Take 134 - Writer and Showrunner Kevin Abbott, Roseanne, Golden Girls, Happy’s Place

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 sure, dozens of unproduced scripts littering the floor.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

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

SPEAKER_02 0:20

For every success, there is months, sometimes even years, of painful failure. This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

That's the normal thing we have to be able to persevere. Like everything in our business here has counted.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

That process takes care of that doesn't matter overnight. I was being told by my manager it's yours to lose. And I promptly lost it. And I remember thinking like, well, that's it for me. I blew my one big shot. What I've realized from that moment is it's never one big shot. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

As always, I'm your still in the entertainment business, co-host Noah Evelsn. A quick note that if you're missing hearing that British accident, British accent that you've all come to go and love, it also is a British accident. Uh Dan is not here today, so we're going to be doing it alone. But for this week's podcast, I'm thrilled to introduce TV writer, producer, and showrunner Kevin Abbott to the show. Kevin has worked on over 20 series going back to the Golden Girls and Roseanne. So I'm now I'm going to now just list the ones he was the executive producer on, which includes, but is not limited to Two Guys, a girl in a pizza place, Adopted, Reba, my name is Earl, Christella, The Cool Kids, Last Man Standing, and most recently, Happy Place, which he now also showruns. Welcome, Kevin.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Welcome. I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Uh, well, you know, we talked a little bit before, so you kind of know what you're getting into. So I'm gonna just set the stage a little bit for this episode and this podcast for for the audience. And let's talk a little bit about, you know, how you got into the business and maybe what was one of your earliest struggles about breaking in.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Yeah, you know, I uh uh I was at UCLA, I was a senior at UCLA, uh, and I was an economics major. So uh basically I loved economics, but I didn't want to do anything that the degree would actually qualify me for. Uh and I'd always been a big reader, so I thought I'd take a shot at writing. Uh, you know, and when I sat down to think about what kind of writing, uh, I actually my thought process went like this what's the smallest, shortest thing I could write to find out if I can do this first? And that would have been short stories, but you can't make any money on that unless you're an established writer. So then I went to Half Hour Sitcoms, uh, and UCLA had a bunch of uh scripts donated from the Cheers creators. So I started reading that. Uh, I wrote a spec script, and I I knew a friend that was working at NBC at the time, uh, and I gave it to him. And he said, Well, first off, scripts are longer than 25 pages. Uh and uh he goes, It's it's it's lacking uh some structure and blah, blah, blah. But there's some great jokes and great thoughts in here. So he he steered me to uh what used to, I don't even know if he's still doing it. Robert McKee used to run this uh uh three-day seminar on uh storytelling. So I took that, I read some books, I I kept writing, just wrote and wrote and wrote, and eventually I had a cheers spec script that I gave to him, and he uh he passed it around to a couple uh of shows and I got uh pitches at two shows. Uh a show that was called uh Me and Mrs. C that only went 13 episodes, you've never heard of it, and uh An Alf. Uh and I wrote both of those. And then, you know, as is so often the case, once you get into the business, it's a lot easier to find work. It's the getting in that is so difficult. Uh it's difficult after that, it's always difficult, but it the hardest hurdle, I think, really, is that that getting in. And uh, once I got going, I mean, I I uh I just stayed pretty much in four-camera comedy, other than my name is Earl. Uh, because I I I like four-camera comedy. Uh, but that's it. I mean, I I think that a lot of it is just writing. I mean, you gotta you gotta keep writing and you gotta approach it like uh, you know, don't look at TV and go, I can write better than that. You know, you gotta look at the best shows and say, okay, can I write as good as that? Uh and then aim for that.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Oddly enough, I was an econ major as well. Uh kind of comment. I think you know, after you do econometrics or you know, high-level statistics, you realize you want to do anything but that.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Exactly. Right. Uh office all day and doing that would have killed me.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Uh, little did we know what we were about to get ourselves into. Uh a more granular question, because you you glossed over this a little bit where you kind of stumbled into writing about, you know, wanting to write for television. You know, when did you realize sort of TV writing was even a thing?

SPEAKER_00 5:05

You know, I have to say I was very lucky in the sense that, yeah, I did kind of just stumble into it. I had no idea. Um, my friend sat me up with two writers, Richard Vaxy and Tracy Gamble, who were writing team uh back in the day, and they uh worked on Golden Girls at the time, or I'm sorry, room 222. And uh just to even tell me what the business was like, I knew nothing. I knew nothing about it. So I went and visited them, and like I said, they were working on 222, which was Marla, I can't remember her last name, but uh they were miserable. I mean, literally, they uh they got done with this idea you're gonna want to walk away from this really fast, aren't you? Because we just made this sound horrible. I was like, no, I'll give it a shot. And like a week later, I got a call uh from to go pitch to Scoey Mitchell for me and Mrs. C. So I called him up and I said, Well, what's a pitch? What are you doing to pitch? Uh and I assume that uh whoever's listening doesn't know anything about it. A pitch is just going in and pitching at the time for four to five story ideas, beginning, middle, and end, um, with the characters. And uh I went in and my first uh Scoey was supposed to meet me at my time, and I'm sitting there in the ante-room for like half an hour, and finally his uh assistant, I hear her on the phone call, yeah, he's here. You're supposed to have had a meeting half an hour ago. Okay, okay. And he shows up like 15 minutes later in sweatpants, clearly had just gotten out of bed or something. Uh, and I pitched to him and I sold, sold a show, and then I called these guys back and I said, So, you know, how much does this pay? I had no idea what it was, and I didn't want to ask any questions because then I realized they're gonna realize I don't know what the hell I'm doing here. Uh and it paid more than I'd made the entire last year. So it was, and that at the time it was 10 grand, I think that's how far back it was, 86. Uh, but yeah, that was that from and at that point I still kept my old job. I was doing data inputting at a law firm. And and then I sold an alf about two months later, and then I I I quit uh my job and started doing this full time. But it really was not, it was less a drive to do it and more that I kind of stumbled into it. I've always liked comedies, uh, I've always been drawn to them. I mean, happy days all the way back, and cheers was obviously my favorite back in the day, and taxi. Uh, and so when I started doing it, I think I just was less thoughtful about it and more just kind of drawn to it, and uh was was was you know blessed enough to to wind up in a field where you know I found some success.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

A couple of comments on that, because you made me think about when I was starting to, and you go into all of these meetings and you start hearing all these terms and you have no idea what they are general. Yes, you know, and nobody, your your agents, even when they sign a new client or your managers, they're not really telling you what all of this stuff is. My first pitch to my horror, which was a pitch uh to Wolfgang Peterson's company, uh Greek myth, after he had did Troy, I think last an hour and 45 minutes for a feature pitch, right? No one had told me it was supposed to be like fight 18 minutes. Like I was like pitching out every beat of the movie and and said, you know, podcasts like this and other podcasts now you can learn a little bit from those mistakes along the way. But I'm I'm really curious, sort of I wouldn't call myself a historian of filming television, although I taught history, you know, at the university level for a while. But in this sense, I'm really curious about the differences between a room in the 80s, comedy room, and a room today. Can you talk a little bit about what it was like to be a room in the room of like Roseanne or the golden or you know, pitching on Alf? Like what it what were those rooms like and what was your normal day like?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Yeah, I mean that they it's changed so much. You know, I like to say the business, you know, when I got in, it was there were still only three networks my first year in the business. There's still just CBS, ABC, and NBC, and that was it. So it was a much smaller kind of a community. Um when I got in, it was freelancing. You know, they had smaller rooms, they just they'd have maybe five, six writers uh on on a show. As a matter of fact, on my first show that I got on, it was called uh just the ten of us, and we that we were in partnership with Growing Pains. The same two exec producers ran it, so they ran us on both shows, and there were only six writers for you know, for basically what amounted to 44 episodes. Uh they were well, you could drink, you could drink in the old rooms. Uh people would occasionally do drugs. Uh, they were they were a little bit wilder. Uh there were uh, you know, it was smoking. I mean, I used to come home uh from some of my shows, my sweater just reeking of of smoke because uh three or four people were chain smokers in the room as you were pitching. Uh there were more writers, you know. Roseanne, the most writers we had in the Roseanne room was 25. We had 25 riders. Yeah. Now, the caveat to that is they weren't all writers. Roseanne used to essentially give them out as Christmas presents. I mean, we had one of the one of the writers was a guy that used to give Tom Arnold free drinks after he came in with a hangover, and she gave him a job. Uh, you know, she would just give people she liked jobs. So we'd have to send them off in other rooms, sometimes come up with an episode title. You know, there'd be 10 people in the room coming with the title for the episode uh while we were trying to uh to get stuff done. So there were there were a lot more voices in the room. The hours I think were were heinous. Uh when I was doing growing pains, we I saw 8 a.m. in the morning five, six times uh during that season. It was uh a brutal, brutal schedule. And that was we didn't get any time off to write scripts. I wrote seven scripts that year, and I had to write them on the time off I had from the shows, which was barely any. And at the time I was 24, and I remember telling my wife, just, I don't think I can do it. If all shows are like this, I can't do this as a job. It's it's it's insane. You know, Roseanne, we never got off before 10 p.m. ever. We saw three, four in the morning a lot. Uh we would get done sometimes. We'd finish the rewrite at say seven, and then Rob would want to, my showrunner, Rob Ewell, would go, Well, let's talk about stories. And you know, it's like, what are we doing talking about stories at 7 p.m.? Now I later found out that Tom Arnold was telling Roseanne, they were married at the time, was telling Roseanne that he was uh in the room with us doing rewrites. Uh, but he was off sleeping with his mistress, Kim. So we had to cover for him. We had to be there in case Roseanne called to check in on us. Uh, so we all stayed there till 10 every night to be Tom's cover, which Roseanne, by the way, found out about it anyway. That was the year they that uh she went on Dave Letterman, and the two of them married Kim, the assistant, uh, and then they eventually broke up that year. That was an interesting year. But you had a lot more kind of chaos, it feels the rooms are smaller now. Um, they're more they're less free in some ways. I mean, it's good in some ways and bad in some ways. I mean, it's it's the worst things I I used to say that at the end of a production season, I couldn't go to a party with normal people because I would say things that would be perfectly acceptable in the comedy room that would horrify anybody that actually had a sense of of taste or decorum, you know. And it would be like, What? What did I just say? You know, yeah, push the nun down the stairs. Why isn't that funny? Why aren't people laughing? Uh it was it was, you know, it was tough. It was tough, but it was fun. When I get together with people that were Roseanne riders or uh Grace Under Fire riders, we always say it's kind of like Vietnam vets getting back together and swapping war stories. And it's always funny how you can forget some truly horrible things that people did. And somebody will tell you, it's like, remember when Brett Flashed, the little kid backstage, oh, that's right. I totally forgot she did that. Uh it it was just kind of chaos. And it's it's uh, you know, with the corporations taking over, there's been a lot more uh, you know, you could you can only behave so many ways. You know, when we did uh I remember when I had to go to the first sexual harassment seminars on Golden Girls, and Jim Valilee was in it. Jimmy, Jim and uh Mitch Hurwich created uh uh Arrested Development. And Jimmy walks in, and the woman teaching the sexual harassment course, he goes, Who's gonna tell me about sexual harassment tits? So there was there was a lot more like that. You know, quick story. Ed Ed dot uh what was his name? Ed dot Weinberg. I pitched to him. He was doing a show with Sherman Hemsley called Amen. And I was pitching to him, and I was he was seated at his desk, and I'm in front of the desk, and in the middle of the pitch, he gets up and there's a bathroom behind him, goes into the bathroom behind him, and I can hear him start to pee. So I stopped pitching. He goes, No, no, go on, I can still hear you. And he can't be it.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

And did you did you did you get the pitch?

SPEAKER_00 14:01

I sold the story. Yes, I sold the story.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

There we go. I I do I do want to interrupt for a second and say that we've had, I don't know, 130 odd episodes of this podcast. And this is already one of my favorite podcasts, getting into the stories. Um and I've heard, you know, I'm in a drama room, I've only been in the business since 2007, and even things have changed a lot since then. That like comedy rooms were brutal, the hours, but the the whole thing. I mean, when you when you make the comparison to Vietnam and say, well, Vietnam, but I've heard stories of just like like endless hours, you know, you're pushing to a production, you're producing, you know, trying to get the thing on the air every week, which is not what drama writers need to do. I mean, that we have a deadline, but not something that's going to air right in front of us, uh, like you guys do. Uh, and I heard that, you know, that there I saw a statistic once which kind of horrified me earlier in my career that screen uh TV writing is number five of the of the most of the most miserable, like the people like the miserable job to have in the country, number five is screenwriting. Uh miserable people, miserable out. And I'm like over cleaning sewer systems. Like, I was just trying to think of like ice ice fishing, like the TV writing is you know, but then but then you have the stories like from you know, I read David Milch's uh autobiography recently where he talked about being a story editor and buying a house in Bel Air. So, like obviously, some things have changed kind of coming into this environment. So I kind of want to do this a little, you know. Normally I try to stay chronological chronological, but because we're kind of thinking about this, like, talk a little bit more about like, you know, there was three people are scared right now. I just want to you know justifiably. People people listening, we had there was you know, there's gonna be a 30 to 40 percent reduction in probably TV writers and television shows. There's uh most of my people that friends, colleagues, high level, low level, most of them are out of work. Not all of them, but many of them. Many of our guild is not working at this second. Yet there's something like there was 699 shows in peak television. There is now like 500, but I heard it's going down to like 300, maybe. That's still many, many more than when there was just ABC, CBS, and NBC, and that's what you guys are fighting for. To talk a little bit about the differences, maybe at this point in your career, you know, as a showrunner level, you're not dealing with some of the stuff that people are, you know, dealing with coming in, but like like some of the fears is this the worst moment in Hollywood? Has there been worse moments?

SPEAKER_00 16:29

No, it is absolutely. You know, what I used to say, I mean, you know, people will ask me all the time how how do I get in, what do I do? And I you know, look, the business has been very good to me. Um that being said, I I can't recommend this to anybody because it when I got in, there were only three networks, right? But it used to be that that there was the brass ring at the end of it. You know, you you would work your way up and you would try to create a show. And if you got it created a show, you would buy a house in Bel Air. I mean, as a staff writer, you would make really good money. You know, as a producer, you would make really good money. But what I used to say was that it we we were like athletes in essence. We had a we had a career that was going to end before we were, you know, 50. I mean, if you got in early, I got in when I was 23. I remember when I got in, my goal was to work 20 years so that I could get vested in the health fund. Uh, because in comedy writing, there just there weren't that many uh comedy writers that had worked 20 years. You know, you'd work up and then you got your shot. And if you didn't make it, you kind of got replaced. You had to, you know, you were like sharks. You had to keep moving or you were gonna die. Uh, but there was enough that you could live on. And if you were smart, uh you could live on it for the rest of your life with with uh residuals and and with the retirement fund. Um, I was lucky, if you would have it, that my first year was my the first year after I got in was 88, which is still the longest writer's strike in guild history, even longer than the one we just had, by I believe a month. Uh so I learned right then that, yeah, this is very unstable. This is an unstable business. You can't count on it. Do not live uh on what you make. Always live below your means. So I always put away money, but but that was a time that you could save enough. You could make enough and then save enough if you worked, say, 20 years, that you could live a nice uh middle class lifestyle on it. You can't do that anymore. Uh the jobs seem the pay goes up and everything, but people are making less. Uh between short orders, streaming, uh, the cut down in syndication so that the residuals are way down, uh, the corporations kind of coming in and beating everybody down and sucking out all the money. Uh, they're just getting into this business seems insane as a writer. I mean, it I don't know how you can keep manage it by getting a couple of jobs. I mean, uh, plus there isn't any, even if you get a show, if it's on streaming, you don't know that there's a schedule when it's come gonna come back on and how many episodes, and you can't plan or anything. So it's gone from when it went CBS, ABC, NBC to Fox, was this my third year in the business, came on the air, and then the Netlets, uh, and eventually some cable. At that point in time, the money did keep expanding for writers. Uh, I was kind of in the last wave of overall deals where you would get large overall deals to just develop. Um, then they switched it to develop and they could loan you out to shows, which really kind of hampered development. And then those deals really largely went away, except for the Ryan Murphy's and the Shonda Rhimes of the business, uh, which you know are the exception. Any writer actually working in Hollywood is an exception. So the Shonda Rhimes and the Ryan Murphys are the exceptions to the exceptions. Most people are trying to get jobs and keep working, and those jobs aren't going to pay them enough to extend over the the lifetime of their their earning careers, you know. And and I used to say when I got done running uh Reba uh back in 2007, I pretty much thought my career was over at that time because I I couldn't get a meeting, I couldn't get in to see any any uh network people to even pitch shows, they wouldn't even hear from me, it which was baffling to me. I'd just come off running a show that had gone for five years, made a lot of money, and I couldn't get in the room to talk to anybody. Uh and I realized I don't have any other skills. You know, I'd gotten to the point of there were no skills that I learned as a showrunner that would translate to any other job, other than maybe teaching other people those useless skills. Uh, and it was kind of terrifying. It was just kind of terrifying, you know, it was a very depressed period for me. And and I was doing really, really well. I mean, I'd worked at that point in time for over 20 years. I was vested, I had retirement funds. But, you know, it's tough to be 40 and think my career is over. I mean, it is equivalent to being a child actor, a child star, and suddenly the best years of your life seem behind you, and what you've done and what you were previously really good at and valued for is no longer valued. It's it was it was it was hard, you know, and and I think it's worse today. I think it's far worse. Uh, they are trying to cut down on the rooms. You know, we just had the big strike over the the mini rooms and and trying to, you know, keep all the money to themselves. And it just seems that they transferred the all of the profits. I mean, it's still obviously a super profitable business. They've learned better how to hide that and where how to have the value be transferred into streaming services and libraries as opposed to being paid to anybody. Uh, but you it doesn't come to the creative people anymore. Whereas it used to be everybody got to share in it when it was just studios and networks, and uh they didn't hadn't refer hadn't uh rescinded fin the fin sin rules yet, the rules of finance and syndication, which prevented people from owning vertically the means of production and and uh and distribution. Uh once they did that, then all the money started just going to the business side of show business. You know, it became business, business, business show instead of show business. And it's made it, it's made it really tough on the creatives, I think. I they don't value the creatives, is really what it boils down to. The people at the very top in the financial uh offices, not the creative side, the creative people at the network in the studio do, but the people that just the numbers people do not. They don't value the creative people. They view writers as replaceable, they view actors as replaceable. They just one is just as good as the other. And no, I think you and I both know that's just not true. Uh, but it is the reality these days. And and I I feel it's it's gonna be much harder for somebody that would be starting off like I did to be successful and stay in the business than it was for me back then. I mean, back then it was once you got in, the community was so small that you could you could get jobs if you were doing your job well. Nowadays that's not even necessarily the case. You know, you can get in, be really good at the show you're working on, and nobody knows anybody else or uh is able to communicate that, and then you don't you can't you can't trade that experience in for another job.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

You do you think you hear all these things about survive until 25, and then you hear survive through 25, which is a little bit more horrifying. I mean, in your experience, because you man, you have a ton of it, and you've seen different sort of eons of Hollywood and movements, and I 100% agree that we've moved to a business, way more business-oriented Hollywood than ever before. Creatives used to run creatives, and people who love film and TV used to run things to a certain degree, and for a while they haven't. And that's the that's you know, we paid the price for that up to a little to some degree. Do you see change occurring? Change back? I mean, uh I mean, because I feel like either we change or we break. Like, I don't see an another answer for that.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

I don't, yeah, I agree with you. No, this is not sustainable. I mean, I've spent in my now, this is my 37th year. Good lord. It's my 37th year in the business. Uh, I've spent, I I tallied it up after the last strike. I've spent uh over a a year and three months on strike uh over various issues. And I'm a huge guild supporter. I'm not a big strike person. I think strikes are so damaging. I've seen so many lives ruined during strikes. So I only I only get enthusiastic, I only get super supportive of the strike when it has to be done. And this one had to be done because these issues are they are ones that will kill riders. I mean, that you can't live under the current system and under the the the rules that they had prior to the strike, but even to a certain degree the rules they have now. I think it has to change. I I agree with you that it will it will break because you can't it I just don't see how people can sustain making a living. There's the the passion to do what we do will carry you only so far. Um at some point in time, you you actually need to get returns on that. You know, I mean obviously I take a lot of joy in creating shows and in and in in individual episodes and in performances. That's that's a thrill. But at some point I also have responsibilities to uh to my family and my kids and and the bills and whatnot. And I'm using that not really as a as a true example. I'm waiting I'm past that. But but for anybody coming up in the business, you're just not you're not making a livable wage in Los Angeles. Uh you can't either the business has to move out of Los Angeles and into someplace else because to a certain degree, I mean, I can't speak to dramas. I I would imagine you're more dependent on production facilities and uh whatnot, that it's much more difficult to go to a place, say North Carolina, that that doesn't have the infrastructure there to help out, whereas as sitcom, four-camera sitcom, which is my primary field, is it's easier. You put up a stage somewhere, you get some lighting, and you get four cameramen and you can do it. Um but I think also that the infrastructure is becoming less necessary in in my field. And either there's they're going to start doing things where it's a lot more amateurish looking, such as on a TikTok or uh, you know, making videos because you can the cameras aren't as necessary anymore to get professional quality, uh, or you're just going to see a lot of bad product, a lot of bad shows, bad movies made by people who haven't had a chance to uh to grow up in the business. I mean, I want to say one other thing that was important to me during the strike, which is the mini rooms was a horrible idea. They're they're only they're only a good idea to the money people. That's it. Because it's not just the money that writers are missing out on, it's the experience. I mean, I learned so much from watching showrunners handle the day-to-day, how to deal with actors, how to deal with the studio and network, how to listen to notes, how to address notes, uh, just all of the million and one things you wouldn't think about behind the scenes of a show that have to be taken care of. Uh you've got to learn that stuff, how to talk to directors, uh, how to convey the intent of what you want this scene to be, how to, you know, how to recognize that a scene's not working. And if you don't have people on set in production doing learning that stuff, then they're not gonna learn it. They're that then people are just constantly relearning information and knowledge that they could have gotten out there. And that's bad for the business, which you know, the other bad thing here is the money people don't seem to be thinking very long term. They think very short term, uh, quarter to quarter, you know, stock prices, because long term that will kill the business. If you just don't have enough people qualified to do it, it won't get done, or it'll get done in a way that is bad and and not not watchable. Uh and and I I I'm fairly pessimistic right now about the business. It's every every five years of in my career, it's always changed, but it's always seemed to get better up until about 10 years ago. And and streaming to me, while at first promising a lot, has seemed to be a an almost unmitigated disaster at the end of the day. Uh, not only with the with the uh glut of money up front that wasn't really aimed at anything other than trying to overpower every other streaming service to now the pullback, you know, the inevitable retraction of money. It's all just devastating. You know, they they the people behind streaming they broke the business. When they broke the syndication model, that was that was essentially how things got paid, commercials and and syndication. That hasn't been replaced. They haven't figured out how to monetize that yet. And until they do, they're going to keep taking cutting costs. And you know, we're the we're the most obvious cost, the the above-the-line creatives.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

Yeah, and I mean, yeah, I mean, especially, and I'm watching, especially I'm living in Hawaii now. I'm gonna do this interview from Hawaii, and for the first time in a long time, every single below the line and above the line crew member is out of work here in Hawaii, uh, or 99.9% of them. No, there's you know, only a tiny percentage of films coming through. And you're watching this is destroying generations of craftsmen. They've they've been grips for four generations, going back to, and this is in LA and Atlanta, there's like family businesses going under because the retraction and the contraction, so many people came into the business, and now they're saying, okay, now that you're all in here, there's not we know we're we're gonna cut back a lot, and obviously no job.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

So we don't, I mean to that point, too, by the way. No, I mean, I want to because that's exactly right. I mean, you said with your drama friends, everybody's out of a job. When I uh we created my wife and I created Happy's Place and sold it this uh past cycle, and almost every writer I knew called me uh looking for a job and and a way of saying, Don't tell my agent, but I'll but I'll take whatever. You know, I just need a seat at the table. Desperation. I mean, and good writers, writers who have done this and can do this. The the thing that struck me was when we we shoot in front of a live studio audience, and and we have what we call warmups, uh, which are people that entertain the audience between the the scenes that we shoot, uh, which is you know, it's at least half the time the uh warm-up talking to the audience and and then half the time shooting. We we had a really difficult time finding a warm-up because they all went out of the business during the last, you know, since COVID and the strike. Four cameras has not been, you know, it's been on the way down, not a lot of them being made. And they need four cameras to survive. There's only like three of the professionals, and I know a lot of them that they stopped doing it. So there's not even it was very difficult finding warm-ups to do that job, which is necessary. Uh, and that that is the that is the case, I believe, all over the industry.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

And I knock on wood that I've come up mostly in network television as well. And that's the only healthy ecosystem. It's not as healthy as it used to be, but it's it's yeah, you're controlles and there's you know, green envelopes, and you can survive the down periods. And I'm like, you know, when I first started, and you're like, oh, you're working on this network show, you should be working on this prestige, whatever, whatever. And you know, and now I'm gonna go to HBO. So happy to have been on the NCIS and the Hawaii 5Os of the world, which you know, you know, just you know, paying the bills for a while. Um, I have a question.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

I've always been blessed by the way, that in the sense that I don't I don't pretend that I've ever been cool and I don't really care about being cool. I I'm I'm perfectly content to be the meat and potato, macaroni and cheese guy. And that's networks, you know, that but you're right, that they are the only viable system at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

And yeah, and and and to grow to love being the meat, potato, meat and potato. Yes, love the thing that we do not take it too seriously. We're not doing not solving brain cancer, we are entertaining people on television. Speaking of television, though, there's a question I've been wanting to ask. You talked about uh this sort of fallow period after Ariba, and was also the strike, right? People strike was happening.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

And I had an overall deal, and I lost the overall overall deal at that time. They they uh you know act of godded me. Uh and uh yeah, and it was that was also a slow period, not a lot of uh comedies being made uh at that time. And it was it was uh two and a half years, I think I didn't work uh during that time.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

I was gonna say, yeah, how how scary did it get? And how did you pull yourself? Was it my name is Earl? Was your next project?

SPEAKER_00 32:02

Yeah, well, I did actually My Name as Earl was the last uh project I did under the overall deal. Um and then so that that actually carried like half a year, and I didn't I didn't really count that because that was under an overall deal, so it was kind of I was helping them, so it wasn't really a job job in my mind. Uh, but it was like two years, and it was it was, you know, I sympathize with anybody uh who's out there going through these periods because it's you know, my wife was very much like, well, go out, you know, go out there and find something. It's like that's that's not how this works, you know, they won't let me in to actually find something. And and it's a detriment that I'm actually experienced, you know, having the experience became a negative uh in in the the minds of so many people who who could have given me a job. Uh I was again, I was lucky in the sense that I I pitched and sold a show with Reba back then because Reba wanted to do another show, and I pitched a show called Malibu Country uh that sold. And then at the same time, other people that I'd worked with, uh Becky Clements was a producer. Uh they had just uh done a show called Last Man Standing, and the showrunner had unfortunately experienced a tragedy. Uh his granddaughter had passed a uh drowned in his pool. Um and it was, you know, horrible, horrible thing. Uh and they needed somebody to come in and and take over. And so she approached me at the same time. So I went, I went from nothing, I mean, literally not being able to get anything and trying, trying to write scripts uh for other people uh to suddenly I had two gigs. Uh and uh it didn't work out too well because I I I was I'm an alcoholic and I I was drinking a lot at that point in time. Uh so I went to rehab, got cleaned up, and got back into business. But but if you want to know how tough was it, that's how tough it was. I I absolutely went uh into binge drinking mode because it was I'm sitting around all I know every episode of Law and Order at this point because I sat around and just watched it all day long. Uh it was uh you know, it's bleak because it's it's so even though I knew it was coming, Don Belisario, who created, I believe, uh the Tom Selector, Magnum PI, I believe was his. He he was a very successful producer writer. He told a buddy of mine at the time, and I don't know whether he worked after this or not, but he goes, you know, you go from successful where everybody knows you and you can talk to people and get you know, you can get anybody on the phone, and then one day the phone just stops ringing, it just stops, and then you can't get back in. Uh, and that is exactly how it felt. And it was, I wasn't able to, I didn't do anything to overcome it. Uh my past work ultimately earned me those positions, but but it, you know, I still wouldn't know how to get back in today. Uh, you know, if this show goes down, you know, luckily I'm old enough now that I'd probably just retire because it's it's uh it's bleak. It's bleak, but I I do believe at the end of the day, the things in the business have to get fixed. Talent will still carry you a long way, talent and and and drive. But but those times those times are gonna happen to anybody. Uh and and I the one thing I can say is don't give up hope. Don't go to the place where I went to, which was just my my my career is over. Uh I don't know what I'm gonna do with the rest of my life. You know, I'm I'm 45 and I I don't know how I'm going to spend the next 40 years. Uh and like I said, at the time I'm going, I there's nothing else I can do. Uh I'd have to go back to school or something to learn another trade because it they just don't translate the skills.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Does does the uncertainty ever go away about your next job?

SPEAKER_00 35:49

No. What's nice about uh the old days, there was you could get an overall if you worked hot, you know, you you would work your way up the ladder and then you'd uh get to around the the co-ep EP level and you'd get an overall deal, you know. The size would vary, but you'd get an overall deal, and that was nice. And I remember at the time I I I've had three of them. It was so nice knowing I'd have a paycheck for the next three years. That was so nice. It is worse now than it was then because the orders are shorter. You know, it used to be that you'd get on a show and I'd you could be on for a few years, and it was a if it was a successful show, you'd know it was coming back. So you'd could during hiatus actually enjoy hiatus instead of sitting around worrying and calling your agent every other day to see if anybody's called or whatnot. Um now, you know, uh like Happy's place. We just they we were finishing up our 13th show. We finished it on Tuesday. So for the the original order, and they'd given us a order for three scripts, which as I say, it's kind of like you know, you're going to talk to people, you're going home to your parents, and they're like, Are you engaged yet? And you're like, No, but they're leaving their toothpaste at our their toothbrush at our house. You know, it just felt it's like the least amount they could do. Uh and it was, you know, it was like, wow, this is horrible. They they we did just get an order for five more produced episodes uh this year, but it that you know, meanwhile, we're sitting there for a month or two. Our numbers are really good. As far as I can tell, numbers are also changed so much. But you know, you're sitting around not knowing. I mean, I didn't know whether or not I said, I what are those three episodes gonna give me? I I don't know what to plan for. If they order more episodes, then the standalone ones are gonna get thrown out because I need to plan for the end of the season. And if they don't, I'm not gonna write them anyway. I don't care. You know, what am I gonna write three scripts for that aren't gonna get shot? This is nothing. You know, there is constant uncertainty. And after these five, it'll be uncertainty. Uh and the or because, and on that's on network, as we say. That is, it's the meat and potatoes, but it's the only viable system because it actually gives you a little bit of security for a year. You know, it used to be that you, if you there was the hiring season in May, if you got a job, you could count on at least through December, because they all had 13 orders up front and hopefully get a back nine, but you'd know from the numbers pretty quickly, the uh airing whether or not you had a shot. Uh and and if you got on a show that was longer running, that was already 22, then you had the year. So you could at least count on a year, which is kind of sad, but is it was the truth. Now you can count on what four months, three months, uh, and then you got to go looking again for something. Uh, there is so little security, and and they don't run, you know. I mean, I last man ran, I believe, 212 episodes. 212 episodes. Uh that's never gonna happen again. I mean, you they're streaming services have found that there's you know, there's not a lot of profitability in them shooting extra episodes. They're there, you know, they need new viewers, that the constant new subscribers, unless it's a show that has been established like a friends or something where people are gonna tune in for that, which are not many of those. Uh, there's no reason for them to run uh shows for 10 years. Uh it it doesn't it doesn't help them. Although I have heard that they're discovering because there's so many services that people are tuning, they're they're buying their subscription, binging the shows they want to watch on the service, canceling the service, then getting you know hulu from networks and then moving on and doing that. So there's at least some renewed interest in trying to keep viewers, keep uh subscribers uh attached to your channel. But but the security, the security, unless you're prepared to really live an unstable lifestyle, this is a bad business for you, you know.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

I I sadly I 100% agree because I like to give happy advice to people, but you know, hold on to the point.

SPEAKER_00 39:44

I run a show called Happy's Place, and I'm dooming glooming everybody.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

What is no, but I'm 100% with you, and I'm just sort of looking for a way through. What is, you know, in the on the macro sense now, just just across your entire career, pick uh those two years aside of uncertainty and binge drinking, what was your hardest single moment in Hollywood? And conversely, what was your best single moment in Hollywood?

SPEAKER_00 40:07

Oh, interesting. Uh I'm gonna pick both starting out because I think that starting out is is the hardest period. Uh, not only because it's hard to break in, but because you you you just don't know enough stuff. I assume if you're getting into business, you have a really good imagination. And if you don't know things, you imagine things, and a lot of those things are really bad. Uh, so my first year, but the first show I worked on was just the ten of us growing pains. Uh, and those hours, as I said, were just terrible, horrible, horrible hours. Um, and I was worried about, you know, the doing the business just from a physical standpoint. And then my option didn't get picked up. That first year, my option didn't get picked up on just the 10 of us, and that just felt devastating to me, you know, because I didn't even like the show. I apparently wasn't good enough to write on it. Uh, so I was I was devastated by that. Uh and luckily one of the producers had created another show, which you've never heard of, uh, and and asked me to go work on that. So that gave me something, but for a couple of months, it just felt like uh I was just terrified that I've absolutely picked the wrong business and my one shot I blew, and I totally uh failed at that. Uh, that is not true, you know. I mean, uh, because I didn't know how the business worked and I didn't know that there would be other opportunities. It what felt like the last possible chance just wasn't. Uh, and that, by the way, remained true for, as I said, that fallow period as well. Um, so that was that was a tough couple of months. Uh, and I believe I just bought a house too. I believe I just bought not not a house prices like these today, but you know, still it's a house, it's a mortgage. Uh, my best day, I think, was when I got the Roseanne gig, weirdly enough, um, because I had come off several, a lot of shows, I come off like four shows that were all pretty much uh TGIF type of shows. Thank God it's Friday shows, which were more to draw kids in, kids with uh families with kids. Um, and you know, I I enjoy writing of all types, but I uh I was kind of done with that. And I got an offer to go run um full house, I believe it was. Um, and I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to do it because I felt like if I take that, that'll be my like my fifth year, and then I'll just be locked into that because the business can they can you know pigeonhole you pretty easily as to what your skill set is. And I didn't want to be pigeonholed forever as just a TGIF writer. Um, and so I turned it down, and my agent was pressuring me pretty heavily because they were gonna pay a lot of money, you know, and and agencies make 10% of that. So, you know, they were pushing to do that. They thought I was incredibly stupid to do that, and I just wanted to bet on myself. I wanted to try uh to get on a better show. And I interviewed for Roseanne. Um, I have a quick story, it's a little bit of a side note, but I always love this story. So I went in to interview for Roseanne, and Rob Ulan was the showrunner, and uh things went really well. And he said, Okay, he goes, I really I want to hire you. It's gonna be as a supervising producer. He goes, but Tom Arnold's got a show called Jackie Thomas, and it if that goes down on ABC, then we have to hire the writers from that. And I'm not gonna have the room uh to hire you. I said, Okay, all right. So uh I flew off to Hawaii with my wife for a break during hiatus, and I'm checking the trades. And during the day, during that time, you know, there was no internet or anything. You had to get the trades, and the trades were a day behind to Hawaii. Uh, so I was a day late on getting any news about whether anything was picked up. Schedules come out, Jackie Thomas does not get picked up. So I think, uh, I'm I'm done. Hiring season was done. I'm not gonna work this year. I was an idiot. And then Rob calls me and says, No, you know what? I found the money. I want to hire you anyway. But Tom has to meet you and approve you, Tom Arnold. Uh, I said, okay, great. You know, I'll be back in like uh four days. He goes, No, no, yeah, it has to be tomorrow. Well, I'm in Hawaii. He goes, Yeah, but it has to be tomorrow, or you're not gonna get hired. So I flew back from Hawaii, uh landed late at night, went to their house out in Bel Air in the morning uh in Brentwood. Tom keeps me waiting in the office for like half an hour, comes out, sits down. We talk for maybe seven minutes, and he goes, All right, good for me. And half of that conversation was this. So uh, so you know, I've got a lot of hair, as you see. That's sarcasm. He goes, uh he goes, uh, what are you gonna do about the hair? I was like, what do you mean? You know, your hair, you're gonna get you gonna get hair plugs or anything. It's like, no, I'll just let the forehead grow. I mean, I I like my forehead. He goes, Oh, well, I'm gonna get I'm gonna get plugs, you know, and I'm gonna, I'm not one of my I want to do it with a guy that works for us out in Iowa and he's gonna do it with me so we can. He talks about his procedure for half of that time. And then he tells me, okay, I walk out, I call my agent, I said, I I think I got the job, and I flew back to Hawaii that day to meet my family. So that was, I had to, and it's not cheap buying tickets the day of you want to fly from Hawaii, but that was it. I had to, I had to pay that, and that was the cost of doing business, uh, especially with Tom. So yeah, it was, but getting that job, betting on myself and having it come through was was a big moment for me. You know, I mean, I later learned that I then I had to work for Rizan, but but at the time it was it was kind of phenomenal.

SPEAKER_01 45:20

And turning down what sounded like a Schoenner gig for a supervising producer gig. Although I do say that supervising producer is one of the best gigs in all of television.

SPEAKER_00 45:27

Oh my god. I said my my number two and I, we argue all the time. He used to he ran last man for a little bit and then he quit and I took over and I brought him back as my number two because he was my number two on Reba. We argue all the time. It's like you take over from me. I the best job in Hollywood is the is as the number two on a show with a showrunner that respects you. That is the best gig in Hollywood. It is not worth the money to transfer up to showrunner and take on all the extra crap that you have to do as a showrunner versus being the number two. I firmly believe that. I tell people that all the time. I do not want to run shows anymore. I want to be the number two.

SPEAKER_01 46:01

Okay, but okay, I'm gonna ask two advice questions to end this podcast. The last one we always ask, but I I've never asked this one. But you've run a lot of shows at this point. So, what is one piece of advice you would give to other showrunners, not to be the number two, but you're now the number one. And what one piece of advice that has kind of steadied your ships throughout the years.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

Make a decision. Make a decision. I would say too often I watch showrunners waffle and trying to figure out the best thing. And this this applies mostly to four camera because we our process allows us to rewrite every night. Um just go ahead and try it. Go, I think this will work. Uh don't be afraid to say, yeah, I was wrong, made a mistake. Uh, to fix it. You know, we're gonna make mistakes. It it it's it's part of the process, it'll make things better. So uh, you know, go ahead and make a decision. Don't second guess yourself. Say, we'll see it in the morning. You'll see it. Hopefully it works, but if it doesn't, you'll fix it. Uh and give confidence to people that you can you will be able to fix it. Don't don't worry about problems, we'll be able to fix them. Uh that's what and the other thing I would say, by the way, if you're working with a star, respect your star. I don't care if you don't, respect them. Uh they're a star for a reason. Listen to them. Uh my thing is always I they're a star because they are, they do what they do. Um, write to them. Figure out, say, you know, how would you say that? If this line doesn't work for you, let me change it. You know, let me know and we'll fix it. Uh, because I want you to be out there not thinking about lines, I want you to be just being you and performing because that's where the that's where your juice is. This is what people love. You know, there's 10,000 good actors in Hollywood. There's seven stars. You know, I want the star, not the actor.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Wow, that's great advice. Uh, okay, final piece of advice. And I'm uh if you and we ask this to everybody who comes on our show. If you could give one piece of advice to somebody joining the business, what would it be? And I'm gonna add a caveat. You can't say don't do it because they are so uh what would be what would be your advice?

SPEAKER_00 48:02

One piece of advice. Uh the the reasonable one would be uh save your money. Don't don't live below your your means because you're gonna need that money. The best piece of advice I can give you is believe in yourself. Uh believe in yourself. It you're going to need times when that confidence uh seems uh hallucinatory, it just seems ridiculous because you there are going to be those times. Um, and it's the belief that you will find a way to make it through that an opportunity will come up uh where you can shine that that's gonna help carry you. Uh, because it's it's always a tough business. And the hardest thing I had to learn was actually believing in myself that I that you know I had a voice because it I didn't believe that going in. And if you don't have that confidence, you know, the business chews up people that are desperate. Uh, you know, you've got you've got to believe in yourself. Just believe that you're going to somehow make it work.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

I 100% agree. Overcome that, you know, imposter syndrome that we all have. All have it. That's your worst enemy at some point. Uh absolutely. Kevin Abbott, thank you so much for joining our show. Everybody watch his new show, Happy Place. Uh, you it's you know been such an insightful, interesting uh conversation, and we super appreciate having you.

SPEAKER_00 49:18

Thank you, no, it was a real pleasure for me too. Really nice meeting you.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Thank you so much for listening, and thank you, James Launch, for the music. And our wives for putting up with our Tom Plutary. As always, each episode is brought to you by Scriptation, my favorite screenwriting annotation software. If you want to support the show, please download a copy at www.scriptation.com backslash Noah.

SPEAKER_02 49:46

Or perhaps even better, www.scriptation.com backslash Dan.

SPEAKER_01 49:51

Dan is spelled N-O-A-H. If you want to find me on social media, I am at Twitter at N Epslin and more recently on threads at Noah Epslin.

SPEAKER_02 50:05

Don't worry about me on social media because all you people seem to care about is Noah anyway.