Take 24 - Showrunner and writer Glen Mazzara, Walking Dead, The Shield

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 floor.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

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

SPEAKER_00 0:21

There is sometimes even failure. This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

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

SPEAKER_03 1:26

Hey Dan, how are you doing? Uh we are super blessed to have Glenn Mazzara on the podcast today. Glenn started his writing career on Nash Bridges before segueing to The Shield, which is one of the most famous shows and writer rooms in TV history. He then worked on a number of other TV series before becoming the showrunner of The Walking Dead in season two, as well as creating and showrunning the TV show with Damien. Right now he is developing a number of TV series that we can't quite talk about. Welcome, Glenn.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Thanks for having me. So I'm excited for the beginning of this because in the in the warmups, as I think we call them, you said, What do you want to cover today? And I said, I want to cover rejection, failure, and adversity. And you said, Great, I love talking about that. So why are you so comfortable talking about that given the credits Noah's just read out for you?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Um, you know what? I talk about it a lot. I do a lot of mentoring and teaching, and and I feel that that's really where people learn, where people um uh can benefit from someone's experience. You know, too much of Hollywood, I think, is very self-congratulatory, you know, and you just have people saying, Oh, I just created a hit show and I didn't know it was gonna be a hit show, that kind of stuff. And and really, Hollywood is a business of rejection. You know, most of what we do, we face rejection. You know, it's like being a major league, you know, player. You're gonna strike out most of the time. Most pitches are not gonna sell. Most scripts, you know. I just turned in a script uh a couple of months ago, and the uh executive called me and said, yeah, the script was good, you know, but and it was like, it wasn't even, you know, and I love that script, you know, and so there's, you know, there's so much pressure to succeed in Hollywood, and and and we could overlook, you know, the process, we could overlook, you know, the wins along the way, because it's always fall short compared to, you know, what our expectations are. So it it really is, you know, a business of rejection. And I have found that a lot of it is just that it's a it's a a ridiculous business, and a lot of the rejection is based on stuff that is out of your hands, stuff that has nothing to do with the amount of work or passion or craft you put into a project. And so uh one of the turning points I had, and we could talk about it specifically, was you know, where an agent said, you know, you can only control what you put on the screen or what you put on the page, the rest of it is out of your hands. And and that's hard for a lot of artists to accept when you're used to, you know, controlling everything. Most of us are neurotic and OCD and really want to control everything, and then you it just gets blown up. And I I I also teach a class at the Writers Guild on crisis management of everything that could go wrong, you know, and how do you deal with it? So I think it's more about learning, in at least in my career, is learning how to deal with disappointments or failures than um capitalizing on any success I may have had in my career.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

That's the fact that you might be the most perfectly qualified guest for this show because you've got lots of successes, but you also have spent quite a lot of time talking about failures in a structured way to help other people, which is sort of the point of this podcast. So I'm actually gonna I'm actually gonna focus on some successes, which is against everything we believe in normally. So you use the baseball analogy earlier on. So of course, it is entirely right that baseball players, you know, they average sort of 0.3, 0.4. But every so often they'll get on a streak where they have sort of four or five in a row and then maybe wonder whether when that streak's gonna stop. So of course it is a world of rejection. Have you had a streak where you've literally everything you've gone for has been a success? And how long did that last? Or have you only ever had one at a time with things in between?

SPEAKER_01 5:46

No, no, I I uh no, I've I've I have I have a few streaks of one.

unknown 5:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

So, you know, landing my first job was a good streak. And then, you know, and I that landed, you know, I was on Nash Bridges for two years, and then I my option wasn't picked up, and I was unemployed for a year and a half. Then I was on the shield for a number of years, and that was a great run. That was a great run. That was probably my best run. Um then after that, you know, I had some disappointments at Fox. I had a deal at Fox, and uh I couldn't get any. I was writing pilots, but they weren't getting shot. Crash, I created one season, I was fired after that. Um Hawthorne, I went on. I maybe got four good episodes before that streak ended. Um Walking Dead was a good streak. That was a really good streak, you know, about three years for that. And then, you know, then I developed Damien. Damien, I think was a good streak of 10 episodes, and then that ended, you know. Um you know, you you you you take what you can get. I I I don't I don't I do know people who are worried about it ending. I think the idea that I have not had a long streak. I've never created a show that's gone seven seasons, I've never done spin-offs, multiple things. So that kind of keeps you hungry. That keeps you really, you know, forces you to reinvent yourself to kind of always dig in. You know, I just spent three years uh before the pandemic developing and shooting and editing um a pilot for Amazon for uh Stephen King's Dark Tower. I wrote all the scripts, you know, we had several writers' rooms, but I ended up rewriting all the scripts for season one. And, you know, I thought it was great. I loved it, I was really happy with it. And they didn't pick it up, you know, and then you're disappointed. My my windows of disappointment get shorter and shorter, you know. So this one I was upset for a couple of days. And then you pull out a blank piece of paper and you start and you start saying, okay, who am I as an artist? What do I want to do next? What what do I have to say? All of that, you know, and then I I signed on to do a show, Wanderers, based on a great IP, you know. Uh I signed on right before the pandemic. Wanderers is a pandemic show. Yeah. And so when you go to sell that, nobody wants a pandemic show. So it's it's difficult. You know, like what are the chances that there would be a global pandemic, just as I do a pandemic show? What can you do? It's out of your hands.

SPEAKER_03 8:39

It's funny you bring up those two books because they're The Wanderers and The Dark Tower are two of my favorite books of all time. And I have been tracking the Dark Tower series forever. So I had seen that, I think The Lost Guys had it for a little while, and then it went to like a Kiva Goldman's company, and there was a big movie TV series thing in the in the works, and then and nothing was ever moving forward. And then I saw that you got it. I'm like, okay, this is the one, this one feels right. And I was waiting and waiting, and then the news came out it wasn't moving forward. Like, oh man. And then I read Wanderers more recently, and same thing. I'm like, oh, this is gonna be great. And then I'm like, oh no, it's way too close to what's happening, way too close to what's happening right now.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

And and you know what? There's but my script for Wanderers, I'm very proud of, you know, I had a great experience working with the team putting that together. Uh, my pilot for Dark Tower, I'm very happy with. So you could look at it, yes, it's a disappointment, it didn't go ahead. But, you know, the studio and and and streamer invested, you know, tens of millions of dollars to make that show. So yeah, it didn't go the distance, but I still got to make something. I still had to got to work with people. I still learned as an artist. I did things I had never done uh done before, you know, I mean in a really, really exciting, fresh, fun way. So I've stopped looking at my looking at my career as saying, well, where did that come short, or what did you do wrong, or whatever? And it's more of, well, that was fun. What's next? You know, and you kind of keep going because now I do expect there's going to be some evil agent of chaos that is going to, you know, interfere in some way and and perhaps lead to disappointment. So I I do take things with more of a grain of salt than I used to.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

I mean, obviously, it's massively unfortunate that you've got a pandemic uh project and then a pandemic comes along. I guess it could have been a lot worse for the world if the same thing had happened midway through The Walking Dead. Um, but unfortunately that didn't happen. Um so I just want to talk about uh the crisis stuff you mentioned that you you do these workshops. Like tell us how that do you presumably just pull out the worst stories that you and any of your colleagues have experienced and warn people that this could happen to them?

SPEAKER_01 11:10

Yeah, you know, I mean there there have been, you know, there's so many things can go wrong. You know, you could have a uh uh, you know, someone doesn't like a script, an actor doesn't want to play, an actor gets arrested, an actor ODs. Uh I mean, this stuff has happened to me, you know. Um, you can't shoot tonight the season finale because you're doing a shootout in a park and there are ferrets mating in the park and they're under protection and you can't have noise. I mean, you know, you just have like insane, you know. I've had fist fights break out. We once had a knife fight break out on the set of the shield because we thought that the women over by craft services were extras dressed as prostitutes. No, they really were prostitutes, and we were shooting on their street and a knife fight broke out. So, so you know, you have insane stuff happen, right? So, so what I what I try to do is say that as a show runner or or as a uh as an artist, you see you can't you can't control anything, okay? You can't you can only let me start over. Before I was a TV writer and showrunner, I was a hospital administrator, I was a logistics manager in New York City, and I um managed emergency rooms and ICUs. So when you have an emergency room, you have to be prepared for anything that comes in the door. So you have to be prepared for chaos. So it was actually very good training ground for Hollywood, okay? Because in Hollywood, we think people want shows to be good. Well, there's a lot of bad shows. We think they want them to be on time, that's not true. We think they want them to be on budget, that's not true, right? Well, what happens is Hollywood only has one rule it's the show must go on. The showrunner is the only position in Hollywood that has show in it. So it's tied to making the show go on. So you have to keep the plate spinning, you have to keep everything going. So therefore, you have to have a high tolerance for crazy. You know, you can't hyper-organize things because stuff's just gonna happen. This past year, so many shows were shut down because there's a global pandemic. What can you do? You know what I mean? What can you do? You can't anticipate that. So it's a matter of how do you manage the crises, you know, and I would extrapolate how do you manage disappointment so that people have faith in you that you're capable, people have faith in you that you're a decent person, that you're a nice person they want to work with again, so you get another chance. You know, if you're the kind of person who's, you know, nasty and blaming people, and you know, most shows go down, they're not gonna want to work with you again. You know what I mean? I mean, you know, even if you have a series of hits right now, people are being held accountable for bad behavior. So, how do you, you know, be ethical? How do you be nice? How do you be supportive to your fellow artists? You know, how do you become when there's a storm raging around you so that people, you know, listen, you know, maybe Amazon didn't pick up my show, but when I met with them afterwards, they said, this was a really hard decision because we really wanted you to have that win. I'll probably work with them again sometime in the future. You know what I mean? I didn't burn a bridge. So that's what I think is important about how uh um when there's a disappointment, how do you show grace under pressure? You bring up it's an opportunity.

SPEAKER_03 14:58

You you bring up toxic leadership, and obviously there's been a lot of articles recently about toxic leadership. I think we've all in our history on different shows worked for toxic leaders, and you see the effect, you see the effect they have on morale in a room. Conversely, you have the reputation for being one of the nicest guys, showrunners in Hollywood. You have a you you are a well-known mentor, you take on you know this role in helping bring up young writers and also showrunner-level writers to kind of prepare them for the world. Was that a conscious decision at some point to sort of this was before kind of this this it became uncouth to be the other version of this?

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Yeah, no, no. Um I I I don't remember if it was a conscious decision. I think what happened was I started, you know, um mentoring people, helping helping out writers. I, you know, I always I I was always respectful uh uh of the of what the assistants in on the shows I worked on and what they were doing, and I would try to help them, you know, and provide guidance and read their and and help them get managers and agents and read their scripts and stuff like that. And then also I do a lot of work on inclusion and diversity and those issues, you know, uh in the writers' guild and that kind of stuff. And when you listen to people and you see that it's not an equal playing field, a lot of people are not getting the opportunity. I would just kind of, you know, reach out or or people could access me and I would read their scripts or give notes, you know. And I do this maybe five, six times a week, where I just spend half an hour to an hour helping somebody I don't really know. You know, they now people get to me through Twitter or whatever. And and what's nice about that in two ways is one, all people really want is to be taken seriously. Yes, they want access, yes, they want your advice or whatever, but they just want to be validated by somebody that they see as a senior writer saying, Yeah, you have the skills, you have the chops, here's what you can do. That's one thing. Two is I love it when those people succeed, even if somebody says, hey, I wrote a script that I never finished, or I moved forward, or or I got an agent, or now I'm running a show, or I did a sale. That's incredibly rewarding. I I love that, you know? So that's one thing. So I personally enjoy that. But one of the things that drives me crazy in Hollywood is that we don't have a model for what is a good producer. You know, I think people look at, you know, a guy like Scott Rudin and say that's a model of a producer, yelling and throwing stuff and all of this. You know, it goes back to the godfather, you know, the guy who goes, you know, uh, you know, she was the best piece of ass I ever had, and I had him all over the world. Well, that guy ends up with a horse's head in his bed, but but, you know, for some reason, that's the stereotypical producer, right? So because I came from working in a hospital, I have some management training. I just remember having to go to these really boring seminars for a few days about how do you manage people? We we don't have a lot of that. You know, we have these sexual harassment seminars just before we start shooting, and everybody makes jokes about them or whatever, and it all feels like the studios they are just kind of from a legal point, just covering their ass. So, you know, shouldn't we have some type of model? Shouldn't we have some type of leadership training? You know, I've just wrote up something for the writers' guild. So, so I think by sharing that knowledge with other writers, you can help them be good leaders, they can bring up good leaders, you can slowly start to change the culture. So that has been my goal and my part in this, you know. So that as far as providing some type of formal leadership training, I again, I just sort of, you know, it's it's just been a developing part of my career. And I put a lot of time into it, sometimes more hours per week than the actual writing. So then I wonder, is this worth it? But I do feel that's kind of my contribution to our community.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

I I noticed from your credits that you were on Nash Bridges, uh, and I've noticed, you know, knew this from the past that I mean that's a sort of a famously crazy show, not not a not a not a toxic show, but just a sort of crazy antics in the background. And then you went you went to uh and we've I've heard some of those, you know, a few of those stories because I had worked on a show with one of the showrunners, and you get bits and pieces of what happened there. And then you went on to the shield with well, you know, run by Sean Ryan, which has created so many sort of famous writers and showrunners. And you think you were talking about modeling, but there, you know, you think that what people think from the outside, what Scott Rudin does, okay, that's what a producer does. You were kind of underneath sort of Sean Ryan, who also famously reaches out and helps. Do you think that you know helped your development going that this is kind of the approach I'm gonna take? And this is because you really do go, as far as I can tell, above and beyond more you do more for the up-and-coming writer than almost any other showrunner in town.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

That's very nice. Thank you. I don't uh uh thank you. I I'm not um I appreciate you saying that. Um on Nash Bridges, you know, even though Nash Bridges, you know, Don had some antics and you know, it was a crazy set. It was a very well-run show by Carlton Qes, who then partnered with Damon Lindelof, who actually was my replacement on Nash Bridges after I was not picked up. Damon, so that that became a very interesting room in itself. Um so Carlton Qs and uh and John Wirth, his number two, they ran a tight ship, you know, and they they provided they provided um uh a good structure, and they they really did invest in their writers. And then Sean used Carlton's model and John's model as a way to run the shield. Okay. So one of the things that I think is important, and I really haven't talked about this, is that you know, Carlton and John had been around the block, and and and you got the sense that they were part of TV culture and history. You know, John had started writing in the late 80s and early 90s, Carlton had been around for a long time. They had worked with a lot of people that that were shows that Sean and I grew up watching. Right? So now when Sean and I start, you know, working and everything, we see we're part of TV history. Okay. We're kind of, you know, we see uh like we we want to carry the torch from this uh earlier generations of people we respected on. I think Our adjustment, though, was saying, okay, but that's been very white and male. And that has to change. That doesn't feel right. You know, when we were on the shield, we would say, okay, this doesn't feel right, that we only have white middle-aged guys writing about a community that's being policed in East LA, and we don't have any people of color on the writing staff. You know what I'm saying? So we would try to do freelances and bring people in, you know, and we we, you know, as that show became, you know, went on in future seasons, it became more inclusive. We had women writing on it, you know, that kind of stuff. So, so it was really, and paying attention to these issues, which was not an issue when we first started, you know what I mean, about having an inclusive writing staff. So the idea was to really, um, I think we kind of said, and then as I started talking to people, and you felt like I was saying that people were being excluded, that that was the change, at least personally, that that if we're going to say we're part of TV history, just like the history of this country, well, whose history is it and who's been excluded, and what stories are not being told? And are we richer or poorer for that? And all of that stuff. So these issues kind of came out, I think, as some soul searching after the shield.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

Can I ask a question, which is a sort of the philosophy of mentorship? So obviously, your mentoring, as Noah said, you're doing a great job and you're going above and beyond. You're doing things that you don't have to do, but you want to give back to the industry. But also, you're in a world where a lot of writers, however successful they are, wrestle with versions of imposter syndrome. How successful actually are they? Given people still get rejected, at what point do you become successful? I guess at what point did you feel like you could be a mentor for other people and you sort of reach the level where you you felt comfortable giving advice in this industry where there's a lot of self-doubt among senior people?

SPEAKER_01 24:06

All right, that that's an interesting question. First of all, I still have imposter syndrome. Okay. I still have, you know, I very often I've joked around about this. You know, I'll take pictures of cemeteries and send them to my friends and say, here's my career, you know, or I'll I'll just randomly text people and say, Is I haven't really heard from anybody this week. Is my career dead? And nobody has told me, you know. Um very often when I'm writing a script about two-thirds through, I just hate everything about it. I hate every word, I hate my approach, and I just feel I should go back to working in a hospital. So I have a lot of self-loathing and doubt and imposter syndrome. Okay, so so, but because I acknowledge it and I talk about it in an honest way, that makes me accessible to people so that people trust me. You know, people come to me, they ask me for advice, you know. So I have um I I think what I try to do is when I give advice or I mentor somebody, I'm trying to be supportive, I'm giving them my experience, you know, and I have been through it. I have been through a lot of crazy situations. So, and and I do think I have an innate ability to read a political situation and say, here's what's really going on, here are the traps. Everyone's being nice to you, but here's what's here's what they're really saying, or whatever it is. So I don't feel that you can that you don't, I don't feel that you have to get rid of imposter syndrome to be able to give advice. I think you just are, you know, trying to give people um um validation skills and talk honestly. Part of that is to say, I know what you're feeling, I understand what you're feeling as a young writer because I still am feeling it today. The frustrations, the rejections. You know, I I did an online class uh in 2020 for 20 weeks, where a lot of what I talked about was my hustle, the idea that I'm going out there, I'm trying to sell a job, that all of this. So people look at me and they say, Wow, you have these credits, you're a success. It's still hard for me to pitch. It's still hard for me to get anything through the system. And it's hard for if it's hard for me, it's gonna be hard for you. So don't think that because it's hard for you, that you're doing something wrong. It's just that it's hard. You see my point? That that that it's hard for everyone. And because because it's a business of rejection. That's my starting point. So just because you're rejected, do not take it personally. They're rejecting everybody. It's a business of rejection, it's not just you. And therefore, because when you think it's just you, you start to think you're crazy. And it starts to feed your demons, it starts to compound your neuroses. No, you're going to be neurotic, you're going to have your demons, but it really is hard. So I think that's kind of been my unique approach to mentorship.

SPEAKER_03 27:34

Speaking of sort of rejection and failure and that everybody is swinging and missing. And I just actually had a conversation with another show owner in Twitter DM who's saying, like, it's so hard right now, right now, in particular, because of COVID and other reasons, it's just so hard right now. But you know, as people are breaking in and they can't break in, or you're already in and you don't get on the staff, does the rejection, I know it gets easier to handle because you're used to it, but also the higher you go, the stakes are bigger, the bigger the win. At this point, sometimes it's a show that you're launching that you've worked on for years and it didn't move forward. What sort of are the feelings in those moments? And do you have sort of coping mechanisms that sort of just take you to the next project?

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Great question. I think one of the things to do is one, you have to do the work. Okay. Sometimes when people get successful, they start kind of phoning in the work and then focusing on the next thing. Right?

unknown 28:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

So I do the work. If I'm writing a script, like I'm writing the script. I'm not a showrunner who's telling other people how to write the script and then I'm giving notes and I'm, you know what I mean? Like I'm in the trenches. So you have to do the work so that you really believe in the script. So you're trying to do as much as you can about uh uh to make it succeed. You bring in good people, okay? You bring in talented directors, talented actors, casting directors, your props, your line producer. You bring in good people around you and you provide the vision, you provide the tone, and then you have to be smart enough to get out of their way. You have to trust the people around you. You can't micromanage them. You have to provide leadership, but you have to let people do their job. You have to let them fail. You have to say you're safe. Great, we made a mistake, let's fix it. You know what I mean? And you build trust. So you so one of the ways that you you can kind of share the burden of the making something of high quality is to realize it's not all on you. You have to bring in a team. Okay. Now, when a show goes down, it feels like you failed. You know, it's on you. Your vision, something about it didn't work. Okay, that's really hard. But you also have to realize that there's a whole other part of this business that is about the studios, the agencies, the networks. These are corporations. You know, they're just looking for hits, they're just looking for things that are going to be kind of low risk. A lot of people don't like to take risks. They're gonna want things that they can see. A lot of times when I describe something, they can't see it. You know, very often I'll even write a script and I'll say, oh, this is a joke, this is a joke, this is a joke. They don't get it because it doesn't read like a joke. And then when they see it, they go, Oh, the show was really funny. I didn't see that. I was like, Yeah, I fucking told you about it 500 times. Like, what are you doing? So you just kind of have to realize that there's so many other things out of your control, you know. You you you just kind of have to, you know, it's strange. You know, one of the things that happens when you pick a project, right? You have to develop magical thinking. You have to say, this is the one. This is it, this is gonna change the world, this is gonna change my career, this is everything I've wanted in this project, right? And then at some point you have to say, well, maybe that wasn't it, but it's this one, you know? And and uh I I sometimes those are those changes are harder to do. I mean, there was one time, you know, I had a project that went down, and um, you know, I was in bed for three weeks. I was I was kind of in a fog for almost a year. You know, it took me a few years to get over that failure, you know what I mean, until I got the next project on the air. Like it's it's it's tough when you when you have an emotional hit, but after a while, the more you realize the more you learn about the business, the more you realize that it's not about you. You know, it's more about these corporations are very, very involved. And so maybe that's a self-defense mechanism where I'm shifting the blame, possible. But I do feel, you know, what's important is I look back at every job I've had, and I I can say I did my job. You know, I I I I delivered what I thought I was supposed to. Now, whether or not that worked for somebody else and their agenda, that's out of my control.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

So, given the nature of this podcast, it would be wrong of me not to explore this specific one you've just talked about, where you were lounging in bed and you couldn't get this out of your system. Now, I'm not expecting you to tell us what it is necessarily, but how how bad was it? So, you know, you've been rejected, you can't get out of bed. Are you like I don't want to be in this business anymore? Are you uh thinking worse things? Like if you can remember, like what was it really like at that moment and what sort of big things were you thinking?

SPEAKER_01 33:03

I felt that I had been wrongly portrayed as a writer that I was not. I felt like a lot of the criticism I received was unfair. I felt that I was in um uh a situation in which um I did some pretty solid work, you know, and that was not being acknowledged, and it was uh to to suit other people's narratives. Okay. So there was part of, so it's like when you're getting out of a bad relationship, like, you know, or you're, you know, I've been married forever, I'm not divorced. But imagine you go through a bad divorce and you're like, well, I want people to know she was the crazy one, or she was this. You know what I mean? You you want to set the record straight or you want to tell your version of the story, but then you're just engaging in a toxicity, you know, it's best to just kind of move on. So one of the things that I did, which actually did help, let's just get back to the mentorship, was there was a uh was I was invited to give a commencement speech at a at a um at a NYU. So I was thinking about, okay, what do I have to say? Just like any writer at any point, what do I have to say? Like what do I want to tell these kids about, you know, their their career, you know what I mean? Where I felt like I was kind of, you know, possibly coming out of a difficult situation. So I don't want to bring everybody down, you know, you want to be inspiring. So, so I sort of had to write a mission statement about, you know, and you can find it online, but I I wrote like a mission statement about what do I believe about art, what do I believe about about the role of the artist, and and and how do we how do we lift people up, you know, how do we uh lift people up. And and in it, I talked about there was a that we have a social responsibility about how we portray others, you know, and and not just to portray women as like say, you know, sex symbols or or you know, people as stereotypes or whatever. And when I said that, the audience just erupted in applause. So I really got a reaction that I did not expect when I wrote the line. I was kind of up on stage and and was surprised. You know, this was at Radio City. I was, you know, and and it was it was just such a great experience, but I realized I hit an emotional cord. I had something to say. So it was about, you know, this moment of reflection, processing pain, you know, and then saying, well, this is what I believe in, and then finding a connection to somebody else, to a group of people, where people said, yes, that's our truth too, you know, and that that was really powerful for me. So then afterwards, I was like, oh, okay, I'm not crazy. This is, this is, you know, uh uh I'm okay. You know what I'm saying? I have something to offer. It's just that I think there's been a shift in my career where I've thought about this is what Hollywood is, and this is my expectation. So if I can get in this box and deliver it, I'm gonna be fine. But we make our own box. You know what I'm saying? When you try to fit in a box, chances are you're not gonna find your spot. You're not gonna fit. So you kind of have to make your own box. You know, I was talking about how a lot of the things in my career are sort of I'm doing on my own. And whether or not they pay or they don't pay, I find that they have value for myself and for other people. So it's about that power, it's about that ownership of your own career and your own life that that has been important to me, you know. So, so I would say that that was a real low point. I've had a few low points. You know, there was one time where I was shooting a show and it was based on on uh pre-existing material and and somewhat involved with that was kind of taken over the set, and I was sort of on the set, and I just remember feeling like a failure, like I had lost control of a show I had created and that kind of stuff. And and and I was talking to somebody and they said, Well, what are you gonna do about it? You know, and instead of wallowing myself pity, I went in and I took control of the set and I kind of stood up for myself, you know. So it's a matter of these moments of crisis. I think it there may be a withdrawal or a pulling away at some point as you process that pain or feel that pain, that rejection, that disappointment. But then it will lead, it will force you to re-evaluate your core values and and and reinvent and realign yourself to things that are more important to you. You know, we're coming out of a pandemic, and and people now have to say, okay, that was weird, but what am I gonna take away from this? What am I gonna, you know, what did I learn through this difficult period that I want to bring forward into my post-pandemic life? You know, it it I think that's a good analogy.

SPEAKER_03 38:33

It's funny. I I you're you're super sort of inspiring me because I do the Start with Eight mentorship, and I someone asked me a really challenging question recently. And you want to be real and you also want to be inspiring. You want them to continue, you want them to move forward. And so, how do you take something that's a really challenging situation and repackage it so that they can be inspired by it? And it sounds like that's something that you that you do naturally.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Well, I would just talk about it honestly, okay. I think I just it's it's you know, it's like when you're writing something for a show. If you write something honestly and the characters say it, the audience will will fill in the gap and they'll be inspired. Okay. I think uh so I I don't try to be inspiring. I try to be honest and give you my input, my experience. If you choose to be inspired by that, great. If you choose not to, that's on you. You know what I'm saying? I can't control that. So I can just only speak honestly. One thing I won't do though, okay, I did have this issue last week. A writer is very frustrated. Okay, this guy was in my online class and he's writing a number of scripts, and and um, he's not getting any traction. He can't get meetings with agents, he can't get meetings with you know managers or whatever. And he's like, and he's kind of asking me, should I give up? And I told him, I refuse to answer that question. That is not my job. That is your life decision. You know, you you have to make that decision. I can only say, here's what I would do in your situation, but uh don't put that burden on me. That's not fair, that's not what this relationship is, and that and only you can say if you have the the desire to suffer all this rejection to write. You know what I mean? Uh only you can say that, you know, writing can be a really miserable experience. You know, I I you know am currently writing a script, and the script completely fell apart. Okay, I had this really good version, it completely fell apart. I don't even know how to address it. Every day I go to my desk and I'm just like, I literally write in in the notebook. What the fuck is this? What the fuck am I doing? You know what I mean? And and uh eventually I'll get through it, but it's painful, but you know, you figure it out, and then you know, they'll either make it or they won't. You know, it's out of my hands, but I can just control what's on that page.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Extraordinary. So you've actually half done what we're about to ask you to do, uh, which I thought might happen given the mentorships that you do. But the final question we ask every guest is if you could give a single piece of advice to somebody wanting to be in this industry, what would it be? Now you've sort of already given a couple of bits, but I now need you to find a different one.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

Okay, I I wish let me give you the advice I wish I had got. I like I said, I spent a lot of time trying to help other people and trying to kind of fit into different machines. You know, oh, you know, um I needed a job, Sean Ryan was a friend, I helped really kind of contribute to the shield, and the shield launched. Okay. You know, I went to um, you know, Frank Dirabont needed some help on Walking Dead. You know, I was there at the beginning, season one, and then I kind of, you know, and then Walking Dead took, you know what I mean? Took off. I I I wish I had spent more time thinking about less of, oh, here's someone who wants a project, or here's somewhere I could help somebody, and kind of just generated my original stories. You know, I kind of I wrote some original scripts. I used to work in a hospital, I've written some hospital scripts, I've never created a hospital show. I I worked in a hospital for 13 years. You know what I mean? I haven't created a show set in New York. I'm from New York, you know. I haven't, I haven't been able to kind of, you know, it's more like, oh, you have a project, I could help you bring that to fruition, but I haven't been able to tell my original stories and and things that I really care about. And so, uh, and so uh, and I wonder if somehow Hollywood isn't the the thing. Maybe I need to go off and write those uh short stories or as a novel or something and just kind of write something because I I I want to tell my stories in a way that I don't wanna I don't want executives giving me notes and saying, you know, does the audience get this, whatever? You know, I want to tell my stories. So so um, you know, and I'm in my 50s and I kind of feel like, oh, how much, you know, I wish I had done that 10, 15 years ago, you know, when I had more time to tell these stories. So my advice is tell your stories, you know, decide early on, you know, why are you coming to Hollywood? If you're coming to Hollywood to tell your stories, then then yes, you have to play the game and you have to hustle and you have to, you know, be mentored and mentor other people and get become part of the system. That's all important. Make a living, all of that's important. But, you know, stay true to who you are as a storyteller and tell those stories. Those stories have value. You know, everybody's story has value. You know, the problem is we're kind of telling the same stories over and over. You know, they're getting a little frustrating, a little light. So I wish some people had said, you know, make more space for your original voice instead of using your voice to get somebody else on the map, if that makes sense. You know, now that's worked for my career, but um I probably could have put more effort or fought harder for my quirkier voice um earlier than playing catch up at this point.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

Extraordinary advice, particularly given the things that you've done in your career. So, look, writer, show creator, mentor, diversity advocate, and yet still sufferer of imposter syndrome, Glenn. Thank you very much for being part of our podcast.

SPEAKER_01 45:15

Really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 45:22

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 and Ebslin.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

Wait, are we are we not bothering to talk about the other Twitter accounts 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. You have a Twitter account? I do have a Twitter account. It's at Dan Rusty. And not only do I have another Twitter account, but I also have two other podcasts. And some of our listeners have been saying, please tell us about your other podcasts. Our other podcasts are. What about other podcasts? Oh yes, United States of America, 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 46:15

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 46:32

That's good.

SPEAKER_00 46:32

I'll do.