Take 16 - Writer and WGA West President David Goodman, Family Guy, The Orville

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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

SPEAKER_01 0:13

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

SPEAKER_02 0:27

This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Thank you, Dan. I know I always say this that I'm super excited for the next guest to be on, but I really am super excited to speak to this person who's sitting across from us or virtually sitting across from us. It's David Goodman. Uh he's been working in the industry as a comedy writer since all the way back in the 80s, where he started, it seems like he started as a story editor on the Golden Girls. His career might even go further back than that. He's been on a ton of shows, which I'm going to skip through because there's just it would take us all hours to list them. But he's been on things such as Wings, Stark Raving Mad, Futurama, Star Trek Enterprise, American Dad, Family Guy. And most recently, he's been on the Orville, Bless the Heart, plus a new Star Wars series that hasn't even been released yet. And of course, he is our beloved president of the WGA. Welcome, David.

SPEAKER_03 2:04

Thank you. Thank you for not going all the way back and letting people know exactly how old I am. I actually started as a staff writer on the Golden Girls. You don't get you often don't get that credit, you don't get that screen credit, but sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

So I'm I'm gonna go first. I'm gonna ask you a question about comedy writing. So we had an actress uh on a few episodes ago who told us that being rejected after you've done a scene where you have to show some level of vulnerability is harder because they're sort of judging your emotions. So obviously, if you've written a clever fantasy or a clever drama, that's one thing. But when you've when you're doing comedy, if you're basically if you're rejected because they're basically saying to you, hey, funny guy, you're not actually funny enough for us, or you're the wrong sort of funny, is it a harder type of rejection when it's not funny, as it were?

SPEAKER_03 2:58

Well, I think I I think not being funny when you're trying to be funny is the most humiliating. Uh maybe that's just my own experience. But when you're in a writer's room, for instance, and you pitch a joke and no one laughs, uh, that is that is uh one of the most cringeworthy, humiliating experiences. And comedy writers go through it every day, several times a day. And uh you want to just crawl back into your uh emotional shell and never come out. But if you if you do that, then you'll never work. So you're you're constantly, uh, minute to minute, as a someone who writes comedy, facing humiliation and rejection because the the last thing you pitch is the last thing you remember pitching. You don't remember the great joke you pitched last week, you remember the terrible joke you pitched five minutes ago. And uh and that stays in stays in your head until you get the next laugh.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

So when you're when you're in a a room, and obviously I've not been in a room, nor will I ever be, unless I have a very drastic change of career. When you you know you're you're working on something, you pitch a joke or pitch a comedy idea, and it and you know it does genuinely fall flat. Do you like go, well, here's three more, and just sort of hope, or do you sort of you have to sit in it until it's your turn again, like the next week or the next day?

SPEAKER_03 4:31

I I think that every writer has a different way of dealing with that. Um, there are writers who fight for the joke, which is always a bad idea, and then uh there are writers who do what you just said, just keep pitching, keep pitching, just don't remember that last terrible thing I said. Uh, I have my own uh way of dealing with it, which is when I pitch a joke that dies, I then explain it. Uh, and it becomes up, I'm doing a bit of, oh, see, you you didn't understand the joke, let me explain it to you, which is also I'm not being serious, but I'm also trying trying to cover my humiliation by, oh no, let me explain the joke to you. And then everybody laughs that I'm I'm explaining. So they're at least laughing at that. Um, if they're not laughing at the joke I just mentioned.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Do you do you think, I mean, in the course of being in these rooms for this long, I've only been in a drama room. So I I only can say it from you know my side of things, where I mean, this this business can be really hard, and rooms can be the best place in the world, and they can be some of the hardest jobs you've ever had. Uh, and we always hear that comedy is a lot harder. Like whatever we're doing in the room, comedy rooms are a lot harder. There's a lot more pressure in the room. Has things changed over the you know the course of your career for the better in a room? Like has the room experience uh you know different at all between now and and when you started, you know, on the golden rose?

SPEAKER_03 5:54

No. Uh rooms rooms are about who's who's running the room. And so if you have a a uh showrunner who is sensitive and who understands that remembers what it's like to be in a room and is respectful of time and encouraging of things they like and not dismissive and not cruel, uh, that's going to be a good room. Um uh, you know, if you're a room with a if you're in a room full of mean people, uh it's a it's you know, it's it is what it is. I mean, I it's a lot of mean rooms. I uh so no, I I think it's really about who's in charge. Uh I think drama rooms are hard because I've been in a few now, and not nearly obviously as many as I've been in comedy rooms. And it's harder in a drama room to prove you're worthwhile. Like if you're in a comedy room, and obviously pitching a good story and pitching, you know, funny things, you know, but if you can just pitch a joke that makes everyone laugh, you can feel like, all right, they're not gonna fire me. Uh, if you're in a drama room, it's like it's harder, I think, as a drama writer in that room sometimes to plant your flag and say, even in your mind, that's mine. Um, I contributed that. You don't know what the showrunner is thinking a lot of the time. And so I whereas if you can make the showrunner in a comedy room, if you've made the showrunner laugh, it's like, okay, he doesn't hate me, because if he hated me, he wouldn't laugh at anything I said. Uh, that's not always true. I've made showrunners who hated me laugh. Uh so but but um but it it at least it calms you down. It feels like you can there's a short-term goal that of let's make everybody laugh, whereas in drama rooms, I think it can be harder. So are comedy rooms fun and are comedy writers funny?

SPEAKER_02 8:01

Now I don't mean funny, obviously they're funny when they make the the the product, as it were, but sort of when you finish pitching jokes, is everyone also fun and funny at lunchtime and on the way home, or is everyone sort of miserable and they're saving their jokes for when it's their turn?

SPEAKER_03 8:17

Right. I uh for me I've I find uh you know uh you know I my my my children will say my will ask we'll ask when they're when their friends find out what I do for a living, uh they they will ask, is your dad funny? And uh I always tell tell them tell them I'm funny on the page. Um uh I think there are really funny people who are not funny writers. I think there are really funny writers who are not funny people, and then there are funny writers who are funny people. Um I think uh, you know, it's like any workplace. So for instance, so for instance, family guy was talking about mean rooms. Family guy was a very mean room. Uh I'm very close to those writers. I've worked with them for so long, but they don't let you get away with anything. Do not wear a hat into the Family Guy writers room. You'll they'll be making fun of the hat for the, you know, I'm a baseball camp, you'll be okay, but uh any other hat, uh a writer wore a train engineer hat once, not ironically. And uh I think they're still talking about it. Um, you know, so it's uh it's it's uh you know, they're going to make fun of a shirt, a sweater, um, new glass, new glasses, a haircut. Uh, you know, that it's it's it's and it feeds that show. It shows Family Guy, the kind of comedy that it is, a lot of it is very mean, purposefully. So that the meanness of the room creatively fed that show, I think. Um uh so but these people are the funniest people, among the funniest people I've ever met. Um uh the Futurama Writers Room, by by contrast, was not a mean room. Uh, it was, however, the the smartest room uh I'd ever been in. Everybody in there had an advanced degree in something. Uh and so I was very intimidated by just the education of everybody in that room. And that also fed that show. That was a really smart show. Um, again, uh everybody in that room was funny, uh uh, but there was also very interesting conversations in that room. Uh there was an episode where where Bender had to, Bender the robot had to jump into uh a pool of lava, and then there was a you know couple minute discussion of what would he have to be made out of to survive the temperature of lava? And I'm not sure any of that mattered to the comedy of the scene, but these writers wanted to know this was possible. It's a cartoon. Um, you know, uh, so that that's uh, you know, every room is different, every all those people are different. I think it it's all about individuals. There are some people you want to hang around with, some people you don't.

SPEAKER_01 11:10

I think there, I think there's a general misunderstanding out there about how difficult it is to be a comedy writer, just uh uh in in regards to craft, right? We comedy feel when done right, comedy feels really easy and really effortless on the screen, and people are laughing. And when I moved to Hollywood uh over a decade ago, 13 years ago, I was like, oh, I think I'm gonna try to be a comedy writer. I'm funny, I make my mom laugh sometimes at the dinner table. That's gotta be enough to like, you know, and I began to write a couple early comedies, and I wasn't that funny. It's much harder to be funny on the page. I wasn't as funny as I thought I was, and I realized, wait, I can write one joke an episode and be a drama writer versus writing many jokes a page and be a comedy writer. I'm going to make and in comedies, you still have to have heart and you still have to have soul and you have to have to have character. In fact, they're often way more character first than many of the shows that I've I've worked on. But I have a question again about sort of the changing landscape of Hollywood, which is uh, you know, there's been, you know, comedy comedians have complained about this as well, that you know, there's a there's with social media and other things, uh, comedic misstep could could could sink you. And do you guys have to sometimes now, in a way you didn't before, think about your audience, think about the words they're saying, and think about the ripple effect of these words on your audience?

SPEAKER_03 12:30

There's no question that's changed. There's no question that uh, in a good way, I think that's that in sense in some ways, and sensitive humor, humor based on uh racism, sexism, uh, you know, is not isn't is uh not something people are gonna get away with in the same way that they used to. So it makes it harder because I think that um comedy writers uh you know fell back on their own uh you know, their own points of view of things. And if they were in a group of of other white men, you would end up doing things that uh other groups might find offensive. But because your your writer's room was all white and all male, there was nobody in that room who was who who had the experience of being offended. Um, so I I do think that that's that change. It does make it does make comedy harder. However, I've heard stand-up comedians have a lot more trouble going to uh colleges uh because of because of um perceived slights, things that were not necessarily um based on those things but are interpreted that way. Uh so it's it's tough. It's much it is much harder. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Do you guys is there ever any oversight, for instance, when we're depending on what show I'm on, medical, procedural, whatever, we turn in our scripts and we have the studio give us back notes, and then there's the BSP, which gives us standards and practices which say you can't say this or you can't do this, or you can't show this, or whatever. Obviously, you're familiar with that. Do you ever get you can't make this joke?

SPEAKER_03 14:08

Um well, you know, there are some times uh there are some times, yes, where so probably my favorite example was um the uh the uh 100th episode. I think it was the 100th episode Family Guy. Um we had a very big table read. And um, I actually don't remember, but we the night before um a writer came up with a joke in the writer's room. We were replacing a gag. We have these, we have these cutaway gags, and um this is a gag based on an incident that happened uh at the time uh involving a uh football player named Pat Tillman who went to fight in Afghanistan and was killed. So the gag that the writer pitched, very offensive gag, the writer pitches it's around 11 o'clock at night. He pitches this gag of Peter. It's a cutaway of this was worse than when I was it served in Afghanistan. And Peter is getting is a soldier and he's getting uh instructions from his commanding officer, okay, when the Taliban comes over the hill, you shoot the Taliban. And Peter says, Okay, when Pat Tillman comes over the hill, I shoot Pat Tillman. And because Pat Tillman was also killed in a friendly fire accident. It was a very offensive joke, but it had the entire writer's room laughing hard, and and it was a very funny gag. We have then a half-hour discussion in the room. Is this too much? But it's getting late, and we have the table read the next day, and everybody's coming to the table read, it's gonna be a big event, head of the network, all these things. And Seth McFarland decides, let's put it in, let's see what happens. So we put it in and um read at the table, got a giant laugh at the table, just a giant laugh. But one of the writers said he was looking at the president of the network who was there with his wife, and that when they the Pat Tillman gag got the the the president of the network eyes went wide, and he looked at his wife, who's also like shaking her head, and he told us cut the gag. So that wasn't standards and practices, that was personal taste. And um the gag did not appear on Fox when it aired, but it did, uh, I think it's in the syndicated version, and it's definitely on the DVD. Um, but it did not air on. So that's an example. The personal taste of your network executives, and he's in charge and he gets to make that call.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

You know, it I mean, obviously, I'm not in the industry, but bringing bringing your spouse along when you're a network executive doesn't feel like a great thing to do for a comedy thing.

SPEAKER_03 17:00

You know, whether it's the wife or a husband doesn't matter, but just it seems like an odd the celebration that was a turn milestone in the you know, you bring your your significant other, you get to get to meet the actors, you know. And and you know, the problem with Family Guy is that it half half of it is about offending people. Package is clearly labeled.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

So look, normally on this podcast, Noah sits in in the seat and says to the guest, you're the most amazing person. This film you made or the TV show is the best ever. And I get a bit bored by that because this isn't what you know, we're not meant to be fanboying our guests. Plus, you know, I don't think you need to hear that sort of thing. However, I'm gonna just do this briefly because I don't normally get to do this. I'm an enormous fan of Family Guy and the Orville, particularly. So I'm gonna I have a question though. As a writer, presumably uh writing comedy where it's either a cartoon, or I think you have to call it animated series, but I'm gonna call it a cartoon because I'm not in the industry, or sit in a space where the aliens can basically be anything you want.

SPEAKER_03 18:06

Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Does that make it easier? Because like the cutaway scenes in Family Guy are genius, but uh because you can literally do anything you want, uh, and there's no limits. And even in the space one, you know, you can pick an alien of a certain size or shape to therefore fit the gag. Is that all a lot uh easier to be funny than Golden Girls, or you know, a normal show that's set with normal humans in a one physical space, or is it harder because the limits are anything? If you don't make it really funny, you've wasted that opportunity. Well, Dan, do you think it's easier? I'd like to think if I was a writer, I'd find it easier.

SPEAKER_03 18:45

Yeah, it's not. You know, anything good is hard. Uh uh, I mean, if if it's bad, then yeah, it was probably easy. Um, but that's the uh, you know, that that's the the sort of the the uh you know it's funny. I was thinking no about what you said earlier about being a comedy writer and and sort of recognizing you weren't funny, or or or that you if this is you weren't funny enough. Uh I I you know I I'm not judging that, but I do what I do say to all writers is your work has to make you make you laugh. So the work you put on the page has to make you laugh every time you read it. That sounds impossible, it's not, but it's just really, really hard. And so anything that's good, uh, you know, the the hard thing about being doing comedy in the oral setting is you don't want to undermine the drama. You don't want the jokes to make you don't want the jokes to make the show silly. Um, you want it to be believable. Same thing with uh Family Guy, those good gags, those memorable gags take a lot of work. I mean, you're basically doing a little mini mini show in that gag has beginning, middle, and end. Um a payoff, a concept, a payoff uh, you know, and some work great, some don't, but you're you're working really hard. And then on top of that, the show's been on for so long that there's been so many things uh that have been parodied in those games already. You don't want to repeat yourself. And then on top of that, uh, when the show started, there were a lot less networks, everybody was watching the same TV show movies. Now, everyone's frame of reference is different. Uh you know, with the sort of uh the scattering uh and the niche programming um that we have you to make a joke that that everybody gets is much much harder in terms of referencing in terms of referencing some bit of pop culture. So uh the answer is Dan, no, it's all really hard. Anything good is hard. So I don't know if this was yours.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

I remember somebody said to me, What's your I'll take credit for it, even if it's not what's your favorite family guy moment, they asked me. And I it's the cutaway to the fake TV show of Touched by an Angel, where there's a little boy, so it says, you know, and now we got a touch by an angel. There's a little boy in a courtroom scene, and the lawyer holds up a teddy bear and says, Where did he touch you? And then there's a guy in the dock, obviously, who's got a halo, and it's all very funny. That's my favorite one.

SPEAKER_03 21:22

I I guess that's not yours because you took longer to get it. It took me a minute to remember that one. It's very funny, I think. But uh uh what's are you asking what my favorite one was? Well, no, I was I was telling you mine, but what are we here? What why don't you tell me your favorite? Uh you know, I I uh I don't know that I I'm gonna be honest, I I don't know that I have one, but I I did, you know, uh there was a joke in the Star Wars episode uh that I don't know if you're familiar with that one, but but uh and and Alex Sulkin, who wrote the script, wrote this joke, which I just thought was really funny. Like during Uh Peter is in the Millennium Falcon shooting TIE Fighters and he's humming the Star Wars music. And I just love that joke. It's very small, but it's like he's like it's it's it's a you know it's a very small moment, it's not the harshest joke, and then you know, there's some real incredible set pieces on that show. Uh, all there was this episode where they all take uh Ipecac, which makes people throw up, and it's this extended vomiting scene, which I also think is very funny. So I have a a range of uh a range, and then of jokes that I pitched, probably the one I'm most proud of was uh uh it's hard. This is as hard as finding as making a comedy in Germany, and then it cuts to the end of the war, and uh German is saying how exciting is the war's over, we can make comedy again, comedies again. But uh, I want you to uh get me on the phone with these writers, and his assistant's like, Yeah, I'm not gonna be able to do that. And it's a Holocaust joke, yeah. Yeah, no, I uh believe we can't get any of these writers get the get their ages on the phone. It's like, yeah, you're not gonna be able to do that. And but that was that was very proud of.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

So look, this podcast is not meant to be about success or humor. Yeah, I know. What happened to all the failure? I got I got a little bit I got distracted by by family guy. So here let's go back to the core point of this rejection. So you're a comedy writer, you're in a room, you spend, let's say, a couple of years with these people, it's all lots of making jokes. When you get fired from a room where you've been working with people with whom the whole relationship is about making jokes and obviously, you know, making a show. When you get fired, is it is it hard to have a guy whose whole time you spent making them laugh? You sit down and they're like, right, thank you. We don't need you again.

SPEAKER_03 23:59

Well, I mean, you probably saw it coming because you weren't making them laugh. Um, that's the uh the problem isn't you every the I've got I've been fired. Um I was fired once from Golden Girls, and uh so I was hired by Golden Girls by one set of showrunners. It was interesting, there were four writers who ran that show for the first four years, and they hired me and my partner, and then they left, and then a new showrunner came in, and it was very clear pretty quickly that we were not succeeding with him. So the fact that he fired us was not a surprise. Um, and then um there was another there was another show that I was on much later that I would have been fired from if it had got if it hadn't been canceled. So the show was canceled, so the writer never fired me, although he was planning to. Um and I knew that too, that that was a strange relationship, that that we we weren't getting along, that he even though he did, even though I was pitching a lot of stuff that was getting into scripts, and uh that that was it, I also knew he he did not like me. And uh um and that so so you know you see it coming. I think you see it coming. I I I I'm not I'm not saying everybody sees it coming, but my in my experience when it wasn't working out, uh it's almost always, yeah, I'm not surprised.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

And presumably making a joke isn't the right reaction at that point because it's too late.

SPEAKER_03 25:43

Well, I don't know if that's gonna turn it around.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

I wanna I wanna I wanna segue now that we're talking about you know a little bit more about some personal rejections, into you know, this bigger question of our guild. And we this might get a bit technical, so I'm gonna try to keep it not technical, but we've had a lot of um writers come on now on this podcast and showrunners, show creators, high-level screenwriters, and they're just saying the landscape is really hard. It's hard for them, it's hard for people at the bottom, it's hard for people in the middle. And there is this idea that once you make it in Hollywood, you're gonna have this amazing life, you're gonna make a ton of money and you're gonna do really well. And what we're finding, and of course, what I've found in my own career and those that are around me is it's just it's it's a struggle. It really is. I mean, even when you're doing well, there's years in which you're not, and this is for every single writer we've interviewed, where you don't know where your next job's gonna come from, you don't know where your next paycheck's gonna come from. And we are all sort of individually in a world of angst. As the president of all of our angst, you know, what what what keeps you up at night about just the the future of our guild and the future of our profession?

SPEAKER_03 26:55

Um, what keeps me up at night? Um you know, I think that the conglomeration of of uh the companies we work for into a lesser and lesser number of companies makes it harder for writers. Uh, yeah, this agency campaign that we just took on was about making sure that our representatives were uh properly fighting for us, had their financial interests aligned with ours, so that we at least had help, better help fighting uh for our income, better income. And and uh I think though I do want to make sure that you know you want to make sure the guild has to make sure that writers uh are protected, and so and it gets harder and harder in in uh in a in a landscape where there are only five companies, six large six, you know, and who um are doing the hiring. Uh so so that that's that's the hardest thing. And as then as these companies become self-contained, siloed, where they're the producer and also the the platform, uh, and that it the ability to sort of negotiate a better deal for yourself when everything is at this one place, that you're producing a show for Disney to air on Disney Plus or on uh ABC or whatever whatever else they own, um, makes it harder to have leverage to say, uh, I deserve this. Uh having said that, uh the guild just did something pretty profound and showed the power of writers and how necessary writers are uh to the process. I mean, that at the core of the agency campaign was a uh was the idea that agents needed us more than we needed them, and we proved that. Uh and that goes the same for the companies. I mean, not that they we they need us, maybe not more than we need them, but they definitely need us. Uh what I always say if is if the companies could actually get rid of writers, they would have a long time ago. Uh they they they need us. Uh the the amount of money that you can make, that a company can make off of one television show uh created by one writer uh is compelling to these studios, which is why they will never be out of the writer business. Um so I I think what what really does keep me up at night is not the change in the landscape, but that that writers don't lose uh hope and don't lose a sense of their own value and don't lose a sense of the power of their uh union to work in solidarity to to make things better. But unfortunately, all the things, all these things require may require fights, some kind of fight in in the near or distant future, uh, to make sure that uh it isn't it isn't such an uphill battle to maintain a career as a writer.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

And I think you know, for the majority of the people that tune into our podcast, they they they understand the nuances of all of this. But for those who don't, you know, the guild took on the agencies in a battle that took two years. And it was not only the agencies which had a ton of power, but it was the the uh private equity firms which owned some of these agencies, and billions and billions of dollars were at stake. And at the beginning of all of this, a lot of people didn't think that the guild would have the stomach to win. And and David Goodman being the president of the guild was often the face of this battle, or at least the name on this battle and of this battle, and uh which kind of brings me to the second question because we we as a guild did win. We held together, and as of a few weeks ago, the last agency signed, and we're all, you know, that we're putting this battle behind us, we're all re-signing with our agencies and moving forward, and the needs of the members and their agencies are hopefully more closely aligned. But I saw a tweet, I think, by Jose Molina, who said something about, you know, David led this, and I'm not gonna, I'm not quoting it 100% accurately, but the I the gist behind it was that, you know, has your relationship with the agencies or your personal agent soured because you were, you know, the name on the banner as we all marched into battle.

SPEAKER_03 31:40

Well, I mean, I didn't go back to my old agent, so uh that might be true. And Jose's tweet was very funny, I thought, because basically he was saying, all the agents hate him. He he's ruined his career for us. What a hero. And he was he wasn't trying to be funny, he was being supportive, but I thought it was very funny. And um uh I don't, I think again, uh individual agents uh have reached out to me. Uh uh an agency reached out to me wanting to represent me. Uh uh, so I you know they uh I don't I I think that perhaps there may be some hard feelings uh at some of the high levels of these agencies towards me because I've affected how much money they're making um by taking away the very lucrative packaging fees. But I got a as soon as WME signed, I got a really nice email from a uh a pretty pretty uh senior agent at WME saying, David, hey, I just want to say I'm ready to get back to work and really excited you guys made a deal. That was really sweet. Um and I think I'm fortunate in that um agents recognize I might be running a show again one day, and I might be in a position to hire their clients. And so they're smart enough to know I'm not gonna burn a bridge with David Goodman uh because I might want him, I don't want him mad at me and and blackballing my clients. I would never do that, honestly. I mean, that's a whole weird thing about this whole thing is uh I just want to work. Uh I'm not holding grudges against agents. They may be holding grudges against me. They may try to impede my ability to work. I don't know. I I but I don't think they have I don't think they have the time for it. They got to get to work and get their clients work. So I I don't I I don't see, I'm not sure that Jose's tweet is right, that they that they're all looking to destroy me. I but I think my picture is on some dartboards. Uh but otherwise I don't I don't know that I don't know that they're thinking about me anymore at all. I think let's just get to work, let's just make money.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

Kofki, one of the things we talk about with a lot of guests is this whole concept that when you get rejected for whatever reason, the the different reasons for getting rejected are incredibly wide and varied. From you know, people getting fired to things changing, and then and you never really find out why. From your point of view, now if you get rejected from something that you've pitched or a job that you're up for, will is there a tiny part of you that thinks I wonder if this will be because of what I did, or actually is it a great get out? You can get you know, you can say to your you can say to your family, oh no, my work was brilliant, but it's just this agency thing that's holding me back now.

SPEAKER_03 34:41

Well, I mean you put the thought in my head that it's a good excuse to have when I fail. Um, I think um no, I I think I take it I think like all writers, I take it completely personally. Uh I I I pitch something and they don't buy it, I I just feel like a failure. I feel like you know, I don't feel like um, you know, part of the other thing too is that throughout this agency campaign, the buyers, the studios reached out to me quietly and expressed support. They didn't go public because they didn't want to piss off agents, but some major, major people at major studios uh called me and said, Hey, keep going. And um, we're with you. We've tried to take this on and we we didn't succeed. And you know, I appreciate that because what it told me was even I would have preferred if they were public about it, but what it told me is at least privately they they were also telling me I'll work again. So that was that's they're the hires. So um, but no, I I I mean, I I've pitched a couple of things that I haven't sold in the last few months, uh that I think um kind of crushed me that I didn't sell them because I liked these both these projects a lot. Um, but you know, you pick yourself up and you move on, and I'm about to, you know, try and sell some more stuff. But you know, it's all it all I my experience of it is always like I think similar to Lobwriters, which is God, I suck.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

So it shows you how hard this industry is, where we have again a number of people on, and they're all we pitched and we didn't sell it, and we're like at all levels, people are rejecting. There's there's no no matter what level you're coming in at, you're gonna have a rejection. And sometimes the higher up you go, the harder those rejections are because the bigger the prizes at the end, and you're really close to this big thing and you just don't get it.

SPEAKER_03 36:48

Well, I I mean, I had sort of the most crushing rejection in that I produced a complete television series, 13 episodes, that has never aired. Uh and yeah, yeah, I'm looking at the expression on Dan's face and he's like, What? How is that even possible?

SPEAKER_04 37:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:04

And um, it was an animated comedy for Fox. Uh it was, you know, went through a long development process to get it picked up. I had a lot of support at uh the mid-level at the of the execs at Fox, the heads of comedy of Fox were very supportive of it. And I did it with another writer, named a very talented guy, who was also the lead actor in it. And finally, the the network president picked it up, and I did everything I could to get him to pick it up. I called every important person I knew to call him. Like I did everything I could. He picked it up, he ordered it to series. Uh and you know, it was a it was an animated cop show called Murder Police. And um, it was picked up because animation is a long lead time, uh, it was picked up in December for the following September. Uh, so it would be on, so we were in production, and while we were in production, this was one of the reasons that contributed to not airing, uh the the network pilot season proceeded, and and the the network in April. So now we've been in production on our show for three or four months, and animation again takes a long time, but it was going well. The scripts were succeeding with the network, and they weren't getting a lot of notes, getting some notes, but they were very sportive. And then in April or May, uh Fox picks up uh Brooklyn 99. Uh great show, cop comedy, really one of the first cop comedies in a while. And so now Fox had two cop comedies, and one of them had lots of stars in it, and came from uh very talented writers, friends of mine, Mike Scher and and uh and Dan Gore. They are they are very super talented and came great auspices, they've been on the office. And there was my show, Murder Police, which I did was doing with Jason, and I came off Family Guy, but I wasn't quite at their league. So they they they had this great pilot, this great show. And suddenly uh I'm not getting a lot of notes from the network, but I'm still finishing the show, and and they just decided not to air. The head of the network just decided, you know what, I'm not I'm not gonna air this because, from what I understand, uh he was uh nervous that because I didn't have any stars in the show, it was gonna be a very hard show to promote and a very hard show to get people to watch. And and that would have cost him a lot of money out of his promotion budget to get people to watch it. We finished the show. I have 13 episodes of this show finished, and I know maybe some of your listeners are thinking, oh, it must be terrible. And I just want to say to them, fuck you. It's it's good, it's a good show. And uh it, but even if it's the worst show ever, there's like there's all these streaming platforms. Why isn't it on? I go back to the studio network at the beginning of COVID. I went back to the head of Fox. I said, Hey, in a in a box in the lunchroom, there's 10 13 episodes of this show, just take them out, you can sell them, they're finished. Um, and I always get a very nice response back. Yes, we're looking into it. And you know, this, but this is so so it it still wrangles me because it's one, I really do think it's a good show, had great stars in it. Jake Lynch is in it, um, uh actor Sean McBride, uh Will Sasso, who's a very funny comedian, uh, was in it, and then Jason, who co-created it with me, plays the lead, and uh Justina Machado, who's on One Day at a Time, like very good, great, funny actors, Phil Lamar, who'd been on Futurama, and uh, you know, just really talented, funny people, great animation done by great animators, and no one's seen it.

SPEAKER_01 40:57

Dan, just for a little bit of color, because you'll like the story. I was watching my episode of Wi-Fi Bo with Dan at his house when I was still back in Los Angeles, and Shy was on our show as well. And he ad lived the line turn around and face the fruit salad. It was a Thanksgiving episode, and he was someone he was arresting someone at the buffet, and Dan's like, that's a great line, that's really funny. I'm like, I wish I wrote it. He just said it on the day, and it's still probably the funniest episode uh line in the episode.

SPEAKER_03 41:23

So I'm a fan of the I would talk about Hawaii 5 0, like uh when because he was doing it while he was doing our show, and and he had lived in his audition, he had lived the line that we put in the pilot.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

Now I'm not I mean, we don't always love the ad libbing, but he happens to be a writer and a talented one. And his ad libs, he's just he can handle really tough dialogue and make it really good. So there was a there was an appreciation for that line. I wish I wrote it, I got credit for it later, and and I didn't, and I will say that publicly, I did not write that line.

SPEAKER_03 41:52

You know, and I know this is like a but you you're gonna you're gonna remember that the next time you write a script, you're gonna look for those opportunities. How can I add some character color to this guy turn around and face right?

SPEAKER_01 42:04

Yes, oh I oh, for sure. It's and it taught me, you know, he just watching those performers say your lines teaches you so much about what works and what doesn't work. I have, you know, before before we kind of come to our ending, I have a you know a question about dead time.

SPEAKER_03 42:17

I haven't talked about failure nearly enough.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

Yeah, we can keep going. We'll go for we can have a two a two episode special, but I do, I do uh, you know, do you have any thoughts in this industry's, you know, the way that they do move beyond, like if you sell a pilot and then it they don't they maybe have another pilot that's too close and it was an amazing script, and they're like, okay, we're gonna make this supernatural thing and not this supernatural thing, and then that pilot's dead. I mean, like they've decided that because they if they didn't go forward, they're not gonna give it a try. And we all have these sort of dead pilots and works that we love that we can't go back to. And and maybe just now we uh, you know, we've had some people on who've had shows that have had second lives because of streaming, that is maybe beginning to just change. Is you know, what are your thoughts about the about this whole policy of like once something's dead, it's dead and you can't go back to it?

SPEAKER_03 43:08

I mean, I don't know that it's a policy, I think it's important, it's always important as a writer to remember who who you're dealing with in this business, that the executives. So, for instance, the reason Murder Police, just as an example, has never been on again. That even though the head of that network left the network, his successors talked for a minute about putting Murder Police back on and then didn't probably with the given the events of uh uh of George Floyd, I'm probably lucky that I don't have a show called Murder Police on the year. But but the the uh the the issue is the execs uh realize you know when you're developing a show, um the the execs realize that um they're invested in its success, they're not writing it, they're not making it, but they're They're investing in its success. And then when it fails, that's their failure too. So you're asking them to put aside their failure and risk failure again on the thing they just failed with. So you it I think that empathy is important because uh execs, you know, are have tough jobs. That's tough as an exec to prove your value. And you prove your value by having developing things that succeed. If you keep going back to a to a pilot that failed, that didn't get picked up, that your boss didn't pick up, and you go to your boss again and say, Well, you know, Noah's script's really good. Could we look at this again? That exec is putting themselves at a lot of risk of their own job. And I think that empathy is important. Uh, you know, so and I think that's the main reason that people don't go back to things, is that execs don't want, and that's what happened again with Murder Police was the the network exec who who left, his successors were like, why are we going to risk looking like risk a failure with this? It's better to invest in something new that can be completely ours. Because if it fails, if my show failed with us with the successor, then they're there, then the guy who left is right. It was was not worth the time, it wasn't worth the investment. So that's why I think it's really we lose sight of that. We lose sight as writers because we do create and we do put all of our ourselves in these things. We lose sight of the fact that execs do too. They're putting themselves their jobs on the line, and when it fails, it's like I gotta step away from this now. I um it's it's not gonna help me to stay with that. Now, having said that, writers have the option of going back to it themselves and pushing it on other people, and you've seen that. You to me, the best story is um the best story of that is uh uh madmen. Uh so Matt Weiner is a writer, he's a writer on sitcoms, he doesn't really want to be on sitcoms, he writes the Mad Men Spec Pilot. That spec pilot gets him on the Sopranos, that script. His agent won't at the time, his agent then wouldn't send it, so Matt found a way to get it to the Sopranos. David Chase hires him, he's on the Sopranos for a number of years. At the end of it, now Matt wants to make Mad Men. David Chase, I believe, tried to shepherd Mad Men and HBO wasn't interested, so Matt ends up selling it to AMC. There's there's the life in that script because the script, it's a great script, and it's obviously I'm a huge fan of that show, and it shows he wasn't going to give up. So it's up to the writer not to give up if if you're really sure about it.

SPEAKER_02 47:09

So you're almost giving advice now, which is good because our last question is if you could give one piece of advice for somebody entering your industry, and I guess for your industry, let's go for comedy writer rather than guild president. Um, if you could give one piece of advice, what would it be?

SPEAKER_03 47:30

Don't. I need work. I don't need other people looking for work, too. I I uh that's that's terrible. I that's not the advice I give. I this is the advice I always give, is it's it's actually advice I've stolen from Steve Martin, who wrote uh somewhere, be so good they can't ignore you. Uh that's your only choice. Your only choice in a creative field is if you're looking to somebody else to make you famous, or looking for someone else to make your career, that can happen, but it's much more likely that you're going to succeed if you put everything you can into whatever it is you're trying to do. Um, you know, I I think, and especially goes for comedy writers. It's you know, you write that script, the script needs to make you laugh every time you read it. It's not, it sounds impossible because well, I know all the jokes. It's not impossible, but it's really, really hard. Um uh that separates the successes from a lot of the successes from people who don't succeed. Um same thing goes for drama writing. If you're writing a script that's a horror script, it should scare you. You're the only audience. You're right now, you're the only person reading the script. It better scare you. If it's a if it's uh supposed to be sad, it better make you cry. It all the things that drama is supposed to do, the script should affect you personally. And so that's a that's that's the writing, that's the writing advice. And I think it's you know, I definitely have that experience with the scripts that I've written that I love, is that I go back and I find myself laughing, not deflying, but I have that involuntary, oh, that's you know, laughter. And and I assume writers who write other things have that experience too of being scared or sad or uh romantic or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 49:30

Yep, very good. So look, David Goodman, producer of Murder Police and and other projects, thank you very much for being part of our podcast. It was my pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 49:41

And and I want to thank you not only for coming on, but I want to take the second to thank you for all you did for the guild. It was it was tremendous, and I'm super uh grateful.

SPEAKER_03 49:50

Well, thank you, Noah. And and you know, I I say it and I mean it. The members like you and and who supported this this action and supported me. I always felt it, and uh, and I know the leadership did too, and we wouldn't have succeeded without uh the members and the members like you. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02 50:08

And I'm not a member of the guild, but thank you for the comedy that you wrote in Family Guy and um and Orville, and also for like keeping people like Noah happy.

SPEAKER_01 50:23

All right, that's a wrap on this episode. If you want to leave us any feedback, go to hollywoodabyss.com.

SPEAKER_02 50:29

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

SPEAKER_01 50:36

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

SPEAKER_02 50:49

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

SPEAKER_01 51:01

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

SPEAKER_02 51:11

But you definitely can't podcast.

SPEAKER_01 51:13

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