Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 722: The Art of Television Showrunning with Steve DeKnight (Marvel's Daredevil, Spartacus)

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IFH 722: The Art of Television Showrunning with Steve DeKnight (Marvel's Daredevil, Spartacus) · 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 ifahpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Indie Film Hustle
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Podcast, Episode number seven twenty two. To learn what we fear is to
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learn who we are or defines our boundaries and illuminates our souls. Jedmotro broadcasting
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from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where
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we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles
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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 humble
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host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur.
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How to turn your independent film into a profitable business. It's harder today
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head over to www. Dot filmbiz book dot com. That's film Bizbook dot
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com. Well, guys, today you're in for a treat on the show
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to Day. We have showrunner, writer and director Stephen D. Knight.
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Now, Steven started working as a writer on shows like Buffy, the Vampire
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Slayer, Angel, Smallville, and Dollhouse, but he really came into his
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own when he created the series Spartacus, which went on to be a huge,
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huge hit. He later jumped on the Netflix series Daredevil, which was
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the introduction to the dark, greedy superheroes of the Marvel Universe, and Daredevil
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launched that whole group of shows that aired on Netflix. In our conversation,
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Steven and I talk about the business, talk about the highs and lows of
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being in the business, how to navigate working in Hollywood, and we also
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talk about his feature film directorial debut, which happened to be one hundred and
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fifty million dollar budget film part of a franchise started by gilbaldol Toro called Pacific
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Rim Uprising. And Steve really was extremely candid about his experience on Pacific Rim
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Uprising, how it came to be, all the craziness that happened, and
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some of the reasons why the story wasn't what he wanted it to be,
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and so so much more so, without any further ado, please enjoy my
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conversation with Stephen d. Night. I'd like to welcome to the show,
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Steven de Night. How you doing, Sean, I'm doing great, great
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to be here. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Man.
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I truly truly appreciate it. Like I was saying before we started,
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I'm a I'm a fan. I'm a fan of what you've been for You've
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been doing for a while, man, and I can't wait to get into
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it. So before we get started, man, how did you get into
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the business. Oh, now that's a story. I actually grew up in
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South Jersey back in the sixties seventy eighties. I was born in sixty five,
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you know, back. I literally was born and grew up in an
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area that didn't didn't even have a zip code, it was so small.
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I lived on a tiny little road called dutch Neck Road. Sounds Sounds made
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up r D four I think it was Rural District four, way out in
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the sticks in South Jersey, and I grew up loved loving monsters and horror
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movies and science fiction movies. I used to spend hours building the old Aurora
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horror models. I just loved that kind of stuff. Eventually we moved to
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a town called Millville, which was about an hour, hour and twenty minutes
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from Atlantic City down in South Jersey, and that's where I spent, you
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know, my my teen years all the way through high school, and I
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just again, at one point I wanted to be a stop motion animation guy
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because I loved Willis O'Brien and Ray Harry Howsen, and then I switched to
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I wanted to be a special effects makeup guy because I was a huge fan
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of what Dick Smith was doing. I actually remember, you know and I
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back then, without the Internet and only three stations on the TV, information
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was hard to come by. People don't understand that we're born after the age
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of the Internet. Just how hard it was. The fine stuff. So
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my lifeline, being way out in the sticks was magazines like star Log and
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Famous Monsters of Filmland Thangloria, and I remember in an issue of Famous Monsters
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of Film Land, they usually had a pager two that highlighted fans who were
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doing amazing model work more makeup work, and they had some pictures in there
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from a young teenage aspiring makeup artist named Rick Baker, and I think the
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picture showed he had done this prosthetic that showed like a broken arm with a
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bone poking through, and I thought, man, I want to do that,
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but I couldn't get any of the materials. I didn't know how to
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get in any materials, and I was just lost. So eventually I started
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wanting to be an actor. I did a lot of acting in high school
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and when I finally went to college. I went to UC Santa Cruz from
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eighty five to eighty nine, and I went primarily as an actor to study
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acting, and after about two years in the undergraduate program, I realized I
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was an okay actor. I wasn't a fantastic actor, and I'm not a
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big guy. I'm about five to seven at the time, I weighed maybe
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one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, so I wasn't a leading man.
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I didn't have the chops of a Dustin Hoffman or an al Pacino. But
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I had always been interested in writing, so I started writing plays and putting
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them on at UC Santa Cruz. From that I got accepted into the graduate
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playwriting program at UCLA, which to me was always one step closer. I
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loved the theater, I will always love the theater, but trying to make
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it as a working playwright in this day and age is such a small target.
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And I had always loved movies and television. That was my main thing
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that I was a big fan of. So I went to UCLA with the
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idea of going through the playwriting program and then eventually breaking into movies. So
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I spent two years at the playwriting department. Then I stayed an extra year
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to go through the screen writing department, and then I got out. This
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was in eighty nine, and I thought, well, give it about six
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months and I'll be writing features. So I got a part time job as
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a English as a second language teacher and a little Japanese private school in the
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valley in Van Nin's and I thought, well, i'll be here six months
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eighty seven before I break In six and a half years later, I'm still
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an English teacher at this little Japanese school, getting older by the day.
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And you know, I would work during the day and then I would go
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home and write all night. And I kept writing one feature after another that
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nobody wanted, you know, no excitement whatsoever. And I was entering all
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the contests and one of the big ones, of course, is the Nicole
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Fellowship Screenwriting Contest. And one year I made it. You know, there
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was four thousand people that entered the contest and I made it down to the
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final five and I lost. But that's that's a win. But that's a
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win at that point, it's a win, but it's it's a painful win.
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I was that close and then it was a kick in the nuts,
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but I dusted myself off. And but because of that, I got some
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interest from some some agencies, all very very very small, so I was
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able to sign my first what I consider real agent. I had had tansigential
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agents, and I had one manager that went really poorly, so I'd never
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had real rep. So I signed up with very small. It was actually
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an actor's agency that had one literary agent in it. A lovely woman but
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I think she was she was getting towards the end of her career. 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. But she was great. Really still couldn't get a lot of traction.
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But I had a friend that I went to Santa Cruz with, a
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guy named Dale Roy Robinson, wonderful friend of mine. He calls me up
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out of the blue and says, hey, I'm working as a production coordinator
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on this MTV show being produced by of all people, rolling Joppy, the
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guy that did the killing fields the mission, and it's a it's a weird
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little teen sex comedy called Undressed. And he said, I don't think it's
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going to be picked up, but if it does, I can get your
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stuff to Rolling Joppies people. I go, okay. Grade. Six months
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later he calls me up and says, hey, they picked it up.
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Send me whatever you have in TV and I'll give it to Roland's people.
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At the time I was doing just features, so but I did do probably
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six months before my friend called me up, just an exercise in television and
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I wrote a spec Deep Space nine, which was the show I was really
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enjoying at the time. As I discovered later, nobody wanted to read it,
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including the people deep Space nine. But it was it was a really
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it was kind of a big adventure story with a lot of humor. It
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was about why Perringis are so small, and it was basically through genetics.
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It starts off with wharf encountering of Farrngi as big as he is, where
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you find out that used to be that big, but through genetic engineering,
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they made them so smaller so people wouldn't know that they were they wouldn't think
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they were a threat. So I send this Deep Space nine script to my
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friend for Rolling Joffey's teen sex comedy on MTV, and he asked me,
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do you have anything else? I don't know that's it for TV. So
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he goes, all right, great, so he sends it to Role Joffies
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people, and this was my first big bit of luck is that it was
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a huge Deep Space nine fan, so he read it, he loved it,
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and based off that, I got on to this crazy TV sex comedy,
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which was a great learning ground of how to write fast under pressure because
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the first season we did thirty half hour episodes. It aired four nights a
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week, and we from start to finish, from scripts to posts, you
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know, shooting the whole thing. I think we had fifteen or sixteen weeks
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to do everything, so it was just a machine. We were just grinding
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and the show became a hit for MTV, so I was on there for
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about four seasons, but it's like dog years. It was like maybe eighteen
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months. We did four seasons, and by the last season we were doing
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I think forty episodes in like twenty weeks, and it was such a grind
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and there's only so many ways you can get undressing age characters undressed literally.
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I remember my breaking point was these two teenage girls were having a conversation,
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and my edict was you've got to get them partially undressed and literally one of
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the girls goes, this tag on my shirt is driving me crazy zoop,
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and I thought, my soul just left my body. I thought, I,
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you know, I'm appreciative that I have a paying job, but my
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god, I've got to try to parlay this into s becaues. Who knows
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how long the show is gonna go. I mean a side story. I
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worked with some great people. Lizzie Weiss went on to write Blue Crush and
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several TV shows, and of course the big name that came out of there
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was Damon Lindelow side story for everybody out there struggling Dale and I I thought
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Damon Lindeloff was an amazing writer, just an incredible find. The head writer
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didn't like him and didn't like his writing and kept rewriting him, rewriting his
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fantastic dialogue and making it terrible. So that can happen to the best of
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us. So why I was in that last season of Dress, I thought,
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Okay, I've got an agent. I actually have a paying job.
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I need to try to maybe get an agent at one of the bigger agencies
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so I can get more opportunities. So I thought it's time to write another
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spec, another TV spec. My two favorite shows at the time were NYPD
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Blue and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I had stories for both of them,
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and I decided to write the Buffy spec. And I always wondered where
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my career would have gone if I went in my BD Blue. So I
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write this Buffy speck called Xander the Slayer, and it was basically Xander accidentally
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gets Buffy's powers transferred to him, and it was all about why men can't
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be slayers because basically it goes to their heads and they become uncontrollable. So
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I finished the scripts and my friend Lizzie Weiss, who had worked on Undressed,
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she was wrapped at UTA. So I call up Lizzie and I say,
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oh, Lizzy, could you pass the script to your agent? And
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she said, yeah, yeah, sure, she passes it over to UTA,
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and then a couple of weeks later, I get a call that says
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they liked it, but they just don't think it's for them. So I'm
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like, oh, well, that's this point. So I gave it to
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my feature agent, who literally only knew three people on TV, but one
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of them was the head of Joss Whedon's company, so it gets over there,
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they read it, they like it. I go over and I interview
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for a job on the animated show that Jeff Lowe is trying to get off
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the ground. But at the end of this interview they say, but Joss
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has to read it, and just to warn you, he usually doesn't like
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Buffy Space. I go, oh, pick great. So they give it
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to Jos and a couple of weeks later, I get a call that he
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wants to talk to me. I go in and we talk about movies and
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comic books, and at the end he says, I know you were talking
16:18
about the animated show, but do you want to come do an episode of
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the live action show? And I was like, hell yes. So I
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did a freelance of the live action show and they invited me to the production
16:30
meeting, and after that was over, they told me to hang around.
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So I was sitting in this big empty room for like fifteen minutes wondering,
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you know, what do you need more rewrites? What do you want?
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Then a PA popped up and took me down to the magic box set and
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Jos was there Oxen and they said, look, we like you, we
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like you work. You want to come join us full time. And I
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just about burst into man tears because it was my flute favorite show on TV
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and I love all the writers that i'd been working, so I said absolutely,
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of course. So I always really consider that the real start of my
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career. That's when things really started to happen for me, all right,
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and again all based on a spec. And you know, there's this thing
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that goes around town where people say, ah, you know, you can
17:22
never get hired on the show if you write a spec for that ship,
17:26
right, lead bullshit. When I was doing Spartacus, if some writer had
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handed in a script that was at least eighty percent close, I would have
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scooped him up in a hot second. Interesting to know that somebody could could
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write the ship. It's tricky because you have to really be able to nail
17:44
it. So you got to in an other way because I was going to
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say that because of hearing that, I'm like, that's generally against the common
17:52
knowledge of don't write a spec of the show you're trying to get on.
17:55
So if you wanted to get on Big Bank Theory, don't write a Big
17:56
Bank Theory spec. But when you were saying all that, you've just got
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to the window to hit it is a lot shorter and closer if you're if
18:07
you're writing a big bang theory to get on a friends. I know there's
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two different errands, but you know what I mean, that's that's a looser
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A loose oh he I could see the talent. But if you're nailing the
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characters that these writers, like if someone in Spartak is you know that those
18:23
characters so well, they got to really understand the voice and really understand that.
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But but if you nail it, you know you're good man and and
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and The next year when I was on Buffy, uh, Josh hired another
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writer that had written a Buff spec Drew Greenberg. So it absolutely can work.
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But I wouldn't suggest that somebody like write a spec script of a specific
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show specifically to get on that show, because that's not why I wrote back.
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I wrote it as a sample to show what I could do. Just
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happened that I ended up on Buppy. I was considered that winning lottery for
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me at the time more than anything. When you're writing a spec script,
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my my big advice is you've got to kill it. You have to love
19:18
this story and it has to really be something special, not just for the
19:22
reader, but for you. Don't just pound out a spec script because you
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know you feel like you have to. Even with the Deep Space nine thing.
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I wrote that one from my heart because I was really excited about this
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story about a giant FRINGI you know, you just in that kind of passion.
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It's It's what I look for as a showrunner now when I read a
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sample is that, I don't care. It could be, you know,
19:48
I could be looking for writers on a big sci fi show and get that's
19:53
like a spec Friday Night Lights. We'll be right back after a word from
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our sponsor, and now back to the show. As long as it's good.
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I don't care action the sci fi stuff, as far as I'm concertain
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anybody can do that. I mean, that's its character and dialogue. It's
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difficult. So I mean, so you spend some time over in Buffy and
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Angel, which is a spin off of Buffy. I was a huge Buffy
20:25
fan. I mean, but when Buffy came out, it was it was
20:26
revolutionary in many ways, Like there was just nothing nothing like that strong female
20:32
lead, you know, I mean, and I think the only way to
20:36
show like that could have died on air is by a fledgling channel like the
20:41
WB that was just trying to find its its roots. And I've heard Sarah
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Sarah Michelle say many times just like a lot of people look at this as
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it was a hit, like there was absolute it was called there was a
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show called Buffy the Vampire Slayer on a show with a dancing frog. There
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was there's no guarantees of anything happening with that. I remember when I first
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heard about it, I thought, they're making a TV series out of that
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movie that wasn't so good. That's an interesting choice. And of course at
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the time I didn't know anything about the backstory about the movie. But yeah,
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it was such a surprise, especially since if people remember, the WB
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at the time was really known for a half hour urban comedies. That's what
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they were doing, That's what their bread and butter was. And the quickest
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way I've realized in my twenty years in the business, the quickest way to
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rise meteorically in your career as a writer showrunner is be the guy that launches
21:51
a network that hits their first It's like what it's like what Sean Ryan did
21:56
with the Shield and it's It's also what Matthew Weiner did with Madmin. I
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remember for a couple of years in a row, I would get calls from
22:08
my agent. I remember they caught up and said, hey, AMC is
22:12
doing original programming? Do you want to talk to them? This was before
22:15
Madmint, and my reaction was AMC. I'm on a network with twenty two
22:21
ups a year, why would I want to go to AMC. And then
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I had the you know the same thing with several of these and then when
22:30
it finally got to they called me up and said, hey, Stars wants
22:34
to do original programming, and I said, yes, I'll talk to him.
22:40
Yeah, obviously over there. What's the address? Let me go exactly
22:44
exactly. So you also say you you you did. You did your time
22:48
over at Buffy and Angel. Then you jumped onto Smallville, which was also
22:52
fairly kind of revolutionary of a show. I remember because it was you know,
22:56
you're tackling one of the most famous caacters in history. But it seemed
23:03
like you guys had a ball just exploring all of those things in in in
23:08
Clark Kansons Superman's early life. That must have been a ball to be working
23:12
on. It was, uh, you know it was. It was completely
23:15
different from the way we worked on Buffy and Angel. Uh. And again
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this goes back to my Jeff Low, who I'd met uh through Joss on
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BUFFI an Angel. He was working with Miles Miller in al Goff who created
23:34
Smallville. UH, and he was over there on Smallville and he was trying
23:38
to get me to come over. So I came over and interviewed with him
23:41
and really liked the guys and ended up going over there. It was into
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his Smallville was interesting. Obviously it's a different animal in many ways. A
23:52
Smallville was much more hard on your sleeve earnest than Buffy and Angel. And
23:59
also with Smallville, Uh, you had all the Superman mythology, and you
24:07
had to get the approval of the feature side uh to bring in characters like
24:11
I remember Alan Miles always wanted to bring in I would never let them,
24:15
which was what was character Uh, Bruce Wayne, Oh yeah, I was
24:19
always wondered at that. And it was it true that you could they couldn't
24:22
wear the cape, like the cape was not allowed. A slut didn't want
24:29
him in the suit, right, not until I think that that very last
24:32
shot, and you know, my time on Smallville, was I had I
24:37
had a blast. I also look at you know, I was doing a
24:42
lot of writing on the scripts and every year, you know, like fan
24:48
sites wouldn't put like the top five episodes in the worst five, and I
24:55
was always in both. It was like I was always in and they were
25:00
letely right. I did some really shit episodes that you know, haut me.
25:06
To this day, I always joke about the exploding baby episode. There's
25:08
an episode called Ageless where Clark Alana find a baby that's rapidly in spurts getting
25:15
older into explodes. I vaguely remember that episode because it was it was a
25:21
horrifying imagery. Yes, in a horrifying episode. The funny story about that
25:26
is I was in the room breaking this and this was the first one that
25:30
I was directing for them. I had directed three episodes of Angel. This
25:33
was my first directing for small Bill. So we were in the room breaking
25:37
my story and I was very excited to tell this story about kryptonite zombies,
25:42
which is basically lex Core a truck classic like you know, Return of the
25:47
Living Dead set up. This lex Core truck is transporting the radioactive sludge from
25:55
their experiments with kryptonite. Obviously, through a rainstorm, buck overturns and it
26:00
leaks into a graveyard and it's kryptonite zombies. And Clark is powerless against the
26:06
kryptonite zombies and they surround the farm and they can't get out of the farmhouse
26:11
and he can't use his powers. And I was like, oh, krystin
26:14
zombies, now you talk, this is my stuff. I go off to
26:17
do a rewrite another script. I come back in. I bump into Al
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in the hallway and he goes, hey, hey, we've changed your episode.
26:23
Great news, this is a great story. Clark Lawanna find the baby,
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and I'm like, the fuck just happened? Where did the crypt zabra
26:32
go zombies? So we did that episode. It did not turn out well.
26:37
I mean through no one's fault except my own, because I just couldn't
26:41
get my head around it, and I almost stopped directing. Then I was
26:45
supposed to direct the next season. I passed, I said ah, And
26:49
then in the third season I directed the Justice League episode Justice, which I
26:59
felt like I kind of vindicated myself after the exploding baby episode. But it
27:04
was great fun to work in that world, and everybody was the actors were
27:11
so wonderful on that show, especially Tom Welling. I can't say enough good
27:15
things about Tom Welling. You know, you would think that he would have
27:18
a big head and be very difficult, quite the opposite. I remember we
27:25
were in some shooting in some gas station way out on the outskirts of Vancouver,
27:30
and I'm sitting in my chair prepping for like the next scene, and
27:36
he walks by with a sandwich and he goes, Hey, they have sandwiches.
27:38
You want me to get you one. I'm like, what star of
27:41
a show does that? And he was gracious and wonderful all the way through
27:47
the show, just really And and Michael Rosenbaum, who played Lex brilliantly what
27:56
I loved about him one of the funniest guys I've ever met. He would
28:00
be telling this crazy story. He told some story about when he got into
28:04
a fight and got knocked out, and uh, we were literally in tears
28:10
listening to him. It was so funny. And then they were ready to
28:12
go to shoot the scene, and just like that he becomes Lex Luthor.
28:19
Uh, like the opposite of a method actor. He could just switch from
28:22
one to the other. It's every time I see actor do that on set.
28:27
In the back of my head, I hear John Lovett cel acting it's
28:30
yeah, from that cnl Hacket acting. It's like, it's just exactly.
28:36
It's so amazing to see them just on it. It's scary. Actually,
28:38
sometimes it's very off putting when you could see and I've seen them turn on
28:42
the tears, the tears like they could turn tears on like water, and
28:47
then they'll stop them like so once lunch and I'm like, oh my god,
28:48
like, how do you do that? I remember a story I don't
28:53
know was al Or joss Or who told me is working with an actor or
29:00
an actress and they needed her to cry and she asked the which I which
29:07
I want the tear to come out? And I'm like, Jesus, now
29:08
that's a talent. Oh yeah, that's uh yeah, I've I've worked with
29:12
actresses like that. It's just it's just just remarkable. It's amazing. Now.
29:17
You know, writing is such a solitary profession. It's something that you
29:19
do alone in a room. I mean, obviously, if it's in a
29:25
room like yours, which is super cool. If no one's if no one's
29:26
seen the video, you've got toys and army of books everywhere. It's very
29:30
inspirational as a way it should be exactly. But but since it's a solitary
29:37
profession, how do you work within the hive mind of a gude? There
29:41
are a few things I love more. We'll be right back after a word
29:45
from our sponsor, and now back to the show. The writer's room.
29:56
And I was really spoiled with the writer's room in Buffy and Angel because it
30:00
was such a great group of people and we had so much fun. I
30:07
always marvel I was talking to Jeff Bell the other day from Angel. He
30:11
ended up running season four and five. There's marveling about how did we do
30:18
twenty two episodes a year? How did we get all that done? Because
30:21
we were always having so much fun. It was just literally NonStop hilarity.
30:29
And the writer's room, to me, is one of the best places you
30:33
can possibly be. I enjoy in, you know, a really loose,
30:40
fun writer's room. Yeah. I also don't believe in staying till like midnight.
30:45
No good has ever come in a writer's room after dinner. It just
30:49
it just doesn't it. It's like if like if you're going to an eighth
30:53
nothing good has come from an atm at three o'clock in the morning. Nothing
30:57
good is happening with the money you're pulling out. No, not at all,
31:02
not at all. So for me, once I became a showrunner,
31:07
I always tell everybody coming in, Look, everybody has a life. We
31:11
should be able to get everything we need to get done from ten to four.
31:17
You know, if we're here on the weekends or we're here till nine
31:19
o'clock, something's gone horribly wrong and that should only be like in a you
31:23
know, break glass in case of an emergency. So for me, the
31:29
writer's room, it's it's such a it's almost like college. It's like being
31:33
back in college. It's just that joyous, raucous fun. Is it a
31:37
hard work? Is there a lot of pressure? Yeah? But also most
31:41
shows aren't twenty two episodes anymore, which is a which is a positive and
31:48
a negative because while most shows aren't twenty two episodes, they're usually you know,
31:53
eight to thirteen now, especially on streaming. Oftentimes it takes almost as
31:59
much much time in the writer's room as it did for twenty two because there
32:04
they're much more hand crafted episodes back instead of more of a mass produced When
32:10
we were doing twenty two. I remember on Smallville, we would always come
32:15
in and say, well, it's twenty two. Five are going to be
32:19
great. There's gonna be a bunch that's going to be pretty good, and
32:22
there's going to be five to eight that are just sucked because we ran out
32:25
of time. Man, that's just you just have to accept that we ran
32:30
out of time, we ran out of money. When you're doing eight episodes,
32:34
you can't have two of them suck. They all have to be fantastic,
32:37
so you sweat every single one. But the writer's room is just such
32:43
a fantastic place, and it's a place that's changed for the better. I
32:47
remember when I got the opportunity to run Spartacus, I really wanted a diverse
32:52
writer's room, very inclusive. I was looking, you know, for a
32:58
broad range of voice and at that time, which was I think I started
33:05
working on it in late two thousand and eight, sounds about right when I
33:09
was brought in two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine a premier,
33:13
and yeah, it would be two thousand and eight. So I sent out
33:16
word to all the agencies what I was looking for, and all I got
33:22
were white males. Because at the time, that's what the agencies were used
33:30
to dealing with, and that's what everybody wanted to hire. And I had
33:32
a devil of a time. I remember at a fantastic Asian writer, Miranda
33:43
Quark that I found through a friend, said hey, you should read the
33:49
script. It's pretty good, and so it was really difficult. But flash
33:53
forward about eight nine years later when I was putting the room together for Jupiter's
34:00
Legens, it was a completely different story. Finally, the agencies had called
34:06
out, the studios had called up, so I was able to put together
34:09
a room that was half female, half diverse, very inclusive, and it
34:19
made for a much better experience in my opinion, not just on the words
34:22
on the page, but being in the room and uh and just having such
34:28
a fantastic time. You kind of got your your own footing, if you
34:31
will, with Spartacus, Like how did Jeck? How did you bring Spartacus
34:36
to a contemporary audience, Because when you think Spartacus, you think the old
34:39
Kubrick, the old Kubrick film, you know, or Kirk Douglas and stuff.
34:42
You're like, okay, Sands and swords, got it, you know.
34:45
Blah blah blah, and I think this is post three hundred, right,
34:47
So three hundred already had come out, so three hundred uh and and
34:51
also Gladiator obviously had already come out as well, so there was reference other
34:57
than the Kubrick thing. But when you think but, you think Sparta because
35:00
that's the first thing that comes to mind. So how did you like it?
35:02
Right? So how did you bring it to a contemporary audience? How
35:05
did you tackle this? So that's a story. So after after Smallville,
35:14
I wanted to do something new, something exciting, And I've always been a
35:17
big fan of the Dennis Potter musicals, The Singing Detective and He's from Heaven.
35:24
So I finished my three year contract on Smallville and I was looking for
35:30
my next thing, and I was talking to people with Chuck about possibly coming
35:34
on there. I was talking to the people over on the Sarah Connor Chronicles
35:40
about possibly over there. They were both Warner brothers, for whatever reason,
35:45
lowballed me on what they were willing to fay me, and out of the
35:51
blue, Sony pops up with a remake of a of a British TV musical
36:00
that I loved called Viava Blackpool. They were doing a version with Hugh Jackman
36:06
called Viva Laughlin and I saw like a clip from their pilot and I said,
36:13
that's what I want to do. My agents were like, are you
36:15
sure. I go, Yes, That's what I want to do. And
36:17
it turned out to be one of the most hysterical debacles I have ever seen
36:22
in my life because I didn't see the four seasons of that. I don't.
36:25
I didn't. I didn't see like two episodes exactly. Yeah, literally,
36:32
so, and there was a whole kinds of craziness going on for people
36:37
to know l LA. We were originally our offices, our temporary offices when
36:45
we first started off. I came in after the pilot was shot. I
36:47
was a co executive producer on the show. We're over by Universal Studios in
36:53
that area, and I thought, oh, okay, great. I lived
36:57
in West Hollywood. It was like, yeah, it's a commute, but
37:00
not that bad. So I'm there for about two weeks. When they said
37:02
great, We're gonna be moving to our new permanent offices next week, I'm
37:07
like, who what where are we going? Santa Clarita in Clorida. Oh
37:12
Jesus Christ, Yeah, you know whoever were Magic Mountain is so I had
37:15
to go from West Hollywood to Santa Clarita every hour and a half hour forty
37:20
five minutes and longer, isn't it. Yeah, it was like an hour
37:22
and a half because everything's fine until you hit the traffic on the one oh
37:25
one near Hollywood there for forty five minutes. So so that was that was
37:30
the first warning sign. Uh, their major Casinos set because it's centered around
37:37
Laughlin, Nevada and this guy opening his own casino. The major casino set
37:43
was in Beverly Hills, so if we wanted to visit that set, you
37:47
know, I had to go from West Hollywood, check into the office,
37:50
go to Beverly Hills, go back to Santa Clarita, and then it was.
37:55
It was. It was a nightmare of portions and the show CBS tested.
38:01
It was a CBS show. They tested the pilot, which tested fantastic
38:07
until people started singing and then it was like somebody unplugged the equipment. It
38:10
just went went dead. So uh, CBS kind of tried to hide the
38:15
fact that it was a musical and all the promos and so the show premiered
38:22
on a special slot Thursday after CSI, where we lost like ten million viewers
38:32
from ZSI and then at the second episode aired that Sunday at its regular slot,
38:37
I think we lost ten million more viewers. And driving into work on
38:40
Monday, hey you cancel, And it was also one of the strangest experiences
38:47
I've had. So we everybody gets there, We to the office in Santa
38:52
Clarita, we tell them we've been canceled. You know, we're having kind
38:54
of the wake for the show, and we an urgent call from the buildings
39:00
facility of Manner saying everybody has to evacuate. Now Santa Clarita is on fire.
39:07
Of course, so driving out the hills are on fire, it was
39:10
like an hellskate a like thousands of crows descended. I'm not shitting. I
39:16
don't know where the crows came from. It was literally apocalyptic. It's like
39:21
God didn't like the show. It's like you're done, You're out. So
39:29
this is all I swear. It's leading to Spartacus. So a couple of
39:32
weeks after that, the writer's strike happened. So now I'm out on a
39:37
picket line, and in my mind it was like, really, the strike
39:39
couldn't have happened a few weeks earlier, so we wouldn't have so much been
39:43
canceled, we just would have disappeared. So I find myself on a picket
39:47
line outside of a Fox. We'll be right back after a word from our
39:53
sponsor. And now back to the show. And who do I bump into?
40:02
Josh Whedon, my old boss, and he said, Hey, uh,
40:07
I just sold the show to Fox right before we went on strike.
40:12
I'd love to talk to you about coming to work on it after this is
40:15
over. I go, yeah, great, And that turned out to be
40:17
daw House. So I came in at Dawhouse after the strike was over as
40:22
a consulting producer. One of the sweetest deals in my life. I was
40:25
originally talking about coming in as the second in command, but then it went
40:30
another way, and I'm the totally fine. I'm fine with that. But
40:34
I'll come in as a consulting producer for three days a week. I'll do
40:37
a little writing, I'll do a little directing. I said, I'll come
40:39
in Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Don't talk to me Friday through Monday because
40:45
I need to rest. Because I need to rest, which gave me time
40:50
to work on some other stuff. So I did that. I was gearing
40:53
up to direct episode two of daw House and I get a call from my
41:00
agent. This means the call I referred to earlier where it's like, hey,
41:04
Stars wants to do some Gladiator series with Sam Raimi. They want to
41:09
talk to you. You're interested. I got to be right over. More
41:14
than anything. I loved Sam Raimi since that was it me ever since I
41:17
saw the first People Dead movie at a drive in so I hopped foot it
41:23
over and it's the Stars executives and at the time Stars, I think they
41:31
had one comedy and I think they were getting ready or just about to air
41:42
crash, but that was produced by lions Gate. They wanted this show to
41:46
be the first ones that they actually produced and known themselves. So I get
41:50
in the room with the Stars executives and on a speaker phone is Sam Raimi
41:57
was nowhere to be found. I think he was shooting him movie at the
42:00
time. But Rob Tapper is producing partner who was with him all the way
42:05
back, you know, back in the Michigan days with Evil Dead. Was
42:09
on the speaker phone from New Zealand, where he had relocated when he did
42:15
Hercules and Zena. And so they tell me yeah, we want to do
42:20
Spartacus. And I was like, Spartacus, ooh, I don't know.
42:23
You know, I was a huge fan of the Kubrick movie and that's daunting
42:29
to try to take that on. So we talked about it and we all
42:34
liked each other. So at the end of the meeting, they said,
42:37
great, we love what we're hearing. When can you start? And I
42:42
said, in about two months. I'm about to go direct this thing for
42:46
Joss Whedon on the show I'm on. And they said, oh, well,
42:50
we can't wait that long. We're gonna have to to keep looking.
42:53
I go, godspeed. Sorry, I'm tied up. So I was actually
42:59
on set shooting this episode of Doe House when my agents popped up and said,
43:02
hey, Stars called again. They've talked to a lot of people,
43:07
they haven't found anybody they liked as much as you would, you still be
43:09
interested? And I said hell yeah. So I literally on a couple of
43:14
weeks later, on a Friday, locked my cut of that episode of Dollhouse,
43:19
and then on Monday started on Spartacus. And I mentioned this before and
43:23
interviews. I didn't know anything about Roman history. The extent of my knowledge
43:29
of Roman history was Kubrick Spartacus, you know Gladiator, Gladiator, Been Her,
43:36
you know, all the all of those old Swords and Sandals epics.
43:42
And so I quickly started reading up about the Third Servile War that Spartacus was
43:47
involved in, and I realized that so much of the story is just made
43:52
up because there's not you know, there's a lot of information about who won
43:57
this battle and who won that battle, but there's not a lot of character
44:00
stuff. And even this comes into play in the show. His true name
44:07
has been lost to the ages. Nobody knows what his real name was.
44:12
He was named Spartacus after an ancient king by the Romans. No, you
44:17
know, nobody knows who he was, and no one ever found his body
44:22
after that last battle because there are just thousands of dead bodies. So we
44:29
waunch into it, and this is where I find out is how Rob Tappard
44:31
sold this show to Stars, which is one of the funniest things I've ever
44:37
seen. He showed me after I was on board. He basically sent them
44:42
a DVD. It was like an old William Castle kind of thing. It's
44:45
him sitting at his desk and talking to the camera and he's saying wouldn't it
44:52
be great if we did a show about Spartacus and it looked like this,
44:54
And then they showed clips from three hundred and Gladiator and and people at first
45:01
were saying, it looks like a three hundred rip off, And we were
45:05
always very honest and upfront that we loved what Zack Snyder and Larry Fong did
45:09
with three hundred and we wanted to take that technology and take what they did
45:15
and see if it would translate into a TV show, a weekly TV show.
45:20
So we owe a huge debt to Zack Snyder and Larry fall with the
45:24
work they did on three hundred, which was just revolutionary. So we dive
45:30
into Spartacus. I started reading every book on Romans in the Third Servile War.
45:37
We hire a couple of PhD Roman history experts who are just invaluable,
45:45
and then we start, you know, forming the story together. And I
45:50
approached Spartacus like I do almost everything I work on, is a love story
45:53
first and foremost. It could be, you know, a love between trends
45:59
love, you know, husband and wife. And so we start working on
46:05
it, and you know, the first episode, which I think is the
46:08
worst episode of the series, and not because of the actors, of the
46:13
directors or anything. It's basically the way the script was constructed. You know,
46:19
there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen, which is not necessarily
46:22
a bad thing, but I think we bit off a little bit more than
46:24
we could chew. We had a very limited budget and there was it was
46:30
just too expensive. So at the last minute we had to start whittling things
46:34
down, and unfortunately a lot of the things that got whittled down was the
46:37
connective tissue. And also that first episode, if you look at it,
46:42
it's very comic book kee graphic novel because we were still trying to figure out
46:46
exactly the techniques, and also we were shooting it in New Zealand, so
46:51
there was kind of we used a lot of the same crew as Hercules and
46:54
Zena, and it just took everybody to realize that that's not what we were
46:59
actually doing. Right. So by the time we got the episode four,
47:05
thankfully, we had figured it out. That's an episode called The Thing in
47:08
the Pit where Spartak is sent to this underground fighting pits, and at that
47:15
point everything started to click. On the writing side, we kind of dialed
47:20
it in. On the production side, we dialed it in and from there
47:24
we took off. It's also it was one of the one of the early
47:29
shows that went straight to series instead of doing a pilot, which is why
47:32
the pilot's a little wonky. It was something pretty new back at that time
47:37
that now we do it all the time. It's mostly just straight to series
47:40
order. And thankfully, the thing that I think made the show a big
47:49
hit because we were airing each week. It wasn't, you know, dropping
47:52
all the episodes at the same time. And I remember when the first episode
47:55
came out, Stars send you a big book of all the reviews, and
48:02
it was just page after page trying to find something that somebody said good.
48:07
Everybody hated it. One reviewer said it was the worst TV show of the
48:15
decade. And this came out January twenty ten, so the decade just started.
48:22
But thankfully we had completed all the episodes. We had already shot all
48:27
thirteen and Stars was airing all thirteen. This wasn't network television where they were
48:31
going to cancel it. And we knew starting at episode four saying's got a
48:37
lot better. And Stars made a deal with Netflix to show the episodes weekly,
48:45
and that's what really helped us, right, because it really found an
48:50
audience. Between Stars and Netflix, it found an audience, and by the
48:54
end of that first season, a lot of the reviewers that saw that first
49:00
episode and hated it circled back around and said, you know what, you
49:02
all should check this out because it actually gets a lot better that Yeah.
49:07
So we had a bit of a bumpy start, and then, of course,
49:10
sadly, as everybody knows, our star Andy Whitfield passed away. We
49:16
were prepping season two when we found out that he had non Hodgkins and FOMA.
49:23
So we had a lot of talks about do we cancel the show,
49:28
do we shut the show down? We can't wait two years to do the
49:34
next installment because we'll lose the audience. So we started we kept working on
49:38
season two, but we kept talking about, you know, we want to
49:40
give Andy time to go through treatment and get better. And so I approached
49:49
Stars and Rob Tappart about what if we did like a two episode like mini
49:52
movie prequel. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now
50:02
back to the show, and Starr says, well, two episodes. It's
50:07
not worth the money to do two episodes. And then the suggestion was made,
50:13
what about four episodes? And I felt like, it's too many episodes
50:17
for a concise story, not long enough for a full story. And then
50:22
eventually they came back and they said, well, what about six episodes,
50:25
And we're like, yeah, that's just right. So that's why we did
50:30
Gods of the Arena the prequel, to give Andy time to go through his
50:34
treatments. And it's also, you know, it's one of those things.
50:37
It was born through a very tragic situation, but it's also I think one
50:43
of the seasons I'm most proud of because it just seemed like everything was clicking.
50:49
And we got there and and introduced Cannicus, which we were going to
50:52
bring into the show, but we got to introduce him in a way where
50:54
you really got to know him. And then Andy Field got a clean bill
51:00
of health and we went to Comic Con and we brought him and we announced
51:06
he was coming back, and we started to gear up for season two again,
51:09
and then we got the call that the cancer came back, and and
51:14
he passed away a couple of months later, which was really really sad,
51:17
and and and you know, we were faced with a choice again do we
51:22
keep going, and Andy uh was was very firm at us to finish telling
51:28
Stuart. So we did a big worldwide search and we found Liam McIntyre to
51:35
carry on the show, which was I can't give enough props to Liam.
51:39
It was such a hard thing to step into and Liam was a huge fan
51:45
of the show and Andy's work, so that made it doubly difficult, but
51:51
yeah, it was. And what really made it special is our executives at
51:57
Stars at the time. Uh most of them were used to programming, you
52:04
know, movies and specials on Stars. So when they would have a question
52:08
or they were uncomfortable with something we were doing, Rob Tappert and I would
52:15
say, no, trust this, this is this is how it should work
52:19
and you're gonna be very happy. And they would say, well, you're
52:22
the experts, go ahead. So they were wonderfully supportive, very hands off,
52:27
and the way we approached the show. Rob and I had some very
52:31
early conversations because Stars wanted to do a mail driven action show, which on
52:37
all four. But I have ulterior motives. You know, I'm a bit
52:43
of a lefty and I wanted to work in the ideas about you know,
52:49
social justice and equality, and my big thing at the time was I felt
52:57
like, and you see it even more today, that there was an economic
53:00
slave class being created in the United States, that you had the super rich,
53:06
the middle class was being eradicated, and then you had the poor that
53:09
were basically there to funnel money to the super rich, which unfortunately is still
53:15
the case. So that was really all of my subtext, and Stars was
53:22
fine with all of that. And we also, I, you know,
53:24
I don't think we could have we could do that show today because I mean,
53:29
it was beyond our rated. It was NC seventeen. But Rob Tapper
53:32
and I early on made the decision when we were talking about who were making
53:37
this show for, we decided We're not going to make it for anybody.
53:42
We're going to make it for ourselves. We're going to make the show that
53:45
we would want to watch and just trust that other people want to come along
53:50
for the rock. And one of the biggest surprises is, you know,
53:54
it was very popular a young you know, among young males, you know,
54:00
eighteen to thirty four, you know that sweet spot, but it was
54:04
also hugely popular with middle aged women. Makes really yes, really, they
54:10
loved the romance, they loved all the male nudity, and that's also something
54:16
we came into it. We were like, you know, this kind of
54:20
stuff has naked women in it all over the place. It's a gladiator show.
54:24
They're going to be naked. They're going to be fully naked. Everybody
54:28
had to understand coming in with the guys, you were going to be more
54:32
scantily clad than the women in this because it's you know, it's when it
54:37
is a gladiator show, that's what people want to see. That's that's amazing.
54:44
So you, I mean you were you had some time on Daredevil obviously,
54:46
which was I mean amazing. I mean, I just love what you
54:51
guys did with Daredevil. I mean it was just like and it was such
54:53
a it's such a lot of pressure because you had to you had to you
54:59
have to make that fans happy, but you also have to make Netflix happy
55:00
because this was the first big launch of the Marvel stuff on Netflix. So
55:07
if if Dared Devil would have failed, we might have not gotten the rest
55:09
of the rest of the guys or not, it would have it would have
55:14
been a lot less seasons of all these other great characters. How did you
55:17
deal with that pressure and how did you just kind of like run into that
55:21
or did you just were you just said screw it, let's just write.
55:23
But that was you know, I was on an overall deal at Stars.
55:28
I'd wrapped up Spartacus, I me in the writer's room, had written a
55:37
full season of a series called Incursion, which was kind of like Aliens meets
55:43
Band of Brothers, and we were actually at the point prepping the cast when
55:49
they pulled the plug because it was too expensive. But I was still on
55:52
this overall deal, so I was being paid a handsome amount of money to
55:58
sit at home and think up ideas. And I did a script for Stars
56:07
based on the Italian crime series Ormonzo Criminale, and then I was working up
56:13
some other ideas because they didn't feel that was quite right for them. So
56:19
I had about three months left on this very sweet deal when I got a
56:24
call from Jeff Low again out of the blue, saying, hey, you
56:31
know, I'm working with Drew Goddard on Daredevil, which I knew. I
56:35
had met with Drew about a year before, and he asked me if I'd
56:37
be interested in coming in and co creating it with him, and I said,
56:40
man, I would like nothing better. Drew Goddard is one of the
56:45
most brilliant, sweetest guys you could ever meet. And I said, but
56:49
I'm on this star's overall deal. I can't leave that. That would be
56:52
silly money to leave behind. So Low calls me up and said, Drew
57:00
Goddard has to lead. He has a previous commitment to write and direct the
57:04
Sinister sixth movie for Sony. This was before Sony and Marvel made the deal
57:10
to share Spider Man. And I said, Jeff, I'm on this overall
57:15
deal. He goes, well, you know, we can really just just
57:16
come in and here here what we're talking. We're thinking. So I went
57:20
in and Drew Goddard and Jeff Low pitched their idea for the show. And
57:25
Drew had written the first two scripts, a couple of rough drafts for the
57:29
first two scripts. And I read the scripts. I heard their pitch,
57:34
and my reaction was a damn it. Now I've got to do this because
57:37
I really like it. So I came on to that. And when I
57:40
came on, you know, we were everything was really far behind. You
57:45
know, we had the first two rough scripts, the third one was being
57:50
written out of the first thirteen we had, you know, We had no
57:53
production designer, no cast, no anything, and we were going to start
57:59
shooting sooner than I would have liked. And our goal was to try to
58:04
get eight scripts done before we started shooting. I think we got the six
58:07
or seven because everything was so far behind. But Drew had drew it,
58:15
basically set the table and you know, he gave me the menu and so
58:22
I was able to cook up the meal. And it was, uh,
58:25
it was brutal because we didn't have enough time. As often the case,
58:30
we didn't you never have quite enough money. And you know, we realized
58:37
that it was a bit of a tricky situation because we were going into it.
58:42
People for whatever reason, didn't really care for the Ben Affleck movie.
58:47
And I always say Ben Affleck is is a great actor. I think he
58:54
was. He was a good choice for that role. But this was a
58:58
time where they made the movie where you know, it was a different time
59:02
for comic book movies. It was more comic book Ye, it was more
59:06
comic booky, yeah, exactly exactly. It was. It was a little
59:09
over the top, And what really drew me into it, into the TV
59:15
show was the fact that they wanted to do a darker grittier corner of the
59:20
Marvel universe with the street level heroes. And I grew up loving Daredevil and
59:25
the character, and we all just wanted to really do justice to the character.
59:31
But we realized that the comic book fans would come at it with a
59:37
bit of hesitation because of the movie, and people outside of the comic book
59:44
would also be influenced by the movie or didn't know who Daredevil was at all.
59:51
So really, uh, the way we approached the show was the origin
59:55
story of Daredevil and the origin story of Kingpin. We'll be right back after
1:00:00
a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show, both at
1:00:09
the same time. There were both two sides of the same coin. And
1:00:13
uh, and there was a lot of I mean, it was a difficult
1:00:19
show because there was all the pressure because it was the first one in this
1:00:22
multi million dollar four show and uh, you know spin off with the Defenders
1:00:28
deal that was completely unheard of. And as we started working on it,
1:00:36
there were Marvel started to get a little nervous that it was a little too
1:00:38
dark. So there was some wrestling and and and I got a preface by
1:00:44
saying I loved everybody at Marvel Joe Cassada, everybody. I would I would
1:00:50
be in a foxhole with those guys any day of the week. But of
1:00:53
course, you know there's going to be creative wrestling. Uh. So I
1:00:59
remember one point to lighten the show up, the suggestion was made that there
1:01:05
should be a funny Russian character that keeps trying to say things in English,
1:01:09
but it's wrong. It's kind of a running joke. And I about blood
1:01:15
Vessel, and I said, no, the Russians don't work unless they're scary.
1:01:22
They have to be scary. Let's not waterre this down. Of course,
1:01:27
we can have humor in the show, not that kind of humor.
1:01:31
So it was. It was a grueling and there was there was a lot
1:01:36
of talk about how far do we push it? Like, I, you
1:01:39
pushed it pretty far. Yeah, I obviously. I mean they brought on
1:01:44
the guy that did Spartacus, so there's no some of those depth, some
1:01:49
of those scenes. I was just like, wow, they went for it.
1:01:52
Yeah, it's like the infamous episode at the end of I think it's
1:01:55
episode four where Wilson chisks crushed, which is the Russian brother's head uh in
1:02:01
the car which Hu drew a bitch to me, it was the trunk at
1:02:07
the time, not the door, but it was the same idea. So
1:02:09
when we got the point of shooting it, we knew if you look at
1:02:15
the scene, uh, you never really see the head being crushed. You
1:02:20
see the aftermath. It's more suggestive than anything else, but it's still disturbing.
1:02:24
The original cut was like three times longer. I mean, it just
1:02:28
kept going on where he was banging that guy and uh. Which also brings
1:02:34
me the Vincent Enafrio. When I we hadn't cast anybody when I came on
1:02:39
and I saw a picture. I was looking, you know, just randomly
1:02:44
on the internet, and I saw a picture of Vincent Anafrio with his head
1:02:47
shaped and I'm like, it's the kingpin. The guy's gigantic. He's a
1:02:52
phenomenal actor. I mean, there's nobody else that really fits this bill.
1:02:58
And so so I to everybody and I said we should go after Vincent and
1:03:01
Ofrio and they said, what are you crazy? He makes like a million
1:03:05
dollars an episode, and I'm with the law and order stuff, there's no
1:03:07
way we can afford him. I'm like, ah, can we just try?
1:03:12
And they go, no, it don't ever work. And then they
1:03:15
they called me up, and this is a side story. They called me
1:03:21
up and said, hey, we got a great idea. It's a little
1:03:22
bit outside the box. Richard Gear. I'm like what I said. I
1:03:30
think Richard Gear is a phenomenal actor. He's amazing. He's not the Kingpin.
1:03:35
No, it'd be like casting me as Superman. It's it's just not
1:03:38
it's just not right. So but we went down the road and but Richard
1:03:45
Gear turned it down. He wasn't interested. I think he made the right
1:03:49
choice. And then it turns out our casting director, Loay Mayfield was friends
1:03:55
with Vincent and Afrio. She knew him socially, and she said, look,
1:03:59
let me just reach out to him. Turns out he's a huge Daredevil
1:04:02
fan, and he agreed to do it at a greatly reduced price because he
1:04:09
loved it. And I remember Jeff Lobani having the initial conversation and he said,
1:04:15
let's talk about his shaved head, and we thought, oh shit,
1:04:18
you know he's not gonna want to shave his head. But Vincent said,
1:04:23
he's got to have a cheap hid. Right, I'm gonna shave my head,
1:04:27
but just so you know, if I've got to come back and do
1:04:29
reshoots or something. We might have to use a bald cap if I'm doing
1:04:31
another show, and we said anything, anything you want, and him coming
1:04:38
on really made such a difference. Him and Charlie Cox, Charlie Cox,
1:04:45
who is possibly the sweetest man alive, and Joe Casada had seen Charlie Cox
1:04:53
and Something years ago and was convinced that Charlie Cox was the guy. And
1:04:58
Charlie came in for an all dish and it was one of the best auditions
1:05:01
I've ever seen, but completely wrong. He didn't really know much about the
1:05:06
character. In fact, he tells a funny story that shortly before he came
1:05:11
in for the audition, he called up his agent and goes, is is
1:05:15
this guy blind? And they go, yeah, yeah, he's blind.
1:05:19
So Charlie came in and because he get read up about Daredevil and Matt Murdoch
1:05:26
and about his heightened senses, his take on the character was that there was
1:05:30
so much information coming in that he was very withdrawn. So he came in
1:05:34
and basically kind of played Matt Murdoch is kind of like rain Man, and
1:05:41
it was It was a stunning performance. It was mesmerizing, but raw because
1:05:45
you know, Matt Murdoch is a bit of a ladies man and you know,
1:05:48
and we told him that was fantastic, not quite right, so he
1:05:55
gave him some notes, he went away, and he came back a couple
1:05:59
of days later and did a completely different performance that was just a fantastic And
1:06:05
a side note there is that he was a very spelt guy. He had
1:06:12
never really you know, he was fit, but he didn't go to a
1:06:15
gym or anything. That wasn't his thing. So we immediately put him on
1:06:19
a program with a trainer, and the like eight to twelve week transformation this
1:06:26
guy went through was just stunning. When you actually see him with his shirt
1:06:30
off and he's got a six pack and all his dimissoles. I mean,
1:06:31
he worked out like a devil literally, no pun intended. I mean,
1:06:36
yeah, oh no, he was. No. Every time I see Daredev,
1:06:41
I'm like, God, I gotta get back to the gym. Yeah,
1:06:44
got to get that out of the gym. He just it was amazing.
1:06:46
Yeah, but he did in such a short period of time. You
1:06:49
jumped into your first feature film, if I'm not mistaken, which is a
1:06:55
small feature was a independent film. He had a Pende film, and there
1:06:59
was there was a guy who did something before then that you just kind of
1:07:01
did a sequel for. So you jump into the studio side of the bit,
1:07:09
like the high end studio tent pole world doing the sequel to Pacific Rim
1:07:14
called Pacific Rim Uprising. So you wrote it and you directed it, and
1:07:17
you worked with Gedmo again Muldeo Toto, who's the creator of this insane beautiful
1:07:24
world. What was it like getting thrown into that machine? Because I've spoken
1:07:30
to so many directors on the show who are at the one hundred and fifty
1:07:33
two hundred million dollar work. It's a completely different kind of filmmaking, and
1:07:38
that's for experienced guys in that space. This is your first time there.
1:07:44
What was that like? Peter ll gave me that job. That's bertht It
1:07:47
was the best and worst job I've ever had. You got to go back
1:07:53
to how how did I get that job? I had written a script called
1:07:59
The Dead and the Eye, which was a very itchcocky in hitchcocky and psychological
1:08:03
spriller with three people in a house and it was very contained, very small
1:08:12
movie. Mary Parent, the uber producer ex studio head of MGM, read
1:08:20
it and really loved it. I met Mary a few years before because she
1:08:24
was a big fan of Spartacus and she knew my agent. So my agent
1:08:27
put us together. And I remember at at that meeting, I think it
1:08:32
was a breakfast meeting. I gave her the rough pitch to this movie idea
1:08:36
and she said, that sounds great. You should write it and you should
1:08:40
direct it, and you know, you ever get around the writing and send
1:08:42
it to me, we'll talk. So years later I sent it to her.
1:08:45
She really liked it, and so we set it up at Paramount.
1:08:49
This was a little eight million dollar movie tops and Paramount was going through a
1:08:55
lot of changes and yeah, as I discovered, it's very difficult do you
1:09:00
get a huge studio to pay attention to a little, tiny, eight million
1:09:02
dollar thriller. At least at the time, I mean this was before you
1:09:06
know, Get Out came out and streaming and all that's into streaming and all
1:09:12
of that, so we couldn't get any traction. We had Kerrie Washington who
1:09:16
wanted to do it, like right before Christmas, I met with her.
1:09:19
She said, I really like it, I'd love to do it. Paramounts
1:09:25
just wasn't geared up to move fast enough. By the time they got around
1:09:29
to contacting her people after Christmas, she had signed up for something else,
1:09:31
so we lost her. And then I get a call from Mary saying,
1:09:36
you know what, maybe this wasn't meant to be your your first movie.
1:09:40
And I thought, oh shit, she's pulling out. We'll be right back
1:09:45
after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. And
1:09:53
then she said, what do you think about Pacific rim too. I'm like,
1:09:56
hell, that's like going from eight million to one hundred and fifty.
1:10:00
That's just massive shooting all over the world. And I said, yeah,
1:10:05
sure, a huge Del Toro fan. I mean, you know, all
1:10:12
the way I remember when I was in college. I think I think it
1:10:15
was when I was in college seeing Kronos at the theater. So I had
1:10:20
followed him all through his career, loved what he did. And I said
1:10:28
yeah. She says, okay, well, you've got to get the approval
1:10:30
of several people. So I had to go in and meet with the people
1:10:35
at Legendary. This is before Mary took over Legendary, and they gave me
1:10:42
the thumbs up. And then I had to go meet Thomas Tall, the
1:10:46
owner of legendary who was a great guy. I went to Deep, Deep
1:10:54
Deep in the in the West Valley to his mansion. I think I met
1:11:00
him right after he had sold the company to Wanda and for like three billion.
1:11:06
You're freshly, freshly minted billionaire. But he was a guy like me,
1:11:11
you know. He came from a blue a blue colored background, you
1:11:16
know, pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made his fortune. And it's
1:11:21
funny when we were talking when I first met him, we were talking about
1:11:25
movies. He mentioned Humanoids from the Deep, and I go, Humanoids from
1:11:31
the Deep. I saw that the drive in, you know, back when
1:11:34
I was a kid, and it always really stuck with me. And he
1:11:38
said, man, I talk about that movie all the time and nobody's seen
1:11:41
it. And I said, me too. I referenced that movie all the
1:11:44
time. So we bonded over that, and I was driving home when I
1:11:49
got the call from Mary saying she had talked to Thomas and he gave me
1:11:54
the thumbs up, and she said, okay, the last one. You
1:11:56
got to go meet with Germo del Toro. And I thought, well,
1:12:00
well that's if nothing else comes of it. I got to meet the Gadmill.
1:12:04
Did you go to his cool backhouse bleak House. I did, indeed,
1:12:10
so I get to weeks later, I go to see him. I
1:12:15
meet him at this modest little ranch house, also in the Deep Valley,
1:12:21
and I knew it was. It was bleak House, you know, his
1:12:25
his famous archives of movie memorabilia and art. And I walk in and there's
1:12:34
the original Canes spacesuit from Aliens, and the original stop motion animation models from
1:12:43
Jason and the Argonauts and all of this other amazing stuff. And I tell
1:12:46
him Gammel, I I've dreamed for years about coming to see bleak House.
1:12:51
And he says, oh, Stephen, this is not bleak House. Bleak
1:12:55
House is next door, he said. This is just where I take everything
1:13:00
and catalog it and then move it. I go, are you kidding me?
1:13:02
So he takes me next door to the actual bleak House, and I
1:13:05
could have spent a year there, and it was It was my childhood dream,
1:13:10
you know, because I grew up reading like I mentioned, famous Monsters
1:13:15
of film Land and Forrest j Ackerman had the Acromansion in la which was basically
1:13:20
the same idea, but this was like that on steroids, and he was
1:13:26
just showing me everything, and I could not have been happier. And then
1:13:30
we talked about the movie. We talked about some ideas, and afterwards he
1:13:36
called Mary and said, yeah, he's the guy. And I guess the
1:13:42
one downside to all this is I love Germo so much anybody that's ever met
1:13:46
him. He is such a brilliant, pure soul who loves cinema and loves
1:13:53
art, and the breadth of his knowledge about both is just as soundings inspiring.
1:14:00
I had the pleasure of meeting Gamble two or three times in my life,
1:14:02
and he's he's so sweet, so down to earth, and it's like
1:14:08
the genius that spawns from him is remarkable. It really is. And he
1:14:13
cursed it was like a sailor No I I don't know which is also hysteric.
1:14:16
Can I tell you the one I saw my comic con once, and
1:14:20
this is the story goes. Working in Hollywood is like eating a shit sandwich.
1:14:25
You could put some male on it, you could put some nice cheese,
1:14:28
but at the end of the day you're eating shit. Yeah, pretty
1:14:31
much. It. One of my great regrets is the movie didn't turn out
1:14:36
nearly as well as any of us at hope, and I'll get into that
1:14:41
in a second. But you know, Germo couldn't do the movie because he
1:14:46
was going off to do his passion project, The Shape of Water did okay
1:14:49
with that, Yeah, he made the right choice, and the studio needed
1:14:56
to get this movie out because it was coming up on five years since the
1:14:59
last one, and anything beyond that they felt like was too long. So
1:15:05
unfortunately, you know, because he went off to do the movie and we
1:15:09
did this thing, so he wasn't involved because you know, he was busy,
1:15:15
which I always regret. I haven't had a chance to talk to him
1:15:19
since those original couple of meetings and I would love to see him come back
1:15:25
and do the third movie and really get things back on track. So the
1:15:29
movie so I get hired. I think it was I want to say it
1:15:34
was large of twenty sixteen. I think it was. That sounds right with
1:15:42
the idea that the movie would shoot around that time the next year, because
1:15:47
there was Geral had developed three scripts and we were using some of the influences
1:15:55
of some of it. But the studio at the studio had a very strong
1:15:58
opinion there was there was several things they wanted they wanted to bring in a
1:16:02
younger audience, so they wanted kids to be part of the movie on screen.
1:16:09
They also they they didn't want the action to be at night in the
1:16:14
rain. They wanted it to be in the daytime and more brightly lit,
1:16:17
and they wanted the Jaggers to move faster. So this is also three of
1:16:23
the things that people complained to me the most about when they see the movie.
1:16:28
I'm like, hm, that's that was. That was my marching orders,
1:16:31
and I understand why they wanted it. I'm a preface by saying I
1:16:34
don't have a problem. I love the executives on the movie. We had
1:16:39
some battles, but they had a point of view, and I understand their
1:16:42
point of view. I didn't always agree with it, but I totally understand
1:16:45
where they were coming from. And also they put a lot of faith in
1:16:49
me. So because we had a not a lot of time, I suggested,
1:16:56
let's put together a TV type writer's room. We'll break the story and
1:17:00
then I'll take two writers from that writer's room and the three of us will
1:17:04
write the script so we can get it done very quickly. So we break
1:17:09
the story, we go through you know, a lot of back and forth
1:17:12
During that time, Mary takes over Legendary, so she's no longer my producer,
1:17:17
she's my studio boss. So we break the story. We turn in
1:17:23
the outline, we go back and forth with with some changes, and then
1:17:28
we we dig into the script and you know, we wrote it very very
1:17:34
quickly. I think it was like three weeks. Once we had the outline.
1:17:40
We had like three weeks to write. We turn in the script and
1:17:45
Mary calls me up and says, wow, I'm surprised. I really liked
1:17:49
which was it really And I'm like, great, fantastic. She was really
1:17:54
happy with the story. The story we broke was with Charlie Huntum as the
1:17:59
lead as Raleigh and Max Martini as his co pilot playing Kirk, so he
1:18:06
was very much tied to the first movie. Maco had become a mucky muck
1:18:12
in the pp BAN Pacific Defense Corps, so it's a huge relief. They
1:18:19
liked the script. Everything's great, I'm not shooting you. The next morning,
1:18:25
I wake up, I sign on to Deadline Hollywood and it's announced that
1:18:30
Charlie Huntum is doing a remake of Papillon that shoots at the exact same time
1:18:34
we are, and I'd met with Charlie, wonderful guy, and he had
1:18:41
mentioned this passion project that he wanted to do, so I don't follow him
1:18:45
for doing that. It's something he's wanted to do for many, many,
1:18:46
many, many years. But of course it put us in mind. We
1:18:49
couldn't push production because of the release date and other actor contracts, so we
1:18:58
had to throw out a large chunk of that script and quickly come up with
1:19:01
a different idea. So the writers and I came up with the idea of
1:19:04
this new brother and sister as the leads that were basically like protege a proteges
1:19:15
of Max Martini's character. So we wrote a completely new draft with these two
1:19:20
characters. Nobody liked it, including us, who were like, ah,
1:19:26
the hell do we do now? And I think it was Guillermo and Mary
1:19:30
who came up with the idea of Stacker Pentecost's son Jake, And MY initial
1:19:38
reaction was, how do I write con that to make any sense? But
1:19:43
okay, I'm willing to give it a shot. And then Mary said,
1:19:46
what do you think about John Boyega? And I knew him from Attack the
1:19:49
Block and obviously Star Wars, and I said he would be amazing, but
1:19:55
there's no way we're gonna get John Boyega. We'll be right back after a
1:20:00
word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. He's doing Star
1:20:09
Wars. He doesn't need another big franchise. She said, well, he's
1:20:12
coming in for a general meeting. Let's put up all the concept art that
1:20:16
we've done in a conference for it, and I'll walk him buy it.
1:20:20
So that's what she does. She walks him by and goes, oh,
1:20:24
by the way, here's some concept art for this sequel to pack Rim and
1:20:30
he really dug it. It turns out that he's a huge anime fan,
1:20:35
so he was very interested in signing on as as the star and a producer
1:20:40
on the movie. So once we've got him, we kicked it into high
1:20:45
gear to try to retool this script with the idea of Stackord Pentecost's son,
1:20:51
which is very tricky because now we we need to explain why isn't Raleigh in
1:20:59
it? And I might a Stacker have a son that we've never heard of,
1:21:02
And we addressed all that in the script that eventually gets cut out of
1:21:06
the movie, particularly what happened to Raleigh gets cut out in the movie.
1:21:11
So of course, when fans go see the movie, it's like, the
1:21:13
fuck is this, Where's where's Raleigh? And you killed Maco. The whole
1:21:18
killing Maco thing in the original script was she had much more screen time in
1:21:25
the original script because she had scenes with Charlie Huntum. She in the original
1:21:31
idea. This didn't make it to the script, but the original idea was
1:21:35
her helicopter goes down in Sydney like it does in the movie, but she
1:21:39
doesn't die in the crash. She's in a coma. And we had this
1:21:45
whole sequence where the Raleigh character went to the hospital with portable drift equipment and
1:21:53
got inside her mind to try to bring her out of this coma, and
1:21:57
while he's inside, she starts to die in the world starts to collapse around
1:22:00
him. It was really cool, but everybody thought the idea of coma was
1:22:06
too depressing for this movie, so we added Jettus in that. And there
1:22:13
was also a big sequence in the movie at her funeral where it was like
1:22:17
a twenty yeager column, twenty yeggers of them carrying the funeral down out of
1:22:24
the coffin down in Japan with the cherry blossoms blowing across and it was this
1:22:31
huge moment that we had to cut because we couldn't afford at the end of
1:22:34
the day. So so it means you're interrupting so the process, and I
1:22:42
want people to understand listening, when you're dealing with one hundred and fifty million
1:22:45
dollars film and the studio wants a release day, so now you're backed into
1:22:49
a release date. Everything the creative process becomes much more complicated because when you're
1:22:56
just in this machine that hat, the train is going, there's nothing you
1:23:00
could do to stop it, and it's it's gonna go, and you're building
1:23:04
track as you're going. You're building track as the training track where you don't
1:23:10
know what the final destination is right exactly, but you and you have no
1:23:13
choice as opposed to sit down, build a long track, you know where
1:23:16
you're going, take your time, Dan, get the thing growing. That's
1:23:19
what a normal film kind of does. But at this and I understand why
1:23:23
because the first one was such a huge hit. I think overseas is what
1:23:25
really Green Green lit the sequel, right, was that is that f It
1:23:29
was huge China and that's why they were like, we got to get we
1:23:32
got to get something else out. I left out the most important part.
1:23:34
So when I sign on in March of twenty sixteen, supposed to shoot the
1:23:40
next year. A week into me working on the movie, they say,
1:23:44
oh, by the way, because of schedules and everything, you've got to
1:23:46
start shooting in October of this year. I'm like, what. We don't
1:23:50
have a script, we don't have a story, we don't have a production
1:23:54
designer. And then we had all the delays because we lost our main star
1:23:58
and we're trying to get a new one and writing the script and we really
1:24:00
never recovered from that. We started shooting I think late October early November of
1:24:08
that same year, which is for a movie this size is ridiculous. That
1:24:12
basically our prep time was cut in half. And as much it's a super
1:24:15
complicated film. Yes, so a lot of that is you do previs for
1:24:21
the visual effects, which in a movie like this is vital because you do
1:24:25
the previz of what's going on with the Jaegers and the Kaiju, and then
1:24:31
you can match the action inside the concoct with the actual people. Well,
1:24:36
we never had a chance to lock down the previous so on some of those
1:24:42
battles, you know, I'm just kind of winging it inside the cockpit as
1:24:47
close as I think we can come to what we think is eventually going to
1:24:53
be in the movie, because we just didn't have enough time. And literally,
1:24:58
because we didn't have enough time, there were multiple times we'd show up
1:25:03
on set and we'd have to wait four hours because the set wasn't done,
1:25:08
like literally a crew of people with hair dryers trying to dry the set so
1:25:12
we can shoot. And you just just have to roll with it. You
1:25:16
have to take all your shot lists and your careful planning and go, Okay,
1:25:24
how can I boil down twenty shots into two, which oftentimes can result
1:25:30
in something better, and many times it did on this movie. But yeah,
1:25:35
and then after that you go into the audience previews, which is a
1:25:44
special kind of hell, especially for a movie like this where there's so many
1:25:48
visual effects, but we didn't have them in and we didn't have it in
1:25:51
the budget for Postviiz we put in tempts for people to see. So we
1:25:59
go into the previews and it's just a mess, and you know, the
1:26:05
audience hates it because most of it is incomprehensible because you can't tell what's going
1:26:11
on. And then everybody gets nervous, so you do a bunch of reshoots
1:26:15
and retooling, and you take things out. The first cut of the movie
1:26:18
was two hours and twenty minutes. What ended up on screen at the movies
1:26:24
was about ninety minutes. So you can imagine there's a lot of stuff that
1:26:28
was taken out of the movie, including what happened to Rold And so it's
1:26:34
a and again, Would I do it again? Absolutely Listen, when somebody
1:26:38
drops out of the sky and say, hey, do you want to write
1:26:41
and direct one hundred and fifty million dollar science fiction fiction epic, you don't
1:26:45
say, well, do I have enough time to do it right? No,
1:26:47
you say yes and figure it out. So you were just basically,
1:26:51
like you said earlier, you were just holding on for dear life. Essentially,
1:26:55
it's like the machine. The machine was just I mean and and for
1:26:59
And this is You're a guy when you get this call. You're not a
1:27:01
kid. This is not your first rodeo. This is your first rodeo.
1:27:05
This is the first rodeo at like the big arena. But you've been but
1:27:09
you've been playing around for a while, directing for a while. You've a
1:27:13
showrunner you understand how the whole process works. And even you with the experience
1:27:16
you have, once you get thrown into this machine, it's a completely new
1:27:19
experience for you. You're literally just trying to hang on totally. And and
1:27:25
plus you know, I'd shot a bunch of episodes of TV right but in
1:27:29
the States in Vancouver. I mean, now I was flying to Sydney.
1:27:34
You know, I had to relocate to Sydney for like seven months and shoot
1:27:39
there, and then we shot a month in China in chang Dao, and
1:27:44
then we shot in Iceland. So you know, I was going all and
1:27:47
I was just just freshly married. I'd literally got married and I think the
1:27:51
next week flew off for seven months while So it was, yeah, it
1:27:58
was it was difficult. And you know, look, you hear about movie
1:28:02
Jawls being the classic example movies where everything's going wrong and the movie turns out
1:28:08
fantastic. This was not quite that experience. Uh. There are things in
1:28:13
the movie that I'm very very proud of, and there are things that I'm
1:28:15
very very embarrassed. But it's not an exploding baby. It's not an exploding
1:28:19
babies. Yeah, I'm not I'm not that embarrassing. So it's so it's
1:28:24
it's a it's a win. Yeah and uh yeah and look, I I
1:28:29
was surrounded by the John Boyega is fantastic. I would work with him again
1:28:33
in a second, no matter what was going on. He was always funny
1:28:38
and charming and he knew his lines and he knew what he was doing.
1:28:42
Uh. You know, we got to discover Kylee Spainey, who is us.
1:28:46
She played the young girl of Marra who is going on to just do
1:28:50
amazing things, and we was just really a fantastic, fantastic I. I
1:28:59
got to work with the DP that I'd always love, Dan Mindel, who
1:29:02
is jj Abram's main d DP, who was just fantastic. So many great
1:29:10
people and working with people like Burne Gorman and Charlie Day, Uh just just
1:29:15
made the hardship easier to swallow and much better. But really, if we
1:29:23
had had like a full year to prep the movie and really dial everything in,
1:29:28
I think we could have worked out a lot of the very obvious kinks
1:29:31
that ended up on screen, and and the movie went through some radical changes
1:29:36
when we were doing the test screetings. It had a completely different ending in
1:29:43
Tokyo and a lot of other things that we altered, and and also it's
1:29:49
something we all I think now regret is because of the test screening. It
1:29:56
was testing really well, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
1:30:05
and now back to the show with little kids, like, you know,
1:30:13
eight to twelve year old kids. So a decision was made to retoll
1:30:18
the movie skewing that way, and to me, it's it's kind of the
1:30:24
mistake that Conan the Destroyer did. When Conan the Barbarian was fantastic, and
1:30:30
then Conyan and the Destroyer they made for little kids, which was just wrong.
1:30:38
I'm hoping the animated series that's coming out on Netflix helps to revive the
1:30:43
franchise. And also it kills me because like when people say, oh my
1:30:47
god, I hate you you killed Maco, I did it? Yeah,
1:30:53
I always say, well, you also have to understand, yes, but
1:30:57
that death had a lot more meaning when it originally started. It was a
1:31:00
lot meteor and then it got whittled down to I agree, it's like a
1:31:04
blip and I'm upset about it. But also I had a plan for the
1:31:10
third movie where she does come back in an unexpected way. In the end
1:31:15
of the third movie. I had always planned to set up a crossover with
1:31:19
the Monster Verse, if that's the way that legendary wanted it to go,
1:31:25
right. But you know, then the movie came out, the critics hated
1:31:30
it, the audience, the movie I think broke even, but didn't do
1:31:35
as much money as the first movie. So it kind of I think put
1:31:40
the Cobash, at least in the short term for a third movie. And
1:31:45
again, if there ever is a third movie, I hope everybody has an
1:31:46
up sense. Def Germo come back in and and do the third and play
1:31:51
in that and play in that world again. Yeah, it's yeah, because
1:31:55
I personally, as a fan, would love to see that. That's an
1:31:59
amazing it's amazing story of how that because I always wanted to know what happened
1:32:02
behind the scenes of that, because I'm like the Spartac is, he's a
1:32:05
daredevil and there's obviously something that happened in Pacific Pacific Rise of like, there's
1:32:12
something there. I don't know what it is. It's not that I just
1:32:15
with something that's so thankful for setting the record straight on what happened behind the
1:32:19
scenes. And again, I don't want people to come across thinking that I'm
1:32:25
saying, oh, those damn executives. No, it's totally understand where the
1:32:29
executives gift one hundred and fifty million dollar mark. The thing that people really
1:32:35
want to do is is idiot proof one hundred million dollar gamble. But often
1:32:43
by doing that, you can alienate the very people that you need to make
1:32:47
it a success. Very very much though, and that's basically the theme of
1:32:51
Hollywood for the last one hundred and fifty years and ten years or something.
1:32:57
I have a couple of last questions that are rapid five. What is the
1:33:01
what is the What are three film screenplays that every screenwriter should read? Oh?
1:33:05
The Sixth Sense, which is a screenplay that I read before I wrote
1:33:13
my Little Thriller, and I love the movie. I never read the screenplay.
1:33:19
I read the screenplay cried my eyes out. It's just an amazing,
1:33:23
amazing screenplay. Highly recommend that, I highly recommend you read anything by James
1:33:30
Cameron, particularly Aliens. Oh, Aliens, It's just so good. That's
1:33:33
Aliens is a masterclass in brevity and how he describes things. It is a
1:33:41
phenomenal, phenomenal screenplay. And I would also say anything by Shane Black.
1:33:47
You also is just the way Shane does scene direction. I envy in Drollover
1:33:56
because I can never condense it as much as he does. I've read,
1:34:01
I read with like reading lankiska Night or the original Last Blast the Boy Scout
1:34:05
before before he gets switched over, just the like he takes what would take
1:34:12
a normal human five paragraphs and he'll riddle it down to five words and it
1:34:17
just and it pops, and it's The descriptions are amazing. So they're they're
1:34:21
artistic, they're almost they're almost hakus. Yeah, they really are. It's
1:34:27
it's like a magic trick. And that's what when I first started writing screenplays,
1:34:30
I made the classic mistake that everyone does. My scene direction was like,
1:34:34
you know, huge chunks, and eventually you learn, uh, you
1:34:42
want to have as much white on the page as possible because these scripts have
1:34:47
to be read by executives and agents who read one hundred scripts a week,
1:34:53
and if they get something that's all dense texts, uh, you know,
1:34:57
they'll they'll read a page or two, but that's it, unless unless it's
1:35:00
like by quin Tarantino, and then they'll sit down and read the whole thing
1:35:02
or by Shane Black and they'll read the whole. Yeah. There there are
1:35:05
some people that just defy the rules. Yes, Sorkin Kaufman like these kinds
1:35:11
of the guys that just totally whatever. And people always say, like,
1:35:15
you have to have everything at your punctuation hasity perfect glo. Well, I
1:35:17
read a Charlie. I read a Shane Black script. Then there was some
1:35:20
grammatical errors. I'm like, when you're Shane Black, Yes, it's okay.
1:35:25
I promise you they're not going to throw it away because the doll was
1:35:28
in the wrong place. Yeah, exactly. And to this day I obsess
1:35:32
over the Proofew, I'm a terrible proof for you hit. So I have
1:35:36
it proved by other people who usually multiple people. And uh, just like
1:35:43
every screenwriter you talk, people tell you you send out your script to everyone,
1:35:47
and the second you do, you find another type. It's so true,
1:35:51
so true. Now, what advice, what advice would you give a
1:35:55
screenwriter trying to break into the business today? You know, it's interesting,
1:35:59
it's uh. I think it's easier and harder if you're trying to break into
1:36:02
day, I highly suggest you target television. Television is a lot easier movies.
1:36:11
The number of movies that are being made have shrunk dramatically, and the
1:36:15
number of studios making movies have shrunk dramatically because of all the consolidation. So
1:36:23
and also right now trying to break in the movies because of the pandemic.
1:36:27
The release dates are so backed up that if I were to do backrim Uprising
1:36:34
today, it would be a couple of years before they would have a slot
1:36:39
to release it because of all the big movies that are backed up, which
1:36:42
is you know, one of the reasons that h Warner Brothers is premier movies
1:36:46
on HBO Max. The other big one is that they want to promote HBO
1:36:50
Max. TV, on the other hand, has exploded in an insane way.
1:36:57
You know, back when I started twenty years ago, there are four
1:37:00
and a half networks, and I remember and yeah, and really premium cable
1:37:12
places like AMC FX had hadn't started doing original content, and even HBO early
1:37:18
it was yeah, I mean the Sopranos was like early nineties, this nineties.
1:37:23
Yeah, yeah, So at least since then, now the streamers,
1:37:28
I mean there's over five hundred scripted TV shows on per year. Now,
1:37:32
this is a plus and minus because when I started, shows were twenty two
1:37:38
to twenty four episodes a season, so you knew going in that you had
1:37:42
a job all year, and generally you would take three or four weeks off
1:37:46
and then you would start on the next season. So it was It was
1:37:49
also great because there was enough episodes in enough time. When I was starting
1:37:55
out, I got to be on set in casting and editing, you know,
1:38:00
the whole gamut, which really taught me how to run a show and
1:38:04
taught me how to direct. Nowadays, it's more standard to do eight episodes
1:38:11
because there's an algorithm out there that says that's the sweet spot where an audience
1:38:15
will finish all eight. Creatively, I think eight is not good now.
1:38:24
First, not a first season for mini series. It's too long for mini
1:38:28
series. Even six is of the sweet spot for many series exactly. That's
1:38:30
what I felt with with God's the Arena, that it was a real sweet
1:38:33
spot. But for me, ten to thirteen episodes is satisfying as a storyteller.
1:38:41
I did take a look at Daredevil. If we had only had eight
1:38:43
episodes, you wouldn't have gotten Fisk's backstory when he was a kid. We
1:38:48
wouldn't have done stick. You know, there was a lot of things that
1:38:53
we would have just cut and it would have felt rushed, quite frankly.
1:39:00
But because there are so many shows going on, there is a constant need
1:39:04
for writers. So TV is just it's boom, It's a boon town TV.
1:39:13
There's so many things being done. It is so hard to put together
1:39:17
a staff these days because there are so many shows buying for those writers.
1:39:24
Now, and what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn,
1:39:27
whether in the film business or in life, film business or life. That's
1:39:33
a good question. I feel like I'm still learning lessons. I think really
1:39:39
the hardest lesson is that I'm still struggling with is balancing creatively what I know
1:39:45
is right, in balancing that commercially what is necessary, those two things can
1:39:54
be very, very difficult. And that's the other great thing about TV.
1:39:56
Now we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
1:40:04
to the show, is all the streaming services. They're willing to try things
1:40:11
that are very, very very much outside the box. And that's why now
1:40:15
you get shows queck Gambit, Queen's Gambit, perfect example, Queen's Gambit,
1:40:20
you get the boys, even things like the OA was completely batshit crazy,
1:40:28
and I loved it. There's no way twenty years ago, when I was
1:40:31
starting out anybody would have done and things like Wayne that I think is just
1:40:38
absolutely stunningly brilliant. The streamers are willing to take chances because there's so many
1:40:45
shows you have to do something to roll those dice. You know, everybody
1:40:49
will keep doing the standard stuff, but they're also willing to take these outside
1:40:55
of the box chances, which is completely thrilled for me to see at this
1:41:01
point. So yeah, that and in TV, because of that, you
1:41:10
have a lot more creative leanway than you do in features. Features has become
1:41:15
a very very difficult business that's dominated by tentpole movies. And you know,
1:41:21
I know there are critics out there that say, oh, the Marvel movies,
1:41:26
they've ruined the cinema. I love the Marvel movies. I think they
1:41:29
are they they encapsule everything that I love. They're exciting, they're technically brilliant,
1:41:39
their funny, and they are emotional. You know, I have cried
1:41:45
at Marvel movies probably more than any other movie. And Game, I mean,
1:41:49
come on, in Game, in Gay Man, in Sinity War,
1:41:53
oh kill me. I mean, but to be fair, if you pull
1:41:57
Marvel movies out of the last decade, the entire theatrical business would have I
1:42:01
think crumbled because I think they held it up for this last ten years,
1:42:05
honestly. Yeah, and Kevin Feigy. I met Kevin feige many many years
1:42:12
ago when he was Abbi a Rod's right hand man, back when Abby really
1:42:17
controlled most of the Marvel properties. And I would go in with meetings for
1:42:23
Abby, like twice a year. I would get a call, Abby wants
1:42:28
to talk to you about this. And I don't know if anybody knows Abby
1:42:30
Abby is. He's a character. He was I think an Israeli toy guy
1:42:40
that he made his fortune and toys. And he would always come into the
1:42:45
room. He would have a ring on every single finger of his hand,
1:42:48
a Marvel ring from the characters, and always wearing a Marvel t shirt because
1:42:54
he loved the Wark. And I actually got hired to write a script for
1:43:00
The Punisher too. My Punisher Too never got made. There were many many
1:43:08
writers after me. They brought me in because at the time, this was
1:43:12
before I worked on Spartacus, but they wanted a gritty, R rated They
1:43:19
pinched it to me as like imagine Taxi driver at the Punisher and I go,
1:43:25
I'm your guy. It's sold. So I wrote a very very,
1:43:28
very fucking dark Punnisher movie and they read it and they said, now we
1:43:32
can't do this, this is this is way too dark. Yeah. But
1:43:38
but with Kevin fig Kevin Figy, Yeah, I could not have more respect
1:43:42
for this guy because he was obvious right hand man for many, many,
1:43:45
many years, and he saw you know, Marvel movies with even with the
1:43:49
best of intentions, kind of done wrong, you know, and he got
1:43:55
his chance and he built this incredible I can't believe the amount of movies they
1:44:00
did in ten years. Amazing, and the quality is just absolutely interweaving of
1:44:10
all the stories and the characters donning. I mean, he just did what
1:44:13
the comics have been doing for decades. They just didn't movie for it,
1:44:16
like crossovers and stuff that just was never done intent and films. The changes
1:44:21
they made in the movies were all really good, you know, especially you
1:44:30
know, I remember growing up and reading The Infinity Gauntlet. Yeah, yeah,
1:44:34
story, and you know they didn't try to translate that directly into a
1:44:41
movie, which would have been nearly impossible because it was all cosmic and very
1:44:45
out there, and the way they took it and made it so emotional and
1:44:50
so surrounded despite the epic cosmic content was just absolutely stunning. I mean those
1:45:00
two movies wrecked me when when Peter Parker is stop, stop stopping, stop
1:45:09
a grown man crying. But really it's like all of those movies just when
1:45:15
I watched them, no pun intended. They are true Marvel, and I
1:45:19
don't think a lot of people, especially at other studios, understands why they
1:45:26
work because they try to replicate it. But there is a magic and it
1:45:31
starts with I firmly believe. I love d C. I grew up on
1:45:34
DC and Marvel. Marvel's characters are something very very special growing up and reading
1:45:41
them. Uh, the way stan Lee and and the whole bullpen put together
1:45:47
those characters with real world problems. I remember going back to when I was
1:45:55
a kid and I read you know, the classic when when Stacy dies ohh,
1:46:00
and I was gutted as a kid. And then I went back many
1:46:03
years later when I was on Buffy and I reread it and there's a whole
1:46:08
subplot with what's his name Osborne, not Norman Osborne, the kid, the
1:46:15
kid. Yeah, I know he's talking about it. Yeah, you know
1:46:17
what I'm talking about, where uh he got a looked down I think heroin
1:46:21
or something. It was a whole drug thing, right, that wasn't that
1:46:27
it's sane to do that back then? Insane? Yeah, And there were
1:46:29
all these great moral choices, that great Daredevil issue when uh he's fighting Bullseye
1:46:36
and they're hanging over the city and he decides to drop him because he doesn't
1:46:41
want him to kill anybody else. I mean, those kind of things just
1:46:45
really really got me. And uh, the genius of Kevin Feigey is taking
1:46:51
all those stories, making them forming, helping form them into the real world.
1:46:58
And uh, just I mean Avengers Age of Ultron. I know some
1:47:02
people didn't like it. I personally really loved it. But the whole all
1:47:06
four Avengers movies, when you look at them, it's just such a marvel.
1:47:11
It's also when people say, oh, CGI is ruined the movies,
1:47:14
I'm like, are you kidding me? I look, you can't like the
1:47:17
stuff like I'm all about, like what Nolan's doing and do as much in
1:47:20
camera as you can. When you can do stuffing camera, absolutely, but
1:47:24
you can't doing camera stuff at the Marvel Universe a lot of times because it's
1:47:28
just so yeah, it's just doesn't exist. Like try to do Doctor Strange
1:47:32
in camera, like, that's gonna be a bit rough, that's gonna be
1:47:35
a Doctor Strange is a perfect example a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. And
1:47:44
one of the best characters in the movie is this cape. We just had
1:47:48
so much personality. It's great. And also when the magic starts to happen
1:47:54
and the city's folding in on it, Oh, such a mind bender.
1:47:59
But with visual efects. I also go back to did you not like the
1:48:01
visual effects and Broke Back Mountain? And people say what visual effects? I'm
1:48:05
like, exactly, there's a ton of visual effects and Broke Back mount but
1:48:10
you don't notice them because their design not to be noticed exactly, and every
1:48:15
major thing. And I always find a problem. I always tell people,
1:48:18
and I've had this conversation with a lot of other screenwriters on the show,
1:48:23
is where DC's characters, you're writing for gods, and it's really difficult to
1:48:27
create conflict with a god like Superman, Like there's not much that can beat
1:48:31
him, and throwing the rock on him is a rough. It's like Okay,
1:48:35
that's old. We get kryptonite. But with every single Marvel character,
1:48:40
even a god like Thor is so vulnerable and even though he don't I don't
1:48:45
know if he can die or not, but the way they write him,
1:48:48
the way he worked the Hulk, you feel it, whereas in the other
1:48:53
characters. That's why I always think Batman is a Marvel character. Who's in
1:48:55
the DC universe Batman, right, he could so all right into Marvel's universe
1:49:00
and not even Blake. Yeah, you've hit a very, very salient point
1:49:08
is that in the d C universe universe that I love is a lot of
1:49:13
the main A list characters are god's trying to be human, where in the
1:49:17
Marvel it's humans trying to be gods basically. And that's the difference. It's
1:49:25
when you have, you know, a wonder Woman or Flash Green Lantern.
1:49:30
At least with the Flash, he's a guy and got powers and you know,
1:49:33
is but still a god though his powers are absolutely godlike. Yeah,
1:49:40
and I love both universes. I mean, you know, I know d
1:49:45
C has struggled with theirs, but I also think part of that struggle is
1:49:53
they saw the success of Marvel and trying to catch up to them in a
1:49:58
short form just doesn't work. We'll be right back after a word from our
1:50:02
sponsor, and now back to the show. Not with uh now, I
1:50:12
mean that's I mean. Justice League was obviously plagued with the difficulties, but
1:50:16
one of the biggest difficulties is, you know, the Marvel Universe spent years
1:50:20
and years and years introducing these characters before they put them all together, so
1:50:27
you had time to get to know them, uh with with the Justice League,
1:50:31
with Batman versus Superman, most of them you just saw briefly on a
1:50:35
hard drive, right, so you didn't get a chance to live with them.
1:50:40
And I don't fall DC for it at all, for trying to get
1:50:44
there, because you know, the Avengers movies were making billions of dollars.
1:50:48
Let's uh, let's get there. And I am an unabashed fan of Zack
1:50:54
Snyder's work. Oh, I agree with you, and I'm very looking forward
1:50:58
to the Snyder cut. I I am an I'm really looking forward to the
1:51:01
Stydter cut. And I think DC's starting to find its legs. I think
1:51:05
they're finding their legs now and we'll see where it goes. And I also
1:51:11
I think a lot of the shit that Zack Snyder gets is that I think
1:51:15
a lot of times people have a hard time separating screenwriting from director because I've
1:51:20
had a lot of people saying, oh, I love your directing on Spartacus.
1:51:24
It's like I never directed one episode. I'm just writing the show.
1:51:28
And with Zach, I think they often blame him for the exact story because
1:51:35
you cannot look at Zack Snyder's work and say he's a bad director. He's
1:51:39
an amazing direct remarkable. Look. I feel the same way about Michael Bay.
1:51:43
You can't look at Michael's Bay work and say he's a bad director.
1:51:45
You can disagree with story stuff, but my god, having directed one hundred
1:51:51
and fifty million dollar movie, I can tell you this, Michael Bay is
1:51:54
a fucking magician. I don't know how he does. He does it like,
1:51:58
well, he's drinking coffee and he's just like it's smoking a cigar.
1:52:00
He doesn't even It's like when Tony, like Tony Scott and Ridley, when
1:52:03
they do that, they've just they've just done it so long. I've actually
1:52:06
been a defender of Michael Bay on multiple my shows. I'm like, look
1:52:10
when Michael Bay came out, when the Rock came out. All action films
1:52:14
changed after the Rock, after the Rock, after Armor Geddon, all action
1:52:17
films changed after three hundred, completely changed the way so many things were shot.
1:52:25
Because those You got to give that credit the technicians behind it, the
1:52:28
craftsmanship. You can't. I mean Bay, I mean visually amazing. I
1:52:34
mean when Spielberg goes, you know, he's a pretty good visual director.
1:52:39
That's saying something. Yeah, And you know, I always think about Sucker
1:52:45
Punch. Oh. I know a lot of people have problems with not talking
1:52:49
about any of the story is beautifully shot. There's that scene on the train
1:52:55
where they're fighting the robots. And I met with Larry fong Uh. We
1:53:00
were briefly discussing possibly him coming on to do Pacific rim Uprising, and I
1:53:04
love Larry, and I asked him, Larry, I got to ask him,
1:53:09
how the hell did you shoot that? Because I've watched it like a
1:53:13
dozen times and I can't figure out how you shot it. And his response
1:53:16
was, I have no idea. Just turn the camera on, but I
1:53:19
have no idea how we shot that. It was but you know, ignore
1:53:25
script, ignore story, just look at that sequence and looking at it from
1:53:30
a director's point of view. There are so many times I will look at
1:53:33
a sequence and say, I don't know where to start. I can't tell
1:53:38
you where I would start to try to shy. I feel the same way
1:53:43
killed Bill with the big fight in the uh, in the in the nightclub.
1:53:48
It's like, how do you even start to plan this? Oh my
1:53:51
god? It's just I'm much more comfortable with two people in a room talking.
1:53:57
You know that. That that's my sweet spot. The other stuff.
1:54:01
I always consider myself first and foremost a writer. I will be learning how
1:54:06
to direct for the rest of my career. And I'm just I'm inspired by
1:54:12
by all of these amazing, amazing directors, and I study their work trying
1:54:16
to figure out how the hell would I even approach something like this. Listen,
1:54:20
I've talked to I've talked to people on the show who are really very
1:54:24
big, accomplished directors, have done a ton of stuff. And then we
1:54:27
start geeking out about Fincher, like we'll just start We'll just start geeking out
1:54:30
about Fincher and how he Like they're like, oh man, did you see
1:54:32
that shot? Like how the hell did he do that? And and how
1:54:35
is it like, there's just certain guys in our and gals in our in
1:54:41
our in our space who do things that Catherin Bigelow could shoot the hell out
1:54:45
of any action amazing. I mean, she's one of the best action directors
1:54:48
of her generation. There's no question she doesn't get the credit she deserves.
1:54:53
But you start looking at these directors and you just go, I don't even
1:54:57
So when you, as an accomplished director, can look at another director in
1:55:00
the business and go, how the hell did you do that? That's the
1:55:08
highest compliment you could do. And obviously you look at Kuprick or something like
1:55:11
that, you just like, what the hell? Yeah, And I think
1:55:14
that's important for anybody in the business to realize. I mean, there's the
1:55:19
rarefied air of like Spielberg, but even Spielberg, when you watch the documentary
1:55:25
about him saying that, you know there's a bit of terror every time he
1:55:28
steps onto the set because he doesn't know quite what he's gonna do, right.
1:55:33
But I think it's so healthy to admire other directors, other writers and
1:55:41
really aspire because I can't tell you how many times I've seen a TV show
1:55:46
and me and my other professional friends who have had long careers, saying,
1:55:50
man, yeah, it just made me want to stop writing because I felled
1:55:54
me on. How many we all felt that way when we watched Wayne It's
1:55:57
like, what the fuck am I doing? I left it up right?
1:56:00
Yeah, you watch something Nolan does, You're just like, well, yeah,
1:56:04
I I'll never get there. I'll try. That's I don't even know
1:56:09
how he's doing this. It's yeah, and when you watch and and like
1:56:14
I watched the opening sequence to the first twenty minutes of Awkward ORNs the other
1:56:17
day, and my god, yeah it holds to this day, like,
1:56:23
it's absolutely it. Would you hold those first twenty minutes You're just like,
1:56:26
how did he get away with that? That would there would be there would
1:56:29
be riots in the streets today if that was released by a major studio.
1:56:33
Yeah, it's it's just there are so many inspiring people, and you know,
1:56:38
ultimately, for me, I always come back to the little kid in
1:56:42
New Jersey who was I like Luke Skywalker. If there was a center of
1:56:46
the universe, I was the furthest from it. Where I grew up in
1:56:49
New Jersey, we didn't even have a movie theater. I had to I
1:56:53
had to ride my bike to the next town over a half hour away,
1:56:56
which was brutal in the winter. Let me tell you, but to me,
1:57:00
whenever things get really hard or tough, and they get a hard and
1:57:04
tough lot, I always remind myself that I am living the dream of that
1:57:09
little kid because I love what we do. I love trying to create that
1:57:15
magic, and I love taking big swings and sometimes they work, and sometimes
1:57:19
you get an exploding baby. You just never know. Can I quote you
1:57:24
on that? When you take a bit, sometimes it works and sometimes you
1:57:26
get an exploding baby. The best best quote of the show, true,
1:57:31
my friend. Thank you Steve so much for being on the show man.
1:57:33
I know we could talk for at least another couple of hours, but I
1:57:36
appreciate you doing again sometime after my next big failed movie comes out. I
1:57:42
appreciate that, brother, Thanks again, met my pleasure. I want to
1:57:46
thank Steven for coming on the show and dropping his knowledge bombs on the Tribe
1:57:50
today. Thank you so so much, Steven. If you want to get
1:57:54
links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the show
1:57:57
notes at any film also dot com forward slash seven two, and if you
1:58:00
have it already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com. Subscribe and
1:58:05
leave a good review for the show. It really helps us out a lot,
1:58:10
guys. Thank you again so much for listening to guys. As always,
1:58:12
keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay safe out there,
1:58:15
and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Indie Film
1:58:18
Hustle podcast at indiefilm hustle dot com. That's I N D I E F
1:58:24
I L M h U S T l E dot com.