Take 41 - Showrunner Hart Hanson, Bones, The Finder

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_01 0:13

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

SPEAKER_02 0:20

For every success, there is months, sometimes even years, of painful failure. This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

That's the norm. You have to be able to persevere. Like everything in our business, your hands get callous, and it all bounces off you.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

That process takes years. That doesn't happen overnight. I was being told by my manager it's yours to lose, and I promptly lost it. And I remember thinking, like, well, that's it for me. I blew my one big shot. What I've realized from that moment is it's never one big shot. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. As ever, I'm your host, Dan Rottstein, and I'm quite excited to have today's guest on. Noah will introduce them, but I just want to say because they're a Canadian, it means we're going to have another polite guest to offset Noah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Noah, how are you? Which, by the way, in 40 episodes, this might be the very first time I've heard Dan say that he's excited to have a guest on. I am as well, but I was going to use the word excited in my intro, so now I get a pivot on the fly. I'm thrilled to introduce this week's guest, Hart Hansen, onto the podcast. Hart is a feature writer, showrunner, show creator, and novelist who's worked on 27 TV shows, including Bones, The Finder, and Backstrom, which he also created, show ran, and executive produced. Hart also recently wrote a crime novel called The Driver, which the New York Times called one of the best crime novels in 2017. Welcome, Hart.

SPEAKER_03 1:56

Hello, it's so nice to be here. I'm I love your podcast. I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

So you've told us in the warmups that you love our podcast. You've put on social media that you love our podcast and even promoted this episode before it came out, which is which is brave given we we haven't we don't know where it's gonna go. You are broadly regarded as one of the nicest people in the business by all accounts. I don't know how much of that is because you're a Canadian or because you're actually a nice guy, but so I don't want to be mean to you today, so we're gonna we're gonna start, I think we're gonna start gently, but I guess what's the biggest meanest mistake you've made in a world where showrunners uh not all of them are nice to their staff, you have a reputation of doing it properly. Have there been times where as a leader you've said things to your teams that you've regretted? And how did you process that and how did you move on from there?

SPEAKER_03 2:54

Um I'm the answer is yes, and I I I do think I I I kind of hate the reputation I have for being a nice guy because I'm not really, I'm just courteous, I'm just polite, which is different from being well, I guess it is the same as being nice, but you you know, there's that old cartoon uh about LA and um and New York that um kind of fits Canadians and Americans, I think. And in it there's a an LA guy is saying good morning, and above his head it says, fuck you, and uh the New York guy says uh good morning and above his uh sorry, fuck you, and above his head is good morning. And so I and but yes, I I am irritable, I'm cranky. I think if you talk to anybody who's worked with me, I'm I'm kind of a cranky guy. I snap. Um I have um I don't believe I've had any temper tantrums, although as I'm saying that I did once holler in a Canadian way. I raised my voice in anger at a line producer, greatest guy in the world, Steve Beers, because I'd said I wanted something somehow about eight times. And um uh it had something to do with a turkey being pulled over a baseball. I can't remember. I can't remember. Um, and it just kept morphing into other things. And I I was cranky, I was sleep deprived and cranky. So um I and I think I'm cranky a lot of the time. I think I'm actually quite not a very nice man. Um, I I think I snap. I tend to apologize after, and I mean it because I hate losing my temper, but uh I don't think I'm that nice. I I'm I'm not sure I have a good anecdote. Somewhere, someone I'm working with is listening to this and and would be able to provide the perfect anecdote of me uh flying into a rage or something.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

So actually, let's let's there's obviously a lot of stuff around sort of bullying in the industry and all that sort of stuff. Where's the line between cranky in brackets Canadian and actual bullying? And how do you make how do you check yourself?

SPEAKER_03 5:18

Well, uh I think there's a difference between being cranky, an understandably cranky person, and a dick. Um and uh I I really I do try not to be a dick because I figure somewhere I am kind of a dick and I don't want anyone to know. Um uh and uh but I I mean personally insulting people, uh degrading them in front of other people just to make them feel bad, these are lines I I hope I have never crossed. And I certainly I wouldn't want to be reminded of any if I did. Uh the other thing is um uh I've heard all the stories you have um and read all the stories you have. Um, my people, the people I work with, you wouldn't want to do those things to. They're they're great, um, they're funny and they're um I I haven't I'm trying to think if I ever hired anyone that I actually just went, oh. And and I do have one. That person was fired. Um, I can't really tell you the story, but um uh otherwise I have not had a lot of regrets about who I've been in the room with. And why would you? I'm not sure they'd take it either, by the way. That's the other thing. I they might yell back, but I don't I don't want to, I don't want to ever have to test that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

You you you came up in this sort of industry in a traditional way, although I think you started on the Canadian side of the border and then you came over to this side of the border, but you've been on a lot of shows. You obviously you saw how shows some shows worked well, some shows didn't work well, but you came up at a time where it was okay, you know, to what we're just talking about here, to be a kind of a more toxic or caustic or aggressive uh or demanding showrunner. It was the norm to be like, you know, fairly hard on staffs to get the product out of them. And you probably had been on a lot of shows that that that operated like that. But it seems like, you know, I have worked with a lot of people who've who worked for you, and you do have, whether you like it or not, a reputation for being nice, maybe not kind. They didn't say kind, but they said nice. And did you make a conscious choice at some point that you wanted to manage the way you wanted to manage because you could get the best out of them, not having to crack a crack a whip, so to speak?

SPEAKER_03 7:44

That's a that's a good question. Um, certainly when any writer coming up and going through the ranks learns a lot about how not to do things, even from very good people. Um, and I and I'm I'm a list taker, a list maker. So I I I I tended to think, well, I'm not gonna do that when it's when it's my turn. Um but um you know this is I'm I'm uh I'm uncomfortable answering these questions because the assumption is I'm just this great guy. And again, I just don't I've I've tripped and fallen over myself as much as uh anyone else has. So I'm nervous saying, well, the key to being a really wonderful person is and I don't have it uh because I'm not it.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

I I think it's a shame, to be honest, that you know, the norm, the standard though, isn't that necessarily or wasn't in the past that that the show owners are are are nice and kind and nurturing. That's changing. I feel like in the last five or 10 years, that's changed that a lot of people have come up on the staffs and being like, well, maybe that old model wasn't working as well as it should, and we want to make some adjustments. But I do want to pivot off of this, you know, you being nice and kind to the the question of failures, because you have you were on a lot of staff. I mean, you really worked your way up to the proper way to becoming you know co-ep and then ep, and then of a few shows, and then you created bones. Now, uh again, this this podcast is is less uh, as we say for the John Rogers episodes, is less Transformers and more catwoman. So Bones, we know everybody knows, was a huge success. When you came out of that and you created shows like Backstrom and The Finder that didn't last as long as Bones, what was that? And I know some friends who were on The Finder with you, so and and I love that show. And it's felt like to me it was canceled prematurely. What do you go through after having a hit show and then creating a show that doesn't last as long as you're hoping it'll last?

SPEAKER_03 9:47

Yeah, well, uh you go through a whole bunch of things, it it's kind of awful. Um uh a bunch of people uh tie their wagon, hitch a wagon to your star. They they they uh that's exactly the wrong way to say it. They they come on with you and they have some faith in you that they're gonna have a job and things are gonna go well. And when you let them down without even getting a back nine order um or something like that, well, you you have to wear it because you know we get all the show runners get all the credit for stuff. We also should get all the blame. So it's just awful to call people and say, well, um, our show is going down. And you know, the worst, the worst people to call are the actors who um are so uh you've been there, uh you go through a casting uh process, and actors are just so excited, they're so uh they're so involved, and their hearts are lived so close to the surface. It's just heartbreak. I I'm not being dramatic when I when I say that I think that one of the things that led to Michael Clark Duncan dying was he had a broken heart. He had found a home, he'd found a place. Jeff Stoltz, who is the uh lead on The Finder, um was his best. It was a remarkable um group. And so was the writer's room. God, it was a fun writer's room. So to say it's uh a show like that gets canceled, and it's a bit like waking up from a really nice dream and going, oh hell, it was just a dream because it it went so quickly. Um it's awful. Um, it's awful. I generally face bad news, which I've gotten more than good news my whole life, uh in the same way. I always have. I've had to kind of lie down for two or three days, if not uh literally, it's often literally, but at least uh figuratively, I've just had to lie down. And then it's like, well, you gotta go. You gotta, you know, you're a writer. You've got to get up and and uh try again, and then try to hire all the people that you you know who don't have jobs, and that that whole thing uh being a showrunner and having two or between two and four hundred people depending on you for their living is just it's just terrible, it's just awful.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

In terms of sort of certainly from the outside, Bones is is the big one in terms of the successes and the longevity and the you know the visibility of that show. But it was a few years now since it finished. From your point of view, uh you know, I don't know if if you're referred to as the Bones Guy by people, but at what point does that uh obviously wear off? And at what point do you see it as a bit of an albatross because um you know things have happened since I haven't been hit, so now you're like, stop talking about my big hit from before, this is what I'm doing now.

SPEAKER_03 13:03

Yeah, um, uh it happened about three days after Bones uh went away. Um uh uh right away. I just I don't want to be known as the Bones guy. I mean, I I'm I'm I've said it before, I think. I think um Bones came about in a very bizarre way. Um, I had a lovely overall deal with 20th, and I bailed on a very good project. Um uh it was all of a sudden sprung on me that I was gonna have a co-created credit. I don't know, I never know how to tell this story. There's a big shot lawyer who was gonna do a story on his career and the way he did things that was gonna be based on that. And all of a sudden, uh one of his young associates was gonna have a created by credit with me. So I said, I'm out. And everybody apologized. Okay, we don't mean it. Uh um, but you know what the uh the pond was was tainted. Uh it was the spring was tainted, so I was gonna drink from it. So I owed 20th, it was late in the season, and I owed 20th a project, and I owed them a pitch down the middle. Um and and so I designed bones as a pitch down the middle. This is a network show. I'm gonna hit all the all the elements of a network show. So it was a bit cynical. Um, that's not right, right? What's the right word? It was uh I was trying very hard to hit the target. There was no edges um that I was trying to sneak by or anything. Later, we snuck tons of stuff in. We became a subversive show in our own way, but that's not how it was designed from the get-go. Um, and it it worked. Um it reminded me of when I was a young prose writer, all my friends were getting published. Um, and and I my short stories were not getting published. So I said to them up in Canada, I said, Well, if I wrote a poetic story with no narrative drive to it that was self-referential, maybe a whiff of homoeroticism to it, and rotting leaves and scarred beauty, and then I would be able to sell a short story too. So they said, Prove it. I did. I sold my first short story, and then it was anthologized a few times, and it was another one of those things where I was aimed at a target, which I don't think is what art is, but that's another conversation.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

This is fascinating because one of the things we talk about a lot on this show is you know, the project people are most proud of, and you know, did they write their soul and all that sort of stuff? And it uh obviously, I know it maybe didn't end like this, but it sounds like I'm not gonna say you cheated, but as you said, it's a sort of quite cynical, you're like, look, here's something that's inoffensive down the middle, can't go wrong, right? You know, that no one will mind. But that can't be the sort of thing that when you were a young man, you're like, one day I want to write a relatively neutral but successful show. So does it as a creative artist, does it hurt you a bit that the show that you're most famous for was a sort of, as you say, slightly cynical cheating way of creating something?

SPEAKER_03 16:39

Um, I one of the ways I know I'm not an artist is that it doesn't hurt me. I think it's really humanly funny. Um I think it's comic. Um uh I now I'm going back again. The the reason I became a television writer, um, I I was going to be um a novelist. I still love novels with my whole heart. Um, but my girlfriend, who is now my wife, um, got pregnant and I was involved in that. And um I immediately, I always have to be careful how I say this because I have to be very clear. I immediately made a decision that I had to make money. Uh, I had a family coming. Um, and um, you know, I was 29 years old. Um, so I had to make money, and I gave a little foray into journalism and I did a foray into script writing. Um, so I went into script writing to make money, to raise my family. Um, with my eyes open and that realization, I thought, oh, I'll write novels in my spare time. No one told me that when you do television, you're either on the bus or off the bus. So the minute you're on the bus, you're on that bus. Um, these are life's decisions that I made that I'm very comfortable with, that I don't regret. I just wish you could do everything two or three times in a multiverse, you know. I wish then I got to go back and be and try and be a novelist and find out if that would have worked and and uh you know be Jimmy Page, um, and things like that. So uh no, it doesn't hurt. It it's very funny. Um, and the other place uh I got uh satisfaction, creative satisfaction out of. I'm not gonna say artistic, but creative satisfaction was in the making of the show. All of a sudden you're in it and you say, okay, what are we gonna do with this? We sold this thing. Um we seem to be bulletproof um in terms of our audience. Um uh Fox moved us all over the place and they could not shake our audience. We went through five network heads. Um uh what are we gonna do to have fun and get satisfaction out of this? And then we worked on those things. Uh one of the things we did that uh one critic said this. Uh, it might have been Mary McNamara, but I I don't know. Jesus, I might have been Mo Ryan, but I think it was Mary McNamara said Bones is one of the most subversive shows on TV because we were constantly saying um the anti-American message was don't follow your stupid heart, follow your smart brain. Lead with your brain, not your guts and all that, which is all anti-American. Almost you notice that almost every show is when in follow your heart, follow your heart. Well, we we said your heart is really your lizard brain. Um, and it will make you uh become a junkie and kill your enemies. So let's follow our brains and not do that. I feel like I wandered off topic there.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

No, that that that was fascinating. And I I really kind of what resonated with me, and I've never thought about is the difference between the slight but important difference between creative and artistic satisfaction. Now, I've I've personally been in network TV for most of my career. Seven of my eight shows have been in network TV. And like you, I get a ton of creative satisfaction because you have to be creative. You're we are within this confine of this little small package of what you need to deliver that's a network TV show, but you can be funny and you can be biting and you can, you know, you can do these things. Now, now, but that is leading to my question of you know, the the latter part of your career was also in network TV. You had an overall deal, you were you had to deliver certain shows to certain people. Now, now I don't know where Hart Hampson is in the world today of if you have the ability to sell anywhere, are you now taking swings? Now I know you spent some time writing a book that was very successful. You have that multiverse going, you wrote your novel, but where where and you're probably writing more, it would be my guess, but where is the Hart Hampson's head now? Are you are you seeking with your heart? Are you trying to be more autistic? Are you batting back in the network cage because you're like, that's that's what I know, and that's what I'm great at?

SPEAKER_03 21:02

Yeah. Um I I always say you have to have uh uh uh a career is a bit like a stool with three legs. You have to have uh two of them have to have to be there. And you know, the three legs are uh money, creative satisfaction, and fun. Um, I need two of those three things to be happy at work. Um and and Bones was um um really fun and lucrative. Um and I I can't under, I don't want to underestimate how important to me having some fun is. Um, and so your life isn't miserable. Sometimes I look at other showrunners who are obviously in agony over their shows. Um, and um this is snobbery, and I'm sorry for it, but I understand that in a novel or a painting. If you're Van Gogh, I don't quite get it for a TV show. I I I apologize to everyone for saying that. It's just it's just what I think. Um Um, I I uh 20th authored me another overall deal um uh when I stepped away from bones and um I declined it because I had um uh as I say, Bones was lucrative and it gave me options that not everyone has. And uh plus I'm old. I was old when I started, um, and I'm even older now. So I started um looking for projects. I did not look for projects. Things would come toward me and I would respond and say, I want to do them. Um, I I I don't think it's too whiny to say no one wants that from me. They want a network procedural. Um and so I it's an uphill battle for me to sell something um that is not a network procedural. And I I mean, I've gone out with um, uh I think it was, I think it was uh who was I talking to this the other day? I I think I've got I've gone out with five projects. Um, and um it was Glenn Mazzara, and he has had a similar number of things out in the world that are frustrating for him. And same with me uh that I've not managed uh to sell. By the way, making them has been delightful. Um and I like it, but I don't I don't want to do another network procedural. I don't, I never want to work that hard again, I don't want to do those hours again, I don't want to generate that many stories again, I don't want to do everything at a flat out run. I was used to say uh network TV was not how good you are at your best, it's how good you are at your worst. I just I was done with that. And I and for all I know, I'm done. Um, but you know, I one of the things I did was I co-wrote um a script with um uh Steve Coogan. Um this is the best thing to do with your life. It's absolutely what I I know I uh you may not know Steve Coogan.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

I know for sure.

SPEAKER_03 24:03

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure Dan does. Um he's a big genius to me. And I the time we spent, like you and I are now on Zoom writing a script together was just awesome. Um it was a but it was a remake of the Persuaders of an old, old show called The Persuaders that hardly anyone knows anymore. Unfortunately, we could not have been less in the sight, guys, because it's two good guy billionaires. And um, I remember sending Steve an email when uh Elon Musk was on Saturday Night Live and the the reaction to that, and then those two fuckers going into outer space for their dick, whatever it was problems they have, that they had to go to outer space. I don't think they even went to outer space. Um, I sent Steve an email saying, Oh, we're fucked. This is uh we're fucked, but we will work on something else. So this is very, I have that option that I can say, oh, I'll work with something else with uh uh Steve Coogan. I'm working on another uh show with Lee Daniels, um, who I believe is my opposite. I believe Lee Daniels is um, we're both uh uh guys, but other than that, you know, he's a black, gay director, megaphorce, and I'm this. Um, and and I'm enjoying that, and I hope it goes somewhere, but um I'm not um uh I'm not phlegmatic about it. I I can't I don't I don't command respect into every room I walk into, especially when it's not a network room.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

Steve Kugan thinks fascinating. I think Noah knows as probably as well as anybody that North Americans partnering with very funny British people in creative projects is really good for them.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

It's it's it's it's it's it's actually a recipe uh for disaster, as I'm realizing as we're going through this. But the real real quick, and I'm uh the I do know it can be both, no, it can be both those things. I I do I do know I do know of Steve Coogan. I was hired, nobody knows this, and I'm gonna tell the full story another day on another episode of the podcast. But I was hired not before before I was a writer to be a uh in Tropic Thunder as a DJ, to play the DJ in Tropic Thunder. I'll tell it's a long story, I'm not gonna tell it now. But while I had gotten that role, and I'm not an actor, I just happened to have been a DJ on the island, they were filming it. They realized I was the exact same height and weight at the time of Steve Coogan, who was in that movie. And they asked me if I would spend 14 hours putting on a prosthetic so they could do my head, so they could blow up the prosthetic of me and then double it as Steve Coogan, because in that movie he explodes. And I'm like, And how much do you pay? They're like, oh, like 85, like 100. I'm like, 14 hours? Like, no, I don't want to do that. No, no, no. So that's the that's the thing that goes to my head right away. But my my my my question to you, Hart, on that is like, you know, you know, as you get to this point in your career where you're working with amazing people like Steve Kugan, like Lee Daniels, like and you're you're taking more chances with the things you're writing, I'm guessing that's not the thing they're expecting. Is it more painful when it doesn't go? I mean, is it like what what are we all learn how to process this pain, but when you really love it and you there's so many good auspices and then they still say no, like what is that process?

SPEAKER_03 27:22

Well, it's it's it's partially um it's partially more painful, but um it's like um complaining that you have a sore ankle to someone who's in a wheelchair. Um I I had every opportunity, I had got every uh I've had it too good to really down to my feet feel sorry for myself. So I have flashes of self-pity and oh oh, but then you step, take one step back and go, oh my god, I've been making a uh living as a writer. Who gets to do that? And a very good living. Who gets to do that? I've lots of friends who are writers and novelists, and and I'm one of the most, I might be the most fortunate. Um, so it's hard to maintain uh uh a sense of grievance. Um, I try, but it's hard. Also, I have this family um who just uh won't put up with it. Um, you know, I uh I I come from a large family, and most of them think um I've been it's very good for me. They think I've just been lucky, um, because they know me. This knob couldn't have he couldn't have merited what he got. It had to be luck. And I think I think that's fantastic. I think it's a just a fantastic element to have on you to to keep you in in perspective. But I'll I'll tell you, I'll I look, I'll tell you my um just in the last month, um I and my book agent, I I spent three years working on a book that was not a crime novel. I like the driver, it's a crime novel, it's my wheelhouse. I can figure out a crime and then hang characters on it and have a pretty good time. And I think I could do that reasonably well. Um, I wanted to write a book that wasn't a genre novel, wasn't a crime novel. I I I I would my rejections have been wonderful. Uh as my agent said, um, we could use the um your rejections as blurbs if the book was going to be published, but it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen soon. It was um, you know, after a couple months of of my agent looking for a place for this book. This was the most painful thing uh I've had on a creative level uh ever. Uh, because you work in TV, you know, not to get too invested, you know, to protect yourself. Um and on this book, I did not protect myself. It was a very personal book. Um, and um it I I have a little faith that someday it may see the light of day, but I'm not self-publishing. And I'm uh you know, I want I want a real book to come out with real people and real editors and real publishers. Um and it it's been really painful. Um so I know what that feels like.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Of course, you're at the stage of your career now where if you get rejected, you can go downstairs, get in your Bentley with the personalized Bones number plate and drive off and spend time with your grandchild. So you're all good. At what point did that uh switch flip? When was it post-bones that everything became more manageable just because the financial worry wasn't there? When did you feel comfortable that missing out on the big swings wasn't as big a deal?

SPEAKER_03 31:03

Um, I I you know I I was very fortunate to get overall deals. I came down to the States in 1998 and I had an overall deal by 2000, I think, maybe 2001. Those overall deals for a freelance writer um were just uh a gift. It was amazing. You could buy a house, you could you could uh, you know, my uh my wife was very good at using that money to buy a house, fix it up, and sell it for more money um once the kids were out of the house. And uh so uh that depending on how you live, that came fairly early. Um uh we we knew we weren't going to starve fairly early by the time bones was made. And then all of a sudden, I I think you know, I again fortunate, uh I was one of the last trains out of Dodge that where an overall uh where uh back end meant something. Um it has ceased to mean as much. That's why uh people are getting huge, huge um overall deals now where they're getting their money then because the there's no back end. I had this um a smaller overall deal, but my back end was agreement on bones was delightful. So after three seasons of bones where it looked like it might like we got picked up for five, it was like I'm okay now. And then it went for you know another eight years.

SPEAKER_02 32:36

So one of my slightly unfair hypotheticals now. So if you could choose between for your next project, your non-genre book working and being published and being a success, one of your big swings, either for TV or or for film, working so you get to make something that's just meaningful to you and a bit different from what you're known for. Or actually, if you chose to do it, creating something very neutral and slightly cynical that would be a massive success, just to have another successful show that you can say that you did. Which one of those would you choose?

SPEAKER_03 33:19

Well, the la the latter one holds. I'm missing a microchip. I I might be on the spectrum. I don't care about that. Um I got that. And uh I I I'm I'm afraid I would pick it's very new wound, but the the book right now. Um yeah, I would pick the book. I I would pick my non-genre uh book. I wrote another crime book that's out looking for a home now, and it's gonna find a home. So again, I can't complain, goddammit. Um, but uh uh I do. But I would pick the book.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

So speaking of you know, uh, you know, back end and bones and all that, and I and I'm gonna say this in very general, not specific terms, but you took on some giants, you took on some giants and you very famously won. And then in in my book, that giant went from one set of giants to a much bigger set of giants.

SPEAKER_03 34:13

That's the way giants are.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Suddenly, you've taken on the biggest giants and and you famously won in a world where people don't win these types of battles. And have there been ramifications for that? What was your mindset going into these things? Going, I'm like, you know, I need to do this.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

Um, I don't know. I don't know if there have been ramifications. Um uh you hear yes, then you hear nonsense. Um, I'm I'm I'm on very good terms with a whole bunch of people you'd think I wouldn't be on good terms with because of that, because it's just business. And also giant corporations tend to diffuse blame, I think. That being said, um, I have been in rooms before where an extremely powerful person would say about someone not powerful, not on my watch. This isn't gonna happen, never gonna happen. And that that happens in small rooms with small people, it could definitely happen to me. Um it it was not a uh uh everybody knows everything going into it. It was not a it was not a uh a factor in deciding what to do. That's about as detailed as I can get about it.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Okay, and and if just as I'm asked of a kind of a general question before I know, unfortunately, we're gonna have to wrap fairly soon, although I could talk to you forever. But you've had such a multifaceted career, you know, 27 shows, uh movies and and a hit hit network shows, two of them. You've written books that were successful. You wrote a book that unfortunately hasn't been published yet, but maybe it still will. There's time. Uh would if you could go back again to young Hart Hansen, who is in Canada, who's just picking up a pen to start a TV career, would you make any changes along the way, or would you to say, you know what, this was this worked out okay for me?

SPEAKER_03 36:04

Um, I think, well, first of all, I would like to have been less anxious. Um, it it's really hard to uh I can remember the clench in my gut for years of worrying how things were gonna go. Um, I don't, I don't think so. I can think of uh meetings I wish had gone better, or maybe I could have shut up a little bit with my opinion about something or kept my mouth shut until I was in the car and not still in the parking lot. I've done those things where you go, mother, fuck and and the person is uh in the next I uh but um in the broad I like uh you know, should I we often say, oh my god, what if we come down to the states sooner? I was 39 when we moved down to the states, and what if we'd come down here sooner? Well, um I don't know, I was fully cooked as a human being. I was a grown-up as much as I can be a grown-up when we came to the states. And maybe that was very helpful. In in you uh it's hard to describe how uh at least back then Canada was everybody knew each other, and it was the waters were it was harder to make a living. It was more hard scrabble to make a living, but the waters were not so deep and cold and filled with currents and sharks. So uh coming down here, it's huge. It was huge even then, and it's it's exponentially bigger now. Um, maybe it was good that I was just a dad, uh, you know, with dad humor and dad genes. And um uh I was booked. Uh I was booked, I think, to be a school teacher. Um, and then I got lucky. And then as a TV writer, I was booked to be the little calming donkey that you put in the stall with the thoroughbred to keep the thoroughbred calm and make the show happen. That's what my function was many times was to be the quiet guy behind the scenes who kept the trains running on time. So when Bones came along and all of a sudden uh I was the engineer. Is that a good? I don't know if that's a good metaphor. Um that was a that was an interesting um change um that I didn't I didn't think was gonna happen. Um I was delighted it did. So no, I don't think I would do much different. Do you know something I should have done differently that I'm not thinking of?

SPEAKER_01 38:39

No, absolutely not. You you have a career that that almost everybody would would want to emulate. And more importantly, and I you know, this is just me as an outsider, because obviously we don't know each other outside of social media, but like watching as you tweet now about your grandchildren and about your life that you've lived you you you know you've lived a really blessed life.

SPEAKER_03 38:59

Yes. Yes, yes. It's hard. How do you not know that? How do you how do you not not that know that living where I live and everybody's healthy? And uh I have friends. I have friends who have a much, much tougher go. So it's hard to I can't complain. I'm that guy who can't complain, it's terrible. Poor me.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

Uh sorry to interrupt. Uh Noah's uh brown nosing as we would call it in England. Um Canada too. Oh, good. Um the last question, uh, which is as you know, is if you could give a single piece of advice to somebody entering the industry, what would it be?

SPEAKER_03 39:40

Um, I I it's the uh I've given this advice for years, and I stand by it, and there's a bunch of young writers and older writers who have heard me say it. Our jobs are to go out and collect rejection. That's what we do. We go out and collect rejection. We have to get as much as we can, get as many rejections as we can. Every once in a while, something good happens and you get uh you have a win, and that pays you to keep working at your job, which is to go out and collect rejections. And I give that advice because it really helped me long before I was writing TV shows when I was trying to sell short stories and things, that every rejection that came in and I kept in a um, because they were mailed in those days, uh, that I kept in a shoebox meant I was a little bit closer to not getting a rejection. It's a it's a it's a game of attrition. You have to Malcolm Gladwell says, do your 10,000 hours to succeed. I say get your 10,000 rejections uh before you succeed, and be proud of every rejection because every rejection is a sign that you've done something fantastic that very few people can do, which is make something and have it rejected.

SPEAKER_02 40:55

Fantastic. Art Hansen, novelist, the bones guy, and one of the top five nicest Canadians we've had on this podcast. Thank you very much for being on.

SPEAKER_03 41:05

Uh uh, it was my great pleasure. Uh uh, thank you for having me. I love you. I love your podcast. Even if you don't air this one, I will love your podcast.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

Thank you, Alright.

SPEAKER_02 41:18

Thank you for listening to another one of our fantastic episodes. Yet again, I think you'll find that I ask better questions than Noah. Noah, have you got anything to say?

SPEAKER_01 41:28

Um, as always, uh, since you've done most of the talking, I'm just gonna sit here quietly again.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Surely there's some people to thank.

SPEAKER_01 41:35

Oh, right, right, right, right. Uh, I would love to thank James Launch for doing all of our outro music. Um, as always, I think we owe a big thank you to both of our wives who support us through this endeavor that started in our basement and seems to be ever growing. And if you want to reach out to either Dan or I, I am at atn Ebsilin on Twitter. I'm not sure Dan has a Twitter account. Dan, do you have Twitter account?

SPEAKER_02 42:00

I mean, I I do, but no one cares. All they care about is being on Noah's podcast. So well done, Noah, for conceiving, producing, editing, writing, and asking the best questions of the two of us because you've done all this work and well done you.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

I do think it's uh worth pointing out after 33 or so episodes that I do both voices. There actually is no damn resting.