Take 23 - Blind Writer Ryan Knighton, Cockeyed, In the Dark

SPEAKER_00 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 literature.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

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

SPEAKER_03 0:22

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

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Like everything in our business here and I was being told by my manager yourselves.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

And I promptly lost it. And I remember thinking like, well, that's it for me. I do my one big guy when I've realized what that will be. It's never one bit job. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_03 0:59

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. Um, as always, I am your non-entertainment co-host, Dan Rotstein, now fully vaccinated. Noah, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:15

I'm also fully vaccinated now that we're making that a thing on this podcast. Happily vaccinated. I am um uh I use the word excited, so I'm trying to like my brain just freezes every time. I am super thrilled and excited to introduce this next guest because I've actually been a fan of his work for a while. His name is Ryan Knighton. He's an internationally acclaimed blind author, screenwriter, journalist, and performer. He's written two memoirs, Cock Eyed and Come on Papa. In fact, uh Cock Eyed is now in work because that's a feature film, which he also wrote that Ryan Reynolds is attached to direct. Ryan Knighton has also written for the New York Times, Outside, Esquire, The Globe, Mail, Popular Mechanics, The Observer, Men's Health, and on and on and on and on. Uh the list that goes, you know, on for at least half a page as a screenwriter. Knighton has written for Unifir Studios, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and has created several original pilots for FX. Most currently, we can find Ryan Knight and working on the network drama in the dark. Ryan also loves to surf, which is one of my favorite details. Welcome, Ryan.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

I'd hire him.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

I mean, you know, obviously Noah, it's you know, it's at the beginning of your bio. Noah, as Noah read out, you know, you're you are indeed blind. So I guess the obvious first question is tell us about the surfing.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Talk about adversity, right? Um yeah, the well, the surfing came around. Um uh my side gig, my sort of side project is I've been a travel writer for about 15 years. And uh about 10 years ago, Outside magazine sent me on an assignment uh to do cold water surfing. And it was sort of an idea I came up with with a friend of mine um because uh he's a pro surfer, uh, but he happens to be deaf. And I thought, oh, that'd be a really funny piece. The deaf guy tries to teach the blind guy how to surf, and it would be like a threes company episode. Uh, and it worked about that well. But uh we came out here to uh to Fino on the west coast of Vancouver Island to do that, which is where he had started in the 80s when it was just like at the end of a logging road. And uh I got up the first the first session I went out. I got up, you know, for about two seconds. And when I fell down and I, you know, sort of surfaced again, I realized, oh, this is gonna be a problem. I'm gonna, this is something I've been wanting to do for a long time and I didn't really know it. And partially it's because as a blind person, like I haven't run in 20 years, like I just don't move quickly under my own control or will at all. So the fact I can get up on a board and go quickly and feel safe that I'm not gonna hit anything. Um, it just it's it's a feeling that's very alien to me. And I mean, Noah surfs too, so he can attest to this probably more than I can. There's a very peculiar quality in surfing that it's a very internal activity. And I didn't know that. It's it drives you very much inside yourself. You have to be completely aware of what where all your balance is, how it's moving in very small ways. And it's you interacting with a wave by feel. So uh it actually lends itself really well to not being able to see. Uh, the only challenge is actually just catching the wave because out past the break, uh, they don't make enough noise for me to sort of gauge where they are and when they're coming or see where the shoulder is. So I work with a coach who calls me in. She's like, after this bump, start paddling it's left, and then I'm I'm good, you know, and uh then I come back out and try to find her again, paddle out into the void.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

I mean, I I'm I'm trying to process all of this as you're saying it as a fellow surfer, how difficult it is to be in the lineup and not 100% know where the wave is, because I know if you're like even inches off, sometimes your whole wave is thrown off. But yeah, while you're up, I can imagine that you can start to work with your the rest of your body and the rest of your you know soul, I guess, to connect with the wave and to connect with the surfing. Uh, you and I could spend probably three and a half hours just talking about this. So uh, but you know, I I want to talk about you know your segue because you do you do um you know multiple as a few of the guests that have come on here, they they're you know they write in an in a number of different disciplines. What did you you know first decide that screenwriting was what you wanted to do? And what were the first early challenges for you as a screenwriter?

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Huh. Well, you know, it's funny. I was thinking about it this morning and I was trying to remember why I started because it's been a while. I think I went through the Sundance Lab in 2008, uh, and that was my first script, and it was when I had attempted to adapt my memoir Cockide. Um and I think it was because, well, I I you know, actually it did, I started out of uh rejection because uh my book had come out. It was my first sort of big book, my memoir Cock Eyed, and it was with Penguin. And my lit agent at the time, so this is a book agent, not like a lit lit agent in the screenwriting sense. Um, she had a film rights agent who was trying to sell the film rights to the book, and it didn't land anywhere. And uh, you know, we were just moving on to the next book, and I kept thinking, but I think there's a movie in this thing somewhere. And so I said to her, Can I just talk to the film rights agent? She said, Go ahead. So I called him and I said, There's a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor of this book that I think would help it as a movie. And he just said, Well, if you wrote me up a treatment, it would help. And I said, Okay, great, what's a treatment? And he he sent me three and I tried to imitate them. We couldn't sell it, nobody bought it. I had some meetings though, which was interesting. And then uh he said, You should just take a crack at it and just see if you can adapt it. And I said, Great, how do I do that? And uh, so he sent me three scripts. I I couldn't tell you what they were now, and uh told me to get final draft, and I just took a swing at it. And the whole time I just was kind of giddy at the idea because I thought, how badass is it to be a blind person trying to describe a picture at a sight of people? Like this is Hollywood's really screwed up if they go with this. Um but then this peculiar thing happened when I was writing it that I really loved adapting it. I loved breaking the book, rebuilding it as a new animal. And screenwriting was this very surprisingly welcoming genre for a blind person, a blind writer, because you're in the process of trying to describe a movie to people who can't see it. So to be writing from that perspective of empathy for what how confusing it is to read a script that doesn't imitate the temporal experience of watching a movie. Um, I just found like it's a very comfortable place to go in as a screenwriter or as a screenwriter to come in as a blind person. Um and so I never left. That's that's what happened. I wrote that that first draft, and they connected me with the Sundance lab, and I got into the lab, and uh that was its own story because I got lost there, as blind people do, it turns out. But uh that yeah, that was the the first way I got into it. So it actually started with rejections because Hollywood didn't want my book. So I thought, well, I'll see if we can I can show them what's in it otherwise. And it's had a long meandering career. I don't think it'll it'll ever happen. Uh Ryan Reynolds attached to it before Deadpool actually was made. He and I were working on it because we discovered we were actually born in the same hospital in this very small town in Canada that doesn't even exist anymore. Uh, we grew up like maybe 10 minutes apart from each other in this town. We didn't know each other. Um, so anyway, that that's sort of a different story, but yeah, it started with rejection. That's that's what brought me into screenwriting.

SPEAKER_03 9:03

Starting with rejection is good for this podcast. So it's interesting the the way you describe this, that in in a in a in a way you have an advantage because you're used to having to describe things that you can't see. So writing a script, not you know, directing a show, but writing a script, you can imagine things in a different way. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_02 9:29

No, it's the other way around. I've spent my life having other people try to describe things to me I can't see. And I've felt the frustrations of um, you know, somebody's trying to tell you what's going on on screen when you can't see it. There's a rhythm and a pacing to the language that needs to imitate the temporal experience of the movie. So, you know, if I was walking down the street and I was about to cross the street and a bus was barreling down at me, I don't want an out of control, overly ornate sentence about there's a bus about to hit you. That's not the speed of the sentence I want. And same thing in a script. I want the sentence to imitate the timing of the screen. And um, that's not something that you typically get when somebody is just whispering in your ear, uh trying to describe the picture up there for you. So it comes from more just a sense of the empathy of trying to get a script to behave on paper uh like a moving picture does. And oddly, in a weird way, some of the best training comes from radio because radio has a similar problem built into it of that you're trying to tell a story. Like I've done stories with This American Life and The Moth. And when you're on radio, you're trying to tell a story and be aware of how it's unfolding in real time for somebody. Uh, but having come out of the book world, you don't have that worry. You know, you're the page is a very uh illusory experience of time, you know. So uh I find that's often the thing that many novelists have said to me when they've come into screenwriting for the first time that shift from working on the page and the page as the final product is a very different thing than coming into writing a page that has to translate into real time. Um, so scenes have to really kind of imitate uh the temporal experience that a novel just does not. So um that that's kind of what I mean about the empathy that I come to it with, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

And I mean, from a just a pure process, we'll we'll get into some real rejection pitches and all of that stuff, but from a from a pure process standpoint, you know, are you are do you kind of write through the musicality kind of of the words on the page? Like I know that people can get a lot from a table read and whatever, hearing their document read to them. And I'm assuming that you use a program that reads the script to you. Is that is that kind of is the rhythms that you talked about the speed of the bus and the the rhythm of the sentence. Are you is your writing style sort of matching the rhythms of the world as you hear them? Um, as opposed to because obviously you're not seeing them? I I hope so.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

I mean, um the Wally script is a great example of a script that really does that well. Like every line is basically a shot. So the reading experience of it has such a feeling of the camera and of the pacing. Um, and even the syntax of it. I mean, what is uh, as they say in rhetoric, what's thematized, like what's put at the beginning of the sentence versus the end of the sentence, what's what's made the subject of the sentence, it moves around with such specificity. And um, I'm not saying I'm perfect at it or the greatest either. It's just it's something that I really appreciate in the script. Um, and so for me, writing, yes, I use a program that's called JAWS that's developed mostly for visually impaired people. Um, and it's basically the Stephen Hawking voice. And it's improved over the years. There's there's far better programs, but I've been using this same voice for oh, like 13, 14 years. And I don't want to change it because it is my writing voice. You know, it's you have a voice in your head when you're reading, it's a separate voice from you. Um, I don't have a voice in my head when I'm reading. The voice in my head would be this computer voice that's reading to me. So I have this very intimate relationship with it, and I'm sort of afraid if I change it, um, that my writing voice will change too. Because it's really a me and this computer fighting all the time to try and make it sound more human, you know. Uh so that that's sort of the origins of it. Like when my first book had come out, a critic, I think it was a British critic, had complained that that he felt it it read a little too much like somebody sitting on a bar stool beside you talking. And I realized, well, that's because it is, but it happens to be Stephen Hawking. You know, so the book was written very orally that way. Like I touch type, uh, I don't dictate, but it's being constantly read back to me out loud. And I don't know how people write scripts without hearing them out loud, because to me, I edit by ear, uh not by eye. And I I think it's key to it actually.

SPEAKER_03 14:01

I mean, some British people can be very mean, so I wouldn't always you know listen to the British. Was that was that you? It wasn't you, no, I wasn't. Um so look, obviously, as um, well, we've had 22 episodes of this podcast, and obviously every writer's had 20 years of this in their career. Like, this is not a straightforward industry to be in at the best of times. Given that not only are you competing with everybody in terms of sort of the quality of the writing and the ability to pitch and tell your story and network and all that stuff, you're also at a disadvantage in the sense that um, you know, people can like when Noah's preparing to pitch for a show, he watches 20 episodes of a show very quickly. He can obviously quickly read back through his scripts, all of that stuff. Like, are you having to work 20% harder than everyone else just to keep up?

SPEAKER_02 15:02

That's such a compliment. Yes, I'd like to say yes, but no, it's not. I don't. Um, it's funny, like I have a very particular process, and maybe it's just because I've come out of so many other forms of writing, as you pointed out at the top. Like I've come out of books and journalism and radio and travel writing. Um so you know, sort of blending into the crowd of a new crowd is sort of what I'm always going for. And I don't have the same speed as everybody else, but I find what I do is try to leverage my other advantages, which is um I spend more time on one specific thing. Uh like I'll sit with something for a long time, you know, rather than consuming a ton of stuff, I'll consume one thing and get to know it really intimately. Um, because like if I watch something and I like it, I'll have to go read the script to see what I missed because I'm only going by what I hear. And uh it's just a different, it's a different process with the world for me. Like I I find everybody else moves much quicker than I do. So rather than trying to keep up, which is a recipe for disaster, uh, I try to leverage the advantages I have in being different and working differently that way.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

You you said a couple of things that have really kind of resonated with me and I think will resonate with our audience because people are always looking for new techniques to get better at their trade craft. And Dan had mentioned that I can watch a bunch of episodes of a TV show before I a staffing meeting or whatever. What Dan doesn't realize is I've I've asked in the past, and I've never actually got this, to get the the episodes on disk so I could listen to them in the car. Not watch them, but listen to them because the the rhythm and the cadence of the main actors, you can almost imagine it better than being distracted by what's on the screen. We obviously what's on the screen matters to a screenwriter and whatever, but it's it's you're you're looking for the rhythms and the cadences as you're trying to find the voice of uh of the lead cast, trying to figure out where you place in this ecosystem of this TV show. And that often I can see that, you know, just listening to something and if you trust that skill will actually probably really help you as a screenwriter. And for those of you out there who are not yet using maybe your ears in that way, it can be super useful to have your script read to you, either through a program or through somebody else, to begin to process your language that way and the words. I mean, because our craft started out really as you know, people telling stories that didn't have a visual component, right? Way back in the beginning of time. We we're we're just you know a modern rhapsody of of of some sort. And I and I think that the the images have added and changed things, but it's not always, it's our job to put them on the page, but it's someone else's job to execute that and direct it and to shoot it. So I think there is a lot to be said with you know the process that you that you do to create something unique and something special. And I think that might be additive. Uh, you know, Dan said it might take more time, but I should think that there might be something really special to the way that you approach this thing.

SPEAKER_02 18:04

I also have more times. I don't play video games or watch sports. So I think, you know, I can I I can afford the times I do less in some ways. Like they're when you're blind, the number of verbs you engage with gets smaller, so you spend more time with each one of them. And in my case, driving is not one of those verbs, nor is video gaming. Um, but you I think you're absolutely right. Like it's sort of part of the thing I've noticed over my career and moving through different genres is that a lot of the work is figuring out how you work. Uh, and it it'll change over time, and you need to pay as much attention to that part of the craft, uh, you know, the sort of the self-realization of what works for you and where your strengths are, but also what gets you into something. Like I can't start a project until I figure out the voices. Um, some people like to just you know, jump into a story and start writing a treatment, or they like to start figuring out plot stuff and then work backwards from there. Uh, everybody's got their thing. And mine is if I can't hear the characters in my head uh having breakfast, you know, doing something that banal, then I'm not ready to start writing. And I start with voices, and then that leads to questions about why do they talk like that? And uh, well, where do they come from if they talk like that? And it it to me, it's the tip of the iceberg to get through. And, you know, I don't see the images on TV, of course, but I think you're right about listening to it. Like you'd be surprised how much you can follow on TV without actually looking at it, because it's perfectly curated reality. Like in my case, I go around the world now. Every sound around me, I'm trying to interpret and use for either either navigation or to make sure that that bus isn't about to run me over. Um, but in TV, every sound matters because there's something going on in that scene that's relevant. So uh you don't have that same thing in reality where every sound matters, right? So I love listening to shows for that reason because it's you know, I know my ears are serving me well when I pick up things. And there's certain shows that just have amazing ears built into them. Like Breaking Bad is one of the best shows for sound and dialogue. It's just there are motifs of sound that run through every season, you know, that they keep picking up on like a poem. Uh, I can't think of another show that has fed my ears that well, really. Um, anyway, that yeah, I think you're totally right.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

I thought Lupin, by the way, if you haven't heard Lupin was a first show in a long time that the sounds of it really affected me, going they someone did an amazing soundscape because you're right, everything's intentional and like the real world where everything, everything is not.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 20:43

Yeah, so can we if we can we go to traditional uh rejection and failure? So like everybody else, you pitch things, you write things, people don't like it, people don't buy it, people don't give you jobs. How much that happened to you? I mean it when we were in the pre-game on this, we were talking, and you you you're gonna regret saying this. I think you you naively said, Oh, I don't think I'd be rejected that often. Um tell me about the times you have been rejected. I'm sure we're gonna find loads now.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

Well, I the the B side of that was that I realized as we were talking, oh yeah, I've been rejected a tons. I I just try to forget about it, which I think is probably healthy and and probably baked into the way I've functioned as a disabled person anyway. It's it's like you just sort of carry your luggage and uh hope that it doesn't trip you. And I guess rejection's one of those things that everybody's lugging around luggage. Um, but it's not like you go through it every day and go, wow, I've got a lot of rejection in that bag. Um yeah, I do, I do definitely have that. I it's funny, like there's different kinds of rejections over the year, over the years, and and some of them. Them stick with you more than others, and they're like burrs on the hide of an animal, you know, that you just sort of why did that one stick so much? And um, you know, sometimes it's like the big things aren't the ones. There's these moments where I've been rejected and it's really made me call into question my own skills. Um, and I'm not sure why, even in some respects, but like like for example, maybe it was my fourth or fifth script I'd sold, or pitch I'd sold, pardon me, to a studio, and it was on the feature side. And um, we were adapting a novel, it was a heist novel, and uh uh it was a big production company I was working with, you know, really well respected, lots of clout, and a big studio. And um I pitched it, we landed it, I did the first draft, did some rewrites on it. The producer's really happy, handed into the studio, heard nothing, nothing, nothing, you know, as it goes. And then, you know, when we got the response, it was I had actually never been criticized that hard before as a writer. You know, it's like I'd come out of, you know, a few books and lots of journalism and other things. It's like I've been around the block and I just got thrown down the stairs for this first draft. And even the producers were like a little flummoxed by it. And I kept thinking, how can this be? Like, I you know, I'm also a professor at a university. I've put sentences together before. Granted, it's a first draft. First drafts always need more work, but the beginning of a conversation, could it really be that bad? And it really got under my skin. Like I felt really thrown down the stairs. And also because I was still pretty early in my career, and I thought, oh my God, I got to fix this thing or I'll never get hired again. You know, it's gonna go around. Like you just don't know when you're starting out what the consequences of a moment like that is. So, you know, I agreed to do a ton of rewriting on some on this thing, begrudgingly. But I, you know, I'm a team player, so I did all the work. I probably did more drafts than anybody should, um, especially for free. And uh, but I just I didn't want to ruin this gig. And then I finally got it to a place where it looked like they were happy with it. So we handed it into the studio, and then a week later, that executive at the studio left uh for another job, and uh the project died with that absence. And that was my first lesson where I realized oh, the the rejection of this script, this executive didn't want to hand it in to his boss because he was in the process of landing another job, and he just didn't want anything to rock that. And it didn't necessarily mean that my script was so bad it would do that, but wasn't handing anything in until this thing was secured, and then when it was secured, you know, handed it in and left. And it's like, you know, it was my first experience with like you really don't know what the story is behind the story sometimes. And so I I went down the stairs and I did I realized like I was punching myself in the face repeatedly, and I probably shouldn't have, um, because there was probably more going on than I was aware. And that that was a good lesson for me at the beginning.

SPEAKER_03 25:11

It's extraordinary. We've heard lots of different versions of projects dying because of execs changing jobs and so on. I think this might be the first one where somebody just created a whole load of work for somebody else to buy them some time before they change jobs, but not at all surprising. I think I'm allowed to ask this question. So have you obviously scripts get rejected for all sorts of reasons, particularly in this town. You know, you've just given us yet another new one. Do you think you've ever not got a job because somebody can't be bothered or doesn't understand what it would be like working with you in the sense that they think that it might be slower or you wouldn't work in a writing room in the way that somebody who wasn't visually impaired would have you ever had that sense?

SPEAKER_02 26:08

That's a really interesting question. Um I have not had that sense, and that does not mean it's it's not true to use about 14 negatives in a row there. Um, what am I trying to say? Whether that's true or not, I don't think I would know. I I think nobody would let me even get a sense that that was the reason I wasn't being hired or considered for something. Have I felt it specifically in my bones? I've had suspicions. Um, but I find like if I get stuck there and I worry about that stuff, um, you know, what am I trying to make happen in the world? Like it's not gonna change anything by fretting about it, resenting it, worrying about it, you know, trying to gird myself against it. So I mean, I can't say I've had a direct experience with that. I would I will say I think one of the things I do find frustrating often is that I won't necessarily be considered for a job, or it's harder for me to get a meeting about a certain job because when they know that I'm the blind writer, they assume that's my subject, right? Like you in in sort of the ownership of identity politics now, there is this challenge that you end up in a lane that's very hard to get out of. And so, you know, I'm the the person who tends to get material brought to him for TV or film that that tends to be about diseases or disabilities. And can you make it just a little bit funnier? You know, or can you sort of spruce it up a bit so it's not such a downer, or you know, whatever the case may be. That that's kind of my what people think of me for first and foremost. And it's paid the mortgage over the years, and I'll do one for the team and one for me. But um, that's been the thing I've always sort of fought with a bit because you know, I don't want to write about that stuff all the time. You know, I live it every day. It doesn't mean I want it to be my subject. Um, but you know, it is a skill set I've got. I've got experience in something that not everybody has, and I should use that. Uh so it's always a bit of a balancing game for me of like, how do I how do I make sure I'm stretching as a writer? Um, but also honoring what I've got that maybe other people don't have as far as a point of view. And blindness is a point of view, it is a point of view. Um, so I can't say though, I I've had an experience with somebody saying very uh not even indirectly, like getting a sense that I wasn't hired because of my disability. Um, no, haven't had it, but that probably I wouldn't be surprised if it's happened.

SPEAKER_03 28:39

So I I know you said that you don't want to be sort of typecast, as it were, as somebody who just sort of works on these issues about blindness and disability more broadly. So but I just do want to ask one more question about that. So it's interesting because I think we had a version of this on our very first episode where we had Adele um Adele Blimon talking about um uh crazy rich Asians and sort of you know being able to give some authenticity to a subject. So is it as simple as you'll get a call from your agent saying, you know, there's a movie and they need some help trying to work out how a blind character would react in a certain situation or act? Is it is it as narrow and specific as that, or is it broader?

SPEAKER_02 29:26

It is it has been both. Um, you know, years ago I was brought in to consult on a movie that Blake Lively was doing with Mark Forrester, in which she played a blind woman. Uh, and it was just ironic because I actually was friends with Blake and Mark had approached me and I didn't know him well, and I didn't know she was doing this movie. And and so I came in specifically to help with that stuff in the script. Absolutely. Uh, and then you know, a number of years ago, one of my TV agents called me uh because of In the Dark. Like it was uh a show that was being greenlit for its first season, and the main character is blind and it's on the CW. And my agent called me and he said, Look, there's the show um with a blind character, they're starting to staff up. I know you want to get in a room because I'd created pilots, but I hadn't been in a room really before, and I wanted to have the experience and see if I could fit in a room and how I would fit in the room and have that sort of in my arsenal. And he said, So there's a show. Um, and he's like, I don't know, is it a little too on the nose? You know, he was a little nervous even bringing it up to me. Um, he didn't want to insult me by just bringing it to me either. And I thought that was actually really charming that he was he he felt that way. And uh I did say, Well, you did you do realize that if I can't get this job, you're so screwed as an agent. Like, if you can't get the blind guy on the one blind show, like I don't know what we're gonna do. Um, and luckily I got I got on.

SPEAKER_03 30:53

That's that's how um Noah got on Hawaii 5 0. Um he just wore a short sleeve t-shirt and showed his tattoos and he got on. So, you know, it's not you're not the only one who benefits from that stuff. Anyway, sorry, back to Noah.

SPEAKER_02 31:06

Noah, did you walk in with you walked in with your surfboard too?

SPEAKER_01 31:09

I was thinking the same thing that you know, I had to wrap my head around being, you know, the Hawaii writer, so to speak. There's only a few of us, so one of a few Hawaii writers, so to speak, in town. And, you know, what does that mean? And I really rebelled against it for years wrote all kinds of stuff that wasn't Hawaii related. And then I didn't. And then I was like, what am I doing? I love Hawaii, I love all this. I came to LA originally to write Hawaii stuff. I I like being, you know, this is my wheelhouse, and it's important to have a wheelhouse. And I've been thinking about all the stories that you've been telling. And and and again, all the audiences aspiring writers having a lane, and often we don't know quite what our lane is when we're starting. And I would think I could be wrong. You know, we're we're a we're a podcast about you know adversity and and and rejection and all of that. But when you came to this town, you brought a very distinct and fresh POV, which I think people might have found really, probably did find really interesting, right? We're all lumped together. We all kind of write the same way. There's not, you know, we're very homogenous as a group, even though we might come from different backgrounds. And here comes there's the rare person that comes in from the outside. Let's just go with like Diablo Cody, right? She had this really cool story. She came in, she took the town by storm. People liked it because she was so unique. She had this unique POV and she hit her scripts out of the ballpark, and she had a huge career. But that doesn't happen that often. And so here you, you know, you come in with a fresh POV, a fresh way to, you know, that you're that you're handling certain content. And even maybe the way it lays out on the page, I don't know. But I but I'm wondering, I mean, and Dan, I'm gonna ask the flip side of what Dan asked. Like, was it ever a hindrance? Do you think that that helps you, that you come into this thing going, like, I'm I'm not like the 10 other writers. I got this this thing that that makes me see the world differently, that makes me approach the world differently, and it's gonna be reflected on the page. Completely.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

Like, if I if I had to do an inventory, I would say the benefits have actually outweighed anything else. And I mean, it's only anecdotal for me. Like I don't have evidence necessarily, but I've I've felt it in meetings. Uh, and there's a few things that have stuck with me. I mean, the Diablo Cody comparison, uh, as somebody who has sort of a similar thing of coming from outside, is it it's a flattering way of thinking about it because I think she's like crazy talented. Um, but there is that thing, like when you come into these meetings, you become aware very quickly that they've seen 900 other people this week. And how are you going to have any Velcro to stick to them and to be remembered when you leave this room? Um, so I have that advantage of at least being like literally memorable, because it's not like they have blind bald tattooed men walking in every day from Canada going, um, you know, what do you got? So there is that. And then secondly, I think particularly because the shift from feature to television and streaming and limited series, like that rooms uh, you know, have become more predominant than they used to be. Uh, and there's a sense of like, okay, we're now curating a field of voices that we want to bring together. What are those differences and what are those uniquenesses that we need in this room? Um, I think one of the things that I that I've felt is that, you know, I've lived, as my old writing mentor said, a very anecdotally rich life. And it's not to be understated in this industry that it's littered with people that have talent, littered with people who write well. Um, and now the thing that that can often distinguish you is just what are your anecdotes? Like who are you? Where did you come from? What are the experiences you've had? What do you bring to a room that nobody else knows about? And I've been really lucky because I came from so many other things first. And I think that's actually been more beneficial in some ways than even the distinguishing feature of the blindness is just having that anecdotally rich life. Um, so yes, I I think you're you're correct. I've had a lot of advantages by virtue of it. And then also by by way, the process, by the way, the process for me, I don't know how sighs do it. Um, like I'll go in and pitch at a studio with my assistant Jake, and Jake's been my assistant in LA for years and years now. And um I still live in Canada, but I'll go down, you know, three, four times a year, do meetings, and do pitches. And he goes into pitches with me, and we have a certain way of doing stuff where he sits beside me like a ringer in the room. And I love him as an assistant because he's still always really moved by stories, even though he's heard me tell it 10 times that week, or the same jokes in the pitch. He still laughs, he still gasps. It's like having a ringer in the room with you. Um, but I don't see the reaction on the faces of anybody else around that conference table. So Jake and I have a system where he will nudge me under the table if like they're starting to pick up their phones or they're starting to look around, you know, speed this one up, or he'll nudge me, like lean into that one a little more, just stay here. He almost drives me in the meeting. Um, meanwhile, I don't see any of these faces, so I don't get hung up on. I think excited people might have this, where as you're pitching, you can see on their faces it's not landing, and then you death spiral into your anxieties and it throws you on your back foot. Um, I'm just pitching to a piece of drywall, you know, it's just blank. And in some ways that there's an advantage to that because it's like doing radio. I'm just at the mic going, and uh, I don't get flustered by by what's going on in the room. So I think I would I would I would encourage you just to close your eyes when you're pitching, it might save you.

SPEAKER_03 36:56

It's fascinating. I mean, I think Noah should do that anyway, because I know somebody fell asleep once during one of his pitches, and I guess you would never have known. Um I'm just interested. This nudging thing. I mean, I guess you've given it away now, so next time you're pitching to somebody, they'll be looking under the table to see when the nudges are occurring. But what's the so is it sort of you know, one tap for you know, they're losing interest, two taps for they're loving it?

SPEAKER_02 37:25

A little bit of that. Yeah, we just we know each other really well, and I can just sort of get the vibe off of them in different ways, like you know, he'll be shuffling, like kick, move on. Um, we don't use it a ton anymore, but it's it's helpful sometimes. And then he'll debrief with me after on people's body language and stuff. Um, so I'll I'll get sort of the slow motion replay afterwards, but I don't have that in real time while I'm doing it. But then again, I feel my job is to craft the pitch before I walk in that I should be able to just hold it like I'm uh on stage at the moth and I've got 10 minutes at the mic. Uh, my job is to tell a story that makes you not want to pick up your phone for 10 minutes. So, you know, I try to treat it that way anyway.

SPEAKER_01 38:08

It's it's so crazy, though, all the visual cues uh that we have to use, you know, while we're pitching to see to see if someone's still paying attention to our story. And I don't know, you're right. I don't know if it helps. Is it exhausting?

SPEAKER_02 38:19

Is it exhausting for you guys?

SPEAKER_01 38:21

It's it's depressing because what ends up happening it's what ends up happening after a lot is the debrief is like, oh, executive number three clearly wasn't liking your pitch. Or and and it's not your pitch is your pitch. You can adjust it a little bit, right? But you can't, you're not gonna throw the whole thing out because someone's not connecting and you can see it in their face. Or sometimes you get warned certain execs just have you know cold faces and don't take it personally. They just hate everything, or they pretend it worth and then they buy it. So you don't Darren joked about the exec that fell asleep. It then an exec did fall asleep and yet they bought the pitch. So and maybe they just felt bad. You know, you never know. You never know.

SPEAKER_02 39:05

You don't know, you just don't know.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

So I I have a you know question. So you said you segue from you know writing memoirs and books and novels and articles, and I'm guessing you're still doing a bit of all of that. And then you you segue into screenwriting, feature writing now or in TV. Um, is there was there ever a time where you know there was a stretch where things weren't working out, at least on the TV side, and you were like, Well, I gave it a shot. I came to town, I I, you know, I swing, and now it's time to pack it up, go back to, or I know you're still in, you know, Canada, but like go back to writing the other kinds of writing, and and Hollywood wasn't for me.

SPEAKER_02 39:43

I've had two stretches in my career. Um, by the way, just to finish what we were saying about pitching too, uh it's funny, I actually have to disarm the audience right away when I'm pitching too, because I've realized over the years that I can start my pitch and then they're only really listening sometimes, maybe halfway through, because that might be the first time they've seen the fact that I actually don't see. And so I'm starting my pitch, and they're like, How does he match his socks? How does he like you can just feel like they're trying to figure out like, what are you doing? He doesn't watch shows, does he? What is what is he doing writing them? And they're not necessarily hearing what I'm saying because they're they're faced with this three-headed chicken in front of them. So I find like I have to kind of acknowledge it right at the top and take it off the table to have them listen. And also because my eyes still look around. And I've had it in the year over the years where I my eyes will be resting on something, and I realize later, like, oh my God, I was staring straight at somebody's earlobe the whole time. And they got really self-conscious because they didn't know I wasn't looking at it. It's just where my eyes rested. Um, so I have to control the room that way too, to make sure that they're actually engaged and listening with me and not distracted by my disability in front of them as well. You know, like that that could be just as uh gambly in the moment.

SPEAKER_01 41:05

I do want to say this. I, you know, obviously I'm not blind. And there's been so many times where I've done the exact same thing where I realized I'm thinking about something, especially in a writer's room, you're the thinking about the pitch or the whatever, the scene, and your eyes are on something that they probably shouldn't be. And you're like, wait, how long have like you're paying no attention to your visual field? And you're like, you have been staring at the same person for the last four minutes or or whatever. So I think this is a a universal truth that you speak through sometimes. But the um the the you know, we are you know coming to our last question, and our last question is always the same for people, but you know, you've now been in the industry for a while, but not only in this industry, but you've been a writer for your most of your, if not all your career. What's some advice that you would give uh, you know, an aspiring writer uh coming into Hollywood in this case? Uh what would be a piece of advice you'd give them? Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 41:59

Um well let me let me speak to two things. I just realized too, I didn't answer your other question uh about stretches of am I gonna pack up and go home? I have had two stretches of that, and that is something people sort of warn me about. Like, you know, it's not gonna be like once you sign with an agent, you just keep working. Um, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Uh, the two stretches I've had where I got a bit spooked, whether or not it was over. Uh, one stretch was just after I signed with a big agency. I was with a very small boutique agent before that. I moved over to one of the big agencies and I thought, okay, this will kind of secure the runway a bit better. And then for the next 10 months, nothing came across my desk. Um, so you know, you have to kind of brace yourself with the fact like the things that you think will help you don't necessarily deliver. And it's still gonna fall on your shoulders to fill the calendar, to push things forward, to constantly come up with stuff uh to create the energy around you of projects that you're developing and thinking about so that somebody going back to surfing can grab the wave when it comes, right? Like you're you're just generating a storm of stuff, so there's some inertia for somebody else to join you with. Um, and the second stretch was actually during the pandemic. Like I finished on in the dark last summer, and it's been very quiet ever since. And I still find it a bit spooky. Like it's uh it's a very different feeling out there for me right now. I'm sure it is for everybody else too, in terms of selling things, what they're looking for. Uh, I think everybody's a little bit unsure. Uh, I think there's actually more uncertainty now than there was during the pandemic, because at least during the full blown year of the pandemic, we knew what we were like nothing was happening. Now the recovery feels like it's got more uncertainty about it because we don't know what the shape of it is. I totally don't know. It feels to me like it's a harder thing to navigate because it's less productive.

SPEAKER_01 44:01

So many of my friends aren't are either aren't working, and these are big time writers, or or aren't working as consistently, or you know, the industry's change changed in 500 different ways that we haven't even fully quantified yet, because of the pandemic and for a lot of other reasons.

SPEAKER_02 44:15

Would totally agree. So, in terms of advice to younger writers, I mean that it's sort of the perennial question. What is the thing that I wish I had been told? Um I wish well, I will give the same advice that I was given, which is to go back to the idea of um develop your life as much as your work. You know, that you think of the work as the as the craft, as the thing that you're putting your time into, that you're developing that skill set, you're developing projects you want to sell, you're developing relationships with people to help those things happen. All that is true. All of that takes a lot of time, a lot of dedicated effort, and um self-criticism too, to improve. But the other side of that is if you don't fill the tank with experiences, you're going to run out of material to write about, or worse, you're going to write about different material the same way every time. That my my point of view on material, my take on it, my my sense of theme. The questions I ask about the world, all of that is informed by the way I pack the rest of my uh you know, the rest of my time when I'm not writing, and trying to do things to make my world different than it was yesterday. And by by drawing and siphoning off those experiences, I find my writing changes and it it grows, my craft grows. So it's really like the advice is not a piece of writing advice, it's a piece of living advice in service of the writer, uh, and to do things wildly and variedly, you know, and so it's that thing of having an anecdotally rich life to draw upon, to make sure that your uh toolbox is filled with characters, voices, images, um, you know, sort of knowing a little bit about a lot of stuff has always stood me well. You know, instead of only thinking of myself as a writer and dedicating all my energy into studying and developing that thing, uh, it's a it's a delivery mechanism for other stuff, and you have to pay attention to that other stuff.

SPEAKER_03 46:25

Extraordinary. Well, fantastic answer. Because obviously, you know, we've had 20 people give advice now, and a lot of it has been around the versions of writing, including a recent episode where somebody literally spelled out how to do a script uh and a winning story. But that broader experience, the life part is is fascinating. This has been uh an amazing episode. Um, I'm beyond delighted that you were able to do this. So, Ryan Knighton, Blind Surfer, thank you very much indeed for being part of our podcast.

SPEAKER_02 46:58

Thanks so much for having me, you guys. It was such a kind thing to be invited, and I think it's such a great, it's such a great podcast. I think uh I wish it had been here when I was starting out.

SPEAKER_01 47:09

I guess me too, but then I wouldn't have been the host. Thanks, Ryan. All right, that does it for us today. I want to thank you for tuning in to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss. If you have any questions or comments, you can reach out to me on Twitter. I am at NEBslin.

SPEAKER_03 47:29

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

SPEAKER_01 47:40

Do you have a Twitter account?

SPEAKER_03 47:42

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

SPEAKER_01 48:11

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

unknown 48:27

That's good.

SPEAKER_03 48:28

I'll do