Latest / Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast / BPS 333: Screenwriting for Netflix and Television with Neil Landau

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BPS 333: Screenwriting for Netflix and Television with Neil Landau · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
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  Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three thirty three. Cinema is a matter of what's
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  in the frame and what's out. Now, more than ever, we need
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  to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we
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  see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this. Martin
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  Scorsese broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be
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  working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the
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  craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof.
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  And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of
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  the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Now,
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  today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage. Now, unlike other script
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  coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the kind of project you are
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  in the goals of the project you are, so we actually break it down
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  So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered by professional readers,
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  head on over to cover my screenplay dot Com. Enjoy today's episode with guest
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  host Dave Bullis. My next guest is an award winning screenwriter, producer,
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  author, and professor. He actually wrote co wrote the cold comedy Don't Tell
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  Mom The Babysitter's Dead, starring Christina apple Gate, which I always say is
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  a write of passage for kids of the eighties and nineties because I think we've
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  all been there, one way or the other, where the babysitter dies and
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  we've got to hide the body. You know what I'm talking about. But
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  he's also written for Dugie Howser, This Secret World of Alex Mack MTV.
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  He's also produced a ton of different stuff, and he currently runs the MFA
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  and Writing Television program at UCLA for their Theater, Film and TV Department,
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  and now he's also written this book. He's also written four other books,
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  for instance, like A one hundred and one Things I Learned in Film School
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  the Screenwriters Roadmap. So his latest book is called TV Writing on Demand,
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  which is what the contest is about, and it's all just about the medium
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  of TV, how popular TV is becoming, all the different programs out there.
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  It's a pretty interesting book. I've actually I actually got an advanced copy
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  of it. It's a really really interesting read. And what we talked about
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  in this episode is what I keep telling people when they had for screenwriting advice.
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  I go, everybody wants to see you have a TV pilot of some
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  kind, because that's where all the money is right now, and that's where
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  all the hits are right now. TV is definitely it, It's the most
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  populus ever been. It's golden Age. But it's also very diversified because there's
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  so many different mediums that this episodic format is coming to, whether it be
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  YouTube, who, Netflix, whatever. So, without further ado, Neil
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  Landau Well I kind of started off as a reigning play. I mean,
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  it actually starts with a lot of what all my books are about character development,
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  about build from empathy, so and filling emotional voids. You know,
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  somebody give what characters go through and what we see even in Carmody, their
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  characters who have voids in their lives and deficits and things, and of course
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  of the story filled those boyds. So my father died when I was six
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  years old of a heart attack. He was playing basketball with some friends.
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  He collapsed on the basketball court. He died in the ambulance on the way
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  to the hospital a heart attack. And so from that age forward I had
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  a very rich fantasy lie stake. I was always writing little scenes and plays
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  and wanted to disappear into not a all, just to kind of, you
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  know, ease my my loss of my father. So I was writing plays
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  from the tunament in fourth grade that I started writing little plays and skits and
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  performing them. And I actually thought I wanted to become a playwright. Mean
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  probably at the time, just because I shared the name with Neil Simon,
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  who was the most well known playwright at the time, and I loved his
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  work, and so I thought I would write plays and be like Neil Simon.
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  I didn't think, well, he already existed and I have to create
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  my own voice. I just thought I'll just copy and him and you know,
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  be the next Neil, the next famous Neil playwright. But being raised
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  by his single mom, we always had financial problems, and so I started
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  to think, well, it's very difficult to make a living as a playwright.
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  And I knew what it would like to grow up, you know,
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  financially disadvantage. So I started to think about well, and they knew some
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  people who had gone to film school and who had written movies and for television,
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  and I did know if you can succeed which versus a big gift,
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  that you can actually make not only make a living wage, but you can
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  actually make a lot of money, which would give me security. And so
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  I segued from writing plays inc I went to UCLA self school and started writing
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  screenplays. And at the time, one of my best friends growing up,
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  Tara Eisen, who was one year behind me at UCLA, but we went
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  to actually elementary school, junior high which is now middle school, high school,
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  and UCLA together, so we were best friends for a really long time.
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  We just started to partner up and write scripts together because I thought she
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  was the smartest, most talented person I knew, and she felt similarly towards
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  me. So we wrote the screenplays while we were going to school, and
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  one year after I graduated, we kept writing, you know, Monday,
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  Wednesday, Friday we'd write, and Sunday afternoon late all day. And the
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  first couple we just stuck in a drawer. They weren't pretty good. The
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  third one became down some of the babysitis did, and we thought we'd be
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  lucky just you know, to have anybody ever noticed us. But that script
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  actually there was a bidding war at three studios and it was one of those
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  you know, big spec script sales from the eighties in eighteen eighty seven where
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  our lives just changed dramatically because we went, you know, I went from
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  making eighteen thousand dollars a year a year and then we were kind of off
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  and running. And that that's kind of how it all started, just from
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  you know, escaping life fits a rich fantasy life, and then just gabbling
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  and thinking maybe we can actually do this as a career, And that was
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  the first thing. And once you selve an original spec script or original pilot
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  that really creates so much heat and buzz that you could actually build a career
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  on that if you can deliver again, you know after that if it wasn't.
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  Just so that was kind of my inspiration and how it all started.
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  And with Don't Tell Mom. One of the things char and I both had
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  in common is are we both were raised essentially from broken families, and she
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  was her father didn't die, but she was mainly raised by the same mother.
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  We also both looked extremely young for our ages at the time, and
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  people always used to ask if our agent had to give us a ride to
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  the meeting because they didn't believe we had our driver's licenses. Yeah, things
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  like that. So we liked also the idea of playing with age, you
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  know, And and we wrote one script about a narc and high school who
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  was much older and closing as a high school student. And then with Don't
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  Tell Mom, we thought of the idea of somebody who actually could look older,
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  it could go into the adult world, importune to be an adult.
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  So that was also part of the kind of a theme that we were exploring.
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  And that's kind of how it all got. That's how our career really
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  gets turning, you know, so when you were writing you know, don't
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  tell mom the babysitter is dead, you know, since it basically launched your
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  career. When you were writing this, did did you actually, I mean,
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  were you when you were writing it or maybe when you're finished, did
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  you actually say, you know what I think this is? You know,
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  a home run shot. I think this is you know, you know,
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  you know what I mean, like, I think this is gonna be We
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  would jokingly, we would jokingly say that one of the things that this is
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  so different between me and Tara is I tend to be very optimistic about everything
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  and pragmatic and Charatans be more cynical, and so I think she always the
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  thought, well, who knows, we may never get anywhere. But I
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  felt the thing about Dulston A moment that was different was that we had so
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  much fun writing it. There were so many times saying it we would just
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  you know, be laughing hysterically, and we kept we would say, we
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  don't know if this is any good, but we think it's I think it's
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  funny. We're having a lot of fun writing it. We well, actually,
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  this is actually even better. Part of the story started with the time.
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  I was always also interested in writing for television, So I did my
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  internship at at MPM Enterprises, which was marriage Olly Moore and Grant Tinker's Company.
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  And a show that I just loved so much which really influenced everything in
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  television and in my life was Hill Street Blues. And that was the show
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  that I interned on the most. And you know, I was on set
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  and I would watch Daley's and I would get to see all the revisions and
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  it was just a great experience just to observe and be around that show.
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  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to
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  the show. But one of the other things I did in ray internship was
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  I delivered mail around the CBS lot. This was CBS Read for Exact,
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  which is in Studio City, right near where I live now actually, and
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  I would deliver mail on a little bicycle. One of the people I delivered
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  mail too was Beth Uffner, who at the time was senior vice president of
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  Comedy Development, and she graciously agreed to read a script and she ended up
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  leaving MCM and becoming a literary agent, and she joined a big at the
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  time there was a very big literary agency called Broder, Curl and Webb up
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  there, which no longer exists. It was I think they were absorbed by
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  either I CDM God, I don't remember. They were definitely bought out death
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  ended up leaving. But the point of the story is Beth took us on
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  as an agent and we were hip pocket clients meaning for those of you don't
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  know, but you know. She didn't sign us, but she said,
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  I have interest in you. You're you guys are young and challenged, and
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  I like, I like what I'm reading Sofa, so let me send your
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  stuff. Let me just informally represent you and see, you know, if
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  we can get anywhere. She was mainly representing sitcom writers, so she At
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  the time, everybody was writing spec episodes of TV shows. That's how you
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  got stasks. People weren't really reading original islets. So Charin I wrote a
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  spec for the Golden Girls and we thought it was great. We got it
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  to Beth and she said she was too busy to handle us anymore. Was
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  the bad news. But the good news is she had taken on an associate
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  who would handle us more of a junior agent, and that they were going
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  to represent us. So this new younger junior agent who came in, she
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  said, well, what else do you have, because she didn't really like
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  The Golden Girls, and we had just finished but don't tell mom scripts,
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  which at the time was called The Real World that was the original predom And
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  so we got her of the script and she hated it. She hated it
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  so much. She said, I think this is the kind of script you
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  should just put away and never show anyone because it will actually from arm your
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  careers. She said, you don't want this to be, you know,
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  representative of your work. So what we did, because we're writers and neurotic
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  and we believed her, so I put the script away. It was a
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  printed out script, so you know, it wasn't even on a computer.
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  You know, back then we were using early versions of computer computers, but
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  mostly we were still typing our scripts. I put it under a pair of
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  hues in my closet and we stopped missing our writing hours, and we were
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  just very discouraged. And but one of my friends from his CLA is a
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  guy named David Kepp who has become a huge, huge screenwriter. You know,
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  he wrote the original Spider Man with Toby Mdwire and he wrote all Jurassic
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  Park one and two, and Panic was more of the World, you know,
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  on and on, and I I mean, he's become probably the most
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  successful screenwriter, certainly financially in terms of box office I think. Ever,
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  he was over at my apartment and he was asking about that script, and
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  he said, whatever happened with that script? And they said, oh,
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  it's terrible. We just put it away. And he said, well,
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  how do you know it's terrible And I said, well, because this agent
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  told us it was terrible and not show to anybody. So he said he
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  asked if he could read it, and I said no, because you know,
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  you don't humiliate me. And he just let me read it. I'm
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  your friend. I'm not gonna you know, I'll just give you notes whatever.
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  Anyway, he read it and he loved it, and he said,
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  it's not the greatest script in the world, but I think you can sell
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  it. And I think it's really funny, and I think the agents wrong.
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  So based on that, and at this point David was still nobody,
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  but you know, I thought, well, maybe we should try to listen
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  to somebody else. The timing was such that one of my UCLA professors had
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  met an agent at a party who was looking for, you know, new
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  writers, and my professor said, well, I you know, I read
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  a script that I think is funny and I know these young writer and so
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  we got the scripting him on a Friday. Normally it would at that time
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  it would take anywhere from six weeks to six months or an agent to ever
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  get back to you got it. Two days later he called said when can
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  you come all and we went into a conference room and it was all the
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  agents, important ears and they wanted to sign us, and then they set
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  the script out and there was a bidding war. So moral of the story,
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  don't ever listen to one person's opinion. Very important point. And that
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  script really unlock everything for us, including our segueing into writing for television,
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  because Stephen Botchko was producing Doogie House or MD at the time and read the
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  script. Can also really loved it, and that was how we got our
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  first TV job. So, you know, you just you never know.
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  You know, it's like William Goldman says, and it ventures in the screen
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  trade. You know, nobody knows anything. It's always worth getting multiple opinions.
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  And if you know three people say this is terrible. I'm just not
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  connecting to anything in the script. Then maybe you listen, but one person
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  is never you know, I don't think he's ever necessarily the be all,
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  end all or anything. And so that was also part of that that story.
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  And I think we we thought it was really good, then we were
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  disappointed, and then all of a sudden we thought it was good again because
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  somebody validated this, you know. And it's always hard when you're writing a
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  script to know if it's good, because he gets you close to it,
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  you know. And I tell my students now at U c l a W
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  where I teach, now, you know, the first thing you lose when
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  you start writing is objectivity, and it's really hard to see clearly really anything
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  because the characters are starting to kind of lead you around, and you lose
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  the sense of the big picture. And it often takes a first set of
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  eyes to really really determine the quality of anything at that point, unless the
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  writer is able to put the script away for at least a few weeks and
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  come back to it at first side. Yeah, it's very very true,
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  because you know, I've been there too, Neil. We're you know,
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  you're writing the scripts, and that air of voice inside of you starts kind
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  of saying, ah, come on, this is too much like you know,
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  the Godfather or whatever. And then you start writing a little more and
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  you're like, I don't know what the hell am I doing? And then
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  by the end you're like, this is all awful. What the hell am
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  I doing with my life? I need I need to go out and I
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  just stort a new hobby. Yes, well, I always men storing so
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  much more. That voice, that little devil or you know, and your
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  shoulder that tells you you suck and they you know, it makes you doubt
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  everything that's never that's never going anywhere, that's always going to be sitting on
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  one shoulder. The other shoulders, though, hopefully will have your muse,
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  which will counter everything the negative voice is saying. It's almost like there's always
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  a battle between the muse and the furies, and I think you know it's
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  it's the negative voice does have value in that it's ego driven and it taps
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  into all of your insecurities and doubts and fears and the rosties. But it
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  is also forcing you to be more critical and to you know, be really
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  tough on yourself because it's probably gonna say meaner things and harsher things than anybody
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  in the business possibly could ever stay to you. I'd rather you're from my
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  own interest feelings from an external one who could potentially destroy, you know,
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  my career, or you know, making moll utate it. The challenge is
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  it's almost impossible to be the creator and the critic at the same time,
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  you know. So what I try to do the best of my ability is
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  say, all right, I know the negative, destructive or hypercritical voice is
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  going to be coming through one side of my head or sitting on one of
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  my shoulders. It's there. I acknowledge it. I just say, you
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  know, just let me finish. I'm going to listen just to the positive
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  news that's kind of inspiring me. When I'm done, you know, I'll
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  be hypercritical and I'll stift over to my critical mind. But it's really hard
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  to be the creator and the critics simultaneously, you know. It's they kind
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  of cancel each other out. And it's what can cause writer's block. You
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  know, writer's block is caused by perfectionism, where you just you know,
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  don't want to write anything because you're convinced it's not brilliant, and it's probably
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  because that negative voice is telling you it's not good enough, it's not good
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  enough, and then you're stopping instead of actually getting pages written. So I
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  always tell people the antidote to writer's block is very simple. Lower your standards.
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  Just write, write a shitty first mass, and then once then you
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  just go back and make it better and and and or you know, give
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  it to a few people, trusted advisors to give you fresh perspectives. Hopefully
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  they'll all agree, but they may not, and then you know, go
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  back. It's the you know, the cliche, you know, the adage
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  writing is rewriting is absolutely true. We'll be right back after a word from
• 20:02
  our sponsor, and now back to the show, you don't. And the
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  growth between that first city, first draft, which is almost always city,
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  and that next draft is often the biggest, leapest script takes, you know,
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  from the first one that's just you're just just an exploratory draft and you're
• 20:26
  just trying to get it down on the page to that next one where you're
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  like, ah, okay, now I kind of see what it is or
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  what it could be, and then hopefully you know each draft you get closer
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  and closer to you, you know, realizing what it could be, and
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  sometimes it surprises you and it's even better than what you originally thought. And
• 20:47
  then once you please yourself and you please your reps and you get a general
• 20:52
  consensus that oh, this is one of your best pieces of work, or
• 20:56
  this at least could sell and be commerce. So then of course you get
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  notes from the studio, and you get notes from the director and the actors,
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  and you know, it's more writing and more people deplete, and it
• 21:11
  doesn't really ever end until really the movie's locked. You know, even in
• 21:15
  post production, you can still continue to make changes in a dr you can
• 21:21
  add lines. It's a very fluid, inefficient process that's very expensive, and
• 21:27
  you know, time is money, and everybody's making discoveries throughout the whole process.
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  But of course that starts with the blank page and nothing, and I
• 21:38
  think that's where the writer can suffer the most. Yeah, it's kind of
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  like Robert McKee says, the nothing moves until the writer actually writes, meaning
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  that you know, without the script you actually can't shoot anything. But but
• 21:51
  I really look what you said. They're neo about lowering your standards it's kind
• 21:55
  of like dating, you know what I mean. I think everyone you know
• 21:56
  wants to data supermodel, but you know, maybe that's not really what's gonna
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  happen. Right Well, yes I have for him, you know, or
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  single to a long time and I'll just I'll say, you know, I
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  was your love life. They'll say there's no one out there. There's just
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  no one. And I always think, well, there are people out there.
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  You may not you know, maybe they don't they're not in the prettiest
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  package or something that fits what you think is, you know, your high
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  standard. But there are a lot of wonderful people out there, and if
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  you get more open to it, you'll probably when you're ready, you will
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  meet somebody. But it's true. I mean sometimes people like my brother.
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  You mean, when he met his wife, he was convinced she was not
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  right just physically, but the more you got to know her and talking to
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  her, the more beautiful she became. You know, they've been married for
• 22:51
  a long time, so he wasn't so much rowing as standers is maybe just
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  being open to you know, not every single single thing has to be fix
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  you know, the first in the first moment, you know, there's a
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  discovery process. So even if you bring in you know, in U c
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  LA, sometimes people will bring in pages and say, these are terrible pages,
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  but I just needed to write something this week. And sometimes the pages
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  are really good and they didn't even realize it. Or other times maybe the
• 23:22
  pages don't work, but there's like one yam buried in those pages that unlocks
• 23:27
  everything that's going to make the script great. So you know, you kind
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  of always have to be open to the happy accident that can happen, and
• 23:34
  that only really happens if you get your butt in the chair and you're willing
• 23:38
  to face you know, face that blank page or just reattack the scene that's
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  in slat or the character that's just not speaking to you. And you know,
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  it takes a lot of courage to write and a lot of patients,
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  you know, just to hope for inspiration and when it's not there, you
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  have to write anyway. That's you know, if you're on a deadline,
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  not always wait for inspiration to strike. And that's that's the toughest thing,
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  you know, because we all want to dazzle everybody every time. But it
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  didn't really work that way. A lot of trial and error, Yeah,
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  and you touched on this too, like previously, like writing should be fun,
• 24:19
  you know, like when you're sitting down you're writing something, you know,
• 24:22
  especially like a comedy. You know, you know, because I've had
• 24:25
  friends who and this happened to me as well, where you know, they're
• 24:29
  trying to write a movie, a horror comedy, whatever, and they just
• 24:32
  kind of agonize and overthink the whole thing to the point where they're like,
• 24:37
  you know, sort of everything. It's like, I don't know if you've
• 24:41
  ever read The Art of War, The War of Art, I'm sorry,
• 24:45
  The War of Art by step Yeah, Stephen Prestfille. It's like that resistance
• 24:48
  comes in in that form where you overthink everything, you over analyze everything,
• 24:52
  and then everything stops becoming fun and it becomes just this miserable slowdown where everything,
• 24:59
  you know what I mean, everything was like, all right, I
• 25:00
  guess I'll write us a word or whatever, I bust sentence, you know,
• 25:03
  paragraph, but everything just becomes this like arduous process and you're like,
• 25:07
  you know, I don't know if I want to write today, and then
• 25:10
  tomorrow, and then a week, and then all of a sudden, you
• 25:11
  know, a year's flown by and you haven't written anything. Yeah, I
• 25:18
  mean that's more. You know, there are people who say, you know,
• 25:21
  don't go to film school, you can just read scripts and watch movies,
• 25:23
  or you know, study television by reading pilots and watching shows. And
• 25:29
  I think those things are true. But the thing that of program does,
• 25:34
  or a really good writer's group does, is it makes you accountable and you
• 25:38
  actually just have to bring something in everyone. You have deadlines. And in
• 25:42
  some cases the difference between a free writer's group, you know, just with
• 25:48
  talented writers and friends getting together once a week like a book club, you
• 25:52
  know, to really just workshop their pages. What But some people have said
• 25:56
  those don't work, people end up plaking. I mean, of course many
• 26:00
  of them do work, but the ones that don't work are because people kind
• 26:04
  of just start gabbling and it does become sort of a hobby. That Whereas
• 26:08
  if you're inner program and you're paying money and going into debt, as horrible
• 26:12
  as that is, because it's pretty horrible to owe money, you know,
• 26:15
  they graduate in that artistic feel. It's no character of success and debt,
• 26:21
  but it our students, you know, are very aware of that, and
• 26:23
  so they work their butts off and they are very aware that you know that
• 26:32
  this is an investment in their future, and they do take it very,
• 26:34
  very very seriously, and they just don't you know, they don't have a
• 26:37
  choice. So it's like, well, at this point, you're running out
• 26:41
  of time, so just go with the best idea you have and get a
• 26:45
  draft in. You can always rewrite it later. And so I think time
• 26:52
  and deadlines are just the best gift for any writer because it gives you structure,
• 26:56
  and you know, a deadline is a gift. I always say,
• 27:00
  a writer without a deadline, just clean things. You know, you'll you'll
• 27:04
  have the cleanest thing. You'll find every possible excuse not to write. Having
• 27:10
  a writing partner really helps with that. It's really helped me and Tar tremendously
• 27:15
  early in our careers because we if one person didn't feel like writing, the
• 27:19
  other person would, you know, would be the disciplinarian and say no,
• 27:22
  no, we have to focus. There were times that both of us didn't
• 27:26
  want to write, and we'd just go to the movies or you know,
• 27:27
  go to something else, or we would challenge ourselves if we really look like
• 27:33
  writing, and we had a few extra days, we would just do things
• 27:38
  like go to the mall, but we would give it ourselves an assignment,
• 27:41
  like we have to go to stores and find clothes that our characters would wear,
• 27:48
  or observe people in the mall to help us find it, you know,
• 27:52
  interesting look or eavesdrop on a conversation to you know, get inspiration for
• 27:59
  dialogue. So everything, it was always like everything we did would still feed
• 28:03
  the creative process. It's not the substitute. It doesn't substitute sitting down and
• 28:07
  facing the page, but it does kind of go all right, well,
• 28:11
  we're still kind of working, and maybe while we're out talking or just having
• 28:17
  one to your tranquil avoid writing. Invariably, if you have a partner,
• 28:22
  you'll start talking about the scripts and suddenly you're in the story session and suddenly
• 28:26
  you're jotting down notes and you push through, you know, something that maybe
• 28:32
  you would have not been able to do on your own. So it also
• 28:37
  really helps with comedy because if we're laughing at least we think it's funny,
• 28:42
  or if one person pitches a joke or a funny situation and the other person
• 28:47
  laughs, that's a good parameter. It's very hard to write in the vacuum,
• 28:51
  you know, and that that's another thing that gets people kind of stuck.
• 28:56
  I know, I don't, your mom just it's just such a vivid
• 29:02
  memory. We when we decided that we had to get rid of the dead
• 29:07
  babysitter's body, we we wanted it just we I remember that we were sitting
• 29:15
  at in my mom's house, so your kitchen table. We said, what
• 29:18
  if they put it in the trunk, like if she came with a trunk
• 29:22
  of all of our stuff, and what if they drop it off at the
• 29:26
  mortuary, because you know, they don't want to bury the body, they're
• 29:32
  not criminals. We thought, we'll just do the right thing. We'll drop
• 29:34
  it off in a mortuary. They'll give her you know, they'll figure out
• 29:37
  what to do. But then they had to leave a note. And when
• 29:41
  we wrote the note that they were going to put on the trunk, which
• 29:44
  said night old lady inside died of natural causes, we just thought that was
• 29:48
  the funniest thing in the world. We laughed for like fifteen minutes thinking that
• 29:53
  was hilarious. We didn't know if anybody else would think it was hilary like
• 29:57
  we did. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And
• 30:07
  now back to the show, and that and the ending of the script,
• 30:12
  which was we after the babysitter dies, you know, early on in the
• 30:18
  fact, we wanted to then have the audience forget that the babysitter even existed,
• 30:26
  because I think the reason the script sold was the ending, which was,
• 30:30
  after this whole ordeal of everything that they've all been through, the mother
• 30:34
  comes back into town and it looks like kind of in that risky Business way,
• 30:40
  which was another inspiration for us. We know, a really great team
• 30:42
  comedy, much better than Don't Tell Him on the Babysitters did. But at
• 30:47
  the end of Risky Business, it looks like he got away with everything,
• 30:49
  and we wanted to have that. But then we when we outlined the movie
• 30:55
  on to index cards, which was how I still outline, we thought,
• 31:00
  what if the mother comes back it looks like she got away with everything,
• 31:03
  and then the mother says, oh, one last thing, where's the babysitter,
• 31:07
  and that that would be the first time the audience even heard about the
• 31:11
  babysitter for like, you know, over an hour. I think that ending
• 31:15
  really helped us sell the script because it was surprising and the reader forgot about
• 31:18
  the babysitter. Also and you know, having a really strong start and a
• 31:23
  strong finish really helps, you know, the self scripts and those two things
• 31:29
  never changed. You know, those were like locked and no matter how many
• 31:33
  drafts we did, they stayed. You know, those were never nobody touched
• 31:37
  those. There was pressure from the studio to have a police investigation looking for
• 31:41
  the babysitter, and and they wanted us to constantly, you know, remind
• 31:47
  the audience about the babysitter, and that was something we kept fighting against,
• 31:51
  saying, let's getting ruin the ending, and we struck some kind of a
• 31:53
  compromise. The weird thing about the movie is, as you kind of mentioned
• 31:59
  it, when it came out, it did okay low budgets, so it's
• 32:02
  made money. It definitely made money, but it's become more and more popular
• 32:08
  over time, and it's now kind of like a cult movie, which we
• 32:13
  don't really understand exactly why or how it happened. But even this coming Monday
• 32:17
  night in LA there's a tribute screening to it as part of the UCLA Archive.
• 32:23
  There's screening a series called Working Women, and one of the movies they're
• 32:29
  screening is Working Girl, which was happening around the same time as Don't Tell
• 32:32
  Mom, which were sold and don't Tell Mom Babies it is dead. They're
• 32:37
  including that in the series, and so, you know, Monday night,
• 32:42
  there's going to be undres of people watching the movie in Q and A.
• 32:45
  And we just think all things hilarious because it's been, you know, so
• 32:47
  many years since it came out, but there's still just a ton of interest
• 32:52
  in it and people still quote lines of dialogue from it to me when I
• 32:54
  go to parties, and I love it. It's that it turned into this,
• 32:59
  but that we never expected. Yeah, you know, it's like there's
• 33:04
  a piece of advice I once heard that for when you're when you're submitting a
• 33:07
  script to like a gatekeeper, so to speak, the most important part,
• 33:13
  what matters most is the first ten pages, and then when it's an actual
• 33:15
  movie, the most important part is the last ten minutes. Yeah. Yeah,
• 33:21
  I mean, if you look at get Out, you know, which
• 33:23
  was I think should have won the Oscar for Best Picture. I'm glad it
• 33:27
  won for Best Screenplay. I just never knew where that movie was gone.
• 33:30
  And I know that they you know, we worked the ending several times,
• 33:35
  but very memorable ending. And yes, I think the reason I think that's
• 33:40
  true about you know, the last ten pages, is that you read somehow
• 33:47
  have an inevitable ending that the audience should have seen coming but didn't. And
• 33:53
  this is just my opinion, and it has to be Friday, you know.
• 33:59
  I think there's a reason why the eighties romantic comedy has kind of gone
• 34:02
  out of style, and a lot of that is just so far plaic that
• 34:07
  the audience was so far ahead of, you know, the story that the
• 34:13
  only fun was how they were going to get together. But there was never
• 34:15
  a question that they would get together at the end, you know, And
• 34:19
  so we really wanted, you know, we really wanted to go to go
• 34:23
  against formula, and a lot of it wasn't so much conscious like we're going
• 34:29
  to go against formula, but he knew we needed something that was unexpected and
• 34:35
  even Roman. My favorite romantic comedy of all time is The Philadelphia Story with
• 34:38
  Catherine Hepburn, you know, and Jimmy Stewart and Carry Grant. What I
• 34:43
  love about that movie is there are four potential suitors, well three really,
• 34:50
  and then it narrows down to two, but you really don't know at the
• 34:53
  end which guy she's going to marry until until the ceremony is about to start,
• 35:00
  and I love that, you know, and all the options that they're
• 35:02
  viable. I also really like the anti romantic comedy My best Friend's Wedding with
• 35:09
  Julia Roberts, because she doesn't end up with the guy and you're thinking she's
• 35:15
  going too, and then when you know, it ends in an unexpected way.
• 35:21
  And I always always shade that, and I love Oh Henry endings like
• 35:25
  Fight Club or The Sixth Sense. You know, movies where everything shifts and
• 35:31
  you didn't see it coming until that moment and then you go, oh,
• 35:36
  that's great, why didn't they see that? And it's so satisfying. Those
• 35:39
  are always my favorite kind of movie experiences. There was a great eighties teen
• 35:46
  comedy that was kind of like about you know, guys going after the girl
• 35:52
  called the Last American Virgin. Have you ever seen it? Oh? Yeah,
• 35:54
  of course that ending. Let me tell you know what it nowadays,
• 36:00
  if you said I wanted to do that ending, you you wouldn't be able
• 36:02
  to get away with it because I'd be It's such a downer ending and it
• 36:07
  ends a lot like real life. And then if you but if you compare
• 36:09
  that to like maybe money can't buy Me Love or any or something like that.
• 36:14
  You know, Okay, we know they're gonna get together, but how
• 36:17
  they got together, by the way, I like, I like both of
• 36:19
  those movies. It's just when I saw The Last American Virgin and like or
• 36:23
  even movies like uh with a Better Off Dead, I mean, the stuff
• 36:29
  like that just absolutely fantastic. I mean, and they they just the the
• 36:34
  how quirky that one was. But but I'm sorry, I know I'm kind
• 36:36
  of jumping around here, but but Last American Virgin though, Last American Virgin,
• 36:39
  I mean that ending, I'd see what new? Would you mind if
• 36:43
  I spoiled? If everybody if I just told it what the ending is now?
• 36:45
  Okay, So everybody, if you don't want to just jump ahead like
• 36:49
  thirty seconds, if you don't want me to spoil, it's for you.
• 36:51
  But but essentially, this guy the whole movie is going after this girl.
• 36:55
  He finally he she gets pregnant by another guy. She so he this is
• 37:00
  like the third act, and he sells all his stuff like it is,
• 37:02
  his stereo system, everything else to help pay for the abortion. They she
• 37:07
  could see abortion and later on that night there or maybe a week later,
• 37:12
  at a house party and she's with the guy who basically left her, and
• 37:16
  she's forgotten all about the protagonists. That's all he's done for her. And
• 37:20
  it just ends with him crying to himself in his car as he just drives
• 37:23
  into the night and the movie ends. And I remembered me while I was
• 37:28
  floored by that ending, because I was like, holy shit, yeah,
• 37:34
  yeah, well, you know, I think it's a really good at and
• 37:37
  I'll stay the TV pilot or a movie y'all say, pitched the first half
• 37:43
  of the movie, just the broad strokes of what you're planning, you know,
• 37:45
  in the ear on stages and they just ask himbody, what do you
• 37:49
  think is going to happen? And if they just go immediately to your ending,
• 37:52
  and they're like this because this is the most logical obvious way that it
• 37:58
  would end. If they're right, you know, you have to change the
• 38:00
  ending or you have to change the path to that ending, you know,
• 38:04
  because you want you know, that's the definition of anti climactic, right,
• 38:07
  you know, where it's like everything happens exactly the way you thought. So
• 38:12
  even if we'd be like you know, when Harry met Sally, which is
• 38:15
  a great romantic complicy. You know, you kind of know they're gonna get
• 38:20
  together, but nor Ephron, you know, she pushes it to the last
• 38:22
  minutes on New Year's Eve, and then when they do get together, the
• 38:28
  last lines of the movie are you know, I hate you, Harry,
• 38:30
  I really hate you, not I love you, Harry, I really love
• 38:34
  you, you know, and I also love I also appreciate that where it
• 38:38
  just seems impossible that it could happen, Like The Graduate, you know,
• 38:43
  he gets there to stop the wedding and then it's too late. I love
• 38:47
  I mean, you know, Mike Nichols is one of my favorite directors,
• 38:51
  and I love The Graduate, one of my favorite movies. But you know,
• 38:54
  great climax. Benjamin rushed into the church, you know, finally gets
• 38:59
  there screaming, you know, he lady, lady, and then it's too
• 39:04
  late. It's over, but it's not over. And then you get that
• 39:07
  even you know, that incredibly iconic ending when they on the bus and the
• 39:14
  stunt of silence plays and it you know, the movie ends with them going,
• 39:16
  all right, we actually pulled this off. She like she's the runaway
• 39:22
  bride. They are together, and yet now what you know, now what
• 39:24
  the hell do we do? That was also you know, people remember these
• 39:29
  endings because they're indultable, and they're they're risky because they're not just they lived
• 39:35
  happily ever after. And I feel like, you know, maybe it's a
• 39:38
  good siguay to talking about television. Part of why I think TV is where
• 39:43
  the most exciting storytelling is happening now exactly for that reason, which is it's
• 39:49
  not just happily ever after, it's this on calling, just you know,
• 39:53
  long term relationship with these characters, where we align with them. By the
• 39:58
  end of the pilot, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 40:07
  and now back to the show. But then it's the fluid dance sometimes of
• 40:13
  allegiance, you know, and sometimes we approve of what they do and sometimes
• 40:15
  we don't, And it doesn't it's it doesn't really end until the end of
• 40:22
  the series, which might be you know, five, six, seven or
• 40:25
  you know, Great Anatomy. I think it is going extin fourteen. It's
• 40:29
  just constantly ongoing, and as long as it keeps surprising us and the characters
• 40:35
  keep facing new new problems and new challenges, it remains interesting. So it's
• 40:39
  against ever really having to fully end the story. It's I love how highly
• 40:45
  serialized television is now and how you know, great writers and really strong effective
• 40:52
  writers rooms constantly find ways to surprise us and to pivot from what we thought
• 40:59
  was either the end of a story where it has I write about this and
• 41:02
  the new book. I call it story tentacles, you know, where you
• 41:06
  make story choices that lead to more stories because it has to keep, it
• 41:09
  has to continue and evolve. And the movie now starts to seem very finite
• 41:15
  to me, you know, like even really good movies. I'll think that's
• 41:17
  it. I want to I want to holler. I want to spend more
• 41:21
  time with these characters. And I think with you know, the domination of
• 41:29
  and people shifting over to on demand viewership where they can binge view and they
• 41:32
  can watch things when they want to and how they want to and where they
• 41:37
  want to that we we love these ongoing stories that just keep pulling us in
• 41:44
  different directions and challenge us and the characters, and so I h you might
• 41:51
  have to you have to think about where you want to land at the islet
• 41:53
  of the at the end of the season. But it's an ongoing story of
• 42:00
  the things I talk about is how you know, a movie is designed to
• 42:04
  have a beginning, middle, and end. A pilot is designed to have
• 42:07
  a beginning medal and an open end, you know, and you want to
• 42:10
  end on more questions than answers, and you want to leave everything wide open
• 42:15
  for more story. And you know, writing movies, it was always you
• 42:20
  know, what's the ending? How does it end? How does it complete?
• 42:22
  And this is the exact opposite of that. Yeah, you know when
• 42:27
  I was working with Jennifer Gasani because I actually shot it, I actually yeah,
• 42:31
  yeah, Jenny, Jen. I think everyone knows Jen, I actually
• 42:34
  shot a TV pilot a couple of years ago. I actually produced it,
• 42:37
  wrote it, directed it, and uh and I it's online right now,
• 42:42
  by the way. It's called game Over, And it's just you know,
• 42:45
  it was like I aimed high. I we had so many opportunities. It
• 42:51
  was there was a lot of backstage fighting. Uh you know what I mean,
• 42:53
  there's a little behind the stuff that was behind the scenes, as I'm
• 42:55
  sure you know what I mean, like a lot of uh, but we
• 43:00
  we've I eventually got pushed out. I finally decided to upload it last year
• 43:04
  because I was just sitting on it. I was like, it's doing nobody
• 43:06
  any good but just sitting on this damn thing. So but after working with
• 43:09
  Jen, I realized, you know, beginning, you know, have that
• 43:14
  pilot, and then the pilot has to ignite the series. So then when
• 43:17
  you go to pitch it, you have sort of like what's the pilot arc,
• 43:20
  what's season one? And when, what's what's going to be the series
• 43:22
  arc h so you know where we're eventually, you know, like Walter White
• 43:27
  Breaking Bad is the best example. You know, Walter White, he goes
• 43:30
  from this mild mattered man in the middle of of New Mexico to a drug
• 43:35
  kingpin. Well, how does that transformation happen? Well, you know that's
• 43:39
  the kept into scar fad with what yeah, yeah, exactly, and you
• 43:45
  sort of have you know, how does that journey occur? And you know
• 43:49
  what happens during those during those moments. It's it's so much more of an
• 43:52
  art than a science. And that's why when everyone tries to, like you
• 43:55
  know what I mean, like I sometimes seen you when like people when they
• 43:59
  try to dissect certain things, they almost like go, well, you know
• 44:02
  what seven page seventeen, this beat has to happen on page thirty. This
• 44:06
  thing has to happen. You're kind of like, I'll come on, let's
• 44:07
  just move away from you know what I mean, Like, let's say that's
• 44:09
  too sciency. Yeah, I mean, I just am so against formula now
• 44:17
  there. You know, there are certain things that there are, you know,
• 44:22
  very few absolutes, you know, in screenwriting. You know, and
• 44:25
  I always tell people if somebody tells you there's a formula or a template to
• 44:30
  follow, it's not a bad idea just to look and say, okay,
• 44:34
  well, you could break down a lot of movies that follow that formula successfully,
• 44:37
  and that is valid, you know, But there are so many different
• 44:40
  structures in ways stories, and particularly now if you do all of it and
• 44:46
  you can break form and the story still works, all the better, you
• 44:52
  know, because it's a mysterious process. But you know, there are a
• 44:57
  few absolutes that I think are lad pretty much across the board and across genres.
• 45:02
  One of them is, I believe every story is a suspense story,
• 45:07
  you know, whether it's a comedy or or a thriller or a drama.
• 45:10
  And the reason is that you know, the two key ingredients to suspense are
• 45:16
  anticipation and surprise. Well, every story needs to fill the audience with anticipation
• 45:22
  of what's going to happen next, and hopefully when you get there it's suparting.
• 45:28
  So I'm always going, where is the suspense? You know, there's
• 45:30
  no dramatic tension. If the script's not working, you know, why isn't
• 45:34
  it works? Well, there's no dramatic tension. Why isn't there any dramatic
• 45:37
  tension? Usually that goes back to empathy, which is the first thing I
• 45:40
  started to talk about, which is, you know, you get that note
• 45:45
  which is the most frustrating note to get from an executive or rep which is
• 45:49
  I didn't really connect anybody or a development person who might say, why should
• 45:53
  I care about any of these people? And suspense only works when you're worried
• 46:00
  about what's going to happen. You know, you have to connect to the
• 46:02
  characters. So, you know, Breaking Bad is a great example because you
• 46:06
  know, by design, Walter White is an underdog from the very beginning,
• 46:09
  and weren't worried because he's dying and he has a wife and he has kids,
• 46:15
  and he's struggling, and so you know, you really align with him
• 46:20
  becoming an anti hero because it seems like the best option based on limited options
• 46:24
  that he has. How you have a thing In the new book a quote
• 46:29
  from David Mamette where he talks about great trauma is choosing not between right and
• 46:34
  wrong, but between two wrongs. It's because Walter White, neither option is
• 46:43
  good. You know, if he's if he doesn't become a drug dealer,
• 46:46
  he's probably going to die and leave his family unprovided arring. He's gonna feel
• 46:51
  like a failure. He sees this as drawn upon his a skill set,
• 46:57
  something that he has that's reruly valuable. And when he and X with you
• 47:00
  know, his former student with Jesse Thinkpen, he sees this as a great
• 47:04
  opportunity that could solve a problem. But he's caught between two wrong because while
• 47:08
  it might solve one problem, it could also get you know, get him
• 47:12
  killed or thrown into prison. And so chapter eight in the TV writing on
• 47:20
  Demand the new book, I have a quote from David Mammett. It says,
• 47:22
  a moral decision is not the choice between wrong and right that's easy,
• 47:28
  but between two wrongs. And if you look at some of the best doesn't
• 47:31
  I have a lot of examples based on that quote in the book. Whenever
• 47:37
  you connect with character caught between a rock and a hard place, you're always
• 47:42
  going to generate more suspense and probably empathy because you know, in all plate
• 47:47
  to not having ideal choices in front of us, you know, and yet
• 47:53
  you know which is the the lesser of the two devils, and human nature
• 48:01
  is to take the path of LEAs resistance. So if there is a path
• 48:05
  of LEAs resistance, that's clearly the easier, better path, and the writer
• 48:08
  in the character doesn't take that path, you're not going to root for them
• 48:15
  because you're going to think, well, why did they not go down the
• 48:16
  path that was clearly the smarter, easier choice. But if you move choice
• 48:22
  and you trap them in a situation where you know neither alternative is ideal,
• 48:28
  I just feel like right away you have pinsent that you wouldn't you know,
• 48:31
  normally have a noow They're absolute For me? About is I believe that every
• 48:36
  story is a coming of age story, no matter what the ages of the
• 48:40
  characters are. You know, it's a maturation story and they somehow need to
• 48:45
  learn something or discover something. And I think that all movies are INTV shows
• 48:52
  are about characters who have to grow up and end or overcome something, but
• 48:57
  the h inter emotional void deficit that they've never really dealt with, and that's
• 49:02
  part of the journey of the story. So I always want to work for
• 49:06
  growth or avolation in a character, the exception being multi cameras that comes or
• 49:13
  the characters tend not change by design. I don't really want them to see
• 49:16
  because we like them stuck in the problems. But movies and one hour dramas
• 49:22
  and half hour dramatis tend to have characters at least trying to change those circumstances.
• 49:29
  And every episode there's the potential to win or lose something. And I
• 49:35
  think that positive and negative tension generates heats, you know, dramatic intensity,
• 49:39
  and helps with suspects. So you know, for me, those two things
• 49:46
  I always go back to. I want there to be a cathartic experience where
• 49:52
  characters have to face fears and neither overcome them, or if it's a tragedy,
• 49:57
  they will overcome the out be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 50:05
  and now back to the show that they had the potential to overcome them.
• 50:10
  You know, all could have turned himself in ultimately where it changed just
• 50:15
  ways, you know, but he once he became Edinburgh, he couldn't you
• 50:21
  know, he just became completely hooked on that power and at that you know,
• 50:27
  it's a very lonely ending for Ahant. You know, I don't want
• 50:31
  to. I'm sure most people now would end but anywhere get the idea.
• 50:36
  Yeah, I think I pretty much everyone who's probably listening to this podcast has
• 50:39
  seen the end up breaking bad. But it's a fitting end for him.
• 50:43
  Yeah, it's a fitting end for him. And it kind of ties in
• 50:45
  with the pilot episode, which is very important, not only the whole obviously
• 50:49
  the whole series, but but just that pilot because of what he's talking about
• 50:52
  in the pilot about chemistry and how things change. It's a it's transformation,
• 50:57
  right, which is what the characters do, so you know, just just
• 51:00
  you know, transforming themselves or perceptions. Uh, you know, like David
• 51:04
  matt was talking about those two dilemmas, you know, the dilemma of two
• 51:07
  bad options, you know, and then that's something true you said too,
• 51:09
  is is you know that I think is the hardest part for a lot of
• 51:12
  screenwriters or maybe something they miss is creating that empathy because when you when you
• 51:17
  are yeah, because you know, it's always that, It's always that question,
• 51:21
  you know, why should I care about these characters? Why am I
• 51:22
  invested in these characters? There the company that the company that probably does is
• 51:27
  the best is Pixar with how they create empathy for their characters. Uh,
• 51:31
  and you know they they Wally is you know, a robot. He's made
• 51:36
  a very sort of you know, sheepish and you know he's not like really
• 51:38
  a threat. You know, you have the Up, an old man who's
• 51:43
  lost his wife. I think Up is probably the best movie they've ever done.
• 51:45
  I think Up was absolutely phenominal. People are I mean I was thopping
• 51:51
  after the prolog you know, it's just such a beautiful prology. And yeah,
• 51:57
  he just said this gigantic void, that need that he probably believed that
• 52:02
  that at his age will never be filled. And then this, you know,
• 52:06
  this black sard life, and then you have you know, magic is
• 52:10
  one of the greatest space to fill the void. I there's a wonderful documentary
• 52:16
  on HBO about Steven Spielberg's career, so retrospective. It's just the whole thing
• 52:23
  is just filled with so much great you know, insight and you get to
• 52:28
  hear Spielberg tell stories about things that you know, some of his greatest achievements
• 52:32
  were accidental, you know, like Jaws. To me, the best thing
• 52:36
  about Jaws is that you never see the shark. Where you almost never see
• 52:38
  the shark, but the tension of the shark being there is even greater than
• 52:43
  seeing the shark. But that was not by designer, and that was because
• 52:45
  they couldn't get the mechanical shark to actually work and it didn't look good,
• 52:49
  so they had to hide it. And then they said, well, how
• 52:52
  don't we create potension of the shark if we can't show the shark, which
• 52:57
  they just couldn't just physically. The production wasn't up to you know, we
• 53:00
  didn't have the technology to do that. And like you didn't say way back
• 53:02
  then. So it's like, well, what if there's music that you know,
• 53:07
  stands for the shark when we hear the music scared and you know,
• 53:12
  again, those are the strongest things in that movie, which was a you
• 53:15
  know, it was done to solve a problem and it actually makes the movie
• 53:20
  more even more brilliant in terms of the void. In that documentary, Splobo
• 53:24
  talks about how Et did not begin as a story of a boy who meets
• 53:31
  an extra terrestrial et was really Spielberg's desire to tell a story about a devoir
• 53:38
  child because his tenants divorced when he was a kid, and the void was
• 53:44
  so enormous when his parents split up. So the question for him was,
• 53:49
  I want to tell a story about how that enormous void created by divorce impacts
• 53:55
  a child. And then he started to think what could possibly fill that because
• 54:00
  it's so infinite, especially for a kid, you know, And then he
• 54:05
  came up with the idea, well, what if he discovers an alien from
• 54:07
  another planet and the former friendship and both of them have the same goal,
• 54:12
  which is to go home, but in different ways, you know, the
• 54:15
  divorce. The child of divorce wants home to be the way it was and
• 54:19
  for the parents to get back together, and for Elliott, it's about getting
• 54:22
  back to its planet. And I just thought that that, to me,
• 54:27
  just speaks to the emotional core of a movie. It may come from the
• 54:32
  beginning and then you have to figure out how to swallow it. And maybe
• 54:36
  that did hear your story, or maybe you have the idea of a boy
• 54:39
  and captains the next stress room and then but he still always have to go
• 54:44
  back and ask, what's the more of the story, what's the emotional void?
• 54:50
  How you know, just even when you're pitching a TV show. I
• 54:53
  was just talking about this in class last week. I said, everybody who's
• 54:58
  pitching, you need you know, I tell my find a way to pitch
• 55:01
  your story in ten minutes. It's like a comedian. You know, you
• 55:04
  need a tight ten. You know, that's that's the key to success.
• 55:07
  First end of comment, Right, you need to take ten minutes, and
• 55:12
  it needs to pretty much be filled with material that's pretty that you just know
• 55:16
  kills. Right, and then you go on the road and you keep doing
• 55:19
  your tight ten and you build a pitch, a tight ten minute pitch.
• 55:24
  But I said, let's just have a rule that at least three times during
• 55:30
  those ten minutes you have to stop and say toever wherever you're pitching too.
• 55:37
  Now, let's talk about how the how the character's feeling now at this point
• 55:42
  in the story. You know, and I said, and you use really
• 55:45
  strong words like, you know, devastated, in raids, you know,
• 55:53
  betrayed, desperate, you know, strong words to convey how they're feeling.
• 56:00
  You know, because no matter how good the plot is, and no matter
• 56:05
  how good the idea is, a pitch is only as good as the emotional
• 56:08
  connection that reels in the audience. You know, they have to invest in
• 56:13
  the characters. And I think that's probably even though most people intellectually know that's
• 56:19
  important. I think people often underestimate the power of emotion in a story,
• 56:29
  and it's because it's the toughest thing to write, and it's the toughest thing
• 56:32
  to convey. A lot of people just try, well, they don't try,
• 56:36
  but they'll almost inadvertently stick to the surface and the plot details instead of
• 56:42
  going deeper into story. You know, Roger Ebert, the late film critics,
• 56:45
  said, we're not in the entertainment business. We're in the empathy business.
• 56:50
  And to me, empathies everything in a story, and it's often the
• 56:57
  thing that's most easily overlooked the creator. So if anybody gets anything out of
• 57:01
  this, at least from my perspective, look at the role of empathy in
• 57:07
  your story. And if there isn't a clear emotional journey, you've still got
• 57:12
  a lot of work to do. You know, you're missing a whole air.
• 57:15
  And it applies equally to comedy. You know, if you look at
• 57:16
  a movie like Bridesmaids and Annie's emotional journey. It's all about feeling abandoned into
• 57:22
  friendship and feeling like you're never gonna be worthy of love. And those are
• 57:27
  universal theme addicts, but they're also emotional and people can relate to them,
• 57:34
  and that's what makes the movie, you know, a movie. The screenplayer
• 57:37
  is nominated for an oscar. It's what took it from, you know what,
• 57:42
  either a long snl sketch of its little been one joke. If he
• 57:45
  get you a movie that head, he'd laughs, great characters, but also
• 57:50
  a lot of parts. Yeah, it's it's kind of like what I always
• 57:54
  feel too, is when you're outlining a story, you get you get an
• 57:59
  idea and you start kind of outlining it. He kind of put the cart
• 58:01
  before the horse, because you start saying, you know, what could happen
• 58:04
  these plot twists, these turns, blah blah blah, and then characters kind
• 58:07
  of back, you know, thought of afterwards like oh, what character can
• 58:10
  be plugged into this when it should be reversed? Should be a character in
• 58:14
  this? And what kind of character is it? You know, how am
• 58:16
  I going to create this? This sort of empathy between everything and a great
• 58:21
  movie that I always go back to, his Blood Simple that just has great
• 58:23
  characters and just twists and turns of what they're doing to try to it's almost
• 58:30
  out of love. You know. I think it's the only Cohen Brothers movie,
• 58:32
  by the way, that isn't about money. I know. You you
• 58:35
  mentioned about a lot of movies are about coming of age, and I actually
• 58:38
  just really like and I actually just saw this, uh this video recently about
• 58:43
  you know, this analysis of the Cohen Brothers movie and how all their movies
• 58:46
  are about money and the pursuit of money, and uh, and I started
• 58:51
  I watched it a little bit more and I was, well, you know,
• 58:52
  that really is true. But I don't think Blood simples about money.
• 58:57
  I just I think it's more of about well, I guess it was about
• 59:00
  money and it went away. But Raising Arizona was the other exception. But
• 59:04
  that again was was the baby was about money because you know that whole you
• 59:08
  know, that whole thing about kidnapping the kid and then there was abounding hunter
• 59:12
  came back, so but you know, it's and then some of the characters
• 59:15
  agree about that reward money. But but yeah, you know, I just
• 59:19
  think that character you know, sometimes it is you know, not really thought
• 59:22
  of. And with TV it's all about character, you know, it's whether
• 59:24
  it's the TV show Ozarks. You know, somebody once told me we're in
• 59:28
  the golden age of TV, which is true, but it's also much more
• 59:31
  segregated now because I got yet, you know, YouTube and Voodoo and HBO
• 59:36
  and Showtime and all these other things where you know, we have all these
• 59:38
  great TV shows and they're on like a hundred different channels. Yeah, there
• 59:44
  are actually going to be over five hundred script shows across platforms this year.
• 59:50
  That's you know, and tens and tens of billions developed time acquisite in production.
• 59:59
  Will be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
• 1:00:06
  to the show and some you know, I'm finding that a lot of the
• 1:00:13
  tough streaming platforms like Netflix and Zulu and premium cable channels like HBO, HBO
• 1:00:22
  and Showtime still develop. But Netflix doesn't spend a lot on development. They
• 1:00:29
  like people to come to them with projects that are what they would ted surrandas
• 1:00:32
  you know, when the Netflix content chief of content he says they're never going
• 1:00:40
  to buy a project that's half baked. You know, they're they're looking for.
• 1:00:45
  And this is pretty much across the board now. And this is a
• 1:00:47
  big change from just even a few years ago, which is it's very rare.
• 1:00:52
  Anybody's just going to buy a pilot. They're gonna want to wait a
• 1:00:55
  pilot. They're gonna want to wait a series bible or even a mini bible
• 1:01:01
  so they know that it can sustain over at least one season. They would
• 1:01:07
  want more detail about season one and then a suggestion of where it might go
• 1:01:12
  in future seasons. There are platforms that want you to map out multiple seasons.
• 1:01:19
  A friend of mine does, ah, what a great criminally with the
• 1:01:25
  word underappreciated. Kind of a sleeper series for Amazon called Patriot. I don't
• 1:01:31
  know if you've seen it. Very people, very few people have seen it.
• 1:01:37
  Stephen Conrad, who is best known probably for rating the movie The Pursuit
• 1:01:40
  of Happiness with Will Smith, but he also wrote The Weatherman with Nicholas Cage
• 1:01:45
  and the Life of Walter Middy with Ben Stiller, and he's a really wonderful
• 1:01:52
  but he created a series for Amazon called Patriot, and I think almost nobody
• 1:01:58
  saw it. It's great. It's a very dark comedy. It did get
• 1:02:01
  picked up for season two, so they're in production now, and uh god,
• 1:02:09
  what was I? What was I? What was your question again?
• 1:02:12
  How did I started to get out of Patriot? As an example, I
• 1:02:15
  was going we were just talking about character. Yes, yes, I'm walking.
• 1:02:21
  When Dell at the time, forget who had developed Loss when he was
• 1:02:24
  at ABC at the drama egxecutive, he had got over to Americans and because
• 1:02:30
  of the Lost experience, where you know, the series kind of didn't bear
• 1:02:37
  a lot of resemblance with the originally imagined and some of that was just the
• 1:02:43
  show became so successful that they had to stretched the story out of room last
• 1:02:46
  season at it. But because Morgan Rendell was involved with Loss, when Stephen
• 1:02:52
  Karnwright came into self Patriot and Stephen had not done television, they really,
• 1:02:58
  in order to for him to have made that deal, really needed proof of
• 1:03:00
  concepts and they wanted him to map out how he could sustain over many seasons,
• 1:03:07
  not just over the first season. And Steven had to prove all of
• 1:03:09
  that to them. And you know, now everybody wants that. Everybody wants
• 1:03:15
  proof of concept, maybe a pilot episode and a second episode already written.
• 1:03:22
  Another thing that another trend is works and studios are now soft screen lighting shows
• 1:03:28
  where they'll first screen light the writers room and they'll see how many scripts can
• 1:03:32
  come out that are of the same high quality as the pilot that that excited
• 1:03:37
  them. So before they commit to production, they want many scripts and they
• 1:03:42
  want to see that the writers has come up with a very strong plan for
• 1:03:45
  the season. That's another trend that's happening. And of course most of these
• 1:03:52
  series Bibles or mini Bibles that are part of the selling process are just selling
• 1:03:58
  tools. As soon as the rated room assembled, often everything in the Bible
• 1:04:02
  goes out the window because they come up with better ideas. But you know,
• 1:04:08
  so you need the Bible. You need to have the plan and be
• 1:04:12
  able to articulate it to satisfy the person who's investing, you know, millions
• 1:04:17
  of dollars ultimately in a production, and then a lot of that, you
• 1:04:23
  know, gets thrown out as you make discoveries and find your way and the
• 1:04:27
  characters to take a life of their own and casting of the you know,
• 1:04:33
  a lot of times on paper, it didn't seem like two characters would need
• 1:04:39
  to spend a lot of time together, but then you realize that when they're
• 1:04:42
  on screen, the chemistry is so strong. Sometimes shows like Homelands. Besides,
• 1:04:48
  they're gonna accelerate the romance, you know, like between Kerrie and Brody
• 1:04:53
  and season one that wasn't supposed to happen till much later, or you know,
• 1:04:58
  back to Breaking Bad, Jesse Pengland was supposed to be killed off,
• 1:05:00
  you know, halfway through season one, but once they saw the chemistry between
• 1:05:05
  her and Paul Oh my god, Bryan Granting, you know, suddenly that
• 1:05:14
  they were like, oh, this is the central relationship. This is like
• 1:05:16
  the strongest part of the show. This is the sweet spot of the show.
• 1:05:20
  Let's not kill af Jos to Pengland. This gives us more story.
• 1:05:25
  So a lot of what's happening now is you need a plan and you need
• 1:05:32
  to be needed to macculate it up. Hunt chickens get inspires that you actually
• 1:05:38
  have proof of concept, some kind of a package, maybe even a director
• 1:05:44
  or a show runner attach maybe an actor who's interested, so that you know,
• 1:05:48
  like when Netflix notoriously ween let two full seasons of House of Cards.
• 1:05:57
  Some of it was based on algorithms, but more of it was based on
• 1:06:00
  the package of you know, David Fincher and no Williman at the time Kevin's
• 1:06:06
  basy, which of course now would be the kiss of death. Uh.
• 1:06:11
  But you know they want they're betting on a winning on a winning racehorse.
• 1:06:15
  And the more that you can convince them, my friend, that they have
• 1:06:18
  a winning more, the more likely they're gonna be to write those sex and
• 1:06:24
  to give you the green light. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what
• 1:06:28
  everyone's sort of you know again, let go just tying it back almost like
• 1:06:30
  a TV show, almost time to it back to what we were initially talking
• 1:06:33
  about, which was creating that script and they and that that's your sort of
• 1:06:39
  it's your calling card, you know that that's your your ability to say this
• 1:06:42
  is what I'm capable of. Uh, you know, it's outside the box
• 1:06:45
  thinking. And I mean, just to take another side note, I know
• 1:06:47
  I want to also just before we close, I know we're right out of
• 1:06:49
  time, I want to talk about your your your new book. But I
• 1:06:53
  just to sort of put a final thought on all this. I have a
• 1:06:56
  you know, when I whenever I see the superhero movies that come out,
• 1:07:00
  you know, we're always talking about the ending has to be closed, and
• 1:07:02
  you know what I mean. But like it's always like you never you I
• 1:07:04
  always go in there and I go, gee, I wonder what they're gonna
• 1:07:06
  set up next, I wonder what series they're gonna set up next. And
• 1:07:10
  I'm always like, so, I'm just I already know that, you know,
• 1:07:13
  hey, this guy's not gonna be beat He's They're just gonna say,
• 1:07:15
  oh, yeah, we invent we invented the Johnson Ray that resurrected them.
• 1:07:19
  And it's like, come on, guys. I mean, it's just like
• 1:07:21
  it's so pedantic and it's so insulting to the audience to just I get it.
• 1:07:27
  I honestly get it. But it's that's the point where it's like,
• 1:07:30
  no matter what happens, there's always a way someone's resurrected. And I'm just
• 1:07:33
  like, I don't know, maybe I'm just too I'm just too burnt out
• 1:07:38
  with this. I know how comic books work, and I know comp books
• 1:07:40
  are are a lot like novels, where they allow all these different you know,
• 1:07:43
  imaginations and things to happen, because in comics they have like alternate worlds
• 1:07:47
  or or that was a that was a alternate universe, or maybe hey,
• 1:07:51
  you know that was someone's dream or Hey, this was blah blah blah blah.
• 1:07:56
  But right, but but like, yeah, exactly. You know the
• 1:08:00
  comic books how they were able to just explain something away by saying, hey,
• 1:08:02
  that was a dream, that was a psychotic episode, that was this
• 1:08:06
  of that. But you know, with movies, you know, I think
• 1:08:11
  it just ends up being like it's a little like Okay, I just saw
• 1:08:14
  thor Ragnarok the other day. It just came out on Blu Ray, and
• 1:08:16
  I thought it was I thought it was actually hilarious, which is what they
• 1:08:19
  needed, because a lot of these movies are too brooding for me, where
• 1:08:23
  everyone tries to be sort of you know what I mean, like tries to
• 1:08:25
  be either cool or broody. But that movie was just funny, and I
• 1:08:29
  know, I I went. I had a friend of mine who saw with
• 1:08:30
  me, who said he didn't like it because it was too funny. But
• 1:08:32
  I said, I think you need that. Uh. And then but even
• 1:08:35
  at the end of thour there's the stinger where they're setting up where another ship
• 1:08:41
  comes upon them and you're kind of like, well, now, who's this
• 1:08:44
  And maybe it's who's that that that villain not dark Side, maybe it dark
• 1:08:48
  I don't remember but yeah, it's it's one of those villains that I don't
• 1:08:54
  know, there's a ten thousand of them. I saw, I saw Justice
• 1:08:57
  League, and I said, I think I'm done with d see movies up.
• 1:09:01
  I mean the exceptions though, I mean Christopherick, you know, Christopher
• 1:09:08
  Nolan, you know, really reinvented the superhero movie with you know, Batman
• 1:09:13
  begins in the Dark Night and by getting to their humanity and their flaws.
• 1:09:18
  So even though you know the Dark Knight ends in a way that is very
• 1:09:23
  unexpected, you know, and you know we're Batman makes this speak sacrifice for
• 1:09:28
  the greater good, and I mean they do. Superheroes do tend to do
• 1:09:31
  those kinds of things. But this was where you were actually ending the movie
• 1:09:36
  with him not a euro but some where everybody's going to think that he's actually
• 1:09:41
  the villain in a way and get Pool or got into the Galaxy, you
• 1:09:45
  know, having the humor and kind of turning the typical superhero movie on it's
• 1:09:50
  on it's ear. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 1:10:00
  and now back to the show. Black Panther was just great, you know,
• 1:10:05
  with really strong female characters who were more badass than any of the male
• 1:10:11
  characters. I like that the formulas are being twisted and reinvented. In some
• 1:10:18
  cases, I think the studios, the big studios which that are primarily in
• 1:10:24
  the big event tentpool movie franchise business, in some cases they can get lazy
• 1:10:30
  if they want to, because you have a whole new generation who isn't aware
• 1:10:35
  that things that you and I might think are tropes or that we're burnt out
• 1:10:40
  on. For them, these are brand new, you know, and they're
• 1:10:44
  thinking it's exciting. So for them they're still able to squeeze new life out
• 1:10:50
  of you know, what might be an older genre. And but you know,
• 1:10:56
  movies that are designed to be franchises are like a TV pilots because they're
• 1:11:00
  not designed to end. They're designed to be the beginning of a conversation in
• 1:11:04
  a relationship with the audience. I love the original The First Iron Man that
• 1:11:12
  because the formula of all superhero movies is or almost all of them, is
• 1:11:16
  that the person has a dual identity and that nobody seems to know, like
• 1:11:21
  just because you know it's at willing suspension of disbelief that nobody's going to realize
• 1:11:27
  that. Bruce Wayne Wayne is Batman, you know, just because his voice
• 1:11:30
  is a little different and he's not wearing the mask. He gets that out.
• 1:11:34
  What I loved about Iron Man is at the very end of the first
• 1:11:38
  first he says, well, the truth is I am iron Man and he
• 1:11:42
  outs himself. Loved that ending. I thought they just went exactly against what
• 1:11:46
  every other superhero movie does and it was surprising and it was funny, and
• 1:11:51
  then they still were able to set themselves up for multiple franchises, but just
• 1:11:57
  in a different way. So I think writers have to work harder to innovate
• 1:12:00
  and and Twitt put put a spin on an old formula because we're never really
• 1:12:04
  going to come up with something fresh at this point, and it's very difficult
• 1:12:11
  to come up with something that nobody's ever done. But can you put a
• 1:12:14
  fresh spin on it? You know, that's very unique to the voice of
• 1:12:16
  the writer, and I think audiences are that's what's excited most audiences now,
• 1:12:24
  and certainly it's the most satisfying experience for me when as in yeah, yeah,
• 1:12:30
  it's it's true. And Iron one was was fantastic, and uh,
• 1:12:33
  you know, it just completely changed that sort of that that sort of template
• 1:12:39
  that they were going by and I love it. Yeah, yeah, it
• 1:12:43
  was. It was awesome. And I also enjoyed Iron Man three, but
• 1:12:45
  then again it was Shane Black, so I kind of I was a little
• 1:12:47
  biased, but but just just uh, you know, and just actually,
• 1:12:51
  you know, I know we're sort of around of time here, Neil,
• 1:12:54
  but just to sort of, you know, finish off, I want to
• 1:12:56
  talk about your book really quickly. You know, TV writing again is the
• 1:13:00
  biggest thing right now every I think everybody, I think you have to have
• 1:13:03
  a pilot of some kind in your your portfolio if you're going to be a
• 1:13:08
  writer, and not only in Hollywood, but you know, even in like
• 1:13:11
  a YouTube episodic series, you know what I mean. So you know,
• 1:13:14
  you know, what was some of the impetus for you to creating this and
• 1:13:16
  creating the book TV Writing on Demand? Well, my last this is my
• 1:13:23
  fifth book, and my last three books have all been about television. So
• 1:13:28
  I did a book called The TV show Runners Roadmap, which primarily covered broadcast
• 1:13:33
  TV, and I wanted to have a lot of interviews with showners in there
• 1:13:38
  as well. It lots of different perspectives, So I interviewed for that book.
• 1:13:41
  I talked to Sanda Rhymes and Vince Gilligan and David Stroher and you know,
• 1:13:45
  just to kind of talk about their creative process. And then the other
• 1:13:48
  half of those books with me and what I teach c LA in the MFA
• 1:13:53
  Screenwriting Program because I run the inside of the programs and I've had a lot
• 1:13:57
  of steps found success, and so we have to just kind of write a
• 1:14:00
  book that talked about the nuts and bolts of how to write a pilot and
• 1:14:05
  how to put a series together, whether it be a drama or you know,
• 1:14:09
  one hour or an hour for nobody after that. But when I finished
• 1:14:13
  that book, there was so much new TV coming, so many films like
• 1:14:16
  you know, Mister Robot, Announcement Cards and Barnes is the New Black.
• 1:14:19
  And I decided, you know, there's so much more to say now.
• 1:14:25
  And I was lying in bed at having trouble flipping, and I came up
• 1:14:28
  with the idea the title TV Outsets Box, which was basically going to talk
• 1:14:31
  about where TV's going. And I got up and I googled it and it
• 1:14:35
  didn't exist as a title, and I thought, Okay, I'm gonna this
• 1:14:39
  is gonna get a new book, and I'm going to write about the trail
• 1:14:41
  Blazers in what I thought was the new platinum euge of television. But as
• 1:14:45
  I researched the book, I realized it was a TV revolution, you know,
• 1:14:50
  like what happened to the music business just happening to the TV business,
• 1:14:54
  leasably change everything about it, how we consume it, how its distributed it,
• 1:14:59
  and and now. So that that then took me to the new book,
• 1:15:03
  TV Writing on Demand, which is if it's being distributed differently and made
• 1:15:09
  differently and doesn't have to be written with commercial breaks and act outs, and
• 1:15:14
  doesn't have to be programmed to time slots where the audiences, you know,
• 1:15:17
  where the network might be afraid if they miss a few episodes they'll never catch
• 1:15:21
  up. Because nobody misses episodes anymore. You know. We have the ability
• 1:15:26
  to watch things whenever we want and then the order we want. So then
• 1:15:30
  I just thought, well, I want to write a book that's kind of
• 1:15:31
  a companion to TV outside the book that talks about how the content is being
• 1:15:36
  created differently because of this revolution that we're in in the TV business. And
• 1:15:43
  so the new book talks about you know, Atlanta and the Crown and West
• 1:15:47
  World and the New Fargo and Stranger Things and Insecure and Ozark and The Night
• 1:15:53
  of That, you know, American Gods and basically the next iteration of great
• 1:15:59
  telling and why these shows are great and how they're being created differently because of
• 1:16:06
  because of how the consumer interacts with them. So for example, instead of
• 1:16:11
  Law and Order, you know, one of the most stalwart, you know,
• 1:16:14
  successful TV shows ever where there was a murder, investigation, a trial,
• 1:16:19
  and a verdict all in forty two minutes with commercials now up the season
• 1:16:24
  long procedural where it's one murder, although the course of the whole there were
• 1:16:28
  people who tried to do that in the past, but now that's just kind
• 1:16:31
  of like everything is slow burned, you know, Big Little Eyes and Handmaids
• 1:16:35
  stale and you know, everything is serialized and are recently lis a slowbrol and
• 1:16:41
  the audience really appreciates that. So yes, So the new book basically is
• 1:16:46
  more for content creators and writers, but there's also analysis of a lot of
• 1:16:51
  these great shows that are very hot right now and what makes them work and
• 1:16:58
  how they kind of sit in into the new GPUI. So if you if
• 1:17:02
  people who read the book, they'll see there's chapters on dystopias and magic realism
• 1:17:08
  and portals and remedies that don't have to be comedy or drama, and you
• 1:17:14
  know, just kind of how everything's shifting and moving away from formula and moving
• 1:17:18
  towards slowburn serialized content that takes the places we're not expecting, because there's the
• 1:17:26
  time to go deeper and to explore arcs over time. And everybody, I
• 1:17:31
  am with uh Focal Press, We're actually going to give away a copy of
• 1:17:35
  this book, which is TV writting on too Man Buy Neil. We're actually
• 1:17:41
  to give away a copy for free. So if if you want to retweet,
• 1:17:45
  by the way, so here's how it's gonna work. If you want
• 1:17:45
  to retweet uh not only this this the episode, but also comment what you've
• 1:17:51
  learned during you know, listening to this episode, you will get a free
• 1:17:56
  copy of the book. If you're inside the US, you will get a
• 1:17:59
  choice with a PDF or hard copy of the book. If you're outside the
• 1:18:02
  US, you can still participate, but I can only if you win.
• 1:18:06
  I can only give you a PDF. So I will link to Neil's book
• 1:18:11
  in the show notes. So again, just to enter, you have to
• 1:18:14
  retweet the episode and also mention what you've learned from listening to this episode between
• 1:18:18
  Neil and I as we've gone through this through all about writing and everything else.
• 1:18:23
  And it's a really great book. By the way, I'm going to
• 1:18:25
  link to that in the show. It's Everybody, it's TV Writing on Demand
• 1:18:29
  and Neil, I've just been going through. I'm going through all the different
• 1:18:31
  chapters you have here, you know, just about all the different things that
• 1:18:34
  are going on and the TV and all the examples and stuff like that,
• 1:18:39
  and I'm starting to realize, you know, there's so many different TV shows.
• 1:18:41
  You start to remember, like Jesus, all these TV shows are happening
• 1:18:44
  at the same exact time. It's unbelievable. It is. The question I
• 1:18:48
  can get the most is how do you possibly keep up with all content?
• 1:18:53
  And answered, It's really hard. Day up very late and I read a
• 1:18:58
  lot of scripts and I watch a lot of Greek and this is my area
• 1:19:02
  of this is what I specialize in now. And I love I've always loved
• 1:19:08
  television. I've always escaped into television time I was a kid, and I've
• 1:19:13
  never seen a better time. I mean, I you know, this is
• 1:19:15
  just just the most exciting time in television both it for viewers and if you're
• 1:19:20
  a content creator a writer, There's never been a better time to break into
• 1:19:25
  television. There's a huge demand and it's still cutthroat and extremely competitive, but
• 1:19:31
  there is opportunity and people need to fill you know, there's just a big
• 1:19:39
  appetite right now. So I encourage people to write stuff that's authentic that only
• 1:19:44
  they can write. And probably the last thing I can leave you with is
• 1:19:47
  if you're going to create a pilot for a show or a screenplight, the
• 1:19:51
  three most important questions to ask yourself are why this idea, why you as
• 1:19:58
  the writer, and why now for this project. If you don't have good,
• 1:20:01
  compelling answers to those questions, I think you need to dig deeper into
• 1:20:06
  your creative for ucess and what do you want your work to represent about you?
• 1:20:14
  Deeper? You know, because just writing a story that you you're not
• 1:20:17
  connected to, that you think might sell isn't not anymore. It has to
• 1:20:21
  go deeper. And there is the personal story where the story that's rooted in
• 1:20:29
  authenticity is what everybody's looking for. And Neil, I think that's a great
• 1:20:34
  way to sort of put a period in this whole conversation. So, Neil,
• 1:20:38
  where do we will find you out? Where do you will find you
• 1:20:40
  out online? Either Neil Landel dot com, Facebook or UCLA you know,
• 1:20:47
  but Neil Lando dot com will give it, uh, you know, a
• 1:20:53
  contact information. Neil Landel, I want to say thank you so much for
• 1:20:56
  coming on, Thanks for having me it again, have a good weekend.
• 1:21:02
  I want to thank Dave so much for doing such a great job on this
• 1:21:05
  episode. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this
• 1:21:08
  episode, head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv. Forward
• 1:21:12
  slash three thirty three. Thank you so much for listening to guys, as
• 1:21:15
  always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:21:18
  Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.