Take 9 - John Zaozirny, President of Bellevue Productions

SPEAKER_00 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 scripts littering the floor.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

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 sometimes even years of painful failure.

SPEAKER_03 0:26

This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default. That's the deal we have to be able to persevere.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Like everything in our business here, and it's gonna be all balanced off you.

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I was being told by my manager that 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_02 1:11

I am your broadly successful co-host Dan Rutstein, joined as ever by Mr. Rejection himself, failed writer Noah Ebbslin.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Hey, how are you guys doing? Very excited to be here, Dan, with John Zozerni, who is the uh owner of Bellevue Management, who actually uh manages a number of close friends of mine and has a really big roster of successful clients. He's also a producer on a number of upcoming films and past films. Uh, the two in the can that I think are going to be released shortly is a movie called Infinite and 1031. And he was also the producer of Eli. Welcome to the podcast, John.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

Uh, thank you. 1031 will unfortunately not be coming out anytime soon. Um, speaking of you want to talk about failures. Um, we did sell that and we were on track production, and then um we never this hasn't really come up publicly, so I won't get into it too much, but I'll just say that right now it's not come, it's not it's not in production. It was supposed to be in production, and then the pandemic hit and other things. There was a leadership change at MGM. Um, so I I unfortunately, but I do have another movie called Parallel, which will be released in December um theatrically and on VOD. So that's something uh that is coming out. So Parallel in December, and then um uh infinite sometime in 2020. Right now it's looking at um Memorial Day weekend for Infinite. Um, but since Fast and Furious landed on a release date, I'm not sure if that will necessarily stick. But everything, all theatrical release dates right now have an asterisk next to them, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

So I love the fact, John, that you're already embracing the main theme of this podcast uh with something that you thought was gonna happen, now it isn't gonna happen. So let's kick right off with this. You know, you run a successful management company agency, that's fantastic, but you only do so because you basically failed as a writer. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_03 3:06

Yeah, I mean that's that's fair to say. Absolutely. I went to film school. Um, I even won a scholarship while I was at film school for a screenplay. This is hilarious, or a screenplay about Alan Turing in 2000. Um, I thought he was a very interesting figure. I wrote this screenplay, and then I was like, ah, nobody cares about a screenplay, about a mathematician who's hiding his homosexuality. I mean, I don't actually don't know if Alan necessarily ever hid it. He just didn't really know that it was a problem. So he just was just living his life. Um, that was my interpretation, at least. I mean, it's more it's more complex than that, I would say, but you know, um, he was a very complicated guy. But anyway, so I wrote the script about him in college um called Deus Ex Machina, uh, about him. It was more of a like his entire life from childhood to through to you know inventing what's called the Turing test, all that kind of stuff. And then I won this scholarship. I was like, it's great, right? Like, there we go. And then I didn't ever do anything with it really, um, because I just didn't think anybody wanted it. Um, and then of course, uh Graham Moore, who is, you know, uh someone I'm friendly with, I've known for a number of years, um, since he was co-writing with another friend, Ben Epstein, uh, he went on obviously to write an amazing script, way better than what I wrote, and got an Academy Award for it. Um so there you go. But yeah, so you know, I had then I had wanted to be a writer. I went and worked in Hollywood for a production company because I was like, well, that's what you do. You work for a production company and then you write on the side, but I didn't really write very much. And then uh I went and got a job for uh two screenwriters, Andrew Marlowe and Terry Miller. Um, Andrew most famously wrote um Air Force One, Holloman End of Days, and went on to create Castle, where I was the writer's assistant. Again, I was like, oh, I'll write on this, I'll be a writer's assistant, then I'll move on to being a TV show writer. Um, I worked on it for three years and kind of discovered that that wasn't necessarily what I wanted to do. Um, in fact, I'm and a friend of mine was like, You should be a producer, you have all these great ideas, which he meant basically, he didn't really mean it this way, but it really meant that I had a lot of first 30 pages of screenplays that I never got around to like finishing. Uh, I was like, wait, other people can write screenplays and I can like get a credit on them. Oh my God, this is amazing. And so I did that and I really enjoyed doing that. And and I started Bellevue in 2010 merely as a production company. Um, and then I didn't make any money really for the first two to three years. Um, I got a bunch of movies set up at like studios, and I was like, oh my God, you must be successful. But here's a dirty little secret producers don't really make any money until a movie gets made. And I mean, let's say like 10 screenplays sell, you'd be lucky if one or two of them actually gets made, you know. Um, and then so I got a small independent movie made for a million dollars, didn't really make any money on that either, because it's a million-dollar movie, nobody's taking a big fee. Um, and then the writer of that movie who had also written two other screenplays that I had been involved with that we had sold to studios, Christo and Capsule. Um, his name is a guy, his name is Ian Shore. He actually literally just called me five minutes before this podcast. I was like, I got to call you back. And he and I become really close friends and collaborators. And he's like, I think you should be a manager. I think you should be my manager. I would, you know, I would fire my manager and start working with you. And I was like, huh. And people had suggested being a manager before, but I always been like, well, then how would I find writers? How would I do everything? And um, and so, anyways, but when Ian said that he believed in me to do it, it really meant a lot because he was a very close collaborator. And also he was uh an accomplished writer. I knew how much he'd gotten paid to write scripts because you know I developed them with him, um, and I got none of that money. Um, he got all the money, and his manager and and agents at the time had gotten all the money for those. And I, even though I had developed and worked with him, some of them were like my original idea, you know, but it's which is fine, it's just like how it is. Um, but he really believed in me. And so in 2015, I segued the company to management. Um, I hired uh uh brought on board another colleague called Jeff Pornoy who joined the company that year. That year we had four scripts on the annual blacklist. The next year we had six scripts, including the number one script, which my wife, Elise Hollander, wrote, which is called Blond Ambition, the story of the early to Madonna. We had a script called Eli got made, which was an original idea that I had brought to a writer called David Churchurillo, who eventually let his manager go and sign with me. And yeah, and so you know, and so we've had a fair amount of, we've added two more managers to the company, Kate Sharp and Zach Zucker since then. And we've Infinite was a book that I had optioned and brought to Ian Shore. And so, you know, a lot of success now, I would say. Um, but you know, it came from trying to be a writer for 10 years and never breaking it as a writer, trying to be a producer for four years, never making it really significantly, never making any money really as a producer until I became a manager, really. So yeah, it was like a lot of it was that's 14 years of not really succeeding, at least at what I was hoping, not making money from what I was hoping to make money from.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

So uh because you sort of spent 14 years not quite achieving the things that you wanted to, when you need to break bad news to them that something hasn't moved forward, which I imagine happens multiple times a day, certainly multiple times a week, are you more sympathetic and empathetic at letting people have bad news because you got 14 years of it?

SPEAKER_03 8:22

You know, the funny thing about bad news, and I'm sure Noah can can speak to this, is that it doesn't happen uh like here's the bad news. I mean, that does happen occasionally, like, hey, guess what? Chris Evans dropped out of your movie, which happened to me. Um, but it's more like let's take your script out, it happens in stages. Do you know what I'm saying? Like you took it to 20 producers, 10 passed, 10 are still reading. Hey, another five passed. And so it's rare that like you have to deliver the worst news of all time. It's more like I've had to deliver little bits of bad news, little bits of bad news, and then finally, hey, so it was trending this way, and unfortunately it has gone this way. That it's it's rare that I'm like, I mean, it does happen where I'm like, hey, guess what? They're not picking up the option, or they're gonna hire another person to rewrite you, which is not as necessarily bad news. Like it actually means that your project is still moving forward. If it's more like the bad news in Hollywood is it does happen sometimes that it's just like big, sharp, and sudden, like, guess what? The studio studio doesn't want to do this anymore. But more often what happens is, hey, we got to the executive, we're gonna hear what we would think. Okay, it's been a month, we still haven't heard anything. Okay, it's been two months, we still we it's probably not a good sign. And then three months in you're like, yeah, so the project's dead. And so it happens, it's rare that it happens like in a very sharp manner. It's more often that it happens in a and does that by the way, that does happen. It does happen like, hey, the studio was in negotiations with you, they've decided not to, not they're gonna, they're gonna they're gonna pull out a negotiation. That does happen, but more often is the little cuts and nicks along the way that lead to the bad news. Noah, does that kind of make sense to what you're you've experienced?

SPEAKER_01 9:59

It totally tracks with me, like where you're you're you just sort of see the hope drained out of something slowly. And um, and yet it doesn't sort of take away the sadness that something you worked on so hard, you know, and and and and in a weird way, it keeps this hope, a little bit of hope alive at all times that this thing isn't truly dead because of the slow descent of things and that things can come back to life. Um, how do you prep your client, John, for now that you are sort of segue from writing and into being a manager, that this just sort of takes a long time. And the expectation when you sign someone off of Twitter or off of a shiny spec, that they're not gonna be sort of buying that house in Hancock Park, you know, in three months, that they're this is gonna take a while to build out a career for somebody.

SPEAKER_03 10:47

I mean, that's the thing you tell them the first meeting. Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, like for me, when I meet with people when I'm trying to sign them, um, I'm very uh upfront and honest. I don't try to be abrasive or or rude, but I do try to be like, look, this is what to expect, you know? Um, and even in cases where someone has become successful relatively quickly, it still takes about six to nine months. You know, that's that's quick by the standards of uh standards of Hollywood, you know? And so you're just telling them that you're saying, hey, here's the situation, you know, this is what to expect. Don't quit your day job, you know. Um, even you know, my wife became relatively uh successful relatively fast. We took out Blonde Ambition in September. She was signed by WME. I mean, multiple people want to sign her, so I went WME in September, I want to say, maybe October. Mike DeLucas signed on to produce. Um, and then you know, it sold Universal in January. Oh, sorry, she was never on the blacklist in December. She was and we sold to Universal in like, well, we started negotiations in like January, and then we sold like April, or that's when the announcement was literally the week of our wedding. Um, and then she didn't, but she didn't really quit her day job until April. And even then it was like because we were getting married, and but she the she knew the money was coming in from Blonde Ambition, and she gotten hired to rewrite another project called Talent Show. So she had two jobs at that point. Um, and both of those jobs alone were were like more money than she would make as a year being an assistant, you know, um which is what she was at the time. She was an assistant on the TV show Fresh Off the Boat. Um, and so yeah, that was kind of, you know, that was a quick thing. And I had a client I signed in like, I forget when, but I think within six months we get her staffed on a Netflix show between six months from me signing her, and that was fast as far as I was concerned, you know.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

I mean, I think I think the idea, something that we can sort of dig into a little bit more, which might be super useful to, you know, the people that follow you on Twitter or the people that are sort of circling this career is is time management and expectation management about sort of how fast things work. I was just talking to a screenwriter, and I'll I'll leave his name out of this because he didn't agree to be publicly outed, who sold one of the biggest specs of the year this year, uh uh sort of an unknown guy who burst into the scene with a huge spec sale, and he was telling me how how difficult I know exactly who this is how difficult it's been to sell the second script, that his second script, even after all of this press and publicity and enough money to allow.

SPEAKER_03 13:08

People think that you sell one. I remember I remember a client like fired me, um, which happens, you know, uh, but and the guy was like, and I was like, okay, well, you know, we developed this thing together, and you're doing sometimes you do like an exit agreement, and you're like, okay, well, I would like 10% if that is ever sold down the road because I developed it with you, you know. And he's like, that's fine, but like if this ever sells, then my actually, this is when we were working together. Sorry, this was like something like that. We were working together. This he eventually did let me go, and this was kind of a sign that it would happen. He's like, he's like, Well, if we were to sell my next spec, then all my other specs will automatically sell, as if he was Quentin Tarantino and they were gonna was gonna sell Pulp Fiction and then they were gonna go and do natural and killers and like uh Dust Dilton or something. And I was like, dude, that just doesn't happen. Like, I've never seen it happen, and it it's it's not like success is no indicator of of success to come, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

So just interestingly, so you you mentioned being fired, so obviously this is a different part of it. So when you get fired, it's because your client you haven't been able to make your client successful. Oh no, sometimes it's because you did.

unknown 14:17

Oh really?

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Being fired for doing well.

SPEAKER_03 14:22

Yeah, I there's a client, one of my first clients. I got him, I signed him on the first, he had a screenplay, it was a very good screenplay, it was 150 pages long. I re worked with him on it for six months. He did not enjoy working on it for six months, but which in retrospect was not that long, but felt very long. And we took it out. I get we gave it a new title, which is a title that I came up with. Um, I was not I but not attached to produce it. Um, I probably could have been. I did so much work on it, but that was that's been my policy. Uh, I got him signed at a big agency. Uh, I got him on the blacklist and it got set up at Universal. And six months later he fired me, maybe nine months later. Um and uh yeah, I mean, like he had his reasons, like, you know, we weren't talking as much, or this. I mean, to some degree, the reason we were talking as much is because when I would give him feedback, he would tell me that I had no interest in my. You know, it's interesting. Getting people success, um, you sometimes there's two reactions to it. Sometimes the reaction, this is one of my clients who was still with me and is a very close friend. You know, he and I would argue all the time vociferously about something. And then we sold the script, and then the notes that the studio had and the feedback he got from everyone as generals was exactly what I had been telling him. And we ended up doing exactly what I told. And he's like, Oh, John kind of knew what he was talking about, you know. And like, we're very close. He was literally a guest at my wedding, he's one of my best friends. Um, you know, and we still have differences of opinion, but we respect each other. And I think that success made him be like, Oh, John knew what he was talking about, you know. The other client was like, Well, I'm on the blacklist, I sold a script, I'm repped by a big agency. You know, I'm right, I am a genius. I don't need John. Why do I need John? Clearly, mommy success proves I'm a he would go on these generals, and everyone tell him he's the greatest thing since sliced bread, and oh, your new idea is so great, and everybody wants to buy it. So he wrote this new idea, he like jammed it out very quickly. Um, and then everyone's like, Oh, we love it, we can't wait to read it. And then everyone buddy passed on it because it was not written, it wasn't at the same level of execution as the thing we spent like so much time on because he wrote it really fast, and he was like, he was really pissed about that, and and he lashed out at me. And so funny, his agent um eventually became a manager, and then he was the manager for this guy, and then I I I got I still knew that that guy really well, the man, the now manager. And he's like, Hey, so when the when the writer strike thing happened, first thing that I got it was like, or something like that. Anyways, he got fired by the same guy. This guy really likes to fire people, so you know it was funny.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Uh Dan, who's who's slightly peripheral to this world, yeah, how often writers, I mean, well, we can talk about writers being fired in a second, because we get fired all the time too. But it's um that people are always sort of trying to figure out the or maneuvering their careers around, let's just say. And so if you're with a manager and who really helped you and you had a huge sale, you might start thinking that I could be with this other manager, or I could be with Brad Pitt's manager, or I could be with so you're constantly readjusting your own like scale of your or your own sense of self-worth, which leads to a lot of jumping around sometimes. But I that's not, I think if you're in it for the long haul, you realize that's not healthy. That's not a healthy way.

SPEAKER_03 17:27

It's not, it doesn't happen very often. It's the only time that's ever happened. Look, more often than not, yeah, it's because you know, there's been a lack, usually I let people go because there's been a breach of trust. I don't, I've never let anyone go because they weren't making me any money. Because if I like them and I believe in them, like it's my company and I can keep people as long as I want. If you're like a bigger management company, you're just an employee, they will be like, hey, you need to have X number of clients. This person hasn't earned for like a year or two. You need to cut them. I don't do that because it's my company, and if I believe in someone, I believe in them. But more sometimes people are like, you haven't made money, and sometimes I'm not the right fit for the person. A lot of times um I'm very development oriented, and a lot of times other people want to, they're like, I'm a writer, you you're a manager, which means you send scripts out into the world and that's it. That's your point of intersection. To me, that's not really earning 10%. That's like a postal service job or something. And I think what Noah says that people are constantly like being like, okay, like I've had success. Well, now what do I do? And then they're also like, I've had failure. So therefore, like it's interesting. No, you said writers get fired all the time. I always joke the only button that an executive has on their desk is fire the writer, new writer. You know, you you can fire the director, but that can be a really like risky move that doesn't happen that often. Do you know what I'm saying? You can't fire the producers, though that doesn't happen. Um, you can bring on a new producer, but even then it's like that's tricky. But like firing writers is the easiest thing to do. And I would say conversely, firing reper reps happens a lot more with actors and to some degree directors, but it does happen with writers. It is the thing that is within your control to do. I would say managers tend not to get fired as much as agents do because they tend to be closer to the clients, but it does happen.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

So look, I'm from I'm not from this world, and the more of these we record, the more I think this, frankly. What a weird and horrible and complicated and nasty and rejection-filled world of adversity that you guys operate in. So, Joe, why are you in it? Why are you doing this?

SPEAKER_03 19:26

I mean, I don't really view it that way to be blunt. Um, you know, I don't I don't view it as a nasty place. I mean, you're asking me for like when I got fired, I'm like, well, here's the bad time. It's like asking people about dating, and they're like, dating is fucking awful, but I love it. You know, it's like it is and it isn't, you know, like the reality is, I mean, I like the business, but I think you also have to become a nerd to, you know, and maybe I'm less sensitive than other people. Like, you know, I I think my wife is definitely more I mean, but she's the person creating things. So for me, it's more like, oh, like I have been through through so many experiences, this so many clients, so many scripts taken out that at a certain point you can see a like a larger picture, you know. It's like I'm like the air traffic control, I'm seeing all the planes, you know, I'm seeing everything that's going on. I'm not the pilot when it's all about the pilot's all about that plane, you know. Um, and so, but I I mean, for me, I focus on the good things. I focus on, you know, the new clients I've signed. I've focused on the positive experiences I've had. We've actually had a a I think we might have had our best year ever at the Bellevue, which is shocking because we're in the middle of a pandemic, you know, it was actually really surprising to me. And I'm like bracing for like the next six months to be bad or something just because it's not a great time for our industry. But I'm like, wow, we've had a lot of success. And to some degree, you know, with management companies, as long as you're not like a goofball, like you tend to like hopefully you get good clients and then they make money and then they build to more clients. And it does tend to scale. I mean, I guess it doesn't happen for everybody, but it has happened for us. Um, but yeah, I liked I I love the business and and and I I don't view it that way as a some evil, nasty rejection place. I like to focus on the positive stuff. But and the way that I guess I get around the negative stuff is I view it as kind of par for the course for all the good things that happen.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

I I think the highs are so ridiculously high in this business, too. When we and when we hit a sale and we don't need that many, like you mentioned, your wife had one or two, and that was enough money to last for a while. That's you're trying to, you know, get one big sale a year or two big sales or one big staff job a year, and then you can float for the rest of the year. But meanwhile, I think what people don't realize, and what is at the heart of this show is that you know, let's say you get a mid-level staff job on a big show and you're really excited, you've also probably dealt with 30 or 40 year all year long. And it's yeah, it we don't really talk about that. We're like, oh, we signed that, or oh, we got this. And instead of saying, Oh man, this week had four rejections, this week the script that everyone loved, nobody you know wanted to even meet with me on it, or you just there's things come in cycle. And my question to you is sort of how do you begin to prepare a young, a young client for some of these, some some of this in the business? Now, my managers never did, and I've been through a few ages, you know, they they just sort of expect you to be fully formed, but there definitely seems to be a process involved of like being really green to how things work, to kind of finally accepting that you have to be fairly Zen-like.

SPEAKER_03 22:24

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's it's it's it's in the stages, do you know what I'm saying? It depends depends if the client has. I guess there's two things. So first thing I would say is the client in Los Angeles andor working in the industry, which actually the two things are usually the same. If they're in, they generally are not not working, uh, they're generally not not working in the business. Uh if they're if they're in Los Angeles, they may or may not be working in the business. They're generally there's generally no world where they don't work in the business, uh, where they work in the business and they're not in Los Angeles. But if they work in the business and they're in Los Angeles, they're probably somewhat aware of what's going on. If they're in Los Angeles, they're also usually relatively aware of what's going on because they um because you know they're around people who work in the industry. Um, if they're not at all in the business and they don't know it all, then it is a bit more of a coaching experience. It also depends on if they've written a screenplay that I'm taking out immediately and I think I can sell, which is a rare case. More often I read their material, I like it, and then we start working on the new thing. And so, you know, as with everything we're talking about here, it's generally not like I don't sit them down and talk about the birds and the bees. It's more like, okay, let's talk about what to expect and the process of when I take your screenplay out. Okay, let's talk about what to expect when you talk to agents. Okay, let's talk about what to do when you have your first general meeting. And then after the general meeting, they're like, oh my God, so and so said they have an assignment they want to bring to me. Oh my God, this is it's all it's all happening. And I'm like, okay, so number one, that company is sketchy. Number two, that assignment has been seen by 500 people at this point. Um, I don't want to put that much time into it. You in a view to the learning experience. And so it's it's really taking it on a case-by-case basis, as opposed to like some kind of curriculum I have where I'm like, okay, like you're on the Jurassic Park tour, and I'm like, okay, so this is how you know Jurassic Park clones are made or whatever. It's more like, okay, we take it on a case-by-case basis. Um, like I was talking a client through a deal today, an option deal today, and I was explaining why I think this is a good deal and what makes this a special deal. And he was talking about, well, it seems like you know, back end doesn't happen that often. I'm like, yeah, you usually doesn't, but this is a case where I think there is some very, very realistic back end. And here's why, and here's the facts we have for why that back end is quite realistic, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Here are the pluses and here are the minuses of the situation. And so it's very much on a case-by-case basis, you know.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

What percentage of your time do you spend on, I guess what you would call sort of pastoral care, in the sense of when there's been a rejection? So not just the sort of practicalities of it, but the you know, talking clients off the ledge, hopefully not literally, but you know, giving them the sort of it's gonna be okay, you're still a star, that sort of mental health, well-being, are you okay stuff?

SPEAKER_03 25:07

Not that often, honestly. Um, most of my clients are pretty chill. I mean, look, it's usually like a lot of mini conversations, you know. What you're talking about is when like there's been like you've gotten kicked off a project and they're hiring a new writer, or this spec you that why didn't this spec sell? Do you know what I'm saying? Or or whatever. Like that is like, you know, it's it's usually a lot of like a little things. It's like it's like it's as opposed to being like some kind of ER doctor where I'm like dun-da-da-like, oh my god, like stat, get the fucking fluid stat, open them up. It's more like being like a nurse and taking care of someone on a daily basis or a weekly basis, you know. It's it's prepping, you know. I think Noah, you spoke to expectations a little bit earlier in the podcast. And I think I view that as my job is to be people's consigliary, the Robert Duvall and the Godfather, and set expectations accordingly. If you're expecting to sell a screenplay for a hundred million dollars or whatever, you're that's not gonna happen, you know. You what are, you know, I was talking to the client who with the deal, and I'm like, look, this is a small contained horror film. We knew we were gonna sell it for a ton of money. Here's why I think this deal makes a lot of sense, you know, um, and here's what it could lead to down the road. And so it's setting expectations correctly. And if I've done my job, hopefully I don't have to have the open heart surgery conversation of like it's all gonna be okay. You know, it's like if you told your kids, hey, tomorrow you're gonna there's uh you're gonna get a jet pack jet pack and fly around, they're gonna be pretty disappointed when there's no jetpack tomorrow. But if you sell your tell your kids, hey, tomorrow we're gonna go get like a Barbie or a G.I. Joe or a new video game, then like that's a reasonable expectation, you know? And so it's really about setting people's expectations accordingly. And look, sometimes even though I set expectations, they feel otherwise or whatever, and like that's what I have to deal with, you know. Um, it's it's that that's what I would say. It's more of an ongoing everyday basis.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

I think we can people can basically understand what it means when uh a writer fails and fails out of, you know, you know, gets fired from a job or didn't execute on the page. But what as a manager, your sense of failure is a little bit different now because A, you're leveraged across a lot of different clients. So it's not as easy easy for someone like you to fail anymore because you've built this empire, this small empire, contained empire, um, brick by brick. But there must still be times where you feel like you failed a client. And what does that feel like? And what does that look like?

SPEAKER_03 27:31

Um I don't know that I feel like I fail clients per se. Because so it's kind of like did a car, I guess you could argue that a car salesman failed to sell the car or whatever. But I think the real answer, if nobody wants to buy the car, you can like doesn't matter like how good a salesman you are, if the product is something that nobody wants to buy, what can you do? You know, I would say the times when I feel a little bit bummed out are when we have something that I really believed in and I really thought we were gonna sell, and then it didn't sell, and maybe where I've set expectations incorrectly or whatever. Like we had this one spec, and to be fair, the agent said this, not me. Um, that Ian that the that the agent told um one of my writers, if we don't sell this, I will eat my shoe. We did not sell the script, and the agent did not eat his shoe. Um, but it was a real bummer for me. To be fair, there had been a spec right before that the agent was like at later found out they thought they were we weren't gonna sell, and we did sell it, you know. And like there was a spec, like I'll this one I can say, Chris Thomas Devlin, his script Cobweb, which I think you read Noah, right? Oh god. Um, we we knew that was an amazing screenplay. Um, we did not think we were gonna sell it. And I think the reason we didn't think we were gonna sell it is because the main character is like an eight-year-old boy, you know, and it's pretty low concept, you know. I remember Chris Devlin called me and he's like, Hey man, I got a new script for you. I was like, Great. So the script he'd written before that was called Red Emily Darringer. It was about a 13-year-old girl who was a serial killer. And I was like, dude, as long as your new screenplay doesn't have like children as main characters, we can sell it. He's like, Ah, so cobweb. Um, and so, but we did sell it. And me and the agent were like, holy crap, we made sure everyone in town read it. Like, we must have gotten that script to like 80 to 100 people because we thought the running was so amazing, and it is, that it would get lead to jobs down the road. And it did, it got him Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Um, but we didn't think it was gonna sell because it just felt too, it didn't feel like, oh, you know, usually movies need movie stars. And this was an eight-year-old boy, there's no eight-year-old boy movie stars, you know. Um, so and Chris, by the way, Chris knew that he's like he worked, he used to be an assistant in the business. He kind of knew that it was an uphill battle, but he really believed in it. And by the way, that movie is like in production right now, you know.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

So, like, I I do want to just take a second to point. We're talking about failure, but I'm gonna digress for one second to success and expectations because you and I have talked to so many people on Twitter about screenwriting rules. And I want to highlight Cobweb as an example of someone who broke every single rule to but just showed how in control of the story he was ever from the very first word on the page and from using words and language to set these images in your head, even the way the words are placed on the page. People are saying you can't do this and you can't do this. Chris, who I don't know personally, but I I reached out to him after I read the script. I was so impressed. Uh I, you know, just went, just broke through all of that and said, I'm gonna write the thing that I want to write. I mean, of course, it follows basic screenwriting format, and it impressed everybody in town to the point that he got the sequel.

SPEAKER_03 30:38

And that's something you guys should talk to on this podcast, is because, you know, by the way, between Wretched Emily Derringer and Cobweb was a few years. He was on the blacklist in 2015 for Cobweb, for black for Emily Derringer. And then I think Cobweb sold in like 2018, I want to say 2017 or 2018. So there's a few years in between that where I think he was trying to figure out his voice and who he was. And I think he has spoken, and I'm not to take some of his thing, but I think he's spoken about this in other podcasts that I've listened to. He said, you know, I tried to write the thing that I thought I was supposed to write, you know, and then I just said, I'm gonna write the thing that I believe in. You know, I have another client called Tyler Tice, um, whose script Day Shift just got Jamie Foxx on board to star. And Tyler had been in LA for a long, long time. And he kind of wrote this, he wrote Day Shift is kind of fucking, I'm gonna write what I believe in script. Uh, and then that's the thing that ended up becoming this huge thing, you know. Um, and I know when my wife was writing Blond Ambition, in no world did we ever think that was gonna get set up at a studio. I mean, I didn't we didn't think it was like number one the blacklist necessarily. My buddy says I said it at one point, but I can't remember saying it. We just what we thought is that it'd be a great sample to get her an agent and get her like in the conversation for TV staffing or something, you know? Um, and so it is one of those things where you just don't all you can do is put, you know, I think the one thing I talk to people about on Twitter about is like people are like, like this one person tweeted to me today, and they're like, hey, why are my log lines, why are my query letters not getting responded to? And I'm like, it's probably because if it's not a weird query letter, it's probably because people don't really aren't don't think your log lines that interesting. And I didn't say this afterwards, maybe I should have, but I'm like, the real answer is go write another screenplay, you know? And I think that's people have like bought one screenplay and they keep bashing it away and being like, make this happen. And it's weird because it's like they keep hammering this nail that's just never going anywhere. And it's like sometimes you have to admit, like, I like a lot of the projects. I don't think I sold a project for a while as a producer, and as a manager, I had kind of like this jump where like I was able to sell stuff pretty quickly in my first year, but that's because there was four years not selling anything as a producer behind that, you know. Or I mean I had sold some things really, but it, you know, it was a lot of like failing to to succeed essentially. Like there's a lot of scripts that I developed. So before I opened Bell of V in 2010, I was still developing. I mean, I've been developing screenplays for other people to write since like 08, I would say to 2008. Do you know what I'm saying? And I I think the first one that I sold was Crystal. I think that would have been um, gosh, I don't remember when that was 2009. I don't remember. Anyways, um, you know, it was, you know, we had the script that had big G attached to direct when that really meant a lot, you know, when he just came off Terminator Salvation and like that didn't sell, you know. And I think weirdly, I take the lessons from the failures, the scripts that didn't sell, and I apply them to things nowadays and be like, which isn't to say I'm like, oh, well, this will never sell, but I'm like, okay, I learned that people don't respond to this, I learned that people don't respond to that. I learned that ensembles are hard, that westerns are hard, I've learned that people aren't looking for this. You know, people come to me like, I want to write a zombie movie. And I'm like, okay, well, why is your zombie movie different from all the other movies? We uh Ian Shore and I took out a found footage movie, and we were about six months too late, we missed the found footage, boom, as it were, you know. So, you know, it's one of those things where you learn from those failures.

SPEAKER_02 33:52

So this is an interesting one. Um, obviously, you're married to somebody else in the business. So what does that look like in terms of people's moods and so on? So you're you know, you're offselling stuff, she might fail, then she might succeed while you know some of your clubs.

SPEAKER_03 34:09

At least only succeeds, she only succeeds. I mean, honestly, mostly it's kind of crazy. But sorry, you got to your question.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

Well, no, it's interesting. Okay, so let's go with that then. So she mostly succeeds. Does she know that that might stop in the way that we've talked about the fact that some of the clients need that? She knows that this train could stop running soon.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

And she's obsessed with the fact that I mean, like, she'd be pissed and talking about this, but you know, I think look, all writers have imposter syndrome. Like, you know, God, it was like some super famous writers reading their like they're like, they had imposter syndrome. It's like, wow, like even them, you know. I think almost most writers or feel like one day they're gonna be called out because they're not really who they think they are, you know. You know, she worked in the business a lot. She was worked at anonymous content, then she was Alejandro Gonzalez in the Retooth assistant during Birdman, then she worked at Universal for an executive, then she worked a fresh off the boat. And I think part of the reason she's actually been successful is because she has all those different jobs and has learned how to speak, you know, TV language, how to speak showrunner language, how to speak, you know, uh executive language, how to speak director language. And so I think that's you know, she she definitely thinks about that all the time. And by the way, like when I say she succeeds, I mean I what I generally mean is that most things that she has gone for, she has gotten, you know. Um, but that is to some degree because she's very, very small. We talk a lot about, you know, you want to here's the thing about writing. This is weird, it's a slight of a slight pivot. If you write a hit movie and Joe Estherhaus has spoken about this, people think that you're associated with magic. That person must be magical. They wrote basic instinct. The next thing they write, even it's called Showgirls, that must be a huge success, right? Like, because they're successful, right? Like, but um, if you write a fail, well, less of a box office failure because people don't really attribute that as much to the writer, but like let's say you write an assignment for you wrote you wrote had a number one blacklist script, and then it was very successful, and then you but then you go and you write another script and it's assignment for a studio. If it's not a very good, if you don't deliver on the promise of that, then people turn out and go, like, oh, they were a one-hit wonder. They don't really have it. And that does really happen. You're only as good as your last, unless you have an outrageous success, you're only as good as your last job, you know. And I think that's one thing I talked to her about and a lot of my clients about is like only engage on things unless you're desperate for money, only engage on things that you really, really, really feel like you could do an amazing job at. Um, and sometimes if they start to cut, undercut the rug out from underneath you where they're like, okay, well, but we want you to do it like this, and you can feel like you're being set up to fail essentially, then it might be best if you haven't like gotten the job yet to like step off because no one is gonna judge the screenplay by like what the executive, no one sees the notes the executives gave you. They only see the resulting screenplay. It's kind of like if you're a director, you don't get to put up like a little thing like you should have seen how good this scene would have been if we had the proper amount of money. You just have to put the movie up, you know. Um, and so you're only as good as your last job. And I think that is part of the whole thing is like really being smart about the things you engage on, you know. But yeah, she does think a lot about like, gosh, what you know, less like, oh, this could all go away, and more like what if people don't like my next thing? What happens then? But I think the thing that's been nice for her career was she wrote Blonde Ambition, that was a success. She went on to write this thing, Queens of the Stone Age, for Sony, which you know, ended up on the blacklist as well. The executive on the project is a big fan of her. Everyone involved was a big fan and would tell people, oh, she did a great job. And that led to more opportunities down the road. You know, what she sold a K-pop pitch, um, she wanted to write some other, some other stuff. Um, she got hired again by that same executive over at Sony to write this thing called Murder of the Dance Floor. And so that's what people look for is like a track record to some degree. And it doesn't mean that like she can necessarily do her next assignment screw it up. She still has to be smart about what she engages on. But if you build a reputation as a as a as someone of quality, then I think you can at least I inoculate yourself again. But that that means you have to be obsessed with only delivering work that is as good as you possibly can, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:13

So look, just coming to the final question. So there's a slice of our audience for this show, which is people who want to be in the business, and that's why they're listening to podcasts like this. So we always like to ask our guests if you could give one single piece of advice to somebody looking to work in this world, what would it be? Um, well, doing specifically what being a writer. So actually, so we've asked the writer, the writer, we've asked the actor, the actor. So let's ask the manager if somebody has just failed at writing in the way that you did, and they're thinking maybe I'll go into this world, what would you tell them?

SPEAKER_03 38:51

Um, you know, I would tell them, you know, it's interesting. Noah's talking about how like I'm somewhat kind of like inoculated from like one bad script, like ruining me. But you know, that's only because I I built up a reputation and I built up a client base. When I started, I only had like four or five clients or whatever, you know? And so that meant the first script I took out had to be really good. And I still believe that, by the way, Bellevue still doesn't take out when people know when I've called them up or anyone from my company calls them up, they know it's going to be a good screenplay because we are very, very picky and quality, uh quality obsessive. And I think that was I knew because I wasn't at a big company that the only reason people would take my phone calls and take me seriously was if I was associated with quality. And so I took out, I don't think Jeff and I took out a screenplay until like September of the first year we were working together because we spent nine months really making sure it was all really, really good, you know. And then those screenplays, some of them sold, some of them ended up on the blacklist. And then that led to more people down the road being like, oh wow, Bell of you really knows what they're doing. You know, the next year with the number one script on the list, this, you know, we're just two managers. And we, I think at for at least a couple of years, we had we were the management company with the most scripts on the blacklist, and we were just two people, like anonymous content and you know, uh 360. They have like, I don't know, 15, 20, 30. I know they have a lot of managers, you know, and so our batting average was really high. And so I think what I would say to someone who wants to be a manager, um especially if they're looking to do it on their own, is don't take out, you know, as as Orson Welles would say famously in those ad, those wine ads, no wine before it's time, you know, only take out material that you are very proud of, that is as good as you can possibly get it. Um, because if you take out crap and if you take out crap on a regular basis, people just won't take your phone calls. And you want to have a reputation. The only thing you have is your reputation. Um, you know, if you were kind of starting on your own, if you're coming from a big company like a CAA or a management 360, I mean CA is an agency, but you take my point, people will like, well, you're still coming from CA. They must, there's some kind of institutional bias, right? But if you're just yourself, you have to prove yourself. Um, and so I would say focus on quality over quantity. You know, there's only there's only two things that I think a writer or even a manager can control in this world. Um, that is not how the marketplace reacts to the material they take out. They can only control how good the material they put into the marketplace is and how often they put that material into the marketplace. And so, and it doesn't cost any money to only take out good stuff. And only it doesn't cost, I mean, look, you're not making any money. That's sometimes why people will just like start throwing out as many things as possible, hoping one of them sticks. But there is a reputational cost if you do that, because people perceive you as not being a filter of quality, they perceive you as being desperate for money.

SPEAKER_01 41:37

Yeah. I do want to close on my part for John, how lucky your clients are that you that although we joke about you failing as a writer, that you have that foundation because it gives you that understanding on a level that um, you know, many other reps just haven't been in the weeds that way about what it takes to get the writing on the page where it needs to be. And that's a huge value to the clients that you have now as you're trying to push their product, you know, past this line, uh uh this quality line, so to speak. But thank you again for your time and speaking to us. It was it was amazing.

SPEAKER_03 42:08

Of course, thank you guys so much for having me. This is a really important podcast to have out there. I think it's it there's so many out there, but I think one that speaks, I think people so often just see the shiny, you know, front of everyone's success. But, you know, I mean, just to tell people, don't believe everything you read in the trades, you know, don't believe it, don't believe everyone's putting it out there on Twitter, you know, there's a lot of um complications behind that. And the reality is, you know, I think podcasts like this are so important because they speak to how hard, how much the struggle is. And I think one thing that's important is if you know how hard it was for other people, it makes when things are hard for you, it makes you feel not quite as alone to know that it was a struggle for everybody, you know. Like for me, it took like 14 to 15 years to figure out what I was right. I was in my mid-30s when I figured out what was right for me to do in this business. You know, I talked to a lot of people and they're like in their 20s, and they're like, oh, I'm never gonna be, you know, like, man, I was not even a manager till I was like 35, 34, 35, you know, and like, and you know, I I think what I did in my 20s and 30s built the ground for the success I'm having today. So I don't view those as wasted years necessarily. But um I think it's important to look at the whole of a life and be like, how did they arrive at that point? Um, you know, and it's funny, I know you guys talk about failing and this and that. And I don't necessarily view that stuff as failure. I view it as an additive experience that it's only a failure if you learn nothing from it, right? If a relationship doesn't end in marriage, is that a failed relationship? I think it's only a failed relationship if it didn't make you into a better person and learn to know what better you're doing from things, you know. I think the reality is, you know, all these things add to a larger, our our larger journey, you know, anyhow. Brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 43:58

Well, John, thank you for your insights, honestly, candor, and doing what you say your company does, which is only giving us quality content. So thank you very much. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

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

SPEAKER_02 44:14

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

SPEAKER_01 44:21

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

SPEAKER_02 44:34

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

SPEAKER_01 44:46

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

SPEAKER_02 44:56

But you definitely can't podcast.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

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