Take 128 - Showrunner and Writer John Wirth, Dark Winds, Nash Bridges

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 littering the floor.

SPEAKER_05 0:13

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

SPEAKER_01 0:20

For every success, there is sometimes even failure.

SPEAKER_04 0:26

This is one of the only businesses I can think of where failure is like everything in our business here.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

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

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry, brought to you by the Emmy Award-winning annotation software scriptation. As ever, I am Dan Rutstein, your non-entertainment co-host.

SPEAKER_05 1:23

And I am your still in the entertainment business co-host Noah Epslin. For this week's podcast, I'm thrilled to introduce TV writer, executive producer, TV show creator, and showrunner John Wirth to the podcast. As a writer, John's worked on such shows as Nash Bridges, Ghost Whisperer, Terminator, Sarah Connor Chronicles, V Falling Skies, Hell on Wheels, Happen Leonard, Woo Assassin, and Dark Wind Dark Winds, amongst many others. He was also the showrunner of Hell on Wheels, Woo Assassins, which he also created, Happen Leonard, Ghost Whisperer, Love Monkey, Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Cape, The District, and most recently, Dark Winds for AMC. Welcome, John.

SPEAKER_03 2:07

Thanks for having me, guys.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

So um I hope we're not I'm not sure this is the right thing to do, and I hope we don't fall out immediately to start the podcast and therefore ruin the episode. But my favorite part of this so far is um I'm not sure I'm giving away a big podcast secret, but we we chat for a few minutes before we press record. And just before uh we press record, Noah was checking the what to say for his intro, um, and you couldn't remember all of the shows that you have showrun, um, which I think says something about where you are, or at least you were struggling to remember all of them, um, which says something about your career. And I'm not sure I've we've had anyone who's done that many different shows. So um was there time for any rejection and failure in between all of these successes? Because that's a a lot of shows.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

Um, well, just to back up to the point you just made, um Nash Bridges is the uh we did, I think 126 episodes of that show. Um and I have I think I wrote or co-wrote for credit with Carlton Q's 39 episodes, I believe, of that show. Uh he probably wrote more, he he created it. Um and it's um as Jed Seidel, who's one of the writers on that show, says, it's the gift that keeps on giving because we keep getting residuals from that show, it won't go away. Um, and from time to time I come across it. Right now, it's on um there's uh some sort of a cable station called Heroes and Icons or something like that, H I, I think it's called. And they play Nash Bridges on that um occasionally. Um and uh one day I was skipping through looking for something to watch, and I saw that Nash was on, so I tuned in and uh was right at the beginning of the episode, and um and I'm watching the teaser, and I'm thinking, oh, this this is pretty good. This actually holds up, it works, but I don't remember this episode. And I had come in, I think I came in to that show on episode 12. Um, and so I said to myself, it must be one of the 12 that they did before I got there. And then I'm watching for a little while because now I'm curious to see who wrote it. And it says written by John Worth, and I had no recollection of writing it. And I think it's it's not that that is not to say um uh to speak about that show pejoratively at all. That is just to say in those days when we were making 22 to 26 episodes a season, and we did six years in a row. So we had very little time off between seasons in those days. Um and I'd come off come out of a world where we did that routinely, and I'd already been working for quite a few years by the time I got on that show. Um it's just exhausting, you know, and you can't, you just can't remember from one day to the next really what you're doing. I remember times standing at the board in the writer's room writing a beat and just stopping myself and turning around to the writers and saying, haven't we done this story? Have we done this story? And some version of it we had, because on those kinds of shows, you know, there are there are a few um sort of generic stories, you know, bad guys rob a jewelry store. Um, you could probably come up with 10 different episodes about bad guys robbing a jewelry store, different characters, different circumstances. So sometimes I would just feel like I'm repeating myself. And there are probably, you know, listeners who will listen to this and say, oh, what an asshole. Of course he was repeating himself. Those episodes suck. Um, but I think there, I think that show was special. Um, I think Carlton Hughes really nailed it when he created that. I mean, there are some things about it that are just timeless, evergreen. And when I watch it today, it works. Um, but to your to to to your further question, um I have had a lot of success. Um it was challenging to get into the business. It was a completely different business when I got into it, um in terms of how television worked back in those days. Uh, we could talk about that if you want to, but I'm sure many people understand what what I'm talking about. Um and um once I got into the business, I've essentially worked every day that I've wanted to work. Um there have been some times, uh, I remember one time in particular when my oldest daughter was um 16. My wife called me at work and said, Um I can't handle her. You have to come home. And so I stopped working for two years and got my kid through high school, got her through the wrong boyfriend she was with. Um, she was a recruited volleyball player, uh, got her into that whole thing, got got all of her, you know, college applications together, her recruitment package. I took her to all these colleges to meet these coaches and to work out with teams that wanted to recruit her. And um she's now uh the co-chair of the robotic surgery department at Kaiser. Um, she's a board-certified robotic surgeon. And um I I'm here to say that was a really good investment I made um in my family and my daughter's life. And I don't regret the several really sort of grandiose opportunities that came my way during that period of time, which I passed on. Um but yeah, we all have um we all have failures. And um, I was listening to a couple of your shows this morning, um, and it occurred to me that we're all kind of in that place where where we view our lives and and our relative success based upon what the industry has decided is successful. Um, and usually that's if people are if you're in the TV business, if people are watching your show um in great numbers, and your show continues for a number of years, um, and um everybody makes money on the show, including you. Um, I think for me, I would I would kind of peel that back to a more basic level about my life as a writer. Um writing if I if I spend um some number of minutes a day writing, not too many minutes, because that's also a horrible place to be. And when you're making a TV show, sometimes you end up in that place where you're having to write too many minutes a day. But but you know, a good day for me would be waking up, having a cup of coffee, exercising, um, being with my family and my my dogs, and then spending um, you know, six hours at the machine um writing words and then exercising. Did I say that already? Um and then maybe having a glass of wine and dinner. Um, and it's it that's quality, quality time for me is the time I'm I spend writing. And um I try to disassociate the outcome of that time with the quality of that time. Does that make sense? So I don't I try not to think about this is the greatest script I've ever written, or somebody's gonna buy this, or this is you know, that actor's really gonna knock this out of the park. I'm just trying to um enjoy the process, tell what I think is a good story, a story that would entertain me. Um if there's comedy in it, write some lines that make me laugh. If there's drama in it, um, or pathos, write some lines and and some scenes that make me feel something. Um and that is success for me. Um and it kind of always was, even when I was not making a living as a writer. Um, and now after all of these years, if I ever get any time, and sometimes I do between projects to write something just for myself, that is that's like eating ice cream, you know. It's I'm just writing those words for myself, and it really doesn't matter where it goes or or what happens to it. Um I here's an interesting situation, it was interesting to me anyway. Um when we were doing Love Monkey, uh that was a show about um rock and roll business in New York City. Um and um and I, you know, I came up in the mid to late 60s and the early 70s, and um, you know, rock and roll was a big thing in our lives, and um I was really into this band called the Merry-Go Round, and uh, they were a Southern California band, and the leader of the band was this guy named Emmett Rhodes, and um I was obsessed with this guy when I was 14 years old. And so many years later, like 40 years later, 50 years later or something, uh, I'm doing this show um with Michael Rausch, Love Monkey. And um, I said, okay, here's a story about this guy, Emmett Rhodes, and um he uh he disappeared, you know. He was he was the the next big thing, he was the American McCartney, and then he disappeared. And this would be a great story for us to write. Anyway, this could be a long story, I'm gonna cut it short. Uh, we ended up doing an episode about him, and we got some of his music to be on the show, and we had to reach out to him and get his permission to use the music. And anyway, I got his phone number, and um and I called him up and we had lunch, and it was a very weird day that I spent with one of my idols. Um, and several years after that, he passed away. And I was so moved by that information coming over the transom, I just thought I have to write a letter to the editor. This guy was amazing and nobody knows who he is, and he disappeared, and he's his story is incredible. And so I sat down to write this letter to the editor, and I ended up with like eight pages or 10 pages of something. And I didn't know what to do with it. And this was during the time when we had fired all the writers in Hollywood had fired their agents, so I couldn't really talk to my agent, but I had a uh literary agent in New York, and um I wrote this thing that just sat down and it came out, um, which is a beautiful experience for a writer, if if you've ever had it. Um and so I called with my agent in New York and I said, I wrote this thing, I don't know what it is. I thought it would be a letter to the editor, but it's too long. Um can I send it to you? And she said, Yes. So she I sent it to her and she called me in half an hour and she said, This is beautiful. I'm sending it to one of my colleagues because it's not really anything I do, but I sent it to him and he's gonna call you. And 15 minutes later, that guy called and said, Um, this is gonna be published in variety tomorrow morning. And so that piece of writing, which was totally from the heart and the soul, and it just poured out in reaction to a life experience, ended up being very successful. I didn't make a penny off of it, which I wasn't trying to do, but many people read that and related to it. And um, I was very glad to have had the opportunity to write that. We're not talking about anything that you guys want to talk about.

SPEAKER_05 15:37

No, I'm I'm fascinated. I'm listening to where I'm gonna be.

SPEAKER_03 15:39

I hijacked the I hijacked the conversation, clearly. Um yeah, I've been fired.

SPEAKER_05 15:51

Well, hold on, let me let me preface that with a question. Uh the uh I think I'm gonna leave the fire question for Dan because I do have a question about and I want to back up a little bit because you get you that was our you know a great answer about your life, and we're getting a little bit of perspective on you. Um, just so you know the people listening have sorts of perspective more perspective into you. Your name has come up a number of times on this podcast. You, as Dan mentioned in the uh opening, we've done a I don't know, we've done over 125 episodes mostly with showrunners, and I think you do have more showrunning credits than anybody else, and so that's a you know testament to a long career. And you were then you know talking in that answer, which I kind of want to drill down on, about uh having to take a little bit of a break because your wife needed you for your daughter. And when I was on my very first show, I the showrunner talked about his wife being a TV widow, meaning that when he was in production, he wasn't there for her, and she was alone because there was too much work to do, and I was sort of low-level, and I wasn't privy to what the showrunners were doing. And the higher I go and the more privy I get to it, the more I realize what an all-encompassing job this is. So, my question to you is you know, you you've been a showrunner of so many shows for most like you know, decades now, probably. How do you kind of balance that with your home life when you're, you know, shooting in Santa Fe? How do you you like you said you like to write, have dinner, come home, but like all of those other demands on you, how do you make sure that you can just balance it with your needs at home? And are there sacrifices that sometimes need to get made?

SPEAKER_03 17:30

Yeah, of course. Um, you know, maintaining a healthy relationship, whether you're you have a partner or you're in a marriage, um is very difficult and very challenging for everybody, I think. I've my I have a 39-year-old daughter and a 32-year-old daughter, and I'm watching them go through it um right now. Um my oldest daughter had an argument with her husband the other day about whose job was more important, and this comes up a lot in um TV in some form or another, because it is such a time suck. I mean, it is a it is the monster of a television show is is um really hard to tame. It's absolutely overwhelming, it's all encompassing. Um if you don't pay attention to your relationships, whether it's with your wife or your children, um, they don't take care of themselves. Let me put it that way. Um, I remember I kept trying to explain to my wife, I don't have a typical lifestyle. I I work many hours during the day. Um, I live in the Palisades, uh, which is between Santa Monica and Malibu for people who don't know the area. And um, and for many years I worked in Burbank, you know, at Warner Brothers or Universal or someplace like that. And it would take me an hour to an hour, 20 minutes typically each way to get to work and get home. Um, and one night a week I would stay really late the night we would put a script out. And so I would typically leave the office about 2 a.m. and I could get home in 18 minutes, just driving with no traffic. So um I could not even get here during the day. So if my kids had any kind of a school play or a game or anything like that, I might as well have been working, you know, uh on Mars because I just could not get home. So I was an absentee dad in some ways. Um, and then on weekends, you know, you're so far behind on your writing schedule, you're usually writing, if not all of one day, part of two days over the weekend. Um it's really grueling. So um making time for your relationships is is really critical. Um I I remember one time I came home for hiatus and I had like five weeks, and I said to my wife, come on, let's go, let's let's pack it up, let's go to Hawaii, let's go to San Francisco, let's do something. Um, and we had two small children at the time, and I remember I was just standing outside this room where I am right now, and she just looked at me and she said, We don't work for you. I was like, What? She goes, dude, we don't work for you. We don't just jump. When you say jump, you know, when you're not here, we have lives. And that was a real wake-up call to me that I needed to plug in um a little bit more because it's easy to forget about that. And you know, you see, I mean, an interesting question that you guys could ask on your podcast is um, are you married? How many times have you been married? You know, because a lot of people I know their marriages just fall apart because they get married to the job. And being a showrunner, by the way, is is like having two families. You know, you are the dad to 200 people that are working for you on a TV show. Um, and it's very emotionally involving. Um so, yes, there are sacrifices. The family does end up being sacrificed sometimes, probably a lot of the time. Um, I know people who are very rigorous. About their schedules. Um, I think John Wells is probably the class act in terms of um having figured out how to schedule himself, and he has an enormous career and business. Um and he he is very plugged into his family. Um, I think he keeps regular hours in terms of you know dinners and all that stuff. I think his kids are grown now, but it can be done, it just requires um some thought and sacrifice, you know, the sacrificing that you would do for your family because you're afraid of something on the show. You're afraid of the star, you're afraid of the um uh network or the studio, or there's a lot of things to be afraid of when you're working on a TV show. Um, usually it's easier to sacrifice the family than something there. Um, I remember the first time a network executive called me on the carpet for some reason. I don't remember what the thing was, but I remember saying to him, I don't know. And that was such an enormously empowering moment to just say to the guy who was calling me out, I don't know, but I'll find out, I'll figure it out, whatever it is. It really was empowering for me to be able to do that. Um and um because you don't you can't know everything, and it's okay not to know. Um so it's just it's uh you know, I'm I'm mentioning that because I think there are little things that happen to you over time um that empower you to have to be able to live a more balanced life. My wife and I try not to go more than two weeks. Our kids are gone now. We have grandkids. Um, we try not to go more than two weeks without seeing each other. Although we just went, um, I was gone for three months. Um, and she acted in the show, so she came over a little bit during that period of time, a few days here and there, um, to do her thing. And um so that was nice. It was nice to have her a part of the show. I I have an anecdote for you, I'll tell you about. Um, so I was doing this show called Um Happen Leonard, um, and we shot it in Atlanta. And James Purefoy and the great Michael K. Williams were the two stars of this show. And um my wife came down there. We were just beginning, I think, the third season of that show. Um, I know you spoke to Mickel. I listened to the Mickle interview as well. Um wonderful guy, by the way. Um, anyway, so Michael uh K Williams had had been nominated for an Emmy for the night of, and the prevailing wisdom was he was going to win that award. So he he meet the Emmys were on Sunday. We were supposed to start shooting the following Monday. So he asked me if he could come, if he could miss that Monday, if we could reschedule him to Tuesday and to accommodate his awards thing, and I said yes, and then he didn't win, and he was a very uh brilliant mercurial character, and he comes to Atlanta on that Monday, and my wife had never seen me work, except up here when I'm writing. She would come, she comes in from time to time and sees me sitting at the computer. And and when you're a writer and you're actually at work, it kind of looks like you're not working. Um, and uh, so she'd never seen me at work doing the showrunner job. So she's down there sitting in my office, and Michael called me, and he was going crazy. He was, he didn't win the Emmy, he was really upset, he got jammed into traveling back to Atlanta, he was in Atlanta, he was exhausted, he was emotionally ragged, um, he was resentful of having to be at work that day. And um he went off on me. And I mean, to the degree where I was holding the phone out like this because he was screaming. And my wife was sitting there and I could see her face, and she was horrified. She was like, What the hell? And so he I kind of let him burn himself out, and then I just said, How can I help you, Michael? And he said, I shouldn't even be here. I said, Okay, go home. Click. Turn to my wife and she goes, Is this what your job is? I said, Well, it's part of it. It's not all of it, but it's definitely part of it. Um anyway, so um that's another aspect of it. Having having your your spouse be able to see what it is you do. Um seems simple, but it's helpful.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

So earlier on you mentioned that the you know, obviously you've been in the industry such a long time that it's now it's changed quite a lot. Now, it definitely will have changed in terms of I'm sure work-life balance wasn't invented yet as an expression when you first joined, but in terms of some of the other sort of changes that you've seen, obviously you've gone from you know being in a room to being the showrunner. How have you some of these big sweeping changes? Tell me about some of the themes that you've seen and how you've adapted to them, and then hopefully an example of when you didn't adapt very well and something went wrong, because that's what this podcast is about.

SPEAKER_03 28:18

Um, I sort of came up uh my first job in television was in 1984, and um it was on a TV show called Remington Steel. Um, and you know, every every every show we do, there are lessons and we learn from these lessons, and then they compile, and you know, you build a portfolio of yourself and how you are in the business as you go from show to show. Um, I remember standing on the set on that show one day um with Pierce Brosnan, and we had built this set, which was uh this big billboard, which he had to clamber up on and fight, you know. And um I'm just a you know, Pierce and I are the same age, so you know, I think we were in our late 20s at the time. And um I stupidly said to him, So are you excited to climb up on that billboard and have that fight? And he just looked at me and he said, Writers on the set are like a spare dick at a wedding. Went, I don't know what that means. It's kind of cool, but I don't know what that means, except maybe I shouldn't be here. I don't know. Um, anyway, yeah, so um so coming into business at that time, um there weren't really uh codified writers' rooms, I don't believe. Um we worked in Michael Gleason's office and we would congregate in there and we would discuss stories, we'd go through stories, and there were no writers' assistants, there were no boards. Um, if it was your story that you were discussing, you were responsible for taking whatever notes needed to be taken in order to get you launched to outline. And um, and then as time went on through the 80s um into the early 90s, uh, I believe John Wells was, I think the the term showrunner was coined by the New York Times for John because he was an executive producer on ER running the show with um Steven Spielberg and Michael Crichton, who were not performing full-time services on the show. So, in order to make a distinction between the executive producer title, New York Times coined the phrase, I believe, um for John, showrunner. So around that time, I was doing a show called uh, I remember when John worked on that pilot. Um we were both on the Warner Brothers lot and we had worked together, we knew each other, we'd have lunch together, and he'd walk by my office to go to lunch, and he'd come back and sit and we'd chat, and vice versa. And he was working on the pilot of ER at the time. And um, I was on a show called The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr. And we did not have a writer's room, although we did congregate in my office um to kind of work out stories, and we started writing on a whiteboard in that room. That's the first time I'd seen anybody write on a whiteboard. Um, and then um then I went to um Picket Fences, worked at Picket Fences for a season. Then I went to Nash Bridges, and by the time I got to Nash Bridges in the late 90s, we were in a writer's room. Writers' room was a thing, and I know uh Wells had a um a big, um, enormously effective room on ER as well. Um, and so this is when we put whiteboards up in the writer's room, um, and it kind of became a codified way of working. And um, I launched um Carlton Hughes, and Carlton Hughes has this eye for writers, which is amazing. It's like he has a sixth sense, he sees people and he plucks them and um and then curates them, and they go off to do amazing things. So um a lot of the people we had on that show um went off to become showrunners um in their own right, you know, Sean Ryan, Daniel Lindelof, um, and um and then those people took the writer, took the board and created their own style of using the board. And before I knew it, um the board in a writer's room what became a thing. Um and uh I know now there are some, there are computer programs where the board is kind of virtual. Uh, you don't have to write on the wall. Um we just did Dark Winds season three, and we had walls that you could write on. We didn't even need boards, you could just write on the wall and erase it. Um, I'm still very tactile in that way. I like to, you know, something happens when I've got a pen in my hand, uh, so I like to work that way. But um, so the writer's room was kind of a thing that became a thing some number of years, maybe 10 years after I'd started in the business. Um, and through that process, you know, Stephen Botchko, um, and people of his generation, then um, people of my generation, uh, Ed Zwick, Erskywitz, John Wells, um, John Savart Young, I mean, that group of people, writers became empowered, and the showrunner figure really started to wield a lot of power. And that escalated into um the era of peak TV and the new golden age of TV, you know, um, where you have Matt Weiner and Vince Gilligan and all these guys who were um enormously creative, idiosyncratic writers who created shows. Succession is a good example, um, where those guys had so much creative power that they really kind of ran these shows um in the way they wanted to run these shows and made the shows they wanted to make. Um what I've begun to see is is I think we we got to the pinnacle of that period, and we're starting to slide down the other side of the slope now. Um some of those writers, um Shonda Rhimes, Ryan Murphy, I mean, you know, the very well-known uh names creators um are probably able to do in some respects, make the shows they want to make and how they want to make them. Um that's a little Pollyan-ish because the business is still the business, and you gotta sell something that the people think they can sell. But I think in terms of the power of the writer, in the way the business has changed, going from a 22 to 26 episodes season to um one where you're doing six episodes or eight episodes. Last year we did six episodes of um Dark Winds and Happen Leonard, we did three three seasons of six episodes. Um, this year I did eight episodes. Uh you don't wield the same kind of power as a showrunner um as we did in the past. Um and I think that's because uh they've stretched out the period of time um where you where you can work on and deliver these episodes, and it gives them more time to interact with you. I was complaining this morning that um while I appreciate the notes I get from the AMC executives, they're they're pretty critically attuned to what it is I'm trying to do, and they have a 30,000-foot view because they're not bogged down in the day-to-day. And I appreciate that very much. Um, but they do have a sense of, well, we can just keep giving notes as long as we want to keep giving notes. Whereas in the old days, I would say, I'm gonna submit this cut to you. You have one bite at the apple, let me hear you notes, I'll do them or not. That's it. We're moving on. Now they get offended if you try to pull that on them, you know. Um, it doesn't stop me from trying to pull that on them, by the way, but um, they do get offended. Um, my uh current executive at AMC says, Oh, we all know how much you hate oversight. Yeah, that's true. I do. Um, so I don't know what it means for this um for the generations, because there are multiple generations now coming up under me. I don't know what it means for them. I sense that um it will be very difficult for most television writers to enjoy the kind of career that I've had, where I've gone from show to show, done a lot of shows, um, shows that lasted for a long time, um, years, seasons, um, lots of episodes per season, um, where you could make a living, you know, even as a staff writer, uh, making writer's guild minimum, you could make a living because you were working 40 weeks a year or more. You know, now I'm typically making 10-week contracts with people. So it's very challenging to live in this world if you're in Los Angeles, um, and uh on what you make on a show for 10 weeks or even 20 weeks. So the business, in my view, is not moving in a good direction from what I experienced, but nothing remains the same, everything changes, it's evolving into something new, and that new thing will be the reality for the younger people coming into it. Um, it'll just be different than what I knew.

SPEAKER_05 39:37

I had the uh you mentioned Shonda and uh John Wells is my current boss right now, but like watching these old Shonda Carlton Qs I'd worked for as well, and it you're absolutely right in seeing like the world in which they inhabit as showrunners feels like a different world than which the the young writers are coming up into. It's a new reality for so many people, and it's a scary reality for these people coming in because, like you said, the rules have changed so much, and uh hopefully there's a pivot back, or hopefully there's a path forward for people, because I feel like as you're mentioning as well in that last comment, the game is changing, and if the game changes too much, there really isn't incentive anymore for people to join this business when there used to be uh lots of incentive, and you've seen that change is so fascinating just to circle back to the beginning part of your comment of like the invention of the whiteboard in the room, like hearing where that came from, and that's the first time I heard that story and going, Wow, at some point this was developed, what we do. Like it didn't like I came into it fully formed, but it was people like you who were creating this. So, speaking across sort of the generations upon which you've worked, what is your uh worst? If you can, you know, you don't have to get particularly specific about it, but what is your worst single experience you've had in Hollywood? And did you ever think of just quitting? Like doing, I'm over this.

SPEAKER_03 41:02

Um I think about quitting all the time. Um, you know, I've read I failed my retirement six or seven times now. Um when just uh you know, three weeks ago I was in Santa Fe finishing up Dark Winds, and I was thinking I could just quit today because I'm just over it. You know, you get to that point, I think, in the course of a project. Making art or aspiring to make art is not easy, it's challenging on every level, and it's really hard and exhausting. Um, I worked with this guy. He was an executive producer, line producer, he's a director, a kind of a creative partner to me in a sounding board, and he was the line producer on Dark Winds. And um I remember the first time we worked together, we had a very challenging um star. And this leads into the answer to your question of most challenging time in my career. And I remember um I was walking from the writer's building to the editing um bay, and and this guy, Jim, was sitting on the stoop of the editing bay, and he really looked hang-dog, you know, like really just over it. And I said, What's going on? And he was explaining, you know, some things that had happened. And then um he reached into his pocket and he pulled out this wad of cash. He said, You see this? I go, Yeah, but what is that? And he goes, This is $10,000. I go, Yeah, what why do you have a wad of cash that's $10,000 in your pocket? He said, It's my run money. If I get to a place where I just can't take it and my head's going to explode, I know with this $10,000, I can drive to LAX, I can get on a plane, and I can go somewhere and I can just get out of here. I said, Oh, that's pretty cool. And then he puts it away and he reaches into his other pocket, he pulls out a lot of cash and he goes, You know what this is? And I go, what? And he goes, This is your runway. It's like, okay, then you got me covered. Thank you. Um so anyway, he and I were doing a show, and um do we have time for me to tell you quite a long story, or should I truncate it?

SPEAKER_05 43:38

Tell you, tell the story.

SPEAKER_03 43:42

All right. So um we're working on the show, and we had a challenging actor, uh, lead actor, and um a very valuable lesson I learned from this actor was uh when he Invaded my personal space and got right into my face. Um, by the way, I'm 5'8 on a good day, and this guy was maybe 6'4. Um, and um he got into my personal space and he looked at me and he said, I don't trust you. That's the problem. It's my face up there. They're your words, but it's my face, and I don't trust that you have my back, and that when I say those words on camera, that America is gonna see me saying that those are words I should be saying. I was like, oh boy, we have a we got a real problem. That's a whole thing. We could do a whole other podcast on how to build trust between, you know, a writer or showrunner and your stars. Um, when you have it, it's wonderful. When you don't have it, it's very challenging. So this actor, uh, we had a young writer um working for us, and he's he went on to be very successful uh in his own right, and then got me too'd and drummed out of the business, I think. But uh he got wrapped up in this actor's craziness. And um I was in the editing bay, it was late at night, the company was working, they were on location. Um, it was a show shot in Los Angeles, and and my script coordinator called me and said, Um, do you want to send the writer's draft of this episode we're making to the star on the set on location? I said, What? He goes, Yeah, I'm being told to make to print out the writer's draft of this episode and send it to the star on location to the star's trailer. I have no idea what you're talking about. I did not ask to do this. I don't know where this is coming from. So we had a um non-writing producer on the show who owned the show, sold the show, owned the show, and uh she was my partner, but also my boss, did not perform full-time services on the show. Um so I I found I I found out that the actor had twirled this young writer up into a knot and um and got the young writer to say, um, John Worth, you know, is uh he ruined my script. There must have been something about the actor saying, Why am I saying this or whatever? And it got to where the the actor was like, Well, I want to see your version of the script then. So I found out this was happening. So I called my producing partner and I said, the star of the show wants me to, this happened to be my wife's birthday. Um, and I was trying to get out of there to go take her to dinner, which it circles back to what we were talking about earlier. So I said, the star of the show wants me to send this writer's draft down there, and um and I'm not gonna do it. And she said, Well, you have to do it. I said, What do you mean I have to do it? I don't have to do it. I'm the show runner. I don't release writer's drafts. I mean, this is the 40th episode of this show that I've done. I've never released a writer's draft. And she says, Well, if he's asking for it, you have to give it to him. I said, No, I don't. I'm not doing it. She said, I'm telling you to do it. I said, I'm telling you, I'm not doing it. She said, You have to do it. I said, here's the thing. If I send this writer's draft down there, he's now the show runner, not me. And is that what you want? Do you want our star to be the showrunner and to have that kind of power? And if you say yes and you order me to send the script down there, I will do it. Otherwise, I'm telling you, I don't think it's a good idea, and I would advise you against ordering me to do this, but I do work for you, so I'm not that kind of an asshole. And she said, I'm ordering you to do it. I said, Okay. I hung up the phone, called my script coordinator, and I said, I want every single writer's draft that I have produced on this show, all 40 of them, printed out and put in a box and delivered to the stars trailer on location tonight. He's like, okay. So he puts together this box, and I'm back in editing, trying to get this cut done so I can take my wife to dinner. And the phone rings, and it's the star, and he goes, Hey man, uh I got this box of scripts delivered to my trailer. I mean, what is all this? What am I supposed to do with this? I said, you know what? I I I don't give a fuck what you do with it. You can use it as a doorstop, you can take it home and use it as kindling, you could take it home and have your wife read it to you as you go to bed at night. I don't give a fuck. He goes, Wow, you sound angry. I said, Yeah, I am angry because you're out of line, and this is bullshit. And it's my wife's birthday, and I'm gonna hang up now and take her to dinner. And I did. Next morning, I'm driving in to the office. My line producer calls me and says, Where are you? I and it's about seven in the morning. I said, I'm just pulling into the parking lot, and he said, The star is in your parking spot. So, that's fine, I'll park somewhere else. He goes, No, the guy is standing in your parking spot. I said, What? He goes, Yeah. So I come around the corner, and there he is. He's standing in my parking spot and he's holding the box of scripts that I sent him the night before. So I pull into the parking spot, like right up to his legs, and I open the door of my car and I get out and I say good morning. And he gives me this demonic look and he goes, Is it? And I said, Well, um, maybe we should talk about this in my office. He goes, That's a good idea. So we go into the building, no one is there. I'm leading the way, he's coming behind me. I open my office door, I step in, I hear him kick the door shut, and he throws the box of scripts on the floor, it goes skidding across in front of me. I turn around and he's throwing a punch at me. And so, as I said, he was quite big and I'm small, and I just blocked the punch like this, and I popped him in the chest, and he went, I got the wind knocked out of him, and I said, sit down, and he sat down, and then um we yelled at each other for two hours, and by the time we got through that, he said, you know, you know, I just gotta motherfuck you once in a while. I said, Well, you know what? I don't work that way. I don't like it, I don't appreciate it, it's disrespectful, I would never do it to you. Um, I don't dig it. It's come on, let me walk into the set, walk me back to the set. So we go out of my office, and there's a lot of people there. And my assistant is there and she's crying. And um I'm like, yeah, it's everything's okay, everything's good. Walk them down to the set. The set has been dead in the water for two hours while this has been going on. So we get down there and I drop them off and I come back to my office and I call my lawyer and tell him a story. And he says, Do you want to press charges? I go, fuck no, I'm gonna live off this story for the rest of my career, you know, like this is gonna be a good one to tell people. And and I have, I've told this story a lot. Um so um, so now I'm I'm in there, and um, the greatest thing about that writer's office was it had a bathroom, and I didn't have to go out to go to the bathroom. So I was in there for several hours um writing, and then I came out to get a cup of coffee, and there's probably 40 people sitting in the lobby right outside my office. Very I mean, like, what are these people doing? And so I'm looking at all these people, and I said, Um, something going on? Does somebody want to tell me what's happening? And the stunt coordinator stands up and he walks over to me and he sticks out his hand, he's an old cowboy, and he goes, John, I just want to tell you I think you're an honorable man, and I would go anywhere under any circumstances to work for you anytime you ask. I said, All right then, what's going on? And he said, You don't know what's happening? I said, Well, why don't you tell me what's happening? So it turns out that the actor gone back to the set and he said, I want everybody on the show, except John Worth, down here right now. We're gonna have a meeting. So everybody comes down there and he goes on to tell them that I have betrayed him in a way that has not happened in all of his years in Hollywood. Uh, I am not a friend to the show, I'm not to be trusted, um, I'm a fuck up, you know, on and on. And then he tops it off with, let's pray. And everybody had to hold hands like at a prayer circle to pray, you know, for my demise, I suppose. So so that now I go, okay, well, this is really just escalated to a place where I think this whole thing is untenable. So um call my agent, call my lawyer, end up calling the network. The network starts freaking out, they want to have a meeting, so I go over there to have a meeting and I tell them I'm I'm leaving the show. And um, and this is where the I'll I'll truncate the story a bit. So they wanted to keep me at the network, and so um they said, you know, just finish out the season. We had like six or seven episodes to go. Um, you don't have to talk to them, just have your number two interface with him, just be there as the figurehead, the whole thing will fall apart if you're not there, and we're gonna give you a different a new show. Okay, so um they give me this pilot to write, and uh I go off to um make this pilot out of town, and um I deliver the pilot, and the pilot's not picked up. So then they say the network says to me, Well, you must have an idea um that you've always wanted to do, and I said, Well, I do, and the president of the network said, I'll buy it. I said, Don't you want to hear? I don't care, I'll buy it. So I wrote this pilot, and you deliver, you know, on that schedule, you would deliver your pilots in December, and you would usually hear late December, early January if if it was going. Um, and so um I deliver the pilot on December 26th. I hear from the president of the network who says, I just read your pilot, I love it. I think it's in the top 10 pilots I've developed in my entire career. It's gonna be a big show here. Um, our CEO is getting married. It's it's gonna be a wedding out of the country, and we're all going to it. So you're not gonna hear from me for a couple weeks, but I just wanted to call you and give you a Christmas present and say, this is a fucking incredible pilot, and it's gonna be huge. And thank you for writing it for us. Like, wow, okay, so now I'm on I'm flying. So um I go to a Laker game a few days later, and that's a place where agents, you know, hang out and troll, you know, all the stuff that agents do. And all these agents start coming up to me saying, Hey man, I hear your pilot is on fire at you know, at the network, and you gotta, you know, you gotta see my director for this, or I've got my actor is perfect for blah blah blah, you know, all this stuff. And I'm I'm thinking, you know, I'm I've I'm cool, I got it made. Like, who's better than me right now? Nobody. Um, and um New Year's comes and New Year's goes, and a couple weeks go by, and um I get a call from the network president who says, Um, I'm sending a script to your house, and literally I hear ding-dong. I go, Okay, I think it just got here. This is before email or anything else where you could just ship a script, you know. And uh so I uh the the this person says, Um, so read the script and tell me what you think. Okay. Um what about my pilot? Uh well we haven't we haven't made all of our decisions yet. Um, still in the mix, totally in the mix, but just take a look at this thing. So I read this thing, I go, okay, I see what it is, but you got a pilot script. What do you need me for? Well, we need you to take the writer through it. We want some changes, and could you just sort of assist us with this one? Okay. So I do that, waiting, hear nothing, go out of town, make that pilot, test that pilot. The pilot tests through the roof, they don't pick it up. Still have not heard anything about my pilot. By the way, this was um about 20 years ago. I have yet to hear about my pilot, which was one of the top 10 pilots ever developed by this network executive. To this day, I have not heard anything about that pilot. Obviously, it's dead. So I do that. That that whole thing, that show doesn't get picked up. Ding dong, there's a uh DVD on my porch of another pilot. So I look at this thing, it's terrible. I call the network, I say, why am I getting this thing now? Well, the other show that we had you do is dead. I said, but what about my pilot? Well, still in the mix, still in the mix, but we need some help on this one. Um the person who wrote this is not a TV person, and um, there's some non-writing producers involved, and uh, we need you to kind of go in there and set up the show and hire this writing staff and kind of get you know, just showrun it. I said, until my pilot gets picked up. Yes, of course. Oh, yeah, of course. Okay, so I get on this show, and um now I'm working with the network executive who is under the president, who reports the president, and um this I'm talking with this person, and this show is scheduled for a Friday night, and I said, you know, this this show has the opportunity to be a very scary show, and it's on Friday night, and there's history of scary shows being on Friday night. There aren't any scary shows on Friday night right now. I think we should lean into the scary and make this a scary show, to which that person says, that's a great idea, let's do it. So I start going down this path, hire writing staff, I'm going down this path. Um in conversation with the with the current executive at the network, everything seems to be going fine, and then I have to go in and pitch to everybody. There's a meeting that's a sort of a pre-production meeting where you go into the network. I'm not sure if this happens anymore. I guess it does. They call it a pitch out now, which happens over Zoom. But in in those days, it was in person, and there's you know, 50 or 60 people in there, and you got to do your dog and pony show. Um, and so I do my dog and pony show, and I'm telling the story exactly that has been decided upon with the current exec. Um, and the president of the network's in there, and the president of the network says, uh, I'd like to uh everybody uh just take a moment, everybody to clear the room. Um, I'd just like a minute with John. So everybody goes out, we sit down, and um the network president says, Everything you just pitched there, none of it is in the show. It's not the show. I said, All right. The show is what the pilot was. I said, but the pilot doesn't work. You make the pilot work, and that's what the show is. All right, I can pivot, I'll try to do that. So I go back, tear everything up, start working on a new version of the show. They're not happy. Um, coincidentally, a friend of mine who works with Showrunner Training Program, um called me up and said, Um, can I shadow you for a few days? I said, sure. So she comes over to shadow me for a few days, and she's listening to, she's a former network executive, and she's listening to my conversations with the network. And at the end of like the second or third day, she comes to my office, she goes, Can I talk to you for a second? Sure. She comes in, she closes the door, and she sits down and she says, You're gonna get fired. I said, What? He goes, You are going to be fired. What do you mean? He goes, I've been on the other side of the calls that I've been listening to, you have with them, and I'm telling you, when they hang up the phone, they are saying that fucking asshole John Wirt, shit can that guy. I'm tired of that guy's bullshit. I said, What are you talking about? She goes, I'm just telling you, it's gonna happen. So I don't believe her because I have been working at this network for years. I've made a lot of money for them. Um, they've been very happy with my work. I'm on the path to, you know, becoming um a rich and famous showrunner working for this network. And um so a couple days later, I get a call to go to go to the network and meet with the network president. I go in, sit down, and there's like seven or eight people in the room, head of casting, uh, the two non writing producers from the show. It was just a big surprise to walk in and see those two people there. Um, and the network president says, uh, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go back to your office, put on the DVD of the pilot. I want you to write one liner of what every scene is. I want you to have your assistant type it up, distribute it to your writers, and then I want you to give me 12 episodes exactly like that. And I said, I can't do it. I don't think it's the show you want. I'm not going to do it. To which I was told uh the network president would rather fish fish or cut bait or I don't know, you know, whatever that saying is. And um and I was done. Go back, pack up my shit, get out, it's over. So I I was it was stunning, you know. I mean, I was walking out of that building going, I think I just got fired. Yeah, I was told I was fired. This is impossible. They can't fire me off this show. My hubris was kicking in them. Like I set this whole thing up. I have a vision for what this thing is. They can't do it without me. So the next beat on that story was they wanted to renegotiate my contract and negotiate down my percentage in that show. And I said, why am I wasting my money paying my lawyer to do this? Because this show is not gonna work without me. Um so I anyway, I did, had to negotiated down my percentage to like 0.000 something four or something like that. And um the show was on without me, I think for 11 seasons. And uh so the first lesson there was yeah, the show can go on without you, pal. You are not necessary. There are other people that can do whatever it is you think you were doing. Um and off of that show with my 000.000 something percentage, I think I've made more money than on anything else I've been involved with. That show was enormously successful.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:34

And my agent loves to say to this day, do you know how rich you would be if you'd stayed on that show? I tried to stay on it, I didn't I didn't quit.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:45

You know, what an extraordinary story. I I love that when you said this might be a long story, I was wondering where it was gonna go with the actor. And I didn't think it was gonna go round to uh to then you miss it, because one of the questions I was gonna ask you, which I don't need to now, is uh give me an example of where you missed out on a show that did really well. It ended up being part of the same story.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:06

So John, also um that's that's the story that got me out of network television. Um, I was under contract at um Touchstone Studios, and um um Warner Brothers was getting Sarah Connor Chronicles going, and um they felt like they couldn't handle Josh Friedman, who is maybe the best writer I've ever worked with in television. The guy's a genius and a wonderful guy, but prickly and hard to deal with if you're one of them, I think. Um and they um Peter Roth asked me if I would come over and do that show. And um so uh I was kind of going, well, um, you know, uh I I I guess I'm kind of free, but I'm under contract at Touchstone. So um Peter Roth called Mark Pedowitz, who was the president of that company at the time, and Petowitz called me and said, you know, um when you got fired off that other show, I thought you were an asshole because everybody told me you were an asshole. And uh and and in the in the sixth months since you were fired, I've discovered what a bunch of assholes they are over there, and how the show has really, you know, suffered without your creative input. And um, I'm sorry that happened to you, and I'm gonna let you out of your contract early and and go over there and and make that show a success and go with my blessing. And I said, you know, I've never received a call like this from an executive before. Thank you. Appreciate it. He was so gracious um and so kind. So um, yeah, so that was the end of well, Sarah Connor was on Fox, so I guess technically it was a a network show. But after that, I just went into cable and started doing um what I consider the best work of my career um on all the shows that I got involved with after that debacle.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:38

So I think we're gonna have to get you back, John, to talk about that part of your career. The unfortunately Way Podcast work, we are we we are this has been absolutely extraordinary, some amazing answers, but we're we're out of time for I think part one of what will be two parts, because we'll we will want you back. But we have we have to end the first part with a with a question we ask every guest, and I can't wait to hear where you go with this one, which is uh if you could give a single piece of advice to anybody thinking of entering the industry, what would that single piece of advice be?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:16

Um I would say, I mean, there's no one single piece of advice, but one thing that comes to mind is don't be afraid to do the work. It's hard. Um, you know, um guess what? You might have to write over the weekend. Guess what, you might have to pull an all-nighter. Uh guess what, you might have to write an episode that you don't like. Guess what, you might have to work with somebody you can't stand. I mean, there's there's a lot of specific reasons why you can be make yourself or or just be miserable on a TV show once you're there. Um and I would, and I've seen a lot of people flame out because they just won't do the work. And the people that really tend to get through it are the people that will do the work and can do the work and show that they can do the work. So don't be afraid to do the work, would be my advice today.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:24

Yeah. Very simple but very important piece of advice from a man who's done the work over so many years. So, John Worth, uh showrunner, extraordinaire, um, and apparently a man who's comfortable punching people a few inches taller than him if he needs to. And thank you very much for being here. Yeah, thank you very much. But real honor to have you on, sir.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:50

Thank you, guys.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:51

Thank you, Jack.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:59

Thank you so much for listening, and thank you, Game Flanch, for the music. And our wives for putting up with our talk delivery. As always, each episode is brought to you by Scriptation, my favorite screenwriting annotation software. If you want to support the show, please download a copy at www.scriptation.com backslash Noah.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:20

Or perhaps even better, www.scriptation.com backslash Dan. Dan is spelled N-O-A-H.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:29

If you want to find me on social media, I am at Twitter at NFslin and more recently on threads at Noah Epslin.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:39

Don't worry about me on social media, because all you people seem to care about is Noah anyway. Truth.