Take 6 - Screenwriter Grant Pierce Myers, The Maze Runner

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 the board.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

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

SPEAKER_04 0:22

Sometimes even this is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Like everything in our business, you're gonna have to count. That doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

I was being told by my manager. And I promptly lost it. And I remember thinking like, well, that's it for me. I'm my one big shot. What I've realized from that moment is it's never one big shot. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_03 0:59

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, adversity, and failure in the entertainment industry. As always, I am your very successful non-entertainment host, Dan Ratstein, joined by the entertainment business failure himself, Noah Ebslin.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Hi, everybody. I'd like to uh uh welcome to the podcast a good friend and very talented screenwriter, Grant Pierce Myers, who's been a working screenwriter in Hollywood for a little over a decade and wrote the giant number one box office smash, Maze Runner. Welcome, Grant.

SPEAKER_04 1:36

Thank you for having me. I I was really touched when you reached out because you wanted to talk to me about failure.

SPEAKER_03 1:44

So let's let's start with that because you know you are a successful screenwriter. Maze Runner was an incredible success. It did very well, and yet here you are agreeing to come and talk about failure. So I guess we probably should start with there's been a maze runner too, and you weren't on it. I guess we'll start with that.

SPEAKER_04 2:06

Yeah, that that that's a form of a failure. Um, you know, my the very first kind of quote unquote maze runner failure story. So I so there are three writers credited with the screenplay for Maze Runner. The first writer, Noah Oppenheim, uh did his drafts a couple years before I was brought on to the project. I was the second writer on. Uh, I spent four months working on it uh with the director Westball. And then one day I get a call from the studio executive on the project, and he goes, I got good news and I got bad news. I'm like, Okay, let's hear it. He goes, the good news is we just got the green light, we're making the movie. And I was like, Okay, what's the bad news? He goes, You're not ever writing again on it. We brought in another writer to do some polish work. So to me, that kind of epitomizes our business, which is like like you just everything, even when you get good news, it feels like failure. I mean, like that that was a night that like champagne should have been popping, and all I heard was you're fired. Yeah, I'm one of three names on the movie, and we all get credit for it, and it did really well and it helped my career. But like, it's hard not to look back at that moment and just feel like I did something wrong. Like I didn't succeed there, and that's kind of ludicrous because you know, I think about myself a year before that, five years before that, I would have killed to be one of 50 writers with his name on a movie. And then you get to that moment, you're like, oh man, this is I I I screwed up. It's just our business is so weird that way.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

I I do want to add for our listeners, many of whom are are aspiring screenwriters, uh, to talk about what a yes, we're here to talk about failure, but what a tremendous accomplishment it is to be the writer who takes a studio tentpole movie and writes the draft that gets the green light. That is the pivotal draft in this whole process. Whether or not they took you off after for someone to do a comedy pass or whatever they ended up doing with you. But yeah, in your heart of hearts, you're suddenly feeling like, wow, did I fail? Why wasn't I on to the very end? Why aren't I on set? You know, and on and on.

SPEAKER_04 4:15

That it that is such a a weird part of our job because I mean, if you think about directors, producers, composers, editors, like no one else gets taken off a project in the middle of the project unless they've gone on like a three-week bender, you know. And for us, it's standard. And it's so hard not to feel like a failure when you get that call that we're moving on to another writer. And then on the flip side, we've all had the other part of that, which is like, oh, I'm gonna come in and rewrite someone else. And like that feels like a victory because I'm getting a job, but then I know how that other writer feels. And and it's it's you really have to, you know, to talk to yourself and say it's not a failure for someone to come in and do more work on a script. Because let's be honest, none of us are perfect screenwriters. Um, and some of us are just we crush dialogue, some of us can write a set piece like nobody else. Some of us are so funny. I've been in the room with comedy writers, they're another breed of human being, they're a different species, they're that funny. And none of us can do it all. And you just have to accept the fact that someone's gonna kind of have to come in and kind of fill the gaps that you don't have. But that really is hard to accept. And I'm not sure anyone ever gets fully there.

SPEAKER_03 5:30

So, if we were to have invited the first writer of Maze Runner onto the podcast, would he have the same story than that, you know, he's written it and then he gets the call saying, hey, we've had enough of you, we're bringing somebody else in. Maybe not within one phone call, but within a period of time.

SPEAKER_04 5:48

So I actually got to sit down with both Noah Oppenheim, the first writer, and T.S. Nolan, the third writer, right after we agreed on the credits. And we all we all sat down and just like shot the breeze for 30 minutes. And if I remember correctly, what Noah said was, you know, because his involvement was so far past, like he was happy with the work he did, but he considered that project dead. And you know, all of a sudden to get a call, oh, they're making it and your name's gonna be on it, you know, it's it's like the screenwriter equivalent of finding 20 bucks in your pocket after your jeans go through the wash. I mean, I've got projects out there in the world that, you know, have been sitting on a studio shelf for years. And if I got the call one day that, hey, um, that thing that you wrote five, six, seven years ago, we're making it, and a bunch of other writers have worked on it, it's really not what you wrote anymore. I'd be like, okay, well, that's fine. It's getting made. Um, I think the more distance you have from the project, the better you feel about it. Like it stung when I was taken off it because I literally turned in my draft and got that call a week later. You know, Noah got that call almost two and a half, three years later.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

It's actually pretty rare for a studio executive to give you that courtesy of that call and to tell you you've been taken off the project. Often these things just go silent and you have no idea that you've been taken off the project until you see someone else tweet or someone else talk about, or you have friends saying, Oh, my buddy's writing the new X movie, and you're like, I'm writing that movie, or I was writing that movie, they often don't give you the courtesy of that conversation.

SPEAKER_04 7:25

I give that studio executive a lot of credit. And since then, I I mean, so I have a policy, and you know, it's something I learned from other writers at the WGA that when you get hired to rewrite somebody else, you have to do your best to get in touch with that person and tell them, hi, I'm the writer who's being brought in. You know, thank you for the work you did. If you ever want to tell me anything about the project, I'm all ears. Um, and know that I appreciate you. And not many writers do that. I would love for that to become industry standard. Because again, it's it's don't think of it as being replaced. Think of it as a baton being passed. You know, it's it's a relay race. Because yeah, like you said, no, I've I've I literally found out I was replaced on one project in the trades. Like I opened it, and by the way, I opened up the trades, read the article, and it didn't even mention that I'd done the first draft. So, like, yeah, that stings. And I think the more the more we as writers can reach out to each other and just be like, hey man, you did a good job. I'm I'm just here to carry the torch a little longer. I think that matters.

SPEAKER_03 8:29

So it's interesting, the reaching out thing. I mean, in a in a civilized world, that feels like the right thing to do. But if my I'm gonna get this analogy right, if my wife left me and then her next husband called me up and said, I'm marrying your ex. I just want to sort of see if you've got any notes you can give me before we take that forward. I'm not sure I'd appreciate that. So when you when that happens, does the first writer always take it in a spirit to which it's intended, or do they is there some some grievance there sometimes?

SPEAKER_04 9:05

It depends on if they already knew. Um, I know I mean, because like to continue your analogy, one version is you and your wife have been divorced or separated for a period of time, and you're aware she's getting remarried, and the guy calls you. The other version is you're still married, your wife just left to go get groceries, and a guy calls you, is like, by the way, we're at the courthouse, I'm marrying your wife. So, you know, I've had I've had varying degrees of success. I've also what's interesting is I've had situations where the studio stonewalls me and tells me explicitly, don't do that. And that puts you in a tough spot because obviously, like contractually, the studio can make that demand, but I just as a person, I feel like I should still be making that call. Um, it gets it gets really tricky and sticky. I just don't ask anymore. You know, like if I get hired on something, like I just make the call.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

And you you also want to know where the bodies are buried, so to speak, right? You want to know where like this scene that you hate and you want to get rid of was actually the like the studio exec's like pitch, he loves this moment, don't, don't crap on this moment. So you want to know when you're coming in, that old writer knows all of that, knows the lay of the land completely. And that's the the benefit of that conversation in part.

SPEAKER_04 10:26

100%. A script is basically a minefield. And I very much want to know from the previous writer, you know, what can you tell me? And it's and it's also stuff like, hey, did anyone ever think about doing X? And hopefully that previous writer can be like, yeah, we brought up X and the producer threw a chair through a window. So, okay, good. I know not to do that.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

I want to come back to these moments right after the maze runner came out. But you brought up something really interesting that I want to spend one more second on, is that we all we all would like to think we can do everything really well. But and in TV, we're often given more of an opportunity to have more of our work on screen, especially if you're a higher-level TV writer. But even in TV rooms, your writing gets rewritten and rewritten and rewritten, and people are better at different things and it goes through this huge process. And when you're talking about a movie, a $200 million budgeted movie or a $100 million budgeted movie that they're expecting a billion-dollar return on, you know, it is like building a house where you have people that are great, you know, framers, then you have great finish carpenters, and you have great painters and electricians, and they very much view it that way. And there's very few people, maybe like the Michael Greens of the world, who can take it from the beginning to the end and be the only writer on this, but very few writers have that ability to do to do it all to the level that satisfies not only a producer, but a major corporation.

SPEAKER_04 11:55

Yes, and I should point out that you know, Maze Runner had a budget of like less than 30, so we didn't quite have that pressure. Um, but no, you're right. It's you know, if you're gonna spend that kind of money, you you better make sure you get it as right as possible. I will also say that you know, a studio executive, a producer, um, if a movie flops, they won't get fired because they brought in the biggest names, um, but they will get fired if they stuck with the unknown writer the whole time and the movie flops. Does that make sense? Um, I think there is a degree, 90% of the time they're bringing in the writer they think who needs to do the job to get it there. I think the other 10% of the time there is a little bit of covering their ass. I mean, well, this gets to what's so bizarre about this business is I mean, for all the reporting of box office numbers and success and this, and it's a subjective business. Like, there's no there's no way to sit down on paper and say, well, if I have this actor plus this director plus this script, plus you know, and that equals a hit. There's no it there's nothing's guaranteed. I mean, yes, I like your odds a lot better if you're making the Avengers movies, you know, but any movie can flop. I think because of that, people want to hire the most successful people, you know, the most successful directors, writers, etc. Because then if you do fail, at least you can point to it and say, Well, we hired the guys who work, so it's not on us.

SPEAKER_03 13:30

So, talking of movies failing, this is a question both to understand the mind of a writer, maybe also a test of what sort of person you are. So when Maze Runner 2 comes out, are you sitting there thinking, well, look, I hope all the kids die in the maze and the film is a complete flop? Or are you like, well, good luck to them, or I don't care because I don't care.

SPEAKER_04 13:52

You know, it was a mix of two things. One is I'm invested in the franchise because I've got my name on part of it. And so you want it to do as well as possible. I mean, that's that's very much a rising tide that can lift all boats. Um, the other part, especially with the second uh second film, second book, because it because the it's based on a trilogy of books, I'd read all the books before I wrote the first one. I was really curious to see how TS handled the second one. Um, the second book is not nearly as clean as the first book, and I mean there was a part of me that was just genuinely curious to see what he did.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

And I I want to back up though, just a heartbeat, because we are we're jumping a little ahead of the story, because there's a there's a story to be told about um, and this was I think where this is a discussion of failure and success and perseverance, where where you got taken off the movie, you have no idea how Maze Redner is going to do, and you actually have no idea if it's even gonna come out yet. It's green light, it's getting made. Hopefully they like it, hopefully it makes it through the whole process. Once a movie is greenlit, it almost always comes out unless there was a disaster, right? And it comes out and it becomes the number one movie in America. And I know for a lot of people, like for your career, it's really hard to get the next job based on a movie that has not come out yet. But now it has come out yet. And are you expecting that week and the week later, this is your first major credit, to for your career to be be transformed?

SPEAKER_04 15:20

Oh, you're absolutely expecting that. Um, because you know, in our in in our business as as writers, one of the things you're told is once you get a movie made, that you know, you go to another tier. Like you're you're competing against less people for the next job because you know, you're only going to compete with people that have had a movie made at that point, as opposed to the tier below you, which is people who were trying to get a movie made. And I definitely saw that bump in my career. I mean, and it started six months before the film came out, because I mean, everyone knows, you know. I mean, like my my agent, my manager, they're calling people like, yeah, like he wrote Maze Runner. And by the way, that's they don't say that because they're ignoring the other two writers. That's just how agents speak. Like, my guy wrote it. Like, there you go. But yeah, like I I got the bulk of the of the jobs I've I've booked, I got on the heels of Maze Runner. And to a certain extent, I mean, I was I was sent a lot of young adult books at that point because they were like, well, he did that one. He should he can probably do this one. But I got I got a good kind of cross-section of projects off of that. And yeah, that was the biggest, the biggest jolt my career ever got was because of Maze Runner.

SPEAKER_03 16:28

Don't take this the wrong way, but you are on a podcast about rejection and failure. You know, you get the bump. Is it sort of, you know, you you until you get the next massive bump, does that tail off, or can you still book work based on the I was the Maze Runner guy?

SPEAKER_04 16:45

It it tails off um and it tails off hard. Like you you really need to produce on the heels of a success. So I would say I got four jobs off of Maze Runner, none of them moved past the script stage. And like you have a window where you need to succeed again, or you kind of almost drift back to where you were prior to the film being released. Um, and that definitely happened. Because like you go from you know, get your your agent gets calls at least a couple times a week. Like, is he available? To maybe, I mean, this this this was a particularly bad year. Like, I think I maybe we got five of those calls total this year. Um, so it, I mean, it really goes up and down with your success. And that is really tough to handle. I mean, because you you kind of get used to, oh, I will be able to book another job. Um, and you just kind of you don't take it for granted because you know how fragile these careers are, but at the same time, you're confident. Like I I know I will find another job. And then you don't for a long stretch. And it's weird. And and in terms of failure, you don't even you feel like a failure because you haven't booked one, but it's not because of anything you did. You know, it's like it's you know, Maze Runner was 2014. Um, we're six years out. Like that movie's still good, and my name is still on it, but because I haven't written another thing that's gotten made since then, I'm I'm trending downward. And I've written a lot of stuff, I've been hired on jobs, none of it's moved to the next level. It's a subjective business you think is the best thing you've ever written. And you show it to everybody, and they're just like, eh. And it's so hard to tell, like, am I right and they're wrong, or are they right and I'm wrong? Um, and that can really tear you up. That gets that gets difficult.

SPEAKER_03 18:51

How do you handle it? What's your process of you know, at home with your family? What do you how do you manage this?

SPEAKER_04 18:59

So, one of the things that we started doing really early on in my career was, and this is and this is something I encourage every young screenwriter I talk to to do. We started celebrating the little things. We we we have what I call or what my family calls Hollywood days, where like, oh, today I had to like the this started when I I was working on a project and I got to go meet the director um at the Soho House to talk about the script. And I mean, like, and if you and if you don't, you know, if you're not in the industry, you don't live in Los Angeles. So the Soho House is like this kind of trendy spot. You have to be a member to get in. You go in there and it's all industry people and it's swanky. And it was the first time I'd ever been there, and you just you hear stories about it. So I get to go there, and I'm I'm sitting with this director, and I I've seen his movies in the theater, and you know, he's talking about my script. And and I went home and I said to my wife, like, oh my god, like I can't believe that happened. And like that night we popped champagne and we we said that was a Hollywood day, and that movie didn't get made. But you have to celebrate those days where it's like, oh my God, this is what I thought this job would feel like. So you obviously celebrate on a day when you get hired on something. Um, but when you have those, you know, those other days where something happens, you have to appreciate them and you have to celebrate. Otherwise, you'll go insane. If you, if you if you wait for the perfect time to celebrate, you'll have a very old bottle of champagne sitting in your refrigerator when you die.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

Yeah. You said something that really stuck with me just now, a second ago, which is how you stop at some point, you also stop knowing what is good and what is not good anymore because you've gotten to a level of high competency, right? You're getting hired, your movies are getting made, you can you can put words on the page, you can make scenes look like what they're supposed to look like, and you finish something. Sometimes you finish something and you're like, ah, that was good, it wasn't great. Sometimes you finish something and you're like, that was amazing. And the response to those two scripts could be completely reversed. The thing that you're like, eh, people are like, I love this, and the thing you're like, this was amazing, they're like, eh, and you're like, you know, it's hard to get to that level of consistency in your own head, and it gets confusing for writers at every level of of, you know, of just sort of keeping, I think we're all driven by confidence and keeping your confidence up to a level of saying, yeah, you know, trying to avoid imposter syndrome, but also literally just trying to make sure you are earning your paycheck and making sure you're always writing at the highest level. And it does get sort of these gray areas because you're not always talking about the art. Sometimes you're talking about the commerce, right? We're in this world of art and commerce that gets mixed up a lot. Um, and how do how do you sort of you know financially plan for the hard times uh in all of this? Because I mean, we're We're all dealing with it.

SPEAKER_04 22:03

Yeah, it's fine. I get this question from everybody. Like, how do you how do you do your personal finances when I mean because it's well actually the first question anyone always asks me is like, so like what studio do you write for? And I'm like, Well, I'm completely freelance, so I have written for Fox, Universal, Warner Brothers. It's it's not the old studio system where like, oh, I'm owned by Paramount and I write everything for them. And then they want to know, well, oh my God, how do you how what do you do about money? Because you don't know when it's going to come in. And I'm like, yeah, you you learn to not make big lavish purchases. Um, you learn to, I mean, and all the other things people should know about screenwriters, you get paid in large chunks, which probably sounds awesome, but it's really hard to be paid like many thousands of dollars and know that that's the only money you're getting for maybe the next year and a half. You know, because like your instinct is like, oh, cool, I'm just gonna settle all the credit card debt that I racked up getting here, and then I'll buy myself something shiny. But it's like, no, I can't do that because I don't know when the next paycheck's coming. So you really learn to kind of budget out and be responsible. I will say, you do have to find some little thing that you treat yourself on because otherwise you'll go insane. I had a I had a friend tell me um that like he he really likes watches. So like he buys like antique, he'll buy an antique like wristwatch every time he like has a project hit a certain point. Um, and it's not a super expensive thing. He spends like you know 150 bucks, but it's like something he has that then he associates with a project. What my wife and I decided to do, and it and it's it's the two of us decided because like I look at us as a team, like she's there for all the ups and downs, she's part of this. You know, when I get hired on a project or when I sell something, we buy a small piece of jewelry that she gets to wear. Um, and what I like about that is we've, you know, over time we've racked up, and by the way, when I say small, we're talking like hundred bucks, but we've racked up this collection of little things. We're like, we'll go out to dinner and she's wearing a certain necklace, and like, oh my God, you're wearing the necklace from the Warner Brothers project. And it it's a nice way to remind yourself, I have been successful, I am making a living at this. I also look at those as like, you know, those are those are keepsakes that'll be handed down to my children and my grandchildren, and they'll be able to say, Oh my god, you know, my my dad bought that, or my grandfather bought that for my mom, my grandmom, um, because he wrote a movie for Warner Brothers. Um, and then the side note to that is that if a project gets made, she gets a much bigger, shinier thing. So for Maze Runner, she got something with a diamond on it.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

So a brilliant idea. And actually, given part of this show is you know bringing people on, and obviously Noah works in this world. Noah, maybe you could learn something here. So, you know, I know when you book a gig, you buy yourself, you know, a new tennis racket or you take yourself to Vegas. Maybe you should buy presents for your wife as well, because that seems like a much nicer thing to do, given they have to put up with all the downsides.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

My my actually in my family, uh, the gifts go to the kids. So we'll do like a little trip out to celebrate. We call them script gifts, same thing. You you do something special. Let's go to Joshua Tree as a family or go skiing as a family and do something with the kids, take them out of school for two days, because I think we've learned the same thing. And my and my partnerships with my wife is exactly the same as Grant's partnership with his wife, is you're in this together, like the stress of the finances, and there's boom years and there's boom weeks and months, and then there's months where you you just miss things slightly. Um, but what I you know, continuing on the finance side of things, which I found really interesting, between uh releasing a major movie and then your next gig, we actually had uh, and Grant, you and I had spoken about her as well. We had Adele Limb on the podcast a few weeks ago, and Adele spoke about very famously the Crazy Rich Asian story, where she came on and she got paid scale, basically. The movie was a hit, and then she got offered scale again. And there's supposed to be this sort of upward trending fee when you have a uh a monster movie come out. Grant, is there is there still truth in that, or is that changing?

SPEAKER_04 26:19

Uh there I there's no truth that I've experienced. I think that that that trend stopped years ago. I mean, look, this business is changing minute by minute. It you you used to be able to, at least I'm told, you used to be able to rely on the fact that every job, no matter if it got made or not, you'd be moving your quote, which is how much you get paid, up by a little bit. Last year I wrote this, I got paid X. This year I wrote this, I get paid X plus 5%. That doesn't happen anymore. When I wrote Maze Runner and then got hired on my next job, my agent, you know, said to them, Okay, well, this is what he was paid for Maze Runner, so you need to pay him more. And they went, No, we don't. And we were like, What wait a minute, that's how this works. Like, you get a bump when a movie gets made. And their response was, okay, well, then he doesn't have to take it. And I think there used to be an element of good faith in the industry that the studio side, and by the way, it's not like executives or producers who decide what I get paid, it's business affairs, it's lawyers. But I think there used to be an element of good faith where they would say, we understand that you are a freelance worker and you've had success. So yes, you've earned a raise. I don't think that's there anymore. Um, because my quote has barely moved since Maze Runner. The only time I got my quote moved at all is when I sold a spec in a bidding war two years ago. And then immediately after that, for another job, my guys showed that quote in there in the studio, like, well, no, that was a bidding war. That doesn't count. So, which I mean, okay. But yes, I the studios definitely move the goalposts like that. I think you just you have to become so successful that it's a loss if they don't get you. You know, you mentioned Michael Green earlier, who's one of my favorite writers too. Like, if if you go if you want Michael Green to write, you know, murder on the on the Orient Express and then do Death on the Nile, like, yeah, you're gonna have to pay him what he's worth. Because if you you you can't afford to say to him, oh, you can walk away. No, because we're back to that point earlier about like people get fired when they don't get the big name writer. But like writers at my level uh and and below, yeah, like they they know you need the job, so like they're just being like, take it or leave it, and you gotta take it most of the time.

SPEAKER_03 28:52

If you had a choice, and obviously, I know the whole thing about your world is you very rarely have a choice about anything, but if you if you had a choice between a maze runner-esque scenario where you get to write on a movie, a big movie, but you also sort of get fired and detach from it before it's even come out, or you can write for a slightly less successful movie, but you're not getting sort of fired in that same call, and you can stay with it with the potential of something later. Which would you actually prefer?

SPEAKER_04 29:27

That's really tough, and it's funny, it gets into like much deeper chess moves because there's a whole way that credit is determined on a feature film. It's not just like, oh, those are the three guys, let's put all their names on it. It's and it's not just like, oh, the producer likes that guy, so we'll put his name on it. Um, there is the the writers' guild has a whole process where uh a panel of arbitrary all the drafts and then they determine what they think the who deserves the credit. And it's a pretty contentious process, as you can imagine, because you know, everyone thinks that they did the most, and you know, someone obviously is gonna come up short. So, I mean, look, if if I had a chance to write on Avengers 10 and I was gonna be one of 10 people writing on it, and I had a chance to get my name on it, I would probably, oh, this is tough. I mean, like there's a part of me that's like, yes, you take that shot, but then it's like, or you're the only name on an indie film, and you're not gonna get paid nearly as much, and yada yada yada, but maybe that movie will do well enough that it'll be worth being the only name on that. It's it's almost impossible to choose because because it's everything is so unpredictable.

SPEAKER_03 30:53

You know, the thing is, I you know, I love Mage Runner, and you know, when when this was all agreed, Noah says, you know, my my good friend Grant who wrote Mage Runner's coming on, and I did my research, and you know, when you tell the story of what happened, I guess it feels like having a wedding where some of the guests get COVID and die. You know, it's like your sort of greatest achievement, but it's also quite sad at the same time. It just seems a shame that you got fired in the same call that your big movie came from.

SPEAKER_04 31:24

Yeah, and and it's something that sticks. I mean, look, I my parents have the poster hanging in their house, and damn it, it's in the living room. So, like, I see I you can't walk into their house and not see it. And by the way, it's really funny when their friends come over who don't know that I'm around like, why do you have a poster for the maze runner in your house? And you know, but yeah, like it's a constant reminder. And again, you really have to remind yourself like I didn't fail, like they didn't take me off because I did a bad job. It's it's just that like that's they they needed the one more writer to do something I couldn't. The I mean the other thing is you know, we've talked about money and finances, and you know, people always read about oh, this writer sold a script for a million dollars. What people don't realize about how we get paid is when you see that headline, a million-dollar script sale, that writer's gonna make uh $100,000 right up front. The other $900,000, he only gets if the movie gets made and his is the only name on it. So, and by the way, yes, I I realize that $100,000 for selling a bunch of words is pretty spectacular. And that is a nice part about our business when you can actually sell it like that. But but so yeah, like getting a movie made and getting a credit on it determines an enormous part of your financial future. And all deals are structured so that you get X if you're the only credited writer, and you get a half of that if you share credit. So, you know, it can really be a financial blow if you have to share credit. Yeah. I I don't know if it's quite like all your guests getting COVID, but it's maybe like more guests show up and you have to pay more for the wedding.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

I I think I think, you know, staying on the subject for another second, I think all we want, you know, uh Dan, you had mentioned like, do you want to do a prestige film where your name's on it, or do you want a big budget film? I think at the end of the day, all of us want is just to stay in the game, right? We're all Grant, myself, you know, there's these white-collar premiere A-list writers, and they're in Hancock Park and Brentwood, and they're they're pretty much made for the rest of their careers. And then there's a whole bunch of WGA writers who are slightly beneath that. They haven't had their breakout yet, they're making good money in comparison to other people some years, and some years they don't make anything. And I call those the blue-collar writers, right? The blue-collar writer is really struggling right now more than they ever have for reasons that Grant brought up. You're if you're not getting any bumps in your in your pay when you do good work, if you're not consistently lining up gigs, and sometimes you're not consistently lining up gigs for no reason of your own, right? You just missed for just strange reasons, or the IP disappeared, or that they hired their best buddy, or the director had a pet writer. So there's all these different reasons why you might not get hired. And it's been really tricky, you know, and then you throw in the pandemic right now, right? The studios have stopped buying the amount of films that they're normally buying, and TV shows, writers' rooms, maybe staffed at half the level they normally do this year. And the studios are still playing hardball with all of these writers. They're saying, we're not gonna up your quotes, we're not gonna, and they just expect us to survive somehow and still have a pool of writers to come back to in four to six months or a year, or however long it takes for the pandemic to end. Do you have any thoughts, Grant, on on ways that you know that this could get better, or are we sort of just stuck in this for the long haul because this is how the game works?

SPEAKER_04 35:04

I think at the moment we're stuck in it because so here's I mean, here's a a story that really plays to this. So uh on one project, you know, that I got hi I got hired on. Again, my agent goes in and says, you know, he was paid this on his last one, and then you know, but Maze Runner's been made since then, and da-da-da. He should be paid a lot more. And I ended up, you know, they ended up saying, Well, we'll pay him five percent more. And my agent said that's insulting. And the business affairs lawyer said, I wish I got a five percent raise this year. And I wanted to scream when they told me that because it's like, dude, you have a steady job. Like, you're gonna be in that job next year and the year after. This is the one job I might have this year. So a 5% raise to me is not the same as it is to you. I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding on the studio side, on the lawyer side, on the business affair side of what we do, how we get paid, and how we make a living. The only way I see us getting any significant changes in this is through, you know, through collective bargaining, through the writers' guild. Um, and look, I I try to be very active in the Writers' Guild because I think um feature writers are underrepresented there. Um, but we we need to increase, you know, we always try to increase feature writer minimums, you know, what because there is a minimum you can be paid to write a script and do a rewrite and all that. It's just we got to move those numbers up because I don't think they're I don't think they're climbing with just the state of our world. Um, and you're right, the blue the blue-collar writers out there, you used to be able to make a pretty good living getting hired to do one or two things a year, but life's gotten expensive. Los Angeles has gotten expensive. These days, even with COVID, you gotta kind of live in Los Angeles. I mean, now it's a little more easy to be remote. Um, but as soon as COVID's dealt with, knock on wood, you're gonna have to be in Los Angeles. And and it's hard to live there and only get paid once a year. So yeah, it's it's it's gotta be about it's gotta be about our guild fighting for you know more pay, big bigger pay for us.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

And hopefully we do better next collective bargaining. We had such a little bargaining potential this this round. When you sell your first thing and you're really excited, and your producers that you've teamed up with in the studio, they're all you know, you must have had a spec script or something or a big project, and you're now this is your first big sale, and everybody loves you, and there's a lot of attention on you, and they're like, we want to make this as the best thing we've read all year. You're getting all of this praise. Then they tell you, which is great words to hear, business affairs is gonna call your agent, right? So that's that's when they hand off their side of things to the lawyers, and then the lawyers send the deal, and it's like getting a, you know, although it's nice to see, it's like a great moment when the deal comes in, it's also being it's it's also like having cold water dumped all over your head because you see what little value you actually are to them based on the first set of numbers they give you. Now, this is a negotiation, so things are just beginning, but they often are like, wait, I thought they love what this is not love. I don't know what this is. And you have to realize it's two different departments and that the studios are huge corporations that are constantly trying to squeeze everything down to the most amount of profit they they can get, which is getting your numbers as low as possible. So it's just it's it's the business side can be really the most disappointing side of this whole game.

SPEAKER_04 38:31

I mean, look, there's a reason we call it show business and not show art. If you get to, if you ever get to work on a project that is purely about the art, you're incredibly fortunate. 99% of the time, a movie is being made because they think they can make money from it. You know, they're gonna put in X, they're gonna get out at least two or three X. The business side, yeah, you're right. It's maddening. It is, it's it's cold showers, it's you know, uh, you know, even if you've got the hottest spec in town and it sells in a bidding war, yeah, then you're gonna have six weeks of contract negotiations. Uh, then you'll finally sign your deal after maybe two months, three months, and then you know, then it's gonna take you another three months to get paid. I mean, I I'll give universal credit. They're the fastest studio to ever pay me, and it took them a month. Um, most places it takes three, four months to get paid. So I yeah, I mean, it's there is no glamour on the business side. There's no glamour in the money. I tell people all the time that I don't do, I don't, I, you know, I love to write, this is what I really want to do, but I'm also here because I can't do math and I can't dunk a basketball. You know, this is what I got.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

Perfectly segues into our standard final question, which is if you could give one piece of advice to somebody thinking about coming into this industry, if they are still thinking about coming to the industry, having listened to this podcast and the previous versions of it, what would that piece of advice be?

SPEAKER_04 40:06

I mean, I've got about 50 all teed up, but because we're talking about failure, you know, if you're gonna go into this line of work, you need to be ready to hear no. You need to be ready to have your heart broken. This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default, you know, that's the norm. I mean, imagine if you were going to med school and on the first day they said, you, you know, 90% of your patients will die. If you were an engineer and they said 90% of the bridges you build will fall down. Like that's what this is. And so you gotta make sure that you love this more than anything else. And and I think a big part of that is you gotta know, do you enjoy watching movies in television or do you need to write them? And I think that's a that's a a very fine but a very important distinction. Um, because a lot of people love movies and TV, but they love consuming. You gotta make sure that you have something to say. You gotta make sure because it's gonna be hard and doors are gonna get slammed in your face, and you're gonna be broke, and it's gonna be miserable sometimes. You gotta make sure that what you have to say is so important to you that you're willing to wade through all that. I just wrote this summer um the most personal script I've ever written. I mean, it's it, you know, I'm an action adventure writer, and I wrote this small family drama. And I mean, like, it it is the most powerful thing I've ever written. And I showed it to my agents. They're like, we don't know what to do. What do we do with this? This isn't you. And and the idea of being told this thing that I needed to say, we don't think anyone's gonna listen. You have to be able to take that and then say what I said to myself was maybe no one wants it right now, but someone's gonna want it one day. So I'm not gonna give up on that script. I'm that like it's always gonna be in my hand until I find someone else who loves it as much as I do who will help me get that story out there. You you just you have to be able to persevere. And part and that and that just comes back to making sure you've got something that needs to be said that people need to hear.

SPEAKER_01 42:33

Yeah. And it's worth adding at the very tail end of this because that was actually really inspirational, Grant. And I'm I'm glad you added that. Is that the hot the lows are kind of low, but you get used to them. The highs are really fucking high. Like when you are on a roll and you are doing well and people are responding to your work, you're you you love this more than anything else you could possibly think of doing. It's not it's not a job to any of us. I mean, we get paid, it's who we are and what we are, and it's just fundamental to to to everything going on inside of our psyche. So that's I mean, and that's that's where you need to be.

SPEAKER_04 43:04

I 100%. I'm actually convinced that the majority of us have gambling addictions. You know, like we may not all be going to Vegas, but I mean, you have to want to ride those lows in order to get to the highs to do this business.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

My my parents once asked me, what does it feel like to be you? And I said, exactly that. Imagine you're in Vegas, you're on a high, you're in a high gambling machine, slot machine, and you have two sevens have hit already, and your whole life is watching that reel, wondering if the third seven's gonna hit and you're gonna get a good payout. That's every single day of our life, and that's really exciting, actually.

SPEAKER_04 43:42

I I actually I'm a big blackjack guy, and I I think blackjack always feels like screenwriting to me because you know, you get dealt cards, and you're like, okay, I see what I got here. I can make do with this, I know what to do with this. And you're like, oh, sweet, I got an 11. Well, I have to double down. And and like you, you, you play, you you play it exactly how you're supposed to, and then you know, the dealer's got 21. And you go from convinced you're having a steak dinner to holy shit, I can't pay my rent. Now, to be fair, because I'm sure my parents will track this down on the internet, I have never wagered my rent money at a blackjack table, but there is that component of it.

SPEAKER_03 44:22

Amazing. Look, um, Grant, thank you very much for this. When the pandemic is over and you come back to Los Angeles, as a member of Soho House West Hollywood, I'll take you there for dinner and I'll give you one of your Hollywood days. I really appreciate that. Tell them you had dinner with a hotshot podcaster, and then, you know, uh and then buy your wife for some jewelry on the way home.

SPEAKER_04 44:48

By the way, it's funny, if you really pull quotes from this, I sound like such an obnoxious asshole complaining about, oh, I'm only one of three writers on a film.

SPEAKER_03 44:58

No, look, it's been brilliant. Thank you for you know being so honest, speaking with such candor. I think it's um it's a tough business and being grilled by somebody outside the business about like how difficult it is and all these failures, you know, appreciate your resilience. So thank you very much for coming on. Well, I appreciate you having me.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

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

SPEAKER_03 45:27

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_01 45:34

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_03 45:47

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

SPEAKER_01 45:59

Yes, I am looking for a job of any sort. I can polish shoes, I can write copy, I can even be in a writer's room. So if that's the case, feel free to reach out.

SPEAKER_03 46:09

But you definitely can't podcast.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

I definitely this is not the thing that I do well.