Take 125 - Writer, Producer, Director Ed Zwick, Shakespeare in Love, Blood Diamond, the Last Samurai

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Any of us who've been in it for long enough, our entire career's been littered with jobs that we didn't get, projects that we thought were gonna go for shore, dozens of unproduced scripts littering for all of us are running into both major and minor failures in Hollywood every single day.

SPEAKER_04 0:26

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

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Screaming into the Hollywood Abyss is brought to you by Scriptation, the Emmy Award-winning app that instantly transfers your notes into new drafts in seconds. Scriptation allows you to digitally mark up scripts, separate notes into layers, track changes across revisions, and so much more. Insert Noah saying something nice about scriptation.

SPEAKER_03 1:20

Dan, I I think this is where they actually want me to talk about how much I love it. And I do love it, it's great. Its collating function transformed me from the messiest writer in Hollywood to, well, ever so slightly less messy. My wife might have other things to say about that. Sitha listeners can get a free month of scriptation by going to scriptation.com backslash Sitha.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

And for those of you who don't understand slightly drawly American accents, that's scriptation.com backslash S-I-T-H-A. Welcome back to Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss, a podcast about rejection, failure, and adversity in the entertainment industry. I am, as ever, your non-entertainment co-host, Dan Rutstein.

SPEAKER_03 2:09

And I am your still in the entertainment business co-host, Noah Epslin. For this week's podcast, I'm thrilled to introduce the Emmy and Academy Award-winning writer, director, and producer Edward Zick to the Edward Zwick to the podcast. Ed has directed such movies as About Last Night, Glory, Legends of the Fall, Courage Under Fire, The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond, and many more. Most of these movies he's produced as well, along with Shakespeare in Love, which garnered him an Academy Award. Ed is also a writer. He co-created and was a showrunner of the TV show 30 Something, amongst many, many other TV projects. He also co-wrote the feature films Last Samurai, Love and Other Drugs, and too many others to list. If all that didn't keep him busy enough, he also just came out with a memoir titled Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My 40 Something Years in Hollywood. Welcome, Ed. Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

So uh obviously uh you can tell from excitement in Noah's voice, he's gonna fanboy through this whole episode because as a writer, I think he's very excited that you're on. Um I'm obviously not quite as excited, but I'm still pretty excited. Semi-excited, I understand. Um, so I think we've got a bit of a deep impact Armageddon situation here. Um, where um we have a podcast that's all about rejection, failure, and adversity. You have a book about the similar sorts of things that have happened in the industry, and they both happened entirely separately from each other, but are out at the same time. So we're not no one's suing anyone here, we're just all talking about the same sort of thing, which isn't the impending destruction of the planet. It is how Hollywood manages to function despite so many things being wrong with it. Um, so I guess the obvious place to start is, you know, you've had a very successful career, you've won awards, you've presumably been paid reasonably well at some point for some of the projects. Um, you could just drift off into retirement and count your money and maybe do a few other projects, but instead you've decided to speak about something that probably a lot of people could have spoken about and have chosen not to for a variety of reasons. What what prompted you to sort of tell your story so openly?

SPEAKER_02 4:26

You know, I um I had never intended to do anything of this sort, uh, although I've have taken great pleasure in some memoirs of years gone by. In fact, comfort in them. Um the ones that I liked best were those that seemed to be closest to the bone. Uh I felt that when I saw things that had happened to me were in fact not the first time, but in that were part of some tradition of uh of uh trauma and abuse, uh that that that I could uh be comfortable in that genre. But I also uh it happened coincidentally with COVID, and I was be calmed in a particular way that a lot of us were. And I don't do well in that circumstance. I I tend to be very sort of hard charging in in work, at least. And so I began to work and I, you know, we how we all have files in our computers now, and we titled them, and I titled mine B-K, which is to say I didn't want to actually say the word book for fear of offending the literary gods, as many uh religions don't want to actually say the name of God. And and so that I I I didn't acknowledge the fact that I was doing it um until a certain point. And I I was putting some things out on Twitter as this kind of Emily Dickinson letter to the world without any you know hope of of acknowledgement or or recompense. But people responded in a very um passionate way, and that gave me some encouragement, and then I um began. But the point of it is is that um I determined that if I was going to write authentically, then I was obliged to talk authentically about other people, and that the standard to which I've always held myself as a writer of fiction, drama, whatever, would be the same standard that I would apply to memoir. That that to be disingenuous was the same thing as being um false, uh you know, uh sentimental, pathetic, all those things that I detest about writing, I couldn't imagine applying to myself. Even though, as you know, in autobiography one does create a persona, and uh, you know, you you inevitably um are doing something that is artful. But um I and the the issue about uh who would be um offended or or how or if I'd broken some kind of omerta, uh I just didn't think much about because I just had some confidence that that the you know the the the words would be uh their own um bona fide.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

So um given that the uh a lot of our audience on this podcast are writers and people in the industry, I imagine that uh there'll be a reasonable number of people who've um already read your book or listened to your book, and there'll be a lot more who'll hear this and then want to go and do the same. Um so the the best question I think I can come up with here is what happened that couldn't go in the book because you were worried that you might was there something over the line that you thought it's best to leave out.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

Well, it's funny that you say that. I mean, since I've written the book, I have because it was essentially uh an act of memory, uh, I I didn't do a lot of research. It was really that which I was was somehow emblazoned um in my mind. I've had occasion, now that I've done a book tour, of occasion to actually recall many more incidents that could have found their way and yet somehow didn't. Um, but those weren't left out for reasons of discretion. They were just left out for you know, lack of you know, adequate long-term memory. Um, but uh I think I made some some determination that the things that I would leave out were those things that didn't necessarily pertain to the work. Because there are certain secrets that I have, or we all have, that I will take to the grave, having to do with you know, certain peccadillos and certain indiscretions and and behaviors that were just um not necessarily affecting me or or affecting the actual project itself. And and there was no need to um unnecessarily dish or or or harm anyone. That wasn't my intention at all. So so there are there are those things that you know will that that uh will forever go unspoken, at least by me. Um and some of them are uh equally um uh problematic about behavior because you know this business is ungoverned. You know, unlike certain you know corporate entities that that you know these days even have you know enormous amounts of HR, um, until even very recently it was it was given very little scrutiny except in the tabloids. Um that has changed. And uh obviously in some way, I think I was um party or to or an observer at least of that moment of change. Um and and and particularly in the character of Harvey Weinstein. But um uh, you know, I I just um yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

Uh yeah, thank you for that. We had a we had another writer on speaking of sort of you know policing their own, uh Mo Ryan came on and talked about, you know, she wrote a book called Burn It All Down or Burn It Down, and it was about just how Hollywood is run and how you know people like Harvey Weinstein coming in and being toxic. And then your book has a slightly lighter touch and just a fanboy for only one second. I really, you know, despite loving all your movies and your TV shows that you've done, um, being a big fan, your book is fantastic. And I really want people to who haven't bought it yet, they should go out and buy this book. I think people who know our podcast know that we actually don't we go out of a way not to promote people's work specifically, because that's just not what we do. But I think you should add this to your if you know your Sid Field, William Goldman, and Edwards Wick's book should be on your shelf if it's a phenomenal read. But you do say something in your book that I want to circle back to because it it's also the theme of our podcast. So you say in your book that the best definition of success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. You also say only in humiliating failure have I ever been willing to open myself up to the harsh scrutiny that leads to growth as an artist. Can you can you dig into the importance of failure in your process? Because obviously that's the theme of the spot.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Sure. Um, and that is where our where our themes align, I think. Um success, I think, is not just mysterious, but I think it's anxiety provoking. I think that in success, you you not only tend not to scrutinize, but you feel unsure as to why something may have happened. And it promotes, I think, this um this rather unusual uh reaction, which is to fear that you'll never be able to duplicate it, that this is the one time that the gods aligned so as to have things happen. But if you're smart, you also realize that there is an element of kismet in all of that, that the script worked in a particular way because you made a set of decisions that could have gone one way, but you made them the other way, that the actor who chose to do it was the right one, or whom you chose, or that was their moment in their career, or that the subject happened to um coincide with some um taste in the mainstream and popular culture that made it available, or that it hadn't followed something of similar nature that had utterly blown it out of the water and and and enjoyed it from ever finding the light of day, or that the management hadn't changed and and they hadn't lost its money to distribute it. There's so many um vagaries that could um deter something from succeeding. And so when it does, there's a sense of relief, but but but again, I think mystery, but but in failure, I think what I most learned was that it's not failure that is the problem. I believe it's the fear of failure. I think it's the dread. I think we ascribe all sorts of apocalyptic fears to failure. And when it happens, which it inevitably will happen if you have any kind of a career that has any kind of length, or if you, as an artist, dare do anything that is out of the absolute um vogue or redundancy of other things, you're going to fail at some point. It's like look, sports is the best analogy. Um, and and and uh, you know, uh, you know, who was it? Cristiano Ronaldo said that, you know, I've taken, you know, 600,000 shots, and of them, you know, you know, 40,000 have gone in. I mean, it's it's that kind of notion. You have to indeed, a baseball player who the best hitter in baseball is he who hits, gets on, you know, one out of three times. He's hitting 333 and he's going to be in the hall of fame if he is, if that's his lifetime average. And that means that he has struck out or popped out or grounded out or fly out or sacrificed two out of three times. And my point about failure when it happens is that at a certain moment you realize you haven't died. You are alive. If you can stand up, you stand up with the same resources that you brought to the dance, the same things that have allowed you to either succeed previously or that have brought you into this world are still with you. And to invest entirely in the outcome is to give over your power to the great unwashed. And it is a commercial business, I understand that. But that isn't probably why you got into it in the first place. You got into it because you had some uh calling or some love of of this process or or or creativity itself or whatever it was, you still have that. And and so I think that that what failure also gives you is the courage uh to uh continue uh uh being bold and knowing that if you fail again, that again you won't die. That this is based that it's been the day, it's the DNA of being an artist and anybody's IMGB of any length, if you look at their career, I defy you to find one or that does not have at least one, if not more, than one failure.

SPEAKER_03 15:51

Wow. I mean, we we started this podcast because we found out that people, you know, people really didn't like talking about failure, or so we thought. And then we brought a few people on who were willing to be open and and it really connected to an audience who needed to hear that other people, not just them, were struggling and high-level people were still struggling. And then as we interviewed something like 120 people, our thesis evolved to it seems like failure is not only you know universal, failure is an extremely important part of success, which which actually brings me to my second question to you. You um you created you had success very early. You created 30 something, and you you won a bunch of Emmys. Uh, Glory did really well. You were a young writer, producer, director. Uh, did that hurt your process at all? Sort of having, you know, getting thrust to the top of Hollywood so quickly?

SPEAKER_02 16:43

Yeah. I mean, I think there was one very particular example in which I somehow I think inappropriately felt bulletproof, or I felt um in uh kind of self-aggrandizing uh in some particular way that I thought that I could single-handedly make something work just through sheer force of will, that I couldn't. And when I felt something going wrong, what I lacked, ironically, was the courage to admit that it was going wrong and that I um that I had uh knew it. And the reason that I didn't admit it was that I was in some way uh again, either puffed up with my own ability or um in denial about the fact that something like that um was happening. I was I was capable of of of convincing myself and a lot of others that it was going to be okay, when in some fundamental way I knew that it wasn't. So, yes, that was a legacy of of having that kind of early success. And um I I can I can say pretty uh strongly that that particular phenomenon never happened again. But there were other things that have happened, some of them external forces that I couldn't control that um uh uh cratered other things. And and in fact, if I were to look at this many years of things that I have tried to do, I think there are just as many that didn't happen as those that did. And if I and if my batting average in that regard is 50%, I'm doing really well because I suspect it's even less good than that.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Great answer. So I I guess the you know, given the the amount of credits you have, the awards that you've won, there's a good sample size to work with here. Um of all of the projects that you've worked on that have turned into an a finished product. So not this isn't about pitches, this is about things that got made. Uh there's gonna be two opposite questions here. Which one are you most proud of? So it's not necessarily about which one what made the most money or won the awards, but in terms of sort of the artistic part of it, which one are you most proud of?

SPEAKER_02 19:11

That's such a hard decision. Do you have children?

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Yeah, and I love them all slightly different amounts.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

I was gonna say, okay, I mean that's uh that's as one of those impossible questions. Um, each has their reasons, and and and in fact, the one that I'm proudest of is the one I haven't done yet, because if I felt if I didn't feel that way, I should stop. Um, I I uh they're they're all look, any movie that gets made is a triumph. Let's let's start there. And it's just as hard to make a crummy movie as it is a great movie. But I would say that when you aspire to things that are more that have a a higher degree of difficulty, if the subject is is more um complex or adult, if it's if it's if it questions certain norms, if it's uh you know dysregulating and upsetting, whatever, that that or even if the subject is is um is political or if the subject is provocative, you're held to a higher standard. And so that uh the ones that that that succeed with that I think have a very particular place in my heart. Um it's a lot about what you aspire to. If you if you if you have a low bar and and you hit it, that's a very different experience than having a very high bar and coming close. Because you're gonna be at a higher level of of accomplishment and and and difficulty in trying that. And I think I've always you know I've always um identified more with the sort of Byronic hero than I have with the sort of um, you know, corporate success.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Is there, given the way the world works in Hollywood, well not the world, the the Hollywood world works, um, are there any projects that did get made, but for either external forces or the way notes were given or the way that your successors took a project to finality. Is there anything out there that is yours that you're unhappy with or not proud of?

SPEAKER_02 21:25

Well, um, I mean, a couple of things I I I've walked away from. You know, we were we were Marshall and I were we wrote a thing called American Assassin, and then um encountered a very different uh response than than the one that had been promised us by this uh the studio at this time. And we said, thank you, goodbye. And they ended up making a movie that had the basis of something we had done but didn't resemble it at all. And we ended up getting credits for it because that's the writer's guild. I suppose we could have taken our name off it, but. Um but that would be self-defeating too. And also we also wrote a very early version of The Great Wall. And we had written it like a kind of Hope and Crosby lark, that it was to say, you know, you know, like those movies. If you remember the Hope and Crosby travelog movies of the 1950s, it was lighthearted. And we felt that a movie about monsters trying to climb the Great Wall couldn't be dealt with with gravity and seriousness because we felt that that would clash. And um this the people that we were working with agreed until they suddenly got scared, and then there was a whole financial scandal where one of the major financiers had to drop out of it. And I don't want to go into it, but the point is that when it was brought to whomever, um, somebody just made the really stupid decision to make it into a serious movie, and they hired a wonderful writer. They hired Tony Gilroy to rewrite it. Um, and they hired and Matt Damon to star in it, and they made it into this, I think, mess that that was like trying to combine um, you know, um the worst flavors you could ever imagine. So, yes, I mean, those things they were utter failures, but I think we had the good sense to walk away from them. Uh, the only one that I could point to that I actually followed through was uh I was making the siege, and and Tom Rothman, who had been remarkably supportive of us to make this movie and to make it at scale, a movie about terrorism, a movie about the First Amendment, and all of those things that it was about. I think he got corporate pressure from Rupert Murdoch or from whomever, and he began to worry very badly about the bottom line of the movie, and he insisted that I find another movie star for the third act of that movie. Um, and and it ended up being Bruce Willis, who I had known in another lifetime for other reasons because I'd worked with Demi. And he was as wrong for the part as could ever be, and he did a crummy job, and he wasn't prepared. And I think the movie suffered as a result of that. I think the movie is still an okay movie, but there's some some amount of verisimilitude and there was a force. Paul Atanazio had come in and written wonderful stuff in that third act because I was already shooting and um to try to amplify this role, and it could have been very interesting, but it was the opposite of that. And I've you know had to, you know, live with that. And when the critics rightly identified that as this weakness, they were right.

SPEAKER_03 24:59

We had um two of the producers actually of The Great Wall at different times come on this podcast, and one of them talked fairly openly about how that project, you know, even went sideways for them. Sometimes it's just going sideways for everybody, and they can't really hold on to it for I'm sure there's a reason, but you know, for a variety of different reasons. So, you know, I you know, your book has so many, you know, candid moments in it. You know, I remember reading the section about glory and having to get notes from uh Matthew Broderick's mom. And I'm like, as a writer, I'm just trying to like it's both cringy and also going like, okay, I've sort of been in that position before, but never at that level. My my question to you is, you know, you talk about you're a rel, you know, a young man when you were making glory. Obviously, it turned out to be a phenomenal movie. You know, as it as you get old, you know, you you're you know, deeper into your career, do you look back upon those early movies and those early experiences within the movies and go, you know, there's things that I would have done different, or there's things I would have done better. And is there ever any inclination to be like George Lucas and go, I'm just gonna make those changes because I have the power to do so now, to like actually retcon my own work to, you know, fit my new sensibility as a filmmaker?

SPEAKER_02 26:15

It's funny, I don't because I think films exist in the moment of their creation. I think they are a factor of any number of things, some of which are the forces that you're fighting against to accomplish them. Um, in the same way they're contextualized by history. You know, a movie uh about Vietnam written in 1962, 68, is it different than a movie about Vietnam written in 1987? And it's going to be a different movie now that they're making the sympathizer based on Vietron, you know, Nguyen's book, uh now. And so those movies are different. And I think you I think it's it's very important to understand um movies in their in their context. And the context were was who were the executives and who are the actors at that time. And and and I think that that I think to to redo a movie is is is somehow revisionist history. I think the movies that I've made are the movies that I've made and um for better and for worse.

SPEAKER_03 27:19

Great answer. Thank you. Uh, you mentioned I, you know, obviously I'm gonna connect with this because I went through a similar experience of having non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. I also had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and very quiet about it. We were, I was actually like you, I had to sort of continue working. And we were also making this podcast, and for many months until I was through treatment, uh, very similar treatment, RCOP, same type of scans, possibly even the same doctors in the same facility. Uh, you know, I decided it was time to be open about having cancer in my journey on this podcast. And, you know, people have listened to that episode, but you know, it definitely changed my connection with Hollywood and the way I approach the industry. I just don't take it as things can wash off me my back a little easier because I had cancer and this isn't cancer. Whatever's going on and said isn't cancer. How did cancer affect your journey uh as a filmmaker?

SPEAKER_02 28:14

Um look, I've never had a better time than after I was in remission, was able to go back to work because indeed I was, you know, confronting the possibility of never working again. And you know, when when you have that sense of finitude and a sense of an ending, then your mind is not necessarily about the movie you're gonna next make. It's about any number of other things that are more important. I'd like to think that I was headed in that direction anyway, because I was already, I think, about 52 or 3 when I when this happened. Um I was working towards something, which is a phrase that I didn't use in the book. And I wish that I had, because it's a phrase that I may have made up or I may have stolen. Um, and the phrase is passionate detachment. And that's a kind of a zen concept, I think, that when you realize that there are so many other things that that um are of value to you and meaning and purpose, then the work, this work, is another one, but it doesn't ride herd over all of them. It doesn't um you don't eat your liver with each one, or or you're not dependent on it for the validation for all the aspects of your life. It's just one of them. And what I found once that word began to creep into my understanding, that the work didn't get any worse, uh, I didn't work any less hard, but my um attachment to the outcome was, as you said, um less invested. And when I got sick, if ever there was a corroboration of that thought, that was it. Um because I will also say, though, that in the same way that being a parent gave me some greater uh understanding of you know uh what it is to be um, you know, uh to have the kind of infantile irrational behavior uh in your life. Um uh so too did this give me some compassion that I may have necessarily had about what everyone is going through in their various ways.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

So we've we've talked uh quite a bit about some of your home runs and base hits, uh, to use your analogy. So uh I feel like it's time to talk about some strikeouts and um some some pop flies. So um I I guess the first one I want to ask is is there of all the things that you've pitched and haven't that haven't gone, is there is there one particular one which you cling on to and have the most regret that nobody would let you make?

SPEAKER_02 31:27

Um more than more than one, I think. Um you know a number of years ago, Marshall and I wrote a script, a spec script. Uh, and I will say this. So this I would say does not describe it as a failure. We sold it for a million dollars, and that was a lot of money when we wrote it. And uh not only that, but it was it was a deal that so many people wanted it so badly that it was even sold with a reversion that came back to us after a certain period of time very quickly. And that script has gone through so many different casts and and and and uh financiers and uh budgets and locations, and it's never happened. And it's probably been it's been more than 10 years now, I think. Um and it is it is in fact the closest to a look at this life, um, and may have had something to do with the book that I just wrote, because the name, the the name of the movie it's called The Making Of, and it's about uh a couple who have been married and been in this business, and uh who've ultimately tried to have a life in this business, and he's been a writer, she's a producer, and he's always wanted to direct, and they finally get this opportunity to make this script, and the story is the story of their marriage, and it's going to be his opportunity to direct, except that the moment they get the opportunity to make that story, they've decided to separate. And so that the making of that movie is the story of themselves, but in order to tell it about themselves, they've had to cast two younger, more attractive actors. And so rather than flashback, the actual process of making the movie is the flashback. But of course, the flash, the truth is what one decides that it is, and there's a great discrepancy between what a husband and a wife might think to be the truth. And of course, the actors themselves have their notion of what the truth should be. And then, of course, there are the various attractions between that man who's now separated and the lead actress, and it's a lovely sort of confection. And uh, if if you know movies well enough to know, um, if you think of a movie like Dave for Night or a movie like Two for the Road, both of which are wonderful movies, it's somewhere in that universe, and it just never got happen, never happened. But if if if you know what I'm saying, that the tone of it, which is a little bit rueful, a little bit um scurrilous, it's it's a you know a little bit um spicy. Um that's found its way into the tone of the book, I think.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

Um be a less fun answer, possibly, but um similar question. So that's the product. I mean, selling it for a million dollars is not you know the worst failure you could possibly have.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Um I guess the other version of that is what's the sort of worst in the moment uh failure you've had in terms of pitching something that's gone wrong or a phone call you've had where where something hasn't happened, the sort of singular moment rather than a sort of bigger project.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

Well, there's two versions to that. There are those things that had incorporated all sorts of failure, which was the process of Shakespeare and Love that we had sets built, and then we had to hear that it was going down, and that was five more years. And Legends the Fall was was um folded once in the process, and you get that phone call and thinking that the dream is dead. But you're asking something more, you're asking about something that is dead and and and done, and and that you have to part with utterly. Um it's hard because I don't think any writer writes anything, or at least you hope writes anything that doesn't have the same degree of investment as something else that he's written. Um you know, characters live in you and you create them. But I suppose that's like an architect who imagines building buildings that never get built. Um I mean, I'd have to, you know, pour through my desk um because there are several scripts like that, that that just uh whether I was paid for them or not, because Marshall and I have written a couple of you know, maybe two or three other things on spec that just didn't work. And we may have not known that at the time, but that was the judgment of the community and the buyers and other actors and actors that I've worked with before and and and and studios that I've worked with before. I mean, I think it may be important to say to whoever's listening who's doing what we do, most things that you do tend to be perceived to be a one-off. No matter who you are, no matter what success you've had, things tend to be regarded on not necessarily the merits, but on what is perceived to be the main chance. And whether that's perceived to be the economic advantage of the studio or the availability of an actor, or they're they're not necessarily about their trust or lack of trust in you and your quality and the work that you've done. You become prey to a lot of market forces, a lot of personal issues that are often above your pay grade or or or unbeknownst to you. And the the inclination is to personalize it utterly, to think that it's some verdict on your ability or lack of ability. And it's not always. Sometimes it is, and I think if you are someone who has um been not necessarily been honest with yourself, or others have not necessarily been honest with you about what it is you're creating, then that's a very difficult situation. Um, because we can create our own um self-absorbed universes very easily and not know about why our work isn't finding uh its way. I mean, I I will say one thing, which is, and I try to talk about this in the book, I know between the ages of 24 and 30 that I would occasionally get work, and the work itself was not only unsatisfactory to others, it was unsatisfactory to me. I knew in some fundamental way that the work was not great, and I didn't know why. And I was floundering. And um there are a lot of reasons for it, uh, part of which I was afraid to the critical voice in my ear, um, teachers and perceived you know, Inca gods and parents and all these various things. Um, and it wasn't until a number of things happened to me that that shook me out of that, and maybe that was just growing up. But I know that it that that it's very possible to be delusional about what's happening in your work.

SPEAKER_03 39:26

I think I think a little bit of delusion for all of us is necessary, especially in the early years, to get past all the uh hurdles. But yeah, and I think kind of recognizing delusion for what it is is an important such an important part of your journey. Um, you you wrote something that was a bit chilling to me, but also real, and I and I see it as well. But you you know, this was actually started a lot earlier than I actually thought about it in my own world. But you talk about making Blood Diamond and it only making something like 40 million dollars and the conversation you had with um No, by the way, no, 40 million dollars profit.

SPEAKER_02 40:02

That's the that's the real scary part. No, it maybe maybe a couple hundred million dollars, but it was 40 million dollars profit that wasn't enough, right?

SPEAKER_03 40:10

So Alan Horn says, we're not making this kind of movie anymore, and he was right. I mean, like, and that is you know the kind of movie you specialize in, which is the kind of movie that many people used to go to the theater for, which is like you know, The Last Samurai or Glory, Legends of the Fall, big, big epic, not necessarily like escapism, but what escapism plus, right? There it made you feel something during the journey of this movie, and people aren't making those movies anymore because no one's financing them. So the filmmakers are all still there, and yeah, you know, Oppenheimer might be the rare exception of a movie that got through somehow, but that's great with Christopher Nolan and a P, you know. So, how does that affect your career personally?

SPEAKER_02 40:52

Oh, it does. I mean, it it affects it affects it in a very direct way. Um you know, uh, I was gonna say something about that. Um you what I didn't realize when I was writing this book, it takes a year to write a book and it was a year to publish it, that the book would take on some kind of autumnal quality. That in fact, even in these last couple of years, that uh trend has only gotten uh codified in the in the business. Um I think I think there are several reasons for it. I mean, it began when multinational corporations took over filmmaking companies and made them adhere to a profit and loss quarterly reporting system that affected the stock price. And and they began to try to figure out how to maximize advertising dollars and how to, you know, uh cut back RD, having to do with development of materials. But they mostly realized that the the adult audience was the most difficult audience to get, that they were the most discriminating, that they were in fact less willing to go out to the theaters, except on a certain time. And they gave up the they gave up the fight. They realized, okay, if we have to maximize money, the way to do that is to come up with the least offensive, most accessible product, which may be um whether that's an IP of a comic book or it's a Marvel universe, whatever it is, that's gonna possibly appeal to younger audiences um who are going to be uh more slavishly and less critically um attuned. And rather than having to really go through the sweat of coming up with an original piece of material that ticks the boxes, as you said, both in terms of spectacle and drama or meaning or ideas or any of that. Let's the there are these these these streaming things that are coming. Oh, well, they'll they'll take that they'll they'll take that weight, and we won't have to do that. And and what happened is that um the the the those streaming things that were coming along were looking at um movies in a very different way. There a couple of them are retail companies, that's what Amazon is, that's what Apple is, and Netflix is a thing unto itself, that's a a video delivery system. That's what how it looked at it. It didn't look at it as a movie company, and their approach to making movies has been much more like an approach to making products than making art. And yes, in answer to your question, has it affected my ability to make those kind of movies? Absolutely. Have I stopped? No. Will I succeed? I do not know.

SPEAKER_03 43:55

So tragic to think about. Um, hopefully change will happen yet again. Because Hollywood does change. Does change? Yeah. Um, okay, this is gonna be our pent ultimate question. Uh, and I hope it's not triggering in any way. We I would remiss to not talk about, you know, which should have been probably the biggest night of your career, which is the the Academy Award win for Shakespeare in love. And I'm not gonna get into the story in detail because I want people to read it in the book, but I want to talk about your emotions when you're on stage. And if this is your moment, this was your baby, your movie. You did so much to make this movie happen, and you don't get a chance to give that speech. Can you talk through your emotions right after that?

SPEAKER_02 44:39

Um the only thing they have to understand is so much had gone on before that. There had been so many um indignities and and acceptance of uh of uh a certain disappointment that had preceded it. So, in some sense, the fact that this happened at that moment was merely the the final indignity that that was probably anticipated. If I'd been at all more uh honest about who I was dealing with, then I probably could have known it. Um there's amount there's a certain amount of fantasy that happens when you go through that award process and you begin to get visions of sugar plums and and whatnot. And um it it was it it stung. But I I mean I do say in the book that that I had to make a choice between between um false humility and an act of violence before a you know a TV audience of millions of people, and it's possible I made the wrong choice. But on the same hand, it became very clear recently that an act of violence on the Oscars, it wasn't necessarily the best thing for a career either. So, you know, I was I was in an untenable situation. And I'll tell you one thing though that um when it was done, it was that thing that we're talking about, about about disappointment, that you just have no choice. There's a there's a phrase, I think it's Peter Matheson's book. He said, when a man confronts a leopard on a narrow ledge, there's very little way to avoid the situation. Um you I couldn't have I probably I wouldn't have made Legends of the Fall if that hadn't happened to me. That led to um another, you know, movie that led to another thing. And you know, you're it's all chaos theory. Each thing affects all these other things that follow after it. And it was um it was oddly comic. And I will admit though that I am not someone who uh has a list. Um but having in had the the Harvey Weinstein experience in so many different ways, I will admit the extraordinary satisfaction in having watched his comeuppance. The irony, of course, is that he should have been um uh probably jailed for any number of his abuses having to do with business long before it was about his sexual depredations. But um there is an old expression that if you wait long enough by the banks of the river, the bodies of your enemies will wash past. And so uh, you know, that it's it that story kept going and you know, as as I watched him his his fall. But he's an interesting person to talk about when you're talking about this and this business. Um his aggression was rewarded by those of us who are socialized and were unwilling or are unwilling to confront that kind of fascism. Um, I ended up suing him and I'm proud of that. But I, you know, uh punching him in the nose at an earlier moment probably would have been better. Uh and I think that we have to understand that there's a there's a an analogy about him and Donald Trump and those people that we see who are big and large and scary and seem to be offering power and offering a kind of um a kind of uh well that that that that that that that aggression is reassuring to some and that it succeeds. And so um it was also a very important moment in terms of being a producer, where after that producers finally got their shit together and created the PGA mark in which you could say who was a producer and who wasn't because of that very moment.

SPEAKER_01 49:14

Um this is definitely falls into the category of a podcast I wish would never end. Um, but unfortunately that's not how these things work. So we do have to ask the final question. On this one, given where you sit in the industry. Uh if you could give a single piece of advice to somebody entering the industry, what would that single piece of advice be?

SPEAKER_02 49:39

Well, as it becomes more difficult to make the kind of living that people aspired to, there was a long time when there was a lot of money and people were coming from a lot of different places because they were coming in search of riches. I think it's l it's harder to have that life here now. And I would say that it has to be you're that your ambition has to be animated by love and passion more than the desire for um money and glory.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

Yeah. I fear you are right. Um Ed Woodzik, thank you very much for coming on our podcast and telling your story in a in a way that I don't think we've had stories told like this before. So uh really appreciate your your candor and your experience. And um, it was uh pleasure and honor to have you on the show.

SPEAKER_02 50:44

Well, thank you. And it's uh really nice to meet you. And no, I've been reading your stuff on and off um on uh on Twitter, I think, over over time. So it's nice to meet you too. And uh and and uh and best of luck with your uh with your football season. Uh uh and uh uh I uh I'll go back uh this weekend uh to watch in mine. So thank you. Thank you so much. Take care. Cheers.

SPEAKER_01 51:17

Thank you for listening to this episode of Screaming Into the Hollywood Abyss brought to you by Scriptation. Thank you as ever to James Launch for the music, and thank you to our loyal listeners. And if there's any showrunners out there who want to hear their fellow showrunners abused uh and ruffled around and put under the microscope so you can hear their stories of rejection, failure, and adversity, please send them away. If you're interested in following us on social media, I've lost track.

SPEAKER_03 51:55

I am at an Evelyn on Twitter or X or whatever Elon Musk now calls it. And thanks to Elon Musk, I'm also at No Epslin on Hive, Audible, Blue Sky, Reds, Mastodon, MySpace, French Twitter, and I'm sure it's