Take 102 - Writers Aaron and Jordan Kandell, Moana, Adrift

SPEAKER_04 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 for.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

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

SPEAKER_01 0:26

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

SPEAKER_04 0:43

I was being told by my manager it's yours to lose. And I probably lost it. And I remember thinking like, well, that's it for me. I blue my one-itch guard. What I've realized with that one is it's never one pitch god. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_03 0:59

Screaming into the Hollywood Abyss is brought to you by Scriptation, the Emmy Award-winning app that instantly transfers your notes into new drafts in seconds. Scriptation allows you to digitally mark up scripts, separate notes into layers, track changes across revisions, and so much more. Insert Noah saying something nice about scriptation.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Dan, I I think this is where they actually want me to talk about how much I love it. And I do love it, it's great. It's collating function transformed me from the messiest writer in Hollywood to, well, ever so slightly less messy. My wife might have other things to say about that. Sitha listeners can get a free month of scriptation by going to scriptation.com backslash Sitha.

SPEAKER_03 1:44

For those of you who don't understand slightly drawly American accents, that's scriptation.com backslash S-I-T-H-A. If you're wondering about timelines, this episode was recorded before the strike ended. Noah, what do you think about the strike ending?

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Uh I was on Cloud9, obviously. It was one of the happiest days I've experienced in a long time. Uh we just goes to show what union solidarity, worker solidarity, writer solidarity can do. An unprecedented deal in an unprecedented time.

SPEAKER_03 2:29

Excellent. There's obviously a lot of detail still to work out about the return to work of people and what they're returning to. But um for now, let's all be pleased. And just remember, this episode, as I said before, was recorded before the strike ended. Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am, as ever, your non-Hawaiian non-industry co-host Dan Rutstein.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

And depending on when this comes out, I am, I might be, you're still on strike, or hopefully not on strike, co-host Noah Epsilon. On today's Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, I'm thrilled to introduce screenwriters, TV writers, and identical twins, Jordan and Aaron Candel to this podcast. They are the co-writers of both Moana and Adrift, amongst many other TV shows and features in development. And like me, they're from Hawaii. Welcome, Aaron and Jordan.

SPEAKER_06 3:31

Aloha. Thanks for having us. We are longtime listeners, first time failures. Or many time failures.

SPEAKER_05 3:40

First time callers for sure. Uh, just so your podcast audience knows right off the top, because we are identical twins, that translates you can't see us, but you also won't be able to determine who's who when we talk because our voices are the same.

SPEAKER_06 3:55

Unless, of course, you're laughing and then just assume it's Aaron, and if we're losing interest, it's Jordan.

SPEAKER_05 4:03

So who just was talking.

SPEAKER_03 4:07

This is a I think a good place to start. So I like having writing duos on because I like to try and find out I like to try and cause discord between them. And I don't know if it'll be easier or harder because you're related. Um, but let's try anyway. So um it doesn't really matter who answers first, and no one will know anyway. But twin number one, um, what is it about twin number two that you find most irritating during the writing process? And let's take it from there.

SPEAKER_05 4:41

I think it's that uh twin number two thinks that they're right all the time. Yeah, and I usually uh and twin number one, what would your answer be?

SPEAKER_06 4:56

Um I think it is we both write so similarly that you can see the flaws as they're happening in your own writing because you're seeing somebody else doing it for you, the version of the writing that you wish would be better because you had somebody writing a better version than what you would already execute yourself at your worst.

SPEAKER_03 5:23

So I'll have to digest that for a second, but I think that's an amazingly clever.

SPEAKER_05 5:29

It's basically seeing AI before it gets five years into the future. Right. And you're like, God, I just wish I could calibrate this to be better.

SPEAKER_03 5:38

So was there a time where you were not writing together? Um, and then why did you decide that writing together was the way you wanted to do this?

SPEAKER_05 5:50

The time we were not writing together was when we each together but independently majored in poetry in college and realized that while we both wanted to be poets originally, poetry is the least collaborative form of writing. And we wanted to work and write together. And what's the most collaborative is the one that we went into.

SPEAKER_06 6:18

Yeah, we've been collaborating ever since. Yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Well, well, I'm sure we're gonna dig into that collaboration in a little bit, but I'm gonna, I guess, fast forward a little bit past poetry in college to the beginning of your guys' career. I do want to uh set the groundwork for how we know each other and how I've heard your name for the very first time, which is all the time when I was trying to get sort of Hawaii-based jobs, I'd be like, maybe you could put me up for that. And they'd be like, No, the very talented twins, Candel twins, are up for that. And I'm like, have you heard of them? I'm like, Yes, I've heard of them, yes, I've heard of them, yes, I've heard of them. But I didn't get to meet you guys until recently. And one of the only maybe fortunate byproduct of the strike was the fact that the Hawaii WGA members actually began to have some meetings, and in that meeting, I got to sit down with you and meet one of you. Uh, but then I realized I really like the other one better. So it's a whole complicated backstory there. But um, so let's go to the beginning of your uh I'm I'm I'm curious about something about your career, which is uh I recently in the last couple of years decided, you know, maybe I can work from Hawaii uh after living in LA for 15 years. You guys made that decision a lot earlier in a time that before there was Zoom, before there was writers working remotely uh from Hollywood, yet you've had a long history with uh Hollywood. How did you, I guess, have the bravery to know that you could do this from Oahu?

SPEAKER_06 7:50

I don't I think bravery is a kind word. I would say naive, arrogant optimism is probably more accurate. Um, we you know we went to college in USC, so we felt like we put in the four years there, and then uh immediately after moved back home to Hawaii and were teachers for two years, two, three years, and then went back to writing the whole time. Went back to LA and did another like three-year tour of duty um before we came back and have been back for probably 12, 13 years here.

SPEAKER_05 8:30

So I think it was always baked into our vision and our very cheesy Jerry Maguire mission statement that we actually literally wrote when we were 24, coming coming out of college and starting the career, which is um the three things we wanted in the career, which was sell a screenplay, uh, get a movie made. That was the second one. And the third, which remains a goal, no matter if we've hit the first two for every project forever for the future, it will never go away, is get a movie made that we're proud of. And I just think that one recycles. Um and we're still chasing.

SPEAKER_06 9:08

We we gave ourselves three years. We're like three years. We have three years out of college to make a go of this. And if we can't, then we need to start rethinking another battle plan um and another career path.

SPEAKER_05 9:22

And it took four till we sold our first thing, which is a story we should circle back to in a second, because I think the story of our first great one would imagine we did at the time, like Willy Wonka lottery winning success, also contained within it the seeds of failure and uh and tenacity that has just tracked through the rest of our career and and most of the guests that we hear come on this, of which we would like to, you know, say we're grateful that you even considered having us because you have such incredibly successful guests on this show that the bar is so high we were already failing at the top from you know just being on here.

SPEAKER_06 10:04

Well, I would say successful I would say you guys are failing for choosing such uh loser guests, to be honest.

SPEAKER_03 10:12

Yeah, no, I maybe didn't clarify, but because of the strike, it's really hard to get good guests at the moment. And he just saw you, you know, down the pub in Hawaii and thought you'd be easy to get toss in the lineup and difference. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

I I think I think the word filler was used uh at one point, but uh so I uh that leads me to a two-part question. Uh uh that that you the second part you've already begun to sort of set the stage for, which is I do want to hear that story about your your first success/slash failure, because that's gonna be a really good way to launch into the rest. But before you do that, quickly Hawaii question.

SPEAKER_05 10:46

The short answer is always baked into our vision and plan is to be writers, but to do it here. And everyone told us all of our team, our representation at the time, friends that were in it. You got you gotta do it, you gotta be in LA, that's where the industry is, or New York, right? That's where the West is or the East is of the guild. You gotta be in one of the hot spots where it's at. And they weren't wrong. We never felt they were wrong. And we, as Aaron said, did what we call our tour of duty. We did years there to do the water bottle uh tours and to make FaceTime with people, but we always felt like and this is the foolish, naive optimism fueled by our love of Joseph Campbell and studying the Cambellian approach, which is uh doors open you never knew existed when you follow your bliss. That's the Campbell thing, right? And for us, our bliss was writing and it was living in Hawaii. And those two always went together.

SPEAKER_06 11:48

We were more creatively fulfilled and felt like we were better prepared to listen to the inner compass of our hearts of what was the stories we needed to tell when we were here in a place that was more naturally and spiritually balanced. Um, we could be better writers and creative artists here and then go to LA and sort of separate the church and state of business side and creative side. And so we could work on the art and then go to LA for the commerce, as opposed to when we were there, there was sort of the Joe versus the volcano brain cloud of trying to be creative, but also trying to hustle and meet people and you know, not be anxious. Uh, and it was harder to find that balance for us personally there.

SPEAKER_03 12:41

So I really want to ask lots of questions that involve you two arguing with each other, and I'll I'll do that a bit later. But while we're talking about Hawaii, I want to since I'm not quite sure what I'm asking here, so bear with me a bit. But this is there's a you know, we've talked about Hawaii a lot. I think there's an authenticity question that I want to try and find an answer to. So there's been quite a lot around this with actors. You know, do you need to be a gay actor to portray a gay character? There's been some questions recently about the size of people's noses in relation to you know playing Jewish characters. In terms of that sort of writing and being from Hawaii, now I've made lots of jokes on this podcast about Noah wearing short sleeve shirts for his interviews for his Hawaii-based jobs because he's got tattoos and they only hide him because they think he's Hawaiian.

SPEAKER_06 13:35

But actually that was a mistake if you're gonna go for Hawaii interviews, and this is why we kept beating him out on all these projects. Uh, you just go shirtless, you just wear board shirts. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 13:44

Grass skirts, you go full cliche. I mean, we are I am wearing a pineapple on my shirt and Aaron a tiki on his, and we're in a board. So Noah, we're really we're really countering this uh this imperative. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:57

If Noah went shirtless for an interview, um, I can't imagine that would go very well. Um, but just in terms of sort of can you tell Hawaiian stories if you're not Hawaiian? How Hawaiian do you need to be to tell a Hawaiian story in today's? This is less about do you know enough about the island to be able to talk about the stories properly about the kings and the queens and the gods? It's more about in today's media landscape, are you allowed? You know, how Hawaiian do you need to be? Do you have to live there? Do you have to have 10 generations mapped out to show that you've got the right to tell the story about the, you know, those sorts of stories?

SPEAKER_05 14:43

Um thank you for the question. The framing probably already could set us up to get canceled in the question asking. And it's a complicated uh question with complicated answers that I'll try to keep brief. You could tell we ramble and answer questions in long form anyway. Um, I would say the history of that answer is anyone can tell a story about the islands because there's a fraught colonialist uh exoticism, fetishism take on the place that we're born and raised. And that has proven problematic in the history of stories told about this place and many places uh that Hollywood and and others have decided to manifest destiny take on as their own. So that there's a shift towards finding more true, authentic voices from the people that should be representing and telling the stories of uh their culture, their place, and their specificity. Now, Hawaii is a melting pot. It is the crossroads of the Pacific, it is the only place we've ever lived where there is no one single majority. Everyone is a minority. Statistically, the population is is spread that that way. And so you get all kinds of cultures and all kinds of influences that meet here, meaning there's so many different views and lenses on what what Hawaii is and who can tell that story that um that's the answer, right?

SPEAKER_06 16:25

And so but that said, I think those stories should be told by people from the islands, right?

SPEAKER_05 16:33

Anytime And not and and we don't even say us, like there have been many stories, as Noah has alluded to, that people have come to us to tell that we said, yes, we're born and raised here, but we're not Kanaka Maoli. We're not native Hawaiian by blood, we are what everyone would call Howli, or what you know, we are we're we're Jewish, so we're like Jewai. Born and raised, live here our whole lives. Uh should we be telling the story of uh to Kanamoku?

SPEAKER_06 17:06

Not necessarily Okalani in the takeover, no. So those aren't our stories.

SPEAKER_05 17:12

There are amazing storytellers uh and filmmakers that we know who uh who can better represent and tell that story and should. And so finding and those voices is important.

SPEAKER_02 17:24

I do want to add, I'm gonna throw back to Dan for the question, but I do want to add here that Jordan and Aaron are great mentors of a lot of uh up-and-coming uh Kanakamuoli Native Hawaiian writers. And when faced with that question, I think the landscape is changing all the time in this. I mean, more and more that Native Hawaiians should be telling their own stories, uh, other people shouldn't be telling, including people who have lived in Hawaii their entire lives. My standard line line is I am a Hawaii native, but I am not a native Hawaiian. And there's that there's a story area for them to tell those stories, like the overthrow, which I think we've all been kind of approached to talk about. Like, and there's certain stories that a lot of my wife is native Hawaiian, just to even begin to even look at that story because it's sensitive, and a lot of that is still isn't for us, and it's you know, but there's not a lot of people, uh, there's there's not as many native Hawaiian storytellers in Hollywood as I would like. And so I think, you know, trying to bring those storytellers up. But again, throwing that back to Dan for the next question.

unknown 18:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 18:23

Well, and Dan, there has been like a positive shift, I would say, even from if you look at the trajectory of Moana, from the time that Moana was first starting the early development of the five-year process of making an animated movie and hiring Taika Whititi to do the first drafts and trying to have an authentic approach to three years later when we were brought on, um, having trained on with the Polynesian Voyaging Society on the traditional voyaging canoe Hokulea and having that background to try to bring that's part of the reason we were brought in is to infuse that story with some of that authentic wayfinding and experience. And how do you what is it like to actually sail one of those canoes? Um, and how do you navigate the culture uh authentically? Uh, was important. But from Moana animated coming out to now a live action Moana and seeing even the sea shift in the last seven years in the industry.

SPEAKER_05 19:24

And when they when they when they hired us for Moana, we were like the only people out of the 900 on the project, other than one story artist who was half Samoan and like the heart and soul of that project. Dave uh Derek Derek's who's who's now directing uh stuff coming out that he should be representing. Um now we're now they've hired female Hawaiian and Samoan storytellers who's friends of ours who should be telling that story. We're not the ones. And so you could look at that as a failure for us to not continue to tell a story that we were involved in that was successful, but I think that's a success for the industry finding the right people to tell the voices better and more authentically.

SPEAKER_06 20:21

Oh, and a successful creatively for the story to have a Polynesian woman story being told by a Polynesian woman.

SPEAKER_03 20:30

Correct. Yeah. Look, thank you. Look, obviously, none of that's straightforward. Um, so appreciate the answer. And as you say, it makes a lot of sense and it shows how far the world has come um between the two maranas. Um so going back to um a theme that I'm desperate to get some good answers on. Has in all the times you've been given notes by studios, has anyone dared sort of take one of you aside and say, twin number one, you know, this is great. I I disagree with twin number two and try to sort of divide you or in some way sort of take one of your side over another, or is no one that reckless, even in Hollywood?

SPEAKER_06 21:15

Axa the Siamese twin hit at the hip connection. Um, I don't think that's ever happened. No, I don't think it's happened because I don't think people can tell or know who's written what because our process is so intricately intertwined.

SPEAKER_03 21:35

And presumably linked to that, nobody so I should use your names at some point. Um, but given that no one can tell which one's speaking, it sort of doesn't matter. But um hasn't has anyone offered one of you a job and said, but you know, we don't want your brother?

SPEAKER_05 21:48

No, I think we kind of come as a twin package.

SPEAKER_06 21:51

I think why would they when it's like two for one special?

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:55

I I do want to say to make it even more complicated, they answer emails together. without putting their name on it with one email account. So it gets very and they live next door to each other. So it's very convoluted this. And you I don't think you could ever pull one aside because you wouldn't be 100% sure that you got the right one. So there'd be some danger even in the pulling aside of somebody.

SPEAKER_05 22:17

That all said, I do want to get to the story that was about us and more about other people's lack of uh identification.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Yeah, exactly. We've been teating up this story. I'm I'm gonna get there and I'm gonna put it on the table for you guys to answer now. Your first success and how that was a failure. I want to know about how you landed your first job uh and did it tie into you moving back were you already back?

SPEAKER_05 22:38

Our first success I think is being on this show before the Duffer brothers are any of the more famous working Hollywood twin writers in town.

SPEAKER_06 22:46

I I'm just gonna claim that's the biggest success right now this is it this is the peak.

SPEAKER_05 22:49

It's all done they're busy yeah that's right uh our first success was we were uh we were summer teaching an SAT prep course in Hawaii uh and sold in a quote unquote bidding war our first script between Disney and Fox they were calling us while we were like giving kids a quiz and be like just take this 20 minute quiz and we'll walk outside it's Fox what that's their offer it's Disney oh it's the same offer oh they're both offering us WGA guild minimums with nothing above it that's why I say bidding war because they were just trying to beat each other without actually bidding up the price and our greatest success was selling our project for WGA minimums which paid us after splits, rep fees, taxes uh way less than we were making as substitute and summer school teachers at the time and we thought we've done it we've made it we're in we sold a project to Disney our career started we're 26 and we were a year off our Jerry McGuire mission statement.

SPEAKER_06 24:02

So that was already a failure but it's not that far off and we still have all the this runway ahead of us and now that we got our foot in the door like our career is going to take off.

SPEAKER_05 24:12

And we didn't sell another project for four years after that make one dime in the industry for four years. And that project every draft we turned in a different executive got fired.

SPEAKER_06 24:24

And so like the head of the studio got fired when we turned in the first draft who'd bought it and then it was the curve it was the curse of the rewrites and like our rewrites were causing the person we were turning into to be fired because it was literally the same day to the point four times to the point where that project no longer had a champion at the studio and got orphaned and went into turnaround. And so uh you can hear the the failure and we made as much on that second sale as we did on the first sale four years later uh after you know being down to our last dimes just trying to make ends meet for those eight years it took us to finally have a sustainable breakthrough in our career where we could just write.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

So that's my next question uh is on that subject of those eight years. And I think it took me about the same amount of time of like you get your first thing three or four years in and you think you're in and then it takes another three or four years to get your second thing. And they often will say that what people don't realize is the second job is often much harder to get than the first job. And yet all of us think once we're through those metaphorical gates it's it's it's you know gravy that you're on the gravy train from here on out and you're not so in those eight years you and I you we have a similar background where we are both Jewish you know non-native Hawaiians uh living in Hawaii and that came with some you know pressure from the family to do something succeed make it and the questions you get when you're not making it for many many years like why aren't you good enough? What was how do you stay the course in eight years of actually not you know another four years of not getting a second job was there a moment where you were like you know pens down strike aside like we are we're gonna just go back to teaching or surfing or modeling uh what you guys don't know is these Kendall twins are extremely annoyingly good looking as well.

SPEAKER_05 26:20

Yeah I mean Aaron said in our our Jerry McGuire mission statement we gave ourselves three years and sold the thing in four and we sold that thing only like the two weeks after we'd cashed the IRA Roth check that our parents had like put in for us it was like two grand you know as a savings account started a savings account for us because we were so broke.

SPEAKER_06 26:43

We were down to we were living like you know I think we had $12 left in our bank account collect our collective shared bank account. We were eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches pretty much those those eight years. And we got to a moment where you know we'd been having meetings uh and we'd been developing things on spec that seemed like it was the relationship build those first four years where it was like you know Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman want to be in a romantic comedy which turned out to be true. They made a romantic comedy in this timeframe we were writing one for them for their company for their company for free for like two years 20 drafts of this thing that was getting progressively worse because we were getting progressively less passionate and committed to the vision of it and it started to feel more mercenary. And it felt like we were selling ourselves out early on for no sale which was a weird feeling of just to like be in some kind of relationship that was you know more imaginary than the characters we were actually writing on the page.

SPEAKER_05 27:53

Yeah in those eight years I think we kind of gave ourselves we kept we we moved our own goalposts I don't think there was honestly like if we were being reflective any moment where we were going to put pens down or give up on this thing because it's just to us the we weren't chasing success and we still aren't. We weren't chasing external results or outcomes or validation from the industry so we could go back and show everybody else hey look we can do this and we've proved it.

SPEAKER_06 28:24

And we majored in poetry we had no like we were aspirations of money. We were poetry poetry majors uh for God's sake.

SPEAKER_05 28:31

So for us what we loved then and what we love now is the process of writing just waking up and looking at the page and trying to turn the story Rubik's cube and solve the puzzle and make it sing.

SPEAKER_06 28:49

And so success to us from early on was just can we sustainably support ourselves enough to continue to create.

SPEAKER_05 28:59

And if we had to be teachers as our like side hustle to pay the bills so we could be writing because when we were teaching we were still writing 40 plus hours a week and teaching uh we were gonna we could have done that our whole lives I don't think we would have stopped writing for us.

SPEAKER_06 29:17

Yeah and so to you know we got to the point where we were we were broke. We had $12 left and it was we had a crossroads where we were offered full-time positions at the schools that we were subbing at and we could have just become full-time teachers uh that would have required you know less rating more teaching uh and we told our parents we've got about I don't know $2500 in this Roth IRA that you get heavily penalized if you cash it well before retirement. We're only 25. So if we cash it it's gonna be like I don't know $2200 that'll maybe we can stretch that out for two months three months the way that we're living paying our rent and peanut butter sandwiches. Uh and they didn't want us to do it right they were like we've been putting this in $50 you know a month since you were 10 and and in that period of time when we did it we wrote and sold the thing within three months. So you know yeah we we bet on ourselves we said this is a uh we're in an investment in our future like 40 years down the lines but if we invest in ourselves now if we use this money and we try to use that time and that's we you yeah yeah we wrote a script in like six weeks and sold it in three months and that was the fastest thing we ever wrote still to date and that was the first sale.

SPEAKER_05 30:44

And if that had failed I think we would have just kept going anyway.

SPEAKER_03 30:50

Uh extraordinary answer. If there are any uh people aged 20 to 25 listening to this please do not take this as financial advice um I'm pretty sure that's not what you're meant to do. Um but obviously it can pay off so maybe do it um and you'll become famous screenwriters. So I'm I'm now giving up um I'm trying to divide you so let's talk about how you do things together. So I always ask the couples or pairs when we this question when bad things happened and it sounds like you had plenty of those when scripts are rejected and studio heads get fired in terms of sort of dealing with that failure how do you you know does one of you deal with it better than the others do you support each other on it and then obviously when you finish telling me that and there'll be more examples of it probably then when you get to the success part you know how do you celebrate successes together?

SPEAKER_05 31:45

Yeah I mean this is where it's great to this is the benefit of having a writing partnership like if you're gonna split 50% of your income maybe you're going to what you get in exchange is a 200% support system for the highs and the lows right you also get to split the like anxiety and overwhelming despair into right and so it's easier to to bear to to carry that burden. Yeah uh and if you can clone yourselves and have like an identical twin version of you it it's only easier because you really think the exact same and and handle it in certain ways. But no I I we call it Zen in the art of screenwriting because the failure part that's built into this industry for every single person we know, not just writers, executives now as part you know our producers producers, actors, directors like it's such an unstable and chaotic industry by nature that if you need crave love stability in your life as a human being which is a totally you know I'd say most of humanity wants some version of that it's gonna be extra anxiety inducing and challenging to like stay in this business. We've always been sort of adventurous explorer overconfident throw ourselves into the abyss lovers of chaos kind of thrive in chaos. Maybe it's like an X factor gene that we had you know to go get adrenaline from the not knowing and and challenging and being afraid and and uh and rising to those challenges. And so for us the highs and the lows we try to mitigate with like a balance in the middle right like again it's not the outcomes that you hold on to it's the daily process of that I get to live in a place that I love, that I get to work with my best friend and that I get to dream up stories and worlds that hopefully will move one person or many people in success. That's like a dream like you're living a dream life and the all the challenges all the successes or failures just become the window dressing on that. And so holding to that core makes the rest of the madness and noise kind of come down a bit yeah for us.

SPEAKER_03 34:09

So like talking specifics the night of the Moana premiere how did you how did how did that play out for you two?

SPEAKER_05 34:18

How did you celebrate uh we both arm wrestled Dwayne Johnson into like a photo with us and that took two of us because he's so big.

SPEAKER_06 34:29

No, we brought our wives our wives yeah I mean look Moana like every single we've written 30 plus movies and TV shows and two have been made right and the two that have been made which are our quote unquote greatest successes were also I would say equally our greatest failures within those uh stories. Um Moana it took us two years of heavy vetting by both Pixar and Disney animation um before we got hired on that. That was a project that was three years into a five year process that had already had two writers that were incredible writers on it who had done incredible work and then another writer following us after us. So there's five writers passing the kind of Olympic you know baton of that relay race and we had we ended up with four directors uh on top of all of the directors that come in and give notes on it uh brain trust brain trust the heads of the studio and the impressure was enormous we'd never done animation when we got hired we came on and the first day that we started on that job the head of the studio pulled us aside uh and told us we're already 60 70 million dollars in the hole on this and it's not working and if you can't get it to work by the next screening which is in about two months uh we're gonna pull the plug on this project and all of these all of this money is gonna go down the toilet all of these people are gonna have to jump to another project um so go write as fast as you can the 900 person train behind you can't start until you shovel the pages into the front of the train and get good work going that they can then make better through the process of collaboration. So that was you know us being on that project I don't think we worked harder in our lives than we did on that. We were working 120 140 hours a week we would not sleep two to three nights uh every week we didn't have I think we had two three days off over the course of six months um on that uh and it would literally we'd be in meetings story sessions editing sound uh recordings all day you had no time you're a more or less a showrunner to do the actual writing until you'd get home at eight o'clock at night and you'd write from 8 p.m to 8 a.m be sending pages in from the car as you're driving to the studio where you're then getting into a room with the brain trust and they're asking you on no sleep to perform your pages to try to make sure that they work um and it was intense and you know our joke is we were it was the dream job if we had any time for actual dreaming. So we were just that's how hard and that's what it took to make to make that go.

SPEAKER_05 37:47

And in success you still as part of that process and how those movies get made pass the baton on to the next writer who was incredible and takes it to the finish line and you know we collaborated with for uh several weeks in the transition and handoff and it's just part of the process.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

Um yeah so again great answer my um my daughter wants to know which one of you came up with the idea for the chicken chicken was on chicken was there pu and he were on uh we came up with a kakamora and the coconut crab tamatoa okay that's not bad that's not in the contributions what what that sounds like both a traumatic yet exciting experience because at the end of the day 900 people did not get fired and there's a movie called Moana that that a lot of people love.

SPEAKER_05 38:45

So question to you what is the your dark night of the soul what is the absolute worst most gut-wrenching Hollywood experience you've ever had um well I'll tell you a Hollywood one and maybe Aaron I'll tell you a personal one maybe Aaron will tell you a Hollywood one just so we can transition out of Moana. The personal one has nothing to do with the industry but it put the entire industry into I think an appropriate context and light for the rest of our careers which was in the moment of our greatest success working on Moana being at the front of that train the dream job minus the dreaming things going incredibly well um getting the movie back on the rails it feeling like it's starting to work we're just working our asses off every three days it was you know write 30 pages rewrite act one uh there was just a deadline reset every three four days and in the midst of our sort of marathon sprint on that my daughter trying to get my attention when I'm in one of these daily deadlines uh climbs onto my lap and slips off the chair and falls and cuts open her eyebrow on like the stone fireplace at the Airbnb that we're staying at. She's two she's two and I've barely seen her for three months because of the job. And we rush to the emergency room to get her stitched up and she has a reaction to the uh anesthetic they have to put her under where she stops breathing while I'm holding her in my arms uh and kind of has to get revived and throw up all over me. And this whole time Erin's in the waiting room writing pages because we have a meeting tomorrow with the heads of the studio and we have to turn this in. And we do because Erin holds the fort down and turns it in and we don't tell anybody I don't think anybody on Disney even knew that this happened or has heard this story. And but for me in that moment I just sort of saw that two roads diverge in a yellow wood if you'll allow me to go back to our poetry major a Robert Frost moment and I went if staying at this level of quote unquote success means I'm failing in the thing that matters more and most to me in my life, which is being a good father, husband, brother, son human being, I'd rather be less externally successful and live a better balanced successful fulfilling life and made a choice in that moment to to be more balanced and do that. And so it may be why uh we don't have as many credits as some of your other guests that have been produced so far, but um but still make a professional living doing this uh and and writing a lot for many studios things that haven't got it made both because of that choice and things out of our control, you know, things getting green lit and then studios getting bought and the project getting killed and a thousand things like that that we could tell you anecdotes of so that's a personal answer to that question. We have the worst Hollywood ones that we could say for the juicy sex appeal of the show if you want to hear that.

SPEAKER_06 42:16

Yeah probably um I'd say Adrift was creatively in the process of finding the book uh reaching out to the real life woman who is an incredible unbelievable one of the most amazing humans we've ever met um and getting to interview her earn her trust fly to where she lives um become close with her uh to the point five years development five five years of earning that trust making sure we had the right story structure and the right approach and vision for the story that felt both authentic to us and also to her and her story her being the audience that we were writing it for and trying to make proud in telling that story uh writing that script uh while I was uh becoming a father for the first time with my kid uh and yeah it was our baby for five years that we were writer producers of we got it to uh the star who's uh came on to the movie we chose the director we our team brought in the the studio uh we did all of the rewrites we managed to keep casting the rest of the movie uh there was only one other producer on the movie which was our director and it was going to be like making movies the old style that not not a huge swath of producers.

SPEAKER_05 43:52

We were at the front of that train and it was going to be the one that was going to match our vision. And it got greenlit and everything

SPEAKER_06 44:00

Was going forward, and it was one of the fastest bullet trained versions of production. The dream you could hope for from I think starting to write the script to being on the first day of production was 14 months, maybe, which is fast. Uh, and the whole thing happened really fast. And we were working with people that we respected, everybody that we brought onto the team.

SPEAKER_05 44:25

We were uh both professional and personally like big fans of, and at least got made uh that the movie got rocky at one moment and might not happen. And a decision got made, as it often does in this industry, that maybe what was needed was a new draft, and not the draft from the writer producers who's every got the whole thing up to this point in Greenlit and everyone involved and everybody's loving work, but just a fresh voice. And that decision was made and then told to us after it had happened, even though we were the only other producers on the project, not just writers, and told to us as in you don't have to accept this choice, but the whole movie might fall apart. So, what's your decision going to be? Do you stand on your principle? Do you stay in position and protect the vision of your script as writers and producers and risk the movie not happening and having to build the bomb back all from scratch again? Or do you fall on your sword to get the movie made, but lose control of your creative vision and the movie got made?

SPEAKER_06 45:38

And and so I would say the best worst day of our lives was because Moana's animated. So everything, you don't get to go to set, right? Everything is made in computers. Uh, the first day of production, which happened in Fiji in this incredibly beautiful, we're flying from Hawai'i to Fiji, right? Yeah, first time I've ever sat in first class, living the dream, going to the first day of set. But that draft of the script was withheld from us until I was getting on the plane to fly to Fiji. I'm reading the draft on the plane. It is this is the night before first day. It's a page one rewrite. It is 90% different than our script. Uh, and if it was, in our opinion, and this is subjective, had been an elevation of our script, we would have been over the moon because movie making is collaborative. And if somebody makes us look better, all the better, we we look better. Uh, and we didn't feel that way about the draft.

SPEAKER_05 46:42

It wasn't at best the same story just told differently.

SPEAKER_06 46:45

Uh, and that's the movie that got made and that came out. And so being on that first day of set was triumph and tragedy on a creative level because you're watching your movie get made, you're watching this incredible real life ship that is an exact replica of the real ship that got wrecked in this hurricane. And you know, and you've got everybody's there, and everybody's excited, and everybody's shooting this thing, and the thing that they're shooting has been your vision until the last six weeks, and suddenly it's a different thing. And so you're watching this child be made brought into the world that is your child, but it's got a different face on it.

SPEAKER_05 47:26

Amazing performances, a phenomenal director, the one of the best, if not the best, cinematographers in the world of all time, and Bob Richardson, casting crew that were a dream to work with, and just making a different version than the one you envisioned the whole time.

SPEAKER_02 47:43

I can't tell you how there's it's really hard to describe to the audience who haven't gone through this how painful this situation is and how writer-specific it is in a weird way that this is sort of a rite of passage for you to be on set, representing words that aren't your own, even when your name is on it, and going and having to own those decisions sometimes in the in the spirit of one voice, and it's not the words you wrote. And it's can be it's can it's it's something you need to learn how to manage, I think, in this in this process. But sadly, I would I would sit here and I would listen to a hundred more of these uh rejection failure stories. Dan and I often you know bemoan the fact that we don't go much longer than we do because we're always getting right into the meat of it when we have to get to the end of our, you know, and ask our final question. But unfortunately, we are there. You guys are listeners to the podcast, so you probably know what's coming. But if you have one piece of advice for an aspiring screenwriter, what would it be?

SPEAKER_05 48:39

Uh Jordan, I'll answer and you can chat if you want, Aaron. Uh for us, it's write what you care about. Don't chase the thing that you think is gonna advance your career. Write what you care about, and then write it to the best of your ability. Make it undeniably great, and everything else is noise.

SPEAKER_06 49:04

Yeah. And I would say it's the external noise, it's the sound and fury of your own mind and your own anxieties and your own fears and of the people around you that are supportive of you, but also wondering why you've chosen this unstable, insane profession and career. Um, if you can get quiet enough and kind of put on the noise-canceling headphones of your own soul and the world around and reality around you, so that you can actually hear what is the story that you're meant to tell? What is the song of your heart that you're supposed to sing? Uh, it's those moments of quietness and clarity where we've chosen to write the things that are most advanced our careers. The most advanced are our careers, even when everybody else said, don't write that. That's not commercial, that'll never get made. Those have been the things that have rocket launched us to different levels of our career uh and have made us sustainable as writers, to continue to try to stay quiet enough to hear the next one.

SPEAKER_03 50:13

Fantastic. So, look, I mean, your last two answers to Noah's question, your the that brutality of watching a different movie be made, and then the story of your daughter falling off your lap, um, as obviously Noah and I are parents as well. That two amazing answers um at the end of an amazing interview. Um, so obviously you've got the same email address, um, but I think you've got different phone numbers. So I'm going to text one of you and tell you that you are actually slightly better than the other, and we'd like you to come back on a second time. Um, but um, it's been incredible to have you on, Jordan and Aaron Candor. Thank you so much. Fascinating insights. Really, this has been one of my favorite episodes to record. So uh thank you very much indeed. It was a great pleasure to have you on our podcast.

SPEAKER_05 51:01

Well, we know you say that almost every time, but we'll believe it because we're glad for punishment.

SPEAKER_06 51:06

That's why we're writers. And flatters. We work for compliments more than money.

SPEAKER_03 51:10

Yeah. Mahalo. Thank you. And Noah, let's get um, I know the Duffer twins are on symmetry.

SPEAKER_06 51:19

Right, clear. Just one, which one? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:23

Thank you for listening to this episode of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss brought to you by Scriptation. Thank you as ever to James Launch for the music. And thank you to our loyal listeners. And if there's any showrunners out there who want to hear their fellow showrunners abused uh and ruffled around and put under the microscope so you can hear their stories of rejection, failure, and adversity, please send them all away. If you are interested in following us on social media, no, I've lost track.

SPEAKER_02 52:00

I am at NEBslin on Twitter or X or whatever Elon Musk now calls it. And thanks to Elon Musk, I'm also at Noah Ebslin on Hive, Scoutable, Blue Sky, Threads, Mastodon, MySpace, French Stir, and I'm sure a thousand more.