Take 12 - Writer Jeff Howard, Haunting of Hill House, Oculus, I Know What You did Last Summer

SPEAKER_01 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 the floor.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

All of us are running into both major and minor failures in Hollywood every single day.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

For every two chance, there is most sometimes even.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

I was being told by my manager it's yours to lose. And I probably lost it. And I remember thinking like, well, that's it for me. I do my one-bit job. What I've realized when that moment is it's never one big job. There will be other jobs.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am your host, Dan Rotstein, currently out of work. Uh, and I'd like to introduce my co-host Noah, who's actually doing reasonably well at the moment in the showbiz world.

SPEAKER_03 1:21

That's ruining the whole point of our podcast. But uh today I'm really excited to welcome to the podcast uh Jeff Howard, who does, who's been a writer for a long time with both features and TV. Uh some of his feature credits are Oculus, Before I Wake, Ouija, Origin of Evil, Evil, and Gerald's Game. And some of his TV credits include American Genius, The Making of the Mob, one of my favorite TV shows of all time, if not my favorite TV show, The Hunting of Hill House and the upcoming Midnight Mass. Welcome, Jeff.

SPEAKER_04 1:57

Hey guys, how's it going? I didn't know you were such a big fan of the history programming. That's cool.

unknown 2:01

Love it.

SPEAKER_04 2:03

So when we Oh, you meant Hill House.

SPEAKER_03 2:05

I love the history of it. I was Hill House comes number two, and the history stuff is right above that.

SPEAKER_04 2:11

I missed the verbal comma and accidentally was really excited. Like, oh man, these guys are ready to talk history.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

So when we started this podcast, guests were told what it was about, but maybe didn't really know the detail. Now we are a few episodes published. Guests are now coming on knowing exactly what they're gonna get, to the extent where Jeff, you've you've actually you've literally written down a list of all your rejections, uh, which I think is wonderful preparation. So is it one side of A4 or is it like a 10-pager?

SPEAKER_04 2:44

I mean, I wish I could say that I'd written down all of them, but I wrote down the most immediately painful ones that I felt about 90 minutes ago, you know, and uh tried to pick some from across the like tried to pick early rejections, uh mid-period rejections, and recent painful, terrible rejections.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

So how how do you rank the rejections? Is it in terms of how good the show might have been, how much money they might have paid, how much it hurt, how many people you're already told you were gonna make it? Like what's the what's the charting here?

SPEAKER_04 3:14

How hard you avoid the people you were involved with at the time that it all went wrong, and how you'd see them again and bring up all the terrible associations and uh then go home and weep softly into the pillow. Yeah, like that level.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

So what's what's number one on your most painful list? What's the first one that you wrote down that Lifetime? Rachel Stratton, 11th grade.

SPEAKER_04 3:37

That sucked. Oh, right, you too. Interesting. I thought that when she said she had a boyfriend in Hawaii, that it was just a cheap excuse.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

The the the I thought you were talking like I'm like Lifetime, the Rachel Stratton story. What was that?

SPEAKER_04 3:54

I'm not ringing any bells of I wasn't up for that. Just a girl from high school. Um like I tell you the way, like, this is uh the weirdest one that I ever felt in strange, like in a really strange way was uh remember that period of time when everybody said, Oh, Nicolas Cage attaches to everything, you know, like it was like a joke, like oh, Nicolas Cage, you know, he's the new Michael Cain, he doesn't turn anything down, like all that kind of stuff. And it was right at the height of that period, and Flanagan and I had written this script that we just still today love and actually talked about yesterday called Relapse. Um and uh, you know, Paul Schrader was attached to direct, and it's like, oh, Schrader's like got a really interesting filmography and maybe it's hit or miss here or there, but it's like, wow, like he's perfect for this. Like this would be so much fun. And they sent it to Nicolas Cage on a Friday, and we were like, oh, this is so cool. Like, you know, Nicolas Cage does everything, so I guess you know, next week they'll put this together and they'll move forward. And then they called on Monday and they were like, Yeah, Nicolas Cage passed. And it was like, wait a minute, like Nicolas Cage, like like literally the the joke about him at the moment is that he like signs on to everything that is ever offered to him or exists. And it was like, we just get this flat, like no reaction, no nothing, like just pass, you know, and it's like, oh, what did we do? Like, what did we do really wrong?

SPEAKER_03 5:09

Did you guys go out for more cast? What happened next?

SPEAKER_04 5:11

You know, uh, they then went out to Jeff Bridges, and then Jeff Bridges uh was apparently deciding between us and one other thing, and he did the other thing, and it was that country move, you know, country music movie that he won the Oscar for. So it was always like, oh sure, you know, go ahead, just go do your Oscar movie instead of the script.

SPEAKER_03 5:29

That's fine. Relapse sounds pretty Oscar-y to me, though. I don't know anything more about it, but the just in the title, I feel a lot of angst and suffering and good good Oscar speeches. No, totally wrong.

SPEAKER_04 5:40

There's ghosts and demons and no, no, it's uh it's good, you know. Look, I think they're I think they're gonna make it for for uh for a streaming service near you soon that I heard. So we'll see. Um the deep Flanagan's long-term DP Michael Fimignari has wanted to direct it for a long time. And I think they're pretty close now to setting it up. Um, because he did those two sequels to that big Netflix movie. Can't remember what it was, which you know, it was like the Was it to All the Boys I Love Before or something like that. He did like the two simultaneous sequels and they were just massive. So um, so I think it will live again, and maybe they'll still get Nicolas Cage. Like you never know. Maybe he'll get his chance to stomp on my heart again.

SPEAKER_03 6:20

So I'm I'm glad when these things come back just to rip your heart out uh for a second or third time. I I have a general question about rejection because we we've been getting in the guests we've had for the most part have been sort of TV writers or feature writers, and you are in the TV and feature writer category where you do a lot of both. Where do you think the bigger heartbreak lies?

SPEAKER_04 6:42

I mean, for me recently it's TV because I just think it's such a golden age of TV and I like uh participating in it. So there's been a couple of things I just really wanted to do that just didn't work out that were like, oh no, what a you know, what a like what a terrible personal travesty. Um but I can tell you about a really bad TV interview I had, like right after Hill House. Like I think uh this was a great this this was a rejection that still stings and still bothers me. But um I guess I should just say the show. I don't think it really matters. I don't think anybody will care. I went to go interview for Sabrina, the teenage witch show. Okay, like right before the show started, you know, like before the first season. And uh Hill House had just ended, and it was very clear they wanted to recruit like a Hill Houser, like that they were hearing buzz and wanted somebody in the room. So I went in and you know, my agents were like, oh my god, it's so set up, it's yours to lose. Like, there's no problem, you know, just go in and do your thing and blah, blah, blah. And I went in and I met Roberto, and he was this really lovely guy, and we had this really like excellent back and forth for like 30 or 45 minutes, you know, just really having a good time and talking about different things and stuff. And then, like, I don't know if you guys like this happens to me a lot. Like, if you're in a meeting and somebody will ask you to suddenly list a bunch of things from your life, like, oh, what are your favorite horror movie scenes or something? Like, so Roberto goes, Well, what are your favorite horror movie scenes? And I was like, uh, and I just had nothing. Like, I had literally like no horror movie scenes that I could recall, like in any way, shape, or form. And I was like, uh, you know, and it's gonna, and he goes, Well, because you know, this is a really this is a hardcore horror show, you know, we're gonna really draw on our influences, we're really gonna it's like, I know. I mean, uh, and all I could think of was like stuff from Oculus and stuff from like you know, like Ouija and I was like, there was like nothing, like nothing was just landing. And I just watched the entire like wall go down in that moment, and I knew like like instant, like boom, like that's totally over. Like this is gonna be, and then when I watched some of the show, I was like, oh, well, obviously, this is a show that like quote references so many classic things that it's like you know, they they wanted somebody who like had their favorite 12 pools to go throw in the room, and I'm going like American World of London, maybe there's a two in there.

SPEAKER_03 8:47

It's like you know, like that was yeah, just like a red balloon in a movie somewhere distant. I don't remember. You know what's funny is I I was put up for that too. You my story is actually in a way worse just because you uh well you were in there and you coming off Haunting of Hill House, which is you know, again, we could talk about it in more detail. Haunting of Hill House is just like stellar television, and what does it feel like to come off that show and go on to something else? But my my managers called me and they were like, We're putting you up for Sabrina, the teenage witch. We're really excited. We haven't in there, we're putting you up. A week goes by, two weeks go by, three weeks go by, there's like nothing. Nothing, I'm like, did it what happened with Sabrina? And they're like, Oh, yeah, it was a pass. Like, I don't even know if they read me or didn't read me, or like I somehow I didn't get off the big list or this, like, why sometimes I'm dying for my manager to tell me where they submitted it, and sometimes when they do tell you, and like you didn't even make it past some early threshold of being read.

SPEAKER_04 9:42

Yeah, I like instant follow-up too, because the longer you wonder about it, the more the time there is for the pain pressure quotient to build, you know what I mean? So it's like if I get a quick no, I just I you know, I love it. I always try to coax a no out of the room, you know. Like if you can sense the no, you know. Um I said like I had a miss, I had a sorry, this like just I'd never even thought of this before, but uh like I had a totally like misperce, like I self-rejected, like in a way that was just hilarious one time that I thought was really like it was a feature pitch, and it was a thing that later got sold to Ron Howard, and um he was attached to direct forever, and it was like really it was one of my earliest things. And I went to this guy, I can't remember his name, but he was like, it you know how it's hard to read people in meetings, and like I was with the the guy that I was working with at the time, and we're pitching him, and it's this biopic story, and we're really into it, we're really telling our thing. And like there's all these moments we had pitched it a bunch of times, and you know how you hit those moments where everybody reacts in a certain way? He wasn't having any other reactions, and it was really weird. And we got like two-thirds of the way through it, and um, the guy I was with was actually like, uh, do you want us to finish? Like, is there, you know, like should we should we bother going on or like should we just cut it here? He's like, No, no, go ahead. Like, and like this, you know, and so so you know, we kind of have you know, half-heartedly finished and everything, and we had a book, and he's like, Hey, do you uh you mind if I like hold on to the book for a little bit and just like maybe check out the you know the chapter that you're talking about and and and the thing? And we were just like, No, like we gotta, you know, we're gonna hang on to the book. Thanks anywhere gonna go, you know, because we just thought, oh, this guy hated us and everything. And we left, and like 10 minutes later, the phone rang while we were in the car, and it was like the manager, and she's like, Why are you guys being such dicks? Like, he he really wanted to check out the book, and he's like, really into it, and like you wouldn't give him the book? Like, what's wrong with you? He's like, like, we were like, we thought he completely hated it, like he didn't say anything, he had no emotions whatsoever. So, yeah, our misread of the room was apparently a self-uh, a self-rejection right out of that one. So he was also the guy who ran the company for a really big director at the time, too. So it would have helped.

SPEAKER_03 11:43

So I I had I've had a guy fall asleep in a pitch before. Like, literally, you see them dozing off and you don't know what to do. Like, do I continue? Do I abort? I mean, you want to have the guts just to walk out, like just to say, I'm done. Obviously, you don't want this, but we all sort of meekly finish our like Larry David would do that.

SPEAKER_04 12:02

Like Larry David would just cut it short or just say, Oh, you hate this, it's so clearly not for you. Goodbye. But you always, yeah, you feel obligated to finish. I uh, you know that director, Mark Pellington. He was like, he did a bunch of you know, he did a bunch of big studio movies before he went to TV. And it was in that run, and we went to breakfast one morning and I was pitching in this thing, and I was like 25 minutes into the pitch, and I said, uh, so you know, that's the end of act one. And he goes, Act one! Like it's like, oh no, and I just knew at that moment that it was doomed, you know.

SPEAKER_03 12:31

So um I know Dan's waiting to ask a follow-up question, but my very first pitch, it's worth saying, I had sent out a feature. It got a lot of meetings. I had a pitch based in the same world as a feature for a new thing. I pitched Wolfgang Peterson's company. It was Greek mythology. He had just done Troy. It was two and a half hours. I was in that meeting with him. I don't think I pitched for two and a half hours. I think I pitched for 94 minutes. I had no, no one told no one tells you. This is my very first pitch. I'm like, I'm gonna tell these ladies this whole movie. And I got out, I'm like, I think it my manager's like, What why were you in there for so long? I'm like, I don't know. We were just talking. Well, how long did it take you to pitch? An hour and a half? They're like, What? I'm like, why did anyone tell me we're supposed to like do this in 20? All right, good. I I know Dan's way to ask a question, though.

SPEAKER_04 13:20

No, I love that too. I got I got in trouble for a lot of those long meetings sometimes, and I'm like, they just kept talking. Like, what was I supposed to do? Like, just you know.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

So uh so I was just gonna tell you about the time I had an interview for uh Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Uh I passed on it because I was busy with some other much more important projects. No, I was gonna I like this asking for the no thing. So when I was I was running a technology company for a while, and we looked at our sales pipeline, which had the most amazing things in it, and then we were trying to work out what's actually gonna sell. Oh, we really got you know absolutely millions in here, and we went through this sort of process which is known as asking for the no. And we went through it, and obviously we asked for the no and they gave it to us on nearly all of it, and our pipeline nearly completely disappeared. But it's a great process because otherwise you think things might happen. So, in your world, like when do you I know you can't do a Larry David as it were, but getting a quick no is better than getting a slow maybe, presumably.

SPEAKER_04 14:20

Yes, very much so. Like uh the slow maybe is the death of everybody, and that's why you have to have 19 things gone on along, you know, is because there's uh a lot of slow maybes. But if you get in a room and somebody says something like, um, oh yeah, we we we have something along thematically that's similar, or oh yeah, we have this, you know, we um, you know, we oh yeah, we were very sensitive to the way something like that tanked in Germany last year. You know what I mean? That's like they're just looking for some, they're always looking for a way to reject you without having to tell you no, you suck. You know what I mean? So it's like you gotta put your antenna up to hear the rejection that is coming in phrases like, oh yes, thematically, we've been developing something like that, or you know, stuff like that. The biggest way that you can tell in a room that you've been rejected is if they say I know it's coming. You go ahead. I don't wanna I don't want to read it.

SPEAKER_03 15:08

No, you say it, you say it. Or I'll say I'll say you want to count us down?

SPEAKER_04 15:12

Yeah, well. All right, all right, uh go. Well, well, well told. Yes, well told me there's no chance in hell that I want anything to do with this material whatsoever. Like, you know, and it's like and it's just so instantaneously over. And sometimes I've been in rooms like in the last couple of years with people who are a little newer and they hear the well-told thing and like get all excited. And it's like, oh no, that means it's definitively over, you know.

SPEAKER_03 15:37

Do the executives know? I mean, I I have a question about that because we all know if it's well told, and the second kiss of test is very thorough, right? Those two, or any combination, or god forbid both, you are you are dead in the water. Do they do they know they're torpedoing us and like a little joke on the inside, or do they not know? And we've just always picked it up.

SPEAKER_04 15:57

Yeah, I wonder. Like that I was thinking that before we got on here. Like, is there just some like jargon that they pick up that they hear in their own internal meetings that they just like use to as deflective? You know, I just always try to remember that they are people with jobs and they have a mandate and a boss. And if they do the wrong thing too many times, if they say yes to the wrong thing or say no to something that was big somewhere else, then they're just screwed eventually and out of a job. So they have to be very careful with all the responses. And they never want to say to you, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard, because like six months later you're massive, and then you're the person, you know, they're the person who insulted the you know, Steven Spielberg and told him that it was crazy. Like, you know.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

But actually, so on that on that point, so we've I sit here on these interviews with fascinating people, and you talk, every guest sort of says, I went to pitch for this, and this person said no, and I went to pitch for this and this person says no, and then obviously they go on and succeed somewhere else. How does it work? I know at the moment no one's allowed to leave the house, but in the normal world where you're bumping into each other at maybe nominee parties or awards or just you know on the circuit. When you bump into somebody who told you six months ago no, and maybe if they did it in that sneaky sort of maybe slow death way, and then they pass on it, and then you could go and become an absolute star with some show that somebody pays you millions for, or you know, when you bump into them, is that sort of do they sort of give you the look which says, all right, I got it wrong, or do they just blank face pretend it never happened?

SPEAKER_04 17:29

Both, you know, like the human nature, like the the the the good and interesting and and you know valuable ones will all go, oh I got that one completely wrong, or you know, oh you know, that was it, that wasn't for me, but I told you it'd be big somewhere, you know. But yeah, some people will just avoid you or just say mean things. The worst people are the people that you knew at the beginning of the industry, and you're all friends and did really stupid things together, and then you all end up in positions of responsibility later and can't see each other as the person in that position of responsibility because you just remember the guy throwing up in the corner of a backyard, you know? So uh yeah, that's that it rever it goes both ways, you know.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

And how well behaved are you in the sense of, you know, do you walk past someone and go, I told you I was bloody good, or does it not, you know, is that not how you meant to behave? You just sort of go, Well, well, you just or do you ignore them or do you rub it in the face of people who gave you particularly nasty rejections and then you succeeded elsewhere?

SPEAKER_04 18:24

I I think in a very UK way you'll appreciate. I just sort of like the uh I I I I like the haughty feeling of knowing that they know that I know and they know, you know, like when something goes well. You know what I mean? It's just much more fun, like to, you know, than to just uh pick on somebody. But there are there are people I just really actively dislike and pick on all the time. And there's people I really like and pick on too.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

So I I had gotten a Twitter, one of my rare Twitter arguments with another writer who who eventually unfollowed me. I realized, and I don't know if it was about this argument, but it's actually about what we're talking about right now. Is they had posted the only thing better than yes is a fast no. And I'm like, no. Yes is better than no. Yeah, but I would take I would take a fast no over like what you said, a maybe. But a yes, even if it took four months from Netflix, is way better than a no that comes in the room. Like, like in my head, like very logically trying to parse this out in my in my in my thinking. What, what, what do you where do you land on that discussion? Or I hope we don't unfriend each other over this.

SPEAKER_04 19:27

I think sometimes when you tweet, you are doing it in the moment so fast, and you go back later, five minutes later, realize how incredibly obtuse you are, and like how you had no clue that you were saying something completely different than you intended, you know, and then you have to make the decision of whether to get rid of it or not. Yeah, and I don't uh I don't know. I I get all caught up in those rules. You read that rules stuff that really bothers me all the time. And then, like, so the other day I posted something just as a joke, you know, and then like all these people try to have this like some sort of serious discourse. There's like, ah, I'm making fun of you like for worrying about this. I'm not uh I'm not trying to contribute to your discourse.

SPEAKER_03 20:03

Yeah, I get I fall into that. I really love I love the not the rule so much, but I love structure. I love thinking about it, I love like knowing where to break it, how to break it. And the people on Twitter, I think when they're just starting, they need something to hold on to. And what we're saying is there's no ladder, and I think that gets really complicated for them to have process, leading to these flare-ups of you know, and there is a ladder, but the ladder is not as clearly defined as they think it is. I think. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 20:33

I got a couple of good ones if you want to hear some stuff. Yeah, just if you're curious. Like there's one I love about John Stamos that I still think is fun. Like at the very beginning of uh I almost said career. That's I beg your pardon. I would never use that word. At the very beginning of doing this job, I uh sold a comedy, a couple of comedies, uh, with this guy, this my best friend of like 30 years. And we met John Stamos. He was like one of the people, like a million people read this script that we had sold. That is like, I recently told somebody, uh a Twitter friend, I sent them like a little synopsis of it. I was like, see like how career-ending and awful this idea is today. Like I was like, but in 1999 was just a stupid comedy and funny. Um, and so John Stamos read it, and or his, you know, the guy who ran his company read it, and uh we go into we went into a meeting with him, and we I like I just happened, like, I don't know why, but I had a John Stamos idea, which was basically that like John Stamos wanted to be an act. John Stamos was himself and he wanted to be an action star. And he nobody takes him seriously as anything, but other than being John Stamos. And then these two guys, in order to try to like coerce him into teaching him how to like pick up women, cut kidnap him, and uh to to try to like learn his skills, you know. And he realizes in his kidnapping that he could turn himself into a heroic figure and be seen more seriously by the world if he escapes from these kidnappers. So he kind of strings them along as these in up kidnappers so he can stage his big escape. And anyway, I worked with his executive for all this time. We did this thing and like we went back and forth, and he's like, All these people that are John Stamos's friends, it would be great to be in this movie. And like, we're all gonna and then finally we're all gonna get together in New York and we're gonna go sit down with Stamos. And the executive like turns to us, like right before we go in, and he goes, What if I had never actually run any of this by John? And he was just gonna hear it all right now for the very first time. After like a couple of months of planning and ideas, and him telling us, like, you know, oh, John's talking to this person, he's talking to that person. We can tell us like all this crazy ass stuff, and he just drops this on us. It's just so weird. It was like, Well, we drove up here from Baltimore, New York, so just go and like just see what crazy thing happens, you know what I mean? And like, uh, so we sit down with Stamos, and the first that like he like two minutes in the talking, he reaches over and he goes, like, like kind of reaches out to touch me, and he goes, uh, you get really good hair. Like, thanks. Like, that's uh, and uh, so that was pretty cool. Like, everything's going great. We pitch him the idea, he really likes the idea. Like, every like every it's all gonna go okay. He starts talking about all those weeks, blah, blah, blah. And then, like, so like we had we face this one precipice of rejection. Then we get him, and he's all entranced, and we go into all these conversations that last for a few weeks back and forth, and then ultimately he comes to it as an is just like, I don't want it to be me. Like, can I just play somebody like me? And we were like, but that's like the whole point is that it's you. Like, that's that's what makes it funny. Like, that's like the that's where all the interest comes in, you know what I mean, as opposed to like, you know, and uh anyway, and so like his ultimate rejection, the ultimate rejection we got out of the entire thing was that John Stamos wouldn't play John Stamos in the idea of ours that he loved. Like he would play anybody else, but he wouldn't play John Stamos.

SPEAKER_03 23:39

Do you think that's what happened with the JC VD project where it became Jean-Claude von Johnson that he didn't want to play himself? Or do you think there was a weird branding issue with his own name and Amazon? I I the original spec script for that was JC VD, which I think was uh which I was just thinking as you're telling the John Stamos story, how rare it is for an actor to want to make fun of himself, like like it to find that rare beast of somebody who can that has the competence to to to do that. Uh so what happened? You just just died at that point, or yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:12

I mean, it was you know, there wasn't, you know, yeah, it was just there was no point. It was like it's like all the we, you know, up until that time it was great. And I thought we were dead the minute we walked into that first lunch, you know. I thought, oh my god, what a spectacularly weird thing for this guy to do to like totally like what are you know anyway. So I always like I like a I like the two-stage rejection of that one. Like a lot of these things aren't just like in the moment, they're like, let me smack you now so that I can give you an even bigger smack later.

SPEAKER_03 24:38

Right. They I mean he he literally he literally pulled the rug out of you 30 seconds before you're walking into the oh yeah, completely discombobulated any type of familiarity with the project he might have had. Um man.

SPEAKER_04 24:51

Yeah, exactly in that moment, and that's when you knew you were dead. I also had a weird one where uh I'm trying to think of an obtuse way to tell this without like incre in like incriminating anybody or there's a part of me that just wants to do the incriminating version, but it won't because you know, kids put them through college, all that shit. Um we I I uh I went with a writing partner of mine, I'm sure you can guess, and we went to a place that was a giant corporation that makes movies too, which probably eventually get there. And uh they had a thing that they wanted us to turn into a movie, and we did, and we pitched it like wonderfully well, and we went to a studio, and like the studio bought it in the room, and then like nine months later, still had just never like reached out to make a deal or contact anything or anything. So, like we never went anywhere else, we never pitched anything else, like they never like it just died of some weird studio neglect, you know. And then, like three years later, I get this call, and it was like this this is like a nuanced rejection. Like, you have to really think about how this felt like it's very strange. But they called and they were like, Hey, do you want to pitch on blank? I was like, You mean that thing that we got the job for three years ago and they never followed up or sent an offer of paperwork or anything? You mean like that one? And they were like, Yes, yes, we're we're going out again. Would you like to do you want to participate? And the thing is like, no, I mean, you could you could give, you could give us the job, like you know, you could just give it to us like like three years ago, and we never heard anything about it, you know what I mean? So uh yeah, like not we get we we got a silent, disappearing, ghosted rejection the first time by just never hearing anything back after we canceled the road tour of going to all the studios because the first place we went bought it in the room, and then uh and and then like years later, like got the second one of saying, Would you like to compete again? You know, it's like oh I'd like to think I'd learned from the lessons of the past.

SPEAKER_03 26:50

That studio got the rights at some point to this project because it sounded like the rights were tied up.

SPEAKER_04 26:54

Same everybody. Oh same, yeah, same everything. There was nothing, it was just like, you know, just like it never happened. And I just literally said, like, when we got because there were people I knew well because you know, we'd all done some stuff, and it was like, you know, it's like, remember when you uh when you uh gave us that job? You still could if you want, you know. So and then my backup stance became I'll come in and pitch you, but like only after you talk to everybody else there is, you know, like after like if you exhaust every other possibility that you think I'll come in.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

You know, g given you've made a list, this is a question that we might better ask you that we haven't asked other people. We always talk very generically that you know, for every win there's uh you know a number of losses, you know, is it 10? Is it 20? Do you do you know how many things? Even an approximation would be of interest. How many things in your entire career you have pitched on, whatever you however you want to define that, and the number of things you've actually sold and made and have been produced? Is this like five out of a hundred, ten out of five hundred? Like what sort of proportions are we talking here?

SPEAKER_04 28:05

I uh I remember at a anyway, like percentage-wise, I would say like three percent of initiated ideas or conversations led to a finished something, you know, and like maybe eight percent was led to like some version of a deal or something getting close, and that like 92% of things just like died in the in the atmosphere immediately. You know, I always tell people when they're starting out, it's like what you're eventually I don't know that this is true for everybody, but it's true for me, is that if you initiate four things, you'll sell one or two, and perhaps one will get made, you know. So it's like, you know, I try to initiate four or five things, push them through different levels until they do their thing, and then hopefully one or two ends up sold, and then out of those, hopefully you get one made and move on to the next set of things, you know. But you and it's really hard to tell like which ones would be which. Like you really some of the ones that seem like the most no-brainers and the easiest to push through the system just die in the system somewhere along the way, and you just never know why, you know, or or well, sometimes, you know, sometimes you do, but most often they just sort of seem to die of some like weird things that you can't control.

SPEAKER_03 29:18

And you never get the information on it, like the like this weird malaise happen to the project, and you try to you reach out and they're like just so quietly not evasive. Like, why can't they just tell us we're we're developing something else with a bigger name? Or, you know, I would much rather the truth most of the time than just sort of not knowing why the thing they were so excited about a month ago or a year ago, they're not excited about anymore.

SPEAKER_04 29:41

And I think it usually just still comes down to the same thing of having a job and the something else comes up that goes easier, you know, like there's there's something else that's better, like easier to push through the system or that works better for the exact nature of what the boss is looking for. And it does, you know. So get you know, the one of the great things about getting to know people that work in those jobs is you just eventually just uh not only understand the other side, but you get to hear the other side. And you know, what you understand about the other side is it's like, well, like our agenda tells us that we need only two things like this this year, and there's already like four that have been tried to push through the system and we just can't do it. Or our thing tells us like we blew all of our money by September, and we really are just kind of coasting on fumes until January, and there's like literally nothing we can do. You know, there's just like a million reasons, or we're going to lose our deal in six months, but nobody knows that. So there's no point, you know, like it'll just it'll get bought and it'll just get stuck here while we're gone, you know. Um, that thing I took out with Ron Howard, we went to their deal was at Universal, like always, but they um they were shopping around for another deal at the time. Like there was like talk, like, oh, they may leave Universal. So when he got attached as a director, we went to the first pitch at Universal, and it was like nobody showed up from Imagine. It was just us. And like there's no, we were like, we were already nervous enough. Like, is Ron Howard really attached to this thing? Like, could that possibly be true? And then uh, you know, we sat through Universal and we did the pitch, and they just literally passed in the room and like we left, and uh then we went to the next one and we got in and they were like, Oh yeah, we you know, I I it was the head of the studio is like, yeah, you know, had lunch with Ron last week and he told me all about it. So, like, you know, like just tell me what movie we're making. And it was like, uh, oh, I see. Like, we I think we were just, you know, I think that may have been the the suitor for the uh possible move, you know.

SPEAKER_03 31:22

So so funny. It's it I have a I have a question about the level of pain. Um, I know at this point in your career that you're getting offered to pitch on things that are that are pretty big, huge. I mean, as big as they get, probably like you know, the big, big TV franchises or whatever. And that uh, you know, the things I get offered to pitch on a TV, the stakes are a little bit lower. They might go or they might not go, but I might get paid for something. But it's not like, you know, uh, you know, big series offer that and and when something like this, as you get progressively higher in your career and the stakes, the the the level of video poker that you're playing is much more substantial, and something doesn't go or something you know gets really close and down to the wire, and you don't get it, is it is are you are you better at handling the pain or is it worse?

SPEAKER_04 32:10

Or it's it's bigger, the stakes are bigger. There's one I still can't process. So because it's so painful, I'll tell you. Yeah, but uh also the video poker site said that it was confidential. How did you know about the that's that's a little weird because I'll go back and read that. Um, no, you know what? Recently, like it really stung because I knew that I didn't do me. That's what really pissed me off the most. Like there was a giant, you know, there was a giant ass franchisee show that was being put together. And I I had what I thought was a really good take for it, and I did like 19 levels of notes back and forth, during which it got completely watered down from anything that I even recognized as like what made me excited about it. And then I found myself on a pitch one day, like the day after our son was born. My wife was in the hospital and I had the you know almost three-year-old alone. And it was like a course scheduled that day at like, you know, 9 15 a.m. And it was like this giant, you know, like the giant thing. And I could just tell like sitting there and going through and pitching it, I just like I was like, oh, this thing has become such a Frankenstein of my own, uh, of not what I wanted it to be. And I did it because I was just trying, you know, I was just chasing a really big job. And I just thought, oh, I will, I will chase it because it's such a it's such a big franchise name and it's such a like commitment series order that you'd be an idiot not to do it. And then like right, and you know, as the pitch is ongoing and my son is screaming for like things and turning in the iPad sound up and down three feet away and all that stuff, it's just like, all right, not only is this never gonna happen, like and they just hated it. Like they just I could tell there was like no engagement on their side, like it was a completely stiff reaction. You could tell it was just exact, they wanted a dangerous take, and I let myself get pushed into the most sanitized take that there could be, and it just, oh, I was so mad at myself.

SPEAKER_03 34:04

Like, but there was no way for you to know. I know I know I mean I I I'm pretty sure I know what this title is, and there was no way to know, I'm guessing from the outside, which way this thing could go anywhere from the kid four quadrant version to the horror version. Yes, you could literally have taken this thing anywhere and stayed true to that franchise, which might have made it even more tricky.

SPEAKER_04 34:23

Uh yeah, I mean I I I wanted to do something that paid an uh like tribute to what it was at first, but also brought it into a I the versions of that thing that I liked were the trippier versions, and it brought it into that trippier world because everywhere I go, people do that's what they ask for. You know what I mean? Like that's just what they that's what they're always expecting when you go in, and you know, and uh I you know I really wanted to go in that direction, and it ended up just sort of like very um homogenized, and not I don't mean in the life-saving way of removing toxins from milk, you know, like in the the annoying version of homogenization, you know.

SPEAKER_05 35:01

Yeah, I get it.

SPEAKER_04 35:02

Yeah, I was mostly bad at me. Like I that's what sometimes you get involved in these things and you forget every rule that you've learned or every piece of advice that you've picked up all along the way, because you're just caught up in the moment and you're like, these guys know exactly what they want. And if I if I deliver, you know, if I just give them that, then it'll probably work out better than if I just keep trying to say, but wouldn't it be cooler if you know? So sometimes when you say, wouldn't it be cooler if you become the asshole in the room? You know what I mean? And it's like, but what about you know, like what if we explore? It's like, you know, anyway. Um, yeah, oh, I was bummed. I was already like in my mind, I was like, all right, I could see this is like a five-year job. I could totally see that, you know, it's like it would be an interesting thing to run. So anyway, still mad.

SPEAKER_03 35:45

I I know you're still in that one, so I would I didn't want to.

SPEAKER_04 35:48

Well, because the announcement came out the other day. And I was like, fuck you. So anyway, I didn't even read it, I couldn't even click on it. I still have no idea who eventually like I don't even know anything about it. So I know in like a year I'll see like a preview and just be like, oh, you know, it's like you know, yeah. That's the guy that kicked my dog.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

When you have a success, so obviously you've you know the the thing the ones that got away and there's a rejection, but when you have a you know an absolute unmitigated success, like the movie poster behind your head. Um sorry, the the show poster behind your head, what is there a part where because things get rejected so much, even when you think this thing is gonna happen, presumably, do you spend all the time before literally somebody starts shooting thinking it's gonna get taken away in some ridiculous way? And even when it's running, and you're like, well, maybe something will go wrong and it somehow won't get released, and then when it does, maybe it won't be as much of a success. Are you sort of do you carry a burden of other ejections that spoil the fun of the successes?

SPEAKER_04 36:56

No, Flanagan does, I think, or people who continue along all the way through to the end and some stuff, you know, and I think it'll get there, but I no, like with Hill House, my biggest concern was how do you find something on on Netflix? And like, like of all the stuff that's there, how will people anybody find it or or care to even know that it's there? Well, it just like be put out and sink into oblivion, you know. So, and it's still the only thing I was ever a part of. I mean, there's more stuff, uh whatever, but like there's the only thing I've ever been a part of that actually like heard people talking about out in the world, you know, which is like a really weird experience. Like it made me realize, like, oh, that like that in itself was its own form of rejection because it realized, like, oh, everything else nobody ever watched because like you never heard anybody ever bring it up or talk about it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

When you say sorry, is this like heard as in people commenting on Twitter or putting the comments in deadline or literally like in the bar?

SPEAKER_04 37:49

Yeah, like in the wild, like walking around, like you know, and like sitting like sitting in restaurants. There were just there was this phase of a couple of weeks where, like, you know, you'd go somewhere and a couple of times while you were out, you would just hear people talking about it. It's very strange. So before then, we had like a Hill House backpack that we were using as a diaper bag. And then once the show came out, we had to get rid of it because, like, like in the first week, like like four or five people just would come up and say something, like, Oh, I should join the show, you know. Like, so it's like, you know, yeah. I was an assistant, you know, backup office person.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

I love that. So you guys spend all your time trying to get success, and then you get success, and and you moan about all the things you don't get, then you get success, and then you stop caning around the backpack because you don't want people to know you're associated with the success.

SPEAKER_04 38:38

Yeah, well, that's the dream, right? Isn't that the goal? Isn't that the arc? No.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_04 38:43

I like you can always tell the people who have read all the biographies and are trying to live out a certain kind of life, you know what I mean? Well, you always think that's really interesting when you see people who are trying to sort of you know emulate some sort of thing that they saw or something. So yeah, I don't know. I just I I didn't I don't I don't know. I didn't mind interacting with people, but then you know, as my wife pointed out, like, well, we do have a child here, you know weird, you know. So people get a little handsy.

SPEAKER_03 39:07

A horror movie, horror TV series, and uh yeah, yeah, you're carrying your baby around in the in the in the in the gear. People get weird about gear. When I was on shows for years, they actually stopped wanting to logo it because you just didn't want to answer the questions, or they wanted the jacket, but they didn't want the name on it. Yes. So we would make it really small or in black or behind the hood, or like the secret logos are kind of the best logo wear where it's somewhere hidden is the name of the show you worked on, but it's not front and center. And I think that's something you really want when you're first starting, and later on, you just kind of want the sweater. My wife just wears them all at home.

SPEAKER_04 39:44

I just don't like she just has everything, she just wears them all around the house. So sometimes I see after Gerald's game walk by. I'm just like that's so strange. So this one on um Midnight Mask, uh, which just wrapped, and they sent, I just literally just went ahead and got like the women's small, like when they sent the thing for like the size. Just like just I'm gonna be honest about where this is going and not get my actual size. So yeah, but you know what? Uh yeah, then uh that I hope that doesn't sound like an asshole thing. It was certainly not in an asshole way. It was mostly the bag just out of like, oh, you just don't. I don't know. It's just weird to have I don't know, it's very strange that people deal with you that way. I don't know how people who are actually somebody could ever possibly deal with it. When we were on the way to the WGA awards, they sent one of those cars and it was like blacked-out windows, and we pulled the driver pulled up next to like some of those tour buses. So they were just like, open the windows, open those. It's like, oh my god, like a hundred people would just be so sadly disappointed to like if the window ever got lowered, they would just be so bummed out by what was actually going on in here, you know.

SPEAKER_03 40:45

I don't I don't know if we told this, if I told the story on this pod, but the really the really quick version is we were walking through Universal and we were all the writers of a TV show, Colony, TV, the TV show colony, and then we heard the people talking on the bus saying, keep your eyes peeled, you might see a you know, some directors or act this is a working day at Universal. You know, keep you know, we're passing, we're walking, like uh the tour is tram is heading towards us, and we can hear them talking, talking, talking, and then they're like, Oh, look, look, there's, there's, there's some writers. And everyone was looking, and then everyone sort of just turned away. And it was like it was like a it was such an inside joke because there was such a palpable disappointment that we a were writers, and B, she knew we were writers just by looking at us. Like we obviously were.

SPEAKER_04 41:28

That's actually a scene from Singing in the Rain, if you remember. Like uh Donald O'Connor comes out and they're like, and here comes, oh, it's Cosmo, blah blah you know, the sidekick, and then and they'll go, and everybody the crowd leans forward and they go, uh, and like lean back, like uh who cares? So, but that's cool. Nobody's supposed to care. I I don't I'm not one of those people I I I they're only supposed to care about the people that you see, like it's better that way. Like, you know, true. Most writers seem to go to hell once you uh so anyway. I do have one real heartbreaker for you about I know it uh about something about a studio project that starts with I know. Um it was just a weird one because like I know what you did last summer was something where like we were so excited. Like I I I like Naomi Ritz as a producer a lot. I think he's just really cool. I I've always been interested in him. He actually bought the very first script I ever sold in 1999, so it's always been like interesting, and it went, it was nice to go back and revisit. And he was so excited about I know what you did last summer, and he worked on it like he was a CE. Like we would we just, you know, he was there at almost like at almost every meeting and did a lot of story conferencing, and it was great. And we had an idea that we were so excited about and everything, and then like I mean, to me, in my mind, it was like, all right, they're gonna go make a Flanagan's gonna go direct to $20 million. I know what you did last summer. It'll be Sony. We'll start off the studio relationship, it's gonna be really exciting and good. And we wrote the script, and it was exactly what we wanted to do. And it's still to be one of my favorite pieces of writing that we ever did. And the whole thing was premised on we said no when they offered it to us the first time, and we said no again. And then they said, Look, you it all we want is the title and thematically, like you can do whatever you want, you know. So we went in and we had this completely different take, and we're so excited about it. It has this massive twist ending, and the entire thing is precipitated on this massive twist ending. Like, what makes it special is this huge twist, and it was so cool, like a witness for the prosecution kind of thing. And um, you know, everything was all teed up, and they get the thing and they love the script and everything. And they're just like their one thing at the studio level is uh that nobody they won't they won't do that ending. And it was like, like, we just want to cut it like two pages before and leave it where it was before this final twist that was like the ultimate, like important thing. And like in that moment, in that note, I just heard it was like meant as a note, and it was just like the death of the entire thing because it was very clear like, well, the director that they wanted to direct it wasn't going to want to direct it without the twist that intrigued us to get engaged to do the script in the first place. And then it becomes like, and just the you know, like instantly all of those dreams of like, you know, studio franchise, studio relationship, like all those things just dissolved in a moment of like. Oh no, they're not gonna let it be the thing, you know. But they knew it was coming, right?

SPEAKER_03 44:04

I mean, they you developed it with them, so they just didn't like it once you put it on the like they couldn't argue with the quality of it, it was just it it was it.

SPEAKER_04 44:12

I'm trying I was trying to think of the way to I don't want to give like I mean they own it, I don't want to give away the name of the story, but like the way that our twist worked out implied a certain perceived immoral anti-biblical act that certainly wasn't the case. And not none of the I don't even know if it's any of the first ten that you're getting to, but it's like like it just wasn't, and you know, anyway, uh the ultimate identity of the actual killer was like a big, big final twist, and they wanted to leave it like at the second to last twist, and it was like that's that's just a movie, then like that like it was there wasn't even anything, it wasn't even like it was something wrong with it. It just wasn't, you know, it was just a movie, you know. So that was kind of that was uh that one that one hurt because it was just so late in the process and it could have been anything, and then um just last like very early, you know how everybody wants their break and they want their first big thing and they're so excited to get that emission, that initial breakthrough, you know? So the very first time that I ever came out here, I met an executive at TriStar. So it'll tell you like about when it was, you know what I mean? And it was like a long time ago. And he was a really nice guy, and they pitched him this really idea that I just loved at the time. They were doing all those biosphere projects, and it was like, what if they made a biosphere and they put like like they were trying to sabotage the project so they deliberately put one, you know, psychic, you know, psychotic person inside who would snap and the whole thing would go wrong, and blah, blah, blah. And the guy was like, Oh my god, I love this. I'm putting this on the weekend executive read list, and we're gonna, you know, do the whole thing, and blah, blah, blah. And uh, he called me on Monday morning. It was just the most, you know, how you say you want the fast no? It was like the most painful, like um, guillotine no of all time. He was like, I put this on the list, and every executive here read it, and they unanimously agreed that we should not do it. It's like, oh, cool.

SPEAKER_03 46:00

Like too fresh for a no like that. That's painful. That's when you want them to lie.

SPEAKER_04 46:05

I I needed a cushion at that moment, and it definitely was not, it was definitely not forthcoming. Um, you know, anyway. Also, in our changing world, also recently got rejected in a way that was actually positive and correct. Um, was working for a really big producer, you know, director's company on a series that was scary with a fellow Hill House writer, Becca Klingel, who I love, who we did like that eighth episode of Hill House together. And she's done a bunch of, she did season two, and she's done a bunch of great stuff, and she's really cool. And we were working on this thing. We had a really good idea, and then uh they brought on an actress, and um you know, they brought on a black actress, and she said immediately, I like what they've done or whatever, but I want to go in a completely different direction with black writers who I know. And it was like, you know what? This is a reject, this is a rejection. I completely understand. You are correct. We are goodbye, you know, no, no problem, understand goodbye. So it's like, you know, so there's also different layers of rejection, too. So that one was one where it felt like, you know what, that that is exactly the right move. I totally get it. We we shouldn't be doing this anymore. You you're you know, right cough.

SPEAKER_03 47:11

So these are I think these are all really fascinating things that people are gonna take a lot of lessons from. But we have one question that we wrap up every podcast with. And if that's uh what advice would you give somebody who's coming into the business? Just just what what would be their your number one piece of advice that you would give them? About rejection or just the business itself?

SPEAKER_04 47:30

Like, uh, look, not every you don't like every movie or TV show that was ever made. Not everybody is gonna universally like something that you did. It takes a very small subsection of people who just get really passionate about it to get something done. So, like rejection in and of itself is not a bad thing. Like, by definition of humanity, we're gonna get rejected 95% of the time for this stuff anyway, because you reject so much stuff that is out there and don't like it anyway. So you just can't really you can't internalize any of this stuff. You just have to uh I I always tell myself that it's just like it's just an actor performance to go out there and to pretend to be this uh writer person for this 45 minutes and that's it. And it's like there's no if you tie your personal self-esteem to being told no in the entertainment business, you're gonna have a really sad and miserable life. So don't do it to yourself. Like uh remove your self-esteem and and what you feel about yourself from yeses or no's, you know, and also the yeses, because the yeses don't mean any more than the no's.

SPEAKER_03 48:29

So that that that that that's amazing. Thank you, Jeff, for coming and sharing some of these ripping off the bandage on some of these painful stories.

SPEAKER_04 48:39

Thanks for having me. It was uh very cathartic. So I needed to get some of this off my chest for a while.

SPEAKER_03 48:53

All right, that's a wrap on this episode. If you want to leave us any feedback, go to hollywoodabyss.com.

SPEAKER_00 48:59

And if you'd like to subscribe, we won't stop you. And if you want to leave a review, we certainly won't stop you. In fact, we'll be incredibly grateful.

SPEAKER_03 49:06

And we have a couple of thank yous before we go completely. We want to thank James Launch for the intro and outro music. We want to thank both our wives who allowed us to hide in our respective basements while we record all of these interviews.

SPEAKER_00 49:19

If you want to find us on Twitter and join in the conversation, I'm at Dan Rutstein, and Noah is at N Evslin. Please come and find us, please say hello, and if you really want to, please give Noah a job.

SPEAKER_03 49:31

Yes, I am looking for a job of any sort. I can polish shoes, I can write copy, uh, I can even be in a writer's room. So if that's the case, feel free to reach out. But you definitely can't podcast. I definitely this is not the thing that I do well.