Take 114 - Writer and Showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker, Luke Cage, Creed II

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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

SPEAKER_03 0:13

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

SPEAKER_01 0:20

For every success, there is months, sometimes even years, of painful failure.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default. That's the normal to be able to persevere. Unlike everything in our business, your hands get out and all bounces off you. That process takes us, that doesn't happen overnight.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

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-pick shot. What I've realized from that moment is it's never one pitch shot. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

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

SPEAKER_03 1:20

Dan, I I think this is where they actually want me to talk about how much I love it. And I do love it, it's great. Its collating function transformed me from the messiest writer in Hollywood to, well, ever so slightly less messy. My wife might have other things to say about that. Sitha listeners can get a free month of scriptation by going to scriptation.com backslash Sitha.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

For those of you who don't understand slightly drooly American accents, that's scriptation.com backslash S-I-T-H-A.

SPEAKER_03 2:03

Welcome to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in Hollywood. Unfortunately, we don't have Dan today. He's doing something fancy with his in his non-industry day job. But as always, I am your industry co-host, Noah Epslin. On today's podcast, I'm thrilled to introduce journalist, screenwriter, TV writer, and showrunner Cheo Hodari Koker to the podcast. After a long career in journalism, he segued over to screenwriting. Cheo wrote on such shows as Southland, NCIS LA, Almost Human, and Ray Donovan, amongst others, before creating and showrunning Luke Cage for Netflix. He also wrote or co-wrote such feature films straight out of content, All Eyes on Me, Legend, a Bob Marley Story, Rapper's Delight, Orange Curtain, Flow, Creed To, Notorious, and Low Riders, amongst many others with a lot more projects in development. Welcome, Chay.

SPEAKER_04 3:03

Thank you. It's really good to be here. It's sometimes it's daunting because it's like we always spend time talking about our triumphs rather than our failures. But as somebody somewhere elegantly said said, you know, like you probably learn more from your failures than you learn from your triumphs. And so I do this and talk about these things, um, hopefully in a way that helps people understand that the writing process, even when it's successful, at times can be painful and that we all have gone through it. And so, you know, if this is the thing that helps somebody not give up or, you know, not quit, then I'm hoping to be that light, if that's helpful.

SPEAKER_03 3:57

And I, you know, I love the way I've been, you know, you've not you and I have known each other for a few years. I think we kind of met over social media. And as we were getting this podcast going, you were one of my early targets for a guest because of the way that you do speak to the fans and talk to the fans when they have questions, and you were fairly candid about your journey, you know, over social media, saying, like, hey, I'm willing to share some of the trials and tribulations that I have faced. And obviously that's what this podcast is about, is sort of sharing trials and tribulations. But let's, you know, start at the beginning. Uh, let's give a sense, you know, a lay of the land. You you had a very successful career as a journalist. Can you talk a little bit about that? And then what happened inside of you that made you decide, hey, I'm gonna leave this, you know, successful thing that I'm doing, working for all of these magazines and newspapers, and you know, try to join the sort of crazy world of Hollywood screenwriting.

SPEAKER_04 4:54

Well, when I first started writing about hip-hop, um, I don't want to say it was the infancy of hip-hop because it wasn't. Um, my generation of writers, whether it's myself, Rob Marriott, Elliot Wilson, um, Sasha Jenkins, um, Karen Good, you know, you know, that kind of um generation of hip-hop journalists, I want to say is really like the early 90s. And um the thing was was okay, I started writing for Vibe magazine from its third issue. Um, I was a writer for The Source, Rap Pages, got my start at the Bomb Hip Hop magazine when I was still in college. Um, the thing was, was when you were writing about hip-hop, it was because you were a true believer. It was from the standpoint of like you felt that if the source's mission, when it was pure, was it was the magazine of hip-hop music, culture, and politics, you felt like this is my generation's chance to talk about what's going on. And as a journalist, you wanted to be a part of that. If you want to call it news journalism, like this is a great documentary on Netflix called Tom Wolf. Um, that's kind of how we felt we were. Like, you know what I'm saying? It's like we were like Vice magazine before Vice magazine, just in terms of how close we were to the culture and the opportunities we had to talk to, you know, Snoop and Dre and you know, uh Gangstar, Nas from the very beginning, Wu Tang, I mean, you name it, like in the 90s. Um, I can it's easier for me to tell you who I haven't interviewed rather than who I did. I mean, one of the only interviews I didn't get to was Tupac. But um my best friend Rob Marriott did talk to Tupac. I was the last person to talk to Notorious B.I.G. as a journalist. Actually, had he called me back, I would have been in the car um, you know, the night that he was um murdered, um, because I was writing a cover story for him uh about him for Vibe magazine at the time. I was moonlighting from the LA Times that could have gotten me fired. But, you know, again, true believer. And so the thing was was that um on one hand, it was I don't want to say it's lucrative. I mean, I got to a point where I got to the level where I was making like 250 a word, which at that you know back then was like you were that was kind of the the upper level of what you could earn as a as a journalist. Um, you know, I was writing for Premier Magazine for a few other places, but the main thing for me was that um it got to be real competitive in terms of magazines banging on other magazines. Like if you wrote for Vibe, you probably after a while were not gonna write for Double XL. If you were writing for Double XL, you definitely weren't gonna be writing for the source. There was all these kinds of clicks and competitions, even though all of us writing these magazines, we all know each other, we're all friends, we're all part of the same, you know, collective. I I don't know, you I don't want to know if you want to call it fraternity or sorority, because there are, you know, I wouldn't classify it by sex, I would call I would classify it by calling. We were all a part of something, and we and we were even though we were rival competitors, we're all friends. But the thing was that I noticed in Hollywood, because I was one of the only journalists out of LA that was also writing for New York publications, was I noticed that like Warner Brothers doesn't care if you're writing for Fox. Fox doesn't care if you're writing for Sony. You know what I'm saying? Whereas there was a lot more restrictions, not to mention the fact that, you know, one of the main things that kicked me over the edge was when Ben Ramsey um sold the big hit. Um, because that spec was a huge spec sale, particularly for a young black writer. And also he had, I think um, Blunt Force was another one that he'd sold. Um I think at the time was the script that the notorious BIG was attached to before he died. And I'm like, wait a minute, I'm over here competing with all my friends for the same $5,000 article cover story when I could be in Hollywood making half a million dollars writing a script. How do I get in? You know, um I was lucky in that I didn't have to find somebody that I knew that was a screenwriter. My uncle, Richard Wesley, um, my uncle through marriage, he married my Aunt Valerie, my mother's older sister. Um, he is in as a screenwriter, he wrote Uptown Saturday Night, Let's Do It Again, you know, the um Sydney Portier, Bill Cosby classic comedies of the 70s, and um also, you know, wrote has written feature films, like um whether feature films released in the theaters or in also cable films, like in parts of four four decades. I mean, Rich is like an is an icon, honestly. Um, and I was lucky enough to basically watch him write and to when I had questions, like you know, he would teach me things from the writing perspective about film. And then um, you know, my foray into screenwriting kind of happened by accident. I mean, I was, you know, I was first approached by this is how all how long ago this was, Brian Robbins, who's the current um president of Paramount, right? Back in the day, of course, he he was before he was a um a well-known actor, like from head of the class, he also really rose his prominence as a director. You know, Hardball was one of his movies, um, Varsity Blues was one of his movies, and he had a production company with um Mike Tolin. And so it was Tolin Robbins, and they also had a management firm. And so, for example, they managed together um with Michael Goldman, who was a former ICM agent who became a manager over there. Um, they were the first managers of like Keenan and Kel and Nick Cannon. So I've known Nick since he was like, I want to say he was like 15 years old, 16 years old, just running around the office. And I was one of the first writers that they signed because um they said, hey, we like your articles. You know, you probably could possibly have a future writing screenplays. And so Mike Goldman, um, shout out to Mike, was incredibly instrumental early on in my career. But I was just trying to kind of figure things out. And I was at the LA Times and I and beyond moonlighting for the hip hop magazines, I was I used to write for the pop music section of the LA Times. And you just get to a point where you're just like, wait a minute, like I'm covering the Hughes brothers and hanging out with them. Um, I'm just beginning to meet, you know, someone who became really my mentor, um, and really close friend, John Singleton. And, you know, um, I'm also thinking, of course, of Theodore Witcher, who of course wrote and directed Love Jones. And all these young brothers are my age. And I got to a point where I was like, do I really want to spend the rest of my life in a cubicle covering people who were following their dreams, or do I want to try to do it myself? Um, so that yes, there was the money factor, there was the people that I was covering as a journalist that were actually my age or my peer group doing the thing and actually out there. And um, it was just a combination of all those factors and the fact that my uncle, you know, was doing it. So, you know, it all kind of converged. Um, it was a couple of things. There's one story I could tell um that I'll tell in a second about how uh what finally pushed me over, but there's the actual practical story of how I became a writer in terms of Hollywood stuff, is um Connie Brook wrote an article for the New Yorker about uh Tupac. It was one of the most definitive Tupac articles that occurred after, you know, of course, he died. And when I read it, my uncle also read it because we happen to be, I happen to be in my uncle's house in Jersey. And um he read it, and his reaction was when reading it was like, wow, like it's clear to me that Sugar Knight must have been involved in um Tupac's murder. And I'm having covered pop music, having been around Death Row Records, you know, kind of like I was on the Death Row beat, me, Chuck Phillips, um, Pete Frank Williams. I mean, we were all over all the events, the, you know, the concerts at Death Row Records, you know, um at Can Am Studios, all that shit. I was like, nah, there's a lot more going on behind the scenes. And what I'm not gonna completely disclose what I said because I don't feel like getting sued. But I said it's not that simple. That conversation led to us fictionalizing the hip hop business at the time, um, and a script that we co-wrote called Flow. Um, and so what happened was my uncle at the time was writing, um, I think he was writing Mandela Declerc for Showtime. So he was busy. He he was busy the way that I'm busy right now, where I'm like constantly working on stuff. And and you know, so we're talking, we're talking about like he's kind of showing me how to plot, and and it's a different writing muscle than as a journalist or anything else. So he's showing me how to do that. Really, the Godfather honestly, you know, taught me everything in terms of um expositionary dialogue. Um, Michael, who's that strange man, you know, speaking? His name is his name is Luca Brassi. He works for my father, you know. It's like there's not, you know, the difference between a baptism and a um a wedding. So for us, our parlance, a wedding is any scene where you have all of your main characters in one place in different parts of a party, but you're introducing the audience to them. A baptism is an intercut sequence where action is occurring while one central stream or event is happening. So, like he's basically teaching me because I've been watching The Godfather my whole life, but now he's teaching it to me from a screenwriting perspective. And so, you know, we plot out flow, he gets busy. I write uh together, I think we wrote about maybe 60, 65 pages, and um a lot of stuff is going on, like, you know, two bad breakups. Um, you know, I leave the LA Times and nothing's going right in terms of like, you know, working. And I didn't realize at the time, but I think I was kind of depressed. Um I was ironically through Tolin Robbins. Um, one thing I got assigned was an episode of Cousin Skeeter. And I was supposed to write this episode of Cousin Skeeter, and and I just was thinking about it, thinking about it. And then finally, you know, I moved back to Connecticut, even though I kept my LA apartment. And one day I called um my manager and I said, Well, you know, um, what's going on with Cousin Skeeter? Like, you know, because I'm I could use the money. And he says, Oh, well, when you never turned in the outline, if we just figured that you weren't gonna do it, so we've already reassigned it. And I realized at that moment and that one second that this whole thing could go away. Any opportunity I have to do anything can go away. And so, you know, and this is at this point because of the breakup I was in without naming names, getting all that shit. You know, I was, you know, I don't smoke or drink, but I was watching television like 18, 20 hours a day. I was, I just was just, you know, not doing anything. And when that moment happened, I said, you know what? Let me go to sleep, get up in the morning, and let me attack these cards that my uncle and I had together. Let me see how much more of the script there is. And then I just got up and I just, you know, I don't know if you want to play, you know, um, Bill Conte's Alone of the Ring like Rocky, but click, something clicked in my brain that said, let me sit my ass down, let me write. And so that's what I started doing is I just started writing, you know. Um, and all these kind of self-help, um, yeah, they're not really self-helped. These quotes behind me are all these different quotes that I would take out of creative screenwriting um to inspire me. Um, because knowing that other writers have their own way of getting through this, um, those were the things that I was kind of cutting up and putting on my wall and then writing. And so eventually what happened was Rich and I wrote 60 pages together. I wrote, I want to say I went crazy. I wrote like a hundred and thirty more pages, got to the very end of the script. Way too many pages, but there was something there. And then I go to Jersey. Um, and Rich is like, Well, yeah, like, okay, you're serious about this shit. He, I mean, he knew I was serious, but he could see, okay, yeah, you really are doing the work. And so then together we pared it down and rewrote each other, you know, a couple of puzo style, and that became flow. And then John Singleton, you know, who I was friends with, you know, um, he was in Florida at the time. I mean, you you have to understand this is pre-Zoom, free whatever. He was like, Yeah, he's like, knowing John, he probably would probably had some girl in New York he wanted to see, needed an excuse. He said, he said, he said, yo, if if I come read this, you know, um, I'm really interested in what you're saying about the script. Like, you know, um, can I come read it? I said, sure, man. So so John literally flies to New York. I mean, I want to think that flow was the excuse, but knowing John, it was some, it's somebody out there, right? So he flies up to New York, he comes to to Montclair, New Jersey, to my uncle's house, and he reads the script. Um, at the time, I'd already sent the draft to um ICM, and they were like, This is, you know, it's a good script. You know, it's interesting. Like, you know, you made great progress. Congratulations. Mike Goldman was also really encouraging. Yeah, you're like, yeah, this is great, but I think this is interesting. John reads it, sits in my uncle's living room, reads the script in one sitting, loves the script, attaches himself to direct. And then all of a sudden, ICM is like, we want to attach Oliver Stone. We're going to this. I'm like, I already promised it to John. This is what we're doing. And that was scary shit because all of a sudden the script that was just kind of like interesting, all of a sudden, became this thing. And then um, John attached himself. We sold it to the new line, and um there it is sat for the last 20 years. But but, you know, and essentially, you know, Empire. Uh, you know, I'm not saying the empire was based on flow, but because we did a godfather-like look at the at the African-American music industry and hip-hop and with the past and present, like that was what we did 10 years before. It to me, it's it's basically my platoon because um Oliver Stone, when he wrote Platoon, it took him years to get that script made. And for me, flow was one of those things that ultimately at some point I'm gonna rework it and um get it made somewhere. I promised my uncle to do it. Um it's gonna happen because it's just it's a good script and it's one of my favorites. But that's how I got started was was doing that. And that and from Flow um and selling that, um, November, you know, got announced on November 12th, 1998. You know, that was kind of the real start of a lot of things. Um, to me, okay, this is the irony of it all. Okay, when Get on the Bus came out, um, the Spike Lee movie that he independently financed and the movie that he made about the uh Million Man March that starred Andre, you know, Andre, the late Andre Brower then and a really the late Ozzy Davis and a slew of African-American talent. Um, Reggie Rock Bytewood wrote that movie. Spike directed it. Um, he independently financed it with through African American investors. It was kind of for us a big deal. So that movie comes out in '96, and um John invited me to go see it at the uh Sendorama Dome on Sunset Boulevard. And so I go with John, we see the movie, and when we get out of the movie, um we run into Reggie Hudlin. We um okay, who as a director, um, of course directed Marshall about Thurgood Marshall with Chavic Bozeman, also was uh the producer of Django Unchained, um, you know, and also has produced like the Oscars and a bunch of other shit. I mean, Reggie's the man. Um, Rusty Cundiet, who I don't know if you guys remember the movie Fear of a Black Cat back in the day, but Rusty was it, but he's also another director who was who was there. And Mario Van Beebles, of course. Um, Mario most famously directed New Jack City, but his um as an actor, I mean, he's also one of Michael Mann's close friends. So Mario pops up all over the place. Like he he it's Mario playing Malcolm X in Ali with Will Smith. I mean, and Mario also as a director. I mean, he's does a lot of television, he's done great films. Besides New Jack City, he did posse. Like he's just the man. So all of us are talking, and Mario invites all of us to his place. And so, you know, we all go up there and we're just film geeks. And so I'm just lucky enough to be there, just along for the ride. I'm still a journalist at this point. And you know, John and Rusty and Reggie and Mario, and all of us really, but just kind of more of them just talking about the films they want to make and what they want to do and how they're going to do things. It was just so invigorating. It was one of the most incredible creative moments I've ever witnessed. It was, it was beautiful, honestly. And then Melvin Van Peebles, who's Mario's dad, who, of course, directed Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song. You know, he hears so much laughter in the kitchen. He comes down three o'clock in the morning, comes down, and you know, it's Mario Van Peebles and he's hanging out. I get home back to the valley of my little North Hollywood apartment around probably like 5:30, 6 o'clock in the morning. And I'm like, this is what I want to do with my life. I want to be a writer. I want to eventually be a director. And I realized, like I said earlier, but this is probably a better version of this two use, that uh, you know, I could either spend my life in a cubicle writing about people living their dream, or I can actually try to live my dream. And so that to me was the moment that I said, you know what, I gotta figure out how to do some of this other shit. And then that, of course, led to um flow and a bunch of other directions. But but yeah, but the combination of both those things is kind of how I ended up, you know, here, so to speak.

SPEAKER_03 23:21

The the thing you said about, you know, seguing from one career to another, is the journalism to screenwriting, obviously it's going to resonate to some of our listeners who have most of them have, some of them have other careers, and they're they're if they're thinking, if they're listening to this podcast, they are thinking about making the jump into Hollywood with all the fears, or they already have. And I think what you said about going to that period of time where you're sitting on the couch and you you you had a choice in that moment. You could end your career before it really even started, or you could get up and do the work. And you said you did the work and it led to flow. So, my question now is you know, I we I listed off some of your credits. Now you have like 30 times more stuff you've worked on that I didn't get to in that introduction. You've done a lot of work since 1998, since this when you told the story. But has there any other times in your career where you sat back down on that couch and you're like, I am done with this, and something made you get back up? Or was it has it been pretty consistently, you're doing this and you're gonna continue doing this until the end?

SPEAKER_04 24:28

I'm laughing because, like, uh, yeah, like you go through these different segues and these different moments and these different peaks and valleys. Like um there was uh, I mean, okay, this is good to kind of talk about. Um, I'll talk about process and also talk about failure. Um, because both teach you how to do both. All right. So perfect example. It's like um, I have ADHD. And like most Gen X people, I've just, you know, never non-medicated. You just learned to deal with it. Um, and so part of what it is is like you invent all these different obstacles to prevent you from writing. And so now at 51, I'm a lot better about starting and about doing things and realizing like how to kind of combat that in ways that I didn't before. For me, running and running marathons has helped me because it's the only thing analogous where it's the small building blocks. It's it's the it's the the three-mile run when you don't feel like running that helps you get in shape to do the longer runs and ultimately build up to the big event. And you realize that I didn't feel like running three miles, but you know, I did it. It helps you realize, okay, I don't feel like writing right now, but I'm gonna get some pay, you know, I'm gonna get some pages done. The thing that happens with a lot of people is that they try to run marathons when they haven't done any training runs. They say, I'm gonna take the entire weekend off. I'm gonna take three days, you know, because alone wrote Rocky in three days, I can write a movie in three days. And they get into it and they get to about page seven and they spin out and they realize how hard this shit is. And then all of a sudden, they discourage themselves. They're like, This is impossible. And my thing is like, don't think about all this time. What you have to focus on is just consistently every day write 300 to 500 words. What I mean by that, okay, back in the day when I write a record review, a record review is 250 words. And so when I get stuck, I'm like, uh 250 words is essentially one page of a screenplay. So I realize, you know what? If I'm stuck, just write a record review. It's not daunting, you can do it, just one little piece. And you just got to keep going. And it's just these little things because you're not, you never find the time. And once you got a job, once you got kids, I mean, it's impossible. So you have to find these little pockets of time to write and to Jedi mind trick yourself into writing these little pieces. And if you condition yourself to do that, you'll be in better shape to actually write more substantially. Um, and so that's to say, it's like, you know, one of my favorite analogies, and I'm I'm I'm known for like I uh I constantly make analogies, particularly with film stuff. There's a scene in the first X-Men movie um where um Hugh Jackman is sitting with Anna Packlin. Um and she asks him about his claws, and he's and she and she says, you know, he pops him and she says, Does that hurt? And he says, every single time. And that's my analogy for what it's like to write. Whether I'm, you know, back in the day when I was writing in a coffee shop to now, where I've got an office, and you know, even though we're in my home office right now, but I've got an office like around the corner, it's still painful. This job sucks. It's not going to not suck. But you, you know, to paraphrase one of these books has really helped me, you learn to embrace the suck. You learn to get past that. Um, you know, and so part of what it is, part of what your job is is, is just finding the little ways to kind of keep going. Um perfect example. It's like I I remember um because it happens a lot of times. I got paralyzed um writing-wise, okay, coming off of Luke Cage, um, and after Creed, I did a draft or was working on a draft of Five Brothers, the sequel to Four Brothers. I was rewriting it for John. Um, John passed away, um, you know, very tragically. Um, you know, he had a stroke and and his hypertension, you know, he passed away while I was still working on the draft. Um, and then at the same time, I was also working on a Gucci main script for for Imagine. And both were taking longer than they should have. And it just got to a point where I was just like, I think in my mind I was grieving John and working on Five Brothers was like trying to confront work, you know, the fact that my friend and I were going to do this project and it didn't get done. So it got easier to push that off. I'm still on um, I'm not on Luke Cage anymore, but I'm still working on projects at the time for my overall for Amazon. So I'm sure people are just like, yeah, what the fuck ever? You're getting paid, crime meet river. But you have all these different things happening, and the pandemic happens. And what happens with the pandemic is like when the pandemic first happens, everyone's like, oh my God, Hollywood is dead. That's reaction number one. Reaction number two is all of a sudden, every single executive in town finally has the time to read. And all of a sudden, everybody wants every script now. And so I went through this moment when I was basically writing both scripts simultaneously, and you know, like I've someone said it best. Um writing in Hollywood is a pie game contest where the reward is more pie. And when you're writing that much and you're not sleeping, and it's just like just all the shit that's happening, you know, kids and yeah, it's just hard, you know, like that was a really, really tough period. And then ultimately I got through it, got both scripts in. I mean, you know, I I really wish I could revisit Five Brothers because um there's still more with that draft that I think could have been um better. Gucci Man is a is, you know, I thought turned out pretty good as a script. Um, you know, it was a great book, and then um I'm I'm still proud of the script, even though it didn't get made. Um, you know, that happens. Um, but I learned a lot about it's not a it's not a failure in that I got both drafts in, but it's a failure in terms of like I needed to have a different approach. I didn't, you know, and so sometimes when you get overwhelmed or you take too many things on at once, I'm a lot better about now about how I go about what I'm doing. I'm a lot better about my pre-work. You know, of course, you're gonna hear from a lot of people about like, okay, I don't do any free work, I don't do any drafts if I don't get paid, all that other shit, right? I view it the way that Kobe Bryant viewed practice. Kobe Bryant was famous for getting up at four o'clock in the morning and basically practicing for three or four hours way before he got to the Lakers facility. And by doing that for three to five years, he eventually got so far past anybody in the league that like it was insane. And so my version of doing that is like if I'm interested in a project, you know, I'll start outlining, I'll outline before I do a pitch. I'll write a scriptment, you know, now before um anything is inked. And people are, you know, of course, my my manager, they're like, what the fuck are you doing? Like that's too much time. I'm like, because the problem is if you don't do that, if you don't know what you're gonna write and how you're gonna approach it, a when you pitch the studio or you pitch, you're not really gonna know what you're doing, or even worse, you'll get the job if you half-ass the pitch, but are charismatic, and then you'll get the money, and then you know, I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing, and there's a time clock, and you don't deliver. So it's almost like I'm gonna write either way. It's like boxing. You know, you got to be prepped for way before you step in the ring, you gotta stay in shape. And so outlining and figuring these things out before I even get the chance to pitch a gig and ultimately doing it, sometimes they don't work, sometimes they reject your pitch. I mean, I I I did a deck for a um a John Wick spinoff. I'm I I I fucking love. Been kicked my ass, but and it didn't happen, but you know, it was a it was a good muscle to try to work on, you know. So pre-work and working and and structure and and thinking about how you're gonna do something and the outlining, um, that's the job. You know, yeah, writing dialogue, writing the script, that that's all that's ice, that's ice cream and frosting. The cake is prep. The cake is figuring out how characters interact and and scriptments and and all the shit that I fucking hate doing, but you, you know, we're not all Quentin Tarantino. So it's like no one's just gonna just like, okay, just because you have an idea, you know, we're gonna make you let you make your movie. And I'm not denigrating Quentin at all. Quentin has earned that because everybody, he's the only, he's still the only person that can, every single time he a script of his gets out, the entire town shuts down just to read. He's the only person that in this current in this modern Hollywood that has that kind of power, you know. Um, but that's the thing, is like you have to learn how to make the process um part of what you do. Um, and I think that that's really important putting in that work. I mean, because you know, that's the thing. It's like when you get to that upper echelon that you aspire to get to, if you want to be in the world that you know, Michael Green and Zach Baylon and and some of the people like they're like, how you how like how do they get to that level? Like, you know, it's because they it's it's not about representation, you know, it's because they're fucking closers, they're ready. You know, you don't have to like the same way you don't have to ask Kobe to practice, you know, you don't have to ask the oper echelon guys to be ready for what the gig is. It's not about fair, it's about uh preparation, it's about focus. Even when sometimes, man, the wolves have to fucking doors, even when sometimes you're waiting on that check. Even when sometimes business affairs takes three to five months to fucking get to your deal, you know it's something that Thelonious Monk said is like you gotta stay in shape because the worst thing in the world is to wait to wait for a gig, finally get the gig, and then you're not in shape, meaning like you're not ready to play. It's it's tragic at that point. So you have to find inner motivation. Um, and it can't just be the paycheck, you know what I'm saying? And it hurts because as a writer, even at the upper, even at the highest level sometimes, it's you know, you gotta find ways to to stay motivated. You have to find ways to focus, you know, because um it doesn't get easier, it gets harder. And I don't I don't I don't want to denigrate, you know, I don't want to um, you know, because there are a lot of people that are like, well, I can't get an agent, I can't do this, and what's he talking about? But like uh I'm I'm telling you, that's the worst part of the job, is you stick to with this, you eventually get to the places you want to go, and then all of a sudden you realize that you feel exactly the same way that you did when you weren't getting paid for this, and nothing has changed. And so the only thing to focus on is your approach, your attitude, and how you embrace the suck, so to speak.

SPEAKER_03 36:32

I I love how you're addressing some of this stuff because I've talked about it a few to the you know, the people that I meant mentor about they write a script and they think they need to sell that script, and that if they don't sell that script, their world is over. And then maybe they write a second script and they go through the same process. And I'm like, you could write a hundred scripts and sell none of those scripts, but no part of that process was wasted. We are not simple compare us to architects building spec houses. We're more like first chair at Carnegie Hall. In order to get to first chair at Carnegie Hall, you are playing a shitload of piano or violin, and no pianist or violin player or cello cellist or whatever is begrudging playing the cello at four in the morning. They're not begrudging those notes that go into the universe. And I think that you are sort of leaning into the idea of like all that work is valuable. But I do want to come back to the words you say, because I've said a similar thing. Like you said, this job sucks. And I will tell people in a weird way, the job we have is the best job in the world, and it's the worst job in the world, and they happen at exactly the same time often. So you're dealing with this vularity.

SPEAKER_04 37:45

Well, you know, everybody before they become a showrunner, they're like, Oh my god, the president of the studio knows my name and has my phone number. Oh my god, the president of the studio knows my name and has my phone number. You know, it's it's it's you got to be real careful what you ask for. You know, um, you gotta be uh strong, you have to be focused. Um, you have to figure out ways to take care of yourself. Um, I think that that's not talked enough about health, um, you know, um, because it affects how you're able to do your job. Um, and I'm I'm not saying that I've licked it because I'm still like I need to figure out how to get more sleep. I do. But at the same time, it's like um, you know, for me, um I remember when I first started writing for Southland, um, being in the John Wells room, which always is a privilege and a beautiful thing to be in a in a writer's room, you know, around John Wells. Um, you know, he had he had a popcorn machine in the room, and you know, there was soda on tap. Okay, and you know, you you eat popcorn drinking soda, and then put once you become a showrunner, you know, anyone in the Luke Cage room could tell you how much I love Mexican Coca-Cola, you know what I'm saying? And so, like, you are drinking a lot of soda, you're not really taking care of your of your diet. Like, I think because I I've had everything from uh current Apple Watch, but to back to Fitbits and everything. When I became a showrunner, I went from averaging seven hours of sleep to about three and a half, four. You do that for a number of years, you do that for five, six years, it fucks with you in ways that you just don't even understand. And so, like I always said about snowfall. Um, you know, my my friend John Singleton wrote and directed movies for over two decades. Three three years of snowfall killed him. You know, you really gotta watch out for it's it because it's an insidious silent killer. And so, you know, that was one of the reasons why um I started running and I'm still running, and you know, um, I'm still in the process of like, you know, losing more weight and uh, you know, um just because it affects how you write, it it affects everything, you know, and so you have to find the balance because the motherfuckers that you work with and work for are not going to look out for you in that respect, and they want results. And so the thing is that whether you're a screenwriter, whether you're on a television show, whether you're running a television show, you have to figure out how to beat the clock without beating yourself up. And the other thing about it is that budget and all the different issues with everything that happens, uh all that shit, it ultimately it comes down to scripts. The more scripts you have done that you can prep, the easier it is to hold on to your job and to alleviate all the other pressures. But when you're dealing with all the different questions and problems, and you also have outlines in those scripts, that's just a recipe for disaster. So part of what the job is is figuring out how to doing prep work way before the job starts, so that when you're going into the room, first starting your room, people have things to talk about. So you can start building story as early as you can so that you can get ahead of the beast that is gonna be waiting for you, because that's the only way that you're ever gonna achieve any kind of balance, honestly.

SPEAKER_03 41:23

So I mean, I love I I've been, you know, I've known you for a few years now. I see you every, you know, I've seen you after your marathon. I've been tracking you online, running the marathon. And I really do believe that you know you're onto something when you say this job takes everything from you. And the stronger you can be physically and mentally, the better you're gonna do, whether you're giving up sugar, you're eating right. Like we all tend to abuse ourselves because this job is hard and you forget, you think it's all mental and everything matters. Um, but unfortunately, we're getting you know closer to the end of this podcast, the beginning, and I want to get a couple of questions about Luke Cage, uh, because big fan of Luke Cage. You know that I'm a big fan of Luke Cage. I uh the I love that show. I would like to think you know that that show, you know, on many levels changed the trajectory of your career. But I would love to know the same, you know, you know, the single biggest success for you from that show and the single biggest failure for you from that show.

SPEAKER_04 42:24

Um my fa it's it's well, I mean, I love every aspect of that show of Luke H. Um, I love um the writer producers I worked with. Um, I loved um, you know, all the actors. Um, I loved, I mean, every editors, production, I mean the whole thing, it was beautiful. Like, I'm I'm proud of every single episode of the of that show. And um really honestly, we were gearing towards a I think a really kick-ass third season. You know, and the of course, you know, Deadline Hollywood said that it was creative differences. Honestly, having been inside of it, more of what it really was was that um the second that Bob Iger called Disney the Netflix killer, that was kind of at that time, it was gonna be pretty much impossible for you know Netflix and Marvel to work out a um uh a deal that would have allowed um the show to continue. Um, so I think that it was more business stuff that killed it than it was creative because we we were seven episodes in, you know, like I 301 is like I I like I I you know it was one of my favorite scripts, you know, like it's that was the thing, it was hard. So I don't really consider that a failure, but I really do wish we had the opportunity um to to do that and to complete that story because I I think it would have been a really great season. Um Probably disappointment. I'm still kicking myself over fucking up the Jamaican accents. You know, as much as growing up in, you know, in Connecticut around, you know, in near Hartford, which has which has a huge West Indian community, and being in New York and as a hip-hop journalist and being around the music all the time, you know, um, I was so focused on trying to get the history right and the culture right, that I made certain concessions with the accents and as a result created by accident, like this hybrid accent that's not really accurate and it became a problem, uh, you know. And uh again, I sincerely apologize to the Jamaican community because um it kills me that um that there was so much of it in and we even filmed um episode uh what was that? I think it was episode uh 11. Um it was 10 or 11 we actually filmed in in Kingston. Um the one with with the um the the Bushmaster flashbacks in terms of his childhood, we actually filmed in Kingston. But um, you know, there's still elements that it's just like I, you know, that was my arrogance in terms of saying, like, okay, you know, um I didn't want to emulate the fake Jamaican accents that Mario Van Peebles had in Joss III, and what do I do? You know, no one remembers Jaws III, but if if you go on Twitter, uh, you know, people go ham on the accents, even though they they love the character of Bushmaster and what we were able to do, you know. So uh I that would I think be the you know I don't want to call it a failure as much as it is a um you know an opportunity for growth. I mean I would have done it differently, you know, just in terms of how I cast, not how I cast, but the process in terms of you know um being more authentic with certain things, you know, um I would have done differently. Um because the thing about a show where you film where all episodes have to be delivered at once, um, you know, you can't change any direction the way that you could if you had a show that, you know, you're releasing them every episode every week. And so if there's a reaction, you can go and change things. You know, it's not like that. I mean, that that that that's the thing about the way the Netflix process is, is because of the fact that you're gonna deliver all the shows all at once, they're all gonna be mixed at once, they're all gonna be translated in all these different languages at once. This makes the process different. But uh, but yeah, like uh I still am very proud of Luke Cage.

SPEAKER_03 46:43

I I think people don't realize who you know aren't doing this job, how much people do strive for authenticity. And there's so many things that get in the way of that, that's not necessarily the intent of the creator, whether it's a note, we've received studio notes on shows set in Hawaii that they don't understand the pidgin English from Hawaii, and we need to change it. And yet that's authentic to the thing. So then you make adjustments and then you get complaints that it's not authentic. So we've I've gone through the same thing, or on a doc medical show or a cop show where you have to make adjustments for certain things, and then you get yelled at by the doctors, the nurses, or the things, and you're like, at the end of the day, we're making a 42-minute TV show where we have to make concessions. But you know, you've you've given us so many interesting stories through throughout this podcast, but unfortunately, it is time for the question that we ask everybody who comes on our podcast, which is if you would give one piece of advice to somebody joining our business, what would it be?

SPEAKER_04 47:43

Uh save money because things like these strikes happen, and um you have to be prepared for those long segues. I you know, I I think um when people first get in the guild, when they finally qualify to be asked to join the writer's guild, um they think, okay, great, I've written something, I've been successful enough where I've sold something. Maybe I even qualified for health insurance, you know, but those valleys can be wide. It can be a long time before something else sells, before other opportunities happen. Um what's happening right now with the decimation of writers' rooms, you know, um, and the fact that so many jobs now, like I don't know what's happening right now, but those few jobs that are in production, the upper levels are going to be hired before, you know, the entry staff levels. And so as a result, it's like, you know, it's hard to perpetuate oneself or have a career in the same way that one could, um, you know, previously in the television side of the business. Um, and then on the feature side, you know, it's like, how do you break into that? It's it's because there, you know, it's like who knows what works anymore, you know, because even right now, even even Marvel, you know, um, on the feature side, it has not in a slump, but is trying to trying to figure itself out, you know. So um saving is one thing. I think the other thing ultimately is uh again staying in shape, not just in physical shape, which is important, which helps you give the stamina, but I mean writing shape. I mean, you know, to me, I I liken it to boxing. Um, you know, and sometimes people say, well, why do you give so much, why do you give your advice so freely? And I'm like, well, because you know, it's uh it's like training for boxing. I mean, there's only, you know, there's only but so many different punches, you know. Are you really gonna get up and run three to five miles every day? Are you really gonna go to the gym? Are you are you gonna hit the heavy bag? Are you gonna are you gonna do all the calisthenics? Are you gonna do all those things? Because I can tell you how to do all those things, but are you really gonna do it? And that's why I say I don't really care about talking about structure or talking about the different techniques, because I'm not giving anything away. Because either you really are going to do these things or you're not. And so, like, that's why I give it freely, because you know, you get out in the world and the shit is hard. Like, you know, one of the analogies I always make is look, is like so I'll be doing a panel somewhere, and someone will say, like, um, you know, if I I want to be a writer, like, what kind of software should I use? Or, you know, what should I write with? And I say, Look, I mean, you can use any software you want or not. You can write by, you know, I I sometimes write in on on legal paths, Molestini. You know, I I have a whole process of how I eventually get to the actual typing of script. But, you know, I say, look, uh, you can have a $50, $50 to $75 folding table. Um, you know, you don't necessarily need a special computer. But then I get to the part where I talk about the chair, and I'm like, well, yeah, you want to spend $950 to $1,000 on one of these chairs. And they're like, why do you want to spend so much money on a chair? Because I'm like, because you had to sit in that motherfucker nine, 10, 11, 12, 14 hours sometimes. And if your chair is uncomfortable, you are not going to sit down to actually finish the stuff. So it's important that like it's not a luxury item. It's really writing is ass to seat. Or, you know, if you have if you have a standing desk, it's it's it's you know, it's it's foot in and you're up. But be either what I'm saying is like it's you have to put in the time. Um, I I think today's I I I tweeted, what did I tweet? I think I think I tweeted, I said, shut the fuck up, sit down and write. It was really a note to myself because um I had phone calls and I was just like, that was me to myself saying, shut the fuck up, sit down and write. But it was kind of been funny because when I put it on Twitter, there's all these different reactions. Like, oh, why are you screaming at me? Okay, fine. But ultimately, that that's what it is. Shut the fuck up, sit down and write.

SPEAKER_03 52:27

There's no, there's no way around it. Sheo Hodari Coker, I've been wanting you on this podcast for a very long time. You did not disappoint. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing so many of your stories with with all of our listeners. No, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_04 52:43

And um, you know, now I'm gonna shut the fuck up. I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna write.

SPEAKER_01 52:58

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

SPEAKER_03 53:35

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