Take 130 - Writer and Showrunner Mark Goffman, West Wing, Sleepy Hollow, Bull, Irrational

SPEAKER_03 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 shore, dozens of unproduced script littering for All of us are running into both major and minor failures in Hollywood every single day.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

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

SPEAKER_03 0:46

And I probably did it. It's never one bitch job. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

As ever, I am Dan Rutstein, your non-entertainment co-host.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

I am your still in the entertainment business co-host, Noah Epson, this week, anyways. For this week's show, I'm thrilled to introduce TV writer, executive producer, and showrunner Mark Goffman to the podcast. He's written on such amazing series as The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Law and Order SVU, Elementary, Bull, and Sleepy Hollow, these last two, which he also show ran. Limitless, the Umbrella Academy, The Irrational, and many, many others. Welcome, Mark.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

It's a lot. Thanks for having me, Noah and Dan.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Um I'm glad you remembered my name there.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Um so that is a I gotta make you more centered so I can uh look directly at you.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Um so that is I guess it's a good place to start. That is a lot. Um, and this doesn't happen very often. It's actually a lot of shows that I actually watch as well, which is great. Um I'm I'm quite excited for this for this episode. So I guess in all of that, you where did you find time to fail? Because it sounds like you've they've got a lot of credits on some big shows. So presumably there must have been some failures in between. Otherwise, why did we have you on the show?

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah, the whole career started out as a as a stumbling into failure because I actually started uh as a speechwriter and I got a master's degree in public policy, planned on going into you know politics. I started writing for the State Department, and I really started to get disillusioned with politics and um what I was seeing in Washington, and I wrote a spec West Wing because that was kind of the idealized version of everything that I was doing. And um, I was very fortunate that that wound its way towards uh Kevin Falls, who was a co-executive producer on the show, and Aaron Sorkin. And I wound up getting hired to write. And literally the day my security clearance came through at the State Department to write full-time, I got offered a job to write on the West Wing and decided that I'd rather rather work for the fictional government and uh White House than the actual one. And so here I have been here ever since.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

So I I'm obviously fascinated by as somebody who used to work for the British equivalent of the State Department, um, and have written speeches for uh a number of ministers and and half of the prime minister's speech a couple of times. Um it is it's obviously it's it's uh in some ways it's a very similar skill. Um uh and actually nowadays you don't even have to use the the truth anymore in political speeches, so I guess it is very very linked. But um was it really that that binary? You you you wrote you were doing the real thing, and then you used some of those skills to write the fake one, plus obviously, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

It's never that uh binary. There was always like I had toyed with coming out to um LA and writing. Um I'm from Houston, Texas originally. I had no real experience or any connections or you know, I didn't even realize that people wrote the shows that I watched on television, they just appeared. Um, and I didn't study screenwriting in school. Uh in fact, at Emory, where I was going, they had just created a film minor um that year. And so I took a couple of film classes and I always loved it. Um in fact, in high school, we had like a TV show class that was my favorite thing to do. Um, but I didn't, I thought you had to have like a real job. I didn't know that you could actually get paid and make a living and have a career doing this. Um, and I I tried it for like a summer, and you know, I was a terrible assistant. I got fired. So there you go. My my first one. Um, you know, organizational skills at the age of 20 was not my strong point. Um, so I lasted a couple of months at an agency and you know, and then and and then I went and I lived abroad for a while and I loved writing, and I wrote for this magazine called Commerce in Belgium. I thought, all right, well, if I can't, you know, write fiction full time, I at least I can, you know, pour it into something that feels important and will have an impact. Um, but then, you know, I just I got very lucky. Um, you know, I wrote another short story that my brother happened to be dating somebody who uh was an assistant in an agency, and I sent my short story to him. He left it out because he didn't read it, of course. Um, and she happened to read it, and that's how I got an agent.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Wow. Extraordinary any given where the world of politics has gone, and also given where your career has gone, presumably no regrets?

SPEAKER_01 6:13

No, I I really struggle with this. In fact, I'm I'm developing a show now that's like about working through the issue of regret. Um, today's my 18th anniversary, and you know, you always think about like, well, you know, what if I had taken a day, what if I'd taken the job at the State Department? What if I had done something different? And what I've realized is it's completely useless and and um not healthy. And so uh I have no idea what other life, you know, I would have lived, but I'm really happy with this one and I try to maintain that attitude.

SPEAKER_02 6:48

I I wish Mark I knew you a little better so I could bust your balls about a couple of parts of that story, and I'm gonna do it because your cousin is a really good friend of mine, Melissa Linda Hilfer. So, Melissa, on your behalf, I'm gonna bust Mark's balls for a couple of comments you made. Uh all of those people listening, by the way, there's two bits of this story that I find fascinating that he told. One, he wrote a speck of a show and he got on the same show. That never that that not only never happens, that's you're not supposed to do that. Meaning, like the first rule is they can't read a speck of their own show, yet somehow they did, and he got on one of the most important shows in in television history. So that's one point where I'm annoyed in a jealous happening today. Uh, and number two is you left a short story out that someone didn't read and an agent read it, and then you got an agent. So these two, these two are I'm not gonna recommend people writing short stories and leaving them in random places because I think Mark is a needle in a haystack. So, Mark, uh let's find actually like like the struggles within all of this, because obviously those two things went your way. Let's talk, let's try to find a place in your early career where it went super sideways for you.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Sure. Well, but I will say that yeah, those are like happy accidents that really did work out and went against the grain. But I also think that, you know, part of the reason I got that job, and I'd love to think that that script was phenomenal and everybody who read it, loved it, but it's also because I had a skill set that they were looking for on that show. I had lived abroad for a couple of years, I'd done these war game scenarios for NATO, I went to the Kennedy School and had a uh you know public policy degree and was doing speech writing. So I had some knowledge that they that was useful in the writer's room. Um and I think that for a lot of people starting out, like uh back then, I had a bunch of friends who were lawyers and got shows on legal shows or doctors and got shows on or got work on Gray's anatomy. So it you can do it through a skill set as well. And then the fact that I'd written the script, you know, and shown that like at least it had a the number the correct number of acts, if nothing else, you know, is helpful. Um, but you know, I don't know if I would have gotten that job if if it weren't for the skill set.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

I I do think, you know, you're making a comment that more than ever, right now, specificity is important. And for those people who are really beating their heads against the wall, going like there's no way in. If you are a um an expert in something that somebody is creating a show about, you should make all your efforts, call all your friends, cousins, leave scripts out, leave short stories out in their wake so that they can see that you exist so that you can, because I think authenticity of storytelling is really important. This this might seem like a really random question, but I want to ask it anyways. Have you ever made a documentary about ventriloquism that somehow went sideways?

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Oh, yeah, you know, I'm sure you asked that to all of your guests. Yeah, it's my standard question. It's a resounding yes. Um and so my my wife, who I just mentioned, we're celebrating her anniversary. The first time I met her parents, I went out to Indiana and her mom um was very reserved, didn't say a whole lot the whole day I was with her. And then uh around dinner time, my wife suggests that she, you know, her mom get out her puppets and uh, you know, maybe that'll break the ice a little bit. Um and this woman who, you know, you could tell like a lot's going on. You I'm sure you know writers like this too. They're reserved, they don't say a whole lot, but they're just brilliant on the page. Um, her mom, you know, suddenly went up and got this uh puppet called Fire Dog and wound up doing this whole routine. And it was just, it was raunchy, it was hysterical, it was like this whole persona. And I became fascinated by um the fact that she had this hobby and she told us that she went to this convention in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, where all of the amateur vents get together once a year. And so I was like, all right, I really need to see this. And I wound up taking uh a camera crew uh out, and I thought, oh, this will just be like a one-week dock, kind of like Trekkies, um, where I just film at the convention. I fell in love with five different puppets, uh, and they're um, you know, people who handle them, uh ventriloquists, and I wound up following them for what turned out from the week, then I thought it would be a year, then our financier went bankrupt. Uh, and it wound up being a four-year odyssey. Um, and ultimately it turned out to be really successful. We got a theatrical release, um, it did very well. Um, you know, it's still available on Amazon and places. Um, but I can go into some of the specifics about why it took four years and how it almost didn't come out three times. So let's give the thumbnail the worst, the thing that really made you feel like this project was kind of the thing that gave me nightmares was um towards the end of the process, one of the people that we were following became extraordinarily famous. Um, and this was supposed to be like lunch pal ventriloquists in Mansfield, Ohio. One of them was a you know, a Miss Ohio candidate, and that was her talent. And um, and and it was really about like what is it like and what's your support system if you've decided to make ventriloquism your art form and your mode of you know living uh in these very small rural areas. Um, but one of the guys, this gentleman named Terry Fader, uh, was in Corsicana, Texas at the time, then over the course of the documentary got on to America's Got Talent, won America's Got Talent, wound up getting a $100 million deal to headline the Las Vegas Mirage. Um, while while we're shooting, and I'm like there in the CEO's office when he's signing the papers, all this stuff. Towards the end of this whole ordeal, and we think we have this gold mine, you know, and and that's why like it sold and it won the first festival we were in. Um I get a call that there's an issue with the one of the puppets in in the dock. Um, that the frog, uh, there's a rights issue, and the the frog is not cleared. And so we were like, oh god, do we do we have to CGI out a frog? But then the performance won't look right. Um, how do we can we take out the frog from this dock? Nothing, there was there is no way out of this. Um, and then finally we we had to hire a um uh First Amendment attorney who was able to prove uh fair use case and got it cleared, but it took many, many months and delayed you know the release of the film uh because of this frog.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Given what we talked about in terms of sort of authenticity and specificity, given that you know more than your average person now about ventriloquists, in all of your subsequent shows, have you had a ventriloquist dropped into any episodes of of elementary or bull?

SPEAKER_01 14:09

I've thought about it. Other people that I know have have were have consulted on them as the ventriloquist expert. Um, but I feel like I covered the area uh in this in this film called Dumbstruck, and so I haven't gone back and revisited. But I mean, what I related to is, you know, especially when I first started out, um, you know, as a writer, there's a reason I'm not in front of the camera. And I really enjoy writing these, you know, different personas, and um, especially much bigger than life people and people who can say things that uh I wouldn't necessarily say. And I found that, you know, I sort of uh related to the ventriloquists who very often are the straight man and their dummies can get away with anything, and then they can you know try to tame their dummies who won't, um, and that's part of the fun of the routine. Uh so I think a lot of people who are behind the camera, you know, are uh are like that.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Given that you've been in it sounds like at least you're into double figures in number of rooms that you've been in. Um I think it's you're safe to answer this because you can be vague enough that you don't offend anybody particularly. But obviously, given that you know you've been in writing rooms over quite a long span, and Hollywood's changed quite a lot in that time. Can you give us a maybe a couple of examples of not so much specific bad behavior, but bad traits that you've seen in rooms that when you became a show runner, you were very sure that you didn't want to do it that way.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Yeah, the the the biggest thing uh I think is really trying to uh allow, and this is always a challenge because you got minimal time, especially if you're on a show in production. You know that there's a clock and you know that you need to come up with an episode, but every person in that room uh has uh been chosen to be in that room for a reason, and what they have to say needs to be treated with respect and be important. And the behavior that really I think frustrates people is when they're cut off too quickly or their ideas are not at all recognized. And I I think you know, the the reason everyone wants to write and you want to be in the room in the first place is to is self-expression. And so if you're not being heard, if you are not being given a chance, at least the opportunity to fully vet out your ideas um before people move on. Um, that's I think one of the hardest things to deal with. Because then people don't feel respected, they they they shut down, they stop contributing, um, or it can become at worst, it's it's toxic and um you know it doesn't become a place where anybody wants to be. And there are definitely rooms where that's the case, if there's a showrunner or a particular writer who is always kind of commanding the room and and not listening. Um, but that's something I really look out for and try to be mindful of.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Is that because you were the person who were ignored, or you saw other people being ignored in a room?

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Or both? Um both. I mean, more that I I would see and try to help, you know, people get their ideas out there. Um, but sometimes, and this is the the challenge is if the showrunner has a specific direction of the room, you you kind of have to feel out how many times do you want to pitch your idea or bring something up before you know giving up on it or pivoting or trying a new idea. And I have a little test I do, and again, I think it it's it's a good barometer, but like if I pitch an idea, I try to make it short and concise. And if the room continues to talk about that idea, you know, you can see how long of a tail you have. If if a half an hour later they're still talking about that or it's spun other things, that's a successful, you know, pitch that you brought to the room. If after you say it, there's either silence or another idea picks up steam and no one ever comes back to yours, then probably that idea is not resonating right now.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

That's a great piece of advice. Uh I'm looking at all of your this, I'm sorry, I'm gonna apologize in advance, not so much to you, but to the audience because this is a failure podcast and I'm gonna ask a success question. But you you have so many great credits, uh, and you've continued working through you know lean years and great years, and your your your career spans a lot of different shows and eras, really. Uh how what do you think the secret is to 75 years old? He's 93 years old. Uh and sadly he looks younger than me, which is even well, we we can get into that, but the uh definitely looks younger than Dan. So the uh the the uh what do you contribute to you know continuing working on show to show to show to show? Is there a secret? Is it like like try to boil it down to one or two things? Obviously, you have to be a good writer, but like that's keeping you bouncing through so many different amazing shows.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Um every show, I feel like whether the show works or not, you know, you want to give it a a thousand percent. And like I will put everything into it, even if I don't know whether it's gonna work, but like I really try to put uh everything I have into a show when I'm there. Um, and it's just kind of part of a an obsessive personality, which has other other problems, but helps, you know, with the shows. And I really like I try to embrace everything about that show when I'm on it. And it used to be a lot easier because you could have just one show that you're working on and and not think about anything else. Um and then the other thing I guess is you know, I I really enjoy the collaborative process. I like working with other writers. And when you find other talented people like you know, you're working with John Wells, you know, continue working with them. Um, and I was really lucky to have mentors like like Aaron and John, who, you know, I went back and I worked with Aaron on a couple of other shows and and with John on um you know, um, on another show. And so I, you know, and and I probably if you look, there are several other writers um, you know, I can continually trace, like on Limitless, that came about because I worked on Elementary with with uh Craig, uh, who's the the showrunner of Limitless, and he was uh he was one of the the number two on elementary. And you know, I got Sleepy Hollow because I pitched a show. Here's a failure story. Um, I pitched a show to uh a woman named Heather Caden, who was working with Kurtzman Orsi at the time, and I really wanted to do a sci-fi show, uh genre show. So I pitched in this thing that I had kind of fallen in love with, and they were like, it sounds great, but we we just sold another show that explores similar themes, and um, so you know, that pitch never went anywhere. Um, but I wound up then doing another pilot, and then six months later, they needed a showrunner for that uh pitch, which they'd sold to Fox, which became Sleepy Hollow. And I came on to work uh and and to run that show. Um, but part of that, I think the reason they thought of me is because they knew that six months earlier I'd I had a failed pitch, um, you know, just exploring similar themes and characters.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

That's fascinating. We we we this is making me think we had a conversation really early on uh on this podcast with Jeffrey Lieber, who's come back actually. He's one of our few people who's come on twice. And Jeffrey Lieber famously on our talked about on our podcast how he wrote the pilot for lost and then it Was rewritten completely by uh you know David Lindelof and J.J. Abrams, and he's still on it. So he must have had some DNA. His name is still on it. So he got money and credit, but really wasn't the pilot he he wrote. And obviously he's been the show owner of many other things. And now he wrote a really, you know, a play which is launching uh that he's really proud of. But we talked about writing your soul's sort of work and writing things that really, even though you have end up having a lot of credits, like have you written the thing? Obviously, I'm not trying to discredit the shows you've been on because you're a worker bee on those show, and I'm sure you worked really hard and you loved it. But have you stamped your DNA into something that you're super proud of, or is that still a work in progress?

SPEAKER_01 22:40

I think it's a work in progress. I mean, every episode I do, I try to find some part of me that's in, even if they're in other characters. Um, and I I find something that resonates. You shouldn't work on a show if you can't find something in yourself that makes you inspired to to watch it and to write on it. Um, and I've been lucky that, yeah, we've we've had really great actors and and other writers that on these shows. And it's easier in the earlier seasons of those shows to to find yourself in them too and help, you know, because the shows are still being created. Um, you know, there was a play that I wrote that was one of the first things that I did that was inspired by my grandfather, and you know, it was uh just a little four-person play. Um, but I'm really proud of that. And that's probably one of the closest like personal stories I've told. And then I have a show now that I'm developing that um I've I've really put like a lot of my family stories into. And it's the one this one about regret and you know the life chosen versus the one not. Um, and so that one's probably like the most personal, I would say, to me, where like my soul is all over it. We'll we'll see how it does. So if anybody actually wants to watch it.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

Slightly oddly, I'm not sure I've ever asked this question in 120-something episodes. Um, and I think it's because Noah cheated by not asking failure questions, so I might as well make this a success question as well. Um, of all the different bits of the job, particularly now that you you're a show runner, what what is the bit that you actually enjoy? Is it the you know, literally like the words on the page? Is it post? Is it calling the actors together and telling them things? What is it watching it on TV often? What is the bit that gives you the the gives you the most is the most fulfilling?

SPEAKER_01 24:39

There's a moment like when you're in the flow and you've got an uh a story that works really well, and you're getting and you're writing that story. I think that's I've always like first and foremost thought of myself as a writer. And there are those times when you're sitting at the computer and you actually know where it's going and you know what's working in the scene, and the characters are making you feel something, and there's something, and even a little bit surprising in the writing um that gets you and makes you pause, but then you're still in it. I that's probably like the happiest place. And it's usually the you know, the the virgin snow. It's like before you've turned it in to anyone else, um, before you've gone through a thousand different rewrites and um you've seen it on your on its feet. Um, that's that's probably like the number one place. But I I really I've come to enjoy you know every aspect because it's such a collaborative medium. Like there's three, four, five hundred people working on on these shows, um, the bigger shows. And you know, it when it's working well and you have great talented editors and VFX people, and they bring you stuff that you haven't seen before that's way better than what you had in your head. Um, I mean, it's it's really magical, it's fun.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

So I I think obviously I'm not in the industry, so this may be a really offensive question. And if it is, it's not meant to be. Um, but the point you made about sort of your favorite time is when sort of your as you said, the sort of the virgin snow part. Are your shows better in your head than they are on TV?

SPEAKER_01 26:33

God, that's a good question. There was a director who once told me if you can get about 60 or 70 percent of what's in your head on screen, you you've been really successful. And um, so that's always been like my like barometer or my goal. Um usually, I can't say always, usually it's better uh on screen because by the time it's been through the machinery, you know, if when when you have other really good writers, you have a solid director, and you have talented actors, every one of them is taking it and adding something to the show that's making it better. Um, it might I've given up also on trying to have like, oh, this is exactly at least in television, like my vision is the only one, and I'm only gonna see it the way I see it. Like I've really come to appreciate what other people are bringing to it. And if it's wildly off where it's not making sense, that's one thing. But if they're bringing something that's different, but it's more interesting, I I I go with it and just like let's you know, let's let's allow this to to grow in different directions than maybe we initially set out.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

It's always so interesting. I've been on set a lot watching the words become three-dimensional, you know, when they when they quote unquote, they get it on its feet, and it's like you see how much an actor can bring to a good actor can bring to words that weren't meant to be that profound, and then all of a sudden they find or turn a phrase and it they add something to it. Obviously, bad actors have the opposite effect sometimes, but it's mostly good actors bringing good things to the writing and can turn, you know, something that's clunky. And you also really learn quickly. And it's recommend anyone who's out there and who's an aspiring writer to try to get people to read your work because you realize when you start to hear it that it's not as good as maybe you thought it was. And the more you hear it, the better you get at hearing that thing.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

Or the good actors will challenge you. I've been on shows where the actors will come to you and say, This is shit. This doesn't work. I I don't know how to say this, you know. Uh, and then you can work with them on that. Um, but also, you know, you know, you've sat through audition processes and you can tell when something it's interesting because sometimes you'll watch 10 people deliver the same scene, and the first five, you're like, oh God, I'm a terrible writer. Why did I go into this business? And then the sixth person just nails it, and you're like, that's genius. And and sometimes it's hard to even, you know, put pinpoint exactly what that one actor did that changed the way the piece worked. Um, but you can really see it when you watch back to back the same people reading the material.

SPEAKER_02 29:15

Oh, yeah, it's such a fascinating thing. We can talk about that for hours, is going through those casting tapes and hearing it again and again, and hearing that thing that you hate just give the echo in your head. Uh, but or you come to hate, anyways.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

They go, okay, I'm gonna rewrite this scene anyway. Definitely.

SPEAKER_02 29:29

The audition. The the um let me ask you a question about failure because that again is our bread and butter. Is there any moment, any any particular failure in your career that still echoes in your head? Like you just wince at it, or if you had just done something slightly different, it would have been a success, or you know, any version of that?

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Yeah, uh usually it's more political than creative. I think when you're when you're showrunning, um, really managing both up and down is incredibly important. And uh there was one show where I really I stood on what I thought I was doing the right thing. And um, you know, it it turns out I just I alienated some of the executives. Um, and even though, you know, I stood on principle, it wasn't ultimately, I think, healthy for me being able to keep the job um or the show. And then after that, it, you know, there was a cleaning house of a of the the other writers, so I didn't even get to protect them in the way that I wanted. So um, you know, that one I think still frustrates me, you know, looking back.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

Um is there a you you're not allowed to say you the answer to this question is not allowed to be, you know, do you love all your children equally? Because that's the cop out. So um in all of the shows that you've worked on, um, and this is less about sort of what was your favorite show, but I guess more in terms of I like the way you've described sort of the bit you enjoy of the job and the fact that, as you say, at its heart, you were writer. Is there probably one scene in one show over your whole career that just it's not necessarily it means something to you, but it's you did something that made sort of your made your whole career worthwhile. That's just sort of either something you've changed or something you you did. Of all of them, is there one that stands out to you as a really special sort of career moment? And I'm gonna ask the opposite version of that.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Sure. I can answer both. And the the first one that stood out to me was again one of the first ones that I ever did on the West Wing. Um, I was really fascinated by uh the Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton showdown, shutdown of the government that lasted about seven weeks, and I wanted to do something on the show. So I pitched a version of that. Um, and then when writing the episode, uh, the way that show works is they had one maybe two times a year where they could afford to go to Washington, D.C. and shoot actually in the city. And I had this idea of a walk. Ronald Reagan actually did this, which is from another shutdown, one of the earlier ones in the 80s, um, where he got out of his out of the presidential limo and walked down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol to prove that he was serious about negotiating and solving this crisis. And no one had ever done that. And people thought he would look weak for the, you know, no, the president should be the Congress should go to the White House, not the other way around. Anyway, I came up with this scene and and I came and started to write the episode. And they said, well, the only way we can do this is, you know, we're going to Washington like next week, basically. And so we're gonna have to write this scene before I had written any of the episode. And I only had like a notion of sort of the whole structure of the of what this the episode would look like. So I wrote that scene where he, the president Bartlett, gets out of the car uh and the and there's a whole sequence where he, you know, talks to uh some people from Indiana, because that's where my wife was, or the woman I was dating then who became my wife is from. And and then he gets back in. And I wrote that sequence without knowing exactly what if it was going to work. I was like, I hope this can work as the climax to, you know, that'll be the pivot turning point in the episode. Um, and then, you know, I I had the rest of the week to kind of work work it out. Um, they shot that sequence and I thought it was really powerful. And you know, Martin Sheen and everyone were just phenomenal actors. And so by miracle, the episode worked. And and um, you know, it was a really, I think, impactful episode. It was one of the first episodes, it was the first episode of the show that I had sole rating credit on, and so I I that one I still remember.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Amazing answer. I love that. Right, cool. Give me give me the other version. I guess it has to be one that was made, though, because obviously there's lots of scenes that you wrote that never got made, but is there one that sticks out where maybe an executive ruined it for you or you made a mistake and now it's immortalized?

SPEAKER_01 34:28

So the tons. This isn't a scene. This is a whole pilot. This was uh almost a year of my life. Um, I did a pilot that uh, you know, it was based on a book. Um, I came in, I pitched basically, you know, the adaptation of the book, and I used really what was the the sore and the source material of like the core idea, very well laid out. Everybody knew what that was. Uh got approved. I wrote uh a pitch and a pitch document, which is the next step, write an outline. Then I wrote the script, and um it was funny because on the score, I guess it was the outline. Um, this is when I I assumed the pilot would never get made because it was the day before Thanksgiving. You get your notes call from the network when you you know finish your your outline, and it was like a five minutes note call. And usually if you either it's getting picked up or they just don't care if you have if it's a short notes call. Um, and so I was like, well, whatever, I'm gonna I'm gonna write this thing and and hope for the best. And then um it started to gain traction and the pilot got picked up and we shot it, or before we shot it, we then went through the whole casting process. Um, and then when we did a run through three days before we start production, and and I guess at that point, so some some of the higher-ups or one of the higher-ups saw it and decided there was a premise issue. Um, and I was like, We've uh, you know, we're we're kind of the ship has sailed on the on the premise of this pilot. Like uh we're shooting in three days. And they were like, You're not shooting it in three days. We're gonna we're gonna shut off production if we can't fix this issue. And so I had uh basically spent the next week trying to rewrite it while in production so that we didn't shut down to fix the premise of a pilot while while we're making it, um, which is uh not an easy uh task, um, and ultimately not successful as the pilot when they got it, they were like, Yeah, I don't know if this, you know, the the thing they says, like the premise doesn't totally work. And I was like, I know we kind of ripped that out earlier. Um so that was that was tough.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Amazing. Um will say I say this all the guests, but this this is a podcast that we could do for three hours because all your answers are fascinating. But unfortunately, that's not how podcasts work. So we're actually gonna have to do the the final question, um, which I'm sure will be another great answer. So, as you may or may not know, we ask every guest as the final question. If you could give a single piece of advice for somebody wanting to enter the industry, what would that piece of advice be?

SPEAKER_01 37:24

All right, I'm gonna I I actually have a list of five. I'm gonna give two because I think these are critical. And I'll try to be allowed.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

You can't have been very good at notes from executives if I've just given you a clear instruction. You're like, well, I think I'm just gonna do what I like instead.

SPEAKER_01 37:39

But I'm doing I'm yes ending, I'm doing what you said, plus plus more. I'm giving you a seems very prepared. Always over deliver, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:48

All right, okay, you can do so. It's an exception.

SPEAKER_01 37:51

Thank you. All right, all right. Um, well, the first is I always look at this like I try, even though this uh I know it's the premise of your show, like every I try to take the word failure out of it and say, This is an experiment. I'm gonna try it. If it doesn't work, then I'm gonna try something else. But you get information. It's like when you're doing Wordle, you know, you put in a bunch and you go, oh, okay, so this letter goes here. Now I know this much. And so every time I write something, I get some feedback, I learn what's working, what's not, and I can keep dialing it in. So I don't have to accept failure until I finally put something away. Um, but even then it might come back at some point. So thinking of life and the work as more of an experiment that you're playing with, as opposed to uh, you know, a definitive binary yes, fail or not as one. And then the second thing, which I think has served me really well is mentors, really seeking out great people who you admire, truly admire, um, and going to them real just for advice, not for jobs, but for somebody who you can turn to and learn from. Um there are people who really have have influenced and changed my life because of that. And so those are probably the two most important things to me.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Magnificent. Only because your answers were so good are we gonna not cut one of these out.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Um you've got final at it, so you can uh you can decide.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

Um, Mark Goffman, been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Uh, really, really enjoyable episode. I hope our listeners agree. Uh, but thank you very much indeed.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

Thank you. And uh next time we'll talk more about Melissa. Definitely. Thanks, Mark. Thanks uh Mike.

SPEAKER_02 39:42

Thank you so much for listening, and thank you, James Launch, for the music and our wives for putting up with our commentary. As always, each episode is brought to you by Scriptation, my favorite screenwriting annotations. If you want to support the show, please download a copy at www.scriptation.com slash.scriptation.com slash dance. If you want to find me on social media, I'm happy.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

Don't worry about me on social media because we care about