Take 4 - Screenwriter Dan Hernandez, Detective Pikachu, the Tick and 1600 Penn.

SPEAKER_01 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_03 0:13

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

SPEAKER_00 0:26

This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is like everything happens here.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

And I'll do that. What I've realized, but that would be never one big five. There will be other stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

So welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am one of your hosts, Dan Rutstein, and I am joined by my co-host as ever. Disappointingly for me, he actually got some work recently. So all my story about him being a complete failure seems slightly unfair. So congratulations now on getting a project, even though it may now still go away. Welcome, Nara.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Thank you. I had to totally derail the whole purpose of this podcast. I did get a little bit of work. I'd like to welcome today. We have a writer-producer, Dan Hernandez, who started started his career in television on 1600 pen and then has moved through a number of TV shows from Super Fun Night to One Day at a time to the tick. To more recently, to my kids' surprise and delight, he wrote the very well-received Pokemon Detective Pikachu and has a couple more kids' movies in the pipeline. Welcome, Dan.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Hey, thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

So look, I'm going to go first. So this is a question, it's not, I'm not quite sure if this falls strictly into the failure rejection camp. It's an imposter syndrome question, which is something obviously that comes up a lot. And I want to talk specifically about Detective Pikachu because my kids and obviously Noah's kids have seen this movie. We've seen it, we loved it. But when you were working on this, knowing that you were holding something so precious to so many people who had spent hours, days, months, years absorbed in this world. Knowing that you were, yeah, you could sort of break hearts and cause crying or delight people, were there elements when you were writing this of anxiety that you were the wrong person to be entrusted with such a precious opportunity?

SPEAKER_02 2:53

Yeah, I I definitely think that there were. So you now find yourself writing something that both has elements that are so meaningful to so many people, but also in a weird side pocket of this world that you're going, is anyone gonna actually want to see this? Is this a story that even should be told? It was a little bit like, you know, at a certain point, there were no battles in the movie, there were no pokeballs in the movie. It was a little bit like writing a Star Wars movie without a lightsaber and the force. And as you're doing it, you're going, I gosh, I I I hope that this is the I don't think this is the version of Pokemon that people have been dreaming about since they were kids. And in addition to that, at least for me, I was already in high school when Pokemon really broke. So uh as compared to someone that grew up with it as a as a as a littler kid, there was an element of like my expertise only goes so far, you know. If my Marvel knowledge is, you know, like 10 out of 10, my Pokemon knowledge maybe was a six and a half, seven. So there were definitely moments where you're writing the script, and there's something called the Pokedex, which is like the Pokemon encyclopedia. So you're literally holding the encyclopedia in one hand, going, if only there were some kind of bioluminescent mushrooms, flip, flip. Oh, there is! Like fantastic! That's great news for me. So I I did feel at times like, are we telling the right story? And when it proves not to be the right story, are people gonna want to kill me for ruining their one chance at, you know, if it if it had failed miserably at actually seeing the thing that they wanted to see? And so that was very much at the forefront of my thought process as as my writing partner Benji Salmon and I were were undertaking the initial writing of the movie.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Are you uh a lot of I hope I'm not gonna offend anyone here, I'm not from the entertainment industry, but a lot of the people we've had on have described themselves as sort of nervous people, they have anxiety, writing's an outlet for them. Are you one of those people? Did you wake up in the middle of the night thinking I've ruined Pokemon for everybody? Or is that not your psyche?

SPEAKER_02 5:40

I'm an anxious person about certain things. I don't like ambiguity and I don't like waiting for the phone to ring. I find that, and I think that unfortunately, as Noah can tell you, like that's a huge part of this industry, and it and it required a thickening of the skin to get used to that. But where I'm not as anxious is in the actual creation process and putting words on on a blank page. I I actually feel pretty confident to do that. It's the thing that I actually like doing the most. Um, and sometimes I I find myself uh at odds with writers I really admire who are like, oh, I hate the process of writing. I can't stand it. I not to not to not to name drop, but I was at a large, I will make I'll probably say it was a large group dinner. I was one of 50, but it was with Conan O'Brien, and he was talking about how he just hated the process of sitting down and writing. And I'm thinking to myself, oh, well, if Conan hates this process, then maybe I'm doing something wrong because I seem to like it and I seem to enjoy it. So I think that it really kind of depends on your personality. But so for me, working out some of these concerns on the page was actually beneficial to my state of mind because there were moments if people saw the movie where I felt like, well, what would I want to see in a Pokemon movie as a fan? What do I think are the essential touchstones of this film? I'm gonna put them in. And if somewhere down the line they fall out, it won't be because I didn't try. And as it happened, a lot of those cases actually did end up staying in the movie from the beginning draft all the way through the end. And other people, of course, you know, in movies, a lot of different hands, different writers, people are working on it. But some of those things that I felt like had versilitude for the fans and for uh people that that really cared about it managed to stay in throughout. And I think maybe it's because I I I was actually thinking, oh, how do I make sure that this experience is meaningful for those people? Because what would I find meaningful in a movie like this? So that that that's kind of how I approach it. So I I'm not an anxious, I mean, I think I am probably an anxious person, but weirdly not in the process of creation.

SPEAKER_03 7:54

It's amazing to me how often I hear people say they hate writing, writers say they hate writing. It's like actors, I've never heard an actor say they hate acting or a director say they hate directing, but I so many of our peers, I would say 50% of the people that I know say that they love having written, but they actually hate the process of putting words to page, which I also find a bit surprising. I'm like, am I doing something wrong, or is my process a bit unusual because I tend to enjoy it when it's going well, when it's going terribly, you do want to beat your head against the wall. I have I have another question about this jump that you made. Uh, it's not necessarily a question about failure, but it's a it's an interesting, you know, you got entrusted, you and your partner, with a humongous piece of IP, which is the Pokemon universe, this huge Pokemon movie, live action movie you guys were doing, uh CG live action, but you came up through television. So what was that moment when you were, you know, on the tick or you were on one day at a time or super fun? I'm not sure where in that you were suddenly, you know, pitching on this Pokemon movie. How did you guys come up for it and how did you end up landing it?

SPEAKER_02 9:02

So, you know, when I talk to people who, especially people who are trying to break into the industry, uh, one of the first things that I always say, and if anyone's heard me talk, they've probably heard me say it before, is there's no individual story that is able to replicated as far as the beginning your journey as a screenwriter. You know, how you got your first job, how I got my first job, how my my friends got their first job. It's all radically different, and they all involve a degree of preparation, luck, being in the right place at the right time, you know, all of those things have to come together in a confluence that that that sort of rises you up to getting that first gig. So I I think that in in some cases the trajectory of a career is similar, with the one exception that if you know where you want to go, you can sort of steer the boat toward that tributary, so to speak, not to use an extremely tortured conceit um that's run its course like a river. Oh god. Um anyway. So so when we so when we started on our first job, 600 pen, you know, Benji and I actually had begun writing movies to begin with. Um and we had gotten a little bit of you know a taste of of success, nothing, you know, nothing. I mean, there's a whole story about how one of our movies was supposedly going to be made, and then we found out like after the fact that it was seemingly funded by like Russian mob money, and it was a whole, you know, it was a whole to-do uh that you know seemed at the time like our big break, but in retrospect, of course, was just nothing. But it it did give us sort of a false sense of optimism about our well, not maybe false, but it it raised our spirits enough to continue. So when we did start writing TV, which we you know, I I'm often a big fan of saying the content should dictate the form. So we had ideas that that's something that my uh a great professor of mine, Robert Creeley, uh, who was a very famous poet, he you know, he was my professor and and he he really hammered home this idea that the content of what you're working on should dictate the form of how it's presented. And so I I really uh brought that into my own life, which is some ideas are TV ideas and some ideas are movie ideas. But Benji and I always knew that we wanted to do movies, and specifically we wanted to do big movies for big IP that we cared about, or create our own IP, but you know, similarly writing movies on a scale that that was large. And and you know, there's there's uh there are many delicate family dramas that I like, but I would never ever write something like that. Uh almost I I almost with 99.9% certainty. It's just not something that I at least in the screenplay form that I would sit down and be like, I'm gonna write Manchester by the Sea. What's my Manchester by the Sea? It's just never that was never really something that was interesting to either of us, just because we're huge nerds, I guess. You know, we were sort of more drawn towards the Star Wars and Marvel and you know, DC, things like that. So as we were able to start this career as TV writers, we always tried to keep it like uh the door open on the movie writing stuff, and we were fortunate to, and I try to be pretty honest about this. I had the good fortune to go to high school with Josh Gadd, the actor. Um so when we got that job on 1600 pen, Josh had seen, you know, and we had at this point, you know, and this is probably more on the failure side of the conversation, we had met on uh every major Emmy winning show that you comedy that you could meet on and got none of those jobs. We had met on The Office, 30 Rock, Parks and Wreck, Community, American Dad. There's probably others that I'm forgetting, and we didn't get any of those jobs. So we had been knocking on the door for a while, but nobody knew that. And as fate would have it, Josh got this TV show after doing Book of Mormon. And he had always said, Well, you know, if I if I ever have a TV show, I I'd love you guys to write for me. And we had sort of said, Okay, well, where are you gonna get a TV show, Josh? And sure enough, he goes to New York and does Book of Mormon, gets nominated for a Tony, which he should have won, and uh comes back with a TV show. And so he, you know, so anyway, that that sort of kick-started the process of us, and you know, and all of these, I all of these stories have like many components pieces, but but we started working with Josh, and then Josh had an opportunity to talk about writing to starring in a Gilligan's Island movie, and he was wanted to partner up with someone to write the movie, and he knew that Benji and I were big fans of Gilligan's Island, and so through Josh, we were able to kind of get our first big studio um assignment. There were all there were all kinds of problems with that particular project, but one of the problems was not the script, which I think ended up pretty funny and pretty good. So suddenly, even though that we were younger writers, we were only you know 27 at that time, 28, um, we had now written a studio feature. So the door was now a little bit cracked open for us to continue to pursue movie writing, which sometimes for people who don't know, if it's if you're you know, a lot of times, especially agents like to brand you in a certain way, which is to say you're the the TV writer who writes young people in an apartment comedies, that's what you do. Or you're the big high concept sci-fi movie writer, and that's what you do, and we shouldn't you know cross-pollinate those things. And and Benji and I always sort of rejected that. And and so we kept pursuing these things, kept pursuing these things. And what ended up happening was we did a project. Sorry if this is a long-winded answer, but it's it's it's uh there were the you know, this just goes to show you how many steps down the line some of these things need to bear fruit, which is we wrote another movie for Josh for the producers at Paramount, Mary Parent and Kale Boiter, uh, that was called Heavy Duty. The the premise was basically City Slickers at Fat Camp. I think it's really one of the funniest things that we've ever written. And it really looked like that movie was very close. It seemed like that was a movie that was gonna get made. And then Mary Parent called us one day and basically said, Hey, I'm taking a job as the president or you know, the the head of legendary, all my projects at Paramount are now dead. So talk about failure. We we thought we had gone from a green light movie to it it's it's put a bullet in its brain, it's dead. So that was very disappointing. But what ended up happening is that we kind of stayed in touch with them, and by the time that they were doing Pokemon, they were like, Who are the biggest nerds that we know? We need, you know, we need some nerd brains on this, and that ended up being Benji and and me, and we were brought in through these other relationships for what was uh you know originally supposed to be just a one-day thing. And because we you know were nerds authentically and knew Pokemon authentically, it kind of spiraled into us working on it, and then it was we were writing an outline, and then we were suddenly writing the movie. So it it was like a very long continuum of of things that that had to like kind of fall into place over the course of five, six years in order to land that that property. And and we were very fortunate to to do so because you know our first produced movie was this giant blockbuster, as opposed to you normally you kind of level up the with movies, especially, uh, but we didn't do that. We went right to you know to this giant movie franchise, and and they put a lot of trust in us to do that. But but it was the the pre-work that sort of enabled us to be in a position to do that.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

I love the fact that in the answer, which isn't really talking about rejection, you managed to drop in a Russian mobster funded movie that didn't work. And also, and I I I I sort of again as an outsider, I find this fascinating the fact that somebody successfully moved from one job to another in a senior studio role. And a byproduct of that is you know, the hopes and dreams of probably a few dozen people were shattered by her single move through no fault of her own. Um, but you know, your project ends on the floor. Now, obviously, it turned out well for you, but presumably there will have been other people who were nearly got that big movie, didn't because of her move, and then maybe never did get the big movie.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

A hundred percent. And and that's what's so the the movie side of the industry, I think, is is very volatile in that way. And and it's really not until the cameras start rolling, and even sometimes not even you know, maybe even after that, that you feel like, oh, this is really happening. This is really a thing that that is occurring. Um so it it is it also, I mean, as far as like rejection and failure, it's it's learning to navigate some of these disappointments and and not be so overwhelmed by them that you you feel like you have to give up or that or that there's something inherently wrong with what you're doing. Sometimes it's things so beyond one's own control, these external factors that have nothing to do with the quality of what you've written, but that still result in the same end place, which is this thing that you really put a lot of work in is dead. It's done, it's over, and there's nothing you can do about it. So, how do you pick yourself up from that and move forward trying to say, okay, what are the good things that did come out of this, these relationships, these this ability to to, you know, to have proved yourself as having done a good job for a very important person, like you know, Mary Perrin or some of the other people that we've worked for. So sometimes it's in these failures that you're set up for future success. But in the moment, it's hard to have that long view because you're so in it with what you're working on in that time, not thinking, well, in three years, this is really gonna pay off. You know, it's hard to it's hard to you know feel good about that.

SPEAKER_03 19:46

Well, only in our industry, I think, I don't think there's any other industry where a studio exec or someone leaves their job and all of their slate, their projects disappear the way it does in Hollywood. And the reason that at least that I've been informed that it happens is the next studio exec in line has nothing to gain by green lighting the projects of their predecessor, right? They if they do well, the predecessor gets all the credit. If they do badly, it lands on them that it was in their quarter or in under their tenure. So you end up like, there's so many ways, you know, for all of our hopes and dreams to be dashed. But this is a particularly cruel one because often those projects have been well financed, they're like right at the finish line. Maybe you've even been promised a green light, and then suddenly you get that awful phone call, uh, which is you know, it's not moving forward.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

And and that's exactly what happened. You know, we were talking casting, we were talking this and that, you know. I mean, it really felt to us like, oh, this this is happening, everyone is loving it, everyone is, and and that's when you you realize the business side is is will trump the artistic side in a lot of cases. Uh I mean, and who knows, maybe that script will come back someday in some other form. I I hope so. I don't think so, but but but I I would like that. But you know, so it some so it is hard not to feel like you personally have failed, even though the reality is these are it's like getting mad at the the cycles of the moon or something. It's not it's so beyond your ability to influence, more or less control, that you you kind of have to take a step back and s and say, you know, I sometimes and maybe this is a flippant way to think of it, but I I think of like the end of Black Adder part four, where they go over the top to like charge the World War I, you know, military and uh machine gun emplacements. And it's like that's kind of how I feel about a lot of our projects. You know, I don't, we're all going over the top, and sometimes you're surprised at who makes it through that charge. You're like, this idea is the one, and it just dies, and one that you're a little less bullish. On but you know, you're like, I will give it a shot. Somehow that ends up making it all the way to the finish line. And you're like, oh, I really didn't expect that this would be the survivor of the 20 ideas that that I, you know, kind of launched into the world. But you know, I'm glad that somebody made it. So here we are.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

So I want to explore this this whole like going to high school with Josh Gadd thing. As a I don't want to know what going to high school with Josh Gadd was actually like, but it's more the principle that from outside people think a lot of this is, you know, this person's friends with this person, and then then everything they do together, they just sort of get their mates involved. Now, obviously, there isn't a tiny element of that, presumably, and obviously you said that you know Josh wanted you on things, but like when you got Pokemon, you know, is that where you sort of say, we don't need this Ryan Reynolds guy, this, you know, we don't need a gin salesman in the lead role here. Can we get um you know Josh Gadd doing that role instead? You know, do you try and sort of swap it round?

SPEAKER_02 22:55

No, no. I mean, and and for something like that, you are as a writer so not in charge of any of those decisions that you kind of have to just remove yourself from. I mean, maybe there are writers who are more in charge of that, but in this case, we there was already a director involved. There were already conversations with people at Ryan Reynolds' level, you know, to so so far above our pay grade that our attitude was like, let's just focus on on making the best script that we can, and we'll leave those big decisions to the people who are actually, you know, in charge. But but at the same time, you know, working with Josh has has, I mean, we would not have had Pokemon if not for working with Josh without having that friendship with him. And so we just did a show, uh Central Park for Apple, um, as part of our uh we have an overall deal at 20th, and and we wanted to work with Josh, you know, because we love him. And so we we think it's important to try to maintain some of those creative partnerships. Josh is a I consider him to be a creative partner of ours, and and we have a lot of creative partners, and luckily we've been able to, you know, work with a lot of neat people over the course of our career thus far. But I think that as far as how you weather the you know, sort of the lean years, it's it's good to have a core of people where you know, okay, I can collaborate with this person, and we're pretty in sync. We we think alike our taste is similar, you know. I think I think taste is is ultimately the great decider of whether collaboration can work or not in the long term. And if you find someone whose taste is in line with your own, not to say that you have to like every single thing the same, but generally, at least for Benji or Josh, if I really love something, I sort of kind of intuitively know that they're gonna feel the same way. And if I don't like something, usually our opinions line up. And so that makes them great collaborators because when we're working on original material, I don't necessarily have to question, well, is Benji gonna really like this? Is Josh gonna like this? Is you know, whoever I'm working with, I kind of have an intuitive sense that if I'm turned on by it, they're probably gonna be turned on by it too, and vice versa.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

So, a question about sort of the writing partnership. So we've had a guest come on here and talk about how he coped after his writing partnership ended and going out on his own. But just in terms of the coming together part, at what point do you realize that you are gonna be working together, you know, with Benji on a movie like this? You know, at what point did you think it's not me on my own? We should do this together? Like, how does that packaging work? And how do you decide how long to stay together and all that stuff?

SPEAKER_02 25:51

Benji and I are perhaps atypical as partners in the sense that we started writing together our senior year of college at Brown in a very intense class that was sort of the de facto equivalent of uh a theater thesis class. They don't actually have a theater thesis class, but this is sort of the closest thing that they have to it, which is writing, producing, uh, and starring in your own hour-long solo show. And you get partnered up with someone who directs your show and helps and basically becomes your writing partner uh through the course of this class, which I think met four days a week for half a year. So Benji and I pretty quickly at the end of college were with each other every single day, writing with each other pretty much every single day, producing each other's shows. Uh you know, basically a boot camp of whether a long-term partnership was going to be possible happened uh in miniature in a very short period of time. And so, like I was saying, once we realized that we were so on the same page about things like taste, what we thought was funny, what we thought was bullshit, what we thought was cloying, what we thought was, you know, a lot of people liked, but that we thought sucked. You know, those are all important factors in being able to actually have a long-term partnership. It also helps that Benji and I are best friends, legitimately. So, you know, there are definitely some partnerships that are are like a work partnership. We meet at the office, we you know, we work together, and then we go home to our respective families and we don't hang out or socialize, or we do occasionally. Um Benji and I are pretty much in constant communication throughout the day. We hang out independent of having any work to do. So we're fortunate in the sense that we actually really like each other and like want to, I don't know, watch the Mandalorian together, whatever. So we have been sort of able to ride all the you know the tensions that come with partnership, including not being successful. You know, at a certain point we were both living at his mom's house in Tarzana. Um, so those kinds of experiences, if you can weather them in again, in the times that you're not having success, um it it sort of points the way towards towards future success. Now, success is its own poison sometimes, and there are plenty of cases of people that are like, we finally had our big break, and then we broke up. Um, and I think we all know people like that. So I think that it's just for whatever reason that our skill sets complement each other such a way that that it's there was a point, like you said, you know, there was a certain point I was like, oh, we're we're gonna be doing this for a long time. But I also think sometimes I I've talked to some writers who who say to me, sometimes I, you know, I I just I should I wish I just had a partner, it would be so much easier. And I sometimes laugh at that because I I I don't think having I actually don't think having a partner is easier um in the ways that people maybe think that it is. It's you know, yes, we can be doing two different things at the same time, that that's useful, but we also have to have concordance about everything. And if you're the kind of person that doesn't like it when someone you know edits out whole scenes that you've written, you're not gonna like working with a partner. So there's a level of trust that must develop in a partnership that it also helps that you know, in general, not always, I really like staring at a blank page and writing the first draft. Benji doesn't like that as much. Not to say he doesn't do it, but but he did he's not he's not as into that as I am. But what he does like doing is taking whatever crap that I have put on the page and making it good. So we have a compliment in that respect as well, which is if he edits something out that I've written, at this point in our career, I don't ask myself, I don't get mad, or I don't think to myself, hey, that was actually really good. I think, oh well, if Benji cut that, it must not have been working for us for whatever reason. And I really don't question it at this point. Once in a blue moon, I'll ask for a joke back, but that's about it. So I I do think that it's a matter of you know, personalities being able to fit together in the right way and and and to try to be as egoless as possible. And and it's hard to be egoless. So that's why I I think sometimes when people are like, well, it'd be so easy to have a partner. I'm like, I don't know about that. I don't know about that.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

There's there's no sorry, there's no way oh, this is the problem with partners, you see. Partners, see, this would never have happened if you were solo. And and no hates it because I edit out all these questions because they're not very good. So I can you know I can see how it can be frustrating for people. So you go now, I'm sure it's an excellent question.

SPEAKER_03 31:01

It was a a little bit of color, which is the idea of taste isn't talked about enough, I don't think. And when you are talking about taste and having similar taste and things and and kind of being on the same page with your creative partners, your real partner, and let's say Josh Gad as well, the people that I find that I've worked with that are extremely successful all have sort of this extremely specific and extraordinary at times taste. And and there's almost no other way to describe um how they view their work and their projects. And I'm not talking about necessarily the way they decorate their houses or the way they dress to work. I'm talking about on the page and on the screen, they know exactly what they want down to the minutiae, which is on the screen, to a level that I don't think most people have that sort of level of specificity. And I haven't really thought about it the way that you presented it today, that we talk about tone a lot, we talk about structure a lot, and we talk about all kinds of different things, pacing a lot, but we don't talk about taste a lot. And that was an interesting kind of uh kind of rabbit hole you sent me down as you were talking about that, that you definitely need to match up with somebody that has good taste. But I do have a question. Your career, seven years ago, you were a staff writer on 1600 pen. Uh, I'm guessing five years ago you were writing Detective Pikachu, right? So that's a pretty quick.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

No, so no, actually, we we we staffed on 1600 pen. The next year we staffed on Super Fun Night, um, which was not the super funnest ever thing. Talking about, you know, if we're talking about failures versus successes, you know, we were fortunate to start in a place at 600 pen that was a very happy, welcoming, nurturing environment, and then uh found ourselves in not that as our second uh you know, our second big job. Not to say that there weren't great people, and I'm not running anybody down, but it just that's just my opinion. Um, so that's its own form of you know adjustment to oh now there's some adversity coming our way. So so actually after six after Super Fun Night, we didn't staff for two years. And we did um development, you know, we developed some stuff. We wrote, uh, that's when we were writing um this movie Heavy Duty. Um and we were so we were, you know, we were working, but we weren't on staff anywhere. And then it wasn't until the first season of One Day at a time that we went back on staff. Um, and it was between I guess it was between the second and the third. The first I think we wrote, yeah, it was we wrote Detective Pikachu between the first and the second season of One Day at a time. And then we worked on the tick between the second and the third season of One Day at a time. Yeah. So that that's so we wrote Detective Pikachu about uh like four years ago, I guess, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

Yeah. So we've talked quite a lot about some of the successes, which is actually lovely to hear for a change, but just in terms of the sort of the the rejection side, so you obviously had this fallow two years at that point. Um, you obviously missed out on a few uh movies like the Russian mobster one, which sounds fascinating. How do you deal with that? And do you lean on each other as partners? You know, when you get the no phone call, or as actually Noah's often said, it's not always as clear as just a phone call. It's a sort of, you know, someone doesn't answer your phone. You know, when you get that, how do you process those difficult times and how do you process them as a partnership?

SPEAKER_02 34:49

Well, I think it's good if you take turns being in despair as opposed to both being in despair at the same time. And you can't necessarily plan that, but but generally that that has how that is how it's it's been for for us, which is one person is really down to the dumps, and the other person is kind of going, you know what, you know, we'll we'll figure it out. It'll be fine. And then that'll flip in two weeks, and then the other person has now come out of their funk, but but the other, you know, but now I'm in a funk and Benji's feeling more optimistic. So I I think that that um that helps, you know, that that you're not that you can actually talk through and process your emotions with your work partner as opposed to doing it with your spouse or your mom or your dad or someone who maybe not as is not as familiar with the nitty-gritty and is a little bit less willing to go over the minutiae of of what's happening. So I I find that helpful. We were fortunate, I mean, we were fortunate and unfortunate in the sense that at the beginning of our career we got rejected by a lot of really brilliant, great people, including, you know, Robert Carlock, the the create the co-creator of 30 Rock, Greg Daniels, uh, you know Dan Harmon, you know, people that I really admire were like, no, we're not interested. So the 30 Rock one in particular was very hard because it really seemed, you know, I'm Cuban American, and so we qualify for this diversity writing slot on these TV shows, which is probably a separate podcast. You know, my I have, you know, it's a complex, it's a big, it's a big point of contention in a lot of ways. But the the reality is we were meeting on these diversity slots, and a lot of the time, and I'm not saying any of the people I just named, but because we met on dozens of shows, um, you know, but a lot of the time you realize pretty quickly that some of the places that you're meeting are not very serious about hiring a diversity person, or if they consider it to be an optional thing that where the expectations are radically low for a person in that position. And this is a huge problem in in the you know, for people of color and diverse people that are trying to come up, which is like we don't really need you, and our expectations for you are incredibly low. So the bar is so low already that that it's almost like you're not nurtured to be your best self, in my opinion. Um, so that in combination with getting rejected by people that we really admired, the 30 Rock one was the hardest one for me. I was pretty down about it for like six months. I really thought this is happening. I had flown from New York. It was like one of those like, you need to be in LA tomorrow by noon. And I was like, but doesn't 30 rock shoot in New York? I'm in New York right now. And it was like, no, come to LA. Okay. So, you know, I spent like $1,500 that at the time I didn't really have to spend to come to LA to take this meeting, that ultimately we didn't get that job. I'm not, and by the way, maybe they were probably right not to hire us. We were so young and and and pretty inexperienced, but I really it felt like one of those things like it's happening. And then it didn't happen. But you know, back to my previous theme of cont, you know, the sort of the continuum of one's career. One of the co one of the executive producers of that show is a guy named David Miner, who's a big manager at Three Arts, which is also a production company. So when things did start to happen for us, we were already a known you know entity, and we had an in now, we had an inn at three arts, and we ended up signing with our manager at three arts because of this pre-existing interaction that we had had with the big cheese of the one of the big cheeses of the company who was like, Oh, I love those guys, we should sign them. So five years later, this rejection paid dividends. He I will also say David Miner was very cool to us. He sent an email to NBC after we didn't get that that 30 rock job that was basically like, Hey NBC, I don't know who how you do this, hey NBC, you should be aware of these guys. And that also paid dividends like four years later, when some of those same people that we had met with were the ultimate decision makers on whether we should be hired on the 1600 penny. So at the time it was a devastating loss that I didn't think was recoverable because 30 Rock at the time was winning all these Emmys and it was the biggest, most hot show ever. And I actually was already living in New York. So for all of these reasons, it was like this is gonna be perfect. My life is really starting, and then it just didn't. But all of those things, all of those components of this rejection actually yielded positive stuff just much later. Um, and the training, of course, of you know, if I could get over getting not getting 30 rock, I was kind of like, you know what, I can kind of get over anything. And there have been some tough hits subsequently, but but none that have made me go to that place of like, I'm depressed. I can't believe that this didn't happen, which is how I felt at the time. But I was also 24, you know, so it's now at 37. I have a different perspective on on all of that stuff. Uh so anyway, I don't know if that answers your question.

SPEAKER_03 40:17

But it it sounds like A, you're not completely over it. B, that's a fantastic. I mean, just with that is such a I mean, I'm trying to imagine me being completely over uh the being coming so close to a hit show like that, and it just doesn't go away.

SPEAKER_02 40:30

I mean, it I I you know, you one can't help but imagine what one's life would have been like had some of these things come through. That one in particular, now, in in the the the wisdom of years, the person who had left 30 Rock was Donald Glover, and they were trying to replace him. A generational genius, and then uh we come in, we're like, hey, you should hire us. So I could sort of see why we didn't stack up as compared to a genius. So I don't blame them. I think they were right to be like, I think we can do better, and that's that's okay, you know. But at the time, you don't have that perspective and you don't have that, you know, the ability to to think in those long-term ways. Now, granted, everything worked out okay for us, but I guess I would say, you know, looking back on it, the fact that we were even in the mix for these things over and over and over again probably was a marker that eventually something would hit. I didn't know that, you know, and but this is where luck comes in. Not everyone has the fortune to go to high school with a movie star and be friends with them. So that's you know, I try to be honest about that component of things because everybody, you know, it's just you don't know where it's a combination of preparation, luck. I know that we had been trying for five years to get that first gig and had met on all of these great shows, but but when we went into the pilot punch up of 1600 pen, people were like, who the hell are these guys? Josh's stupid friends? That was which was also a totally reasonable reaction. So you you kind of have to have faith that the markers of at least that you're not barking up the wrong tree are are true and and hope that eventually you know you get the right tree, which we did.

SPEAKER_03 42:18

Dan had mentioned earlier about the idea of relationships and nepotism and all of that in Hollywood and on the outside that there is this belief that we all have cousins and uncles who are the head of a studio and that's how we're all working. But the reality is that even if you have a friend like Josh Gadd who might open a door for you, he might even get you a seat at the table. You're not staying at that table unless you have talent because there's just too much money involved. So, and you're definitely not getting into another room and another table and another room and another room without a certain degree, not only talent, but enough talent to beat out this entirely this giant pool of people who are all seeking those same jobs.

SPEAKER_02 42:55

Well, what was interesting about that situation is, you know, and I've told this a version of this story before, but but it's true is that we treated that, you know, this opportunity to come to the pilot punch up. That was all that was that was all that we had. We had an invitation to go to the pilot punch up. So for people who don't know, before they shoot the pilot, especially you know in comedy, you get a bunch of comedy writers to to come to the table read and then add jokes and and fix problems as a group. Um, so that's all that we had at that point was an invitation to do that. And so we treated it like eight mile. This is our moment, we're writing jokes, writing jokes. We had more jokes than we ever possibly could have pitched in the context of this this this punch up. But what I've discovered sort of subsequently, having you know been on the opposite side of it now, most of the writers who are invited to these punch ups are not thinking my entire life is dependent on this how this punch up goes. Uh, most of them don't even read the scripts before the table read and certainly don't prepare that many jokes. So That's where the preparation came in, is I did think to myself, in a best case scenario, if this goes well, the whole course of our life will be radically different. And that is what happened. But I went into that situation knowing that that was at least a remote possibility and preparing accordingly. So it's it's uh you're right. You know, you you it's not just, oh, I know this person or this person got me in the door, which is great and amazing. And actually, you know, I don't really think that there's shame in in taking advantage of those relationships if you can. This is a very hard business. And you should, you know, like you you went to, I don't begrudge people that are like, I went to Yale, and the executive at so at you know, wherever went to Yale. I so I cold emailed them and then I got a meeting. Okay, great, good for you. Everybody has different, you know, everybody's path is going to be different. But what remains the same is being able to like actually deliver once that opportunity is is put in your lap. And and you know, luckily we we didn't totally humiliate ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

This is excellent, and there's a part of me that wants us to just keep going and we can do a two-parter, but unfortunately, I don't think we're quite there yet. So we're gonna end with a final question.

SPEAKER_03 45:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

Well, what we'll do instead is probably have you back on next time you've had a when you've had a few more rejections and a few more successes. Yes, a few more failures. Um, it's just been a little bit too positive for my liking.

SPEAKER_03 45:23

We do want to hear the Russian mob story for later. We're gonna put a pin in that for a three for uh for the next time he's on, we are gonna hear that Russian mob story, but it goes go ahead, Dan.

SPEAKER_00 45:31

Yeah, I think that might even be a you know a scripted podcast series, just that Russian mob story. But so the last question we ask every guest is if you could give a single piece of advice to somebody wanting to be in your industry, what would it be?

SPEAKER_02 45:44

Hmm. That's a hard I mean, that's a really challenging question. A single piece of advice. I guess it's to look inward and to really do a self-appraisal of all the idiosyncratic weirdness in your own heart and try to not be afraid of putting that into a script. Because the things that always jump out to me when I read other writers and the thing that has been commented upon about my own writing is there's weird shit in there. There's odd stuff, there's opinions that are maybe not popular or or or points of view about things that are that are very odd and and maybe not always attractive in the sense of it makes you look good as a person, but I think that not being afraid to to write something singular and not r shy away from those parts of yourself that are that are eccentric, that are maybe not as fit for the you know, seemingly you know, ready for prime time. But that's the stuff I want to see on the page. That's the stuff that that is unusual. Those are the expert weird life experiences, having done something that is totally unique and getting a perspective on that. You know, I I was in uh my degree in c in college is in fiction, actually. I I that's what I really thought I was gonna be doing. And I remember there was a a med student who audited our fiction workshop, and this guy wrote about how all the med students were ravenously hungry after doing uh an a cadaver dissection. And I had never seen someone write about first of all this topic. Second of all, it wasn't it wasn't what you would expect, the like, oh, the beauty and fragility of life, and you know, oh, I was weighing a person's heart in my hands. It was like we were in the guts of this person and we were all just starving afterwards. And I remember thinking that's a fucking weird thing to put in your short story, but it was true and it's memorable, and it stayed with me to this day. I doubt that that that person is even a writer. I'm sure that that person has gone on to a successful career in medicine, but the articulation of this point of view that you know maybe isn't seemingly congruent with our idea of you know medicine and healing and all that stuff, man, it made an impact on me. And so I think just using that as an example, like what are the things like that in your own writing or in your own life that you can put on the page and make someone come away going, wow, I never had that perspective, or this is a or this person is a total maniac. I have to meet them. That's well, you know, but with control, with intention. That's the you know, not not just you know, blasting it all onto the page, but but doing it with a degree of of judiciousness and of of uh purpose, um that's what you have to try to cultivate. At least that's where my head is at today.

SPEAKER_03 49:02

I I we we see all of these arguments on Twitter, right, about the rules of screenwriting, and we we're always bickering over bold and not bold or underline or we see or camera direction and all that. And and what's frustrating to me is that there seems to be a certain school of teachers who are teaching their screenwriting students to be exactly the same as everybody else. You need to make these screenplays look and feel exactly like all the other screenplays that are on the conveyor belt of screenplays that are going into development offices. And in my mind, I could be wrong about this, but it echoes what you're saying. Be wild, be out there, make them look at this going, what am I reading? Because that is gonna keep them interested when they have a stack of 500 scripts behind them to be in. Now don't be completely off base and writing in crayon, but like like put your own stamp on it, put your own voice on it, and don't worry about all those other things because they're gonna remember your screenplay, and that's what you need them to do.

SPEAKER_02 49:58

I I think that's right. I I find all those arguments uh on Twitter to be quite tedious a lot of the time because if there's an idea, if there's a heart, if there's a beating heart behind the script, it doesn't matter if you write Weezy or you underline the bolds or you even don't format it you know exactly the way that you know, I don't know, Aaron Sorkin formats. Who cares? It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. Because it's it's it's it's identifying that there's a core of something real that you can hold on to that that is the ultimately the goal of any screenplay, whether that is Manchester by the Sea Part 2, or or you know, the the dumbest comedy about dudes hanging out in an apartment. But either way, it has to be the best version of that, and it has to come from a point of view that is distinctly your own. I think of the cold open of New Girl. I think to me, one of the great comedy cold opens. You get everything that you need to know about that character and about the point of view and the world that we're entering into. It's all right there in like two and a half minutes. It's perfect, perfect. Liz Merriweather articulates only through her point of view, her heuristic, what this thing is gonna be about. And if you and and I remember reading it before even it was made and going, wow, this is really good. That's the experience that you're trying to capture and and and to and it and it takes a long time. You can't, I mean, you gotta keep practicing. And I say all the time, there's tens of thousands of pages on my hard drive that no one will ever see because they weren't good enough or that I was still practicing or whatever. But if you were working toward that thing, you know, um, I had a professor in college who was actually the head of the theater department uh who seemingly hated theater. Uh, funnily enough, he seemingly did not like theater. But he we somebody asked him why he he directed plays, and he said, I'm I'm trying to see if I can direct a play where at least where only where even one person in the audience goes, I completely understand this person's mind. He was looking for that, even if it was only one person to connect with him in that way. And I think that it's a similar thing when you're screenwriting. You could get 200 rejections, but if the right person says yes, you're on your way.

SPEAKER_00 52:28

Good. And on that note, positivity at the end of a very positive podcast. Dan Hernandez. All right, I was sorry I was too positive. I uh good, makes a change. Um, no, thank you very much. It's been a privilege to have you on the podcast and sharing your insights. So very much appreciated. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 52:46

All right, thanks for having me, guys.

SPEAKER_03 52:47

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

SPEAKER_00 52:54

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_03 53:02

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_00 53:15

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_03 53:26

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_00 53:37

But you definitely can't podcast.

SPEAKER_03 53:39

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