Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 749: Save the Cat! Writing for Netflix & Television with Jamie Nash

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IFH 749: Save the Cat! Writing for Netflix & Television with Jamie Nash · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

• You are listening to the ifh podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Indie Film Huscle Podcast, Episode number seven forty nine. The writing is the only progress you make. Ernest Hemingway broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur How to turn your independent film into a profitable business. It's harder today than ever before for independent filmmakers to make money with their films, from predatory film distributors ripping them off to huckster film aggregators who prey upon them. The odds are stacked against the indie filmmaker. The old distribution model of making money with your film is broken and there needs to be a change. The future of independent filmmaking is the entrepreneurial filmmaker or the film entrepreneur. In Rise of the Film Entrepreneur, I break down how to actually make money with your film projects and show you how to turn your indie film into a profitable business with case studies examining successes and failures. This book shows you the step by step method to turn your passion into a profitable career. If you're making a feature film, series, or any other kind of video content, the Film Entrepreneur method will set you up for success. The book is available in paperback, ebook, and of course audiobook. If you want to order it, just head over to www. Dot filmbiz book dot com. That's film bizbook dot com. Now, guys, today on the show, we have author and writer Jamie Nash, who is the author of Save the Cat Rights for TV, the last book on creating binge watching content you'll ever need. And I have to say, after reading this book, I completely agree. If you're a fan of Save the Cat, which is the most popular best selling screenwriting book of all time, then you're going to love this book. Jamie goes deep into the step by step approach using Blake Schneider's principles In this conversation. We talk about the eight Save the Cat TV franchise types that will improve your story and your pitch, the not so secret TV pitch template, how to write and structure a compelling TV pilot that can launch both your series and your TV writing career, and much much more. We also break down a ton of different TV pilots and discuss some of our favorite shows and why they are so amazing. So, without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Jamie nash I'd like to welcome to the show, Jamie nash Man. How you doing, Jamie, I'm doing great. Thanks for having thanks for coming on the show. Brother, I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. I'm a big fan. Oh thanks man. Thanks. We're here to talk about your new books Save the Cat writs for TV, and I am a huge Save the Cat fan. I've had a multiple different authors who have written different Saved the Cat books on as well, because I you know, look a lot of people, some people are like, oh, it's a formula, and it doesn't you know. It's like, oh, it's taking other creativity out of it. And you know what, for some people that might be the truth, but other people, it's not. So I always like to present every kind of system way structure that you can because you just never know what writer's going to connect with what person. I remember when I Saved the I read Saved the Cat for the first time, I was just completely blown away and I was just like I was young, early in my screenwriting career. And there's a reason why it's still one of the best selling, if not the best selling. This is the selling by the way I have my book. Can't even knock it off its perch. So you know, we're number two A lot of times staring right at it and I'm like, can't we pass it for one day? And it's how old? Now? How long has that been? Around two thousand and seven, so it's been around for a couple of years now and it's still so there's obviously some sort of value there because there's been a lot of screen writing books between two thousand and seven and now. Yeah, and it's still there. So how did you I was reading a little bit before our conversation. You met Blake back in the day. Yeah, yeah, So I'm in Maryland and it you know, most of my career has spent doing indie horror movies, especially back in those days. And somewhere along the line, I was trying to network over the internet back in the you know, the two thousand internet, like two thousand and three, two thousand and four internet, and I remember I met him through a writing group. There was some kind of writing group, but I don't I can't remember how they met him, but he he was there, and he actually wanted me to write a script with him. He had seen that I had sold some stuff. I was just starting my career, and he kind of came to me and said, you know, I like your sense of humor. You have a good handle and structure, and he had this idea for a script and he pitched it to me. And he was even though his days were probably a few years before that, like the nineties were his heyday. You know, he sold I think he had two million dollar script sales. Of course, he infamously wrote stopper, my mom will shoe. That's how he broke into Hollywood. So he hadn't I'm not sure if he had sold anything in the last couple of years. But to make a long story short, he asked me to write a script with him, and I met him that way, and that was prior to Save the Cat. And I mentioned this in the book. He was using the Save the Cat terms on me and I just thought they were like standard Hollywood terms, Like he wasn't doing it and the way the book does it. He was just like, you know, we need all his lost moment here, we need in the debate section. And he was using these terms, and I was like, Oh, this is just the way. You know, maybe maybe he just got this jargon through, you know, talking to producers and stuff like that. But I so I almost organically processed that stuff even before the book now, just for him talking through that kind of stuff. So that's how I met him. That must have been That must have been pretty cool. And yeah, man, that must have been awesome coming up. But so how did you get into the business. Yeah, so I was a computer science major. That's how I got in the business. Now, I was a computer science major. I always loved film. I was doing computer games at the time, but programming them nothing really that creative. I always thought programming would lead me to the creative side. It never really did. It's a different kind of creativity. I was always like, yeah, and then one day I'll make my adventure game and I'll put my stories in there, and that never happened. So I wrote on this side, and probably in the early two thousands, I started to write screenplays. And the first one I I sold a script called Altered with Eduardo Sanchez. It was our Buardo Sanchez, the you know your listeners will know the blair Witch Project, one of the blair Witch Project directors, and that was his first movie after blair Witch and Universal picked it up and then Universal kind of buried it in some ways. It was a straight to DVD. Still to this day, people find it now. It came out I think two thousand and six, two thousand and seven ish, and people find it to this day and are like, I've never heard of this movie. You know, it has a lot of fans that just pick it up and find it and enjoy it. But that was my intro to the business. I made some good money. I kept programming because I was like, you know, I'm not it's not enough money. It's not going to change my programming ways. But then after that made some more movies, got a lot of indie gigs. I was really I was really this weird indie screenwriter. I was doing, and honestly, I think it was because I was cheap. I wasn't in the WGA yet. I wrote really fast. I was game for anything. I just love to write and make movies. And I was you know, when I compare myself to what I do today, what it taught me because I did finally go full time. I went full time in two thousand and eight when the market kind of crashed and I got laid off from my City Group gig. And at the time I was I was a computer consultant for a city group, not that I was laid off. They were just like, we're not making any money. We're not going to hire any of your consultants back next year. You get paid too much. And at that point I said, I'm going full time. And a couple of years after that, so it's been since two thousand and eight i've been a full time screenwriter and probably around two Yeah, in twenty eleven, I finally got in the Writers Guild. So, and what the point I was going to make was, when I was an indie writer, I had to write like ten screenplays a year just to make a little bit of money to survive. Like I had to write so many screenplays and do so many gigs because you know, I didn't have all those guild protections of minimum salary, residuals, all that stuff. And then once I got into Guild, my muscles were in a way that was just used to writing ten screenplays a year. So I'm kind of a nut in that I write about five usually like five to six scripts a year or something, pilots television shows, podcasts, I'll write novels, and probably since that time, I've been doing it a screenwriting full time. But now on the WGA, that's awesome, man, that's your unicorn. You mean someone who's a full time screenwriter, Like that's full time screenwriter unicorn. And also I'm in Maryland, which makes it even weirder. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show, right exactly. And that's the thing that a lot of screenwriters listening think that the only way you could make a living is if you're Shane Black, Aaron Shorkin or Tarantino, where you're getting million dollar paydays. But there are, and I've had on the show many just workmen, craftsmen, just people screenwriters who are just you know, cranking out work, you know, job per job, you know, and making a good living and supporting their family. But they're just working as opposed to like this one and done lottery ticket mentality, which so many screenwriters into the business with. Yeah, I mean you're the title of your show, your podcast, that's that was my life. It was indie film hustle. I legitimately I had to do ten scripts a year, because I don't know that I did ten. I'm using that number. It was more like five or something. A lot. Yeah, crazy, And to this day I get anxiety if I don't produce that many in a year. And it's basically like you say, the shame Blacks of the world, not even the shame Blacks, but the la folks. They have a different game they're playing where they have lots of meetings, their networking every day they live and breathe it. But for me, I'm constantly feeling the need to remind people I exist, and the way I do it is by writing. So I'm constantly saying, look, I'm here, I got a new thing, and I'm meeting people like after it goes out and I meet people talk to them, and so that's my life. So your network, So your networking technique is to actually create content and create projects. Yes, wow, what what what a concept is opposed to just doing one script that took you seven years to make it to write and hoping that that's the one that's going to break you. Yeah, it's it's definitely. I'm not sure that everybody can pull it off, but it's the only way I've known to really pull it off. And then when you get one friend, that friend is where you get most of your work, to be honest. So Ward of Sanchez is a good example. I did a lot of work with Nickelodeon. So the weird thing is I'm a horror person and a kid person, Like they're the two arenas. Yeah, so I've done tons of scripts with Nickelodeon, and I did tons of horror scripts. And once you find that person that really wants to champion you and likes your work and sees it, then they become the majority of your stuff. But I've sold over the years, I mean, it's crazy all the different places. Because we had a script at Blumhouse at one point, which is obvious, but then I also had something at like Discovery. Uh, you know, I had a pitch that I sold the Discovery at one point. I've had stuff at Amazon Prime all over the place. Yeah, so that's awesome, man, that's awesome. So you sat down and wrote a book called Save the cat Rights for TV, and right now, arguably television and and now you say television, I use streaming is all encompassing television and streaming. It is probably the most lucrative and easy I can't say easiest, but you have a better chance of making a living in the television streaming world than you do off of independent films, only because it's I mean, when you were coming up independent films, there was money to be made. Now it's a lot different world we live, and now the money is in streaming. So that's why I wanted to have you on the show, because I feel so many screenwriters who've been, you know, just hacking away at the independent film script which is fine and you can definitely keep doing that, are starting to transitioning, like you know, where I think streaming and television. I might want to start trying to get into the writer's room. I might start trying to develop my own show, all that kind of stuff. So first question I have for you is what are a few questions a writer needs to ask themselves when developing a show. Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So I have this kind of magic formula in the book that it's it's the first section of the book. By the way, the book will take you from A to Z, and I should define what Z is super quick is because, like you said, you put it perfectly. The number of jobs in the WGA television to film if you do the comparison. They do a report every year and the last I saw this isn't the exact numbers, but it's super close. It's ballpark. I should have looked up the exact numbers. Is I think of nine thousand jobs, seven thousand plus are in television. Wow, okay, yeah, So it's it's super skewed toward television. And it makes sense because they're writers rooms and all these other things. Right, it's more jobs, just more job, tons of tons of straight Each show has you know, five to twelve writers. They're in rooms, they get jobs. So, which is part of the reason why we did this book, why we did this rights for Television book. So the thing my book really tries to push is the reason you write a television pilot, and it's really concerned with pilots. So that's what I said A to z A. You start with nothing, Z end up a pilot. When I say a pilot, a pilot story, a save the cat outline, you know you'll have the outline ready to go. All you have to do is get in final draft and crank out the fun stuff. A TV show pitch and a TV show concept. So you could pitch your show or you could send the pilot in. Either one would work. And so when a writer is considering doing television, what my pitch to you is or to your listeners, is you need a pilot. A pilot is the key thing you're going to need, because really you're not one goal is to sell the show. That is one goal. But if you want one of those TV writers' jobs, if you want to get in one of those rooms right now, they're asking for original scripts. So you know, back in the day, and you know when I was coming up, they would ask you for spec scripts, which were like an episode of Friends, for example, you just write like episode two hundred and three of Friends. You know, nowadays nobody wants that, and I, you know, I pulled a lot of people just to make sure, because I considered putting that section in the book and I so I went out to my you know, showrunner friends, my friends that are on staff, and they say, nobody writes those anymore. There's some fellowships that actually take them, so it's not true. There are unicorns that still ask for them. There's like the one in one hundred that say we want to see our friends script to decide if you're going to a curator's room. But most people are looking for pilots. Some will take features and some will take plays, but ninety nine percent of them take pilots. Like pilots is what you need. So the book is really focused on the fact, hey, you might want to get one of those TV jobs. Hey you might you might try to write a pilot. So that said to kind of backtrack, to write a good pilot, to write a great pilot, you need a good show. So that was this is your question, so what are the things in a show that you really need? And from my experience and then from research as well, I came up with the three big things. These are the three A unique world is really important. There are some like stand up comics and stuff that their point of view is kind of the world. You know, like Seinfeld, it's a show about nothing, so to speak, but his unique view of it. His comedy is kind of the world. But for the most part, you're trying to find some kind of world that you know and that's authentic to you. Because again, these are writers samples that you're trying to get a job with. So your script needs to say something about you. So it has to be something you love. Yeah, you know, in the book, I give examples of things I love. I love pro wrestling, you know, I love street performing, I love computer programming. You know, these are things I love and I could speak about. I could talk about I love the research. So can we? So can we? Can we do a pilot that is a pro wrestler who's also a street performer and codes on the side. I've done it. I've gotten that. I've got four of those pilots. I've got those four pilots. Yeah, exactly, I've got all of this. The funny thing, you say, here's the weird thing. I've done two of those those worlds for pilots. But the programming one, which seems the most obvious and the most relatable, I haven't figured out a fun take on that. It's it's I mean, I saw Silicon Valley is a great and it's that coding per se. But it was so wonderfully done. I mean Silicon it was wonderfully wonderfully done. That's the thing between that and Halt and catch Fire. I don't need to do. I'm a huge Halt and catch Fire person. Yeah, and I love Silicon Valley. So what am I going to add to that? I can't find the fresh perspective. One day I'll find it. So so world is the first part. And then when I was going to pitch the first thing you learn in television. At every meeting, you'll pitch this great thing and they'll tell you, they'll sit you down. They'll say, we really care about his character. Character, character, character, It's all about character and television. It's who you want to invite onto your DVR every single week. It's all about character. And they always say to put character first. And I have trouble. I'm a plot first guy. I'm kind of a concept first guy. You know, I came up loving the Shane Black kind of stuff. You know, die Hard is kind of my movie. So I'm a concept first type. Person. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. But I really had to over the years, especially over the last I don't know six years, I've really kind of reinvented myself to try to think character first, almost, or that's try to really get at what pulls at my heart strings and what engages my own personal story and emotions in the script. So character is part two, and then the last one is And this is another term I never heard i got to Hollywood. The term was somebody would say, what's the franchise? That would be the first question you'd get. And to me it was a really cheesy kind of question, like God with his cigar would be, you know, what's the franchise, kid or something. But it was a term that was regularly used, and what it meant was story engine. What's the thing that if you put you know, you kind of sit there every week and you say, we need a story, the idea, what's the inspiration for, what's the con Where does the conflict come from, where are the goals, where do the heroes come from? And it's that franchise that's the thing. So in my in the book, just to give an example for a franchise. I came up these and Blake Sneier came up with these things called genres uh in his in his first book, and genres were basically story patterns. There were recurring stories we'd see over time. So he has like Buddy Love might be Buddy copp or romance he had. He had a Golden fleece, which might be like a quest movie, or it might be a sports movie for you know, you're trying to win the trophy. You're trying to win something monster in the house. That was my favorite fish a fish out, fish out of water. I think it was something on his shadow. There's I do think he has a true fish out of water. He has a full triumphant is the one that he has. So there are ones that kind of a fish out of water, but I don't think he has one. But he has a whole bunch. Trying to remember the number exactly. I think there's ten. There might be twelve. I should know. They're in my book too, So there's a bunch of them, and they were the they were the stories. So I came up with something similar, which is the franchises. I I kind of went through and I identified all the types of franchise types to help you figure out your show, and just you could probably come off up with these, just like you came up with Fish out of Water, like that's a recurring theme. You know TV shows, there's the procedural shows. I call those blank of the week. They're my blank of the week shows. So it could be anything from u X Files, you know, Monster of the Week, to CSI, which might be Case of the Week, to House which might be Patient of the Week or something like that. So that's one type of franchise trapped together, so they're they're family shows, you're you know You're or the office based shows, so you're in an office, you're trapped with these people around you. The conflict and the reoccurring stories come from those people in the interplay and the social dynamics, and so it came up with a bunch of these, much like Kia genres and the way I suggest. So there are the three things I think you've come up with. Honestly, think you start with the world, like what are the worlds you love? Then say who are the characters that really compel you in those worlds? And make a big list, you know, in in Silicon Valley. You know, you have the CEO, you have the kind of you have the guy who runs the uh, the incubator, you have, you have all these things and you write those down and you have all your characters. And then if you start applying to the franchise type, you know, is this a is this a trap together? Is this a? Is this a blank of the week? You know, and then you can kind of brainstorm the kind of show you're creating through those three main pillars that you're creating. So what are the so? What are the so we have a blank of the week, we have trapped together? Are there any other ones? There are so a lot of the modern serialized shows so blank of the week, they're kind of the old you know, episodics. There's there's a dude with a series long problem or season long problem. Uh so great, breaking bad, Breaking bad, or somebody that like twenty four or something like that. Right right, there's there's one called man or woman with a plan. So it's somebody almost like like the show Revenge, remember the show Revenge or something where somebody is like, uh, they have a plan and they're gonna they're going to enact it, there's buddy love. So some of these are similar to the genres because they tell stories over time and does this does this trans this go from comedy to drama to action? Absolutely absolutely so, much like the genres, the genres, the Black Snyder genres, which are very they're like cousins to these frames types. A monster in the house just as an example, so a monster in the house is usually like a person trapped in a scenario with some monster, but something like what about Bob or Cable Guy. They're not horror movies, but there's still patterns that are similar to fatal attraction or something right. Absolutely so. Yeah. So one of my one of the examples I give in the book is is dude or dudet with a series long problem or season long problem is the Good Place, And that's a comedy, but it could also be Homeland, uh, you know, or something like that. So they definitely cross genres. They're really just speaking to where you're going to find the conflict week the week, you know, and they help you kind of brainstorm what your show is, but they also help you brainstorm what your pilot will be, and they also help you brainstorm what the season might look like gotcha and and obviously select the procedural, like you know, blank of the week. That is more network television kind of world. That's not as much the streamers. Of course, there's always exceptions. The one place you might see it in the streamers is animation. When you get the animation, some of those are like like Rick and Morty or something like that. They can be serialized for sure. I mean, Rick and Morty isn't a streamer, but they have a big mouth, or you know some shows like that. Maybe not Jack a little South Park, but that's more that's comedy central. South Park's a shelf. Park's a good example. Again it's it's network, but it's kind of streaming too, right exactly when I say network, it's the four big ones. That's that's what That's what I'm thinking. Is NBCA or you know something like that. They're definitely those procedurals, those television like Hawaii five oh, you know, things like that, they're definitely in the blank of the week category or even the trap together category. Yeah, and that's the one thing I'm not really I've never seen a Hawaii ive oh or or or that or CSI in a streaming world. It doesn't. It doesn't really exist. Originals obviously after the fact, but never originals because I've because of the pandemic, have been consuming quite some quite a good amount of television and we just just sit there, just absorb. Like I just finally went back to Handsmaid's Tale. I hadn't. I hadn't finished it yet because I got pissed off when they caught her again. I was like, I can't, I can't, I can't take it. That's how I was. I got to season two. I love season one, Yeah, like this is great. I was like I can't. It's got to go forward somewhere I can't take and when they pulled her, when they pulled her back out, I was like, I'm out, I can't. But then I'm like, okay, they've got three seasons, so they got I got basically the third season, and then as of this recording, the four season starts. I think Friday, you and I are the exact same one. It's so funny. I took literally they pulled her out of the spoiler alert almost like my favorite show. When it was on, I loved it. I was like, this is great. And then season two I'm like I still love it, and then once it got to the end, I was like, I don't know if I want to watch season three. I can't. I can't. And just a perfect example Walking Dead. Like Walking Dead, I was a huge Walking Dead fan, and once Meagan showed up, right, once Meagan showed up, that whole season was so abusive to the audience. I felt it just you can't beat the characters you love to a pulp and never give them a win. It was just kind of like you were just seeing your favorite characters never win. And this Nagan was this He was a villain that was so so so on. The villain can never be unconquerable. If you if you create a villain that's unconquerable, then there's no hope. And that's what I felt in Walking Dead. And then I stopped watching. I hadn't seen it since that last season. Yeah, at the very end something, but yeah, yeah, I was a comic book Walking Dead person. So I read all the comic book. Yeah, And the comic book is easier to digest because it's it's not as much story, you know what I mean. Even though it takes place, there's just not as much of it. It's not as much so. Megan's great. I love Megan in the comic book his You're absolutely right though, he's like undefeatable. He's always two steps ahead, he always finds a way out. He's definitely a tricky character. I think it's kind of the lost syndrome as well. There when Loss got into those middle years and it just didn't feel like they were allowed to move forward. They jumped the shark. They jumped the shark. It's like, if we can go back to the old concept of jumping the shark. For anybody who doesn't know what jumped the shark actually means is from an old episode of Happy Days when Phonsie literally jumped the shark in his motorcycle and we all said, okay, you've gone too far. I think the season before it was a cliffhanger episode, and the season before he jumped like a bunch of barrels. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show, right, it's something else, that's fine. So in the next episode they had the top. Next year they topped it was in he was in l A he jumped some sharks. They were doing the whole evil and evil thing. It was just bizarre. So and that's where and that's where Jumped the Shark comes from. But yeah, that's that's It's just really interesting in regards to television because I mean I've consumed obscene amounts of television in my lifetime, and now this last year, i mean we just literally just go searching, like we we just finished, we just caught up with uh, this is Us and watched all of This is Us like and cried a lot. Uh, but it's so in my book. So it's such such an amazingly written shot show. To be able to work multiple timelines, the same characters at different ages, the plotting that's involved with that, it's it is on something I've I've really on a whole other level. I've just there's never been a show like it. The pilot is a great example to what people should be doing in they're pilots. Yes, because not to spoil it, but it's been out a while and look at its spoiler alert. If everyone doesn't want to know, that's just I'm sorry. Yeah, that's absolutely so. This is Us. It does this thing where it's kind of a mystery. You don't realize how the characters are totally connected. So you're doing the math the whole episode, and then in the very final like seconds of it, it shows you how they're all connected, and it does this like magic PRIs and it blows your mind. So you could just watch the pilot episode of This Is Us, turn it off and sort of be satisfied with the show. It's like a mini movie under itself. It's it's really a great a great episode. And the movie, by the way, it started as a movie, did it? Oh, the script started as a movie, which that I've never read it, but I did. But that's the thing and that technique they use constantly throughout the series. They'll be introduced to brand new characters, no in weird time frames. You don't even know what time of what the history, what historical time they did, much like Lost, much like Lost, right, Yeah, you're just like, what what's going on? And then you just like these weird characters. And then at the end, just like and then my wife and I would be sitting there going like where who are these people? Like how are they connected? Like where where is this line going? That? When are they gonna meet? And you're just like, oh, and I don't want to ruin it. But I just saw the one with the uh, the guy with the internet who helped start the Internet, And there was like this the whole the whole series. You saw this family and going through it, and there's one of the guys who actually did the Internet and created FaceTime, and that's the connected with a lot of I was just blown away. I was like, oh, that's brilliant. It was so well well, I mean, one of the best written shows on television currently, I think, no. And and like I said, I that. So my book also breaks down a bunch of pilots. That's one of them. There's a there's a whole bunch in the book. I tried to give something for everybody. I have Rick and Morty's pilot. How about do you have Breaking Bad? I didn't do Breaking Bad. Here's the reason I didn't. I tried to only I tried to only do First of all, a lot of people have done Breaking Bad, and I mentioned Breaking Bad in my character section. There's a whole big thing about it. But I tried to only do shows that weren't yet canceled. H So I finished, We're not finished canceled as a rough word. But I tried to do shows that we'd get another season next year. Just it was strategic, just longevity of the book, right exactly, so you're not going back to like Sopranos exactly. And then I think they announced like a week later, this is also end next year. But still I have one year before it will be. It is good, it is this is news to me. There ending it next year breaking news there. My wife and I have a theory that maybe one of these spin off characters will just become some new iteration of this is Us, like a new Family or something like that. Of course we'll spin one off. They could absolutely spin that off and continue to same model, different family, different stories. Oh yeah, you could absolutely, absolutely absolutely do that. Now one question, had you you talk about a beach sheet? How do you actually use a beach sheet in creating in television? Because I know how to do it in film, but how do you do it in television? Sure? So what I did in the TV, and honestly, my experience comes from the Blake Snyder beach sheet. I teach college students. I bought beach sheets and stuff, so I know it really well. And in recent years a lot of my students come and say Hey, I don't want to write a feature. I want to do a pilot. Can I do it in your class? And I've I've allowed them to do it, and over the years I've learned some tricks. I've learned how it works and how it doesn't. A lot of people that use the saving the cap beeatch sheet. Well, first of all, describe the save that cap Beachie is. I guess the save that kept Beachy is kind of this template that it spells out what should happen when in a movie is the most cross way of saying it. So, just as an example, I'll give through the first act. Just to give you a quick example. You start with an opening image that's like page one, the first thing, and it's usually some thematic image that shows captures a thematic or how the world is before the story starts. Usually it's book ended with a closing image on the end. And you'd be amazed in a film if you took opening and closing image of your films to see how there's a certain poetry there, how there's a certain book endedness there. So anyway, opening images first, then you usually get a setup. The setup is all the things you'd think it's like the character's homework and play your main character, who your main character is, what their life is like before the story starts. And that's the setup. And then you get to the catalyst, which is this lightning bolt moment that comes in like it's Peter Parker being bit by a spider, it's a meteorite crashing into the earth. It's some you know, some often random coincidence, some crazy thing that starts the story. It's meeting the person you'll fall in love with in a rom com. It's whatever that thing is. And that's the catalyst. And that happens on page twelve, according to Save the cat the first book of a feature film. So and it goes on and on like that. There's a midpoint that's that's like, you know, at your fifty percent mark, there's the all as lost, which happens about seventy five percent, and that's the worst thing that can happen. That's Obi Wan Kenobi getting killed, or your mentor dying or you know, at that point where you go into this woe is Me thing because some horrible happened just then in the darkness the soul and the finale and everything else. So the fifteen beats of the save that. There's fifteen beats in the Save the Cat beach heat. You can get his book and check those out. There in my book, I completely described Save the Cat. You can skip over the original book and just go to mind. I'm sure to say the Cat people will not be happy with that, but yes, no, I'm joking. No, there's a lot. There's a lot you can get if you can do it either way either way. Yeah, you can get a lot. You can get out any way you can. I'm sure Amazon has a buy two for cheap price right now in the whole absolutely Save the Cat. People calling me right now on the phone. I think I understand. So that's the beat sheet. It's it's just kind of this thing. It's kind of like a fill in the blank. And again, these are all the most crass ways of saying it. Uh. It's a kind of fill in the blank template that you can go through and say, once I have this done, i'll have an outline for a movie if I if I fill out all these sections, I'll have an outline for a movie. The problem is and and by the way, there's a Save the Cat writes a novel book that's hugely popular because those people are even and I say those people, I'm one of them. Novel writers are even more resistant to somebody telling them, you know, here's a template than film people are. And it's it's hugely popular in the novel world. And it's the exact same template, by the way, because the template is really just a template on how to tell a good story. And and it's really an adaptation of things that came before it, Yeah, sid Field, all those things. It's it's very similar to all all of those, but it has its own nuances and its own way of speaking the language, its own language. It's a language, uh Now with with opening like an opening scene of a pilot or a film for that matter, I love one of the reasons I love, I mean Breaking Bad arguably is probably one of the best written shows of all time. That pilot, though it is it is a fairly it's a it's a masterpiece, it really is. Did you give another fifteen minutes? And it's one of the best independent films ever made. If you do it the opening scene, what's your feeling on? Because with the templates that you're laying out the beach sheet, you're laying down the opening of that scene. And I'm a big fan of this. The opening of that movie is the end, and I love doing that because the audience is like, wait a minute, how did they're asking questions while you're going through it? And it's very powerful as a storytelling technique. Is that work inside the beach sheet somewhere? It does? So this that one. And I'm trying to remember Breaking Bad because while I remember the beginning, like I get mixed up later because it starts blending in with the other one. So it was when he so when he came, when he comes out, it's like him coming out in his underwear in the middle of the desert. Yeah, he's a witch video, right, that whole thing. And then I think it ends with him pointing the gun at the camera, and then we cut to you know, a week or two later or earlier or something like that. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. So I think the reason I ask, I'm not i'd never remembered the end of it because it blends with the whole season. But I remember at the beginning. So my understanding if I and if I remember correctly, because I didn't just watch it yesterday. I think we catch up to that moment and then we continue, so like that's generally it never ends at that moment. It generally is like a place where you pick up and then you keep going. So it's kind of like a really nice engine. Yeah, I was going to say, in the purest sense than it is a perfect opening and closing image because we're book ending, you know, you're opening and closing on the same kind of thing. It's just that kind of thing. One thing I realized when I watched a ton of television shows getting ready for this book. I found some things that a lot of shows did. And there's a thing I call the opening pitch, And it feels like the first two minutes that teaser scene of almost every show is almost like something you could show up to an executive's office and just show them that two minutes, like say, look, this is our show. What do you think? You know? What questions do you have? Breaking bad? Does it in more that teaser sort of way, like here's the coolest thing. We're gonna give you mysteries and stuff to think about, like how did this guy in his underwear in this in this car? In the desert and drugs and all that stuff. So they do it in that way. But something like The Mandalorian, for example, it gives you this mini movie at the beginning where it shows his tools, it shows how he fights, it shows that, it gives you Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, and you could just show that. You know, imagine if they showed that to us on YouTube, just that first, you know, that first teaser section. In that case, it's longer than two minutes. If they showed you that, you'd be like, I'm in, I'm in, and the opening pitch. A lot of them are in character driven shows like Insecure or even Marvelous Missus masl which is one of my favorite shows. A lot of times you get the main character just talking like like here's who I am. I'm just gonna pitch you me. So Insecure that starts with her pitching herself to a bunch of kids, and like it pulls back and she's talking to kids in the school and they're like, what you know, you're going too deep here. Marvelous Missus Masel, she's at her wedding and she's giving her wedding speech and she kind of pitches her heart like who she is and you see why she's funny, and it's like a stand up routine and you could almost just put that like here's who she is, and to an executive on the desk and be like, that's that's who she is. So this opening pitch thing is something I definitely saw in the teasers where you get that first two minutes to just kind of lean forward and say, this is our show. We're going to show it to you, Rick and Morty. Rick and Morty. The first two minutes of that is a random Rick and Morty adventure. It's almost like a James Bond thing, sort of like he gets the kid, gets woken up, they get taken on a spaceship, there's a bomb or something going off. It's it's Rick and Morty in two minutes. It's like an episode Rick and Morty in two minutes. So you find that this happens a lot in pilots like they that first two minutes they use so perfectly, and even in shows like network shows like Blackish was another show I analyzed. Blackish is it's like a montage, but it has the main character giving his point of view, like what what kind of the blackish thing means to him, and it's basically an overview of the whole ship. It's like it's like a teaser trailer for the whole entire show. So anyway, that's what I noticed about the opening pitch. Yeah, so you also talk a little bit about the wonky laws of pilot physics. What is that? Well, now, in some ways it was really in some ways that's there. It's two parts. In some reason, it's my catch off for all these weird things like the opening pitch. Like, there was another thing I noticed I called the whiff of change. Stated, so in pilots, you usually don't have full character arcs, but there's usually a change, and almost all pilot that might happen in episode due three because if you change the character in every episode, they would be weird by you know, the end of the season, they would be like they keep changing. But most pilots change the character in some small way, like to make a commitment. So you know, there's some spoilers here for I'll give you a couple of quick spoilers for the Mandalorian. I think most people know at the end of it, it's on them. If they haven't seen it. I'm sorry, yeah exactly. But at the end of that, you have this bounty hunter who lives by a code and he's touching fingers with baby Yoda. You know, it's like there's some change in the world that this bounty hunter is now going to protect. It's this minor change and it usually happens around last scene. But another show is like like Justified or something in an older show Christ you get the character literally asking a question was I justified at the end of the show, like in a shooting, and shows like Barry, which is one of my favorites, and I cover in the book with the sheet with a beat sheet. At the end of that, somebody comes up to him and they say, you know, I'm an actor, and he goes, I'm an actor too. He's gone from a hit man to an actor at the end of the show, and he states it. He actually says it. It's amazing how many shows you'll see now when you watch at the end of the pilots they say what the change is, they verbalize it, so they actually so the character. So for to use it as an example, you start off James Bond starts off in the pilot as a mild mannered, whatever you know. And then at the end of the pilot, I am now I am now a secret agent, and then the show takes off from there. Now this is Adventures as a Secret Agent. And of course he does change hopefully throughout the series, somewhat depending on the show obviously, because some of these procedural shows, these characters never change. It's yeah, no, but you got it exactly right. So whatever his arc is in that first episode which kicks off the show, and it's not always this is why it's wonky, yeah, but almost. It's so it happens so often that I wonder if an Mo went out because you'll see it so often. But I think what it really points to is when you're writing your own pilots. While a TV show doesn't change a character, you know every episode, your pilot should. Your pilot should have that movement. And the reason I think that's the case, your pilot almost needs to be cathartic by itself. It needs to almost stand alone a little bit like you could just go back to watch that Mandolin episode, Baby Yoda and this and that, and you could watch it almost in a vacuum and never watch another thing again. It has a beginning, middle end, there's a change in the character. You get the feeling it's a pitch for the show. You're like, but there could be continuing adventures? Is the thing? Absolutely, the story itself solid, And when he touches Baby Yoda, arguably Mandaloria could just Okay, you could stop right there and go, well, obviously he just returned the baby Yoda to the proper people and that's the end of the story, or yeah, that's what I want. The whiff of change. As opposed to a character arc, it's not total character arc. It's usually a question. And in a movie, I think it's very equivalent in a movie to when the character commits to that first act break. In the first act break a lot of times, like Luke Skywalker and Star Wars, the whole time he's like, I can't go. I get to help with the Blue Milk Farm or whatever doing it's a it's a what is it, God, it's a it's a moisture. A moisture was a moisture basically Blue Milk Farm. I think that would have been a lot. I actually like the Blue Milk Farmers. When I reboot it, it's gonna be a blue milk farm. They're gonna have blue cows. It's gonna be there. Uh So by the time his parents are you know, or his parents, his aunt and uncle are killed and realizes there's spoiler alerts, spoiler boiler smart work, there's and his home's burnt. He kind of looks and he's like, he has that slight width of change. He's going on an adventure now. The only thing I'd say, a pilot, they almost say what the change is. They almost physically they almost verbalize it. That's that's the amazing thing. But usually there's that slight change where they've gone from uh, moisture farmer to adventure by the end and they make some commitment and that that'll be the rest of the series, that'll be the season you're watching. And in Mandalorian did it's so beautifully because they did it without words. They did it with an image, and it was like this hard ass, just militant Samurai of the universe for a moment softened when he saw and connected with this little creature who we all just were like our minds exploded when we saw baby Yoda, and you're just like, oh, this character's changed forever, just because of and that motion of him touching the finger. All of that is like I'm getting chills. Damn it, damn you, John Favor. But it's it's true. By the way, Mandalorian pilot is also broken down in my book. It was one of the ones I chose and mart Yeah, to backtrack to the thing you said, Mandalorian has a hint of serialization for a streamer. It definitely has a mission of the weak quality, kind of a throwback to the eighties almost. It actually has like an aten vibe to it will be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show. It has a serialized story running on the higher level. Sure, and it gets more serialized like toward the later episodes in each season, but it definitely has like we gotta help this person. Oh no, it's literally like every episode like Okay, we're gonna go break this guy out of jail. Okay, we're gonna go to this moon and we're gonna go do this, or we gotta go to the to this this uh, this base that we got to sneak into. Like every week it's something and it literally leads itself to the next episode like it's so beautifully that look, what do we gotta do now? Oh? Well, well, actually it doesn't lead to the next episode, but it starts. So a lot of times he'll just be like fly flying off into space, and then the new episode like pick him up from space. Oh, we're gonna land on this planet. New adventure. We gonna need we need some we need some blue milk, we need to we need some blue mich Oh. Look it's seven Samurai. Okay, and let's do seven Samurai now on this planet. And it's it's great. No, it's it's it's a wonderful show. I wanted to ask you something though. With television, the old school way of television where you had commercial breaks, there was a very specific style of writing plot point breaks or that had to hit because commercials. So it's generally like a five act. I think it was a five act. It the funny generally if ive, it really depends on the network you're on. In the show, it's it's funny. They're actually heavily negotiated things. So you know, like if you were Vince Skill again, you might be like, I only want four. There's no way I'm doing five, you know what I mean? And then and and C's like, uh, walking Dead is ten or whatever, you know, walking Dead as a ton they just do it. They put commercials all over the place, and he could say, well, we don't have zombies, damn it, so we're doing four that's right, that's right. And then and then something like mad Men. I think the thing with that show was, uh, the showrunner said, I'm not writing them in, you figure it out, and they they had to figure it out. They had to go in and put ads in. So they come kind of abruptly in mad Men when writing. But when writing a pilot, let's say you because now there's many more streamers than there are network my advice to people, and people take this the hard way in some ways. I don't think they like hearing this necessarily. I don't think you have to write act outs that all in your pilots anymore. You can just totally forget about that for now. Once you're hired or once they buy your script, then you worry about it. But nobody's judging your script on where you put your act outs or even if you know what they are. They're purely judging it on story and most and I won't even say most almost everybody I talked to you said, yeah, don't worry about the act outs. However, there are some people that like putting them in just because it's kind of like when people put smash cut in their feature. You know, it just feels something like smash cut to Interior gym night, you know, And I think people like to put him in for that dramatic moment. Like it's almost like what I say in my book, I always say, right, you could write to them, and I feel like if you replace them with dunt dunt dum, you know in your head, and that works for you, then feel free to write to them, because you really they serve a valid They serve as a valid inspiration to write to these big cliffhanger moments and have five of those in your script and stuff like that, like if that inspires you to write page a page turner, then put him in or put him in and then take them out to me in if that inspires you. But you don't need them, and if they give you any anxiety at all, like where should they go or should they be here or there, then I'd say take them out. I've written for shows that have them, and it's funny. When you get to production there, that's when you get like the network version, Like on our network, we do it this way and they're very specific. Like you, when you're writing a pilot, the advice is you can put them wherever you want. So Act one it can be on page twelve, it can be on page ten. It's your called twenty. You make it up. You're your own network when you write a pilot. But once you get into a phase where AMC buys your pilot, they have certain network rules, like it might be act your act one, Act out must come between page ten and fifteen, and if it's on page fifteen, you have to give at least six pages before the next one, or you know, they have certain rules that are unique network to network. I would advise not worrying any bit about that until they pay you to worry about it, because you don't know if your shows can be on Netflix or Amazon Prime where they don't have ads, or Hulu which has ads but sort of doesn't, or you know, work it kind of does if you pay, you don't. It's it's the Wow Wild West like this. I mean, for decades it was pretty much the three three then four networks and television was just written the way, and that was just the way it was, and then all of a sudden, now it's literally a thousand different ways and thousand different approaches and a thousand different things. You can never can you imagine getting Breaking Bad on the air. She's never would have happened, never would have happened. You know, shows like that would have never been able to get on anywhere else, Or mad Men, you know like that. Yeah, that doesn't seem like a good well. Breaking Bads arguably one of the worst pitches of history, and Vince Gilligan says, I was like, it's a horrible, horrible pitch. I remember I didn't watch Breaking Bad at first. I was like, it sounds like Weeds, so it's like Weeds a little bit. And I was like, I'm not gonna I loved Weeds, but I was like, I saw Weeds, I like her. I'm not sure that I like you. I actually I actually caught I caught it. I and I all the way up to the last five episodes. So the last five or six episodes I watched, okay, but we binged all the way up until then, So this is great. Season two, I picked up on it somewhere in season two. Uh yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, it is what it is. Can you explain what a board is and how do you use a board in the pilot? Is there a way to use the board in the pilot? Yeah? Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. So the board. This is what's kind of interesting about Save the Cats. So Save the Cat is mostly known for this fifteen point be cheap, right, but it introduced a lot of other cool concepts like write your log line before you write us, scare up, you know, and things like that, the genres that we mentioned briefly, but one of the big things that had from day one was this thing called the board, and in a film, basically what the board is. It actually translates really well to television because they use boards like crazy and television. A board is just an index courtboard. It could be a digital board. It's whatever you want to make it. But usually at some I don't those aren't those. It's those index cards that you can buy a pack again at the grocery store. I think I buy one dollar is one hundred cards perfect for a movie or a TV show. So for one dollar you can have your your movie. By the final we Save the Cat as pre printed ones. Now they have things to build things up. I've seen post it notes. People use post it notes as well. I use post it notes. I'm a post it note guy. It's just the more disposable. I don't have a good board, so I just posted. Yeah, you just put on the pop it. Basically you write your scenes down on it. So you know, let's say we were doing Breaking Bad, it might be like confessional scene. We might just jot down the basics of it. Confessional scene in the desert, Walt thinks he's about to die. That'll be first card. Tack that up on the board, you know. Second scene, saddest breakfast in the world. He turns fifty bacon, blah blah blah whatever. We tack that up on the board, and basically we construct an entire show with these index cards. In a film. Blake's guidance was forty cars. By the way, this part was revolutionary to me, even though I knew him. He told me this, and I didn't know what he was talking about. So when we were doing that script, he said, let's okay, I think we're ready. I think we have our beach sheet. Let's do a ten to twenty ten, and I was like, what's a ten twenty ten? I just assumed all raders, he made this up. I mean, he made it up. Let's do a ten twenty ten. So what a ten twenty ten was was was forty index cards. That's what he considered a feature film. Ten were act one, twenty were act two, and then ten we're act three. So act two, as you see, is twice as big as the other two. Really it's four acts. That's the dirty secret of feature filmmaking. Act two is two A. You know, Act two is you know, you get two A and two B and they get split into twist. TV works the same way, so it'd quirk all those forty up ten ten ten or ten ten ten ten four times. TV works the same way, but there's a lot less beats, and it just depends. The big thing I found in adapting Save the Cat. It adapts fine. Writing a pilot, it adapts great. I use it myself to write pilots. But what it doesn't adapt to, and what I've pulled away is the beach sheet is more like a to do list and less like a this must happen page twelve. This must happen at page thirty because what you find is a show like the Mandalorian, that opening pitch, that cool scene in the beginning where he captures the person and I think there's a monster that attacks him in the desert. He flies away and they do the carbon freezing and all that stuff. That's like twelve minutes long. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. It's twelve minutes. So if you were doing a ten twenty ten and that was just your opening pitch, you'd blow up. It's like sucking up so much juice of your timeline that you'd be in big trouble. But what I found in television is they spend time where they need to spend time. A lot of times in pilots, it's the setup, because they need to set up characters, they need to set up character art, they need to set up worlds, they need to set up all this stuff. So they need all that time for the setup the first act. But then sometimes Mandalorian is a perfect example. The funning game section, which is the first part in Save the Cat terms funny Games is the first part of act two. It's usually the promise of the premise if you were seeing a movie, it's like trailer moments, it's like the monster went wild, or the people are on an adventure or something like that. But in the Mandalorian, because they do all that cool stuff in the beginning, it's really small, like funning games. Like he he ends up there, he has to tame the beast that that creature I think to ride and him and the ugnot go off on the adventure, and that's kind of all they do for funny games. It's really small and mid twist and stuff like that happened afterwards, so they In television, you as a writer have to pick and choose what gets the space. All the beats get hit, but they don't necessarily get all the space, like in a regular feature where you say, you know, it's very rigid. In a feature, it's like ten for the first act, twenty for the second act, ten for the fourth. In a Save the Cat television show, it could be it could be like I got five for the for the setup, I have three for act two. I have three for Act two B, and then I have two for the finale or something. You might do some weird combination and I give a lot of guidance, so that it's sort of it's sort of where true television writing comes into play because television writers often in writers rooms. If you google writer's rooms and you look up the breaking bed writer's rooms, which you'll see is these boards. You'll see note cards and boards. They live and breathe off note cards and boards even more than feature writers do. It's really how most of them break story. Now, do you need to show Bible. You don't need to show Bible. You don't need to show Bible. I do have a section where I tell you how to write a sort of a Bible light, which is a pitch document. That's what most people have. Most people have the one two punch of their pilot and some kind of five to ten page pitch document that you know. It sets up what season one will look like in a very high level, like a couple pages at most. It sets up who all the characters are. It tells what your personal connection is to the story. And that's the pitch document. But the truth of pitching television. Pitching television is usually done face to face. It's very rarely done like submit your pitch document to us. I have you do that for preparation, but also to prepare in case you're called, Like somebody reads your pilot and it's time, they're like, hey, we're bringing you in. You know, come on, you're ready to go if you have If you do the pitch document I described in the book, which was given to me over many years from manager's studio execs all that, I'm kind of giving you the one they gave me. You'll be ready to pitch. Nice. Now, I'm going to ask you a few questions to ask on my guest, what are three pilots? Everyone should read? Three pilots everyone should read. This should be an answer that's I'm rock solid ready. The truth is, I'm trying to be original, but breaking bands pretty darmited. I just can't get away from it. It's right, I mean if I mean it's like Chinatown is Chinatown. I mean you're gonna have China Town. I mean Godfather's Godfather. I'm mean, you gotta read it exactly exactly. The other one that comes to mind, and it's not my book because it's an older one, is The Shield. I think The Shield is a great pilot. It has this great ending that throws you into the next week. It gives you everything about those characters, but it also gives you a beginning, middle end story, so it feels kind of procedural, but then it also feels like it also feels like it's got a continuing story. You want to watch the next episode, You want to get to that next episode. And I'll take one from my book. One of the ones I really like for my book was Barry's Pilot. It just fits really well. It does a really efficient job of being exactly what it is, telling a surprising beginning, middle end story, and setting up next week, all the while being thematic character driven. So I'm a big fan of the of the Barry one. I can't remember if I read the very one. I think I did. I think it's out there. I think you can get it, because I think I think you can get it as well. Now, what advice would you give a screenwriter trying to break into the business today? Honestly, I mean, this is no joke. If you can, if you can swing it, television is the way. And honestly, that's why I wrote this book, because my students are going to television. I've been going to television for the last few years. Think television, Think about these pilots. Try to get yourself a good pilot. The other advice that I always give is you kind of have to prepare. You have to make yourself better as much as you have to make your work better, because it's it ran like we went over my screen in the beginning of this. If I told you it was going to take you seven eight years before you get in the WGA, you've got to be ready for that. You know, you gotta be ready. And the way I got ready for it was I learned how to write five scripts in or six scripts a year, or ten scripts a year. I also had to like understand failure and understand patience and understand all that stuff. So I'm a big fan of like figure out how you're going to endure the long journey as opposed to just find a way through the door. Like set yourself up so that you can be persistent, so you can be persistent over a twenty year period and not like a wild person over a one month or one year period. You know, set yourself up for the long term. That's what I'm saying. And what's the lesson that took you the longest to learn? Whether in the film business, or in life. Wow, that's a tough one because you know, the lesson that took me the longest to learn in the film business is probably something I'm still needing to learn. That's that's that's the hard part about that question. Yeah, I've got I get that answer quite a bit, and like I'm still learning it. I'm like, but there's always something for me. It's patience. It's always been patience for me. Like it's gonna take, it's gonna take twice as long, if not longer than you ever expected to be. I sadly, I've learned patience. Not that it makes me happy, but I've learned that honestly, and honestly, it feels like I've just been ground down to the numbness of patience, you know what I mean. It's like it's like I'm so numb. You have no choice in the matter. It's it's like it's an acceptance of the inevitable. It's that's all it is. When you're like, I'm a patient person, No, you've just accepted the realities of the world. It's and in our business, my god, nothing moves fast. Nothing, nothing moves fast, and sometimes that slow move, like right now, I have, you know, three projects out there. One is getting notes at a super slow pace, the other is trying to attack director at a molasses like pace because they're going to big directors, and the others trying to attach an actor at So when I say attached actor, it's like a situation where you send a script out, it goes to the agent, The agent takes a month to get back, then they say yes or no. They usually say yes, and then it takes two months for the actor and you're waiting all that time to go to the next actor. So it's like the slow slog of attachment when I'm doing When I'm doing projects now, I think of it as like it's a three years, three to four year prot Like I'm just I walk in knowing that if it's going to be a three year like oh yeah, in three or four years, is going to get where I need it to be. But so this isn't really one that i'd say so my lesson in regards to that, like how I've learned to deal with that, it's not a lesson. It's a weird lesson because I don't want to put pressure on people to do it this way. I've learned that the only way I can stomach that, the only way I can add patients is by spinning lots and lots of plates. That's why, Yeah, that's why I'm doing. That's why I'm doing Save the Cat Rights for TV. While I'm writing a pilot, while I'm pitching a TV show, while I'm doing while I'm reading a novel, if I don't have ten plates spinning at a time in some way, I mean, one of them could be an old script that's out there that's spinning, you know what I mean. It could be like a five year old script that I've kind of given rebirth to and sent to somebody. But if I don't have ten things out there, I start getting anxiety. And that's part of what I'm saying for the long haul, like, think about the stuff you're doing now may not pay off for like seven years. I've got a bunch of scripts that didn't sell for like six or like I had managers or people that would say, I don't think I don't think this one's very good, and then it sold like seven years later. And it's not that they were wrong, it was just it wasn't it time. Yeah, the market changed, will be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. So get those things going, think about them long term. But the only way I find to deal with failure, not failure, but rejection and the slow slog is to have so many things that today i'm talking to you and I'm talking about save the cap rights for TV. I'm not thinking about all the rejections that are probably piling up in my email right now. I'll think about those once we hang up, and then I'll see that. But I have like fifty things going on, but right now I can only focus on this thing. So it's a great way. The best way to to you know, stem off that rejection, to stem off that that impatience, is to start something else, to keep moving, to keep spinning plates. So I'm a juggler, by the way, so plate spinning is my great, great, great advice. I do the same thing I have. So actually have too many plate spinning to the point where it gets a little out of hand and people are like, how are you doing that? I'm like, I'm just built to do that. I have a thousand things going on a thousand times, and they're like, how many? How how do you put out circle you know it can be weird because you probably couldn't stop it now that year. No, Like when I people are like, how do you put out four to like three to four podcasts fresh every week with four shows or something like that or five shows and something like that, And I'm like, I mean, if it was just one, I'd be bored. Like I could do what I could do one episode a week in my sleep. Five is challenging. Are you telling me I'd have to sit with my own thoughts for a while. No, you can't have any No, no, stop that, that's not possible. Uh. And very last question. Three of your favorite films of all time? Yeah, this one. It's so funny. I keep changing this one for some reason. All my movies, by the way, are ones I've realized or ones I've seen in theater as a kid. Like. They're my favorites. And unfortunately I'm heavily in the Spielberg Lucas. I was in that, so I apologize for being lame, as I'm about to be. The Raiders of the Lost arc is my number one favorite, And now I start switching. These are the ones I start switching back and forth back to the future. I'll put it number two. I love Back to the Future. I like the mix of genres and the comedy, and then the third one is the one. Sometimes it's RoboCop. Sometimes it's Evil Dead too, sometimes it's there's all these weird ones. I mix back and forth. I'm trying to remember when I said the other day. And sometimes it's Star Wars, the first Star Wars. We don't call it a New Hope in this house obvious, yes, yes, so it's it's and sometimes it's Aliens. And I mix and match all of those. I saw them in the theater and I can't. It's it's strange because even Back to the Future sometimes slides back to three and something else is liked, and et is another one. I mean, there's so many Jaws. But today I'm going to go with Uh, I'll just go with Star Wars because I don't make fair enough fair enough. I mean, I mean, you don't have to go too far with me. Now, where can people find out more about you? And where can they buy the book? Oh? Sure? Uh yeah. Probably the best place to see me is on Twitter. I'm at Jamie Underscore Nash. I respond there. I do a lot of QP messages, sign up follow me. A lot of save the Cat kind of stuff too, a lot of writer stuff. So if you're into writing stuff, I'm definitely involved in the writer writing community on Twitter, so please follow me. I'd love to have any interaction. Uh. And you can buy the book on Amazon. Uh, that's the usual go to place, but you can buy it anywhere that sells books. It's it's in the bar, It's in a couple of Barns and Nobles. It's funny. I'm constantly tracking, like when's it going to show up at my Barnes and Noble, Like it's it's in like four place is in Maryland where I live, but it's not in the one that's right across the street from my house. About it? I want it there, so but you can buy it. You can buy it anywhere you buy books. And the audiobook is about to drop this week. I don't know it. This week. Amazon's is thirty Days and oh no, thanks forever, thanks for ever. Yeah, thirty Days runs out this week or next week, so soon soon will be an audiobook if you prefer that, some people do. Jamie, Thank you so much. This has been a very educational conversation. I really feel that you were channeling Blake when you were writing this book, because a lot of the things that you're saying ring so Save the Cat in the way that you're presenting the information in a very simple, easy to understand method, which is what Saved the Cat is so brilliant and what Blake was so brilliant at doing. So congratulations in the new book and hopefully I'll help a few writers out there. So thanks again, my friend. Yeah, thank you. I want to thank Jamie for coming on the show and dropping his knowledge bombs on the Tribe today. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, including how to get Save the Cat rights for TV, head over to the show notes at indiefilm muscle dot com, Forward Slash seven forty nine, and if you have it already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com, subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It really helps us out a lot. Guys. Thank you again so much for listening to guys. As always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle Podcast at indie film Hustle dot com. That's I N D I E f I L M h U S t l E dot com.