Take 94 - Showrunner Luke Tunnecliffe, Making their Mark, Fearless

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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 for.

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

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

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And I probably lost it. I do my one big spot when I've realized what that will be. It's never one pitch bot. There will be other spots.

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Screaming into the Hollywood Abyss is brought to you by Scriptation. The Emmy Emmy Award.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

It sounds awful when you say it. Let somebody with a more charming accent do this bit. Screaming into the Hollywood Abyss is brought to you by Scriptation, the Emmy Award-winning app for anyone that reads scripts. Makes notes, organise them into layers, and save hours of time by automatically transferring those notes into new script revisions. Stiffer listeners can get a free month of scriptation by going to scriptation.com backslash stiffer. Now that's how you do it, Noah. Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss of Podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. Once again, we're gonna have an excellent episode today because Noah is not joining us. Once again, he is stuck on set. You just have one host. Um and again, we don't have an American guest, we have an Australian guest. I am delighted to have on the show Luke Tunacliffe, who is the Chief Content and Development Officer for Jam TV. And even though in Australia they don't call them showrunners, he's effectively the showrunner of a number of sports documentaries, including Making Their Mark and Fearless. Welcome to the show, Luke.

SPEAKER_03 2:24

Dan, it is very, very good to see you again.

SPEAKER_04 2:26

I'm just really disappointed that Noah is not here, and I only have to put up with you.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

So I have known, as you'll be able to tell immediately, I have known Luke for a while. We used to sort of work together in uh certainly in my one of my previous lives. Um, and I've been trying to get Luke on. Luke is one of the more interesting people I know, and I've been trying to get him on one of my podcasts for a while, but he doesn't drink whiskey, which was disappointing. So we can't go on that one. Um, but obviously the bar to getting on this show is you have to be a showrunner, and rather helpfully, Luke has been a showrunner on multiple occasions, which is why we're on. But we've not done sport on Screamings at the Hollywood before, so it's gonna be quite interesting talking about it. So let's let's dive straight in because I remember you were very excited because uh you were gonna make this show, which was gonna be uh your classic fly-on-the-wall documentary about sport, but your sport, the amazing sport of Australian rules, which uh I am one of the many Americans who rather, well, people in America who rather love, and obviously in Australia it's a it's a religion. And I remember you were very excited about telling me about this show when we were talking in that in that time before the global pandemic. And obviously you ended up making the show, but you made it when there were no fans in the stadium, the players were all in isolation, the clubs were all in financial turmoil, which obviously slightly changed the how it all played out. Tell me the story of the excitement of bagging a big show on Amazon, and then how it had to change and how you had to deal with all of that.

SPEAKER_04 4:14

You're right, Dan. I I will never forget uh February 2020, so just before the pandemic really took hold, that I was I was actually in U, I went to the Miami Super Bowl and then went and saw you in Utah. And I remember telling you, you know, in a month's time we start shooting on this new, you know, in in Australian terms, is the biggest sports documentary in history, Amazon Prime Video, um, where we were going to follow six Australian rules football teams for the course of a seven-month period over an entire season. And for for your listeners who don't know what Australian rules football is, you know, we regularly have crowds of 100,000 people at games. It is, as you said, it is a religion. Um, so it was only it was only right, and it was long overdue, that that someone like Amazon came in and saw the opportunity to to do a real fly on the world documentary. And then, you know, I I get back to Australia from Utah, and literally a month later, I'll I'll never forget, we're in our boardroom on March the 20th, and the phone call came through from LA uh from Amazon, and they said we've just shut down 90, I think they said 93 of our productions worldwide, and you're one of them. Um please disband. Uh we'll come back to you with further details. And that you know, we had 154 crew work on the show who were reliant on you know that seven month period being locked. I I'll never forget the devastation of that phone call and the shock um anger, maybe. Um but but we understood, and then it was from that point, it was a case of saying, right, we understand that's where Amazon needs to go worldwide. What can we do to impact that and to change that decision? So the ball got rolling from there, Dan.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

So what did you do in that situation? And how did you end up still making this thing?

SPEAKER_04 6:24

We were lucky that the pandemic in Australia at that point wasn't that bad, although you know there was a lot of fear and seeing the news reports from from overseas. Um again, I I remember I was standing in the middle of one of our stadiums on a chute when the news came through that the NBA NBA had shut down. And at that point, when when a sport, a global sport like the NBA shuts down, that's when you know that it's gonna come and hit you pretty hard soon enough. And what we needed to do, you know, as a sport, being the Australian AFL, Australian rules football, they started putting in plan B, C, D, and E, and I think they ended up down at plan Z. And we're lucky that that they they came into a hub situation, brought all the teams um to Queensland, which was one state that wasn't hit by the pandemic, just had literally hadn't reached there. It was almost like this invisible force field around one state, and so this the entire league effectively up and move, similar to what the NBA ended up doing at at Disneyland. So um, yeah, we we I mean no one had ever had COVID protocols because it's not something we'd ever in the you know the television or or the film business had to encounter. So we very quickly had to put in place protocols, and then we had to work with Amazon's team, and and it got to a position where we were the first production, w worldwide production with Amazon, um, back up and running again thanks to the protocols. And they were really strict and they had to be, the strict protocols that we put in place, and we got through an entire season without incident, and and we made the show and it you know went out to 244 countries.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

So obviously, I watched the show because I both love the game and I wanted to see what you could come up with. Obviously, it wasn't what it was meant to be because sport completely changed, but it was fascinating because you know it was uh players having swabs stuck up their noses and people dealing with awkward family situations because they're you know they were torn away from their families and put into these quarantine situations, club owners worrying about the finances and the rule changes and so on. I'm not saying is it better than it would have been if there wasn't a pandemic, but in terms of given that fly-on-the-wall documentaries are meant to show you know the sport beyond the sport, did it actually achieve maybe more than it was meant to in some ways?

SPEAKER_04 9:07

I think in 20, 30, 40 years' time when children who had never heard of COVID and they're having a history lesson, I think they could watch this show, and I think it's the time capsule for for that moment. Um, I think as you said, no one had ever seen be pulled the curtain back on on a pandemic to this extent, and you know, things shoved up your nose, and uh as you said, all the different testing that we had to put in place. It was different. Um, and I think it was good different. I think, yeah, yeah, I mean, we've done so many sports documentaries of of teams when there hasn't been a pandemic. I think this is something that um will be looked on for generations to come as well that was a weird time.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

So obviously, you know, your company have been doing involved in sports broadcast for a long time. This world of documentaries that's in this place now with obviously Ryan Reynolds with the Real Rex and one, which probably came to more people than had realised, but you know, before that, and that was inspired by one about Sunderland, which had been inspired by ones that had been about um the Arizona Cardinals, there's been one on the All Blacks, been one on Formula One. At what point did you realise that you guys wanted to get into the sort of documentary streaming world? And how hard was it for you to join in? And what is it, how much of your business is it now, and how important it is it for storytelling and sport nowadays? Three questions.

SPEAKER_04 10:45

It's a consider look, it's a considerable part of our business now uh that streamers over the last five years have have made their way into Australia in a big way. Uh, you've still got the free-to-wear networks, but the streamers you know have a have a pretty big stranglehold as well. So the oppos there's more opportunity for storytellers than there's ever been before. And we're fortunate that you know, I'm I'm biased, but I I think that at our company, Jam TV, we've got the best storytellers and the best producers here. And sport is our DNA. We know it better than any, or we think better than anyone in our country. So we're we're in a really fortunate position where there are so many great um sports stories to tell. Uh, Australia is is a sports mad nation. Uh, there's not too many places in the world that has a you know a tennis um Grand Slam and a F1 Grand Prix, uh, and all the other sports that we have here that, as I said, regularly get 100,000 spectators at the mighty Melbourne Cricket Ground. So sports stories are in our blood. Um, yeah, I look back to Jordan's The Last Dance. I mean, it's probably it was actually the first year of COVID, wasn't it? I remember we're all sitting at home in lockdown watching that, thinking, wow, I mean, this is this is the pinnacle of sports telling. Everybody talks about drive to survive and the effect that that's had on the F on F1. You now see that they're they're doing it with golf, they're doing it with tennis. It'd be interesting to see how that has an impact um and bringing a broader audience to their viewership or not similar to F1. Um, but what the last couple of years have shown us is everybody's got a story to tell. Every sport, every athlete. Um, and we just love getting down and dirty, and and ultimately these fly on the walls, you end up shooting a lot more than is ever seen. Like with going back to making their mark, we shot two two and a half thousand hours of vision across a seven-month period that was ultimately condensed down to seven one-hour episodes. So from two and a half thousand hours of vision down to seven hours.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

You pay your editors well.

SPEAKER_04 13:05

Some would say there's a lot of wastage there. And and the reality is when you are doing you know, observational documentary, there is a lot of wastage. It's not like scripted where you shoot for purpose and you know what every scene is. This you just don't know what you're gonna get. And ultimately, the best stuff that you end up getting is probably when you least expect it. You just need to be there and you know be available to collect whatever it is you you're supposed to or what you don't know what you're gonna get, that's why you just need to be there at every turn.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

I mean, I remember meeting you in LA and you were either on your way from or going to meetings with you know the big companies, who are obviously many of whom are headquartered in LA. How much explaining about Australia did you need to do? Given there's obviously there's there is an inward some Americans have quite an insular view, and obviously there's a there's enough support here, they can make plenty of documentaries to go around. Um, and obviously, I know some of this is obviously for the Australian domestic market, but some of it is obviously for the international markets as well. So how how how did the sort of let me tell you about Australia and why it's worth doing stuff with us pitch? How much of that did you need to do separate from the actual stories?

SPEAKER_04 14:32

I know your podcast is about rejection and and failure, and that's probably you know, I go I rewind five years and these conversations when we first started having them with streamers, particularly the ones that are based over in LA, it was really difficult. The amount of doors that got slammed in our face, um the rejection of yeah, it's just not for us. And then you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and you need to keep going, you need to find a new angle, and you don't give in, um, you find a way to make it sound like they need to be here and uh have a foot in the ground here in Australia. I I think ultimately what changed was when some of these big streamers actually physically, you know, flew executives out to Australia to come and have a look at some of our sporting events who might never have seen them in the past. I think you know we're a 15-hour flight away, but it to Americans Australia feels like the other side of the planet. Uh or on another or on another planet. Um, but to actually get here and to see our sport up close and to see how mad we are, I think that's when the penny drops, that there's a real opportunity for great stories.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Yeah. Obviously, you you you I mean, your sport, we're sports fans, that's how we first got to enjoy each other's company. When you come to something like obviously you've been to at least, is it two Super Bowls you've been to? I've only been to one, but I'm locked in for Vegas. Yes, you are no, you're very excited about Vegas next year, as you should be. Um so yeah, you've been to a Super Bowl, which obviously, you know, the Americans describe as the the greatest show on earth. I mean, in terms of crowd size, they're limited by the stadium, it'll always be smaller than some of your events. But when you when you come to a Super Bowl when you're used to your the madness of Australian sport, what what did it do is it just how commercial it is? Is that the biggest difference between their big spectacles and your big spectacles?

SPEAKER_04 16:43

Um yeah, this look, the Miami Super Bowl was it was certainly an eye-opener. We we were there covering it for part of what we do is radio as well as a business. So we we were on Radio Row, so had a media pass for the week. And then we're down and lucky enough to be in the San Fran rooms pre-match and walked out onto the field with them. And that was probably the moment when you walk out and you look around and you go, Wow, I mean it's it it literally is half the size of our stadiums here, but the energy was just on that day was amazing, and to see the broadcast and particularly um down in Miami, down on the down uh down on the foreshore there. They ESPN and CBS, and there was there was probably 10 networks set up all week, and they were 24 hours a day. So there was this insatiable appetite for content, and you couldn't get enough of it. And there was angle, different angles and injuries, and it was it it was it was fascinating to see that. I mean, we are you know, we're a country of only 25 million people. So to put that into context of of what you guys are, and then you see the half-time show, it's you know, that's next level stuff. Um, you know, I I loved LA's halftime show last year with Snoop and Andre and MM and to see the production values that go into that, it's I I don't think anybody else can do that as as good as the Americans can. Love it.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah. So let's talk a bit about your your journey from the from the beginning. So how do you first get into sport and broadcasting? And now you're in the business that you're in now, and you were telling me off off recording that you're actually doing some non-sport stuff as well, because the documentary stuff has moved on, from sort of breaking into where we are now. Could you have imagined how much the industry has changed?

SPEAKER_04 18:54

No, and I'll pick you up. The documentary has not moved on. We're doing we've got more documentaries than than probably we can handle, to be honest. But what we've also seen is there there is this big appetite for scripted drama in Australia. There's probably in the last 12 months there's been this sort of shift that that the streamers want um homegrown drama stories. So, yeah, we're we're having a play in that and really enjoying the scripted space. It's it's something different for us. But we've got you know, we've got some great script writers and directors and producers that we've bought in-house and and we're really enjoying that process. Back to what you originally asked about you know how I started. I I was fortunate enough to work at one of the Australian rules football teams straight out of school. So at the time, the biggest club, Collingwood Football Club, worked there for four and a half years, and then the president of the time, um, a guy by the name of Eddie Maguire, who was the biggest media star in Australia, also happened to be the president of the club, and he you know, he was all he he was he wore many hats for this man, Eddie, who's um he's probably a cross between Mark Hubban, Robert Kraft, you know, that sort of stature within here, within Australia. And he also was the host of Friday Night Football on Channel 9 here, which was the biggest football show. And he wanted to get he got me out of Collingwood and said come and do broad broadcast TV. So that for me, that's how it started. Yeah, I've been fortunate enough to attend Olympics and Com Games, um, Wimbledon's Ashes, every big sporting event throughout the world. I I'm I've been fortunate to have a front row seat at.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Amazing. Even though I actually got my facts slightly wrong and you corrected me, let's actually talk about the scripted drama space because obviously that is well, it's been the bread and butter of this podcast, and lots of people we've been involved with have been showrunners, and they the American version of this is you know, you you start work, writer's assistant, you work your way up in these rooms and you end up running these shows. You're coming at it from a different angle, which is you know how to make a production because you've done sports documentaries. So the streamers have were you pitching to them, or were they coming to you and saying, you know, you understand Australia, can you do these things for us but derive locally?

SPEAKER_04 21:37

Again, we've been really fortunate. It comes down to relationships, and relationships take time, it's not something you know, the trust and um for them to know that you're going to be able to deliver to the standard that they need. It takes time for that to happen. We're fortunate we're in a really good position now that we've got that trust and with all of them. And yeah, it's it's a combination of what you're Just said we've been lucky enough for the streamers to come to us and say, Hey, we've got an international format. Could you produce it for us in Australia? So that's not one where we pitched, it came to us. But likewise, when we have ideas now, we go directly to them and say, How about this? Now, of course, you're going to get no's, but I think what we've done particularly well over the last couple of years is listen to what the streamers ask you. Uh, sorry, what they tell you, what they are looking for. Because no point pitching something to somebody if they're not in that in the right frame. I think for us, it's pitching to the right streamer at the right time with the right concept. And that's yeah, it's we've had some pretty good success and a s and a pretty good strike rate. No point coming up with a hundred ideas and you know throwing a hundred darts and you know, none of them land. You know, we we would prefer to put all of our time and energy into things that streamers are have told us they're looking for, and then we'll reverse engineer it to come back with a concept, a creative concept that hopefully works for them.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

What's your what's your worst pitching story?

SPEAKER_04 23:18

It's not so much a pitching story that went bad, it's probably the frustration is when you you have an idea, there's only so much time in the day or a week or a month or a year, and you don't get to that idea, and then you see that idea being made by somebody else somewhere else, and it becomes a hit. That's probably happened on you know too many times that you can count that that you sit there and go, I had that idea, why didn't I follow through with it? That's probably more frustration, and then you beat yourself up about that more than anything else.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Is this in sports or is this in other things?

SPEAKER_04 24:06

Um no, the the sport and dramas as well. Like where I know there's you know, I can't talk about the specific titles, but there's been a few that that we have spoken about, you know, might have even been five years ago, and for whatever reason we just didn't follow through with and might have been made slightly differently, but the genesis of the idea is the same.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

Yeah. So just on this whole sort of Australia versus America thing, well not versus America, but you know, the obviously the differences and so on.

SPEAKER_04 24:40

There there isn't there is no Australia versus America. There is definitely Australia versus England.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

That is true in many ways. Um but I know that during the pandemic, as you say, it was it was odd because there were times I remember you telling me some of the weird COVID rules you guys had were even more restrictive than you know, you couldn't go for a walk with your whole family at various stages because you know it had to limit it to the number of people. But as you say, it wasn't actually the effects weren't as bad. And you you ended up taking an American production on in Australia because LA was shut and Australia wasn't, although that didn't go perfectly.

SPEAKER_04 25:28

No, we were when LA was uh in the grips of COVID, we were called about a production that they was just about to go into production in LA and then everything shut down. They'd already cast the show, and I won't talk specifically about what the show title is, but it it was a show for a very large um US network uh prime time show. And they said, Is there any chance you could do it in Melbourne? We said, Well, uh, leave it with us. We'll the first inclination is always yes, and then we'll figure it out thereafter. And anyway, we had to lobby our government to get allowed because at that point all the borders were shut and flights weren't happening, so we had to lobby to get 60 Americans flown from from the states into into Australia. They had to do two weeks of quarantine in a quarantine hotel, these contestants, and the the talent for this show. Then we it was an eight-week shoot at the Melbourne Dockland Studios, at which point we're uh Melbourne was pretty well open for business, and we were probably three-quarters of the way through the shoot, then all of a sudden, Melbourne went back into lockdown, and as part of that, our production was shut down. At that point, we had to again lobby the government to say this won't be, you know, this won't be good for our credibility if we can't finish this show that we said we'd be able to do. The irony was LA had reopened at that stage, so the show could have been made in LA if they'd just waited. But anyway, long story short, we um we got the government support, we put more protocols in place. It was the most stringent of sets you can imagine, but we got the show to the line and the show got to air, and it was it look, it was a great learning experience, and it putting your um putting all the eggs in the basket of all your crew to do the right thing. Um, because if one of them went down, then the domino effect to you know, talking about a you know $15 million production, whatever it was, it was a considerable production. You just saw how diligent everybody was at at that time because they needed to be, because ultimately everyone's lives, lifestyles and you know, financial well-being was at stake.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Obviously, being a showrunner is a complicated thing, even during normal times. What did you learn about the skill of required to do that job? Given what you had to go through in a number of different ways during the pandemic? Now we're I mean, I know there's still COVID testing, but we're effectively out of the pandemic now. What did you learn during those periods which is actually valuable in uh non-wartime showrunning, as it were?

SPEAKER_04 28:37

I think that everybody everybody had their own story to tell in their own personal life, and they had their own circumstances to deal with. And the mental health of people certainly throughout that time was suffering. And I think um there wasn't a uh a one size fits all approach to every to the entire crew because ultimately everybody was doing it differently and in their own way. Um, you know, the amount of times that we had to look after not just the person uh as part of our crew, but it's their their wider family because they were having issues at home with their children, homeschooling, and just everything was harder, and you had to have compassion for that. And I think, you know, I I'd like to think that I've got better myself now with a reasonably young family as well. That um, you know, life's pretty tough, and particularly when you're working in a business like ours where it's all consuming and um you know it can be 24 hours a day, seven days a week in this game, and um, you know, you've got to look after people as best you can in order for them to give you the best result on set.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Yeah, absolutely. You know, you're in an amazing position in terms of what you've achieved in the Australian sport scene, and obviously you're now to say, with the relationships you've got the streamers moving into non-sport and you're moving into scripted. Do you have any pretensions at some stage to come and do something? This is a very American-centric question, but you know, come over here and work on a big production over here, or is that just A, you don't think it would work, but B, why would you?

SPEAKER_04 30:34

Dan, you'd never say never. I love America, you know that. Um, I'd you know get there as much as I I possibly can. COVID notwithstanding. Um ultimately I'll go wherever great stories are to be told. And if there's a you know there's a great story that we can be involved in over that side of the world, then absolutely we we'd always look at that. And you know, I I love going to the States, so there's no dramas with me heading over there. I was a long time ago, I was um given an opportunity at ESPN in in Connecticut, and I I ultimately knocked it back uh for for varying reasons. I would have loved to have seen how that might have played out. Um but to be honest, there's I I have no regrets. We're we live in a great a great city and a great country and and we do we think great things over here and enjoy doing it.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

But you're saying if I, you know, if if you thought you could pitch a uh documentary about Orange County Soccer Club centered around their uh charismatic English president, it's something that Jam C would Jam T V would consider.

SPEAKER_03 31:44

Uh who who exactly is the charismatic English president? I'm not I'm not sure who that might you might be referring to.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

So fast forward five years, given that five years ago you know you hadn't made these documentaries, you were just doing sort of the more linear sports production and studio work. You know, you're now you've done them for nearly all of the streamers moving into uh uh crime and you're moving into scripted. Like what what does this look like in five years' time? Where else are you going as a as a business and for you as a as a showrunner? What what could this all end up looking like?

SPEAKER_04 32:32

Um if I had the crystal ball then, I'd love to be able to give you that answer. But I don't know. Things move and change so quickly in our industry as we've seen over the last couple of years that I don't actually know you know where we'll be in five years. I know as a business, you know, I'm confident we're in a really strong position with with our foundations, but where the industry is going to be in five years, I don't know. I mean the streamers are uh starting to pull back slightly. Um and you see all the costs cutting it at all these big organizations, you know, Silicon Valley and the like. So it's going to be interesting to see where it heads. Ultimately, content will still need to be made on a on a grand scale, just to what level time will tell.

SPEAKER_00 33:18

Yeah. If you're a sportsman or sportswoman today going into sport, is it possible to have a career of success if you aren't doing social media or you aren't open to documentaries, you just want to do your sport without any of the other stuff. Is that still a thing, or is that almost disappeared now?

SPEAKER_04 33:51

No, I think you can. There's there's a number of sports people in Australia that are very private people that uh that are still very successful at what they do on the pitch or the field or in the pool. Um, I think to amplify, you know, as a sports person, you only have a finite period of time where you're at the top of your game, unless you're Tom Brady and you play to your 46 or whatever it is, that that's one out of the box. But if you've got, I mean, on average, I think a store a sports person have has a lifespan on average of for three to four years. The good ones obviously get 10 plus, but you'd want to make the most of that. Having a social media presence, um having your story told in a long-form documentary only helps your life after sports. Um, you know, Tom Brady's legend is because he's been he's he's pretty much been an open book for a fair amount of time, and that probably helps you get a $300 million deal to commentate once post-playing. Um, and I think as a sports person, you get a real opportunity to set yourself up, surround yourself with smart people. What I mean, I've got a lot of friends that have played elite level sport who have set themselves up because they have ingratiated themselves with people from that organization they're at. You know, that we when you sporting teams attract people with money as followers and supporters, and you you're best to latch onto them because life after sport can take you a long way, corporately or or whichever other way you want to go.

SPEAKER_03 35:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Um disappointingly, uh, we're running out of time um because I'm rather enjoying this conversation. Uh I mean, some of it's because Noah's not here, but some of it is just it's just fascinating. Um but I we have to ask the final question, which is if you could give a single piece of advice to somebody wanting to enter your industry. I'm not sure how we class your industry. I guess we'll we'll make it sports documentary making. It's too complicated otherwise. What would that single piece of advice be?

SPEAKER_04 36:15

Have a thick skin. Um something that we always go by is Theodore Roosevelt's The Man in the Arena quote. Um, it's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes up short again and again. And that's what sports broadcasting and sports storytelling. It's it's a tough game. And that that goes for any form of media content. You've got to get in there, you'll cop a couple of whacks across the head, but you've just got to keep getting up there. And when you go and pitch something and it gets knocked back, you've just got to find another way, you've got to come up with new angles. Um, it's it's a tough business, but it's also a great business. I think, I mean, every everybody would say work hard and and all those things. I mean, that they are true. Ultimately, um, to have longevity in this business, I I think relationships is is what stands stands you in good stead. Yeah, brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Luke Tunners, Tunnercliffe. Thank you very much indeed for being part of this podcast and good luck with your sporting and non-sporting endeavors.

SPEAKER_04 37:41

Dan, it's an absolute pleasure. I appreciate you taking your time out to talk to a an unknown little Aussie down under, particularly when you've got the world at your feet over there. So please say hello to all my American friends.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

Hey, look, a showrunner is a showrunner. Plus, we had a gap in the schedule and there was no one else available.

SPEAKER_03 38:03

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Cheers, mate. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

No worries, mate. Well, that's a wrap on this episode of the myths. As always, it's been this episode is brought to you by Scriptation, the screen, writing, and annotation software that at the very least has made my life easier and will make your life easier as well. We'd like to think of live with us recording these episodes in offices and basements and closets and bathrooms, and anywhere we can get a little space to record an interview. And of course, if we want to thank James Lodge who provided us with a great intro and outro music.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

If you want to find us on social media, you can find Noah at NFLin on Twitter, tweeting a variety of writer-based nonsense and terrible puns and occasionally faking sponsorship. If you want more refined tweets, mostly about football and whiskey, you can find me at Dan Rutte. If you're interested in buying a copy of Scriptation, if you go to www.scripton.com backslash tissues, S-I-T-H-A, you'll receive a Twitter discount. Thank you very much for listening. As always, we appreciate you. Please give us any feedback, mostly positive stuff about me, and we will see you next week.

SPEAKER_02 39:27

And if you do say a negative thing about Dan, there is a chance that you will scream.