Take 100, Producer Erica Huggins, The Dark Tower, Ted and President of Fuzzy Door Productions

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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.

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

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

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That's the first thing. Like everything in our business, your hands can count.

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That doesn't happen 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.

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Screaming into the Hollywood Abyss is brought to you by Scriptation. The Emmy Emmy Award.

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It sounds awful when you say it. Let somebody with a more charming accent do this bit. Screaming into the Hollywood Abyss is brought to you by Scriptation, the Emmy Award-winning app for anyone that reads scripts, makes notes, organise them into layers, and save hours of time by automatically transferring those notes into new script revisions. Sither listeners can get a free month of Scriptation by going to scriptation.com backslash Sither. Now that's how you do it, Noah. Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am your non-entertainment co-host Dan Rutstein.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

And I am still in the entertainment business co-host Noah Ebslin. On today's Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, I'm thrilled to introduce producer and development executive Erica Huggins to our show. Erica has worked as a producer or executive producer on such movies and TV shows as What Dreams May Come, The Dark Tower, The Spy Who Dumped Me, Under the Banner of Heaven, and The End Is Nigh, amongst many others. Currently, Erica works as the president of Seth McFarland's production company, Fuzzy Door, which makes the Orville Family Guy an American dad. Next up on her slate is a TV show version of Ted, a remake of Naked Gun, A Reimagining, a Revenge of the Nerds, and many other projects too numerous to list here. Welcome, Erica.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Thank you, Noah. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

So uh obviously we're very excited to have you on the show, Erica. And um I always say this when we have people from your people related to your productions on. I don't as watch as much television as Noah, um, but uh some of my favourite shows seem to be the ones that you make. Um so I'm even more excited than usual to have you on. Um I'm actually gonna start with a a broad, I guess, adversity question uh related to the modern landscape. I'm not gonna use the word woke, but certainly the modern landscape in which we operate. Given some of your shows um skirt around the edges of what's acceptable and what's possibly not acceptable, given that's the new reality of the world, and you're obviously the fact you're actually about to make something new with the quite offensive teddy bear, um, how do you navigate that nowadays? You know, how do you entertain when you know that you are probably closer to the organization being cancelled potentially than you probably were when this all started years ago?

SPEAKER_00 3:51

It's a really good question. And it's uh it is hard to navigate, especially comedy, I would say. Um, you know, comedy has all kinds of rules now that I think some of which are great and needed and adjustment was made in a good way, and some of which, you know, we're still trying to figure out if it if it's helping or hurting us by not talking about things in an open way. Um on TED, in sp you know, particularly with TED, I would say the best idea that came up on doing TED as a TV show was doing it as a prequel. So setting it in 1993 gave us a lens into talking about all the things that you can't talk about today through the lens of 1993. And it was a, I mean, it's kind of was the best way to be able to tell a story about a slightly racist working class family in Boston with a filthy, R-rated bear who is the best friend of our young uh John. And basically it's all about first, right? So it's John and Ted in high school smoking pop for the first time, having sex for the first time, you know, going to high school and dealing with love for the first time. And yet we get to see it through a lens of a of a simpler and yet more uh probably less woke time. So we have a little bit of room to be able to play with that. And um so that's that's kind of, I would say, what we did on TED. I think, you know, it is it is just a different moment in the world, and we are all aware of it. And, you know, I think what Seth was doing for Family Guy and American Dad, you know, it was on network television, and he never was, he it was always skirting around the edges, and both sides of the aisle embraced those shows. Both, you know, both elements found it really like it was speaking to them, and that's kind of his genius.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

In terms of sorry, I should say, that's a um a fantastic answer, and I now have a follow-up similarly, in terms of the rooms for Family Guy and for American Dad, and and the Orville, and I guess for the new show as well, how much sort of self-censorship is there in terms of when they're coming up with ideas? Do they sort of I imagine obviously as part of the ideation process, people say things that will obviously won't make it into the show? Do they sort of decide themselves that they can't go there, or do things get pushed up to either to Seth or to you, where you have to say you can't do that? You know, in terms of the world of knowing the boundaries, how often is it self-done and how much do you need someone senior to say, well, we definitely can't do X, Y, or Z?

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Uh Seth is in all those rooms, you know, not in Family Guy and American Dad anymore, but certainly in the Oracle and in TED, you know. Um it's it's it's pretty much self-imposed, you know. The room is, you know, self-aware uh and very in tune with not only the world that we're trying to create in television, but the world that we're trying to play to. Um, and we want the broadest audience. So, you know, I think that nobody's telling them how to modulate. I think we all know sort of, you know, what is coloring outside the lines these days.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

I love watching, by the way. Normally these our roles are reversed because I'm the one that sits here fanboying about different shows, and Dan's asking very practical British questions about leadership and and morality, and uh, and he truly loves these shows. So we'll watch him to dig in. But I want to let's let's take you back. Let's we're gonna take you all the way back to the start of your career. You I'm not gonna specifically talk, I'm not talking about the movie, what dreams may come, but I'm talking about the theme of dreams. And since you produced it, the the theme is there. You you were a young producer in Hollywood. By all accounts, many of your dreams came true. Where where are some areas where your dreams did not come true, or where something went sideways for you uh as you were kind of navigating your career?

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Um, God, there are so many. Um, you know, I started out as a film editor. Um, and it was my way into uh the business. And I was my first big job was when I was pretty close out of college, maybe a year or two out of college, and um I was asked to come on as an apprentice assistant editor on Michael Chemino's movie The Sicilian. And it was Michael Chemino, right? And what I had heard about that editing room was that they had gone through many, many, many assistants to fill this spot. And, you know, nobody was exactly saying why. Um, but I got the job. I was, like I said, kind of in awe of the the whole the people I was working with. I was working with an Oscar-winning film editor, French film editor who was amazing. Her name was Francois and Bono and Michael Chimino. And my job was to be a pair of hands for Michael. My job every day was to undo everything that Francois, the editor, was doing in the next room because Michael didn't want to cut the movie down. He didn't want it to be shorter, he didn't want it to be over, he wanted to do it the way he wanted to do it, and apparently behind the scenes, the studio was telling him that it had to be shorter. One day, after seven days a week of, you know, 16-hour days, literally, it was hell at the time. And it was fun. It was like boot camp, but it was a lot. Um, my car wouldn't start. I had to go to the shop. I sent a message in. I finally got to the editing room, and Michael was standing there and he fired me. And he said to me, You'll never work in this town again. That's that was the words he used. And I was not only devastated because shaking that feeling of like scary, scary, but I was also just like it was the greatest situation I'd ever seen. Like I made all these friends, I knew I was working with these amazing people, and I didn't realize what the PTSD sort of fallout was going to be because it really, it really did. I was young, I didn't understand how I was going to recover from that. Um and then, you know, I got another job working with John Waters on hairspray. And three years later, after Michael Chimino told me that I'd never work in this town again, he hired me on his next movie to be uh an assistant editor. So um, and then he went to my wedding and he became my friend. And it was just one of those things where you know you overcome those moments, but that moment itself was so painful. And I really did think he was right that I wouldn't.

SPEAKER_02 11:52

I guess I have a that's a great story. I guess I have a joke question and a real question to follow. The question is so did he follow, did he fire you from every subsequent movie you worked on with him as a year?

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Worked on one other movie with him and it was all good.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

My real question is how does something like that, you know, now you are in a position as a producer where you hire and fire people? How does that does does that stay in your brain as like an earworm, as a brain worm, that like this awful experience happened to you? And when, God forbid, you have to let someone go, you do it with a little bit more grace?

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Absolutely. I mean, I think that um it it scarred me in a big way, and it it showed me that um that it's really it's it's really painful actually as a kid in your first jobs. And I have a lot of young people working at Fuzzy Door, both as interns and as assistants and young executives, that they're there to learn and to feel like they're part of something bigger. Um I actually haven't fired that many people in the in my company or at when I was at, you know, an executive. Um, it usually happens on a set where somebody, you know, either isn't doing the job or the job is not right for the particular director or showrunner you're working with. Um and that becomes a little bit more complicated because you're it's like a family of people. Um, but you try and find a way to make it the best, the best version of being fired that you possibly can, I guess. You know, you wanna, you wanna be, you wanna be a person, you want to feel it, and you want them to understand that, you know, it's not gonna, it's it's it's gonna be okay. And sometimes that's true, and sometimes maybe it's not so we've we've done apparently 99 episodes of this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

And um one of the main themes, and bearing in mind I'm not from the industry, um, one of the main themes we seem to have come up with is uh the industry's not run very well in terms of um uh how people are put into leadership positions, how people lead, uh why decisions are made, um and uh all of the sort of what feels given how much money there is in the industry, what feels like things that should work in the industry, a lot of things somehow don't. Now uh you run a production company, um, it is obviously a business with a bottom line, um and you have to run it like a proper business. How how uh do you run uh a business within an industry where uh businesses it some of the normal rules of business don't make sense from a leadership point of view? Like, how do you navigate that world of trying to make amazing television or films while also running the business part of the business in a world that doesn't really make proper sense?

SPEAKER_00 15:11

It's an interesting question, but I I guess I would say the you know, we have a deal at UCP which is universal. I think you had Beatrice and Toby on which I both of which I like. Um you know running a business when you have a deal because they're paying for us to be part of their bigger world, is you know, really being good partners with um with the executives. Um and good partners has a lot of different contexts, right? It means you know fighting really hard to get things done um without crossing the line. And also it means on their side being able to tell me when something's not working. Um the business part of it is is really interesting because I think about this all the time. You know, in a real business, you can predict a certain amount of success or failure, right? You can predict, you know, how many cookies you're gonna sell within a year based on last year's, you know, model. Um we can't we don't do that in the film business or in the TV business. And um so finding a balance between knowing that you choose well with your executives and the people that are on my team, and also trying to do everything we can to give UCP the things that they're asking for without undermining our own sort of point of view and feelings about making television, since our deal is with UCP for television. Yeah, I don't know if that completely answered it, but I do it it's it's not an easy thing. And we never give anything up, we don't get rid of anything. You know, it's not like a project doesn't work and we decide you know to throw it away. It's always kind of in there, you know, trying to figure out another way to do it.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Yeah. So um one should never make assumptions, but you seem nice. Um what sort of leader would you describe yourself as? How how do you lead your organization?

SPEAKER_00 17:53

You know, I was very fortunate as I was coming up in the business to have very strong and um and and really amazing mentors in my life, um, both in in the editing world, in the producing world, um, even when I was in college. And I think I sought it out. I think for me it was uh important to have that relationship. Um one of the things that I try and do in terms of leading the company is making sure that people understand what the bigger um ask is, what we're doing as a company. I found that in some situations in my previous lives, you know, everything felt very secretive. You know, it felt like you didn't quite know what was about to happen. You know, there were events happening on there were things that were coming out in the trades, and you were like the last to know, and it was about something that you were working on or something that you were doing. I think transparency is really important. I think, you know, I think I mentioned this before, but we do have a very robust internship program here, and we do that because for me, I like to give people opportunities to see if this is something that they're interested in, right? And sometimes you don't know. I didn't know that I wanted to be a producer, um, it sort of happened to me. Um, but I think it gives people access who don't necessarily have access. And once you get somebody into Fuzzy Door, we have, you know, we have lunches every week where we're bringing in guest speakers to talk about different parts of the business. Our interns get to be part of our staff meetings, get to read all the scripts, have access to everything that we're doing. And so they actually are seeing the world in a real way, uh, and how we function as a production company, you know, in real time. And so to me, that's my style. You know, I don't I don't know that everybody has that style, um, but I like to feel like my I am actually making a difference and that an internship is actually going to be great for somebody and they're gonna walk away from it after the summer and say, I didn't just get coffee for all the executives. Um and and then you know they come back and they become our our assistants, and then the assistants become our executives, and so it becomes a relationship that starts early. Um I think I lost the thread of the question, which was how do I lead? Um is that correct, Dan?

SPEAKER_01 20:59

It it was, but that is if part of your leadership style is making sure that everyone in your organization feels valued and part of it and needs developing, then that's just a that's a very good leadership style, and B, that's a great answer to that question. And uh, you know, if you're bringing in experts to talk about different aspects of the industry, I'm more than available to I'm calling you after this.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

You're coming.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Not Noah, just just me. I'll send you, I'll send you a personal email.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

I want both of you guys to come.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Uh um okay, so you you I mean, you have you have so many successes under your belt. I mean, so this we could spend 25 hours having the podcast about success uh and talk about some of those things. But what I want to hear from you is uh about a project that maybe went sideways that still haunts you. Is there anything that just didn't go the way you wanted it to, and you still think about that? Maybe you could have done something slightly differently, or still hope there's life for it?

SPEAKER_00 21:59

Um Yeah, there's a lot, some of which I'm not prepared to talk about, but the one that I can talk about, and I mean a lot. So um but there was a um there was a movie that we were actually in prep on, um called Cartel, which was it was a um Josh Brolin, Diego Luna movie about the cartels in Mexico. Uh it was a universal movie. This amazing director, Asgarleth, was about to he had he had made a couple of smaller movies and he was he was the director. Um we were all in Mexico City prepping the movie, and it wasn't something that somebody did, it was kind of the zeitgeist of the world came into play while we were prepping the movie, which was that you know the complexities of shooting a drug-related drama on location in Mexico made it complicated for us to keep going. And I happened to be home visiting my family the weekend, the Friday night that it it was we were told that it wasn't gonna keep going, that we were shutting down. We were five weeks from shooting. And it was it was devastating. It was like, you know, that we had 500 people on this crew. It was a fairly big, you know, movie. We were we were building sets, we had, you know, started working with the actors. I mean, everything was moving forward, and we came to a stop on a Friday night. And I remember getting the call, I was at dinner with my kids and my husband, and the phone rang, and it was, you know, the head of the studio telling me that it was that we were shutting down. And it was um, like I said, it just it was something that I could not have seen coming. I didn't feel like it we were, I had no indication up until that moment that I got that call that any of this was happening. So it was a big um, it, it, it was terrible for all of us. Um and yet, was the decision the right decision? I don't know. I wasn't I wasn't really part of the conversation of making that decision.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

Was this before or after the narcos someone on the narco? Wow. Did you when the person on the narco set, and for I guess some background for people who don't know, uh, I think it was a locations person on that TV show got shot and killed by the cartel while making uh, I think in retaliation a little bit for the portrayal in that TV show. Maybe not, maybe I'm being too hard on it, but whatever it was, it was connected to the show. Apologies that that wasn't the actual story. But did you? I mean, we talk we use the word triggered a lot in in contemporary culture. Was it triggering to suddenly that there was a death and you guys were sort of you know trying to tell a similar story? The consequences are real, it feels like, when we deal with make-believe so often.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

It was the first time that I felt like the real world sort of um storytelling, the the real world and storytelling, you know, became threatening. Um and it it didn't feel when that happened on um when it happened to me on cartel, it was so much, you know, probably I don't know, five or six, maybe seven years before uh the show happened. Um and it was it was already bad then. So I can imagine how it was shooting at that point. I it wasn't triggering so much as I kind of felt like it wasn't fair that we couldn't do the movie. So at that moment it it I understood why it was the right decision.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

So changing tack a little bit, I uh we've had I think half a dozen uh writing partners on the show. Um and my favourite questions are always about when they argue with each other, uh, rather about then how they're successful, because that's more interesting to me. Uh and to our listeners, probably. Um so not that you're writing partners, obviously, but uh obviously uh your relationship with Seth um and uh you know obviously he's a reasonably talented actor, singer, writer, you know, I can't remember how long the list is. Um but you you must disagree sometimes, um, I'd like to think, otherwise this is gonna be a waste of a question. So um so you're not partners in that sense, but you're partners in terms of the things you're doing as an organization. How does that dynamic play out between sort of you know, I get not just in front of the camera, but he's the sort of the name, and then you're the one probably does all the work. How do you how do you manage that dynamic and when things go wrong and also when things go right?

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Um okay, so it's not a waste of a question, but we we don't really have that that kind of dynamic. He, you know, there's a trust that exists, and I'm not saying it's all perfect and there's no, you know, but it's not a between Seth and I, it's very it's very good. It works because he hired me because of what I had done at all the years before, right? All the the knowledge that I had before coming to Fuzzy Door. Um, and for me, I was excited to do something that I couldn't do and my other job, which was television and film, not just film, because that was my job before. Um so I have a lot of experience in the movie business, but when I came to Fuzzy Door, understanding the television business was something new for me. It was I was excited about it, it was a new muscle I was excited to flex and and to learn how to use. Um but Seth had been in television his whole career. So part of the learning curve in the first couple of years was understanding, you know, how it worked, to be honest. What was a showrunner? You know, I had an idea of what a showrunner was, but actually working in television, showrunner is so much different than what I thought before coming into that part of the business. Um, so there's trust in terms of um, you know, how we create, how we decide, how we choose, how I choose the things that I want to do at Fuzzy Door. Um, and then there's things that are very much specifically Seth-oriented material that he is doing, that he wants to be involved in, that are that are, you know, projects that he wants to write or direct or star in. Um, but a lot of the work that I've done uh coming into Fuzzy Door has been to expand what Seth started and to build a bigger company for him and for me. And because we are doing this together, it feels like we pretty much, even if I have a half-cocked idea of doing a show of me that maybe he doesn't like, he's gonna support me in it.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Yeah. So good, thank you for not wasting my question.

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Okay, I might have.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

No, no. So one question, it's sort of this is something we've talked about with individuals. We've talked about individuals celebrating success. You know, when you sell a script or when something gets made, you know, some people buy gifts, some people buy houses, some people buy pens, people do all sorts of different things. As a this is something we talk about quite a lot in my my day job, I have a real job running a real company, and we talk about celebrating success and how a lot of people sometimes forget because you're always on to the next thing. As a company, when something has gone well, um, either you've sold something or it's started production or it's wrapped or it's renewed, whatever the moment is, how do you as individuals and as a company mark successful moments?

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Nobody's ever asked me that before. Um you know we didn't it I definitely have experienced not marking successful moments and how bad it feels. Um so I do try and make sure that the whole team is part of either a you know an announcement in in a staff meeting or you know, like on The End is Nigh when we when we finished shooting The End is Nigh, we had a big party here at um at the Fuzzy Door offices, and it was great. And we had music and food and it was really fun. Bill came and Brandon was here, the whole team was here, and it was really, really fun. Um we don't buy cars for people. I haven't done that before, but I have heard of things happening like that in big success, um, back in the old days of movies. Um you know, I think that uh I don't have a good, I don't have a really great answer for that, but I think it will I think that you've put it in my mind now, so I should think about how to do it in a in a bigger, better way when we do have successes. Because I think you're right, it is hard to, it is easy to forget how to do it.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

So on this podcast, when someone says casually something like, you know, I've been at places we haven't celebrated success, obviously the question is, tell me, I mean, obviously, I'm sure you're not going to name the place, but tell me about where success wasn't celebrated and how it made not how it might yeah, how it made people feel and how obvious it was and what you learned from that.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Yeah, it's a um, I think that I would say for my first two very long jobs, which were both 10 and 14 years before this, um, you know, success was not it was not something that you shared with your bigger team, I guess I would say. As I climbed through and up the ranks of, you know, being an executive or being a producer on certain movies, when something opened to a nice number over a weekend, there was a little, you know, yeah, nice number. But mostly it was the reverse. How can we make it better? What did we do wrong with the material, the marketing materials? What did we overlook? Where could we have done better? And I think that the in when you invert the conversation and it becomes placing, you know, sort of looking at the negative as opposed to the positive, I definitely learn from that. I do not do that. I try and look for all the things that we did right and use that as a way to talk about it. And, you know, you can then come back at some point, you know, after the fact and talk about maybe the things that you would have done differently. But I think in the moment it's really important to live with the joy, you know, because it is truly fun when something good happens. And it doesn't happen all the time. In fact, it rarely happens. So enjoying it is is important.

SPEAKER_02 34:53

This is so interesting. And we've had a lot of writers come on and talk about writing, a lot of writers have come on and written the number one movie in America and then never got hired on that movie again. Or what they're telling their whole like their version. But that what I'm, you know, the I guess the dream, the golden ticket for many of us who were coming up before streaming was a big theatrical release, that big weekend, whatever that looks like. The movies on the marquee, the that you're going to the premiere, maybe the week earlier, it's releasing, you are beginning to track box office, that whole success. Can you run us through a little bit of emotionally the roller coaster you go through? And then maybe what happens when the movie does not hit the numbers that people are hoping for. And I you talked a little bit in the last answer about your public face, what you do with the team, the marketing, the numbers. What do you do personally when something you how do you kind of rebound when maybe the movie didn't release the way you were hoping?

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Um, so the first part of the question is taking you through sort of the process. And it's it is, you know, you'd think you're done when the movie's sort of, you know, ready, but the process never ends. It really doesn't, especially in post-production, because the iterative process of making it better, of seeing, you know, upgraded visual effects. If you have a visual effects project, you know, uh reducing the length, expanding on a particular scene, you find out a lot of information doing uh research test screenings, which are as an editor, were really, really painful. As a producer, I think probably more painful. I've never been in a research test that didn't make me want to. I don't know. I was I it always gave me anxiety in such a huge way before we did it. And we did a lot of them. I mean, three or four sometimes for each of the movies that I've worked on over all these years. Um I have to say I've rarely been in a research screening that was amazing. It's usually pretty brutal. You know, you're asking people to tell you to criticize your movie, to tell you what could have been better, what should have, what characters did they like, what characters didn't they like. Um, and so that process sort of it ends up having a lot to do with how the final movie comes out. We do use a lot of those screenings as ways to monitor who's going to come to the movie, um, the kind of marketing materials that we can that that should work. But, you know, to Dan's, I think, first question about, you know, we're not a real business, something could happen. You know, there's a snowstorm on the East Coast, so people don't go, or it's super hot on the West Coast, and everybody wants to be inside. And so everybody goes. And so sometimes it's out of your control, but a lot of times you are you do every piece of marketing. Um, you look at every piece of data, you try and figure out how to get the best result for your movie out in the marketplace. And then you see the reviews, hopefully they're good. And then comes, you know, Friday night. And Friday night is usually they move to Wednesdays, but then Friday. Friday night was the night, right, where the new movie opened, and you'd wait for the numbers. And the numbers were, you know, very telling about how the how it played on that first opening night, what the numbers for the weekend were going to be for that particular movie. And, you know, it was always a, I mean, we were talking all weekend, people were nervous about it. You're reading the reviews, you're completely freaked out about if it's not playing well, if it is playing well, you're elated. There's it's just it be it became a roller coaster. Um, and I think that, you know, at the end of the day, that would be the Monday morning staff meeting where you either would celebrate or you wouldn't celebrate the the numbers or the the way that the movie is going to uh sort of continue playing for, you know, whether it's three or four weeks after that. Um and then, you know, people like directors and actors are all calling in to find out what happened when it went wrong and you know how excited they are when it went right. So um, but that's the process. Um you know, for me, there were a lot that as the movie business was expanding, this is the second part of your question, Noah, as it was, as it was sort of um shrinking, not expanding, as the movie business was shrinking and the TV business was expanding, and you know, streaming happened, and you know, basically you could watch a great, you know, small movie every week on a great television show, right? With movie stars, the world of television and streaming became something that I wanted to be part of. Um, I wanted to be able to uh not feel that devastation after uh a movie didn't work, but also I wanted to have the option of looking at material through a more agnostic lens and saying, Oh, this should have been a TV show, not a movie. This is a movie, you know, not a TV show. Um, and so I think that after, you know, a lot of years doing one thing, that was my that was my sort of, you know, me screaming and saying, I gotta, I gotta have more options and I want to do more in this business. And um so here I am doing more in the business.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

Amazing. Well great answer. Look, um, I'm not just saying this because you've promised I can come onto the set of the Orville, but um it is uh with great sadness that we are nearer the end of the podcast and the beginning, and we are on to the final question, which I think you know because you've listened to other podcasts, which is if you could give a single piece of advice to somebody wanting to enter the industry, what would that piece of advice be?

SPEAKER_00 41:46

Um you know, uh do access people's wisdom and use uh you know, use the wisdom in a way that helps you move to the next place. And and I guess what I mean by that is that people were very generous to me um with their wisdom. It wasn't always correct, but it made me think. It made me expand my interests, what I thought I could do, what I wanted to do. And I think that a lot of times you get people wanting to be in the film business or the the entertainment business um with a list of all the things they want to do, you know? And so I guess the other piece of advice would be to narrow it down when you're talking, when you have your shot at talking to somebody like Noah or Dan, and you're getting into you know, this moment of somebody's willing to give you a job, be clear as to what that job is that you want. Because oftentimes, you know, you want to be a director, but you really want to write, but what how great it would be to be a producer, but I've always wanted to act. And it's hard to do something with that when you really want to help people. So have us have a point of view and research the person so that you're asking for them to help you in the thing that they know best.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

Great answer. Uh Erica Huggins, who has had the perfect response to you'll never work in this industry again by going on to be incredibly successful in film and television. Thank you very much for being part of our podcast.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Thank you for having me. It was really fun.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

And I'm calling you for that lunch.

SPEAKER_02 43:49

Well, that's a wrap on this episode of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss. As always, this episode was brought to you by Scriptation, the screen, writing, and annotation software that the utility has made my life easier and will make your life easier as well. Uh, we'd like to thank our wives who put up with us recording these episodes in our offices and basements and closets and bathrooms and anywhere we get a little space to record an interview. And of course, we want to thank James who provided us with great intro and outro music.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

If you want to find us on social media, you can find Oa at NFslin on Twitter, tweeting a variety of writer-based nonsense and uh some terrible puns and occasionally begging for sponsorship. Uh, if you want more refined tweets, mostly about football and whiskey, you can find me at Dan Rutstein. If you're interested in buying a copy of Scriptation, if you go to www.scriptation.com backslash silver, S-I-T-H-A, you will receive a special discount. Thank you very much for listening. As always, we appreciate you. Uh please give us any feedback, mostly positive stuff about me, and we will see you next week.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

If you do say a negative thing about Dan, it's a chance I might buy you a free copy of descriptors.