Take 127 - Writer, Showrunner, Memoirist SJ Hodges, The Player, Uneven Ground

SPEAKER_01 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 scripts littering for all of us are running into both major and minor failures in Hollywood every single day.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is and I fucking like it.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

That's it for me. I do my one big shot. What I've realized what that will be is it's never one big shot. There will be other shots.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

As ever, I am Dan Rutstein, your non-entertainment co-host.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

And I'm your still in the entertainment business co-host, Noah Epsilon. For this week's podcast, I'm thrilled to introduce TV writer, memoirist, memoirist, and showrunner SJ Hodge. SJ has written on such shows as The Player, Recorded Lives, and Guidance, which he was also the creator and showrunner on for seasons two and three. She also recently wrote a memoir titled Uven Ground, which chronicles becoming a widow and her extended journey of healing and discovery. Welcome, Susan.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

So let's just start. I'm already a little bit confused. Um SJ is your IMDB name. He's now calling you Susan. Who are you?

SPEAKER_03 2:05

Well, I am Susan, but um I changed my name to SJ Hodges in order to get red. Um as a as a woman with my with Susan on the scripts, there for a while, I couldn't even get, I couldn't even get in the door. Um so changing it to SJ, I could write about, and the interesting thing is I could write about men, and they would be like, oh, this is this guy's brilliant. And then I would walk in the room and they'd be like, oh, you can write for men.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

What what what time period are we talking here?

SPEAKER_03 2:45

Well, let's see. That would have been mid-2000s.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Okay, wow. I'd love to say the world's changed, but Noah, when we were recording his podcast, he said, I've got this SJ Hodge person. I'm like, all right, let's get him on as soon as possible. Um so it it's it works for podcasts as well, I think.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

There you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

But in all seriousness, are you sure? I think did you how did you know it wasn't working, as it were? Like how do you find out you're not getting read and therefore need to change?

SPEAKER_03 3:18

Well, I couldn't get meetings.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

It's as simple as that.

SPEAKER_03 3:22

And then Yeah, I couldn't get meetings. And then and then if if I did get a meeting, they would say things like, oh, you really write, you know, you really write for men pretty well. And I was like, okay, let me just see what happens if I I just change my name, like just SJ put SJ on things. Um, and it worked. Like I started just having more, I started just getting more meetings, starting getting pulled in a little bit more. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Yeah. Wow, that's extraordinary.

SPEAKER_03 3:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Do you know of other people who did who had to do the same thing?

SPEAKER_03 3:57

I don't know of anybody specifically, but yeah, it was just it was just a it was just a test. I was like, let me just see what happens. Yeah, and it worked.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

Well, obviously it did indeed work. Um, and I I know that obviously this is gonna be probably slightly different to some other episodes of of the podcast, but I think obviously the one of the you you've you referenced it when we were talking before. Obviously, the being a being a showrunner and going through significant personal tragedy is not a common occurrence. Can you just at least tell us a bit about that?

SPEAKER_03 4:33

Um you know it's funny because I actually I actually think showrunners go through things a lot, but they just keep going. They just keep running the shows, they just keep showing up on like for me. I actually I had a pilot deal at CBS um TV studios um when my husband died from brain cancer, and I delivered the pilot and we were supposed to take it out, and I called and said, I'm moving to Hawaii. Um and that was very that was clear, that was a very intentional act for me. I did not want to be the showrunner in the room who was torturing everyone because she was miserable and and trying to just function. Um I think I think sometimes, you know, when you've got a show running and you've got this big operation going, you feel obligated to stay in there and your life is falling apart. And I, you know, I've heard horror stories from from writers who've been in writing rooms where the showrunner's getting divorced and and they're, you know, they won't go home. And so they're keeping the writing staff there all night long. And I just did not want to be that showrunner. I just didn't want to put people through that. And I knew there was no way I was gonna be able to show up uh and be the best version of myself to run it, you know. And I think you know, you want to be the best version of yourself when you're running these things.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

Let's first set the table a little bit on our relationship because we we know each other. Uh Susan slash SJ lives in Hawaii in a really beautiful part of Hawaii. Uh, and we met during the WGA writer strike, where the writers in Hawaii were bound together to make signs, and we went to her house to make signs and eat pastries, and we met all the other writers, and that was a marvelous experience. And at the time when I met Susan, uh she was, I wouldn't say in retirement, more in transition living in Hawaii. Uh, wasn't sure if you were coming back into Hollywood, and I think things have changed coming into this podcast, so we can sort of get there. But let's back up all the way to you know the beginning of your journey in Hollywood, where you got a job by with John Rogers, who has had an episode on this podcast, and the player, who by all accounts is an extraordinarily good writer and showrunner and probably a good mentor for you. What did you take from him? And was there any sort of early failures and missteps before we get into the later parts of your career?

SPEAKER_03 7:11

Oh, yeah. I mean, by the time I got to John, I think I had written probably at least three pilots uh that hadn't gone anywhere at all. But Jen Court, uh, who is his development person, um, she was over at uh Mel Gibson's company. And she had read a pilot of mine called The Widows. Look at that. I didn't even think about it. Yeah, I wrote a pilot called The Widows about uh a group of West Virginia widows, like coal mining widows, and what happens if a bunch of money comes into a small little community like that? Like, what if they get book deals? What if there's movie deals that start happening around these women? What happens to that community? And that pilot started to open some doors for me. And Jen had read it and she brought me in. She wanted to meet with me. Um, and I thought it was very strange to go meet with Mel Gibson's company because I was like, everything I write, people like drive the speed limit. Like nobody's blowing anything up. Like, like why, you know, I didn't know. But she was moving, she was going to John's company. He was starting Kung Fu Monkey. Um, and she asked me to come in and pitch to John. And I came in and pitched. And the minute I sat down with him, I threw out all the ideas that I'd come in with because he reminded me so much of my birth father when I met him. Like, so my birth dad, I'm adopted. And uh I sat down across from John, and there was just something about his humor, something about him reminded me of my birth dad. And I started talking about my birth father and about meeting my birth dad when I was 23, and he's in the antique business. And I thought it was just this real, really strange little world. And he was like, Oh, let's write that, let's do that. Um, so I ended up doing a pilot called Found Objects with uh John. And we had that and we took it out, and it was sort of at the tail end of, I want to say six feet under had been down for a few years, and everybody was kind of looking for the next six feet under. Um, and we didn't sell it, but we just had a bunch of meetings because it's him, he can open a bunch of doors. And then uh, and then he just kind of kept me in mind, I think, for all, you know, for when he had projects coming and the player, the player lined up. Um, at the time that I had just, I just also won the Humanitas. Um so everything started started like aligning finally. But before that, I was like, I felt like I was just banging down doors for years, years and years and years. Um, but yeah, you know, it's like everybody has to know, everybody has to know you. Everybody has to know you at the same time. And Sony knew me because we had gone in and pitched the Found Objects Project. Um, and Rogers knew me, and um, and I had won the Humanitas, and um Jason Catum's was my mentor at the Humanitas, and his showrunner, the showrunners for the player were um Massett and Zinman, and they had worked with Jason Catems. So it was like one of those things where it was like everybody knew everybody, and I happened to fit at that time in for the staff writer job. But then it comes down to like, okay, is it actually gonna like I got the job offer before there was actually a show.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

We didn't want to oh I do want to point out because you you gave a great piece of information to people that I don't think we've talked about. We've had 120 some odd uh episodes, and about when you get that job, that first staff writer job, how hard it is. People often think that the way into those jobs is through staffing meetings, and sometimes it is. But when you're in a staffing meeting, you're asking for something, and in your case, you were offering something, you were offering a pitch, and you created a relationship through offering a pitch. And it was the same way actually I got into Y5O. It wasn't by a staffing meeting, it was by pitching and them remembering that I was from Hawaii and circling me into their world. So I think I wanted I just wanted to drill down that because people, if you want to get on a show or you really wanted to get in a world, often the better approach is to come offering them something as opposed to asking for something because everybody is asking them for something.

SPEAKER_03 11:39

But I do Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Every every opportunity that I've had has been a direct result of me sitting with a show runner or somebody who had more power than me and saying, What can I bring you? Like, what do you need? Um, I one of the very first things that happened for me was Sally Robinson. Uh her her stepson, I believe, had I I was the like I was the essentially the person holding the RSVP list for the NYU party at Sundance. And she wanted to come to the party with him. And and she had written Iron Jawled Angels, so it was it was showing at Sundance. And I I said to her, could I, you know, could I have a just a coffee? Could I take you out for coffee and just kind of pick your brain? And she said to me, You need to attach, you need to attach showrunners to your projects. That's how you're gonna get in the door. And I and I went back and I went, was that an offer? Like she was giving me advice, but I was like, was that an offer? And so I called her back and I said, Is that an offer? Could I, could I attach you to something? And she said, Well, pitch me some stuff. Um, so I just went, I went, I had 12 ideas and just like quickly came up with like 12 ideas, like a little quick little pitch for each of them. And I just started quickly pitching them to her. And she said, That one and that one flesh those out. And within like a week or two, I had fleshed enough of those out. And I went back to her and I said, These are the two. And she said, Let's work on that one. And then I started working on that one, and then we had a script. Um, and that was that was, you know, that started to be um, that was a script about that's the script that people used to say to me, I can't believe you can write men like that. It was a wrestling script. It was a it was called On the Mat. Um, and it was about college wrestling, uh, like at Iowa. Um, and they were like, I can't write, how do you write boys like that? Or how do you write guys like that? And I was like, hmm, I think I need to change my name. If I can't get in the door as a woman, maybe it's time to start to change my name. But Sally is the one who gave me the advice of like attach a showrunner. Um, and and then that that's the approach I just started using. Is anytime I sat down with somebody who had more power than me, I'd be like, what do you need? What kind of projects are you looking for? Can I pitch you some stuff? Um, can I work basically can I work for free for you and do all the heavy lifting? And you just get to put your name on it, and then we can, and then you know, if you like it, then we can take it out. And that worked a lot.

SPEAKER_02 14:17

Um, this would have been a really good answer to our last question around giving people advice, because as someone outside the industry, this feels like an amazing piece of advice that a lot of what Noah calls pre-WGA people would find fascinating. But I'm sure you'll have some good advice to come later as well. So I guess a question for me is so um we're not allowed to have favorite guests, obviously, but if we were to have them, John Rogers would be probably one of them. He's amazing. Um when you eventually became a showrunner, what from working with John do you think you took and used?

SPEAKER_03 14:55

Well, I jumped from a staff writer to a showrunner in one job. So and and that was that would have been, I think, insane for somebody who hadn't produced theater for a lot of years. I had been in theater in New York for years. Um, and so it wasn't, it was just a lot more money and a lot more moving pieces, but it was still, you know, so being on set, um, I got really lucky with the player. I got to be on set. I got to actually shadow uh our co-EP, Amanda Siegel. I got to shadow her, which almost never happens now. Like I I feel like I was sort of the last generation of staff writers that actually got to be, you know, got to see pre-production, production, post-production. I got to walk through that. Um and that absolutely affected what I was able to do as a showrunner. Like I was able to come in with just a skill set that a lot of people don't have now because their rooms are so short. Um, and they're they're, you know, they're basically saying, here, come write the scripts and and then you're gone. And the showrunner has to go off and do everything by themselves. Um, so I got really lucky that I got to have production experience on a network show. And that was um Roger's, you know, the Rogers, Massett, and Zinnman, the player. Um, but Lord have mercy. That was like out of the, like, that was out of the frying pan and into the fire. Because we were, we were basically shooting like an action movie every week. There were like car chases, there were like explosions, you know, like I had, you know, at one point I had like earphones on and safety glasses because we were blowing up a house. I mean, it was, you know, it was it was madness.

SPEAKER_02 17:00

I mean, being a showrunner is we've talked about this a lot on this show, you know, it's it's three jobs, not one job. It's it's hard, no one trains you for it. And this is coming from people who had been in rooms for years and you know, they'd they'd worked in all the jobs on the rungs halfway between the bottom and the top and all that stuff. So when you were given this opportunity, might be too hard to ask this, but what was the one thing you were most worried about? Post. Okay, post.

SPEAKER_03 17:33

Because I had the I had the least amount of experience in post. Um to me, the other stuff, pre-production and production, that all felt like again, it just felt like theater just with a lot more money, although not on guidance. We didn't have that much more money on guidance. Um, but post was like, okay, what exact, you know, what exactly do I do here? You know, like I hadn't, I hadn't, I hadn't had as much. I got to sit in the editing bay a little bit with with the player, but not to the level of like actually cutting an entire season. Um and then like stuff comes back in post and you're like, oh, this isn't working at all. And it's all you got. So you gotta like figure out how to make it work. So you gotta take it back in the room and you tear it apart, and you, you know, okay, we've got these scenes, like, how do we cut them differently? Um it's like a completely different writing process. Um, and so that was that for me, it felt like that was the biggest leap in my skill set.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

In the moment, did you realize the magnitude of being made showrunner having only been a staff writer? Were you too busy doing it to take a step back and realize and worry about the thing that probably everyone else was thinking of?

SPEAKER_03 18:54

I didn't know I was being offered it. I didn't understand. So I thought I was going in for a general meeting. I thought I was just going in to like introduce myself to awesomeness. Um, it was awesomeness TV. And I they had read an article about um playwrights who had transitioned to television. And the first season of guidance was basically uh uh the concept of guidance is a guidance counselor in a high school is trying to figure out a mystery. Something's happened in the school and they're trying to figure it out. It's an anthology series, so every year is different, different school, different guidance counselor. Um, so the first season, it had been a very tight, like they'd basically just been across a desk the entire season. And so they were looking at playwrights, like how can we bring somebody in um who can just write a lot of, you know, tell story through dialogue. Um, and so they were bringing in playwrights. So I didn't really realize that I was being interviewed for showrunner. I thought I was going in just to have a general. Um, and then halfway through the meeting, I was like, I think they're pitching me the show. And again, I left the meeting having no clue that that and I went to my husband and I went home and I went, I swear, I think they were asking me to run a show. And he goes, and he goes, well, tell me what they and I started describing the meeting. He goes, You need to call them right back. You need to call them back right now and tell them, yes, you'll run the show. He said, Did you say it in the in the meeting? I don't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. So I called them back and I said, Are you asking me to like run this thing? And they were like, Yeah, pitch us again, pitch us your take on what season two would be. Um, and so again, you know, you sit down and you come up with, okay, here's what I would do for season two. Um, and I wanted to work with a school shooting. Um, so so I I worked, yeah, I worked on that and then came back and it happened really fast. It was really, really fast. It was like from the meeting to uh to staffing my room, I want to say was like maybe two or three months. It was crazy. Yeah, it was really fast. And I was, you know, again, I remember sitting on this set for NBC at the player, and we were out in like some remote location, and it was like a hundred degrees, and everybody was sweating, and the sushi truck got like stuck coming up the mountain, and people were like pushing the sushi truck up so we could have sushi on top of this mountain. And I remember looking around and going, This is not sustainable. Like, this is not sustainable. This is not gonna last. We're not gonna have sushi trucks on the mountain for much longer. And then what happened was the show, the guidance show came and it was like, you know, micro budget. Um, and you know, everybody's just like, you're just winging it. Um, but you're still expected to do, you know, you're still expected to create half hour of material, um, 10 of those, and your budgets are, you know, under half a million per episode. So, and you don't want it to look like crap, right? Because your name's on it. So, so, and you want it to work, and this is my first opportunity to really put my name on something, and and we've got these micro budgets, and and how are we gonna do this? So, you end up hiring a lot of people who need the break, right? A lot of talented people who need that first job. Um, and you're just putting a lot of uh a lot of faith in them for sure.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

So much to unpack here. First off, the metaphor of pushing a sushi truck up a mountain might be the metaphor for Hollywood. Like uh all of our experiences right now, a broken down sushi truck that maybe at this point never makes it to the top of the mountain. Uh, and also the two things I just want to comment on is like going from the player, which you said was a mini-movie every week. And I understand that feeling from coming from the NCIS franchise as well, where you just have a lot to play with, to guidance, which seems like you are making a micro-budget film every week, yet with intensely more pressure on you. Uh, my first question is you must have a theory because you've told me the story. The reason one of the reasons why you were telling me the story of going from staff writer to a showrunner at when we were at the pool one day. Uh, and uh my wife is like, you need to ask her on. That's a fantastic story to your podcast. And the question I ever asked that day was, you must have a theory about why they picked you. Because it you you were you you told two stories now where it was felt like a sort of random to you, where someone asked you to be kind of be a showrunner mentor, and then someone asked you to be a showrunner, but none of that stuff was probably random. There was something that led you to this moment, you know, obviously talent on the page, but what it's not often where they're picking a staff writer out of the group of people and saying, This is the person that's gonna run the show next year. So, what do you think happened behind the scenes?

SPEAKER_03 24:28

Do you remember what I said?

SPEAKER_00 24:31

You do?

SPEAKER_03 24:32

Remind me.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

No, no, I don't remember from back then. No, no, no. I'm asking the question today, fresh. I don't know what you said. I'm curious.

SPEAKER_03 24:41

Um, I mean, I think because I again gosh, can I tell this story?

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_03 24:51

Okay, I'm gonna tell I'm gonna tell the story and then we'll make a decision. My experience on the set of the player was uh wow. It was again, we had we we were we were we had Aston Martins, we had, you know, we had really expensive cars. Um and there was a there was a wreck um on the set. And I had to, I was a staff writer. It was my it was my first coverage of of production as a staff writer, and I was up with a unit and B unit was doing stunts, and I had to essentially stop production as a staff writer on a four million dollar a week production and call, you know, stop everything and take control of the situation and call the showrunners and get everybody, everybody in every executive position on a call and like handle it. Um and I shared that story. I shared that story in my interview. Um, and I think when I said that, they were like, oh, okay, she's gonna be fine. Um and I think I told the sushi story too. I think I did tell the sushi story as well of like, okay, like this isn't sustainable, right? Like we're gonna all have to learn how to work differently. Um and uh I think because I had had theatrical experience, but also because I had these crazy experiences where like real, real tragedies, you know, like real things were happening. Uh people got sent to the hospital, you know, the the car was wrecked, the total, the camera was totaled, like you know, there was real craziness happening. Um, and the fact that I was able to manage all that, I think gave them the the um the the trust in me to hand it over. Is that the story I told, Noah?

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Yeah, that was that was part, no, you that was definitely the answer I was looking for. No, and you only told part of the story, so I was holding the rest of the story for today's podcast. Okay, so so let's talk, you know. Obviously, you and I know each other, have known each other for a few years now, and uh a lot of uh the last few years I've been watching you uh as you've been navigating the writing of a memoir, which you produced live. I mean, live as in you were producing chapters, probably not as you wrote them, but as you finished them and polished them and you were releasing them to the world, and you were very open, and things were still felt you know fairly raw when I first met you, and your husband had passed away, you had moved to Hawaii, there was a dream you had, you showed up and you just dropped everything to take care of yourself and your daughter, right? And you began writing this memoir. Can we talk a little bit about the memoir and about that time period in your life?

SPEAKER_03 28:06

Uh yeah, I mean, uh I had just delivered, well, so season two of guidance. Um, I delivered season two, and my brother-in-law died by suicide about two weeks later. Um, and my husband went into a very deep depression. Okay, so my husband had gone into a very deep depression. Um, I knew I was gonna do season three, and I was pitching season three, and he, my husband just couldn't seem to get out of this depression. It just kept going and going. It was getting worse. And he'd always been very supportive of my career, and all of a sudden he was like not supportive of my career. And I was like, what is going on here? Like he's there's like a man walking around my house in a Clayton suit, um, and he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Um, and at the time he was actually on set with us. Um, I I he was an actor and he was actually on set and and working in the show with me. And shortly after we wrapped production, he was diagnosed. And um I delivered uh season three, and um and then we went into all of his recovery, trying to recover, trying to, trying to address this. He did have a short period of of recovery. It wasn't remission, but he did have a short period that gave us a little bit of a break. Um, and during that time, I started to, I got um a pilot deal from CBS. So I was writing a pilot while we were going back and forth from radiation and surgeries and all these things. And during that time, I was having this dream. I kept having this dream about a beach. I kept seeing this house, I kept seeing this beach, and I knew it was Hawaii, but I had never been here. Um and I knew that if I was seeing this place, it meant that he was dead because I would certainly not move him away from his doctors at City of Hope. Um so I didn't want to believe the dream, but I kept having the dream. I kept having the dream over and over and over again. Um and then he died in January of 2019. My daughter really started to completely fall apart at that point. And um, she was seven at the time. And I just knew that we needed to make a really big change. Um and it just it just didn't make any sense to try to stay in a business where I'm working 14-hour days. I'm now a solo parent. I my daughter needs me. I'm no good to anybody at this point. And yes, I have this pilot deal and and I'm delivering it, but how am I gonna actually do this? I can't really do this. Um, it's not fair to anybody. It's not fair to my daughter, it's not fair to me, it's not fair to anybody on that show, it's not fair to the executives, it's not fair to anybody. So I said, let's just go. We'll go to Eva. I got a little cottage in Eva and didn't know where I was calling it Ewa because I didn't know you pronounced the W's as Bs. So we went to Eva and um we locked ourselves into a cottage for a month. And at the end of the month, my daughter was like, Do you want to go for a walk or something? Shouldn't you like go for a walk? And I was like, Oh, okay, she's doing better. Like she can let me out of her sight. Um, and it just became very clear like we needed to be here and we needed to focus on our healing. And we did. And we moved here and and just sort of started making life. And then COVID hit, and everybody went into hibernation. So we weren't the only ones in hibernation, and that gave us a little bit more time to be in hibernation. Um, and then I started to come out of hibernation and started hiking and going to Peru and Thailand and Bali and studying meditation and yoga and and plant medicine and doing ayahuasca journeys and just started really uh searching for what am I really supposed to be now? Like, am I a writer? I don't even know if I'm a writer anymore. It took a while uh to even come back to writing because it was too painful. You know, like writing is where we unearth who we are, and it was too, it was just too fresh. It was too much. So it took a while before I think it took about three years before I actually started writing. Um, maybe four, uh, three and a half, maybe. And I think I the the the ayahuasca journey was the piece for me. She showed when I got when I was laying on the floor vomiting and doing everything else. Um, ayahuasca was showing me, you know, you're a writer and and you need to write this as a book and you need to share your story. And uh and so I got kind of the message from ayahuasca to go back and start writing. And that's when the blog I started it as a blog, and I just started writing very raw, like this is what I'm going through right now, this is what I'm doing, this is how I'm processing it. And then it became like it was more of a blog, and then it became like this journey. I've said, Oh, I'm gonna do 50 hikes and I'll write about the hikes. And then it became uh uh the hikes were too limited. I wanted to write about other things that were going on in my life, and then it became uneven ground. And it's really been like just sharing like here's how writers process, right? Like here's here's what we do. Like it's really been um so freeing to just write whatever I want to write and not have anybody giving me notes, nobody's telling me this doesn't work. There were, I didn't care if the grammar was right, I didn't care if it was spelled right. I was just putting it out, putting it out, putting it out. Um, and it seemed to really resonate for people. And um, and then people started asking me for like advice about like how do I do this? And it sort of turned into sort of a uh impromptu chaplaincy. Um and so yeah, I have about 20, 20,000 people who come to the site over the course of a month and they send me questions and then I go online now and and talk about, you know, very specific, like, oh, should I, you know, what should I get somebody who's grieving? Like, oh, well, get them, you know, Uber Eats cards or like really very like practical sort of stuff that way. But it's been so like after writing for other people for years and years and years to write for myself again um has been huge, like hugely freeing. And and I was gonna say very scary and very scary too, because it's there's no, you know, I can't go, oh, that's my character. I am the character, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:29

And the book I I I've read passages and I've read your advice online, and as someone who's dealt with cancer and made it through, and then you write about cancer so eloquently about how to talk to people who are sick, how to talk to people who've just lost somebody, and I feel like you are so always so dead on because people are uh, you know, can be callous, I guess, in their own way without realizing it that they're they're actually being more hurtful than helpful because they get really awkward. And I think the way you presented it, but this this uneven ground is now available as a book, correct? Not only you can you find it online, but you can buy it.

SPEAKER_03 36:04

Yeah, it's we're we're finishing the cover and uh it'll be out in the next couple weeks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

Okay. Um well, our my penultimate question, we always ask the same question as the finale, and I'll leave that for Dan. But the penultimate question is I know like uh life surprised you once again. So you were set in Laminalo, you had a great life, you were you had you were writing this this book, you you were having some success with it, people were reading it, and I thought you were done with Hollywood, and maybe you thought you were done with Hollywood, but I know the siren call has called you home, that you're going back into the fray. What changed your mind and what made you think, okay, it's time for me to face this again, and what lessons have you learned? Because I think you're a very different SJ Hodge, probably than ran this than who ran that show about five years ago.

SPEAKER_03 36:53

Yeah, I I wasn't, you know, I often say that I don't really feel like I have much choice about the way I move through the world. Like I feel like God kind of just smacks me up the head, you know, with a brick. Um, and so we, you know, we were we were here and and the housing situation we're in is changing, and um, my daughter's school was changing, and and she got into a school, an art school in Los Angeles, and that seemed like a really good fit for her because she is a visual artist. Um, and you know, when you're a parent, like they come first. Um, and so I I wasn't planning on returning. Um, but then I I saw the school. I came in and looked at the school for my daughter and went, oh, okay. And then I just made a few phone calls and said, hey, I think I'm coming back. And all of a sudden there were just meetings. There were just meetings, and um, pretty much every meal for three weeks was with somebody. Um, and I went, oh, okay, I think LA is welcoming home. Uh the funny this and this is the the kicker for it. Everywhere I went, there was a parking space in front of the where I needed to be. And I was like, okay, LA is really messing with me now. They're really saying there's there's literally space for you here. Like that, like nobody can get a parking space in Hollywood on Friday night at 8 p.m. And I had a spot in front of the Hollywood Improv. Free. No, you know what I mean? And I no ballet. And I was like, okay, this is getting crazy. Um, so I feel like it just again, just in the same way the dream led me to Hawaii, like I feel like I'm being called back. Um, but I hope, you know, for me, the big piece is the uneven ground, the first book is done, but there's two more books as part of that series. Um, and so can continuing to write on that for me is is super important as well. Like there's just um that that to me is my soul. Like I have to have something for my soul, and then the other work can come to ordinary.

SPEAKER_02 39:15

What great answer. Um the between your sushi truck up a mountain and uh the free uh finding an available parking spot in in Hollywood, you've sort of come up with two of the best um analogies for the world that you people operate in. Um extraordinary. Um I would like to keep going because this is fascinating in a very different way to other episodes we've done, but unfortunately that's not how podcasts work, so we have to we have to wrap it up, which is with this final question which we ask every guest, which is if you could give a single piece of advice to somebody wanting to enter the industry, what would that single piece of advice be?

SPEAKER_03 40:10

I mean, one of the smartest things I ever did when I was, I I didn't, I did not know anybody. I'm from West Virginia, baby. I don't know anybody in this business. My mom was a teacher, my dad was a mill write. I didn't know anybody in Hollywood. People didn't even I how could you be a writer? Writer wasn't something you did for a living, it was like something that happened that somewhere. It wasn't it like I was supposed to be like a lawyer or a teacher. And what I did was I had gone to NYU and I sat down with it, it was like a I can't remember what year it was, but it was a list of all the pilots and shows that were going that year. And I looked up every single showrunner and writer on every single show and figured out which ones had come out of NYU. And I wrote a letter to every single one of them and said, would you? I'm I'm graduating from NYU. Would you meet with me? And I'll buy you a coffee. And would you give me just advice about what to do coming out of NYU, how to break in the industry? And I had 13 meetings. And one of those meetings was Gary Glassberg, who ran NCIS. And Gary ended up introducing me to his agent. He introduced me to a bunch of writer friends of his. Um, Jim Valilee met with me, but he was in comedy and I was a drama person. But Jim also has continued to be somebody who's in my life. Those, I just sat down and did the heavy lifting of like, okay, what can I do? Like, how can I meet people? Um, so I would just say, like, go down those, they they make, you know, they go, they list these things every year. Here's who's working, here's who's working. If you have some way that you're connected, like if you came out of the school that they came out of, if you if you grew up in the hometown where they grew up, like just write the letter and ask. Ask for the meeting. Can I just can I just take you out and pick your brain? I'll pay for the coffee. And of course, they all paid for the coffees.

SPEAKER_02 42:32

What a brilliant answer. Um, so completely coincidentally, last night uh I was at a work event and a kid who's been doing an internship with us has just finished, and he uh his internship, and he's gonna go back and do his last year at college. And he said, What should I do in terms of trying to get he wants to work for any sports, I work in sport, and he said I want to work for any sports team. He doesn't really care which one. And he said, What's the best way of approaching it? And I I said uh some version of like go through the list of all the general managers of every team in the NBA, NFL, whatever it is, find some kind of link. Like, did they go to I think he's at Syracuse, find some kind of link and then write to them all and see if they'll take them, ask them to be a mentor for you or see if they'll give you a meeting. And to be honest, he asked me this question, I couldn't think of an answer, so I sort of made it up on the spot. I've no idea whether it would work or not, but it feels it felt like a sort of broadly sensible piece of advice to give to a young person. I'm now gonna call him and tell him to listen to this podcast because you you've done the Hollywood equivalent of that, and it worked incredibly well. Um it's it's brilliant. And look, um, I'm very um it's such a good answer because when we ask for advice, people give useful pieces of advice, but this is obviously an incredibly practical piece of advice. Um, at a time when I don't know if you do social media.