Take 126 - Writer Gary Whitta, The Book of Eli, Rogue One

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Any of us who've been in it for long enough, our entire career has been littered with jobs that we didn't get, projects that we thought were gonna go for sure, dozens of unproduced scripts littering the floor.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

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

SPEAKER_02 0:20

For every success, there is months, sometimes even years, of painful failure. This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

That's the norm. You have to be able to persevere. Like everything in our business here, it hands the out and it all bounces off you.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

That process takes years, that doesn't happen overnight. 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_02 1:05

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry, brought to you by the Emmy Award-winning annotation software Scriptation. As ever, I am Dan Rutstein, your non-entertainment co-host.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

I am still in the entertainment business, co-host Noah Ebslin, and also notably not British. For this week's podcast, I'm thrilled to introduce screenwriter, TV writer, producer, and director Gary Widda onto the podcast. Gary has either written or co-written such movies as The Book of Eli, After Earth, and Rogue One, a Star Wars story. He's also written on numerous video games, including but not limited to The Walking Dead and many others, as well as having written on the TV series Star Wars Rebels. Welcome, Gary.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Hello, thanks for having me. I'm very glad to be here. Sorry, I could have sounded like William Shatner there. I'm gonna break up my sentences. Um, I'm I'm excited to be here. I was looking through your um through your uh podcast page prior to coming on, and uh you've had some very auspicious guests on this show, people I uh you know, writers that I look up to. So this is it's it's cool to be in good company.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Excellent. Well uh we're obviously I'm delighted to have you on for a number of reasons. See, one is your sort of generically your obviously very impressive body of work. Second thing is I love having British people on because I think I think it's fair to say, I think none of our listeners would disagree that I think the Brits bring something different and special to both the podcast world but also the entertainment world. Um, but also we we think you're our first substantive Star Wars guest. Um, and uh we both uh rather like Star Wars and so do our families. So for all sorts of reasons, um we're very excited to have you on. Let's just start with it is a really actually not a very good first question, but it is what it is. Just the sort of a geograph, a geography point. Obviously, you are indeed British, you're from from East London, and you've been over here a long time. What was your why what was your coming to America story? Why did you come and when did you come? And what were you hoping to achieve?

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Yeah, I was uh born and raised uh in East London, as you mentioned, as a very much a child of the 80s, and I very much grew up on as a lot of Brits uh have and continue to do, uh raised on a lot of American culture. You know, obviously grew up on Star Wars and Star Trek just the same as as everyone else. Um a lot of you know, we we import a lot of American television, you know, most of the most of the big movies are American movies, and so I really I had very much a kind of a Hollywood um upbringing through you know endless VHS rentals and just every you know, all the TV stuff that would come over. Um, and I was always a bit of a sci-fi nerd. So, you know, I always gravitated towards the Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, you know, Blake Seven, Night Rider, Battlestar Galactica, you name it. I loved all of that stuff. And I would, you know, just read comic books and science fiction novels voraciously. And I always wanted to do something like that in that vein. Writing was really the only thing I was ever any good at at school or had any interest in. So I thought, well, let's put these together. And I love video games as well. And that was actually my first career. I worked as a video game journalist uh for several years. Uh, never really thought about pursuing the Hollywood thing um seriously, because it's just especially growing up in London, like it's literally half a world away, right? It's on the other side of the world. It's very much a closed shop. It never really felt like a realistic, it felt like a pipe dream, really. And the video game thing was something I was able to kind of get my arms around uh more easily. So I worked in uh video game publishing, video game magazines for many years, became editor-in-chief of a magazine here in the UK called uh PC Gamer. Uh, and that's what brought me to America. They launched the US version of PC Gamer back in uh 1996. Uh, and I at that point I'd been the editor of the UK version for a couple of years, and they said, look, we want to get the US version up and running. Uh, come out here and um and help us out with it. And it was originally just supposed to be for a year. I moved to San Francisco, uh, but I fell in love with the place and uh ended up you know working on PC Gamer for a good few years um and stuck around and eventually got my green card and my American citizenship, and I've been here ever since.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Amazing. So they said to you come over here. Basically, it's the same sort of magazine as in the UK, but just spell all the words slightly wrongly.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Yeah, just take all the U's out of you know, colour and humor and just basic stuff. Um, no, it looks like it really was just meant to be for a year, and I thought I'd just come back with lots of stories about you know Yanks and their their their their ways. Uh, but I really did fall in love with the Bay Area, and I guess it was always a little bit kind of very much buried at the back of my mind that suddenly Hollywood wasn't that far away. That I, you know, it was I went from like you know 4,000 miles away from from uh LA to 400. And so I don't know, maybe this is um maybe this is something I could get, I could take a little bit more seriously. So when I was working on PC Gamer, I was kind of bashing out in my spare time little little scripts and fan fictions and just you know practicing and trying to see if I could do it. And I wrote a bunch of you know awful stuff, uh, you know, because everything you write in the first few years of learning to be a writer is is not that great. Um and then what happened was it was really a twist of fate more than me making some courageous decision to strike out and and pursue a Hollywood career. I already had, you know, what at that point was a very good career in video games. And I it would never have occurred to me to like cash it all in for you know the lottery ticket of pursuing a career in Hollywood. But what happened was I got laid off. I basically got the sack. The the company that employed me hit some uh financial uh hard times and had to close down a lot of magazines and laid a lot of people off. And I got laid off and I suddenly had nothing better to do with my time. And I thought, well, I don't know, what do I want to do? I could, again, I've got a pretty I had a pretty good resume in video games. I could easily get back on that train if I wanted to go work for, I don't know, IGN or one of you know one of the many websites that were springing up around that time. This would have been around 2001, uh around the time of the dot com, you know, bubble. Um but I thought, I don't know, maybe, maybe I can try the screenwriting thing. I had just enough money saved set aside that um if I lived very frugally, I I could, I could, I could support myself for about a year without having to, you know, uh have a job. And I took that time and I just kind of threw myself into teaching myself how to write screenplays. I'm very autodidactic. So like I didn't really read, I think I read like one book on screenwriting, never did any seminars or courses. I I tend to learn by doing and making mistakes and learning from my own mistakes. And so over the course of a year, I wrote five, I think five very bad screenplays, but each one was like slightly less bad than the last one because you know I was kind of learning and teaching myself and I was reading a lot of screenplays, uh hanging out online in some of the kind of the nascent screenwriting boards and sharing pages and doing the you know, doing the things that you do when you're um, you know, trying to break in. And uh eventually wrote a script that I thought was good enough to show someone and started, you know, sent it to some um uh places that I found in management companies that uh you know will accept unsolicited queries and got my first manager that way. And that was how that was how the kind of the career shift started. I guess I wish I could tell you that I made this like courageous decision to um to go pursue a career, but the the the the truth is my hand was kind of forced. I mean, in the end, it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me. I was devastated at the time when I when I lost my job, but um it's a it's a good example of how you know it's something that might seem like uh a terrible eventuality in the moment can end up you know opening up a you know a whole new a whole new door for you.

SPEAKER_03 8:25

Well, I mean, there's a lot to a great answer, a lot to unpack there in my head. And I know this is wrong, uh, but when you're British and you're a writer, I always assume that you could just walk up to an agency or a management firm and just with your accent, they would just say, Oh, we would love to ref you. I think that you're gonna, you know, be an amazing client for us. But it sounds like you had to do what we all have to do, which all had to do, which is write a lot of bad screenplays. Eventually you wrote some good ones and it started your career. Now I know, like, you know, this is a challenging podcast because I know that our listeners are gonna want us to get to the Star Wars stuff, but I'm a big Book of Eli fan. I love that movie. I thought it was fantastic. How do you go from, you know, writing your first decent script that gets you a manager? And this is not a failure question, I apologize, but we'll get to the failure stuff, to sort of landing this really big uh movie.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Yeah, so the first thing that I wrote was was enough to get me um a manager, my who I'm who I'm still with, um, you know, 20-something years uh later, I've always been with the same uh manager. He was the kind of the guy that discovered me. And and luck really played oftentimes when I talk about screenwriting uh, you know, seminars or conventions or whatever or interviews, I I reference luck a lot because it's played a big part in my career and just being in the right place um at the right time. And in and what happened with uh with this one was I sent the script into it's quite a large management company. And you know, usually typically when you send a script anywhere, whether it be you know producers or studios, there's usually kind of like a phalanx of readers and and people between you and the actual decision makers, right? Whose job is to kind of read all the scripts, sort out the good ones from the bad ones so that the ones that go to the, you know, the people that actually make decisions have already been somewhat filtered out. Mine never went through that process. Literally, this guy called me, the the head of the company, and said, I don't know why this script was put in my weekend read pile, because there's no coverage. Like it's not been through any readers. I think someone just put it in my bag by mistake. But I really love it and I want to represent you. And so, I mean, again, in a in a different kind of sliding doors reality, one of those readers just didn't like my script and I don't have a career today. But as it as it is, uh, it just got it went to the head of the company without any kind of prior uh coverage or or anyone kind of you know um uh uh you know checking to make sure that it was it was good enough to go you know higher up the chain. So I got it that was like my first kind of stroke of luck that led to me, you know, kind of having my first foot in the door.

SPEAKER_03 10:47

And was that that wasn't the book of Ulair, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:49

No, no, no. That was that was a thing that I ended up actually making as a graphic novel uh many years um later. I think so. I so the first script that I wrote, I remember that my my manager saying to me, like, this is a great piece of writing, but like no one's gonna make this movie. Um but people like people will really like the writing. So let's put this out there kind of like as your calling card script and start getting you, you know, known. And I, you know, went and did the baby rider bottled water tour, went to all the different places, met with a bunch of executives who who liked the script, uh, you know, who weren't gonna make it, but you know, wanted to know me. And, you know, would you be interested in this or that? And uh just kind of jobbed around the kind of battered around the minor leagues of screenwriting, I guess, for a while, doing just a little uncredited rewrite works on on things. You know, I wrote a couple more specs that didn't really go anywhere. I wrote one that was that that was optioned um and had various directors attached, but like just couldn't quite get off the ground, you know, just couldn't quite get there. And so I was like, I was I was doing okay. I was making, I was making a a living, um, but you know, I hadn't had anything produced, and you know, I felt like kind of really breaking in. That hadn't happened for me yet. Um, and then I, you know, came up with the idea for Eli, and it was something I was really passionate about. I didn't know if it was commercial or it was something that anybody would make, but I've learned a long time ago not to not to listen to that concern. Like, is it commercial? Is it marketable? Is it on trend? Is it the sort of thing that Hollywood would make? I think the only voice you can listen to is like the one that's telling you that you want to tell this story and then you know, let the gods sort it out, basically. Um, and and I'm glad that I that I did because um I'm sure if I if I'd have pitched this idea uh, you know, of a guy with a kind of Bible in one hand and a you know machete in the other, it pretty it might not have gotten through, you know, the uh the the advice of my managers who said, Oh no, can you write something a bit more commercial than that? But I really, I really wanted to write it and I didn't want to be talked down off the ledge by my by my managers. And so I just kind of went off and wrote it in in secret. I just like spent like a week uh like hammering this script out, like 16, 18 hours a day. I was writing, you know, when something like really gets a hold of you, it's like a fever dream. And I wrote it, I had a first draft very quickly, sent it to my reps, and they weren't quite sure what to make of it, but you know, I've written it now. I may as well, you know, give it a shot. So I did a little bit of work polishing it up, getting it ready to go to market, and it went out to um uh you know, all the all the usual suspects, and we had a little bit of interest, but it was really Warner Brothers and Joel Silver that that sparked to it, and that was my first studio sale back in 2007, and that was really cool because you can see the aside from the fact that the movie was sold and that was exciting for me. Um, it was really interesting going back on the on the kind of the next bottled water tour post that sale because it was a you know it was a heart script for a minute and uh it was a it was a spec. I still people, you know, when I do meetings, people still still go, oh, I love that script. Like the people they really enjoy not just the movie, but they enjoyed really reading the scripts. It's one of my favorite pieces of writing, and it has a lot of fans, and like I said, it really is the movie that that gave me a career. But I remember going back to those same studios after Eli sold and thinking, oh, I didn't know this building had a second floor. Because now I'm meeting all now I'm meeting all the bosses of the of the junior execs that I met before. Like I you can tell that I've been kind of promoted and now I'm being thought of as a higher level because it, you know, it's sold to a major studio and we had Denzel. Suddenly I've been I'm yeah, it overnight you can suddenly be seen as uh a different person than you were the day before. It's it's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 14:17

What's helpful here is uh Noah always asks the question about like what's it like after you've had some success and you're hot. So I'm I'm glad you've answered it without having to hear from him. Um I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna ask a Star Wars question, um, just because I can't wait any longer. Um but it's actually this sound I'm I'm I'm trying to think of the question here. I'm not sure it's really a question. I feel like I've got it's a sort of statement, which is given that you're from London, I feel like I'd love to know the moment you told your like your real friends, not your new Hollywood friends, but like your real friends from home that you're on this Star Wars movie. Because in my head, I'm I'm imagining it, and I feel like you know, you you call up them or you're back in England, you go to the pub and you say, I'm working on this. And I feel like their first response is some version of fuck off, mate, uh, as opposed to congratulations or or well done in any way. Um I am I way off the mark.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Um, I'm trying to remember. It's so it's interesting because you know, I I had I had that job for a good, I want to say a good couple of years before I was allowed to tell anyone that I even had it. And that is obviously a difficult um secret to sit on because it is something you want to kind of you know shout from the rooftops that you're working on a Star Wars movie. It's very, very exciting. Um, but I, you know, Lucasfilm are very, very serious about you know that, you know, keeping your mouth shut and they they they drill it into you. And so I became very disciplined and and sat on it for a good while. Um, and then one day I think that I think it actually leaked. And they weren't necessarily planning to announce it like right then. They obviously were gonna announce it at some point, but I think like Hollywood Reporter or someone got a hold of the fact that you know Gareth and I were were working on this uh movie, uh, what was gonna be what you know what would become the first of the standalone uh films. And I remember someone coming into my office. I was working at Lucasfilm at that time. They said, you know, just just so you know, like this is all gonna happen in like in the next 20 minutes. Like we're scrambling to put out a press release and like preempt this this leak. Uh so you know, get ready. Like it's all, it's it's fine, like the lid's finally gonna come off. Um and uh I remember, you know, I was I think I was on Twitter at that point many years ago. Uh you know, it's on various social media and things like that. And you know, it the the story hit. And yeah, of course, yeah, your phone just immediately starts blowing up, like all your all your actual friends and then people you haven't heard from literally in years, right? Kind of coming out of the woodwork. And I I remember it, I mean it was it was nice, it was very cathartic because it kind of felt it finally felt nice, you know, to to you know be able to um acknowledge it, obviously not talk about it in any degree, but at least acknowledge it. It was something that I was doing. Um and the there were two main like trends, the two main themes for all the messages, because you know, I got like hundreds of messages that first that first couple of hours from from people that wanted to know more about it or wanted to reach out. And um, the two main themes were, oh my god, this is amazing. I can't believe it. Well done. I know, you know, some people have known me for a long time saying, I know that you, you know, screenwriting's been your dream and you like you always love Star Wars and like this must be amazing for you. And then this, and then the second theme was, and they would often come as part of the same, you know, uh text or email, don't fuck this up. And you know, every every uh every uh filmmaker that I know, certainly the ones that I've met or got to know with who uh got to got to know who you kind of went through that same process, who kind of found themselves suddenly, you know, in the Star Wars sandbox, said you know, the same thing too. I remember I remember when Ryan got episode eight. I think he posted a um a little gift from um it was from the right stuff when one of the pilots is saying, please God don't let me fuck this up, right? So like it's everyone has that that same sense of of of excitement and and trepidation because you are fully aware that you know you're being handed, you know, a cultural crown jewel, right? It is absolutely a crown jewel of not just American but world popular culture. Remember, Ryan always used to say Star Wars is in a category of one, like there's nothing else quite like it in terms of the devotion and the and the and the passion that is that it has um uh inspired over the over the years. And so yeah, you're you're you're very you're very aware of of that. I mean, I was obviously was already telling myself, don't fuck this up when people started, you know, drilling that that point home. Um, yeah, it's it's but it's obviously something you've got to you can't let that dictate your you know your your mindset as you get into it. You have to you have to try and find some way to kind of not just not think about what if it's bad, you know, like we do as writers we do that all the time anyway, but with something as significant as Star Wars, where you know, I remember thinking like, you know, Book of Eli was obviously out at that point, and it was Denzel, you know, it was a big movie, you know, a lot of people saw it, but like, you know, not everyone saw it. Um, but I remember thinking, man, I'm writing on a movie that like everyone is gonna see. Like George Lucas is gonna see this movie, right? Steven Spielberg is gonna see this movie. Everyone is gonna, everyone I admire is gonna see this movie, just by the nature of being Star Wars, like my writing is gonna be put in front of you know everyone that I admire. And it was so it wasn't even really so much as like a Star Wars concern as just like a filmmaking or a or a writing concern that I just really wanted to like, I don't know, just give a good account of myself and like be able, you know, be able to be proud of like what what what I put out into the world, just just just within the context of this is my writing, not even in the context of like this is you know my crack at Star Wars. Because I was always confident that the Star Wars stuff was like again, I grew up with it. I feel like I knew knew and and know that world very, very well. But it's like can you can you do it justice? Like are you are you up to the are you up to the task? And it was it took it took a while for me to kind of get out from under that that mindset of being able to just you know sit down and write and not worry too much about you know the outcome.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

I mean it's an extraordinary answer. I'm very excited by pretty much everything you just said there. I think obviously I'm not a writer, so you have to bear with me here a bit because I don't really understand how it all works. Um so obviously you've got all of that pressure at the time of the announcement, and as you say, you know everyone's gonna watch that movie. In terms of your like actual craft part of it, do you do you think about that stuff when you're in it? So, in the same way that I don't know, when you're having to rewrite some dialogue for for Eli, you know, you're just maybe you knew Denzel was in it at that point, maybe you didn't, but you know, you're just rewriting a bit of dialogue. But this one, you're like, you know, you're redoing something and you're redoing something, and while you're redoing it and doing your actual writing craft, are you thinking all of those thoughts, you know, Spielberg, George Lucas, Legacy, it's in the category of one, or are you able as a writer to sort of do the writing without thinking, and then maybe only afterwards realize what what you're working?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

I mean, I'm very I'm fortunate in in both both the examples that you mentioned with Eli and Star Wars, I wasn't working in a vacuum. I was initially with Eli because that was a spec script. So, you know, initially that really was just me like all alone at the keyboard, not ever imagining that this would even become a movie, just knowing that it was a story that I felt really compelled to write, you know, come come what may. And you know, again, we'll see if anybody wants to buy it or make it, but I just I just know that I want to write it and we'll worry about the rest later. Um, and by the time we got into rewrites, Denzel was on board, and I was I was working, you know, literally sat on a couch with him like for hours a day going through the scripts. And so at that point, it really just becomes about making sure that he's happy, right? You you usually there's like a a a particular focus, you know, whether it's notes kind of telling you what you're gonna do and like uh uh uh you know, you've got like a direction in terms of the writing that you're doing. Um, and at that point it was just just making sure that Denzel was happy with, you know. Everything that he was seeing. And this was this was a role that he was excited to go play. And I have the same, I had the same thing with Gareth on Rogue One. Gareth and I were essentially employees number one and two on that movie, with the very first two people hired before anyone else. And for a while it was just us sitting in, you know, a nondescript office just kind of talking about, you know, what kind of Star Wars movie we wanted to make. We knew that it was the story of the Rebels Stealing Desktop plans because John Knoll had already come up with that idea. That was the pitch that got the movie uh you know going and got us hired. I was hired to you know develop you know that that story uh and turn it into a and turn it into the first draft of the script. And I remember saying to Gilly, I I always like to work. One thing's I one thing that I've learned is I don't like working on a movie. If it's set up and like it's something that we we there's an expectation it's gonna be made, I don't like working on the script before there's a director because I've done it too many times now, where you know you do 10 drafts for the producers and then they finally hire a director, and the director comes in, and the director, of course, is gonna have his or her own point of view and say, Oh, this isn't what I want to do though. Like I want to do something completely different. And you know, that that and so your script ends up getting tossed out, and maybe the director wants to do another draft with you, or maybe he's got his own writer he wants to bring in, or whatever it may be. I've been through that many, many times. And so I much prefer now, um, as a practice, getting into you know early development of a script when there's already a director attached. So, you know, I can like I said to Gareth, and I said this to every director I've worked with since. Tell me, tell me about the the version of this movie that you're excited about, the version that like what excites you about this movie, like what is it you want to do? Because once you tell me that and I understand that, and I've got an idea of the movie that's in your head, I can go away and write to that so that when you see the script, it's you go, Oh yeah, this is all the stuff that I want to do. This is the stuff that we talked about, as opposed to, you know, what the hell is this? And so I was fortunate that that Gareth was available very early on. I remember he was editing Godzilla at the time, and he would literally kind of like edit Godzilla in, you know, and then uh when he once he was done, he would come across the street to the Disney lot and sit with me and talk about Rogue One. And that's until he was like fully off of Godzilla, he could kind of split his time between you know finishing off that movie and and and laying laying down the tracks for this new one. Um, and yes, we just we just talked about what you know what do you want to do? Like what excites you about telling this story? And I've I've told this a million times before, but for him it was always like he said, I want to it's about shades of gray. I don't want to do whites at white hats and black hats. Like we know that the rebels are the good guys um and the the empire of the bad guys, but we also know that it's never as straightforward as that, right? There's there's there's ambiguity and you know, there's there's shades of gray. And he said, I want to have like a rebel character who you might you might think of as a bad guy. I want to have an imperial character that you might think as more of a hero, because you know, it's it's the reality is messier, right, than just heroes and villains. Um, and that's how we ended up, you know, with Sorghera and you know, some again, some of the other characters, kind of the more morally ambiguous characters in in Rogue One. But that was again just something as simple as that. Like just one line from the director saying, like, I want to explore that gray area. And I can go away and like that gives me a direction to work in.

SPEAKER_03 25:03

Oh. Normally I'd be like, like, you know, wanting to jump into some failures like at this point in the podcast. But I think I need to stay here for just one more second because this is where I think our audience is gonna want us to be. And I apologize, by the way, if you can't answer this question, because I know around Star Wars are billions of NDAs, like you mentioned. They print them on red paper, or at least I've told been told that, so you can't Xerox them.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

So I remember I remember when they brought the script for episode seven into a room on red paper for me and Gareth to read, and then they take it away at the end.

SPEAKER_03 25:35

Right. There, I mean, like I not only is it like you said, it's like it's in a it's in a class of one, right? So NDA is on top of NDA. So if you can't answer this question or you have to answer it obliquely, that's fine. But so you know, for a while it's you and Gareth working on this thing. And then I'm sure at some point you either turn in a treatment, an outline, or something for the powers to be to read. How big were the guardrails at that point? Because this is a massive, this is the massive IP. This isn't just a massive IP, it's the biggest IP in the world, arguably. Did they say we're not doing any of that? We're doing this. Were they open to you guys sort of laying out a lot of those tracks before they decided they needed something to the left or something to the right? What was the process of development like?

SPEAKER_01 26:20

I mean, I'll I mean, I'll say this all credit to the people at Lucasfilm that I worked with. Um there were there were very few guardrails. It's it wasn't it wasn't like a where they sat us down and said, well, it's got to be this or that, and like you don't color outside the lines. There were a few things that we knew. But again, we knew the basic story, right? That it that we wanted to tell the story of uh the rebels who stole the Death Star plans. And John Knoll, um, who had come up with that original story, had like a, I think like a two-page, you know, very rough outline of like who the characters were. And some of those characters are in the are in the film and some aren't, you know, because we we changed a lot. Um, but in you know, we we basically knew that that was the area, you know, we so we knew it was like original trilogy, it would be right before, you know, a new hope, and just just the fact that it is so kind of contiguous with a new hope, like it happens literally right before a new hope. There are certain like canonical things that you know, you know, you know where you are in in time and space in terms of that corner of the Star Wars universe, and certain you know, things do have to, you know, connect up. And I like I remember going through, I mean, I already knew the movie, you know, obviously line by line, because I'd watched it so many times as a kid, but I remember going back through and just making all these little notes. Like there's a there's a line um on the Death Star where one of the Imperial officers says to Vader, like, you've not been able to conjure up the stolen data tapes. And I'm like, okay, data tapes. So there's it has to be a there's gonna have to be a physical object, right? They can't just beam it, right? It's like there has to be something that has to be physically stolen, which is good, right? Because it's a heist. You want to have a MacGuffin, you want to have a physical thing for them to steal. Um, you know, in the opening crawl, it says, you know, during the battle where the rebels scored their first victory, the um uh rebel spies stole the plants. Okay, so we know that this has got to happen in the context of a battle, right? We can't change that history. It's funny, it's occurred to me over the years Star Wars history is more sacrosanct than actual real history. You can do a what you can do a World War II movie, right? And and and and change things. You can say like certain events have been changed, you know, for dramatic effect or whatever. Quentin Tarantino can kill Hitler in a movie theater, right? And in Glorious Patters, and everyone goes, yeah, whatever. But if you change anything in Star Wars canon that that doesn't match up with what's already there, you people are gonna have tantrums, right? And so there are certain things that are kind of inviolable. Uh, and I kind of became like the like the nerdy logic cop that was saying, oh, this is why, this is why Wedge can't be in the movie, for example, or this is why Tarkin needs to be in the movie, because you know, people are gonna watch these two movies back to back and they need to make sense when you when you do that. And so there was a little bit of just you know, just that. And Lucasfilm have a have a huge um uh uh resource available in terms of the story group and the people that know Star Wars infinitely better than than I do. Like they know it absolutely backwards and front. And any question I would have about canon or history or you know, whatever, they instantly were able to get me an answer. But in terms of like the creative direction for the movie, like the interesting thing was like that it wasn't, it was almost like the opposite of saying guardrails. Like they one thing that they knew was because you know the first episode seven hadn't come out yet, but they knew it was coming out, and this would be the next one. That it would be episode seven, and then it would be the first standalone, then it would be episode eight, then another standalone, then episode nine. They knew that that they knew that much. And I think they they felt it was really important that because this was a standalone, that it stand alone, right? That it not just feel like another saga Star Wars film. They were like, this is separate, you know, this is gonna be a one-off. So stylistically, you know, a lot of things that Gareth and I were attracted to initially, like, well, is there gonna be an opening crawl? You know, are we gonna do the iris wipes and the star wipes and things like that? Can we do a time jump? Like Star Wars had never done like a time jump, right, in its storytelling. Um and when we came to realize, you know, at one point there was never there were several drafts where there was not a single lightsaber in the movie. And yeah, obviously there is, you know, at the very end in the in the final in the final one. I remember saying to Gareth and Doug Chang um from um ILM sitting in a meeting and saying, like, man, there's not a single lightsaber in this movie. Isn't that weird? And they're like, Yeah, but that's what makes it great. Like, because we're doing it was like we're doing things that we haven't done before. John Noel was constantly, I want to see things that I haven't seen in Star Wars before. And that was a that was another thing that kind of led me to go away and come up with certain things that I thought were really cool, like Vader's Castle and the first uh, you know, the first attack, the first Death Star attack that destroys the city and Sor Guerrera's base. Um and so Lucas from if anything, well, like like go nuts. Like we want to see something different. Like we don't want this to feel like a typical Star Wars film. The whole point is that we can, you know, there are different colors, right, and different palettes that you can use and different themes and and flavors. And this one can be a bit more gritty, or this, yeah, we can do a time jump, right? We can do a prologue, you know, 20 years ago or whatever. Like we can, we we don't have to worry about um, you know, this this fitting the template. We want to, we want to break the template. And so they were they were really encouraging in in that regard. And then the only other, the only other guardrails were um, you know, again, nothing exists in a vacuum. Episode seven will have come out a year before. At that point, JJ was still shooting it and we knew very little about it. So we would hand in, you know, a story treatment or whatever, and the Lucas would look at it and go, hmm, yeah, maybe don't do that kind of planet. And we're like, well, why is that? And so, well, because you know, JJ might have something similar to that in episode seven, and you you we don't want to repeat that idea or whatever. Um, and for a while we were just kind of playing like they wouldn't show us episode seven, right? Because they're so secretive. And it was almost like playing like hotter, colder, oh a bit warmer, warmer, or too too warm, you're getting too hot, you know, you're getting too close to something we're already doing. And eventually, like I said, they like I said, like, you've got to let us do our jobs, you've got to trust us and let us like know what we're dealing with here so that we don't keep, you know, uh, you know, butting into the stuff that JJ's doing. I remember at one point, you know, uh I wrote Admiral Akbar was in the scripts, and they're like don't do that because JJ's using Admiral Akbar. So he became Admiral Raddus, you know, the other the other uh Mont Calamary uh rebel officer. Um I was like, can you just let us read the thing so that we don't keep like bumping into it? And eventually they did. They put us in the windowless room with the script, and we read it, and after that we knew, you know, what to stay away from. And that was that was a useful exercise. So yeah, really, it was just like obviously, you know, try not to repeat anything we're doing in episode seven too much, um, because people will notice, you know, the movies are coming out a year apart. Um, and like don't and and like just try to make it as uh like unlike the saga films, because we want these movies to be distinct and have their own identity. And that was pretty much it.

SPEAKER_03 32:36

What a what a great answer. And I think you know, Dan and I say this sometimes, we'd love to have guests on and for longer than our episodes allow us to, and to you know, specifically just talk about Star Wars, because we could talk about this for five episodes, I think. But you know, I do have to kind of get us into the failure part of this conversation and sort of what happens next. So I'm really fascinated. I feel like personally, I mean, last, you know, recently we had Ed's Wick on who won an Academy Award, and in many ways, that's sort of the pinnacle of Hollywood. Everyone, many people dream about winning an Academy Award, and very few people do. But I kind of think in a weird way, writing a Star Wars film is also the pinnacle of Hollywood. Like there's no bigger IP, there's no bigger movies, there's no bigger franchise. So you write this movie, it comes out, it's you know, it does massively. Uh what happens next, you know, emotionally, mentally to your career? Do you discover there's now a third story that you never knew about? The second story is now gone. Is there a weird does life get a bit anticlimatic because it's how do you surpass that? What do you do next? And what were some of your struggles after that movie came out?

SPEAKER_01 33:47

I would say anticlimactic for sure. Um, it's interesting. It's interesting you said, like, I want to move on from Star Wars and talk about failure. I don't know if I've ever really spoken about this before. Um, but you know, it's it's been you know almost 10 years now since I worked on Rogue One. I'll I'll tell you, I personally consider uh my Star Wars uh experience to be a failure because I was not able to ride the train all the way to the end of the station. I was replaced as the writer, um, and then that writer was replaced as the writer. You know, there were a lot of there were a lot of writers on Rogue One, not all of whom are credited. I'm fortunate to be one of the four uh credited writers of the movie, but there but there certainly were more than that. Um, and you know, I was hired to, you know, write the movie and I wrote a story outline that got us commenced to script, and I wrote, and then I wrote the first draft of the script. And then um, for reasons that were never fully explained to me, you know, they replaced me. And you know, I'm I'm very proud of the fact that my name is in the blue letters. Um, you know, that's something that I'll always treasure. Rogue One will probably always be the number one thing on my bio because again, what's bigger than that? Uh, I'm extremely proud of it. I regret nothing. Like I would I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Like the high, the high moments, you know, being on set, like seeing a fucking full-size X-wing for the first time and going, oh my God, like this is like the 10-year-old me is like is is is going nuts. Um, but you know, I wasn't, I, you know, I wasn't able to to you know get it all the way to the finish line. You know, the whatever it was about that first draft, they they felt like they wanted someone else to come in. And that got, you know, Chris Weitz came in and did an amazing job. Uh, and then other writers um after him. And uh in the end, you know, there was a big credit arbitration, and I got my I ended up getting um uh shared story credit. And again, I'm I'm happy with all of that, but like I look back on it and it it I I I I feel like I failed, right? Because you want to you want to be the writer that delivers it all the way to the end. And I remember saying to Gareth very, very early on, they're gonna fire me at some point. Like that, it's just a reality. On a big, big movie like this, there's no way they're gonna, no matter how much they like the script, there's no way they're not gonna cover their asses and bring in like a like a big ticket writer, right? To to slap their name on the front of the script. And Gareth's like, oh, don't worry about that, it's not gonna happen. And of course, and it and it and it did happen. And it certainly took no pleasure in being right. Um, and it's I don't know, it's funny. Again, I'll I'll probably never talk about it like in any in any meaningful detail, but I will say that like, and this is it's not just me, there are there are others that have that that have been through that machine that feel the exact same way. I know because I've spoken to them. I can't, I I can't watch Star Wars as a fan anymore, having worked on it for five years. You know, I worked on the movie, I worked on two seasons of Star Wars Rebels, um, I wrote on a Star Wars book, I've written Star Wars comic books. My my weird little humble brag is that I'm the only person who's ever written Star Wars for film, television books, and comics. And that's cool, right? But I I I look back on it and like it was so emotionally, psychologically, mentally painful at times. It was agonizing at times working on that film. But maybe because just of the pressure I put on my myself, but some external stuff as well. And uh, you know, I ultimately didn't get what I wanted out of the experience. My name, my name's on the movie, but not in the way I would have, I would have preferred or felt that I deserved. Um and uh I like I it's funny, people say to me, what do you think of Andor? Like, what do you think of this show? I said I haven't seen, I've not seen a single minute of any of the Star Wars television shows. I can't watch them because it's it's what working that close to something can't not change your perception of it. And it's not that it was all a bad experience, it wasn't, it was a brilliant experience in many ways. But you you like once you've seen behind the curtain, once you've had an experience that that is that up close and personal with it, you can't just be the same Star Wars fan, the innocent wide-eyed Star Wars fan that you used to be anymore, right? And so I actually find you know Star Wars stuff quite difficult to watch because I can't I can't dissociate my own personal feelings about my time working on it from just being able to sit down and enjoy as a fan, as I was. I don't know if any of this makes sense, but like it's like I said, I I've spoken to there, there are others that have been through through the the process since you know the Disney acquisition, the creative process who said the same thing as yeah, like it's hard for me to just watch those movies anymore and just enjoy them for what they are because you can't separate your own you know emotional experience from from being a part of it.

SPEAKER_03 38:20

Wow. I mean that that didn't distill our podcast into a little one-minute speech, uh, nothing else has done in 125 episodes. I'm gonna make a quick comment because I know Dan has a ton of questions. And that is like, I think I agree with you in your comment that you said you were bound to be replaced. The bigger the IP, the more the writers. That just happens to us all the time. But you really gave us a glimpse into how painful that can be, even when you know it's coming.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

Yeah, the funny thing is Gareth, obviously, the director's always senior, right? And Gareth is a brilliant, brilliant director, and he's gone to to make uh a bunch of great stuff. He's doing the new Jurassic World movie right now. I love Gareth. Gareth is one of those people that I will always show up for. Like I'll go, I'll go to battle with him in a heartbeat. I think he's brilliant. And I he's just just a just a really down to earth, nice guy. He became one of my favorite um people that I've worked with in this business. And but at the time he was a little bit more green than me in terms of Hollywood, right? He had done he had he had done monsters, his brilliant little independent movie. Then he got thrown in at the deep end big studio franchise filmmaking with Godzilla, right? And that was a really difficult process creatively. Lots of writers coming and going, lots of you know, scripts changing every five minutes. And when he came on to Star Wars, I remember him saying back when it was just the two of us, he said, it's I remember on Godzilla, you know, I was getting new pages every day, and I didn't even know what I was shooting, and you know, it's it was it was a it was it was kind of a mess. And uh that's not gonna happen this time. It's gonna be you and me all the way to the finish. We're gonna do this. And I remember sitting there going, just you wait. I I I I'm telling you, wait and see. And you know, it and and and that and that came to pass. Um, just because again, it's not again. I I'll always tell myself that I feel like I failed. I feel like I should, you know, if I'd have written written a better first draft, maybe I could have held on. But to some extent, I don't think it matters. Like on those big, big, big, big movies. I was still kind of a baby rider at that point, right? One big produced or two big produce credits, one of which had just been a massive flop, the uh the Will Smith movie. And so I wasn't the kind of name that someone would see on the front of a script and go, oh, this will be all right. You know what I mean? Like that, for that you need like a Stephen Gagan or a Scott Frank or a Chris White, so one of these guys, like you know, the closers that you know could come in and you know are gonna do a job for you. And I was like, there's no way this movie goes all the way to the end with like my my name's the only name on the front page. Uh and that like I said, that's that's what happened. I've been I've been doing this for long enough to know how the machine works, and you know, the machine you know did what it did in this case.

SPEAKER_02 40:45

I mean as Noah said, you know, I think nothing sums up our podcast more than that story and the way you've told it. And obviously, um a British person saying I'm probably gonna get fired at the end of this is feels more authentic when than when Americans say it. But I I mean I remember like I think it was the second or third episode of this podcast now. We had Grant Myers on, and the the episode was basically I wrote Maze Runner, uh it got green lit, and they fired me in the same phone call. Um, so obviously this is a bit muffen to Maze Runner.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

This is a bit more grown-up version of that in terms of oh, I mean, and like I said, I'm like, I I this is probably the most candid I've ever been about, you know, being honest about how the Star Wars experience was emotionally a very mixed bag for me. If I if I were to go into details, yeah, well, I mean, I'm and that's just never gonna happen. But it was there were there were it was agonizing. Like there were times when I there was there was there was one moment where I wanted to quit the business over it because I felt that I had been so poorly uh so hard done by that. I wrote this letter and I had my wife read it and she said, Um, why don't you sleep on that before you send it? And I woke up the next morning and read it again and went, Thank God I didn't send it. But like it was a there was a there's been three times in this business, 20 years I've been in this business, three times that I have come this close to just saying, fuck it, fuck it all. I'm I'm going back to video games. This isn't worth the aggravation. And that was that was the first of of three times when that happened.

SPEAKER_02 42:10

Um I now obviously you have to ask what the other two were.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Well, now we're into the red meat, aren't we? Now we're actually talking about what you want to what you want to talk about. So the other one was um this was years later, I worked on a movie called uh Mouse Guard, uh, which I loved. It was an adaptation of the of the David Peterson uh graphic novel. It's an incredible world. It's just just an amazing series of books. If nothing else, go go find those books. Uh and they had been trying to crack it for years, and eventually it came to me. Um, and I think this was shortly after Star Wars. So there was, there was, there was a burst of let me go, let me go, I'm let me go back a minute and I want to answer that other part of your question about like what happened afterwards. So there was that for a long time I thought, well, look, once my name's on a Star Wars movie, like I'm I'm set, right? Like everyone, like I'm not, I'm never gonna have to like worry about getting a job again because that Star Wars credit's gonna get me all these other jobs. Doesn't it it did not quite work that way. I mean, like Rogue One worked out great, right? It's I think it's considered, I think largely considered the best of the of the Disney era movies, right? It's the one that people seem to universally like the most. And I I I take quite great pride in that fact. There isn't another one from that, uh, from that batch of Disney movies that I would like trade you know credit with. You know, like Rogue One, Rogue One's the one I would want to be associated with, and I'm glad uh that I am. And again, even though it went through you know many rewrites, some of the some of your favorite stuff in the movie is stuff that I put in there, right? And I'm and I'm really, really proud of that. And like I said, all my name will always be will always be up there with the John Williams music playing, and it I'll always have that, right? But it it did come at a cost. And any expectation I might have had that like this would suddenly kind of put me, like you said, talking about the third floor. That never really happened. There was there was a period like shortly afterwards when I was there, there was definitely a lot of work coming in. Um but I and I allowed me to continue to be picky about what I did. I'm considering myself very fortunate, I've never taken a job just for. Money. Like I've only do it if it's something I really feel like I actually want to do. Uh creatively is exciting to me. And that was actually, I remember so then when the Mouse Guard people came in. Um, again, I was actually in the middle of Star Wars at that point. I said, Look, I'm really busy, I can't even really entertain anything else right now. And they said, I said, it would have to be like, there's like three things out there that I would kill to do. And if it's one of those things, great, otherwise we don't have anything to talk about. And they said, What's Mouse Guard? And I went, Oh shit, that's one of that actually is one of the three things because I loved these comics. And for years I was saying, like, these should be a movie. Um, and I got hired to write it. And David Peterson, the creator of the books, you know, I met with him and he signed off on my, you know, a creative, you know, my take, my approach to what the movie should be. David and I became good friends. I love him to death. Um, and I wrote what I thought was one of the best scripts that I've written. I'm still probably still in my three favorite pieces that I've ever done. I was just so, so pleased with it. And I had the luxury of, you know, working off of a really great foundation because David had created this amazing world, uh, an amazing story that I was able to adapt. But I felt like I did a really, really good job with it. And everybody loved it. The producers um loved it, the studio loved it, David loved it. It was like, oh my God, like maybe this movie's actually gonna get made. Um, and then I got fired for reasons that no one's ever been able to explain to me. And, you know, I was never able to get a straight answer out of out of anyone. And uh I remember when I found out, I literally threw my phone against the wall and my wife had to come in and say, like, are you okay? Because she could even be like streaming down the phone. Um and I remember, I don't remember exactly who it was, but like my agent called me and said, like, I've got I've got the president of production of 20th Century Fox on the phone right now. He wants to talk to you and like an apologize for what's happened. I said, like, don't put him on the phone with me because I will say something I can't take back. I'm so fucking annoyed right now. Like it the most frustrating thing in this business is just doing the just doing the work isn't enough. Doing great work isn't enough. You can write an incredible script, you can leave it all out on the field, you can do the best work of your life, and it will still, in many, it's nine times out of ten, come to nothing for for reasons that you know completely out of your control, have nothing to do with the quality of the work, and are in I and are, you know, in uh in many occasions total bullshit. But that you've just you know you and you learn to live with it. And I've developed, you know, I've I it's funny, I wanted to come on this podcast because you're talking about failure and rejection. I I know a lot about that having uh having done 20 years in this business. Um I'm someone that I think many people would look at, and by any metric, you consider me a success, right? I've had three big movies made, including a Star Wars. I've done TV books, films, comics, all this kind of stuff. But you have to remember, I I often talk about it. The analogy I often use is like an iceberg, right? Like the the part of the iceberg that breaks the surface of the water and is visible from the surface, that's the stuff that I've had made. That's Star Wars and Eli and the other things that I've had produced or published. What you don't see is the, you know, the the seven eighths of the iceberg that's that's underneath the water. And that's all the failure and rejection and stuff that never sees the light of day. But I see all of that, right? I have my heart broken over and over and over again in this business because I put my heart and soul into everything I do. And, you know, 99 times out of 100, it comes to nothing. But you keep doing it because eventually something will will happen. But the success to failure rate and the satisfaction to kind of dissatisfaction rate as a creative person in this business is shockingly low. Um, and you you really got to be, I think a lot of people think I'm skeptical when I when I talk about stuff in this way. I just think I'm pragmatic. I've been doing this for 20 years and I pay attention and I see how difficult it is uh, you know, for good material to, you know, to make it to the top, and how many, uh just how many other kind of factors that have nothing to do with creativity or you know, artistry are arrayed against it. This is a you know, it's a commercial business, right? I get it. It's it's it's a weird business because you're trying to marry art and commerce, and those are two things that just don't belong together. And when there's a conflict, as inevitably there will be, commerce will win every single time. And that's a bit you know, it's a bit disappointing. But it's a naive, it's naive to think otherwise, right? That these big movie studios aren't patrons of the arts, right? They exist to increase shareholder value, right? And if they can do that by making an incredible film, they will. If they can do that by taking a finished film and sticking it in the trash through a tax write-off, they'll do that as well. They don't give a fuck. Right? It's it's it it it's it's it's often difficult as someone who is naive enough to like just think about this business purely from a creative point of view, um, because you know, you'll you'll come up against the cold heart of reality of the fact that it's you know it's a commercial enterprise and that's often not um you know compatible with you know what what you want to achieve. I tell people all the time, if you want to be a writer, write anything else, write books, write comics, like write poetry, write a song, write anything other than movies, because it will it will it is the it is the medium that will put up a fight the most. If you if if the satisfaction you want is seeing your name and run or roll on the end credits of a movie, and the movie is something you still recognize as the thing you have written, just know the chances of that happening are astronomically slim.

SPEAKER_02 49:10

Fucking hell. Sorry, no, I don't but Gary, it's funny. So, like we had someone on the other day, I'm now like 130 guess in, I can't remember them all. But we had a chap on uh who had three good movie horror credits, and he told us he didn't like any of those projects because by the time they made it to film, they weren't the things he'd written in the first place, and you know, that was a really interesting certainly for me who's not in the business. I found that whole thing fascinating. And I've been in doing this long enough now to hear these stories that that it doesn't surprise me. So here's a question for you. Um, obviously, you've done Star Wars um and you've talked about how you felt afterwards. If you got uh two phone calls in the next hour, one is I don't know which one would mean more to you, Star Trek or Marvel. Let's let's say Star Trek. Um, if someone called you up and said, you know, we want you to write a Star Trek movie, but just so you know, you might get the first draft and you might get your name on it, but you know, there'll be four writers after you, and that's just what it is. And whether we're telling you that now or you just know it's gonna happen, or you get something, you get offered a chance to write something. Maybe it's one of your own projects that's out there, and someone calls to green light it and it's much lower profile, not existing IP, you no guarantee that you know Spielberg or whoever else is gonna watch these things, but you get it's yours and you get to see it to the end, and your name stays on it, and it'll probably be 90% what you wrote. What of those two would you choose?

SPEAKER_01 50:40

I mean, I already made that decision a long time ago, and it's not it's not an either or like I I do both. I'm doing like a big franchise film uh for a studio right now, and but I'm also kind of developing my own little projects. I like to try to be able to do both, but like the like the Star Trek or the Marvel example, like you where you said, Oh, just no, just be aware that you know you'll probably get sacked or whatever. Like, I don't need to be told any of that. I know that already. I knew that on Star Wars, right? I know I've been doing this long enough to know that that's gonna be the case with almost every film um that you work on. And those, you know, as I love Star Wars, you know, Marvel's is an exciting world. I've expressed interest in working in those worlds creatively um in the past. But again, you I I've also been around long enough to know that there's gonna be a lot of challenges, right? Because you're again, it's not, I always said about Star Wars, like unlike a world that I create where it's it's my toys and I own them, when you go, when, when I am working on something like Star Wars or The Walking Dead or Batman or any of the other like kind of worlds that I've that I've worked in that I don't own those characters, it's not my toy box. You gotta think of it like when you were a kid and you would go over to a to a friend's house to play with their toys, right? They're their toys, right? And and and so you you have to play by the rules, right? You don't get to rip the arms off the toys, or you know, you've got to you've got to you know respect the fact that you're a guest in someone else's house and that and they're their toys, they belong to them, and you've been uh you've been invited to play with them, right? That's the way I I think that's the way I thought about Star Wars. These toys don't belong to me. They're George's, right? Well, they're Disney's now, but you know, and they've invited me to play with them, but I've got to treat them with with respect, right? And understand that I don't get to make the final decisions on these things because I'm not writing the $200 million check to go shoot the film. Um, and so I I made my peace with that a long time ago. And so much of being a writer at that level, I think, is you know, that kind of A-list, you know, kind of studio tent pole type level is only partly being able to deliver the work, you know, the written word on the page. Obviously, that's a huge part of it. But a lot of it is is also just like the politics and the diplomacy of learning, you know, how to keep people happy, right? And learning when to push back on a note and when not to, or you know, what you know, what notes to push back on, you're learning to pick your battles, making alliances, understanding like who, you know, around this movie actually has any credibility or any power, and making sure that those are the people that you're talking to and you're not wasting your time trying to influence people that can't help, you know, make the version of the movie that you're excited about making. I often say that, you know, right, you know, writers have no power, right? They don't, they have none in in film. The only power that I have is the power to persuade you that I'm right. If if I if if if if I'm sitting across the the table from the head of the studio or the director or the someone who is actually going to be listened to and is going to get to say this is the way it's gonna be, the best I can do is try to make a convincing argument that the way I want to do it is the right way to do it. Now, if I can if I can persuade you and then you go fight that battle, great. But I remember like on Eli all the time, we would get notes from the studio, and I was talking to Alan Hughes, one of the directors, and we would agree that we didn't like a particular note. And Alan would say to me, like, don't, okay, next time you talk to them, though, don't push back on this note. Let me do it. Because if you push back on the note, they're not gonna care. If I push back on the note, they have to listen to me. So a lot of it is about just understanding, you know, who on a movie, you know, has the juice, right? Who, you know, who who actually are the decision makers, and just trying, it was almost like being on a reality show, right? Like make you trying not to get kicked off the island. So you're making alliances and you're doing, you're not trying to be sneaky, but you're just trying to like protect yourself. And some of that is a big part of that, obviously, is doing the work and producing the pages at the end that people are happy with. Uh, but to be able to do that, you've got to know what people want. And you've got to know like what who are the people that matter that want those things. Um, and just trying to find a way to kind of navigate that. And a lot of writers, by definition, like aren't social animals, right? We're, you know, we're private people and we don't necessarily um not always a stereotype, but like like it's not always easy for me to express myself to someone verbally. Like the I for me, when I'm most vulnerable and most exposed is when I'm writing, right? Like every every time I give you a piece of my writing, I'm like, here, this is a little piece of me, like this is a little piece of my soul, right? And that's that's easier for me to do that than it is to like tell you something directly, because I'm not always the best communicator. I'm told I'm I'm good in a room. That's something I've got better at over the years. But you know, one of the reasons why I think screenwriting is hard for many writers is like when it's just you behind the behind the keyboard writing a novel, you've got your editor and your publisher fine, but like you're mostly just left to your own devices. When you are a writer on a on a you know an in-production or in pre-production movie, um, you know, you're one of you're you're part of a massive machine, right? Where everyone has an opinion. And, you know, again, you're probably the first person who's gonna get this, gonna get the sack. I've noticed this recently, like you never get named as a it's funny. I listen to producers talking to say, oh yeah, so Gareth, the director is gonna come in later, and then uh Liz, you know, our our lead actor is gonna come in, and then we're gonna talk to the writer later. I'm like, why didn't you why didn't you say the writer's name? You just called him the writer. And it's and it's and I and I and I think it's because they change writers so into so readily that they won't have to like remember who the current writer is. But it's also somebody said to me, it's like being a farmer, it's like being a pig farmer. If you as soon as you name the pig, it becomes more it becomes more difficult for you to butcher it. So you don't give it so you don't give the pig a name.

SPEAKER_03 56:00

Oh my goodness. I think we had to redo our our intro to uh that little pull quote where never name the pig. Um, okay, so we're we're at our penultimate question leading into our final question. Uh and you mentioned about Rogue One, about if you had to do it again, you would do it exactly the same. But I'm not really kind of curious about your whole career, sort of encapsulated in your whole career. Uh, another hypothetical uh like Dan setup, you you could have you have two choices, stay in video games and and make as much money as you made in film and not deal with some of the things you dealt in film, dealt with in film, or having done your exact career that you've gone through now with all the ups and downs, would you do it again? And did it make you happy?

SPEAKER_01 56:44

Yeah, and and the thing is like I I I worry about what people are gonna think when they hear this podcast and think that I'm complaining. Because I do I do have this, I I tell myself all the time, like, no matter how bad things get, and and they and they do get bad. I've actually been through like a rough patch just recently. The most recent time that I said three times, the most recent time that I considered quitting was earlier this year. I was I I was so I was just so over it. And I just felt so like bereft because I'd written something that I thought was the best work that I'd ever done. I really, really like this was it for me. It's like, oh my God, this piece is really important to me. Uh, you know, we had an incredible producer, incredible uh talent attached, went out to market and just everybody just shrugged. And I'm like, why the fuck do I bother? Like, what what am I even doing here? And I just felt so devastated and so heartbroken because I don't deal with rejection well. Um, so I really am in the wrong business. But every time you get fired off of a movie, or every every time that you don't um sell something that you really believe in, or you can't get people to believe in it, it's almost like the analogy I would use is almost like processing a breakup. Was it me? Did I do something wrong? Could I have done something different? Who are they with now? You know, who's the new writer that replaced me? You know, and you get jealous. And it's like, it's it's it may maybe it sounds silly or sentimental to say it that way, but like I can't do this job unless I care about it. And so what that means is you put your writers, I think, are kind of like incurable romantics, right? Like we put our heart on the line every time. And that's what enables us to do really great work when when we can. But it also means that you know, you're putting it at risk every time, right? And you're gonna nine times out of ten, you're gonna get your heart broken. And there have been times I just that's it, I'm never doing this again, right? I'm never gonna love again. I'm never, never, never doing it again. And then, you know, six weeks later, I'm back writing another script because A, it's all I know how to do, and B, it's all I it's all I really want to do. Um, you know, even even with all the dissatisfaction that that often um comes with it. And again, as much as I to anyone who's listened to this thinking, wow, Gary sounds like a real fucking downer. Like, you know, he's a Hollywood screenwriter and all he does is complain. Um I just kind of call it like I see it. And this is this is a difficult business for for creatives. Um, and I think it's probably more difficult now than it's ever been. The current era, you know, of contraction uh that we're in, and all people seem to care about is IP, and it's harder and harder to get original work through the through the system. Um it's I'm still I still wouldn't change anything. It's it's funny to say that after all these complaints, but again, I always tell myself, when I'm really up against it, when I'm really feeling down, just remember you're doing the job that you've dreamed of having since you were 10 years old, watching Star Wars on V on a VHS tape. Right? You still that's the job that you have, right? And it's not it's not the dream version of the job that you imagined, right? It comes with a lot more heartwork, heartache, a lot more rejection, a lot more failure, a lot more dissatisfaction. But there are still those moments when, you know, Denzel's wife is bringing in Jamaican jerk chicken wings that she just made for you both while you're working on the story. Or, you know, Goldie Horn is bringing you cookies because you're in the living room with Kurt Russell talking about a role, or you're on a set and you know, R2 D2 rolls by and you think, oh my god, like you want to pinch yourself. You know, all these little moments, and they they are very, very few and far between, but those little moments are some like they're enough to sustain you because you want to get to the next one, even through you know, what can be years of you know stagnation and like I haven't had anything made, I haven't had anything produced in a long time because it's so fucking hard, right? And it's not that I haven't been doing great work, I think I've been doing the best work of my career, but the system is just you know, it's it's it's so many ways. Again, if you're looking for that like pure creative satisfaction, the the the system is the this business is just inherently like stacked against you. And you know, you either me you either make peace with that or you don't.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:30

By the way, if you're worried about people thinking you're complaining, I think this is sort of an iconic episode for us where people will be inspired and not feel so all alone. We get messages all the time from people saying when we hear a big screenwriter on your podcast who say, talk about their struggles, we suddenly feel less alone with our struggles.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:49

And I feel Yeah, and no, I I I appreciate that. And that's actually why I've always I've always I've always been, I think, candid about that on social media. I I don't have any problem at all. I don't feel in any way vulnerable or or um diminished when I talk about my failure. You know how, like, for example, there's a whole thing like men don't talk enough about mental health, right? Because we're too macho to talk about that. But we really need to, right? Because it's a real problem. Just as as a small, just as a subset of that, I think we should we should be more willing to talk about failure, our failures. Uh, I think you know, failure is the the the greatest teacher. And you um you either, you know, every time some every time something doesn't work, and there's gonna be a lot of those occasions, it's an opportunity for you to take what you can from it, take what from take from it what you can learn and apply it to the next thing. Failure will always teach you much more than success. My it's not my quote, it's but I stole it from someone years ago. Um somebody said to me once, failure isn't the opposite of success, it's a part of it. And that's it's it's it's so true. And you did, but you've you've got to be able to absorb all that failure, you know, on the on the on the way to success. And uh it's it's it it it can be brutally difficult. And if if I complain a lot, it's only because I love if I didn't care, I wouldn't complain, right? I I I c I complain because I care, because I love, I do love this job. I love to write, I love to tell stories, I love to, I love to create worlds, I love movies, I love television. It's it's all I've ever loved. And being a part of that is is the greatest privilege. But it means that when things don't go the way that you hope they will, it hurts 10 times as much because you you you've always got like so much emotional investment. But to but to your point, yeah, I've had people on social media say to me, well, I'm bellyaching about some projects or whatever, or you know, I feel like a failure today, or I can't write, or whatever. People say, Oh wow, like to hear that coming from from you is, you know, someone again, someone that I perceive to be, you know, a successful writer makes me feel better. And it's nice to kind of like be able to pay that forward. I remember very, very early in my career, I got to spend some time with Frank Darabont, who I absolutely idolize right as a creative person, and um sat with him early and he was kind of like you know, giving me some some pep talks and he was he was talking about his writing process, and he talks about how he how he would sit down in front of you know the computer each day and just look at that blinking cursor and that blank page and just feel horrified, right, and terrified. Oh my god, like what if what if what if this is the script where I get found out, right? Like what if it's all been a fluke so far and I can't really do this? And what if I'm no good? And I'm like, wait, you think you still think that way? You wrote the Shaw Shank redemption. He's like, Yeah, it never doesn't matter, it never goes away. It doesn't matter, you know, how much success you have. Like, you'll always find a way to convince yourself that it was all a fluke and you know you're you're gonna get found out, you know, as an imposter sooner or later. And I remember thinking at the time, man, I don't know if I like hearing that or not. Because on the one hand, yeah, it is kind of comforting to know that it's not just me, that it's not like a newbie thing, right? It's like even the big, the big boys um suffer from that kind of insecurity, but it also means that it does never go away, right? 20 years on, and I still have that, even after the success that I had, I still have that insecurity. I still have that um imposter syndrome. And so I think the, I think the least you can do is let people know that they're not alone when you know they're having that when they're having those feelings of insecurity or what if I'm not good enough? Because A, I don't know anyone in this business who doesn't have that. And B, weirdly, perversely, I think it's I think it's necessary for success. If you think your shit doesn't stink and your first draft is golden, I guarantee you you're not gonna last five minutes in this business. But if you're constantly pushing yourself and telling yourself, oh, what if I'm not good enough? But you but you want to silence the inner critics. I'll show you, I can do this. That's the only way you're gonna do good work is by constantly questioning yourself and asking yourself if you can do better. It's it's it's the people that are convinced that they've got it all figured out, right? That struggle in this business.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:44

Thousand, thousand percent agree. Okay. Last question, and this is the question that we ask every single person that comes on this podcast. Okay if you could give one piece of advice to somebody joining this business, in this case as a screenwriter, what would that be? Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:03

Um I mean a lot of it, I mean it would just I think it would just be an encapsulation. I would have been ranting about this all the time. I would just say like enjoy this exactly. But be but be prepared to spend a lot of your time feeling profoundly dissatisfied. And j and just know that that is non-negotiable. And you and again, you you can you can either absorb that or you can't. I think there's a there's a certain kind of like self-selecting Darwinism in this business. I think all I think all the people in Hollywood that have ever quit are the ones that were supposed to, right? And it's it's the rest of us that are too dumb to know when we're beaten that are still that are still sticking around, you know, hoping that the next one's gonna be the big one.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:02

Um normally I come up with something pithy and clever at the end of these things, but I can't think of anything appropriate to say other than uh Gary, that was uh one hell of a podcast episode.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:13

Sorry, you I'm looking at you on Zoom right now, you look emotionally drained, did I? I depressed you. Well, no, I was gonna make a Spurs joke, like your whole career is like very Spurs.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:22

Well, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:23

I mean, like I said, I'm a Spurs fan, so I'm used to spending large portions of my life profoundly dissatisfied.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:27

Yeah, but I not all of our readers, listeners will know what I is. But but look, Gary, uh extraordinary. Um I you know, I basically I was excited because you were British and you'd been on Star Wars. I wasn't necessarily expecting like the best exposition of failure and frustration and um great pig analogy uh from you, but um that was utterly extraordinary.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:49

And I would I feel like I feel like I should just add a disclaimer at the end here. If you are a uh uh a working studio executive or or producer or someone like that, uh I'm not really like this all the time. I'm actually fucking delightful and I don't don't really complain this much. This is very much, you know, they said come on and complain, so I'm happy to do it. But I'm I'm I'm I'm actually I'm actually uh quite lovely to work with. And you should hire me to write your next movie.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:09

No, a hundred percent. But look, Gary, extraordinary. Thank you very much for for your time. Thank you for your uh honesty, candor, um, authenticity, as they like to say over here. That's extraordinary. Um, and um, you know, rogue one was brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:25

I enjoyed it immensely. Thank you for letting me get all this off my chest.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:28

Thank you. Thank you so much for listening, and thank you, James Launch, for the music. And our wives for putting up with our Tom Pillary. As always, each episode is brought to you by Scriptation, my favorite screenwriting annotation software. If you want to support the show, please download a copy at www.scriptation.com backslash Noah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:54

Or perhaps even better, www.scriptation.com backslash Dan.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:00

Dan is spelled N-O-A-H. If you want to find me on social media, I am at Twitter at NFslin and more recently on Threads at Noah Epslin.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:14

Don't worry about me on social media, because all you people seem to care about is Noah anyway. Truth.