Prologue -Season 2

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 sure, dozens of unproduced scripts littering the floor.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

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

SPEAKER_00 0:20

For every success, there is months, sometimes even years, of painful failure.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default. That's the normal thing you would have to be able to persevere. Like everything in our business here, it hands in the council, and it all bounces off you. That process takes because that doesn't happen overnight.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

I was being told by my manager it's yours to lose, and I promptly lost it. And I remember thinking, like, well, that's it for me. I blew my one big shot. What I've realized from that moment is it's never one big shot. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Welcome back to season two of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. This is our, I keep trying to call it an epilogue, but Noah keeps reminding me that that's not correct. So this is our prologue, a chat about what is to come in the coming season and what we've been up to since you last heard our voices. I suppose you want to hear the other voice, make sure he's still here after what he told us last time. Noah Evslin, Survivor.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

How are you? Hey hey Dan, I'm I'm doing great. And I don't think for any of our listeners who are mostly writers, they probably won't be surprised that the Americans know the difference between prologue and epilogue, and the Brits, who have always had trouble in the in the world of writing, uh, do not so last time we sat down and recorded a podcast, the world was a different place.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Omicron hadn't yet been invented or identified. Noah poured his weeping heart out about his tough battle with cancer. Uh an episode which uh surprisingly for me actually was our second most listened to episode of the entire season. Uh a point which Noah has gleefully been reminding me for weeks that he is more important than any of the guests we had on, which seems a strange position to take. Um, but it was it was an amazing episode and uh I think a fitting end to the season because nothing is a story of rejection, failure, and adversity than one man's battle with something as complicated as cancer. But Noah's survived, he's come out the other side, and is in great spirits.

SPEAKER_03 2:45

Uh, and I wanted to add that Dan might or might not have added uh after the success of the prologue episode that I should get sick again because my sickness clearly sells. No, that was not the intention of that podcast. I was glad to share the adversity with you guys. And I was actually really um surprised and humbled and touched with the amount of DMs I received, the amount of messages we got through the website about people sharing their stories with cancer, people saying that this story really helped them, uh, that, you know, we all put on the whole purpose of this podcast in many ways was to shatter the illusion that we're all doing well at all times. And that's what social media does, you know, to people. It makes people think that, you know, everybody around them is dealing with all these successes when when a lot of people are dealing with a lot of things, especially right now with a pandemic. Lots of people have chronic diseases that they quietly keep to themselves for the most part. And, you know, uh I was able to speak to you know more than a handful of people who shared privately with me that they're struggling with something and that and this is people in our community. So that that was touching, and that was sort of an unexpected sort of byproduct of all of this. So and it has been a while, Dan, since you and I, you know, have done this. We intentionally took a few weeks off in between the end of you know December and and now. And one of the reasons was uh it was the holidays I had to go to set, which was really exciting to uh you know watch some episodes of NCIS Hawaii be filmed. Dan had a major success uh in his life, a rare one, one of probably the first ever, maybe. But I called Dan the reverse Ted Lasso a lot, a Brit in America dealing with uh um being the VP of a of a soccer organization. And that soccer organization seemed to have done quite well this this year, didn't it, Dan?

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Yeah, it's actually SVP, not just VP, but thank you. Um who's counting? Who's who's who's but yeah, my uh my Orange County Soccer Club, who I'm working for, ended up, much to everybody's surprise, winning the national championships live on ESPN. I actually was caught on ESPN camera two or three times and was on the pitch afterwards hugging the players. Um, and although it's very exciting when you TV people see your names and your credits on network TV, it's exciting for you. For me, as a failed sports person, having stills sent to me by friends of the ESPN logo and then a picture of me underneath was probably a limited career highlight. So that was quite exciting. But yeah, my football team won an amazing season, so it was um it was actually an incredible success. It was quite nice to have a success. And you know, there's not we're not going to do a podcast about it, but the team had some some serious act two struggles, including having to fire the manager. So there was a low point in the middle of the season, and then it all came good at the end, which was uh which was rather exciting. So yeah, no, it's been good, and it's uh it is nice actually. I uh I may have mentioned I host two or three podcasts, and I wasn't on a microphone doing any of them for a few weeks, and it's been quite nice to get back on the horse, as they say, and start recording again. And in the way these things work, it won't be a secret to you that we've already recorded uh a handful of episodes for the upcoming season two of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, and it's been uh great to sit down and talk to people about the things that we enjoyed talking to them about last year, and I think hopefully you're all going to agree that this season is uh already as good as some of the highlights from last year, but it is probably worth touching on what we're gonna do. So I think I think we touched on this a bit at the end of last season when we weren't talking about Noah, we were talking about the fact that uh it was we were uh honoured and delighted and excited that uh our little podcast that we both do as a side uh side hustle, side fling did much better than we thought. And we were excited that the engagement we got and how it resonated with people and how people were very happy to be on the podcast. And it was great, and we've reflected on it, and we want season two to build on that. And like all good things, we've tried to make some changes to make it a little bit better as well. So then I know do you want to talk about the upcoming season and some of the things we're gonna do a bit differently, apart from not talking about your health?

SPEAKER_03 7:14

I think one of the main things that we're doing different is what's behind the scenes, and that was the unexpected success of the podcast has led it, has made it a little bit easier for us to find guests. And you know, before we had to explain what this podcast was all about, which was no, you're not gonna come on to talk about the big blockbuster film that you're that's about to come out or your big TV show. We actually want to find out and listen to all the failures that were in between. And now we have actually people who are fairly familiar with the podcast coming on, and so we don't spend as much time explaining what we're all about. And it's hopefully, you know, we've had great guests, and I think from the very beginning, from Adele on forward, we had some really high-caliber guests, which has helped us. But we're, you know, the challenge now is to continue that and and maybe hopefully better it to keep on trying to bring in the best people that we can find. Um, so we are definitely going to stick with the format of bringing on creatives, a lot of writers, because that's the people that I know. Uh, but also actors, producers, agents, managers, maybe some people in other fields, sports, right, Dan? We're thinking about some sports to talk about their, you know, the failures, rejections, and adversities in their fields. Because the other thing we that we realized as we're recording and we began to get feedback from other people is, and this is not a surprise, but something that we hadn't thought about as much. Failure is universal. It crosses uh genre, it crosses careers, and a lot of people in interesting fields were reaching out saying, hey, you know, I've failed as well. So we're gonna branch out just a little bit. And I think, you know, also, which I'll have Dan talk about, there's gonna be some, you know, internal format changes, small things, but we're always sort of striving to get a little bit better.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Yeah, I think that's a great point. I mean, we we've always tried to have diverse guests in the obvious ways you would describe diversity, but we also want it to be diverse in terms of the roles that they play in Hollywood. So let's say we're gonna try and find other parts of the crew. In terms of some of the changes, we obviously wanted to keep some of the core format, which is amazing guests telling quite painful sometimes stories of their journeys, and that part will continue. We're obviously going to continue the part where I ask fantastic, uh, deep, clever questions. Noah asks sort of light and obvious and slightly lazy questions, and then tells us about the time somebody fell asleep when he was pitching. So that stuff that people have really enjoyed will stay, but then we're also gonna add some other bits and pieces. So obviously, we're having this chat now as part of the introduction, but actually, every episode will begin with Noah and I just having a couple of minutes uh talking about uh the reaction to the previous episode, the guests to come, and just a little bit more. People have enjoyed hearing the two of us argue with each other and belittle each other, and I think we're trying to lean into that. So you'll hear from us at the start of every episode before we then go into the questions with a guest. And I think it's not about although I get accused of being mean, I don't think it's gonna be I'm gonna be meaner, but I think we do want to probe harder. So our guests were tremendously honest and upfront and open about what they went through, and I think we can't not go deeper into some of that, and we know people respond well now, so you will. I'm not saying every guest will cry, but some will get pretty close to it. So I think that's going to be an important part of it. We're also going to introduce a small feature. Um, and Noah trailed this on social media where we're inviting questions. I don't think we want necessarily people to give us questions to ask of the guests, uh, not because we think we're brilliant, but I think it can get a bit messy and complicated then and we lose some of our flow. But people have got questions for us. So we're going to start that today. So, Noah, I know you had a bit of a response. So, do you want to start off with one of the questions for the co-hosts?

SPEAKER_03 11:13

Sure. This this one is really interesting, I thought. So I thought we would start here. It's from Tatiana in the Ukraine. So we have actually fans all the way out of the Ukraine. She she has a two-part question. First part, not surprisingly, this is a common question I get, is why is Dan so mean to you? Is he that way in real life as well? So that's part one of this question. Uh, part two, she asked, you know, what do you do when Dan asks a terrible question? What is do you keep your face neutral or how do you respond and how do you actually bounce the podcast back? Dan, why don't we, you know, why don't you start with some of those answers?

SPEAKER_00 11:50

So thanks for that, Noah. Um, so let's, why don't we stick with the actual real questions? A real question we had, actually, rather than your your silly made-up ones. I know you did see some DMs between me and Tatiana from Ukraine, but that was not the question she was asking me.

SPEAKER_03 12:04

We okay. We have a we have one from fan of the podcast and friend in real life, Kaya Alexander, who asked uh just a couple of minutes ago, what's the most surprising thing you learned from one of your guests?

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Actually, I think I mean we had 50 guests, 51 if you include Noah as guest. I think obviously a lot of them told some fascinating stories, including when um uh uh Stephen D'Souza told us about the fact that he had two projects where people died as part of the process. I think somebody was murdered and somebody died accidentally. Um so they were they were sort of surprising, but I think actually the most surprising was I'm gonna try and remember how I think this was you have to help me on this, though.

SPEAKER_03 12:52

Is this um Jeffrey Thorne You have to give the answer first so I before I can weigh in about pretending to be his own manager? Yes, I think so. 90% and and Jeff, if we if we screwed this up and it wasn't you, we apologize. But yes, I think it was him who told us the story.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

When early in his career he was struggling, so pretended to be his own manager, and I think at the time we joked, you know, Alla Donald Trump, um, although hopefully for sort of better reasons, but in order to create a sort of sense of gravitas around him when he was early in his time, and I think this was uh you know, when the internet wasn't quite invented fully yet, so you could uh play fast and loose a little bit, and and actually how it helped. And I think that was that and had to audition to draw Disney porn for I think it was to go on the side of milk cartons and didn't even get that gig, and that was how low they had to stoop um as part of trying to survive Hollywood.

SPEAKER_03 14:06

You know, I think those were two, yeah, those were that was a such an interesting uh interview uh from the very beginning. But you know, I think I think for me, the the thing that was really surprising was, you know, how just how much early failure a lot of these people did have. Like, for instance, just going to our most recent interview, Bill Lawrence, I think he said he got fired immediately from this first five shows he worked on. Uh now, granted, he started when he was really young, but this is you know, for people who, you know, it's really hard to get on a show. And then once you get on a show, getting fired is pretty painful. It happens to a lot of people. They're very, as as John Zerzani said, the one amp piece of ammo that most producers have is fire the writer. So we do get fired a lot, but like it doesn't, you know, feel good. And then when you get fired from two or three in a row, you're like, maybe I'm this isn't for me. Maybe I'm just not a people person, and that some of our most successful people, you know, really had to bounce back from you know, really hard adversity and from really a lot of signs that maybe this job wasn't for them, when in fact, then they go on to create one of the most beloved shows of all time, uh, in uh uh you know, with it with Scrubs and Ted Lasso.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

So this isn't quite what Kaya's question was, and thank you, Kai, for being such a supporter of the show. But the thing that was not essentially surprising about an individual guest, but for me, definitely the overall surprise is the level of candor and openness we got from guests overall. So, you know, I've been in and around the edges of entertainment, not obviously from the inside like Noah, but you know, I know a few actors or whatever, and I can't ever imagine sitting down and them bearing their souls in these ways. But for people who are very successful to come on and talk about the times they nearly quit, the things that they had to do, you know, the the depth of their despair at different times of their career. It wasn't so much surprising that that happened, knowing what I know about Hollywood, but they were so comfortable talking about it, particularly in industry where you know, even the top people have said they have imposter syndrome and syndrome, and you always wonder whether you're going to work again. For people to be so comfortable opening up like that was for me both surprising and frankly the only reason that the show has worked and has been well received. Because if they weren't doing that, we wouldn't really have much of a show, it would just be Noah showing off and me trying to be mean, and that doesn't make a show. It's the guests being such fantastic and willing guests.

SPEAKER_03 16:37

I think I heard a phrase uh recently called vulnerable vulnerability porn, and that when people this it's a new thing where people are, you know, obviously uh interested in learning about other people's vulnerabilities and and adversities. And I don't think hopefully we don't push it to the point of pornography or being sort of you know overly excessively talking about these things, but this is the theme of our show. And I I I you know, we have a guest coming up uh who got you know really emotional recently. And this this, you know, it just shows us neither Dan nor I are obviously Barbara Walters, but the the idea that I'm also surprised that people are are willing to open up to us and to tell, you know, their failures. And I I think it's a new paradigm of really Hollywood. I don't think even five or ten years ago people would have been sharing these stories. I think there's something in the air, whether it's the pandemic or the world, or just to say, hey, maybe it's time we all stop pretending so much that everything is okay and that it's okay that things are not.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Yeah, I think that's right. Now, one thing it's actually worth saying, probably, and I'm conscious, I don't want to talk for too much longer because much as we know the episodes with just Noah and I have been remarkably well received, we don't want to overstay our welcome in your ears. So we are gonna leave you so that you can save something for next week's episode with a real guest. But on the subject of sort of people being open and vulnerable, we have been offered a couple of guests who have been, for want of a better way of phrasing it, cancelled. And we briefly discuss whether we want to talk to them because obviously there is rejection, failure, and adversity there. We chose not to because although we love our guests opening up about their difficulties, there's different types of difficulties, and I don't think we want to necessarily offer somebody a redemption route through our podcast without being arrogant about how important our podcast is. I don't think we want to have those sorts of conversations. So we want the rejection, failure, and adversity stories from people, and their honesty and openness and vulnerability is what makes the show great, but I don't think we want to give some people a chance to be vulnerable who maybe we don't want to let them be vulnerable. And I don't think it's our place for them to be vulnerable to try and win something back.

SPEAKER_03 19:04

Yeah, I definitely believe in second chances for many people, but there are some people that, you know, in this business have hurt a lot of people and you know are looking for ways to to redeem themselves. And and again, that's not quite what this podcast is about, but it is, you know, you know, we are evolving and we're changing, and we are platform for many people to share stories. So, you know, we're we're open to change and and we're open to to you know try to get, you know, as Dan had mentioned, a diversity of guests on. Uh, but for now, the stories are meant to uplift. And this is something that's sort of hidden within our podcast, is hidden in all of these failure stories is is the fact that people are overcoming this, these failures. And so we're hoping, and I think that has been the general theme and thrust of season one, is that you come out of each episode feeling good about your career, feeling good about yourself, and feeling good about your own failures, because you can see that the necessary, that the path to success always leads through you sort of uh a number of failures, rejections, and adversity.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Absolutely. And you know, remember that if you're if you're sitting at home thinking, well, my career's going nowhere, I'm frustrated, you know, you listen to the stories of the guests, that hopefully uplifts you. And then you also think, you know, look, there's a man here who survived cancer and isn't even the best question asker and host on a show with two people on it, and yet he somehow gets himself out of bed every day and can go to work and be a productive writer. So, you know, be inspired by Noah's ability to overcome adversity and keep listening to our podcast.

SPEAKER_03 20:43

Thank you guys for everything, and we will see you next week for our very first guest. And that's a wrap on this episode of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss. As always, we want to thank James Launch for the amazing theme music.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

Do you before we sort of thank our wives and stuff, do you think anyone actually listens this far, or do they stop when the music comes back in?

SPEAKER_03 21:05

I think they normally stop after you mention your second and third podcast. That'd be my guess. Well, I haven't mentioned them yet, though, have I? Uh, if you do want to reach out with us to us for criticisms, complaints, or praise, uh, you can either reach out to us through the website or I am at nevslin on Twitter. And Dan, you have an account?

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Not that anyone really cares about. So if you've got complaints about the show, go to NEVslin and feel free to air those. If you have praise or you want to pay us in some way for something, come to at Dan Rutstein. And have a great day.