Take 119 - Writers and Producers Eric Johnson and Paul Tamasy, The Fighter, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

SPEAKER_01 0:58

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SPEAKER_03 1:20

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SPEAKER_01 1:43

And for those of you who don't understand slightly drawly American accents, that's scriptation.com backslash S-I-T-H-A. Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am as ever your non-entertainment co-host, Dan Rutstein.

SPEAKER_03 2:09

And I am your still in the entertainment business co-host, Noah Ebslin. For this week's podcast, I'm thrilled to introduce the Academy Award-nominated screenwriting duo of Paul Tannissey and Eric Johnson. Together they wrote and produced The Fighter, The Outpost, and Patriots Day, as well as co-wrote the upcoming Guy Ritchie movie, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, amongst many other things. Paul also works as a director, and his movie Depravity comes out later this year. Welcome, Paul and Eric.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

Thanks for having us. Glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

So I play soccer every Monday night with Paul in an over 45s game. And it would be fair to say over 30s. Based on what I've seen on a Monday night, there's no one who knows more about failure than Paul Thomasy. Um thank you, thank you, gentlemen, for joining us. So I think I think it's you know, obviously, this is about failure and adversity rather than success. But I actually want to talk about the Oscar nomination because I think obviously there's probably like everything, there's more to that story, and uh then nothing straightforward in this town. So tell us about uh how you end up on uh getting a movie nominated for an Oscar and the story of that of that film, and then let's talk about some other stuff.

SPEAKER_04 3:39

Well, that film's actually probably an appropriate movie to bring up when it comes to screaming into the Hollywood Abyss, because as successful as the film was, getting it there was, as Eric would attest, an absolute nightmare.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

Probably worse than any film we've ever well it took us what seven or eight years. Eight eight years, eight years to get it made. Once we, you know, we discovered we we acquired the rights originally directly from the fighters and started from there, and it was uh it was a long, rocky journey, believe me.

SPEAKER_04 4:13

Yeah, without without giving names, let's just say when you're dealing with that world, you're dealing with um the mob and and and other elements that that we had to deal with throughout the years that we were working on. It was crazy. Yeah, it's just a lot of people have heard the horror story, some of which we really can't say right now, but some people have told us we should write a book about it someday because it really was nuts.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

It's you know, the world of movie making is really wild, and and the world of boxing is really wild. So you bring those two together, and there's a lot of really interesting personalities, and everybody you know has an interest in it and wants a piece of it, and some of them deservedly so, and some of them not so deservedly so. So it becomes a long slog, and you just have to persevere. That's something I've learned from Paul is you don't quit, you never give up, you never let anything go. If it's a good idea and it's going to make a good movie, and you know it is, don't give up, just keep fighting, and and eventually you'll get there.

SPEAKER_04 5:18

Yeah, it's literally where the title came from. Eric and I were working on the fighter one day. It wasn't called that at the time. In fact, our working title was Mickey and Dicky. And um, and we it was one of those days we were just getting beat up on all sides, and literally people were calling me and saying, Paul, you just gotta drop the project, it's not worth the battle. And I looked over at Eric, I said, Man, I'm the one who's starting to feel like the fighter. And then we paused right there and looked at each other and went, Oh my god, that's it. That's the title, and that's where it came from.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Amazing. So when we we had a we had a guy on the other day who's written three movies, and he says he doesn't like any of them because like by the time they by the time they actually ended up on screen, they were, you know, they weren't what he wanted, and he wasn't happy with how they looked. So with with the fighter, a were you happy with the final product? And B, when because of the struggles you had to get there, when it was nominated, were you relieved, pleased, annoyed that you had to keep thinking about it for longer? Talk about that.

SPEAKER_04 6:22

Well, Eric, Eric will tell you from day one, and I mean this, I I from day one said I believe this movie is gonna get Oscar nominated when we were working on it. And every time reporters would ask us, I would say, No, I really thought it was gonna win Oscars, because I really did. Um, but like every movie, um, even when it got close to production, the plug got pulled on it a few times, like it wasn't gonna happen. And really, to Mark Wahlberg's credit, he he pulled the whole thing together.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

He really is a remarkable producer in a lot of ways because you don't see him working his magic, but he does it. He's very quiet in the way he does it, but he gets things done. You know, the fighter fell off the rails multiple times on the way to production, and he was the one that put it back together, picked it up and got it moving forward again.

SPEAKER_04 7:11

Yeah, and to be honest with you, the first cut of the film, David, oh, if you're listening, I know you would say this is true. Um, the first cut of the film had problems, particularly the third act. It it fell flat completely. Part of the problem was nowhere in the fight did the director cut to the corner. So you never saw the corner of either. Have you ever seen a fight movie where you don't cut the corner to the corner? So Eric and I suggested that they Mark Wall, they've actually built Mark Wahlberg a full-blown boxing ring in his backyard. And um, we suggested just go there and sh reshoot some scenes there, and we gave them suggestions of dialogue, and they went and reshot it. And then David O, to his credit, when he went in and recut it, they hired the HBO crew to help them shoot it. So it had a great look to it. Um, but then he went and recut it, and uh it suddenly worked.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Yeah, it it I think that his, you know, David O's time in the editing room in the end, you know, well, throughout the whole process, but in the end, really brought it together. And it he did this thing where there's bookends and the thing that just changed the way the whole film felt. Um so when it came out, I loved it. You know, I mean when he was done with it, I think Paul probably did too. I thought that we were so fortunate to get somebody like David O. Russell to direct and have somebody like Mark Wahlberg to produce and act. It uh it we both were very pleased when it came out.

SPEAKER_04 8:46

Obviously, not a fan of our art at all. You know, most writers I think will tell you they're never happy with his script, directors as well. And I definitely know I fall into that same category, but I think out of all of our projects, and not just because of the awards, we we were just happy overall with how the film came out.

SPEAKER_03 9:03

So yeah, I know a lot of people listening. Uh, you know, we have a lot, we have people at all different levels of the industry, those who have made a lot of movies, those who made a lot of TV shows and are deep in it, and those who are just beginning and making their first short and whatever. And for those of you out there making your first short, it's good to hear and be reminded that even esteemed directors like David O. Russell, their first cut is gonna could and often will fall flat, and that there is a miracle that can happen between the first cut and what ends up coming onto screen. Editors are geniuses, and a lot of work goes into just pulling it all together. So if you're out there and you're looking at a first cut and it's awful, it will get better, I promise you. And they are telling you that as well. Okay, I wanna, we're gonna probably come back to the fighter because I think there's a lot of interesting stories uh to mind from that. But I want to go back a little bit. In fact, let's go back a lot because I only read off a handful of your credits, but you, I just look back, you have some like 23 writing credits, which A is pretty spectacular. But you did a lot of uh family films, children's films. You were almost did every film in the Airbud franchise. So, question to you guys was there a pivot at some point? Did you guys decide that, you know, we've done everything we can do for Airbud, and now we want to do something a little bit darker and more personal? Or how did you end up getting into sort of more prestige Academy Award fair from what you were doing before?

SPEAKER_02 10:24

I should start the answer by saying that the Airbud was uh Paul and his previous writing partner, Aaron Mendelssohn. So I really didn't have anything to do with those, I other than being a fan and getting to go to the um screening to see how much kids how much the kids loved it. And you know, it became a Christmas perennial. If you you can still see Airbud DVDs at the checkout line at places like Walmart and you know uh at Costco around the holidays.

SPEAKER_04 10:57

Yeah, but the turning point to answer your question, we had a hard time even when Eric and I started writing together, it we had a hard time shaking the Airbud persona. It was a label that uh Hollywood tried to put on us right away because Eric had also written a great family film. The best script that Eric and I have to this day written together is a script called Toad Trip. And every studio in town tried to buy it, uh-huh, and we sold it to um DreamWorks. Yeah, we sold it to DreamWorks, and the film still has not been made to this day, and it's heartbreaking because I think it is there was a reason everybody tried to buy it.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

So we thought, okay, well, this movie will get made in it, it still hasn't seemed to you know the it we wrote that over 20 years ago. They paid us a lot of money for it. It seemed to be on the fast track to to being made. We were with um the producer of Shrek. With we went into um DreamWorks with him, with John Williams. So we had everything going for it. So it was right when Shrek had come out, and it was a huge hit. We it had everything going for it, and it just got bogged down in studio politics and and never got made.

SPEAKER_03 12:12

So can I ask about, you know, now that you bring it up, so obviously there was a turning point uh in Paul, your career, because you were working, you know, on on one trajectory, and then you guys met, and suddenly your your your writing changed. What made I I've heard so many stories of writers who start off as a pair and end up as a single. I very rarely hear stories about people pairing up much later in their careers. How did that happen? And and you know, Dan loves to sort of, you know, what was the what's the worst part of your uh uh work in relationship together and what's the best part? That's a very Dan question.

SPEAKER_04 12:48

Well, first of all, there isn't a worse part. I mean, to be straight up, my my former writing partner and I, we used to argue a lot, and it wasn't a really good creative experience. And then I met Eric by I was actually doing an internship for Peter Goober's company. I was a UCLA student and I was interning for Peter Goober, and a script came in that Eric had written called Free Ride at the time. Uh extra empty fun buddy comedy was back then when buddy comedies were really popular, and uh I liked the script and asked him if I could option it. And I was just young, I was like 19 years old.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

Well, I got a call from my agent saying there's a producer that is, you know, it uh it had been optioned by Disney, and I worked on it at Disney for over a year and made some money on it, but then they ended up putting in a turnaround, and that's how it ended up in Paul's hands. And I got so as far as I knew, it was just sort of a dormant, and then I got a phone call from my agent saying there's a producer that wants to uh pick up uh extra effort, and I went, Oh, great, set up a meeting. So she set up a meeting at um San Francisco Cafe or something, whatever.

SPEAKER_04 13:59

San Francisco Saloon, the one here in Santa Monica, the one on Pico, I think.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

And uh so I went walking in there, and you know, if people listening to this podcast won't be able to see this, but um I'm a little bit older than Paul. And uh I walked in the door and I walked past this kid sitting next to the door looking for a producer, and then realized, oh, it's this kid. But we started um talking about the script a lot together, and what you know, he told me what he thought it needed right now to get noticed again, get um some new attention. And we realized pretty quickly that we worked really well together. And you know, as he said, his previous partner they would argue a lot. And I always have this sort of this philosophy is you know, when you're working creatively with somebody, you know, once stop arguing once you realize you're wrong, you know, because um it's such human nature just to try, you know, once you've decided what your point of view is, to keep fighting, fighting, fighting. When you're working with a partner, the whole point is to get to the best solution. And if you realize the other guy has that best solution, be honest about it and accept it and move on, you know. And so that's sort of how we our our partnership began, our writing partnership began, and it and why it's lasted. Yeah, and why it's lasted. So and you know, I ended up becoming a friend of the family, and I was there when their son was born, and you know, I was got invited to their wedding, and I met his wife at their wedding.

SPEAKER_04 15:46

That's how long we've been working together. Yeah. And I do I know I do stuff on my own too, you know, which Eric's fine with. I've I've got a movie called The Painter right now, the fifth season is financing. Um, they're out to big filmmakers right now. There's five filmmakers that want to do it. Um so we you know, uh, and then the movie I just directed as well. So we do some things separately as well, but mostly together.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Yeah. So going right back to the beginning, um and uh this is I this is I'm gonna start with Paul on this one, I think, because so you know you are you don't sound like it, Paul, but I think part of the reason you've been so successful is you're actually British. Um so I agree. How does how does a a Brit come out here, get into this world, and was it writing that you wanted to be in as your Hollywood journey, or did you want to be an actor, Uber driver?

SPEAKER_04 16:53

Um not an Uber driver, although I don't think that would be bad. No, I um my mother was uh my mother in England was uh my mom, I should say, she was a model in England and also was an actress who did a lot of off-Broadway when we did live in the States when I was much younger. And um so that was sort of in my blood. And then I went to UCLA on full scholarship as an actor. I was there when Jack Black was there. He and I did a lot of stuff together there. I actually cast Jack and the only stuff he did there because I thought he was great. Everybody else thought he was crazy. Um, I thought he was crazy great. And um so no, I really wanted to act. And then while I was working for Peter Goober, in addition to Eric's script coming in, I had this idea for a movie. And I pitched it to them, and so they started bringing in these writers that they were gonna hire to do this thriller idea I'd come up with. And when I heard how much these writers were gonna get paid to write this thing, I was like, damn, I think I'm gonna try to do this. So I wrote my first script and with no training at all, I didn't, even when I was at UCLA, I was not studying writing. And I optioned that script right away and realized I had a knack for it. And then my intention was to start casting myself in in my own movies, and I never really got around to doing that. A lot of it became easy. We started writing big movies, and it was harder for me to get people to say, Hey, let me be in that. But um, it's uh I still want to act to be honest with you. I I did a little bit part in this movie I just made. Um, but in the stuff coming up, I plan to do it just for fun, because I still can. But I have to tell you, getting behind camera has been a lifelong goal. Eric will tell you this particular movie I just made 20 years, I've been trying to get it done.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Amazing. Yeah, yeah. Um it's good. I mean, I've known you for nearly 10 years, and I don't think I've ever we've ever never talked about this. I don't think I realised that you you used to be an actor, and I definitely had no idea you're from a family of models. You've hidden that well. Um you've you've got a movie out. You've obviously got a movie out now, which is exciting. And we were joking before we turned on the podcast that you know I saw your name at a bus stop, um, sort of in the valley. Do you still get uh given how hard it is to get anything made, on those occasions where things actually get made, presumably that excitement of having a real film out, the trailers are everywhere, the posters are everywhere, and you live in the town, so you you see that all do you still you still get that thrill?

SPEAKER_04 19:37

Yeah, yes. In fact, tonight we plan on drawing because we heard there might be a big billboard on sunset. We're gonna go down there and see if it's there and try to get a picture of it. Yes, yeah, because well, I was just gonna say getting a movie made, you're gonna say the same thing. Yeah, getting a movie made is a miracle. So anytime you do, it is exciting. It really is.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Yeah, and you have to take the time to enjoy the fact that you finally made it across the finish line and you have a product that people are gonna be able to go see. I remember David O. Russell was saying, you know, he had been through the whole Oscar thing, you know, the run up to it, because it's like four months long and it takes over your life completely. And it gets a little bit, you become a little bit weary going through it because there's events every single day, and you have to have all these new clothes and go to all these things. And we were getting to the point where we were getting, you know, like, oh God, I don't think I can go to another one of these. And David O'Russell said, you know, I got to that point too, 10 years ago. And he said, and then it took me another 10 years to get back here. So I'm enjoying it, you know.

SPEAKER_04 20:42

Yeah, Eric will tell every time I tell people this, they don't believe me. But two months into it, I was done. I'm like, I'm not gonna go to another fucking party. I'm not gonna go sit there. I never realized that you literally, it's like a campaign, it's like you're running an election. You're going and asking people, please vote for our movie.

SPEAKER_02 21:03

And so you're going around doing all this glad handling and it's mostly just going and meeting people and stuff. And you know, there are people that are fans of the movie and they're also academy voters. Yeah. So you're, you know, you're not specifically, you know, asking for their vote, but you're just talking to them about your film and stuff. And, you know, I I remember when Paul had finally had enough of this at one point, there was uh a Friday where there was one thing on our schedule, and nobody had called me about it. The publicists hadn't called me about it, and nobody had called Paul either. So he and his wife got in their car and they were on their way up to they have a cabin up in the mountains, they were on their way there for the weekend. I was on my bike in Venice, and I got a call around five o'clock from uh my publicist, and she said, Are you going to this party tonight? And I'm like, No, I don't think so. And she went, Oh, the studio really wants you to go. There's a lot of Academy voters are going to be there. So I um I said, okay, I'll go. And she said, Could you call Paul and see if he'll come? And I said, Well, he's already halfway there. She said, Oh, please call. And so I called and I talked them into turning around and coming back. And then we all went together. It was in Brentwood, and we walked in there. And within 30 seconds, we were among the first people to arrive. And there were a couple of other people that arrived just before us. And I looked up and Paul's talking to Jennifer Lopez. Jennifer Lopez, that's right. And it just started from there. And then the rest of it was wall-to-wall A-listers. He came in the kitchen and I'm hanging out talking to Vincy Jones. And you know, it was one of those part, and it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime kind of experiences that we're both so glad we did it, but we almost didn't because it was deep into the campaign season, and you're just tired. You know, you get weary.

SPEAKER_04 23:01

But back to movies being a miracle. I mean, when we were invited to see Ministry of Ungently Warfare, our movie that we have coming out, Jerry Bruckheimer had us over first to see an initial cut, and then they worked on it, had us back again. And I brought my manager and Neil Parrett. Do you know Neil? Dan? Yeah. So um Neil was the one who introduced me to the story. So we brought Neil to the screening. And Jerry Bruckheimer was standing there right before the movie began. And I walked over and I just said, Hey Jerry, I want to thank you for getting this film made. I know it's been a struggle. He said, How many years has it been? I said, It's been eight years. He went, That long? I went, Yeah, that's why I always juggle about 10 projects, because every project is a miracle. He said, I couldn't agree more. And then he literally got up in front of the audience and said, I just heard it took me eight years to get this film here. Hope you enjoy it. And he walked off. And that was all he said. Um, but it seems like you know, even in that case, big studio movie like that, even with the Jerry Bruckheimer, a long journey to get it there.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Yeah. So obviously, you you said that you know the the fighter was it was a fight to get there for the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Was some of it warfare and some of it ungentlemanly on this one as well?

SPEAKER_02 24:22

It was more, I think, you know, I it was um, it seemed like it was gonna gain some momentum initially all on its own and get made quickly. Because we had some there were some other directors attached to it along the way that were big filmmakers. Big filmmakers. And it it just seemed, and then you know, sometimes you lose somebody to another project that's ready to go now that you know, and so um that was sort of the one the issue with this one was was uh you know, having a director that could uh see it through to the end. And and you know, it's all about timing too, about the timing the financing and and the available window for the director and the cast and all of that stuff. So so many pieces have to fall into place for it to move forward and go through go to production. And so with the with this one, it was more a lot of that kind of stuff. Things it would almost get there and then somebody would fall out and you'd have to kind of start to put it together in a different way.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

Yeah. I think there's a idea amongst people who who are trying to be in this business or who are in this business that at some point things are gonna get easier. That if you just write, let's say we have a showrunner on, if you just write a TV show that gets made, things are gonna get easier. If you just write a TV show that wins an Emmy, things are gonna get easier. If you write a TV, if you write a movie that gets Academy Award nominated, makes you go to all those parties, do the thing. What happens the next month, two months of your career? Is there, are you are you quote unquote hotter? Like how does that work for your career? Are you are you getting more offers? Does it not change at all? Is it equally hard to make every movie after that? Is there no difference? I'm super curious about you know trajectory and career once you've sort of reached the point where sort of you're getting these types of nominations.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

Well, I feel like it our career writing together really took off not after the fighter so much, but after the next one, which was the finest hours. Because then I think what happened was people look at it and go, oh, it wasn't a fluke, you know, these guys are able to deliver. And so once we had two under our belt, then things did, it doesn't necessarily get easier making the movie, but it gets easier, you know, there are doors that are open to you. Uh, you know, you can get into any room in in Hollywood once you've had that kind of success. But it really took us a couple before things really took off.

SPEAKER_04 26:58

Yeah. And speaking of timing, you know, so uh the Ministry of Ungenital Warfare opens April 19th. We're going to the premiere in New York on the 15th. Um but we are the Friday the week before going out with a pitch based on a book from the same book author. Another story about British SAS, greatest mission since World War II, also introduced to me by Neil Paret. Always joke that we should be giving my football team 10% instead of our agents. But um that project um is a great one. We have a, I can't tell you who, uh, but we have a major star has suddenly come on board huge star. And um, we're gonna be taking that out next Friday. And Eric and I have had a lot of and we're taking out a big visual presentation, it's literally 30-something minutes long. It's like a mini documentary. We did the same thing for the fighter. I think the fighter you looked it up was 39 minutes. Yeah, and back at the time it was a DVD, and it was literally that DVD is what sold the fighter because there were so many people bidding on it, and happened to be Brad Gray watching the DVD while he was in Paris. He called from Paris and bought the movie from watching the DVD. So in this case, we're taking out a similar thing, except it's me uh basically pitching it while we're cutting to all this footage from the real event and uh or some of the recreations of the real event.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

And uh yeah, with the fighter, you know, that that's how we sold it was with a video like that. And at the time that was really unusual. And our our producer, David Hoberman, was teaching a class at UCLA, and he started using our video to show his class, this is how you sell a movie. And it we had it's become our thing ever since. Yeah, we had access to a lot of great boxing footage, a lot of old VHS tapes. They weren't in very good shape, but there were a lot of these great old fights of Mickey Wards and Dickie Eklunds that nobody had ever seen. So we were able to cut this together and we put a nice soundtrack in it, and we told the whole story as we intended to tell it in the movie. And um, you know, it it did the job. So from then on, that's how we sell these things. It is long if we can do it, we make a little short documentary about it and sell it that way.

SPEAKER_04 29:27

And speaking of football, you know, the movie I just directed. There's so many lads that play football with Dan and I that are in the entertainment industry, and it's really been a great source of contacts for me, not only for great projects, but I love farming out work to any of the guys on the team I can. So Joe Metcalf, who actually runs our football on Monday nights, he's the composer on my movie, and he did a great job. We didn't, I didn't have a lot of money to pay him. He normally makes 10 times what he got paid to do this, but he did a great job. And um, and then another guy we played football with, Rafael Morello, who we call Hoffa, he's uh, or some people call him Rafi. He uh contributed a song to the film because I didn't have a big budget for music, and he came in with one of his songs, and then one of the actors I played football with, his name is Alex Rowe, young English lad, on the rise as an actor. He has one of the leads in the film, and I met him playing football.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

What I'm missing here, Poys, why haven't I been asked to do anything? I can play like a debonair British gentleman when the right roar comes along.

SPEAKER_03 30:36

I think I think the answer to that's fairly self-explanatory if you could see the video. Uh so you know, obviously, you have a movie that you made called The Fighter, and you have a career that spans decades making, you know, amazing uh films. This is a podcast about revect rejection, failure, and adversity. So I you know, I have to ask this question of like, what is the worst moment you've ever had? If there is can just pick one uh that you've had in this town where it made you maybe either think, I want to quit, I'm done with this, I'm gonna go back to England and become a model, I'm going to do whatever else I can do besides be in this sort of awful, terrible business.

SPEAKER_02 31:15

Well, for starters, we kind of do that every day.

SPEAKER_04 31:19

I was gonna say on almost every one of these, I say I'm quitting.

SPEAKER_02 31:23

Yeah, this is it. We always used to have this joke, okay, it's time to buy the avocado ranch. You know, quit this business and go grow avocado somewhere.

SPEAKER_04 31:33

Yeah. I honestly um I think the biggest nightmare for Eric and I in this business has been going through arbitration at the Writers Guild. It's uh it's a blood sport and it's ugly. And you work on a movie for as long as we have, and then suddenly you find that your fate is being determined by a bunch of strangers who have no idea what you did on the film, what your contribute, and they're just judging by what they're reading on the page. And it's become so easy for writers that come after you and filmmakers that come after you that know the system to cheat the system.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

It's sort of the curse of working on these big studio films. I mean, it's wonderful working on them, and you know, it's uh you know, great prestige and the money's good and all that, but they have a tendency to throw writers at projects. So they want to hedge their bets. So you inevitably, if you have a movie that's going to cost tens of millions of dollars to make, they're almost always gonna bring on another writer somewhere along the way. The the director might bring their writer with them, or there might be somebody in between you and the director. And so um, if there's another, we always have get our product, Paul usually gets a producer credit, I get executive producer credit, and um that keeps us involved. Yeah, it keeps us involved. We've made that a mandate from this point on, but it also means that there's going to be an automatic arbitration. Yeah. If if one of if you're you know one of the writers is an executive, and that law, that rule was created to protect writers from being arbitrarily rewritten by, you know, have a producer change a couple of things and then slap their name on it. But it it comes back to hurt writers, producers like Paul and I, who are really putting our blood, sweat, and tears into this thing, you know. Yeah. So, and sometimes arbitration turns out the way you feel it should, and sometimes it doesn't, and you have to roll with it, and you're not even allowed to talk about the the the ones that you are not happy with. There's rules against that, you can be sued.

SPEAKER_04 33:48

Yeah, but I've almost quit. I almost quit on my first one, Air Bud. Um the movie I walked into AF. We made that movie for 4.5 million Canadian. And then part two, same thing. So I walk into AFM one day after both films have been made, and I see all over AFM Airbud one and two, 450 million worldwide, and this is how they're selling. And I'm like, 450 million worldwide, what where's our money? And it turned out, you know, they had hidden the money in all these offshore accounts. We they didn't just screw the writer and I, they screwed the actors and uh other people. The dog, the dog, everybody. And um, so very early on, I got my taste of what it's like to work in Hollywood, and I almost quit then. And then there was a movie I wrote, I came really close. On I wrote a horror film called The Dark that I was very proud of, that everybody said was the next shining. And I went through arbitration at the guild, and I didn't really know much about arbitration or what you're supposed to do when you go in there. I thought, how could they take my name off this movie? I worked on it for seven years, and before I'd even got home, they were calling me in my car to say, Hey, you're losing your writing credit on this film. And it was devastating to me. I mean, I I cried, I was heartbroken. And I told my wife, I'm quitting, I can't fucking do this anymore. And somehow, something probably another good story brought me back, you know. But um, you you so you go through things like that are are frustrating, yeah, to say to say the least.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

Yeah, extraordinary. So I don't really want this podcast to end because um there's some fantastic answers to some average questions, but the um unfortunately the way podcasts work is we do have to end it. So there's a final question we ask every guest. So we'll ask both of you, um, and obviously looking for different answers. So um, and you've sort of hinted at a bit already through your your journey, but we'll ask anyway, because that's how the podcast ends. Which is if you could give a single piece of advice to a writer joining the industry, what would that single piece of advice be?

SPEAKER_04 36:03

What we always say. It's it's a line in our movie, uh, in The Fighter, don't give up, never give up.

SPEAKER_02 36:09

Never give up, never give up, never give up.

SPEAKER_04 36:11

Yeah. Because if you really, I mean, look, you're not going to be happy in life, right? If you're not really trying trying to do something you love doing. And so that's what you really want to do, that just never give up.

SPEAKER_02 36:22

And one thing we do is, you know, we do, I think both of us have a good sense of what's a good story. And when we come across something that we think is a good story, we move as fast as we can to get the rights to it. You it's if you can control the IP, if you can control the rights to it to a true story, because we do mostly true stories, and if you're the one controlling the rights, it keeps you involved all the way through. And and you can be there to push when it needs to be pushed and pull when it needs to be pulled and get it through the whole process.

SPEAKER_04 37:04

But just so you know, in the case of ministry, this big movie we have coming out in a few weeks all started with five minutes before a football game. Neil Paret kicking a football with me and says, Paul, my mom just read a book called Churchill Secret Warriors, and he starts describing to me, and he says, It's a book about the formation of the SAS by Churchill. It's really the James Bond origin story. And on Monday, without even having read the book, we called the author and snapped up the rights because we knew there was a movie there. We actually sold that, by the way, as a franchise to Paramount, which had never been done in Hollywood. We sold a true story franchise. So if in in two weeks, if this movie is successful, there will be two more movies. Because in the book, there were a number of missions that these guys went on that changed the course of the war.

SPEAKER_01 37:58

Unbelievable. So the secrets of success in Hollywood is play football. Be British, play football, and ask people what books their mums are reading, and that's it in this town. That's absolutely true. Right. I knew there was a formula.

SPEAKER_03 38:14

You haven't succeeded until you've been screwed over, until the even the dog has been screwed over on one of your exactly.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Yes. Amazing. Um, Eric Johnson and Paul Tamasi. Uh, this has been a fascinating and fun episode. Thank you very much indeed for your talk. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having us. It's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_04 38:31

All right, see you guys next time. Thanks, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

Thank you guys. 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 away. If you're interested in following us on social media, we've lost track.

SPEAKER_03 39:13

I am Evelyn on Twitter or X or whatever Elon Musk number calls it. And thanks to Elon Musk and Monsieur and No Epson on Hive, Sky Red, MySpace, French, and Shiny.