Take 32 - Writer Thunder Levin, Sharknado

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Any of us who've been in it for long enough, our entire career has been littered with jobs that we didn't get, projects that we thought were gonna go for sure, dozens of unproduced scripts literature.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

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

SPEAKER_04 0:20

For every success, there is months, sometimes even years, of hype failure.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default. That's the normal thing you have to be able to persevere. Like everything in our business, your hands gonna count. That passes takes because that doesn't happen overnight.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

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

SPEAKER_04 0:59

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. As ever, I am your non-entertainment co-host, Dan Rotstein, and we have at the other end Noah Evelyn.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

Hey Dan. Uh today we have the prolific screenwriter and director Thunder Levin on the show. On top of writing all five massively successful Sharknado movies, he also co-wrote Zombie Tidal Wave, as well as wrote and directed American Warships, AE Apocalypse Earth, and Geodisaster, amongst others. Welcome, Thunder.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Thank you for having me, Noah. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_04 1:38

So I guess this is Sharknado is a fascinating one because I get we have to start with this because I guess depending on who you ask, it's either a massive success because it is a success, or it's a massive failure because a lot of people sneer at it. So where do you stand on the is Shark Nado a success or failure question?

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Well, the fact that a lot of people sneer at it means they've heard about it. So it must have been a success. Excellent. That's the that's all I got. I mean, when whenever whenever people, you know, can complain about how cheesy it was or uh it was so bad it's good, or just it was so bad or it was trash. I'm like, okay, it's not it's not your cup of tea, but there are millions of people who did like it, um, and who still every day on Twitter say, when's there going to be another one? So um, yeah, to me it was a success. People have heard of it. That's that's about all I can ask for. I'm I'm on a podcast right now. It must have been it must have been something.

SPEAKER_04 2:39

Yeah, although the podcast is about rejection and failure, but still the the point the point is taken.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Well, if you never have any success, nobody cares about your rejection and failure.

SPEAKER_03 2:48

So there's there's definitely a bar with the with the uh the people we have on the podcast, and you've clearly passed that bar. We've had this, by the way, you and I, you know, uh uh out of this podcast, we've had this discussion, and it's fascinating, and I'd like to do it a little bit more on the podcast about the nature of what Dan was getting into with Sharknado, which is it was a massive, mind-blowing, surprising success in a way that everybody who knows, if you walk down the street and ask somebody, have you heard of the movie Sharknado? And have you heard of the whatever, you know, sometimes even Academy Award nominated, whatever, everyone has heard of Sharknado to the point where it's created five spin-offs, which is sort of unheard of in most franchises. Yet you had to create this sort of tone, which was both tongue-in-cheek, cheek and also serious and also uh uh uh funny, but also there was all of these things that you had to walk to kind of execute this movie and make it the success that you did. Correct?

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Uh right. And and to be honest, that's the thing I'm proudest of is uh is walking that fine line between farce and a serious disaster film. Um, because that's what I think made it work. If it had been just a straight, serious disaster film, it would have just been bad in a bad way and cheesy, and it would have been just another one of sci-fi's beam movies that nobody paid attention to. Um, and if it had been, if it had been farced, there would have been, you know, a few people laughing along, but most people would have tuned out. And I I think it's I think it's the fact that we were able to walk that fine line uh that made it work. The fact that we the the way the film had to work was that the film had to know what was going on. The audience had to know that the filmmakers knew what was going on. The only people who couldn't know what it was was the characters in it. Um, they had to take it seriously, they the actors had to play it straight. And and thank God um Ian Zering caught on to that early on. Um, and uh that's that's one of the things I've heard him talk about in interviews was that he had to commit to this um because the characters can't know how ridiculous this is. Um, you know, we had we had uh six movies where it could start to gradually dawn on them. Um and an example actually, just just the other day I saw Fast and the Furious Nine. And it's taken those guys nine movies for the characters to realize how ridiculous the things they've been surviving are. Um so that's sort of the the key to to playing something like this. If I think if we'd gone any further either way, it would not have worked. And that's actually something that uh that I did on my first film, Mutant Vampire Zombies from the Hood, um, was also walking that fine line um between farce and and serious uh disaster. Because all these things are on low budgets. So if you're never gonna be able to quite fulfill the grandiose vision. So people are gonna laugh. And the question is, do you want them to laugh with you or at you? And I'd much rather have people laughing with me than at me. I get enough of that in the bedroom. So, you know.

SPEAKER_04 6:20

So I guess obviously as we sit here today, sharknado is uh you know, somewhat of a cultural phenomenon. You know, I was I was in Vegas the other day, uh, and it reminded me that you know there's a Sharknado uh uh slot machine. Right. Uh I actually didn't see it this time, but the previous time I've been in Vegas, there was there's a there's the big at the end of the line one where like three people can sit there in Caesar's Palace. Now, if that's not a measure of success, you know, nothing is. So I guess at what point uh do you think it it crossed the line and became what it was? You know, is it was it the first movie? Was it when you were writing it you knew it was gonna be like when did this become when did you know it was gonna be like this? And when did it actually become like this?

SPEAKER_00 7:08

Um interesting because those are three different things. Um when it actually became like this was the night it premiered, um, because Twitter went nuts, and that's that's not something any of us could have really predicted. Um and once celebrities started tweeting about it, it was just an avalanche. And at some point we had 5,000 tweets a minute, apparently. Um, and it it, you know, our hash, the Sharknado hashtag, did uh more uh more Twitter activity than Game of Thrones Red Wedding. So obviously, once that happened, it was a done deal. And there were, well, you would think there would be sequels and um and and just I don't know, just a couple of weeks later, I was walking down the Venice boardwalk and there was a shop selling uh Sharknado t-shirts. And I'm like, holy crap, what the hell happened? Um, but when did I know? And what was I thinking when I wrote it? Um when I wrote it, I was just trying to have fun with it. Um, my hope was that if I enjoyed this movie, other people would too. Um, and and on honestly, that's all I do with with anything is I write things that I would want to see. Um, and so I figured if I was having fun with it, maybe other people would too. And that was my hope. And I hoped uh, I mean, originally I was going to direct it, but once I uh chose not to, I hoped that whoever directed it would get the sense of fun I was trying to put in with it. And then beyond that, and really in the end, probably just as important was would the marketing people get the sense of fun? Would uh would the executives at the asylum allow that sense of fun to get through because they have a tendency to play everything very straight? Would sci-fi get that sense of fun and allow it to be marketed that way? And and fortunately, it was a perfect storm of everybody getting it. Um, and when, you know, when I first had an inkling that it it could be something, um well, I breathed this big sigh of relief when the first poster came out, and the tagline on the poster was enough said. And I was just like, Yes, they got it. They're not trying to pitch this as a serious disaster film, they're not trying to do it as an utter farce, they're playing it exactly the way I played it in the script. Um, and then um some uh some podcast or publication um at AFM saw the poster and said, the asylum won AFM today. Uh AFM for those who don't know is the American film market, where independent films are sold to distributors. And and some uh a member of the press uh did a little blurb that said, uh the asylum won the internet, won AFM today uh with hashtag Sharknado. And that was sort of where the ball started rolling um from a public awareness perspective. And then for I don't know, a month before it aired, uh there was some PR awareness, and I was getting um I was starting to see press about it, and I realized that I could easily be left behind. And so I started uh sending out um messages to uh to press outlets as if I were my PR agent, because I didn't have a PR agent. And so I I sent out emails in the third person saying, Would you like to interview the writer of Sharknado? And it and it actually worked. And I got some interviews in the uh month leading up to it. And um and like a few days before, I think it aired on what was it, July 13th, I think. And so I got some calls a couple of weeks before um from friends at different parts of the country saying they'd been in July 4th parties, and people were actually talking about Sharknado and how they couldn't wait to see it. Um, so we we started to get the feeling, uh, you know, a couple of weeks ahead of time that this was gonna be something. You know, uh it was it was by no means certain it was gonna be what it became, but it was gonna be something more than the standard sci-fi channel B movie. And um thank God it it turned into even more than that.

SPEAKER_03 11:51

I I now feel a little bit duped. Dan and I received an email, I think, from a guy named Lightning McCorkley. Should we bring on this guy, Thunder Levin, onto the podcast?

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Uh uh, I want to be on actually Noah, that's funny because to be honest, the one thing you will never see from me is me playing on my name. Um, because to me, I I I've spent half a century now with people making jokes about my name. And I was done with that when I was eight. So uh that's that's one thing you will never see from me.

SPEAKER_03 12:26

I think you have, and this for the record, Thunder is one of the coolest names like you can have. So anyone who's making fun of you is is seriously jealous. But I want to I want to cycle back a little bit to something you said and just comment on it. You made a really great craft point that I that I want to that I want to uh sit on for one second, which is you you said that you wanted the audience to have as much fun with the movie as you have writing it. And I think that is a super valuable thing for people who are aspiring writers to know that often the best thing that you're writing is the one that, if you're writing horror, the thing that really scares you, if you're writing something that's in this kind of tone that that you really had fun with, if you're you know writing a thriller, the thing that really had you as the writer on the edge of your seat. And if none of those things are happening when you're writing it, you might have to sort of look look at the writing. But that's not a question. This is this this is the question. You write something super specific, tonally specific. It's a very, you know, agents say stay in your lane, right? They like to, or managers, they like to kind of be able to to to kind of kind of identify what you do and then sell you out to the broader market. You're the guy now, and I think this is where we get in for the for better and for worse, who wrote this thing that is hyper specific, Sharknado, that is almost. I mean, you can duplicate it over and over and over again, but but it it has it been difficult for you to break out of that, you know, this this this new box that you're you're now in because of the success of this movement.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Yes. That's that's both the the short and the long answer. Um, yes, it's been very difficult, and that's frustrating because this is this is not all I do. I'm not sure before Sharknado, it would not have even been the leading thing I do. I mean, I did one film like this, Mutant Vampire Zombies from the Hood. Um, but I've always been a serious science fiction guy. Um, and so that is indeed frustrating. And everything, well, not everything, uh, with one exception, all the stuff I did leading up to. Okay, maybe I'm wrong about that. Because my student film was kind of like this, too. So maybe it's just in my head that I'm a serious science fiction writer. I don't know. Um, but much of the stuff I did before Sharknado, and in fact, the film that I chose to direct instead of Sharknado was more serious science fiction. Um and so after Sharknado, I've been trying to parlay that into being able to do uh more serious stuff, and so far it has not uh panned out the way I want. So that's um you know that's uh that's a big part of the Hollywood abyss.

SPEAKER_04 15:14

So I'm I'm not gonna say, do you regret Sharknado?

SPEAKER_00 15:18

No, I don't.

SPEAKER_04 15:19

Good. Um but presumably going on to this point about the fact that you maybe want to do more serious stuff, so when you're pitched out, are your agents saying, you know, we've got the Sharknado guy, do you want to meet him? Or are you saying to them, please stop calling me the Sharknado guy, call me the serious science fiction guy who did Sharknado, or don't mention Sharknado at all? Like, how are you how are you trying to sort of break out of that world to to do the other projects that you want to do?

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Well, that's a problem. Um, and my agent has obviously since you have not seen my name on uh a 200 million dollar uh science fiction film, um my agent has been battling with that. Um because you know, even if you say I mean the way an agent is gonna go into a conversation is he's gonna say, Hey, I've got this project from this guy, um Thunder Levin, and either they're gonna say, Who's that? Or they're gonna say isn't he the Sharknado guy? Um so getting getting around that is proving very tricky uh and very frustrating. Um and I don't know that uh my agent has found the solution yet.

SPEAKER_04 16:48

So I guess we like to do these hypothetical questions. So if you had a choice between writing another version of Sharknado, so you know, in that mold of cultural phenomenon phenomenon, that fine line between disaster movie and farce, you know, that sort of model again, or actually a serious one, more you know, yeah, I guess not more mainstream, but yeah, a more serious project. Which you would choose the more serious project?

SPEAKER_00 17:30

Um are you asking which I would choose to write now or which I would like to have bought and produced?

SPEAKER_04 17:39

Uh answer both of those questions.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Okay. Uh the answer to which would I write is both, because that's what I've done in the past couple of years, and I am actively shopping a very serious dark science fiction thriller and something that should should be the next Sharknado. Um which would I rather have bought and produced? Probably the serious science fiction film. Um, but to be honest, I wouldn't mind having both of them bought and produced. Um, and I would like to direct them both because both of those aspects are part of my persona, my creativity, my fandom, to be honest. Um, so I mean I've got um I've got a serious science fiction film called Star Child that I'm trying very hard to uh to get in the right hands. And I've got Deadbeard, the zombie pirate rock musical. And um, you know, that uh that I'm also trying to get in the right hands. And and that one actually we uh we might be trying to finance independently.

SPEAKER_03 18:51

So is there a is there a flip side? I mean, you you what happened to you is what every writer dreams about on some thing you wrote has monster success, right? And you and and to the point where being duplicated and duplicated, and they kept you on, which by the way, as Dan and I know through the course of this podcast, it is super rare. You might write something that's a monster success, and then many of the stories we get, well, I was replaced right after, or they brought in another writer. They kept you on for every one of the of the sequels that followed, as far as I can tell from your IMDB.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

But uh, not everyone, actually. Uh, there were six movies altogether. I did not write the last two. Okay, but you're on five.

SPEAKER_03 19:30

You've quite four of them.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

I have you know, characters created by on on the ones that I didn't write, but I only wrote the first four.

SPEAKER_03 19:37

So that's still a majority of them. And you and the four that people were talking, I think there was also like an ebbing of this. I mean, the it was like the first three was the one that was the for me, where like this thing is here, it's here again, it's here again. And I was jealous, I was in the industry, and I'm like, how do you write one of those? Because man, that's that's cool, and I want to do that too. But the um the my my question to you is like, so that moment passes, and you want to you you want that high again, right? I mean, that you want to chase that dragon, and the moment's moved on, and even you know, you write your dark, maybe with your dark science, maybe you're gonna get that same success. I hope to hope you will. But what happens to your psyche when you know that something that you did is gonna be very difficult to duplicate because of reasons completely outside of your control?

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Yeah, um, that's obviously that's frustrating. Um, the one saving grace um in my case, I think, is that um I was uh let's say more mature when I had that breakout hit. If Sharknado had happened when I first came to LA at 27, and it could have, because I had a TV series that looked like it was gonna go at uh Fox. Um or it looked to me like it was gonna go at Fox. I I don't know if it if it looked to uh to the executives there. Um but if this had happened to me when I was much younger, I think A, the success would have gone to my head. Um and then B, when it stopped coming, uh it would have been even more depressing than it is. That's not to say it's you don't miss that high. Um, because that's for a creative person, that's um, you know, it's not a rock star high. I mean, it's not like standing on a stage with 50,000 people screaming for you. Um, but it's probably as close as a writer gets. Um, at least a a feature writer. Maybe, maybe a writer showrunner on a huge series gets gets more than that. You know, I mean um Benioff and Weiss before the last two seasons, Gene. Roddenberry, you know, I mean Josh Whedon before before things started to turn recently. Um, you know, they get they get a kind of adoration in public that um that I don't get uh and didn't get even at the height of Sharknado, but I did get some of that. And that's that's that's intoxicating. That's um that's uh that's a thing to be treasured and to to enjoy every minute of it, because at least when it when it's something that happens to you later on in life and not early on, um I think you're aware how rare and special it is. So those those first uh three or four years, uh I was I was enjoying every minute of it while knowing that it was going to be the struggle of my life to somehow continue it.

SPEAKER_04 22:57

So interesting, this is something in 32 episodes of this has never really come up, is is the high point and the way you described it, as in it's not you're not standing on a stage in front of screaming fans.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

So there was there was one day a Comic-Con where I was on a stage in front of Screaming Fans, and that was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_04 23:17

I was gonna say, so what is for you, given that the success of it, where is the high? Is it when you're trending on Twitter? Is it when the paychecks come in? Is it at Comic Con? Is it being introduced? Is it doing all the media around it? Like, is there a real moment of sort of quick high around it for a right of a feature?

SPEAKER_00 23:44

The highest high was Comic-Con. Um, for um, for various reasons, I wasn't on the panel for the second one. Um, but I was on the panel for the third one, and that was probably as good as it gets. Uh, walking the red carpet for the premieres. Um, that was, I mean, the when we did the red carpet for the first one, the movie'd already been out a month because nobody expected you know it to be quite what it became. And so it was a month later that we did this one night only theatrical screening. And uh, and that's when there was a red carpet, and we had no idea what to expect. Um, but the producers took us out to a fancy dinner, and then there was a party, and then we went to the screening, and uh the marquee at the multiplex was all Sharknado, and there was a um, I don't know, a hundred-foot press line, red carpet, um with with you know the the stereotypical cliched flashbulbs popping, um, that you had to that you had to walk down. Um, you know, and obviously I was not the the first to go. Uh Ian and Tara and Cassie and John Hurd and uh and and then the director were all uh were all in front of me. And I don't know how interested people were in me there, but enough people were interested and enough photographers were shouting my name that it was it was uh it was pretty amazing. And and um and the press is great when you have people asking questions about something that you dreamed up in your head. I mean, remember, you know, what we do is basically just professional daydreaming. And um, and so for someone to first to pay you for your daydreams, and then to actually want to talk to you about your daydreams, that that's a very personal kind of affirmation that um that is pretty unique and special. Um and that's probably why so many people try and do this, I guess. Um so really all of that was a high. And the first night when it was blowing up on Twitter, I'm not sure if it was it was necessarily a high, it was surreal, it was incredible. But for me, it was a high, but it was also incredibly stressful because I'd been at this for 20 years already, and this was my first opportunity, really, at the big stage. And so the whole time that night that I was trading tweets with celebrities and stuff, I was also panicking because I had to figure out some way to take advantage of this, and I knew how fleeting that opportunity would be.

SPEAKER_03 26:45

As as so tricky, right? Because you're a writer, and as a writer on social media, you have to think that every tweet that you come out in these moments also have to reflect my writing and all things. We're so full of anxiety as human beings to begin with. But just backing up a little bit, first off, great story because like people, you know, it's very few and far between for people to have a moment like you had, writers. I mean, writers spend their whole careers and they have movies come out and they don't really get that thing. The movie came out, it fell flat. The movie came out, they were written out of it. The movie came out. There's so many reasons why, as a writer, we don't get that opportunity to enjoy that moment and go, this is the moment. Yeah, but of course, let's I want to dig in. This is a you know a podcast about failure, rejection, and diversity. So I want to flip that coin some more. I want to analyze, you know, the months after. I want to like the like the not the not the fall, because there wasn't a fall, but when the high ends, you're left with what? Like what what are you like what are you hoping for? Where are you at emotionally?

SPEAKER_00 27:45

You're left. Well, I mean, for me, uh again, it took me 20 years to get to that point. So I'd had I'd had a whole career of um, I'm not sure I'd say failure, but of grabbing for the brass ring and never getting it. Um, I had a lot of scripts that were optioned but never produced. Um, and then finally, after years, after I finally raised money and produced uh my own film and proved to uh people that I could do what I'd been saying I could do for years. Um then finally I started to make incremental steps, but they were all relatively low-budget films that not that many people saw or paid attention to. Um, and when you're making films at that level, most of the people who see them who are used to hundred million dollar blockbusters are gonna just completely shit on your work because they're used to this high level of production and we're doing stuff, you know, for a quarter of a million bucks or whatever. Um, so I had been through that. I had I had lived that for my entire professional life. So fortunately, I'm not back to that because I can still make calls and people will take my calls. And if they don't know my name, I can say I'm the writer of Sharknado and now they know who I am. Um so it's it's not it's not all the way down. But yeah, trying to try to replicate that or even come close to it is um, I don't know, it's a it's a grind. It's it's it's the same kind of it's frustrating because it feels like I'm trying to reinvent the wheel. Um and and that's maybe the nature of independent film, because uh I know several fellow filmmakers who've complained about this that even when they have something that's a relative success, they don't instantly have funding for the next film. They still have to go out and and somehow convince somebody to pay for it. Um and that's I don't know if I'm getting at the the soul-crushing frustration that that you're looking for here, but that's there is certainly an element of that. It's very, I want to shake these people and say, do you know what I did? Something like this has never happened before. With, I mean, maybe it did, Rocky Horror Picture Show, but they didn't, they were never able to follow it up. Blair Witch did not follow it up. I mean, they they did, but it didn't work. Um, there's never been a beam movie that exploded like this into the public consciousness and then was able to sustain it over multiple sequels. And so I I frequently want to shake development executives and say, Don't you see what we did? I can do that for you. Why aren't you listening? Why aren't you taking this seriously? Um, so yeah, that's that's frustrating. Um, you know, and Shark, nobody would have expected Sharknado to become what it was. So when I say, hey, I have the next Sharknado, it's frustrating when people aren't willing to say, Well, you did it once, I guess you can do it again. Um, and at the same time, people will say, Well, that was very impressive. Some people will say, Well, who get it, who understand what happened, they will say, Well, that was very impressive, but we don't want to do that kind of thing. The most common thing I've heard is, well, that's great, but that's not what we do here. Um, with zombie tidal wave, uh, not zombie tidal wave, with Deadbeard, um, I pitch it, and inevitably the person I'm pitching it to laughs and says, That's great. I want to see that movie. But that's not what we do. I mean, I've had the exact same response from almost everybody I've pitched it to. And that's why we're now looking at uh doing private financing, because I'm absolutely convinced that if we put distributors or studios in a theater with a live audience watching this movie, they're gonna, you know, throw money at us to distribute it. But right now they can't see that. Um, and then when I'm trying to do something serious, you know, often I can tell they're looking at me thinking, well, this is just the Sharknado guy. We can go hire Aaron Sorkin. What do we need you for? We can go hire Noah Evels and what do we need you for? And so I might have to uh you know, I might have to knock knock Noah off at some point, um, just just to increase the opportunities. But um, but yeah, that's that's that's frustrating. It could it makes it make you feel like you're pounding ahead your head against the wall. And when you realize you're pounding your head against the wall, even after these successes, it can it can make you question the whole thing. And especially, you know, I'm not a I'm not uh young up-and-coming writer anymore. Um, so that starts to play into it too. I never really thought about ageism um until very recently. Um, you know, because to me, hey, I just had my first hit a few years ago. How can I be over the hill? That that doesn't make any sense. Um, but I start to wonder if if that thought is occurring to people. So yeah, there are there are a lot of long, dark nights of the soul involved, too.

SPEAKER_04 33:53

That's an extraordinary answer and fascinating insight. Uh apart from a bit about you know trying to beat Noah, which I think is the easiest part of Hollywood that you've discussed. And I guess so. One thing we've done on the show is people have told us about projects that nearly went and didn't go for all sorts of uh crazy reasons. I guess uh in reverse, how were there any pivotal moments where Sharpnado nearly didn't go? Um, there must be a couple of big forks in the road which went the right way. Can you tell us a little bit about how close it came to be taken and taken away from you?

SPEAKER_00 34:30

Um Yeah, I mean there were there was one I the thing is it went so it went surprisingly smoothly. Uh the complications happened uh once we had success and too many people were trying to claim credit for it, and too many people's jobs were on the line to maintain it. That's when things started getting tricky. Uh on the first one, there was one moment where things could have gone sideways, but really only one. Um the first one, the the sci-fi channel original movies department. I don't know if we're supposed to say this out loud, but they were pretty much on the way out. Um uh it seemed like they were gonna drop that, uh, the network was gonna drop that whole department. Um and so nobody was really paying too much attention uh during the early development of Sharknado. I had been warned when I was hired to write this, I had been warned that the development process for the sci-fi channel movies could take years because there were so many different people whose thoughts had to be uh incorporated. Because there are there are three partners at the asylum, plus a director of development, plus three or four executives at sci-fi. Um, and and they would all give you contradictory notes, is what I was told. Um and and how do you satisfy notes that say literally the opposite thing? Um, and when somebody figures out, I wish they would tell me. Um, but so I went into that prepared, and in fact, when I was negotiating my contract, I said, Hey, I've heard these stories. I need you to pay me up front. And miracle of miracles, they actually did. Um not that I got paid a whole lot, but but what I did get paid, uh, they they paid me basically up front. So that by the time the first draft was done, I had almost all of my money. Um and then it didn't take that long at all. Um, and the the one fork in the road was after the first draft, when I had had a lot of fun writing the script and I sent it to the asylum, and they sent it back with uh with a big uh bold all caps email where the first line said, This is not a fucking comedy. And I was like, and then they went through the script and they redlined every funny line in the script and every uh every intentionally cheesy moment. Um, and I was like, guys, we talked about this uh in the story phase. You acknowledged that it was gonna have to be ridiculous. And they said, not like this, it can't be, it can't be this is this is too much. Um and I was like, okay, well, you're you're paying the bills. I will I will take out all that stuff. But if sci-fi comes back and says this should be funnier, I'm getting a big cartoon hammer and I'm gonna hit you over the head with it. And I was able to say that because I'd already, you know, made several movies for these guys, and uh, and at least one of them had been uh had been quite successful, and there were a couple ongoing that um that that the development process was going fine. Um so I actually I actually put that in an email, which I would not recommend for for writers to do. Um but but then the sci-fi notes came back and they said this should be funnier. And um, you know, I they just forwarded that to me without comment. And um and I responded, well, consider yourselves all metaphorically hit on the head with a cartoon hammer, and now I'll get to work. Um, and and so I put back a lot of the funny. The funny thing is that the director of development said, okay, you win, but you can't just go back and put in all the stuff that the partners made you cut out, um, because that's just gonna piss them off. So I put back like half the stuff they made me cut out, and then I came up with with another 50% of uh of new stuff. And then the only other notes I got from that was this could still be funnier. Um, and and so I I did a second uh well, a third draft at that point, um with uh with more attempts in that direction. And and that was it. That was that was the last fork in the road. After that, it was a matter of will the director get it, will the marketing department get it? Um, but as far as the script failing or or it all falling apart, fortunately, that was never in the cards. Now, when we got to the second one, um there were notes about uh we don't want these pop culture references. And I was like, guys, look look what worked in the first one. Um and by the fourth one, they were criticizing me for not putting in enough pop culture references and not putting in the specific pop culture references they wanted. Um but no, the the the first one, fortunately, uh it went along mostly the way it needed to. There was never a never a moment where it seemed like it was gonna fall apart.

SPEAKER_03 40:22

I I somehow now every writer needs a cartoon hammer on their desk uh uh you know as a weapon and a tool. Okay, so this this this was all amazing, but it it does bring us to our final question, uh, some of which you've covered already. But if you had to give one piece of advice to somebody up and coming, coming up in this business, either in writing or in directing, what advice would you give them?

SPEAKER_00 40:48

If there's anything else you can do that will make you happy and fulfilled in life, do that instead. That's that's that's the first piece of advice I would give them. If if they said nope, there's nothing else, it's gotta be this, um I would say don't do all the things I did for 20 years. Um and I would say never give up because you haven't failed until you give up.

SPEAKER_03 41:23

Totally, totally agree.

SPEAKER_00 41:25

Um, I mean, I don't I don't know that I have, I mean, I actually did a whole video for uh for film courage um that went on for like an hour and a half where I gave advice about practical stuff. Um but I'm but I'm not I'm not saying I wouldn't be saying anything that everyone else doesn't say. Um and the and the business has changed a lot since I was trying to break in. Um so I'm not even sure how much how relevant my advice would be. Um I mean I guess the the the cliches are write what you the movie you would like to see, because that will translate hopefully to the page. Um as you said, uh Noah, um, if you're writing comedy, write the things that make you laugh. If you're writing horror, write the things that scare you. Um, I had uh one script where I was literally in tears writing the death of a character, and it I was just an emotional wreck the whole day. Um, but they never no one ever bought that script. So maybe that's not good advice. I don't know. Um it's a it's a tough nut to crack, and I don't know that there's any magical piece of advice that will make it easier. Uh, practice your craft, keep writing, um uh see what other people have done that succeeds. Um don't be arrogant. I guess it's funny. I was just thinking about this in preparation for this podcast. I was thinking about the series uh at Fox when I was 27 years old, and how the development exec was bumping on this one thing um where the bad guy, it was a supernatural thing that ended up somebody else did exactly the same idea a few years later. Um but the development exec I was working with um was bumping on the fact that the the big bad was a demon. Why did it have to be a demon? That's gonna put some people off. Um, can't it be a monster or a vampire or a this or a that? And for some reason I was stuck on the idea that it had to be a demon. And you know, if if if 50 something me could talk to 27 something me, it would be for fuck's sake, it could be anything. It doesn't need to be a demon. So I mean, some Sometimes even if you're absolutely sure that you're right, if if people who are willing to write you a check think it should be something else, maybe they're right too. Um and and knowing when when to believe that and when to believe you're right is probably the key to this whole thing. Um after never giving up. Um, but the the thing about never giving up is you have to be prepared to fail, maybe for a long time. Um there was something about me that, I mean, maybe it's because I'm simply not qualified to do anything else. Um, but there was something about me that just kept going. I mean, I got enough affirmation, uh, enough success that I never felt like, wow, I'm really bad at this. I should do something else. It was always a matter of, well, I just haven't had the opportunity to prove myself yet. Um, and I was getting enough, enough success. Uh, you know, I had scripts optioned that just never got produced. Um, I had people at high, relatively high levels talking to me and taking me seriously, even if they never actually hired me, that I always thought that success was right around the corner. And it it came to a point, and honestly, it should have come to this point a good five years earlier, where I had to look in the mirror and say, well, this isn't working the way I wanted it to. And I always said if all else failed, I would write a low-budget film and raise the money and direct, produce, and direct it myself. And I should have made that decision five to ten years earlier. Um, because once I made that decision and I actually raised the money and made the film, it started snowballing because that film led to another writing job, which led to another writing job, which was uh successful enough that it led to the asylum saying, Okay, what do you want to do next? Uh and while I was saying, Well, there's this science fiction film, and what about this giant monster movie? They said, Well, what about uh movie called Shark Storm? And I said, No, we've had enough shark movies, we've had enough storm movies. I don't want to do that. And I had done enough for them that they liked that after I turned them down, and after sci-fi said, Well, this movie would be okay, but call it Sharknado, they came back to me. And um thank God they did.

SPEAKER_04 47:03

Absolutely. Don't give up and don't be arrogant, feels like two fantastic pieces of advice. So, look, Thunder Levin, a serious science fiction writer who just happened to also write Sharknado. Thank you very much for being part of our podcast.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

Well, thank you very much for having me, Dan. And Noah.

SPEAKER_03 47:29

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_04 47:41

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

SPEAKER_03 47:52

You have a Twitter account?

SPEAKER_04 47:54

I do have a Twitter account. It's at An Rusty. And not only 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. 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_03 48:23

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. We as always want to thank our wives for putting up with our nonsense.