Take 51 - Rob Thomas, showrunner and novelist

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 0:14

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

SPEAKER_00 0:20

For every six days, there is means sometimes even years of painful failure.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default. That's the default to be able to perservate. Like everything in our business here, and it's gonna be out.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

I was being told by my manager it's yours to lose. And I probably lost it. And I remember thinking like, well, that's it for me. I do my one big shot. What I've realized from that moment is it's never one big shot. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

So welcome back to season two of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss. As you will have heard last week, Noah and I get to chat before we bring in the guests, but this is it. This is the first episode. This is the bigger moment where we get a guest and we start asking questions, and you listeners get what you want, which is not Noah and I just talking to each other. You get real guests. How are you feeling about this, Noah?

SPEAKER_03 1:24

I'm I'm feeling good. I'm definitely feeling good about not talking to you for the next 40 minutes, uh, and having somebody else in there to have a conversation with.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

You know, as we this season is about extending what we did last year, more interesting guests, more depth of questions. And I'm quite happy that for this first episode, where as you're about to hear, we had a man who's created nearly half a dozen shows on Rob Thomas. We actually get all of that. I I didn't get him as close to tears as I'd wanted uh for the season opener, but the classic stories of failure, stories of being fired, a couple of physical threats that he made, or at least um people he wanted to make physical threats to, I think that's what people want.

SPEAKER_03 2:12

I know, and I do want to point out that we have been studying all of Barbara Walter's tapes to try to figure out how she gets people to cry on her things. And we we haven't quite got there, but no, I I think I think Rob was great. He he you know opened up to us and there was a level of sort of honest uh honesty about you know his process and what it means to succeed and fail at his level that I found sort of fascinating and covered new ground that we haven't covered before.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Now, I'm not just saying this because I want people to listen to the entire episode, but our regulars will know that we always ask the guest for a piece of advice at the end. And actually, he gives some cracking advice that's well worth hanging around for. I'm not saying skip through Noah's parts just to get to the end, but the end is worth hanging around for.

SPEAKER_03 2:55

It is really easy to fast forward to the British parts because you can sort of hear that edge in the voice and you can just hit, you know, uh forward by five seconds. Do we but we have a listener question for today, right? Are we going to go into that?

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Yeah, yeah, no, we do actually. So uh we have a listener question from um from Chris in Toluca Lake, who asks, where do you get all your amazing guests from?

SPEAKER_03 3:17

And that's a great question. Uh, I don't know if we've ever talked about this online. Just to start, it was through my network, through Twitter, social media. Basically, I would sneak into people's DMs. And I had created enough when Dad and I first talked about this podcast, it was like, Well, where are we gonna get the guests from? And and I was like, Well, I know enough people that I think I can have like five, five good interviews. And I wasn't quite sure I could get us any more than that. So with the idea that we get five, and then we could use those five to get five more, and uh feels like dating all over again, where I have to be at a bar and lift my drink and awkwardly approach somebody and say, Hey, you know, do you want to come on our podcast? But that seems to have worked out for us so far.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Yeah, at least that's how much better. I I imagine you're better at this than you were at dating, uh, although actually your wife is lovely, but it I and this is a rare moment where I have to be nice to Noah, but he he does have a remarkable network. He's worked on some great shows and and has known some great people. And so at the beginning, it was a case of just Noah reaching out to people who he already knew. There were a couple of guests that were from my network, but the vast majority were Noah's. And because Noah's obsessed with social media, he's very good. If somebody makes the mistake of liking any tweet of Noah's that's anything to do to the podcast, Noah massively overinterprets that as interest and will straight away leap on it and say, Oh, you know all about our podcast, very, very senior showrunner. Would you like to now be on? And fortunately, just for Noah's ego, some do still ghost him, but a remarkable number write back and say, actually, yes, I'd love to come on the show. So, I mean, we managed to get well over 50 guests through that way. Um, and we're also now, how do you describe this, Noah? Well, we're beginning to be approached, I think it's probably the right way of phrasing it.

SPEAKER_03 5:01

Yeah, it was a big surprise, I think, probably around halfway through or three quarters of the way through our run, where we are starting to get approached by different, we'll keep it vague, but people definitely have interest in having people on our podcast, which was a surprise, I think a big shock. And both of us thought it was kind of a joke at first, but it turns out no, this is what this is that they want to be on this show, and we're doing quite well.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

And it would be remiss of me not to specifically name someone who's been helpful. So obviously, some of it's now as network, but actually a couple of the guests have enjoyed being on so much that they want to have other people come on. And so um, I'm not sure he is if he is now officially a co-EP, but Hart Hansen has been extraordinary. I think if you total it up, probably we're gonna reach a point where probably 10% of our guests have originated from Hart Hansen, obviously, including himself. Um, but he came on, he loved it, and he's like, Hey, can I uh anyone I can help you get on? Which I think he now regrets because immediately Noah's like, well, how about these people? And then Hart's like, okay, I'll I'll reach out. And we don't know which of his friends he reached out to who wrote back saying, I have zero interest in going on that podcast. But some of them, including today's guest, wrote back to Hart and said, Yes. Now, actually, they Rob assured us he'd vetted us, he listened to a couple of episodes before risking his career. But um, Hart has been instrumental. So thank you to Hart Hansome for being an excellent guest and also an excellent wrangler of other guests.

SPEAKER_03 6:28

And and yep, thank you, Hart, so much. Uh, and I guess with no further ado, should we bring out our first guest?

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Yeah, I think now is time. Enjoy the show. Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. As ever, I am your English non-entertainment co-host, Dan Rutstein.

SPEAKER_03 6:53

And I am your industry co-host, Noah Evselyn. Today I'm delighted to introduce author, screenwriter, producer, showrunner, and director Rob Thomas. Rob worked as a staff writer on Dawson's Creek before creating Cupid, Party Down, the new 90210, Veronica Mars, iZombie, amongst other film and TV shows. He's also a novelist with several books under his belt, including Rat Saw God, Slave Day, Satellite Down, and Doing Time, Notes from Undergrad. Welcome, Rob.

SPEAKER_04 7:20

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

So I'm gonna start with a relatively simple opening. So you have you have written or produced well over a hundred episodes of good network television. So and you come highly recommended, and everyone in the industry knows who you are. What are you doing on our little podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity with all that success?

SPEAKER_04 7:51

Well, let's see. I uh just got dropped from my overall deal at Warner Brothers, and my uh children's private school tuition is due. So I'm I'm feeling as desperate uh and angsty as any writer in Hollywood right now. Uh, trust me, I am uh I'm dealing with uh failure all the time.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

I don't want to go too heavy with the first question, but being dropped from an overall deal is obviously we have lots of people, and we'll get I'm sure from you we're gonna talk about individual shows that aren't going anywhere for reasons that can be very wide and diverse. But being dropped from an overall deal, that's a little bit more personal than a specific show. How does how does that fit into sort of how you feel about the industry?

SPEAKER_04 8:41

Um it wasn't terribly surprising. Um, I've been at Warner Brothers for a number of years, but the two people over there who have championed me, um uh Peter Roth retired uh and uh and Susan uh left Warner Brothers to take over NBC. And so and we were in the middle of a pandemic and no one was making television. Uh and the person who came in at Warner Brothers was someone who uh I had one of the most tragic, disappointing years of development with so all signs pointed toward that happening. My agent assured me at the time that, oh, this is happening to everyone in an overall deal whose deal is coming up, who doesn't have a show on the air, they're all getting dropped. And I I nodded along and believed that um uh for the first year. And now I'm I'm I'm not sure I believe it. That may have been just one of those things agents tell you to make you feel better. Um, but in any case, I'm veil, I'm available. Uh have laptop will travel. Um uh yeah, so I I am I'm dealing with the fallout from that. It does, you know, I've I've known where my next paycheck has been coming from for a long time now. It's uh it's uh I'd forgotten what it's like to be completely uh vagabond uh in terms of my career.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

So there's a sort of rule on this podcast. If somebody says a word like tragic related to a particular project, I can't then let that go. So can you can you I mean as much as you can tell us, tell us about whatever this tragedy was in relation to some development.

SPEAKER_04 10:36

Um in one year I had a deal with ABC Studios. Um they paid for two blind pilot scripts, and I managed to get them both picked up. Um, it was actually the year where I got four things picked up uh in one summer. I got the new 90210 party down, and then these two ABC pilots. And it's the year that my producing partner and I refer to of uh as the the year of uh spinning gold into straw. Um one of those uh ABC pilots that we did was a clusterfuck of epic proportions, one in which I had to be restrained from headbutting our director. Um, we went several days over schedule. Um, I knew that pilot wasn't getting on. Um the other one, we thought we made a great pilot. This was the second time I did Cupid for ABC. I had done it once in '99, and they asked me to do it again in 2009. And Bobby Connavali started in that. And you know, it's a sort of a rare thing to finish a pilot and feel like really good. And then the testing proved out what we thought. It was people adored it in the testing. And then uh we did get that show picked up, but then ABC did not like anything we did for a year, and so it was a um, it was a every day, it was the it was the least fun year of my television career. It was it was so bad, I actually uh decided to move back to Austin. And uh with the theory being that I could live in Austin, it would be much cheaper to live, and I could survive simply writing failed pilots every year. Like that, I'll write two pilots that don't get on the air, and my life will be great. Um and I did that for the next three years of my life were doing just that, but then we got the Veronica Mars movie made in the same year that um iZombie got picked up. And so the next three years were spent commuting back and forth. So the studio executive that I did those pilots for at ABC um uh that it became all poisonous, um, but she uh is the new head of Warner Brothers television. So a lot of things went wrong, or yeah, a lot of a lot of dominoes fell um perfectly to uh sort of bounce me out of this overall deal, I believe.

SPEAKER_03 13:22

I I I want to make two comments on what you were saying and then ask you a question. Okay. Uh the first the first comment is we've had over 50 guests on, and your agent was right in saying that they've all had one common thread, which is it was the hardest year they've ever dealt with last year. So you were you're in good company of people failing even at the highest levels. Number two, it's now 2022. I think it's time for Cupid number three. We all need a little love in our life, but I want to use that as a segue to go back to Cupid number one. Yeah, I want to talk to you about you you are on Dawson's Creek, which is was a hit show, it was kind of a transformative show for TV. Uh I for as far as I can glean, you were a fairly young writer on that show. When you create your own show and suddenly you go from staff writer or low, low-level staff member to creator of a show and all the pressure that comes with that. How terrified were you?

SPEAKER_04 14:16

Uh, very terrified. I it was I'd been a high school teacher a a year before, essentially, a year and a half earlier. You know, I was making $20,000 a year as a high school teacher. And then to have sort of be in charge of a budget of you know, three and a half million, four million dollars an episode and be expected to deliver. Um, yeah, it I would uh it was the year somebody uh I you know it's funny, I played in a band for nine years and and never got high. But that first year of being a show runner, uh one of the other executive producers convinced me, you know what, go home, just take a couple hits on this pipe, the world will look much better. Um, and and they were right. Um, I had to, you know, I'd be nine o'clock, and I my head would still be racing. Um and uh I needed a little something to take the edge off because I was so stressed uh that that first year of having a show on the air.

SPEAKER_03 15:28

And and was it sort of trial by fire for you? Do you feel like this is something that you have to sort of get on that tread treadmill that's lit on fire for the first season for you to succeed in the second, or is there a better way to do it?

SPEAKER_04 15:42

Uh it it certainly worked for me. I it was the steepest learning curve of my life, probably since my first year of teaching high school. Um yeah, I happily I had a producing partner who was a director who largely took post and production off my plate and allowed me just to focus on scripts that first year. Um, additionally, um, you know, I was in that very common situation of uh hiring my bosses, where they the show got picked up, but I was, you know, I had 13 episodes of Dawson's Creek under my belt, and uh they needed showrunners to be brought in to, you know, sort of make the trains run on time. Um, but eight or nine episodes into the season, uh the network fired those showrunners, and then it was all on me uh at that point. And we had had a good working relationship. Um, but uh yeah, it it that all fell in my lap. I will say that I believe at that point I was the lowest paid showrunner in the history of television because I basically yeah, I I I was getting paid about what any executive story editor uh would be making today, that first year of running Cupid.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Obviously, you've gone on to perform the same role on other shows for longer. Do you do you when you went into your second and your third show, did you go into those feeling very confident because you managed to sort of scrabble through the first version of it? Or did you were they still big learning curves and actually is a show runner a position where you sort of never really feel settled in it however many times you've done it?

SPEAKER_04 17:44

Um I feel pretty settled in it now, doing it. I I in some ways I feel like it's the job I was meant to have. It it combines a strange assortment of skills that aren't necessarily related, but they're ones that I feel good about. Um certainly when Veronica Mars got picked up, I felt much more confident uh confident than I did with Cupid. And then uh I managed to hire a really terrific staff, which also made life much easier uh on Veronica Mars.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Because you know, we don't want to get into sort of anything that's at home in them, but because you work with showrunners who were fired, obviously not by you. Um what did you learn from either the way they did things or at least the way that it was perceived by the studio by the network that when you were back in charge on your own made you uh a better showrunner?

SPEAKER_04 18:50

Um I had very little time working on a staff. I really only had that that first season of Dawson's Creek, and that was a strange, uh strange situation in that Kevin Williamson had created the show, uh, but he at the time also had uh Scream had come out and he was in the middle of writing Scream 2, and so he had things pulling him a lot of ways, and so they brought in the show runner uh um who had done 90210, and he became sort of the guy to make the trains run on time. Um and you know, it it he ended up not working out on the show, he only lasted uh a season, but he was the guy who was there uh when I was there. It it did teach me a bit, but what really taught me were a couple of the writers who I worked with. I I had never written television before. Um, I got hired for Dawson's Creek based on a spec script that I had written, which was just a hundred pages of dialogue. I had written a um a script for uh uh a USC film school graduate who wanted to make a movie for $100,000. So it was all written for a restaurant in one night, and it was just like three different couples on a first date, sort of my dinner with Andre in three vignettes or something. And and I knew so little about screenwriting, it was just a hundred pages of dialogue. It's I will occasionally stumble across that script, and it amazed me. There really is almost nothing but dialogue in it. Um, but I had no idea how to get in and out of scenes, and it's the other writers on staff that sort of taught me how to be a television writer who got down in the weeds uh with me. And uh, like this is you don't have time to dilly-dally in television. Like you you have very limited real estate. This is how you get in and out of a scene. That was one of the more important lessons I I learned that first year.

SPEAKER_03 21:07

Without you, you I keep on thinking about you talking really openly to start this podcast about the the overall deal that went sour. Now we don't have to go into that though those details because we touched upon it, but made me think about your career a little bit. You you um you created a number of shows, more than most, you know, you ran those shows, and then you left LA, you moved to Austin, you're like, I'm over this place. And I'm wondering, you know, in line with that, the move, your thought process, what was your most sort of painful rejection story or failure story in regards to either creating a TV show that didn't didn't go right, or already having created a show that began to go off the rails a little bit?

SPEAKER_04 21:48

Um well, it's funny because I would view moving back to Austin not even as the low point of my career, that had come pre Veronica Mars and um after. I got Cupid on the Air. Um, it was sort of David Kelly called and asked me to come out to his office while I had Cupid on the air, and um and he said that he was going to create a new show about female private detectives, and he asked me if I wanted to run it. And well, I already had a show on the air, so I didn't know how I was going to run a second show, but apparently David Kelly knew how to read the Nielsen ratings, and I did not. He knew I would be available uh the following year, and so um so my show gets gets canceled. David Kelly asks me to run his new show, and it's like having a great rookie season and then becoming a free agent. And and suddenly, um, like I was I was getting offered more money than I ever could have dreamed of in my life, uh, particularly thinking I was gonna be a high school teacher. Um and that was the culmination of about seven years of things going well for me. Um, before I moved out to LA to become a television writer, I'd played in a band. Um and I'd done that for nine years, sort of beating my head against the wall, waiting for some good break. And then when I eventually quit the band and focused on writing, from the sort of moment I finished my first novel until the moment that David Kelly hired me to run his new show, it was just this upward trajectory and everything was going amazingly well. Like I woke up every day, couldn't believe the house I now owned or what my life was like. And I signed an overall deal with 20th at that point, and I became the cautionary tale. Um, I signed a four-year deal for a lot of money and got exactly zero shows on the air in those four years. I I believe I was probably at fault for the lack of overall deals uh in the uh mid-90s. Uh, like I was the guy who ruined it for everyone. And uh and I probably, you know, I I got three or four pilots ordered that were shot, none of them on the air. And it really, and the first pilot I made in my first year in that uh uh 20th deal was bad. It was it ended up not being a good pilot, and I think it sort of put me in rider jail, both for quitting the David Kelly show, um, because David and I did not see eye to eye on it. Or I don't even know if it's David and I didn't see eye to eye. It was that David had hired me to run that show and it became clear David was going to run that show. And um, so that was that issue. But from the moment I quit the David Kelly show, things just sort of fell off uh the cliff for me. And so at the end of those four years, I had nothing to show for it. The week I got out of that overall deal, my agent sent me on a general at UPN, and I got there and they said they wanted to do young female empowerment. And I had talked to 20th while I was there about my young female detective show I wanted to do, and they felt like no one's buying high school or not interested in that. So I spec'd it. And so I had Veronica Mars in a drawer. And uh after that meeting, I sent I sent it to the executive I met with, and they called me a couple days later and said they wanted to make it. And we made that pilot, and I loved it. I was so proud of that pilot. I thought it, you know, uh, and I was so beaten down by the business that after we finished that pilot, I took my then girlfriend uh on a vacation on a cruise uh from Athens to Istanbul, and I proposed to her on night one. But I said, hey, listen, just so you know, if Veronica Mars does not get picked up, I want to move back to Texas and going back and go back to writing young adult books because I've just wasted my 30s. It felt like four years of typing into a waste basket. Like they're just like it might as well just roll out of the out of the typewriter into a waste paper basket. Because are you really writing if no one ever sees it or reads it? And um and that year we knew that UPN was going to pick up the Tay Dig show. So, like three other pilots were competing for this one slot. And if that had not gotten picked up, um I I would have I would have moved back to Texas and uh where it's cheaper to live and wrote young adult books and you know, hopefully be a big fish in a very small pond. Um, but that did not come to pass. But that was really the lowest point for me emotionally. I I remember being out on a date with a with a woman who is a doctor, and I started telling her about my, you know, my emotional, my travails as a television writer who wasn't getting his show on the air. And she at one point said, Hey, listen, man, I can't I can't listen to this anymore. I deal with sick kids every day. Yeah, get your shit together. Um, so I'd like to say that I did get my shit together and that emotionally I was fine after that. But the truth is I was still whiny and miserable for quite some time.

SPEAKER_03 28:04

I think the motto, our new motto for screaming into the Hollywood abyss might be get your shit together. We'll just make bumper stickers and put them all over town. And we'll credit you, of course. Um, you know, I want to get to your your YA novel career in a little bit because it's interesting to me that you do so much writing. But I have a question that we've never asked before about the angst people, you know, I want to parse it for for the people listening. There's showrunners who create their own shows, which you did, and there's showrunners who end up working for people who created shows. Some of those people are less powerful than them, and some of the people are more powerful than that than they are when they get into those situations. And and yet they're still technically the showrunner. They're the one that's that's the boss technically of the show, yet there's somebody hovering above them. And it happens, I've worked on shows where that's been the case. It's it happens all throughout Hollywood. What is that feeling like when you're the boss but not the boss? Is that a harder, you know, or is or can you kind of coast beneath their shadow?

SPEAKER_04 29:00

Um, it's harder for me. I frankly, I I have trouble not being the boss. I'm not very good at it. I think anyone who has hired me to consult on their show would would heartily agree with that. I I um, you know, I've run into Kevin Kevin Williamson and I worked out of the same office building for several years, and I have on more than one occasion apologized to him for my piss poor attitude when I was a staff writer on Dawson's Creek. And it was after years of, I think, writing novels, it's my own thing, I completely own it. I did not understand that my job on the show was to make Kevin Williamson's life easier. And I need to write like Kevin Williamson, and that, and if Kevin Williamson wants to change what I write, that is his prerogative. And it did not set uh sit well with me. And I I was whiny uh uh about it. Uh, and it's something that I figured out as as my career went along. Like I I don't think I would have I would uh put up with an attitude uh like the one I had if I were the boss. Um yeah, yeah, I had to grow up and learn that.

SPEAKER_03 30:26

That that is the you know, the uh uh you know, we're gonna ask it an advice question in a bit, but that piece of advice to any uh writer who's coming up on staff is your job is not to be the best writer you can be. Your job is not to be the best producer you can be. Your job is to make your showrunner's life easier. That's your job. And if you understand that, you work, and if you don't understand that, you probably don't. So that's something that's a lesson that is that takes a while to sink into people's heads. You your job is to make people, you know, their life easier.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

Every so often on the show, we come across a situation where some non-entertainment stuff parallels with entertainment stuff. So actually just want to explore this. I'm not a very good, I'm not very good at not being the boss principal because it's interesting. I um I may have suffered a similar issue with my career where I feel like I'm not a very good consultant. I've done consulting for people and they come and and they want me to solve a very specific issue or be in charge of a very specific thing. And I can't sort of when I see other things happening that I would have dealt with differently, I sort of can't help but feel like I need to interject and maybe suggest ways of doing it differently, but also actually this whole thing could be done differently, and maybe I'd be the person to do it. And as a consultant, that's not always what people are looking for. We discuss it quite a lot at home. My wife thinks I just don't like being told what to do, but I don't think it's necessarily, and I'm hoping you're gonna agree here, otherwise, this is gonna come off badly for me. But I don't think it's a necessarily an arrogance thing that you know more than other people, it's about when you have been in charge, it is just very hard not to be, and to keep quiet about that. And uh I have probably annoyed uh CEOs and presidents of companies I'm consulting for in the way that you've probably annoyed showrunners. So can you just talk me through it? I mean, unless maybe for you it is an arrogance thing, you just like shouting at people and telling them what to do, or is it the same sort of thing you just you're just not very good in a in a very specific position?

SPEAKER_04 32:34

Um I I you know I it is something that I I'm not proud of. I do really care about story and and uh you know it's the you know it's the caring that gets you in trouble. It's it's the you know, because usually if I'm if I'm in disagreement with uh a show uh a show runner about a script, it's it's not the script someone else is writing, it's the script that I'm writing, and I feel like the story really needs to be told this way. Um and I have trouble letting go of that. It's like I I see a path, I think it's the right path. And and again, I it is it's not a quality to be admired uh by any means. I always I think about that scene in broadcast news and which the older television executive says to Holly Hunter, it must be uh wonderful to always think you're right, to always think you're the smartest person in the room. And Holly Hunter says, No, it's awful. Um I don't know exactly whether I'm the Holly Hunter in this situation, but it it has always seemed applicable to me. Um uh to think you're the smartest one in the room. It yeah, it's it's a I don't know. It comes from a place of caring about story. That part I I can explain. Uh and I I don't know whether it's an arrogance or dickheadedness that that prevents me from going, okay, let's do it your way. Um, and I uh it's not like I never buckle, um, I just go down swinging, which which isn't always pleasant. Now I say this, I I uh and I'm portraying myself as a horrible employee, and I do think I have been at times in my past. I think as a boss, I am a generous and uh easy person to work for. I I I don't think I have I have the problem in reverse, uh, but I certainly do have it taking direction on story, which uh also may explain why I'm no longer in an overall deal at Warner Brothers.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

No, uh it's interesting, I think, because that's the same. I guess almost I have the same problem, which is when I'm not the boss, I get annoyed about it. But when I am the boss, I'm actually very good at letting the people under me make decisions. But somehow I like to be the one to let them do it rather than yeah, interesting. Sorry, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:19

No, you create you. I'm just mulling something over here, too, which is one of the problems in our business, which is we were just talking about, and I kind of clarified that you you're there to make your shorewater's life easy for most of your career. So you become this soldier, right? And then you but you're also a creator and you create your own thing one day, maybe by accident, pilot in your in your drawer, and all of a sudden they make it, and there's like you're the leader, and you got to fully mentally shift into this new paradigm, and it's not easy to do. And we're the only ones, you know. I mean, maybe maybe there's other creators that have the same paradigm shift, but it's very complicated for creators, I think. And I think sometimes the best creators don't do that shift as easy.

SPEAKER_04 35:59

And and honestly, I have not done, I've not been on many shows that that I did not where I was not the boss. Um, that first season on Dawson's Creek um was one of the occasions. And then the a couple times I've been called in to be a consultant on a show where I was never, but I I've never been on someone else's show for more than six months. So I I I never you know got in the flow of being a quality uh employee.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

So you've been the boss at least four or five times, depending on how many times we count Cupid. Right. Um and as discussed, you don't do brilliantly when you're not the boss, right? You're moving along, things are going well, there's a global pandemic, something you're working on dies, you're now we're now out the other side. Are you trapped in a world now where you're uh it's all or nothing because you don't you wouldn't want to go back in below the top level? Now is not an easy time to move things forward. Even if somebody asks you to come in and consult on something, which is great for school fees, it's not necessarily what you want to do. So it this pause that we've had to take because of the pandemic and just because of the way you've worked and the success you've had, are you sort of are you a little bit trapped now and maybe worried that there won't be another bad role for you?

SPEAKER_04 37:33

Um it's funny. I um I don't it I don't even think about staffing like that. It doesn't really enter my mind. It would have to be a special, like if if I get a call from Succession and they wanted me to come consult on that show, I would take that call. That that I would be very excited about doing. Um, but yeah, I mean it probably is create a show and get it on the air or nothing for me. Um, you know, I I was up, you know, there was uh a job that came open this summer that was to run a show that I had not created, but it was a show that I liked from a writer director who I'm a fan of. Um, and so I did put myself up for that. Um so there are jobs I would take where I was not the creator of the show, but uh uh you know I'm a big fan of the Americans. Um I'm sure there are many people who are listening to this big fan of the Americans, but um I kept seeing, I think it was Josh Brandt's name as one of the consultant writers on that, and it, you know, and takes us all the way back to I think Northern Exposure he co-created. And I kept thinking watching that show, and I kept thinking, like, hey, when I'm put out to pasture, that's the gig I want. You know, I like that to me would be great. Like I'm in my late 60s or whatever, and I get to come in for a few days a week on a show of the quality of the Americans. That that's sort of my fantasy of my of my 60s, uh, because I can't actually at this point picture hanging it up, um, particularly with two kids who are gonna want their college paid for, I think. Um, like I'll be working for a while.

SPEAKER_03 39:36

That's so fascinating. Can we talk about levels of anxiety? You know, obviously we all go through fallow periods. That's just part of our job. And when you're when you're a young writer and you miss a year or you miss six months, and you're, you know, every paycheck counts for sure, and then you get another job and you fill the bank account up again and you're feeling good, and then there's a fallow period. Now, I I've now that you go to the top where you where you're at. And I've spoken to a handful of of showrunner-level writers recently, just randomly, because it's been a hard year, and I've created some relationships and who haven't worked for a year, for two years, for three years, and it's beginning to sink in that it's a tricky world and that it's never been harder, and how do they find their way back? And I try to imagine the level of anxiety because you tend to increase your nut, so to speak. The the the higher up you go, the bigger the house, the bigger the thing, the da da da, and the bigger your expenses. And does that translate into higher anxiety at night when the weeks are going by and the phone's not ringing the way you want it to ring?

SPEAKER_04 40:36

Um you know, it's interesting because I when I was teaching high school, I had kept getting into deeper and deeper credit card debt. By the time I left teaching, uh, you know, I was making 22,000 a year and had four credit cards maxed out uh at about $20,000 of debt. And I was so stressed, I thought I will never get out of this debt. Um and the relief that I felt when I got that Dawson's Creek job and could pay off those credit cards was immense. So I don't want to diminish that. I I felt like I was in debtor's jail, and I certainly don't feel that now. Um, you know, I can still sell pilots and make money even if they don't get on the air. Um, but yes, I I remember my agent being so happy that I bought the big house. You know, it's like you bought the big house, you're gonna uh you're gonna be working, you're gonna be taking jobs. Um, and part of the reason I moved back to Texas was to reduce that nut. Like I will I will be able to write failed pilots, pilots that don't get on the air and be comfortable. And and I was, but when I moved back out to LA, I did get a nice house, and we do have kids in private school. And so um I had gotten very used to that steady income. And now, yes, I am I am nervous. I'm thinking about money in a way I have not thought about in years. No one and trust me, no one, and I'm sure people aren't worried on my behalf. I'm doing fine, but I'm very conscious of money now.

SPEAKER_00 42:21

It it pains me to start drawing a podcast like this to a close because this has been so fascinating. But uh, unfortunately, the nature of podcasts is these aren't Marvel movies that we can run for three hours. So um fortunately, that there's still space for some great entertainment here because we have the last question. You've already given a little bit of advice, so I'm sure you're gonna have plenty to say here. But the last question we ask every guest is if you could give a single piece of advice to somebody looking to enter the industry, what would it be?

SPEAKER_04 42:54

Um, you know, I like I say, I probably listened to six of these, and I don't I didn't want to repeat this advice, so I maybe someone's already said this, but I will venture out there anyway. Um and this all reminds me of the Steve Martin joke: like, I'm gonna tell you how to get a million dollars and never pay taxes. First, get a million dollars. Um, well, this answer is going to be structured similarly. First, get a job on a TV show. If you want, like whatever job you can get, it is, you know, assistant, PA, any job that you can get on a television show, preferably one that tonally is in the ballpark you want to be a writer in. That's step one. And it's a tough step, and that involves a lot of networking. And I'll come back to that. But the part two of it is once you get that job, be great at it. Be great at picking up the lunch orders. Be great at being an assistant. Because the way that those jobs help your career is that once you have a room full of professional writers who like you, who trust you, they will show your material, they'll read your material, and if they like it, they'll show it to their agents. Um that is the most common way to break into the business. And I have felt it when assistants come into that job and feel that it's beneath them. They have defeated the whole purpose of getting that job, which is really to endear yourself to, you know, the eight, nine, 10 professional writers who in who are in there who are in a position to help you with your career. So do that job with a smile. And in a couple of years, you will have people who are rooting for you who want you to succeed. Everyone there knows you did not want to be the person who runs out and picks up the coffee orders, but everyone will appreciate it if you do it with a with a smile. Um, the other thing that I will say, and this has happened with two of my assistants, and it's even sort of the way that I broke into the business, it's hustling. It's, you know, I sort of yada yada over the first get a job in television. But just by way of example, um, when I got that first Cupid picked up in '98, uh, and this was even when I got the pilot picked up, I got a letter at my parents' house in Texas from a woman asking, if your show gets picked up, I would can I be your assistant? And I I hadn't even really put the pieces together that I would get an assistant, but anyone who sort of hustled and figured out she must have sent it like right when ABC picked up the pilot. Um, well, that person is hustles. That person is proactive. And uh the woman that I hired, Vanessa Taylor, you know, just got nominated for an Academy Award a couple of years ago. You know, she um she was writer on Game of Thrones. She yeah, she co-wrote um The Shape of Water um that got the Oscar nomination. My second assistant also has had a long and illustrious uh television career. Those are great jobs to get. Um, my the the last assistant that I hired um just guessed my email address, just sent emails to my company name, which comes up on screen is Slave Rats, and she did every combination of my name at slaverats.blank that she eventually did. I just give away my email address. Um, anyway, she she just predicted my email address and got me a resume right in the moment that I needed it. So part of that job, uh getting that job is hustling. I mean, it is figuring out how the system works and figuring out a way to hack it. But if you can get your foot in the door, get in there and make people like you because you are happy, or at least you have a smile on your face as you're doing that job, and you will have a room full of people who can help you who want to help you. Um, and I've seen that work as a means of breaking into the business so many times.

SPEAKER_03 47:42

You just you just gave, we have had a lot of people give advice, and we've never gotten this advice that you just gave. And I think you actually gave sort of the golden egg, which is the secret, which is people we all get asked, how do you get a rep? How do you get a manager, how do you get an agent? Through other writers, right? Other writers can really help your career in a way that almost nobody else can. And if you create those relationships through working hard, like you're saying, they're gonna help you. And that's that's the secret. If there is a secret that I know of, that's the secret. But thank you so much, Rob, for for doing this with us.

SPEAKER_04 48:11

It was my pleasure. I love the podcast. Thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_03 48:17

And that's a wrap on this episode of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss. As always, we want to thank James Launch for the amazing theme music.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

Do you before we sort of thank our words and stuff, do you think anyone actually listens this far, or do they stop when the music comes back in?

SPEAKER_03 48:31

I think they normally stop after you mention your second and third podcast. That'd be my guess.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

I haven't mentioned them yet, though, have I?

SPEAKER_03 48:39

Uh if you do want to reach out with us to us for criticisms, complaints, or praise, uh, you can either reach out to us through the website or I am at nebslin on Twitter. And Dan, do you have an account?

SPEAKER_00 48:51

Not that anyone really cares about. So if you've got complaints about the show, go to NEbslin and feel free to air those. If you have praise or you want to pay us in some way for something, come to at Dan Rutstein. And have a great day.