Take 55 - Showrunner Simon Barry, Warrior Nun

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 scripts literature.

SPEAKER_04 0:14

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

SPEAKER_00 0:53

What I've realized that that was it's never one page five. There will be other stars.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

We've got some good news, we've got some bad news. So the good news is in this intro part, you won't hear Noah's voice. The bad news, unfortunately, is in the main episode you won't hear my voice. So one thing we said we would do in this second season of screaming for the Hollywood a bit is uh mix things up, try different things. One of the things we talked about trying is using guest co-hosts. So we've got a fascinating interview with an amazing man called Simon Barry. Uh he uh ran among many other things the Warrior Nun, which I absolutely loved, uh despite it being about Warrior Nuns, which I didn't think was a topic that would particularly interest me, but it remarkably did. And I won't be on it. The interview was conducted by uh your industry co-host, as he likes to call himself, Noah Evsen, along with uh fantastic friend of the podcast, Grant Pierce Myers, who you'll remember from episode six famously got green lit for the maze runner and fired from the maze runner in the same phone call. So uh Grant joins Noah, they both ask questions. Uh the cutting wit, uh uh the meanness that you might expect won't be there. But uh excellent questions, actually, I must admit. Even better answers, and a really good episode of the podcast. So I'm sorry I can't be there for you. One thing you probably uh in some ways I think it'd be fair to say it'd probably be best that I wasn't there because uh Simon is British born and uh is a Canadian. So the politeness, the civility, the use of clever grammar, and the the general overall high intellect that you would get on a podcast where a British-born Canadian and myself are on it would probably be just a bit too much for you all. So we're keeping it simple. And it's Grant, it's Noah, it's Simon. Please enjoy.

SPEAKER_04 3:08

Welcome back to the Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss podcast. My name is Noah Eslin, and I am your industry co-host. Sadly, Dan Rutstein won't be with us today, but that just means I get to intro two people. First off, we have today's guest co-host and friend of the pod, Grant Pierce Myers. You might remember Grant from episode six of our podcast. Amongst other things, Grant was the co-writer of Maze Runner. Welcome, Grant.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Uh, very happy to be here, Noah. I I guess maybe this is me failing upwards for once.

SPEAKER_04 3:39

That sounds about right. Uh and of course, we have our special guest that I'm delighted to introduce, Simon Barry, will be in the hot seat today. Simon is a longtime screenwriter, TV writer, showrunner, and director who wrote the feature film The Art of War. He was also the executive producer, creator, and showrunner of Continuum, Ghost Wars, Bad Blood, and most recently, Warrior None. Welcome, Simon.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

Thanks, guys. Uh, which part of the podcast do I get to do the actual screaming? I've been waiting for an actual opportunity to scream because there's a scream in me that needs to get out. I don't know what's appropriate, but you tell let me know.

SPEAKER_04 4:16

I'd say we jump in with the screen. Ah that was, by the way. That was that was a great scream. And that was actually the when we were starting the podcast, it was a metaphorical scream into Twitter that started this ball rolling where I was like so frustrated about something, and I screamed into the Hollywood Abyss on Twitter. And people said, you know what, that might actually make a really good podcast. Uh so let me just jump right. Let's let's just jump right into our first question. You a lot of times when I'm uh doing these podcasts and we're interviewing people, we see that people have sort of a circuitous route to where you are today. They've started as staff writer or you see a lot of assistant credits. Not in your case. In your case, it seems like you have a feature film credit, and then all of a sudden, you're creating shows. So I want to talk a little bit about the time before that, because certainly there was some failure that led to where you are today.

SPEAKER_03 5:17

No question. It's actually a great question because it it's it's it segues nicely into one of my personal theories about failure and success, which is um uh ignorance and delusion. Um I have I think there's a factor in, especially in the Hollywood process, where if you have the right amount of ignorance about how hard things are, and the right amount of delusion about yourself that you can actually accomplish something in the absence of all logic and reason, you can actually open a window that allows you to do something that normally you might not be able to do. Um, I was lucky enough to start my career in the 90s before Twitter, because so I didn't know a lot about how hard this industry was. There was no guide to tell you, hey, this is actually really difficult. I had this stupid, you know, um self-motivated, I guess, delusional state of thinking, well, I can just go to LA and be a screenwriter uh or a director, even though I have really no um business thinking that. And I had this uh fortunate um beginning to my career. I started working on sets as an assistant cameraman. And um and it was basically my opportunity to work on film sets. I didn't want to be a cameraman per se. I just wanted to be in the action. I just wanted a job on a film set so badly I was keen to do anything. And I ended up being an assistant for you know the better part of about eight or nine years, and worked my way up from like a trainee to a second assistant loader to a focus puller. And was about to get into camera operating, um, which I thought was a great job, when I met a writer named Ed Solomon on a movie I was the assistant on. And it was a movie called Leaving Normal that Ed Zwick was directing. And Ed was this very approachable real person who was for me this this um embodiment of like a real person who could make a career in Hollywood, and it made me feel like, oh, you don't have to be someone, you know, you don't have to be like this shooting star personality or this this weirdly um talented unicorn. You can be like a very friendly, nice person who just works hard and has talent. And Ed was basically um effusive that way. He was he was a real person, and he gave me the confidence to at least think that I could do that. But you know, I hate telling this story because it's really not what you should ever do. I'm the idiot who moved to LA without a screenplay, thinking I could become a screenwriter. Like I literally went down thinking, oh, I've made a few, I've made a few short films. And I thought I'll just screen a short film or two, and people will discover me as this great filmmaker, and I'll just get a career out of that. And I had this with this screening in LA where I'd invited all the people I'd ever met on the film sets I'd worked in, because I was in Vancouver at the time. And so I was working on all these American sets, and I invited all these people I'd met to come to this screening, and nobody showed up. Not a single person showed up to my screening. And it was like a 35-mil print of a short film I'd spent a ton of my own money on. I was already broke. And I got to LA, and this dude was there who was really sweet, nice guy, who was just there because he was dating a girl I knew. And he said to me, Well, um, your film, your short film's really good. You should send me your script. And I was like, I don't have a script. And he goes, Well, you gotta write a script, buddy. Like, you're in Hollywood now. You don't you don't have a conversation with someone if you want to be a filmmaker without a script either you wrote or a script you you have the rights to and you control. So I was like, Well, what do I write? He said, Well, write the movie, write a movie that a uh an A-list movie star and an A-list director would want to make. That was all he said to me. So I literally locked myself in a room for about four months and just um wrote that script and it became my uh calling card. So, and the thing was that I, you know, I'd moved down to LA and I was dating this girl who, as soon as I arrived, had gone away to Australia to work on a movie with a director she was working with. And while I was in LA, I'd we'd gotten this apartment and I couldn't afford it on my own. And then one thing led to another, and I got a phone call from her that you know she was breaking up with me. And I had literally I'd literally been buried in this apartment with no furniture for three or four months writing a screenplay. And I I couldn't work in LA because I didn't have any papers as a Canadian. I was just basically a monk. And um, and the day she called me to break up with me was the same day that uh an agent called me and said they wanted to sign me because they'd read the script. So I was literally sitting in an empty living room listening to Annie Lennox crying on the floor with no furniture in one minute, and then the phone rang two hours later, and it was this young agent I had met just randomly who had said, Hey, send me your script, and I sent it to him. And he said, I want to sign you. I think this is great. And then that basically opened the door to me getting a job, uh, getting a visa, work visa, and being able to stay in LA and start my career, which led to uh the Art of War and working a lot at Warner Brothers for a while, basically developing screenplays and being an onset, uh not an onset, an on the on-the-lot writer who was tossed around from development job to development job for a little while. So that's how it all got started. It's not something you should ever duplicate or even try to duplicate because it's so stupid. I mean, what who goes to LA without a screenplay to be a screenwriter? I'm literally that, you know, I'm that lucky and ignorant. Uh now I'm, you know, I've learned the hard way. Uh, but that's probably why my career is so kind of um uh I guess you could say, you know, uh checkerboarded in terms of the work. I had no strategy at all. It was really dumb luck.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Uh well, well, Simon, checkerboard's awfully generous when we s when we talk about you going from the art of war in 2000, and then there's nothing on your IMDB page until 2012.

SPEAKER_03 11:29

Um what is in the dark years? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

Yeah. Tell that's so tell us about that. I mean, you know, uh the the thrill of getting a feature film made is there's nothing like it. And then what and then, but what is it like afterwards, you know, when nothing happens for a long stretch?

SPEAKER_03 11:48

Yeah, I mean, the out of the gate things were very quick for me, which was great. And then I and I think the writing was on the wall at the at the premiere for the art of war, which was at the Chinese, and I showed up and there wasn't, I didn't have a seat, you know, they didn't have me on the list, which was like fantastic. I was like, what the hell is going on? Like this town sucks. So I I had my, you know, that was my kind of like, oh yeah, you're a feature writer, it doesn't mean anything moment. And then I started getting bounced around uh to do basically like a lot of um development work through other companies that for movies that did get made but not with me. Um, you know, I mean at some point I was involved with movies like Speed Racer, Oceans Eleven, um Ice Age, and a bunch of others that obviously went on to great success. That I never actually got a chance at writing the screenplay of, but I was in you know early development meetings at this treatment level and trying to basically win my my lottery ticket at at getting those jobs, but never did. And then um I did end up uh in an opportunity to write um a limited series for USA Network. Uh Jeff Wachtel, who was running USA at the time, had this book um by Harlan Coben called Gone for Good, which was essentially the earliest days of um um limited series at USA. It was very early days, and they hadn't really done one yet. And so I was the you know feature writer who had gotten a shot at writing this limited series for TV show. And it turned it worked out great for me in terms of the con of the um the sample. I thought the script that I wrote to a couple of scripts actually, because it was it was a five or six parter. And that started a uh a journey working at USA that then led to working at CVS and spelling. And over those 10 years, I kept thinking, well, I'm gonna be a TV writer and I'm just gonna write something that gets made. And you never think in year one, this is a 10-year journey. You just keep going because you don't, because every year you're on a job, every year you're getting a you get an opportunity to pitch something, or the a producer at a network or a network executive brings something to you. And I was very fortunate in that executives like Nina Tassler and Christina Davis and um Jeff uh Locktell would always they I got an opportunity to work all the time. So I was making a living, but nothing ever clicked, nothing was going my way. And I think I think I was uh it was um somebody you were who was on your podcast recently was talking about that moment when you realize you're working for for the job, not for your your soul, the script of your soul. And I was definitely caught up in that in that um hamster wheel of thinking, oh, I just need to work. I don't need to really think about what my voice is because I was I was fairly immature because I hadn't written very much. And I was not really coming to writing from a place that was, you know, I think as earnest and as honest as I probably should have been. And so I was getting a lot of work, but it was it was seemed fruitless because nothing was moving forward. And so I went from, you know, working on sets for a decade as an assistant cameraman to um getting my first movie made very quickly and very and very easily to essentially what turned out to be a decade of nothing. And it really did it did make me rethink my approach. And and it the result of my rethinking was continuum. Uh continuum became kind of my uh way out of the hamster wheel. I had to like get off that, and I did. I I basically made a uh a um a concerted effort to do two things. One, to stop being a hired gun, which was a difficult decision. But two, I I moved back to Vancouver. I I moved back to be with my wife and also to uh really decide that I was going to take control of what I was writing for my own purposes, not for someone else's. So it was a good, it was a lot, yeah. I I wish it hadn't taken 10 years, to be honest, to figure that out. But I think that when you're busy, you still don't stop enough to think about why you're doing what you're doing and what is it doing to you as a human being. And and also just forgetting. I mean, I'm a I love cinema and I love television, I love storytelling. And I was so enamored with being part of the Hollywood system as an outsider, as a as a Canadian kid, that I basically was just thrilled to be wanted at all, as to be honest with you. I just was like, I don't belong, I'm I just don't deserve this. But at the same time, I have to tell you, I was also quite happy in those years early on not being produced because I was just happy to be working as a writer and living uh a very I was having a great time living in Hollywood. I had a very lucrative job and I was um I made great friends that are still my friends to this day in those days. Uh but I just wasn't I knew there was something unsatisfying that was eating away at me creatively. And it was really the idea that that I wasn't really standing up for myself creatively. And so that's probably why things changed so dramatically in in in 20, 2009, 2010, when um my career definitely took a big, a big turn. And I, you know, when overnight I became a creator showrunner, essentially.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

I'm kind of fascinated by this moment, and I love the term hamster wheel, by the way, because I think everyone in this industry knows what it's like to be in that spot. So when you're on that wheel and you're starting to realize, like you said, that you're more of a mercenary and you're not writing the stuff you care about. How do you get the confidence to write the thing you care about? I mean, because you know, you you know that you're making a living here. Um, the stuff's not getting made. I I know that always dings my confidence. How do you how do you decide what that passion project's gonna be and where does the confidence come from to write it?

SPEAKER_03 18:01

I I think I have to go back to that uh healthy delusion thing I talked about earlier, which is do you have to, I think to survive in this industry, at least for me, that delusion that things were are gonna get better and things will work out is is kind of primal to the rejection process. I mean, I certainly experienced as much rejection as anyone else, but I at least I always had a job to fall back on that felt like it was, you know, as bad as it was, I always had a gig, you know, I always had like a pilot to write. And I think I wrote in those 10 years, I think I wrote something like 14 or 15 unproduced pilots that were all commissioned at at the network level. I mean, it was a it was not a didn't feel like failure at the time. I was going into offices like at CBS uh and selling in the room. And in some cases, I would sell two pilots in one year. Uh it was it was wonderful. But I was always the bridesmaid every year. It was like the phone call would invariably come up at around Super Bowl. It was like, hey, it's down between you and another show, and we're gonna make the decision after the Super Bowl. And you know, whoever was running the network would, you know, say it was either the other show or no no new show. You know, no, they would they would reduce the order or something. So that always bit, but I think that that that sense that, well, I'm this close, I've got to keep at it, and just kind of kept me thinking that, you know, I could, I could, I would get that moment. But I think I was the wrong writer. I all the time I was working at CBS, that which was a great group of people. I loved the executives and I loved their professionalism and how they worked. Their notes were great, but I never felt like I was writing a CBS show. I always felt like I was writing a cable show that was trying to be a CBS show. And I would even go into meetings sometimes and go, am I really the right guy for this? Because I was selling these really high concept ideas that they loved and they bought, but never seemed to be catching fire. And I just felt like uh fraud in that sense, you know, that these are people who supported me creatively, but I was not really gonna deliver the the bullseye. And so at the end of the day, I think, you know, I had to rewire my thinking a little bit in terms of what is the Simon Barry show, as opposed to being someone who was trying to make someone else's show. I had to stop and think, like, what's your show? What's the show you want to make? And how do you how do you find that um uh place in yourself creatively where you I can identify it? I didn't really know how to identify it because I just wanted to go do like a Star Wars first, you know. And I was like, well, I'm never gonna get to do a Star Wars. So I should write the show that I would want to watch. And that was like a really simple thing, but I think it took me a long time to understand what that means. It's you when you get to a point and you go, what's the show you want to roll? What what what show do you want to watch? Not what what career do you want to have? Like make the show that you want to sit down and watch every week and and be passionate about. And I was watching a lot of shows I love. I certainly wasn't writing any of the anything like that for on the uh for the jobs I was getting. I was writing something that I probably wouldn't be um, you know, tuning into and making an evening out of.

SPEAKER_04 21:14

This answer is resonating with me on so many levels. And I think I've told the story on a podcast, so I'm not gonna tell it again, but the idea of like realizing you're not writing your soul's work or you're not good enough, or you need to get better and knowing where you're at and knowing you've had some success, but in if you want to stay here, you need to just do better, be better, and recognizing that and adjusting. But what you're really talking about is not only finding your voice, which is what's something we talk to young writers about a lot, but finding sort of the core of who you are, right? That that's a little bit different. It's not on the page, it's more about your entire identity. And was that a moment or was that a process?

SPEAKER_03 21:53

No, I I definitely I'd always been a you know, it's funny, I'd always been uh a political politics junkie. you know and I I was fascinated with sociology and human behavior and and and as I was getting older I was just you know I just knew that there was a backdoor into my opinions that wouldn't feel preachy or um you know pedantic and when I came up with the idea for continuum which was essentially you know a political show hidden in a time travel show my I could satisfy so many different itches you know I could scratch so many different things that were I'm a nerd so I could do the nerd part really well I had a fascination with you know um modern politics and and social behavior and kind of the the um the lemming mentality and things that were going wrong with societies that and I could basically back into some of those concepts and technology how technology affects behavior and how technology affects society in a way that didn't seem like uh that was what the show was it was essentially a cop show right and and but buried within it was this wonderful little um allegory of um you know modern terrorism essentially which was you're you know one man's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter or has is another person's um um hero and the idea that in time travel and in science fiction you can say so much just by creating these um these uh analogies and they and the audience gets into the mythology and the time travel stuff and they don't really feel like they're being spoken to on a level that is really a little bit more you know meaningful and I thought that that was a great I was really satisfied with that opportunity to do something that felt like you know a sci-fi time travel cop show that actually had something to say about what was going on with technology, the police state, surveillance, terrorism and all these things without it being a very heavy show, you know and that for me was very satisfying as a person, as a writer I had like endless energy and enthusiasm and it really felt like it was me. It was a show that I was that was speaking to from my perspective and a show that that was a little bit of my um optics on things without it being you know very uh straightforward you know it was it was like a roundabout subversive way into topics that I thought were cool. And so that was really for me that was kind of my wake up call.

SPEAKER_04 24:38

And and and once you it seems like to me and again the IMDB profile only tells a very small part of the story but once you you wrote continuum you have a number of other shows some of that I'd even mention you know in the intro where you've either created or you show ran or you have a whole sort of group of them but what does sort of failure look like at this level from this perch uh when you're at this when is it is it the day to day or is it in between the shows are you still struggling to find and it just you know you got you got some going but there was like five or 10 that didn't go that really hurt you like like what what does that look like for you?

SPEAKER_03 25:13

Well I think I've I think with the perspective now of of this many years is that you know the happiness needle I realize is something that's constantly moving, you know and and failure I constantly redefine. You know when I was when I was younger and just working as a writer and not getting produced I did not feel like a failure because I was in my chosen profession making a living and I felt like I'd won the lottery. And so now I look back on that being unproduced for that period and going, you know, now I would consider that a failure but at the time I didn't think of it as failure at all. And so that that has been constant my entire career every time I get something that is amazing and wonderful and I have had many blessings as a writer and as a showrunner and and it's been a great I've had a great career already you realize that you end up redefining what failure means because you constantly move the the goalposts of what failure is and whether it's comparing yourself to other people I was like god damn it JJ Abrams is just he's like how can I feel good about myself when I look at JJ it's like it drives me crazy right and and then ageism creeps in is like at this point in my career Spielberg had already made like you know 10 classics. So that's of course that's dumb. I mean I should that's not healthy for you to look at yourself that way but it's sort of an inevitable ladder of of self-definition right you can't really be in this business without being acutely aware of what everyone else is doing. And then you sort of calm down at a certain point and you realize well by all measures I know I've been very lucky and I've had an amazing uh success. And that for me now is is enough. I still want to do a Star Wars I mean I want to do a Star Wars movie or a show. That is like always going to be my my end game and you know and I'll always work towards it but I think I need the dream more than I need the job. And I think that there's something very powerful about that uh that thing I said earlier which is like you have to have a this healthy delusion about where your career is going to go to survive the ups and downs. Because you know as you know even though I've been I've had a bunch of shows and and there are more coming I you always feel like you're being rejected because you are always being rejected. I mean I've lost out on two huge jobs this year two jobs that would have taken me to another tier. Now the fact I even have to say I have another tier to go to is like that's just kind of sad, right? Like I shouldn't be worried about the next tier but it's it's how do you get away from that uh feeling that you can do better and you can improve and you can work on a bigger project with a bigger budget and a bigger exposure. I mean that's like this it's a cloud that just won't go away and it doesn't make me depressed but it makes me hungry and it makes me feel like there's another there's another obstacle that I have to always um conquer. And so and that's bullshit obviously because it's relative and everything is the failure is relative and uh comparisons are relative. So it's just I think that's just part of being human and being in a community where you you can't help but compare yourself. It's just unfortunate. But maybe it is also the fuel that makes us try things we might normally not try. I think creatively in the last two years I've definitely felt like I need to step out of my comfort zone which is genre I need to step out of the things I'm that I find easy uh that I find like I've done enough times now that sort of I'm on autopilot. I need to do things that are and I express it now more as a director. When I direct I deliberately make my life difficult so that I can feel that fear and anxiety in on a level that I might not as a showrunner or as a writer because I I have things fairly under control in that field. But as a director I can actually terrify myself still which gets me really excited.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

So I you you mentioned there were a couple jobs you lost out on this year that would have taken you to another level earlier you mentioned you know you met on Oceans 11 you met on Speed Racer. I'm curious these these jobs that you go after and don't get um when those projects get made and end up on the screen do you watch them?

SPEAKER_03 29:53

How do you how do you deal seriously how do you deal with the projects that could have been yours when they come out especially if they're successful I think with I was my involvement with those things was so superficial and so early I don't really feel like I was in any way you know part of their success you know at any level and these are really early flirtations uh and usually the idea that I pitched for example my my pitch for speed racer was really Cain and Abel and it was rejected by this that ultimately you know I got I got hired by Joel Silver to develop the the the process and I pitched it to the execs at Warner Brothers and I got to the point where I was almost going to write the script and then they the director I was working with got fired and then everything fell apart and it never happened. And the movie that the Wkowskis made was completely different from the movie I had pitched. So I never felt any kind of connection uh in that way and so I and I would say most often when those jobs come up it's either something so baked in already before you get the job that the movie's going to be whatever it's going to be anyway like Oceans 11 or you provide such a dramatically different version of the movie that from the one that gets made that you never really feel like you had a shot anyway. And that I mean that happens all the time. And you know it'll keep happening because you kind of have to swing for the fences in these pitch sessions sometimes like I was up for um uh I don't even know if I'm allowed to talk about it but a big IP at Netflix. And I think I got an I got an opportunity because of Warrior None because the the the the it had done very well unexpectedly I think and so I had this opportunity to pitch this huge IP which is a a big I'm a big fan of and so I really had to swing for the fences. I couldn't go in and make it this safe predictable version I was like I'm just gonna I so I did this sort of Shakespearean heavy is the head that wears the crown pitch about you know a character a character pitch essentially for a non-real for an IP that isn't really character driven and you know I didn't get the job it was but I think I was the runner up. And it hurt because I thought I they probably went with the predictable version. I could have pitched that I could have gone with the easy straightforward fastball down the middle version but I had to throw like the you know the curve and and and that was more satisfying for me creatively but obviously I took a it was a it was a higher risk pitch and I struck up. And you know and and that's you know that's that hurts on on the level but I also I'm glad I didn't pitch the predictable fastball version because that probably would have been harder to make and you know the commitment now I am so highly aware and attuned to the the years of what actual showrunning commitment means. You have to really love your show on so many levels not just conceptually but the team the cast the other writers and it's like it is this relationship that can destroy you if it's not healthy. You know so you want to you at least you want the nugget of the idea to be so enthralling to you just as a person that you feel like I want to wake up every morning and work on this. And if you don't feel that way it's gonna be you know it's gonna be hard. So yeah it hurts. It hurts not doing getting those IPs that you do go, I would be so good for this, but you can't control it.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

I want to talk about something you do have control over uh warrior none. So uh you think yeah nice one. Uh well yeah yeah now tell me all the ways you don't control it. Um so so warrior none comes the season one comes out in uh around July 2020. I remember my Twitter feed blowing up people loving it you know it was very hard not to get spoiled. But I'm curious in in the way that shows are released now like on Netflix where you get them all at once, do you how do you deal with going from everyone's talking about your show one week to they've moved on to the next thing the next week I mean because to me I'm not sure I could take that sudden like wait you guys loved me a few hours ago what about me now?

SPEAKER_03 34:23

Yeah I I think I mean I was well prepared for the um the the the diminishing returns that you describe on social media when it comes to a show. I mean having had you know three other shows four other shows come out really does prepare you for all of that um feedback being something you kind of get addicted to but at the same time you realize is is a um it's it's a curve that's that falls off quite steeply. And so what happens with uh that is it's great. You're right the first few weeks it's enormous it's overwhelming and um you can't even keep up with it. And then it sort of it distills down to the core fans that never go away that they're always there for you and they're the true um uh advocates for the show on social media and they kind of keep you going and you and you try and you know throw them a bone every now and then of like a hint of what's coming or photos or what have you um the good news is is that you know once you get busy again that is so all consuming the social media part of it becomes you know less of a measure of your you know your validation I guess and just getting down to work is is is really all you can focus on. And I think I don't know I I'm I'm fascinated with Netflix's business model and I understand it really well that it is a monster of of sorts that that isn't designed to lift up any one show really uh you're part of an ecosystem uh and it's a very robust ecosystem that's designed to appeal to everyone on the planet like that's not an over I think I'm not overstating that. I think they really do want to make a show for every human being and their taste whatever that taste is and they do they do a good job of sort of bringing you into the fold and explaining to a showrunner and even the the writer's room on on War or None we were brought into sort of this classroom setting where they sort of walked us through their the way they distribute and and target um shows to specific groups of people like and how they they curate individual images even to those groups of of people so that everyone feels like they're being uh serviced directly as a as a um as a consumer so I think that you know when you when you see that in operation you're all you're almost already prepared for the inevitable trailing off of enthusiasm and marketing. I mean I felt lucky that we got a billboard on sunset and Timesquare because a lot of shows don't you know and that for me was like okay they they believe in the show this is a by netflix standards not an expensive show not a show that they need to put out there to in uh PR terms to make their investment back. We were we were like the little engine that could I felt and so they were they were promoting us out of I think a sense of of that they believed in us that the show could succeed which was nice. So I couldn't really criticize that process because I was benefiting from it. But I totally get what you're saying. I mean a lot of shows and shows that are made by friends of mine have been have been lost in the shuffle because there's it's a it's a very very very big ocean of content and so it's very easy to get you know lost as just another you know molecule.

SPEAKER_04 38:02

In in the ecosystem of TV today and what you're doing now again uh you know speaking as a fan of of warrior none and I really like the things you were doing in there but you you opened this conversation talking about your soul's work and I'm I'm guessing you put you know a good deal of your soul into warrior none to make it the success that it did and the other writers were involved and now looking forward I'm not saying warrior none's ending but you're looking deeper into your career are you do you want to push deeper into your soul's work?

SPEAKER_03 38:32

Is that even possible with the type of ecosystem and machines we're dealing with today I think well recently I think inspired by shows like Chernobyl and Succession I I feel like you know as writers we always look at shows that we would love to work on but we know deep in our hearts we're not good enough to work on, you know, that we're just not good enough writers to to be part of because these people are operating at such a higher level um but but there are also things that you go what what am I interested in? What are the stories that do scare me to tell because I think I want to be scared and I want to feel like I'm not I am the wrong writer sometimes to prove just to myself that I can do this. So I have been actively looking out looking for for projects now that are the things that I would normally never approach because I would think oh no this is something that they should get Craig Mason or Jesse Armstrong to do because they're really great at this and I'm not and I go well I'll never know if I'm good at this or not if I don't try. And even if I try and fail I think I need to do that just because when you write so much uh as I do just out out of the course of your day-to-day job I'm you know you're I'm writing it's it's like breathing right there's no there's no distinction anymore between getting up and getting to a keyboard and just just living normal life it's like it's it's a constant. So you go well I just got to take all that energy and all that momentum and put it into something that terrifies me creatively and makes me feel like I can actually uh change lanes even even in the even in the exercise it doesn't even have to sell I just have to like see if I can finish it and get it done in a way that I feel like yeah I can hold this up against you know writers who I admire and feel like I'm not as good as and that for me has been sort of my this 20 the the uh COVID you know year was the year I decided I'm gonna tackle things that normally I would say no to or I say you're I'm the wrong guy. I I actively went after them. So I I did one job um in the fall that was a World War II biopic um that I had no business in a way writing if you look at my resume but that I had a bunch of interest in you know and and a fascination with the character and um and and world war two and politics and a lot of a lot of connections. And so it just felt like you know I have I had to do something that just made me go how do I shake this tree that I'm very comfortable lying in a hammock in and not just be this not be comfortable. I guess I'm looking for discomfort in a way which I think is maybe I don't know if it's um maudlin or not uh it's is it ennui is it boredom I don't know I I just think like I just feel like I need to step it up and I feel like that's important as a creative person. And you know you want that. You want to feel a little bit like you're risking people laughing at you sometimes a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 41:57

I mean you mentioned Craig Mason and Craig Mason obviously reinvented himself to create that you know mini series that seemed to have come out of nowhere from his IMDB page and obviously now he just pushed himself to the top of that heap but it seems to me like a common thread in your IMDB history is actually not and your story is not playing it safe right I mean you you came here with no screenplay stuff you decided you were going to do this you had to reinvent yourself a number of times. Now it would be really easy for you to play it safe from this moment on I'm guessing for you to say I had this hit on Netflix I've got I've got all these other shows that have done well I'm gonna do that again and again and again and I'm gonna just live it out until the end of my career. But that's not what you're saying. You're saying I want to pivot change push myself and the question is why? And not not in a derogatory step but like there's something wrong with me what is what is pushing you inside as an artist to do this which is really interesting to me.

SPEAKER_03 43:02

Yeah I I think I think I want to um I think I want to feel like um I'm an artist hey I think part of feeling like you're an artist is taking risks honestly I think that uh uh when you are haunted by the things you know you could be doing and you're not doing them it it there's a certain part of you that makes you go well that's maybe where the imposter syndrome comes from you know is is the idea that oh I know I've I got this figured out and I pulled it off and um that's great. I fooled everyone but then it's like well now what? What's next? Like what's the next thing to go after you got you you you you did that so now there has to be another another level. And I I don't know maybe it's because I'm addicted to video games a little bit that I I need to level up and I need to I need to hit the next boss and and beat the next level and beat the next boss. I don't know what it is. I think it's part of, I think it's connected to the same part of me that has, I'll go back to that, you know, crazy, healthy, delusional sense of that I can do something that, you know, I there's no evidence to suggest I can do, which is kind of how I started my career in the first place, was just thinking, well, I what I don't know can't hurt me. And it didn't. So now I can keep doing that, maybe. I I honestly don't know. I think it's also just feeling like you want to be challenged. You know, I think I think I love the challenge of of being um nerve that nerve that butterfly feeling in your stomach that am I good enough to do this or don't can I pull this off? I think that's really healthy. But it's probably also dangerous in a way because it does provide disappointment it can lead to disappointment and a reality check that might not be ideal. Uh I don't know. I I'll let you know. I think I I mean I I'm not there yet so I don't really know what the um we should do another you know if I'm lucky enough to uh you Craig Mazen it I'll uh I'll I'll let you know how it feels uh I don't think I have yet so I'm just gonna keep banging my head against the wall and and creating artificial problems to solve you know and and and obstacles to overcome that you know to make me feel like you know I have something to get up for and and do and and challenge myself with well I I feel like without Dan here we haven't really gone hard enough on you or or really you know mined you out enough.

SPEAKER_02 45:44

So I've so let's go back to your girlfriend dumping you. No I'm kidding. I actually have the honor of asking the last question today. It's the last question that always gets asked. What is the one piece of advice you would give to the other writers out there both the up and coming and those on the hamster wheel all of us um about failure and how to persevere in this industry um well I I had I think I had I listened to your guys' podcast so I did have an answer prepared but I think I also have an answer I just came up with which is I think pursuing failure in a way is is is a um elegant solution in unto itself.

SPEAKER_03 46:27

I think pursuing failure is kind of how you define you know the opportunity to go beyond what you think you're capable of. So I think that failure is inherently um part of what we do and a healthy thing in a way because it is something that you kind of he keep having to come back to again and again and it's okay. I think it's it's something that we shouldn't be ashamed of. I think it's something we should embrace in a way. And I am just making this up having had this conversation with you I was going to say something about you know uh you know balancing life and the pursuit of career and um and having you know and some shortcuts to like making your scripts and your stories better. But I do think that actually the one thing this podcast provides is this um permission to uh embrace failure as a as a way of improving you know I do think that that failure is a is a great learning tool. I've failed many times I've been fired I've had tons of rejection I've had way more unproduced I mean I'm like batting I don't know like 0.90 in my career. I think I'm I'm under a hundred you know it's it's not I have so many unproduced projects and so many pitches that have not been sold. It's ridiculous. But I don't think that's a problem. I think it's actually been always a better there's always a there's always been a better um um day after those bad days that helps you sort of look at things differently and approach things differently and mature hopefully um but so I do think that that it's like that's the persistence thing I guess it's just you just you have to hang in there and believe that it doesn't it doesn't mean anything if you last long enough that's success like survival is success that you can't it's not the number of shows you make it's not the awards you win it's I think if you just succeed in this business it just means you've you've stuck it out and survived. Uh that to me feels like a very positive way of looking at it because you know uh it also you get to a point in your career where you're like oh these things that I thought were gonna happen haven't happened and they might not happen and that's okay too because you you kind of feel like yeah but I'm gonna I'm gonna have a great journey in regardless.

SPEAKER_04 49:04

What's amazing about your answer is we started this podcast with the idea that we would share failure stories amongst Hollywood creatives so that people wouldn't be so lonely. And then as we started to go through interviewing people we we learned that failure is sort of part of your journey and that's fine and and you need to accept it and you need to internalize it. And now as we're getting you know deeper into these interviews with people I'm starting to realize and you and you said it so eloquently that failure is is necessary. Failure is is is so pivotal to what's going on that there's such a thin line between failure and success in this industry and that they're really in many ways almost the same thing and that that you're not going to have one without the other. So I just want to thank you for helping crystallize that for me helping crystallize that for the audience and obviously thank you for coming on today.

SPEAKER_03 49:53

It's been my um sincere pleasure and I yeah I don't know what you guys charge for therapy but uh just bill me and I'll Venmo you the money uh I just feel like that's the only fair uh quid pro quo here.

SPEAKER_04 50:05

Our secret side hustle thank you so much all right guys take care cheers bye 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 50:21

Before we sort of thank our words and stuff do you think anyone actually listens this far or do they stop when the music comes back in I think they normally stop after you mention your second and third podcast audio podcast.

SPEAKER_04 50:31

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 50:46

Not that anyone really cares about so if you've got complaints about the show go to nevslin 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 Rotstein and have a great day