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IFH 753: Screenwriting for Netflix and Television with Neil Landau · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFAH 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 fifty three. Cinema is a matter of what's in
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  the frame and what's out. Now, more than ever, we need to
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  talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see
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  the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this. Martin Scorsese
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  broadcasting from the back Alley and Hollywood. It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast,
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  where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the
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  jungles of the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome,
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  Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your
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  humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Film
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  Entrepreneur. How to turn your independent film into a profitable business. It's harder
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  to than ever before for independent filmakers to make money with their films from predatory
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  film distributors ripping them off to huckster film aggregators who prey upon them. The
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  odds are stacked against the indie filmmaker. The old distribution model of making money
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  paperback, ebook, and of course audiobook. If you want to order it,
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  just head over to www. Dot filmbizbook dot com. That's film biz
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  book dot com. Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis. My next
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  guest is an award winning screenwriter, producer, author, and professor. He
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  actually wrote co wrote the cold comedy Don't Tell Mom The Babysitters Dead, starring
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  Christina Applegate, which I always say is a writer of passage for kids of
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  the eighties and nineties, because I think we've all been there one way or
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  the other, where the babysitter dies and we've got to hide the body,
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  you know what I'm talking about. But he's also written for Doogie Howser,
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  The Secret World of Alex Mack MTV. He's also produced a ton of different
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  stuff and he currently runs the MFA and Writing Television program at UCLA for their
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  Theater, Film and TV Department, And now he's also written this book.
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  He's also written four other books, for instance, like one hundred and one
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  Things I Learned in Film School, The Screenwriter's Roadmap. So his latest book
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  is called TV Writing on Demand, which is what the contest is about,
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  and it's all just about the medium of TV, how popular TV is coming,
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  all the different programs out there. It's a pretty interesting book. I've
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  actually I actually got an advanced copy of it. It's a really really interesting
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  read. And what we talked about in this episode is what I keep telling
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  people when they ask forst scream arning advice. I go, everybody wants to
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  see you have a TV pilot of some kind, because that's where all the
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  money is right now, and that's where all the hits are right now.
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  TV is definitely it. It's the most populars ever been. It's the Golden
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  Age. But it's also very diversified because there's so many different mediums that this
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  episodic format is coming to, whether it be YouTube, POLU, Netflix,
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  whatever. So, without further ado, Neil Landau Well, I kind of
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  started off as a rating play. I mean it actually starts with a lot
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  of what all my books are about character development, about build from empathy,
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  so and filling emotional voids. You know, some might give what characters go
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  through and what we see even in comedy, or characters who have void in
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  their life and deficits, and the course of the story filled those voices.
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  So my father died when I was six years old of a heart attack.
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  He was playing basketball with some friends. He collapsed on the basketball court.
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  He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital of a heart attack.
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  And so from that age forward, I had this very rich, fantasy
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  long estake. I was always writing little scenes and plays and wanting to disappear
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  into another wall just to kind of, you know, ease my my loss
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  of my father. So I was writing plays from the fourth grade, I
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  started writing little plays and skits and and I actually thought I wanted to become
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  a playwright. Me probably at the time, just because I shared the name
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  with Neil Simon, who was the most you know, well known playwright at
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  the time, and I loved his work, and so I thought I would
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  write plays and be like Neil Simon. I didn't think, well, he
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  already existed and I have to create my own voice. I just thought I'll
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  just in him and you know, be the next Neil, the next famous
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  Neil playwright. But being raised by a single mom, we always had financial
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  problems, and so I started to think, well, it's very difficult to
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  make a living as a playwright. And I knew what it would like to
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  grow up, you know, financially disadvantage. So I started to think about
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  well, and I knew some people who had gone to film school and who
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  had written movies and for television, and I did know if you can succeed,
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  which is versus a big if, that you can actually make not only
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  make a living wage, but you can actually make a lot of money,
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  which would give me security. And so I segued from writing plays into I
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  went to UCLA Felt School and started writing screenplays. And at the time,
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  one of my best friends growing up, Tara Aisen. It was one year
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  behind me at EUCLA, but we went to actually elementary school, junior high
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  which is now middle school, high school, and UCLA together, so we
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  were best friends for a really long time. We just studied to partner up
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  and write scripts together because I thought she was the smartest, most talented person
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  I knew, and she felt similarly toward me. So we wrote a few
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  screenplays while we were going to school, and one year after I graduated,
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  we kept writing, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday we'd write and
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  Sunday afternoon light all day. And the first couple we just stuck in a
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  drawer. They weren't very good. The third one became dun't some mom.
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  The babysits did, and we thought we'd be lucky, just you know,
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  to have anybody ever noticed us. But that script actually there was a bidding
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  war at three studios and it was one of those you know, big spec
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  script sales from to the eighties in eighteen eighty seven where our lives just changed
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  dramatically because we went, you know, I went from making eighteen thousand dollars
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  a year making hunch of the year and then we we're kind of off and
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  running, and that that's kind of how it all started, just from you
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  know, escaping life fits a rich fantasy life, and then just gabbling and
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  thinking maybe we can actually do this as a career, and that was the
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  first thing. And once you solve an original spec script or original pilot that
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  really creates so much heat and buzz that you could actually build a career on
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  that if you can deliver again, you know, after that, if it
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  wasn't. Just so that was kind of my inspiration and how it all started,
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  and with Don't Tillmorrow. And one of the things Chara and I both
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  had in common is are we both were raised essentially from broken families, and
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  she was her father didn't die, but she was mainly raised by same mother.
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  We also both looked extremely young for our ages at the time, and
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  people always used to ask if our agent had to give us a ride to
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  the met because they didn't believe we had our driver's life. Yeah, it
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  was like that. So we liked also the idea of playing with age,
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  you know, And and we wrote one script about a nark in a high
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  school who was much older and closing as a high school student. And then
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  with Don't Tell Mom, we thought of the idea somebody who actually could look
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  older could go into the adult world and pretend to be an adult. So
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  that was also part of the kind of a theme that we were exploring,
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  and that's kind of how it all got That's how our career really gets turning.
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  You know. So when you were writing you know, don't Tell Mom
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  the babysitter is dead, you know, this is there basically launched your career
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  when you were writing this, did did you actually I mean, were you
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  when you're writing it or maybe when you were finished, did you actually say,
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  you know what I think this is? You know, a home run
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  shot. I think this is you know, you know, you know what
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  I mean, like, I think this is going to be Yeah, yeah,
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  we would hookingly. We would jokingly say that. One of the things
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  that is so different between me and Tara is I tend to be very optimistic
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  about everything and pragmatic, and Chara tends to be more cynical, and so
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  I think she always the thought, well, who knows, we may never
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  get anywhere. But I felt the thing about Nelson Moll that was different was
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  that we had so much fun writing it. There were so many times saying
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  that we would just you know, be laughing hysterically, and we kept we
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  would say, we don't know if this is any good, but we think
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  it's I think it's funny. We're having a lot of fun writing it.
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  We well, actually, this is actually an even better part of the story.
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  So with the name, I was always also interested in writing for television.
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  So I did my internship at at MPM Enterprises, which was Mary Tayler
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  Moore and Grant Tinker's Company. And a show that I just love so much,
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  which really influence everything. We'll be right back after a word from our
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  sponsor, and now back to the show in television and in my life was
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  Hill Street Blues, And that was the show that I interned on the most.
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  And you know, I was on set and I would watch day's and
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  I would get to see all the revisions and it was just a great experience
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  just to observe and be around that show. But one of the other things
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  I did in rain internship was I delivered mail around the CBS lot. This
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  was CBS Redford that which is in Studio City, right near where I live
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  now actually, and I would deliver mail in a little bicycle. One of
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  the people I delivered mail to was Beth Ufner, who at the time was
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  senior vice president of Comedy Development, and she graciously agreed to read a script
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  and she ended up leaving MTM and becoming a literary agent, and she joined
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  a big At the time, there was a very big, uh literary agency
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  called Broder, Curl and Web up there, which no longer exists. It
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  was I think they were absorbed by either I see them God, I don't
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  remember. They were definitely bought out death ended up leaving. But the point
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  of the story is Beth took us on as an agent and we were hip
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  pocket clients meaning for those of you who don't know, but you know,
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  she didn't sign us, but she said, I have interest in you.
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  You're you guys are young and talented, and I like, I like what
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  I'm reading so far, so let me send your stuff for let me just
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  informally represent you and see, you know, if we can get anywhere.
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  She was mainly representing sitcom writers, so she at the time everybody was writing
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  spec episodes of TV shows. That's how you got stasks people weren't really reading
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  original pilots. So Taran I wrote aspect for the Golden Girls and we thought
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  it was great, got it to Beth and she said she was too busy
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  to handle us anymore, was the bad news. But the good news is
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  she had taken on an associate who would handle us more of a junior agent,
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  and that they were going to represent us. So this new younger junior
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  agent who came in, she said, well, what else do you have,
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  because she didn't really like the Golden Girls and we had just finished Don't
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  Tell Mom scripts, which at the time was called The Real World that was
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  the original podom and so we got her of the script and she hated it.
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  She hated it so much she said, I think this is the kind
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  of script you should just put away and never show anyone because it we'll actually
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  from arm your careers. She said, you don't want this to be,
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  you know, representative of your work. So what we did, because we're
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  writers and neurotic and we leave terns, so I put the script away.
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  It was a printed out script, so you know, it wasn't even on
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  a computer. You know, back then we were using early versions of commuter
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  computers, but mostly we were still typing our scripts. I put it under
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  a pair of hues in my closet and we stopped missing our writing hours,
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  and we were just very discouraged. And but one of my friends from his
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  cola is a guy named David Kepp who has become a huge, huge screenwriter.
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  You know, he wrote the original Spider Man with Tobey Laguire, and
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  he wrote all Jurassic Park one and two and Panic War of the World,
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  you know, on and on and on. I mean, he's become probably
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  the most successful screenwriter, certainly financially in terms of box office I think.
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  Ever, he was over at my apartment and he was asking about that script
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  and he said, whatever happened with script? And I said, oh,
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  it's terrible. We just put it away. And he said, well,
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  how do you know it's terrible And I said, well, because this agent
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  told us it was terrible and not show it to anybody. So he said,
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  he asked if he could read it, and I said no, because
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  you know, we don't humiliate me. And he said, just let me
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  read it. I'm your friend. I'm not going to you know, I'll
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  just give you notes whatever. Anyway, he read it and he loved it,
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  and he said, it's not the greatest script in the world, but
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  I think you can sell it, and I think it's really funny, and
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  I think Ageent's wrong. So based on that, and at this point David
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  was still nobody, but you know, I thought, well, maybe we
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  should try to listen to somebody else. The timing was such that one of
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  my UCLA professors had met an agent at a party who was looking for,
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  you know, new writers, and my professor said, well, I you
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  know, I read a script that I think is funny, and I know
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  these young writers. So we got the script in him on a Friday.
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  Normally it would at that time it would take anywhere from six weeks to six
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  months for an agent to ever get back to you got it. A two
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  days later he called, said when can you come all and we went into
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  a conference room and it was all the agents and partners and they wanted to
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  sign us. And then they set the script out and there was a bidding
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  war. So moral of the story, don't ever listen to one person's opinion.
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  Very important point, and that script really unlock everything for us, including
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  our segueing into writing for television. Because Stephen Botchko was producing Doogie Howser MD
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  at the time and read the script and also really loved it, and that
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  was how we got our first TV job. So, you know, you
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  just you never know. You know, it's like William Goldman says, and
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  adventures in the screen trade. You know, nobody knows anything. It's always
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  worth getting multiple opinions. And if you know three people say this is terrible,
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  I'm just not you can do anything in the script, then maybe you
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  listen, but one person is never you know, I don't think is ever
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  necessarily the be all, end all or anything. And so that was also
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  part of that story. And I think we thought it was really good,
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  then we were disappointed, and then all of a sudden we thought it was
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  good again because somebody validated this, you know. And it's always hard when
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  you're writing a script to know if it's good, because he took close to
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  it, you know. And I told my students now at UCLA where I
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  teach, now, you know, the first thing you lose when you start
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  writing is objectivity. And it's really hard to see clearly really anything because the
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  characters are starting to kind of lead you around and you lose the sense of
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  the big picture, and it often takes a first set of eyes to really
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  really determine the quality of anything at that point, unless the writer is able
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  to put the script away for at least a few weeks and come back to
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  it fresh. Yeah, very very true, because you know I've been there
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  too, uh Neil, where you know you're writing the script and that inner
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  voice inside of you starts kind of saying, ah, come on, this
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  is too much like you know, the Godfather or whatever, and then you
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  start writing a little more and you're like, I don't know what the hell
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  am I doing. And then by the end you're like, this is all
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  awful. What the hell am I doing with my life? I need to
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  go out and I just start a new hobby. Yeah, well, I
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  was mantoring so much more. That voice, that little devil or you know
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  in your shoulder, that tells you you suck, and then you know,
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  it makes you doubt everything that's never that's never going anywhere, that's always going
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  to be sitting on one shoulder. The other shoulders, though, hopefully will
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  have your muse, which will counter everything the negative the voice is saying.
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  It's almost like there's always a battle between the mews and the furies, and
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  I think you know it's it's the negative voice does have value in that it's
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  ego driven and it taps into all of your insecurities and doubts and fears and
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  neuroses. But it is also forcing you to be more critical and to you
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  know, be really tough on yourself, because it's probably going to say meaner
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  things and harsher things than anybody in the business possibly could ever say to you.
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  I'd rather hear it from my own interviewings. From an external one,
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  you could potentially destroy, you know, my career or you know, became
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  a loutation. The challenge is it's almost impossible to be the creator and the
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  critic at the same time, you know. So what I try to do
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  the best of my ability is say, all right, I know the negative,
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  destructives or hypercritical voice is going to be coming through one side of my
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  head or sitting on one of my shoulder. It's there. I acknowledge it.
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  I just say, you know, just let me finish. I'm going
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  to listen just to the positive news that's kind of inspiring me. When I'm
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  done, you know, I'll be hypercritical and I'll shift over to my critical
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  mind. But it's really hard to be the creator and the critics simultaneously,
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  you know, It's they kind of cancel each other out. And it's what
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  can cause writer's block. You know, writer's block is caused by perfectionism,
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  where you just you know, don't want to write anything because you're convinced it's
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  not brilliant. And it's probably because that negative voice is telling you it's not
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  good enough, it's not good enough, and then you stopping instead of actually
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  getting pages written. So I always tell people the antidote to writer's block is
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  very simple. Lower your standards. Just write a shitty first, and then
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  once then you gop back and make it better. We'll be right back after
• 20:02
  a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show, and and
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  or you know, give it to a few people, trusted advisors to give
• 20:14
  you fresh perspectives. Hopefully they'll all agree, but they may not, and
• 20:18
  then you know, go back. It's the you know, the cliche,
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  you know, the adage writing is rewriting is absolutely true. You don't.
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  And and the growth between that first city, first draft, which is the
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  most always city, and that next draft is often the biggest leap of script
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  cakes, you know, from the first one that's just you're just just an
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  exploratory draft and you're just trying to get it down on the page, to
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  that next one where you're like, ah, okay, now I kind of
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  see what it is or what it could be. And then hopefully, you
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  know, each draft you get closer and closer to you know, realizing what
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  it could be, and sometimes it's surprises you and it's even better than what
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  you originally thought. And then once you please yourself and you please your reps
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  and you get a general consensus that, oh, this is one of your
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  best pieces of work, where this at least could sell and be commercial,
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  then of course you get notes from the studio, and you get notes from
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  the director and the actors, and you know, it's more rewriting and more
• 21:26
  people to please, and it doesn't really ever end until really the movie's locked.
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  You know, even in puss production, you can still continue to make
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  changes in adr, you can add lines. It's a very fluid and efficient
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  process that's very expensive, and you know, time is money, and everybody's
• 21:48
  making discoveries throughout the whole process. But of course it starts with the blank
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  page and nothing, and I think that's why the writer can suffer the most.
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  Yeah, it's kind of like ar McKie says, the nothing moves until
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  the writer actually writes, meaning that you know, with the script you can
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  actually can't shoot anything. But I really look what you said there, Neil
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  about lowering your standards. It's kind of like dating, you know what I
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  mean. I think everyone you know used to data supermodel, but you know,
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  maybe that's not really what's going to happen. Right, Well, yes
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  I have for him, you know, or single for a long time,
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  and I'll just I'll say, you know your love life. They'll say there's
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  no one out there, There's just no one. And I always think,
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  well, there are people out there. You may not you know, maybe
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  they don't they're not in the prettiest package or something that is. It's what
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  you think is you know your high standard, but there are a lot of
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  wonderful people out there, and if you get more open to it, you'll
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  probably when you're ready, you will meet somebody. But it's true. I
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  mean sometimes people like my brother and you know, when he molded his wife,
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  he was convinced she was not right just physically, but the more you
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  got to know her and talking to her, the more beautiful she became.
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  You know, they've been married for a long time, so he wasn't so
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  much throwing as standards is maybe just being open to you know, not every
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  single single thing has to be perfect, you know, the first in the
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  first moment, you know, there's a discovery process. So even if you
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  bring in you know, at uc LA, sometimes people will bring in pages
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  and say, these are terrible pages, but I just needed to write something
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  this week. And sometimes the pages are really good and they didn't even realize
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  it. Or other times maybe the pages don't work, but there's like one
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  dam buried in those pages that unlocks everything that's going to make the script great.
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  So you know, you kind of always have to be open to the
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  happy accident that can happen, and that only really happens if you get your
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  butt in the chair and you're willing to face, you know, face that
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  blank page or just react the theme that's plaid or the character that's just not
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  speaking to you. And you know, takes a lot of courage to write
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  and a lot of patients. You know, that's the hope for inspiration and
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  when it's not there. You have to write anyway. That's you know,
• 24:17
  if you're on a deadline, you cannot always wait for inspiration to strike.
• 24:21
  And that's that's the toughest thing, you know, because we all want to
• 24:26
  dazzle everybody every time, but it doesn't really work that way. A lot
• 24:30
  of trial and error. Yeah, and you touched on this too like previously,
• 24:34
  like writing should be fun, you know, like when you're sitting down
• 24:37
  and you're writing something, you know, especially like a comedy. You know,
• 24:41
  you know because I've had friends who and it's happened to me as well,
• 24:44
  where you know, they're trying to write a movie, a horror comedy,
• 24:47
  whatever, and they just kind of agonize and overthink the whole thing to
• 24:52
  the point where they're like, you know, no, sort of everything.
• 24:56
  It's like, I don't know, if you ever read the Art of War,
• 25:00
  sure, the warf of Art, I'm sorry, the Word of Art
• 25:02
  by Stephen the Worst Floor, Yeah, Steve Prestfield. It's like that resistance
• 25:04
  comes in in that form where you overthink everything, you ever analyze everything,
• 25:10
  and then everything stops becoming fun and it becomes just this miserable slow down where
• 25:15
  everything, you know, what I mean where he was like, all right,
• 25:17
  I guess I'll write a word or whatever I sentence, you know,
• 25:19
  paragraph, But everything just becomes this like arduous process, and you're like,
• 25:23
  you know, I don't know if I want to write today, and then
• 25:26
  tomorrow, and then a week, and then all of a sudden, you
• 25:27
  know, a year's flown by and you haven't written anything. Yeah, I
• 25:33
  mean that's more. You know, there are people who say, you know,
• 25:37
  don't go to film school. You can just read scripts and watch movies,
• 25:41
  or you know, study television by reading pilots and watching shows. And
• 25:45
  I think those things are true. But the thing that the program does,
• 25:51
  or a really good writers group does, is it makes you accountable and you
• 25:56
  actually just have to bring something in everything. You have dead lives and in
• 26:00
  some cases, the difference between a free writers group, you know, just
• 26:03
  with talented writers and friends getting together once a week like a book club,
• 26:07
  you know, to really just workshop their pages. What. But some people
• 26:11
  have said those don't work, people end up slaking. I mean, of
• 26:17
  course many of them do work, but the ones that don't work are because
• 26:21
  people kind of just start dabbling and it does become sort of a hobby that
• 26:25
  whereas if you're in a program and you're paying money and going into debt.
• 26:29
  As horrible as that is, because it's pretty horrible to owe money, you
• 26:33
  know, they graduate and that artistic feel with no paratieve success and debt.
• 26:37
  But our students, you know, are very aware of that, and so
• 26:41
  they work their butts off and they are very aware that you know that this
• 26:48
  is an investment in their future, and they do take it very very very
• 26:52
  seriously, and they just don't you know, they don't have a choice.
• 26:55
  So it's like, well, at this point, you're running out of time,
• 26:59
  so just go with the best idea you have and get a draft in.
• 27:03
  You can always rewrite it later. And so I think time and deadlines
• 27:08
  are just the best gift for any writer because it gives you structure, and
• 27:14
  you know, a deadline is a gift. I always say, a writer
• 27:17
  without a deadline just clean things. You know, you'll have the cleanest thing.
• 27:22
  You'll find every possible excuse not to write. Having a writing partner really
• 27:26
  helps with that. It's really helped me and Tre tremendously early in our careers
• 27:33
  because we if one person didn't feel like writing, the other person would,
• 27:37
  you know, would be the disciplinarian and say no, no, we have
• 27:38
  to focus. There were times that both of us didn't want to write,
• 27:41
  and we'd just go to the movies or go to something else, or we
• 27:47
  would challenge our smell. If we fully flow like writing and we had a
• 27:52
  few extra days, we would just do things like go to the mall,
• 27:56
  but we would give it ourselves an assignment, like we have to go to
• 28:00
  stores and find clothes that our characters would wear, or observe people in the
• 28:07
  mall to help us find it an interesting book, or eavesdrop on a conversation
• 28:12
  to you know, get inspiration for dialogue. So everything, it was always
• 28:18
  like everything we did would still feed the creative process. It's not the substitute.
• 28:22
  It doesn't substitute sitting down and facing the page, but it does kind
• 28:26
  of go, all right, well, we're we're still kind of working,
• 28:30
  and maybe while we're out talking or just having line, you're tranquil avoid writing.
• 28:36
  Invariably, if you have a partner, you'll start talking about the script
• 28:40
  and suddenly you're in the story session and suddenly you're jotting down notes and you
• 28:45
  push through you know, something that maybe you would have not been able to
• 28:49
  do on your own. So it also really helps with comedy because if we're
• 28:56
  laughing at least we think it's funny. Or if one person pitches a joke
• 29:00
  or a funny situation and the other person laughs, that's a good parameter.
• 29:04
  It's very hard to write in a vacuum, you know, And that's another
• 29:11
  thing that gets people kind of stuck. I know, if don't jell mom.
• 29:17
  Just it's just such a vivid memory. We when we decided that we
• 29:22
  had to get rid of the dead babysitter's body, we we wanted to just
• 29:30
  I remember that we were sitting at in my mom's house, so their kitchen
• 29:33
  table. We said, what if they put it in the trunk, like
• 29:37
  if she came with a trunk of all of our stuff, and what if
• 29:40
  they drop it off at the mortuary, because you know, they don't want
• 29:47
  to bury the body, they're not criminals. We thought, we'll just do
• 29:51
  the right thing. We'll drop it off at a mortuary, they'll give her
• 29:52
  you know, they'll figure out what to do. But then they had to
• 29:56
  leave a note we'll be right back after a wh from our sponsor. And
• 30:03
  now back to the show. And when we wrote the note that they were
• 30:08
  going to put on the trunk, which said nights old lady inside died of
• 30:12
  natural causes. We just thought that was the funniest thing in the world.
• 30:18
  We laughed for like fifteen minutes thinking that was hilarious. We didn't know if
• 30:22
  anybody else would think it was hilarious like we did. And that and the
• 30:27
  ending of the script, which was after the babysitter dies, you know,
• 30:33
  early on in the fact, we wanted to then have the audience forget that
• 30:38
  the babysitter even existed, because I think the reason the script sold was the
• 30:45
  ending, which was after this whole ordeal of everything that they've all been through,
• 30:51
  the mother comes back into town and it looks like kind of in that
• 30:55
  risky business way, which was another inspiration for us. We had a really
• 30:59
  great team comedy much better they don't tell them the babysitters did. But at
• 31:03
  the end of Risky Business, it looks like he got away with everything,
• 31:06
  and we wanted to have that. But then we when we outlined the movie
• 31:11
  onto index cards, which was how I still outline, we thought, what
• 31:15
  if the mother comes back, it looks like she got away with everything,
• 31:19
  And then the mother says, Oh, one last thing, where's the babysitter,
• 31:23
  and that that would be the first time the audience even heard about the
• 31:26
  babysitter for like, you know, over an hour. I think that ending
• 31:30
  really helped us sell the script because it was surprising and the reader forgot about
• 31:34
  the babysitter also, and you know, having a really strong start and a
• 31:40
  strong finish really helps, you know, sell scripts. And those two things
• 31:45
  never changed. You know, those were like locked and no matter how many
• 31:48
  drafts we did, they stayed. You know, those were never nobody touched
• 31:52
  those. There was pressure from the studio to have a police investigation looking for
• 31:57
  the babysitter, and they wanted it to constantly, you know, remind the
• 32:02
  audience about the babysitter, and that was something we kept fighting against, saying
• 32:07
  that's going to ruin the ending, and we struck some kind of a compromise.
• 32:12
  The weird thing about the movie is, as you kind of mentioned it,
• 32:15
  when it came out, it did, Okay, it will low budget,
• 32:19
  so it's made money. It definitely made money, but it's become more
• 32:23
  and more popular over time, and it's now kind of like a cult movie,
• 32:29
  which we don't really understand exactly why or how it happened. But even
• 32:34
  this coming Monday night in LA there's a tribute screening to it as part of
• 32:37
  the UCLA Archive. There's screening a series called Working Women, and one of
• 32:44
  the movies they're screening is Working Girl, which was happening around the same time
• 32:49
  as Don't Talme Mom were sold and Don't Tell Mom the Babysitters did. They're
• 32:53
  including that in the series, and so, you know, Monday night there's
• 32:58
  going to be hundreds of people watching movie in Q and A. And we
• 33:00
  just think the all things hilarious because it's been you know, so many years
• 33:05
  came out, but there's still just a ton of interest in it and people
• 33:08
  still quote lines of dinalogue from it to me when I go to parties,
• 33:12
  and I love it. It's us that it turned into this, but that
• 33:15
  we never expected. Yeah, you know, it's like there's a piece of
• 33:20
  advice I once heard that for when you're when you're submitting a script to like
• 33:24
  a gatekeeper, so to speak, the most important part, what matters most,
• 33:30
  is the first ten pages, and then when it's an actual movie,
• 33:32
  the most important part is the last ten minutes. Yeah, yeah, I
• 33:37
  mean, if you look at Get Out, you know, which was I
• 33:39
  think you'd have won the Oscar for Best Picture. I'm glad I wanted for
• 33:43
  Best Screenplay. I just never knew where that movie was going. And I
• 33:47
  know that they you know, reworked the ending several times, but very memorable
• 33:52
  ending. And yes, I think the reason I think that's true about you
• 33:59
  know, the last ten pages is that you read somehow have an inevitable ending
• 34:06
  that the audience should have seen coming but didn't. This is just my opinion,
• 34:10
  and it has to be surprising, you know. I think there's a
• 34:15
  reason why the eighties romantic comedy has kind of gone out of style, and
• 34:20
  a lot of that is just so formulaic that the audience was so far ahead
• 34:24
  of you know, the story that the only fun was how they were going
• 34:30
  to get together. But there was never a question that they would get together
• 34:32
  at the end, you know. And so we really wanted, you know,
• 34:37
  we really wanted to go to go against formula. And a lot of
• 34:44
  it wasn't so much conscious like we're going to go against formula, but he
• 34:46
  knew we needed something that was unexpected and even romantic. My favorite romantic comedy
• 34:52
  of All Time is The Philadelphia Story with Katherine Hepburn, you know, and
• 34:57
  Jimmy Stewart and Carrie Grant. What I love about that movie is there are
• 35:02
  four potential suitors, well three really, and then it narrows down to two.
• 35:07
  But you really don't know at the end which guy she's gonna marry until
• 35:14
  look, until the ceremony is about to start. And I love that,
• 35:16
  you know, and all the options that are viable. I also really like
• 35:21
  the anti romantic comedy My best Friend's Wedding with Julia Roberts, because she doesn't
• 35:29
  end up with the guy, and you're thinking she's going too, and then
• 35:34
  when you know, it ends in an unexpected way, and I always always
• 35:37
  appreciate that, And I love Allly Handry endings like Fight Club or The Sixth
• 35:44
  Sense, and you know, movies where everything shifts and you didn't see it
• 35:49
  coming until that moment and then you go, oh, that's great, why
• 35:52
  didn't they see that? And it's so satisfying. Those are always my favorite
• 35:57
  kind of movie experiences. There was a great eighties uh teen comedy that was
• 36:04
  kind of like about you know, guys going after the girl called The Last
• 36:08
  American Virgin have you ever seen it? Oh yeah, of course that ending.
• 36:13
  Let me tell you, nobody nowadays if you said I wanted to do
• 36:16
  that ending you you wouldn't be able to get away with it because if it's
• 36:20
  such a downer ending and it ends a lot like real life, and then
• 36:24
  if you but if you compare that to like maybe money can't Buy Me Love
• 36:29
  or or something like that, you know, Okay, we know they're gonna
• 36:31
  get together, but how they got together, by the way, I like,
• 36:35
  I like both of those movies. It's just when I saw The Last
• 36:37
  American Virgin and like or even movies like uh with the Better Off Dead,
• 36:44
  I mean, stuff like that just absolutely fantastic. I mean, and they
• 36:47
  they just the the how quirky that one was. But but I'm sorry,
• 36:52
  I know I'm kind of jumping around here, but but Last American Virgin though,
• 36:54
  Last American Virgin, I mean that ending to what you would you mind
• 36:59
  if I spoil everybody? If I just told him what the ending is?
• 37:00
  Now? Okay, So everybody, if you don't want to just jump ahead
• 37:05
  like thirty seconds if you don't want me to spoils for you, But essentially,
• 37:08
  this guy, the whole movie is going after this girl. He finally
• 37:13
  she gets pregnant by another guy, so he he this is like the third
• 37:16
  act, and he sells all his stuff, like y stereosystem everything else to
• 37:21
  help pay for the abortion. She gets the abortion, and later on that
• 37:25
  night there or maybe a week later, at a house party, and she's
• 37:30
  with the guy who basically left her, and she's forgotten all about the protagonist
• 37:35
  after all he's done for her, and it just ends with him crying to
• 37:38
  himself in his car as he just drives into the night and the movie ends.
• 37:42
  And I remember I was floored by that ending because I was like,
• 37:45
  holy shit, Yeah, yeah, well, you know, I think it's
• 37:52
  a really good athon Aut stated the TV pilot or movie, I'll say hitched.
• 37:59
  The first half of the movie, just the broad strokes of what you're
• 38:00
  planning, you know, in the early stages, and then just ask somebody
• 38:05
  what do you think is going to happen? And if they just go immediately
• 38:07
  to your ending and they're like this because this is the most logical obvious way
• 38:14
  that it would end. If they're right, you know, you have to
• 38:15
  change the ending, or you have to change the path to that ending,
• 38:20
  you know, because you want. You know, that's the definition of anti
• 38:22
  climactic, right, you know, where it's like everything happens exactly the way
• 38:28
  you thought. So even Avide, like you know, when here I met
• 38:30
  Sally, which is a great romantic compedy. You know, you kind of
• 38:35
  know they're going to get together, but Nora Ephron, you know, she
• 38:37
  pushes it to the last minutes on New Year's Eve, and then when they
• 38:42
  do get together, the last lines of the movie or you know, I
• 38:45
  hate you, Harry, I really hate you. Not I love you,
• 38:49
  Harry, I really love you, you know, and I also love I
• 38:53
  also appreciate that where it just seems impossible that it could happen, Like The
• 38:58
  Graduates, you know, he gets there to stop the wedding and then it's
• 39:01
  too late. I love I mean, you know, Mike Nichols is one
• 39:06
  of my favorite directors, and I love The Graduate, one of my favorite
• 39:08
  movies. But you know, great climax. Benjamin rushed into the church,
• 39:14
  you know, finally, like it's they're screaming, you know, he's late,
• 39:17
  lady, and then it's too late. It's over, but it's not
• 39:22
  over. And then you get that even you know that incredibly iconic ending when
• 39:27
  they are on the bus and then of silence plays and it you know,
• 39:31
  the movie ends with them going, all right, we actually pulled this off.
• 39:36
  She les, she's the runaway bride. They are together, and yet
• 39:39
  now what you know, now, what the hell do we do? That
• 39:43
  was also you know, people remember these endings because they're indelible, and they're
• 39:47
  they're risky because they're not just they lived happily ever after. And I feel
• 39:53
  like, you know, maybe it's a good segue to talking about television.
• 39:58
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to
• 40:05
  the show. Part of why I think TV is where the most exciting storytelling
• 40:10
  is happening now exactly for that reason, which is it's not just happily ever
• 40:15
  after. It's this ongoing, you know, long term relationship with these characters
• 40:22
  where we align with them by the end of the pilot. But then it's
• 40:25
  the fluid dance sometimes of allegiance. You know, sometimes we approve of what
• 40:30
  they do and sometimes we don't, and and it doesn't it doesn't really end
• 40:37
  until the end of the series, which might be you know, five six
• 40:40
  seven or you know, great anatomy. I think is going to since fourteen.
• 40:45
  It's just constantly ongoing, and as long as it keeps surprising us and
• 40:50
  the characters keep facing new new problems and new challenges, it remains interesting.
• 40:55
  So it's against ever really having to fully end the story. It's I love
• 41:00
  how highly serialized television is now and how you know, great writers and really
• 41:07
  strong effective writers rooms constantly find ways to surprise us and to pivots from what
• 41:13
  we thought was either the end of a story where it has I write about
• 41:17
  this in the new book. I call it story tentacles, you know,
• 41:21
  where you make story choices that lead to more stories because it has to keep,
• 41:25
  it has to continue and evolve. And the movies now starts to seem
• 41:30
  very finite to me, you know, like even really good movies. I
• 41:32
  don't think that's it. I want to I want holder. I want to
• 41:36
  spend more time with these characters. And I think with you know, the
• 41:43
  domination of and people shifting over to on demand viewership where they can binge you
• 41:47
  and they can watch things when they want to and how they want to and
• 41:52
  where they want to. That we we love these ongoing stories that just keep
• 41:59
  pulling out in different directions and challenges and the characters, and so I,
• 42:05
  uh, you might have to you have to think about where you want to
• 42:08
  land at the islet at the at the end of the season. But it's
• 42:12
  an ongoing story. And one of the things I talk about is how you
• 42:17
  know, a movie is designed to have a beginning, middle, and end.
• 42:22
  A pilot is designed to have a beginning medal and an open end,
• 42:25
  you know, and you want to end on more questions than answers, and
• 42:29
  you want to leave everything wide open for more stories. And you know,
• 42:34
  writing movies, it was always you know, what's the ending? How does
• 42:37
  it end? How does it complete? And this is the exact opposite of
• 42:39
  that. Yeah, you know when I was working with Jennifer Gasani, because
• 42:45
  I actually shot it, I actually yeah, yeah, Jenna jad I think
• 42:47
  everyone knows jen I actually shot a TV pilot a couple of years ago.
• 42:52
  I actually produced it, wrote it, directed it, and uh and it's
• 42:57
  online right now, by the way. It's called Game Over. And it's
• 43:00
  just you know, it was like I I aimed high. I we had
• 43:04
  so many opportunities. It was there was a lot of backstage fighting, you
• 43:08
  know what I mean. There's a little while behind the stuff that was behind
• 43:10
  the scenes as I'm sure you know what I mean, like a lot of
• 43:14
  uh, but we have I I eventually got pushed out. I finally decided
• 43:17
  to upload it last year because I was just sitting on it. I was
• 43:21
  like, it's doing nobody any good. But he's just sitting on this damn
• 43:22
  thing. So but I, after working with Jen, I realized, you
• 43:27
  know, beginning, you know, have that pilot, and then the pilot
• 43:30
  has to ignite the series. So then when you go to pitch it,
• 43:34
  you have sort of like what's the pilot arc, what's season one? And
• 43:37
  when? What's what's going to be the series arc? Uh, so you
• 43:39
  know where we're eventually. You know, like Walter White Breaking Bad is the
• 43:43
  best example. You know, Walter White, he goes from this mild mattered
• 43:46
  man in the middle of New Mexico to a drug kingpin. Well, how
• 43:52
  does that transformation happen? Uh? Well, you know that's a into scarfet
• 43:58
  with what the bill against it? Yeah, yeah, exactly, and you
• 44:00
  sort of have you know, how does that journey occur? And you know
• 44:04
  what happens during those during those moments, It's it's so much more of an
• 44:08
  art than a science. That's why when everyone tries to like, you know
• 44:12
  what I mean, like I sometimes seen you when like people when they try
• 44:15
  to dissect certain things, they almost like go, well, you know what's
• 44:19
  seven page seventeen. This beat has to happen on page thirty, This thing
• 44:22
  has to happen. You're kind of like, oh, come on, let's
• 44:23
  just move away from you know what I mean, Like that's it, that's
• 44:25
  too science completely. Yeah, I mean I just am so again. Formula
• 44:32
  now there, you know, there are certain things that there are you know,
• 44:37
  very few absolute you know, in screen ringing, you know, and
• 44:42
  I always tell people if somebody tells you there's a formula or a template to
• 44:45
  follow, it's not a bad idea just to look and say, okay,
• 44:49
  well, you could break down a lot of movies that follow that formula deathfully,
• 44:52
  and that is valid, you know. But there are so many different
• 44:57
  structures in wa story and picularly now if you do all of ay and you
• 45:02
  can break form and the story still works all the better, you know,
• 45:09
  because it's a mysterious process. But you know, there are a few absolutes
• 45:14
  that I think are valid pretty much across the board and across genres. One
• 45:19
  of them is I believe every story is a suspense story, you know,
• 45:22
  whether it's a comedy or thriller or a drama. And the reason is that,
• 45:29
  you know, the two key ingredients to suspense are anticipation and surprise.
• 45:35
  Well, every story needs to fill the audience with anticipation of what's going to
• 45:38
  happen next, and hopefully when you get there, it's supporting. So I'm
• 45:44
  always going where is the suspense? You know, there's no dramatic tension.
• 45:47
  If the script's not working, you know, why isn't it working? Well,
• 45:50
  there's no dramatic tension. Why isn't there any dramatic tension? Usually that
• 45:53
  goes back to empathy, which is the first thing I started to talk about,
• 45:57
  which is, you know, you get that note which is the most
• 46:00
  frustrating note to get from an executive or a rep, which is I didn't
• 46:06
  really connect anybody or a development person who might say, why should I care
• 46:09
  about any of these people? And suspense only works when you're worried about what's
• 46:15
  going to happen. You know, you have to connect to the characters.
• 46:19
  So, you know, Breaking Bad is a great example because you know,
• 46:22
  by design, Walter White is an underdog from the very beginning, and we're
• 46:27
  worried because he's dying, and he has a wife, and he has kids,
• 46:31
  and he's struggling, and so, you know, you really align with
• 46:35
  him becoming an anti hero because it seems like the best option, based on
• 46:39
  limited options that he has. How you have a thing in the new book
• 46:45
  a quote from David Mammitt where he talks about great trauma is choosing not between
• 46:49
  right and wrong, but between qu wrongs. It's because Walter White neither option
• 46:58
  is good. You know, if he's if he doesn't become a drug dealer,
• 47:02
  he's probably going to die and leave his family unprovided, boring, He's
• 47:06
  going to feel like a failure. He sees this as drawn upon his a
• 47:12
  skill set, something that he has that's fairly valuable. And when he connects
• 47:15
  with you know, his former student, with Jesse Diinkpen, he sees this
• 47:19
  as a great opportunity that could solve a problem. But he's caught between two
• 47:22
  wrongs because while it might solve one problem, it could also you know,
• 47:28
  get him killed or thrown into prison. And so chapter eight in TV Writing
• 47:35
  on Demand, the New book, I have a quote from David Mammott.
• 47:37
  It says a moral decision is not the choice between wrong and right that's easy,
• 47:43
  but between two wrongs. And if you look at some of the best
• 47:46
  days, and I have a lot of examples based on that quote in the
• 47:51
  book, whenever you connect with character caught between a rock and a hard place,
• 47:57
  you're always going to generate more suspense and probably empathy because you know,
• 48:02
  in all late to not having ideal choices in front of us, you know,
• 48:08
  and yet you know which is the the lesser of the two devils.
• 48:15
  And human nature is to take the path of lease resistance. So if there
• 48:20
  is a path of leaks resistance that's clearly the easier, better path, and
• 48:24
  the writer in the character doesn't take that path, you're not going to root
• 48:30
  for them because you're going to think, well, why did they not go
• 48:32
  down the path that was clearly the smarter, easier choice. But if you
• 48:37
  move choice and you trap them in a situation where you know neither alternative is
• 48:43
  ideal, I just feel like right away you have pinsent that you wouldn't you
• 48:46
  know, normally have another absolute for me about is I believe that every story
• 48:52
  is the coming of age story, no matter what the ages of the characters
• 48:58
  are, you know, it's the maturations, and they somehow need to learn
• 49:01
  something or discover something. And I think that all movies are ben TV shows
• 49:07
  are about characters who have to grow up and and or overcome something but by
• 49:13
  inter emotional void deficit that they've never really dealt with, and that's part of
• 49:19
  the journey of the story. So I always want to work for growth or
• 49:22
  evolution in a character, the exception being multi cameras that comes or the characters
• 49:29
  ten not change by design. I don't really want them to see because we
• 49:34
  like them stuck in their problems. But movies and one hour dramas and half
• 49:39
  hour drama tis tend to have characters at least trying to change their circumstances.
• 49:45
  And every episode there's the potential to win or lose something. And I think
• 49:51
  that positive and negative tension generates heat, you know, dramatic intensity, and
• 49:57
  helps with suspense. Right back after a word from our sponsor and now back
• 50:06
  to the show. So you know, for me, those two things I
• 50:13
  always go back to. I want there to be a cathartic experience where characters
• 50:17
  have to face fears and either overcome them or if it's a tragedy, they
• 50:22
  will to overcome though that they had the potential to overcome them. You know,
• 50:27
  Alt could have turned himself in ultimately where it changed just ways, you
• 50:31
  know, but he once he became Eisenbergh, he couldn't, you know,
• 50:37
  he just came completely hopped on that power and at that, you know,
• 50:43
  it's a very lonely ending for him. You know, I don't want to
• 50:47
  I'm sure most people now it ends, but anyway, get the idea.
• 50:51
  Yeah, I think I pretty much everyone who who's probably listened to this podcast
• 50:54
  has seen the end of Breaking Bed. But it's a fitting in. Yeah,
• 50:59
  it's a fitting in for him, and it kind of ties in with
• 51:00
  the pilot episode, which is very important, not only the whole obviously the
• 51:05
  whole series, but but just that pilot because what he's talking about in the
• 51:07
  pilot about chemistry and how things change, it's a it's transformation, right,
• 51:13
  which is what the characters do, so you know, just just you know,
• 51:15
  transforming themselves their perceptions, you know, like David Matt was talking about
• 51:21
  those two dilemmas, you know, the dilemma of two bad options, you
• 51:23
  know, and then that's something true you said too is is you know that
• 51:27
  I think is the hardest part for a lot of screenwriters, or maybe something
• 51:29
  they miss is creating that empathy because when you when you are yeah, because
• 51:35
  you know, it's always that, it's always that question, you know,
• 51:36
  why should I care about these characters? Why am I invested in these characters?
• 51:39
  The company that the company that probably does this the best is Pixar,
• 51:44
  with how they create empathy for their characters. And you know they they Wally
• 51:49
  is you know, a robot. He's made it look very sort of,
• 51:52
  you know, sheepish, and you know, he's not like really a threat.
• 51:55
  You know, you have the Up, an old man who's lost his
• 51:59
  wife. I think Up is probably the best movie they've ever done. I
• 52:01
  think Up was absolutely phenomenal. People are I mean I was stopping just after
• 52:07
  the prologue. You know, it's just such a beautiful prologue. Love and
• 52:12
  Yeah. He just says this gigantic void that needs that he probably believed that
• 52:17
  that at his age will never be filled. And then this, you know,
• 52:21
  this black hard light and then you have you know, magic is one
• 52:27
  of the greatest spaces to fill the void. I there's a wonderful documentary on
• 52:31
  HBO about Steven Spielberk's career. It's a retrospective. It's just the whole thing
• 52:38
  is just filled with so much great you know, insight, and you get
• 52:44
  to hear Spielberg tell stories about things that you know, some of his greatest
• 52:47
  achievements were accidental, you know, like Jaws. To me, the best
• 52:51
  thing about Jaws is that you never see the shark. When you almost never
• 52:53
  see the shark, but the tension of the shark being there is is even
• 52:58
  greater than seeing the shark. But that was not quite his own, and
• 53:00
  that was because they couldn't get the mechanical shark to actually work and it didn't
• 53:04
  look good, so they had to hide it. And then they said,
• 53:07
  well, how don't we create the tension of the star if we can't show
• 53:10
  the stark, which they just couldn't do just physically. The production wasn't up
• 53:15
  to you know, we didn't have the technology to do that. And he
• 53:17
  didn't say way back then. So it's like, well, what if there's
• 53:21
  music that you know, stands for the shark when we hear the music scared
• 53:27
  and you know, again, those are the strongest things in that movie,
• 53:30
  which was a you know, it was done to solve a problem, and
• 53:34
  it actually makes the movie more even more brilliant. He had in terms of
• 53:38
  the void. In that documentary, Spilbook talks about how ET did not begin
• 53:45
  as a story of a boy who meets an extra terrestrial. ET was really
• 53:51
  Spielberg's desire to tell a story about Javoir and child because his talent's divorced when
• 53:57
  he was a kid and the void was sewing enormous when his parents split up.
• 54:02
  So his the question for him was, I want to tell a story
• 54:06
  about how that enormous void created by divorce impacts a child. And then he
• 54:13
  started to think what could possibly fill that boy because it's so infinite, especially
• 54:16
  for a kid, you know, And then he came up with the idea,
• 54:21
  well, what if he discovers an alien from another planet and the former
• 54:24
  friendship and both of them have the same goal, which is to go home,
• 54:29
  but in different ways, you know, the divorce. The child of
• 54:32
  divorce wants home to be the way it was and for the parents to get
• 54:35
  back together, and for Elliott it's about getting back to his planet. And
• 54:39
  I just thought that that to me just speaks to the emotional core of a
• 54:45
  movie. It may come from the beginning, and then he has to figure
• 54:50
  out how to swell it. And maybe that did hear your story, or
• 54:52
  maybe you have the idea of a boy and catch the next press room and
• 54:58
  then but he still always has to go back and ask, what's the more
• 55:00
  of the story, what's the emotional void? How? You know, just
• 55:07
  even when you're pitching a TV show. I was just talking about this in
• 55:10
  class last week. I said, everybody who's pitching you need you know,
• 55:15
  I tell my students trying a way to pitch your story in ten minutes.
• 55:19
  It's like a comedian, you know, you need a tight ten. You
• 55:22
  know, that's that's the key to success. First stand up comments, Right,
• 55:23
  you need to take ten minutes and it needs to pretty much be filled
• 55:30
  with material that's pretty that you just know kills, right, And then you
• 55:34
  go on the road and you keep doing your tight ten and you build a
• 55:37
  pitch, a tight ten minute pitch. But I said, let's just have
• 55:43
  a rule that at least three times during those ten minutes, you have to
• 55:47
  stop and say to whoever you're pitching to, now, let's talk about how
• 55:54
  the how the character is feeling now, at this point in the story.
• 55:59
  You know, and I said, and you use really strong words like,
• 56:02
  you know, devastated, in rage, you know, betray desperate, you
• 56:12
  know, strong words to convey how they're feeling. You know, because no
• 56:17
  matter how good the plot is, and no matter how good the idea is,
• 56:22
  a pitch is only as good as the emotional connection that reels in the
• 56:27
  audience. You know, they have to invest in the characters. And I
• 56:30
  think that's probably even though most people intellectually know that it's important, I think
• 56:36
  people often underestimate the power of emotion in a story, and it's because it's
• 56:45
  the toughest thing to write and the toughest thing to convey. A lot of
• 56:49
  people just try, well they don't try, but they'll almost inadvertently stick to
• 56:54
  the surface and the plot details instead of going deeper into story. You know.
• 57:00
  Roger Ebert's the late film critics said, we're not in the entertainment business,
• 57:02
  We're in the empathy business. And to me, empathy is everything in
• 57:08
  a story, and it's often the thing that's most easily overlooked by the creator.
• 57:15
  So if anybody gets anything out of this, at least from my perspective,
• 57:22
  look at the role of empathy in your story. And if there isn't
• 57:24
  a clear emotional journey, you've still got a lot of work to do.
• 57:29
  You know, you're missing a whole air. And it applies equally to comedy.
• 57:31
  You know, if you look at a movie like Bridesmaids and anti emotional
• 57:35
  Journey, it's all about feeling abandoned into friendship and feeling like you're never going
• 57:40
  to be worthy of love. And those are universal theme addicts, but they're
• 57:45
  also emotional and people can relate to them, and it's what makes the movie.
• 57:52
  You know, a movie. The Spring Player was nominated for an oscar.
• 57:54
  It's what took it from you know what, either a long and I'll
• 58:00
  schedule a little bit one yo. He did do a movie that had he
• 58:04
  laughed, great characters but also a lot of hearts. Yeah, it's it's
• 58:08
  kind of like what I always feel too, is when you're outlining a story,
• 58:13
  you get you get an idea and you start kind of outlining it.
• 58:15
  You kind of put the cart before the horse because you start saying, you
• 58:19
  know, what could happen these plot twists, these turns, blah blah blah,
• 58:22
  and then characters kind of back you know, thought of afterwards, like,
• 58:25
  oh, a character can be plugged into this when it should be reversed.
• 58:29
  Should be a character in this? And what kind of character is it?
• 58:31
  You know? How am I going to create this this sort of empathy
• 58:35
  between everything. Yeah, and a great movie that I always go back to
• 58:37
  with Blood Simple that just has great characters and just uh the twists and turns
• 58:43
  of of what they're doing to try to it's almost out of love, you
• 58:45
  know. I think it's the only Cohen Brothers movie, by the way,
• 58:49
  that isn't about money. I know. You you mentioned about a lot of
• 58:52
  movies are about coming of age. Uh, and I actually just really like
• 58:55
  and I actually just saw this, uh this video recently about you know,
• 58:59
  this outline analysis of the Corn Brothers movie and how all their movies are about
• 59:02
  money and their pursuit of money and h and I started to watch it a
• 59:07
  little bit more and I was like, well, you know, that really
• 59:08
  is true, but I don't think Blood Simple is about money, and I
• 59:13
  just I think it's more of about well, I guess it is about money
• 59:15
  in a way. But Raising Arizona was the other exception, but that again
• 59:21
  was was the baby was about money. Because you know that whole you know,
• 59:23
  that whole thing about kidnapping the kid and then there was a bounding on
• 59:28
  hurricane back. So but you know, it's and then some of the characters
• 59:30
  agree about that reward money. But but yeah, you know, I just
• 59:34
  think that character, you know, sometimes is you know, not really thought
• 59:37
  of. And with TV, it's all about character, you know, It's
• 59:39
  whether it's the TV show Ozarks. You know, somebody once told me we're
• 59:44
  in the golden age of TV, which is true, but it's also much
• 59:47
  more segregated now because I got you know, YouTube and Voodoo and HBO and
• 59:52
  Showtime and all these other things where you know, you have all these great
• 59:54
  TV shows and they're on like one hundred different channels. Well, be right
• 1:00:00
  back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
• 1:00:08
  Yeah, there are actually going to be over five hundred scripted shows across platforms
• 1:00:14
  this year. That's you know, and tens and tens of billions developed on
• 1:00:20
  acquisition production and some you know, I'm pointing that a lot of the top
• 1:00:28
  streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu and premium cable channels like HBO, HBO and
• 1:00:37
  shows I am still developed but Netflix doesn't spend a lot on development. They
• 1:00:43
  like people to come to them with projects that are what they would Ted Sarandos.
• 1:00:47
  You know when the Netflix content chief of content he says they're never going
• 1:00:54
  to buy a project that's half baked. You know they're they're looking for.
• 1:01:00
  And this is pretty much across the board now. And this is a big
• 1:01:02
  change from just even a few years ago, which is it's very rare.
• 1:01:07
  Anybody's just going to buy a pilot. They're gonna want to read a pilot.
• 1:01:10
  They're gonna want to hit a series bible or even a mini bible so
• 1:01:15
  they know that it can sustain over at least one season. They would want
• 1:01:22
  more detail about season one and then a suggestion of where it might go in
• 1:01:27
  future seasons. There are platforms that want you to map out multiple seasons.
• 1:01:32
  A friend of mine does a great criminally uh with sort underappreciated, kind of
• 1:01:42
  a sleeper series for Amazon called Patriots. I don't know if you've seen it,
• 1:01:47
  Uh, very people, very few people have seen it. Stephen Conrad,
• 1:01:52
  who is best known probably for rating the movie The Pursuit of Happiness with
• 1:01:55
  Will Smith, but he also wrote The Weather with Nicholas Cage and the Life
• 1:02:01
  of Waltermittee with Bence Stiller, and he's a really wonderful but he created a
• 1:02:07
  series for Amazon called Patriot, and I think almost nobody thought it's great.
• 1:02:14
  It's a very dark comedy. It did get picked up for season two.
• 1:02:17
  So there in production now and uh god, what was I? What was
• 1:02:24
  I? What was your question again? How did I started to get on
• 1:02:28
  Patriot? As an example? What was going on? We were just talking
• 1:02:31
  about character? Yes, yes, yes, walking went doll at the time.
• 1:02:37
  Forget, who had developed Loss when he was at ABC as the common
• 1:02:40
  executive, he had got over to Amazon and because of the Lost experience,
• 1:02:46
  where you know, the series kind of didn't bear a lot of resemblance to
• 1:02:52
  what they originally imagined. And some of that was just the show became so
• 1:02:58
  successful that they had stretched the story out a room less season, had it.
• 1:03:02
  But because Morgan Rendell was involved with Loss, when Stephen Knwight came in
• 1:03:07
  too self Hatriot and Steven had not done television, they really in order to
• 1:03:13
  firm you have made that deal, they really needed proof of concepts and they
• 1:03:15
  wanted him to map out how he could he could sustain over many seasons,
• 1:03:21
  not just over the first season, and Steven had to prove all that to
• 1:03:24
  them. And you know, now everybody wants that. Everybody wants proof of
• 1:03:30
  concept, maybe a pilot episode and a second episode already written. Another thing
• 1:03:37
  that another trend is works and studios are now soft screen lighting shows where they'll
• 1:03:43
  first screenlight the writer's room and they'll see how many scripts can come out that
• 1:03:47
  are of the same high quality as the pilot that excited them. So before
• 1:03:52
  they commit to production, they want many scripts and they want to see that
• 1:03:57
  the writers who has come up with a very strong plan for the season.
• 1:04:00
  That's another trend that's happening. And of course most of these series bibles are
• 1:04:09
  mini bibles that are part of the selling process, are just selling tools.
• 1:04:13
  As soon as the writer's room assembles, often everything in the Bible goes out
• 1:04:17
  the window because they come up with better ideas. But you know, so
• 1:04:23
  you need the bible. You need to have the plan and be able to
• 1:04:27
  articulate it to satisfy the person who's investing, you know, millions of dollars
• 1:04:32
  ultimately in a production, and then a lot of that, you know,
• 1:04:38
  gets thrown out as you make discoveries and find your way and the characters start
• 1:04:42
  to take a life of their own. And casting of the heat part of
• 1:04:45
  this. You know a lot of times on paper, it didn't seem like
• 1:04:51
  two characters would need to spend a lot of time together, but then you
• 1:04:56
  realize that when they're on screen, the chemistry is those wrong. Sometimes shows
• 1:05:00
  like Homeland decide they're going to accelerate the romance, you know, like between
• 1:05:06
  Kerry and Brody and season one that wasn't supposed to happen till much later or
• 1:05:11
  in you know, back to Breaking Bad. Jesse Pinglin was supposed to be
• 1:05:15
  killed off, you know, halfway through season one, but once they saw
• 1:05:19
  the chemistry between her and Paul Oh my god, Bryan Crankston, you know,
• 1:05:28
  suddenly that they were like, oh, this is the central relationship.
• 1:05:30
  This is like the strongest part of the show. This is the sweet spot
• 1:05:33
  of the stove. Let's not kill off jose Pingland. This gives us more
• 1:05:39
  story. So, uh, a lot of what's happening now you need a
• 1:05:46
  plan and you need to he needs to articulate it up. Plunt to King
• 1:05:50
  Get inspires that you actually have proof of concept, some kind of a package,
• 1:05:57
  maybe even a director or a showrunner attached, maybe an actor who's interested
• 1:06:01
  so that you know, like when Netflix notoriously we let two full seasons of
• 1:06:10
  House of Cards. Some of it was based on algorithms, but more of
• 1:06:14
  it was based on the package of you know, David Fincher and go well
• 1:06:19
  at the time, Devin's basy, which of course now would be the case
• 1:06:23
  of death. Uh. But you know, they want their betting on a
• 1:06:29
  win, on a winning raceurse. And the more that you can convince them
• 1:06:32
  upfront that they have a wanting more, the more likely they're going to be
• 1:06:36
  to write those sects and to give you the green light. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:06:42
  I think that's what everyone's sort of you know again, like it was
• 1:06:45
  just tying it back almost like a TV show, almost tying it back to
• 1:06:46
  what we were initially talking about, which was creating that script and the and
• 1:06:50
  that that's your sort of it's your calling card, you know that that's your
• 1:06:55
  your ability to say this is what I'm capable of. Uh, you know,
• 1:06:59
  it's outside the box thinking. And I mean, just to take another
• 1:07:00
  side note, I know I want to also just before we close, I
• 1:07:03
  know we ring out of time. I want to talk about your your your
• 1:07:05
  new book, but I just to sort of put a final thought on all
• 1:07:09
  this. I have a you know, when I whenever I see these superhero
• 1:07:12
  movies that come out, you know, we always talk about the ending has
• 1:07:15
  to be closed, and you know what I mean. But like it's always
• 1:07:17
  like you never you I always go in there and I go, gee,
• 1:07:20
  I wonder what they're gonna set up next. I wonder what series they're gonna
• 1:07:24
  set up next. And I'm always like, so, I'm just I already
• 1:07:27
  know that you know, hey, this guy's not gonna be beat he said.
• 1:07:29
  They're just gonna say, oh, yeah, we invent we we invented
• 1:07:30
  the the the Johnson Ray that resurrected them. And it's like, come on,
• 1:07:35
  guys. I mean, it's just like it's so pedantic and it's so
• 1:07:39
  insulting to the audience to just I get it. I honestly get it.
• 1:07:43
  But it's that's the point where it's like, no matter what happens, there's
• 1:07:45
  always a way someone's resurrected. And I'm just like, I don't know,
• 1:07:49
  maybe I'm just too I'm just too burnt out with this. I know how
• 1:07:53
  comic books work and I know, comic books are a lot like novels where
• 1:07:56
  they allow all these different you know, imaginations and things that happen. And
• 1:08:00
  because in comics they have like alternate worlds or or that was a that was
• 1:08:03
  a alternate universe, or maybe hey, you know that was someone's dream,
• 1:08:08
  or hey this was blah blah blah blah. But but but like, yeah,
• 1:08:13
  exactly, you know how the comic books, yeah, they were able
• 1:08:15
  to just explain something away by saying, hey, that was a dream,
• 1:08:18
  that was a psychotic episode, that was this or that. But you know,
• 1:08:23
  with movies, you know, I think it just ends up being like
• 1:08:26
  it's a little like, okay, I just all threw Ragnarok the other day,
• 1:08:30
  just came out in Blu Ray, and I thought it was I thought
• 1:08:31
  it was actually hilarious, which is what they needed, because a lot of
• 1:08:34
  these movies are too brooding for me, where everyone tries to be sort of
• 1:08:39
  you know what I mean, like tries to be either cool or broody.
• 1:08:41
  But that movie was just funny. And I know I had a friend of
• 1:08:45
  mine who saw with me who said he didn't like it because it was too
• 1:08:46
  funny. But I said, I think you need that and then but even
• 1:08:49
  at the end of the four there was this stinger where they're setting up where
• 1:08:55
  another ship comes upon them and you're kind of like, well, now it
• 1:08:58
  was this and maybe it's who's that that that villain, not Dark Side,
• 1:09:02
  maybe his darks I don't remember, but yeah, it's it's one of those
• 1:09:06
  villains that I don't know. There's a ten thousand of them. I saw,
• 1:09:10
  I saw Justice League, and I said, I think I'm done with
• 1:09:14
  DC movies. That's I mean, you know the exceptions though, I mean,
• 1:09:18
  Christopher, you know, Christopher Nolan, you know, really reinvented the
• 1:09:25
  superhero movie with you know, Batman begins in the Dark Knight and by objecting
• 1:09:30
  to their humanity and their flaws. So even though you know the Dark Knight
• 1:09:34
  ends in a way that is very unexpected, you know, and you know,
• 1:09:40
  Batman makes this speak sacrifice for the greater good, and I mean they
• 1:09:45
  do superheroes do you tend to do those kinds of things. But this was
• 1:09:47
  where you were actually ending the movie with him not a euro but some where
• 1:09:54
  everybody's going to think that he's actually the villain in a way. We'll be
• 1:09:58
  right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show and
• 1:10:09
  get Pool or Guard into the galaxy, you know, having the humor and
• 1:10:13
  kind of turning the typical superhero movie on its ear. Black Panther I thought
• 1:10:18
  was just great, you know, with really strong female characters who are more
• 1:10:23
  badass than any of the male characters. I like that the formulas are being
• 1:10:29
  twisted and reinvented. In some cases. I think the studios, the big
• 1:10:35
  studios which that are primarily in the big event, tent pole movie franchise business,
• 1:10:44
  in some cases they can get lazy if they want to, because you
• 1:10:46
  have a whole new generation who isn't aware that things that you and I might
• 1:10:53
  think are tropes or that we're burnt out on. For them, these are
• 1:10:56
  brand new, you know, and they're thinking it's exciting. So for them
• 1:11:01
  they're still able to squeeze new life out of you know, what might be
• 1:11:06
  an older genre. And but you know, movies that are designed to be
• 1:11:12
  franchises are like are like TV pilots because they're not designed to end. They're
• 1:11:16
  designed to be the beginning of a conversation in a relationship with the audience.
• 1:11:21
  I love the original the First Iron Man that because the formula of all superhero
• 1:11:29
  movies is, or almost all of them, is that the person has a
• 1:11:32
  dual identity and that nobody seems to know, like just you know, it's
• 1:11:38
  it's at willing suspension of disbelief that nobody's going to realize that Bruce Wayne is
• 1:11:43
  Batman, you know, just because his voice is a little different and he's
• 1:11:45
  not wearing the masks. He figures that out. What I loved about Iron
• 1:11:49
  Man is at the very end of the first step, first he says,
• 1:11:54
  well, the truth is I am iron Man and he outs himself. Loved
• 1:11:59
  that ending. I thought they just went exactly against what every other superhero movie
• 1:12:02
  does and it was surprising and it was funny, and then they still were
• 1:12:08
  able to set themselves up for multiple franchises, but just in a different way.
• 1:12:13
  So I think writers have to work harder to innovate and twist put put
• 1:12:16
  a spin on an old formula, because we're never really going to come up
• 1:12:20
  with something one hundred percent fresh at this point, and it's very difficult to
• 1:12:25
  come up with something that nobody's ever done. But can you put a fresh
• 1:12:29
  spin on it? You know, that's very unique to the voice of the
• 1:12:31
  writer. And I think audiences are that's what's exciting most audiences now, and
• 1:12:40
  certainly it's the most satisfying experience for me. I'll stand. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:12:45
  it's it's true. And I ran one was fantastic, and you know,
• 1:12:49
  it just completely changed that sort of that that sort of template that they
• 1:12:54
  were going by, and I love it. Yeah, yeah, we see.
• 1:12:57
  It was awesome. And I also enjoyed Irony and three, but then
• 1:13:00
  again it was Shane Black, so I kind of I was a little biased,
• 1:13:02
  but but just just uh, you know, just actually, you know,
• 1:13:06
  I know we're sort of run out of time here, Neil, but
• 1:13:09
  just to sort of, you know, finish off, I want to talk
• 1:13:11
  about your book really quickly. You know, TV writing again is the is
• 1:13:15
  the biggest thing right now every I think everybody. I think you have to
• 1:13:18
  have a pilot of some kind in your your portfolio if you're going to be
• 1:13:21
  a writer. Yeah, and not only in Hollywood, but you know,
• 1:13:25
  even in like a YouTube episodic series, you know what I mean. So
• 1:13:29
  you know, you know what was some of the imphetis for you to create
• 1:13:30
  this in creating the book TV writing on Demand, well, my last this
• 1:13:36
  is my fifth book in my last read books, they've all been about television.
• 1:13:41
  So I did a book called The TV show Runners Roadmap, which primarily
• 1:13:46
  covered broadcast TV, and I wanted to have a lot of interviews with Joe
• 1:13:51
  anders in there as well at lots of different perspectives. So I interviewed in
• 1:13:55
  that book. I talked to down To Rhymes and Vin Gilligan and David Shorr
• 1:13:59
  and you know, just to kind of talk about their creative process. And
• 1:14:02
  then the other half of those books with me and what I teach c LA
• 1:14:05
  in the MFA Screenwriting Program, because I run the side of the program and
• 1:14:11
  I've had a lot of suits success, and so I went up to just
• 1:14:15
  kind of write a book that talked about the nuts and bolts of how to
• 1:14:18
  write a pilot and how to put a series together, whether it be a
• 1:14:23
  drama, you know, one hour or not hour for somebody after that.
• 1:14:27
  But when I finished that book, there was so much new TV coming,
• 1:14:30
  so many chills, like you know, mister Robot announced Cards and Barnes is
• 1:14:33
  the New Black, and I decided, you know, there's so much more
• 1:14:38
  to say now. And I was lying in bedded to having trouble sleeping and
• 1:14:42
  I came up with the idea the title TV Outside the Box, which was
• 1:14:45
  basically going to talk about where the TV's going. And I got up and
• 1:14:49
  I googled it and it didn't exist as a title, and I thought,
• 1:14:53
  Okay, I'm going to this is going to be a new book, and
• 1:14:55
  I'm going to write about the Trailblazers in what I sawt was the new platinum
• 1:14:59
  to chill this. But as I researched the book, I realized it was
• 1:15:02
  a TV revolution, you know, like what happened to the music business is
• 1:15:06
  happening to the commun business. Completely changed everything about it, how we consume
• 1:15:12
  it, how it's distributed, and then now So that then took me to
• 1:15:17
  the new book, TV Writing on demand, which is if it's being distributed
• 1:15:21
  differently and made differently and doesn't have to be written with commercial breaks and act
• 1:15:28
  out, and doesn't have to be programmed the timeslots where the audience is,
• 1:15:31
  you know, where the network might be afraid if they miss a few episodes
• 1:15:35
  they'll never catch up. Because nobody misses episodes anymore. You know. We
• 1:15:40
  have the ability to watch things whenever we want and in any order we want.
• 1:15:44
  So then I just thought, well, I want to write a book.
• 1:15:45
  It's kind of a companion to TV outside the book that talks about how
• 1:15:49
  the content's being created differently because of this revolution that we're in in the TV
• 1:15:56
  business. And so the new book talks about you know, Atlanta and the
• 1:16:00
  Crown and Westworld and the New Fargo and Stranger Things and Insecure and Ozark and
• 1:16:06
  The Night of you know, American Gods and basically the next iteration of great
• 1:16:14
  television and why these shows are great and how they're being created differently because because
• 1:16:21
  of how the consumer interacts with them. So, for example, instead of
• 1:16:25
  Law and Order, you know, one of the most star wark you know,
• 1:16:29
  successful TV shows ever where there was a murder, investigation, a trial,
• 1:16:33
  and a verdict all in forty two minutes with commercials nowing up the season
• 1:16:39
  long procedural where it's one murder all over the course of the whole. There
• 1:16:43
  were people who tried to do that in the past, but now that's just
• 1:16:45
  kind of like everything is slow burned, you know, big little Lies and
• 1:16:49
  Handmaid's Tale and you know, everything is s realized and our recentlylers global and
• 1:16:56
  the audience really appreciates that. So yes, so the new book basically is
• 1:17:01
  more for content creators and writers, but there's also analysis of a lot of
• 1:17:05
  these great shows that are very hot right now and what makes them work and
• 1:17:13
  how they kind of fit into the new gpu and scape. So if people
• 1:17:17
  who read the book, they'll see there's chapters on dystopias and magic realism and
• 1:17:21
  portals and ramedies that don't have to be comedy or drama, and you know,
• 1:17:29
  just kind of how everything's shifting and moving away from formula and moving towards
• 1:17:33
  slow burn serialized content that takes us place as we're not expecting, because there's
• 1:17:40
  the time to go deeper and to explore arcs over time, and everybody I
• 1:17:46
  am with Focal Press, we're actually going to give away a copy of this
• 1:17:50
  book, which is TV running on demand by Neil. We're actually to give
• 1:17:55
  away copy for free. So if you want to retweet, by the way,
• 1:18:00
  so here's how it's gonna workf You're gonna retweet not only this the episode,
• 1:18:03
  but also comment what you've learned during you know, listening to this episode.
• 1:18:10
  You will get a free copy of the book. If you're inside the
• 1:18:13
  US, you will get a choice between a PDF or a hard copy of
• 1:18:15
  the book. If you're outside the US, you can still participate, but
• 1:18:19
  I can only if you win. I can only give you a PDF,
• 1:18:23
  So I will link to Neil's book in the show notes. So again,
• 1:18:27
  just to enter, you have to retweet the episode and also mention what you've
• 1:18:30
  learned from listening to this episode between Neil and I as we've gone through this
• 1:18:34
  through all about writing and everything else. And it's a really great book by
• 1:18:39
  the way, I'm going to link to that in the show. That's Everybody,
• 1:18:41
  it's TV Writing on Demand and Neil, I've just been going through.
• 1:18:45
  I'm going through all the different chapters you have here, you know, just
• 1:18:47
  about all the different things that have going on and the TV and all the
• 1:18:51
  examples and stuff like that. And I'm starting to realize, you know,
• 1:18:55
  there's so many different TV shows. You start to remember, like Jesus,
• 1:18:57
  all these TV shows are happening at the same exact time. It's unbelievable.
• 1:19:01
  It is. The question I get the most is how do you possibly keep
• 1:19:05
  up with all this content? And the answer is it's really hard. I
• 1:19:11
  stay up very late, and I read a lot of scripts, and I
• 1:19:14
  watch a lot of three and this is my this is what I specialize in
• 1:19:18
  now, and I love I've always loved television. I've always escaped into television
• 1:19:25
  the time when I was a kid, and I've never seen that better time.
• 1:19:29
  I mean, I you know, this is just the just the most
• 1:19:32
  exciting time in television, both for viewers and if you're a content creator a
• 1:19:36
  writer. There's never been a better time to break into television. There's a
• 1:19:41
  humane demand and it's still cutthroat and extremely competitive, but there is opportunity and
• 1:19:47
  people need to fill you know, there's just a big appetite right now.
• 1:19:55
  So I encourage people to write stuff that's authentic that only they can write.
• 1:20:00
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to
• 1:20:08
  the show. And probably the last thing I can leave you with is if
• 1:20:13
  you're going to create a pilot for a show or a screenplight, the three
• 1:20:16
  most important questions to ask yourself are why this idea, why you as the
• 1:20:23
  writer? And why now for this project. If you don't have good compelling
• 1:20:27
  answers to those questions, I think you need to dig deeper into your creative
• 1:20:32
  process and what do you want your work to represent about you? Deeper you
• 1:20:40
  know, because just writing a story that you're not connected to that you think
• 1:20:45
  might sell isn't it notts anymore. It has to go deeper. And there
• 1:20:48
  is the personal story where the story that's rooted in authenticity is what everybody's looking
• 1:20:56
  for. And Neil, I think that's a great way to sort of put
• 1:21:00
  a period in this whole conversation. So Neil, where do we will find
• 1:21:03
  you? Where can Weep'll find you out online either Neil Landau dot com,
• 1:21:10
  Facebook or UCLA, you know, but Neil Lando dot com will get it,
• 1:21:15
  uh, you know, contact information, Neil Landel, I want to
• 1:21:19
  say thank you so much for coming on, thanks for having me, appreciate
• 1:21:25
  it and have a good weekend. I want to thank Dave so much for
• 1:21:29
  doing such a great job on this episode. If you want to get links
• 1:21:31
  to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over to the show notes
• 1:21:34
  at any film uscle dot com forward slash seven fifty three, and if you
• 1:21:38
  have it already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com. Subscribe and
• 1:21:44
  leave a good review for the show. It really helps us out a lot.
• 1:21:46
  Guys. Thank you again so much for listening. Guys, As always,
• 1:21:49
  keep that Hustle going, keep that dream alive. Stay safe out there,
• 1:21:53
  and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Indie Film
• 1:21:58
  Hustle podcast at Indie Home Hustle dot com. That's I N D I E
• 1:22:02
  F I L M h U S T l E dot com.