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IFH 675: Inside HBO’s Writers Room with Showrunner Daniel Knauf · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

• 0:03
  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Indie
• 0:13
  Film Hustle Podcast, Episode number six seventy five. I See Everything in Black,
• 0:18
  in Pain Claude Money Broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood. It's the
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  Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive and thrive as
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  an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz. And here's your host,
• 0:33
  Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle
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  Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored
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  by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur How to turn your independent film into a profitable
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  business. It's harder today than ever before for independent filmmakers to make money with
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  their films, from predatory film distributors ripping them off to huckster film aggregators who
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  prey upon them. The odds are stacked against the indie filmmaker. The old
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  distribution model of making money with your film is broken and there needs to be
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  a change. The future of independent filmmaking is the entrepreneurial filmmaker, or the
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  film entrepreneur. In Rise of the Film Entrepreneur, I break down how to
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  actually make money with your film projects and show you how to turn your indie
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  film into a profitable business. With case studies examining successes and failures. This
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  book shows you the step by step method to turn your passion into a profitable
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  career. If you're making a feature film, series, or any other kind
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  of video content, the Film Entrepreneur method will set you up for success.
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  The book is available in paperback, ebook, and of course audiobook. If
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  you want to order it, just head over to www dot film bizbook dot
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  com. That's film bizbook dot com. Now today on the show, we
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  have writer showrunner Daniel Noff. And if the name doesn't sound familiar, maybe
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  the shows that he worked on has. He created HBO's Carnival, which is
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  a cult favorite. If you guys have not seen it, there's two amazing
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  seasons of it out there in the world. And I was a big fan
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  of it when it came out in the early two thousands and at the time
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  it was the most expensive television show in the world at the time. It
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  was crazy how much they were spending on basically an unknown. He had never
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  done anything of any major, major magnitude before then, so it was pretty
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  amazing what he was able to do. And we talk all about his adventures
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  and Carnival being a showrunner of that show, as well as his writing method,
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  his adventures inside the writer's room and what it's like to be inside of
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  a writer's room of a big show. He's also worked on shows like The
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  Blacklist, Dracula, Spartacus, My Own Worst Enemy, and many many more,
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  and he's been around the block a few times and it has very very
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  interesting or how he got into the business and how he got his first shot
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  with Carnival and that whole process of a struggling writer or someone who just love
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  to write but was not getting a whole lot of traction and then one day
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  Hollywood Kim Anakin and I think he was ready. So we'll talk more about
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  that in the episode, which was extremely enlightening and inspirational to say the least.
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  Now, if you guys want to watch the video podcast of this,
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  it is on Indie Film Hustle TV, and you could go to the Indie
• 3:31
  Film Hustle TV video podcast to see us actually mean Daniel talk it out and
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  see this interview live. It's really really a cool experience to watch it.
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  So if you want to do that, just head over to Indie Film Hustle
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  dot tv. And now, without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation
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  with Daniel Naff. I'd like to welcome to the show. Daniel Naff.
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  Thank you so much for being on the show, my friend. Oh,
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  I'm happy to be here. So well, first, first off, you
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  have, well you have a very impressive career and resume, so we're going
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  to get into a bunch of the stuff you've done. But first and foremost,
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  how did you get started in the film industry? Crazy story that you
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  know, whenever and whenever you know, I do seminars sometimes, yeah,
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  and inevitably it would be how do I break into film? Which is funny
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  anyway, because it's like what you know, because there's Largis and he's kind
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  of hard baked into the entertainment business, and so the language reflects it.
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  So it's like, you don't hear people say, well, how do I
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  break into accountancy? Or how do I break into plumbing? Our destruction?
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  You know, it's like, but we got to do at b and E
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  to get into this business, so that question will come up, and and
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  it's like I'm singularly unhelpful in a way. I mean, I was an
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  insurance broker and tell us I'm in forties. I did that for like twenty
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  two twenty three years. I ran a business and um. And while I
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  was doing it, I was I'd always wanted to be a screenwriter, and
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  and I'd studied, UM, I'd studied creative writing in college and grown up
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  in Los Angeles, and so I kind of had and I loved movies.
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  I mean, it was my favorite thing. And but I had three kids
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  and I had to raise them, and I had to make money, and
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  there was a certain you know, lifestyle. I wanted to have a house
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  and you know, be able to pay my bills and that kind of thing.
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  So UM, I kind of set it aside. Um around the time
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  I was twenty two and got married, and it was like, oh,
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  yeah, this isn't what grown up to. UM. And then around the
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  time I was by the time I was twenty seven, I was actually going
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  insane. I mean I was like like literally like I was not a happy
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  career and uh and uh, and so I was going through this crushing depression
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  and I started writing and it brought me out of it, and I realized,
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  yeah, I'm this isn't something that I want to do. This is
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  something I kind of have to do. I'm just my brain's wired this way
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  and I need to be doing something creative in order to in order to It's
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  like a shark has to swim, you know, and I have to do
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  this thing. Um and I mean, so when people come to me and
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  say I've always wanted to write, and I think, well, I've always
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  wanted to be a bird, it's like that I don't have any choice.
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  It's like, so I started doing that, and I focused on really developing
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  my craft and writing screenplays and reading books about screenplays, you know, sit
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  Sitfield's books screenplay and other books where some of them were useful, someone were
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  completely useless. Taking some seminars, going to uc UCLA Extension here in LA
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  has some great classes, um and um, and just basically focusing on learning
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  the craft and and I getting some mentors. I had. I had two
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  very good mentors. My first mentor was Jan Fisher, who wrote The Lost
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  Voice, and we met when I was in a workshop at UCLA and ended
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  up writing some scripts together. Um, and and she kind of took me
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  under her wing and really really taught me a lot. And then and then
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  uh, I reached I hit like I hit my forties. And I said
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  to myself, and I'd put it off as you know what I'm I told
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  myself, if this isn't happening by the time I'm my forty, um,
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  I'm just gonna do something else. I'm starting and helping novels because it's sort
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  of a young man's game. And you know, breaking in is as any
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  forty forty something, you're all, you know, slightly overweight, be an
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  e guy. I'll tell you it's probably a lot easier when you're in your
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  twenties. And I am. I thought, I come from a long line
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  of like really sore losers, Like we're the guys who flipped them Monopoly board.
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  You throw tennis brackets at people. You know. My brother, My
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  brother always says his favorite, one of his favorite things goes show me a
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  good loser, and I'll show you loser. So I just said, you
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  just could take one more real run at this. That created a website called
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  unmovie dot com posted the first acts of all my scripts that i'd written up
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  to that point. Um, and you know, by then I've had some
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  success. I had. I didn't sell a script in the in nineteen ninety
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  three that ended up being a movie for HBO called Blind Justice, a Western,
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  but then nothing after that. You know, it was like, yeah,
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  it was like nothing. It was yeah. I was kind of like,
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  you know, check Yeager, you know, bouncing his X fifteen off
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  of the stratosphere. You know, it's like, wow, it's coming in
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  too hot. And so I was really, you know, the customer slump.
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  So I just created its website and put this stuff on. And I
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  got a call from a guy, Robert Kobod, who worked for a guy
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  named Scott Weinen, and Scott was an Emmy winning director, and he had
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  told Robert, you know, I'm tired of reading doctors, lawyers and cops.
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  Show me something different. And Robert found the first act of Carnival,
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  and he contacted me, says saying, I'd like to read the rest of
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  your pilot. And I'm thinking what pilot? And I remember, oh,
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  yeah, you know, I'd taken this crazy two hundred page screenplay that didn't
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  work, and thought maybe this isn't a feature and I collapsed the first act
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  to a pilot. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
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  and now back to the show. And so I showed it to them,
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  and I met with them, and they were very um. They were they
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  were very helpful, and they told me I needed to do a Bible and
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  I didn't know what a Bible was. And I did this Bible for Carnival,
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  and and we took it to HBO and all of a sudden, it
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  was like they bought it and and I was executive producing and in writing an
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  HBO series. So I started my career at the very top of the heat.
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  And I came in UM, and you know, it was weird because
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  it was like nobody to work with me. I'd never done another television show.
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  I had no reputation in the business. I just came out of like
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  left field, and I'm running an HBO series and they're you know, they
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  only would have like, you know, four or five shows on at a
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  time. It was a pretty, you know, kind of a you know,
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  high up kind position. And for somebody who was really a nobody to
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  be in. And I mean I actually got to a point I remember reading
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  on on on IMDb. That was like a rumor going around that I didn't
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  exist and that I was I was a pseudonym for David Lynch, which was
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  like really flattering but not really good for the brand. You come in.
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  And so I did this show for two years and I really kind of hung
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  on by my fingernails. So it was, it was, it was.
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  It was a kind of a terrifying experience because it's a shark tank in there.
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  And and just to answer your question, it's like for me to give
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  advice to some of them how to get in, I can't really say and
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  I can come in, you know. Oh, I was a baby writer
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  for a while and I got a story editor job on another show, and
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  then I you know, built that up and I went I didn't do the
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  same trajectory as most TV writers do. I mean, I know what that
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  trajectory is. You graduate from film school, you every every favor you can
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  get, and you try to get into the into a writer's room. Um,
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  whether you're in there as a office PA and you're bringing coffee, or
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  whether you're writer's assistant and you're just taking notes. And that's really the way
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  into TV writer. It's into TV writing it's really very much. Um,
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  it's it's it's it's very much like you all, you know, like you
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  know, getting into plumbing, shoemaking back in the joining the guild. Um,
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  it's it's you know, but mine, I just I broke right through
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  it. It's sort of the top. I worked my way down everything.
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  So you said it was it was a shark tank. Can you explain a
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  little bit about what was about that experience that was the shark tank? Because
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  I mean, you have a very unique story, you're right, and most
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  people don't start off running an HBO series. Well I wasn't running it.
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  I mean, I mean, but you know what I mean, like Executi
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  producing it the first year Ron was running. But well, really the main
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  reason what it boils down to is there's a lot of money on the line
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  and they were putting a bet on an untested talent and that's kind of terrifying
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  for a major corporation. Was it was like four million an episode or something
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  like that, Right, Yeah, there's three point seven five in the first
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  season as far as I know, And that was at that time the most
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  expensive show on TV. And we had a huge cast, and we had
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  extras and elements and a lot of outside days and some special effects and so
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  um it was. It was. It was a hugely expensive undertaking and they
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  would have loved to have had a season hand at the top, and that's
• 13:52
  what they kind of wanted to do. It was like, if we can
• 13:56
  find a guy who can take this this other guy's crazy idea and make your
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  work. I'm sure they would have scraped me off at some point, but
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  they found to their kind of their horror. And I'm not saying this,
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  you know, pat myself on the background here. This is what I've been
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  told by other people who were involved at the time. They said what they
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  found was nobody else knew how to write that show, and so they were
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  suck with me. So you so you wrote yourself a niche? Yeah,
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  well, I mean really what else? I mean basically, what I did
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  was I created It's like it's like sitting on creating a board game where everything
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  you do well is something that wins that board game, and it's custom designed
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  for every single thing you do well. And they realized, I'm probably guessing
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  to their abject horror that you know, that they needed me and they couldn't
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  get rid of me, and it would have been easier to get rid of
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  me because I was so green, and from my standpoint, I didn't know
• 14:54
  the rules. And getting into Hollywood and dealing with Hollywood people and the entertainment
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  business is a lot like suddenly getting into time machine finding yourself in the court
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  of King Louis the fourteenth. In your there's a whole battery of sort of
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  kabuki like rituals and certain things that have to be said and how they're said,
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  and pecking orders. And I remember my first I sent a memo out
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  one time, and in Jeron's business, you send a memo out and it
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  just it's here. It is here, everybody, Here's what's going on.
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  Glad you know. I got called by one of the executive producers. He
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  said, what do you think you're doing. It's like, what I mean,
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  one of my dad I'm setting out this memo of it about you know,
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  some nothing. He climbed up my ass about, oh, you have
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  to put this person's name first, and this person's name second, and this
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  person's name third. And so it was really a lot about just learning these
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  weird customs and rituals and expectations. I also didn't know what was a reasonable
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  ask, Like, you know, was it a reasonable ask? You know,
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  if I said, no, let's not do this. Um, it's
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  pretty easy if you don't have a really strong knowledge of physical production. And
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  I didn't back then to step on the ant hill. And I did that
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  pretty regularly. I learned very I'm a quick study, and I learned,
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  and I make I generally, don't make him a sane mistake twice. Um,
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  I just make every possible mistake once fair enough. And so it was.
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  It was. It was kind of a jarring, terrifying kind of experience
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  in which I was kind of hanging on by my fingernails, you know,
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  at all times, and feeling like a stranger in a strange land. Um.
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  But I did the full two years, and in those two years,
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  I pretty much learned the lay of the land. And uh, you know,
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  so after that I knew, you know, exactly how how the sausages
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  made, and had I really had a love for physical production and asked a
• 17:06
  lot of people who are very knowledgeable questions and learning about that and and so
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  you know, since then that was Carnival was kind of my film school,
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  you know, it was like hell of a film school. Yeah, I
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  mean, there was just there was a there was a there was an immense
• 17:22
  amount of there was there was there was money and stature and everything writing on
• 17:29
  that. Um. I mean the sad thing really is the expectations HBO had
• 17:34
  for the series were wholly unrealistic. And um that's one of the things that
• 17:38
  killed us. If we went on the air on HBO, now you know,
• 17:44
  they'd be considers like an unmitigated success. But they were saying, oh,
• 17:48
  we expect to score higher numbers with this show and The Sopranos. And
• 17:52
  when I the day I heard that, I was going, oh god,
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  we are so dead because the Sopranos's mainstream drama and whenever you get into genre
• 18:00
  stuff, even more so back then than now, where genres kind of you
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  know, oozed into mainstream. Back then, there were people where as soon
• 18:11
  as ben Heel's a little girl at the beginning of the show, they're going
• 18:17
  to turn it off and they're not going to turn it back on because they're
• 18:18
  doing that's not real, you know. And that's there's some people, no
• 18:23
  matter how well, it doesn't matter whether listen they were super good jazz or
• 18:30
  really crappy jazz, they just don't they can't differentiate because they just don't like
• 18:34
  jazz or rap or country western and for you know, shows to involved magic
• 18:41
  or supernatural or whatever. If people aren't into that, no matter how good
• 18:47
  you do, you're going to lose that audience. Do you think that Carnival
• 18:51
  would have had a better chance in today's environment, like on a streaming service,
• 18:55
  like they have a longer run. I suspect we would have done our
• 18:57
  full run if it came out. If it came out, I would say
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  it even if it came out like two or three years after we did come
• 19:04
  out, we were really on the bleeding edge of everything and people just weren't
• 19:11
  really ready for that show. And it would have been easier too, because
• 19:17
  of a lot of what we were doing in the first season. In the
• 19:19
  first season drags quite a lot, but a lot of it was about just
• 19:23
  teaching people the vocabulary of the show and so that they would understand and people
• 19:30
  there had never been anything online that it was just it was It was just
• 19:34
  a really weird thing, you know. I mean, it had kind of
• 19:40
  the cryptic aspects of Twin Peaks, but it was a period drama and there
• 19:45
  was some historical aspects that were based on true you know, situations and true
• 19:51
  events and other things that that were made up. And and so we really
• 19:56
  felt like we kind of had to handle the audience along for the you know,
• 20:00
  the first first at least six episodes so they know what the rules were.
• 20:06
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now back to
• 20:12
  the show. Now, can you said some you said a term show bible.
• 20:18
  Um. For a lot of people who are listening, they might not
• 20:19
  know what a show bible is. Can you explain how what your process was
• 20:23
  being a newbie putting it together, just so they don't feel, you know,
• 20:29
  it's they're you know, it's so it's though they're they're dumb or anything.
• 20:32
  When when when Scott said, yeah, first you need you know,
• 20:34
  we need to get a bible, and I'm thinking we are going to kneel
• 20:37
  down and pray they buy it, you know, like King James or the
• 20:42
  New American Way where what name your poison? Um? A show bible is
• 20:48
  basically a document that goes into the milieu of you know, the world.
• 20:57
  First, you start basically with log line okay um um, you know powers,
• 21:06
  it's like on a war between good and evil as fought in the blasted
• 21:11
  landscape of the thirties dust bowl, you know, or whatever. So you
• 21:15
  come up your your sort of three liner or two line or log line,
• 21:19
  and then you start to elaborate on that, and you get into, um,
• 21:26
  the world, um, the rules of the world, UM, you
• 21:32
  know, the you might like, I like to put youse images just to
• 21:37
  set tone and give an idea of what things are going to look like.
• 21:41
  Um, and you you you talk about the history of all the backstory.
• 21:48
  You get into the description of the you know, so full blown articulation of
• 21:55
  the bottom three quarters of the iceberg, and talk about the characters, the
• 22:00
  character's history, you know, feld descriptions of who everybody is and where they
• 22:06
  come from. And then and then you go into um, you know,
• 22:11
  first season, this is your first season arc that will be quite detailed.
• 22:15
  By episode one, you do this, episode two, this, and then
• 22:19
  you know, later episodes. You're kind of you know, increasingly shorthanding and
• 22:26
  hearing people an idea of where the thrust of the show is, what its
• 22:30
  destination is, where when the show kind of ends, um, if if
• 22:34
  it ails, I mean a lot of shows and when nobody's watching them anymore,
• 22:37
  I mean the most episodic dramas and when people are just tired of watching
• 22:41
  it, you know, but as cereal, this is a serial and that's
• 22:48
  that's kind of what I put together for them. And what I did was
• 22:52
  a very complex thing to where people are looking at and going, wow,
• 22:56
  is this based on like real people? Because I had like, I got
• 23:00
  bored with it, I said, when once I heard that in description,
• 23:03
  Okay, here's what you have to do. I got suit. I started
• 23:04
  writing it and I was going, God, this is like watching paint dry.
• 23:08
  And if I'm bored, whoever's reading it, who's got the misfortunate reading
• 23:12
  this thing? It's gonna even even more. It was Hey, I can
• 23:15
  do things, you know, And so I started going, let's have a
• 23:19
  little fun with it. And what I did is I created the whole thing
• 23:22
  sort of from the point of view of this intrepid university professor who had heard
• 23:29
  about this carnival and had done a bunch of research and gathered files about the
• 23:33
  actual carnival. And there were fake police reports and fake newspaper articles and fake
• 23:40
  religious tracks and all kinds of stuff that he had kind of gathered and put
• 23:44
  together. There was even an interview with Sampson when he's like seventy five years
• 23:48
  old in old folks home, you know, and he's this sort of you
• 23:52
  know, angry car mudge and you know, and and uh, you know,
• 23:56
  just just like, you know, can you go out and give me
• 23:57
  suppose you know? Um, And so I just had a blast riding it,
• 24:03
  and so they saw it. They've never seen anything like that. Um.
• 24:07
  And I've done that since on almost every show that I've developed, because
• 24:12
  I always figure, hey, you know, why screw a success. But
• 24:18
  while you're doing it, I mean, it's like I'm beginning. I keep
• 24:22
  hearing different things. Some people they need to come in with every dot,
• 24:25
  every I dot and every T crossed and manage you know, and and and
• 24:30
  you know trailers, you know, um, you know, promos, you
• 24:38
  know, the shot, you know whatever, you know, this whole thing.
• 24:41
  And then I hear other people saying the best beets just to go in
• 24:44
  with a strong pitch. I don't know what the rules are anymore. You
• 24:48
  know, Well, yeah, the Netflix and Hulu and those guys coming thrown
• 24:52
  everything off the window as far as rules are concerned, very much. So,
• 24:56
  and and you really, you know, it's like, um, it's
• 25:03
  they they set up shops so far, you know, kind of upstream um
• 25:07
  that they wield an immense they in the world. And this isn't just in
• 25:14
  Hollywood. There's the Golden rule, which is he who has the gold roles,
• 25:18
  and and in Hollywood that's very very very much operative. And you know,
• 25:22
  people like met Netflix are sitting on billions and billions of dollars and they
• 25:27
  say, okay, you get some, and you get some and you get
• 25:30
  some. And I don't know what they're you know, which projects, what
• 25:37
  makes them pick out what project or you know whatever. It's kind of I
• 25:42
  mean really, I mean sometimes I feel it's like that. There was this
• 25:45
  old show that was on I think in the fifties before my time, but
• 25:48
  it was called a Millionaire, and it was about a guy who would just
• 25:52
  go out to random to give a million, yeah, a million. You
• 26:00
  know, you can buy an island brilliant. Now you can't even buy it.
• 26:04
  And now you can't even buy a house in Burbank. You have four
• 26:08
  bedroom house and receive but you know, the the with a swimming pool.
• 26:14
  Probably sometimes I feel like that's what Netflix is now, you know, is
• 26:21
  kind of like all of a sudden boom you know, you're gifted with it,
• 26:23
  and so well, it's a very it's a very chaotic market, right,
• 26:29
  it is pretty insane. And you know, I've talked to you know,
• 26:32
  I talked to a lot of people like yourselves who are in the business,
• 26:33
  who were in the business before Netflix, and I've seen them just disrupt
• 26:38
  this entire industry. And now players like Disney are showing up with their streaming
• 26:44
  service, and Apple just talked just said, hey, we're going to put
• 26:47
  ours in and uh, Comcast or I think it's AT and T excuse me,
• 26:52
  they have one coming out. Like there's so many of these services coming
• 26:56
  out, and it's really just changing the way everything is done. Yeah,
• 27:00
  what's interesting too is the impactants had on just the way people comport themselves.
• 27:03
  But I think I don't know who it was. I think it was Betty
• 27:07
  Davis or one of those old actresses. Um was quoted as saying, Hollywood's
• 27:11
  the place of the one place on earth where you can get encouraged to death.
• 27:15
  You know, very true. It's extremely true, or as I like
• 27:19
  to say. And when people say, hey, you know, it's good
• 27:22
  for exposure, and I go, people die from exposure. You know that
• 27:27
  I'm gonna I'm gonna steal that line. I wouldn't steal that. That's a
• 27:30
  line on a desert. That's death. He was exposed exposure, so so,
• 27:40
  you know, But it used to be that everybody was really super,
• 27:41
  super super I was talking to my wife about this this morning, and I
• 27:45
  was just making this observation. Used to be that people were very very sort
• 27:49
  of sort of sort of sort of polite and genteel with each other, mainly
• 27:56
  because you really didn't know whether this guy who was you just had every reason
• 28:00
  to believe it's a completely talentless hack, okay, or just a straight up
• 28:06
  bosom for all you know from your experience in six years, could be running
• 28:12
  a studio you just didn't know, or could be the guy that everybody wants
• 28:18
  to do business with. So people were generally very careful with talent relations.
• 28:23
  You didn't want to, he wanted to. You know, it would always
• 28:26
  be God, we really love this, but it's just not right for us
• 28:30
  right now. We were developing something similar to it, or you know,
• 28:33
  to be always that kind of there'd always be we love you, we think
• 28:37
  you're great. But my agent one time called me up. It's like the
• 28:41
  sixth thing that it's like not soul, and he says, yeah, well,
• 28:45
  they really love you, and I go, no, they don't don't
• 28:51
  love me, because if they loved me, they would buy shit from me.
• 28:53
  I could wipe my ass on a piece of toilet paper and submit that
• 28:56
  and they face a show on it. Don't tell me they love But there
• 29:02
  was still that it was just sort of out of kind of out out of
• 29:04
  respect. I wouldn't say it's out of respect. I wouldn't say it was
• 29:07
  them being kind. It's not kindness. It was out of fear. It
• 29:11
  was fear that the persons sitting in this chair right now with us maybe somebody
• 29:17
  we absolutely need to be doing business with later, so we don't want to
• 29:21
  burn any bridges. What I found lately in talking to other writers and stuff
• 29:26
  is Netflix, And maybe it's because I read a little bit about their their
• 29:30
  internal culture of transparency. You'd say, what's on your mind, to be
• 29:34
  totally frank with people, and that's the way we do things is there's a
• 29:38
  tendency for them to say, huh, fuck off, we're not interested.
• 29:42
  Go away. I mean it'll be just like fuck off, go away,
• 29:45
  and you'll go what did you like, what fuck you we you know we
• 29:51
  didn't like it. You know, some didn't work for us, so go
• 29:55
  fuck off. You know, we'll be right back after a word from our
• 29:59
  spawn, sir, and now back to the show. And they don't give
• 30:07
  you feedback, they don't say what they're looking for. They don't want a
• 30:11
  follow up meeting. And and it's kurt and it's harsh. You know I
• 30:15
  heard that too, and and so it's like it's like it's like, what
• 30:22
  does that bode well for them? Um? If they come sniffing around later,
• 30:30
  and you know, and they're not somebody I want to do business with,
• 30:36
  they're probably gonna have to throw them up more money at me to get
• 30:38
  me, and they'll have and they'll have it. We'll be right back after
• 30:42
  a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show, because they've
• 30:52
  got the money. But I just think, you know, guys, there's
• 30:55
  a reason why there's so much as kissing going on in Hollywood before you got
• 30:59
  here, and that's because you don't understand somebody who's at the very bottom of
• 31:03
  the game, living out of their car this week, in six months can
• 31:08
  be picking up an oscar, you know, I mean that's the story of
• 31:12
  the guy who wrote Dances with Wolves. He was literally living out of his
• 31:15
  car and a year later he got an oscar. You've got to basically treat
• 31:22
  people well, because people who maybe you don't need this week, you may
• 31:26
  need desperately in six months or a year. And you know. But again,
• 31:33
  I mean it's like like I said, it's sort of part of the
• 31:37
  chaos right now. I don't really care. It doesn't affect me, doesn't
• 31:42
  really affect my game. My game is I just do the best work I
• 31:47
  can and move forward. And I'm not a peripheral visionary. I just I
• 31:52
  don't look at what everybody else is doing. Can't kind of Hey, I
• 31:56
  do my own thing and hopefully somebody was to it. No, I've always
• 32:01
  wanted to ask you and also just someone like you. We had that experience,
• 32:07
  that kind of lottery ticket win with Carnival. What was it like when
• 32:13
  you got the call or were you in the room. What was that experience
• 32:15
  where like where you're greenlit we're going to make this show. Oh, I
• 32:20
  can remember exactly what it's like when I sold the thing. You know,
• 32:24
  um, because I was, I was, I was at a little I
• 32:29
  was like at my daughter's softball game. I remember where I was standing.
• 32:32
  I remember looking at my my my, looking at her mother and going,
• 32:37
  oh my god, our life just changed. Well, it was like they're
• 32:43
  doing it. The problem was I just I've never tried to get in intov
• 32:50
  before then, and so I couldn't fully appreciate how amazing it was. You
• 32:55
  know. It was kind of like, of course they bought it. It's
• 32:58
  good. I guess. I was like when I was like seventeen, he
• 33:05
  took me to Santa Need a race track, right, and I just beginner's
• 33:09
  luck. I picked seven out of the nine horses on the notes, and
• 33:15
  I remember sitting there and I was thinking, these two dollars bets. That's
• 33:16
  gonna be two bucks, and I can make up that co home with a
• 33:20
  couple of hundred bucks. And I'm thinking, you know, maybe this college
• 33:23
  thing is overrated. You know the track, and the track just seems much
• 33:28
  more easy the way back to the girlfriend, you know, expecting to impress
• 33:32
  her, and I didn't. You know. It's like, yeah, they
• 33:35
  were like, you know, my horses was like they were shooting them out
• 33:37
  there. I was like, oh, yeah, I broke his front way
• 33:39
  and take them back, you know, I totally humiliated and realize, oh
• 33:45
  my god. And there were a lot of aspects of Carnival that were like
• 33:49
  that. I wasn't. I wasn't. I hadn't gotten beaten up enough to
• 33:54
  really fully appreciate it. Um in the market, I hadn't spent a lot
• 33:59
  of time trying to network or sell things. What I'd done is I'd spent
• 34:01
  twenty years, um really honing my craft, you know, and that was
• 34:07
  good. And if I was going to do it another I'd rather do it
• 34:10
  that way than the other way. I don't think Hollywood's a good place to
• 34:14
  learn how to write in. So so you were basically training for a fight
• 34:17
  that you never knew was going to come or not come. But when it
• 34:21
  finally came, you were ready. Oh yeah, I'd been doing like Brazilian
• 34:25
  Jude chits you for twenty years with in a basement somewhere you know, no
• 34:30
  one knew who you were on. Yeah, I was like, you know,
• 34:35
  I was bringing you know, just bringing guys in and breaking their nets.
• 34:38
  There'd be no fucking witnesses. And so by the time I was fully
• 34:43
  evolved, I mean I really was, I had I had honed it to
• 34:49
  a fine point m and in utter in a total obscurity um and a lot
• 34:57
  of people, you know, you get into it, but probab, I
• 35:00
  see, like getting into graduating from college, getting that first job, you
• 35:05
  reached a point where you're pulling down a six figure paycheck and you kind of
• 35:08
  go, well, I guess I knew everything I need to know about writing
• 35:10
  and your development as an artist just stops. The other thing is I had
• 35:15
  twenty I had twenty five. Well, by the time I did it was
• 35:20
  I had four decades plus of living. I'd done, and I had a
• 35:25
  lot of experiences, and you know, I had a lot to draw on
• 35:31
  versus some guy who's twenty years old and he has I had a really bad
• 35:37
  break up and high school, you know it was at time I got kicked
• 35:40
  in the yards seventh grade. I mean, it's just, you know,
• 35:47
  there's not a lot of complexity to what you can look back on at twenty
• 35:52
  two years old, whereas at forty five, I had three kids, feeling
• 35:57
  there had been the health there had been health problem, must have been you
• 36:00
  know, a million, a million things, and so it's like I could
• 36:04
  draw on all of that. Now you you also acted as a showrunner on
• 36:08
  a few shows. Can you tell which which shows you worked on specifically as
• 36:10
  a showrunner. I was never really the showrunner on Carnival, but I was
• 36:16
  kind of the showrunner by default on Carnival because the second season wrong in a
• 36:21
  way to do Battlestarcleactica, and I was basically the head writer. I was
• 36:27
  doing everything a showrunner does. But you know, but at the end of
• 36:34
  the day, there was another executive producer was handling most of the post production
• 36:38
  and you know, calling certain shots. So I wasn't really a pure showrunner,
• 36:42
  but I was making them a lot of creative decisions, and a lot
• 36:46
  of the crew were making end runs around the other guy to say, hey,
• 36:51
  you know, we're trying to get a decision. He hasn't, you
• 36:53
  know, and he's putting this one to committee and we really need to know.
• 36:57
  Now, I say, just do this, you know. So,
• 37:00
  I mean, I know what a show unner's job was, and so I
• 37:02
  know that in the second season, I was the de facto show runner.
• 37:06
  Now, what does a show runner do exactly for the audience so they understand
• 37:09
  the showrunner is basically responsible for, first of all, pretty much all scripts
• 37:15
  and the trajectory of what's going on in the writing room and the story of
• 37:19
  what's being submitted to the network. Dealing with all the notes to come back
• 37:22
  from the network, dealing with the production issues that come up, looking at,
• 37:29
  you know, drawings of sets that are going to be built, and
• 37:34
  signing off on those. You're signing off on everything. You're generally you're generally,
• 37:38
  you know, working directly with your key crew and your line producers to
• 37:46
  just make sure that everything's running and then all the trains are running on time.
• 37:51
  And in doing what you can do to make their job. I would
• 37:55
  say, I would say easier, but sometimes I think just to make their
• 38:00
  job possible. It's really, it's really this is this is pyramid building,
• 38:09
  you know, and you're building a new pyramid every week, and you're building
• 38:12
  each pyramid from the factory floor up and and so there's a lot of details
• 38:16
  that need attending to. You're also, you know, you're delegating a lot
• 38:21
  you can't be you know, you can't have your hand in everything. Um,
• 38:23
  you just have to make sure that the right people who reflect and understand
• 38:29
  your vision for things are in the slots. You know, Now, can
• 38:31
  you talk a little bit about the writer's room and what it's like to be
• 38:35
  in that writer's room. For people who have never been in a writer's room,
• 38:38
  well there's I've been in both. I've been in two kinds. There's
• 38:42
  really only two kinds of writer's rooms. Um, well there's there's there's lots
• 38:46
  of different kinds of writer's rooms. Um, there's writers rooms of work and
• 38:50
  writers rooms don't work. There's where you know, Um, the shows that
• 38:55
  I've run, the shows that I've been in charge of the writers room,
• 39:00
  I take great pride and when when I'm running a room, it's running on
• 39:04
  all cylinders and you have five or six writers in a room and I'm usually
• 39:08
  writer's assistant taking notes you have here, you're using cards or whiteboards in your
• 39:15
  breaking story. Your job is to sit as a group and break story.
• 39:20
  And to me, the key is, first of all, everybody has to
• 39:23
  feel safe, you know, they have to feel like they're not going to
• 39:28
  be ridicule that they come up with something silly. One thing that I really
• 39:34
  like. Ron Moore brought this to our room and Carnival, and according to
• 39:38
  him, it's it's an old gene roddenberry tip trick is a thing called a
• 39:44
  stupid stick, and you designate something. It can be anything, it can
• 39:47
  just be an object. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 39:55
  and now back to the show. And if you pick this thing up
• 40:00
  and you hold it and pitch something, nobody can make fun of you.
• 40:04
  It's got supernatural powers. That's awesome. So and often it's the stupid stick
• 40:09
  pitch that really gets breaks the dam. Like usually the reaction is that,
• 40:16
  like, you shouldn't have picked up the stupid stick. That's actually really smart,
• 40:20
  or it'll be yeah, that's stupid. But you know if you did
• 40:25
  that, which flat gets every it just breaks a log jam. And I
• 40:30
  mean, really the key to me of successfully running a room, And I
• 40:36
  think the best I love analogy is that the best analogy I've found for a
• 40:39
  writer's room is you know, you're drawing, You're drawing juice, your drawing
• 40:46
  story out of the ether. As a writer, it's bubbling up through your
• 40:52
  story. Well, it's being informed by your own experiences. It's being filtered
• 40:55
  by your own experiences and interpreted by your own experiences. But that story comes
• 41:00
  from somewhere else. I truly believe. The more I do this that writers
• 41:04
  and artists, artists of all stripe are the only people on earth that are
• 41:08
  actually in daily um who in daily communication was with supernatural? I mean,
• 41:16
  I just there's it's something else. I can't tell you how many times I've
• 41:21
  written something in gun Where the fuck did that come from? Oh? Yeah,
• 41:24
  holy shit, Like that's that didn't come out of me, you know.
• 41:29
  And it's nothing I've ever seen, and it's nothing I've ever experienced,
• 41:31
  for God's sake, and it's coming from somewhere else. And so you're you're
• 41:37
  basically a light bulb and there's a power station, you know, down down
• 41:42
  the street. I look at it as you know, to keep of power
• 41:45
  station thing going. It's like you're driving through the desert here in California and
• 41:49
  there's you're out towards Nevada and there's these solar collectors and it's, you know,
• 41:54
  hundreds of mirrors on the desert floor, all of those mirrors focused on
• 42:00
  a heat element at the top of a tower that is you know, moving
• 42:05
  turbines down below. And I look at it as a good writer's room,
• 42:10
  is all the people are taking that that mojo, that story mojo, that
• 42:15
  juice and sort of focusing it on, you know, on on the person
• 42:20
  who's running the room, and and it's like it's amplifying everybody there. You
• 42:27
  can't if you have a good, well one on writer's room, nobody can
• 42:31
  really remember who came up with what it. It becomes it becomes a pure
• 42:39
  hive mind. And they're not just saying it because I like star Trek,
• 42:44
  but it becomes it becomes a hive mind. And there's only one writer in
• 42:50
  the room. There really is only one writer in the room, but he's
• 42:54
  he's the combination of you know, the four for six or twelve twelve writers
• 43:00
  that are all sitting in the room focusing their mirrors at that center point,
• 43:05
  which is just you know, forging the story. Um and it all kind
• 43:09
  of melts together, you know, um. And so it's not you know,
• 43:15
  the twelve equals one twelve creates one writer, you know, and that
• 43:20
  that takes the immense trust um and and in the process and um and a
• 43:30
  measure of generosity and more than that, just making sure it's fun. And
• 43:35
  because because creation is play, creation is play at a very high level,
• 43:40
  yes, but it's nevertheless it's no different than you know, like six kids
• 43:46
  in a sandbox, truck playing with trucks, you know, or army man
• 43:51
  or something. It's you're in a state of play and you need to make
• 43:54
  people feel like good if not that place, yeah, because if you,
• 44:01
  if you, if you're making kids not feel fun, they're not going to
• 44:06
  play in that sandbox. What they're gonna do is they're going to retreat to
• 44:07
  their corners and pound. And I'm seeing that happen in writers rooms. I
• 44:10
  mean there's writers rooms where it's like it's just everybody's just stirring a hole in
• 44:15
  the whiteboard and it's like what if we what? Oh yeah, it's like
• 44:28
  just constipated. Just oh my god. I've been in rooms like that and
• 44:34
  it's just like and usually it's a function of people at the top. It's
• 44:42
  a trickle down effect of of of the way that ideas are received. M
• 44:47
  shows like that are not fun. You know. No, let me ask
• 44:52
  you a question. How do you deal with studio notes or notes in general
• 44:55
  from people who have not sat and bled on the paper like you or on
• 45:00
  your laptop to build that story. Well, first of all, you know,
• 45:04
  I keep in mind that everybody, everybody involved and wants to make the
• 45:07
  material good. Now you'd argue there's probably a few people out there they just
• 45:12
  want to get their fingerprints on it. And there's a good argument for that.
• 45:15
  You know. It's like they want to be able to turn to their
• 45:16
  wife and see, hey, see that sweater. I picked that sweater out
• 45:21
  for that actress or something. I don't know, I don't. I think
• 45:24
  that's more of the exception to the rule. Everybody is just dying to make
• 45:28
  something great, and and sometimes if it's coming from people who don't understand the
• 45:37
  process, like the executives, it may not be as well articulated as it
• 45:44
  would be if you were getting it from another writer, you know, And
• 45:46
  thank God for that, because if they were capable of articulating it as well
• 45:52
  as a writer, they wouldn't need us. So that's said. You know,
• 45:59
  I say, you know, I read every every year I see some
• 46:02
  article and some basically on the internet or whatever, some blog or some screenwriting
• 46:07
  magazine and be like, but thoughest notes will you ever got? And it's
• 46:10
  bunch, you're right talking about the dollst note or ever goot. And to
• 46:15
  this day I've never seen anybody right when saying the smartest note I ever got?
• 46:19
  Because I can tell you for every really stupid note I've gotten, I've
• 46:22
  gotten one where I'm kicking myself in the ass. I'm my way home going,
• 46:24
  why they hell didn't I think of that. Sometimes people come up with
• 46:29
  with things where it's like, oh, wow, you're absolutely right. Um,
• 46:34
  I think the biggest problem is a lot of the notes. They have
• 46:42
  a lot of executives. They want to pitch a solution they perceive a problem,
• 46:45
  and they tend to frame their notes as solutions to problems they perceive.
• 46:52
  So it'll be hey, you know, do this and you're kind of going
• 46:55
  h like I feel, and it's like it's if there's any executives listening,
• 47:04
  or any future executives, the best thing to do is just frame the problem
• 47:07
  first, you know what I mean, Um, oh, the second act
• 47:10
  or you know, and be as specific as you can. This really bumps
• 47:15
  for me. You know, um, this particular moment or this this second
• 47:20
  scene kind of drags or it seems like this one character disappears and you know
• 47:24
  in the second act, and you know, frame the problem. Don't try
• 47:30
  to just pitch a solution, because the solution it's sort of like, you
• 47:37
  know, you got a doctor there's only one doctor in the room. And
• 47:40
  then you got a bunch of people who are standing around in the room,
• 47:44
  and they bring a patient in and he's bleeding from the ears, and everybody
• 47:49
  says, for God's sake, put cotton in his ears and put some band
• 47:52
  aids on his ears his ears. Really, the doctor and you're going,
• 47:55
  now, actually, that's indication of like, you know, you know,
• 47:59
  that's or cranial bleeding, and we really have to get him into an m
• 48:01
  R. I see what's going on with his brain, you know, And
• 48:05
  it's not A band aid on the ear is a situation. So you know,
• 48:12
  sometimes it's better just to point out, hey, he's bleeding from the
• 48:15
  ears. Not hey, put some band aids on his ears. You know,
• 48:20
  it's just better to frame a problem or point out the problem and then
• 48:24
  propose a solution. You are good at analogies, by the way, you
• 48:28
  are very good at analogies. Thank you. I should open up a little
• 48:34
  store. You should just sell analogies for us. Now, what is the
• 48:39
  biggest mistake you see first time screenwriters make? The biggest mistakes screenwriters make,
• 48:50
  I would say the biggest mistake all writers new writers make. And even if
• 48:53
  you that are like along the way is not recognizing a lot of the people
• 49:00
  go. You know, if I get it really good the first time,
• 49:05
  it'll save me time on editing. You know, I can edit and write
• 49:09
  at the same time. I can multitask. I can work with my iPad
• 49:14
  and watch TV at the same time, so I can edit and write at
• 49:17
  the same time. And then they sit down, which in really editing is
• 49:24
  using a completely different part of your brain than writing. It's completely It's as
• 49:30
  different as the difference between oh, I'm doing an analogy, but it's just
• 49:35
  different as the difference between skiing and eating a banana. Right, they have
• 49:40
  nothing to do with each other. Now I suppose you could ski while you're
• 49:44
  eating a banana. Not Well, the thing is, the thing is,
• 49:50
  it's like it's really they're they're they're they're mutually exclusive activities. And we'll be
• 49:58
  right back after a word from our answer and now back to the show.
• 50:07
  And what I find is the effect is like when people do that and they
• 50:12
  go, that's where you get into the It was a dark and stormy night.
• 50:15
  Oh no, no, no, that sucks. It was a shadowy
• 50:20
  and straining night. Oh that's worth This is the recipe for complete writer's block
• 50:28
  of paralysis, where you're trying to make qualitative decisions about things that are just
• 50:32
  dumping out of your head. Okay, you cannot do it. You cannot
• 50:37
  do that. You can't do it. It is like like pegging the accelerator
• 50:44
  and the break on your car at the same time. You're gonna make shitloads
• 50:49
  of noise and last mode, but the car ain't going anywhere, okay,
• 50:53
  And so it's like it's like understand that, you know, when you sit
• 50:58
  down to write, you write like you're being pursued through the jungle by a
• 51:04
  bunch of guys with machetes. You don't think about it. You go.
• 51:07
  You can be thinking, oh, this is shit. I know a ship,
• 51:10
  but I've got to get through this scene. Okay, I know what
• 51:14
  the next scene is going to be, and just get through it. Get
• 51:15
  through it, get through it, get through it right forward. Don't,
• 51:20
  for Christ's sake, when you sit down and write, don't sit down and
• 51:22
  read everything you've written before you write, okay, because now you're editing it
• 51:25
  again. Stop that. So you just sit down, you read the last
• 51:30
  few words and you go, oh, yeah, that's where I left of
• 51:31
  and you just pick it up and you have to write like you're just now.
• 51:37
  And it's okay if you're If you go off of your outline, that's
• 51:42
  all right. If something happens and the character takes you into direction you didn't
• 51:45
  expect to go great, okay, you know, and sometimes those are great
• 51:49
  moments, and so go ahead. But as long as you get back onto
• 51:52
  your you know, onto the path again, and arrive at your trajectory and
• 51:57
  arrive at your ending. But just get that first draft, get it out
• 52:00
  as quickly as humanly possible. And I can guarantee you that the parts that
• 52:06
  you thought while you were writing them were just shit on ice. Actually you'll
• 52:10
  reread them and you go, well, this isn't bad. And the stuff
• 52:14
  you thought where you were, oh my god, I must be channeling,
• 52:16
  you know, eugenal Eel. You know, it's just garbage, you know.
• 52:22
  And so it's like it's like you have no way of knowing how well
• 52:25
  you're doing while you're creating. You can't be So that's another reason. So
• 52:30
  so my advice to writers is understand that process and understand editing and writing and
• 52:37
  editing a creative process and the editing process are two completely different things, and
• 52:45
  you know, and and don't try to don't try to multitask that it never
• 52:50
  goes well. I actually heard, I actually heard a great analogy from a
• 52:54
  songwriter which I think is amazing analogy for writing, which is like when you
• 53:00
  go into an old house and you turn on the pipes and all you see
• 53:04
  is that mud come out. You just gotta let it go and let that
• 53:07
  mud keep flowing out of the pipes, out of this faucet, and sooner
• 53:10
  or later, because start walk, it starts getting lighter and lighter and lighter,
• 53:14
  to the point where then you're getting clear water that you can actually drink.
• 53:19
  But you have to get through all that other stuff first, or else
• 53:22
  it won't you won't get to the good stuff. So you just have to.
• 53:24
  You it's like, it's like it's it's it's an ugly, messy,
• 53:29
  smelly process. There's nothing, there's nothing. There's nothing glamorous about being an
• 53:36
  artist. A lot of times it really is it not when you're real creative.
• 53:40
  You know, when I'm I'm I'm one of those I'm one of those
• 53:44
  rare birds. A lot of people are like, you know, I hate
• 53:46
  writing. The tortures they're sitting in front of her. I've seen you guys
• 53:51
  sitting there, sitting there frowning at their screens. And I'm happy and giddy
• 53:58
  and stupid when I'm writing, you know, I mean, I'm just like
• 54:00
  laughing. I'm like, like, I'm just sitting here making faces. But
• 54:05
  oh god, look they're all gonna be crying here. This is gonna be
• 54:07
  so great. Well, you actually just said that right when we got on
• 54:10
  the on the on the line, You're like, I'm writing a ghost story,
• 54:14
  like you were so happy about it when you said that's because I love
• 54:17
  this process. I there's tons of love on the page. I just adore
• 54:22
  writing. I'm not one of those guys. It's like, there's all I
• 54:28
  like having written. It's like I like the process. I like I like
• 54:34
  doing it. It's one you know, it's funny. There's that I forget
• 54:37
  what it is. It's some recent you know, one of those self help
• 54:40
  business type books, and they made this prop proposal if you do any endeavor
• 54:47
  or activity for ten thousand hours, ye become And he's like, okay,
• 54:53
  so if you want to be a if you want to be a concert pianist,
• 54:57
  you just have to play for ten thousand. Now, what he doesn't
• 55:01
  say is that if you didn't like playing the piano, right, you'd have
• 55:08
  to be the world's dumbest asshole to waste ten thousand hours of your life doing
• 55:14
  something you don't like doing. People who spend ten thousand of their hours of
• 55:19
  their life mastering some art or craft or science or whatever they master, they
• 55:24
  have to love it. You have to love doing that. But there's a
• 55:30
  lot of people that don't. A lot of people who go to school.
• 55:34
  You have to love some aspect should, you know. But you know,
• 55:38
  I mean a lot of people fall in love with the idea of being a
• 55:42
  writer, you know. But I meet writers every day. They've ever written
• 55:45
  a word. They're just natural rock counter. It's really good in telling stories.
• 55:49
  They're just and it's like where I go, for God's sake, I
• 55:52
  wish you'd sit down and write a book or something because you're really good,
• 55:54
  you know. And then I meet people who are writers and they're making very
• 55:58
  good money. You know, if you have worked with people who are writers
• 56:01
  and it's like they're not writers. They've they've worked out the craft, they
• 56:05
  understand what follows what. They're not really writers, they're just they're just regurgitating
• 56:10
  things they've seen and putting a spin on everything to make them, you know,
• 56:15
  to make it a little fresh enough to where everybody gets, you know,
• 56:19
  get scared. Yeah, that's an interesting that's that's very interesting because sometimes
• 56:24
  you see these movies or you watch these shows and you're like, wow,
• 56:28
  it's just the same, the same stuff. And I've met writers too.
• 56:30
  I've met writers and filmmakers for that matter, who do exactly what you know,
• 56:35
  they understand the craft, they're technicians. But but like, you know,
• 56:39
  I could put the paint on canvas and I know how to do it,
• 56:43
  and i know the technique. But I'm not Da Vinci. I'm not
• 56:47
  I'm not Van Gogh. I'm not I'm not being brave. I'm not being
• 56:52
  you know, I'm not going out there without a net. Well yeah,
• 56:55
  I mean, but that's just you know, maybe that's the cards that are
• 56:58
  delcha. You know, not everybody is, you know, I mean there's
• 57:01
  probably guys painting pictures from you know, photographs down at the mall that you
• 57:08
  know, from a craft and from a from a craft standpoint, as far
• 57:12
  as mixing colors and laying down paint, I probably you know, highly evolved,
• 57:16
  you know. But the there's directors like that I don't name any names,
• 57:21
  or there's directors that are absolutely masterful, but it's just not quite substantial.
• 57:30
  There's a there's an it's hard to put your finger on it, but
• 57:32
  it's like there's a sense of a missing depth to it in my mind.
• 57:38
  Yeah, that that somebody like Hubrick brings to the party, you know,
• 57:44
  or or Scorsesey or you know, where there's there's something really to it and
• 57:50
  there's something underneath that there's like fifty layers underneath and you will only see it
• 57:54
  in twenty or thirty years of watching the movie that you'll Hubrick Ya's my favorite.
• 58:01
  You you know, he was aware of what he was doing and everything,
• 58:05
  but he wasn't aware of everything he was doing. And no artist really
• 58:07
  is a lot of it. You're just doing your best and it's coming in
• 58:10
  that way. But you really do have no idea, you know, how
• 58:17
  how why it works that way. You know, you're just focusing on trying
• 58:22
  to articulate your vision as well as you can. Yeah, I mean,
• 58:25
  I you know, I take you go to college lip classes and he gets
• 58:30
  some clown, you know, up in front he's your college lip teacher,
• 58:34
  and he's trying to tell you what's going through Herman Melville's head. Right,
• 58:37
  you know, imbe Dick or Stephen Crane's head when he was writing Red Badge
• 58:42
  of Courage and yeah, he was thinking about this and he's working on symbolism
• 58:45
  over here in South And I tell people, I go, I can tell
• 58:49
  you what was going through Herman Melville's head when he wrote in Hermobie Dick.
• 58:52
  It was like, I gotta feed my family, and this thing's doing a
• 58:54
  couple of months. You know, that's what's going through Herman Melville. Right,
• 59:00
  I got bills, you know, right, doing the best you can.
• 59:05
  You're running through the jungle with the machetes beyond you. That's what's happening.
• 59:08
  You know. It's funny because kuber Kubrick is one of my favorite artists
• 59:12
  of all time. And there's so much I mean, there's volumes libraries written
• 59:16
  about what people think he was doing in two thousand and one and in the
• 59:21
  Shining and then and all of those. And I just did you see the
• 59:24
  documentary film worker, Um, I know it's it's it's his assistant. Uh
• 59:30
  oh, I see, it wasn't it wonderful, was it? It wonderful?
• 59:34
  But you hear him and he was the guy that was literally next to
• 59:37
  him for thirty years, and he's like, you know the twins in shining,
• 59:40
  Well that was me. I brought twins in. And Kubrick said,
• 59:44
  well, I guess there are twins now where everybody's like, in there's twins,
• 59:46
  because back in the day he shot some photos of twins and they're putting
• 59:50
  up like, no, it just happened to be that way. It was.
• 59:57
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
• 1:00:04
  to the show. The first episode of the first episode of Connival was called
• 1:00:08
  mil Fay, right, And I decided, you know, when I first
• 1:00:15
  created a show, I wanted to name each episode after each city they were.
• 1:00:19
  And we didn't do that the first year. We did it in the
• 1:00:21
  second year, you know. But I titled the episode of mill Fay,
• 1:00:25
  you know. And the way I found it is I got a period period
• 1:00:30
  map of the dust Bowl and sort of looked at dots on the map and
• 1:00:35
  found it a little tiny dot named Milfa and I went, oh, I
• 1:00:37
  like that, and so that's what I titled it. So then we make
• 1:00:39
  it like two years later, it's on TV and people are talking about it
• 1:00:44
  on the Internet and going back and forth with their interpretations, and some guy
• 1:00:47
  says, well, you do know and and mil fae is an anagram for
• 1:00:54
  family, And I'm going, Wow, I'm a serious. I couldn't have
• 1:01:04
  been thinking about that, you know, I couldn't have done I couldn't.
• 1:01:07
  I'm not going to be thinking about stuff like that, you know, when
• 1:01:10
  I'm making creative because I'm making ten ten thousand creative decisions in the course of
• 1:01:15
  the screenplay, you know, ten thousand decisions to make. You can't be
• 1:01:20
  thinking on that level about everything one he'd never finished. He'd still be writing
• 1:01:24
  the pilot today. So when Carnival came out, the Internet was definitely often
• 1:01:31
  running. It was already around for a little bit, and but then the
• 1:01:35
  message boards and all that stuff was going on back then heavily. And I
• 1:01:39
  remember people just you know, because it wasn't there wasn't as much content flying
• 1:01:44
  around as there is today. Yeah, And they really delved into the deep,
• 1:01:49
  the deepness of Carnival. How is it? As a creator, I've
• 1:01:52
  always wanted to hear this as a creator, to go on and just Lou,
• 1:01:57
  I'm like, you guys have no idea what you're talking about, Like
• 1:02:00
  what ya was? Like? I know, because like I said, and
• 1:02:04
  people have different interpretations for different that's nobody does that when they're talking about CSI
• 1:02:10
  CI right, or even shows like House. You know, they're they're not
• 1:02:15
  even really doing stuff like that on the Sopranos so much. But the minute
• 1:02:19
  they start to interpret stuff symbolism and so forth, what things really mean,
• 1:02:24
  connections between different elements. As soon as people start doing that, you're taught.
• 1:02:30
  Now that's what people do about art, okay, and that means succeeded
• 1:02:35
  and even made art. It's not just a TV show, You've made art.
• 1:02:38
  And so that was the biggest thing. I mean, I'm not going
• 1:02:40
  to say, oh, you're wrong, because they could be right. I
• 1:02:45
  mean, to me, it's it's it's it's there's a collaboration happening between the
• 1:02:50
  artists and the audience. If the audience draws something out of it the artist
• 1:02:53
  didn't intend, does that mean it's not there? Absolutely not. You know
• 1:02:58
  that, Well, yeah, why wouldn't it? It should be If it's
• 1:03:02
  open to multiple interpretations, that's a good thing. That that's because You're reaching
• 1:03:07
  people different people in different ways. It's almost like the story in the Bible
• 1:03:14
  of the apostles speaking tongues or something, and everybody's here different language. Um,
• 1:03:20
  that's fine, that's good. Well. Yeah, like to go back
• 1:03:24
  to Kubrick, every one of his movies has been interpreted a thousand different ways
• 1:03:28
  and will continue to be interpreted for them for decades and decades to come in
• 1:03:31
  different ways. That's because his work is hard, which which brings me to
• 1:03:35
  my poetry. I should pitch my quote. Please, please pitch your poetry.
• 1:03:38
  Yeah, I was gonna ask you, what's next on your plate?
• 1:03:40
  Well, I'm doing a bunch of stuff. I'm I mean, it's like
• 1:03:44
  I've been I've been creating shows that don't go on. You can check them
• 1:03:51
  all out. I mean it's like people go, well, push, you
• 1:03:52
  haven't done anythings. You're creating anything since Carnival. It's like, No,
• 1:03:55
  I've created like a bunch of show. I don't know why. I've read
• 1:04:01
  a bunch of women. I was saying, this is good, this could
• 1:04:04
  go to morrow. I don't know what the deal is. But I've got
• 1:04:10
  a site called an Off TV and you can see it's it's unusual because you
• 1:04:14
  can see the actual pilots in their entirety on some of the projects. There's
• 1:04:17
  another thing called a bible, which we talked about earlier in the show,
• 1:04:21
  and you very rarely get to see show bibles on the internet. This will
• 1:04:25
  give you an idea of what a bible looks like, like what a show
• 1:04:28
  bible looks like. Um, So it's a nice resource for new writers.
• 1:04:31
  And then and then, and then there's these things we call decks, which
• 1:04:35
  are sort of like anywhere between an eleven and fifteen page version of a Bible,
• 1:04:41
  like mostly sizzle, very little stake, just giving. It's kind of
• 1:04:45
  thing they call leave being mind. You might take it to a pitch meeting
• 1:04:47
  with you and leave something behind for the executives best up the chain of command.
• 1:04:51
  So some of those two so they're they're helpful selling things. And that's
• 1:04:55
  all on n Off katon Auf dot TV and I'll put it in the show
• 1:05:00
  notes. Um. The other thing. The other thing is I recently I
• 1:05:06
  got I started writing poetry again. I wrote it. I wrote poetry,
• 1:05:10
  and I first started writing, um, as you know, when I was
• 1:05:14
  an art major, and then I flipped over to creative writing, and and
• 1:05:18
  I was john to that. I did a lot of poetry and worked with
• 1:05:21
  a lot of really great had a lot of great poets or teachers. That
• 1:05:25
  was where I sort of cut my teeth in. Um. I started writing
• 1:05:29
  again about six seven years ago, and for like five years I was writing
• 1:05:33
  these these poems and just post him on Facebook. I would just post them
• 1:05:39
  on Facebook. And because it's like who gets paper, right, pas,
• 1:05:42
  Why am I going to submitted to called poetry poetry magazine? Yeah? Yeah,
• 1:05:47
  poetry, yeah, jugs and poetry the Jugs of Polotry magazine. Yeah,
• 1:05:54
  so we we magazine. Does that still even exist? I don't know.
• 1:05:58
  And so so I just post them in this this this woman was actually
• 1:06:03
  collecting them and she contact me said I've got You've got my thirty five poems
• 1:06:09
  and and um, I thought, wow, maybe we should do a book.
• 1:06:14
  So I called it another person I knew, and it's a publisher,
• 1:06:15
  and she said, I would love to publish poems by you. And so
• 1:06:21
  we did this thing. It's called NoHo gloaming. I mean, if you
• 1:06:26
  go on if you want my Facebook page or Twitter, you'll find it.
• 1:06:30
  Um, if you go on the net, you want to find it,
• 1:06:31
  just put it in Clash Books is the publisher um c l A c E
• 1:06:39
  c l A s H Books, and the book it's NoHo n O h
• 1:06:44
  O gloamings g l A m A n g um And there's links all over
• 1:06:50
  my web, my my my social networks and so forth. And it's um,
• 1:06:57
  it's about as pure. I mean, it's like when you do TV.
• 1:07:00
  I'm like, you're not about the note process. It's your your vision
• 1:07:04
  is mitigated by a lot of people. You know. It's very rare where
• 1:07:09
  you can't really the raw stuff up because it takes so many people just to
• 1:07:15
  make these damn things, you know, um, and you know everybody's you
• 1:07:20
  know, it's going to waver from the way you might have imagined, you
• 1:07:23
  know, down to know props and camera angles and it's all a myriad of
• 1:07:28
  details. And it was so nice to return to a form where I'm creating
• 1:07:32
  the end result right there on a page and so and it's very approachable.
• 1:07:38
  It's not. It's not if you don't like, if you think of poetry
• 1:07:45
  the way I think of minds, okay, and you're allergic to poetry and
• 1:07:51
  you're going, uh, you know, it's not this precious stuff. It's
• 1:07:56
  it's very relatable. I believe that if somebody, I believe people will read
• 1:08:00
  it and they'll connect very deeply with it. There's one poem at the end.
• 1:08:04
  It's an epic poem that's just crazy and kind of funny, and it's
• 1:08:10
  it's the story of a guy in the Witness Protection program. Um. Yeah,
• 1:08:14
  I mean it's not I mean, I'm not writing about ravens and angels
• 1:08:18
  and you know, dead king trees. Yeah. I writing about stuff like
• 1:08:24
  Sitco gas stations. Right. My influences were Charles Bukowski and this whole Los
• 1:08:30
  Angeles Brian Rogue school. Um. And it's very down to earth and sort
• 1:08:36
  of grounded, straight up stuff. And sometimes I'm using and sometimes moving.
• 1:08:41
  So I urge you to check out my poetrait. If you like my TV,
• 1:08:45
  they'll really like that. Awesome. And I'm gonna ask you a few
• 1:08:48
  questions. I ask all of my guests, Um, what advice would you
• 1:08:51
  give the actress thing? Yes, yes, yes, yes, exactly exactly,
• 1:08:57
  just like the actors to do odd type. Don't do that. It's
• 1:09:00
  not going to if you are a chery. No, I'm joking. What
• 1:09:04
  advice would you give a screenwriter wanted to break into the business today, I
• 1:09:10
  would say the best thing you can do is skip film school and just start
• 1:09:14
  shooting film, because you can do that. I couldn't do that when I
• 1:09:18
  was starting out as a filmmaker. As a filmmaker, yeah, I would
• 1:09:23
  film school. You will learn everything you learn in four years of film school
• 1:09:28
  in five days on a set. Pretty much. It's a film school is
• 1:09:32
  the world's biggest waste of money, unless you go to UCLA or n YU
• 1:09:38
  or USC and otherwise, if you're going to some other college to get a
• 1:09:44
  communications degree or film degree or that, you're totally wasting your time. If
• 1:09:48
  you want to be a filmmaker, take take shit, take twenty five.
• 1:09:55
  Tell your parents saying, okay, I want to take twenty five percent of
• 1:09:57
  what you would spend on a college, and I want to make them movie
• 1:10:00
  with it. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And
• 1:10:08
  now back to the show. Just make movies, write them, get your
• 1:10:14
  friends together. Sony has a good eye, and make him the director.
• 1:10:17
  Now just make go out and start making movies. And you know you might
• 1:10:24
  not monitor, but you'll get from here to there much faster than you will
• 1:10:27
  if you go to film school for core and how about screenwriting? For screenwriting,
• 1:10:31
  you know, I think the most important thing I would tell a writer
• 1:10:35
  who wants to be a dramatist, which is a very specific kind of writing.
• 1:10:40
  People think that novelists think, oh I cannot I can adapt this into
• 1:10:45
  a script. They usually can. It's very specific. Shasepeare was an actor
• 1:10:49
  before he was a writer, and I really I didn't really learn how to
• 1:10:54
  be a dramatist until I studied acting. And I studied acting by accident,
• 1:10:58
  I thought I want to be a director. And so one of my second
• 1:11:00
  mentor who was really important in my development was a guy named Cliff Osmond who
• 1:11:05
  was an acting to an acting coach. He was Armanda Sante's acting consultant,
• 1:11:12
  and I met him on a set and we got to be good friends,
• 1:11:15
  and I said, I want to take some of your classes because I want
• 1:11:16
  to learn about the process so I can interact with actors as a director.
• 1:11:21
  And what I did was I ended up learning how to write. I really
• 1:11:26
  learned. I was really good at packing the trunk and I knew how to
• 1:11:30
  to break a story and figure out what follows this and what follows that.
• 1:11:35
  When it came to my character work, I was faking it until I studied
• 1:11:41
  acting. And you'll learn one thing you learned in acting is is to act
• 1:11:45
  in the moment. Now, if you're you got stage fright. I have
• 1:11:48
  terrible stage fright. When I'm playing somebody other than myself, I could get
• 1:11:53
  up in front a zillion people being damned off. Yeah, But if I'm
• 1:11:56
  playing a character, it's scary, and you know, I just can't build
• 1:12:02
  that fourth wall. But when I'm alone in a room I came in,
• 1:12:08
  I'm writing in the moment. I'm mostly my scene work feels like I'm just
• 1:12:12
  taking transcription. I know my characters so well, I know what they're saying.
• 1:12:15
  Oh I'm doing is just trying to keep up with them while they while
• 1:12:18
  they're talking going through a scene. I never am going M what would he
• 1:12:25
  say there? M? What would she then say? Another thing I'd say
• 1:12:30
  the young actors or young young writers, is that sort of a sort of
• 1:12:35
  attached to that is if you're going to a place like that and you're going,
• 1:12:40
  what would I say if I was in that situation? What would I
• 1:12:43
  say if somebody said that to me? Is nobody really gives a fuck what
• 1:12:47
  you would say, okay, because you're really not interesting. Actors aren't doers.
• 1:12:54
  Actors are watchers. If you're boring, just boring boring people, and
• 1:13:00
  so nobody cares what you'll say. You have to understand your character and what
• 1:13:04
  the character would say. They all have to have different voices out to be
• 1:13:09
  real, you know. So again, I would really strongly suggest studying,
• 1:13:13
  spending at least a couple of years, um, you know, in any
• 1:13:16
  way you can, and whatever resource your town or city has, um getting
• 1:13:24
  up and studying acting and doing scenes and seeing how hard it is. And
• 1:13:28
  it also helps the develop a really strong respect for your for the actor and
• 1:13:32
  how hard they're And that's something that's sorely lacking with many writers in Hollywood,
• 1:13:39
  where I'll hear I'm a book, Oh yeah, you say you just sucks,
• 1:13:44
  and it's like, has it occurred to you that you know you're writing
• 1:13:47
  shitty stuff? For him to say, there's no way to make it work?
• 1:13:51
  Well as if Mary, if Meryl Streep was saying, it wouldn't have
• 1:13:56
  worked. Yeah, I mean, if you can to where you write and
• 1:14:00
  when you're in there and you're doing you're working with actress, you know,
• 1:14:02
  actors. You get to understand the kind of stuff that actors want to say,
• 1:14:08
  that the kinds of moments actors want to play. And if you know
• 1:14:11
  that and you get them on your side, I mean, you know that's
• 1:14:14
  good. That's something that's gonna make you stand out. You know. Now,
• 1:14:18
  can you tell me what book had the biggest impact on your life or
• 1:14:21
  career the biggest the book that had the biggest impact in my life or my
• 1:14:29
  career, or or or either or I would say at this point, you
• 1:14:33
  know, I was a late common too, was um, well, let
• 1:14:40
  me think there's there's so many of whichever one comes to your mind. The
• 1:14:44
  Alchemists, of course, I love The Alchemist. That's one of my favorite
• 1:14:47
  books. It's an astonishing like everybody should everybody should read it. It should
• 1:14:54
  be required, it should be required for everybody in the world, but especially
• 1:14:58
  those who are artists. I think, I think, yeah, but I
• 1:15:01
  think for everybody. I think so. I think it's a good It's about
• 1:15:04
  as close a thing to like, if Homo Sapiens came with an owner's manual,
• 1:15:13
  it would be The Alchemist. I with you, good answer, Good
• 1:15:18
  answer? Now, what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn,
• 1:15:21
  whether in the film industry or in life. M hm, Um,
• 1:15:30
  that I'm not always right? You know that sometimes. Um, I've been
• 1:15:38
  in situations where I'm absolutely sure something's not gonna work, and and that person
• 1:15:44
  has, you know, higher rank than I do, so everyone sho get
• 1:15:46
  to call a shot. And I'm thinking, he is, it's gonna not
• 1:15:49
  work. It's I'm gonna work as well as the way I would have done
• 1:15:53
  it. And then all of a sudden I watch it and it works beautifully,
• 1:15:56
  you know, and I go, you know what I was wrong?
• 1:16:00
  Um? You know it's like this is the way you know, just because
• 1:16:04
  it's the way you would do it, doesn't mean it's the best way to
• 1:16:06
  do it. And um, And when it comes to a collaborative art,
• 1:16:13
  passionate rules today. And you know what it boils down to is the person
• 1:16:17
  who's most passionate it's probably gonna win that fight. Don't get hung up on
• 1:16:24
  little stuff. If people want this change, the worst place you can go,
• 1:16:30
  the least productive, most toxic place you can go, is to this
• 1:16:33
  place that almost every shitty writer goes, which is they're trying to reck my
• 1:16:41
  work, you know, and it's like, yeah, they're dumping shitloads of
• 1:16:45
  money into this and they just want to rack it because they don't like you.
• 1:16:49
  They mean people they want to do let's go come on for God's say,
• 1:16:55
  you know. I mean sometimes sometimes another way it does work, and
• 1:17:00
  sometimes it works even a little better than the way you had in mind.
• 1:17:03
  Just don't don't think that you're ever gonna watch something that is exactly the movie
• 1:17:09
  you had in your mind when you conceived it and wrote it. It's always
• 1:17:12
  going to be a little different. Some parts you're going to be better,
• 1:17:15
  some parts you might win. Sad um, hopefully the you know, the
• 1:17:19
  former is more numerous than the latter. You know, very good. And
• 1:17:24
  then the toughest question of all three of your favorite films of all time,
• 1:17:28
  Oh, that is tough. North to my Northwest. I love I love
• 1:17:30
  it. Um. I think, um, uh this see there's a lot
• 1:17:39
  of I'm just gonna see it pops into my head off Casaitlina of course.
• 1:17:45
  Um. And then I think it's probably uh, it's probably a jeez.
• 1:17:50
  It's really kind of a dead heat between Chinatown and uh and and and the
• 1:17:59
  Shining Oh, I really love the shot, but I can a dozen.
• 1:18:04
  Of course, those four right exactly, that just came into mind right now.
• 1:18:10
  I agree with you, per and We're everything David Lynch, Does that
• 1:18:13
  count everything? Everything by Kubrick, Everything by and every other movie by the
• 1:18:18
  Cohen brothers. It's like that every other You're right, it is almost every
• 1:18:26
  other movie. Because but when they hit it, they hit it out of
• 1:18:30
  the park. I know. But when they strike out, but you know
• 1:18:34
  what, though, no even strike out, it's an interesting strike exactly what
• 1:18:39
  I was about to say. I was about to say. Even when they
• 1:18:41
  strike out, at least they're going to places that is pushing them creatively,
• 1:18:45
  in places that we might have never even been to. So for every there's
• 1:18:48
  no country for all men. There might be a lady killer. Hey do
• 1:18:51
  you do you do editing on this thing? After you're done? I do
• 1:18:55
  not. You don't we go straight through? Can? I'm gonna say,
• 1:19:00
  honey, keep it down, I'm on the radio. No. My audience
• 1:19:05
  is used to this, So it's all good. Don't worry. And then
• 1:19:09
  where can people find you? And you just dropped the person on the table
• 1:19:14
  probably sounded like like a bomb. It's all good. It's all good.
• 1:19:16
  Now, where can people find you? In your work? People can find
• 1:19:20
  all of these things I've done at nos TV, and then you can find
• 1:19:25
  my stuff. I mean, you know, I mean it's I'm pretty active
• 1:19:30
  in in on Twitter and social networks. There's interviews, you know, just
• 1:19:35
  google my ass and you'll pop up rough. Don't google my ass because there
• 1:19:45
  you can find me all other places. And as far as what I'm doing
• 1:19:46
  right now, right now, I'm kind of I finished up. I did
• 1:19:49
  three years in the Blacklist, and I'm kind of been doing a lot of
• 1:19:53
  development, so I'm right now, I'm kind of I'm I'm I'm kind of
• 1:19:58
  I'm between jobs. Okay, we'll be right back after a word from our
• 1:20:03
  sponsor, and now back to the show. You know, as Henry and
• 1:20:15
  the Racer Head would say it, I'm on a vacation. I'm on vacation.
• 1:20:21
  You're on sabbatical, sir, You're on sabbatical. You are a psychic
• 1:20:28
  Daniel. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much
• 1:20:31
  for being so kind and generous with your time. Thank you. I enjoyed
• 1:20:36
  it. I want to thank Daniel for dropping some major knowledge bombs on the
• 1:20:43
  tribe today and sharing his experiences his unique experiences as a showrunner and a writer.
• 1:20:50
  And guys, if you want to get notes to anything we discussed in
• 1:20:53
  this episode, just head over to the show notes at Andy from Wels dot
• 1:20:57
  com Ford Slash six seventy five and if you have it already, please head
• 1:21:00
  over to Filmmaking podcast dot com. Subscribe and leave a good review for the
• 1:21:06
  show. It really helps us out a lot. Guys. Thank you again
• 1:21:10
  so much for listening to guys. As always, keep that hustle going,
• 1:21:13
  keep that dream alive, Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you
• 1:21:15
  soon. Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at Indie Film Hustle
• 1:21:20
  dot com. That's I N D I E F I L M h ustl
• 1:21:25
  dot com.