like in a whole movie.
• 55:59
  The other, I mean, he's in everything now.
• 56:01
  It's because what he's in, they're all short term.
• 56:04
  You're only shooting it for a, a, a little bit at a time.
• 56:08
  And so therefore you could do 5 projects or in three projects
• 56:11
  and it doesn't bode well for the, for the, the people, the
• 56:13
  writers and the workers 'cause they're, there's no security in
• 56:17
  doing it. So it's, and because with
• 56:20
  streamers, because the Netflix's of the world are of the world,
• 56:27
  It's not the old days where it's just NBC is in the United States
• 56:30
  and then you can license it elsewhere and there could be a
• 56:32
  revenue stream there. Now it's all Netflix wants.
• 56:34
  Everything well. Yeah, but depending where you
• 56:37
  go, I think they're a little bit more, I think it's a little bit
• 56:39
  more technical than that. I because I, I know that, I
• 56:42
  mean, obviously even based on where your country is, like what
• 56:44
  country you're in, the licensing rights are different and I don't
• 56:47
  know. And everything gets a little
• 56:49
  squirrely outside the States from my understanding.
• 56:53
  Well, Netflix, they want everything.
• 56:56
  They do want to. Pay higher, higher fees up pay
• 57:00
  higher fees up front, but. That's what draws them in.
• 57:04
  That's and that's the stupid that's the same short term
• 57:07
  problem that that we have. I think the if, if America
• 57:12
  stopped getting off a three or four month business plan,
• 57:16
  instead started focusing a little bit more on a couple of
• 57:18
  years down the line. And I think that a lot would
• 57:21
  change very quickly. And I think that this
• 57:24
  incredibly, incredibly short term thinking and incentivizing
• 57:29
  is just, I mean, think about, if you think about I'm, I'm hungry
• 57:34
  and you're not going to think about what the food, how, what
• 57:36
  the food's going to make you feel like in an hour from now,
• 57:38
  then you're never going to eat well.
• 57:40
  Then you're think about how quickly your body will fall
• 57:43
  apart if you, if you can't plan for the future at all.
• 57:45
  And I remember even with Amazon, I've read, I've read about, I've
• 57:48
  read a couple books about them. And one of the main things that,
• 57:50
  that, that, that everyone admired and was was blown away
• 57:53
  by was the fact that they didn't care what their stock prices
• 57:55
  was. They said, listen, if Wall
• 57:56
  Street wants to punish us, they'll punish us.
• 57:58
  But at the end of the day, we're looking to grow our business and
• 58:00
  we're not looking to make any friends in Wall Street.
• 58:02
  We don't need every projection to be the top thing in the
• 58:06
  world. In a year from now, when they
• 58:07
  see what our plan is, they'll all come running and look what
• 58:10
  happened. I mean, you got, you got.
• 58:13
  To now he's the richest man in the world.
• 58:15
  Yeah, Yeah. Well, yeah.
• 58:17
  Other than what's all the world like that?
• 58:19
  Yeah. I wanted to ask for we, but I
• 58:21
  know you're running out of time. You've got a couple minutes
• 58:23
  left. I wanted to ask about the
• 58:24
  difference between screen writing and script writing and
• 58:28
  fictional writing or any other form because I know I, I tried,
• 58:32
  but my heart, my original aspiration was to be a
• 58:34
  screenwriter. And I, I, I always wanted to,
• 58:39
  and I took a creative, I took a screen write screenplay writing
• 58:41
  class in college and I talked, I told the story and I, I loved my
• 58:46
  professor, but he, I, I submitted my first assignment
• 58:51
  and he looks at me and he calls me over after and he goes, So is
• 58:55
  your character autistic? I said not intentionally read
• 59:04
  your script out loud. And I said OK.
• 59:06
  And I took the paper and I read out loud and I'm like, I cannot
• 59:09
  believe how mechanical and robotic and terrible this
• 59:15
  sounds. And and, and, and I and it
• 59:16
  turns, you know, I mean, obviously it was a pretty blunt
• 59:18
  way of putting it, but he was right.
• 59:20
  Yeah. I mean, it was, it was terrible.
• 59:21
  So can you you want to can you tell me a little bit about the
• 59:24
  what it takes to write for for script as opposed for just the
• 59:27
  page? Well, there, there's, there are
• 59:30
  a lot of similarities too, and it goes back to what we were
• 59:33
  talking about before. I mean, when I, when I gave you
• 59:37
  my, my, my triumvirate of things that I look at with, you know,
• 59:40
  the character, the setting and the theme, it's the same as a
• 59:43
  screenplay or, or, but it it's all the same stuff.
• 59:45
  It's good characters who want something, I mean, based on its
• 59:50
  storytelling. So that that's the same, the
• 59:55
  mechanics of it, the screenplay structure for the most part is
• 1:00:01
  very rigid and, and I used to fight against that because I'm
• 1:00:06
  like, oh, people will sometimes turn down scripts just as it
• 1:00:10
  doesn't fit some kind of format with that four points.
• 1:00:12
  Wait a minute. No, I got to write what makes
• 1:00:13
  sense and whatnot. And, and there's truth to that,
• 1:00:17
  but the the scene structure, pacing, pacing is so different
• 1:00:25
  and. And the actual writing itself is
• 1:00:29
  very different because when you're writing a screenplay,
• 1:00:34
  that's not the finished product. The finished product is what's
• 1:00:37
  going to be on the screen. And there are a whole lot of
• 1:00:40
  people that are going to take that, starting with the
• 1:00:42
  director, who are going to take that and add to it.
• 1:00:47
  That might not necessarily be on the page.
• 1:00:49
  So one of the challenges in writing a screenplay is writing
• 1:00:54
  with economy. You, you can't describe things.
• 1:00:58
  You can't go thought process. You can't it, it's all got to be
• 1:01:02
  you have to you have to see it. You have to imagine what it's
• 1:01:04
  going to look like on screen. And so you have to learn an
• 1:01:08
  economy of words to describe what a scene should look like,
• 1:01:12
  what a setting should, what a world should look like very
• 1:01:14
  quickly. You, you can't expand and
• 1:01:17
  expound on something. It's got to be fast because of
• 1:01:22
  course now I'm going to go against that now.
• 1:01:23
  I don't know why movies are now three hours long.
• 1:01:25
  It's crazy. They don't need they.
• 1:01:29
  Not that they don't need to be. They shouldn't be.
• 1:01:32
  I mean, Woody Allen once. Pillars by the flower moon I
• 1:01:35
  took an I took an aisle seat just so I could walk up and down
• 1:01:39
  the stairs while I was while I was watching it to stretch my.
• 1:01:41
  Leg yes, yes, like what is the heck?
• 1:01:45
  And and then you see these budgets are 400 million to $300
• 1:01:48
  million. It's like I could have cut $100
• 1:01:50
  million out of that and it would have been a better movie.
• 1:01:53
  So. So I don't, I don't, I don't get
• 1:01:55
  that phenomenon. It's on the budget.
• 1:01:57
  It's crazy. It's crazy.
• 1:01:59
  I, I, I really don't get the thinking there because it's not
• 1:02:01
  like it's a one off. It's like they're all that long.
• 1:02:04
  I mean, usually a cut. Woody Allen used to say that the
• 1:02:06
  ideal length for a comedy is 89 minutes.
• 1:02:10
  What movie is 89 minutes now? It's they don't exist.
• 1:02:14
  We're streaming like I'll are they I don't know I'll, I'll
• 1:02:18
  maybe I'll, I'll turn on a a comedy that was made for
• 1:02:21
  streaming thinking, Oh, this will be a short, fast thing.
• 1:02:24
  No, it's goes 2 1/2 hour. What?
• 1:02:27
  Come on. What's aren't studios saying?
• 1:02:30
  You know, come on. So, so maybe my, my economy here
• 1:02:37
  isn't operative anymore. I I don't know.
• 1:02:41
  But but you have to be able to write visually that that's the
• 1:02:46
  big really with a short few amount of word found in words.
• 1:02:51
  And you can't, it's the old show don't tell thing with with a
• 1:02:55
  screenplay, you have to know you are showing it.
• 1:02:58
  You're going to see it on screen.
• 1:03:00
  The people are going to be speaking dialogue where with a
• 1:03:04
  book, you can take some time with it.
• 1:03:06
  You you can get into thought process.
• 1:03:09
  You could, I mean, you don't no one's going to see this.
• 1:03:13
  They're only going to see what they're imagining is on your
• 1:03:16
  page. So, so that's a very big
• 1:03:19
  difference that you have to be much more hand holdy with books
• 1:03:25
  now. Now things have changed a little
• 1:03:27
  bit too. This is boy, and it speaks to
• 1:03:31
  ADHD. Now, granted, I don't write
• 1:03:34
  great literature. I, I'm the first one to say that
• 1:03:36
  I don't write great literature. I write, I tell good stories and
• 1:03:40
  I talk about well and, and talk about talk about reading it
• 1:03:46
  back, reading it aloud and whatnot.
• 1:03:48
  So many of my books are written in first person, so I write it.
• 1:03:54
  It's as if the character is telling you the story.
• 1:03:57
  So the voice, whether it's specific to Bobby Pendragon or
• 1:04:00
  Marshall Seaver or or whoever it happens to be, you know, I come
• 1:04:03
  up with their, the way they speak.
• 1:04:07
  I come up with the way, the way they, their word choices,
• 1:04:09
  whatever. And then I tell the story that
• 1:04:11
  way. But it's like me telling them
• 1:04:13
  the story in that person's voice, which is why it doesn't
• 1:04:18
  lend to great literature. So unless you're Aaron Sorkin,
• 1:04:21
  where everyone has these speeches that are like, wow,
• 1:04:23
  they came up with that at the spur of the moment.
• 1:04:25
  That's that's brilliant. That that character is amazing
• 1:04:28
  because I told you. But especially for young people,
• 1:04:33
  they're not only writing their own dialogue or telling their
• 1:04:37
  own dialogue, they're also describing us going on.
• 1:04:39
  So it's a much simpler way of writing.
• 1:04:41
  That's why I say it's not great literature.
• 1:04:42
  You're not going to get lost in the prose of, of what I wrote.
• 1:04:45
  It's it's very simple. Where is I going with this
• 1:04:49
  screen? Writing similar that way I
• 1:04:51
  think. Yeah, screen writing is more
• 1:04:53
  like that. You, you've, you've got to,
• 1:04:55
  you've, you've got to forget if it's simplified, you've got to
• 1:04:57
  paint the picture very quickly. And then you have to, there's a,
• 1:05:01
  oh, I know what I started to say, but to this day, you know,
• 1:05:06
  a book in my mind, a book is different than a than a movie.
• 1:05:10
  You know, a book is you can kind of get lost in a book.
• 1:05:13
  Even my books, even if you're not writing great literature
• 1:05:16
  that you're like, oh, the word play is so Marvel.
• 1:05:18
  You know, it's not going to happen.
• 1:05:20
  I, I once heard a review of one of my books.
• 1:05:22
  It was, it was a Morpheus Rd. book.
• 1:05:25
  And I think it was a kid. I don't, I don't know who it was
• 1:05:29
  and I, I, I know where I read the review, but it was the
• 1:05:33
  review started out with this book was really slow to get
• 1:05:36
  started and I thought, oh, oh, here we go.
• 1:05:40
  This, this is this doesn't bode well comma.
• 1:05:44
  But after the 1st 10 pages it really took off like.
• 1:05:49
  What? 1st 10 pages, that's barely the
• 1:05:51
  title page. This is a book.
• 1:05:54
  It's not a video game. It, it's, it's not a, it's not a
• 1:05:58
  like, but, but that's what kids want, especially kids and adults
• 1:06:02
  too. It's not just it's adults.
• 1:06:04
  You've got to the pace has to be so fast.
• 1:06:06
  So unless you're know you're going to write, read something
• 1:06:09
  that's true literature where you know you're going to settle in.
• 1:06:11
  If you're writing popular stuff, it's got to be as fast-paced as
• 1:06:15
  a movie. I've never realized, I've never
• 1:06:18
  realized the extent of the truth of what you're saying until I
• 1:06:21
  read the first couple. My, my great uncle was a writer
• 1:06:25
  for ABC for many years and was part of the Writers Guild.
• 1:06:27
  And so he used to get screenplays sent to him all the
• 1:06:29
  time just to hoping that they would, they would vote for them
• 1:06:32
  for best, best script and he'd give you, he'd give them to me
• 1:06:36
  and I and I'd read these awesome scripts going, you know, I, I
• 1:06:39
  wasn't growing up. I was in college when he
• 1:06:41
  realized that I was in teens giving them to me and, and I
• 1:06:44
  realized the writing is so minimal and so sharp and so and
• 1:06:52
  what I also realized they write like there was almost like a
• 1:06:57
  transcribe of a conversation. You're not writing, you're
• 1:07:00
  transcribing. I start to talk and you
• 1:07:03
  interrupt what I'm saying the of saying it.
• 1:07:04
  Or, you know, you feel a great emotion while, you know, while
• 1:07:06
  kids pissed off or someone else walks in the room and have to
• 1:07:09
  abruptly change my intention in the middle of my sentence,
• 1:07:11
  something else. So you might be 3 words into a
• 1:07:13
  sentence and then just shift it. And you have to get used to
• 1:07:16
  writing like that. Yeah, I imagine because that
• 1:07:20
  when I read it, I was like, oh, that's why I'm bad at this,
• 1:07:22
  because I, I, I, I, I, I'm wordy.
• 1:07:25
  I I, I like the fans in the library, you know?
• 1:07:27
  Well, well, if you're Aaron Sorkin, you could be wordy, too.
• 1:07:30
  That's what the words are. I'm sorry, just I, I, I thought
• 1:07:35
  you'd appreciate this. I, I did, I did a podcast with a
• 1:07:38
  really interesting guy who was a homicide detective in Arizona
• 1:07:41
  and a very, very sweet guy. And I asked him, I told him, I
• 1:07:46
  said, one of my least favorite things about stupid crime movies
• 1:07:49
  or superhero movies is every time you have a villain, you
• 1:07:52
  know, you're, they have him in a dark room and they say, why did
• 1:07:55
  you do this? He says, when I was 12 years old
• 1:07:57
  and he goes into a whole monologue, you know, like what
• 1:07:59
  happened? And he says, I cannot tell you.
• 1:08:02
  And this is what he told me. He goes, I cannot tell you how
• 1:08:05
  often it actually does happen. Well, I'll ask them.
• 1:08:09
  I'm, you know, I'm sitting across from someone that
• 1:08:11
  committed a crime and I'll say I'm, I'm not judging him.
• 1:08:15
  I'm just asking, why did you do it?
• 1:08:17
  Would you like what, what, what, what happened?
• 1:08:19
  And he goes, so many people are so quick to just tell the truth
• 1:08:22
  because they figure they're caught, they're in trouble.
• 1:08:24
  That's it. Like they're not thinking you're
• 1:08:25
  trying to game anything. And at the end of the day, you
• 1:08:27
  know, you watch someone on screen and they could be all
• 1:08:29
  tough when they're confined and handcuffed to a table.
• 1:08:32
  And he said most people just want to get out of it, just want
• 1:08:34
  to just want to, you know, OK, I'm caught, I'm done, I'm
• 1:08:36
  whatever. So he goes, what's the story
• 1:08:38
  goes? Well, I really, you know, I
• 1:08:39
  hated my ex-wife and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:08:41
  And then he goes, You have no idea how many people monologue.
• 1:08:44
  So I thought that was very funny, but so it changed my tune
• 1:08:48
  a little bit. Well, but that's an extreme
• 1:08:51
  example too. I mean, that's, that's, I think
• 1:08:53
  there's this whole psychological thing with that where people are
• 1:08:55
  like, I got to get this off my chest because it's weighing on
• 1:08:59
  me. Oh my God, whatever.
• 1:09:01
  Or maybe maybe the person I'm telling this to won't take pity
• 1:09:05
  on me and realize that because I was abused as a child, maybe
• 1:09:08
  they'll let me go, whatever it is.
• 1:09:11
  Maybe. But but you're right.
• 1:09:13
  But with normal conversation like we're having right now,
• 1:09:16
  people don't speak in well, I know some people speak in
• 1:09:18
  monologues, but it's like, you know, yeah.
• 1:09:23
  It's like, stop. All right, TMI, You got to stop
• 1:09:27
  now. But yeah, you have to.
• 1:09:29
  You have to learn how to do the rhythm.
• 1:09:32
  And it it with books a little bit too, but it's a little more
• 1:09:34
  of a leeway. You have a little more leeway
• 1:09:36
  with books. But when you're actually seeing
• 1:09:38
  it for real on screen, for real, you see it for real on screen,
• 1:09:43
  it's got to ring true. And people do cut people off
• 1:09:46
  and, and people do lose focus or, or they leave the whatever
• 1:09:52
  happens. So you have to be able to,
• 1:09:55
  That's why to be a good writer, you have to be such a, a student
• 1:09:57
  of human nature and, and observe people all the time and how they
• 1:10:03
  do react. I, I'm doing that all the time.
• 1:10:07
  And they use traits of, of people that I know just because
• 1:10:12
  it's like, well, that's interesting.
• 1:10:13
  The way they always interrupt you and you're always, you can't
• 1:10:18
  get 2 words in edgewise because they want to tell you about what
• 1:10:20
  they have to say. It's whatever.
• 1:10:22
  That's one example. But in some ways, screenplays
• 1:10:27
  are more real than writing a novel.
• 1:10:32
  Yeah. It's like, I don't know if this
• 1:10:35
  is a good analogy, but it's like when you watch a a musical on
• 1:10:38
  Broadway. It's like people don't break out
• 1:10:42
  in song what you know what, but this is not real.
• 1:10:45
  But in that genre, in that, in that forum, you get it makes
• 1:10:50
  sense. You go with it.
• 1:10:51
  With books, you can kind of give a little more leeway on a
• 1:10:56
  conversation in exchange or whatever it is.
• 1:10:59
  With screenplays, it's got to be more real.
• 1:11:02
  Yeah, it's. A little bit less and less
• 1:11:05
  forgiving. Yeah.
• 1:11:06
  So, but then there are also similarities.
• 1:11:09
  They said it's all about good characters who want something
• 1:11:11
  and, and the interesting things that get in their way to do it.
• 1:11:14
  So that that, that that's just good storytelling, whether it's
• 1:11:17
  a a play, a movie, a, a book or whatever it happens to be.
• 1:11:21
  Then then there are similarities.
• 1:11:22
  It it was fun. I, I had a, there was a couple
• 1:11:26
  years that it was, oh man, I wish I could go back and do this
• 1:11:29
  again where I was in the middle of writing a Pendragon books.
• 1:11:34
  So I'd write essentially A Penndragon book a year and then,
• 1:11:36
  and that took roughly 6 months all told, string it all
• 1:11:40
  together. But then the other six months of
• 1:11:43
  the year I was making a TV series called Flight 29 Down and
• 1:11:46
  writing the scripts and producing that show in Hawaii.
• 1:11:49
  So it was like, so when I was doing the show, just when I was
• 1:11:52
  sick of dealing with the set and people and crews and actors and
• 1:11:56
  all that kind of stuff, just when I was like, Huck, I get, I
• 1:11:59
  get to sit in my cave and write a book that I can do whatever I
• 1:12:02
  want. Then after I'm like, I don't
• 1:12:03
  tear my hair out, I'm making it back on the set again where I
• 1:12:06
  could, I could actually communicate with people and have
• 1:12:08
  other things happen. So that that was fun.
• 1:12:10
  And, and I don't know if this is a good analogy, but if you ever
• 1:12:14
  played sports, I remember as a kid, I remember there was always
• 1:12:17
  a, it's not so much anymore, but usually when you're a kid, back
• 1:12:22
  when I was a kid, you would play the sport that the pros, the,
• 1:12:28
  the schedule is the same as the pros.
• 1:12:29
  You play baseball in the summer, play football in the fall, you
• 1:12:32
  play basketball in the winter. Not so much anymore.
• 1:12:34
  Now kids are like so refined. They're playing baseball year
• 1:12:37
  round because they think they're going to get a scholarship or
• 1:12:39
  whatever it happens to be. But I always remember that
• 1:12:41
  transition period of throwing a baseball to throwing a football.
• 1:12:48
  It's different mechanics, it's different setups, it's different
• 1:12:51
  body motion and, and at first it's just like what it takes a
• 1:12:58
  while to get. Oh, OK, that's what, And that's
• 1:13:01
  what it's like going back and forth to be writing a screenplay
• 1:13:03
  or writing a book. It's like, oh, I'm, I'm doing
• 1:13:06
  this. I'm taking too much time in this
• 1:13:08
  scene. What what am I doing?
• 1:13:09
  It's like, all right, I got to, I got to start start cutting it
• 1:13:12
  down South. There there are different.
• 1:13:15
  It's awesome analogy. It's a great analogy.
• 1:13:16
  I, I, I live like that on a, on a daily basis, more than a
• 1:13:19
  monthly basis. So I work from home during the
• 1:13:22
  day and I go crazy. So I go teach and then I get
• 1:13:25
  back from teaching. I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready
• 1:13:26
  to pass out And I, you know, I want my kids to bed and I'm
• 1:13:29
  like, Oh my God. Like so so I, I, I hope to be
• 1:13:33
  able to kind of stretch out my tolerance for each each step of
• 1:13:36
  my. Yeah, yeah, couple hours is not
• 1:13:40
  a good fact, to be fair, to be up to here.
• 1:13:44
  Certain writer like myself, you know, very short writer like
• 1:13:46
  myself, I just think in the paragraphs out of time and
• 1:13:48
  that's the extent of it. There you go.
• 1:13:51
  I really appreciate the time and getting to me and getting back
• 1:13:54
  to me and making the time for this.
• 1:13:56
  This is really a ton of fun and maybe I'll check out some of
• 1:13:59
  your TV shows, Reach out and see if we'll do something else about
• 1:14:02
  that because sure, absolutely. This is really tons of fun.
• 1:14:05
  And I thought we came on going for a long time, but I want to.
• 1:14:07
  I know you. Got good luck cutting this down
• 1:14:10
  into a listenable. Oh, this is going to be, are you
• 1:14:13
  kidding? This is going to be awesome.
• 1:14:15
  Anyway, I appreciate the time. Thank you.
• 1:14:17
  Great to meet you, Jeffrey have. A great night.