Take 13 - Writer Shawn Simmons, Wayne

SPEAKER_04 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, project that we thought were gonna go for sure, has this unproduced script literary.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

All of us running into major and minor failures in public every single day.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

This is one of the only businesses that I can think of failure is.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

He's been a writer in the industry for a bit over 20 years, starting as an assistant on the TV show Becker before segueing into writing and such shows as Man Up, Awkward, School of Rock, and most and a ton of other ones. And most recently, he created this. I mean, it's it's one of my it probably is my favorite show. Uh Wayne, it premiered on YouTube Red in 2019, and you can now find all of season one on Amazon. Welcome, Sean.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

Thanks for having me, guys. I'm really excited. We're talking about positive prayer, right? We're talking about the power of prayer. Am I on the right podcast? This is exactly what this is. This is a cooking show.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

So let's start with a success, which is very much against everything we believe in on this podcast. So this is not the point of the podcast. But um, you know, you have got a show that obviously no one loves it, but everyone loves it as well. And you know, during a pandemic when people are at home watching more TV than any before, this is like the perfect time to have it. So now you've got this amazing show, it's going really well. How do you feel about it in the sense of are you like, right, I'm done, I've my career is made, or are you hoping that the success continues, or are you like, I deserve this from years of rejections? Like, what is it that is your feeling now you've got the hit?

SPEAKER_03 2:45

As a New Englander, um, you never you always feel like the ceiling's gonna cave in. There's no, you know, I think that's common to Irish people as well, but you even you know, in the best of times, you're like, something's gonna screw this up. Um, but Wayne, you know, Wayne was a really, I think, uh different experience because uh I, you know, I don't think a lot of people have been through this where it came out on one network, the network was essentially canceled out from under us, which is the crazy thing that you you know the network gets canceled first before you do. Um, and then you know, there was a wave of big fans. You could tell there was like cult fans, but in that network, and again, I'll say YouTube premium had an excellent bunch of people. Um Dustin Davis and Amanda Barclay and Suzanne, and just a great group of people who were really artist first, artist friendly. I would get, you know, every every time we turned in a script or a cut, it was like I always joked that they had a notepad that only had three lines on it because we get three notes and a compliment, you know, every time. And so they they really let us make this. I mean, I think I think most people agree is a weird show. Um it and you know, I was in the business of hoping to make something that stood out for being different. Um, but definitely like I wrote, you know, I wrote a five-page speech for a you know cop at the end of that show where he's sitting in the station and turned it in kind of giggling, like they're never gonna. I I just wrote a five-page speech, they're never gonna let me do this. And you know, it got down to like three and a half pages at a certain point. But so, you know, they they were excellent, um, and let us make the show we want to make, but you know, I I had a sort of good experience after the show then, um, you know, and then uh the show the the network got canned. Um, and then you know, it's been god that came out in January 2019. Um, you know, went on to Amazon uh November 6th of 2020, um, after a lot, you know, they had to make the deal forever. And it was, you know, unfortunately, you know, this virus is is probably the reason people needed content, but you know, it it's definitely a a time to have something on TV with with people around sitting on couches wanting to watch TV. So and then it came out again. And having experienced YouTube, you know, explaining to people it was on YouTube, and then you could see in their eyes they were just like, I'm not gonna try to figure that out, how to watch that show. You know, it's just people didn't want to, especially older people. Um, and so it came out again on Amazon, and obviously that's a one-stop shop. It's you know, it's a place where people often run over to to see what's on, you know, not as much as Netflix, but definitely second or third, I think Disney's now. Um, and so I got this whole this this last few months has been this whole incredible wave of, you know, it's as if people didn't know it existed. Um, you know, I have all these, you know, all my meetings are now. I have all these executives calling me, I have these like, you know, legends calling me about the show, actors, and you know, it it's strange because I got I felt like the heat I did not get off of YouTube um was very much, you know, it's cool that I got a second chance on a bigger streamer because I actually like this feels like you know, the heat you're supposed to get when people seem to be enjoying your show this much. And you know, um so it's strange, it's different from other people, I think. Um that's that's the difference.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Look, as as a podcast, I host two soon to be three podcasts, and there's always this in my head my podcast is better than the number of listeners we get. That's a every podcaster thinks that, but there's a discovery issue. So you have a podcast and people love it, but not as many people listen to it as you think. Now, you're not the first show to go through this phenomenon because obviously Cobra Kai had exactly the same thing. So, how how does it work? Because obviously, you know, your your show's out there on YouTube, it's the same show and it's as good, but nobody's watching it. And then when it comes out, sorry, not nobody, but fewer people, then when it has this sort of renaissance, do you sort of feel vindicated? Like I knew it was I knew it was this good. It's just I wanted more people to see it.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

I I had already, you know, it had been through a you know a lot of people at that point. I mean, I think we got like 50 million views on the pilot in the original YouTube version, and you know, we got a handful, we had a good handful of reviews. It was always really passionate. Um, and you get to, you know, the fun thing is you get to sit there and we have this world of the internet where you're getting live feedback constantly, constantly, like the comments, and you know, and it felt it felt a bit more passionate than what I noticed from other shows. You know, these I don't know if you Wayne fans, I'm guessing, you know, there's a lot of 15 to 30 year olds, and they are sometimes I call it like pizza gate crazy, like and enthusiastic. They're just like it's really over the top. Um, so it felt, you know, it definitely became clear that you know, whatever mark we needed to hit, it felt like we did a good job. Uh, you know, people were happy or addicted to it, or it was it was I know that for a fact that it was through data um that it was binged like crazy. Like it wasn't a show that people were just watching one of. It was they all watch again, it's a half hour, it's five and a half hours in the end or something. It's it's a little easier, but people were binging it uh a lot. Um, it wasn't like uh, you know, just watch the pilot and go home show. Um, so yeah, I mean it it felt, you know, it and it still feels the same way we're doing it again. It just feels like more people, you know. I I definitely it feels like, you know, whatever 2,000 reviews on Amazon that are five star and 70 that are, you know, in the middle or one because they're you know, mad it's violent, or you know, something like that. But yeah, I mean it definitely it's weird. The first time around, it definitely felt like we did, it still felt like we did, you know, a good job. We felt proud of it and felt like people were responding the right way. So this time it just feels like more of that. It definitely seems like the same level of why has no one told me about the show, you know, stuff you see out there, you know, which is super fun and feel lucky again. It's uh yeah, it's pretty cool to get it twice, you know. You know, especially in the industry. That's you know, I I felt like we kind of missed our you know chance a little bit to get something off the industry a bit. I mean, I got I got a couple jobs off of it and things like that, but it felt good like it got bigger. I got a new, you know, agent recently. Um, you know, I've had some incredible meetings in the past couple months. Just that level is different. That level is definitely different. Like executives are coming in numbers this time in a big way, you know.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

I definitely definitely want to circle back to the success success aspect of of what happens after you have a show like Wayne. But I have a I have like a thousand questions that are all clashing in my brain because I'm a super hyper fan. So I'm gonna try to get it, not ask the big fan questions, but I do want to say to the people listening that because a lot of them are writers, please, you know, not only watch this show if you haven't already, but but get the screenplay, get the pilot and read it and break it down because the level of specificity on the page, the writing, it's all you know, top-notch. You're gonna learn a lot, especially if you're in the comedy dramedy world. Um, my question for you is, you know, um, I guess it's twofold, really. One is the the Wayne is actually kind of a perfect show to discuss on a podcast like this, because I feel like in many ways, the characters, it's sort of a treatise on rejection, failure, and adversity for those characters, right? They they're going through so much. Their families have put them into these, they're teenagers, right? So they the main characters, and they've been in this sort of these awful childhoods or these challenging childhoods that they now need to overcome and thrive. And so, in really in many ways, you're you're commenting uh throughout the series on sort of what it takes to survive, on what it takes to thrive when you're put into less than stellar living and life conditions, which brings me to you know the Hollywood industry as a whole. You this was 20 years in the making, Wayne. You've been on, I mean, you've been on a ton of shows. I'm sure you've had a lot of development and you've sold shows and you've done the whole thing, but you know, it seems like from my from what I can tell, you started around the year 2000 and then around the year 2019.

SPEAKER_03 11:48

2006?

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Yeah. Uh uh uh 2006. So 2019, uh, you know, I'm sure maybe you sold Wayne in 2018 or 2017, but you have this thing come out. Was there times in those four 13, 14 years where you felt you know that you were gonna give up or you were gonna walk away from this business?

SPEAKER_03 12:11

I, you know, it started off well enough. You know, I I started, I was an assistant at I was an assistant for Lisa Lang, who's a great uh executive who kind of carried me through. We started at Studios USA was a thing for like two years. It's no longer around, it became kind of universal. Um, we went from there, the current and development department of universal to Warner Brothers, went to that current department to the development department. Um, so that was my if anything, people are always surprised when I have this conversation because they're like, Oh, you didn't, you weren't a writer's assistant, you didn't do it. No, I was never writer's assistant. I would have been a terrible, terrible writer's assistant. Um, as I wander off, you know, thinking about other things with my ADHD and my bad typing. Um, but no, I came up through development and I it was an incredible school because no, you're not just working on one show, you know. At at Warner Brothers, I was working on, they were making like 20 pilots every year. Um, and I was watching those scripts get developed, I was hearing the notes calls, I was reading them and seeing the changes when they came back in. You know, that that was an incredibly different school, and I think a really good one for me specifically. Um, and then you know, I I was continuing to write, I think I wrote I wrote a curb spec. You know, this was back in the day, man. This is you know, 2004, something like that. When did The Office come out? I can't remember when the office came out. So I remember interviewing on that job with my first spec. Um and I wrote a curb spec, and then I wrote a you know, Sunny Spec, because everybody wrote specs back then. Um they told you you're like they would tell you never to write anything original in those years, you know. It very quickly changed. Like it was funny because it was the whole, you know, my whole beginning of development, and then within like five years, it was like, Where's your original? I'm like, everybody told me not to write one for you know 10 years. Um I actually think, you know, I actually think specs are really good and in showing people can write other people's shows and and they they can actually recreate that world and those characters and the you you know match the voices. Um I read specs a lot of the time, especially in comedy. But um yeah, and then and then I uh I you know my specs got out there. One of the executives over there, Wendy Steinhoff, who I love, I think she's still there, Warner Brothers. Um she took my script and liked it, and she gave it to put it on the pile for the shows. And and uh the Phil Gos who worked on the 70 show and created a show called Happy Hour, uh was their first one after 70 show. They didn't create it, they were one of the showrunners at one point. Um uh and uh that was my first gig and and uh you know went great. I mean, they gave me two two scripts for a staff writer, that was insane, like seemed to be going well. Um and then the the the next show is an ABC show. If you go through, I always say if you go through enough uh what do they call it? I even forgot what it's called now, season, um pilot season. Oh my god, I don't even think of pilot season anymore because it's just not it's not a thing as much. Um and don't get a job, you get really spooked, you know. And I started taking, you know, it was probably a wrong idea, but I started taking those kids' jobs because they were 26 episodes, you know, it was like an incredible amount of time. And I had, you know, I had my first kid on my first show, I had my second kid on, you know, two years later, and it was like, but in the end, that credit hurts you, you know, in in the things you want to do. If you want to do kid stuff, and there's I took a lot of the stuff I learned on kid shows, and and it's in it's there's some stuff in Wayne. You could see like some of the stuff I used from that experience. Um but yeah, I mean it was it was hard. It was I I I know your your question is like, they ever feel like giving up. Um there were two years before Wayne, um I wasn't asked back to a show because of I was told at least budget. Um they cut it down from 20 something episodes to 13 and a bunch few of us got canned. Um, I was at the time I'd been working a while, I was one of the more uh expensive ones at the time. And I went two years without a job. And I there was never like were you gonna give up? I think there was a thought of like am I gonna have to think about giving up, you know. Um, because it was dark, man. It was like really, really incredibly dark. I, you know, we had some really scary conversations in my house. You know, listen, the the stakes are different for me than I understand that other people like you know, Texas are freezing right now in a house with no heat and things like that, stakes are different. But like after two years, and you you know, you're talking about selling your home and and and you know, taking your kids out of their school and changing your life, you know, completely, it was dark, man. You know. Um put it this way, I came up with a through a very dark conversation, I came up with one of the dumbest ideas for a show ever, which was that there are two people who um are going to uh put um their kid in the will, they're gonna leave their kids to like Renee Zellweger. They're just gonna say, like, you know, she seems nice and she has money. Let's just leave our kids to Renee Zellweger, see where she takes them, you know. But that was coming from a conversation that was like, well, fuck man, like I my poor kids, and if I fucking shoot myself or something, I just got dark, you know. We can't, we got kids, you know. So it was a very dark time, it was a scary time. And Wayne came out of that. I'm not saying Wayne had the seed of Wayne had already started before that. Um I had written uh the opening scene where he throws the ice through the window because I had experienced that. I'd say I was eight years old and I watched this kid get beat up. Um, I was too young to do anything, but like five kids, six kids are beating him up, and uh those kids got tired and kind of started to walk away, and the kid stood up, took a rock and threw it at him and got beat up again. So, you know, in in those really tough towns that I grew up in, you know, you you you know, kids don't have a mom or they don't have a dad or they don't have both, you're not taking their pride too. You know what I mean? So, you know, I just wrote that scene and uh didn't know what the show was, and then eventually got to like the oh that makes me laugh, Dirty Harry, in high school. Like that just thought made me laugh. And it was from there, but I mean, there's no doubt that it motivated me, you know, that dark time, that two years. Um but yeah, and there was definitely a uh am I gonna have to give up, you know. Um you know, I'd like to say that I dug myself out of a hole, but I just did something that, you know, a show that I really wanted to do and I wasn't you know inspired by, and I always say irresponsibly emotional about, you know, I always want to be irresponsibly emotional about every project I do, um, where it's not work, where I'm fucking crying about it and I'm you know laying in bed thinking about those characters as real people. Um, you know, that's why when Wayne got canceled the first time, it was it's it should feel like they died. Like, you know what I mean? Like I honestly felt grief, a lot of grief about those characters because I've been sitting with them so long. So yeah, I mean, it's the longest answer, but uh yeah, it felt it yeah, I I mean it was it was an incredibly dark time where I felt like I might be, I might have to give up, you know. I'm sure a lot of people have to change their career. Yeah, you know, I'm not special, you know.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

So so you know, given this podcast is about rejection failure, the fact that you gave a longer answer about the giving up bit than you did about the how you feel about the success of Wayne says is it's that's the right balance. That's what we were looking for when we invited you on. So that when I I while while we're on this all slightly more than subject, I want to explore a bit more. And obviously, going for two years without a job, which also happens to be Noah's um middle name, um, I think you know, it's there's a the two years, you know, we've heard versions on this podcast of obviously longer than that. When you're really in it and you're you're you're having these sort of dark times, tell us the sort of conversations that you are having, the the really practical ones.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

There's you know, there's some that we actually had, and we tried again, we tried to laugh about it through that like, you know, what if a couple killed themselves and left their kids to Renee Zellweger, you know, trying to laugh about it, but the underneath it's you know incredibly desperate. I remember, you know, we didn't have money for anything, and her and I felt really bad because my wife's birthday was coming up. And Again, this I hate these conversations. I grew up so poor that it's like you know, I grew up poor and like had a free lunch ticket and we had government cheese, and you know, it's so so sometimes having as much as we have now, and then talking about um feeling this way when we had a house, you know. Um, but like I remember her birthday coming up, and her sister called, and I was worried because I was like, I wanted to get her something, and times were tough, and she was saying you don't have to get me anything and all that. And her sister called and said, I'm taking her to Disneyland to stay in a hotel. And I just sobbed, like I sobbed in relief that she was gonna get to do that, you know. So it was the conversations we were having were like, I mean, they they're just basic in the end. I mean, first it's what are we gonna do about you know, like are we gonna have to sell the house? And you never want to say those words, and you never, you know, so sometimes we it was incredibly lonely too, because I didn't want to worry her as much because you know, so I was in different rooms kind of feeling it on my own, and then she was in a different room feeling scared on her own. Um, but yeah, I mean, it is like what else I I'm all you know, I I don't know what else I can do, man. I don't know what else I'm capable of. I don't know, I don't have any any other skills. I was a generally like fucking lazy kid who loved comedy, who loved, you know, TV and movies. I, you know, at a certain point I wanted to, you know, do stand-up and then threw up every time I did it and realized I had terrible stage fright and couldn't do it, threw up before and after each time. Um, so I couldn't do any performance, even though my mother was like, you should perform your, you know, and then uh went to college and and did better than I did in high school, and uh came out to Los Angeles like people who want to make things, you know. Emerson College especially is just like everyone's making shit together at Emerson. And um, so I don't know, I don't know. I will say that writing, I I get really turned on by language, and I get really turned on by the way people talk to one another and characters, and I don't mean characters, I mean characters when you meet weird fucking people, characters in the world, and um storytelling. I just it's it always came as you know naturally to me to be fascinated with it enough to be able to log it, you know. And I would log and I would listen to people a lot. And I'm always every time I talk to somebody, I'm studying them and studying them, and I'm fascinated by it. And that I think then what made people laugh and the math of jokes, like there's absolutely math in it, and um so yeah, I don't, I mean, those were the con I guess if you're talking about the conversations you're having, it's like, what the fuck am I gonna do? I never studied anything else, you know. I studied writing. Um, so that's a scary conversation, you know.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Two two things jumped out at me in that answer, and that was a you know, a really profound answer uh about just how hard this business can be. Uh, one is you know, when you were going through this two years of unemployment, you were a high-level writer. So it wasn't like you had just started your career. You had been in it for a long time and had been on a ton of shows. So it's it's like a lesson for those people who think there's only one door you enter, then you're in the magical land of Hollywood, and it's all gonna be jobs and money and movies getting made and premieres. And it's all of these people we've interviewed, it's and mostly they're all at the showrunner level. It's not like that for any of them. So it's all kind of a profound awakening to say that everybody is going through this. And the second thing that you you know said that really landed with me is the importance of having a uh a support system in in your house that you have two kids, I have two kids, you have a wife, I have a wife. And when those dark moments are happening, you're in it together, man. This boat is sinking together, or this boat's floating together. And you're you're if you don't have the wife who believes in you a hundred percent, or even sometimes more than you believe in yourself, it becomes a very hard journey to to navigate these these pitfalls.

SPEAKER_03 26:08

Um, you just made me remember something about I don't know if this is just true to me or other people, but you know, when things are good, like things are decent right now. I mean, I've you know you fight more it weirdly, you because the stakes aren't so high and you don't feel like you need to hug someone and grab onto them. And like, so it'll be like, you fucking left the cereal open. What the fuck, man? You know, and it's like you're fighting about like petty shit. But when we were going through that, I think it's the closest we've ever been. I mean, we're genuinely like hanging on to each other like life vests, you know. Um, and we were, I think, the kindest to each other because we knew we couldn't take anything at that point. We could take very little. Um, and I come from New England, man. We fucking my wife gets out of the car car. You know, I said calves, what's the car? Um, my wife gets out of the car and at the airport and gets picked up by my parents, and it's like immediately negative bickering, like they're waiting for an audience. You know, they're like, Well, your mother fucking doesn't like calling in the cop anymore. Like every tiny thing they fight about, and you're like, Did they wait for us before they started this? And they watch football games and they go, I'm never fucking watching this team again. Fuck that. You know, like it's all negative bad. My wife's like, I don't know how you do that. I don't know how you live there. It's like you're being drowned by people bickering and insulting each other. And then, you know, we come back. So, yeah, like when things are good, it's funny, man. And it's just like we're giving each other shit. Like, you and I'll believe, but when they're bad, at least, at least we know that's the time to hug and hang on, you know.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

Yeah, because you're you're yeah, for sure, you're you're in this together. So I want to fast forward just the hair because we're talking about a little bit of the past. Now, you had a very rare occurrence happen to you, which is you had the show, like we this is how we opened, right? You you've been working really hard. You had two years of of no work, and then you create the show that is your voice. And I know you had some, you know, really talented people working alongside you, but like you were able to make the show, it sounds like that you wanted to make uh with Wayne. And it's this little, not a little, but I'm by by little, I mean it's like not that many episodes, it's a it's a piece of art and it's it's just wonderful, it's an entirety. I mean, hopefully we get more of it, but it works as a piece of art, and it's on this network that has already been canceled and there isn't that many subscribers. And so when it was happening, when your dreams had come true, so to speak, of creating your own show and creating the show you want to write, and it's not yet getting because I it it's gonna have a second life, but it's not yet getting the fanfare or the meetings or anything from it. Where is your mind at at this moment?

SPEAKER_03 28:56

It did, I wouldn't say it felt like that. It I was definitely getting a wave that listen, it might be in contrast too. I mean, I was fucking dead in the water. Um, so it felt good. I mean, there, you know, I was reading, you know, reviews in Rolling Stone and reviews in you know haste and all these things. There, you know, a couple of them were making me cry, you know what I mean? And that all the reviews were good. Um, you know, I was definitely getting me like all the you know, I noticed the level of people in the meetings was much higher. You know, it was like the big dog came in and you're like, oh, there's eight people in this meeting, like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu. Now, granted, they're all different people. And now I looked at the list now, I'm like, oh my god, all the people that liked me two years ago are gone. Um, but yeah, it definitely didn't feel like that. It felt like it just felt like a nice compared to this, it felt like a B minus, you know. But at the time it felt like an A. It felt like a lot of attention. It felt like, you know, people were calling to work with me. It felt like people that did see the show were passionate about it. You know, this time was just very different because I was getting, you know, double the meetings. I had agents chasing me. I had, you know, Michael Bay called me. I'll say that. Like, like so so crazy. Like shit like that was happening. Like I got a few of those calls that were like, oh, you're calling me at my house. Um that's different. That makes it feel automatically like completely different. But I will say that at the time it felt like a victory, and it felt like you know, I did, I mean um you know what I'm gonna say it. Um you know, I've been working on the John Wick spin-off for a year and a half for stars. Um you know, I haven't told anybody that because we're not supposed to get. Um, but you know, that came along and you don't just get that. You know what I mean? That it was an incredibly hard pitching to eight people over the course of six months and craziness, you know. Um but that you know, that type of stuff was happening during the after the YouTube years. Um and you know, it has been going on because it's like giant IP and people are scared to death. So it has been going on for a year and a half or something, it's insane. Um but yeah, so it didn't, I I don't think it it felt like frustrating in any way because it deal didn't feel like I was getting results. And now do I kind of feel like I it should have been more now? Now I do, you know, because I'm like, oh wait, you know, Jerry Berkheimer's calling me. You know what I mean? Like it's okay, maybe I was supposed to get that stuff. Yeah, I mean, obviously YouTube wasn't able to get it out there. Uh they tried, um, you know, so yeah, it didn't feel like that way at the time.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

So we we've done the past and sort of the present, let's do some future. What's the psychology going forward for you? And and and maybe because of where you're from geographically, this will give the answer. But are you sitting there thinking, right, you know, I want the next one to be another version of Wayne in terms of the level of success and the phone calls I'm getting and all that stuff? Or is it if I don't get the next one, I can have another two years of misery and and darkness again? So, which which way round do you approach it?

SPEAKER_03 32:30

Um it it kind of depends on who you are, I think. For me, um, again, I always feel like it, you know, there's this weird new layer I realized where you're worried, you you start to worry that I think this is the case with everyone, right? Where you kind of like, am I gonna be able to do this again? You know, or even get close. Like, am I am I gonna forget how to write? You know, am I gonna forget whatever magic I had at that moment if it was magic, you know. That that's a weird thing that I'm feeling right now because it feels like there's stakes here things going on and bigger agents and bigger people in the room, and people give you, you know, money for a script and it's much higher, and you're like, oh good. Am I gonna, you know, there's more producers attached to it, you know. I think you do generally have to kind of contend with that. You have to kind of like call off those dogs on yourself a little bit and try to, you know, have some faith in your ability. I mean, it wasn't just writing one script in Wayne, it was writing several and and making them work and um yeah, so that freaks out a bit. I'm not gonna lie. Like, am I gonna be able to do this again is definitely a freakshot of it. And it's also you know I hope I'm in the business now of uh I say that I want to take jobs because you know I'm inspired by them and know my way in and not take jobs because I have to, you know, like sometimes they'll throw those IPs in front of you or those big things working with people, and you're like, Oh, you have to take that job. And I I learned at least for myself that that sounds like a job. That sounds like work, that sounds like trying to find your way into something where you know, I have to like find my own specific way into an idea that makes me as irresponsibly emotional as I was with Wayne, or a couple of the other things I'm working on. You know, like I don't ever want to take a job, like fuck man, it's it's Star Trek. You have to take no, I I don't know the right way in. Like, I don't want to fail and I don't want everybody to hate me, and I don't want to, you know. Um, those for me, my stuff has been generally like original content um up until the WIC thing. Um, so yeah, that's I think I approach everything now very carefully because hopefully I have this is the opportunity to do that. And it's not just like, oh, a job, you know, give it, you know, I'm scared to death of the big job coming in and going, like, I don't have a Star Wars idea, or I don't know my way into that character, or I don't know that IP well enough or care about it enough. Like, I just don't want to be taking jobs because I I have to, you know.

SPEAKER_02 35:33

I have a very kind of crafty question uh about the nature of craft, as where we're you know, kind of you're talking about the oversight and the IP and the different levels of people in the room and the producers and your agents. And I know with Wayne, and you had brought this up in the podcast, that you said there was very minimal notes. You were allowed to kind of write this thing that was your voice. And there's, you know, we won't go too much into the weeds, but like the moment where you do the episode that's all from Dell's POV, where you take Wayne out of the your story for one second, so you can start to empathize with the parents, and that really kind of made that your story a hundred times stronger. And as you reference that five-page speech, but you know, the Thai Prison speech. I'm guessing, you know, with projects like John Wick, or maybe not saying John Wick by name, but other kind of bigger IP projects, you have a lot more people looking at those moments and going, wait, we're taking John Wick out of the story. Wait, there's gonna be a five-page speech, but it's what made your thing so unique. It's probably what made Cobra Kai too so unique. They came up on the same network. They both, you guys both exploded then on your different streamers, and now you are kind of have a lot more oversight, even though you're a lot higher up. I'm guessing, as you are navigating these bigger projects with a lot of expectations, you have people really looking at every line in a way they weren't before. Is that kind of get to your worry about like just executing at the level that you think you can?

SPEAKER_03 36:56

Yeah, I mean, there's a whole nother thing you're doing when taking other people's stuff. It's like you're you're there's two ways you can approach it and be incredibly true to that tone, or you know, or hope to bring what you do to the thing. You know, like I I'm very careful, like I I know this might sound dumb, but like in in a lot of our stuff, it doesn't feel as character forward as you know, it's plot, you know, which is which is difficult for me. Um I generally like to give every character humanity and and you know, like you brought up the Dell episode, like that was a thing I like, I I I I try really hard to do, which is uh give every character, even the villains, that bit uh of humanity that makes you understand them that they're human beings, because you know, even some a lot of the bad people I grew up with, you know, we're still dads or beings or they're just fucked up. And and so uh Rhett Reese uh always comments on the fact that like even with characters in my stuff that you don't see on screen, I'll somehow manage uh to tell a story about them. And I didn't know I was doing it, but like the example he uses all the time is um when Dell goes to the bus station to buy that ticket from the waitress, um there's a person who's on break and he's not coming off because he's doing his meditating, you know, and like and that Rhett always brings that up because we know this guy now who's in the back meditating at a bus station and he's on break meditating, you know. Like I always try to do that, and like the you know, the two the two creepy people in the you know, Lee fucking Murray in the shed with with Kira, his girlfriend, and there's a lot of like we have dreams to go play the prices right, and uh you have an ankle bracelet, and you know, you said you promised your mother, and like I try to like you even those fucking psychos have their dreams, you know what I mean? And that I I think it's important to try to do that with every single thing that walks on screen, you know. Um, I do it with inanimate objects sometimes. Um, guns, you know, the story of the gun and a John Wick story, you know, give that gun a story. Um, so yeah, I mean that I forget where your question is now, but the IP, the IP stuff, you know, especially with IPs, you're you're taking something that's someone else's and you're trying to find your own way in. A lot of the times with those IPs, I don't I don't really believe they want your special way in. Like they're gonna, everyone's gonna get freaked out and they're gonna want you to give them, you know, a certain thing that everybody thinks it's supposed to be. So, you know, I try to push my original voice into it as much as possible, but in the end, you know, maybe it's just trying to make well-fleshed out characters in a very plotty show. Like maybe that's what I can bring to it within the confines of an IP, you know.

SPEAKER_02 40:10

I I I haven't watched your John Wick yet, but I know for Wayne it's a masterclass of what they say, which is you know, uh simple plotting, simple story, complex characters. This is a boy who's trying to go find a missing car, right? It's a very simple directional story and needs to travel to get there, but each character is so complex and brings so much to the table. And you're gonna follow that journey. You want to see him get that, it's enough, and you're gonna follow him all the way. And sometimes I I do think you're right. I've lived mostly in the you know, hour-long space, and it is you're doing a lot of plotting, and you you have to you have to sneak the character stuff in there, and you don't always have the opportunity, and sometimes all that stuff gets cut, so all you have left is 42 minutes of plot, which isn't always as interesting.

SPEAKER_03 40:51

Yeah, and like it's hard for me because I have to learn in those cases about you know, the beginning of Wayne, that first that ice rock scene is telling a story about a character through action. That's through action, definitely, which you kind of have to be better at doing for the hour-long stuff. It's all about the things they do rather than the things they say. I will say, like, that's the coming up in half hour comedy and kid shows, kids' comedy. That's all it is. It's character, character. What you know, I always it's a funny thing that I didn't I've only heard from one person, but I think about every time I do it, every scene, I always think, what do they want? What are they doing to get it? What do they want? What are they doing to get it? What do they want? What are they doing to get it? And I try to look at that drive in every scene. And I think sometime like Wayne, if you look at it, it was I did it heavily in that, like every scene. And is there a weird thing I could add uh for tension? You know, um that was always a thing too. Like, is there tension in this scene? The basic stuff, but um sometimes I read I read, you know, samples and it's not there, you know. But you know, you read your samples to hire people and you're like, oh, that stuff's not there. Um, but then again, you know, I grew up in night in the 90s with like Link Later and stuff where you know Kevin Smith, where people are just talking for 90 minutes and it's the most entertaining, fucking greatest thing ever. You know, it's all character and almost no plot, and like what is their drive, you know, and I love it.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

So we we've seem to have um in a good way transitioned from podcast about rejection to masterclass for wannabe writers, which is great because our last question is if you could give a single piece of advice to somebody wanting to join this industry, what would it be?

SPEAKER_03 42:51

Oh god, you know, I'm it's funny because I'm uh as much as I've been a little bit more involved in the Twitter writers Twitter, um generally I get scared of it. You know, I get sometimes I'm things get lodged in your head that shouldn't be there and things people say, and um so I generally like I really I I I used to tell people when I go to Emerson sometimes and I talk, um I always say, like, your job for a lot of this is collecting people, you know, you're collecting allies and friends, like you know, I might hit up you guys sometime for knowing a little bit about you on Twitter, like that you work in this thing or you work with these people, or you you know, work on this type of project. I say, hey man, you know, like I'm trying to do a project, blah blah blah, or wanted to, you know, I've I've I've gotten a lot of relationships off of Twitter lately. Me and this last night I was talking to this guy, Michael Fuller, who you know, yeah, he I loved Quarry. Um, it's just or I think an amazing show that it haunted me. Um and he liked. Dwayne a lot, so we became friends, and you know, I always say, like, oh, we're you know, we're both of the same agency now, and I always say, like, we one step closer to working together, you know. And it's I I always say that that's my thing, is I always say, like, you're collecting people because you're I didn't learn I don't feel like I was at my best or learned how to completely do it until I was like 38. You know, I felt like I was in a room for 10 years, and I was lucky that my my strength seemed to be scripts. Um I was a little self-conscious at the beginning about pitching and joke writing. So I was a little quiet at the beginning and it freaked me out. I got better at that, but you just if you do good enough to stay on and get more jobs um and leave a lasting impression with a good script on every job, you know, you generally get to learn all the rules and the tricks and the you know, all the things through the notes from that work and from the different writers who are running your shows. And so to me, it's all about like all those people, it's the simple you know, everybody you work with, everybody you meet, you know, you're collecting those people to hopefully get you jobs. And you know, you're as far as your skill, like I don't know, I don't know how I wasn't I didn't read books about screenwriting or TV. You know, it felt like I had grown up watching it enough that I absorbed a sense of rhythm in storytelling and TV, you know, and then I learned character and drive and everything through these jobs, but you know, I g I guess that's weirdly the the only thing I ever repeat. Otherwise, like I don't I've never learned like learned through books or anything like that. And I I don't think I have a good sense of the rules um at all. I never, you know, I don't like when people tell me like this didn't happen in the screenplay on page 36. You know, it's supposed to happen before page 36. And I'm like, don't tell me that. That'll like trip me up in a way that'll just screw me up completely. I've just kind of gone written off of um kind of a sense of just watching a bunch of shit and absorbing, you know. Um so yeah, I mean, if people have enough skill, they can get better through working on those jobs, and then in the end, it's just about collecting all those people you're gonna work with, you know, or we'll help you, or we'll read your script. If you don't go on that journey of like someone's nice enough to, you know, read your script, someone's nice enough to put you on a pile, your script in a pile for a showrunner to get in a room, meet those next people who might you can call and say, Oh, you know that guy to get me that next job. Like, you got to do a lot of work in that regard. To Twitter's a great thing because it's creating a new place to do that, you know.

unknown 46:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

Well, uh, Sean, it's a pleasure to have been potentially collected by you. And um, we stand ready. I think obviously Noah definitely stands ready for future projects. I stand ready if you ever need advice about whiskey, soccer, being British or the diplomatic service, uh living in a garage. But yeah, oh yeah, whiskey garages, uh, pandemic, why LAUSD aren't opening the schools again, all this stuff, yeah, but not writing. But thank you very much for being part of the podcast. It was fascinating, both the highs and the lows. So really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 47:26

No, this was great. And again, same here. You know, reach out anytime, and I'll be reaching out to you sometime, I'm sure. And you know, this has been great. I'm really glad you guys asked me.

SPEAKER_02 47:37

All right, that's a wrap on this episode. If you want to leave us any feedback, go to hollywoodabyss.com.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

And if you'd like to subscribe, we won't stop you. And if you want to leave a review, we certainly won't stop you. In fact, we'll be incredibly grateful.

SPEAKER_02 47:51

And we have a couple of thank yous before we go completely. We want to thank James Launch for the intro and outro music. We want to thank both our wives who allowed us to hide in our respective basements while we record all of these interviews.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

If you want to find us on Twitter and join in the conversation, I'm at Dan Rutstein, and Noah is at M Ebslin. Please come and find us, please say hello, and if you really want to, please give Noah a job.

SPEAKER_02 48:16

Yes, I am looking for a job of any sort. I can polish shoes, I can write copy, I can even be in a writer's room. So if that's the case, feel free to reach out.

SPEAKER_00 48:26

But you definitely can't podcast.

SPEAKER_02 48:28

I definitely this is not the thing that I do well.