Take 30 - Screenwriter and Producer Steven DeKnight, Buffy, Smallville, Spartacus, Daredevil

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Any of us who've been in it for long enough, our entire career has been littered with jobs that we didn't get, projects that we thought were gonna go for shore, dozens of unproduced scripts littering for All of us are running into major and minor failures in every single day.

SPEAKER_03 0:26

This is one of the only businesses I can think of with failure.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

I was being told by my manager it's yours to be and I trunk you lost it. What I've realized from that moment is it's never one big shot. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_03 1:00

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. As ever, I am your non-entertainment co-host, Dan Rutstein. And we have on the other side of the Zoom Noah Regelin.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Hey Dan, how are you doing? Um, on today's podcast, we have Stephen S. Denight. Steven is a Hollywood triple threat writer, producer, and director. He started his career on Buffy the Vampire Slayer before Sagoing onto Angel, Smallville, Dollhouse, and others. He then became the creator and showrunner of Spartacus for Stars and the showrunner of Daredevil for Netflix. On top of all that, he has directed multiple episodes of TV, as well as co-writing and directing Pacific Rim Uprising. Welcome, Steve.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Hey, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_03 1:47

So I'm going to do something we've never done before on this podcast. Um, mostly so it makes we seem less mean when we ask you the failure questions. We're gonna start with a success. So can you tell us the thing you've done in your career which you're most proud of? And then we'll get back to our usual way of doing things.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

I think that would definitely be Spartacus. And that came about in such a bizarre way. Um, I was actually a consulting producer on Dollhouse with Joss Weeby. And I was uh in the process of writing and directing episode two. Long story short, uh, Dollhouse had a very rocky first season. So episode the episode I was supposed to write was episode, I think, six or seven. I was writing and directing episode six or seven. Because of the turmoil on the show, I had written the script, and then uh Joss and Tim Minier read it and really liked it and sent it to 20th Century Fox, who really liked it, and suddenly that became episode two. Um, there was a lot of jiggering around uh on the show. Uh, so I was in the process of finishing a draft of the script and getting ready to prep to shoot the episode. And I got a call from my agent saying, Hey, Starz wants to talk to you about some gladiator show. Are you interested? And uh, you know, STARS was not known for original programming at that point. This was, you know, the streaming services hadn't quite taken off yet. Um, and I remember in my career in the past, I had gotten over the years a call from my agent. I remember one distinctly where he said, Hey, AMC is doing original programming now. Do you want to meet with them? And I told him, AMC, I'm working on network. Why do I want to talk to AMC? I will forever kick myself for not taking that meeting with AMC because that was uh probably about six months to a year before Mad Men Mad Men came out. Um, so I'd learned my lesson from that. And I said, Yeah, sure, I'll take the meeting. So I went in and I took the meeting with the uh the executives at STARS. And on a calling in from a conference call was uh Rob Tappert, Sam Raimi's producing partner. And we all hit it off great. And they said, uh, you know, fantastic, you're the guy. When how soon can you start? We want to start immediately. And I said, three months. I'm writing and directing for Joss right now, I can't just leave. So they literally said, Ah, we got to move faster than that. So thank you very much for coming in. We're moving on. So I had the job, I lost the job, I went back to Dollhouse, and I was actually about halfway through shooting my episode when my agent popped up on set. And whenever your agent pops up on shit on set, it's usually really good or really bad. So this time it was really good. They said, Hey, stars called up, they've been talking to a bunch of people, they haven't found anybody they like as much as you. Would you still be interested? And I said, Well, hell yeah. I mean, and uh everybody should understand, uh, I, you know, I was a huge fan of the Kubrick movie, Spartacus. So it was very intimidating to step into that pool. Um, and I knew nothing about Roman history. The only thing I knew about Roman history was the movies I had seen, you know, a little Ben Hur, a little Spartacus, stuff like that. Um, but I said sure. So I literally finished uh editing on a Friday on my episode at Dawhouse and started Spartacus on a Monday. And I started by reading everything I could about Spartacus. And uh so and you know, the the show was one of those things I don't think we could actually do now. Uh it was a rare moment in time where Rob Tappert and I had such creative freedom that I've never seen before or since. And basically that's because with Starz, they had one one-hour drum on the air, which was Crash. Um, but Stars wasn't producing it. Lionsgate was producing that. Spartacus, stars wanted to own it and produce it. Um, the interesting part is most of the executives at Starz, the higher-up executives, were used to just programming, not developing original content. So as Rob and I were working on the show, um uh along with Josh Donin and Sam Raimi. Josh Donin is Sam Raimi's producing partner, longtime producing partner. Um, while we were working on the show, especially in that first season, we would get calls from stars saying, Oh, I don't know about this. You know, we think that might be a little bit too far. And Rob and I would say, Oh, no, no, no, trust us, this is what you want to do. And they would go, Okay, you're the experts. And they literally let us do whatever we wanted. Uh, I can only think of, you know, maybe twice in the entire run of the show where we had to make a small compromise. One was in season one, where you had the gladiator recruit with the rather large member. Uh, there's uh there's a scene in like the locker room of the Ludus where Spartacus and Crixes are sitting there talking, and this guy with the large member walks in, but all you see is that. And uh we had like two shots of it. And they said, Can you cut out one shot of that? And we said, Okay. But besides that, they literally supported us and let us do whatever we wanted. And then when Chris Albrecht and Carmi Zlotnik moved from HBO over to take over stars, they came in, they looked at everything, they saw the numbers on our show, and everything was working great. And they very graciously said, Hey, you you guys are doing great. Keep doing what you're doing. And uh, they were very supportive because when you have that kind of regime change, that can just murder you. But they were very, very supportive and just let us do our thing. And it was such a Rob and I approached that show. Uh, you know, people always ask, Who's the intended audience? Especially network executives want to know who are you targeting? And for Rob and I, we decided early on we're not targeting anybody. We're not, you know, originally it was sold as a male-driven action show, and there's plenty of that in there. But, you know, I have other interests. I really want to tell, you know, more complicated moral stories. I want the villains to think they're as much a hero as the heroes. And and I really wanted to make a obviously a political statement. Uh, my big thing on Spartacus was that uh, you know, in in current day America, the middle class has been squeezed out, and basically there's a corporate slave class that's been created. And you know, there's a and it's only gotten worse, the the gulf between uh the haves and the have nots just keeps getting worse and worse. So that was my political bent on that. And also I had other, you know, I I I have social agendas, I want it um, you know, as a diverse caste as possible. I wanted to present same-sex relationships as nothing out of the ordinary as they were in the in ancient Roman times. Um, so we got to do basically anything we wanted to do. Um, and it was uh coming off up until then, I'd only work on network television where I could only do PG, maybe kiss up to PG 13. Um, and suddenly, you know, I was on a show where, quite frankly, we skipped R and went straight to NC17. Um and that's a whole nother thing, is that uh, yes, there's a lot of nudity on the show. Umly, I'd say, about maybe 25% of that nudity is actually in the scripts. Um, my uh my producing partner Rob Tappert loved to throw in naked people in the background anywhere he could. And uh God bless him, it worked. You know, because I was always the one saying, I don't know, there might be too much nudity in this show. And he always told me there's no such thing as too much nudity in this show. And he was certainly right. Um, so I really think that that was the first show that I got to spearhead and run myself on the creative script level. And and I can't emphasize enough, Rob Tappert, there would be no Spartacus without Rob Tappert. He was the uh uh producer uh genius uh on the ground in New Zealand, uh making sure everything came together. Um but that was such a wild time. I mean, the whole thing was one big experiment. We had no idea. Uh we were way out on a limb. Uh, you know, Rob had this vision of doing Spartacus using the technology that Zack Snyder uh did with 300. So it was all a big roll the dice. And when you watch a show, you can see I always say you have to get to episode four before it actually gels. Up until then, it's a little all over the place. The scripts didn't quite come together, everybody was still finding what the show was. Uh, we were also using a lot of the same crew and some of the same actors that they had used on Hercules and Xena. So it it took us all a bit to really figure out okay, this isn't Hercules and Xena as much as I love those shows. Um, so long, long story long, it was a huge experiment. And at the end of the day, I gotta say, it's still the thing on social media that I get the most questions about. I get every week. Uh 10, 20 people pop up saying, What are you gonna do a sequel to Spartacus? And uh I always tell them, I don't know if we have it in us. That was such a specific, rare, wonderful time. I think now we'd get noted to death. So I would say that's my career highlight. And a very, very, very close second was Daredevil. Um, and the only reason it's uh a second and not number one is I came into that show to help out my buddy Drew Goddard after he had to leave. Um, but again, that was another thing where uh and that one was much more difficult because obviously it's a Marvel property, everybody has an opinion and a concern and wants to protect the character. Um, but that was uh that was a close second for career highlights.

SPEAKER_03 12:49

Thank you, Steve. I think we might have to ask this question again because of future guests, because I love the fact that even when you're talking about success, there's a there's a you know, there's some rejection and failure in there in the fact that the fact you only took this meeting because you missed out on a massive opportunity potentially before. Um I think it's nice for our listeners to actually hear a story where the executive said, Yeah, yeah, do what you like, because we've had so many people tell us about the fact that regime change has killed their shows, or bad notes have obviously killed shows and so on. So it's it's um it's it's great to hear the a little bit of failure within the success. But Noah, I know you want to ask a traditional rejection, failure, and adversity story.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

My my my first off, my key takeaway from that as you were talking was the idea that it is a bit ridiculous they ask who the audience is for things. The audience is people that like TV. I want to make a good show. Uh, it could appeal to someone in the Midwest, it could appeal to a grandma, a kid. I want to make something interesting, is the answer. Not I want it for seven-year-olds to 11-year-olds who live in Nevada. I mean, uh, the simplicity of that is such a strange question to ask.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

One of the biggest surprises of Spartacus, we knew we would we would get the you know, the 17 to 35 male viewer. I mean, that was a given with the subject matter and the way we were shooting it in the action. What I think was a surprise to everyone is one of our strongest segments was middle-aged women. They loved the show, they really, really drove our numbers. And, you know, in hindsight, it's like, well, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of beautiful naked men and women. Uh, and there's, you know, I always approached Spartacus not as an action show, but as a love story. Uh, every single element of that story was about love, whether it was Body Odysse with his love with Lucretia, Spartacus for his wife. Um, you know, it was all built around love. So, in a way, it was like one big, very NC17 rated violent, uh, sexy romance novel. And I think that appealed to uh a much broader audience than anyone was expecting, especially because it was so violent.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

So this this story of yours feels a bit like if if if if getting on a staff is a lightning in a bottle situation, then running in running your own show is like you know, a lightning in an even smaller bottle. And now you have a situation where you not only ran your own show, but you you didn't get noted, you got to run the show that you you got to write for better and for worse, and it sounds like for better because people love that show. I love that show, it's a great show, people really enjoyed it. You got to write the show you wanted to write, so it takes you now more to the present, right? You you had that experience, which is so rare, and we've now interviewed a bunch of people who did definitely did not have that experience running their shows, which are also great, but you know, there's all kinds of pressure. We're we're business, we're not we're not just art for art's sake. So we have all of these competing interests telling you different things that sometimes often make the end product worse. So now you're up for jobs, you're you're you're working on shows, you're doing new things. Is it is it harder now to when you hear those notes come at you, knowing that the thing you were able to do on your own worked at such a high level and that this these feature projects might not, or are you you just get that that was a lightning in a bottle, in a bottle, in a bottle situation?

SPEAKER_01 16:27

You know, nobody likes to get notes. Uh, I I don't know one writer, myself included, that you know, I've been in this for over 20 years now. And every time I hand something in, um, you know, there's a little voice in the back of my mind that's uh that says this time they're just gonna love it. They're not gonna have any notes. Never happens, has never happened once to me in 20 years. Um, it doesn't matter who you are, they will have notes. Uh, and part of it is uh is a desire, and this is not coming down on executives, part of it is it a desire to make it as good as possible. Sometimes that goes too far, and they try to make it audience-proof, and that's the most deadly kind of note. Um, where it's a systemic, let's dumb everything down, let's over-explain everything, let's have characters actually say exactly what they're feeling and thinking so the audience isn't confused. That's when you get really, really bad shows because you you can't audience proof a show. Um, as much as they try with algorithms now and crunching the numbers, you don't know what's going to hit. If they had a formula, if they had an algorithm that could, you know, predict a hit, all they would have are hits, and that's obviously not happening. So so much of it is just a gut level feeling. Um which takes me to another thing is that you know, a lot of times not just studios, but writers and creators are playing catch up where you see what's working now, like like Ted Lasso, fantastic, huge hit, could not love it more. And now suddenly everybody's looking for the next Ted Lasso. Uh instead of looking for the next thing that's original. Uh, you know, it's very easy to fall back into okay, what's selling now, instead of how about we just do a great story, and then that'll be the next new thing that everybody wants to do. Um but I'm sure you guys at you know, Hollywood runs on two things, money and fear. And uh, you know, it's a constant battle between both of them. And even in my successes, it's been really difficult. Like Daredevil, which I'm super proud of. Um, I literally, uh, you know, my wife had pointed out, she was really worried about me on that show because as she explains it, I was always red and yelling all the time. And I don't really yell. But I, you know, on that show, I discovered early on that the only way I could get people to actually listen to me was to lose my mind. Otherwise, I just couldn't break through the static. Um, so even on your successes, there are things that, you know, uh are very, very difficult. I I don't think I've ever been on a show that was easy. They're all hard. And you know, the schedule, the timing, the money, the pressure, uh, everything makes it difficult. Some are worse than others, but it's it's never, at least for me, has been an easy time.

SPEAKER_03 19:48

So we wouldn't be the podcast that we are if I once you mentioned the Daredevil thing, we didn't then go back and let's get some more detail on that. So let's so you're working on, you know, obviously Marvel is extraordinary, and the things they've done are extraordinary in TV and in film, obviously. So you're working on the show, so you know it's a obviously a great thing to be working on, but there's frustrations that are making you yell. Can you just talk about sort of what it is? Obviously, not it's not about names, this is just about how you feel. Like, how do you deal with uh the stress and pressure of working on a huge property like that, knowing that you know you want to make this as good as all the other ones? How do you deal with that internally?

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Daredevil was a really unique case. Um, and to back it up, uh, so I had finished Spartacus for stars, I was on an overall deal with uh with stars. And for those who don't know, an overall deal is when a studio pays you a set amount of money for a set amount of years, usually two to three years, and that means you're exclusive to them. You can't work for anybody else. Um so I I was uh still on an overall deal at stars. Uh I had developed a big um space show called Incursion, a military space show. Um very uh it's kind of Banda Brothers Meets Aliens, R-rated, very gritty, boots on the ground, sci-fi show. And I had sold it, we had put together a room. Uh this is like a pre-failure story. We I they bought it, we we put together a room, uh, eight-episode order for season one. We were uh we had finished writing episode four. We were gearing up to start casting and finishing off the order when I got a call from stars saying they crunched the numbers, the show's too expensive, they're not moving forward. But they still wanted all eight scripts. Because they were planning on doing it at a later date when they had more money. So that was a weird situation where you know we're halfway through writing the show. Oh, we're canceled, but we still got to finish all the episodes writing them. Um so that was a a bit of an odd situation.

SPEAKER_03 22:18

So just just like how does that work? Because we've we've talked to showrunners whose shows have been cancelled, and you know, you have to tell 300 people we're out of work. Now I know this is obviously only the writers at this point. So you you have to say, hey guys, you're all out of work, but can you please do your best work for the next you know six weeks? Um, and there's no guarantee it'll ever get made, but please do your best work anyway, while and please don't spend all your time looking for a new job because we need this to be good.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Exactly. And thankfully, I I had a a really, really wonderful writing staff. Uh I had some people from Spartacus, uh, I had Doug Petrie, who uh I was close friends with when we worked on Buffy together. Um, you know, I just had a really, really strong, supportive, incredibly fun writer's room. So they were all bummed, but nobody ever phoned it in. Uh, you know, the the they're like me. I'm I'm incapable, even if I hate a project and don't want to do it, I can't give less than 110%. Uh not in my DNA. And thankfully they were the same way. And everybody was bummed, but we all really enjoyed being around each other. So it uh it worked out. I mean, we finished all eight scripts. I uh there's still some of the some of my favorite work um that I've done in a writer's room. Um and so uh after that I was still on my stars deal. So um Lionsgate came to me with a uh property called Romanzo Criminale, which is an Italian crime series that they wanted me to adapt uh for stars. And so I did that. I did that script. It didn't end up going at stars, still one of my favorite unproduced scripts. I really enjoyed working on that. So now I've got about three months left on my deal, and I'm in the enviable position where Starz is still paying me just to think. Uh, they just wanted me to think of ideas and come up with stuff. You know, I didn't have to run a show, I didn't have to do anything. Uh, when I got a call from my uh my my pal Jeff Loeb, um, who was uh you know the head of Marvel Television, uh Jeff and I knew each other. Most of my stuff all all goes back to Buffy. Uh Jeff and I knew each other from Buffy. Uh Jeff was brought in to spearhead the animated Buffy show that never got off the ground, but we all wrote a bunch of scripts for. So I became friends with him through that. Uh, that's another lesson. Even Joss Whedon, at the height of Buffy, as popular as it was, 20th Century to Fox, uh, we had like, I think, eight scripts for the half hour Buffy Animated Show, and they were eight fantastic scripts. Fox looked at them and said, Nah, we don't want to do this. So even at that level, uh, you know, you're gonna have somebody say, No, no, not for us. So Jeff Loeb calls me up and says, Hey, would you be interested in coming in and taking over Daredevil? Uh Drew has written the first two episodes. He's laid out the rough structure of the season, but he has a pre-existing deal to go right and direct the Sinister Six Spider-Man movie for Sony. Um, uh that of that unfortunately never went because then Sony and Marvel, uh, as we all know, uh came to terms with sharing Spider-Man. Um, so that movie kind of fell by the wayside. Uh I, of course, was drawing a rather large check for sitting at home thinking. So my first instinct was, uh, not really keen on giving that up. But I went in and I heard what they had to say, and I really loved what Drew laid out. Um, and Drew and I had worked together on Buffy, of course, and we also wrote uh uh worked together and wrote together on Angel, the spinoff. Um, so I love him to death, super talented guy. So I came in, I decided, okay, I came in, and uh, in full disclosure, the money was not great. I took a haircut on that show, much less than I would normally make, um, for two reasons. One, to help out a couple of friends who were in a jam, and two, because I grew up reading Marvel and Daredevil, and I love the character and I love the world. And uh I had always wanted to work on a Marvel property. Um, and they uh they really wanted to do a grittier, darker, you know, ground street level uh version of the Marvel universe. And uh what they told me is they said, you know, look, we can't go all the way R-rate it, but we want to push it as close as possible. Uh, you know, we called it PG 16. Um, so it started working on the show, and uh, you know, everybody really loved what we were doing. Every everybody on that show was working on it really because they had a passion about Marvel and Marvel characters. Um, so there was a lot of passion, a lot of love. And uh, but it very soon you could tell some of the executives at Marvel were getting nervous about how dark it was. Um, because obviously uh you bring in the guy that did Spartacus, I'm gonna push it as far as you let me. Uh so I was pushing pretty hard, and they were a little nervous that it was too dark, too grim. So I remember one of the, I think one of the biggest arguments we had is I got a note that they wanted to add a funny Russian as comic relief. Um, and I I lost my mind. I pushed back really hard and said, Look, that's not this show. If you do that show, you're gonna collapse the grounded realism we're working for, and you're gonna make the Russians silly and not scary. These guys need to be really fucking scary for this to work. So there was a lot of back and forth, and thankfully, they, you know, um, I think they heard that. And uh Jeff Loeb, who's you know, was one of my oldest friends in Hollywood, uh we would really argue very, very uh very loudly. Um and early on we came to a mutual agreement. Um, because you know, uh for example, there's a flashback episode where you find out why Wilson Fisk is all fucked up. And uh there's a scene where young Wilson Fisk kills his dad with a hammer and his mom uh saws up the body so they can put it in the trash and dispose of it. And there's a part where she puts the saw on the dead husband's arm and she starts moving. There's no visual effect, there's no cutting. But then we move off of her and we hear the sound. Um, and I had a big argument because they didn't want the shot where you saw her start the saw. And I said, You gotta have that shot. You know, you're not seeing anything, it's all implied. But that became a huge argument. So, what we ended up doing is we just trimmed a bunch off of that shot. We kept it, but it was it was shorter than I wanted and longer than Jeff Loeb wanted. And Jeff and I came to that uh mutual agreement that as long as we were both not happy, we know we met in the middle. So, and that's exactly what we did for the rest of the show. But it was an extremely difficult show. Um, late in the season, I spent I think it was a three-hour video conference because some execs um were worried that Matt wasn't being heroic enough. Which my my whole thrust in the series when I came in is I wanted Matt to be a very gray character, that he wasn't completely a hero yet, that he was really messed up, he had very violent tendencies, he often couldn't control himself, and he was like an addict that he had to go out and beat up people. Um so the suggestion was that Wilson Fisk has planted bombs in an apartment building, and Matt has to go in and disarm them before everybody dies. And I said, Well, that's not the show. That's not it's not Spider-Man in the 70s. This is, you know, that's a very cut and dry uh kind of scenario and not the gray area that we're living in. And again, it there was a lot of arguing, a lot of back and forth. Ultimately, uh, you know, we abandoned that idea. And I think I made some other concessions. Um but uh yeah, and I think it's important for especially up-and-coming writers to realize, you know, like when I'm telling these this story, when other people are telling this story, the one big thing that I had to learn, the executives are not your enemy. They're not my enemy. Um, they have different opinions, they have different agendas. Ultimately, when you boil it down, we all want the same thing. We want the show to be a massive hit. There's just differing opinions about how to get there. And I'm the first one to admit that in these arguments, I've been wrong as much as I've been right. There's things that I've thrown down on and insisted on. Spartacus is a great example. There was an episode, uh, it's the episode where a spoiler alert, people haven't seen the show. I'm about to spoil something. There's an episode in the first season where Spartacus is waiting for his wife to be delivered. And she arrives and she's been stabbed and she dies in his arms. Um, originally, uh, I wanted to have an episode that really centered on that character of Spartacus' wife and to show their life before she got to this point. And uh Rob Tapper didn't think it was a great idea, but I insisted, I fucking put my line in the sand, I said, no, this is what we're doing. And we actually wrote that entire script that way, and it came in, and the writer did a fantastic job. I read it, and my first reaction was, Holy shit, this doesn't work at all. Uh, Rob was absolutely right. Uh, we've got to throw this out and start over, which is exactly what we did. So yeah, you have to be willing to say, oh shit, I made a bad choice. They were right, I was wrong. How can we fix this? Because it happens all the time. I I I've done that multiple times, and I've tried to learn when I'm getting notes, okay, take a deep breath. This is also why I prefer, I always tell executives, send me your written notes. That way I can read them, I can digest them, I can think about them. What I don't say is that I can, you know, scream in my own house and yell and get that out of my system, and then say, okay, let's take a look at this note, and let's take a look at the note behind the note and see how we dress it. But it's really, really important for people to understand the studio is absolutely not your enemy. Um, you need to look for solutions together. Now, look, there can be people at the studio that rub you wrong the wrong way and are not great people. That's definitely happened. Just like there are creators and showrunners and directors that are lousy human beings, you will come across those, and then it's just more like trying to manage the situation. Um, but yeah, very important that the studio is not your enemy.

SPEAKER_00 34:53

You did something really interesting that I noticed that's that's rare and probably really difficult to do. Early in your career, very early in your career, at least as far as IMDB is concerned, which is sometimes wrong, you were able to go from writer to writer and director on episodic TV, which I which is fairly rare for someone on staff or a staff adjacent or wherever you were at that moment, you were able to do both because you know it takes you out of the room. The show owner doesn't necessarily like their writers disappearing for huge time to be a director when they have other directors who could come in and do that. Did you do that too because you knew you'd rather be going up these two paths? Is it because you had director ambitions? Did you get lucky? Was it a combination of a lot of things or your relationship with Joss? Like it seems like a lot of things enabled you to do this because you're not only a writer. I mean, we've been talking about the writing and storing side of your career, but you're also, you know, a very established director.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Yeah, that was uh it was a combination of all the above. And it was also uh honestly a very different time in television. When I first started, um a show called MTV Undressed was actually my first show. Uh, if you guys remember Undressed, it was like a teen sex comedy on MTV. Uh that that was my first paying Hollywood job. And then I had written a spec, uh, a spec Buffy the vampire slayer that got into Joss's hands, and I got hired to do a freelance episode of that show. And then based on that, I got hired full time. Um, I always say that's you know, Joss plucked me out of obscurity and and really gave me a career. How I started directing, which also leads me to one of my biggest failures in my career. Um I was working on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Uh we were working on season uh six, and Josh had sold Firefly to Fox. And so he he came into my office and he said, Look, uh I I've sold Firefly. Um, I need Tim Myer to come run it. Tim My Neer was a right-hand man down on Angel. I say down because uh uh the offices were at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, which was an old uh train depot that they had converted into like an artist uh community. And there were uh Fox had some stages uh as part of that. Um and Buffy was upstairs, Angel was downstairs. Uh so Josh said, I need to take Tim Mainier from downstairs, move him over to run Firefly. That puts a huge hole in Angel. Would you be willing to switch over to Angel next season for a promotion? And I hear you want to direct, uh, we'll let you direct an episode. And I said, Well, fuck yes, of course. Of course I would. And I loved Buffy, but I also loved Angel. In a lot of ways, I think Angel was a little more my style. Um, so I agreed to do that. So that next season, I went down to work on Angel, and I I was scheduled to, I think it was episode 17, I was slated in to do. And I was convinced that at some point somebody would say, Well, shit, you've never directed anything, like not even a play. Um, maybe this isn't such a good idea. But the date kept getting closer and closer, and nobody popped up saying you're not doing it. And then I realized, oh shit, I'm actually doing it. Um, the one thing they did is they set up one full day of second unit shooting for me to come in, I guess to make sure I wasn't a complete idiot. Uh and uh so I came in and I shot a couple of scenes that had been dropped from uh previous episodes that had shot and they ran out of time. Um, so I did those. Uh, you know, nothing caught on fire and everything came out fine. So I I did my my episode of Angel. And again, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Um, everything I knew about directing, I had read from books and just watching movies and stuff. Uh uh, particularly that first episode I did, I think on the commentary, I I mentioned that I I relied heavily on Sergio Leone movies and his framing and stuff, and uh and uh the old Kung Fu movie Master of the Flying Guillotine. Um, I used a lot of those kind of visual references. Uh and I remember I I had shot like the first couple of days of my directorial debut. I got a call from Jeff Bell, who was running Angel at the time, and he said, uh, he and Josh had watched the dailies, they look great, keep doing what I was doing. So that's what I did. The episode turned out really well. Um, it was difficult. You know, I think I was over schedule because I was still learning, uh, but we completed it. And then the next season, I did two more episodes, and here's where the big failure comes. My second episode, my sophomore at bat, was a complete disaster. I mean, I almost stopped directing, it was so bad. It was a very complicated show where uh Wolfeman Hart is being haunted and Spike, who's still uh kind of a ghost, is investigating it. It's basically a ghost whose serial kills other ghosts. Um, but because of the nature of it, you know, you you would have to shoot a scene twice with a ghost that's there, and Spike can see, but the rest of the people can't see it. So you have to shoot everything twice, which immediately made it very difficult. And the first day we were shooting, we were in the set that was supposed to be a basement set. So it was extremely low light, which is difficult. It was a set we had never shot in before. There were practical effects, special effects, lots of stunts. And literally at lunch, we make it to lunch, we look at the schedule. Uh, I am now somehow a day behind shooting, and I've only made it to lunch on the first day. So the line producer comes down on set, and this is one of the worst moments of my career, screams at me for like two minutes in front of the cast, the crew, everybody, and ends his tirade by saying, Am I gonna have to call 20th Century Fox and tell him you can't do this? And at the moment, in the back of my mind was fuck you. Let's see if you can do any better. Um, but you know, at that point, you just got to shut up and take it. And I remember I went home that night and burst into tears for like 20 minutes because of all the anger and emotion welling up in me. And I thought, that's it, I can't do this. I'm not a director. And uh for me, directing does not come naturally. It's like I've got it, it's hard work for me. There are directors that you know just have that spark. I mean, Steven Spielberg being the greatest example ever, who can walk onto a set and figure out how to move everybody so elegantly and you know, get such amazing stuff in just a few shots. Um, I have a hard time thinking like that, although I'm trying to train myself to. So that was just terrible. So I limped along through the rest of the episode. Um, it's interesting. Joss came to set that next day after I had been screamed at and said, Hey, I heard you had a tough time yesterday. I'm just here to check in. So I was doing this scene with like six of the characters in an office. He sat, he watched for about 20 minutes. He came on to set and he said, Ah, you're doing great. Listen, I'd suggest maybe you do this instead of that, but you're doing fine. So it was it was the pep talk that I needed. Uh, so I finished that episode, and later in the season, I did another episode that went okay. Um, after Angel, I'm gonna jump to my next debacle. After one of the problems that I kept getting yelled at on Angel was, you know, I was taking too long, I was doing too many setups. Uh, and setups uh as most people know, but if you don't, is like if you have an over the shoulder of talking to one character, uh, you know, you're on them, that's one setup. You got to reverse, do the opposite shoulder on the other character, that's another setup. Every time you move the camera, not move within the scene. But like go from a wide to a close up or stuff like that, it's a different setup. Um, I was notorious for doing way too many setups, uh, because in my mind I wanted all these pieces that I could put together. So when I uh Angel finished uh shooting, we we got canceled in season five and we wrapped up that show. I ended up working, uh Jeff Loeb pops up again. Jeff Loeb was on Smallville and said, Hey, come on over to Smallville, we could have some fun with Superman. Uh so I did in that first season, uh part of my deal. I was scheduled to you know, write and direct an episode. Um, so I have this idea for kryptonite zombies. You know, it's a classic Night of the Living Dead with Kryptonite, you know, rainy night, Luther Core truck, uh transporting uh kryptonite sludge from his experiments, uh crashes and overturns next to a cemetery. The stuff seeps in, and you got kryptonite zombies, and they surround the Kent farm. And of course, Clark is powerless against kryptonite zombies. So, and I was really excited about this story. So I I leave the room to go do a rewrite on another episode. I come back and uh I think it was Al Goff, and I I love Al Goff and Miles Miller, uh, who created and ran Smallville, were fantastic to me. I could not love them more. But I remember I bump into Al and he says, Hey, uh, we got a better idea for your episode. Clark and Lana find a baby. And I thought, oh, I'm fucked. I'm absolutely fucked. So my kryptonite zombie show became an episode called Ageless, um, where Clark and Lana find a baby, and this baby was born under uh you know kryptonite influence. So he uh there are these energy surges, and he goes from a baby to being an eight-year-old and an eight-year-old to being a teenager in these surges, and he's he's going to surge and die. And when he does, it's probably gonna take out half of Smallville. So that's what the story became. Um, where I really got into trouble is when I went up to shoot it, I made the conscious decision because I was always getting yelled at ongel because I was going too long, I had too many setups. My goal was to finish early every single day. And by God, I finished early every single day, sometimes a couple of hours early. And as you can guess, when I got back into editing, I hated everything. I didn't have enough coverage, I didn't have enough pieces. It just I overcompensated to uh try to fix that issue in my editing. And it's, I think, is one of the worst episodes of Smallville in their 10-season uh uh run. Um and I remember after that uh talking to another uh TV director, uh an old pro who said, Look, here's the thing. Were they yell and stomp their feet and get really upset if you're over and over budget? Yes. If it's a success, will they remember or care? No, they're not gonna care. Um and if he says conversely, if you go in and you finish on time, under budget, everybody's happy and it stinks, they're still gonna hate it and they're still gonna blame you. So give it your best shot. Try not to be, you know, crazy extravagant, but just realize, and and and I really took that to heart. Moving forward is uh, you know, obviously you gotta you gotta watch the clock, you gotta try to get everything. But at a certain point, if I'm on set and I determine I need another half hour or I need to go an hour over, yell all you want. Um, I would rather do that now than spend five times as much coming back trying to do it later. So that was uh that was one of those hard, hard learned lessons. And it was the I call it the exploding baby episode. The exploding baby episode was so traumatic. The next season I was supposed to direct another episode. I said, no, I'm gonna pass. And again, I seriously considered not directing again. And then in my final season of Smallville, uh I through the luck of the draw, I got the Proto Justice League episode that I was supposed to write and direct. And again, it was really, really hard. Um, you know, I I got into some uh very uncomfortable arguments with uh um the line producer on that one too, who was also a director. Um and I I I really uh you know I I love the guy, he was great and a great director, but um, you know, sometimes you feel like okay, you if I'm the director on set, you can't go talk to the actors and give them direction. I'm not gonna stand for that kind of shit. That's just confusing and disrespectful. And and and it wasn't, again, this guy was not being a dick. He's a lovely guy. He was just trying to help. But you know, it rubbed me the wrong way, and it probably rubbed me more the wrong way because I was still very insecure about directing. Uh, but that one actually turned out well. I always say if you if you look at Smallville and you look at a list of like the best episodes and the absolute worst episodes, I'm about evenly split on both lists. I'm like in the top episodes and I'm in the shittiest episodes. And I completely agree with that assessment. I think I did some great episodes, and I think I did some episodes that absolutely suck.

SPEAKER_03 49:56

I I love the fact that we started with a success question, and then I didn't really ask that many rejection and failure questions, but you sort of you've dragged yourself through telling us some fantastically wild stories of rejection. And I think you know, yes, part of the reason we enjoy this podcast is the the honesty that a man who has achieved as much as you have is very happy just telling us about all the times you made a mess of directing and nearly quit. Oh oh terrible. So we could we could do this all day, but unfortunately that's not how podcasts work. So we're gonna have to move to our to our last question. Now it's interesting because you've actually been given some you've been giving some good advice about directing while telling us how you didn't do well in it. So our last question we ask every guest is if you could give a single piece of advice to somebody wanting to join the industry, what would it be? I think you've sort of already done that for directing. So let's do this for for writing or or showrunning, you choose. But what advice would you give somebody?

SPEAKER_01 50:59

Well, I I think with writing, um you know, for years and years and years, especially when I was trying to break in, um, and it took me a long time to break in. I I graduated uh from UCLA with a uh master's in uh playwriting. That's what I studied as a playwright. And it took me nearly seven years before I got a job in Hollywood. I was working at a uh at a small private Japanese school in Van Nuys, teaching English to Japanese students for nearly seven years. Um uh and so I mean the first bit of advice is you can't give up. Don't don't put any kind of time limit on yourself. You know, you have to be realistic, you have to have a day job to cover things, but it it doesn't matter. You know, some people um get jobs before they're out of college. Um I know when I was in Santa Cruz, Brandon Braga was already working with the Star Trek people before he even got out of college. Um, other people like myself take a little bit longer to get a foot in the door, so you can't give up. Um, the other thing, I you hear this all the time: the advice, write what you know, which is the worst fucking advice you can ever give somebody. Um don't worry about writing what you know, write what you're passionate about. That's the most important thing. Write what you're passionate about. Um you can do research to fill in the blanks. Uh yeah, yeah, if if I just wrote what I know, yeah, I would have written a bunch of boring stuff. Uh because that's that's what I know. Um, so yeah, you just you've got to write what you're passionate about. Um, you can't be that concerned with again what's selling, what's popular now. Um, I remember when I was in school, I I went through this screenwriting program as well. And um we had to write a feature spec um in about 12 weeks. And we were all pitching our ideas, and this one guy comes in and says, I've been reading the trades and I've determined this is what's selling, and this is the you know, the genre, the story that I'm going to tell because this is what's selling. And thankfully, my professor looked at him and said, uh, well, that's meaningless. It's absolutely meaningless. Because what you're reading that's selling now is not going to be selling in six months. Uh, you know, that you're being behind the curve. You got to get ahead of the curve. And at the end of the day, all anybody cares about is a great script. The other thing people really like is an entrance into a world that hasn't been explored that much. You take Breaking Bad's a fantastic uh example where it's it's you know, it's the world of meth chemists and that that specific drug culture. Mad Men's another great one, the world of advertising, you know, in the 50s. Um, if you can find one of those unique angles, great. But the most important thing is you have to be passionate about it. When you're writing that script, you got to ask yourself, do I want to spend 24-7 for the next five to eight years just doing this story? And if the answer is no, you should probably do a different story that you're passionate about. And honestly, even if you love this story with all your heart and soul, let's say you have five seasons. By the end of season two, you're gonna hate everything about it and you're not gonna want to do it anymore. Uh, you know, you always hit that wall. I felt that way with Spartacus. It's like, Jesus, I I love this show, but I can't imagine this going longer than four seasons. Um, so it's really important to start at a place of passion and love and a story that uh you don't just want to tell, it's a story you have to tell. And uh, you know, for me, it for me was it's weird with Spartacus and Daredevil, um, two successful shows that I've run, um, I didn't actually sell either one of those. I came in after they had been sold. So all of my advice about do something that you're passionate about, uh, that was completely different with me for those, because I was hired to come in and do it instead of selling it as a spec. But if you're writing on a spec, definitely do something that you're really, really excited about.

SPEAKER_03 55:42

Absolutely brilliant. That's fantastic advice. And I think the everyone says write what you know. And I think this is the first time I've heard a twist on that, which makes such great sense. Look, this has been um an extraordinary insight into how all this works. So, Stephen S. Denit, the director of some of the worst episodes of Smallville. Thank you very much for being part of our podcast.

SPEAKER_01 56:06

I appreciate it. Thanks so much, guys. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 56:13

All right, that does it for us today. I want to thank you for tuning in to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss. If you have any questions or comments, you can reach out to me on Twitter. I am at NEBslin.

SPEAKER_03 56:25

Wait, are we are we not bothering to talk about the other Twitter account, given we have this great social engagement and people never bother to actually include me, whose idea it was to do this podcast in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 56:36

You have a Twitter account?

SPEAKER_03 56:38

I do have a Twitter account. It's at Stan Rutste. And not only do I have another Twitter account, I also have two other podcasts. And some of our listeners have been saying, Dan, please tell us about your other podcasts. So our other podcasts are what are my other podcasts? Oh yes, United States of Dramerica, where I share a glass of whiskey and have a fascinating conversation. And America the Beautiful Game, where I talk about soccer in America and what it can learn from Europe.

SPEAKER_00 57:07

For our repeat listeners, uh, you can probably stop listening when Dan starts talking about his second and third podcast. Uh, that brings us to the end of another great episode. We, as always, want to thank our wives for putting up with our nonsense.