Take 62 - Studio President Beatrice Springborn, Universal Content Productions and Universal International Studios

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 littering the floor.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

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

SPEAKER_01 0:20

For every six days, there is means even this is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is the default.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

That's the first reason. Like everything in our business here, and that's the new way.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

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

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Welcome back to Streaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am as ever your non-entertainment English co-host, Dan Rutstein.

SPEAKER_03 1:11

And at this second, I am your industry co-host, Noah Epslin. Today I'm excited to have on Beatrice Springbourne. Beatrice is president of Universal Content Productions, otherwise known as UCP, as well as president of Universal International Studios. She oversees all aspects of UCP and Universal International Studios Award-winning slate, which includes such amazing shows as the Umbrella Academy, Mr. Robot, Homecoming, Hannah, Downton Abbey, Clickbait, and too many others to mention by name. She's also worked for Hulu, Storyline Entertainment, Karen Mondebach Productions, Valhalla, Film Nation, and Pixar. Welcome, Beatrice.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

So I was trying to think of the best way into this when we have an exec. Given that we are 60-something episodes into this podcast, and there's a good number of them, which has featured writers and showrunners telling us about how projects have failed and what's happened. And some of the blame, as you can probably imagine, has ended, you know, uh what they would call us upstairs. Um, and now we have somebody who's very upstairs on the podcast. Um, so that might be the obvious place to start, but I'm not gonna quite start there. I want to find out how you got upstairs. So, film school. When you went to film school, were you thinking I want to be a studio exec, or were you thinking something else?

SPEAKER_00 2:31

But even and I'll I'll go back even before then. I mean, I thought I was gonna be a journalist, a hardcore journal newspaper journalist, and went to the University of Kansas for journalism, and the internet crushed that dream. So I, because the internet came along, all news really moved online. And so my career went more to the startup world. I worked for a couple of startups in San Francisco. I wrote for women's magazines, I wrote a couple of those people magazine, where are they now? I worked on the Unibomber case as a researcher, worked for a magazine on Unix computing, and then fell into entertainment getting I got a job at Pixar in development. Um, one of my very good friends' husbands was a storyboard artist there, and they were looking to make a movie every year and a half to two years and really wanted someone who didn't come from the agency world, I think who was more than literate, meaning read, but read, you know, was a total nerd reader like I am, and um and was able to write and read well. And so I went into the interview there just not knowing how great of a job it was. And I think I was a little too cool for school in the interview, which which helped. I was sort of like, I'm loving my freelance life lifestyle, and I really love hanging out at coffee shops. And they were like, you have the job. So I got to work at Pixar during a really great time and learned development there and um went to film school because I didn't know anyone in LA. And it was my ticket to Los Angeles in terms of being paid by my student loans and um and just getting to meet people here on the dime of uh of my student loans. But I was a you know, I was it was a it was a risky move because I left Pixar, left like the majority of my Pixar stock on the table, and um left a very cush job to go into debt and move to LA.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Fantastic. So I actually was a journalist in my first career, and one of the reasons I left is because I'm slightly older, I think, and they they invented the internet and it completely ruined all journalism. So um I didn't know.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

I think we're probably the same age.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Um so obviously when you when you were at film school, was the intention to move into a studio, or was it to work in development or produce, write?

SPEAKER_00 4:53

It was, I think at that time it was more to produce than it was produced for film. So I was really interested in I was working for a producer at the same time as I was going to film school who did Memento and Donnie Darko and um that went on to make the prestige and a few other movies. But um we I was really fascinated in just the creative elements of producing. And so I felt like because I didn't know anyone, I would learn that in film school, at least while I was interning. Um, and so got a little bit of that, I think, through school, but mostly by working while I while I was in school.

SPEAKER_03 5:29

So this is sort of interesting to me because we've had, you know, as Dan said, we've got 60 people on, and about 50 of those were writers. So we we understand pretty deeply what sort of a what angst uh a writer is go through during their career, right? And as a writer, obviously I'm in the trenches every single day. So I see it. But you know, as a producer first, and then obviously as a studio executive, you know, what does a bad day look like on your side?

SPEAKER_00 5:57

A bad day is, you know, I mean, we have we have them, believe it or not. I think it's hard because as an executive, you can't really, you know, you can't throw tantrums, you can't like act like uh uh a little bit more sensitive to some things. But I think a bad day is especially when I sit on this side, because I used to be a buyer, I think as a seller, it's wishing that people would take more creative risks, right? For me specifically, and seeing some of the buyers reject projects that I, as a buyer, I would have bought, right? So that's frustrating, I think, because all you have in this business as an executive is your taste and your point of view and your belief in something and your passion. And there are a lot of people who sometimes don't buy into that. So I'd say that's the most frustrating thing is when you have a feeling or a gut about a project and you can't get one person to buy to buy into that, right? Literally buy it. Um, I think those are hard days. Um and other than that, I think you know, there the days are hard in bits and pieces, but it's a mixture of great and and hard, you know, it's it's it can be every anything from creative issues to HR issues to someone doesn't like a project, but ultimately you have to keep reminding yourself you work in television and you know we're not we're not curing cancer.

SPEAKER_03 7:25

Fair enough. Do you do you think that coming from a journalism background, so you have you know you you have a grand writing, and then you go right into Pixar as your first job experience, which is so story-centered, famously story-centric. Do you think that's helped you, you know, later on in your career work with writers, navigate story, understand what's important to you?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

I got a grad school, I mean, grad school plus education in storytelling, and got to be in so many of not to quote Hamilton, to be in to be in the room where it happened, but um, you know, just to be around all of that brain trust and also just see their approach to storytelling because all of the ideas there are developed internally, and then they bring on external writers to work on them. So you're getting to read tons of samples, you're getting to know so many writers, and that's really where I got to know a lot of playwrights and writers that I never would have been exposed to. But then also just seeing their quality bar is so high that they will throw away a huge chunks of a project if it's not working or if it doesn't feel right. And I think that that I've been, I I know I've been really lucky to work at a number of places where quality is is number one and and just making sure you have the right story. And if you don't, then you're not going through with it. But um, and also I I didn't just do um written development, I did uh a lot of visual development, which was a new thing for me too. And I think to be able to work with visual artists who express themselves so differently and you know have a different way of communicating and being, I think, led and um the way you work with them was just a new experience for me. And I think helped in producing and dealing with creatives, um, in all under the roof of a company that has a fantastic culture, you know, and that's I've been again fortunate to have that at many of my jobs, but but Pixar is really really, as you guys know, the the top of their game.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

I was trying to work out where to go next in terms of whether we do failure and rejection or we do leadership. And I think I'm gonna go on on leadership just because you mentioned culture. So one thing we've talked about a lot on this show is particularly with showrunners, they suddenly become leaders of organizations, but no one trains them how to be. They just suddenly become in charge of hundreds of people. Obviously, it's it's slightly different when you're uh actually part of the studio. And I imagine there's leadership training courses and all that sort of stuff. But in terms of culture and leadership in a creative world, what does that what does that mean to you? And how much uh has it changed over the years you've been in these sorts of positions?

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Yeah, I mean, for me, and I think it started uh probably most apparently was at Hulu. We really had a culture of trusting our executives, you know, and I'll give you a few examples. I mean, my boss, Craig Erwick, who now also runs ABC, was just amazing at saying, I don't see this project, but if you see it, I trust you to make it, right? And that, you know, happened on a couple projects. And then I had, you know, the famous example that I always give is we had an we had um an a really amazing creative executive at Hulu named Billy Rosenberg, who still runs comedy there, who loved pen 15 and kept, you know, talking about this amazing pilot and you have to watch this amazing pilot. And I think there was a generation gap for me because I did not grow up at that time. There were parts of it I didn't understand. I could see that Maya and Anna were amazing actresses and writers, but he just really fell on his sword for that project and kept pushing, pushing, pushing to get it made, and kept pushing, pushing, pushing for a better music budget. And ultimately I was like, the fact that I've, you know, you're here, you have a point of view on this. Maybe not everyone sees it in the same way. Like we're going to, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna do this. And I and I really think an organization that's made up of people who are open to hearing other ideas, knowing that they're not the audience for everything, bears a much more creative environment. Um, and I've just been again so fortunate. I mean, in all those instances, I've I've said, like, I would put my job on this show to do it, or you know, I I believe in a show above my own my own livelihood, but um, but that's our job, you know, and I and I do think that that's something that you see less and less in this industry. I don't know if it's because of consolidation, if it's because of a fearfulness of of you know losing one's job, but I do see a lot less of that kind of risk taking and want to stand behind a project in a big way.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Fantastic. That's that's very refreshing to hear given some of the conversations we've had on that.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Yeah. I mean, look, you're up against so many things. I think as an executive, you have to understand you're you're not just managing one show, you're managing a slate of shows, which sometimes I think is hard, especially as a buyer, to talk about like it's not just about that one show, it's about how that show fits with everything else you're doing. And sometimes I think that that's hard to understand. And then I do think that, you know, it there is a want to do something, you know. We need, like people will say, we want a soap, or we want a show like X that's just been successful. In my experience, the shows that have been successful were never things that we asked for, right? They weren't mandates. So you look at a show like Handmaid's Tale, no one asked that wasn't a mandate for us. Oh, let's do, you know, let's do a show about sexual slavery from a book from the 1980s that had a movie made before, right? No one, no one was like, that's the show we want. But when it walked in, when we when we went out and um found it from MGM and packaged it and put it together, it be it became something amazing. And so I just say that you and our execs on the on the seller side, you have to really believe in it. I'm uh yes, I want to hear what their mandates are, but I also know that I have a point of view and that I want to support projects that I love and think are great.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

So obviously, running the organization where you're giving people creative freedom, there's a there's obviously a flip side to that. And I'm sure you'll remember from when you started out in Silicon Valley, the obsession with you know, permission to fail, fail fast, fail spectacularly, and then move on. Presumably the risk of giving people obviously a chance to take risks is some things don't work. So can you give us an example of where things haven't worked, but also sort of how that's ended up being a good thing?

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Yeah, I think part of it is managing a portfolio, right? And I know everybody says that, but the best positions I've had on the buyer and the seller side is just, you know, being able to understand, like, here's where we're able to take risks, or we can do this project for a price, or you know, we can have you have to be able to leave room for failure. And failure can look many different ways. Like even on shows that are super successful, sometimes getting there is painful, right? You're like, this should not be this hard. Or you realize that you were all making a different show the whole time. I mean, I've worked on shows where you get to literally the end of the project and someone says, you know, I loved making this magical realism show. And then the screenwriter is like, oh, wait, I thought this was a broad comedy. And you on you realize that was a big lesson for me is realizing like you all have to be making the same show from the get-go, or it's even if it's a success, it's painful. It's a painful road. So that that's been a huge aha moment that seems so basic. But sometimes you all think you're making the same show, but you you speak different languages.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

Can we can we stay there for one second? Because I'd love if you would pull back the curtain a little bit more. Now, again, we have most of our uh audience is is writers and and and and just speaking as a writer for most of them, you know, we send our projects to studio exactly someone who we've been working with for a long time, but that we know they're going upstairs, right? They're going up the chain. And then it goes quiet because we know they're deciding, right? And your agents are just be patient, the decisions you know happening, and you know, you're you're you're waiting for that call either way. So, what what is that process pulling back the curtain for you guys where you are discussing as a group whether or not to take a swing, whether it fits your slate, whether it is the thing you bought. And are you passionate? Like, do you guys argue? Is it like this is the project I love, but I don't? What is that group?

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Yes. I mean, I think in the best environments there is a lot of arguing. Um, when I was on the buyer side at Hulu, we argued like brothers and sisters. And I think, you know, we're all really curious people. So part of the process would be trying to understand why someone loved a show, right? I think your job is to kind of explain why this is great, explain why it's gonna stand out. But again, I think it goes back to there, it's never a conversation. And I think this is what was the hardest thing when you're talking to agents or the showrunner, is it's never about just that one show. It's also about the slate, how it's gonna fit in, other shows you've done like it, what's the competition doing, you know, when can we have it by? There's so many other things I think that go into it besides just that singular show and that singular vision. And it's always about like the overall slate. And sometimes you can't let people into what that is because it's you know, it might mean exposing some sort of financial information or understanding of that or a piece of that that that's hard to um discuss because it's not about that specific show. But truly, it's usually about timing, the overall slate, uh what else you have, cost, the business parts of it as well. And it's usually if you've gotten to that point where you're deciding you're gonna pick it up, it's usually less about the creative at that point, right? When you're in those final stages.

SPEAKER_03 17:27

The whole package.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:30

So we've had this sort of ongoing discussion. We started as a pandemic project, Dan and I. I was like, it's a pandemic, let's do this podcast and let's start interviewing people about failures, failure, rejection, and adversity. And it it somehow resonated with with people as they were, it felt made them feel safe, made them feel like they were being heard in many ways, that they weren't alone in failing in failures. And but a common theme has been it's a hard time right now. Not only is the world a crazy place, pandemic, war, other things, but in our industry, there's there's sort of these big shifts going on, landscape shifts. And it's been a tricky time for the creatives to get projects going, to even high-level creative are saying, like, this is the first year where I'm not selling any pitches or nobody's buying, or and there's a ton of theories why. And I don't think we've actually landed on on what the truth is, on why is the landscape, and again, the answer is probably it's a combination of a hundred things, but like from your perspective, as now as a sort of a big time seller going out as well to other big buyers, like what what is what is going on exactly, do you think? And is that true?

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Is it a harder time than oh yeah, I absolutely think it's harder. I think it's um a couple things. I think that there are many places that are unwilling to buy, or it's harder to buy from outside studios, right? And so your project has to be what we say undeniable, which is such a funny term because undeniable can mean something different to any, to other people, to anyone, right? So to me, that means highly executed in quality. Like that's number one. It's like you can have a great idea, you can have it just the script or pitch or has to be great, you know, and and not everything is amazing or executed amazingly well. Um the second thing I think is there is a general fear. I think you see a fear in the world in general, and by the way, rightfully so. I mean, it's not a it's a scary time and the scariest of times in in so many ways, but that has also bled into, I think, people's fear of taking on something that could affect their livelihood. Like if a project fails, they're gonna lose their job, they're gonna, you know, they're going to um be in some danger of not having stability. Um, and so I think that fear of an even more unstable environment for someone based on a project is is also feeding into it. It's a personal in a very personal way. Um, and so I just keep saying, because there's there's been a couple of projects this year that didn't sell that I was just like beyond confused by um objectively, you know, and um and I just keep saying you have to just keep believing in what you think is great, um and keep going because there it is going to click, but we're I've I've lived through hard times, you know. I I lived through a business after, you know, around 9-11. I've lived through the last recession. And while those are as extreme, um, these times happen, there are ebbs and flows, and I can only believe that great creative will overcome and hopefully people will continue to have a creative backbone because truly that's all we have. That's a long-minute answer.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

At different times in your career, you've obviously both been trying to sell things to people and presumably some of them being rejected, but also rejecting other people. So I mean basically the the premise of this question is going to be, are you a nice person? But I'm gonna just frame it around a bit broader than that, in the sense of when you have to say no to people for for all the different reasons that you might have to, as you said, it might be money, it might be timing, it might be there's a it's a brilliant project, but someone's got exactly the same project or it doesn't fit in the portfolio. But when you have to to say no, because you've been at the other end of nodes, I suppose. Like what sort of what sort of person are you when you're thinking about those nodes and how do you feel about it?

SPEAKER_00 21:32

I used to be terrible at it. Truly, I think I always wanted to be seen as the nice person, the person who is, you know, um agreeable, amenable, you know. But I ultimately, through some great coaching and also through colleagues that I worked with and other jobs, I realized that um I the best way to be responsible. Respectful to someone is to pass quickly and to be honest about it, right? And to give them as much information as you can. Because I think that's the hardest thing is sometimes there are passes where, you know, the networks asked you not to give all the information, or there's something related to another project that you don't want to involve, you know, that you don't want to reveal. And I think you just have to do it quickly and you have to be as human as possible and you have to say you're sorry, you know, and how much time and energy they've spent on the project that might be a pass, but I used to be terrible at it.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Because you were trying to be too nice, and then you were because I was trying to be nice, trying to be too nice.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

You know, it's interesting. I took a writing class last year, and I really got more empathy through for writers because you know I'd started out as a as a writer. I mean, I wrote for for strange startups and weird magazines, but I um I took a writing class at UCLA Extension between jobs and had an idea, it was a book idea. And just being in that class and hearing the way that people talk to you and and can be so harsh about creative really helped me in the way I talk to writers too. Because I think sometimes I you give throwaway notes, you're just like, okay, this is what you need to do. You kind of rush through it, forgetting that someone has spent years of their life on it, right? And and you're there giving like 20 minutes of notes, and or also not realizing that something could be so personal or born from something so personal, and just being like, oh, they're writers, they made it up, you know. It's and so that experience, I think, because the idea that I, you know, the idea was personal to me. It was, it was hard to put myself out there. And I'm like, oh my god, writers do this every day. And our notes sometimes I think are a little throwaway and a little bit um mechanical. So I think it just in uh in hearing the way people talk to me and what what I responded to and what I didn't, it was really, it was really helpful to do that.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

80% of our listeners are sitting here thinking you're the most amazing exec in the world, but at least thinking about the No, it was it was it was selfish.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

I mostly just wanted to see am I really as terrible of a writer as I think for punishment.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Can I ask a motivation question? Obviously, I mean this might sound like a bit of a naive question given that you work for a company and companies ultimately make money, but um, commercial success or awards slash sort of creative brilliance, what when you look at a project, which one are you looking at?

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Both, because I think they can exist together, right? I think it's it's funny. I um I had a boss who once kept, we kept saying we wanted we wanted to, we were, we were separating the two. And he was like, if you look at every successful show that has been nominated for the Emmys, or you know, typically they're they live in both of those worlds, right? It's it's a show that exists and can be both. And I was, I do think, you know, at Hulu, I was really fortunate to be involved in some shows that you wouldn't necessarily think of as commercial hits, right? Again, Handmaid's Tale or The Great or Normal People, those were all shows that were hugely commercially successful. And I feel like I've brought a lot of that experience to my job here at UCP and saying that we shouldn't just be making things that are, you know, art projects or even you know, just awards baits. They should they should live in both worlds. And I think you can do things that are really elevated and best in class and different and subversive, hopefully, and um and have both, you know. I I want to make shows that have an audience, but I also hope we make shows that are provocative.

SPEAKER_03 25:52

It's funny. But by the way, as a writer, I definitely appreciated you saying that writers fall in love with their projects and then we're asked to let go abruptly, and it's a really can be challenging because we are asked to love a project for so many years or months, and then suddenly we're asked not to love it anymore. And it's it's it's a tricky emotional uh process for us. But I want to like obviously talk about your emotional process when it comes to sort of letting go of projects, but also, you know, what I'm really curious about, you know, we we talk about a lot of people about like what you feel after, you know, a show you're on and you got fired, and then can you watch it anymore? Or what happens to you guys like internally if you pass on a project that becomes a big success? Is there any fear that that might happen? Or is there some joking banter to the other companies going?

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Yeah, I mean, there have been a couple of those that have gone on to be successful that we passed on when I was at Hulu. Or, but I will say, like, you get so attached to projects. I remember one of the first pilots that I passed on on Hulu. I was with a more junior executive in the room, and I had to call the showrunner. And this was a showrunner who made the perfect pilot. Truly, the pilot was, I mean, in my mind, was like an amazing show, perfect pilot. She was so amazing to work with. And when we called her to pass, I I was just didn't, and the reason we're passing, there were political reasons. There was another show like it. I mean, it was none of the it did not, and this is the other thing that can happen is it doesn't always come down to like it's not a good show. Sometimes you can pass on good shows because of just what you're looking for, what you're doing. And this was a pilot that was great, and we had to call the showrunner and pass, at least in my mind. And I remember her being so gracious and so wonderful, and I hung up the phone and burst into tears. And you know, that's not necessarily what you want someone to see who's on your team reports into you. It was a massive moment of vulnerability, but I think it was just to say, like, God, it's so hard because you you fall in love with them just as much. And sometimes having that um distance is tough. And I I think if you have too much distance, you're not a good executive.

SPEAKER_03 28:00

Yeah, no, and and and I appreciate that too. And I appreciate you know, anytime a producer, one of my producers or studio execs, if you can feel that they love the project too and they and someone passes them, you're all moving on together and it doesn't feel so lonely. But I I do have a question uh for you about, you know, you you, you know, after film school Pixar, you you went to all these kind of great production companies, Hulu, and now you're here here where you are. But has so it, you know, it seems from the outside that there was a really kind of quick and and and and successful trajectory up. But was there ever a moment in all of that where you just wanted to quit? Like it just didn't feel good, like you were done with this industry.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

I almost quit. I I had a child, my daughter, and the hours were crazy, right? I was working like all the time, I was coming home reading scripts, and I I come from a uh my mom has a PhD and is a professor. And so I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna go get another degree, right? I already had my master's degree and I had applied to this program at MIT, this media program, and was this close to quitting the business. And an eight and a great agent, I'll name check him, Joe Cohen, um at CAA was like, you are honest and good with creatives, and we need people like you in the business. You just need to go do another job that is going to teach you the fundamentals of television. Um, and I was like, no, I don't want to do that. And he he set me up with a really great gig that kind of helped me understand all of the parts of TV from international to um to at that time it was called event series, which is just now limited now. We just call them limited series. Um, and you know, he was a real champion. He was like, you should stay in this business because we need good executives. And he actually then introduced me to um Craig Erwick, who hired me at Hulu. But you know, he was he didn't have to, I was just some executive with not a ton of experience that he helped kind of push and uh get me to see that there was light and there was light beyond the the dark tunnel. But for me, it it's about the hardest thing sometimes about this business is just the hours and what you sacrifice, right? And it and is that what is it worth it?

SPEAKER_01 30:18

So thank you for your honesty on that. I think it's yeah, we've we've had yeah, we had a showrunner on who told us about you know, he basically left his family for in another country for months to to run shows and slept on the couch in his uh you know his writer's room because it's just how it was. Given the position you're in, is there anything you can do to actually change some of that culture? I mean, I think no one's told with a story. If you're in a writer's room, try and work for a showrunner who's got kids because the rooms finish at you know six and not 10. You're an exec, you know, you have a child. What can you do to help other people with this problem?

SPEAKER_00 30:52

Well, I, you know, for me, volume, and I'm not, you know, I'm good with volume. I'm not, there are other executives that are much better with volume, I think, but but um I think it's just doing less. I keep saying less of best because it rhymes, but it's not grammatically correct. Um, I'm really focused on, you know, we don't need to take out a thousand projects, let's take out 50 great ones. And so I don't really want to, and that also just helps in terms of selling, right? I don't want to service anything, I don't want to take things out just because a deal wants to take it out. I want to do it because we're all excited about it. And being excited about something doesn't mean that I am the audience for it. It's just I see that someone else is gonna love it. And you know, I think I've learned to not not not sleep. Like I used to not sleep. I used to, and I'm not a good executive. And I've also just learned that again, we're making television. As much as I love this business, it doesn't love you back. And so, you know, I'm in the business of people, not in the business of just shows. And I think that's something really important to remember as you're even putting together shows, is it's about finding the right people to do that who are hopefully going to have the right chemistry. Because no show I've ever worked on that was successful was born out of like, here's a piece of IP, let's make it be great. It's because of the people who came to it.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Have you got any interest in running a show? I know it's obviously, I don't know if it is, I guess it's just theoretically, it's a step down, but it's not a step down in other ways. Is it something you're interested in?

SPEAKER_00 32:25

It's the most impossible job ever. I think that people who do it well are absolutely brilliant leaders because it requires so much of them. Um, and to, you know, and to lead and manage and across so many different trades and personalities. Um I know, I don't, I don't want to be a showrunner. I I never I I for a long time thought I wanted to write. I think ultimately what's exciting to me is the visual medium. I think if anything, I'd love to learn how to direct um and spend some time like understanding that because that's the most foreign piece of it to me.

SPEAKER_03 33:06

I think right now we're in such an interesting time, you know, in TV. And you touched upon it with a number of the shows you guys have done, and we're moving to, you know, the content is getting specific and emotional. And they they they people have said we were in the golden age of TV like five, 10 years ago, but I really feel like we're just getting better and better as we perfect this craft. And so I want to ask sort of a two-part question. I'm gonna ask, you know, I kind of preface that like, what are you excited about moving forward? But also, you know, you talked about not sleeping. What keeps you up at night about your job and this industry moving forward?

SPEAKER_00 33:40

First part of the question was what am I excited about moving forward? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I'm excited, I'm really excited in shows that subvert form. And so, for example, we're doing this show called The Resort with Andy Sierra, who did um Palm Springs, the film Palm Springs. I don't know if you guys saw that, but it's like a very cool meditation. When you pitch someone, we're doing a meditation on marriage, they're like, oh, but it's it's a meditation on marriage set in a very cool, like thriller setting, a a Mayan Riviera setting. Um and I just think he's any way you can kind of subvert tone um is fascinating to me. You know, I just I'm about I should go to TV Executive Jail because I just watched Euphoria. But the thing that um occurred to me about that show, and I didn't want to watch it because I have a nine-year-old daughter in Los Angeles, and so I was like, I can't watch this, but um but but what occurred to me in that and was so interesting, it's one of the first shows I've seen that it's almost like a mini-movie in each episode. And I've seen that done before in anthologies, and but truly, like how you can make something feel like it's one piece, but have such a different tone in each episode to me is fascinating. So I think just being able to bring to audience things that make them feel differently. I know that make that sounds kind of cheesy, but like one of the things we always talk about when we read a script is not like, do you like it? Was it, you know, do you like the writer? Did you think the writing good? I'm like, did it make you feel anything? Because usually I know a project's good if I'm like jealous of it, meaning like someone else has it, and I'm like, ah, or or you probably feel that as a writer, right? You're jealous of something, you know that like it's made you feel something. If it makes me feel sad, happy, it just has to make me feel something. And I think the most successful writers can evoke that in a way that less sophisticated writers can't, you know. Um, and that can be many different emotions, but I think that's like that's my North Star. And then when I look at what keeps me up about the business is the number of executives who don't have a backbone. I think that um I worry that people are, you know, servicing things, just doing a job, and this isn't just a job. Um I mean, it is in terms of like keeping your sanity and disconnecting from it sometimes, but I just think that the reason I got into this is because I love books, I love film, I love TV, and I want there to be executives who continue to foster that versus just treat it like a straight-up business. Because actually, I think that kind of passion leads to great projects and to commercial success.

SPEAKER_01 36:35

I'm I'm tempted to suggest that we invite you back onto the podcast for a later episode. And all we do is ask you to talk for 35 minutes about what you mean by executives without backbone. I think you can make for a whole nother episode.

SPEAKER_00 36:49

But we'll say I've just alienated all of Hollywood.

SPEAKER_01 36:53

Um, unfortunately, it genuinely saddens me that we've reached the tail end of this and we've only got one question left. Um, because this has been so fascinating. But we this, I'm sure, will still be a fascinating answer to the question of if you could give a single piece of advice to somebody wanting to enter the industry, and I think it has to be the industry being becoming an exec. What advice would you give somebody?

SPEAKER_00 37:18

Okay, I've given this advice before, and people think it's ridiculous, but it goes back to my backbone comment. Keep your overhead low. Because I really feel like I see people who just go crazy, buy the biggest house, get the most expensive car. And I do think that hinders it the word, it it hamstrings you in terms of the decisions you make because you're too scared to make decisions because of fear of losing a livelihood you've created. And to me, it's not to say, you know, you have to live shabbily, just be reasonable and know that you can always walk away. Because I think that the the best executives know that. I mean, look, that's a luxury too, that I know that I have, but know that you have a backup plan, know that you can go to MIT for grad school. Um, but also just I say that because I think it just allows for people to take more risks and not have to rely um on just the paycheck to be to be creative and um and bold.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

Fantastic. Well great answer. Beatrice Springborn, an executive uh with both a backbone and empathy for writers. Um thank you very much for being part of our podcast.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

Thank you so much. Appreciate your time. Thanks.

SPEAKER_03 38:35

And that's a wrap on this episode of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss. As always, we want to thank James Launch for the amazing theme music.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

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

SPEAKER_03 38:50

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

SPEAKER_01 39:10

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