Take 14 - Showrunner John Rogers, Catwoman, Leverage, Transformers

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 sure, dozens of unproduced scripts littering the floor.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

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

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Oh my god, business here, it's not that big.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

So welcome back to Streaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, adversity, and failure in the entertainment industry. I am Van Rotston in my whiskey garage, nearly a year into this pandemic, now with the added pleasure of a cicada behind me for entertainment. Noah, how are things in Hawaii?

SPEAKER_03 1:21

I'm enjoying listening to this cata almost more than your voice. Uh, we're doing great here. Uh, we're we're hanging out. We're really excited to have this guest, this next guest on our podcast, who is a multifaceted screenwriter, producer, and showrunner, uh, John Rogers. John has written such notable movies as Catwoman, The Core, and Transformers. On the TV side, he started his career on Cosby, not to be confused with the Cosby show, before creating Jackie Chan Adventures, Leverage, the Player, the Librarians, he's worked as a showrunner on the TV show MacGyver, before recently returning back to the Leverage franchise, which I'm hearing people calling right now somewhat jokingly, Leverage 2.0. Welcome, John.

SPEAKER_04 2:05

Uh, thank you very much. And I'm about to say, if you if you've got a podcast about um Hollywood failure and you haven't had the writer of Catwoman on yet, well, this is like I'm like the nuke. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, I top it out, man.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

So look, I mean, that was gonna be my opening question. You've half asked it already for me. So Catwoman discuss.

SPEAKER_04 2:25

Uh well, here's what here's what's interesting. I mean, you're gonna remember back then it was post-um Schumacher, pardon me, post-Shoumacher Batman, and and DC knew they wanted to keep these franchises going, but they had nobody at at Warner Brothers who liked these movies in any way, shape, or form. And so this was this really great producer, infamously good producer, Denise Danovi. She's brilliant. And and what was amazing is they wrote me into it. And and this is this actually folds very neatly into crucial advice I give young writers. I knew Dan Waters, who wrote um, of course, Batman Returns. I went to university with him actually, and uh kind of knew him casually, and then he went to Hollywood and became a very successful writer. And he said, after trying to do, after doing Batman Returns, of course, they try to make a Catwoman movie with Michelle Pfeiffer. And he said, he quit after several years and said, This movie can't get made. This movie is impossible. And that was a lesson that in my 30s I wish I had absorbed, which is learn the difference between a challenge and a warning. Because it was a warning, and I was like, Oh, you think this movie can't get made? Well, I shall conquer this movie. I shall be the one to go venture into the darkness and bring it back. And it was like, no, no, this was not a challenge, young buck. This was a skull at the end of the clearing telling you not to go here. Um, and and you know, it was it had gone through miserable development, it had gone through development with executives who who loathed making comic book movies. Um, and look, you can still tell the ambivalence at Warner Brothers now. You know, they're not they're the the TV people are great and the feature people are still, uh, it can't be dark and portentous, so we're not embarrassed to be making these things. Um, you know, it was particularly joyless time. And it was like two and a half years of trying to write that movie. And I had a standing bet with Denise Danovi. Every time we went in for notes after a draft, I and I said, I'll bet you lunch that whatever made the most amount of money this weekend, they'll tell us to make it more like that. Because it was utterly rudderless. It was utterly just we don't know what we're doing, we don't want to make it, but we have to. We're we're trying to keep the franchise, we're trying to do something. And and so I wrote a version, the version that got Hailey Berry to sign on and the version that got Pitoff to sign on. And I wrote a very, and my costume, if you read my draft, my costume is Darwin Cook's classic Catwoman. Like if you actually like Catwoman, you're going to arrive at certain things. Um, and uh, but we did, we were stuck with, rather than the cool thief version, we were stuck with the um dead and coming back version because it had to be tied to Batman Returns for various sundry character rights issues. And there's a great moment, I remember we're doing a note session. It might have been Robinoff, who's like, well, why does she come back from the dead? What's this whole thing about her coming back from the dead? Yeah, that just makes no sense. I'm like, it's not in the books. We can get rid of it if you wanted. It's something you know, Tim Burton came up with out of his ass. Like, we just dump it. And like, no, no, we gotta make it like the original movie because because they they didn't want to clean start it, right? And and another lesson, another thing that for young writers, like the one of the reasons I didn't quit was they were gonna reboot Batman. And Fincher was interested. And a way they kept a lot of writers around back then is like, do you want your shot at the Fincher Batman? Like, if you do a good job on Project X, and I wasn't the only guy at the time, they were stringing along on superhero movies. Like, if you do a good job on this, you get your shot at the finch. I wrote a treatment. Every I think 10 of us did. Like, we wanted to be the person to do the fincher Batman, all of us, and so we all went along and got our asses kicked on our movies. Uh, and then I wrote the version that got Heliberry to sign on and Peetoff to sign on, and I was contentious and I got fired a lot in my 30s. I did not know how to maybe um accept a note in the most gracious way possible back then. And uh I remember had a conversation with the execs. I was with my manager, and the execs said, you know, thanks, the straft, Ali's on, P top's on. But as we move forward in production, you know, you've been working on this two and a half years. I think we've come to the end of our creative journey with you. And I you think it's time to, you know, find someone to work with production with the director. And I was like, great, totally cool, thanks. And I came out of the meeting, I'm like, that went well. And my manager's like, you got fired. I said, what? He's like, yeah, you just got fired harder than almost anyone I've ever seen get fired. Like, like, you're done at that studio. And I was done. I was done at Warner Brothers for like two years. Um, and and interestingly enough, it was uh Akiva Goldsman who hired me to write a movie. And it's one of those great things, like, why do screenwriters have to stick together? Because Akiva wanted me to write an adaptation of this 70s spy thriller. And he called the executive who remained nameless at Warner Brothers. And I was the one who got thrown under the bus because they didn't like me because I made them feel stupid in meetings and they need to blame somebody. So, you know, he called, like, hey, I want to hire John Rogers for this movie. And the exec's like, uh, no, you know, he really didn't give us a good draft on Catwoman. And Akiva, to his credit, went, No, I know he gave you a good draft on Catwoman because you asked me to rewrite it, and I told you I wouldn't, and you should shoot it. And then you rewrote him. So I know that's bullshit. So I'm hiring him. And Akiva Goldsman is the one who got me back into the feature business of Warner Brothers. And and not a lot of guys necessarily would have played that card, you know. Um, but yeah, that was that was there was a moment during that that two and a half year development, and then it comes like, why did you leave your name on it? You know, why why did you leave your name on it when arbitration came up? There were literally 20 writers on that last, you know, because I a lot of people don't know. There's one draft where they put have to put the name of everybody who's ever written on a project. Like just the official last draft, all the submissions, all the drafts, all the revisions, and then you arbitrate. And there were 20 writers over the course of like the number of years that it taken around at them. And somebody said, Why'd you put your leave your name on it? It's like, because you don't want to walk away without the money that you feel you deserve for that two and a half years of getting kicked in the teeth, you know, because you don't think it's gonna be that bad. I mean, nobody thinks it's gonna be, well, this is gonna be epically one of the worst movies ever made. I'm gonna leave my name on it and get paid. You know, I thought it was gonna be Daredevil bad. You know, I didn't know it was gonna be the the shorthand you use for horrible superhero movie bad. Um, and and uh and you know what, that money spent just fine. Uh yeah, I gotta say.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Look, you've given us a great answer to that opening question. And obviously, you've given us a tale for young writers to be wary of. You've given us a great story about how writers can stick together, a great story about sort of another different way you can get fired without necessarily realizing it. Such a full answer. I feel like we should move on, but I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_04 9:27

Well, please dwell, feel free to dwell.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

That's so obviously this is a podcast podcast about rejection and failure and adversity. So it's entirely right we start with Catwoman. But if you were on, you know, you when you're on normal podcasts about success and so on, does it also does it come up because it is so iconically bad that it sort of hangs around with you even when you're not meant to be talking about maths?

SPEAKER_04 9:56

One of the things because I've I've been pretty public about it and and uh you know because I'm good natured about it. Because look, man, there's no way around it. It was it was a bad movie, and and you know what? It's interesting because like I'll fight you, I'll I'll knife fight you on the core. The core is a perfectly good sci-fi movie. I just we just mistakenly made a 1968 science hero movie for joyless monsters at Paramount, and then it just didn't come out at the right time. The core has like weird hardcore screenwriter fans who are like, you didn't, you people don't get what they were doing. I'll fight you on the core. Catwoman just sucked, and I'm not personally invested in it. So I'm okay if it comes up because it it was a good example of you know how the process goes wrong. Executives were writing pages and sending them to script. They hired a French director and then thought his designs were too European. It was the the the the thing which I probably probably really sank me was when the first photo of Kayleigh Berry in that outfit dropped. They called me at my office because nobody else, everyone else was so mad and the process had been spoiled, so spoiled, nobody else wanted to do press. And they're like, look, your name's on the movie, your arbitrator, your name's on the movie. You know, will you do press? And I said, I don't, guys, the costume. And they went, yeah, that costume that just dropped, it looks great. I'm like, you know, guys, she looks like a Quebecois stripper. And you know, the premier etage, the cat woman, and I'm just and I don't think she should be fighting super villains in heels. And they just like, well, if you and they hung up on me. And and I thought it was a witty bon mo, and it burned me horribly because they were very, very angry at me. But but like you have to surrender to the fact that I've had a 25 going on 30-year career, and I have written somewhere between 35 and 40 movies and pilots. And that's not counting episodic, that's not counting just the episodes of television I've written or supervised or rewritten. And like, it's it's the tip of the iceberg. Like, you're gonna have you're gonna have uh you're gonna have one that sucks, and you gotta be able to walk away from that. Like, if you can't walk away from failure, that isn't your fault. Don't do this job. I mean, you're not in control of your destiny for 90% of your life as a screenwriter. I mean, we we I mean, look, it just happened on Kinkiller. We spent two and a half years trying to make the Kingkiller series on Showtime, and we had 10 scripts, and then the CBS Viacom merger, somewhere in the corporate combinations, they were like, Oh, we don't have the money for that, and it went away. I mean, we had a staff, we we had locations on hold.

SPEAKER_03 12:37

That that's that that is my all-time favorite book, and I heard that kind of disappeared, and I'm so bummed, and we can circle back to that. I do have a really quick Akiva Goldsman story. I'm I'm from the island of Kauai as it's come up on this thing. Akiva's half-brother is also from the island of Kauai, Drew. Akiva's brother grew up with my younger brother. They're absolute closest best friends. And I knew as I went to Hollywood, at some point this would come up. If I ever crossed paths with Akiva, if my career ever got that, you know, that that that hot or that good, and wherever I'm ever in this vicinity, literally, Drew, his brother, grew up in my house. And I'm finally got to the point where I'm pitching Akiva something, and I'm like, Akiva, you know, before I get into the pitch, I I want to tell you that, you know, my brother and and your brother are absolute best friends. They grew up in my house, and there was like nothing. And he I heard he's a great guy. And I'm not sure if the story didn't land or if he wasn't just ready for that story, but I had to move on to my pitch, which he did not ultimately go for. So, but I do have I do have a question for you about the moment after, right? We talk about, I mean, the moment after Catwoman comes out. Now, I know from looking at your credits that you had you've had an amazing career. So it didn't hold you back that much. But the movie comes out, it's getting the opposite of accolades, the Razzies and all of this. And and what what's going on with your managers and your agents as you're trying to navigate your way out of this? Because your name is very much on this movie.

SPEAKER_04 14:11

Um I think that the you know what's interesting is okay, so and this is one of those things where it seems like everything happens in order in Hollywood in your career. But what really happens is a bunch of stuff happens at the same time and things surface and drop, right? And they kind of rise and fall. Because I didn't go to the Catwoman premiere because I was shooting second unit, I was directing the auditions for the women who were possibly gonna be the co-lead for the global frequency pilot for Warner Brothers. And so I was in my f I was in the slot for my first showrunner gig. And at the same time, right, that movie came out in 2005. I'm already up because I'm writing Transformers. And so there's there's this this fascinating thing where like you don't realize, you know, like Catwoman got worse the farther it got in the rearview mirror. You know, it was just a bad movie. And then as it kind of as the superhero genre very much kind of went fallow during that period of time, it became one of the last superhero movies made during the interregnum. And so it just kind of really stayed. It kept hitting the worst list after a few years and kind of gained its reputation. But you know what, what's so you just kind of walk away from it. Like you bury your dead and you move on. You bury your dead and you move on. Like, you know, I'll tell you what a worse day was than that movie comes out and and dies, is the day that on the player they told us, we know you have a bad time slot, don't worry about it. We know you have a bad time slot, don't worry about it. This is all we're really sorry, you know, because we were on Thursday nights, we didn't have our lead-in, you know, Blacklist was supposed to be our lead-in, and Blacklist didn't launch yet. And we're getting fucked, you know, pardon me, language. You know, CBS is having the best football Thursday night football season ever that they've ever had. And Shonda Rhimes is just it's the as long as Shonda walks the earth, nobody else is winning Thursday night, and they're like, don't worry, we just gotta get through Christmas, right? We we know the ratings aren't good, it's our fault. We put you in a bad time slot. Just get through Christmas, everyone else goes down, football ends, we're gonna relaunch you, you're gonna be great. And then they call us the episode right before Christmas, and they're like, you're done. You're done today. Like, you're done, like finish the episode you're shooting today, you're done. And I had to go fire 200 people. Like, I personally had to call a meeting and get 200 people. I mean, it was department heads first, and I made a speech after, but I had to get a bunch of and all the departments heads know, like, hey, showrunner meeting, the name numbers aren't great. Everybody come to the production office, you know. Nobody thinks it's gonna be a pleasant surprise, you know. Um and you know, uh a movie that sucked and I had very little to do with it sucking. I mean, there's literally one line of my script in that that movie is a lot worse than when you're a showrunner and you have control and you feel responsible, and these are your friends and you're working with them every week, and you feel like you have failed, and those people have to go get jobs now because you're not a good enough showrunner, you know. That that's worse. That's a thousand times worse, you know.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

Ironically, I was working on the Shonda's Thursday night lineup on all of them at that time, and that was alive, man. Well, I mean, that was Shonda's Bohemoth man. She those thirteen, there was no competing with that on any on any network really when it when it was at its at its peak for sure. Now, I was looking at all your credits, and you have such a wide variety of things that you've done in your career. But one of the commonalities I noticed is that for the most part, in the last half of your career, after Catwoman, you're dealing with a lot of characters who are really, really smart, like like beyond smart. Like these are prodigy level people for the most part. And it is, and I was wondering, is there any residual Catwoman in all of that? Or is that just the characters that you care about at this point?

SPEAKER_04 18:18

I think I think it's the characters I care about, but I think it's it was you know, the it there's kind of a dividing line where I went from jobbing writer and take whatever I job I can get, to you know, that transition when I wrote trans, you know, I wrote the first drafts of Transformers. And and by the way, this is this is illustrative. Um, because you know, uh Krispinor Orsi took over Transformers from me, you know, when when um the director came on, and uh because they had done the island with him with uh why am I blanket? Um Michael Bay. Michael Bay, yeah. So Michael Bay had done the the island and it hadn't come out yet, and Catwoman had come out yet. And I wrote the first draft of Transformers, like this is great, this gets us moving. You know, we have a director now, he likes these two writers. I'm like, God bless, you know, because the whole Transformers, the even the whole Transformers thing was tricky. And the island came out, you know, the island made $10 million less than Catwoman. The island was a bigger flop, but Catwoman is the flashier flop. But no one could say X number of years later, 13 years later, that Kurtzmall, well, Bob's out of the business, really, but Alex Kurtzman and I aren't working writers. So I think it's it's more like you're in a phase of your life where you're jobbing and you're taking gigs and you're trying to like scramble for whatever gig you can get and trying to make your mark. And then hopefully you swing to like, okay, now people know your voice. Now they know what you like and what you're good at. Um, you know, because this the stuff that I'm not credited with that you don't see in my MDB was a bunch of me putting out oil well fires and people knowing I was dependable, and people knowing that when their their show or movie was on fire, I would come in and be calm and bring it down. And so then you start to write what you want to write. And I like to write hyper competent characters. The things I write after Catwoman is the stuff I like to write, and I'm I'm born to write, you know. Uh, and that's why there's a coherence, you know, to that vision. I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not Joss Whedon where it's like, well, look, a very fragile woman kicking men's asses and working out his own shit that way. I'm not that consistent, but you know, I'm I I have a consistency to the types of characters and types of problems I like.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

So I think it's time to move on from Catwoman, except I've got one more Catwoman call.

SPEAKER_04 20:41

We're here all night. Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

It's not, it's not time yet. Um, so we've had writers come on here, and actually Noah falls into this camp as well, where they tell a story about like when they get on a show and it's a success, they buy a gift or something to celebrate that moment. So we had a guy on, so he's got bits of jewellery for his wife for every show he did. You know, it's it's marking success and having a memory. The inverse of that, you still got paid on Catwoman and it was a flop. Did you buy anything with the sort of Catwoman money? Like you've got your sort of it was a shit movie, but here's my new call.

SPEAKER_04 21:18

You know, it's the residu. I mean, you know, it is this is really it's a really wonderful illustration of the nature of residuals and back end. Um if you were to look at what I've made, not back end, because I actually own real points of leverage because uh it's TV. If you're looking at the residuals for my career, it is leverage by a very large marker, then Transformers, a movie that made a billion dollars. And just behind Transformers is Catwoman. And so, you know, it was much more not like this is a giant lump sum that surprised me. It it accretes over several years. Like you just like look and it's X amount a year. Um It probably helped finance my company, like the fact I had that buffer, you know, that I had income, passive income coming in. And there was a joke for years, and there still is a joke when I'm at conventions. I'm like, let me get this round. It's the last of the Catwoman money. I'm burning it off. You know, it's just it'll it it indulges me my lifestyle. Um no, I mean, you know, it it's you know, at the time I get a reasonable script fee, and then it's only years later you open up your residuals page and you go, oh shit, look at that. You know, I made made some decent money off that. Um, but you know, that money is blood money and humiliation money, and you know, so so I I feel I earned it. Um, but no, I'm not a gift guy. You know what I do at the beginning of every season on a show, I buy a new fountain pen. Like I'm very, I'm a very raised by Jesuits and nuns forsaking physical pleasures type of dude. You know, I don't like having stuff, so it's just little gestures like that for me. Um to to to sort of say, and it's always sort of writer-oriented. Um, you know, that that's like this is my this is my craft. This is just a way to remind me, like I'm getting to do my craft again for another year. How cool is that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:11

So how many fountain pens do you have?

SPEAKER_04 23:14

I have a bunch of fountain pens. Uh, and there was a great pen store up in Portland. So that was kind of my ritual is whenever we did the season opener, because I'd always write the season opener on leverage and librarians, I'd fly up for the scout. I'd go to the store and I'd buy the pen that year, you know, to say, like, okay, here we go, another season, you know. Um, so probably eight or nine pens kicking around between leverage, librarians, other stuff, you know. Um it's I've been very, very lucky.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

So when you were talking, so this is half Catwoman but half not. When you were talking about Catwoman, you're saying the difference between a challenge and a warning, and you sort of say, as a, you know, your advice to young writers is, you know, if you can see it's a warning, see it as the skull at the end of the tunnel and so on. That sounds great in principle, but actually, if you're a young writer, even if it is a warning and you get offered a catwoman type role, should you actually do it anyway?

SPEAKER_04 24:13

Advice is meant to be ignored but remembered. Like, you know, I I think that any anybody who offers you a paying gig, I mean, because I because I get phone calls like that all the time from writers I've mentored or writers I just work with, like, ah, I got this gig and I don't know. And I'm like, does it move you the next step up? If it moves you the next step up, take the job. If it's just money, maybe not, you know, but because look, and by the way, the way the economy's gone with writers and stuff, take the job if it's just money. But for me, it, you know, I've gotten calls and it's like, I don't know if I want to take this job. And I said, Does it move you into the showrunners club? Because we know once you run a show, you're on the list, and that's a big difference. And, you know, I've had actors call me and go, should I take this show? I don't know about it. I'm like, are you the lead? Are you the big head on the poster? And like, yeah, I'm like, well, then take the show, you know, because because you know, the you you and and Noah's worked broadcast, you know this. At the beginning of broadcast pilot season, they just hand you a list of their acceptable lead actors. There's no effort really put into casting a lead actor on a broadcast show. It's literally, here's the list, pick one of these. A lot of them are offer only. And I'm like, could I? I mean, by the way, the player, I got so lucky Phil Winchester was coming off of Strikeback. I love Strike Back. And and but, you know, they gave me the list. I'm like, well, do I get to meet with these people? Like, no, a lot of them are offer-only. You have to send them the script. And if they like them, I don't even get to have coffee with them first. And I said, Well, I like Phil Winchester, like he's great. I think he's fantastic. And luckily for me, Phil, who's just coming off Strikeback, right? So he's done like hardcore cable, is saying to his agent, what? So I just have to take a job. I don't even get to meet with the showrunner and decide like what the hell? And so he and I insisted on meeting each other. And we had this very strained meeting at CAA where we were having a really good time, but the agents and managers were all standing around super uncomfortable at the prospect we were actually talking to each other before we started to make a show together. It's madness, you know. And so, you know, the answer is understand the system you are in and understand the mechanisms by which you rise within that system. Um, you know, that that is the real rule is is like learn, be sensitive to the, you know, it's a system, it's it's it's a paradigm to use Thomas Cohn's, you know, paraphrasing. Not really, I'm I'm paraphrasing code, but you know what I mean? You you there's a lot of writers who don't aren't prepared, I think, for the level of politics and systems thinking that goes into a screenwriting career, you know, and it's hard. And a lot of times you become a writer because you're an introvert, and it's like, dude, that or lady, or excuse the pronoun of your choice, I I I'm down with you no matter what. It that's gonna be really hard if you don't learn how to do that.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

So I love the being on the list thing. So in my previous life, I was a diplomat, and I had a friend of mine who was offered a posting, and he was uh you know, senior-ish, and he got offered a first posting as an ambassador, and he had the whole, I don't really want to go to that country. And the advice we all gave him was go, because once you've been an ambassador, you are an ambassador. And even if it's an ambassador to no offense, Tajikistan or or similar, you're still an ambassador. And once you're on the list, it's hard to get you off the list. So I'm glad it worked.

SPEAKER_04 27:43

Noah and I were in the same building, you know, on the at the Paramount lot. And what happened is um Terry Metalis was running MacGyver, and then he went to go to Picard, and probably because they were anticipating the strike, they didn't see COVID coming. Um CBS ordered an extra nine episodes, but Terry was already on Picard and said, like, oh, where are we gonna find a where are we gonna find a showrunner? And Terry said, Well, call John, because I know he's he just kinkiller didn't go, so he's sitting around. And so uh, you know, I talked to Peter Lake Koff real quick and I talked, I went in to meet with the CBS execs, but there was no question they weren't going to hire me. I was an available showrunner, like I was on the list, I was approved, unless I was, I mean, Jana Spencer has this great phrase she uses. She's like, there are meetings where you're just supposed to wear pants. It's remember to wear pants meeting where they just have to have a meeting to make sure you're not completely out of your mind and you don't show up without pants. But that's it. Like that's the bar you have to hit for that meeting. Um, and and my meeting at CBS was absolutely like wear pants, you know. Um, I successfully launched and run multiple shows of multiple seasons, you know, and that was because I, you know, and and you know, you always have a job, like they're always looking for a showrunner. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:00

It was it was a crazy time for us in the same building where we heard and we were all kind of friends with people. We knew the people on the other floors. We were obviously I was on Hawaii 5 0. This is MacGyver, so these are sister shows in the same building. And we MacGyver had basically rapped, and we knew the showrunner left, and the writers were just finishing up some stuff, and then all of a sudden we heard there was more episodes and there was someone else. There's like a flurry of like movement downstairs as you were coming in. But you're talking about like, you know, at a point in your career where you basically just have to wear pants and you're getting these these. And that's obvious from the amount of shows you've created and the amount of movies you've written that that's the right choice. They get that you're that you're safe, that you're solid, that you're gonna do the job, and then you have a good reputation. So there's not a not a lot, a lot, not a lot of bargaining or betting on you at this point in your career. But looking at your credits, you you, I mean, you've worked really steadily as far as you know, I can tell. That said, IMDB is like you said, it doesn't always tell a full story. Was there times early in your career where there was job insecurity where it felt like, is this the right business for me? Am I gonna make it? Am I gonna drop out? Or did you always feel pretty good?

SPEAKER_04 30:06

Well, I mean, the thing you have to remember is I started as a stand-up, right? I started as a stand-up and I got my own sitcom pilot a minute and a half back when they were giving every heavy set white guy uh an inappropriately hot wife and a sitcom pilot back in the 90s. And and so when I got my first staff writing job, it was utter chaos because it was on Cosby and as Dan mentioned, not the first one that made everyone rich and famous beyond their wildest streams, the second one that ended lives and careers. Um and as horrible and chaotic as it was, I was a kid on a roller coaster because I'm like, holy shit, I'm not in my car driving eight hours across Wyoming to get to a bar gig. I'm in a writer's room getting free lunch, getting paid more money than I've seen in my life. And and I think the trick was because I had not gone to film school and I had kind of I wrote my specs and I I always wanted to be a writer, but um, I didn't know there were any rules. So when I was at Cosby, I developed an animated show. I developed Jackie Chan Adventures because Sony was looking for somebody to do it, and I was a giant Jackie fan. Uh because and back then you had to get bootlegs and shit. You couldn't just, you know, see his stuff. I but I was super well versed. And CAA told me, like, no, you don't do this, man. You're a you went from staff writer to producer in three years, like you're on the showrunner track, like you've got to go. And I was like, no, I want to do it. And and so I did that, and then I also wrote a feature. And so as different sections of my career went down, other sections rose, you know, and so I became a feature rewrite guy, just as my two-year deal at Paramount, I gotta, you know, because back then you tell young writers this now, they want to murder you. But back then, I was like, I was a third-year producer and they gave me two years at Paramount in my own office and an assistant in parking, like shit, it just doesn't happen anymore. But there was always insecurity, you're always humping for the next gig. But the advantage I had was, well, I guess I'll write some movies now. I'll guess I'll go back to TV. Well, I guess I'll do some animation, I'll write a comic. You know, like uh, you know, and my it's only me and my wife, there's no kids. And so it was very much we kept our overhead low and just chased kind of just, you know, what's the thing from Julius Caesar? Um there's a tide in the affairs of men, and just tried to like stay aware of where the opportunities were and kind of drifted with them.

SPEAKER_03 32:33

So I I you I saw you tweet about this today, and I want to back up to it, which is the the sitcom, which you had mentioned uh having a sitcom, starring in a sitcom because you were a stand-up and and having a hot wife in that sitcom. So you you have you and yet this isn't really represented in your credits. Was it a did the pilot not go for it? What happened to it? The pilot didn't go.

SPEAKER_04 32:54

We well, I mean, look, it was. I mean, if you want to talk about uh, you know, are you I mean, because it it is tricky because you look at my career and you go, like, wow, that's a lot of success. Should you be on a failure podcast? I'm like, well, look at the the 24 things on my in my drop box that never got made. You know, that's trust me, there's plenty of failure. Uh, I just managed to to succeed just often enough to hide it. Um, so uh I did the Just For Last Festival, got the biggest deal ever out of Just for Last Festival, shot a pilot at Disney for CBS under Peter Torteresi, highest testing pilot CBS had that year. Torteresi calls me, he's like, You're on the air, like wrap up your uh because I was that summer, I was on tour as a comic. He's like, wrap up your tour, like you are on the air. We're gonna announce soon. Come back. I was like, oh my god, and I'll tell my wife and we gotta get ready to move to LA. And I was I was um I was in Winnipeg doing a club in Winnipeg, and they announced Peter Torrese's fired, and Les Moonvest is in. Change of network head. And I've had this happen multiple times now. Like, if you've been in the business long enough, you know exactly what this means. And Les Moonvest is being Les and the way he did it, he found like, nope, I'm not gonna I I have to kill Peter Torrese's pilots. Like, this is what the it's like when the new lion comes in, he has to kill all the lion cubs from the previous you know, pride. Um, you know, so he went and they shot a bunch of pickup pilots, and he picked up, I think Andrew Dice Clay got my time slot, like the pilot with Andrew Dice Clay and Nancy McKean. He went with a lot of very safe names. Um, and I get a call in uh Winnipeg Kitchen, the guy who was running the club. They're like, You're you're not, you're done. Like, don't come back. Um, your show's not going. And and so, I mean, it's a pilot, really well received, uh, but you know, uh poof.

SPEAKER_03 34:44

But but but but that this is interesting because you then said you segued into writing being a staff writer on the Cosby show, but you knew in you you had a hit pilot that you that almost went that most comics would have said took that as validation of the career they already have, which is stand-up.

SPEAKER_04 35:00

And um yeah, I mean, but but that's the thing. As I I had, okay, so this is this is I don't know whether this is within your purview. So I was doing a physics degree at McGill University. That's what I was starting doing. I was writing as a hobby, and I actually wanted to write mystery novels and write mysteries and that sort of thing. And I was like, you know, I don't really have an ear for dialogue. And there was a stand-up comedy course class that they taught at the Comedy Nest in Montreal. So, well, I'll do that and I'll just I'll learn how dialogue works because dialogue to me is verbal. It should sound because I liked witty stuff. I like the thin man, I like stuff from the 40s that had pop to it, the big sleep, that sort of thing. And I kind of backed into a stand-up career because it was um it's very structured and it requires a lot of the sort of work that a physics person is attracted to, like methodology. A stand-up routine is an experiment you repeat under variable conditions hundreds of times and then tune to perfection to the point where you can make a random group of strangers with different backgrounds have the same emotional response every 15 seconds, no matter what. I mean, when you think about it, that's a stunning piece of psychology. And you do that by just crafting it and working at it and tuning it within an inch of its life. And and and because I was a student, I did that first year, I did like 300 shows. I just went every night and just ate shit and did five minutes, like every single night, over and over again. And and so that first year, um, I wound up getting selected to go to Australia and do stand-up in Australia, and then my career uh went my career. So um when I got validated by that sitcom going, I did do a little acting, but I was not addicted to the idea that I'm gonna be a sitcom star. I was interested in the idea of crafting words, and I just happened to be the correct heavy set white dude at the time to get a sitcom. And when that didn't go, I was able to displace my ego over to, well, the thing I wanted to do is write anyway, so why don't I write my specs? And then got hired on my first show, and and there you go. I mean, I think that's a big, if you're talking about failure, um, you know, there's a great thing. There's a book called Atomic Habits, which is a really great book about forming habits. And in it it says, um, you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. And that's, I think, really crucial to just remember, like as you're building a career, it's like you will do as well as your adaptability and habits allow you to do, you know, and and you should never get too comfortable just writing one thing or just thinking you're gonna have a certain career path. And by the way, there are terms who'd say I'm mad, and like, you know, you'll never make a madman with that attitude. It's like, well, maybe not, but you know, he was a Simpsons writer's first, you know, uh Vince Gillian was out of X Files before he did breaking bad. Like, you you don't know where you're gonna go, but you know you you know how you will succeed. You write three pages a day every goddamn day of your life, you know, and you try a bunch of different stuff and develop a bunch of different skills because whenever that opportunity comes, it's not gonna be the one you expect. You know, it's just not. And the difference between failure and success is percentages. It's just baseball, man. You know. You're almost a perfect gangster for this podcast. You failed so much, so well, so publicly.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

You failed brilliantly, but you you started talking about your failure before we'd even asked. And now you've started giving advice before our final question when we need.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

I want to I want to modify the final question, Dan, because you know, and by the way, we don't have to we don't have to end now.

SPEAKER_04 38:49

I'm not in a rush. I don't want to I didn't want to I didn't want to drive you to the ending. I apologize.

SPEAKER_03 38:54

No, we can we can keep going, but I I want to segue into this question, which is our now which is the ending question, but you've you've actually answered the ending question normally is what advice would you give to an aspiring writer to, you know, as they're starting their career? Now you've given that advice in this podcast. So the question I want to ask you is, what advice would you give to a showrunner? Because you've you're you're the guy that's coming in to put out fires. And I have a we have a lot of people that have been guests on our shows that are like a first-time showrunner who are facing this all for the very first time. What advice would you give someone running a show?

SPEAKER_04 39:26

You know, I well, I I'd modify my advice because my the advice has changed since I I have learned it. And there's advice I would give you on the staff, and advice I give you if you're breaking in. The advice I'd give you if breaking in now is make something. Make a comic, make a podcast, make something. Just don't write specs. The the the way to rise above the the noise now is to have a narrative you can point to. And you know what? You can find a frickin' artist on Tumblr or Twitter, and you guys can both decide to work for free, or you can eat some money and give it to them. But, you know, uh Paul Bay, who I don't know, you've seen I've talked to him on Twitter, um, he's breaking into the TV business in his late 40s because he made podcasts and they're great. And you can't deny those podcasts. And then those podcasts got optioned and the agents met him and he pitched his heart out. And they're like, Well, you're in the you're in the game now. You know, you sold stuff, you you made something and we wanted it. And I would say that is the biggest advice for young writers now is like Christine Boylan and I can't remember her partner's name, they they write, they run this great, they haven't been able to do it because of COVID, but they created a one-act play reading uh program uh that um that was just putting on plays at a theater down on Pico. You know, podcasts, there's nothing cheaper than a Bluetooth mic, and you can cut on Garage Band. Like, make something. Now, the advice for the showrunner, because I have been called and I have been called into fixed shows, and it's always like an awkward first two days where I'm like, I don't want your show. I'm not here to take your job, man. I really because that's their first suspicion, right? It's like they bring in somebody and like they're they're getting eased out. But I'm like, I don't want to do that, you know. Um, the thing I like about television is the collaborative nature of it. My advice to showrunners is trust your staff. Like writers, a lot of times you've become a successful writer because you are focused and obsessive, and you work very hard and you take on a lot of burden and you have a real clear creative vision. And you that clear creative vision and your trust and love of it is what carries you through all of the horrible bullshit and failure. And when you get into the incredibly chaotic business of showrunning, and we and and I have issues with this, we we're not because we're we're we have so much content to make, we're letting people be showrunners before they're ready. And that's it's hard because on one hand, showrunning has been very biased towards male and white writers for so long, it has been very exclusionary of women and writers of color and LGBTQ plus writers. So it's great that there's more opportunities, but at the same time, they're being set up to fail because they haven't had experience on a staff. And like I get taught to be a showrunner by guys who ran shows in the 60s and 70s when they made 38 episodes a year. Like my toolbox is deep, you know. And if you're somebody who was on a sketch show or had a play and now you're a showrunner, that's not fair to you, you know. And so what happens is you've got your creative vision, you're clinging to it, and you have all this responsibility, and you and they put responsibility, they tell you you're the showrunner. And when things start to go wrong, instead of leaning on your staff, writers turtle up. And they're like, Oh, I gotta bear this burden, ah, I gotta save my show, I'm the only one who can do this. And there's a great quote, and it's often it's often attributed um to like five different people over the course of the 20th century. The earliest version I've heard of it is from like 1910, a tribunal journalist. There's a great quote that says, the cemeteries are full of irreplaceable men. And you have to keep that in mind. Like, you know, I went into one show that was that was shut down, and the network called me, it's like we're shut down, we can't afford to be shut down, but we can't make another episode. We're just the vision of the network and the showrunner too far apart. Get it back on its feet. Like, we're we're not gonna go to a second season. We know that. Just get it back on its feet so we can finish the season. And and I went in, and the and the writer was is brilliant. He's a far better writer than I am, by by no, there's not a comparison. And and he was just locked in his office and he was trying to carry this burden alone. And I went out and I talked to the staff, and I came back in. I'm like, you have three showrunner-level writers out there, like you have three people, and one person who was a coexec for five years on a law and order, like you've got people you can trust, lean on them, you know. And I think that's it, Hollywood can be so lonely and so competitive. That's always my advice is like, and and and look, different people put different staffs together. For some people put staffs together. So that they will execute your vision. I put staff together like a jazz band. Like you're here because you play an instrument I can't play. Like you, and the the biggest joy for me as a showrunner is when I get a script and go, I couldn't have written this. The show's bigger than me now, right? It's not just my vision. The show's bigger than one person. It means it has legs. It means if I stepped in front of a bus tomorrow, it could go five more years. I made a thing that has its own life. You know, that to me is a successful staff and a successful showrunner relationship. So to me, and there's some showrunners out there like you're insane, it's your vision. What are you doing? You're mad. But to me, primary advice, just in general, for showrunners is trust your staff, lead on your staff, talk to your staff. The one thing that the one like aphorism that was taught to me that I would say internalize this hard. Every criticism is the tragic result of an unmet need. Every note that you get, even from the I will say one or two exceptions, because some executives are just bad people or not good at their jobs, whatever. But every note is a version, is not like, why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? I don't like that. You hear all that, it's negativity and it's frustrating, and you made this thing. What the fuck do they know? If you gave them 50 pages, they couldn't make something entertaining. Why the hell am I listening to this person? But what that person is saying is I wanted to feel something and I didn't. I needed, I had an unmet need. I wanted to feel something and I didn't. And that's what that note 99 out of a hundred times is. And it's great because the shorthand I've learned, and there's some executives who don't like it, but a lot of executives I do. Um I get a note and I go, Well, what did you want to feel there? You don't feel. And that cuts through so many notes calls and so many notes meetings. They'll go, like, I just want to feel like they were in danger. That I can do. I'll give you that. You know, because so many times executives can't articulate because they haven't been taught to talk that way either, right? The executive's been taught, oh, you have to give a bunch of notes and suggestions. Like you have to pitch a bunch of stuff in your notes. Could you do this? Could you try this? Could be that's why are you doing that? You're not a writer. That's my job. Just tell me what you wanted to feel you're not feeling, and let me give that to you. And you know what? A lot of times they're right. You know, and if you get a really good relationship, like uh Perlina Ibakwe, who's now running like NBC Uni, but she was my ex exec on at NBC on the player, and she's brilliant. She's one of my favorite execs, and she's so smart. But we got to the shorthand where she was like, you know what, I'm not feeling? I'm gonna feel this. And it was like, oh, thank god. Like our notes calls were two and a half minutes long because we had the same vocabulary.

SPEAKER_03 46:44

I'm sorry, that was super long, but it's super I was like trans, I was like transfixed just taking it all in.

SPEAKER_00 46:52

That was that was amazing. Um, like you know, I'm not a writer, I'm not from this world, and you know, this podcast is not meant to directly just be sort of really useful things writers can learn. It's meant to be, you know, a deeper human condition about how people deal with rejection and failure in an extreme way. But actually, this one's been a really good masterclass in both rejection and how to be a writer. You know what?

SPEAKER_04 47:18

Love it, because to a great degree, the the way I've responded to failure is, you know, when I was a kid, my favorite Red Sox player, and this ages me, was Karlja Strzemsky. And Karl Yostremsky is not a flashy player, but the reason Karl Yastremski was my favorite player is I went to see them, I went to see a game, and uh it was practically super early, so we got to see him playing. And he was he was hitting a couple and he had his hands taped up, and I'm like, why is his hands taped up? My dad said, Well, infamously, he'll hit practice balls until his hands bleed. And and he because he doesn't have a lot of natural talent, but he just hits all day long until he gets good. And and that's I was I had to be a kid, uh you know, I was eight or ten. And and and that's the thing is like if I have a lot of tools now, it is because every failure has taught me a lesson. And every time I got fired, it was fine. Um dudes, I got fired. I mean, I really got fired a lot in my 30s. Um, but every time I got fired, it's like, why'd I get fired? Uh, because I fucked that up. I said this, or I didn't do that, or I didn't understand the process, or I didn't know how to read that exec or that director, you know, and and you build on it. And and that's the only reason I am, guys. I'm a perfectly decent pulp writer. Like I am not a super talented writer by any sort. I have a very lovely turn of phrase when I work within my genre, you know. But what keeps me alive is the fact that I have been beaten up enough by different job experiences that there's not a lot you can throw at me, and I can't reach into the magic toolbox and say, I got one of those. Like this here's the thing I developed after this thing kicked me in my ass when I was 33. You know, I get the tool for that, you know. So it is both. It's it's it cut the resilience comes from failure. Enormous failure, repeated failure, continuous failure.

SPEAKER_00 49:19

Brilliant. So look, John Rogers of Catwoman Fame. Thank you for being on the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 49:26

Thank you for having me. That was lovely, guys. Thank you so much, John. All right, that's a wrap on this episode. If you want to leave us any feedback, go to hollywoodabyss.com.

SPEAKER_00 49:46

And if you'd like to subscribe, we won't stop you. And if you want to leave a review, we certainly won't stop you. In fact, we'll be incredibly grateful.

SPEAKER_03 49:54

And we have a couple of thank yous before we go completely. We want to thank Games Launch for the intro and outro music. We want to thank both our wives who allowed us to hide in our respective basements while we record all of these interviews.

SPEAKER_00 50:07

If you want to find us on Twitter and join in the conversation, I'm at Dan Rutstein, and Noah is at M Ebslin. Please come and find us, please say hello, and if you really want to, please give Noah a job.

SPEAKER_03 50:18

Yes, I am looking for a job of any sort. I can polish shoes, I can write copy, uh, I can even be in a writer's room. So if that's the case, feel free to reach out.

SPEAKER_00 50:29

But you definitely can't podcast.

SPEAKER_03 50:31

I definitely this is not the thing that I do well.