Take 106 - Writer and producer Jeremy Adams, Supernatural, Lego Scooby-Doo

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 sure, 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_01 0:20

For every two steps, there is most, sometimes even years of painful 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. Unlike everything in our business, your hands get out. That process takes that doesn't matter overnight.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

I was being told by my one bit job, 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 dot what I've realized when that won't be. It's never one big dot. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Screaming into the Hollywood Abest is brought to you by Scriptation, the Emmy Award-winning app that instantly transfers your notes into new drafts in seconds. Scriptation allows you to digitally mark up scripts, separate notes into layers, track changes across revisions, and so much more. Insert Noah saying something nice about scriptation.

SPEAKER_03 1:25

Damn, I I think this is where they actually want me to talk about how much I love it. And I do love it, it's great. Its colletting function transformed me from the messiest writer in Hollywood to, well, ever so slightly less messy. My wife might have other things to say about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Sitha listeners can get a free month of scriptation by going to scriptation.com backslash Sitha.com backslash S I T H A. Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am as ever your footballing co-host, Dan Rottstein.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

And I am your TV industry co-host, Noah Evelsn. On today's Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, I'm thrilled to introduce TV writer, screenwriter, animation writer, and graphic novelist Jeremy Adams to the podcast. Jeremy has been the writer or co-writer of 40 different things, including but not limited to Supernatural, Green Lantern the Animated Series, Lego Scooby-Doo, Hot Wheel City, a bunch of different Lego DC shows, Teen Titans Go, Mortal Kombat Legends, Batman and Superman, Battle of the Supersuns, Justice League War World. Jeremy has also written the Flash and Green Lantern Run, has also written Flash and Green Lantern runs for DC Comics, amongst many other graphic novel titles. Welcome, Jeremy. Well, thank you. It's great to be here, Dan.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Noah ever the professional decided to read it out with Lego blocks in his mouth, so you couldn't actually quite hear everything he said, which I thought was so many different words. Very impressive. Um so it's not strictly probably the right question to ask, but let's start anyway. Lego. What's the hardest thing you've ever built in Lego? Just in reality?

SPEAKER_04 3:28

Yeah. Um, there is a Lego Monkey Kid mech that took me far too long to do. And I figured I had to go through the process since I was working with them so much. Uh, my kids are much faster at it than I am. I'm trying to like, oh, I got to turn the page. There's very specific directions, and I am impatient. So sometimes those things get mixed up.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Excellent. So uh not that the podcast is going to be about action. But uh my kids are into it, and the other day they bought some set. And if you just miss one step, yeah, um, yeah, your whole thing can fall down. We had an at that wouldn't stand up properly because my son was overexcited and we missed the knee, I think, at one point, and then the whole thing never worked.

SPEAKER_04 4:12

And there's nothing worse than getting far enough along and realizing I've got an extra piece. Oh no, I have to either go back and take everything apart and put it back in. I mean, it's not unlike doing notes for television, right? I mean, it isn't. It's like, oh, I forgot this thing, I gotta go put it back in and make it exactly.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Of course, my whole setup was uh, you know, is building Lego a metaphor for succeeding in Hollywood?

SPEAKER_04 4:37

Um meaning that if you step on the bricks, you're in pain. Uh, that it's frustrating and hard. Um, and no, there are no directions to uh working in Hollywood, it's all a guessing game. And everybody I know has a different story and how they got in and and how they were successful or not successful. And success is really different compared to each individual person. Noah and I talk about this every once in a while.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Um you've got a fascinating list of credits. Um, and obviously you have it's difficult to work out, you know, what how you define success, but under most objective measures of success, you are a success. Can you looking at what you've achieved now and going back to when you were sort of starting your journey? Uh, have you made the things you thought you might make? Have you reached the level you you hope to be able to get to? Or is this all completely different from what you expected? And actually, you would hope to you know write movies and uh you know work on NCIS.

SPEAKER_04 5:41

Right, right. In Hawaii, for sure. Um it is both it's almost like it's a paradoxical statement, but it's almost both the same and different. Like I wanted to come out here and make big movies, and um I was egocentric enough to believe that I could do that, um, which I I do think you have to have a certain amount of self-confidence, but it's all wrapped up in feeling like you're absolute, you're an absolute fraud at every you know, step of the way. Um, I remember very quickly realizing that there were, you know, the supply of writers outstripped the demand by a billion to one. And um, I was disillusioned um very quickly because I remember going into a Carl Jr. drive-thru by Universal Studios, and somebody was in front of me, the drive-thru person was handing the bag of food out to the person driving. And then immediately he handed a script to the person that was driving. And I was like, oh my gosh, everybody wants to be a writer. And and you and you're deluded enough to think that you can do it, but you're also faced with the reality that the odds on you doing it are very slim. And I thought, if I could just get one credit, then the worst case scenario is I could teach somewhere. And I remember getting one credit and thinking, oh, I did it. And then you get the second credit and you're like, this is amazing. But then it was like huge amounts of years between that and my next credit. And some people walk in and they just get success right away, but it did not happen for me for over a decade of just grinding and trying to get it. But to answer your question, it's like it looks different. I'm not doing, you know, the next Star Wars movie, but I am doing movies that I really enjoy and that are relatively untouched in terms of what I've written, which is is something that's that's not necessarily the case most of the times. So I feel like I've gotten to a place where there are a bunch, there's a handful of things, projects I'm just really, really so excited and can't believe they let me do that. Maybe because of the the budget range, they wouldn't have let me do in live action, but they did let me do in animation.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Was the um the Carl's Jr. story? Is that a real story based on something you saw? Or you working at Carl Jr. giving it to project?

SPEAKER_04 8:07

I mean, no, no, it's a real story, but I mean, you're you're not wrong. There's a certain amount of I worked at Blockbuster for a significant portion of my life in Los Angeles, and I worked at one in Santa Monica where a lot of famous people would come in, and there was always the temptation to be like, I'm a writer, you know, can you help me, please?

SPEAKER_03 8:28

You know. I want to set the table a little bit on my relationship with Jeremy. Um, we go really far back. In fact, we uh my our W, we have the same WGA mentor. And for those of those people who don't know, the WGA, once you join the WGA, assign you to a high-level writer to help guide the early part of your career. And we both had Jose Molina, who was another guest on this podcast. And that was the first time I met Jeremy over a decade ago, I'm thinking. It's it's been a while now. And uh, you know, we've stayed in touch ever since. And the, you know, but I do let's, you know, trying to stick in chronic chronological order, you know, right around the time that I met you, you had either sold a project, obviously, something had got you into the guild. Uh, you meanwhile were maintaining a separate uh animation career because the WGA and tag are separate. We talked a little bit about that in the podcast, some of the frustrations there maybe about you know the two unions being separate, even though we're doing the same thing. But what were some of your early struggles right around that time period where I met you to like break into more live action? Like, where was your head at?

SPEAKER_04 9:36

Yeah, I mean, uh, the reality is my first credit, I got it, and then it was a couple of years later, and I got my next credit, and then I thought, oh, things are are moving in terms of animation. And I remember the Friday that my wife found out she was pregnant, and then the entire department I was working for got let go. And it was another three or four years before I was doing ghostwriting, and I was at the lowest point I've ever been emotionally because it's hard, it's up and down, it's feast or famine. And I was like, oh my gosh, I've got this credit, I've I've done the work, but I'm still not getting hired. This is weird. And so you're plugging away and you're trying to do anything you can to be in and around the industry. And then this mentor of mine started handing me work from from Warner Brothers based on my previous work and the fact that he knew that I was the fastest writer he knew that could write. So it was it was really hard. And what you found out when you got into animation, you you kind of got pigeonholed and you were were kind of referred to or or looked on down upon as a lesser writer. I mean, you've done that to me how many times? No, I mean it's been ridiculous. But but but you do feel like you're kind of ghettoized inside the animation world. And part of that has to do with the way that tag is organized and the way that WGA is organized, and the fact that animation writing and the animation guild, you don't get paid as much. A lot of the projects are not um as expensive to make, even though their back end in terms of consumer products can be billions of dollars. Um, and it becomes hard because there's no royalties and there's mini-rooms and you're freelance. And and so to be looked at seriously by live action writers um is a huge feat. And I noticed tides started changing during COVID, was one where a lot of live action writers left um live action because it wasn't being done, and they started doing animation and they started seeing how um terrible the circumstances around writing animation were compared to live action. Um, and I think that started moving the ball a little bit. It also let them know that it's the same, it's the same job. I mean, we have to do it faster sometimes, and we have to do it um a little more direction on the page sometimes, depending on the writer, but it's the same job. And the same thing when I ended up getting into live action with supernatural. The amount of people that treated me different was so staggering and it and to some degree disingenuous. Um, but the money that comes with live action is so much more, and the respect is so much more. Um, but when when we're talking about a long time ago, I was I was you know, stay-at-home dad, had nothing on the horizon, uh scared to death I was gonna have to take a job at 7-Eleven after my wife came home because you know, living in LA is expensive. And here I was with one kid, and the second one hadn't come yet. And and you know, I somehow roped this lady into a marriage with somebody that is working in an industry that is almost insurmountable. So it was it was rough, and then suddenly the work started coming, and and all I can tell people generally is there's this great Neil Gaiman commencement speech where he talks about you can be two of these three things, like really good or really great to work with, or uh have things on time. And I never knew if I was really good because producers could be so subjective. They could be like, Oh, I love the way you write action, I hate the way you write dialogue. And the next guy could be like, I love the way you write dialogue, I hate the way you write action. But I knew I could be the greatest person they could work with, and I knew I could turn the things in on time, and that built a reputation that that got their butts out of fire and started giving me more and more work. And from there I was able to ask for more and more money on the animation side. And then when I did the Scooby-Doo Supernatural with my friend Jim, that changed everything for us and allowed me to go into live action. And and then that added a little bit of spark onto my quote unquote brand, but it was still it was still terrible, like you're constantly grinding. And I had my worst Hollywood experiences post-live action that I did pre-live action.

SPEAKER_03 13:58

Well, let's let's I'm gonna obviously I'm gonna ask about that right now, but I do want to shine a light on something that I glazed over real quick or glossed over real quick in the uh introduction, which is you have 40 different credits. That I remember having Javi on and you know saying you have you've been on 25 different shows, and this was just a huge list that I couldn't read off. And you have in the last decade or maybe 14 years or so, you've had 40 things produced to get a credit, it has to be produced. So you've had at least 40 credits, which if you were in live action TV, you'd be living at the top of Bel Air right now on those 40 credits with those residuals. Maybe talk a little bit, you know, if you want to, about the a little bit more about the difference between the animation lifestyle and the um live action. But I also now really want to hear you jump into how it got harder once you actually began having some live action credits.

SPEAKER_04 14:51

Yeah, the difference, I mean, and and this has been expounded upon by more intelligent people than me, but the way that the animation guild was organized back in the day, you know, they did not think of animation as anything more than just for kids. And there weren't really writers, it was kind of board-driven projects. And but writing started coming into being with animation. And by virtue of that, I think scurrilessly, like the studios took animation writers and put them in this union with a lot of other crafts, storyboard, directors, all sorts of stuff. And because of that, the craft of animation writing is low balled a great deal. A lot of animation is um doesn't cost as much as live action, still costs a lot of money. We are doing the same job as live action, um, but there are no residuals. There are no uh, you know, royalty. I remember literally three years I should have been in the industry and I was paying for health insurance through my wife's health insurance. And I remember getting really upset and telling my friends, like, this sucks. We don't get any residuals, we don't get any of this. And that's and they're like, Yeah, but you get health insurance and a pension. And I was like, I do what? I had never heard of it. And I called up the animation guild and I said, Hey, I guess I'm supposed to be in your guild. And they say, What do you do? And I'm like, I'm a writer. And they go, Oh, yeah, we miss you guys sometimes. And so for us to carve out a lot of things during negotiation, we don't get to negotiate by ourselves. We're negotiating with several other groups within the animation guild, and it makes it harder and harder. And honestly, also, the WGA had never really looked at animation as a viable, you know, uh writing to cover up until a few years ago. And and it was always kind of completely siloed. But I think as we get further and further along, and more people from WGA go to Tag and Tag goes to WGA, we all realize it's the same thing. We also realize that the studios are making gobs of money off of the back of animation product projects like you know, SpongeBob is being seen, but how much money is it making in toy sales? How much money from storyboard directors and writers that come up with ideas get turned into pillowcases, you know, and toys, and we don't see a dime of that money, um, which sucks. But you want when you want to be a writer, you're doing it because you want to be a writer. And I didn't really think about I'm on my second date with my wife, I said, I'm probably gonna be poor the rest of my life, which is something you shouldn't say to people. But because I'm pursuing a dream that I know um the odds on succeeding are very, very slim. So by virtue of the fact that being uh, you know, not paid as much, you end up saying yes to everything. And you end up burning yourself out by trying to do everything to make up for the difference of what live action counterparts will do. And so I can't tell you how, I mean, just the things that I've got made is is amazing. And I look back and I'm amazed and I feel very blessed and fortunate. At the same time, the amount of free work that I've done over the my the span of my career is so egregious. But when you come out here with no connections and you're just trying to figure out how to break in, you're doing anything you can, you you do say yes to the the first the first thing I did when I moved to LA, I got a job at Blockbuster and I quit the same day because I got a job being a free PA on a movie in Chinatown. And I was like, Well, I made it. I'm going to be a PA in Chinatown and work, you know, 17-hour days. And then, you know, reality hits you, like, but how are you going to pay for food? So I did that for a week and I was like, I got to go back to Blockbuster. And so you're juggling having money coming in to do your regular life while you sporadically get this other work. And it came so sporadically with me. But after time, people started trusting you, and you start building your network. And and I do think trust and and and your reputation are so important that people know, oh, Jeremy's going to be really fast and he has a billion ideas, and that can be worth something. So that's helped me out. But again, you know, not to ramble, but talking about the hard stuff that happened after live action. Here I was on Supernatural, um, and you know, a show that had been on for 15 years. The show is ending uh right during COVID. We didn't get um our rap party or anything. But because I had a leg in animation, I was very lucky that I got to do a few movies during that time. It was great. But then I think in 2021, um I had one animation project that was going to be the biggest animation project I had ever worked on. The producers involved were some of the biggest producers in Hollywood today. And I had uh got this job, and my lawyer said, do not take this. The contract is terrible. And I said, I can't not take it because of the people involved. And for a year I developed this project with the other person, and then we were just going to wait for it to be greenlit or to be pit to pitch it, and they pitched it without me. And I realized something was wrong. And I was, I was like, uh-oh, I've been around long enough to know that I was getting cut out of the process. The pitch got greenlit. They said, Oh, we just had to do it really quick. It was nothing about you. And then the next couple of weeks, there was a deadline article about it being released, and I was nowhere to be seen. My lawyer couldn't get a hold of anybody. And these people that I thought were my friends that I talked to every day weren't returning my calls. And they were like, Well, finally I got a hold of somebody. They're looking for somebody that has a bigger name. And it was, it was really hard. And I had never had a manager or agent. I had just been hustling my took us off for the last decade. And I feel felt like if I had somebody to protect me, I maybe I could have. And then that was on the heels of another project I was doing where the animation studio held the project up for ransom basically and said, We want to write this. Um, and we own all the assets now. So if you want the show to go forward, we you have to let us write everything. And so I got a call and they said, You were great, we love you so much, you're wonderful, but we have to do this, unfortunately. And I was let go. So it was like within a month, those two things happened. And I was out in the cold. And um, my wife, who had my genius wife, who had been able to quit her job for a couple of years um to take care of the kids, had to go back to work. And um, and while I was doing comic books, which was great, but it doesn't pay that much. And uh, you know, you know how expensive LA is, you know how expensive daycare is, you know how expensive kids are. And then uh, and then slowly the last. Two years things have started picking up again, but it's definitely hills and valleys, to be sure. Now that I've rambled, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Yeah, by me. Do you want as part of your catharsis? Do you want to name the individuals who screwed you over? Just so you feel better?

SPEAKER_04 22:17

No, you know that you know what's so funny about that though is I would, if I was in my 20s, I I think about it all the time. I was like, if I had success in my 20s, that would have been terrible because I would have actually actually burned my career to the ground doing things like that.

SPEAKER_03 22:32

And I had a moment, what I just want to add because I know Dan has a question. I want to add, I know a detail about this story that's not going to name names, but it's just interesting the way the universe works. The titles that you wrote in those times, those small comic books, were The Flash and the Green Lantern, which now is sending you around the world signing autographs. So, like right, weirdly, yeah, that really worked out for you, even though you were your soul was being crushed at the same time.

SPEAKER_04 22:56

Yes. And by the way, I I feel that way all the time. You know, the the what's the Churchill uh quote when you're going through hell, just keep going. Um, I'm a pretty religious guy, and I could see a lot of times I ended up dodging bullets in retrospect and got opportunities because of it. But it was it's really hard. I mean, my wife all the time doesn't understand you can be so people will tell you that you suck to your face. They will tell you that uh, you know, they'll note you to death. Or when I before I was getting paid, I can't tell you how many producers were would would try to make you think that they could get something going, and they would just try to get so much free work and how many projects I have that are wrapped up because I got involved with the wrong person because I was just so desperate to break in. And it's demoralizing because, like I said, the supply, the amount of people that want to be writers is vast, and the amount of jobs available are small.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

The animated versus live action. It's fascinating hearing you talk about it. Because obviously, there are animated shows which have, I guess, transcended animation, is that right? The way of describing it, you know, like Family Guy and The Simpsons, for example, which are animation, but somehow if you stop a person in the street, they wouldn't call them animation, you know, because they're sort of so much in the public consciousness. So and then also the sorry, the other point, there is a question eventually here, but and then the other point is the thing about the you know, the the amount of money that can be made at the back end in terms of sort of consumer goods and so on, even if you don't get any of it. Um the people who you might be hiring you do. So when you are when you're pitching shows and thinking of ideas, are you thinking, you know, what's the thing that will be next Christmas's children's obsession while trying to think of an animated show? Um, and also are you trying to think, how can I make a show that's doesn't feel like animation? You know, it could be something that ends up being, you know, Simpsons-esque. How much do you think about those things? Or can't you? Because if you do, then you end up making something that's sort of crap anyway.

SPEAKER_04 25:23

I I think that the second part. I don't think about it. I don't like when I write, like I have a this Mortal Kombat Johnny Cage movie that just came out. I didn't think about that as I knew it was animation, but I didn't think about it as animation. I thought, can I how what if I got to do my own big trouble in Little China? What would it look like in this context of this universe? I don't necessarily think about it. There are some times where I think about the consumer products angle. When I was working at a toy company, um, I would one of the ways I got hired on their shows is because I was doing all these you know giant Bibles on their own organic brands, how they could turn it into stories. But I don't really concentrate on that. And when you're talking about the Fox, especially the Fox lineup of you know, Family Guy or or Simpsons, those are WGA shows. And WGA can cover animation, but it's very weird because this is how the conversation it goes. I've been in these conversations where you get hired to do a show and you say, Hey, I would love this to be covered at the WGA, and the producers go, No. And you go, well, maybe I'll walk away. And they go, Great, now serving writer number 35. Like they don't care because, as I said, there's the supply of writers unless you're a big enough name that walking away would be a problem, it would scuttle the project. But generally, why would the producers ever want to go with anyone other than the animation guild? Because over the life of their product, they won't have to pay nearly as much. Um, but yes, you want it to transcend. There have been a couple projects that I think will that will age very nicely. Also, the weird thing about animation is because it's animation, it kind of lives on for generations. Um, I've been showing my kids old shows, Thundercats, or I'll show them the Avatar of the Last Airbender, which at this point is fairly old, and they hold up amazingly well. Versus if you show your kids Dallas from 19, whatever, 81, kids aren't going to care as much. So animation has this transcendent ability. And when you're dealing with genre, especially, um it it lives through generations. People are finding Green Lantern the animated series again, and I did that ages ago um because it's on Mac suddenly. And that's there's some benefit to that. And there is a it's because they're niche generally, you get a little more notoriety. I had somebody call my wife on her cell phone, found her her phone number to yell at me about a Scooby-Doo project I had done. And that's another downside of the fact that like there is a negativity and stuff, there's a weird fame that comes with it, but there's also a weird target that comes with it that can be both good and bad.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

So I I haven't asked one of these questions for a while, but if you could choose between um creating an animated show that absolutely uh kills it, but in the animation box, as it were, um across to live action and uh having a show that absolutely kills it, but in a more traditional TV network or streaming, or I guess it's chuck a movie in having a movie, non-animated movie, but a movie, live action movie, which and you could choose between the success in all three, which would you choose?

SPEAKER_04 28:55

The choices are an animated show that kills it, a TV, live action TV show that kills it, and a and a movie.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Yeah, and just to add a layer, answer the question where you sit today, and what your position would have been on that when you were 21.

SPEAKER_04 29:13

Uh I they're primarily the same. I would love to do a live action movie. And I I will tell you right now because I love movies, number one, but I've noticed that theatrical writers can always go the other way. And it's much harder to go go from animation to live action, it's much harder to go from live action to theatrical. But if you're in theatrical, it's much easier and you have a lot more clout, you can go the other way. Um, and it's and and you have a lot more opportunity after that point. I I I there's countless amounts of live action writers that can set up shows after their their movie is done versus animation or uh television. Would I mean would you say I'm wrong there, Noah?

SPEAKER_03 30:00

No, I mean I'm I was mulling over because you and I have sort of similar backstories in some ways. I happen to have gone into live, I could have easily gone the way you went. You know, we could have you could have easily gone the way I went. I think in many ways we're actually very similar writers, you and I, just so you can see how two careers can go. And I would, you it's a really great answer. I probably would have picked TV, create a hit TV show because I'm in the world TV and you have more power in TV. But you're absolutely right. There's a cachet of writing a hit movie where you basically, for the next two years, you can sort of do what you want and you can play in all of the different. So you're obviously thinking, um, you know, in and this is interesting because it's probably it's probably you know is really uh reflective of your entire career where you have to think three or four steps ahead. How is this gonna not only help me now, but how is it gonna help me in the future? And I did, you know, kind of through through that answer, you talked about facing these crises without a team. And I do, you know, kind of want to shine a light on that as well. That if you're like a writer's assistant on a live action TV show, agents and managers are gonna start approaching you to be repped. At this point in your career, you have 25 or 30 credits. Credits to the point where, like, by the way, my kids like look up to you, Jeremy. You know that. Like, they want to play Fortnite with you, not with me, because you've worked in every movie that they like and every TV, and not only that, you've written the graphic, the the comic books that they like. So, like you are at the pinnacle of success. They don't even watch my show. So I'm just a difference there. But I do want to ask, you know, how did you, because I know that people who listen will want to know this answer. How did you then pivot into getting representation, you know, in a time of life where it was tricky because animation writers make less, and therefore there's less of a pie for the managers and agents to take their piece from? How did you get it? And how did you how are you maintaining that relationship?

SPEAKER_04 31:49

Yeah, um, it it's a I I had I had approached, I basically went to some of my friends that were writers and I said, I just had these terrible things happen to me. I was foolish to go into this without somebody having my back. But again, I had heard all the horror stories of friends of mine that have managers or agents, and as soon as they get them, they think that's going to give them unqualified success, and it never does. Or they're like, they spend the next year lamenting them that they have to pay them, and within two years, they fired them anyways. Um, but I was like, I needed somebody, I needed something to do because I had never done the you know meetings around town. And it was somebody in a Dungeons and Dragons group. I was like, I'm looking for an agent or a manager, and they go, I got a great manager. And so I literally just said, Hey, I'll take them. And I went and met with them. And I think they had the same reaction that you're having. They're like, look at how many credits this guy has. But as I started that relationship, I also think they understood they, I don't think they know how to leverage all that experience because again, you can get pigeonholed as, oh, this guy does just comic books and animation, and he has limited live action work. So you're, you know, I get a lot of, oh, we love your work. Uh, we would love to work with you. Maybe you could do some free work for us. If you ever have a great idea, why don't you come in and pitch it to us? You know, but getting staffed, uh, you know, stuff like that, that's not that's not something that I've been able to do or even be interviewed with staff. So it's been a real interesting ride for me. And all I can do is control the controllables, which is the same thing I had to learn a long time ago when I worked as a second assistant for this very crazy producer. And at one point he asked me, Hey, can I read something of yours? And I realized I was talking a lot of crap early on in my career and I didn't write anything. And I was like, oh shoot. So I had to write. And that's the only controllable I have in this business is you just have to write. You just have to write, you have to write a lot, you have to write a bunch of stuff, you have to do stuff for money, and then you have to write stuff for yourself. And then, and then now because of comic books, I have a little more of a little more room to potentially make that into comics, where I own a piece of it and I own uh the IP and the library, and I can use that going forward to help sell it potentially as other media.

SPEAKER_03 34:20

You you and I have talked about this before, but just the amount of writers who don't like to write, and I and I get hating writing because it's hard and it's painful. Some people like having have written and they still will do it, it's painful, and I almost like admire them more because they hate it, but they do it anyway, different way. Yeah, a lot of people in our world just don't like to write. And yeah, I've said this before, I control my anxiety by writing. It's the only thing that I can do when I'm out of control. But I do want to ask you, you mentioned um going from blockbuster to a PA job in Chinatown and then back to Blockbuster uh early in your career. Was there ever a time more recently where things like you've mentioned 2021 being really painful for you, uh, where you thought, I'm going back to Blockbuster? Not blockbuster per se, but I'm done with this business. And is there anything, you know, I know you all, is there anything that you actually can do outside of this? Like not thinking about you, you never actually there. I mean, I'm not gonna answer the question for you, but what would you do? And and has it ever come up?

SPEAKER_04 35:22

Yeah, no, I'm unqualified to do anything. Uh, and and I was, you know, after college, getting a degree in film, uh, you know, it was like I knew I had to burn my ships, and this was the only route I had to take. And I and honestly, everything I did, like if it gets really bad, I'm not sure what I would have to do to survive. I would do something. Um, and I'm happy to do anything to to make a living. But all my my whole through line is I want to be in this industry, I want to write. Someday I'd love to direct, you know. I would also like to get kicked through a window by Jean-Claude Van Damme. People have dreams, okay, guys? And that's mine. So uh, you know, I knew that that was the direction, and I and I purposely cut off certain avenues because that's the only way I could go. And uh sometimes you have to, you know, also being in those those environments where you're hungry and desperate, you can that galvanizes you. Like I said, the only control will you have is to write. You know, you try to write yourself out of a corner. Like the only thing I can do is go, well, maybe the next one people will like. And maybe the next one people will like, and maybe that one. And you just keep doing that. And you and I mean, in college, I remember Ben Vereen coming to my college and saying, if there's anything else you want to do, you should do it. Because the odds on you actually succeeding and or you know, burning out and walking away are very high. But I've never had that feeling of like, I'm gonna give up. That's never been there. And luckily, I've had my stepdad used to call me up and he would leave a message on my machine, and it was him, the sound effect of him opening a beer, and he'd be like, Yeah, that's just you kick opening a can of whoop ass. And he would hang up the phone because he admired the fact that I was doing this thing. And I honestly think a large part of my family didn't think I would ever get anywhere in it. They've told me so later, but during during it, they would say, uh, they would cheer me on. And I also know contemporaries of mine that didn't have families that would cheer them on, and they left very quickly after getting here.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

So we we're much nearer the end than the beginning. I've got one question left before the the final question. All right. We we talked about, well, you talked about your supportive wife who, when not yet your wife, on the second date, you said, you know, just so you know, I'm not gonna earn any money, and this is a woman who quit a job and then had to go back to work when things weren't working out. Um I don't want to put you on the spot here, so I hope your answer's yes. But on one of a very early episodes, we had a guest talk about the gift that he buys his wife when he gets a show sold. Please tell me that you look after this poor lady. And when they sell a project as a gift.

SPEAKER_04 38:18

We uh uh my my wife is so amazing, and she's also I grew up fairly poor, so I never celebrated anything. She loves to celebrate everything, so it's been a gift to me because every time something does good happens, we do celebrate. Um, but you know, just recently we've been able to buy a house in Los Angeles, which is such a crazy thing that we never thought would be possible. And um, and we feel very, very, very fortunate. And I'm scared to death. I mean, I this the fear never leaves, you know. It's always like, oh, I might survive this year. I hope next year will be okay. And you just, you know, it's it's the princess bride that most likely kills you in the morning, uh, is is what I feel all the time. But I try to take care of my wife as best I can because uh I I realize how lucky I was to have her, and then to have a spouse that you know just as supportive through this insane industry is is paramount. Um, so I'm I feel very, very fortunate.

SPEAKER_01 39:25

Excellent. Uh so look, final question. Uh if you could give a single piece of advice to somebody entering the industry, what would that single piece of advice be?

SPEAKER_04 39:39

Um it's so hard to just say a single piece of advice, but for me it was it wasn't just writing things, it was letting people read those things. I was so terrified of what people might think. And I the minute I started even in my terror letting people read the things that I wrote, I found a couple things happen. My writing got better. Um, it started producing a callus for rejection. And and then it helped build a network of people that were dreaming the same dream you had, and that you got to grow up with in this industry. Because as Noah said, we met each other a decade ago, and and to see each other's career grow over time, you you tend to help each other out. You tend to um, oh, I heard about this, you might be perfect for this. You know, there's that a lot of that going on, and you trust that person. So when I trusted somebody to read my script, and my mentor, my boss that that gave me a lot of my work, I remember the first thing he said when he read it. He because he he came back and he said, Oh, this is garbage, but it's like the good kind of garbage. And I remember being like, Oh, what does that mean? But but it it it I didn't react poorly, and I think that real to him, he realized, oh, here's a teachable person and somebody that I can, you know, pour into to help make him a better writer. And it did help me make him make me a better writer. So I would say it's not just about writing, but it's about giving that writing away and letting people read it and start that journey to be a professional writer.

SPEAKER_03 41:22

Fantastic. Jeremy, uh, despite you my kids admiring and liking you more than they like me, it's been a pleasure to have you on our podcast. Thank you for joining us today.

SPEAKER_04 41:31

Thank you, guys. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 41:33

Thank you. And a point of clarification um, Noah's kids admire most people more than they admire Noah, uh writers or not. Um, Jeremy, thank you very much for coming on the show.

SPEAKER_04 41:45

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Thank you for listening to this episode of Screaming into the Hollywood Abyss brought to you by Scriptation. Thank you as ever to James Launch for the music, and thank you to our loyal listeners. And if there's any showrunners out there who want to hear their fellow showrunners abused uh and ruffled around and put under the microscope so you can hear their stories of rejection for failure in adversity, please send them our way. If you are interested in following us on social media, no, I've lost track.

SPEAKER_03 42:34

I am at NEBslin on Twitter or X or whatever Elon Musk now calls it. And thanks to Elon Musk, I'm also at Noah Ebslin on Hive, Spoutable, Blue Sky, Threads, Mastodon, MySpace, French, and I'm sure a thousand more.