Take 40 - Journalist Mo Ryan, Vanity Fair

SPEAKER_02 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 literathing the floor.

SPEAKER_03 0:13

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

SPEAKER_01 0:20

For every success, there is months. Sometimes even years. Failure. This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default. That's the normal.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

We have to be able to persevere. Like everything in our business, your hands can count. It all bounces off you.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

That process takes yours. 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_01 1:00

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. Um This is gonna be quite a fun episode, and Noah will do the introductions.

SPEAKER_03 1:12

Great. On today's podcast, we had the longtime film and TV critic, writer, podcaster, and entertainment journalist Maureen Ryan. Maureen has written for Rolling Stone, Salon, The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, Slate, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, and others. In 2015, she became the chief TV critic for Variety. Most recently, she's worked as a contributing editor for Vanity Fair. That's not enough. She also used to host a successful podcast, Talking TV, with Ryan and Ryan. Welcome, Mo, or should we call you Baroness Von Ryan?

SPEAKER_00 1:44

You know, either one, her ladyship, you know, it's fine. Probably Mo is the thing that people go by the most.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

So at some point in this podcast, we will be exploring failure, rejection, and adversity of some of the people that you have written about and in the industry more broadly.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

But it will some people I wish would fail a little more, frankly, but we can get into that.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Yeah, I'm already looking forward to that section. Right. It wouldn't be fair on our other guests if we didn't ask you about your personal failings. So let's obviously we've had a journalist on before. I was a journalist as well. We know that journalists spend a lot of time writing things that never appear. Um, but um as as obviously all writers do. Tell us a little bit about uh your own versions of rejection and failure, including apparently one that happened to you just a few hours ago.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Yeah, well, I mean, I I think this is always the case, but it seems even more the case with people in the entertainment industry to have a lot of different projects on the go. So I have a lot of different things on the go at the moment, and that's fine. I'm used to that. Um, one of them I feel like I either am putting a pin in it for later or it may just never um revisit my timeline. Like, you know, I I don't, I think it kind of isn't working out for now. But that's all to the good. If there's one thing I've actually learned, um, that things, you know, you should do what you think you need to do at the time that it feels right to do it. And right uh with a lot of different um conferring goes on as with any endeavor. Is this the right time? Do we have the right amount of sourcing people information, this, that, and the other? So the interesting thing about it though is that um it appeared to be falling apart today, but at the same time, I needed a piece for a different thing I'm working on. So I reconnected with some of the um people from the the project that I think is in flux andor not going to happen. And they were able to help me out with a different matter. So it's weird, you know. I mean, as a writer, you sit there and go, no, right, there's no failed writing, there's no, there's no useless writing because everything will hone your skills, hopefully, or your voice, or what you know, your ability to gather information. So it's weird. I've become much more zen about it, but you know, one thing I wanted to actually start out with was what I've kind of kind of come to call something that will, of course, take off, you know, and become a cool meme or something, the 9095 rule. And that is um, and I'm talking specifically here about the serious reporting I've done on people who have engaged in abuse, toxicity, unprofessional behavior, even up to and including in assault, physical, mental, financial retributions of various kinds. Um, about when I'm doing a story of on one of those things about a person, about 90% of what I know about that person doesn't make it into the story. So just just so you know, like there are a number of factors that affect that, but the 95 part of that formulation is that of the people I know about where a story of that kind or on some of those topics, if not all of those topics, could be reported, I have not reported or done a story on 95% of them. So I mean, my failure rate, I gotta I gotta feel like I'm up there, like I like it's epic, right? That's that's an incredibly um disheartening statistic when you think about it, because that's a lot of people, you know, comparatively, like even if I take a larger pool of the reporting that other people have done and just say the last last four or five years on, you know, people who engage in, as I said, abuse, toxicity, unprofessional, vindictive retribution, you know, um, all the things that are kind of like coming to much coming into focus much more clearly in the coverage of this industry. Um I really like a lot of these folks are still flying under the radar and hoping to um continue to fly under the radar. I mean, a couple of factors are helping them that journalism's not in a great state, and we can get into that a bit more later. Entertainment journalism has always had its issues. Like, you know, and I'm not one of these people to necessarily say that having access to the players in the game is bad because, you know, I one of my friends and mentors is Kim Masters, and for some of her pieces, she has access to the very highest levels of power, and yet she does really rigorous reporting. I've worked for trades, multiple trades. I don't think that the trades are all bad or all good. I think that there's good work that can be done at every publication I've worked for, and I've either I've done it or other people have done it. Um, but as a whole, you know, journalism is, you know, more or less on fire in having a tough time of it. So that helps people who want to work um with impunity and commit commit unprofessional or horrible um acts and have these deep-seated patterns continue. Um the it's just there are just a number of things that help those people. And, you know, sometimes what I think about is have I helped and this is this will maybe, I hope I don't want to start out too dark, but sometimes I sit there and think is have I made a whole generation of powerful people in the industry become more sneaky and clever about how they abuse and take advantage of others? Um because I think a lot of people who engage in these behaviors, A, are intelligent and B think it's justified, and C, maybe have figured out that they need to be a little bit quieter about it and smarter about it. And um that depresses me when I think that that's the end result of all of this. But I I I don't know. I mean, you know, if I'm honest, I'll throw it back to you, which is often something I do. I don't know if my work has had an effect. All I can do is continue to talk to people in the industry and ask them. And, you know, the most heartening thing I heard recently, and I don't, again, not every workplace is the same. We're talking about thousands of workplaces. So I couldn't possibly give you an answer of industry, is the industry better? I don't know every one of them, but something that someone said to me recently that really is the opposite of that, like dark thoughts I just shared, is that, you know, this person said something along the lines of you are helping to change the expectation of those coming up. And I, if I'm changing the expectations and the baselines that people are expecting and in some cases demanding when they can safely do so, I'm I'm thrilled about that because I, you know, I I truly believe this with my heart and soul. There are more people who want to be accountable, respectful and professional than those that don't. And what I've been trying to do for honestly going on more than 20 years is try to provide cover to the first group and expose the second group, you know, those who don't want to be accountable, who don't want to be um respectful, professional, and uh just, you know, a decently moral human being. Because my whole thing is I'm not asking for perfection, I'm not perfect, I'm not a, you know, like that's not the goal here. The goal is systems and institutions that respond with accountability and make changes necessary to ensuring no harm comes to anyone personally, professionally, physically, um, more, you know, all of that. But like when that does happen, there are systems that can ideally we're going toward a prevention model, but that take care of those problems in a responsive manner. And that's that's the biggest. If I if if if if I talk if I say what's my biggest failure, I don't know that it's necessarily my responsibility to do this. I guess it's it's a long held wish of mine to that this happens. You know, I want there to be systems and institutions and resources for those that need them, not a person, not me, not Ronan Farrow. Like we can't, like a person can't be the thing. The system has to be the thing, the system has to function better for people.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

I guess so. Obviously, we we've moved to a part of the interview we're always going to get to. We got there slightly early and I thought.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Sorry, I'm I I talk a lot.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

No, but I guess the question is obviously in your role as a journalist in the entertainment industry, how do you get that balance, particularly in this world that we've entered in the last however many years, maybe four or five years, where this sort of these sort of behavior being exposed, how do you get the balance right between you know maybe you're working on a couple of stories at the same time. One of them is stories of you know bullying, abuse, toxicity around a powerful individual who you're about to expose or write about, but then also you know, hear my thoughts on season two of Ted Lasso. There's there's that part of the entertainment world that gets written about as well. So obviously, you do both of those things. So how do you yeah, how do you how do you sort of do the light stuff while doing the dark stuff or do the dark?

SPEAKER_00 11:41

I kind of need I kind of need them both, to be honest with you. It gets really dark. You know, every single time I do one of the big biggest stories I've done, um, my husband now laughs when I say this, but I'm never doing this again. Because I don't I don't want to do it again. It's very painful. It's very painful for people to um to ask them, and they're doing it willingly. A huge thing for me is never coercing people into participating in a story, because if I'm coercing or bullying people into exposing their lives or painful moments, then I'm no better than the people, than the worst people in the industry. So it's with their willing cooperation and consent, but you know, I'm continually asking people to relive these very difficult moments in their lives. And um it's very taxing to then take that and hold that and hold their thoughts in in my respect for their humanity and respect for the journalistic process, which means um multiple the most recent, one of some of the most recent stories I've done are all like there's there was a big story I did this year where multiple sets of lawyers were involved, multiple sets of PR people, multiple sets of, you know, spin lawyers. And then I and then I have my team on my side, you know, whatever publication I'm working for, lawyers, fact checkers, editors of various kinds, all weighing in with their pieces. And then when you talk about some of these stories have 20 or 30 sources, and you're trying to respect their that their their mental health and their um they understand that I'm not going to tell their full life story in the piece, but I want to convey the nuance. I want to convey, you know, I want to respect I want to respect everybody in the process, and that includes the people that I'm writing about that are the subjects of these stories. They always get a chance to respond, if not months to respond. No one who is a subject of a big story I've done has, I don't think, I I guess I could be wrong, but there's been no corrections have ever been appended to any of the big pieces I've ever done in 20 years. Um, not even, you know, small corrections. I mean, I'm very meticulous and thorough, but holding all of that stuff and and processing it and taking it through the taking it through to the finish line is very stressful. And so sometimes I hold out like there's Ted Lasso screeners in my inbox. I'm gonna watch those. Um, you know, this week, you know, you had Joe Henderson on writing about, I hope, you know, we'll have a thing on Lucifer out there in the world soon, which is a fun, pleasant thing to write about. Um I I kind of need to have a variety of things to write about. And actually, I think I think that's one reason I ended up getting into reporting more hardcore. I mean, I did go to journalism school, I've always done reporting of various kinds. Uh a lot of my for a lot of my career I had the word critic appended to whatever I was doing, TV critic, chief critic, whatever. Um and I like that, but you know, I guess I kind of compare it to if I'm a literary critic in the 19th century and I don't also want to talk to Charles Dickens, then I'm not doing my job well. You know, I'm just interested. I'm interested in this process and the storytelling. And I really, you know, as many of us did, I gravitated to talking to showrunners, to creators, because they are the architects, like they're they're behind the, you know, they're the wizard behind the curtain and they're doing the things. And um it's sometimes I compare it to, you know, taking the 10,000-foot view. You know, I think I started out on the ground and then I kept going up and up and up. And the higher up you go and you view the industry, especially television, which is more where I was always rooted, um, you just see certain patterns. And it did start to bother me that like as a woman, I think I'm interesting. Why are my why do I never just feel like I see myself on the screen or like you got Laura Rosalind, now you're done. Like for another three years, you gotta wait. And then, like, so I kept seeing like, okay, well, what are the stats on this? And then I would write about this. And so I'm interested in what feeds this commercial storytelling machine, how it makes what it makes. And just in kind of exploring the idea that none of this is written in stone. There's no like platonic ideal of what commercial storytelling should be. It's what people think will sell at any given time. It could be anything. So I've always enjoyed having a mix, I guess, is the the answer to your question, a mix of things to do, because I kind of get bored with only doing one thing. But the reporting aspect of it in terms of the abuse culture, as I call it, I think, you know, when I looked, when Me Too broke and I looked around, I thought, okay, well, I I know a lot of people in the industry. And when a bunch of people began contacting me about this person or that person, I knew enough about reporting and the industry and I had their trust. And I thought, well, I I want to, I want to do this for them. Because like a lot of these people have given me many things that I care about and like. And I overall, you know, and I've said this to people who um for some aspect of their job were being combative toward me. I care about the industry and making it better. And, you know, if you make the comparison that I'm a doctor, I I want to diagnose the real problems. I don't want to tell you you have a head cold when actually you have something much more severe. I don't want to be that person. And I just, you know, if I'm honest, I hope this doesn't sound self-aggrandizing, is, you know, again, and I sympathize with this because journalism is in a tough state. These stories suck up a lot of time and resources, and a lot of publications are not really well fixed to do them, to devote that time and resources to them. And I'm immensely proud of many people who took on this job as essentially a second job, in addition to their actual jobs, which were already demanding. So I think a lot of people have tried their best to take on this kind of reporting, but I just sort of saw myself standing there going, well, every time I do one of these stories, it brings another story out of the woodwork. And if people have heard, um, I mean, probably I can I can tell you, um, I'm Lucas Till is someone I got to know through reporting on Peter Lenkoff. And kind of like the nicest thing that I've ever had said to me is Lucas and I had our first conversation, and he said, Mo, I just was casting around for someone to talk to because I'm I just am kind of I'm in a really tough place and I I just want to I want something to change. And he's like four different people told me to talk to you. And so I hope what that means is that word went around word, I think, goes around and people think that they can trust me. And I hope that, you know, I hope they trust that I will also do my diligent job as a reporter and reach out to the subject of every story and verify things and and try to get the most responsible version out there.

SPEAKER_03 19:06

As somebody who is is in the TV business, deep in the TV business, I can say this, and this is going to answer your earlier question about, you know, how did you feel about the reporting or did you see any change? And I got the sense that there was cataclysmic change, to be honest, or at least the start of massive change with the Lenkoff reporting and the other reporting that you did, where I feel like in my time in Hollywood, there's there's sort of three types of showrunners. There's the the good showrunner who really wants to do well, is a good person. There's the toxic showrunner who is going to be a toxic person no matter what. Like you said, he might hide it or otherwise, and they're hard to change and they're hard to get at, and you've been getting at those people one by one. And then there's this middle ground of showrunner who gets a lot of money and a lot of power all at once, and maybe they're not in the position to manage, and they need to make a choice. And sometimes the choices they make aren't the best choices because there was no accountability to them, and they could become more and more toxic slowly. And I think what began to happen with reporting like yours is um accountability began to happen, and people realized that there was no benefit to being this awful person. Yes, maybe there was some weird short-term power rewards, but there was also talk conversations, and there always has been, and now there's reporting, and it could cost them their job and their career. And I think this middle group is saying, I don't want to be that person. So that that was my commentary. But I do have a question. And in many, in many ways, your job is that of a professional observer and chronicler of the inner workings of Hollywood. Uh, and because of the the because of your the things you've written, careers have ended. And you've taken on these these giants, right, in the industry who might never work again. And you you went at them, you know, from from from afar, from the outside, right? I don't, we don't know each other personally, but in my opinion, you went at them ferociously, fearlessly, and and bravely, right? That's my perspective of how you approach these articles. But what's the toll? You know, what is the truth behind that? What is the toll on Morion when you're writing an article where you know 30 high-powered lawyers are gonna come after you? They're gonna try to besmirch you, they're gonna try to take you down as as hard as you're taking them down.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Um I will tell you right now about something I don't think I've ever spoken about publicly. But at one point, I I won't get into the context, but it involved. I have basically let's put it this way I I have a limit as a human being. And at one point I was at TCA Press Tour in the very fancy, very nice Beverly Hilton, and I walked out. To one of their refurbished gardens, no one was there, and I had a full-blown panic attack. You know, um it's hard. It's hard sometimes. I'm not gonna lie to you. I I get afraid because these corporations are very powerful. They're really powerful, and I can see by the people that they have supported that they are ruthless. You know, it's like you know, when you have quotes in the New York Times saying we're backing our guy, you know, for someone like Les Mundez, and this was back before he was gone. Uh what am I to them? I'm nothing, you know, I'm nothing to those people. I'm an obstacle. And it's it's it's many different layers that smash up together. It's the people who come to me and who trust me, the people I'm working for as a reporter, and I care about what they think too. I want like the fact checkers and the lawyers and the editors, I want to do, I want them to think, yes, you've covered your bases, and they all push me to do more and to be better and to be good. But that's another form of pressure. There's my own personal moral compass and expectations for myself, and that's before you get to like this person, it's their life. Like it is, it's their life. You're you're toying with their life, and then they have many powerful entities behind them: a network, a studio, a PR team. I mean, here's here's an example of something that has happened. Sometimes people just stop calling me, and like a lot of times what'll happen, report um PR people and lawyers will call me or text me or bother me or email me every day for months. That's what I don't talk about. Or they'll call my boss, my editor, and complain about me and talk about me in disparaging terms to others, to my editors. And you know, they're really one thing I think I haven't, again, I haven't talked about in sort of like openly, but I, you know, I will hear because you asked. They don't want me to do these stories, and one way to get me to not do them is to dissuade me. And you know, you can imagine all the methods of dissuading me. And one of the methods of dissuading me is um if someone's if I've sent someone's lawyer a four-page list of questions about specific incidents, PR people and lawyers calling me every day, insisting that the conversation be off the record, and then asking, what's this really about? Well, I don't know. I feel like if the four-page you know memo I sent you listing every single one of the allegations that we are investigating, and and this is by the way, this is more than will appear in the story. We just like go in loaded for bear because we don't know what we'll end up using. We gave you a four-page document that lists what it's about. Why are you calling me? And what they're really calling is to say, why are you doing this to our guide? Then it's um bullying me on the call, disparaging me to my face on the call or in emails. I was told by one person's lawyer that I should really think about my behavior in a very much, you know, think about go to your room and think about it, young lady, tone, that kind of tone, um, because I I was told, here's a list of people who are willing to speak to this guy and be a defender of this guy. Okay. I called and texted them, texted most of them. I set up an interview with one person, and then that person wanted to be off the record. I said, okay, or not not named, I said, okay. And then she pulled out of the interview completely. And I said, and then I got a nasty note from the lawyer saying, Well, why you should really think about how much you like what people think of you and why she felt the need to cancel. And I'm like, wow, I I didn't think I was actually an you know a monstrous ogre, but I guess I am. I'm very professional. I talked to people who defended Peter Lenkoff at length. Um, I I don't know what to tell anyone. Like, I don't I don't I don't think I'm an ogre. If you talk to me, I will have a conversation with you that is professional and I think rational. And I do not tell people they can't say X or they they must fit a narrative that I'm giving them. Um so like a lot of the psychic energy and a lot of frankly the time that is expended on these stories, a good chunk of it is just trying to navigate people that are trying to wear me down and get me to give up, or in one particular case, get me to lose my temper. And I I don't think I quite lost my temper. I will let there were three people on a call, two lawyers at one point from one piece I was reporting. And I kept getting the push. This is the very typical example of the kind of thing I get. I kept getting the pushback during this call of um, well, the people that you're talking about and the instance you're talking about, those employees simply did not know how to or could not consistently reach the standard of professional excellence that this showrunner was striving for. And I was like, and so finally, I think in a call, I think in a I I I remained professional, but I was I was became somewhat agitated. And I said, I have talked to 30 people for this story. I've talked to 30 people for this story, all of whom want to be challenged as professionals and who want to reach or exceed a high standard of behavior and professionalism and the execution of their craft. That's not the issue here. The issue is not that they could not meet his standards, the issue is that they came to me because they felt he treated them in an unprofessional and toxic fashion. And I so I mean, maybe that's me getting on a soapbox and up editorializing in the middle of an of a supposed interview, but this was like the fifth pushed interview with these people who had been giving me the runaround for two months. So I was like, you know, kind of ready to like snap. And if that was the extent of my snapping, then for honestly, for an Irish Catholic redhead, that's pretty tame. Um, so formerly Catholic, I guess I should say. So you the punchline to this, and I'll give us a moment of levity, the punchline to that incident that I now like laugh myself sick about is that lawyer then said to me, Well, you know, that Sherwarner has worked in his career with hundreds, if not thousands, of people. So, really, if you think about it, 30, 30 people is not that many. It's really a small percentage of the people he's encountered over the years. And I was like, okay. Um anyway, moving on. I just was I what can you do in that point, except like do this to your phone? Like, and I'm making the middle finger right here. It's like, yeah, okay, that's that's um, that's clearly the takeaway from that. It I guess the answer is um it's very difficult. And to do the stories that I've done with a level of professionalism and I guess artisanal in a way, uh focused that I've done them. I I don't make it easy on myself. Again, this sounds a self-aggrandizing. I guess what I'm trying to say is this I take people's careers seriously. I believe they take them seriously wherever they are and whatever their pattern of behavior has been. But I really, really take seriously the idea that if someone has entrusted me with their deeply felt thoughts and recollections of a difficult work experience, I want to do the best possible version of that story that I can. And I am an outsider, which gives me some perspective. But I, you know, I guess, you know, the story that I did on All Rise, um I I'm really proud of that. I'm really proud of that story. I'm not happy about what the people who worked there had to go through, but that was almost 9,000 words. And that was because people trusted me. And what I didn't want in the world was a 1400 version, 1400-word version of that, where the the main and only real incident is that he said something indefensible on a Zoom about black to black people. That's that's a sh a version that I would personally consider shoddy. I understand why short and shoddy versions of things get out in the world because people are pressed for time and their careers are tenuous on the best of days. I actually, one reason I left my full-time job was to be able to do this artisanal thing and really make people feel that they were respected within the process. And I I I do fact-checking of my own before the fact-checkers even get to it. I really try to from the beginning, I have tried to respect the fact that people are coming to me with very difficult experiences. And I think one of the one of the hardest days of my life was when I was reporting on Andrew Chryslerg, and I talked to probably 10 to 12 people in one day, because basically a dam broke, and a lot of people decided to come to me. And there was one con I I remember all those conversations, and I don't know if any of those people will ever listen to this podcast, but I remember these conversations that I have really well. And it still to this day very deeply affects me that so many of the people I talked to were young and up and coming, and those like assistants and you know lower rungs of the writing staff, you know, uh support staff. I mean, Noah, you've been there. It's very it it it really altered me on like a cellular level, and I basically had like a PTSD attack that night. Like I just I basically like lost it. I've shed a lot of tears over the years.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

So there's a lot of stories when they break, everyone already knew about that person. So not just in your industry, but like you know, when when the whole Tiger Woods things happened, everybody in golf that he was cheating on his wife, and this is how it always has been. You know, when phone hacking happened in newspapers, everyone knew it had been going on. Uh and I worked in British newspapers, including tabloids, and we all knew it was going on, but no one talked about it until it's happened. Same with eyeball rigging in banking. So there are obviously some of the people that have been brought down. It was an open secret that this had been going on. Have there been any where someone's approached you with a story, and it's been a surprise to you and others that actually this person is behaving in a certain way. Oh, yeah. It wasn't well known. Or even you know them and you've met them and you actually have found them on face value very easy to deal with, very pleasant, and then actually.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

I have a number of those. I have one in particular, someone I've known from the start of his career, had no idea. No idea. I mean, I I I would like to answer that in a couple of ways. Like the whole thing of like, oh, everyone knew about Weinstein, I didn't know that. Like I did, I didn't. I mean, maybe people in film did. I mean, I knew, I don't know what I knew. And this is something I this is a great question because I think about well, what did I know about that person that they could be difficult or temperamental? What did I think that, how did I define that in 2015, let's say? I think that I was naive, but sometimes I still think I'm naive because I'll hear about someone last month and I'm like, really? Oh wow. Um, yeah, that's that's a really hard one. I have felt, I'm telling you, physically ill at certain things I've come to realize about people whose careers I've helped. I mean, in a small way, in a minuscule way, in a way that if it if you removed it from the timeline, it wouldn't matter. But like, um, yeah. I mean, the thing about the but the thing I think people I've encountered toxic abusive narcissists in my life. So I feel like there's something that people in the industry or people who haven't encountered them don't understand. They're often the life of the party, really charming, incredibly clever, persuasive, a great person to hang out with. That is for sure the case with some people who um I I really I could not have known based on their behavior to me and anyone else I knew. I didn't know. And it's really it's very upsetting. It's upsetting to me, and I think that the work that I do is a little bit of trying to make amends, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Obviously, it has been reported so um that something had happened to you a few years back. Yeah, yeah. How does that colour the sort of work you've done afterwards? And almost again, do you have to obviously you have very high journalistic standards as you've talked about?

SPEAKER_00 36:30

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

Because in an odd way, because it had something had happened to you, so it doesn't appear that it's you know your whole journalism career is now personal.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

How have you how do you Oh, this time it's personal, Dan? Sorry, I had to say the movie tag line at the moment. Um no, I'm I'm really glad you brought that up. Um, because you know, there's the notable case at the Washington Post of a journalist named Felicia Sanmaz who was barred from her newsroom for being, you know, a survivor of assault and not being able to cover that, which I find frankly enraging. It's infantilizing someone who is a professional. Um, you know, would you say, oh, well, uh, you were arrested once, so you can never cover the cops? Like, I look, what? Like that doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. And it's really only applied to certain things and certain people. Um, I will tell you the honest to God truth that that experience nearly drove me from the industry. I was very much hanging by a thread when that happened. I do not ascribe this intention to the person who did what they did to me, but I had been reporting on issues of inclusion, issues of bias, issues of sexism, issues of misogyny doing the stats for years. And then, you know, one of the few high-profile female critics, this happens to her. It's just like it felt like, man, all I've ever tried to do is help this industry. And if this is what I get, I just don't, I can't, I don't know if I want to do it anymore. You know, and honestly, the twin side of that is that I I also brought so much love and enthusiasm. Like, you know, I love hit listening to your podcast because it's like so many people go through so much shit because they love the storytelling and there's they remain good people, even in the face of this industry's cruelty and sometimes brutality. So it was really a dark, dark, dark time for me. And fortunately, I had um friends that really helped me through it. Many of those friends are in the industry, and I didn't know if I wanted to continue, and I didn't know what it was for. You know, my my dad had just died, my mom was dying, and I just thought, I don't know what what is this for? Why am I going through this? Like, why is there so much difficulty? And when Me Too happened, honestly, Dan, I knew what it was for. And I will tell you flat out, I would not have approached this reporting with the sensitivity and the nuance and the respect for survivors of abuse that I hope I have displayed had I not gone through that. There's no doubt in my mind. There's no doubt in my mind, and I will tell you a specific thing that has happened to me multiple times. I'll be doing a story and I'll have you know sources lined up, and these things take time. So people check in and I check in with people. Every so often someone says to me, either in a phone call or in an interview or via an email or they text me, I don't want to participate anymore. I can't do it. And I say, okay. And I think that sometimes people expect me to be mad about that. And I say, please never think that. Put that straight out of your mind. Because if I was doing a story that only relied on one person, I mean, yes, I do believe one person if their story is credible. Like I'm not, I'm not saying don't believe one person. I'm saying for what I do, I often am, you know, fortunate or unfortunate, however you want to view it, I have to be loaded for bear when I do these stories. I personally find it. I've told people who've come to me with one credible allegation, I can't get any other corroboration. You are putting yourself in a very difficult life position if you take on someone powerful and you're the only one. And I don't want to lie to people ever about what that means for them. So every so often, though, someone will come to me and say, I no longer wish to participate. Could you remove everything of, you know, could we not? Could could my participation just be sort of like excised? And I say, sure. And I think sometimes they expect me to be angry and I say, absolutely not. You're you're telling me that you have an awareness of what you need to survive, and that's what I want. I want you to survive your life. I don't, I mean, whether or not you stay in the industry, you know, if I can help, if I can be a resource, that's fine. You know, I will help you. But you're telling me that you are trying to survive your life, and I want to support you in that at all times. Like that, there's, you know, and sometimes we go out for lunch a year later, or they like they come back to me a year later with a different tip on a different thing. And so, like, so my thing is like Marion wants to notch as many takedowns. That's not it. That's not it. That's not it. I want people who feel like they were not heard and who want to expose a dangerous situation or a difficult or toxic situation. I want them to feel like they were heard. And there's a something I do a lot of, which is called journalism triage. And I feel like it's a direct outgrowth of what I went through when I needed people, I needed to talk to people, I needed to understand what I'd been through, and people made themselves available as a resource to me. So something that I do is um I something I call journalistic triage. Over the past four years, I have had, I would say, between stories that actually did happen and stories that didn't, I would say it's closing on a thousand conversations with people. Where, and that's where I get that 95% from. Most of these stories don't result in something being published under my name, under my byline. And that can be for any number of reasons, any number of reasons. And as you know, I feel like me being a survivor has allowed me to say, I am not going to tell someone to risk something they do not want to risk. I'm not going to coerce, I'm not going to bully, I'm not going to lecture. I'm very upfront with people. When someone is being named in a story, and I really need some people to be named, I'll be like, it's going to help get this story out if you can be named. And if I'm honest with you, upper level EP level people out there, it's less fraught for them to do it. People at all levels have done it. And I I take my hat off to all of them because it's a hard, hard conversation every time. And sometimes people do drop out, and I don't judge. Um, but so I think that my experience put a lens on my view of the world that it radically altered my view of the world, but it helped me to understand where people were coming from. So take take just the survivor experience and then take someone being in this industry experience. Those are two incredibly challenging sets of experiences. And if I can help people understand that I understand the risks they're taking, then we're good. I mean, a lot of times. What happens is I talk to person X for three hours over four different days or five conversations over two months, and the end result of that is one sentence that I can put in the story that is really crucial to that story getting published, then that's what we do. And that's you know, talking of the toll it takes, I actually really get to know a lot of wonderful people, a lot of really interesting people who want good things for this industry. So that's a huge upside that I now feel like I know that there is an army out there. I mean, you don't have to tell me, you don't have to convince me, I know that there's an army out there of people who are willing to put their asses on the line to make the industry better. And I'm that maybe to give us a bit of a positivity here, I know the ratio of good to bad because I feel like it's in my inbox. Do you know what I mean? Like, you know, yeah, the toxic people who are very intent on being toxic or lying or this or that or the other. I don't think they're the majority. What I do think is just to go back to a point Noah made, we've had this whole three-ring circus of the Jeopardy thing. And you know, one of the things they announced before they finally launched Mike Rickers was, well, we're going to give him sensitivity training. Hollywood is very good at giving coaching, training, instruction, management training way after someone has become an enormous liability to many people. Like that stuff needs to be front-loaded. That needs to be the baselines coming into a job. And I'm a huge thing that I don't think I've written about enough. I've I've had sources say it in stories, the training and the management and all of these different things that people should be strong in, that's happening after the fact. They launch these people into these positions with not enough training in many cases. And I feel like Hollywood is the industry where it's like, well, you know, if we make the analogy of the car industry, like, well, 50% of these cars, the brakes don't work, but it's probably fine. It's probably not. It's probably not fine. Why are you doing that? Anyway.

SPEAKER_03 46:15

As we that was, I mean, well, as as we as we head into our last question, I just really quickly want to, you know, as a TV writer and speaking as a TV writer to another writer, I just want to thank you because there has been we've noticed changed, and people in my industry on my side of things call you the HR of the TV biz. And that's that's really unfair to you now that I see the toll it's taken on you as we chat, that it's not something that you you've you didn't need to take on this role of RHR. But even in the last two years, things have changed and things have continued to change, and you deserve our, you know, as the people on the ground, as someone who has worked with these other writers who you've interviewed on these shows and seen them heal through these conversations before I even knew who you were personally. Of course, I knew you were with your name, uh, was was really, really gratifying and and and and healing and healing for me. But that does lead us to the other.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

Can I just jump in with one thing here? I mean, that's just if if people are listening to this, like what I want them to take away from this is look, I know it sucks and we all have too much in our plate, but I thank you for saying that it isn't fair, because it isn't fair. And I think that this really gets into my whole, like, you know, um, I I I it, you know, how do I put this? It starts to feel weighty. It feels like a weight to feel that you're the like last best best hope hope of Gotham, you know, like I don't want to be that. I do I want to have a be a person, you know. And so my my two cents on that is everyone in this industry has to fight so hard for even for what they have. And I'm telling you that you have one more fight, and that is to make systems, resources, and institutions that are responsive and accountable. And I'm sorry that that's one more thing that I'm slinging onto your plate, but it's it is what it is. If you if you if you all have been changed by my reporting, thank you for that. But I don't want this to be a situation where you know, me and the the the the dozen people doing this reporting, we all are in a bus and that bus gets hit by a meteor. I don't want that to be the end of change. You know, I don't. I I like you there there are systems the guilds are looking at and are I hope will implement that sh that you won't like honestly, you need to fight for it because it can't it can't just be the press. The press can be a method, it can't be the method of ensuring accountability.

SPEAKER_03 48:40

You'll you'll you'll be happy to know that, and I can't go into too many details, but even the HR briefings we get have changed even in the last year. I think they're realizing that the old systems weren't working, and they are create, they are trying, God bless them, to create new systems that protect people. And that's all, you know, they're they need to get better and better because these people need to be protected. But I noticed that there has been massive, you know, you have these same HR things every year. And this was the first year where I felt like it was a completely different spiel about getting people to talk and open up and so they can know what's happening on the ground and hopefully not say we're gonna give this person some kind of extra coaching and training, but say there's a million talented writers who are up and coming who can do this job, we're gonna train them in advance so that when they're in this position of power, they they will understand how to be a better leader.

SPEAKER_00 49:33

That makes me happy.

SPEAKER_03 49:35

Sorry, sorry, but I just you know, we we you you've listened to our podcast, so you know what this final question is all about. In this case, you will you you know you're an entertainment journalist. What what would you say to an entertainment journalist who's sort of just starting and wants to really write about Hollywood, be you know, do their pieces. What piece of advice would would you give somebody like this?

SPEAKER_00 49:57

Hmm. Man, I had a different question lined up for people or a different answer lined up for like the young people coming into the industry. And if I just may briefly say that while I gather my thoughts, never ever let someone convince you that you have to earn baseline respect, that it is not your due walking in the door on day one. You absolutely deserve that. And if you are in a job where you're not getting it and that happens too much still, just understand that you are there's a community around you that knows and believes in you and believes you deserve that baseline professionalism respect from day one, and you'll get out of it and you will make it better by surviving and not becoming the person that dishes out that kind of behavior, which I think you won't if you have self-awareness, let's hope. Um yeah, people coming into the industry doing what I do, I would just say this is so hard because especially me coming at it from a critic, I'm coming at it as a place who as a person who evaluates something, but you don't go, I know I've never met into a critic, a critic who gets into it because they like, you know, shitting on things. Like I think there's this mentality so critics just don't like, they just like to be mean. I'm like, I don't, I literally all my friends are critics. That's not true. That's not a thing. I mean, if they are, then they're bad critics and they're they're boring and no one reads them. Um, so there's that enthusiasm or that at least interest and curiosity, and you know, you're intrigued by this thing that you're writing about. So there's kind of an investment in a buy-in. Um, I would just say that um if you're coming into writing about this industry and you have not paid attention to the reporting in the last few years, you need to get up to speed on that reporting, including the toughest reporting, and understand that the industry can be capable of sublime art and creation and storytelling. It can it's also routinely been built with a casual brutality, or in actually in some cases, intentional brutality that is profoundly baked in. And if you don't reckon with that, if you don't reckon with how people are treated and the patterns and processes that create the entertainment that you see, if you're not willing to look at context, if you're not willing to look at history and educate yourself, if you are always going to take the side of the most powerful and not pay attention to the powerless and how they have systematically been treated over time, then go, I don't know, like maybe this isn't the right job for you. I mean, it's gonna, you know, it's I I think history, context, education, and will a willingness to be circumspect, if not skeptical. Um, I'm really, I mean, if I I'm actually in a weird way, I'm worried for journalism as a profession because, you know, venture capital and capitalism, late capitalism as a whole seem to be very intent on killing it. But I'm actually very heartened by who I practice this profession with. Um, you know, I think I'm on that sort of like the older end of like critic TV writer people. And the people coming up behind me, frankly, it's a more inclusive array of people with a wider array of viewpoints, which was long overdue. And I'm, you know, that's for sure a thing that is to be that's good. It's made criticism better, it's made coverage better. Um be but I I don't I the thing I hate the most in covering this industry is what I call the cynicism Olympics, you know, people trying to out-cynical each other. You don't want to become, you don't want to get into that race to be the most cynical person covering the industry, because believe me, I've been in those conversations and they're very depressing. And who wants that? At the same time, um don't believe everything you're told or sold. You know, understand the reasons why people are selling you a particular point of view and don't necessarily believe that. Look, I there are PR people who I know who are really wonderful at what they do. And you know, there are executives who are really good at what they do. These large corporations as entities, however, think about what they have tolerated and are willing to tolerate in their quest for what they think is success in financial prosperity. Um those things affect the people in the trenches in the industry. And again, if you're not thinking about how it's made, who makes it, how people are treated when it's made, and you're just simply enjoying the product, I think that that's maybe a sign that you could be more curious and could educate yourself more. I'm not saying educate yourself to the point where you are want to, you know, run away and colonize the moon as a party of one, as I've often wanted to do. Um, but you know, be be aware of the world around you. I don't, I don't understand how you can have lived through the last few years, even if you're a young person coming out of school, how can you have lived through the last few years of coverage of this industry and not had your perspective altered? Just keep being curious and keep being your own person. And if something feels off to you or wrong to you, investigate that, look into it, even if it's just an impression of an artistic piece. Think about why it bothers you. You know, interrogate yourself, interrogate your motivations, interrogate who you believe and don't believe and why. And uh curiosity will serve you well in this job. That's the short version, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 56:20

Very good. Thank you very much indeed. That was a fantastically insightful that answer. But the the whole podcast. So look, um I'm not a writer in the way that Noah is. Um, so I'm not gonna thank you on behalf of writers, but as a former journalist, um, that the easy stories are the easy stories, and the hard stories can be hard, and the bigger the organization, the harder they are to write. So thank you for all that you've done in journalism. Uh, and thank you very much for being part of our podcast.

SPEAKER_00 56:53

Well, thank you both for being wonderful listeners and doing a wonderful podcast. I really enjoy a lot. And I guess the last thing I want to say is, you know, anyone who's talked to me in the last 20 years, I've done this gig, especially in the last few years, you know, especially if you were a lower-level person, but all the people I've talked to for all these stories, I profoundly owe them my thanks.

SPEAKER_03 57:18

Well, thank you so much. And I'm hopefully some of them will hear it on this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 57:25

Thank you for listening to another one of our fantastic episodes. Yet again, I think you'll find that I ask better questions than Noah. Noah, have you got anything to say?

SPEAKER_03 57:35

Um, as always, uh, since you've done most of the talking, I'm just gonna sit here quietly again.

SPEAKER_01 57:40

Surely there's some people to thank.

SPEAKER_03 57:42

Oh, right, right, right, right. Uh, I would love to thank James Launch for doing all of our outro music. Um, as always, I think we owe a big thank you to both of our wives who support us through this endeavor that started in our basement and seems to be ever growing. And if you want to reach out to either Dan or I, I am at at NEBslin on Twitter. I'm not sure Dan has a Twitter account. Dan, do you have Twitter account?

SPEAKER_01 58:07

I mean, I I do, but no one cares. All I care about is being on Noah's podcast. So well done Noah for conceiving, producing, editing, writing, and asking the best questions of the two of us because you've done all this work and well done you.

SPEAKER_03 58:21

I do think it's worth pointing out after 33 or so episodes that I do both voices. There actually is no damn resting.