Take 87 - Podcaster, writer Paul Bae, Black Tapes, Big Loop

SPEAKER_01 0:00

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

SPEAKER_00 0:13

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

SPEAKER_03 0:22

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

SPEAKER_01 0:43

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

SPEAKER_00 1:00

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

SPEAKER_03 1:05

Oh, 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, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am as ever your English co-host and the second most successful podcaster on this show, as you're about to find out why.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

And I'm your industry co-host, Noah Ebbsling. On today's Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, we're excited to have on longtime of the pod, as well as screenwriter, memoirist, and podcaster Paul Bay. Paul created two enormously successful fiction podcasts called The Big Loop and Black Tapes. He's also sold multiple TV projects to Amazon, AMC, NBC Universal, as well as directed an audio drama for Marvel. Top of writing, Paul is also an actor and a comedian. Paul's breakout role as delivery man in Fringe propelled him to such roles as a store owner in Supernatural and Officer U in their interview. Welcome, Paul. I I know Dan normally asks the first question, but before we officially start, do you still remember your line as the delivery man on Fringe?

SPEAKER_02 2:42

Because they cut it. I went from a guy with a line to a guy who just had to look surprised as a delivery man. And then because I snapped my uh Achilles tendon during that scene, they had to pull me off the road and just use my delivery bicycle as a stand-in while the truck barreled down on it.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

Thank you. So Paul is a, as Noah said, he's a friend of the podcast. He's been very supportive for all the things we wanted to do. He's also been desperate to get on here and keeps asking us, and we keep telling him that he hasn't failed quite enough yet. But I think he's probably failed enough now that he qualifies to be uh to be on the podcast. I want to talk to you about your sort of journey because uh you ended up with uh unless it's changed, one of the most successful uh and most listened to scripted podcasts. But that actually came effectively as a result of a failure because you couldn't do it as a TV show. Um so can you tell us how you became a very, very successful podcaster because you weren't able to be successful somewhere else?

SPEAKER_02 4:00

Yeah, I I got I became we became, as you say, very, very successful in podcasting because we were very, very, very failure-laden uh in screenwriting. Uh my my good friend Terry Miles, uh, I I was a again a very, very poor actor in his first film he ever made. Uh I think it's called You Me in Love or Something, and I was I was one of the leads, strangely enough. Uh and you know, of course it didn't go out because I sucked so much. And so, but uh, instead of being Terry's actor in his great movies afterwards, uh, he we became friends, you know, keep me in the loop. Uh, where I failed as an actor, I became an excellent friend. And uh one day we're just sitting there going, um, let's make a movie together, and he said, Do you have any ideas? I said, Uh, I have a movie called The Black Tape I Wanna Write about a ghost hunter who doesn't believe in ghosts. So we wrote that in five days and gave it to his agent, who I won't name, uh, and Terry since parted with, but we gave it to him and waited. Uh, we waited a year, he said it might be going to somewhere, we waited two years, you know how it goes, and then all of a sudden we realized it's not going anywhere. Uh so we turned it into a podcast because serial was huge at the time. Uh, and we thought I just had a frustration. I said, uh, too bad we can't turn our screenplay into a podcast. And Terry, uh being a former musician who mixed his own music and uh uh you know a DIY director of uh indie films, uh a pretty successful one at that, he said, Why the hell not? And that's how it started.

SPEAKER_03 5:20

Which is extraordinary. And tell us how success for those of people who don't follow these things, how successful are we talking? We're talking how many millions of downloads?

SPEAKER_02 5:32

Um we're not the most uh so BBC did this, the BBC uh did this did a study on uh English audio drama in North America, and apparently we were the third most downloaded uh after some long-running shows. But in terms of per episode uh downloads, I think I think we might have been number one. I think and I think we had something like 1.3 million at the time per episode. Uh 1.3 million downloads per episode, which is for fiction, you know, it's not a it only came out once uh once every two weeks for a 12 episode run for two and a half seasons. Um so it's it's not like a talk show where people come in all the time. So the numbers are pretty good on an episode per episode basis for fiction.

SPEAKER_03 6:12

Yeah, well look, well, you know, 1.3 is x million is extraordinary, and we're very jealous of those numbers. Although, actually, if I'd known you only number three, we might not have invited you on the podcast. We thought you were more successful. We tried to only go for the top two. Um so just a last question from me. Slightly this is a very specific failure story, but um obviously you were on one of my other podcasts first, you came on my Whiskey Podcast, and you told a brilliant story about the interview um and how you what you did in the audition for that, and then what happened as a result, and then obviously having your head blown off uh in part of the show. Can you just can you just tell? Because it's a great story of of a very specific type of failure for an actor. Can you just tell us about what you did in that audition with your Korean and then what happened?

SPEAKER_02 7:04

Yeah, and the worst part of that is they they they brought me out of retirement for that. So I was happily retired, back to teaching and whatever. And then uh my eight former acting agent says, Listen, can you come back in one more time? I felt like this uh romantic cowboy asked to put on his spurs and his gun belt and his holster. They said, you know, Seth Rogan and his company really want a Korean to play these North Korean soldiers. And my parents are from North Korea, so I thought, you know, this is a good way to pay tribute to my parents' heritage of playing a North Korean soldier. I don't know what I was thinking. So I went in and my Korean's not that good. I got my dad to translate the lines, the English lines that they gave me into Korean. I went in and it started fabulously. I think I was about 30 seconds in. I could see the casting director and everyone getting really impressed by the words coming out of my mouth, and then I I think because I'm a comedian, when I saw their reactions, it threw me off. I'm used to playing in dark rooms or riffing off of an expression. One of them had an expression, I wanted to joke off of it, and then I lost my place. And I forgot my Korean. I was I I lost my rhythm. So I started naming off all these. I started saying, like, uh Chajemion Kimchi, uh, uh, and just naming off Korean menu items that I knew, and no one had any idea I was doing that. And so my agent called me all excited uh right after the audition and goes, I hey, I heard you rocked it. Um I'm like, awesome, because you probably got the part, they just gotta check it with a Korean translator to make sure you said the lines. So I so I went from the guy with the most lines out of the two to the guy with almost nothing to say. Uh but at least I was on screen to get my head blown off uh at a very pivotal point, which is my act, which is the height of my acting uh success.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Paul Paul, I think you're you you have the rare honor of being someone who's come on our podcast more than once. Obviously, you've come on as kind of a guest co-host, and we mine some of these stories a little bit because we obviously wanted to chat about your stories as well. And we have been, unlike Dan said, trying to get Paul on for a long time as a guest himself, not as a co-host, which I'm sure we'll bring you back one day as a co-host, but as a guest to kind of actually kind of probe into your story. Because one of the things that I really like about you uh on social media is how sort of honest you are about how hard things can be. Uh, and you we we we know, and we talk about a little bit here about this breakout success, um, obviously, of your of your audio, of your audio career, your podcast career, which sort of segued you into a film and TV career, something you've been you know trying to do for a while. But my question right now, obviously, we're we're a podcast, as you well know, about failure, rejection, and adversity. So the my question really is about were you surprised after you got some heat? And you definitely have some heat and you had some heat back then, how hard it is still to get any traction in this business?

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Yeah, it's it's you know, because I was new. Uh in 2018, I sold my first. Um, I guess I could talk about it now. Everyone thinks the black tapes was my first TV sale, um, but it was it was actually the big loop. I I had sold the big loop to a network uh just a few months before the black tapes, and I sort of sold it while I was down in LA pitch getting ready to pitch the black tapes. So sort of, and I I went into that pitch without knowing it was a pitch. I thought it was just a meeting with some executives that happened to be a fan of the big loop. Um and so when that happened, and then all of a sudden the black tapes happened, and then my I got an agent, and they were like, You're on fire. Uh you're gonna have a career in Hollywood. My wife and I were thinking of selling everything here and moving down there because the next week I've been selling a pilot a year, and I thought, this is it. And then my my agent says, I think it's time for an overall deal. Now I had no clue what an overall deal was at the time. He says, I'm gonna try to get you one. And I love the guy, and he came back, went to a major studio, came back with the offer. I remember he's saying it's nothing. Uh let's ignore this and just keep doing what we're doing. And I said, Well, at least tell me the number. And he he told me the number, and I remember thinking, Oh, hey, cheer up, it's not so bad. I can go back to teaching and double that uh right now. And that's how low that number was. And I'm like, I'm like, I we had I had no business even thinking of an overall deal. But you know, you people around you in Hollywood sort of pump you up when you have a certain type of momentum, and I get it. Like, it's like you when you play sports, your coach will tell you, you're on fire, you take the ball, just go. Um in Hollywood, I I found that I have to just sort of winnow out these voices and sort of like uh uh find a way to sort of really listen to what the truth behind all the voices are. Some people are saying great things just to pump you up because they think you need it, uh, or to just keep you going, or or you know, just any type of motivation or any type of wind under your sales in this business is is helps. But uh at other times, for people like me who have no idea what the landscape was at the time and what these words meant and what these deals meant, um, I I I learned to pay closer attention to what they mean and what not to listen to, but yet appreciate the the motivation behind saying those things at the same time. Um yeah, so it's it's it's a lot of illusion. You always hear about Hollywood and its illusions. And then when you get through the when you try to jump into that pool, you find out it's just desert sand, uh, there's a lot of that in this in this industry.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Illusions mixed with with a lot of uh delusions. Now I do want to add you know to your thing that uh uh uh selling a pilot a year is pretty pretty damn good, especially in this environment recently. It's been really hard for anyone to make any sales at all. Uh, but were there any time any time since you've switched from being a teacher, which you famously chronicled in your in your memoir, since you switched from being a comedian, since you switched from being an actor? You've had a number of careers that have brought you to to this moment where you're like, damn it, I think I made a mistake. Maybe I'm gonna go back and just, you know, it's just there's just too much constant rejection, too much constant failures, and and and maybe it's time to just, you know, you know, take a pause or do something else.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

I think you know, the the only time I ever felt that like a a tinge of regret that maybe I made the bad worst decision, uh, is I had this um, I got uh a development deal with this Canadian TV company, and they gave me uh a daily TV show with some of my comedian friends. Uh it was called the City News List, and it was basically a a really budget version of the daily show for local politics. And we would joke about these local political issues, uh, and it's four comedians, and I was the host of it, uh the anchor. And we had that every day, Monday to Friday, we'd do the writer's room in the morning, come out and sit around the table and and make these jokes, and you know, we had a small fan base, and I remember thinking, I don't know if this is gonna last. Uh, because you know you start you start paying attention. I remember that we had a big meeting for new lights for the set. I'm like, oh I'm excited now, and the lights never came. I'm like, oh crap, we're about to get canceled. So I remember so I was expecting it. I didn't decorate my office at all or my cubicle area, but when on the day that we got fired, I felt the sense of relief that I was partly right. You know, that the relief you get was I knew it. I'm relieved now. But then following that is oh shit, what am I gonna do for money now? Um, and I had thank God I I had friends from teaching, and I you know asked them can I come back? And I had to sub all over again and start from the bottom. And I remember during that year, um and also my wife and I uh uh she opened up a new business, and I and she thought, do you think this we could do this easily as long as you keep that daily talk show job? I'm like, I don't know. And as soon as we opened up that new business, the show got canceled. And so it was quite it was really financially challenging that year. And I I started taking tutoring jobs again. And I I went from a touring comedian with a daily talk show to now substitute teaching and taking these night jobs at these academies. Uh and I remember thinking at the time, this this sucks. This is uh uh I'm not used to this, I haven't experienced this type of instability. If I wanted to be this financially unstable, I would have stayed a comedian. Uh, but at least it's something I enjoy. But this is teaching at different schools with no connection to the students, uh, it really hurt. And that was a I remember that might have been the darkest place I had hit, but even then it wasn't that bad because my wife and I had each other, and we knew if we if we worked hard and if I had a little bit of luck, I'll end up a full-time teacher again, and our business is gonna grow. It was bound to grow. Um, and so and it did. The business grew. I got my full-time teaching back, and then it went great. But it was a year of a lot of uh did I do the right thing uh going through my head.

SPEAKER_03 15:13

So for those people who follow you on social media, you know, you live in an extraordinary part of the world with amazing views, you're you've got your your dogs around you, you've got an incredible uh selection of whiskey. Like it you've got this sort of uh solitude and peacefulness that most people can't have because uh there aren't properties like yours in you know in the middle of LA, and if they if they if you if there were there'd be you know thirty million dollars. Does it uh help you uh well we've we've talked to people before about you know whether they should have moved down here, does it help their career? So I'm gonna I guess the flip side of that is uh being in such a relaxing place and being away from all of the nonsense of Hollywood and the delusions and illusions, does that actually allow you to be a better writer because of that background? Or actually, do you think if you gave all up and came and rented a very cheap flat somewhere in the middle of Hollywood that you'd be able to crack into the industry more quickly?

SPEAKER_02 16:18

Um I'll be honest, if I was in LA, I think I'd be socializing way too much. Uh there's a lot of people I like uh down there. Like uh, well, Noah's not there anymore, but I I'd probably be bugging on you on your door, Dan, quite often, and some other people that I've met on Twitter. Um up here in this, I mean I'm in a small village population 1300, uh uh about uh 40 minutes outside Vancouver, so there's really no other writers for me to hang out with uh over here. So I get a ton of writing done, and and the reason we were about to move down to LA is because this was before the days of Zoom. Uh and the pandemic hit, and unfortunately there was one positive, which is everyone started zooming, um, which allowed me to put the brakes on us moving down to LA and just sort of stay up here. Um and because uh because of that, I I think my my productivity is is way up there. Um I'm able to write. Um I don't have kids, I only have three dogs. Uh they don't they don't have anything to say to me. Uh so I have a lot of energy. Uh all the energy I would spend managing other people that I'm trying to raise uh through argumentation, or you know, I I was a high school teacher, I know how much energy goes into like uh uh bargaining with people uh for behavior. Um I I don't have any of that energy expended, so it just goes into my writing.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

And so for if you lived in a less beautiful place, the sort of should I move down to Hollywood, it might help me thing might be easier, but you'd be giving up a lot more than most people to come down here. So does that mean I mean, uh, what's your sort of should I move or should I not move? Or do you think actually now if some of these shows that you're trying to work, they they all work, you can still keep your idyllic Vancouver lifestyle?

SPEAKER_02 18:00

If everything works out the way I'm hoping to, after talking to some showrunners who who've all told me, uh the ones that I've grown uh friends with, they've all said, Don't ever sell your place. Just stay up there. And when you if you get a green light on a show and it and it happens to be not produced in Vancouver, but in LA or somewhere else, I'll just live in those places for a few months and then come back here uh with my wife and dogs and just continue doing what I'm doing that's led to those moments.

SPEAKER_03 18:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

The the I wanna I want to probe a little bit into the Paul, the productivity, which you talked about productivity. I I have a glimpse into your world through social media, and obviously you and I are friends. I've never been to your house and I've never spent, you know, any I've actually never met you face to face. We're so we're exclusively friends over social media and occasionally on Zoom. But you know, I watch your life from afar, the the the life that you present to us. I see your the amazing food you cook, I see your the walks you go on with your dogs, I see your pithy comments on Facebook on Twitter. I particularly enjoy the comments you direct at Dan uh at his expense. The the and then you have a lot of energy, I can tell. And I I I know from the DMs we exchange that you that you're you're pitching a lot, you're producing a lot. But what is what is your, you know, the the how often are you writing a spec? How often are you pitching? What's your balance? Do you like to put words on the page every day? Are you you more of an idea guy generating pitch ideas and not writing specs? What are you doing right now?

SPEAKER_02 19:19

Uh well, right now, uh I think I I think I told you, Noah. Um, I I and I want to keep this as vague as possible, but I had I do a lot of general meetings. Uh, I do a lot of writing of pitches and a lot of one pagers. Uh one pages I just give to my reps, and if they get excited about it, they send it out, which leads to generals. Um sometimes even I've had four occasions where I would tweet and a joke idea that goes viral, and I'll have one of my reps contact me because their assistant saw it and said, Can you take that down? We're gonna set up a meeting about that very idea. So those things happen, uh, which is weird. Um three weeks ago I walked into a general with a studio and I told you this, Noah. And I I during like I always do, I I have three ideas in my pocket. I soft pitch three ideas, um, and I have one pagers for those three ideas, and a week later I found out we're they're going ahead with all of them. So now I'm furiously writing full page full pitches for those three ideas for which I only had one pagers. Uh for for one of them I have a showrunner attached now. For another one, I'm at we're trying to attach a showrunner, uh, another one I'm trying to attach a lead actor. So I'm constantly writing these pitches right now. Um what I'm missing is the actual writing of the script. Uh I would love to get past the pilot stage, get a green light so I could write something. My dream is now to write an episode 102 of anything uh instead of uh the pilot. Uh 102 being the second episode of uh of a uh of a show just green lit.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

You you just brought a find fascinating and that we haven't actually talked about on this podcast, and I think it's really important to vocal to kind of dig into it just for a second longer, is that you said you bring three ideas to every general meeting. And I think you know, there's no rule book in Hollywood. There's no like a lot of people take a general and they're like, Well, that's I just want to make a friend, or they don't quite know what to do. I see people get asked a lot, like, what are your favorite TV shows? And that feels like a question to me where they're not really guiding the meeting, they're just running out of things to talk about. So somebody will say, What are you watching to kind of create the new, you know, direction for the conversation? You are bringing in ideas in your back pocket to hopefully get to the point where you are mini-pitching people. Now, I think people get confused on what a general is and what a pitch meeting is, but I think you're doing it just right, where it's like, I want to turn this general into money. I want to turn this general into work. And if I just talk about myself for an hour, that's all I'm gonna get out of it. So, can you talk a little bit more about how you came up with this process and and how it works for you? Because I'm guessing it's a very successful strategy that others who follow us might want to start emulating.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

I think it comes from uh both teaching and stand up comedy, which I used to do, which is you know, be prepared for different scenarios. Uh, like before a comedy, if you're going up for um, for example, if you go up my up on a Comedy stage on a Friday night, and you see a bunch of people walk in with uh you know a phallus of inflatable phalluses on their heads, you know, well that's a staghette party, and they're gonna be very rowdy, and I better and they're not gonna want to pay attention to my slower jokes uh or more long drawn out stories. They're gonna want joke, joke, joke, joke, and they're gonna want a little bit of attention to them to to quiet them down. Because uh, when they after they get the attention, they tend to pay attention to the show. So, you know, just being prepared. So before general, I'll do a little bit of research, I ask my reps who what do they make? Uh what are they known for? I'll I'll try if possible, look up the executives to see where they come from, what in what they've made, and then I'll sort of I'll from what they've made usually or what they've been attached to. Not that executives always have the choice in these matters, but you know, I I take a guess as to like what excites them. Uh then I'll have my the three ideas that I think might I'll be able to soft pitch during the course of the meeting, and sometimes I can't do that. Uh there's no space for, but if they say something like um the the question you brought up, Noah, if they say something like, what have you been watching? Uh and I know I have in my back pocket, because I watch a lot of stuff. But if I know I've had my back pocket, for example, a Korean gangster film, uh sorry, Korean gangster series, I'll say I've been watching a lot of Netflix, a lot of Korean gangster stuff, uh, which is why I wrote this. Uh you know, and when I say I write this, they know I mean a one pager. Uh and then I'll I'll I'll say, Oh, I'm hoping to do this. And the and if I see their eyes go wide, then I know I can I can go a little further and push a little farther. Uh but quite often I'll I'll pitch an idea or throw out an idea, and I I'll I'll say nothing, just a polite smile. Oh, that's interesting, that's cool. And I won't go any further. I'm like, yeah, that's yeah, that's bad. Um just knowing when to stop uh selling something that someone doesn't want.

SPEAKER_03 23:40

So we're about halfway through the podcast, and a lot by now most of our polite guests have said good question uh before giving their answers. But obviously that hasn't happened yet, so I feel like we should uh yeah up our game a little bit. So you um you mentioned the K-word, um so uh you know you mentioned sort of Korean gangster show. Uh I want to talk about sort of diversity as a as a positive. I know that from again following you on social media, when you've talked about some of your things that you're working on, other Koreans in the industry have are mentioned as part of that. In today's world, because obviously it's very different from probably where we were maybe ten years ago, maybe five years ago, does do you lean into the the diversity to both obviously to mine the stories, but also actually how you find ways through the maze of Hollywood?

SPEAKER_02 24:37

One of the greatest things for me personally, uh career-wise, uh since Parasite won an Oscar, is that uh it's allowed people like me to lean into who we are, who we authentically are. Um when I was younger, in my early 20s when I started writing uh stage plays, uh one one act plays for myself, I'd always center a white character, uh a white character character that I grew up with, or a white character that I saw myself through. You know, I I grew up around white media. I I w I used to wish uh Mike Brady was my father. Uh I I used to wish I were these, uh, you know, uh I wish I used to wish I was uh McClane on Die Hard. Um, you know, it's it's I identified with white characters, and then and I identify, I'm able to identify not just with those characters, but with characters that actually look like me. That's been the big shift. So I've been able to write stories uh coming out of my experience. And in the the uh the great thing about that is the people I'm talking to in generals or in pitch meetings, they know it's coming from a very deep, authentic place. And and I think uh I feel like this new newfound or renewed energy comes out of me telling these stories because I've told watered down versions of them to tell people what I think they want to hear for most of my life. And only in the last five or six years have I able to tell them exactly the story I want to say with the exact same characters I had in mind. And it and because I'm doing that, I think it I get it's like something's unleashed, and I think they feel it. And it's it's been able to help me connect with people, uh, even through a Zoom. I'm able to push through uh with uh with that energy. I'm just excited to be able to tell these stories. So I remember after Parasite one, I I emailed my reps uh jokingly reminding them, hey, just so you know, uh, I'm Korean too. Uh and they wrote and they wrote back, oh hell, yeah, we know. And right away I had all these meetings lined up with people I would not have had the chance to pitch or meet prior to that evening. Um it might have been like two years down the road, but it really sped things up for me.

SPEAKER_03 26:35

So that's fascinating. I guess does that put you so obviously I fully understand. As as you know, I've got my family a mixed race, and when my daughter watches TV shows now, you know, the whole thing everyone's had, I think, with the Little Mermaid, you know, when she can identify it completely changes your view of the entertainment industry when you feel part of it. I'm not saying it's gone too far, but are you now sort of do people only want you to pitch Korean themed things? Because now actually they're like, we don't need you to do a white person one because there's plenty of those, so we want Korean only. Like, has it gone so far full circle now that you're you only want to hear your authentic story and not anything else?

SPEAKER_02 27:20

No, but uh I I've had these, I can't say the studio obviously, but these dream studios approach me for these things that are not Korean, and and during the generals, I I always find myself, and my reps have talked to me about this, that I sort of turn it, I try to turn it Korean. Like, is there any way we can make this more Korean? And they're like, well, the IP is not Korean, and I'm like, but can it be? Can we make it? And so, you know, I I think I've I've burned those opportunities, although you know, I still have relationships with them. The meetings are fun, but I think I I I kind of I'm at a point in my career, I I kind of want to only tell these stories right now until I can get them out of my system. Then, but you know, I I don't write just Korean characters right now, but what I'm saying is that the story is essentially at its core, uh, Korean first, at least the ones I'm taking out.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

I I think, you know, to this point that um diversity obviously has become really important, but what has become almost more important in my view is authenticity of storytelling. They want they want someone who can tell the story and who's best suited to tell the story. And that doesn't matter what color you are or where you come from, but they want to be able to know that you can, that you are the person to tell that story, hence the more and more importance on the why me section of any of these pitches. Um, but you know, I want to like talk a little bit more about kind of what's going on in today's TV landscape. Because I feel like you know, being on social media, at least we get this perspective from those on social media, uh, and obviously from the people that Dan and I've interviewed on this podcast, that things are really hard. And every time I think they're getting better, I hear that maybe they're even getting harder. And obviously, in many ways, you're fairly new, and in many ways, you've been around for many, many, many years. So, what uh scares you about the industry right now, and do you see a way through it?

SPEAKER_02 29:04

You know, it's it's it's uh I I felt so uh underprepared being invited onto this podcast where I listen. I I'm not just friends with you guys, I'm I'm I'm a fan of your podcast because I you have heavy, heavily experienced showrunners and writers, uh actors and directors sharing their experiences that span decades, which is why I didn't want to be on the show as a guest, uh as a guy who's only been this five, six years. Um so I have very little insight into that thing, except for the except for the little bit I've seen from 2018 to even now. 2018, I was able to pitch straight to the buyers. Uh, and then two years later I had to get involved with studios, and I thought, and then I learned at that point, oh, that's actually the norm. I was just, you know, sometimes you have beginner's luck. Uh I I remember the first time I swung a golf club and I did really well, and I thought, well, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be a I'm this is how I'm gonna make my living at golf, and I sucked, right? Afterwards, right? Just beginner's luck. It's it's like that. It's it's then I found out this is the way you're supposed to do it through a studio. And now it's I'm like, I just signed an if come deal this week. Uh nothing wrong with an if cum deal, but that's for those of you who don't know, it means no money right now. It means money when you eventually pick. And there's it's it's it's a lot of work to do between now the signing of that deal, getting the pitch, getting the attachment, and then taking out to town probably in the new year in January or February. And then if they say yes, go through business affairs, maybe for like four to six months, and that's when I'll get paid if I'm able to sell it. So that's what scares me. The long road to payment uh in this kind of thing. In in the real world, some uh if anything takes that long for you to get paid for work, someone's knocking at your door uh with with wearing brass knuckles. Uh but uh in this industry, this is this is the norm, and it and it does frighten me. Uh luckily I have other things I can sell, which I've done this year, like I've sold podcasts that I'm developing as well, and other media. But uh I I fear for people who are in my position uh or or just below or coming in newer, just able to just doing TV, because I don't know how you're supposed to pay the bills doing that.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

This model is unsustainable and needs to change, and I hope they take it on our newest bill negotiations because it's eight to ten months to get paid. It's you know, you you you have a job, you got your first TV job, you quit your other job because you have to, and then uh you're going for your second job and you get it right away, and it's still 10 months before you get your next paycheck. People can't sustain on that, can't survive.

SPEAKER_02 31:30

Yeah, and the one thing I wish someone had told me is that to work in Hollywood, uh you need money. Like, you need like I thought, you know, the idea is to get there, sell the thing, become rich. But luckily, my wife is successful, and she's uh, you know, I what one point after um uh uh our our her business started taking off, and uh, you know, I was substitute teaching again, and she said, you know, the black tape is doing well enough, and our business is doing well enough, you don't have to teach anymore. Like financially, you know, we're we're good now. You could devote it fully to writing because you got a manager now. Let's let's see what happens there. And that's what allowed me to have this career. Like my wife having the money already, and my money came afterwards. But you know, it's it's without that, I don't know how in the world I'm supposed to be this productive. Um, that's the only thing that allows me to write all this stuff and have these pitches ready. Uh having a smart rich wife.

SPEAKER_03 32:18

Uh so if you had a choice to make, uh obviously, as a regular listener, you know I sometimes give people choices of which type of success they would like. If you had a choice between um somebody calling you up and offering you a very, very serious amount of money to do another podcast because they know you're very good at it and uh there's money to be made in podcasts. So real money for a real length of time takes all the risk out of what comes next for you. Or uh you get a chance to make a probably maybe it is the Korean gangster TV series, but a real authentic story from the heart with people you want to work with, but it commercially doesn't necessarily have a lot of legs, but you get to make that one thing you really want. And then the third thing is you uh get the chance to make something which is not a Korean story, but is successful and goes for multiple seasons and there's plenty of money in it, but you have to move to LA. Which of those three successes would you choose to take?

SPEAKER_02 33:28

Oh, that's a good question. Um, I would probably go with number sorry, three. Is this three one uh is the third one a commercially viable product and it move to LA? But good money? Probably that one, because my goal right now is to help my wife retire. Uh she's worked her ass off to get help me get the career uh where I need it to be, where I can now sort of provide, but still it's still too risky right now. I can't, I'm not guaranteed to sell something every year. So my goal is to get her to be able to happily retire to pursue the thing that she loves. Uh and if if and I know she loves LA, if if if we can go to LA and I can provide for us and she doesn't have to work her job anymore, uh I would pick that.

SPEAKER_03 34:12

Interesting. And then once you're there, would you then try and do number two?

SPEAKER_02 34:15

Yes. I would switch over. And uh once I have the money, it's in the bag, everything's paid for. Uh tell the stories I I I that are uh really important to me.

SPEAKER_03 34:24

So it just uh I mean it's not quite the same question again, but it's just obviously when you podcasted, which you know we talked about in the beginning, came out of not being able to get where you wanted to with traditional screenwriting, you got very good at it, and there's particularly nowadays, there's very serious money in podcasting, and you know, your both of your shows have got commercials running in them and people are playing lots of money for that. Is there a part of you with maybe one eye on making your life your wife happy and your life easier? Knowing you know how to crack that world, which a lot of like I know obviously this podcast Noah's doing is successful, but a lot of screenwriters won't be thinking I'm gonna go off and do a scripted podcast to make lots of money. But you know how to do that. Is there a part of you that thinks maybe I should just do that because I maybe can get to number one this time with a scripted podcast, and leave some of the ridiculousness of trying to do the non-pass version, non-podcast version of Hollywood alone?

SPEAKER_02 35:28

Uh I I am doing that. I'm I'm still I'm still I I keep trying, I haven't stopped trying to do that. The problem is uh in terms of like uh a scale of payment, uh, whenever I start doing that with an audio drama, uh I'll I'll sell something in TV. And because the payment for that pilot is is um, you know, that's what I live on for the year, all my energy now goes to that, and I have to put the uh the podcast away uh for a second. Uh this year is when I have a development deal with a podcast company. Uh so it's it's it's much like a TV commitment. Like I've we signed the contract, it went through business affairs. So that one I can't put away. I'm working on that one at the same time. But when it's my own project that I think I can get to, you know, in the top 10, um, it every time I get close, it it's I have to shelve it because of something that moves forward in the TV side.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Unfortunately, this brings us, uh I would obviously, Paul, I love you, and I would talk to you for hours and hours. And one day you and I will do a 22 hour long podcast, uh, I'm sure to the enjoyment of a single person. Uh, but we uh but I've keeping on here all day, but we are we've come you know full circle, and I need to ask you the last question, which at this point you could probably tell us what that last question is because you've listened to you know to a lot of our episodes, but I will say it anyways. If you had to give one piece of advice to somebody joining this business as either a TV writer, feature writer, or audio podcaster, what would they be?

SPEAKER_02 36:56

Uh I've this is advice I've given quite often, and I sort of hinted at it uh in this episode, but even more so in the new economy of this industry, uh I uh I I would I'm gonna double down on this advice. If you don't live in LA, uh but you want to work in TV, try not to move to LA until you someone pays you to move. Um, there's different ways to sort of make your mark uh and attract attention to yourself. I I I I try I I've always used in my career uh what I call a peacock model. Like stand on the ground that you're in, that field, with a bit more room, unfurl your feathers and draw people toward you. The person who likes your feathers will eventually turn their head and see you because it's not that crowded where you are, right? You just have to keep standing there though. It might take a while, but you have to keep unfurling it and standing there, and someone will find you and they will come to you. You won't have to go to them. That happened with me. Uh it took a long time, it took a few decades. Uh, but every time I went to LA, there would be some kind of failure before that, uh, which I learned from. But when I made my mark in Vancouver and was able to, you know, have people from LA and different parts of the world contact me uh while I was in Vancouver, that's what made the difference.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Fantastic. Excellent answer. As I all have been, we've been wanting to have you on for a while, and we have not been disappointed. I know you reached out to me earlier today to ask if you could give like a sort of 10-minute segment on how Noah could improve his questions, but I just don't think we're gonna have time for that today, so we're gonna have to end it. But I just want to say Paul Bay, friend of the podcast, actor whose Korean consists of menu items and having his head blown off. But excellent writer, excellent podcaster, excellent screenwriter who no doubt has got increasing amounts of success round the corner. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast, and I can't wait for the day you actually move to Los Angeles when we can go out and have a drink together.

SPEAKER_02 38:52

Yeah, have you back on After Get a Green Late, then I can actually talk about the success part of this equation. But uh thank you, thank you, gentlemen, and thank you, Dan.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Well, that's a wrap on this episode of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss. As always, it's this episode was 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. Uh, we'd like to thank our wives who put up with us recording these episodes in our offices and basements and closets and bathrooms and anywhere we can get a little space to record an interview. And of course, we want to thank James Launch who provided us with the great intro and outro music.

SPEAKER_03 39:48

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

SPEAKER_00 40:34

And if you do say a negative thing about Dan, there is a chance I might buy you a free copy of Scriptation.