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IFH 678: Inside the PIXAR Story Brain Trust with Rob Edwards · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Indie
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  Film Hustle Podcast, Episode number six seventy eight falls When Things Change, I'll
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  be happy. True When I am happy, things will change. Kyle SE's
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  broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast,
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  where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the
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  jungles of the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome,
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  Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your
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  Enjoy this episode with guest host Scott McMahon. Okay, today's episode I'm super
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  excited by today. I have screenwriter Rob Edwards on its bonkers. It's like
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  over two hours long, but is just pack with such great information. I
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  wanted to dig deeper into one area that I have a particular interest in.
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  It's the Pixar Brain Trust storytelling meetings. So how does Rob fit in?
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  But here's a quick bio of Rob's work. Rob Grip and Detroit, moved
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  out to Los Angeles and had an agreement with his dad that he would find
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  work in the industry within the first nine months he was there. Now here's
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  where Rob's hustle is on full display. Now this was back in the mid
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  nineteen eighties. He would call every production company in town and ask the person
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  on the other line if they wanted to hear a joke or a piece of
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  gossip. Most of the time, Rob was able to get a laugh from
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  them with his jokes, while those who picked the gossip would share even juicier
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  stories with Rob of their own. Now, all the people at these production
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  companies would ask what Rob wanted. Now, Rob didn't ask for anything return,
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  He just said that he would call back and let them know. So
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  when he calls back the people at these production companies they remembered him, and
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  when he asked for work, they were more inclined to hire him because the
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  fact that at least there would be a guy around the office who could tell
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  jokes all day. Robert worked these production gigs during the day and at night
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  write his scripts. Now the hustle paid off because he was eventually hired as
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  a writer for television before he was twenty one. Now that's crazy. Since
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  then, here are Rob's credits. He's been a writer on Full House,
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  in Living Color, The Fresh Prince of bel Air, which most of the
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  stories are based on his own experience while attending prep school in Detroit. In
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  fact, Rob went to the same school as Aaron Sorkin, who Rob worked
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  with on Studio sixty later on. Now, we didn't get a chance to
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  go into detail about working with Aaron Sorkin, but I do hope to have
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  Rob back again one day, so there's talk about more stories. You know.
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  Rob's work eventually landed him over at Disney, where he wrote Treasure Planet
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  and The Princess and the Frog. Rob was there at Disney when the Pixar
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  guys took over story development, and that is where we pick up the story.
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  I've always been fascinated by how Pixar continually knocks it out of the park
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  with their stories. In the book Creativity Inc. By Ed Catmill, who
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  was one of the founders of Pixar, explains how the development of this brain
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  trust group has been proven to be invaluable to the storytelling process for Pixar.
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  So I'm thinking, how does it work? What happens in those rooms that
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  is different than getting studio notes or working in a writer's room and now here
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  today we need to find out because Rob worked firsthand in these brain trust meetings
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  for The Princess and the Frog. What I hope you get from this episode
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  is some real world strategies of how to make your stories better. I mean,
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  after all, it's not every day you get to sit in on a
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  Pixar storytelling meeting. So sit back and enjoy my conversation with Rob Edwards.
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  With the Film Trooper, the goal was to try to help sort of the
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  uber independent filmmaker, the one that things have changed so much in the filmmaking
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  landscape. Obviously, you have the studio system. You have sort of like
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  the indie Hollywood like people that have one foot in the studio system one put
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  but in like the film international film market. And there's probably like ninety percent
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  of everybody now that has a camera and can edit movies on their laptop.
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  Now they've entered the scene, but there's a there's a different sort of business
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  economics for them, and you know, we're just sort of discovering it and
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  um, but at the core of all this is still telling a great story.
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  So because I also came from the video game world. For like twelve
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  years, I worked at Sony PlayStation and I was a cinematic supervisor there,
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  making you know, movies for video games. But our department was considered fluff
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  because at the heart of all video games is the gameplay. So if movies
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  and television is if story is king, then in video games, gameplay is
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  king. Because you can have amazing graphics on your video game, but if
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  it's sluggish, if it's not fun to play right, people put it aside.
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  So I wanted to if you would indulge me, just like, imagine
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  this setup where we have these uber independent filmmakers that they are learning the skill
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  sets as a filmmaker to shoot at it, you know, direct what it
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  may be, but we do see a lot of it falls short in terms
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  of the storytelling aspect of things. And with your history, with your experience,
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  I'm really curious about what you saw in the transition one working in writer's
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  rooms, working in collaboratively, but then on top of that working with Disney,
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  especially on that transition when Pixar, you know, came in, and
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  I would really love to know more about could you take us through a little
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  journey of like how the brain trust meetings work? Or it's because if if
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  What I'm trying to do is if there's something there, there's these nuggets there
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  that we can then identify and say, Okay, So if you're like an
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  uber independent filmmaker and you're writing your story right now, how can you simulate
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  on your own by we were talking about the accountability group, you know or
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  masterminds? Could you create something like that that's very specific to creating your own
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  version of a brain trust group? And if so, what would be those
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  inner workings that that we could apply that'd be like, oh, like,
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  how do you get in a room where people can be free to be have
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  candor without being consulting you know exactly? Well that's see, that's the thing
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  the question is is kind of the answer because it's that is for me at
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  at Disney Picture, I saw the pre John Lasseter Disney, you know,
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  with Treasure Planet. That was all you know, the old regime where there
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  were levels levels after levels of middle management and everybody, and you know,
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  sometimes a note would come down from on high, you know whatever, and
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  it would get uh, something simple like somebody would just read something and say,
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  hey, I wonder if we could do this, and then middle management
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  would just pound us and say this has to happen. You know, there's
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  no you know, uh, there is no other version. And we would
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  look at it and we would say, hey, look we've tried this.
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  It doesn't work. Um, it makes the movie bad. And they would
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  say, no, we got this note and you have to do it.
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  And then we would do it and it would go back to the person,
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  you know, the voice on high and he would say what is this?
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  This is this is crap. I said, well, this was your note.
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  This isn't you know this addresses your note? Like no, no,
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  no, that was just a thought. You know, it didn't work.
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  You should have thrown it out. And that's what, you know, middle
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  management kind of does to kill you. What's great about the brain Trust is
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  that, um, it's it's too one is I'll say, the impossible part
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  of it. We'll start there. The impossible part of it is you're never
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  gonna find yourself in a room with Brad Bird and you know Andrews, yeah,
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  the doctor, Bob, and that these guys are gonna say, hey,
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  it's very important that your movie is good. You know, and uh,
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  and we'll invest in it with an artist's heart. And um, you
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  know that's very tough. Having said that you can construct rooms of filmmaking.
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  Before they were Pixar, there were just a bunch of guys who almost got
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  shut down. You know, for Toy Story. Toy Story was a mess.
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  The first draft of Toy Story, the first version, first set of
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  reels of Toy Story was a mess. What he's yelling at everybody? Um,
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  you know, everybody was cowering in fear. It was the most by
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  their admission, the most unlikable film ever. And then uh, uh what
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  what what Pete, Pete and Bob said? Was that Pete doctor I said
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  that Andrew Satton kind of went into a room and figured it out. We'll
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  be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
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  show. You know, he went into a room with all of the techs
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  you know, Dot Truby or whatever, and Robert McKee and all the notes
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  that they'd add from everything, along with his own thoughts about you know,
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  movies that he'd like, the notes that they had gotten. You know,
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  why wasn't Pixel, why it wasn't Toy Story working? Um? And how
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  had they arrived at this place where even Steve Jobs was saying, like,
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  okay, guys, maybe it's maybe this isn't maybe this isn't the right the
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  right fit. And he came out and said, I got it. It
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  needs to be this and this and this and those are the rules that you
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  always see, you know, in their ted talks, and that you know
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  of of what they do, which they frequently break. By the way,
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  I had, guys, in every movie they have happy villages. They just
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  don't call on happy villages. There is a you know, there is an
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  I want song. Everybody has to state what it is they they want um.
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  Uh. But those rules. Basically what they do is they enforce the
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  rules and the way that the the the brain Trust works. At least what
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  I saw is that they start off. Um. What you don't get that
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  you do get sometimes from your buddies is hey, a great movie. Yeah,
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  and that's that's the worst thing in the world. You know, it's
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  just um, it's the the uh. I would say, savagery of low
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  expectations. This is very good, Yes, don't change a word of it.
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  That's awful. What you say is, okay, what is the biggest
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  problem that's where that's where andrewstand would usually start. So, Okay, what
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  is the biggest problem, Let's start there, and then let's let those things
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  filter down, because some of the smaller problems that people have may be things
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  that started with the bigger problems. When you see, when you say a
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  big problem, is that the actual what's the biggest problem of the story not
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  working? Or what is the biggest problem in a story, or like,
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  what is the protagonist's problem the biggest problem with the story not working? Okay,
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  and it and it is it is. Your buddy will say, oh,
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  it works, it just needs this a the brain trust says it's not
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  working. You know, the the um the default is, it doesn't work.
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  These movies just don't work, you know. And if they are,
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  if they're good, it's still not good enough. You know, they're not
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  great. They're not everybody's favorite movie. You're not gonna um, you're not
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  gonna turnstyle. You know, you're not gonna leave the theater buy a ticket
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  and come right back in. Yeah. Yet, especially in the first second
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  draft, a lot of people will stop there. That's a that's a major
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  problem. I see A lot is it. Writers will say they'll do a
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  draft or two, and they'll say, oh great, you know this is
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  good. It all works, and then they'll stop. You can't. You
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  have to say, okay, well what you have to plus it? You
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  have to say, okay, what's the next level of this? You know,
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  we have a really great and has A has A has a great scene.
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  She's auditioning the costumes for the New Incredibles. Okay, that's fine,
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  but what's the next level of it? You know, Oh great, let's
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  put her on a chair and the tier goes back and forth and we have
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  everything, you know, we show everything as it's happening. Okay, awesome,
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  you know, now it's plused, you know, and then can you
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  plus it even more the reactions to it all that kind of stuff, because
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  yeah, I'm sorry, that's definitely like a flaw within like this world of
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  the Uber Independent, like they kind of work a script a little bit,
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  but they just get it too good enough to like, I think I can
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  make this right right exactly, you know, And you can make it.
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  Really, you can make anything. And sometimes that's the best thing a professional
• 13:41
  can do for you is just say, okay, this, you can make
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  this, this is fine. You know, you can roll the cameras,
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  it'll all it'll all shoot well, but you're going to get creamed by the
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  by the critics. You know, you're it's good enough for forty four forty
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  percent ripe tomato, you know, but you're not going to get that ninety
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  nine unless you super super push it. Um And especially with independent films,
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  there are fantastic independent films, and then there are some that you just say
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  like, oh, you know, I can yeah that when they when your
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  friends send you the links, yeah, yeah, everybody knows you let you
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  watch it. It takes you four four times to get all the way through
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  it because you're just kind of like, okay, well this is this is
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  okay, but nothing is really gripping, you know, getting me gripped the
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  screen. On the other hand, you'll see like you know, the Marvel
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  films, the new you know, the new Marvel films, the UM obviously
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  the Pixar films, UH, films that are well told. They drive you,
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  you know, you instantly have um a character that you understand that you
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  really want them to achieve their goals, and then the opposition is just monumental.
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  And then you're just watching them be clever and cool and and wonderful and
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  make their way through the story. Um. Yeah, well then that is
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  that is a school of storytelling. And the way that you get to that
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  is that thing where you know, somebody at the table, hopefully everyone at
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  the table, says, look, let's start with protagonists. What does the
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  protagonist want and how much do they want it? Straight up? You know,
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  first question. I'll see dozens of scripts, stacks and stacks of scripts,
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  and I'll ask the about I'm twenty pages into this, I can't tell
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  who, you know, what the protagonist wants. If I can tell who
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  the protagonist is, I can't tell what they want. And that just sucks.
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  You know. That means you know, you have terrible friends. Nobody
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  has read your script, you know, with any honesty and told you you
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  know, look, it is a chore to turn the pages of the script.
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  Can I ask you with the I know that you know obviously Pixar Disney
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  is and it is animation. And in the pitch process, like when the
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  brain Trust group comes together, is it just is the initial meeting just the
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  script phase or do they come like here's your phase with some storyboards or you
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  know, they put up a board and somebody acts it out, or like
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  how does the how does the other members acquire the story or is it presented
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  to them or do they actually read a script come into the meeting? And
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  I guess the second part of the question, is there like a moderator,
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  is you know all right or is it more of a loose like all right,
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  everybody, this is a story we're making, you know, Rob's news
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  story. He's the director on it. Um we read the script or we've
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  seen the pitch or ready for their pitch, or like how does that?
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  How does the room work? Then? I was just curious because if I'm
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  going to do something like on an uper independent level, should I come to
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  the table with some storyboards and present it as much as possible. I'm I'm
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  just trying to figure out how I can the best I can to simulate what
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  they're doing in the branch. Yeah exactly, Yeah, Well Anderson has those
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  things be wrong as early as possible. Yeah, You're gonna be wrong,
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  you know. It's and again that's always the assumption. It is broken.
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  It was broken until the last possible second, even um Ron Clements and John
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  Musker, you know, Princes of Frog and Planet and Planet and you know,
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  uh, a little thing called Little Mermaid, a little thing that those
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  guys, um what don hall the head of story. He would say,
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  they like to leave the paint wet, meaning that you're always developing, You're
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  always um, You're always coming up with ideas. You're leaving that door open
• 17:25
  for that new, wonderful idea to come in. Even when I was working
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  with Aaron Sorkin on Studio sixty, he would we would talk about you know,
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  uh um. It was kind of a paperless office. You know,
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  you don't write it down, don't lock any idea down. It's just you're
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  just talking out stuff. So when you start off with with with with John
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  Lasseter and I was working on a project called uh King of the Elves was
• 17:49
  based on a Philip K. Dick short story, Okay, and what you
• 17:52
  do is you start talking about who are the main characters going to be?
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  You know? And in this case it was kind of like I want to
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  just for me as a writer, I wanted to address some of what I
• 18:03
  was going through with my UM. I have two sons and um and just
• 18:07
  this idea of what is it what are you looking for a son to do?
• 18:11
  When do you know that a son has is ready to go off to
• 18:15
  college, is ready to you know, has become a man? Um.
• 18:18
  You know, as a father, you're always searching around for stuff. You're
• 18:22
  trying to figure out fatherhood as you go. And so what is it?
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  You know, what is that look that you want to see in your son's
• 18:27
  eyes that says I'm ready? And how do you get there? There?
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  And can we do that in the in the in the course of this this
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  story which is essentially about these sides, which is essentially about these uh elves
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  and this guy who essentially inherits and inherits this elf world. Um uh so
• 18:52
  yeah, so so so you start there, Okay, well these are this
• 18:55
  is the emotional palette. This is what I think is is going to be
• 18:57
  fun. Let me kill that thing? Sure, sure, go ahead,
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  Sorry about that, um you want to clean? Um? Where did I
• 19:03
  start? We were talking about your You're working a story about you have two
• 19:07
  boys, but you know, when do you get that moment? How do
• 19:08
  you how do you capture that moment when it's in their eyes that they're ready
• 19:12
  for manhood or ready to leave the nest or whatnot? Yeah? Exactly,
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  yeah, and so uh yeah, so for me, that's what I was
• 19:19
  exploring, you know, that's just what I'm exploring in life. And I
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  thought, Okay, this is a great way to Tom to write it and
• 19:26
  kind of you know, share it with people. I'll have a lot of
• 19:29
  insights on it. It'll it'll be informative to me. It'll be a movie
• 19:33
  that I would want to watch, which is start. And then I was
• 19:36
  talking to uh to John about it and John said, oh man, my
• 19:38
  son is sixteen two, and there's this look they give you and and everything.
• 19:42
  We just started sharing stories about you know, just how do you get
• 19:47
  through to them and what do you give them? And you know, just
• 19:51
  how do you raise a boy? And we're sharing story, shared story,
• 19:53
  shared stories here, and I said, okay, excellent, I know,
• 19:56
  I know what I'm going to do. We'll be right back after a word
• 20:00
  from our sponsor, and now back to the show. So I go off
• 20:08
  from that basic conversation because I know, okay, good, he's an audience
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  I'm an audience member. And that's another one of the Andrews standing yeah that
• 20:15
  I cling to, which is be a film goer first, a filmmaker second.
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  So I go I set out to um look at the story, which
• 20:25
  is very light and say, Okay, what can I do? Basically,
• 20:29
  how can I get a rise out of John? You know, I'm gonna
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  story what I do is going to get a rise out of John. What
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  are going to be those real great honest moments, um that we can do?
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  So I go through what we know story team. We we kind of
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  plot and there's it's fantastical and it's all kinds of stuff, but at its
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  core it's got this really great emotional emotion to it, just like Princess and
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  Froger and egos. Yeah, yeah, and um, and then and then
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  you are pitching kind of a wall of drawing things. Uh you know,
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  first act is on one wall. Actually, second act is on it,
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  so on two walls, and then the third act is on the is on
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  the next wall. Um, you know because for the second act is always
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  in two parts of two a yeah, with the midpoint and then uh you
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  know. And and it's funny because John will and I use this method all
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  the time. John walks in and he goes third act. He walks right
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  up to it and he's, Okay, where's that moment? You say,
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  well, you know, it's it's there, and what he's looking for is
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  what's the epiphany? What's that little thing you know where the the uh where
• 21:37
  you know where he is going to turn into a star or when you know
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  the both Keiana and Levine are going to decide, you know, to uh
• 21:45
  that they're to trade their journey for their relationship all the things they want.
• 21:49
  Um, what is that? What is that moment? Like in yeah,
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  in every you know when when Luke I was you know when when Luke chooses
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  the you know, the force over the over the right right, you know,
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  what is that and what is the And then you go back and you
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  say, okay, great, well what are the elements I need to tell?
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  That's that story. And so he's looking at that point at the mechanics
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  and then you go through it. You pitch it once he's once he has
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  bought off on that that moment working great, Oh yeah, I can see
• 22:21
  that. I can see crying at that moment. Then you go back and
• 22:23
  he says okay, you know, he sits down in his chair and he
• 22:27
  say okay, Act one, Scene one. A flaming qualifier comes in from
• 22:32
  space and whatever, and you're trying to give it as good a look as
• 22:36
  you can. Yeah. Um, you know it doesn't help you to soft
• 22:44
  sell a pitch, you know, even if it is rough, even if
• 22:48
  you just have little heads with smiley faces on it. Yeah, you pitch
• 22:51
  it. You know, it's your favorite movie. So you're you're you're going
• 22:55
  with it, going with it, going with it, you sell out and
• 22:57
  go And then he says, okay, great, I see it got slow
• 23:00
  here, it got slow here whatever. I bought off on the ending.
• 23:04
  But and then you start doing your story map, right, if you're gonna
• 23:08
  if you're gonna have Luke use the force to sell, you know, to
• 23:12
  to shoot down the desk Star, there should be a scene in the middle
• 23:15
  of the movie where he realizes that the force is stronger than, you know,
• 23:19
  than than just any mechanical concerns. What if we put a helmet on
• 23:22
  him or something some fraculous happened, and that'll be that, And then how
• 23:27
  do we get him there? Well? Okay, cool. He should be
• 23:30
  a kid who wants to I don't know, he wants adventure. And how
• 23:36
  many of these movies start with, you know, I want I'm going to
• 23:38
  live more than the provincial life, or I want to you know whatever,
• 23:41
  Yes, but looking out of the window, Harry Potter wanting something, you
• 23:45
  know, something better than living under the stairs exactly. And you know,
• 23:49
  uh where Poe is looking at his his shelf full of things going on.
• 23:53
  Oh man, it would be so awesome to be a kung fu master um
• 23:56
  o'neo looking you know, uh, seeing the rabbit. You know that that
• 24:02
  that there's that call. And then you say no, you know, because
• 24:07
  you get just whatever, jump on the thing. You have to say no
• 24:11
  to that call. And then you go through, like I say, the
• 24:12
  story math. What's going to get him into the second act? How is
• 24:15
  he locked in? Well, for Luke, you're going to burn down his
• 24:18
  family. His family's anything keeping him in this world, his uncle who says,
• 24:22
  no, you're going to sit here, you know, drink green milk
• 24:26
  and be a good boy and um. And so you burn that down because
• 24:30
  Luke's first intention is just to um, is just to get the old man
• 24:37
  to the bar and be done with yea. You know, look, I'll
• 24:41
  get to that far, but you know, you're all this other stuff is
• 24:44
  crazy talk and uh. And by the time he gets to the bar,
• 24:48
  he's kind of in it. And and then off they go on the adventure
• 24:52
  or whatever, you know, and the first part of the adventure is um
• 24:56
  is impossible because the planet has been destroyed. And then you're just going getting
• 25:00
  him deeper and deeper into it. All you're doing is looking at that endpoint,
• 25:06
  like when is he completely bought it? When is he going to sacrifice
• 25:08
  his life take on this his role as you know, jedam Maaster and whatever,
• 25:14
  and embrace the ways of the four the yeah, fourth, that's the
• 25:19
  whole thing, and you're gonna make it difficult for him all along the way.
• 25:22
  You're going to build up the opposition as much as you can. So
• 25:27
  going back to the brain Trust, those are the elements you're looking at it
• 25:33
  and you're saying, Okay, you're telling this type of story. And a
• 25:38
  lot of times it's straight up film theory. I don't know if you're a
• 25:41
  film student or whatever, but all you do in film school that is wonderful
• 25:45
  is you watch a ton of movie and watching all musicals. You're watching whatever.
• 25:51
  You know. For me, when I start a movie, I'll go,
• 25:53
  you know, I'm going to watch every spaghetti western that ever was boom,
• 25:57
  you know, and I'll just I'll just go through my net FLIXQ is
• 26:00
  just you know, just funning with stuff. I'm gonna watch every kung fu
• 26:03
  movie, um, every crazy kung fu movie that I can find, and
• 26:08
  I'll just go through every single everything, single weird one. UM, I'll
• 26:14
  do all of my research. I'll just kind of become inbed, you know,
• 26:15
  just completely embedded in this stuff. Let it seep into my DNA and
• 26:21
  then I really and then I'll see the matrix. I'll see, Okay,
• 26:23
  this is how these types of stories are told. If I can stay on
• 26:27
  this path, I think I'll be fine. And I think also I'll be
• 26:30
  satisfying the audience that, um, that enjoys this type of movie. So
• 26:40
  yeah, and then off I go. Then I know, like, um,
• 26:45
  I'm working on a project right now. There's the air for for yeah,
• 26:49
  a studio, I'll say studio. Yeah, but it's you know,
• 26:55
  completely mainstream, but it's um. One of the things I said was was
• 27:00
  the audience has seen a ton of movies like this and um and the uh
• 27:08
  it's in the category of the of like Maze Runner and Insurgent and those kind
• 27:15
  of things, and the audience of that of that genre is often like they're
• 27:22
  really super skeptical. You know, if you if you show them like what
• 27:26
  is it? There's a ton of these kind of Percy and things, you
• 27:29
  know, there there are a bunch of these movies that come out and the
• 27:33
  audience has never absorbed, you know, just never takes them in. And
• 27:36
  then you're done. And so there are things that you need to do.
• 27:40
  There are tropes that they want to see, but they don't want to see
• 27:41
  the same tropes as they've seen in the other movies. So you have to
• 27:45
  mess with them, and mess with them in a very clever way, so
• 27:48
  that it said an very early signal that Okay, this is cool, you
• 27:52
  know, forget your popcorn, lean in and enjoy the movie. Yeah,
• 27:56
  that's the plussing. That's the extra extra extra, right um. And hopefully,
• 28:02
  like a bad room would be a room full of people who don't all
• 28:07
  like making the same kind of movies. You know, they're gonna pull you
• 28:10
  in every direction. How good I see? You know, you go into
• 28:14
  Marvel and all those guys have read every single comic book. If you throw
• 28:18
  off a reference, they will all go, oh yeah, and you know
• 28:23
  is this and then you could do this and then the room just explodes with
• 28:27
  everything, you know, all the minutia. Everybody will go. You know
• 28:30
  what's great about that issue was this and this and this happened. No,
• 28:33
  here's what I think. I think this is what made it great. But
• 28:37
  this, you know, this episode and this, this issue and this issue
• 28:41
  didn't do well because of this, And everybody will have their theory and great.
• 28:45
  If you can move towards this and away from that, you'll be fine.
• 28:49
  Um. And that's generally what happens in those brain trust meetums is it's
• 28:53
  a yes and M kind of table. That is that is literally the same
• 29:00
  principles of improv. Yes exactly. The whole teaching is an actor will give
• 29:07
  you something and the other actor has to say yes and yes. Literally,
• 29:11
  that's what it is. I act. I act up here in Portland,
• 29:15
  so um, you know, just for my acting friends and stuff like that.
• 29:19
  So it's one of those things that's funny that you brought that up.
• 29:22
  Yeah, do more of that because it becomes for me. Um. Yeah.
• 29:29
  I did a lot of improv in college, and I did some instand
• 29:32
  up as well, and improv yeah. After and even in my stand up
• 29:37
  I would leave, I'd always I consider it in quarters, right, I
• 29:42
  would do my introductions and kind of get everybody into like, this is who
• 29:47
  I am, This is where my comedy is going to come from, guys,
• 29:49
  so get you to it. We'll be right back after a word from
• 29:55
  our sponsor, and now back to the show. Yeah, exactly ten jokes
• 30:04
  in this area. And then I would kind of like, Okay, now
• 30:07
  that we're friends, now that we know each other, here we go.
• 30:11
  You know, we're gonna go go into this. And then third quarter I
• 30:12
  would just kind of kick back and I'd say, hey, let's talk about
• 30:15
  something, and I would just riff and um and you know, I would
• 30:21
  just I would ask the audience a question or else, you know, or
• 30:23
  whatever, and I would just go on whatever I was given, just lean
• 30:29
  into it and fly. And then i'd of course wrap it up with some
• 30:33
  you know, some stuff that was money night and you know whatever, drop
• 30:37
  the mic and take off. But that that and and and frankly, it's
• 30:41
  also the same kind of thing that happens in a TV room, like you
• 30:44
  had mentioned before, you know, um, in sitcom rooms, that's exactly
• 30:48
  what happens, um, because literally you cannot afford in a sitcom room for
• 30:53
  somebody to go yeah, I don't know, you know. So when I
• 30:56
  was running tables. I would always say buy it or be it, you
• 31:00
  know, being um, Okay, there's an idea on the table that I
• 31:06
  believe to be very good. If you think of a better idea, pitch
• 31:11
  it now. Otherwise we're going to build off of the idea we have,
• 31:15
  but we're not going to spend an hour and a half just kind of shooting,
• 31:18
  you know, just telling everybody why it's a bad idea. So um,
• 31:22
  so it winds up being really really great. So that's exactly what you
• 31:26
  find in the pis O room. Somebody will say, well, what if
• 31:29
  you know that's the first thing. What if and anytime anybody says what if
• 31:33
  whatever, the room gets really quiet, even if you have even if you
• 31:37
  have your own what if you're like, okay, great, I'm just gonna
• 31:40
  get in line. Yeah. What if we turn the whole thing upside down
• 31:45
  and this happens, and then this happens, and instead of everybody going,
• 31:48
  oh, shut up, you okay, if that happens, then this would
• 31:53
  also happen, and this and this, and then this would happen and this
• 31:59
  and this. All the energy winds up around that that idea. Bloom boom
• 32:04
  boom, and you're just building a mountain off this idea, and hey,
• 32:06
  you know what's a great sequence with that. You can do this and this
• 32:07
  and this, and then somebody else will say, hey, and that will
• 32:10
  fix this scene because you can do this instead, and they'll start pitching the
• 32:14
  dialogue and everybody we're cracking out the jokes and all that. And then sometimes
• 32:17
  you get to the top of that mountain and you go, I don't know,
• 32:23
  built this whole thing, and you say it's good, but it's not
• 32:28
  necessarily better than what we had before, or it's good, but it's a
• 32:30
  whole other movie or whatever. And then it gets quiet and everybody digests what
• 32:37
  we had, and then the next person says, well what about this boom?
• 32:40
  And then you start you build again, same energy and everything. Everybody
• 32:45
  gets into everything. There is no there is some negative and because some people
• 32:50
  will say, ah, you know, we tried that and blah blah blah
• 32:52
  blah blah. But if you were going to make it work, here's what
• 32:54
  you would do. I say, so everybody is looking at it in terms
• 32:59
  of, um, they're making the movie, and and that you get too,
• 33:04
  which is you know, uh, which I think is wonderful because Brad
• 33:07
  bird is going to have a different idea in his head than Pete Doctor.
• 33:10
  Yeah, and Pete Doctor's gonna have a different one than than than Mark,
• 33:14
  you know, than um than even even John, you know, and John's
• 33:19
  gonna have it, you know whatever, and everybody's gonna it's an orchestra,
• 33:22
  right, So John is Um, John's got a big heart at John's or
• 33:28
  whatever, and he's he's a big kids who He's gonna love the you know,
• 33:31
  a big block scene. Um. Uh, Andrew is looking to make
• 33:37
  sure it's you know, you're checking the boxes. Uh, Pete's got you
• 33:40
  know, Pete's got his take. You know. Brad's a cowboy, you
• 33:45
  know, he's he's he's doing his thing. And uh and in that symphony
• 33:50
  you have like, Okay, great, this is this wonderful set of ideas.
• 33:55
  Um uh even what is it? Michael Arn't you know who wrote you
• 34:00
  know, Little Sunshine? He comes in and he I love the way he
• 34:06
  thinks because he thinks a lot like me. I'm a I'm a structure guy.
• 34:09
  You know when when I when I started doing um sitcoms, there were
• 34:14
  two rooms or three rooms. There was there was the room of guys who
• 34:16
  would think about the stories. There was story guys you know who would so
• 34:21
  would um as you were breaking the story, they would sit down and say,
• 34:25
  well it should be this and then this and then this, you know,
• 34:28
  and just plot out the plot out the story, knowing where the jokes
• 34:31
  were going to come. And then we would invite a larger group in and
• 34:35
  then those would be the joke guys would come in and say oh yeah,
• 34:38
  and then this and this. You know, they would have great dialogue.
• 34:42
  And I saw very early, you know, they were like, well,
• 34:44
  which room do you want to be? And I was like, I want
• 34:45
  to be in the room with the exact producer, you know, And that's
• 34:50
  the story room that those guys seem to be. Those guys are working all
• 34:53
  the time, and those guys, anytime the stuff was wrong, they would
• 34:58
  kick the jo joke guys out of the room and a very small group of
• 35:00
  story guys would work would work through it. Fascinating. Story guys were the
• 35:06
  guys who would hold the pencil, meaning they would make the last decision.
• 35:08
  They would write down whatever the choice was, um. And and so I
• 35:14
  like that a lot. And even now as I'm working in features and stuff,
• 35:19
  it's always the story guys who are kind of called in when things are
• 35:22
  really wrong. They'll say, okay, please help us, you know what's
• 35:29
  wrong with it, and you go in with your toolbox unmotivated character. The
• 35:32
  third act moment doesn't work. Let's build back from that. What are the
• 35:36
  values that we're doing here and go through Before I go to the I just
• 35:43
  want to kind of recap sure, like make sure I'm I'm grabbing the essence
• 35:46
  of everything you're talking about. Um, there's it sounds like there's a little
• 35:50
  bit of a I think your cable might be hitting I think it's hitting my
• 35:53
  shirt. So okay, yeah, you get you get a little story just
• 35:58
  you and I. Yeah, they go, okay, is it going clean
• 36:00
  clan clean? Yeah? Yeah, yeah yeah. Is that not too bad?
• 36:02
  It's but I just it's such great information you have and it is just
• 36:07
  you and I on the video, So it's all good. Look like a
• 36:12
  prison hopefully that's perfect. So the well we can what I can gather from
• 36:21
  here is I like this concept of one. Make sure that the room that
• 36:24
  you create, the group that you create. If you're going to create your
• 36:28
  own brain trust group, Um, you know, if you're writing a horror
• 36:31
  genre, you know, make sure you have people that like it, that
• 36:37
  helps have studied up on it. Yeah, exactly that know that no,
• 36:39
  the genre that no, the tropes um that have a passion for it,
• 36:44
  that that can gel with you as well as I like this idea that you
• 36:47
  start from the b end what is what does that one thing or just have
• 36:51
  that conversation like what is the one thing you want on this film? The
• 36:53
  story? Is it the moment? What does that magic moment, that third
• 36:58
  act moment that makes it the pay off all worth it? And then reverse
• 37:01
  engineer go back from the beginning and work towards it. I like all that.
• 37:05
  I love this that little note you gave about the second act the midpoint
• 37:07
  of like if the payoff and the third act, then that magic movie moment
• 37:13
  is it works. You have to give us a little taste of in the
• 37:15
  midpoint, which is great, you know, and it totally makes sense.
• 37:19
  And then obviously the people that you put together have to know you know their
• 37:23
  story structure or you know that they're just their film geeks or other filmmakers themselves
• 37:28
  that are have an opportunity to contribute to the storytelling process where you know,
• 37:36
  we all seem to do it anyway, after we watch a movie, we're
• 37:37
  like, why didn't not work? You know, like I think my wife.
• 37:40
  My wife and I just rewatched the remake of Poltergeist last night and were
• 37:45
  huge fans of the first one. I mean, watch that many times over
• 37:50
  and seeing what happened, you know, our own analysis of taking away.
• 37:53
  And it's interesting the conversation you have just saying why didn't it work? Because
• 38:00
  you're trying to figure out like what's gut wise, what's what's what's something's off?
• 38:02
  Whyden? Is it not working for us? And uh, I think
• 38:06
  it was. I think it was like it took an hour, like originally
• 38:07
  like a two hour movie into an hour and a half, and it was
• 38:10
  like go time from the beginning, like there there was no one. It
• 38:14
  was just like bang, bang bang. There was no time to catch your
• 38:16
  breath. And it felt it definitely felt rushed and all the wonderful cinematic you
• 38:22
  know vision visions of the stuff, but it was there's some soul aspect missing.
• 38:29
  I think. See that's the thing. Because that and because I was
• 38:31
  going to ask you, okay, what what what did you think was was
• 38:35
  was missing it? So in what part of the movie do you think it
• 38:37
  was missing from I think if you if your conclusion was that it was soulless.
• 38:43
  Yeah, and we're and we're in the brain trust meeting right now,
• 38:45
  so okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is conclusion was that Polter
• 38:47
  Guys was souless? Where how do you fix that? Where? What?
• 38:51
  What? What had they taken out? Because you have in this case,
• 38:54
  it's empirical, right, you have a movie that works and a movie does
• 38:58
  not that does not work, Ye, that are the exact that are supposed
• 39:01
  to be the exact same movie, right, so you can kind of look
• 39:04
  at them side by side, you know. And I'm notorious for this.
• 39:07
  I'll get iTunes and I'll just i will watch five minutes of one movie,
• 39:12
  five minutes of another movie in the next, five minutes of one game the
• 39:15
  next, and I'll just I'll completely go go through because a lot of movies
• 39:19
  will have if you watch point break and Fast and Furious, they're the exact
• 39:24
  same movie, right, and they will tell you they're the exact same movie,
• 39:29
  and um uh, every you know in every way you know, um
• 39:36
  and and so the question is, okay, great, will those two work?
• 39:38
  Now? Now? This one? Okay? Great? So so we're
• 39:40
  back to it's soulless. That's our problem. Where did that come from?
• 39:47
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to
• 39:54
  the show. Definitely, I think from watching the remake, um and being
• 40:02
  a fan, like you said, being so well versed in the first one
• 40:06
  and seeing it many times over, you know all the nuances, you know
• 40:08
  all the scenes, but mostly from the from it was there's a sense of
• 40:13
  wonderment in awe and sort of respect for this, this deeper conversation about the
• 40:19
  paranormal that was existed in the first one. Again, we're talking about somebody
• 40:25
  remaking Spielberg exactly. Yeah, you know, yeah, but Spielberg's got a
• 40:30
  bag of tricks that is very interesting. And when I look at Spielberg,
• 40:35
  I always look at um Man. I just had this conversation with Spielberg himself.
• 40:42
  Well, his daughter went to school with my son, so it was
• 40:45
  okay, you know, we guy and his and his other son took karate
• 40:52
  class with my older son, so oh wow, Okay, so it was
• 40:55
  just all this cross over. But but we never like, hey, tell
• 40:59
  me about Joe or whatever. But I did get a chance to meet the
• 41:01
  writer of Jaws m I said dinner with him a couple of months ago,
• 41:06
  and and we were talking just about those things, of anusia, of all
• 41:10
  of that stuff. And when I look at Spielberg, I always look at
• 41:15
  when I'm analyzing a filmmaker, the first couple of films, the first two
• 41:19
  films. Um. I may have mentioned this failure, but that that that
• 41:22
  I always look at them when they're in their infancy, when they're trying to
• 41:27
  put together their bag of tricks, and then I try to find what is
• 41:30
  their worst film. And for Spielberg, it's nineteen forty one right there.
• 41:35
  And in nineteen forty one he is doing he's showing his bag of tricks,
• 41:40
  but he's doing everything wrong. And you can tell like, oh, this
• 41:45
  is what he what he does great, everything that he does great in the
• 41:50
  first couple of movies, he does really poorly here and everything that he did
• 41:53
  great like an et. And this gets to the answer of what I was
• 41:59
  digging at with the two Polter guys is that it's the first act. It's
• 42:02
  a first act problem that that you when you buy into something emotionally, it's
• 42:08
  if you don't feel it emotionally. It's because when we met those people.
• 42:12
  We didn't care about them exactly. You know, if it's a roller coaster
• 42:15
  ride, if if they're thinking, well, the best thing about polter guys
• 42:19
  is the little girl gets sucked into the TV and whatever, there's a closet
• 42:22
  and all that stuff like that is not the best thing. It's about this
• 42:24
  family. It's about this guy who is who is you know, has moved
• 42:30
  his family into this into this new environment. He's worried that there is something
• 42:35
  wrong with the area. There's this drumbeat of weird things that have been happening
• 42:42
  around the area, and you're filling in the character. It's like it's like
• 42:45
  Jaws, it's like Et. It's everything. The conversation that they have at
• 42:51
  the at breakfast in ET before ET shows up is the most important conversation you
• 42:58
  have. Um. Yeah, I remember in Princess and the Frog there was
• 43:01
  this whole thing of we were just we're trying to get them into the body
• 43:07
  as quickly as possible. And the note we kept getting back in the brain
• 43:12
  trust because that's the other part of the brain trust. Right as you screen
• 43:15
  the movie, you're showing the movie to a lot of people and they're giving
• 43:19
  you notes back, everybody in the building, everybody at Disney, everybody at
• 43:22
  Pixar. You get reams of notes. I didn't think, you know,
• 43:28
  this is a problem. This is a problem. This is a problem.
• 43:30
  And then they put the notes into sections, so someone's about, you know,
• 43:35
  the main character, or something about you know, the story itself.
• 43:38
  And then we were getting all these notes. I you know, the story
• 43:42
  seems funny. I just don't care. I don't care about the journey.
• 43:45
  Yeah, And I said, well, that's the first act problem. Same
• 43:49
  thing. And you didn't care because she wanted to have a restaurant, but
• 43:53
  you didn't care why she wanted to have a restaurant. So I said,
• 43:55
  well, hey, I saw this drawing of a dad. I love this
• 44:00
  story. Yeah, yeah, this keep going on. This is a great
• 44:02
  don't There was a dad picture drawing of a dad and basically they were trying
• 44:07
  to figure out what the mom looked like. So they had drawn a dad
• 44:10
  just to figure out, you know, what were the features that that Tiana
• 44:14
  had gotten from both of her parents, and then that would be the mom.
• 44:17
  And there was this a drawing and I asked the character designer, what
• 44:22
  you know, what is this like? Oh, you explained it, and
• 44:24
  I said, well, this is Can I borrow this? And I took
• 44:27
  it back into the room. I said, this guy is the most important
• 44:29
  person in the movie. Um, because daughters, that relationship between daughters and
• 44:35
  fathers. And we've been looking driving so hard to have a person, um
• 44:42
  to have an emotional reason why she wants to have this restaurant. Why not?
• 44:45
  Why can't it be the daughter the dream of a daughter and her father
• 44:49
  and um, and that the legacy of that once the father passes away,
• 44:54
  she wants to continue that dream. And then there's no way the thing can't
• 45:00
  have emotion. Um, it's a woman holding you know. It's it's what
• 45:07
  they did in up right the house at a certain point becomes you know that
• 45:14
  Carl is trying to continue the dream that he had with his with his wife.
• 45:17
  Um, that's that's the And I could mention probably fifty other movies that
• 45:22
  are fueled with that kind of emotion. There is a reason why we tell
• 45:25
  stories in that way. UM. And so once that happened, it was
• 45:30
  a tiny adjustment. It was about three pages and in the beginning of the
• 45:35
  movie, and everybody said, wow, what did you do? Did you
• 45:37
  rewrite the entire movie, like, no, we just gave every time,
• 45:40
  you know, she says the word restaurant, you know what it means.
• 45:45
  And I had to hit it. I think in the middle, at the
• 45:47
  midpoint, when they're right before they dance, and then at the end when
• 45:51
  they're on the riverboat and they're looking looking out at the restaurant itself, and
• 45:57
  it's what gets Navine to back off. He wants to proposed to her,
• 46:01
  and it has such huge emotional weight that it's like, Okay, great,
• 46:05
  my job here, my job here has done the mechanics. The rest of
• 46:07
  the mechanics of the storytelling were I don't want to say inconsequential, but they
• 46:14
  were less consequential because we had launched the story correctly. You watch a movie
• 46:20
  like Man on Fire, they spent a ton of time. I don't think
• 46:22
  anybody dies until the midpoint of that movie. Yeah, the whole movie is
• 46:25
  about this broken guy's love for this little girl and how this girl redeems has
• 46:32
  his soul and makes him, stops him from committing suicide. Yeah, you
• 46:38
  know, the bullet doesn't go off. There is something, you know,
• 46:42
  the god of the story has a larger plan for this guy and it's about
• 46:45
  this, it's about this relationship with this little girl. And you know,
• 46:51
  he starts coaching her about you know, don't be afraid of the gun and
• 46:55
  all that, and and they have this wonderful, wonderful relationship. So at
• 47:00
  point when she's kidnapped, you're like, oh no, yeah, go down,
• 47:06
  because now this guy has license, you know, he is he is
• 47:10
  fired up. And if you look at I'm sorry I say last example,
• 47:14
  but if you look at Taken, Taken follows the exact same model. That
• 47:19
  girl doesn't get kidnapped. Chilled deep into that movie. Yeah, heart,
• 47:22
  heartbreak, heartbreak, the pony versus the you know, karaoke machine, all
• 47:27
  of those scenes. If you're looking at it from an executive standpoint, you'll
• 47:30
  think, oh god, you know the movie's really about it. It's a
• 47:34
  shoot him up? And why is it taking sixty minutes before the guy fires
• 47:38
  the first shot? You know, well, like, can't we just condense
• 47:42
  this? And and you have to, as a writer, as an artist,
• 47:46
  say no, people don't watch buildings burn. They watch people saving the
• 47:52
  people they love that are in the building that is on fire. That that's
• 47:59
  drama. Yeah, it's interesting. You know you brought that up. It
• 48:01
  got me excited because you were saying, like how important to set up,
• 48:05
  how portant the first act is. And if you look at some movies back
• 48:08
  in the in the seventies, like even Exorcist, literally I think the first
• 48:13
  hour like nothing major paranormal like happens. I mean, the priests doesn't show
• 48:17
  up until after the hour mark, like like all this stuff I remember about
• 48:22
  the Exorcist doesn't happen until like almost after the midpoint. You know. It's
• 48:25
  like, yeah, because the even like Rosemary's the Baby, same thing.
• 48:30
  Um uh Gary Shining, Oh my god, yeah, exactly shining. You're
• 48:37
  just watching girls and bikes and me or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, it's
• 48:42
  just and and there are a little creepy things that happened. There's always got
• 48:45
  you know, a cat dropped out of the box. Uh. I was
• 48:49
  watching Alien, Um, same thing. It's just the day to day workings
• 48:54
  of you know of space. Uh uh, the space these teamsters and then
• 49:01
  and then midpoint the thing leaps out of the guy's chest and you're it's off,
• 49:07
  off and running exact. But what we've been setting up before that is
• 49:10
  nobody listens to Ripley. You know. Um, these guys are are in
• 49:15
  it for a paycheck. You froze up, do you see? Yeah?
• 49:22
  Okay, sorry, Yeah, that that that that nobody listens to her,
• 49:24
  That that you know, these guys are are in it for a paycheck,
• 49:29
  and that something is wrong with the science officer, you know, and there's
• 49:34
  all these kind of you're you're just setting up the dynamics, um uh,
• 49:37
  and it's getting your heart is kind of in your chest. You know that
• 49:42
  something's got to happen. Yeah, um uh. And then when it does,
• 49:45
  it's just like bam bam, bam, bam bam. And then you're
• 49:47
  left the best thing about looking at the third act versus it, it's the
• 49:52
  thing, it's the thing that you are. Um you know, the lights
• 49:58
  go up, you walk to your car and you man, that was awesome.
• 50:04
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to
• 50:10
  the show. And that's the thing. You know, if that third act
• 50:16
  moment works, then it's all worth it. If it doesn't work, it
• 50:22
  doesn't matter what you did up until that point. Nobody's gonna you know,
• 50:28
  the the audience coming out of the seven o'clock show. I talk about this
• 50:30
  all time because it's what. It's what makes movies great. It's what makes
• 50:35
  the business of making a movie, even if it's an independent film. It's
• 50:38
  the audience coming out of the seven o'clock show, their reaction as you're in
• 50:45
  line for the nine o'clock show, right, and yeah, everybody knows that
• 50:49
  thing of like people who are going oh snap, yeah, yeah, and
• 50:53
  they're like crying or they're like high fiving or stuff, and they're they're nodding
• 50:59
  at you because they know like, oh, this is gonna be you know,
• 51:01
  you are in for a treat, this is gonna be magnificent and uh.
• 51:06
  And it's that thing that's what makes movies great. That's what makes movie
• 51:09
  going great, you know, and everything, um, you know, yeah,
• 51:15
  go ahead. Now we can say it's fascinating because we were talking about
• 51:17
  the long setup and then we gave some examples, but you did mention even
• 51:22
  like the movie up and I think it's one of the greatest examples of the
• 51:24
  shortest, most heartbreaking setups ever. You know, it's within you're in tears
• 51:30
  within the first whatever five minutes of that story of Carl. You know,
• 51:35
  it's beautiful and they're just it's just building up. You know, remember they're
• 51:39
  building up for the moment when he ditches the house to save the boy,
• 51:45
  you know, and and so and that's the whole you know that John would
• 51:49
  you know I was who walked into the room. Okay, what happens.
• 51:52
  He crashes the house, He throws all the stuff out, you know,
• 51:57
  to give it ballast. He's run out of balloons and you know, uh,
• 52:00
  and he goes and saves the boy. Um and uh that's that's his
• 52:06
  Luke Skywalker moment right right. And so so in the beginning, you want
• 52:10
  to say, well, if the house doesn't mean anything, right again,
• 52:14
  story math. If the house doesn't mean anything, that moment's not going to
• 52:17
  mean anything. Everybody's going to go, so what it's a house, Yeah,
• 52:22
  you know, you get another house, like no, no, no,
• 52:23
  This house is very special because it is the embodiment of you know,
• 52:29
  his relationship with his with his wife. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Ellie.
• 52:34
  And and I believe that at various times he calls the house Ellie.
• 52:39
  Um, and it's the he's working towards the picture of the house on the
• 52:45
  on the mountain. Yeah. And so you're going to give him that and
• 52:49
  then you're gonna take it away you know, he's gonna get all the way
• 52:52
  there, realize it's it's not worth what he thought it would be worth,
• 52:55
  and then he's gonna go save the boy. Great, so you need and
• 53:01
  I forget who There is a one the co director of Um of Inside Out,
• 53:12
  Ronnie del carmin. I want to say, Okay, I believe that
• 53:15
  was his sequence and that put him on the map as a star, or
• 53:19
  you know, he'd been on the map as a star anyway, because he's
• 53:22
  fantastic artist. But he was the guy who who walked through that sequence and
• 53:27
  said it stripped of its dialogue. He had temporary music that was that was
• 53:31
  wonderful for it. This this kind of very you know, ballad kind of
• 53:36
  thing um and it was amazing. You know, just a process of how
• 53:42
  that sequence came came to be because you know, obviously the first twenty drafts
• 53:50
  of that sequence were not that sequence. Yeah, you really had to kind
• 53:53
  of work on it, work on it, work on it, and so
• 53:55
  it just wasn't it. It would make you cry. And I believe it's
• 54:02
  five minutes and thirty seconds long. It is not very long in in in
• 54:07
  pure movie movie terms, but by the end of it, when you know,
• 54:13
  just that pan across the doctor's office. Oh my god, you know,
• 54:16
  just every one of those moments is completely iconic. It's just it's truly
• 54:22
  wonderful. And then it gives him license to do everything that he does,
• 54:24
  which is he won't sell the house, smashes the guy on the head when
• 54:29
  he you know, when he's when he's threatened. Um, and now he's
• 54:32
  going to you know, go live this dream and go to uh you know
• 54:37
  this this waterfall great, it's amazing. I was curiously you with your s.
• 54:44
  You've history like writing on your own, working in rooms, you know,
• 54:47
  in television and and now working like obviously the last few years and animation
• 54:52
  is the advent of visuals like um, because I don't know if you have
• 54:57
  an opportunity with the Princess and the Frog to go down in New Orleans too,
• 55:01
  or you're part of the research crew because you know, you were mentioning
• 55:05
  like how lasseter m is such a huge proponent of research, like just getting
• 55:09
  it as orb into your DNA, like like you've probably already done prior,
• 55:14
  but I was curious. Um, you know, we have the TV room
• 55:17
  and we're seeing like this explosion of golden age of television just amazing shows left
• 55:22
  and right, and and I can only account like because the power the writers
• 55:25
  there, like in writers together pushing each other to make it great. And
• 55:30
  then you have animation which allows you to I mean my past working with so
• 55:36
  many PlayStation working vision effects, we always had to work with visuals. We
• 55:39
  always had something to draw from to try to make it, you know,
• 55:42
  better. And I'm wondering, like, because now you have visual cues like
• 55:45
  you mentioned and Princess of the Frog, here's a drawing, a sketch drawing
• 55:50
  about the father. It was like that is huge for me, And yeah,
• 55:53
  I was wondering, have you seen UM? I guess like how could
• 56:00
  UM like an independent you know, a borrow from this concept of like should
• 56:05
  they just inundate themselves with so many look frames or drawings or initial sketches anything
• 56:09
  like that to like innundate themselves of what their world would look like. So
• 56:14
  if they brought in their own makeshift brain trust group, so everybody could connect
• 56:17
  to like, oh, what's that, what's this? Or you know,
• 56:21
  how's this fin the story? I don't know from York's any like stories you
• 56:24
  could share of like just like you said, you're walking around, you're seeing
• 56:28
  artists or somebody. Pretty much the film made in like visual format before even
• 56:35
  like even one written word is put on an actual traditional script. I guess
• 56:37
  I don't know, right Well, that's the that's the fun of the new
• 56:43
  the new tools will call it is it's um. I know that. Robert
• 56:47
  Rodriguez his his process is very similar to the Pixar process, which is interesting.
• 56:53
  He kind of pre shoots his movies, UM and he will just with
• 57:00
  handheld camera or I don't know, a cell phone or whatever. He'll get
• 57:02
  his actors in a room and he films his rehearsals and he takes them back
• 57:07
  and I don't know if he's using you know whatever, you know, whatever
• 57:10
  it is, but you know, as easy it is as it is to
• 57:14
  edit something. He just edits it at home, and then he goes in
• 57:17
  the next day if they're shooting the next day, and he'll show it to
• 57:21
  everybody like this is this is what this is, and here's what I think
• 57:23
  is wrong with it, Here's what I did to rewrite it, and here
• 57:28
  we go. You know. So the second thing you see will be that
• 57:30
  m Woody Allen shoots an entire movie edits it, and edits it, shows
• 57:38
  it, you know, it, takes a look at it, and then
• 57:42
  I don't know if he gets outside feedback or or anything. I assume he
• 57:45
  does, and then reshoots the entire movie. It's always in his budget that
• 57:50
  he will shoot it twice. So you do it, and obviously that you
• 57:53
  know, the first version is not just everybody kind of slogging through not wearing
• 57:58
  their costumes and stuff. It's an actual movie. And then he shoots it
• 58:01
  again. So um uh, And I think that that that is a great
• 58:08
  way to go. Um if you can't get Ridley Scott storyboards his own movies
• 58:16
  top to bottom, and I believe shoots the storyboards and show you know,
• 58:20
  shows shows those. Yeah, So that the first draft, and the way
• 58:24
  I look at it is, you know, from a Disney perspective, is
• 58:28
  that when guys are drawing, right, they take a blue pencil. It's
• 58:30
  very light, you can barely see it, and they just start drawing and
• 58:34
  whatever, and they're just and the lines are everywhere, and it's a complete
• 58:37
  mess, and they're drawing over themselves and they're doing whatever. And then they
• 58:42
  start to see it and then they'll they'll they'll take out a black pencil and
• 58:45
  they'll start tagging it down and they'll you know, take great and here the
• 58:50
  eyes, here's where the eyes go, here's whatever, because you're kind of
• 58:52
  trying to see it on the page, and only a handful of people can
• 58:58
  just start drawing with the black ansel it and go you're sketching, sketching,
• 59:01
  sketching until you see it. If you if you listen to a band right,
• 59:07
  the band will go, you know, it'll sound terrible, and then
• 59:10
  they'll kind of gradually, you know, come down to whatever they're doing.
• 59:15
  Sculptors the same way. It's a blob, an amorphous blob for so long
• 59:20
  and then they start to tack down little sections. And writers are the only
• 59:23
  ones who don't do that. Writers I'll see them go, oh, I
• 59:27
  have an idea, you know, faded go in, you know and carry
• 59:31
  the broker store day and like, who does that? Nobody does that.
• 59:36
  You don't think that way. You say, I want to make a movie,
• 59:39
  I think it should be kind of like this movie that I loved when
• 59:44
  I was a kid, or it should be I want to make the best
• 59:49
  you know, um badass six year old know whatever magical power movie that I
• 59:57
  can will be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
• 1:00:06
  to the show. Here is a precedent of other you know, badass six
• 1:00:12
  year old. Here's where some have gone right and others have gone wrong.
• 1:00:16
  And this is what moves me about this kind of movie. This is why
• 1:00:21
  these kinds of movies are my favorite movies, and this is where others have
• 1:00:25
  fallen afield. I think my movie is somewhere in here, and and then
• 1:00:30
  you get out like I'm old school. So I have like you. I
• 1:00:35
  have, you know, just a clipboard and a fountain pen, and I
• 1:00:38
  will sit down and I'll just start writing. And it's rarely dialogue. It's
• 1:00:45
  just what do I love about these kinds of movies? I love this,
• 1:00:47
  I love this, I love that. Hey, my favorite scene in one
• 1:00:51
  of these things was blah blah blah blah blah, and and my least favorite
• 1:00:55
  scene is blah blah blah blah blah. Excellent. I like to eat my
• 1:01:00
  dessert first, So if I'm writing, I will say, well, here
• 1:01:04
  are scenes that should be in my movie. You know, these are great
• 1:01:08
  scenes. And if I can just string a clothesline between these scenes, I
• 1:01:14
  think I'll be okay, because these are the classic scenes. There should be
• 1:01:16
  the mentor scene and the and the equipment, you know, the badass piece
• 1:01:22
  of machinery you know, or the you know, the great gun or whatever
• 1:01:25
  it is, you know, a cool monster, a you know, fantastic
• 1:01:30
  spaceship, a you know, always kind of I'll put those in and then
• 1:01:34
  I'll say, okay, well wait now I'm going to try to make myself
• 1:01:37
  crying the third act and go you know, um yeah, and that's yeah.
• 1:01:43
  But but it's always starting from like a morphous a morphous you know,
• 1:01:45
  the the ink, you know, the paint is wet, there's no paper.
• 1:01:51
  I'm just freestyling until i find like it should be this, and then
• 1:01:58
  I'll start to give it shape and tack it down, um and then only
• 1:02:02
  last the last like it's it's. I often will write the entire thing um
• 1:02:10
  by hand, and then after I've gone through the whole thing, then I
• 1:02:14
  type it into software. Interesting, do you know is there a difference for
• 1:02:19
  you between like, uh, plot in character or is it the same,
• 1:02:23
  like because I can see like doing an outline constructing like the logic of the
• 1:02:29
  world of where you want this moment to go. For the protagonists and maybe
• 1:02:32
  the protagon. Like you you see like a major change that's going to have
• 1:02:36
  to happen for this character. But once you kind of maybe have like the
• 1:02:39
  simple idea laid out, then do you do you go in and start like
• 1:02:45
  thinking like, Okay, the Dad character a lot right now, my early
• 1:02:47
  drafts are serving exposition. Well, then how do I make that character more
• 1:02:52
  interesting? Because there was this whole I think you were talking about like um
• 1:02:58
  in Jason buff podcasts about how like in Finding Emo, there was all these
• 1:03:04
  wonderful characters, all the supporting characters, even no matter how small the character
• 1:03:08
  is, like each fish had some interesting best story, one scar one like
• 1:03:15
  it was nervous or I don't know it was this it was just rich with
• 1:03:17
  content because or context because it was so each character was so unique that way,
• 1:03:22
  as opposed of just being serving exposition. Do you see that within those
• 1:03:28
  group meetings you have or or sometimes somebody goes, I have this is the
• 1:03:31
  character. I don't know what story was going to happen with them, but
• 1:03:36
  I don't know how like did you see it go both ways? Right?
• 1:03:38
  Right? No? That that that it's the interesting thing is and it's it's
• 1:03:45
  um It's fantastic question because it is I think at the crux of m most
• 1:03:54
  I'd say a good ninety percent of filmmakers don't understand this one sic thing,
• 1:04:00
  which is that there should be no difference between character and story. But there
• 1:04:06
  is a huge difference between character and plot. Okay, that plot is just
• 1:04:12
  Um. I was in this uh. It was a masterclass in France,
• 1:04:17
  in Marseilles, and this there was a guy who'd done this web these webcasts
• 1:04:20
  and stuff like that was you know, really charismatic guy, really energetic,
• 1:04:25
  we know, a great storyteller in quotes, and I'd done this thing and
• 1:04:31
  I'll talk about it a little later because it remind me to tell you this
• 1:04:35
  thing because I think it helps all writers, everybody that I've done it with,
• 1:04:40
  with writers, it makes them a lot better. Um uh. But
• 1:04:45
  this guy is telling this story and he's going on, he's pitching me this
• 1:04:48
  this movie, and he says, oh, and then an alien comes in
• 1:04:54
  and blah blah blah blah blah. He's pitching, pitching more and more.
• 1:04:57
  The Italian guy, right, he was like yeah, and then this happens
• 1:05:00
  and then they fall into an abyss and then a guy has a gun and
• 1:05:03
  whatever, and he shoots his grandma and whatever. And he's just going through,
• 1:05:06
  going through and going through, and I'm watching the audience and I and
• 1:05:12
  I stopped him for a second. I say, watched the audience as you're
• 1:05:14
  as you're doing this, keep going, and he's what, keep And then
• 1:05:18
  this happens. There was a big explosion and whatever, and I said,
• 1:05:21
  I said, what what what do you think I saw? Uh? After
• 1:05:26
  about two minutes, everybody started talking to each other. He just tuned him
• 1:05:30
  out. There were a couple of his friends in the back that were kind
• 1:05:32
  of smiling. Really towards the end, everybody was just everybody was just hiding
• 1:05:38
  from the thing because he was. Because it was it was mostly sorry,
• 1:05:44
  I mean to do something to the screen. Sure have I have flux And
• 1:05:50
  I didn't realize that it's been. It's been kind of making the image of
• 1:05:55
  uh more sleepy as wet. But yeah, so I said, look at
• 1:06:01
  the audience, and the audience has just completely tuned him out. I said
• 1:06:04
  why as well? He couldn't figure it out. I said, well,
• 1:06:10
  because you lost your character. First, you didn't make me care about your
• 1:06:14
  character. And second, as it's going on, you were just at just
• 1:06:17
  getting more and more. You were using plot to try to save you from
• 1:06:23
  character, and I said, okay, And I pitched his own his story
• 1:06:27
  the same way, and I pitched it all character. You know, this
• 1:06:30
  guy comes in and more than anything else in the world, he wants this.
• 1:06:35
  Oh but you know this guy also wants it and blah blah blah,
• 1:06:41
  and he wants it even more so at the very beginning, the guy boom
• 1:06:44
  whatever, he takes it from him, and now he's sitting there going,
• 1:06:46
  oh, no, what am I gonna do? Now? Aliens attack and
• 1:06:49
  blah blah blah and whatever, and everybody's leaning in as I'm as I'm telling
• 1:06:54
  the story because you care. You know, you give a crap about the
• 1:06:57
  story. Before he was doing plot, what I was doing was character.
• 1:07:01
  And you know, if it's if it's finding Nemo, every character that um
• 1:07:06
  that Marlin passes should develop him as a character. You're going from the journey
• 1:07:13
  of a guy who's overly cautious to a guy who's going to let his kid
• 1:07:15
  do this thing. In um In the Incredibles, everything that passes Bob Pars.
• 1:07:21
  You know, we set him up as a guy who will save everybody
• 1:07:25
  at any time, you know, whatever you've been doing. The whole thing,
• 1:07:28
  everybody that he passes, every experience that he has is is basically kind
• 1:07:32
  of to show that his addiction has gotten out of control, you know,
• 1:07:40
  and until he even finds an enabler in the enamel. Oh great, Actually,
• 1:07:43
  I'm going to go off and do this thing, and I'm just going
• 1:07:45
  to completely ignore my family, right because those are the two values that are
• 1:07:49
  at stake. It's it's do you are you going to reclaim your your your
• 1:07:54
  glory at the expense of the thing that you that that you know, your
• 1:07:59
  future, you know your family. You were once this guy, now you're
• 1:08:01
  this guy. You need to be more than mister incredible, she says pointedly,
• 1:08:06
  you know, thematically in order to do it. So every single scene
• 1:08:12
  is going to be him deperately clinging to his former life. He's in the
• 1:08:15
  meeting with his boss and he's looking outside and he can't you know, and
• 1:08:18
  he's just seeing a guy getting his pocket picked and he can't give it up.
• 1:08:24
  You know. He's he's there with the old lady, and the old
• 1:08:27
  lady is worried that she's going to lose her thing, and he can't you
• 1:08:30
  know that his new life, he just won't do it. Everything, everything
• 1:08:35
  he's doing is kind of these things butterressing him but against each other. That's
• 1:08:41
  the nature of storytelling. That is character. You're developing that character to the
• 1:08:45
  point where the character has to make this decision of like, you know,
• 1:08:53
  I can either go and try to save the you know, save the city
• 1:08:58
  by myself, which I know I cannot do, or I can trust my
• 1:09:01
  family to help me. I can do this as a family, and and
• 1:09:04
  off you go. Yeah, you know that that's that that in in that
• 1:09:10
  way, as you're telling the story, it's very clear what's muscle and what's
• 1:09:15
  bone. You know that that um or what's wheat and what's chap right,
• 1:09:19
  that that any scene that doesn't have him moving towards um either on the upside
• 1:09:30
  where he's he is completely like, yes, regaining your former glory is the
• 1:09:34
  most awesome thing in the world you can do. That's the build to the
• 1:09:38
  midpoint, and he's and then at the midpoint, ha ha, I've killed
• 1:09:43
  all these people and now I'm going to kill you. And he can't get
• 1:09:45
  out of it whatever, and I can't get out of the room, and
• 1:09:47
  he's you know, those those little yeah whatever whatever, and now, oh
• 1:09:54
  no, this is where it's gotten you to the you know, to to
• 1:09:57
  the terrible, terrible midpoint. We'll be right back after a word from our
• 1:10:02
  sponsor, and now back to the show. And then it's the family is
• 1:10:12
  going to go rescue him, right, So now you're on the downslope,
• 1:10:15
  and so everything that happened from that point on is look how cool this family
• 1:10:19
  is when the family is unrestrained. Yeah, until you get to this point
• 1:10:26
  where it's he's bemoaning the fact that, you know, it's almost a false
• 1:10:30
  act too. Right, the rocket is headed towards the city and Bob is
• 1:10:34
  sitting there saying, oh, I can't believe what I've done, you know,
• 1:10:39
  do guys this is really terrible. And his daughter he says, yeah,
• 1:10:42
  yeah, blah blah blah, dad, you know whatever, And she
• 1:10:44
  saved them all very easily because he's not thinking about family. He's thinking about
• 1:10:48
  himself. Right. So we're driving, driving, driving for that moment,
• 1:10:51
  and that's all character. You know, every scene in that is a scene
• 1:10:58
  that you absolutely need. Um uh, and none of it is, but
• 1:11:03
  none of it should feel like plot. Yeah, it is all to drive
• 1:11:08
  the guy towards making that decision. It's really interesting because we started our conversation
• 1:11:13
  about talking about mastermind groups or accountability groups, and like how it's so much
• 1:11:18
  easier to look at somebody else's problem or look at what they stand for because
• 1:11:23
  we can see from an outside perspective what's in front of them. But we
• 1:11:27
  as individuals are so wrapped up in our own stuff. We can't, like
• 1:11:30
  you mentioned, we can't see our own get out of our own way.
• 1:11:34
  It's all right, And we were talking about there's so much things that we
• 1:11:36
  have to unlearn to be able to be and then we're here, we are
• 1:11:43
  talking you know, character and story and all these characters or you know,
• 1:11:49
  especially with the Pixar stories we were talking about and and you know the stories
• 1:11:54
  we were mentioning, there's there's this aspect of baggage or that there's these known
• 1:11:59
  beliefs that they hold onto for so long. But that third act moment,
• 1:12:02
  that John Laster moment he's talking about, it has to be this let go
• 1:12:08
  of all that in order to have that transformation at the end. But it's
• 1:12:12
  funny because we were talking, we started talking about it in real life and
• 1:12:15
  we're seeing it happen in stories. It's like, oh wow, that's that's
• 1:12:17
  fascinating and and and really that's why I think that is why. Um,
• 1:12:24
  like I like to look at well screenwriting everybody, you know, it's the
• 1:12:27
  technology of screenwriting. But really we're storytellers, right, guys in rocking chairs,
• 1:12:32
  you know, saying hey, is this is what's important. And that's
• 1:12:36
  why is because we always we make the same mistakes, you know, all
• 1:12:42
  the time, as human animals, as machines whatever that we are. Um,
• 1:12:46
  we make the same mistakes all the time, and so we tell ourselves
• 1:12:50
  these stories like let go you know of that and embrace the new. Um.
• 1:12:57
  One of the things I'll say, like in masterclass all the time is
• 1:13:00
  you can learn how to speak French without learning, without forgetting how to speak
• 1:13:04
  English. You know, you can accept a new philosophy, a new way
• 1:13:09
  of thinking. Just try it out, and then if you want, you
• 1:13:13
  can go back to what it is is you do. But a lot of
• 1:13:15
  people will say like, well, wait a minute, I don't like,
• 1:13:17
  you know, I'm not such a big fan of Disney movies and you guys
• 1:13:20
  are you know, you guys, it's all a factory and blah, blah
• 1:13:24
  blah, and I'm not going to make movies like that. And I'm like,
• 1:13:27
  okay, well, let me see what it is you've done. Yeah,
• 1:13:29
  it's morphous, horrendous kind of what and like, what are you doing?
• 1:13:33
  You haven't you've so resisted all of the kind of rules and not just
• 1:13:39
  necessarily like the Disney rules or the Pixar rules, but just the rules of
• 1:13:43
  general storytelling. You know, like of that fifty characters, fifty main characters
• 1:13:49
  is not a good way to go. You know that a film without conflict
• 1:13:56
  is not is probably not going to work all that well. Right, film
• 1:14:00
  that is about something that nobody in the world cares about is not going to
• 1:14:04
  be uh, is not going to be enjoyable. Um, there are but
• 1:14:11
  a film, a terribly constructed film about something I really care about, and
• 1:14:16
  a you know, a person who is who is wonderful, who I want
• 1:14:21
  to see more of. Uh, And um, you know that that film
• 1:14:26
  is going to go through the roofs. You know it's gonna be be I'm
• 1:14:30
  gonna enjoy it. I'm gonna and people are gonna say, like, what
• 1:14:31
  what was that that you were you kept talking about? You know, I'm
• 1:14:34
  gonna go on social media, it's like, Okay, look, I'm gonna
• 1:14:38
  go out on a limb and just say that this movie was the best movie
• 1:14:40
  you know, that I've ever seen. And that's especially from the India side.
• 1:14:46
  That's what you really want to you know, that's where you want to
• 1:14:48
  want to start with. I'm not I'm gonna make my favorite movie. I'm
• 1:14:53
  gonna make a movie that is that is the favorite of all of my friends,
• 1:14:59
  and and and here's and here's tom I'm going to sit down and and
• 1:15:02
  do it. Because you mentioned too about you get a lot of screen waters,
• 1:15:08
  like the crazy question of like, hey, what software you use?
• 1:15:11
  You know? It's like that's like, yeah, that's the last question you
• 1:15:13
  need to know, because it's you need to know story or just tell story
• 1:15:15
  and write story. And that's the same plague that's technology is having right now.
• 1:15:19
  I guess on the independent side, which is everybody's got a camera and
• 1:15:23
  editing tools and they're just so it's like what are you shooting on? What
• 1:15:27
  are you shooting on? As opposed to who who cares what you're writing?
• 1:15:30
  What software you used to write? Who cares what camera you use to shoot?
• 1:15:33
  Because the bottom the essence the cores. Everything we talked about here is
• 1:15:38
  is really I love this whole thing, Like how do you level up,
• 1:15:42
  how do you push your beyond and building a system of the right kind of
• 1:15:47
  people around you and having that kind of system in place to you know,
• 1:15:51
  push push the story, like take yourself out of it and push the story
• 1:15:55
  further. Um. I'm will often say like animation is out a genre.
• 1:16:00
  You know, It's just it's just like a different camera. It's just like
• 1:16:03
  black and white. It's not a genre. Yeah, it's it's just a
• 1:16:05
  way, you know, you still have to tell great stories. They still
• 1:16:09
  have to connect with people. Just animation is a way that you're that you're
• 1:16:13
  that you're doing it. The rules are always the same. Yeah, definitely
• 1:16:16
  this I don't want to keep you. I know we're a little over an
• 1:16:18
  hour, but okay, sorry, I did have one other Yes, it's
• 1:16:21
  one other thing. And this is just like it's been my soapbox for for
• 1:16:25
  for a couple of weeks because I keep um, I'm sure your listeners will
• 1:16:29
  get a should get some value out of this. Anyway. I was.
• 1:16:33
  I've been because I'll do these these um these masterclasses and a lot of times
• 1:16:38
  the format of the master class when I can do them, and I do
• 1:16:42
  maybe one a year just to kind of like get gone right but the UM
• 1:16:47
  but a lot of times what I'll do the my favorite versions of them,
• 1:16:51
  and I just revised it, is the writer will come in, they'll sit
• 1:16:56
  next to me, and they'll pitch their movie to the to the rest of
• 1:16:59
  the group, and then we'll go through it and we'll say, Okay,
• 1:17:01
  what's right about it, what's wrong about it? We'll kind of do a
• 1:17:03
  Pixar room with it. And what I keep discovering is it sometimes the the
• 1:17:09
  writer's ability to pitch can severely impair, you know, the experience. And
• 1:17:17
  so what I started doing is I said, okay, let's let's the first
• 1:17:20
  day, like, let's not even think about don't think about your movie.
• 1:17:25
  I'm going to give you two movies to work on. Because if you're UM
• 1:17:29
  and I see you're into guitars, I love guitars. The first thing you
• 1:17:32
  do if you're learning piano or guitar is you learn like Mary had a Little
• 1:17:36
  lamb. You know, you just plunk out the easiest song in the world,
• 1:17:41
  and then you go to, Okay, great, now I can learn
• 1:17:45
  CE and a g A and I can out of that, I can play
• 1:17:47
  a bunch of a bunch of different songs. I can play a bunch of
• 1:17:49
  other people's songs until I get really good at it. I can play most
• 1:17:54
  of you know, Simon Garfuncle or whatever. But I can off of those,
• 1:17:57
  off of three or four chords. I can make my way around a
• 1:18:01
  bunch of different songs. I am not composing at that point. I'm just
• 1:18:05
  learning how to play guitar, and I'm learning the dumbest songs that I can
• 1:18:10
  for it's the simplest, the two chord songs moving into threes and then im
• 1:18:14
  and then eventually I'm gonna start oh, okay, good, here's a little
• 1:18:16
  riff and stuff like that, and until the point. But it's going to
• 1:18:20
  take me a little while before somebody says, wow, you're really good at
• 1:18:25
  guitar. So the same is true of say a painter. They'll go to
• 1:18:32
  a museum. They will set up their easel and they'll just look at you
• 1:18:36
  know, you'll see these these painters repainting, these painters of other painters.
• 1:18:41
  They'll go and they'll go stroke for stroke. They walk up to them and
• 1:18:44
  go, oh, that's what he was doing. That's the brushstrokes in this
• 1:18:46
  little section. That's how he made the sunset look particularly bright. Excellent,
• 1:18:54
  And I'm not sure if I've mixed my colors right in the same way the
• 1:18:58
  that guy did. That's it. Ah, that's what he's doing. The
• 1:19:00
  composition of this thing. Oh great, I see four or five paintings that
• 1:19:04
  have the same kind of composition. These guys must have all studied each other.
• 1:19:08
  That's awesome. Now I have a greater understanding. I'm still not painting
• 1:19:11
  my own stuff. Yeah, you know, I'm just learning about what what
• 1:19:15
  people do. So what I say is, okay, tell me one of
• 1:19:18
  two stories. I'll say there's three Little Pigs or them or Goldilocks and the
• 1:19:24
  Three Bears. Yeah, and you know, always my first question is who's
• 1:19:28
  who's the protagonist of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I know this only because
• 1:19:32
  um, I've heard you before. But go ahead. Oh excellent. Oh
• 1:19:36
  I didn't know if I did it. No, no, but this is
• 1:19:38
  good. But Pete, please go ahead because this is such such this is
• 1:19:43
  such great aspect of your master class. But do you want me? Um?
• 1:19:47
  I know it, but go ahead, yeah, yeah, right,
• 1:19:49
  And most people will guess Goldilocks because the story is called Goldilocks and the Three
• 1:19:53
  Bears. No, no, no, it is a it is a crime,
• 1:19:57
  and then a detective story. We'll be right back after a word from
• 1:20:01
  our sponsor, and now back to the show. Yeah yeah, Bils goes
• 1:20:10
  in, breaks into a house, eats porridge, sits in a chair,
• 1:20:15
  Uma eats all the porridge, sits in a chair, breaks it, and
• 1:20:18
  then sleeps in a person's bed. So it is an active crime going on.
• 1:20:24
  And then three people return. Three characters return, and um, and
• 1:20:29
  one is eating, one is eating, one discovers something is wrong, one
• 1:20:32
  sits down, one sits down, one is oh my god or whatever.
• 1:20:35
  And then they go pursue it. So the baby bear is the is the
• 1:20:40
  protagonist of the story. Now go tell the story, but tell the story
• 1:20:44
  in you know, what are you going to do with the story? Now
• 1:20:47
  you know now you have your own edge to it? Are you going to
• 1:20:51
  tell a story about a boy who really wants to go to sleep? Are
• 1:20:56
  you going to tell a story who's about a kid who's really hungry? Are
• 1:20:59
  you the story about a kid with anger issues who is trying to hold it
• 1:21:02
  down? Whatever that angle is you know you have you now have the formark,
• 1:21:06
  you know the format, and you can go and tell tell that and
• 1:21:10
  then get good at that, get good at telling that story of doing your
• 1:21:14
  cover of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Um. Then once you're feeling that,
• 1:21:20
  now go start pitching your own stuff. You know, get that.
• 1:21:25
  And the way I look at it is, you know, you've just seen,
• 1:21:30
  um, you just saw Star Wars. You know, you just saw
• 1:21:33
  you know, the jj Abrams Star Wars. And as you were leaving the
• 1:21:38
  building, it burned down. There was an oil fire. The whole thing
• 1:21:42
  burned down, you know, all the friends, everything, And now everybody
• 1:21:45
  turns to you and said, oh, what was it? You know what
• 1:21:47
  happened? Yeah. A lot of people when they pitched, they'll go,
• 1:21:49
  okay, well there's a ship and bigger ship. As kid comes in and
• 1:21:58
  he's taking out garbage, and then it's this kind of history. Who's really
• 1:22:01
  mean? You know, there's a soccer ball that you know does whatever,
• 1:22:10
  and it's like, no, you know, how do you tell that story?
• 1:22:14
  You are the last lifeline of this of the greatest movie ever made.
• 1:22:18
  How do you tell it and have that behind you? But with a story
• 1:22:25
  that you already know, get comfortable with that if it's your tape recorders,
• 1:22:29
  whatever, and then go. Then you have that set of skills and you're
• 1:22:32
  not pitching garbage, and you also are learning from those reps. This pitch
• 1:22:38
  is well, this does not pitch well. You know, this is the
• 1:22:41
  essence of storytelling. Um. Most of the time. And I mentioned it
• 1:22:45
  before, most of the time. Like right now, I'm doing a superhero
• 1:22:49
  thing and I watched everything. It's everything, and I rewatched everything from the
• 1:22:57
  point of view of me making this new movie, and I'm taking notes on
• 1:23:02
  it, like, oh great. You know, they spend a good iron
• 1:23:05
  Man spends a good long time in the middle of the movie just becoming Iron
• 1:23:10
  Man. Yeah, Man spends a good long time in the middle of that
• 1:23:14
  movie. And in both you know, first versions. You know when when
• 1:23:18
  Uncle Ben died, Um spends a lot of time on the suit and the
• 1:23:24
  web and the thing. You know, the mechanics of becoming Spider Man.
• 1:23:28
  That's a big part of our enjoyment. They don't just put on the suit
• 1:23:30
  and oh here I go. Um, it's it's a big part of the
• 1:23:34
  journey. So great. I have to have that in mind, you know,
• 1:23:40
  and just kind of going through it, understanding it, and then when
• 1:23:43
  I pitch it, I'm pitching it like a Star Wars. Um. I
• 1:23:46
  just had this meeting a day or two ago, you know, and I'll
• 1:23:51
  get up, I'll warn around the room, you know, I'm shooting stuff
• 1:23:55
  down or whatever. You know. I have this, this this total enjoyment
• 1:24:00
  because I love these movies. You know, I want first I want them
• 1:24:02
  to make my movie. But second, I can't wait to see my movie.
• 1:24:08
  You know, I can't wait to be in the line, you know
• 1:24:10
  for the nine o'clock show when the seven o'clock comes, you know, comes
• 1:24:14
  out son. I love that. That's my little soapbuck. I'm glad,
• 1:24:18
  I said in the other one. And I'm hopefully, like I said,
• 1:24:21
  I hope it's valuable to your Actually it's extremely valuable because I had, you
• 1:24:27
  know, with my podcast, I have just people will email me, you
• 1:24:30
  know occasionally, and just this is asking advice or opinions. And I've made
• 1:24:34
  a point to a young filmmaker. I said, if you kind of want
• 1:24:39
  to test yourself as a filmmaker, whether or not you're a good director or
• 1:24:43
  not, make a short film based off of some very famous short story that's
• 1:24:48
  in public domain, something that has proven like that exists, like an Edgar
• 1:24:55
  Allan Poe story. That's something that's like, Okay, this exists. This
• 1:24:59
  is a historically well known story. Um that has all the elements in there
• 1:25:04
  that make it successful. So if you can one write it, adapt adaptation
• 1:25:11
  of it, and then two, if you're a director, you can test
• 1:25:14
  your directing chops that way because it's all the elements are there. You know,
• 1:25:17
  the story's solid. You know it's a you know, short enough that
• 1:25:21
  you can make it within your means. And then if it falls flat,
• 1:25:26
  then you can go back and figure out why it fell flat, because it
• 1:25:28
  then it puts you because you can't blame anything like I can't blame the story
• 1:25:32
  didn't work or the screenwriter didn't write it right or something like that. It's
• 1:25:35
  I mean, there's all these elements there of like you really really want to
• 1:25:39
  test yourself as a director and look at the Look at the success out of
• 1:25:45
  Sundance right there. The Birth of a Nation's sold for fourteen seventeen four,
• 1:25:49
  right, and that's that was a take on they already established movie. You
• 1:25:55
  know, it's his riff, yes on this movie that I can't wait to
• 1:25:58
  see it because it's definitely a long overdue take on that movie. Yeah,
• 1:26:01
  exactly, exactly, Yeah, and it should it should be fine, and
• 1:26:03
  and that enhances the viewing of the movie. And I think too. Yeah,
• 1:26:09
  with a lot of short films, um that I see, I'll always
• 1:26:14
  say, like, what short films did you watch to inspire you to do
• 1:26:17
  this? Because most of the short films I've seen, especially the you know,
• 1:26:21
  the good one, you know, the Pixar ones and also the really
• 1:26:25
  good live action ones, are very very simple. One one person or two,
• 1:26:31
  you know, in a relationship, and then that slowly evolves over time.
• 1:26:36
  Um, there was a you're talking about riffs on some There was this
• 1:26:41
  YouTube thing that happened that I thought was great. Was the Power Rangers thing
• 1:26:45
  with I don't know if you saw that the fan film or which one.
• 1:26:47
  Yeah, the fan film, the Power Rangers fan film. I guess they
• 1:26:50
  had to take it down. Yeah, but it was fantastic. It was
• 1:26:54
  like I'd never you know, this guy's take on Power Rangers. You know,
• 1:27:00
  the wink is of course it's powering, but it's the yeah, you
• 1:27:06
  know, they're Dame vander Being and stuff like, oh, this is this
• 1:27:10
  is seriously enjoyable. This guy can I can't wait to watch this guy make
• 1:27:15
  a movie. You know, the Deadpool um trailer, you know, the
• 1:27:18
  little sizzle off of that. You know, that's the first time director and
• 1:27:24
  now of course the biggest highest grossing UM, I take my first time director.
• 1:27:29
  It was you know, it is something that we've seen before, you
• 1:27:33
  know, um, you know it's it's the thing. And the way he
• 1:27:39
  did it was just fantastic, you know, and obviously like because the other
• 1:27:44
  thing that I would put to that is the short story that you adapt should
• 1:27:47
  be one that you absolutely love, and the way that you do it should
• 1:27:50
  be you should be showing everything that you do great. You know. If
• 1:27:55
  you are a great cinematographer, it should be a beautiful movie. If you
• 1:27:59
  are right with character, it should be or whatever. If you're funny,
• 1:28:02
  you know, don't try to wake funny if you're not funny way by all
• 1:28:06
  means, because one bad joke will kill you, you know, as far
• 1:28:10
  as the enjoyment of it. But yeah, if you can work. If
• 1:28:15
  your best friend is a fantastic actor, you know, go do you know,
• 1:28:21
  get on him, you know, call it every favor you know,
• 1:28:25
  hey, I give the speech at your wedding, you know, show up
• 1:28:29
  for you for an hour and a half and and help me, help me
• 1:28:31
  in my movie. Robert Rodriguez will talk about that, like, don't anything
• 1:28:35
  that. You know, I have a friend that has a bar. I
• 1:28:38
  have another friend that owns a bus. You know, like, great,
• 1:28:41
  there's going to be a bus chase and part of this is going to take
• 1:28:44
  place in my friend's bar. Awesome. Then you know, production value goes
• 1:28:47
  through the roof and you're on the map as a as a serious filmmaker.
• 1:28:53
  Yeah, and definitely, like all those processes helps. The idea is to
• 1:28:58
  kind of keep yourself in check, to keep pumbled, so that, like
• 1:29:01
  you said, if you're to put yourself out there as a writer, as
• 1:29:05
  a filmmaker, as a storyteller, to utilize a brain trust kind of concept,
• 1:29:11
  you have to be willing to accept, like to to to let go
• 1:29:15
  of what you've created and know that it's not yours anymore. I think Laster
• 1:29:19
  talked about that. He said that when they created Buzzing Woodie, there was
• 1:29:23
  a point where they realized it's no longer theirs. It's like now they have
• 1:29:28
  a responsibility to serve those characters, um, honestly and and truthfully to the
• 1:29:33
  audience. You know, we're we'll be right back after a word from our
• 1:29:39
  sponsor, and now back to the show. And I think that's a concept,
• 1:29:49
  very, very important because you have to you have to listen that people
• 1:29:54
  don't just give notes just for the sake of giving notes. Yeah, they're
• 1:29:57
  addressing, they're resting a problem. Sometimes a problem took place pages before what
• 1:30:03
  they were dressing. You know, sometimes the wheels were off the wagon way
• 1:30:08
  before. You know, this particular scene that that drove everybody nuts. Um,
• 1:30:12
  you know, it was a setup. It was the amp up to
• 1:30:14
  it, and you have to be open to that. I was giving notes
• 1:30:18
  to a writer. He sent me something and said, oh, I just
• 1:30:20
  want to hear your input. Okay, I'm gonna be tough. Oh yeah,
• 1:30:25
  that's okay. And I gave him the notes and it was and you
• 1:30:29
  know, me like I like to talk, but it was it was I
• 1:30:33
  would say, four fifths him defending the thing that he had done and only
• 1:30:40
  one fifth of me giving the note. And I was like, look,
• 1:30:44
  we're not going to get anywhere with this because I'm not just giving you notes.
• 1:30:46
  Because I want you to talk me out of it. You know,
• 1:30:49
  I know your intent is on the piece of paper. If it is not
• 1:30:54
  clear, you know, you've got to work with it. You know,
• 1:30:58
  it's not just you know, I will give this note, but probably you
• 1:31:02
  know everyone that you give it to will probably give these same notes. If
• 1:31:05
  they don't, they're not doing you any favors. But that but part of
• 1:31:11
  the process when you're a when you're an artist, it hurts to get notes.
• 1:31:15
  It physically hurts you. You know, it's like somebody is roughing up
• 1:31:19
  your baby and you just have to. I think it was David, the
• 1:31:26
  guy who created Family Ties. He said, you just write down the note.
• 1:31:30
  That's all you need to do. Understand it. Write it down,
• 1:31:34
  then, you know, conclude the conversation, punch the pillows or whatever,
• 1:31:41
  you know, bry in the shower, and then and then go and look
• 1:31:45
  at the notes and say, Okay, what did I This will ultimately make
• 1:31:49
  it better something you'll just cross off and say, I don't care. I'll
• 1:31:53
  get this note nine times out of ten. Most of the time, it's
• 1:31:56
  like, you know what, I didn't sell it. I just there was
• 1:32:00
  something. You know, my intention was to do this. I didn't.
• 1:32:04
  That's what threw them off and this, But of course you have to start
• 1:32:09
  off with the intention, right, You have to start off with a strong
• 1:32:12
  motivated character. It has to be very clear what it is the story that
• 1:32:15
  you're telling. People get bored with plot. They are excited with story with
• 1:32:23
  you know, with the drive and the conflict. You know, even Aristotle
• 1:32:27
  talked about you know, intention obstacle um anything was I was watching Dalton Nabby
• 1:32:33
  right because the last episode was on, and I'm oh, just in tear
• 1:32:40
  from Black Kid from Detroit, you know, main demo. But but it
• 1:32:45
  made me go back to the first episode and watch that. So I'm watching
• 1:32:50
  that in the first three episode and um and it's all there, you know,
• 1:32:57
  um and and and Julian Fellows in an interview, he says, well,
• 1:33:00
  I was watching West Wing and I saw that how Aaron Sorkin crafted the
• 1:33:08
  characters in the pilot of West Wing, and I took that as my template,
• 1:33:12
  and then that's what I did in Downtown Abbey. Interesting now you would
• 1:33:15
  think those two shows are completely completely different. But a structuralist, a writer
• 1:33:19
  who knows craft and loved crafts, it's the same thing. So the flirtation
• 1:33:26
  between the you know you Carson and you know this is that's that's there,
• 1:33:32
  and the little dynamics and just the sisters, all of that's there, and
• 1:33:39
  you know, um, progress is coming. I mean that the opening event
• 1:33:43
  is is the Titanic, you know, goes down and kills dozens who were
• 1:33:47
  set to inherit the estate. And now it's you know this this this other
• 1:33:50
  guy, so like cheers, right, this person is coming in, you
• 1:33:55
  know, these lost the waitress, this new person comes in. Know,
• 1:34:00
  it's it clocks along. But it's all story. You know, it's all
• 1:34:04
  story. You're you're driving towards this thing that the world is changing, and
• 1:34:10
  the you know, the the head butler in the in the lord of the
• 1:34:13
  estate are saying, oh my god, I don't know what's you know,
• 1:34:16
  what are we going to do? And that's the tension in every episode.
• 1:34:19
  That's great. It's is great storyteller, right, um. And and those
• 1:34:26
  are the tools that has nothing to do with the software. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:34:30
  exactly, it's nothing. You know, I don't care what method.
• 1:34:34
  You know, what if he's a movie magic, if Julian Fellows is writing
• 1:34:38
  it on magic, or he's writing it with a quill. You know it
• 1:34:42
  is it is. It is great storytelling and um and that's what's gonna that's
• 1:34:47
  what it's gonna save you. You could film that thing, you know,
• 1:34:51
  with the cardboard box and it will be compelling television. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:34:56
  you know you mentioned some things like clear is it is? You know,
• 1:35:00
  when you're giving notes or feedback or accepting that. I don't remember where I
• 1:35:04
  heard this before, but I wanted to implement because somebody you'd asked me like
• 1:35:09
  just advice, like me to give advice, like when you're giving like when
• 1:35:14
  somebody read your script. I said, well, one thing you can do
• 1:35:16
  to get constructive feedback. I don't I really don't know where I heard this
• 1:35:20
  before, but I thought was great. Was simply was simply when you read
• 1:35:27
  the script, can you read my story? Can you tell me? One?
• 1:35:30
  Is it clear? Two? If it is clear, is it interesting
• 1:35:36
  that way? That way? You're not, there's no there's no like you
• 1:35:40
  can't be defensive about it. It's just like, well I read it,
• 1:35:43
  I wasn't sure about what happened here or why the character did this. He
• 1:35:46
  goes, well, it is clear, but it feels like stuff I've seen
• 1:35:50
  before. You know, that way, it's not a personal attack on you.
• 1:35:54
  Like, okay, so that I can work on that note and Matt,
• 1:35:57
  you can kind of police your cell phone, right, yeah, that
• 1:36:00
  you. Um. I was working with Dan Fogelman, who had who had
• 1:36:03
  written cars and um uh you would love and we were working on a draft
• 1:36:16
  a movie for Disney Live Action Animation Hybrid. And one of the things that
• 1:36:24
  he said to me, which is great, he says, on every page,
• 1:36:27
  assume that the person reading it might be on a treadmill and um,
• 1:36:30
  and that that person, you know, you have to make the intention very
• 1:36:34
  clear, the obstacle very clear. Tell the story that you're going to tell.
• 1:36:38
  Clarity, clarity, clarity, because you don't want the note. That's
• 1:36:41
  one note that you can easily take off the table. It wasn't clear.
• 1:36:45
  Um. Like. One one of the things that I love, I'm I'm
• 1:36:56
  a writer who likes a study writing. I like, I'll listen to anybody
• 1:37:00
  who's talking about how they're how they you know, every everybody's lectures, everybody's
• 1:37:03
  series. I love that stuff. And one thing was this guy, um,
• 1:37:08
  the guy who wrote four Weddings in a Funeral m whose name escapes me.
• 1:37:12
  Yeah, but he had also written Love Actually, and before that he
• 1:37:15
  wrote this great series called Blackadder, and he was, you know, Rowan
• 1:37:19
  Atkinson's like kind of main guy. And and one thing that he said is,
• 1:37:26
  you know, don't be afraid of writing on the nose. And he
• 1:37:29
  says one of the most famous lines, and I think it's love actually as
• 1:37:32
  um he says he's sitting there, he's riding around it, around it,
• 1:37:38
  around it, and he says, I'm just gonna say what it is.
• 1:37:40
  It's habit, and he wrote the line I'm just a woman talking to a
• 1:37:45
  man, just a girl talking to a boy. No, that's I think
• 1:37:48
  I was actually nodding Hill right with Julie Rods exactly. Yes, guys,
• 1:37:53
  you're right. Don't be afraid to ride in the nose. That's such a
• 1:37:56
  great like simple vice, like yeah, then if it's then if if people
• 1:38:00
  don't like it, then find then that's a that's a whole separate conversation.
• 1:38:03
  But they won't go what what's going on? You know this stage it was
• 1:38:09
  like they're kind of talking around something. I don't really get it whatever,
• 1:38:12
  and then it just lost me. But no, you know, um that
• 1:38:16
  that what is it? Like? You know, Darth Vader states his intentions
• 1:38:19
  pretty much that you know, yeah, you know he's like, you know,
• 1:38:26
  I will you know, he states his intentions. That's why. That's
• 1:38:29
  one of those things that you know you can dance around, but you really
• 1:38:31
  have to hit at some point or another. Is you know what what Pixar
• 1:38:35
  would call the I one song? You know that that that nobody does.
• 1:38:39
  Everybody sings and I want song in some way or another and go, I
• 1:38:45
  like that sing a I one song. You know, I can't I talk
• 1:38:48
  to you for there's so much I would love to having. I would love
• 1:38:51
  to have another opportunity to have you come back on too, so we could
• 1:38:55
  talk more. You know, you're working with Aaron Smerkin and just other writing.
• 1:39:00
  Um, you have your master's classes coming up. I can definitely make
• 1:39:02
  sure you have. Everybody has the links and promote you know, Rob Edwards
• 1:39:06
  dot Net. I know you're you're starting. That's the community. Yeah you
• 1:39:12
  can still find me, uh at I am Rob Edwards on Twitter? Okay,
• 1:39:16
  great, yeah that's that's new. Oh that's brand new. Perfect.
• 1:39:19
  I was terrified of what I would do on Twitter and finally I said,
• 1:39:26
  okay, just put it away. At three am. Um, yeah,
• 1:39:30
  don't don't. I try not to Twitter too much, but but I most
• 1:39:34
  uh, anything that happens that of interest will be on there. Oh fantastic,
• 1:39:40
  Okay, yeah, all the blog posts, all that stuff will be
• 1:39:42
  on it. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now
• 1:39:50
  back to the show. Well, you know, um as we wrap you
• 1:39:56
  know, wrap all this stuff up. I can't thank you enough for taking
• 1:40:00
  a time, your generosity to share with me your knowledge, your experience,
• 1:40:03
  and this aspect of the brain trust or of any sort of communal like writing
• 1:40:10
  group that has affectiveness like that was really important to me because I'm trying to
• 1:40:15
  show to my audience like I want to apply this stuff. So like literally,
• 1:40:19
  I think the next episode I'll be doing for my podcast is a video
• 1:40:25
  hangout, um with some people I bring together to illustrate like here it is,
• 1:40:30
  um, you know, a brain trust, my own version of a
• 1:40:33
  brain trust group put together on the on the script that I'm working on.
• 1:40:39
  UM, I don't know, yeah exactly with those improblems, you know,
• 1:40:43
  yeah, the rules established. The rules are clearly you know, yeah,
• 1:40:46
  hit the bigger problems first, it's yeah, yes, and you know what
• 1:40:50
  if and and and yes and yeah and and piling on and you know,
• 1:40:56
  best idea, you know, no bad idea is just build build build,
• 1:41:00
  right. Um, yeah, that's that's awesome. I think it's something so
• 1:41:04
  that the people to see it, like, oh, I see how that's
• 1:41:06
  working, and maybe they can stop before they settle on their story, like
• 1:41:12
  they can push themselves. And it's really just it's a call. It's like
• 1:41:15
  a cry out, a call to the rest of the independent filmmakers out there,
• 1:41:18
  like just because you can make it, just don't make it just yet,
• 1:41:23
  you know, like you use use the right tools, you know,
• 1:41:26
  don't you know, I always say, want to say you're using the wrong
• 1:41:30
  tools. You know. Just stay stay, stay with you know three about
• 1:41:34
  you know, index cards and post it notes and stuff, and work the
• 1:41:40
  story. Don't lock it down so early. It's like you don't lack a
• 1:41:44
  painting after the first stroke. Yeah, and and use use other people.
• 1:41:48
  It's a told we tell stories. You know, a big part of a
• 1:41:54
  Princess in the Frog we were we were pitching that thing all the time.
• 1:41:59
  Um, you know, I love him to pitch. I will pitch people
• 1:42:01
  say hey, what are you working on? I will you know, I'll
• 1:42:04
  just take over the party. Yeah, oh, let me tell you this.
• 1:42:10
  It's upon a time because I want to see if people are gonna if
• 1:42:14
  people's eyes are gonna glaze over. Um, yeah, if people's eyes are
• 1:42:18
  gonna glaze over, I want to see him glaze over, if people are
• 1:42:24
  if people are leaning in, if people laugh at something. Then the next
• 1:42:28
  time I tell that thing I'm gonna tell, it's gonna be twice as long.
• 1:42:30
  You know that thing, you know, to a colosseum, and I'm
• 1:42:35
  gonna avoid, you know, just like the plague, the part where people's
• 1:42:40
  eyes glazed over, and I could probably tell why their eyes eyes glazed over.
• 1:42:45
  Yeah, it's that second question. It's yeah, it was clear but
• 1:42:48
  not interesting. Okay, Yeah, this is amazing. That's something. Yeah,
• 1:42:55
  so so awesome. So yeah, no, no, yeah, please
• 1:42:58
  let me know when that happens. I can't wait to Yeah, I'm I'm
• 1:43:00
  put it together. Actually, it's funny because I wrote a book as an
• 1:43:03
  experiment. I was telling my audience and the podcasts like, hey, if
• 1:43:09
  you know, filmmakers are just we're making digital products. And a lot of
• 1:43:13
  authors for the longest time have been writing digital products for Amazon you know,
• 1:43:17
  you're just selling a digital product, So what are the mechanisms of like writing,
• 1:43:21
  creating something digitally and then selling it. What are the marketing mechanisms of
• 1:43:26
  selling? So I said, I'll write a book and put myself as a
• 1:43:29
  guinea pick. So I did that last year and put it on Amazon,
• 1:43:31
  and I've been selling it and I'm seeing what works and what doesn't work.
• 1:43:34
  But part part of that process of writing the book, I also record an
• 1:43:39
  audio recording version of an audio book of it. And I was like,
• 1:43:42
  wait a minute, this is I've seen this happen because I know The Blacklist
• 1:43:45
  has a podcast, and so I did an early version of my script by
• 1:43:49
  recording it as an audio basically play. I was reading, like, it's
• 1:43:55
  like an audio table rate, but it's you know, you can listen to
• 1:43:58
  it. So the next I'm reading, rewriting, doing the rewrites, and
• 1:44:00
  I'm going to I'll record it. And that's sort of my way of like
• 1:44:03
  inviting my guests on who will be part of this makeshift um mass M,
• 1:44:09
  I'm sorry. Brain Trust group is like you can either read the script or
• 1:44:13
  you can listen to it. All the bells and whistles with the actors.
• 1:44:15
  I put in place and the audio cues and the music, so you can
• 1:44:19
  have like an audio experience of it. And then that way it's easier for
• 1:44:24
  them. Like you said, they're on a treadmill, they're in traffic,
• 1:44:27
  and they can listen to the story. And then that way, when they
• 1:44:30
  come to the table, they can tell me like what worked or what wasn't
• 1:44:32
  clear, or what was it and then we can take the brain trust meeting
• 1:44:36
  to the next level because hopefully I have to do something to create that visual
• 1:44:43
  experience or an emotional experience that's just not just the written word at least that's
• 1:44:47
  my intentions right exactly. And starting yeah, starting with yourself. What I
• 1:44:51
  love about that is that you started with yourself as an audience. You know,
• 1:44:56
  what is the book I most want to read? And then you know,
• 1:44:59
  yeah, and then and you started there so so you know what it
• 1:45:01
  what it needs to be. You also did that, you know, kind
• 1:45:04
  of what I love that Tim farrass thing of, like I'm a I'm a
• 1:45:08
  guinea pig. Yes, I'm just going to throw myself into this and see
• 1:45:12
  what happens um, which I think is a good life experience, Like get
• 1:45:15
  used to getting bruised. You know, I say it all the time.
• 1:45:20
  Embrace the suck. You know, all sucks. You're always going to hear
• 1:45:24
  somebody going like, oh, that's stupid, and and you have to just
• 1:45:28
  say, I know it's stupid now, but you know in a couple of
• 1:45:32
  months it won't be. Yeah, if you tell if if I get the
• 1:45:38
  right you know, if I get the right stuff, so so yeah,
• 1:45:40
  so so put yourself. You know, putting yourself in the in the mouth
• 1:45:43
  of the lion is a great idea. Yeah, that's that's that's gonna be
• 1:45:45
  a lot of fun. And you will you will probably learn volumes from it
• 1:45:49
  because you'll have that that delicious like flops kind of thing. Yeah, like,
• 1:45:55
  oh no, this is embarrassing, and then you know, you always
• 1:45:58
  pull yourself out of the ashes. Everybody does. Very very cool. Hey,
• 1:46:01
  Rob, thank you, thank you so much. Right, can't thank
• 1:46:04
  you enough. Really, thank you for having me. I want to thank
• 1:46:09
  Scott so much for doing such a great job with this episode. If you
• 1:46:12
  want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over
• 1:46:14
  to the show notes at indie film muscle dot com. Forward slash seventy eight
• 1:46:18
  and if you have it already. Please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com,
• 1:46:23
  subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It really helps us
• 1:46:28
  out a lot, guys. Thank you again so much for listening to guys.
• 1:46:30
  As always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay
• 1:46:32
  safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to
• 1:46:35
  the Indie Film Hustle podcast at Indie film hustle dot com. That's I N
• 1:46:41
  D I E F I L M Hustli dot com.