Take 124 - Showrunner and Director Jim Mickle, Sweet Tooth

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 shore, dozens of unproduced script littering on.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

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

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Screaming into the Hollywood event is brought to you by Scriptation, the Emmy Award-winning app that instantly transfers your notes into new drafts in seconds. Scriptation allows you to digitally mark up scripts, separate notes into layers, track changes across revisions, and so much more. Insert Noah saying something nice about scriptation.

SPEAKER_03 1:20

Dan, I I think this is where they actually want me to talk about how much I love it. And I do love it, it's great. It's colletting function transformed me from the messiest writer in Hollywood to, well, ever so slightly less messy. My wife might have other things to say about that. Sitha listeners can get a free month of scriptation by going to scriptation.com backslash Sitha.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

And for those of you who don't understand slightly drawly American accents, that's scriptation.com backslash S-I-T-H-A. Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am as ever your non-entertainment co-host, Dan Rutstein.

SPEAKER_03 2:08

And I am your still in the entertainment business co-host Noah Eveslin this week, anyways. For this week's podcast, I'm thrilled to introduce screenwriter, director, producer, show creator, and show runner Jim Mickle to the podcast. He co-wrote and directed such movies as Cold in July and Stakeland and others before creating the series Happen Leonard and Sweet Tooth, as well as directing episodes of those as well. Welcome, Jim. Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

So I guess it starts with Jim. Are you gonna are you gonna survive until 25?

SPEAKER_04 2:46

I don't know. You know, I had a conversation with an executive back in like February who said, um, well, 2024 is a wash. So and it just like I just I felt like I just got back from Christmas break, and you're already saying this year is a wash. So I I don't even know what that means. So I just heard that survived the 25 thing the other day, and I I don't know. I don't know if the industry is gonna survive until then.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Yeah, I mean, obviously, I I don't really understand what it is. I just keep people like now we keep putting it on on whatever the new name for Twitter is, but um uh but you know, obviously there uh let's let's frame it this way with a real slightly more real question. Obviously, there is a lot of this, you know, the industry's a mess, people are telling you this year's awash, there's people talking about surviving until 25. In two weeks' time-ish, you have got the uh the next season of your incredible show coming out. So yeah, um, are you with your writer friends not talking about it because you don't want anyone to know you're having a successful time? Like you're actually becoming really successful in a shitty year. So, how do you how do you deal with that?

SPEAKER_04 3:48

Yeah, I've um, you know, I've kind of flip-flopped with what you know the the popular sort of consensus was because so in the COVID year we shot Sweet Tooth Season One in New Zealand, and there was no COVID in New Zealand. So I was like, we were some of the first folks in there. Once you quarantined, it was like we were making a show, we were happy, we had to wear masks on set. But outside of that, we were able to have a life, and you talk to people back here in the States who were just going through it. And it was, I I felt really out of sync with the rest of the world and and even people that were making stuff, but I felt incredibly blessed by that. Um, I also hate to say that during the strike, as as much as it was a traumatic experience for me for the industry and for people, at that point I was so burnt out that I literally I had just gotten back to museum. We just wrapped season three, we were just starting post, and I thought, I don't know how I'm gonna survive you know this year if I don't like take a breath or take a moment. And so the strike actually hit at a time where mentally, for me, it was actually the best thing for me mentally. And it really was awkward talking to people who obviously were just hit in so many massive ways. And and I I kind of felt like I think right now it's the only thing that's actually keeping me alive is being able to take a deep breath and um uh have a life, I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:02

I I so funny you bring that up. And uh I'm gonna compliment Dan on a good question there. It's it's the a rare compliment for me for Dan about a good question because it's such a hard, uh it's such a hard environment right now for writers. And if you are working, you know, there's just and most writers that I know are not, it's you know, you approaching it with a bit of empathy with your, you know, because they're there are really big writers that I know right now are you know are in between jobs or in between shows. But we're gonna come back to Sweet Tooth and your current success and hopefully a bunch of you know failures in between. But I want to um, you know, you have such an interesting career. You you're a writer, director, you were producer, you wear many hats, you wrote a number of movies and directed them. Uh let's set the stage a little bit for your career. How did you just I mean, people just don't make movies? You were able to make a number of movies. So, how did that happen? Um and what were some of the failures along the way?

SPEAKER_04 5:57

Yeah, I mean, it's a very it's a it's a unique um career that I've been very fortunate to have, and I knock on wood, and I every time I think about it or talk about it, I feel like I have to specify like I don't take it for granted. I've been incredibly lucky. Um, I went to film school, I wanted to be a director, I went to NYU undergrad. I left school. Um, I thought, okay, now I'm gonna be a director. And of course, nobody wants me to be a director. So, like everybody else, I sort of left school and bummed around and didn't quite know what to do. Um, I worked in independent film in New York for a long time. So I was a PA, I was a grip, I was in the art department, I was a storyboard artist. Um uh I fell in with a grip and electric crew and I did that for a couple of movies. Um I then felt like being on set isn't really conducive to being able to make your own things because you're on set 18 hours a day, and you know, you don't you it's sort of that chicken in the egg thing. And so I started editing. I had a computer and I knew Final Cut Pro, so I started putting myself forward as an editor. Um, and then out of that, I think um I reached out to Nick D'Amici, who was uh an actor who I met on a short film and who was writing a lot of stuff and who was writing stuff for himself. And he was in a similar position where he was uh I think frustrated that he wasn't getting the kind of roles that he wanted. Um and we sort of just made a pact of like, let's make a movie, whatever it is, let's make a movie. I think it was, I think it was uh this is 2005, I think it was August 8th or August 13th. I'll have to look and see like what the Monday was that year. But we said, you know, no matter what, that day we're gonna shoot something, even if it's just the two of us in your apartment, you know, we'll we'll shoot something. Um and that wound up being our first movie. And it started, we got about $10,000 from a friend of ours who was willing to invest in that, and then that grew to 20. It became a snowball, not a very big snowball, but it was 20 and it became a 27,000. And so we went into production with $27,000. And um, we somehow made an apocalyptic uh zombie film in the East Village of New York. Um, and that film ended up um oddly has had the biggest theatrical release that I've ever had. So Lionsgate picked it up, um put it on a couple hundred screens that in 2007. Um, and from there I was lucky enough to sort of parlay that into more independent films and grew at a one of the things I'm really proud of and happy with is like I feel like I didn't grow too fast. So that was a $30,000 movie. Um, ended up doing Stakeland, which was $600,000 a couple years later. Um, did We Are What We Are, which was about a million a couple years after that, and then a couple years, and then really the next year at that point things accelerated. We did Cold in July, which was about two million. Um and then we fell kind of ass backward into television at a time where that was a possible thing to do. So uh it was all very organic.

SPEAKER_03 8:45

That's I I want to highlight that for one second because I this is such a good piece of advice that you actually we ask advice questions at the end of the podcast, but you gave a great piece of advice that, especially right now, today, there's so many people that are out there that are waiting for the Hollywood doors to open for them. And you and your friend were like, We're not waiting for any doors to open for us. We are gonna just go shoot something and we're gonna hope that it that it finds an audience, or at the very least, we're gonna learn how to use Final Cut Pro a little bit better and final draft a little bit better and a camera a little bit better, and they'll bring that to our next thing. And not waiting around for the opportunities to come to you, but creating the opportunities, I feel is such a huge, you know, people sort of need to wrap their head around a little bit because this this this town doesn't, I don't think there are any metaphorical doors that open or close, but if you look at such a thing, it it's really hard for those doors to open. But okay, so that also that's gonna lead to a real question, which is which I have to ask now. I had a different question, but you said you fell ass backwards into television. Yeah, I know what that means.

SPEAKER_04 9:49

Yeah. Well, I was it was uh it was a great span of I guess it was almost 10 years of of making those films and having a great I mean, you know, we went to Sundance, we went to Cannes, we won a lot of awards, um, went to every film festival that I had grown up reading about or attending, um, was lucky enough to sort of go into all those. But I guess I felt like coming out of Cold in July, I felt like it still wasn't sort of breaking through the way that I wanted to. And in reality, I think it was the beginning of like the streaming boom where it was just becoming harder and harder to get attention for anything, you know. Um, but at that point, you know, television was really taking off as a real thing. Breaking bad was sort of hitting a stride. Um, I remember True Detective was starting to come out. So it was sort of, I feel like in a way, independent film was becoming television, you know, becoming a place to sort of tell those middle ground, middle tier sort of human stories, which I was much more interested in. Um and we were just very lucky, you know. Sundance, the Sundance Network is one of the only networks that's really in New York. I was in New York at the time. Um, and we had a meeting with them, and we had just played Sundance with We Are We Are. We were about to debut Cold in July there. And I think they had not a mandate, but I think they were looking to sort of parlay Sundance filmmakers into making shows for the Sundance Network. And at the time they had been looking at Hap and Leonard, which is a book series based on Joe Lansdale's novels, who had written Cold in July, and we had just obviously adapted one of his books and had a great relationship with him. And so um I feel like it was pretty the the it the street was pretty paved um to go in there and pitch Hap and Leonard. They were already well aware of it and wanted to make it. They basically told us that we, you know, were we hired to write a pilot basically at the premiere of um Cold in July at the festival. Um and so we ended up um doing that pilot script, and then they said, Great, and how would you like to be a showrunner? And I was like, uh sounds good. I had no idea what a showrunner was. I I went home and um Netflix had a documentary called Showrunner, and I went home and I watched that and it sort of focused on what people do. And I was like, that looks awesome. I want to do that. I guess I'm showrunner this now. And and um it was a weird experience because now that I've you know I've been through the process now, done six seasons now, and have had larger and larger writers' room, and I still feel unique and a bit of imposter syndrome because I never did that. I never worked my way up, I never was in a restaffed a room. I don't know what it was like to be in a position. I've sort of only been the teacher in the class, sort of metaphor, which is a which is a tricky thing, which comes with blessings and and curses. But um, yeah, that was the beginning of the television experience.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

So giving me plenty to work with here. So I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna start about this this show. I mean, we've talked about yeah, showrunners a lot on this podcast and the fact that often the least qualified people uh are given the opportunity to do it. Like in a real world, you don't put someone in charge of you know 200 people and millions of dollars in budgets if they haven't been trained in it, but somehow in Hollywood it seems like a perfectly acceptable thing to do.

SPEAKER_04 12:49

Yeah, um same thing with directors. I mean, that was one of the reasons why I was getting fed up working on independent films because I was like, I went to film school, I did all this. Most of the time, the director on independent film is the least experienced person on set, and you're and you're sort of watching there, being like, I feel like I'm getting paid to work on your student film, basically, that you funded yourself. That happens a lot.

unknown 13:08

True.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

As a showrunner, uh, like I say, without trading and without you know, like Noah's done, I think every job in the room from like getting the coffee uh up to now, he I didn't got to showrunner yet, but he's done he's done them all. And when he ever when he gets showrunner, which I imagine will be soon, he knows everyone in the room's job and all that stuff. But when you're sitting in front of both the writer's room, but also when you're sort of in the on a production and you're you know addressing all the cast and crew, uh just talk me through this sort of imposter syndrome thing and how it plays out. I mean, are you uh do you sort of play the authenticity saying, like, hey, I've not, you know, I've not done this before, but I know we need to do these sorts of things, or do you go pretend you know everything and hope that it maybe that's a good question.

SPEAKER_04 13:54

It's a good question. I mean, at the time, I I didn't know what I didn't know, which is a blessing. The first season of that show was like the hardest year of my life, and I feel like it was a real after like screening together successes in film. I feel like taking on that first season of Happen Leonard was just an absolute smack in the face in every single way possible. So, on the one hand, it helped that I didn't know what I didn't know, but also to Sundance's credit, you know, it wasn't a big show, it was a it was a small show. It was, and they even said at some point, like run it like an independent film, not show run it, but like make the show like you would make an independent film if you're interested in that. Um, the reality was all executives left by the time we started making the show, and suddenly we were with AMC executives who did not have that as a date and that became part of the politics to sort of figure out on the fly. But um Yeah, no, I mean I think I I went into that first season thinking like this is an independent, we're making six independent films, you know, in a row. And I think what I didn't realize was it's like six independent films in a row, but they're also all together at the same time, and it's way faster and way more intense and ambitious than making an independent film. Um, you're having to stroke you're you know, we had a number of actors who had all just been the number one actor on their own TV show and we're now coming into an ensemble show. And you know, day one, we were in the swamps of Baton Rouge, you know, and everyone's, you know, going through like we had a tornado on the first day. It was just all those kind of things that like you just don't, you know, you're trying to roll with at that time. But um it was incredibly, incredibly, incredibly hard. Like I said, all of our executives left. And so I don't know that I had the wherewithal to ever announce my experience level. It was just like sort of hanging on by the by your fingernails, you know, for the entire process.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Obviously, you know, whining forward a bit, sweet tooth. Um you've you know, you've you've run a show before at this point, obviously, but this feels like for a combination of reasons, one of which you've already mentioned. So you've got obviously somebody else's uh IP, um yeah, which you've got to, and you know, obviously it's quite a complicated story, so you've got to uh treat it the right way, but then you've got like Robert Downey Jr. Yeah, yeah, done one or two things in Hollywood, you know, as an exact producer, and then you know, the pandemic point, which is most people can't work, so yeah, it felt like when it I'm sure it's not right, but in my head, when it came out, it's like, oh, this is like the only show that's coming out at the moment, because it yeah, it was a lot less production, and obviously, you were in New Zealand. So you put those elements together. Like, did you did you go into work thinking, were you worrying about those things? Like, I've got to keep him happy, I've got to get this IP right, and I don't want to bugger this up because this is the only thing Netflix I'm making this year, or yeah, do you know enough that you just sort of treated it like any other film or any other show?

SPEAKER_04 16:47

So, yeah, great question. I mean, uh a lot of that stuff were things that we weren't aware of until afterwards. So the pandemic, you know, hit in the middle of it, and you know, it didn't re I think we were in the we were up to like episode three in the writer's room when it happened. The reality was, you know, it's a show about a pandemic, and the pilot focuses on a pandemic, and we had shot that before anyone knew what COVID was. Um, again, I remember watching a Netflix documentary called Pandemic, thinking like maybe I'll learn some things that I can sound like I know what I'm talking about when we do this, which had nothing in it of interest. And literally, you know, that was probably like January, February of 2020. Um so, yes, um, you also throw into there that DC is involved. You also throw in that it's Warner Brothers and Netflix. So there's like a lot of cooks in all that. Um I and we can go back to it, but I learned a lot from that first season of Happy Leonard to um I ended up doing three seasons there. Um we brought in a showrunner in season two, and I was able to learn from him in season two and three, which was one of the setbacks, one of the big setbacks for me that wound up being a real positive because I learned a ton. And I felt like by the time I came into Sweet Tooth, I knew a lot more about what I was doing. I was a lot more confident about that. Um, I also knew that season ones were going to be really hard. And so Beth Schwartz, who has been a guest on your podcast, um, we reached out to her. Uh, she just wrapped Era. We reached out to her and she came on as co-showrunner for season one, um, which was amazing because again, like as you said, that was when COVID hit and having to figure all that stuff out on your own would have been damn near impossible. So being able to have a soulmate, you know, during that process with her was great. Um, and then two three, I did um solo. And by then, I would say that was that's been the highlight of of what I've done so far because everybody sort of understands what you're doing, and everybody's sort of locked into the rhythm and and knows how the show gets done and what it is. And it and those last two seasons were just in two was incredibly hard, but season three, which will be out soon, um, was just an incredible experience where it felt like finally all the things over all these years kind of came together and and worked together.

SPEAKER_03 18:51

You mentioned imposter syndrome uh last time, even earlier in this conversation, and you know, you mentioned having showrunners added. I'm a big believer that one showrunner is really difficult, that um the the that this is a business where that definitely helps when you have two or three showrunners because there's just too much work for one person to do. And but eventually you do, you know, you do learn the craft, you do understand the job, you are doing the job. But does imposter syndrome ever go away? Let's talk about season three. Is there ever a moment where you're like someone's gonna find me out still in the middle of it? Or are you kind of like, you know, like Fantasia, Mickey Mouse?

SPEAKER_04 19:26

Like you've got it, you you've figured it out, and you're yeah, I would say on the writing side it does, which is weird because um, you know, I went and I was trying to explain this to somebody that they like when I went to film school, it was to direct. And writing classes were always to me, it was always like writing is a thing that you have, it was like lifting weights, it's like a thing that you have to do so that you can direct, so that you can make a film. Um and I sort of always not that I didn't, but I thought I think I always had that sort of mindset about it. Working with Nick for almost 20 years was he wasn't interested in directing, he was interested in just telling stories and writing and being on the page. And I think that rubbed off on me over the course of time. And I feel like I learned how to become a writer through working with him. Um, where I feel imposter syndrome is now being around writers who that's their sole thing is just writing. Like, you know, they're not doing it because they want to act, they're not doing it because they want to ultimately direct. They do it because they love the craft of writing and they read scripts instead of watching shows. Like when I'm around people like that, I just feel I feel like it's a party that I'm I will never have been to. Um and for the first time now I've written things that I haven't directed, which I never thought that that would be a thing. So that's where I feel imposter syndrome. Um it's weird because in the reality, now I've done that more. Like I've written more, and you know, um, we were nominated for WGA award uh last month, which is weird because I never thought that that would be something in there. So I try to use those moments to say, like, yeah, no, you are a writer. You know, just because you do other things doesn't mean that you're you're you're not that what what happens emotionally?

SPEAKER_03 21:08

Because you mentioned that for 20 years you had a writing partner and and now you don't. So you know I'm not sure if it's another version of imposter syndrome or kind of like a safety blanket, or you have another blanket with everything you do, and now you're out front without that. Can you talk a little bit about that experience?

SPEAKER_04 21:24

Yeah, um I I miss it. You know, I mean, Sweet Tooth is the first thing I did by myself, and um, I basically had off of the back of season two of Happen Leonard, like a lot of things imploded in my career, and and out of that, I sort of came out of that experience. Like I have to sort of change, I have to do something new. I have to sort of change. And that led to writing Sweet Tooth and saying, like, I kind of don't care what anyone else thinks or says. Like, I hold up in my bedroom and I literally wrote that and knew that it was breaking a lot of rules, but at the same time, I was sort of like in a headspace. Where it was like, I'll do that and I'll wait for someone to tell me that you can't do some of these things. Um, and so that was that came out of that, and I'm very grateful that it did. Um, working with Nick was amazing though, because I think you know, having exactly like you said, having somebody you can just constantly bounce things off of and go back and forth and look at stuff, and and um, I don't know how you do it without that. And and coming, I remember going from tell to tell from film to television thinking, like, I don't know how you ever go to writing by committee. I don't know how you ever go to a writer's room. That just seemed crazy. And then after doing one season with uh, we only had a writer's room with three people, but I came out of there, I was like, I don't know how you'd ever go back to just being one person writing something, you know. Um, the things that you can come to in 20 minutes might take you two months for yourself, you know. Um, and you're constantly able to sort of shoot down first ideas and get to the heart of things in a way that is amazing. So that's been a process now, is sort of adapting to like, I don't have that person. I my my wife is my producing partner, and that's great because you can do that a little bit, but um that that writing partnership is pretty special.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

So it's I I know obviously I know you you sort of you moved across to to television from film, uh time when television was changing and how it works. So I I don't know the budgets on Sweet Tooth, but I imagine one episode of that is definitely more than 27,000. Uh yeah, yes. But you know, it's probably bigger than the the budgets of the biggest independent films you worked on. So, in terms of where you go next, so you know, Sweet Tooth is coming out, you assume that it will be as successful as the previous uh uh seasons. Um what's next? Do you want to let's give you some choices? Do you want to go back and make like a a real not an independent film, but like a real film? You want someone to give you a real budget, like a massive film as a writer, producer, director, whatever bit of it you want. Do you want a see doing something that runs for three seasons is great, but you know, the the one that makes your television career is the one where you know if you need to go for 15 seasons, you can. You know, do you want to make it maybe it's a network television, maybe it's a streamer, but like a proper TV series that goes, maybe it's like a sort of game of thrones, so it's still scale, and you know, it's not a sitcom, but it's still TV. Um is there a third track, you know, comic books, or who knows what age you went. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:28

No, I mean, the the reality is right now is the first time that I've been able to sort of sit with my own thoughts since the beginning of Sweet Tooth. And and um that was probably 2017, was the last time that I sat and sort of pitched something and worked on something. Um, in terms of that. So it's hard, it's it's been really nice to be able to sit and think about that. It's also quite paralyzing because you feel like you understand a lot more about things now that you know can can make it hard to sort of um make a firm decision on that stuff. I'm working on a movie right now. I I um have a script with Legendary and with Netflix, which is also a comic adaptation. Um, and that's been uh a great experience so far. I'd love for it to be that. I'd love for it to be I, you know, after Happy Leonard, I went and did a movie, and it was so fun because Happy Leonard was very hard. It's six days to shoot an episode of that show. Um, and every day, you know, every episode had multiple action scenes and underwater sequences and car chases and stuff, and and it was and all location. It was just it was incredibly hard. So coming out of that, I just like I just want to make a movie. I want to, you know, I want to get back to that. And so that was in the shadow of the moon, which was a great experience. And then after wrapping that, it was like, man, it would be really fun to go back and be able to tell a story, an ongoing story, like um like a series, and that led to Sweet Tooth. So I say that right now. I'd love to go back to movies. At the same time, I also don't know what movies look like. I don't know what movies are, you know. Uh you know, you see things that go to the theaters and do well and things that don't, or you see things that come out that sort of disappear. And and um, I think it's a weird transitional period right now for both of those mediums, and I don't know what the future is for either of them.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

Yeah, I mean let I don't want to get too sort of uh I guess industry introspective, because that's not really what we do here, but equally given what you've just said, it is it is a slightly strange time, and everything's you know, the strike hasn't really shaken itself out yet, and some people refuse to watch real TV anymore, and some people are getting annoyed at the streamers because their model isn't sustainable. Um you know, in all of that, I guess in some way, as a creator, how much do you sort of need to think about that? So you've got a great show coming out in two weeks on Netflix. Um is there any part of you that thinks and you have to be careful what you say because they're your bosses, but you know, is there any part of you oh, I wish it was on you know, traditional TV or you know Amazon Prime's growing at the moment? Like, do you think about any of that?

SPEAKER_04 26:59

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:00

They're the ones, this is the show, and all I care about is my show. Or do you think about sort of what do people think of Netflix at the moment? And are they, you know, oversharing their passwords, or do you just think about the show?

SPEAKER_04 27:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I just think about the show, and and and part of that's the creative, but part of it is also like we made the show for Hulu originally. Originally, Sweet Tooth was 100% for Hulu. Um, they greenlit it, they were the only ones that came in. I think we'd even pitched it to Netflix and Apple and Amazon. They all moved on, they all passed. And then Hulu and Jordan Hellman, who I will forever thank Jordan Hellman. He's a courageous, courageous man. Um, and he had actually greenlit Happen Letters at Sundance also. Um, he greenlit the pilot. And so we wound up going and making this pilot and had an amazing experience and came back with a pilot that I was like, I feel like I feel like I just made the best thing that I've made. I'm so happy with this. There's no way this isn't gonna air. Everybody at Hulu seemed to really dig it. And at the time, I think Disney came in and you know, corporate thing happened, and we never really got an answer. Like, I never even really got an official pass on them, but we just waited and waited, and we never picked up. And the next thing I knew, Warner Brothers was like, Well, we're moving on, we're gonna shop it around. They did that thing of like, we'll shop it around to see if anybody else wants it. And I kind of thought, what are the odds that that happens? That seems incredibly rare. And and I and I was at a point where I thought, man, can I at least get a DVD of this or something so I can show people? Like, we made a cool thing, trust me. Um, and then Netflix came and scooped it up and they saved it, and it wound up doing such incredible numbers for them in season one and they promoted the hell out of it. And I, you know, they perfect, absolutely not. Are the things that you know are Netflix-y about Netflix? Absolutely. But on the, you know, on the other side, I I thank them for coming in and rescuing the show and getting it out there, and they've been great to work with overall. So um, yeah, so no, I I don't think I've ever had the opportunity to wish that it was somewhere else.

SPEAKER_03 29:03

I love all these. I mean, obviously, Sweet Tooth is such a massive success, but I, you know, I do want to go back to the side of the tracks where we're talking about the hardships and the failures. Uh there ever been a time where you felt like particularly steamrolled or felt like you were, you know, maybe wanted to leave the industry?

SPEAKER_04 29:19

Yeah, yeah. Um yeah, so one big one, and then kind of a lead up to that. So um coming out of season one of Hap and Leonard, um, I was I was just completely beaten up, like physically, mentally, psychologically, everything. Um, but I felt like, okay, now I actually know what I'm doing, I know what to do to be a showrunner. And so, like I said, um I I kind of put myself forward for that. And when Sundancer and AMC said, All right, you have a second season, it was sort of like good news is you have a second season, you know, bad news, maybe not bad news if we want you to have a showrunner. We want to bring in uh a tried and true showrunner. Um, and this isn't a demotion, but you know, you'll still be like the creative overseer, you'll be over to, but we're gonna have somebody that knows what they're doing. Um and at the time, that was a huge kick in the teeth for me because I had just come from you know directing a lot of movies and feeling like the captain of the ship, and suddenly after captaining the ship for one season, it was sort of like, okay, you know, you can stay on the ship, but you're not the captain anymore, you know, like the first me. Um and that was a hard transition to make. Like, um, and I think I my immediate reaction was, I don't want to do this, I don't want to be a part of this, you know. I don't want to have to go back to the actors and now say, like, hey, you know, I was sort of that guy, and now suddenly somebody else is doing that. I'll introduce him to he's a great guy. Um, but we were we were very fortunate to get a guy named John Wirth, um, who had been a showrunner for many years and been around for forever, and he knows the television industry better than anyone. Um, he also has been a part of the showrunners training program. And when he came on part, his sort of discussion was like, I'm not here to take your show from you. I'm not here to take it over. I love what you guys have done creatively. I'm here to teach you and show you guys, you know, make the show on time and keep the train on the track, but also to show you guys how it goes. Um, and that ended up being exactly what that experience was. The two seasons of I felt like that was my I was I was glad that I didn't sort of flip out and say, like, you know, screw you guys, I'm out. Uh I was glad that I stuck around and spent two years sort of learning from him and from that process. We also brought in more experienced writers. I learned finally like what a television writer does and how to think about things and that experience. Um, and that set me up to go on and do things like Sweet Tooth and feel like I kind of know what I'm doing now. I know what I didn't know. I still, you know, I'm still not great. I just I I'm much more aware of things and I can anticipate things, and and I attribute so much of that to John. Um the reality was at the time I was really pissed off when they told me that. And um, at the same time, a studio had been chasing me to do a movie. This was like 2016. Um, he had just done Creed, he had just been nominated for an Oscar. Um, and I turned it down a couple times. And when they told me basically, like, you're not gonna be the showrunner next season, um, my agents were like, why don't you just go have a meeting with Stallone? And and so I met with him at his amazing house, had a lovely chat. I went in and I was like, Look, man, you know, like Copland is my favorite. And right away he just kind of got emotional and he was like, I love Copland. Like, no one wants me to make Copland. I don't want to do the action, I don't want to do this stuff, you know. Like, those are the kind of movies that I want to do. And he one of the things that blew me away about him was he he would talk about a scene, the script. I didn't write the script. Um, a very talented writer, Dan Casey, who I love, wrote the script. Fly would talk about scenes and he would be able to improvise, he'd be like, it should be like this. And he would sort of improvise a version of the scene on the spot. And it was like amazing. Like in every line out of his mouth was like, that should be a line in the trailer. Like, that is like it was just amazing watching him and how his mind worked from a story sense. And so I signed on to do that movie, kind of as a screw you to AMC of like, all right, if you don't mean show on, I'm gonna I have this other opportunity, I'm gonna do this. Um, and I kind of got myself in a bind where I'd committed to both projects, and they were both happy. Years ago, they were happening uh about five minutes away from each other in Atlanta. So we had a film office and a TV office. And my agents said, like, do it, do it. Agents like to say, like, say yes to everything and let us go to the fallout. In this case, they did not. Um so but um the reality was while we were waiting for the film to get greenlit, I was in the writer's room with John, with a guy named Abe Sylvia, who's also gone on to be a showrunner now. He's he's awesome. He was part of writing staff. And I felt like every day was like, like I said, it was like TV film school. Like I was just learning this process. And I'm like, now I don't want to leave the show. I really enjoy what's going on here. I think this is really good. I think we're making something great. Um, but meanwhile, the show got green or the movie got greenlit at the same time. And so I had to make a choice where I basically backed out of the show. Um, I sort of relinquished any like directing slots that I was gonna do. Um, and I went to prep the movie full time. Um and I felt like a delinquent dad, you know, because the show that I'd set up and people that I cast and and crew that I'd worked with. Um I felt like I was letting them down, but I felt like this is what you're supposed to do in this industry. This is Hollywood, you know, you're supposed to sort of grab these opportunities, you should do this. Um, and so I spent months basically ignoring the show, focusing on this movie, all the ups and downs of it. Um we hired a full crew, um, we cast three other roles. Um, I storyboarded the entire movie with my cinematographer. We scouted all the locations, we went through the entire process. Um, and we got to the point where we were about a week away from shooting the movie. And coincidentally, it was the final week of two of Happen Leonard. And I went to, it was a Friday. I went to their last day. It was the last scene we were shooting, and I had a bottle of champagne to show up and be like, creator of the show, here you go. Um and I walked in and I felt really awkward because a lot of people on the show didn't even recognize me. They thought I was in the like the lighting crew, and meanwhile, like one of the actors was like thought I was like a grip. And I'm like, dude, I basically cast you and have written a lot of your lines. I just haven't been here. Um, but we were waiting to do roll on the last shot, and my agent calls and goes, Um, hey, got some bad news. Sylvester Stilling just backed out of the movie, and he says he's not coming back. And the thing that I had told them months earlier, which is I feel like you're making me sort of gamble two things at once that I want to do, and I'm gonna lose both, um, was exactly what happened. And I basically lost a year to process.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

So presumably you went back to Sylvester Stallone's house, knocked on his door, and physically confronted him with why he let you down. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 36:06

No, I I tried to stick it out. The studio is like, um, don't worry, he's known for this, he'll come back. Keep going forward. We'll we'll try to put this back together. He was mad at the studio for not putting enough into cast budget or some other stuff. Um, so I did. I so I ended up doing stayed on for another week. They said, Don't tell anyone. So I stayed on, and I didn't tell anyone. I went on all the Tech Scouts, which is quite intense experience. You're on like a charter bus with you know 40 department heads and going through and going to every location. And I remember people being like, Okay, like here's the wide shot of the church. Like, how wide is your wide shot? And I want to know where I can park my trucks and getting into all that. We're rehearsing stunt choreography scenes, we were like painting rooms at houses, all this. And I knew in my head on the bus, like this movie is not happening. And at some point, the way that I knew it wasn't gonna happen was during the course of prep, at some point, he he had said, I want to grow a goatee and I want to grow my sideburns. And I was like, Okay, I'm not exactly as I see it, but like, you know, let's go for it. And and as he said that, I was googling Sly Stallone goatee just to see what that looked like. And I saw there's an entire Tumblr page of like Sylvester Stallone goatees, and I was like, okay, it won't look like those we'll we'll find a new look. And he had sent me at some point a picture of him with a goatee and sideburns, and it actually looked pretty freaking cool. So I was like, okay, cool. So he's gonna do that. And at some point on like day three of the Tech Scout, somebody came up to me on the bus and was like, hey, so just I'm trying to figure out what we're gonna do. What's his hair gonna look like? And I went on his Twitter to show him a new picture of him. And when I pulled it up, he had shaved his goat, his goatee and his sideburns, and I was like, ah, he's out. Like meant, he's gone. He's not, he's not coming back. So I stuck around for another week or two and tried to pretend that it would come back together. Um, and then on Thanksgiving Day of that year, um, he called and left me a very rambly message, and um he was out. And so I limped back home. Um, having walked away from the show and having the movie that I spent almost a year on trying to get that thing forward, um, having blown up in my face. And I and I really felt like that was an episode of trying to do what the industry was telling you to do and and realizing that it was not. I should have just sort of stuck with what um I felt really mattered, I guess, at that point.

SPEAKER_03 38:29

Oh, I was gonna ask a different uh question, but I don't think anything beats uh Sylvester Stallone shaving his goatee as a way of finding out that your movie has been canceled and that you've lost a career on a TV show. So uh great answer for a uh podcast where this is the things we love to talk about. Uh that does unfortunately, however, bring us to our very last question, which we ask every single guest that comes on this show. Yes. If you can give one piece of advice to somebody joining the industry uh as a writer or director, because you do both, what would that be?

SPEAKER_04 39:04

Um, I think two things. I I knew that you were gonna ask, I think two things. Um one is don't put all your eggs in one basket. I mean, that story was a part of that, but but also like early on, um, I optioned in Cold July at the beginning of my career. I thought that was gonna be the movie I was gonna make. Um, it took seven years to make it, and I wasn't, I didn't have the sort of like the breadth of my mind or imagination to think about other things. And so whenever anyone else would say, like, do you have any other things? You have any other things, be like, no, this is the thing that I'm making. And especially with independent film, like any time that that movie came together or fell apart, like that was my life. There was nothing else to fall back on. And mentally, I think it did, it took a real toll because that was, you know, everything was married to that one project. So something that I try to tell sort of younger folks when they're getting out of school is like, have that project, but also have other things that you can bounce around with. So when you do get hit with something bad, you're able to sort of shift gears and you're not trying to start from from scratch. Um, and then the other thing I think is like find what makes you happy or or think about what's gonna make you happy. And that was something that COVID, I think, did for me. And and um, you know, I feel like there are people who I know who are in the business or out of the business who want to be in the business who talk about success or talk about careers. And I think the reality is like all of those things are up to the beholder, you know. Success is completely up to the beholder and what might make some person feel unsuccessful would make somebody else feel like they've made it. Um, same thing with careers. And and as I've thought about that question and gone through the COVID experience, like and the strike experience, one of the things I kind of came away with is like, don't try to judge yourself or set these sort of arbitrary metrics of what is success, but find like what's going, what's gonna make you feel good at the end of the day and what's gonna bring you happiness with what you do, whatever that is.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Magnificent. That's a a great answer to end a series of great answers. Uh Jim Mickle, thank you very much indeed for coming on our show. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_03 41:05

Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

Thank you for listening to this episode of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss brought to you by Scriptation. Thank you as ever to James Launch for the music, and thank you to our loyal listeners. And if there's any showrunners out there who want to hear their fellow showrunners abused uh and ruffled around and put under the microscope so you can hear their stories of rejection, failure, and adversity, please send them away. If you're interested in following us on social media, no, I've lost track.

SPEAKER_03 41:48

I am at and Ebslin on Twitter or X or whatever Elon Musk now calls it. And thanks to Elon Musk, I'm also at NoEvslin on Hive, Scoutable, Blue Sky, Threads, Mastodon, MySpace, French, and I'm sure of that.