Take 83 - Writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, A Quiet Place
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RSS Feed They talk with incredible candor about their Quiet Place journey, what happened, what they learned and how they coped with a complex career conundrum.
We talk difficult decisions, celebrating and commiserating and putting things in perspective.
A fascinating interview with two of the most genuine writers about their unique Hollywood story.
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 literature.
SPEAKER_05All of us are running into both major and minor failures in Hollywood every single day.
SPEAKER_02This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default.
SPEAKER_05Like everything in our business here can't be open.
SPEAKER_01I was being told by my manager it's yours to lose. And I fucking lose it. And I remember thinking like, well, that's it for me. I do my one big job. What I've realized from that one is it's never one bit job. There will be other shots.
SPEAKER_05Screaming into the Hollywood Abyss is brought to you by Scriptation, the Emmy Emmy.
SPEAKER_00It sounds awful when you say it. Let somebody with a more charming accent do this bit. Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss is brought to you by Scriptation, the Emmy Award-winning app for anyone that reads scripts. Makes notes, organise them into layers, and save hours of time by automatically transferring those notes into new script revisions. Sither listeners can get a free month of Scriptation by going to scriptation.com backslash Scyther. Now that's how you do it, Noah. Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am your non-industry co-host, Dan Rotstein.
SPEAKER_05And I'm your industry co-host, Noah Epslin. On today's Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, we're excited to have on screenwriting and directing teams Scott Beck and Brian Woods. They wrote such projects as Spread and Nightlight, amongst others, before probably most famously writing the screenplay for a quiet place. They also wrote and directed the 2019 horror film Hunt, as well as wrote a companion book, also called Haunt, being released December 6th, which recounts their experience making the film. Welcome, Scott and Brian.
SPEAKER_03Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. Big fans of this podcast, big fans of digging into failure and disappointment. It feels like uh our brand on some level. So thank you for having us.
SPEAKER_00Excellent. Thank you. And obviously, we appreciate your kind words, but that doesn't change how we're going to approach these questions. And um I I'm not gonna, it's slightly lazy to ask the same opening question as I've last last time we had a duo on, but I'm just gonna do it anyway because it sets the tone. Brian, what's the worst thing about working with Scott?
SPEAKER_03Um oh man, you're gonna put me on the spot. I have so many beautiful, pleasant things to say about Scott. What's something really get real? Really mean. Well, I don't like doing interviews, like sometimes uh, you know, we we you know what? No, that's it's Scott, you're just such a pleasure to work with.
SPEAKER_02I that's gonna make my answer harder.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because you're clearly prepared for some nasty comment.
SPEAKER_02Let's hear it. I uh is that am I is it fine to go now?
SPEAKER_00Because um it definitely is off to what you just said.
SPEAKER_02No, honestly, like we live in we often live in two different time zones, and so the sleep schedule is very different. He he's more of a night owl, and I get emails when I'm like waking up to get my daughter ready for school.
SPEAKER_03So that's that's true. Yeah, I'm up at like 5 a.m. and then yeah, and then with Scott. That's a good point.
SPEAKER_02That's not really that juicy, though. I mean, I I think we've we've we've known each other for like 26 years, so we've like built up a healthy filter for each other's BS. So I yeah, unfortunately, we just know how to tolerate each other like an old married couple.
SPEAKER_00So I'm gonna ask a slightly more sensible follow-up question, but um I I am and I know it gets, I think, maybe bored of me doing this, maybe our listeners do as well. But I find the whole writing partnership fascinating, not least because of the terrible dynamic I have with my podcast host. So um when you're working together in an industry where there is a lot of rejection and there's a lot of failure, being together, are there times I'm sure you're gonna talk about how you support each other, which is lovely and we do want to hear it, but I'm slightly more interested in the in the times when you know there's been a rejection or some failure, and either somebody external is trying to create division between you, or just it's something so bad has happened that you just sort of blame the other person, even if you shouldn't.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean that that certainly that moment rears its ugly head, luckily only like maybe twice a year or something. And and sometimes it can be in the writing process where there's a rejection so um difficult that it makes you either want to cry or or laugh and lose your mind, or there's been times where there, I think you kind of mentioned like an external force where Brian and I were sitting in like a hotel room in the middle of nowhere, um trying to get something made, and and we just got the worst news possible. And we were both hitting like such a such a low that we ended up like getting into an argument with each other. And then not five minutes later did that pass. And we were quickly able to like apologize because we realized like we weren't mad at each other, we're just like both hitting a low. But that is so rare that both of us hit a low. That's one of the beauties of partnerships, is like usually you have an anchor. So if I'm feeling low, Brian has some sort of motivation that drives us forward, or vice versa. Um, but it does happen. Like this this business does come with so many like unexpected hits to the to the gut that sometimes you're both hit simultaneously, and it really gives you pause of like, is this a worthwhile career to pursue?
SPEAKER_03We've definitely developed a talent for one of us being really um depressed and um defeatist, while the other one is the positive um end of the spectrum. And and and it's just been so helpful to like be able to prop each other up, cry on each other's shoulders. I think it's like the the best reason to have a filmmaking partner is because the the business is really uh you guys know super random and you put all of your um heart and your emotion into these um stories that you want to tell. And so it's very it feels everything feels very personal. So it's it's uh highly recommended to have a to have a writing or directing partner in the in this business.
SPEAKER_05You you came to my attention, uh, you know, obviously you wrote the you know the screenplay for a quiet place, which was really, you know, obviously well received. But the uh you came to my attention when you when you wrote a Twitter thread about I think the writing of a quiet place, and you had mentioned all the people you pitched and and you talked to, and they're like, This is crazy, there's no dialogue, don't do it. And I'm summarizing badly. And then you talk to your reps, and it sounded like they said, don't do it, and then you're like, the hell with it. We're we're gonna defy, you know, not only our the town and our reps, but also sort of uh common sense screenwriting theories, which is like screenplays need dialogue, yeah. Right, they need people talking to each other, they need, you know, you can't actually write a story that doesn't have that, and you did it anyways, and it to great success. And can you talk a little bit about you know, you know, what what kind of compelled you to keep going when everyone told you no?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. And I would add a little more context to that too, that it came at a point in our um quote unquote career where we were still like we had made a low budget feature film that we wrote and directed, and we were still struggling to find ways to um to write something, but also make ends meet, which meant like a lot of the advice we were getting is like you chase open writing assignments. And there were things that we literally spent like a year and a half, two years chasing that we just didn't feel any passion for, and that felt like a failure in and of itself. And and so it drove us to this idea that had stuck around for a while, the quiet place where it's you know, this family on a farm, they're being hunted by something predatory, and it it it's a silent film. Like it combined our love of Charlie Chaplin with with Ridley Scott's Alien. And um we we started noodling on it, but every time we would pitch it to like a close friend or or like an industry executive and just pitch like the core idea for it, they literally would just kind of like roll their eyes and they'd be like, This sounds like the most boring script to read. And as like a screenwriter, you know, like the first gateway is to have like an easy read that will be a page turner. And if you can't get past that, there's no hope of even getting that movie considered to even being bought and then made into a movie. And so we were just kind of floundering for a while, trying to get traction on interest from that.
SPEAKER_03We have this uh email that uh should be framed, we should frame it um and and send it to our friend. This uh one of our producing friends, I won't name his name, although he he he knows we we give him a hard time for this all the time. Where we actually emailed him uh three different ideas we were working on. And a quiet place was one of those ideas, and it had like kind of like the breakdown of the plot synopsis. And what was his response? It was like a flat, like uh uh that's too, oh yeah, yeah. It was a kind of a flat, like it's too gimmicky. Don't like don't work on that a quiet place thing. Uh focus on these other two. And um, you know, it just goes to show that uh we're all kind of guessing in this business. Nobody, we all have our own vision about what a what inspires us or inspires a particular idea, and you never really know. And it's important to get feedback from people that you trust, but it also you have to follow that gut instinct. And and I I would credit Scott to constantly like we would keep coming back to a quiet place over and over and over again. And and I know I was getting um a little um disappointed by the feedback we kept getting. And I'm just like, I don't know, this feels like a waste of time. And Scott constantly was just like, but I like it, like I believe in it, like we gotta keep, we gotta keep chasing it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was at a certain degree, like just getting fed up with um looking outward, even though that's so valuable to us, like anytime you want to vet an idea to get that outward opinion and really get the honest pressure test. But there's a point where something sticks around with you, and the inward voice, um, we just had to trust at that point. Um, just because we were trying to chase the outward voices, meaning like people saying, like, do open writing assignments, chase this remake of this Warner Brothers film that um that nobody likes anyway, and and then they don't even buy a take. Like, we've been through so many like horror stories and and wasting our time, it felt like, that it's like, why not just go back to what we were doing when we were kids, when we were 12 years old and first start making movies in Iowa and just do something that felt like we were passionate about it. And we'd wake up every morning trying to do it. And so I think that was our first um big revelation in in our career, I think that we carry forward to this day is like just really trust our gut at the end of the day, and maybe we will fail. And that's more likely than not, but at least we'll have a better time failing at that than trying to chase something else that we're not passionate about and then failing on that.
SPEAKER_05So you know, it it's obvious that that, and that's a really great answer. It's obvious that a quiet place helped your career because it was now there's a quiet place universe, and your your friend was wrong, obviously, you know, uh, but to to discourage you from writing that. But he mentioned the word gimmick, and I'm not gonna say, you know, a quiet place is based on a gimmick, but it's based on a big high concept, right? And it's based on a surprising twist or angle into making a film. And I want to talk about the pressure that comes next next to duplicate that because did it actually in many ways it helped you, that's obvious, but it also hurt you because now when you come to pitch people things, they want the thing they they want you to, you want they want the subversive version of a project from you guys.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's that's a great, great question. That um on one hand, it's certainly like fermented what our brand is, so to speak. And and there's certain times where like there's an idea that's so far removed from Quiet Place that feels frustrating because it's like what we want our brand to be is like just write something that's not ever like you haven't necessarily seen before, or it's not having to be based on IP. Um, so I think there's like a certain pressure from that standpoint, but there's also the pressure to deliver something that satisfies um a theatral audience perspective, which is really important to us. Like any movie that we write, we want to be able to be in a pack theater and be able to watch that and see the reactions trickle throughout the crowd. And we're trying to also find something that strikes, you know, checkmarks the original box, but check marks the gimmick. Like, and we actually agree. And we think Quiet Place is a gimmick movie, but it has characters. And that's the last um box that we're trying to check, is that it actually has characters that we hope audiences actually relate to or really care about. And it's for us, like it's not an easy thing. It's not like we wake up every morning and we have like 10 ideas that kind of check all those boxes. So when there is one that feels special enough, like we try to hold on to that really dearly. And there's certainly the idea of you're gonna face plant no matter what. Um, so it's it's certainly something that we we see on our periphery, but we try not to think about it too often, to be honest, so it doesn't hinder the work.
SPEAKER_00Obviously, getting a film made uh you know from the outside, how hard can it be? But obviously, for everyone in the industry, actually like getting it out there and it being on screens um is an enormous accomplishment for you because it was rejected by so many people uh along the way, when you walk around town when you you know, obviously when you're uh pitching other things or just talking to people, you'd be like, Yeah, we did the quiet place. And let me tell you that, you know, 50 people rejected it before. You know, do you feel like a I guess a sort of chip on your shoulder around it that it was a success despite all of the failures, and therefore your sense of satisfaction is even higher than it you know it should be just for making a movie?
SPEAKER_03I know exactly what you're saying. I think that um maybe that is the instinct, but I think that's probably dangerous thinking. I I think like you when you study as we do religiously study like different filmmakers' careers, you can there's that like tipping point that some filmmakers um reach where they go from because they've been told their whole career that um they don't know what they're doing and they're not gonna be a filmmaker and they're not gonna make it. They've been told all the horrible things that we all are we all hear as um young artists, and then they'd make it and they prove everybody wrong, and then they prove everybody wrong again, and then all of a sudden the mindset is like, Well, I'm I'm always right and you're always wrong. And then you sometimes, I'm just saying, some filmmakers you start to see this decline in their work where they've lost touch with reality a little bit, and they start making movies that like actually only they connect with, and and maybe like they've gone too far down the rabbit hole. So I'm hoping everything you just said is uh not uh is not something we're we're I'm hoping we're not learning the wrong lesson from um from a quiet place. I think it was just a unique uh you know, a unique film that uh was kind of a weird one and and maybe it was hard to hard to see from early on.
SPEAKER_02I also would say like our instincts have have, as much as they've quote unquote like proven us right, they've also proven us wrong many times, too. Like there's certain things that we don't think are gonna work with an audience, and then we watch that scene executed with an audience and it actually works better than we thought, or vice versa, where there's something like we're like this is guaranteed to work, and then you watch and it falls flat. And so it's it's a nice slice of humble pie that we graciously devour because it it does remind us that you really never know anything. And when you make especially genre movies, like the audience is going to be a bit of the uh the key.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, this um we're putting out this this haunt book and we're we're publishing the screenplay for it. And in the foreword to the screenplay, one of the things we say, like the thing, the only thing that bothers us more in the script when we reread the script for haunt is not the um compromises that we made as artists with the financiers, it's the compromises we didn't make, the things that we argued with the fine, like our producers and like you get notes all the time, right? And and and sometimes as an artist, you fight, fight, fight like for what your vision is. And sometimes you're just wrong, you get it wrong. Like we look at the screen and we're like, oh man, like like that. What there's like you know, a certain thread in that movie that we fought really hard for, and maybe we maybe we didn't get that one right. So you just never know, you know, we're on both sides all the time.
SPEAKER_00You know, obviously being rejected by everybody, and then one person saying yes, and it turned into a success. We we had Bill Lawrence on to talk about Ted Lasso, and obviously the exactly the same thing happened there, and it wasn't, you know, it was really rejected by everybody as a silly concept and then was excellent. I I guess uh and it's just sort of a little bit linked to what both Noah asked and actually what I asked, but I guess the point is uh now, how do you know when you've got it wrong? Because if you whether it's a you know a different gimmick or if it's just something you've written and it gets rejected by the first 10 people, do you think, well, obviously, like with a quiet place, we'll keep going and eventually it'll be made and be a massive success. Because you know, it may be you actually have got something that's not gonna work. So have you got a in an industry where you get rejections, are you worried that you're gonna create a sort of false sense of what actually no means now?
SPEAKER_02Um man, I I'm trying to think of like specific examples that that kind of like have taught us, um, there's certainly times where people have said no and we're bullheadish enough that we just plow forward. And I think to a certain degree, there's value in that, because there's value in getting something made or getting something written and and learning failure through the process of making that. Because I think if like we get dissuaded too early, then we may not even have a career because we would just be like, oh, we we haven't made anything. And so I'm not saying necessarily that volume is the most important thing, but I think the the tenacity to get something made and believe in it um is probably the thing that we try to follow the most.
SPEAKER_03We really love uh the filmmaker Steven Soderbergh and the way that he takes so many different shots in his career. And so there's almost like a lack of precious preciousness with each movie that he's just experimenting and trying things, and movie after movie, it's not always, you know, he makes Oceans 11, but then he goes and makes full frontal. Like he could, like he couldn't have it, was almost like he was actively trying to not um follow up Oceans 11 with a big, successful, commercial and critically enjoyed movie. And there's something really brave about that, and um, I think that's a an inspiring model to follow.
SPEAKER_05I want to circle back to your thing about compromise, the comment you made about compromise, because it actually really resonated with me because it's something that I'm struggling with right now, with something that's going on, which is um I wrote a horror film, gimmicky one, that uh I was on as writer and director. I sold it to Warner Brothers, and I said I wanted I wasn't gonna sell it unless I directed it. And there was silence, and then they came back and said yes, and they wrote me a directing deal, and I'm like, oh, this is amazing. Then the executives left and the project died, and I got it back in turnaround. And so now my reps are saying, if we go back out with it, you're on a TV show full time, you have no time to direct this movie. We can either sell it, try to sell it again, and you don't direct it, or you just hold on to it until you're ready to direct. And it's a very personal thing. And I wonder, uh, you know, as I'm kind of struggling to make the decision on what to do, uh, you know, obviously you've had to make the decision to direct and not direct. And no, do you ever wonder what could have been? Do you guys ever, or is this just the path that you're on? And do you guys ever hasn't hardened you to compromises? Compromises you had to make in the past, is it hardened you in the future, saying maybe I'm not gonna make that type of compromise again?
SPEAKER_02Certainly, like the compromises that we've made throughout do teach us, like it teaches us either that compromise worked out, or definitively like we're never going to go down that alley again. And it's case by case. Um, I guess uh I was gonna respond, you you had asked one question right before that. I'm trying to trying to call recall what that was.
SPEAKER_05I mean, I I asked about whether or not, you know, kind of like for me, giving up the for me, I'm just faced with the question of having to give up my own directing and whether or not that's something I actually want to do. But then also just like, you know, you can only in retrospect do you know if it was a good idea or not. You know, the movie for you, you know, the projects you've worked on have been huge successes, some of them. So you never know actually the project that could have been.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah. You never know. It's like um a quiet place was maybe very reminiscent of what you uh are going through here, because that was a script that we wrote to direct. And we wrote it in a way that we felt wasn't even um, it was almost like the script wasn't even digestible by any other standard than we were. Directing it because it was written in such a visual form. And we we felt like the movie was so inside our heads. And that was a project where Paramount ended up um making us a deal to direct, similar to your story. Um, and congratulations, by the way. That's that's super awesome. That's great that you not only set something up at Warner Brothers like that, but that you also have it back in your control and turn around and that you get to make this decision. And with the quiet place, we were faced with that decision. The the first actor we went out to was John Krasinski, who um seemed perfect for the role. And then um we got this like fateful uh phone call from our agents that was both exciting and terrifying, which was they they called us um on a workday and they said, Hey guys, um good news, weird news, maybe bad news. Um John Krasinski wants to star in a quiet place, but he would also like to direct it. And in addition to that, uh Emily Blunt has raised her hand to star in the film, to co-star in the film with John as well. And it was just a mind-blowing moment because for us, Emily was the dream uh idea for that role, but now we had to face uh ourselves our our passion to direct the movie and and really try to figure out like, are we going to let this go away? And it was not an easy decision. And so I feel the uh the pain uh that you must be facing. In that case, I think at the end of the day, that movie will always feel like uh somebody like adopted our child and raised it. And so it's always it's actually like never stopped being painful. It's still painful, however, um it there's a complexity to it where we're able to also, while being hurt by it, we're also able to um appreciate all of the um amazing things that have come from it. We're so proud of the film, we're proud of the cast, we're proud of the work that John did. We thought he'd directed the hell out of the script. And um and we're so honored that people enjoy the movie and that they they want to keep making more of them. So it's had so many bounties, it's almost like embarrassing to even remotely complain about.
SPEAKER_02But I'll I'll actually like extrapolate that, I guess, a little deeper just to get a little more real about like the the failure is or the the feeling of like um failure and what's coming next. And I remember before the film was shot, but we had sold it and set it up, and John and Emily had attached, there's like that firework sequence in in the film. And I remember like Fourth of July coming around uh 2017, right? Like a couple months before they were gonna shoot, and just seeing like the fireworks explode in the sky and be like, oh, that would have been so much fun to like direct that sequence. And then, you know, seeing them on set, like not being there in person, but like seeing on social media like fireworks exploding in the sky, and and just being like, ah, like I wish that was the movie, and having certain sleepless nights where it was like, hmm, that was a script that we thought we were gonna direct and hopefully would be a really unique movie. Now the pressure is back on us to like, how do we write a script that we feel equally passionate about and feel is equally special? And like that pressure, I guess this kind of links up to the question you were asking earlier today, uh earlier today, the the the pressure to try and repeat that for ourselves selfishly, so we could get, you know, that directing job was um was monumental. And certainly like I would wake up at like, you know, one or two in the morning just because I just could not get to sleep because this was bothering me so much. Um, so it was a really weird thing. I had never been through um before, and I haven't necessarily been through that again, but there was a period there where it did kind of keep us up at night, and it was a big like career existential question that loomed over us.
SPEAKER_05We had we this this is reminding me of uh um, and thank you for that candid answer. This is reminding me of our, I think it's our third or fourth podcast where we had Grant Pierce Myers on, and he talks about getting a very similar type phone call, which is your greatest, you know, basically you have this amazing news and crushing news in the same phone call. Amazing news. The movie you wrote is being green light, crushing news, you're now fired off the project, and someone else is coming on. And it's only in our business where we get those those duality, your dreams come true at the very same second the carpet is ripped out from underneath you. Has that strengthened you? I noticed that you now wrote and directed haunt. Like, are you saying I I am we it's now gonna be our vision or nothing moving forward, or are you more realistic in the comparison?
SPEAKER_03No, we are. I mean, yeah, we the the movie. So Haunt and A Quiet Place were kind of written written simultaneously and were developed simultaneously. Um, but the movie that we wrote directly after A Quiet Place was this film called 65 that is gonna come out next year. And that was a script where we were just like, we're directing this one, like that's that. We're gonna produce it, we're gonna direct it. And um, and you know, it just it empowered us. And I think also, no question, um, the success of a quiet place gave us an opportunity to um be uh protected as directors in a in a different way. And and you know, so you you do your best, you you you you face plant and or things don't go your way, and you do your best to to use that as the platform for the next thing, and that's that's definitely what we did there.
SPEAKER_02I also think it's like it it's hard to like prep yourself for this, but the that whole situation taught us that whiplash could happen at every corner. You know, I imagine it's what like being an Uber drive around LA is like you never know when somebody's gonna ram right into you. And that's kind of how I feel in in this industry is the craziest stuff will come out of left field, and you don't you can never anticipate it, but you can at least in retrospect acknowledge that these insane things can happen. So, for instance, like I remember we papered a deal and everything was like signed and everything was good, and then 24 hours later the deal got totally like blown up, and we're like, but we all signed the deal and agreed on it 24 hours prior, and and that was one of those like few moments where it was like anything is fair game in in this business.
SPEAKER_00No one mentioned Grant and the his maze runner experience. Um, I think and the other version of this we had was uh Jeffrey Lieber, who wrote The Lost Pilot, came on, and I mean that one went quite dark that episode as he told us about how he ended up in therapy. Because every time anyone mentioned Lost, he had to give like a 20-minute explanation of how you know the pilot he wrote isn't the movie, you know, the show that got made and the whole thing. And in the end, he sort of rationalised it all through therapy and used the lost money of which he got a decent amount to buy himself a holiday home. And I can't remember I can't remember the name of it now. He knows he gave it like a very lost-specific name, like the smoke monster or something. Um, but for you guys, is there a version of that where when you know people don't know the whole quiet place story, you you feel you have to explain to people what happened rather than just it being what it is when people congratulate you? And do you, you know, did you take some of that money and buy yourself something very sort of specific to make up for what happened?
SPEAKER_03Well, the money is probably not as good as you thought I think it um because uh maybe we didn't have a great deal. But um, no, I I think I don't know. We everything you're saying is so interesting. You're you're selling me on going back and listening to these other podcasts because it sound uh fascinating, but we try not to think about this too much.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's you know, it's it's certainly a degree of being grateful for what doors it did open up and what it's enabled us um to do. And and so we don't try to really uh dwell on that. I think that's certainly a life philosophy we try to adopt outside of the the entire quiet place situation where it's like what what's under our control now? Like what can we really do right now to further ourselves, to further our careers, to further our lives? Um, but but it it it there was a period, there was a period where that kind of like hung over our heads and and it was like, how do we just for ourselves, how do we parcel what just went down in a way that we can be healthier like mentally to move on? And and I guess certainly for myself, like one of the things in the in the wake of that was like I had a one-year-old daughter, and and I was like, I think I just want to move back to Iowa and like have a little bit of headspace there and be outside of the industry. And it didn't slow down the work necessarily, but it certainly granted a little more perspective so that instead of you know going into a room and the conversations immediately were about like the latest movies that were coming out or what's in development, it was about like, oh, this person had a baby, this person is getting married, and like it just normalized what what my brain was really starting to like ingest. Um, whereas in in Los Angeles, like it just felt all-consuming of like there's the highest stakes and biggest focus on what is in my world, which really is not the case. It's it's the smallest thing in in the history of uh of the world.
SPEAKER_00So much as it upsets me to ask a question which is about something positive rather than negative, because that's not what we're here for. Um but you know, we asked the sort of the negative side of there being two of you. In terms of the sort of the positive side, the support side, like when you have successes, how do you celebrate them together? And how do you sort of, when you're moving on to new projects and getting excited about them, how does that dynamic work in terms of the the positive side of there being two of you?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean, we take every opportunity to celebrate that we can, right? Like, and I hope every writer and director and filmmaker in Hollywood does also like any any like oh we got a nice email from uh our friend's mom who watched a movie we made, like, let's order pizza tonight, like let's celebrate that. You know what I mean? Like we're always encouraging each other to to um enjoy the small little victories because that's really that's really all you have. Yeah, it's mostly um big face plants.
SPEAKER_02And I think it's really like making sure we we maintain like a tight-knit um group of our friends, friends that we've known since high school or or college and our significant others. Like I think about like the quiet place premiere, and like the coolest thing of that was not like being in Manhattan and getting to see it with all the different movie stars that showed up. To me, it's like Brian and I went back to like the hotel room, got a bunch of like New York style pizza, and had a couple friends come over, and we just hung out until like three in the morning. And that that was like the the the magic of it, getting to like celebrate everything as a group and and together, I think we always try to put the focus on.
SPEAKER_05You know, I'm really glad we have you guys on. We have a lot of of TV writers on, and we've heard a lot about the horror, you know, the horror stories coming on TV and the positives coming on TV, a lot of showrunners talking about their journeys, and and we've had, you know, a number of screenwriters on, but less, uh, arguably. And we're going uh into what I feel like is a sort of pivotal yet scary time where uh strike conversations are are happening. And I know that sometimes it feels like at these moments the there's a bifurcation in the guild between the TV writing side and the and the feature writing side, and that the needs of the feature writers haven't always been fully addressed. What are some of your fears sort of going into these negotiations? Because your guys are in the trenches for sure, you know, you know, setting up projects, writing features, and what would you like to see changed going into these next negotiations uh specifically?
SPEAKER_02That's a great question. I mean, this this is not the most interesting answer, but I know certainly healthcare, because um, you know, healthcare from a standpoint of like feature writing, it's like you you sell a script, the sale doesn't really count, uh, rewrites due. And then sometimes there's gaps of like, you know, three years. And so uh there's there's the potential loss of healthcare, which especially having families is is certainly a significant um concern. Uh certainly like we're we're just getting into like the streaming world of features, which I I can only imagine what it's like with TV, but you know, residuals and and knowing that that's a big part of when you hand over your rights to a project, like you're not just handing it over for the money that comes in from the sale and and the rewrite, but it's all the different um residuals and such. And and we already know the Hollywood system accounting system is broken when you see statements of big movies that you work on and they claim that they're in debt, and then you're like, they must be making sequels and spin-offs out of the goodwill of their own heart, you know. So there's there's a lot of uh accountability that I think needs to be.
SPEAKER_03I mean, then to be clear, a Quiet Place is one of those movies. Like, we see those statements that uh that movie A Quiet Place allegedly has lost the studio millions of dollars. But the press conference conferences would tell you otherwise, right? It doesn't make sense that they're making sequels. So, like, you know, there's there's just like it's so important to have that protection, the guilt protection. And yeah, I hope moving forward with the streamers that the residuals get ironed out for feature writers because it's just not in a it's not remotely in a fair place, and it's not comparable to uh what a residual meant um in the age of DVD and VHS and so forth.
SPEAKER_05And it it it honestly, you know, doesn't feel sustainable. And we could actually talk about this for hours, but unfortunately our podcast is not hours long. So that brings us to you know to the final question that we ask everybody that comes on here, which is if you had one piece of advice each of you to give to an aspi someone, you know, entering this business uh on the on the feature side, what would it be?
SPEAKER_02I mean, certainly the idea is you can't wait around for anybody to give you the opportunity that maybe you hope for. And I feel like that's something that we certainly felt when we were younger writers, and it's something we saw in a lot of our peers when we were, you know, in our in our early 20s or in college, that it felt like the the doors would open up if you just stuck around long enough. But you have to put in so much of the work. And I think beyond that, make sure that the work you're doing sincerely is something that that strikes a passion in you, because I feel like you can burn out too easily if you're chasing things that you think will lead to the next step. And you need to just concentrate on the present, on the now, what gets you out of bed every morning. That's that's something that we certainly abide by every day.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think my response is very similar, just the the philosophy of why you do what you do, and it's become painfully obvious to us over the years, both um having worked on movies that have um been successful at the box office and with critics, but also we, you know, we've written and directed uh total failures that have you know, our movie Night Light has a 12% on Rotten Tomatoes. So we've been through both ends of the spectrum, and the thing that is the same through it all is um do you love the work? And and and the work for us has always been the reward. It's the thing that uh we enjoy the most out of this business. And even if the end product turns out uh how you dreamed or or not, as long as you're really loving what you're doing, that's the most important. It sounds um kind of basic, but it's something we just keep coming back to, like what's fun, what's fun to write, what's fun to to direct, what are the movies uh and TV shows that we love, and and what are our heroes doing, and and just trying to chase that and and just remembering why we we started down this path to begin with. Because the business makes everything not fun. I feel like it kind of gets in the way in it gets in the way of the enjoyment of it, but um, but it's a it's a it's a lovely art form, and it's and it's fun to be an artist. So that's how we feel.
SPEAKER_00The uh the business makes everything not fun is probably the quote that should be the tagline uh for this podcast and actually everything to do with Hollywood. Um but um Scott Bright, thank you very much indeed for coming on the show. Absolutely fascinating answers um and uh real deep insight, which is what we want from our guests. So we really appreciate it. And hopefully you've inspired Noah to create a podcast with no talking, which I think would be great. Um so thank you very much indeed.
SPEAKER_02Oh, thank you. This has been great. I wish we had five more hours to do this. It's therapeutic. Have us back. We have more stories.
SPEAKER_03We'll we'll we'll get there, we'll dig deep next time. Thank you guys.
SPEAKER_05Thank you. Well, that's a wrap on this episode of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss. As always, this episode was brought to you by Scriptation, the screen writing and annotation software that at the very least has made my life easier and will make your life easier as well. Uh, we'd like to thank our wives who put up with us recording these episodes in our offices and basements and closets and bathrooms and anywhere we can get a little space to record an interview. And of course, we want to thank James Lunch who provided us with the great intro and outro music.
SPEAKER_00Uh if you want to find us on social media, you can find Noah at NEVLIN on Twitter, tweeting a variety of writer-based nonsense and uh some terrible puns and occasionally begging for sponsorship. Uh, if you want more refined tweets, mostly about football and whiskey, you can find me at Dan Rutstein. If you're interested in buying a copy of Scriptation, if you go to www.scriptation.com backslash sither, S-I-T-H-A, you will receive a special discount. Thank you very much for listening. As always, we appreciate you. Uh please give us any feedback, mostly positive stuff about me, and we will see you next week.
SPEAKER_05And if you do say a negative thing about Dan, there is a chance I might buy you a free copy of description.