The Screenwriting Life (2024)

Todd A Kessler's newest show, Apple TV+ THE NEW LOOK, is one of Meg's favorite of the year. The show, which chronicles the rivalry between infamous fashion designers Coco Chanel and Christian Dior tracks their rapid ascent against the tense backdrop of WWII Europe, and for Meg, the way the show explores art, survival, and the risks we take to be great, speak to that time as much as they speak to today.

Meredith Scardino has been many things: a fine artists, an animator, a late night writer, and now, a narrative comedy Creator/Showrunner (the wonderful Girls5Eva), but her focus on providing value wherever she is. Listen to Meredith take us through her twisted path to showrunning a Tina Fey-produced comedy and how she staffs her room.

When Inside Out debuted, it was quickly celebrated as one of Pixar's masterpieces, earning multiple Oscar noms (including one for our HOST Meg LeFauve!) How then, do you approach a sequel to such a beloved classic? This was one of the many questions that weighed on both Kelsey Mann and Meg LeFauve as they reopened Riley's head to jump back in. Jump in with them!

When asked about his first time working in feature animation, Meg's Inside Out 2 co-writer Dave Holstein described the process as: "writing inside a dishwasher while it's running." This is just one of many charming talking points in this lovely conversation between two brilliant minds: Dave, and our very own Meg LeFauve!

Friend of the show Dustin Lance Black is back to talk about the central lynchpin of a great film: the protagonist. Lance is known for his complicated heroes (often real people) who draw us in and don't let go. Today, we discuss how to draw a protagonist that will hold an audience's attention, and perhaps more importantly, what to avoid so that same audience won't lose interest.

The romantic comedy is one of the most enduring genres in American Cinema and for good reason: it's all about love, joy, and transformation, aka, the heart of good storytelling. This is Billy Mernit's entire ethos, the foundation that has made Billy's rom-com philosophy one of the most celebrated in our business. Billy is a story consultant, novelist, and Romcom guru, who's booking WRITING THE ROMANTIC COMEDY is a fundamental screenwriting craft text for emerging writers and pros.

We're back with part TWO of our ten common traps that will kill your script. Take notes, TSL Fam!

Whether you're a pro or a beginner, there are certain traps as screenwriters that will almost ALWAYS kill our writing. On today's show, we cover the first five...(stay tuned for the rest!)

Linda Seger basically created the job of independent script consultant. After years of exploring, she discovered that her gifts lie in making a good script great, which is the name of her first book: "Making A Good Script Great." Since then, Linda has become one of Hollywood's most sought-after and celebrated consultants, because of her ability to distill down what is needed on the page.

For Linda's Books: https://lindaseger.com/screenwriting-books/

Navid Mcllhargey has been a studio executive and producer for over 20 years, and over the course of his impressive career, he has seen the business change dramatically. Today, we get an inside look into the life of a studio-exec-turned-producer, and more importantly, what it looks like for a producer to puzzle together a movie in today's dramatically different Hollywood.

Carole Kirschner, the director of the CBS Diversity Writers Program & WGA Showrunner Training Program, is passionate about helping creative professionals build thriving Hollywood careers. Whether you're an emerging writer of a pro, Carole will offer you PRACTICAL advice as to how to approach this ever-changing business.

Octavio Solis is among the most celebrated playwrights discussing the Latin American experience, but he wasn't always a writer. Octavio began his artistic journey as an actor-turned-writing-teacher. But when his students started succeeding, he felt an emerging feeling; a need to take his own advice and get to the page.

Since then, Solis has written dozens of celebrated plays, in addition to culturally consulting on Pixar's COCO, which we discuss today.

Even though Debby Wolfe began her career writing "edgy, brooding feminist shorts" (her words), but really found her lane as a writer when she wrote a Modern Family spec that launched her career. Since then, she's written on a number of multi-cams, eventually arriving on Lopez vs. Lopez, which she's currently showrunning. Today, Debby discusses how she manages to produce at the pace Network TV requires, how she staffs, and the importance of character-driven comedy.

Jeff Melvoin is - for lack of a better word - a TV legend. He's an award-winning television writer, producer, showrunner, and educator who has written dozens and produced hundreds of one-hour episodes on over a dozen television series. He's also the founder and chair of the Writers Guild of America's Showrunner Training Program, now entering its 19th year.

Jeff's incredible book RUNNING THE SHOW, the focus of our convo today, is part memoir, part playbook, and part cheat sheet all about TV writing, from staff writer to showrunner. It's a must-read.

Cole Haddon is many things: a feature writer, a showrunner, a novelist, but he's grown an incredibly loyal community for his STORY brain, which mostly congregates on his very popular substack.

Today we discuss tone, genre, and plot through a case study in which we comparing two very popular TV shows: The Bear and Ted Lasso. In this discussion, we'll trace how, despite them sharing a lot narratively (plot), they exist in totally unique WORLDS when it comes to tone and genre (and why this matters.)

For a deep dive into Cole's brilliant story brain, check out his substack: https://substack.com/@colehaddon

Today is a chance to hear from YOU! We were thrilled to invite longtime listener Jennifer Deaton onto our show to hear about her impressive career in the biz including her life as a reader for Focus Features and screenwriting debut, the award-winning indie feature Jack of the Red Hearts.

This year, one of the most talked about Animated Shorts at this year's Oscars is WAR IS OVER. The project, inspired by the Music of John and Yoko, is an 11-minute animated short featuring the 50-year-old classic song Happy Xmas (War Is Over), set against the backdrop of war.

Today, we welcome three of the shorts' brilliant creators: Pixar alum and Oscar®-nominee Dave Mullins, Golden Globe®-Nominee Brad Booker, and co-writer Sean Ono Lennon who executives produces alongside Yoko Ono.

This year, one of the most talked about Animated Shorts at this year's Oscars is WAR IS OVER. The project, inspired by the Music of John and Yoko, is an 11-minute animated short featuring the 50-year-old classic song Happy Xmas (War Is Over), set against the backdrop of WWI.

Today, we welcome three of the shorts' brilliant creators: Pixar alum and Oscar®-nominee Dave Mullins, Golden Globe®-Nominee Brad Booker, and co-writer Sean Ono Lennon who executives produces alongside his mom, Yoko Ono.

Nimona isn't just one of 2023's best animated movies, it's one of 2023's best movies, full stop (and yes, it is Oscar-nominated). Today, we welcome one it's co-writers, Lloyd Taylor, to talk about adapting ND Stevenson beloved graphic novel, working through a roller coaster development window, and not being afraid to blow up his own work in service of finding the best version of a movie possible.

Elizabeth Hargrave's debut board game Wingspan has become one of this century's most definitional games, but her inspiration to create it was pretty simple. She says, "I felt like there were too many games about castles and space and not enough games about things I’m interested in. So I decided to make a game about something I cared about." This is just one of the MANY points that will apply to your life as a writer.

STORY ENGINE. Two words we so often dread, but let's be honest: the engine of your story is what POWERS your movie. It's make, or break. And today, we break down eight elements to test whether or not you are on your way to a feature film story engine that will take you from fade in, to fade out!

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife.

Despite this being his first produced feature, David Hemingson's script for THE HOLDOVERS is one of the most celebrated of the year, nominated for over 40 industry prizes (including the Oscar), having won many of them. He's a self-proclaimed "journeyman" writer having bounced between children's animated, network comedy, and hourlong procedurals for over two decades. Even given his decades of experience, his approach to working with Alexander Payne was still one of humility, openness, and discovery. Today, David, Lorien, and Jeff, discuss how Hemingson's "unsellable" pilot about an all boys prep school became a new American classic.

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

Hearing Celine Song discuss her authority as an artist is powerful stuff. Despite no feature film directorial experience, she knew she had the secret key to lead the production of Past Lives, which is now a 2024 Oscar nom: a fierce commitment to her script, the story, and characters. For Celine, all of the power and authority that we bring to our work comes from the simple fact that we are the authors and engineer of that sacred document that drives the whole thing: the script.

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

We talk about lava, character wounds, and emotional storytelling ALL THE TIME on the show, but it's important to remember: there's more to good storytelling than an emotionally juicy character. Today, Oscar-winner (and friend-of-the-show) Michael Arndt discusses this, along with trends he is noticing in the evolving world of 21st century cinema.

GREAT RESOURCES FROM MICHAEL:

http://www.pandemoniuminc.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@michaelarndt8848

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

Cord Jefferson knows what if feels like to watch a project die. Recently, he had a greenlit show that was so close to shooting that the production office for the show had a physical address. And then, it died. In a creative funk, Cord discovered Percival Everett's novel Erasure which immediately reignited a passion in Cord, and eventually became his debut feature film AMERICAN FICITION. Today, Cord discusses the process of adapting the novel.

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

ORIGINALLY BROADCAST ON JUL 26, 2023

Despite being a multiple Academy Award winner, celebrated producer, and feature/TV director, Jodie Foster is still aiming for a singular goal: to tell truthful stories. On today's show, we discuss how Jodie processes her work, how she collaborates with others, and what Robert De Niro taught her on the set of Taxi Driver.

Join Our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

Do you ever feel stuck in your work? Like there's an invisible wall blocking you from generating your best material? You're not alone, and today, we're thrilled to be joined by 5-time NYT bestselling author Adam Grant to talk about just this. Adam's new book HIDDEN POTENTIAL illuminates how we can elevate ourselves and others to unexpected heights, which couldn't be more relevant to you as a writer.

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

Don't worry, we hate talking about it too. And yet, Paco de Leon has a way of discussing money that feels safe, generous, and even hopeful. She specializes in helping creatives and freelancers manage their money by talking about what they believe about their income and even...gulp...themselves. You'll feel better about both your finances, and yourself after we finish this conversation!

FOR MORE ON PACO: www.thehellyeahgroup.com

TO JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

As we navigate the holidays, it's easy to look back (and forward) on our career and feel a complicated mix of emotions. But at the end of the day, we HAVE to give ourselves permission to dream if we want to maintain stability in this business. Today, we discuss just that!

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

It's that time of year when hundreds of Holiday Movies air on screens all over the world. Whether its Hallmark, Lifetime, Disney+, Netflix, or Apple, or even Theaters, it's one of the hottest markets around for emerging and professional writers, and for Holiday screenwriting Queen Eirene Tran Donohue, one of the best ways to break in. Listen to her break down why!

Having begun his career as an actor, and then transitioned to an Oscar-winning writer/director, Tom has worn MANY hats in this business. Because of that, he has a particularly unique point of view when it comes to writing. Today, Tom discusses how he embraces his multiple creative identities when approaching the blank page, especially he considers drafts that are going to producers, the studio, or actors.

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

Today we're honored to welcome NINE members from the WGA's inclusion and equity committees in a thoughtful conversation about the state of the industry and representation on and off the page. Today's guests are:

Asian American Writers Committee: Kristina Woo

Career Longevity Committee: Catherine Clinch

Committee of Black Writers: Hilliard Guess

Committee of Women Writers: Franki Butler

Disabled Writers Committee: Shea Mirzai

Latinx Writers Committee: Christina Piña

LGBTQ+ Writers Committee: Spiro Skentzos

Middle Eastern Writers Committee: Cameron Ali Fay

Native American & Indigenous Writers Committee: Anthony Florez

RESOURCES:

TTIE Fact Sheets: https://www.writeinclusion.org/factsheets

Storyline Partners Fact Sheets: https://www.storylinepartners.com/resources/

Women Of Color Unite: https://wocunite.org/

This week, producer Jeff walks you through how he got his film Always, Lola from idea to distribution with a VERY low five figure microbudget...and you can too!

TO WATCH THE FILM: https://www.alwayslolafilm.com/watchathome

TO TAKE THE CLASS: www.jeffgrahamdigital.com/class

Happy Thanksgiving TSLers! Enjoy this throwback to our very first episode.

To prepare for his upcoming appearance on our show, TSL is proud to rebroadcast a classic, Michael Ardnt's Act 1 Masterclass.

Little Miss Sunshine's script, written by our guest Michael Arndt, won almost every major industry award, and for good reason. Its warmth, humor, and surefooted commitment to its themes makes it one of the finest scripts written this century. And SO many of those themes show up in Act 1.

Michael has become a bit "obsessed" with act 1's lately, because it's our chance to maximize the "rooting interest" around our hero so that our audience has no choice but to keep watching.FOR MICHAEL'S (AMAZING) WEBSITE: https://www.pandemoniuminc.com/

The Morning Show is one of TV's most discussed shows, and season 3 showrunner Charlotte Stoudt recognizes it's cultural foothold. For her, the idea of incorporating real world events is all about character, and a chance for both the characters and their discussion of the world around them to illuminate each other.Charlotte also discusses how she runs the morning show room, works with her powerhouse cast, and looks back on her impressive career.

PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

In our time time-honored tradition of asking the same three questions at the end of every show, we wanted to put together a supercut of some great guest responses to be enjoyed in one fell swoop. New episodes

Featured in today's supercut:

- Nora Twomey

- Eirene Tran Donohue

- Constanza and Domenica Castro

- Allison Tolman

- Dustin Lance Black

- Dana Stevens

- Jeremy Doner

- Joe Robert Cole

- Kelly Edwards

- John Lee Hanco*ck

- Jane Anderson

- Julia Cho and Domee Shi

- Rafael Casal

- Kelly Fremon Craig

- Charlie Day

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

In our time time-honored tradition of asking the same three questions at the end of every show, we wanted to put together a supercut of some great guest responses to be enjoyed in one fell swoop. Part two coming Monday!

Featured in today's supercut:

- Matt Lieberman

- Monique N. Matthews

- Sean Presant

- Stacy Rukeyser

- Sam Bain

- Nicole Perlman

- Stephen Karam

- Anna Drezen

- Jenny Lumet and Alex Kurtzman

- David F.M. Vaughn

- Dan O'Shannon

- Jen Grisanti

- Patrick Osborne

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

We're back for another story workshop, plus some amazing suggestions for writing exercises to help crack act 2.

Join our patreon: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

TRANSCRIPTION

Lorien McKenna: Before we jump into our conversation, we wanted to remind you all about some very exciting news about the Austin Film Festival this year. In addition to being there in person and doing our live story panel, in addition to some other panels, we're going to be throwing a party! A TSL party in partnership with Final Draft.

Meg LeFauve: And we are really excited to have our partners in Final Draft. I mean, not other than it, you know, it is the industry standard. You all need to know it. But they're just such a great, great company to work with. And the party is going to be on Saturday, October 28th, right after our story workshop at Stephen F's Bar and Terrace.

So, come

Lorien McKenna: and meet us, and maybe even get

Meg LeFauve: some swag! Ooh, some swag! Some TSL swag! Yes! Some final draft swag! Yes! I would like some final draft swag. Me too. Come. Come, you guys. Okay, let's get into it. Hey, everyone! Welcome back to The Screenwriting Life. I'm Meg LeFauve

Lorien McKenna: And I'm Lorian McKenna, and today we are at Stevens College, and we're doing a live podcast where we're going to do a story workshop.

So the first person up who's going to do it with us is Rex Obana. So Rex, this is where you tell us your story, and we're going to ask you questions.

Rex: I just have to correct you.

Lorien Mckenna: Oh, how do you pronounce your name? Obano. Obano, what did I say?

Rex: You said the former president of the United

Lorien McKenna: States. Obama? Did I say Obama?

Rex: Well, kind

Lorien McKenna: of, yeah.

Obana. Oh, I said Obana.

Rex: Yes, Obana.

Meg LeFauve: Rex, welcome to the show.

Rex: Thank you for having me. Yes, so, the the television drama is about a missing person's unit. And there are two cops. You say cops over here, we say policemen. But, you know, we're in Rome. And the first policeman is... This is Sally, Sally Mountie.

She has given her best years to the police force. And she's good at finding missing persons. Very, very good. The saying is Mountie gets her man.

Meg LeFauve: Nice.

Rex: Yeah, so, the thing is, the thing is, because she's given her best life to the police force, she hasn't had a child. She hasn't managed to have a child, and that's what she wants.

And so she's going through IVF. We call it IVF? And the series, in a sense, as she's looking for the missing children, she is trying to search, find her own. And it's tearing her apart because it's not going very well. So she's kind of torn between her kind of allegiances to other mothers and parents and her desire to be one.

The other cop is... Well, it's so new, I can call him Tyrone. He hasn't got a surname, or any kind of moniker. And he is going through, he's another cop, and he's very, very good, again, at searching for missing children, or missing people. But his children, he has three, have been taken away in a bitter custody battle.

So then again, with him, he is trying to... It is his allegiance of searching for other people's children and then kind of having a battle for his own. And these two cops have given their life to searching for the children and, but they are being torn apart inside. So every week there's a story of the week.

There's a missing child, there's a missing person. I haven't gone through, you know, the the story of the week element in it. But it is, it is about these two people and it's about... My, my brother, my brother's son was taken into care when I was, when he was 6 to about 16. And I saw my brother kind of disintegrate mentally with that trauma.

Court cases social services as we call them. And so this is kind of in a sense my way of homaging that period in my family's life. And thats what I got so far, literally these are notes

Meg LeFauve: wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you.

You know, it's so powerful. And I know we're not supposed to be talking about how to pitch. But, I can't help it. It's so powerful to hear the personal. And you know, why you? That question, why are you the person to write this? Can you see how it all comes alive? When people talk with their personal connection to a story.

I thought that was very powerful. And told very well, considering you came up with it in the cab.

Lorien Mckenna: Yes. Yes.

Meg Lefauve: I have to say. You're a great storyteller. And I'm very interested in it. I have some questions, but I want to let you say what you liked first.

Lorien McKenna: I agree, too, because I'm like, well, does he have kids?

What's happening? And then we tell the story about your brother and the pain you saw, the pain you had around it, too. It did really bring it together, and it was like, oh, yes, this is a story you can tell with your lava, right? Yeah, I have questions, too. My, my first question, though, is And you might not know this, right, because you just came up with it, but the, what is the conflict between those two main characters?

Because they're on a similar journey, right, both are sort of looking, one to find her own child and one to get his children back. So what's the conflict? Are they partners?

Rex: Yes, they are partners. They work in the same missing persons department.

Lorien McKenna: So what's, how are they, how are they grinding together?

Like, why am I going to watch this show in terms of the characters, right? When you think of a show like SVU. It's how those characters are navigating and negotiating the, the relationship to the crime, but also to each other.

Simon: Okay.

Rex: I don't know that. Yeah, it's something, it's something that I was thinking, I was working on another show and there's something thinking about, in a sense, what, what the conflict is between them, but not great enough that you, they're arguing all the time.

Yes, right. No, I don't want that. It might be a difference of approach. It might be, it might, I, I, I don't want to have a love interest between them, I don't want to have any that they're married or related, but there's got to be something. It might be that one is old and one is young, I'm not 100 percent sure, it might be, it might be that, but yeah.

Yeah,

Meg LeFauve: approach, like it could be, you know, is it Scully and... Mulder. Right? They just have different views of the world, so their beliefs are so different. Even though they have the same goal, those beliefs will keep... Or, I was thinking, you know, let's just talk about, like, one could be ready to retire, lethal weapon, one's ready to retire, and one is young and foolhardy and constantly putting them in danger.

I'm too old for this. I'm too old for this, right? You know, I'm just thinking about the archetypes of pairs, right? Right. But of course, they're cops, so they're each, you know, actors love to play skills, right? So they might have different skills that are complementary, but also clash, right? Because in order to do his thing, he has to be improv'd all the time, and she wants to go by the book.

Can that be psychic? One could be psychic. I think that was a TV show, right? Yeah, yeah. But you can see when you think about the TV shows with cops, why they're doing that is to start to give the relationship narrative drive. I like Cagneyand Lacey.

Rex: I do like that. That's another one. You know, where I'm not sure which one it was.

I think it was... She could never settle down. Whereas Lacey had half and they were just, you know, she had that family dynamic going and you had the clash between both of them. So yeah.

Meg LeFauve: Because we want it. We know at the end of the day, I mean, not so much anymore, but it used to be That they are going to get their man, right?

So it's the how they get them, and the how is very much about the emotional relationship between the two of them. And it's great what you're doing, that your brain is thinking of other Cagney and Lacy. Like, when I create, I always try to think of, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. I don't copy, but it's kind of like, you know, painters would first, in the Renaissance, would first study the masters.

And then they would go and find their own voice at coffee. You see that in museums, right? Yeah. But then they would find their own voice once they got their skill set down. So sometimes if I'm given, like I'm right now writing a horror movie and I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to watch a million horror movies, right?

And figure out the math that other people have done. I can break it, but I have to know I'm breaking it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So I guess my other question, other than the relationship, which is often why you really tune in, because you love them together, right, is the world. So is the world of the show going to be mostly the investigation?

Are we also going to be going home with them?

Rex: Yes. I think, I think with, with Sally, it's, the home is quite. Alone and stark, you know, she's a single person. She worked her her life is her work or has been And also I think the Tyrone the same thing as well I mean, I'm not sure sometimes when my ten year old daughter and when she I think when she goes away on camp or something The house is very different.

It feels very different and I think The office, the precinct, is alive with people. And they go to homes which are alive with people to a certain degree. But theirs is quite stark. But I do want, I think you said something about tone earlier. Mm hmm, yeah, tone. And I do want it to be kind of hopeful.

I don't want it to be kind of, you know, kind of, say torture p*rn, but just kind of, you know, down every week. I do want, maybe if they're not found, they don't always have to be found, but they do find something to a certain degree. So I do want it kind of be hopeful enough. I mean, I think series is like the practice.

I like the practice, the law series a couple of years ago. Younger people might not remember it, but yes. Which was in a sense, very, very hopeful at the end. But not, in a sense, like Ally McBeal hopeful, in a sense, which was kind of, you know, a pastiche. But yeah, just very hopeful. Yeah,

Meg LeFauve: because if I'm an executive, I'm going to think, wow, that's all a bummer.

Like, missing kids, you lost your kids, you can't get pregnant. Like, what's fun here? Tell me what's fun here, right? So, in terms of just thinking of the show, and I know you're just starting, so this is, I'm just thinking, I'm just throwing out ideas. Do you, maybe, do you need to code one of them up? So, she seems to have a great life.

She doesn't want kids. She's perfectly happy. She's like this fun character. You can't wait to see her. But she does, is have a secret. Which is, you know what I mean, and I'm not saying you're not saying this. I'm just trying to say, I want to go see her have fun and have a great life. And she doesn't need to have a husband.

She's perfectly happy not having a husband. You know, or, you know, I don't know that this is a personal thing that just this is a personal thing. So take it or leave it. Yeah. What

Lorien McKenna: I was looking for is a single woman, great life secretly. She's doing IVF and that there's a waiting and a hope and a loss in that, you know, fertility stuff is really hard and you keep it secret a lot of the times because there's shame in it.

Right. But it's a secret thing. So out out here you're like, Oh no, I'm fine. I'm great. But then there's this.

And I kind of wanted him to be, this is my take, because, and it's easy for me to do this because you're still forming the idea, so take this as just like what my point of view as somebody who went through fertility, as somebody whose life changed unexpectedly with a kid, like, that, that he would have a family, and it would seem happy and fine, and he, but that under it is this, That there's something really like a divorce or he, she's trying to take the kids and he's struggling to hold on to it in that same way.

And so that, that there is a, because when you have kids, let's be honest, there is that point of, would I do this again? I love my daughter. She absolutely should be in the world, but there is grief around having kids because your old life is gone. And just that, not that it's about being a parent, but it feels like there's a big piece of this.

And it's such a. Identity changing thing, so that it's not all not all sadness, but you do get different windows into what it looks like, and losing kids, losing the hope for kids, you know, all that kind of, it goes to theme, right?

Meg LeFauve: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and, you know, again, this is just more my personal thing women always have to want a kid.

Mm hmm. So, I'm just... Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Want to throw that out there for something you to consider as a female character? I'd be interested in a woman who is perfectly happy not having kids and that she is mothering all these lost girls and boys, those are her children, right? And yet there's still a question of she's alone, right?

That she, that there's a there's a sense then that she's protecting herself from actually true emotional intimacy which then could come into the partnership. So it's just kind of digging in, which I'm sure you will, you thought about it two seconds ago. You know, and dig three seconds, three seconds ago.

Just digging into those layers of the characters, which you will and thematically is, and again, it's new. Do you have any sense of thematically what you want the show to be, you know, kind of running on? Is it, is it, I don't think it's parenting necessarily. Is there any word that comes to mind?

Rex: The only word specifically is loss. Right. However, that means to each character. Right. And how that is manifested through, through action and through need and through desire.

Meg LeFauve: Loss is a great word, and what's great about it is their job is to refuse that loss. Their job is to fix that loss, regain, right?

And how are they doing that in their own personal lives or not, right? Are they getting overwhelmed by it or not? So I think that would be powerful stuff.

Lorien McKenna: But then, then in Lost, too, there's the, it's like the parents, you're showing that, like, everybody deals with that differently, right? Some people look guilty because they've shut it down.

Then you can have the hope part, you know, where everybody, if they, when they find the lost little boy, everybody has that. A sense of hope. But then there's the

Meg LeFauve: next one. Yeah. And what's great about your show too, in terms of usually when people pitch TV shows, we spend most of our time talking about the engine, but because it's a procedural, they just immediately have an engine.

So you don't have to worry about that. There has to be an engine to the relationships, right? Which is why they're going to pitch to you. Can they be in love? Because that's an easy engine like that. So if you're very

Lorien McKenna: clear upfront. No. I mean, in terms of, these are their relationships, this is their belief system, their point of view.

Meg LeFauve: And, and how they're helping each other through laws and is, is what's evolving in the relationship the emotional intimacy of being honest with each other about stuff versus, you know, not, right? So that something is evolving. I mean, I think

Rex: that's really interesting because, you know, how honest are they being to each other when they have to be honest as they're working together to solve the case.

How honest are they being as people, as well as how honest are they being as policemen?

Meg LeFauve: Right, because the whole first season could be about them starting to be honest with each other and forming a relationship. So that I'm loving watching them come together and, oh, I know she didn't tell her that. Oh boy, you know, but she didn't tell him that, you know, so that you're watching them.

And then the second season, because they will... You know, want to know, then if they've come together and we love them as a team, then the second season, what's happening to that team, right? And the third season, what's happening to that team? And you have to have at least three seasons to tell me about the relationship and how it's moving.

And listen, procedurals, people want to tune in to see what they want to see. They want to see the same thing over and over. So there is a network version of the show where they're really not changing. And that they are exactly the two people that they are every week. I, because I come from features, tend to like the shows that evolve over the course of the season.

So, you know, that's a choice that you need to make right away. Is this a network show? That is a procedural? And what I'm tuning in for is that this team will always be this team. And I know how she's going to react, and I know how he's going to react. And it's juicy, and I love it. Like Cagney and Lacey. Even though there's some evolution, of course, but really...

Cagney's Cagney and Lacey's Lacey and forever that will be what it is. Or is it more of a streamer where you're giving them a procedural, which they would love by the way but there's this evolving storylines over the season arcs too. And then you pitch them at least three, right? And for the networks, they want, you know, a hundred episodes.

So that's why it can always be the same and it can be interchangeable and all that stuff that was talked about in the other keynote. And for the

Lorien McKenna: pilot, it's important to start in the action. Right? Like, I'm going to read your pilot. I want to know that it's a procedural. Right? We can spend a lot of time with exposition and introductions.

And, but I want to see that exposition in how they're solving the case. And the things they're telling each other and not telling each other. And then, oh wait, you know, like Nurse Jackie. Remember Nurse Jackie? The pilot for Nurse Jackie? I think I was a bit too young

Rex: for that.

Lorien McKenna: It just came out. How dare you?

Rex: That sounded funny in my head to

Meg LeFauve: be honest. It was

Lorien McKenna: funny. I thought it petticoat junction or something. Good grief. Nurse Jackie came out like last year. Fine, we're not going to talk about

Meg LeFauve: it. Keep going. Petticoat junction. Oh

Lorien McKenna: my gosh. Petty Joke Junction, then let's talk about high school.

Meg LeFauve: Did awesome. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you. Do

Lorien McKenna: you want to pick the next one? Thank you. Good luck. Awesome.

Meg LeFauve: No, no, you pick. You're the picker.

Lorien McKenna: All right, you guys. Who's sending me the strongest vibe?

Chris Brown.

Shaking his head. Did I pronounce that one right? You guys are not exactly have the best penmanship. This is a note to everyone. Does that say brown? It's like...

Meg LeFauve: It does kind of say brown.

Chris : Yeah,

Meg LeFauve: unfortunately so far. Hi, Chris. Hi, welcome. Yeah,

Chris : hello. Yeah, hello.

Meg LeFauve: I know, you're a bit on the spot. It's all good.

Take a breath. Feel your feet. Do

Lorien McKenna: that too.

Chris : Okay. Okay. So, the project I'm working on currently is a feature film. It's called Kindred at the moment working title. So, it's actually very Pixar ish. Inspired by a certain movie about feelings.

Meg LeFauve: That I love. Is it an animated movie or no?

It is an animated movie. Okay, animated movie, Kendrick. Got

Chris : it. Kendrick. You basically start in, in the world human world. This character named Zora, she's a photojournalist. She is trying to get this picture of the shady deal going on. And you realize you kind of move into this other world.

And you notice it's about this like kind of reckless dog spirit is kind of like navigating her or managing her movements, what she does is it's, it's pushing her to do certain things. And she's working with the teammate, this kind of jaded dog, this other coyote. And she, they're not jelling at all.

They're just not doing well. And, come to find out these are like spirits, spirit animals, and they mine human interaction in order to sustain their world.

Meg LeFauve: Sustain the human world or the? Sustain their spirit world. Their spirit world. Yes. So like monsters ain't kind of.

Chris : Yeah, it's kind of a symbiotic relationship.

So humans get, you know, you get the liveliness, you get the energy that you need to, to, to move on, to push your, to push yourself, but you're also sustaining the astral world. And so they basically a new, the coyote spirit quits because another spirit can't work with Kendra. She's her, oh, dog, dog spirit, her name is Kendra Barkley.

Kendra Barkley, she she's. Going through a few partners at this point and this is her last chance basically she gets paired up Usually they work with animals kind of near who they are, but she's kind of going through most of the dog spirit so now she has to be forced to work with Gale, Hedwin, and Eagle and He it's kind of rigid kind of no Kendra's not really about the rules.

She's more about guidelines and and Gale is more like Now we're going to do this the right way, and they clash, but come to find out that like he's got a past that he's holding on to that keeps him from, you know, really being himself and Kendra's dealing with Zora and Zora's having a hard time.

She's great at work, but her home life is kind of suffering because of it. And so you see the interactions between these worlds in between Zora and Gale as they They find, they get on the trail of kind of a conspiracy in her world that is kind of damaging the human world and the astral world. So reluctantly, Gail and Zora team up, or Gail and Kendra team up in order to save

Meg LeFauve: both worlds.

And can Zora, Zora doesn't know they're there, kind of like inside out, really doesn't know? Has no

Chris : idea. The spirit world really pushes on the human world without the interaction, without anybody knowing about.

Lorien McKenna: So does the main action, I mean, great job. Thank you.

Meg LeFauve: Thank you. So

Lorien McKenna: the main action is in the spirit world.

So the main character is Kendra, Miss Barkley. Yes, Miss Barkley. Kendra Barkley. And so we're going to see how their guidance of the human sort of affects her and, and then as they're uncovering this. So the, so act two is them on the journey of uncovering this thing while also trying to help her get through whatever she's trying to get

Chris : through.

Because Kendra wants, all Kendra wants is to pilot Zora by herself, like the old days. Each spirit animal was, Oh, so there's

Lorien McKenna: a paradigm shift here. You have to have a partner now. You

Chris : have to have a partner because. In the old days, people were always thriving and connecting, and it was

Lorien McKenna: easier for each.

Listening to their, their guardian dogs.

Chris : Since technology has arrived, people have gotten more complacent. It's harder to mine spirit energy from humans, so. Because they don't have anything anymore. Exactly. Okay. The Spirit Regulation Agency we need a

Meg LeFauve: compliance, so it's... So is it like Monsters, Inc., where they're getting energy for their world from humans?

Yes, it's very similar. And then what do they give back to humans? What do humans get that they need? Humans get... That kind of alive presentness? Yeah,

Chris : it's, it's, it's called well I call it inspiration. Okay. The, the fire, when fire, when man discovered fire.

Meg LeFauve: Right. So it's like muses. They're almost like muses.

Yes, exactly.

Lorien McKenna: So I'd be on my phone scrolling, and I'd get an idea, and my guardian would say, hey, go write that idea down. But I'd be like, or I can just sit here and keep scrolling. Exactly.

Meg LeFauve: That would diminish the motion. And then if you do go write it down, what does the spirit world get? Is it a visual, like, look what, in Monsters, Inc.,

they made the canisters, right? So that it was very tactile.

Chris : There was, there, okay, I will admit there are some similarities.

Meg LeFauve: That's okay. No. That's every story

Lorien McKenna: in the

Chris : world. It's called a spirit meter, spirit energy, whatever it's called, but it's, it's, it's made to, but it also sustains all of their world. It like gives them food.

It gives them water. It sustains their entire world because the thing that connects the human world and the spirit world is something called, it's a giant structure called a tether, and it connects the two worlds. Oh,

Lorien McKenna: so the worst thing that could happen is that they would break

Meg LeFauve: apart. The tether would break.

Okay. So, and I'm assuming that in Act II that is the threat, that the tether is going to break.

Chris : That is part of it, yes, but there is a, okay, let me get a little deeper into this because there's a lot of lore to this. Kendra they work for a company called Kendrit the mind, spirit, energy, and they're being taken over by Kind of the Amazon of their world.

There is a merger called Spira and This beautiful butterfly man is in charge of it. He's taking over the You know helping the world and he's like we're gonna help the merger and we're gonna make kindred better than ever and we're gonna save Our world and that's pretty much what it boils down to but they're like Gail used to be a guardian.

He used to be kind of a cop and something happened and he was Sent to Kindred to work there, so you kind of uncover some of their past and stuff that's happening there. So,

Lorien McKenna: okay. I'm gonna ask you a question. So, what I'm seeing this movie, imagine it, the movie is up at, you know, Hollywood. What's the, the big theater on Hollywood Boulevard?

El Cap. Yeah, it's at the lcap. Okay. Packed audience. You've got the dancers. The whole thing is happening, right? The whole production at the end of the movie. What do you want me to feel? Not think, feel.

Chris : I want you to feel connected. Because the, the theme of my film is connection. Like, in order for humanity to thrive, we need to be Connected to what?

Each other. To, you need to that's a, I see what you're saying here, but So

Lorien McKenna: at the end of Inside Out Mhmm Why we're so moved by it is because, oh, we're not even allowed to feel sad. We're encouraged to feel sad. Being sad is healthy. And this sort of unlocked in all of us this like, Oh my God, I'm not bad or weak or some terrible pejorative thing for feeling sadness.

It's. So, at the end of Monsters, Inc., right? So, like, what do you want me to feel personally? So, connection is great. Okay. But, connected to what? Myself? My, my muse? Giving myself permission? Not only do I have permission to write it, I have a responsibility. I have, like, what it...

Chris : Yes I think it's, I can't remember which love it is, it's not, it's not agape, it's one of the Greek ones, I think it's for mankind, humanity, it's that love in which, in order for us to succeed, there's, we have to be connected.

I don't know exactly how to, like, People

Meg LeFauve: have to be connected, or we have to the spirit world?

Chris : No, yes, we have to be the the spirit world, but the thing that makes the spirit world go, what they, in, in, like, Encourage is us to, you know, be our best to thrive, to do that, to do what we can to get there. And I, I think part of that is so many people think like, like Elon Musk, he thinks he believes that the only way to get forward is somebody has to be the smartest person and somebody has to build something for that.

And it's like, that's not necessarily it. What we need to do is work together. We need to make more farmland. We need to work together in order to make

Meg LeFauve: the world a better place. So it's connection to each other. Yes. So we see

Lorien McKenna: the human character, Sorry, I'm going to let you go, I just keep interrupting Meg.

She's being very gracious. So the human character, what is she going through? She's not connected, she's distant, and at the end, she becomes connected to the bigger

Chris : world? Yes, but her journey is, She's trying to get, catch this shady deal so that this peace deal can go through, or yes, this peace deal for the city so they can get a better I think it's a green deal is what I put in the story because I've already written a full draft.

But what she's lost because Kendra's pushing her so hard is connecting with her family. She's getting divorced. She's losing her kid. She forgot the reason she was doing all of this. She lost that connection to her family because she was going so hard to paint. Because Kendra couldn't see, what's good for Kendra, yeah, is to be good at her job for her daughter.

But what's more than that is, she needs to be there for her daughter. Because that's why she

Meg LeFauve: the first place. What is her action in the climax of the movie? The main character, who is the... Kendra? Kendra, yeah. What's her action in the climax of the movie? In the climax

Chris : of the movie, her action is... She, she finally starts to begin to trust Gail and they work together like, cause she's So

Meg LeFauve: trust.

She's very She's gonna, she's gonna trust Gail and they're gonna work together. Yes. What's her end of act two? Her end of

Chris : act two what happens at the end of act two, they, I'm, it's, I can't remember

Meg LeFauve: So just something to think about. Go for it. And it's all really interesting. So I, my brain is just these aren't comments or even criticism.

It's like, A, I'm trying to understand to make sure because I haven't read a script and B, just to because I've been where you are right now, which is a lot of stuff and Pete Docter loves a lot of stuff and you know, like the, but part of the job, as you know, as you start to write drafts is starting to pare it down and get really focused and what do you need and what is the story, right?

Of all this beautiful stuff, right? Yeah. So what? The word connection is such a big word, right? And it's a great word, and especially if, I don't know what draft you're on, but if you're in early drafts, that's a great, you know, at Pixar, or even at Disney Animation, you would just put the word on the wall.

Because everybody knows we're somewhere in the bucket of connection, right? But it's not yet a theme yet, because that's a big word. What it's what you're saying about connection. The how of it, or I mean there's a million movies inside of Connection. So what I immediately go to is, okay, whatever she's doing at the, whatever she realizes at the end of Act 2 is your thematic.

Okay. Okay, so whatever your main character kind of comes to realize about herself, please make it about herself and not just about other people, especially if it's a female character. She has to be the main character, which means she has to realize it about herself. The blindness, unless she's a claiming character like Moana, and we can talk about that.

It doesn't sound like it. It sounds like she needs to really learn to trust and become emotionally intimate so that she can have a partner. So does she just sound like a transformative character? So whatever she realizes about herself and therefore the world, And where she's gone off track is your emotional thematic.

So if, if it is about ultimately trusting her partner, then your movie is about the bucket of trust. I'm not saying you can't have a movie with trust and connection. You can, but at some point you also have to pick a pony. So that you can go deeper into that context. And so, because if it's about trust, I want to know about what, and this is where the lava starts to come in, right?

Like, what are you personally interested in, afraid of, blind about trust? Where do you have problems trusting? Because her journey right now does seem more to be about, I don't want to work with anybody else, I'm perfectly good by myself, I don't, why? Because I have a wound, I don't trust people because they always, always, always betray you.

Whatever. That's the easiest version, but.

Chris : To that point, there is a backstory for her as well. She. Both of her, she doesn't like Gale at first because basically you sense that she doesn't like Guardians. She doesn't like the cops. But you realize that she lost both, her, one of the things she says in the movie is that Guardians always do things for others but never do anything for themselves.

And that's a thing she basically says. You find out that she lost both of her parents, that they were both guardians and they went out on a job and didn't come back. And she was like,

Meg LeFauve: but what happened to a guardian that they wouldn't come back?

Chris : They have similar, I mean, they have similar bodies in their world to us, so they can, they can die.

But,

Meg LeFauve: but did, were they killed by a bad guy who we're going to see in Act 2? So this is again, I'm just digging around with you. So if you have a backstory that's super important like that, then Act 2 better be about it. So that's something to be careful of. I'm not saying you are into it. You have a lot of ideas, and I'm, and again it's a pitch so maybe it's hard, but the, I just want to warn you, having been where you are, that cause in Inside Out we have three worlds going, right?

We have Riley, we have the headquarters, and we have down below, right? So the, the trick of that movie is they constantly have to be affecting each other. Because if they're not, and they're just paralleling, out that scene goes. Like literally, anything that happens down here affects Headquarters, affects Riley, and Riley now affects it, and it's rippling back and forth when you have all these different worlds going.

So, they thematically all are traveling on the same line. Because if they're thematically even degrees off, you're gonna get confusion and mud. Right. Not clarity. Right? Because everybody, Riley, Headquarters, and Joy, and Sadness, are all really digging into the same thematic. Okay. So just be careful about that.

Meaning trust versus connection versus blah, blah, blah. And then world rules, it's hard on a pitch. You know, you gotta be super clear, and you will be, I'm sure, on the rules of what are the stakes of Guardians. I, I can't visually see it yet either. Like, and like on Inside Out, he's probably, and I wasn't there, you were, might have been there.

Like, he, they're drawing immediately. Mm hmm. to try to did he have drawings and paintings immediately to show the mind? Yeah, the art department

Lorien McKenna: started almost immediately. Ralph Eccleston, who was a production designer, was already doing big concept

Meg LeFauve: pieces. Because he's got to explain to the Powers that be.

This is the world. This is what the mind looks like. It's such a big part of it. So. And it helps

Lorien McKenna: like when you have the big art, like even just a sketch of what headquarters might look like or what that world looks like with the, the lands. Right. Right. It felt like, oh, okay, we go from here to

Meg LeFauve: here. It helps visually.

It'll help. So if you were to even give the script, you're probably also going to give some artwork. Yeah. So they can immediately see, and you might know that, but and then the other thing I wanted to say before I lose you is what was I gonna say? Because now I'm thinking about artwork.

Lorien McKenna: I have one thing, which is I think there's a lot of things going on, right?

All great stuff. And it's about narrow it down. So like at the beginning of act one, what is Kendra's belief system? Something Meg talks about, right? Like, is it I'm responsible for my parents death and that's why I don't want to have a partner because I think I'm going to put you in jeopardy and kill you.

So then I'm going to just, and that's what we, that's

Meg LeFauve: the belief system. If, often when movies are about trust, the person that, who is the person that you, that person doesn't trust themselves. So it, if you externalize that into I actually might have killed my parents, that I understand now something why trust is in the plot.

I'm

Lorien McKenna: sorry, what? Yeah, now that's always good. Or is it something else, right? Sort of, that belief system is what, even what Jeff Melvoin was talking about, you know, the belief system. It's the same thing we are talking about, right? Belief system, it gets threatened, and then a new belief system.

Meg LeFauve: And then how that she, and sometimes it's easier to think about the story really just from your main character's point of view.

In terms of I'm going to introduce you to this thing that's called a ghost spirit, and it looks like this, and these are the rules, and this is what happened to her, and what nobody knows is this is what happened, and then, and I'm meeting the human through her. Right? So that it's not too bifurcated.

I guess my last question for you, if I hope any of this has been helpful, is Why is it personal to you?

Chris : It's, it's personal to me because I I was actually talking to some people about this yesterday. I have a problem with I, I, I, I have people, I think, don't always reach their maximum potential.

And I think that's because so many people believe that their maximum potential is focusing on something independent as opposed to, You know, I think humanity, a lot of humanity believe that if I'm the best I can be, me personally, I can achieve something. And it's like, technically that's true, but if you're not trying to achieve something for the greater good or with the greater good, I don't think that matters at the end of the day.

And how is that

Meg LeFauve: personal

Chris : to you? Personal to me? I, well, because it's for me, I think writing for me personally, Is that great or good? And I, I, I don't, I think that like, media is we don't talk to each other through books. We don't talk to each other through a lot of certain things. We talk to each other through movies and TV shows.

Okay,

Meg LeFauve: what's so interesting to me, and but I want to put you on the spot. You're staying in your intellect. Pretty hardcore. Right. Which means there's a lot of lava down there. Yeah. Because your brain, and it's fair, we're in front of audience, it's a podcast, I'm not gonna ask you to go beyond your intellect, but your intellect is protecting you right now, and it's very smart and really interesting, so I'm not even commenting on what you're saying, but you're still not telling me how it's personal to you.

Lorien McKenna: So there's think, know, and feel. And you're talking about what you think. And then there's know, I know what kind of shoes I'm wearing. I know, I know what I'm gonna, what I ate for breakfast. Then there's feel.

Chris : Then the answer is, I don't know. Perfect. What a boy's attitude.

Meg LeFauve: Like, well, in this moment. No, and you don't have to know right now.

But I'll just tell you that a lot of the work at Pixar is hours and hours and hours of answering that personal question. Gotcha. And and we all have to bring it every day. You can feel very naked at Pixar. Because you're constantly having to bring that to the table every day. So, and what I just want to show to you and for your next draft or what you're thinking about as you get notes or whatever's going to happen, is the rudder is going to be allowing that to come up into the center of the story.

The theme is emotional, it's not intellectual. The theme is going to be something that is your lava, is, you know, makes you feel vulnerable. And then once you start to get that in your hands, right, That becomes the rudder for all the other choices of all that other great stuff you have. Do you see what I'm saying?

Like if you said to me, I'm making this up, you know, I I had my brother, was my very best friend in the whole world, and he betrayed me, and to get back at him, I did this horrible thing, and I ruined his life. And so I want to talk about, I want to talk about trust. And, and my own power that I'm really afraid to unleash, because the one time I unleashed it, it was in Revenge, and look what it did.

And so suddenly I'm understanding, Oh, yeah, I get what you want to talk about. Okay, let's get in and pick some story stuff, right? Because now, the story is going to be driven by this heat. Right, and I know what to help you pick. Otherwise, I don't know what to help you pick. Everything is interesting. It's all intellectually cool, but I have to pick based on that heat.

So like Pete Docter literally would make us go on walks. And he would go on long, long walks. Because he intuitively is a genius at staying connected to that. Right? And he was not going deep enough. He knew when he started he wanted to talk about what happened to his girl, little girl, when she was 11.

Because before she turned 11 she was like, she would meet people at the front door and be like, Hello! I'm going to do a tap dance for you, because I'm fabulous. And she was very happy. And then at 11 she got very into herself and He said, I lost my little girl's joy and I want to find out where she went.

Okay, we're not a story yet We're at a situation Right? But he's got a personal question that he's driving towards. What happened, your, what this emotion can be about can be a question you have based on something that happened in your life. And that question starts to rudder the whole thing. Do you see what I'm saying?

He's saying, what happened to my little girl's joy? But see, the problem with that doesn't drive a story yet because it's still outside of him. Like... For the first pitch, be careful, because the emotional thematic happened to your brother, not you. So it's going to echo out, and not have the power of something that you experience.

I'm not saying you can't do that, I'm just saying that's gonna be, you've gotta still put you inside of it. So, as he's developing it, he decides, well, you know, when I was in middle school, I was a really scared kid, so, it must be with fear. But, he would get back joy, and he knew he wanted joy to get lost in the mind, and then come back.

And who is she with? What's the main relationship? It's going to be fear. But he said every time they came back, he didn't have anything to say about fear. He just emotionally didn't have an insight or some experience or something of what he wants to say to the world about fear. And so he was realizing when I came on, he was just starting to realize, I think it might be sadness.

And in the original DVD release, I wish Disney Plus, if you're listening, would put this on Disney Plus, because it's so amazing. He takes a camera, and he's walking in the woods up in San Francisco, and he's talking to himself. And he's literally saying, I, okay, I think this movie is gonna get shut down.

Imagine that. Multiple Academy Awards. So just know, your, your, your imposter syndrome, your doubt about your story, that is part of the creative process. It doesn't mean you're not a writer, it doesn't mean it's not good, it means you're right on track. Pete Docter is walking in the woods saying, My movie's gonna get shut down.

I don't know what my movie is. People are walking out of the theater and they're saying, It's a good idea. And by now they should be saying, It's a good, it's a movie. And he can't figure it out, he can't figure it out, he's got too many pieces, right? And so, he's walking and talking, he's like, and this is what he does, which is amazing, and why he's who he is.

He doesn't move away into his intellect when he hits that fear of my movie shutting down. He moves down into it. So you can watch him walk and go, Okay, so, what's gonna happen when I, my, they shut my movie down? Well, I'm gonna first lose my house, because I'll get fired. And well, that would be bad, to lose my house.

Wow, I would... That, okay, but is that, you know, is that really what I'm the most afraid of? And he's like, no, actually, I think the worst part would be I couldn't come to Pixar every day. Okay, if I can't come to Pixar, you see how he's going deeper and deeper. If I can't come to Pixar every day, Why is that bad?

Why does that make me feel, well, I'm going to really miss the people. It's not the place, it's the people. Okay, why am I going to miss the people? I'm going to miss the people because of all the fun times we've had. You know, we've had so much

Lorien McKenna: fun. Oh no, you're making me sad about leaving Pixar.

Meg LeFauve: So he's like, but look, he's going to go down one more because he's not there yet, right?

He doesn't feel vulnerable yet. He doesn't feel that lava coming up. He's coming up. You can see it on his face. It's starting to come up. And he goes, okay, I'm going to miss all the happy people. But you know what I, I, what I'm going to really miss is all the hard times we've had. And that, how that has bonded us.

Because they lost, lost Joe Ranft, which was an original founder of Pixar in a car accident. And they lost Steve Jobs. And other, many other things. But that, those losses, bound, bound them together in a deep way of connection. And that connection of having lost together, and suffered together, is what he would miss.

That emotional intimacy and suddenly he went, he goes, Oh, it's sadness. And you can watch him go down, down, down, right? So, now we have a rudder. Now, I mean, there's all kinds of challenges to what he wants to do. But now I know as a writer. I can absolutely, like, so for the first thing is, well, then sadness has to be on the journey.

You don't even have her on the journey. Like, all kinds of stuff. We can start to really roll because we have this emotional rudder about sadness. And the first thing I say to him is, you know that means we have to cry at the end of this movie. Is John Lasseter going to let us? We cry because if the, if the thematic is accept sadness, you're going to have to do it in the movie.

And what's really interesting, just as a side point, so often, The very thing you're asking the audience to, the character to do in your script, you are not doing. Because it's not an emotional thing you have yet processed fully, so you're not doing it in the script and you're doing the opposite to your character.

It would be like, okay, we're going to put sadness in the dump and have Joy go find her. Well, are we asking Joy to confront her own sadness? No, we're protecting her from the very theme that we're trying to do. It's just, it's a really interesting thing that the brain does. That is not what you're doing, because I don't know your story well enough, but so that rudder, you don't have to do it right now with us, but it's something, that would be the next thing if I was working with you.

I would say, do not pass go, do not go anywhere else until you start digging down. You can look at the end of act two for this that's where it should be coming up, that subtext, that love is coming up into context. You can look at your favorite scenes and why you love them. You can look at the scenes that you cannot get right and why can't you get them right because the lava might be sitting right under there and your brain is like, Don't look over there!

Just don't even look over there! It might be a flat character often, it's weird. The brain will flatten out a character because it's very afraid of what's... So I would do some exercises, not to promote Lorian, but she does do these exercises with people to pull their lava up. I would start to do that to get into something that really makes you shake a little bit.

And then I would then start to build around that. Okay. Take it or leave it. Take it or

Lorien McKenna: leave it. I want to say, I love your concept. I love your concept. It's wish fulfillment. I wish I had dogs or animals like, you know, guardian angel, like helping me, inspiring me, like that feels very comforting. And I love the idea of a spirit world and they're paying attention that we fuel each other and that there is that symbiotic relationship, which is what you're talking about in terms of connection.

Right. If one of us falls down, we all fall down. Right. But I really love the concept. So Meg just talked a lot about of. All the ways you're going to be like, Oh, my God, I don't have anything. What do I have and how do I fix this? But I think the concept is really good. And if I saw this in a trailer, I'd be like,

Meg LeFauve: Yeah, let's go.

Yeah, I would, too. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Simon. Hi. It's great to be here. Wonderful to have you. Hi.

Simon: My story is a comedy heist feature film. It's called Waiting for Robbo. So it's an Australian film. And it's about, it kicks off with two members of a kind of dysfunctional gang who are waiting in their car.

Had a deserted beach for the other two members of the gang to turn up after a a heist where they've inserted themselves between a gang of female bikies and a strange branch of the Finnish Mafia who are operating in regional Australia, as, as they do. And so the two main characters are Cole and Eric, and they're waiting for Robbo and Fat Boy.

Bring it, Fat Boys. A young, thin girl, actually, who's, they're the other two members of the gang. And as they're waiting, they start going over the heist in their mind, replaying what actually happened. And they realize that they have different versions, and things didn't go according to plan. And as time got ticks Robbo is...

Not coming. They, they, they decide that Robbo has, you know, tricked them all. And then they find out they've got Robbo gave them backup plans. Like an envelope with open at, this at three o'clock if everything else goes wrong. They both open their, their, these backup plans, which say they should shoot each other and burn the car and, you know.

In the meantime they, they, they discover that fat boys actually in the dunes with a high powered rifle taking potshots at them. They finally open the boot of the car which is where the, the, the, the jewels are meant to be. The, the, the McGuffin of the story. And the, and they find in the boot of the car is robbo.

Who's been bound and gagged and is that enough to kick off? Well, what's

Meg LeFauve: act two? So we've got a fun set up,

Simon: but the

Meg LeFauve: movie is The Yellow Brick Road, right? So what's your Yellow Brick Road? So,

Simon: none of them really seem to know what happened to the, to the... To, to, to the, to the jewels. And the, the end of Act Two is that the, the bikeys and the Finnish Mafia turn up to get revenge on the gang, because they don't know where the, where the stuff is either.

And there's a massive shootout which leaves Robbo dead. And the, the, the gang are happy that The, the robos been killed. They find on him what they think are the, are the jewels, which, but are actually another set of fakes. And everybody leaves leaving the two main characters, Eric and Cole back where they started.

And then they finally work out where the real stuff is, but it's been accidentally buried on, on the beach. So that's kind of, that's kind of the ending.

Meg LeFauve: Okay, so lots of fun, fun stuff there. And I want to see the movie. It's a movie, right? Yes. I totally want to see this movie. It's reminding me kind of Sexy Beast and, I don't know, Tonally, if that's about right.

Which I love that movie. I don't quite yet know what Act Two is. And who the main character is? Or are there two main characters? Is it the two people that are told to shoot each other? Are they the main characters? They're the

Simon: main characters. And who are they? Okay, so, Eric is an older guy, fifties.

He's a bit of a plotter. He he just wants This is the last heist for him. He's going to leave this gang, he's the last chance, he's finally going to make some decent money and go off and have a cruiser. And Cole is much younger, he's the driver of the gang, and he's like the idiot savant, he's the clown.

He's, he lives in the moment. He fiddles and he can't sit still. And do they

Meg LeFauve: like each other or not like each other?

Simon: They, they're kind of like a family. They love each other, but they don't like each other. So...

Meg LeFauve: But they don't want to shoot each other. They don't, they definitely don't want to shoot each other.

They're kind of making a choice that we're not going to do what these things say. And we're not going to shoot each other. But there

Simon: is a moment where, where... Call because he believes that he's got to do everything that Robbo tells him he's gonna do this But he he's happy to be talked out of it. Okay,

Meg LeFauve: so So is it a dual?

Protagonist then they each have their own point of view on the thing there

Simon: is but in my head Eric the old the older He's going to go on a bigger journey, right?

Meg LeFauve: Okay. And so where, what is his end of act two?

Simon: His end of act two is that it's become clear to him that he's not going to get anything out of this heist that he's been living endlessly for the future to arrive, to make him happy.

He, he, he's always annoyed by Cole, who's living in the present permanently and making fun out of the world as he, as he lives. And he, all his dreams are just collapsed in front of him. He's not going to get anything out of this host. So

Meg LeFauve: what's interesting about that, again, I'm not saying you didn't do any of these things, we're just digging around.

Those are all things that he's realizing that happened to him. Versus what he created himself. So what is his self responsibility at the end of Act II? Is it transformative? Like, I have chosen a life, or why, maybe ask why he has to live in the future? What is so scary to him about living in the present?

Right? So, because again, I'm not saying that's not an interesting idea, but I don't feel anything yet when you say it. When, when people say their end of act two is I want to feel it in my body, not just think it in my head. So, I like the idea of I've been living in the future because I don't want to live in the present because Why doesn't he want to live in the present?

Simon: What, what's revealed at the end of Act 2 is, cause he keeps talking about he's gonna go on this cruise with his wife, Joni, and what's revealed is his, his wife actually left him two years ago. She's not there anymore. So

Meg LeFauve: he's living kind of a fantasy. Correct. And why did she leave him?

Simon: That's a good question.

I don't know.

Meg LeFauve: But that's the question. Do you see how that might be the question of the rudder? Yeah. Again, being left is something that happens to you. Do you hear the reaction? So, that's, but, why does, what does he believe? Whether it's right or wrong, by the way, of why she left him. And, it could just be this whole movie has been about him avoiding admitting.

What is the truth of why she left him? Like, I think of Officer and a Gentleman where he is pushing him, and pushing him, and pushing him, and pushing him, until finally, at the end of Act Two, he starts screaming, I GOT NO PLACE TO GO! And this, this thing that's been sitting under this amazing character, what an amazing character that character is because he's such an asshole and he's such a scumbag to start because he's, that's his survival instinct until finally this guy breaks him.

And as soon as he can say, cause I got no place to go. Now you can be a gentleman. Now you can be an officer. Right? So, that break of why she left him, what he believes about himself, which may be through learning with this experience with this other kid he's realizing isn't true, or it is true, and he has been creating this whole movie because he won't It just loves that part of himself or admit that part of himself or that he made a mistake and it's okay.

I mean, there's a million reasons of, you know, I got no place to go. Why? Because you, you got nobody in your life. You have created that. Yeah, right. So there's To find that would start to become for me like the rudder of a rewrite, right? Like once you start digging that up and something that will make you feel vulnerable, I can start to say, okay, well then in the plot, where does he start to learn the opposite?

Or how does anyway, so go ahead, Lauren.

Lorien McKenna: Is there an actor you have in mind to play him? Like an actor that really... speaks to you, whether he's alive or dead or

Simon: old or young. Yeah, there is actually, he's my brother. Okay. Who is an actor. But imagine, I don't know, imagine Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe, okay.

Lorien McKenna: Russell Crowe, what era of Russell Crowe are we talking about?

Simon: He hasn't done much good for a while has he? Like is it

Lorien McKenna: Gladiator Russell Crowe? Or is it Les Mis Russell Crowe?

Simon: It's more contemporary Russell Crowe. Eric is sort of overweight, 55. Yeah, a bit. Okay.

Lorien McKenna: But he's got this physical, like, past his prime kind of thing.

Sorry, Russell Crowe, if you're listening but you know, that sort of energy, he's not listening. It's okay. That sort of energy. Okay. So that helps me sort of understand that there's like this strength and this like, the other thing behind, like the, he's in a, it's got a shield around him. Yeah.

Meg LeFauve: And Russell Crowe's characters, and I say this with admiration, they're highly skilled.

And they are a little bit know it alls, a little bit, a little bit. So that there's something to break down. There's something to break down that know it all ness that, again, I'm not saying you're not doing that in your script, but there's, there is a shield, there's a mask to get through, and then something that just an exercise you can do when you pick the character is you can chart Russell Crowe as an actor.

He's probably traveling on the same structure, character transformation, like structure is just character transformation. He is probably just traveling on that. Midpoints generally don't line up, I think, but you can look at three, five Russell Crowe movies where he is leading supporting doesn't work as well, and how do we meet him, who is he, what does he believe about himself, what does he believe about the world, what are his skills, flaws, just look at all that in act one, and then where is he, you know, what is the inciting incident, what What, where is he as a character at the end of Act One, where what is his new goal and plan at the end, at the start of Act Two?

What is the midpoint? Generally they don't line up. What is his end of Act Two as a character? Because this is all the character points where they're giant shifts are happening. And then what does he do in the climax? And you'll start to see a pattern emerge. And this is just a writing exercise. Yeah.

And then you take that pattern and you stick it on your script and you're like, Oh my God, I'm totally not doing that. And it just starts to show you the places that you're kind of skating by or you're not pushing him hard enough. Angelina Jolie has different patterns when she's in a big studio movie or when she's in an indie film.

When she's in a big studio movie, she is the most powerful person and she has to learn humility. And when she's in an indie film, she's a humble... Like she's not claiming her power, and she has to claim her power, and they're completely reversed. But she's kind of exploring the same thing, but from opposite sides.

Nicole

Lorien McKenna: Kidman has this throughout her career. You can track her movies, like she's the victim, she's saved, and then at now, she's like... A badass powerhouse right at the beginning so but like it's her career in the movie shift that you can see happening It's real. I love

Meg LeFauve: her thing. It's just an exercise to do to find that end of act two The most important thing is that end of act two emotionally resonates with you But to help you find it sometimes looking at those characters can help you get into a sandbox at least Oh, yeah, what seem that they seem to be doing over and over there any

Simon: risks running with a specific?

Actor in mind?

Meg LeFauve: Some, some writers absolutely say don't do it, and some writers say they do. It just is such a personal thing. I like to have an actor but some people really, really don't. I don't start with an

Lorien McKenna: actor because I feel it's distracting when I'm writing, but then once I've written it, I'm like, oh, who would be great for this?

For a pitch, you have to be able to show comps like, it's Kristen Milioti, or it, you know, it just tells a different tone. But I think... There's danger in only writing for that specific actor because then another actor will read it and

Meg LeFauve: be like, I can't do this. It's more, it's more a tool if you want to, like, look, it's like a frame to put on it, so it's just a tool in your toolbox.

I'm not at all saying create from that. I'm saying once you've got your script and you've done a couple of drafts and if you're stuck. This is a way to maybe see why, where you're stuck, so

Lorien McKenna: one thing I want to ask about, and you don't have to answer this, is if you're writing this for your brother to be in, that's the piece that I'm like, why?

Why is this about your brother? Why is your brother this character? Like, those are all the why's I have in terms of maybe,

Meg LeFauve: the love isn't. Are you the future guy or the present guy?

Simon: No, I think, I think my biggest fear in life is turning into Eric, this character who doesn't live in the moment. Who's, because Cole is, Cole is this childlike character who lives in the moment, who never, never thinks about what's going to be the consequences of anything.

And we laugh at him and, but he's, he's a delight to be with, but Eric is so annoyed

Meg LeFauve: by him. But what's so amazing and what I love about your, what you're exploring is there is a grey zone because there is also a problem to only living in the moment. There is, those people, like my son, they tend to need to be taken care of.

Right? Because they're always, you know, they're, that isn't black and white, right? And it's just that he's out of balance, right? And probably he'll still be who he is, right? But I do think there's something emotional underneath why you don't want to live in the present. Like that, that and why she left him.

That is where, that's the real thing you're exploring. And I don't know what that is because we have to know why she left him. And be careful, because you might say, well, because he's always at work. Okay, why is he always at work? You have to keep asking why until you start to feel that shudder coming up, right?

Great.

Lorien McKenna: But I love a heist movie, and I love like, what was the movie with Ryan O'Renolds? And where it was all like the big reversals at the end, like all the trickery. What was that movie? It had Red in the title. You know, it's the movie with the thing, yeah, the movie with the, the movie with the thing with the guy.

Anyway, I love a heist movie. Is it Red Notice? Red Notice. That's the one. Oh my God. I've, I've had half a cup of coffee, okay? You know where there's, oh it's gonna be this, this is the answer, and then there's this big twist that sort of changes everything you've seen up till that point, and I feel like that's what you're doing, right?

And I, that's so

Meg LeFauve: fun. And I'm, I'm really looking for, and I love Fat Boy being the thin girl in the dunes with his rifle. Love it. Yes. Love it. You're breaking archetypes and combining archetypes, which I love it. You know, I just think of Sexy Beast, which I'm pretty sure is Sexy Beast, right? Where he's in his pool at the beginning and then that giant rock comes down and it's just such a wonderful metaphor for what's coming to the sky.

So it just, it's, it's awesome. And so. Can't wait to see it. Great job. Thank you.

Simon: Thank you very much.

Believe it or not, documentary filmmaking has lots in common with traditional narrative feature filmmaking...tune in today to learn why, with two award-winning documentarians!

TO SEE MONIQUE'S DOC (screening this week!): https://www.birthingjustice.com/screenings/

FOR MORE ON LINDA: https://ladylikefilms.com/

TO JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

TRANSCRIPTION

Documentary Filmmaking w/ Monique N. Matthew and Linda Goldstein

Meg LeFauve: Hey everyone, welcome back to The Screenwriting Life. I'm Meg LeFauve.

Lorien McKenna: And I'm Lorien McKenna. And today we're thrilled to be chatting with Monique Matthews and Linda Goldstein about documentary filmmaking. Before we jump into our conversation with Linda and Monique, we wanted to remind you about some very exciting news about the Austin Film Festival this year.

In addition to being there in person and doing our live story panel, in addition to some other panels, we're going to be throwing a party! A TSL party in partnership with Final Draft.

Meg LeFauve: And we are really excited to have our partners in final draft. I mean, not other than it, you know, it is the industry standard.

You all need to know it. But they're just such a great, great company to work with. And the party is going to be on Saturday, October 28th, right after our story workshop at Steven F's Bar and Terrace.

Lorien McKenna: So come and meet us and maybe even get some swag.

Meg LeFauve: Oh, some swag, some TSL swag, some final draft swag. I would like some final draft swag.

Come, come you guys. Okay, let's get into it.

Monique N. Matthews, a previous TSL guest, if you'll remember, is a writer and teacher and was featured as one of Daily Variety's 10 writers to watch her Christmas film. A holiday in Harlem was nominated for an end. Double ACP image award. And she most recently directed birthing justice, a documentary about the racial disparities of childbirth healthcare in the United States, which debuted on PBS in April.

Lorien McKenna: And Linda Goldstein Knowlton is an Emmy nominated filmmaker working in both documentary and scripted stories. She produced the award winning film whale writer and co directed the documentary the world, according to Sesame street, which aired nationally on PBS. Her other documentaries include the award winning We Are the Radical Monarchs and Somewhere Between, as well as Code Black, which was the basis for the CBS one hour drama.

Her most recent film, Split at the Root, made its world premiere at South by Southwest in 2022 and is now streaming on Netflix.

Meg LeFauve: Welcome, you guys.

Monique N. Matthews. Thank you.

Meg LeFauve: We're so excited to chat with both of you about documentary filmmaking. But first, we're going to be talking about our week or what we like to call Adventures in Screenwriting. Lorian, you go first. How was your week?

Lorien McKenna: It was good. I finished the play that I was writing, so I feel really proud about that.

It's a short 20 20 pages, and it was just a first draft, so I need to you know, Go back and see what it actually is. And this morning I came up with a high concept for a sci fi show that I want to write. Which is different for me because usually I write into character and then discover what the world is.

And so this is like, I have a title, I have a high concept, I have a world. And now I, you know, just have to write it down and build it into a TV show. But, so I'm excited to get into that. I am finding a little bit of a challenge to manage all of the different me's that need to be managed. The writer me, the teacher me, the strike me, the friend, mom, family, oh god and I signed up to be a room parent, you guys, for sixth grade.

That’s me! I'm not sure which version of me that is, but I can tell I'm going to have some.

I thought I'm going to do it and it's going to be great. And I will, whatever, I lost my mind. I, I didn't realize how many needs there needed to be for all these things. So I not quite sure what I'm going to do, but the management, of course, the first go to writer, the first me to go is the writer me.

So I'm trying not to do that. Yeah, that's it. That was my week. I made some decisions.

Meg LeFauve: Monique, how was your week?

Monique N. Matthews: This week has been great. I just finished a narrative one hour pilot based on birth injustice because people are like asking so it's it's about this nurse. And this midwife in this OBGYN who take over a labor and delivery unit in the hospital.

So I'm pretty excited that I got that vomit draft out and I'll go back and work on that some more. So, and I'm working on a book right now with Carl Douglas. He was the he was on the OJ Simpson case. He was. The lawyer under Johnny Cochran, he was Johnny's mentee. And he's just like this phenomenal lawyer in Los Angeles.

So just kind of documenting his like how to success is tentatively called I will drag your ass to greatness.

Meg LeFauve: I love it. I love it. And I'm so excited. You're writing the narrative of your doc because I loved your doc and I know the characters you're talking about. And I was so, oh my gosh, I was in, I just thought they were so wonderful.

I was enthralled. So I'm just that just makes me so happy that you're doing that. And if I can help in any ways, please let me know. Okay, Linda, how was your week?

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: My week I have no, I don't even know what, what is a week. What is a week I've been, I've been on the road 10 days. I think I've started a new documentary.

So I went to New York from LA. I shot for a couple of days and then we are doing an impact screening series of split the root, my current film. And so we went to Atlanta, Charlotte. El Paso and I'm now in Phoenix. This is our 6th screening. We started in D. C. in New York a little while ago. So this is our 6th screening for now.

Then we're taking a 2 week break and then we're going to Orlando and San Diego. So there's that. That's a lot. It's a lot. And Monique knows so well, even though you plan these things and out in a while, and you've gotten all the invitations out and you've sent them to your list. And it's literally to the day of, like, following people, following up, following up.

Oh, wow. We have 95. RSVP is, oh wow, we have 30 people in the theater. So, and then again, being reminded, because I'm traveling with the film with one of the protagonists, and now with one of the other producers, it's, you know what, the people that are in the room are the people that need to be in the room.

So, that was a good reminder. And then I just got off of a notes call on a Doc that I'm producing.

Meg LeFauve: you've got a lot going on, lady.

Monique N. Matthews: Happy to be here with y'all.

Meg LeFauve: Linda and I have been friends for decades and I know that she's always this busy. Don't let her fool you. She is always, she is a go getter. My week is super easy because I was in family stuff up to my eyeballs and vortex that included.

A canceled flight, then I had to run and find a hotel to get back there in the morning. And then the plane had a flat tire. I didn't even know that was a thing, by the way. And how do they change a flat tire of a plane in 15 minutes? Did not, and I wasn't confident about it, but we did okay. And then I'm prepping for a talk that Lorraine and I are going to give at Stevens College for a screenwriting conference that has kind of Pretty much absorbed every moment of my time.

Lorien McKenna: And there's the keynote me, the keynote speech me. And I've been working on videos for that.

Meg LeFauve: And the keynote and the, you know. So basically all is to say I've done no writing at all. Because I've been doing all of those things and I'm trying not to feel guilty about it. And I'll worry about it later. Like when I'm done with this keynote with Lorian.

And we have the day off in Missouri. Because we do. So I'm like, I'll write on that day when I'm in a hotel room in Missouri. No, I won't because I'm Lauren's gonna be like, let's go to this fun place.

Monique N. Matthews: I was like, please get some barbecue when you go to Missouri. Like that was one of my favorite things. I need to eat the food of the culture wherever I am.

Missouri barbecue is really good. Oh, okay.

Meg LeFauve: Good. Now I know. Yeah. Awesome. All right. Let's get into this ladies. We're going to start at super basic for our listeners. So, what is a documentary? That's maybe too broad. But, you know, what is, what makes it different than a scripted film? How do you guys approach it?

How do you guys approach documentary versus you're both also producers and creators of fiction? So, for you, what is that like, that divide, that difference?

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: Well, it's, I mean, in a, in a super basic way a documentary. See, now that I'm saying that there are several kinds of documentary. The big general idea of a documentary is that it is unscripted that filmmakers that we are a fly on the wall and that we are following real people around.

And nothing is. The only, nothing is written. That said, asterisk, there's also those historical documentaries and those are written, right? You have the narrator saying in 1843, blah, blah, blah. And and the, that archival footage comes up. And so those are written. Those are written in the idea of we are telling you a true story that happened to people.

Again, couple more asterisks. Both of those kinds of documentaries, and I'm probably forgetting something, is who's telling the story? Whose lens is it coming through? You know, where's the lens? Pointed there. Is it like that? You know, and so all of those things go into so even though that's not written.

It's edited. I don't know. Would you consider that written or would you consider that edited anyway? There's there's kind of all that. The, the nuance that goes into it, but documentary. Not written.

Meg LeFauve: Okay. Monique, what do you

Monique N. Matthews: think? For me, I mean, it's certainly unscripted, but there's a great deal of research that generally goes into the documentary filmmaking and it should certainly, I think that.

Sometimes a mistake happens when people think that it's, you know, real life and it is real life, but it is the parts of life that draw an audience as well. I mean, so you want to make sure that you are as prepared. It is possible for things to go off script because you're not telling people what to say, but when you do your research within a, within the topic matter and you do all of your research, then you're prepared for, you know, you speak to someone and they go a completely different direction and you were not anticipating or preparing that.

But I, I've learned that the more prepared I am, the more. That my interviewee trust me and once they trust you, I mean, that's that's the gold right there. So I think that 1 of the things in documentary filmmaking is that you really need to garner the trust of the interviewee. I mean, I'm sure as a filmmaker, you definitely need to actors trust.

You need to different peoples, but it's a different thing when someone is telling you their own story and putting themselves out there and feeling naked and they're not, they don't make a career out of putting themselves out there in a particular way.

Meg LeFauve: And how do you, oh, sorry, go ahead,

Lorien McKenna: Laurie, when when you get an idea or like you read it, read an article or you do research and you come across something, you're like, oh, this is a great story.

How do you know if it's a documentary or a scripted show that you should dig into? When do you make

Monique N. Matthews: that decision? You know, I think you start with what you have. So, you know, and I'm sure Lindy could talk to that as you introduce her with. Cold black. I mean, whatever the lens you have for the the medium to tell this fantastic story, you take it.

And however, it kind of morphs and manifests after that. I mean, it is similar to scripted writing where, you know, you would like a screenplay, but if it starts out as a book, if it starts out as an article, you want that source material down and you want it to make sure that you capture the nuance of it and then, you know, see how, how it can you know, live in different spaces.

Interesting. So if you're an

Lorien McKenna: established documentarian, and you have an idea, you use the tools that you have, and then it can develop into something else through people seeing, like, what you were talking about, right? You made this beautiful documentary, and then people were craving more of it in a scripted format.

So you could, you could do that. Okay, that's interesting.

Meg LeFauve: And when you're deciding, okay, this is a documentary, I'm, I'm not going to do scripted first, I'm going to let, do the documentary, Monique, you were talking about when the person you're interviewing perhaps goes off of where you thought they were going to go or what movie you thought you were doing.

How do you even, let's just back up a step, how do you even pick who the main character or the protagonist is? Because, you know, people think documentaries don't have protagonists, but as Linda mentioned in the opening, they do. You're traveling with your protagonist. Is that something you try to pick beforehand, or do you kind of really have to let them choose you, i.

e., you're starting to film and go and it's, and that person is starting to come

Monique N. Matthews: forward? You know, it's kind of, you know, just listening to this show a lot and gaining so much for it. It's like sometimes you can say, Hey, you know, we're doing this documentary. We have this great person who we think is going to be very charismatic because they have the story.

And then it's kind of like when you're writing a script and someone else can just steal the, they just steal the page. They just steal the room and they become more compelling. And, and, you know, for me, I kind of, I kind of went with that. I kind of was like, Oh my gosh, this person is the hero. And when I identified the hero of our, of birthing justice and she, we, we worked with and I'll, I've, I've told her, I was like, Ebony Marcel, she's a midwife at In Washington, D.

C. A community of hope. And she's just really she's just incredible. And so as we were in pre production, we were talking to her and she certainly was giving, you know, a great deal of background information and just, you know, things to know. But then when you see her on camera, she just really becomes compelling.

And you're just like, Oh, my gosh, I just want to follow you. And I had the opportunity after her. Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry, there's something else Linda can talk to, you know, talk to is like, you really need to get people's trust really quickly because we had like one day for each of these interviews and we went to four different regions and that's a, that's a lot to get people to open up.

So. One of the benefits of having Ebony and centered in DC is we had, we kept going back to her. We had to keep going back to DC for other things. And she kept talking and I was able to just say, Hey, this happened here. Well, what do you think about this? And so really kind of able to interweave. And that was just kind of kismet that just happened.

But I think you really have to be willing to, you think it's going to be one person or you hope that like my producers thought it was one person and. I just kept, I was like, no, it's her. And I just kept following, you know, the eye of the story.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: Yeah. And, and, and yeah, to piggyback on, on some of that is, well, one way that I think about documentaries too, is you have a central question or your idea, right.

And then you throw out all these fishing lines, like you said, and, and, and see where some of them go. And you see that some of them are. Wow, that's going nowhere snip, you know, and, and then, but then you're with that person. You're like, oh, you're a surprise, you know, and and then you follow there and you, you know, cut off all the, you know, you, you try not to cut off the fishing lines until you actually have to, you know, cause it's like, what if that person surprises you or that, you know, location, something happens.

So that's. That's kind of one way I think about it, too. The other thing I just wanted to mention because coming from both scripted and. Documentary cause someone asked me once and I didn't have a good answer, but our friend producer, Julie Lynn had the great answer. She said, what, you know, what's the difference between being a producer for scripted films and a director of documentary films?

And she said, as a producer, your job is to eliminate all surprises for the director. And as a director of documentaries, your job is to be open to all surprises. So I kind of, that's good. Right.

Meg LeFauve: You know what I love about what you guys are saying, because for me as a fiction writer, I find it's exactly the same.

Like I might decide what I think the story is, but then when I get in there, I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is not the story because where was this character and where are they coming from? And there's so much trust involved. In that process of writing fiction, too, you have to trust, okay, Muse, I don't know why this person has shown up, but I'm gonna take a day or two, and I'm just gonna trust and see where this goes.

And so I just have a question about, and, you know, you're saying you have to do it very quickly. Do you have any advice about gaining trust? Because in a weird way, we have to gain trust with ourselves when we're writing fiction, but I think it's, it's, it's relevant to both. How do you gain your character's trust?

Research

Lorien McKenna: this one.

Monique N. Matthews: Yeah, three things. One is to do all the research about what they're doing beforehand. Read as many articles as you possibly can about them. There were come to it with the utmost respect. The second thing is to be completely open and present in the moment and trust be present in a moment.

And that's the third thing is trust. Like, really just they need to like, it. They need to be willing. If they get up and walk away that you don't make it about you. And for me, that's what trust really boils down to when you're a documentary filmmaker is so many people make it about them. And I've seen, you know, and doing documentaries there, everybody makes a mistake and you, you, you, you want the good mistakes, right?

That's like, Oh my gosh, this is better than ever. But I've seen so often where. You know, sometimes a filmmaker will leave out really critical and crucial information because it doesn't fit their narrative. And I think that interviewees, they know when you are not there and you're not open and that willing to listen to their story.

So for me, it's trust. It's you know, doing your research and it's about being in the moment and being present. It's so

Lorien McKenna: interesting. I when I work with a character. I have to let go of what I want them to be, what story I think they should tell, and I have to be available to let them tell me the story so I can tell their story.

And it's really hard, because sometimes when you don't like a character, it's because they're holding back from you. And you have to like, go and meet them where they are, like, even if you've done bad things. I'm rooting for you. I love you no matter what and it's that building trust with your characters so that they trust you to tell their story.

Not

Meg LeFauve: to be present. Yeah. Not your version to be present with them. It's exactly the same. I love it so much.

Lorien McKenna: It makes me imagine that I could actually understand what it's so baffling when a documentary is I watch them and I'm like, wow, how do they put all this together? But Because creatively, it seems similar, you're just dealing with real people.

Which is a bit more

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: complex.

Lorien McKenna: It's a little bit more complex, but it feels like it's something that, not that I'm getting to go do it, but

Monique N. Matthews: one could. Linda, is it the same for you? You totally could, Lorian, but you don't.

Lorien McKenna: Now we're making a documentary. Great. Okay,

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: fine. I totally agree with Monique. And, I...

And I, and I'm, I would love to hear from the writers of how you know, if it's similar or different, but it's, it's absolute honesty with the people because it's, I'm being honest with you, I might not tell them my whole family backstory or all of that, but I have a very honest conversation with them about who I am, what we're, the big picture of what we're trying to do with the film, why I want to make the movie, who I hope sees it.

Okay. Bye. Bye. And, and the big thing, and part of that trust is you can stop the camera whenever you want. You will see a cut of the film before it goes out and you have a voice in that. And so to really lay down the idea that you are a collaborator in this. Peace, you know, I'm not here for the train wreck.

I'm not like, I'm not 60 minutes or whatever. It's like, I, I'm drawn to this person and this topic because of an emotional reason. And, you know, I think also, right, people can sniff out your inauthenticity. Right. That's the word. Right. So that. You know, they're gonna, they're gonna know if you're like, I love you, or like, let's have this conversation.

And yeah, and it's an ongoing conversation, even though sometimes it's a really brief conversation, but hopefully with that research, you can talk to them on the phone ahead of time or zoom or something. Sometimes you can't. But it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's so maybe as a writer, like, how honest do you have to be with

Meg LeFauve: yourselves?

Exactly. And that's what we talk about. Lava, right? Because sometimes as a writer, you run away from it. And, and, and, and create drama or do whatever you need to do. But no, you just have to stay present and be, and be on it. So now, okay, so you've got your interview. You think you found your protagonist.

How do you create a narrative? How do you create a goal for the character or narrative? And does that happen in it? Edit, or is that happening as you're recording? Are you editing while you're still recording? So you're trying to find the narrative while you're still interviewing more people. Like how, how does that work?

Monique N. Matthews: Well, I think for me, I might be a little different than Linda because though it's not written my questions ahead of time and I do share them. With people, it, you know, it provides a scope. It's like, this is, this is kind of where I'm thinking about. And, you know, to build the trust, I'm giving this to you a week ahead of time, as much time as possible for them to review it.

Some people just don't, and they just want to go off the cuff. And that tells you who you're talking to and other people, they want to see it and they want to go through it. And, but I find that that is the first kind of writing for me, like, because I'm, I'm establishing a narrative there. They can interrupt it.

They can shift it a different way, but there is a narrative there. And then just going and talking to them, there's a narrative. So I think, you know, Linda asked the question, is it writing? Is it in writing? Is it in editing? And it's one of those processes where I just find you, you know, like I say, a writer writes, you're constantly as a, as a director of a documentary film, you're constantly, you know, re re re editing, rewriting for me, it was as the writer, it was like, that was the narrative.

That was the first narrative. Then I'm there and I'm talking to them and I might start asking different questions just based upon. What the environment looks like. And then I always say to them, Hey, tell me what's important to you about your city, because, you know, still the original sex in the city, they're still big fan of using the city as a character, and so we went to four different regions and the city is always a character that always informs you about people.

And so for that, that's a whole different type of writing. So for me, the writing happens constantly because I want the narrative of not just what I see as an outsider coming into a place, but what they see, what they hold is value. Like, so there's a thing in Birth and Justice where we go to Augusta, Georgia and I was like, hey, you know, where should we go?

What symbolizes Augusta, Georgia? And every time people see it, the first thing you see is the statue of Jane Brown in the middle of Main Street. And I would have never thought that, but Every single person that we talked to say, Oh, you got to do James Brown. You got to do James Brown. And then you look at the history, you know, Augusta was, was, was founded by Augustus who founded Georgia and in the middle of, you know, one of the most, you know, Formerly Red States is James Brown being heralded, this, this son of a sharecropper.

And I think that that says so much about the town and, and, and what it's doing. And so that's what, I mean, I think you're constantly rewriting and writing all the time. I love that. What about you, Linda?

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: Yeah, I mean, I guess it's interesting. I have to think about this. Why I don't think of it as writing.

And I totally agree with what you're saying. I always think of it as. Editing and I, and I always my editor is like, is your closest collaborator. Right. And I'm, it's I can't, I don't think like an editor. I, I think in all of these kind of bigger ideas, and then I hone in on, you know, something that someone says, and that could lead to something else.

But I, it's really hard for me to. Do selects and and they're, they're not going to, they're not going to give you the answer. You think they are right. So then you are going to go off on some other direction. And in terms of how to find the story, it really is. What they say, what they're doing next, what they're, you know, where they're going.

And so it's really that following it really is that fly on the wall. And then also being able to step back and get, Oh, it's the establishing of they live in Augusta, this has formed their worldview. This is, you know, where they're living their life and doing their shopping and going to the doctor and, and all of that.

So it really, so place truly as a character. But for me, I kind of thought, I feel like what are you doing next? What happens now? What can I, can I come to your job? You know, let me see you in all of your different.

Meg LeFauve: Do you feel like though, when you pick a documentary, you've kind of chosen somebody who already has a goal so that there's some drive to the documentary already, or are you really picking just a topic and looking for drive or, you know, somebody trying to change the world, you know, how do you activate it?

If it's just a, Social political idea, how do you create a story out of that? Because even in documentaries, you are creating narrative for us to follow.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: Right. I, I feel like for the films that I do, that there is a person who is driving the idea. So there is that person mag, I think you said of, you know, the, that the people in the center of the films that I do are always, always, always striving.

You know, have no idea if they're going to make it. They don't they're just going like this. And so it's following people as they're striving and as they succeed or not, or where that takes them. So I do feel like most of the films have a. Have a driver,

Meg LeFauve: they have that want that can start to create narrative and that we can want for them to get and then suddenly we can have conflict to it.

And so even there, even in documentaries, you're looking for that, want that drive. Monique, is it the same for you in terms of

Monique N. Matthews: being on the show right now? Because for me, it was, it was about the topic. It was you know, when I was approached by the executive producers to board this project, it was like, oh, we want to look at black maternal health in the U.

S. And I was like, oh, you know. That's interesting. And I had no idea that it was this epidemic that's just hiding in plain sight. And so it was the topic. And then I started realizing on social media, all these women who I knew for years went to college with was like, Hey, can I, they would DM me. Can, can I talk to you?

This happened to me, people I was working out with, I was in this workout group. And, you know, this one woman almost died. Like, and she was like, Mo almost died. And I was like, Oh my gosh. And. You know, so many women experience shame in a way that they shouldn't experience. And so for me, it was that the topic just really just.

Opened it up and then the people appeared. It was kind of, you know, very much like build it and they were come. And so I'm working on another documentary right now. And again, it's topic driven, but so many people come and they have all these different stories and we're going to do it regionally as well.

And I'm just really excited. We're really early in it, but I'm just really excited about how topics just draw out. The human, just the human need for expression, you know, and just allowing that, like, I love giving voice to the voiceless or the invisible. I like looking at things that are hiding in plain sight.

My next documentary is looking at the, what's called African American tradition of stepping, which is something that happens in African American fraternities and sororities, Kamala Harris is in a sorority. And. They've actually been used to mold, to shape and mold these leaders. So I have footage of like, you know, Kamala Harris Martin Luther King, Cedric the entertainer Hakeem Jeffries, the current speaker of the house, all these people have these great, like these huge positions or entertainers like Cedric.

Or even Angela Bassett, and they have this tradition of using movement as a way to develop leadership skills and to be seen and to be heard in a world that doesn't really want them or hasn't really been expressive of having them seen and heard.

Meg LeFauve: Oh, I can't wait to see who your protagonist ends up being.

I can't wait either. Oh

Monique N. Matthews: my goodness, it's

Meg LeFauve: so exciting. Go ahead,

Lorien McKenna: Lorraine. Very similar to like scripted, right? It's either, oh, it's a high concept or, oh, it's a character or it's this idea or, you know, how it can come in so many different ways. There isn't the way to come to a documentary, which I love. Can you talk about, so, you know, people have to be comfortable on camera.

Say, like, how do you, you have identified your protagonist, they fit in with your idea and then they just can't be on camera. Like, have you encountered that, where, you know, like, that's, is, like, you've built all the trust, you've done all the things, you've worked it, like, how do you, what do you do if that's happened to

Monique N. Matthews: you?

For me, it has happened. I mean, here's the, here's the balance, right? I've, and, you know, when you work with others, I can blame this on my EP, who I love. It's, some people are not, they have this wonderful story and they're not compelling on camera in the way that they need to be compelling on camera. And sometimes you cut around them and sometimes you have to reshoot with other people who.

Or still telling an authentic story, but who will fit in more. And it's, you know, we make tough decisions. And for me, it was more important that, you know, this issue where the United States as a whole would be, you know, rate 23 out of 35 developed nations. This includes white women for, you know, having healthy and successful births.

So, you know, it becomes more than about a particular character. So for me, the subject became more than it. About an individual. And if someone didn't feel comfortable, cause I've had people, they like, I don't want to talk about that. And then afterwards I saw the film was like, Oh, I should have talked about that.

And there were a lot of people who didn't with a lot who are doing a lot of great work in this area, they didn't have trust for the media. So they didn't return our phone calls. They were just like, Oh, there's these filmmakers. They're going to do what everybody else does. It's going to be a train wreck.

And then afterwards we were embraced because they're like, Oh, we could trust you. So it was a lot of people who spoke to me off camera who didn't want to be identified. And you just have to just go with what you have. And, you know, hopefully the magic is there and the authenticity.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: Same, nothing to, yeah, I mean, I mean, and it's, and it's really hard and then sometimes there are there are, I mean, there's a basically the woman who started the whole reason for the, the basis of this group that's at the center of Split at the Root is called Immigrant Families Together, and it started as an idea of this woman who Julie, who wanted to do something boots on the ground in response to the zero tolerance policy, the family separation.

And she saw this woman. She learned about this woman, Jenny, who was 1 of the 1st woman who was let out of detention and. Yanni, not comfortable, I mean, cut to later and she's part of our film and she's a central piece of, you know, person and, and we've become friends. Totally uncomfortable on camera, uncomfortable as I learned to be in, we had to be in a quiet room to record the interview, right?

And even though she's completely claustrophobic because she's been in detention. So she's an uncomfortable person on camera and her story is so compelling and she is the 1 case where her kind of. Motion coming through it didn't it didn't matter. I mean, it didn't say, oh, wow, she's less compelling or her voice is hard to hear or something like that.

It was you have to be present and and it's all about her her getting to use her voice. So. So, but, and so it's interesting to see so uncomfortable in the beginning and then becoming more and more and more comfortable. And then we had our, our screening in Washington, D. C. where you know, we had members of Congress and she's just walking up to them.

I want the picture. This is what's going on in my family. You need to hear me. And you know, you see someone's growth. So I'm, I don't know, I'm trying to like pull things together, which I shouldn't be doing as a producer here on your own show. But of that, you're, you're, as you're,

Lorien McKenna: you're doing a documentary

Meg LeFauve: right now.

I love it. She changed. She arced and you're how amazing to let the awkwardness be. And that she arced in that. It's amazing. Is that part

Lorien McKenna: of why you make documentaries, like a call to action, inspiring other people to, like, what is it for you? Why are you called to this

Meg LeFauve: medium? Yeah, because I, that's, that dovetails with another question, which is, you know, you're supposed to be flying the wall, and yet it is a creative act.

You, you are in it, right? You, we call it lava on this show. Your lava has to be in it for you to, You know, it's not like you're going to become rich making documentary. So there has to be some passionate reason you're going to do this. So how do you keep it personal and yet, and yet objective too, is within that question.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: Yeah, I mean, I have to really check myself on my objectivity all the time. My you know, my driving force is to create community and to for people to not feel that they're alone and for them to see themselves and that they can, every single person can do something. So. Split at the root. You can do, you know, you can get involved in a tiny way or a giant way and you don't have to be an expert in immigration and in somewhere between which is about four girls adopted from China when they were little and we follow them when they're teenagers.

It's. You're not alone and everybody is somewhere between no matter who they are in their lives. Right? So there's a specific and a universal. So it's really about right? Platforming ideas. I have a lot of privilege as a white woman. That's that's something that I can do. But it's really just about creating really creating

Monique N. Matthews: community.

I just I want to acknowledge something that you're saying that I think that anyone who's listening to this, podcasts may want to be aware of as they consider funding, right? Cause documentaries funding is a, is a huge thing is you have time. You built in time to make sure that you were with your subject.

Like we just, with our budget, we didn't have it. Right. So I think that there is something to that. And I think that there's something to, in terms of the, one of the constant things we're talking about is being present is when you create your budget for it, if you really want, you have to know how to insist on the time to, to follow people and not.

Not do that shortcut if that's what you are going for. I know that with Birthing Justice, it was a call to action. It's like, you know, it's in our tag. Every woman deserves a beautiful birth story. And so, how does this birthing story look in this particular region of the country? And it differs based on the region that you're in, but that's the call to action.

That's the story. And for me, I've written across mediums for I mean, I get, I would say the majority of my professional life as a magazine writer, as a, as a news journalist you know, and Ph. D. programs at UCLA. So I'm used to writing and, and writing in different forms and mediums. So for me, I, I just want the medium where I can tell the most compelling version of the story with where I am.

I think that sometimes people want to wait until they have, you know, this particular amount of money to do something or this. And it's just to start where you are. What do you have? What can you do? And if it's just, if you know you want to follow people, then, you know, don't want to do 10 people. Like, focus on two if that's what you know you can get the budget for.

But if you need to tell a story, I really believe you need to tell the most compelling version of that story based upon what you have on hand and go for it immediately.

Meg LeFauve: Okay, I have a question about that because I love that. So you're in there, maybe you're in the edit room or maybe you're in the interview, so much of documentary in any story, but especially documentary, it seems to me is exposition, like you've explained so much about the topic, about the social topic, about the, like, how do you handle exposition and So that it's not talking heads just explaining stuff all the time or is it the way you're asking the question?

Is it something you do an edit where you're like, oh my gosh We have to explain this and we have to go get another interview. How does exposition work? It's

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: so hard. I mean, so I did a film about Sesame Street and their work around the world and the the The spine of the story took place as they were creating a new series in Bangladesh.

Did I know about the history of Bangladesh before I went to Bangladesh six times? I did not. Do most people in our country or in the West know about Bangladesh? No, they do not. I can guarantee it. So we had to give context because there's a very special reason why Sesame Street and literacy in Bangladesh, it So we

You know, we pieced together archival footage that told the story, basically the history of Bangladesh in two minutes. And I commend my editor. I mean, that is like heroic and so adding music to that at, you know, there's, there's kind of different pieces and and split at the root. We also needed the context of migration to the United States from Central America.

You know, why are all those people coming? Well, it's what our government has done over a whole bunch of years. So how do we, how do we explain that? And so for that, I did actually ask my, one of my protagonists, Hey, can you give me the history of Central America, American you know, military involvement, why we've created the problems that we now have.

And she did, and we use music and we use archival footage and excuse me. So it's, I. It's really hard for me, but it's so important if you don't have the context.

Monique N. Matthews: Right, right. Monique, how about for you? You know, for exposition, I would certainly say that leaning on my background as a screenwriter is helpful and putting up show don't tell like everywhere.

Right? So one of the things we wanted to cover is like, when you look at what's happening in terms of the black maternal health care crisis, specifically in the United States and how if the U. S. was just a Just made of black women, just black women comprised the U. S. It would be 37 developed nations.

Costa Rica and Mexico are the only two that have worse outcomes than United States. If that was just, if it was just all black women. And so. Looking at that in DC, for example, gentrification is really huge, right? So, but when you look at people being pushed out of these communities and community is such a vital important when a woman gives birth, you know, in a community and so many women are homeless.

And, and then when you look at birthing and it doesn't matter what socioeconomic status black women have, they're still more likely to die than any other ethnicity in the United States. Right. Then it's like, well, how do you show gentrification? Like, I didn't want to back away from that. So then that's when the B roll footage became, hey, such and such said this.

I need to make sure we find what this looks like so that when she says it, people see it. So I really wanted to make sure that my B roll reflected whatever exposition people came with. Because I know that sometimes people say things and they can seem like talking heads and they can seem like they're all over the place, but you know, there's.

Generally a perfect storm when you get to an epidemic. And if you just focus on one thing, you lose so many other things. And, you know, as filmmakers, the wonderful thing is how do I show this? How do I show this in a second or two, three seconds? And so for me, it was finding B roll footage to match the exposition.

Meg LeFauve: I loved in your documentary, Monique, where. And I'm going to get it wrong and I apologize. It's more about my brain than the impact that one of your protagonists talked about. How, in an interview, and I believe it was in Georgia, a doctor said, Well, if you take out the African American mortality rate in birth, we're doing okay.

And when she said it, I was like, I must have heard that wrong. And you must have known that I was gonna be like, That's not possible, cause it's And then you show him, say it. And it's so impactful to have both of them say it, to have her say it, and then to, to watch him say it. So, it just, I mean, think of what you're talking about, the show Don't Tell, like, you allowed us to have the horror of witnessing the actual thing that she's talking about.

It was so powerful. It was so, so powerful.

Monique N. Matthews: Yeah. Yeah, he was a lawmaker out of Louisiana, and we actually had to do a few different things with our PBS edit because he pushed back and said that, he said that, but that's not what he meant.

Meg LeFauve: Oh, so it's not in the PBS version? Well, we can cut this if it's

Monique N. Matthews: a problem.

No, that's why we like the director's cut. It's like, you said it, but okay you know. For whoever your distributor is, they want objectivity and you have to go through something. So then we had to figure out, you know, how do we tell this balanced story that that happened, you know,

Meg LeFauve: that's, that's another question I had.

And we had about how do you keep it, the, the areas of gray or another way to say it in a different way is getting too preachy, right? Like, how do you how do you navigate that?

Monique N. Matthews: Oh, I think it's a, it's kind of like a case by case basis. I don't think that it's, you know, there's just one way to do it.

It's just, you know, in the moment you show up and you just, it's kind of also when you're writing though, I mean, Laurieann, you talk about this a lot. It's, and you mentioned it earlier with characters. You really have to present as much as possible three dimensional characters and trust your audience enough to make an intelligent choice about where they fall along the line.

And so I think that when you don't reduce the humanity of someone, regardless of what it is that they said, that you give the audience a chance to, to show that they can form their own opinion instead of you making it for them. I

Lorien McKenna: have a question that kind of relates to this. So I get nervous when I'm about to watch a documentary or I'm going to a documentary film because I know it's going to pop some bubble I've been living in.

It's going to show me some new scary thing I didn't know about, some new horror about the world, right? And it feels like it's I feel scared. Right? And so I tend not, I mean, I tend not to watch them because I, I, like, oh my god, do I want to do that? Or do I just want to be in my safe little happy bubble and watch another episode of a sitcom I like?

Right? So how does a beginner to the documentary scene How does one make a slow entry into it so that it's not like you watch the big scary one first, right? And I think this comes because in seventh grade, they showed us a documentary about the Holocaust and they let it play for too long. And so I got very scared, right?

I was 11 years old and I was like, Oh my God. So I have that feeling come up. That's my lava, right? So how do you, you know, cause there's the, like the way I'm documentary, right? Which is. Fun and joyful and nostalgic, right? And then there's other documentaries which are very dark and scary and expose something.

I don't know what I'm saying here, what the question is, but I know there's lots of people who feel this way, right? We want to stay safe and entertained, but not too challenged. But I think we do need to shift that. And be more accessible. And I know you experienced this in your audiences, right? People get scared of them.

They don't come.

Monique N. Matthews: So, I mean, I, I can go first with this because just it's called, it's called birthing justice, right? But then when you say all this about, you know, black maternal health crisis, maternal health in America, people are like, oh my gosh, I don't want to see that that's so depressing. I can't take it.

And for me, I wanted to, there were several things that I do. I wanted the. The women that you saw, the families that you see to be so beautiful as they organically were that you could not take your eyes off of them. You're like, Oh my gosh, like she's saying this, but something is really compelling and I got to keep watching this.

Right. Also for me as a filmmaker, I have an underlying theme of black joy is resistance. Right. So, you know, I really Think about like every year Martin Luther King Jr. holiday comes up and one of the favorite things that I like to see because you can get kind of overdose on all the pictures of King during his holiday, right?

Is him playing pool or him like shooting cards and it's so different than everything that I had grown up thinking about him, like, and to know, you know, he was 38 when he died. And for me, just as a kid, I wasn't born when he was, when he was alive. So he was just always old to me. Right. And always, you know, in a suit and tie in the seed of humanity and see, I wanted to, to really explore how that joy that Has been a part of social movements, political movements that Black people have been a part of since they've been in this country.

And it's always underdeveloped. Like you'll see the anger, you'll see the pain. And I was like, no, the joy is just as valid. And I know that this is something that's hiding in plain sight. And when my audience sees it, even though this other stuff is happening, they'll go, wow, but I didn't think about this.

And understanding as a writer, polarity, I just, I really knew I wanted to, to keep that drawn in. So as a filmmaker, it was really important to know where my audience was. Now, I know some people will be like, Oh, you just got to let them know. And, and you can, but I wanted to keep them engaged at the same time.

So it was really important that people look beautiful in their natural element. So it was very, my documentary is very colorful. I wanted to make sure I captured the color. And thematically to show something that was in plain sight that people weren't aware of, and that was joy as a tool of resistance, as a weapon.

Beautiful.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: When I worked with this organization, the Radical Monarchs in the Bay Area Marilyn, who's one of the co founders, said, you know, especially it's so important working with youth, is that, you know, really the living the idea is that the revolution will have joy. Right? And that was, I mean, I learned 150, 000 things from her.

And that was that was such an important. Lesson for me and a tool for me to just professionally and personally to move forward of how to,

The, there needs to be joy along with the anger or that how I am, you know, how I'm uplifting people or their ideas or standing back while people are uplifting themselves that there is joy, right?

There is joy in the movement forward. So. Having been fueled by anger for so long it was for me, it was a really important

Meg LeFauve: lesson. I also think within the striving is hope, you know, I mean, that's why I love both of your guys work is that within, yes, it's hard, and yes, there's really hard things to look at.

And be disappointed about in terms of humanity and culture in America or whatever it is but all of both, all of your work has a, has also a striving, a hope, a, a working towards a solution, a week that there's power within this documentary for all of us to consider once it's considered, there's a chance to change it.

And I just think that is also, for me, why I don't, there are documentaries that don't have that, and you do feel like, oh my god, like, oh my gosh, tell me, can you put a thing at the end? Can I, can, where, what can I do? But I love both of your work, because you do have that hope and striving within it.

Lorien McKenna: And I will say, anytime I do watch a documentary, It has, like, I'm always so like, Oh, yes, this sh*tty thing is going on, but there is joy in it.

It's just this block I have that is, like, getting me, it's like, I have to be braver in how I can, how I watch things, I think. That's just a note to myself. But I'm sure I'm not alone in that. That's just the concept of a documentary feels like, Oh, I'm not smart enough to understand or, Oh, I can't do anything about it.

You know, like, You know, so, but, but you're right. Even if I can watch it and like tell someone else to watch it

Monique N. Matthews: form,

Lorien McKenna: like that community, the, the spreading of that, like that, I feel like that's what I can do. I can watch, I can recommend, I can talk and share. Right. So within my power, my capabilities, I think that's what you guys are talking about a little bit too.

Right. Building that building.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: Yeah. I mean, Monica. You have your own better words, but it's like right as a filmmaker. It's like that's the best possible thing is for someone to watch and to recommend right and that they're, you know, yeah. And I also

Meg LeFauve: informative. I mean, having watched your documentaries.

If that topic was to go by a news feed or I hear there's a bill where, like, they need people to call about what, like, I do think just knowledge with permeating out into the culture, right? And educating people on this is happening. Does have ripples what you're doing does have incredible ripples And I know that must be hard as a documentary because it's not like immediate like box office for the weekend was a hundred

Monique N. Matthews: million dollars Right,

Meg LeFauve: like you don't guys don't get that It you're you just have to trust that the ripples of of what you've done and put out in the world is going to continue To go out and affect more and more people And that that how that those shifts happened, like you both said, giving voice to the voiceless isn't of itself such a powerful act.

Monique N. Matthews: And I think even if it's not really heavy, heavy, I was thinking about Hedy Lamarr's bombshell on Netflix and just to be trapped in beauty, right? Like just watching that. And I was just like, Oh my gosh, like, this is really brilliant. This woman was brilliant and she used her beauty. And then she became, you know, In, in encapsulated, like if she was in a cage as a result of that and people couldn't see her past it.

And, you know, then her children said she was difficult. And I think that that's something that, you know, we can relate to as we, as we look at people as three dimensional human beings and how they got this way. So for me, just looking like and seeing, oh, she was the face of this and she did that. And it's just like, wow.

So we're in 2023. Can a woman, you know, who is considered the most beautiful people would say she was people magazine, most beautiful today. Could she come out with a patent for World War II and be taken seriously still, or would that still, so those. Those questions I think can help, you know, the people who are new to documentaries because there's so many topics, but that's just universal.

Where women are just like, can I be a fully human, can I be beautiful and have a brain and like, like just the most simple element, you know? Well, that's

Meg LeFauve: what's so powerful about documentaries that are great. Like yours, both of yours, we start to see ourselves. Right, even though I have no context whatsoever for that documentary at all, they're human beings and you start to put yourself in their place.

And what would you do and admire what they did and the, and, and how hard they're working or what they're, how they saw it. Right. And, and like you said, Monique, it's such a beautiful thought and where they. It fell down. It also makes them relatable to us, right? Because, no, they're not gods, they're not perfect, or why did they do what they did, right?

I just think, I, I also so love that about storytelling and what you guys can do with documentaries too, in terms of real life. I guess my question is for our listeners out there, You know, sometimes I will hear a pitch and I'll be like, it's a documentary. You're basically pitching me a documentary. I know it might be a fiction thing, but you haven't found the concept yet to make it fiction, especially when I were for Jodie Foster.

I heard the story of everyone who's ever lived and done anything. Did she walk to China in her bare feet? I heard about it. Like, I mean, I've heard everything. But they, there was more documentary. So let's say you have that story and you realize, you know what, I do want to make a documentary about her.

I, you know, and maybe that'll lead to the, right, to the fiction eventually. What is advice you would give to a new documentarian either about financing or how to approach things or anything, any advice you would give to people who are just going to try to break into this?

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: There's such a lower barrier to entry in documentary.

If you have an iPhone, you can start filming something and make a little proof of concept. You can just use something's happening and you don't want to miss it in the moment. Right. Just start. Just start filming. You don't need. You don't need the permission on the grand level, and you don't have to write an outline at 1st and you don't have to live in your lava and, you know, all of those things you can just you can just go.

So that's 1 thing. And the other just. And everything that everyone said is that in what we all do is we humanize people, right? So, Monique and I are humanizing by turning a lens on real people that people that are a number. Oh, black women. This is happening to black women. Now, here is this woman in particular walk in her shoes, right?

And like, really understand that woman that just walked by and you have not, you don't know anything about her. Right? So we have that opportunity and that's what. Yeah. Writers are doing too, right? You're having this character and like you're saying, it has to, this person has to become 3 dimensional to humanize them.

That's how that person is relatable to you. And they're your, and they're your character and story can move forward. So it really is about the humanity and humanizing people. That doesn't answer your question. I say just start and also watch a lot of documentaries and reach out and there's the International Documentary Association.

It's an amazing organization. Step into that world. Film Independent also has a really strong documentary arm. There's, there, there's a whole there's a bunch and I'm forgetting who they are, but tap into the networks. They're there. There, there are zooms. There are screenings. There are people that you can make meet to make create create community.

Monique N. Matthews: I'd like to just echo what Linda said. Cause I know you can, people can say start. And then I was like, yeah, everybody says start, but it really is like, I, I, I mean, I've been a screenwriter for quite some time and you get. Like, for me, it was like, I had my career, I came out of UCLA film school, it was hot, hot, hot.

And then the 2007 strike happened, and I wasn't ready for the transition to television. And so I was just out there as a feature writer, as an African American woman feature writer, no one was hiring me. And I was like, what's the next story I can tell? And I felt like I was like useless in your hands. And I had an iPhone six and I was like, you know, I'm going to do a minute documentaries on people who decide to live extraordinary lives, like ordinary people who, who depend on excellence, like something that's simple and that really led to me getting my feature documentary.

It's not like, Oh, Oh, it's like, literally I just put it out there and people saw it and then I just kept doing more things and I used the technology that I had at, at hand. Then. My writing background allowed me to know how to tell a story like how do you I want to do profiles on ordinary people teaching excellence.

That's 1 sentence. You see it and you just go for that. And things keep moving forward from that. Also, you know, like you can't be afraid to fail like failures apart. Like you talk about lava, like every day you guys talk about doing the work and what that means and you still time people. And you know, one of the things I love about you, Lorraine, as you talk about how, you know, fearful things can, can be for you at times, and yet you show up each and every time and the bravery that exists in that, and I think whatever, like bravery, foolishness, because it's that fine line.

But he's showing up, you know, and Meg talks about there's nothing like that blank page and you're sitting there and you're staring at it like, I'm going to show up every day to this blank page. And it's just that it's just like, you know what, if you start, you know what, you might, you might realize you're trying to tell 20, 000 different stories and you just need to tell one.

But you won't know, you just need to tell one unless you start telling them. And I think that we compare, we keep comparing whether it's a, it's a screenplay, whether it's a film, you can't compare your first draft to an Oscar winning script. And we do it all the time, or to a film, and you go to an antique film, like, I mean, for me The film that I taught in my screenwriting class, one of my favorite films was definitely Inside Out.

Like, that is just, and Magnum, that was like my, like one of the, cause it's such a beautiful story. The structures, the characters, and so often in film schools, they teach films in, in, in a one, in a one in AMI. So it is Oscar nominated, but you think of Oscar nominated films, you think about, you know, the classics from 40 years ago that are so far.

Out of the way for people and there's something about an animated film about a little girl whose biggest thing is fitting in after she goes, you know, her parents move. And to really give her that voice, that beauty to, to, for that to be okay, for that to be a big enough story. I think it gave my students freedom to tell their stories.

And I think that we like. Just, just go for what's there. Like your story is enough and, you know, watch things that you don't necessarily think are so big and so, and so active and have, have so many, you know, laurels on them that they intimidate you from just telling your story and failing at your story and telling it again and again and again.

So for me, I think that that's really, I love that. Thank

Meg LeFauve: you so much. I love that.

Lorien McKenna: Yes. I have a question about Just Start, right? So, as everybody knows, my daughter was diagnosed with type 1 and I'm angry about a lot of things around it. And we're managing it, but like, I'm, every time I meet a mom or a dad, they have the diagnosis story, which is trauma that never goes away.

And then there's the, the living the real life of it. We had a good day. We had a bad day. We, you know, like, there's so many different places I want to go. I don't want to write a narrative about it. I've tried. It's just like, I don't want to tell my story for once. I don't want to talk about myself here, but I'm so curious that I'm like People who are uninsured and how do you get stuff that you need, that's just insulin, there, there's thousands of dollars of supplies you need to manage your kid effectively so that, you know, you're not waking up every night to poke them in the finger, right?

So, I, I don't quite, and I also, so say I want to make a little mini documentary about this. What I'm afraid to do, just start, like, okay, I want to reach out to somebody and say, can I, can I just talk to you and record it? I feel like. That I'm committing to something. Okay, it's a lot of fear talk here. Maybe this isn't a good example, but

Meg LeFauve: like, I mean, it's a perfect example because you just have to start.

Yeah, you

Lorien McKenna: just have to start and I say, well, you and then they're like, oh, you're making a documentary. I don't know.

Meg LeFauve: You can just say,

Monique N. Matthews: I don't know.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: You can say, I'm doing research for a project.

Lorien McKenna: Ah, there it is. Okay. So, yes, but I, but I think it's like that, like, am I equipped to tell the story? And I think.

We're all always asking ourselves these questions, right? It's about, you know, it's just a, it's a scary concept. It's how I felt when I first started writing plays, how I first, my first TV show, like, am I equipped to succeed? Am I No

Meg LeFauve: one is equipped to do anything artistic. At all. I don't care who you are.

I don't care what kind of show you put on. Nobody is. So even if

Lorien McKenna: I don't know what it is, like, I just want to start talking about it. It's

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: a project that you need to do research for. Seriously. Seriously.

Lorien McKenna: I think that's really important because it's like, I don't have a question. I don't have a character. I don't have a concept.

Meg LeFauve: So, so Linda, you're saying you can just start with, I'm going to do research.

Yeah, project. And I know it's in the world of diabetes and this kind of angle. And that's all I'm going to do is start the research to start

Lorien McKenna: there. Exactly. Exactly. Teeny, teeny little step. I don't have to name it. I don't have to know what it is. So

Monique N. Matthews: the screenwriter in me would say, okay one is, it's really hard to create something when you're in the middle of it, right?

Cause you're too attached to it. So then the, the screenwriter things like, okay, so you had some distance from it. What would be your three minute elevator pitch for that? Oh, it's a documentary is really elevator pitch, but no, you're still talking to an audience and having to find what it is that you want to say.

And if it's just 3 minutes or 5 minutes, you know, if you can get that, we talked about if you get that log line down, you got it. But it's, it's how do you get there?

Meg LeFauve: Right. Did you Monique, did you get your three minute pitch before you did the research or did you do the research, learn deeply about the topic and start to see the three minute pitch?

I

Monique N. Matthews: started like, you know, I got there were so many ways to come at it. And then I realized, like, Oh, my God. I like, I didn't know so many women that I knew were affected by it. Like I had a cousin who I didn't know she died at like 32, like from having a baby. Like it was like, and you think that you're safest in the hospital.

And I remember her as an infant and I never saw her growing up and she's no longer here. And I was just like, Oh my God. So this deeply affected me. And I just, I just didn't know. And then I was like, no, this is happening to too many women. And I'm tired of women. Feeling ashamed of something that is systematic, right?

We're taught to go within ourselves and feel ashamed when we shouldn't. And it's just so, for me, that really just that voice of like, no, like, let's remove the cover of the shame here became so important to me. And that clarion call, if you just don't, just don't feel ashamed. Right. And so that guided everything as I, as I moved forward, I knew it was happening too much and I wanted people to, I wanted the right people to start or the right institution to start being held accountable instead of we just individually take things on for us that we shouldn't.

Yeah,

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: and I, and, and all of that, as you're saying, right, all of those pieces, the personal, the context, right? All deeper and deeper because of all the research that you did. Right? So, like, that could help you. You know, refine your three minute, you know, elevator pitch or bring another idea or character into your story and all of that.

So it is that kind of like a little bit of a chicken and egg, right? You've got the, I've got this. And then what do I do with it? And so then it's, okay, I got to do research. And then it takes you to where you think you're going. And then you need to do some more research. So,

Lorien McKenna: yeah, I go for it and it might change.

Like, have my logline, go off and start, and it could change depending on what happens. Right.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: It will change

Monique N. Matthews: as crazy as it sounds. Right. Because it's such a, it's such a, a pressing issue and it, and it, it hurts and you're dealing with it. It's like, you want other people to take this journey with you. Right. So there's a roller coaster. So I do think you do. Need to like, if you're talking to like, what is the and I know it sounds commercial, but like, really, the, what is the big idea?

Like, what is and you get that? And because people will tell you, oh, you should do it about this. And you can like, no, that's not it. No, you should do this. There might be a kernel there. And it's just. You know, you're pretty busy. So what's going to keep you up late at night and make you work through things.

And I D I don't think that when things are serious and they're real, that we need to take away the commercial lens that we learned about audience and engagement. Do you guys have the

Lorien McKenna: same? Oh, smart. We have the same blockades, questions, pressures as we do in scripted. Why? What's the big idea? Who's the main character?

What's the native address? Why you? Why? What is the cell? What is the elevator pitch? Like, it's all the same thing. It's just a different way to tell a

Meg LeFauve: story. Yeah, it's a different form. Yeah.

Lorien McKenna: And I do not have another me available to be documentary me. That is not. I don't have another me. I'm a room parent right now.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: The other thing I was going to say is that if you know how you think it's going to go, then that's propaganda in a documentary, right? If you think, you know, I'm going to. Follow this person or this doctor or, you know, whoever it is and it's this is where the story is going. That's where I'm going with it.

Lorien McKenna: If you're, if you're trying to prove a point, yeah, rather than or

Monique N. Matthews: investigate. Yeah,

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: that's that's

Lorien McKenna: rather than a conversation. You're,

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: you're right at the end of exploring. There's no exploration. Right? So that's exploration research. And I'll give you one teeny example of just that, how nobody knows anything when you're doing something creative, you know, I had been doing this for a really long time.

And I am starting a project that is a documentary series. And I'm super excited about it. And I come back from my first shoot and I am panicking on the plane. I was like, guess it's a short film. Like what? Like, I just was like, I was questioning everything. Like, what is this? Where's this going to go?

And I went there so sure of like, this is what it is. I still don't know exactly what it is. I know who it's about, but it's like, Oh, there's so much more exploration. You know, and I was really down on myself because I was like, Oh my God, how could I have been so wrong about the format? This is going to take.

And it's like, you can't know until you're in it. Can't

Meg LeFauve: know until you're in it. That goes for every creative. artistic act there is. You can't know until you're in it. So all you guys go get in it. Just start. Just start. All right. This has been spectacular. I think we can talk for another hour. I know I could listen to you both for another hour.

But we're going to wrap up with our three questions that we asked. Monique, you have already answered these questions, but you're going to have to come up with something new. Okay. For each of you, for, for both of you, what brings you the most joy when it comes to your work as a documentary?

Monique N. Matthews: Monique, you go. Oh, she, she applied this in a documentary, so it's a little different. Ha ha! Ha ha! You know, the, what really got me is the first screening we had, we had it at Clark Atlanta. And our beautiful doctor from Augusta, Georgia Donna Pickett Adams, she came up and I wanted to know what they thought.

And she was like, you got me like when people say that I captured them and their essence or and the same thing for Ebony and the same thing. As I went to, you know, St. Louis or Oklahoma and everyone I talked to was like, you showed me like how I am like, this is how I see it. And it wasn't about me. It was like, I was able to show them them.

And that brought me so much joy that they saw themselves reflected in what was on the screen. They were like, I felt like someone has seen me that really, to this day, it just gives me chills.

Meg LeFauve: I love that. That can happen in, in fiction too. You can be at the after party and somebody walks up and says, I feel like you were talking about me.

And, you know, that's just like, oh my god, that is the most precious. Linda, what about you?

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: The, the people that I have worked with that have been in the film and, and behind the, you know, making the film with me, I have my work husbands. I have my, these two guys I've worked with for over 20 years. This is our sixth or seventh film together.

We've been around the world together. We think six or seven times. So the relationship, so I love my work husbands and, and the new, and the new people that, that you know, the new crew members. But the, the people that are in the film that are really making themselves vulnerable and collaborating on such a deep level, they're, we're, we're friends.

We're long, long lasting friends. So, you know, a couple of those, the couple of those girls that I filmed with when they were 14, they're now, you know, lawyers and, and you know, we're, we're really close. So like that, you know, those relationships. Awesome. Love it.

Lorien McKenna: All right. Linda, you're going to start this one.

Okay. What pisses you off about your work as a documentarian?

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: I thought you were going to say what pisses you off. I'm like, do you have the time?

Meg LeFauve: We're going to narrow it down.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: What pisses me off is that. This is the question. There's so many outlets, all of the streaming, so many channels. Oh my god, it must be so great for you to make documentaries now.

Nope. Unless you're making something about true crime, a sports figure, or a celebrity. Something else, Monique? I don't know. That, you know, it's like, And even if it's, even if it's, you know, something, you know, joyful, I think it's still really, really hard. And so that pisses me off that the, the barrier, the, the barriers to say, we're going to give the audience something a little bit different.

Monique N. Matthews: That pisses me off.

Meg LeFauve: Monique,

Monique N. Matthews: what about you? I think it pisses me off when you run out of time and it's, there's segments that you want to do and you're like, Oh my gosh, that would be great. And you just couldn't like, we wanted to, this is whole, one of the things we really wanted to explore and we just ran out of time was black women giving birth in prisons.

Because some women are shackled and, and these are women who are in prison for minor offenses where they probably shouldn't be incarcerated at all. And I wasn't able to tell that part of the story and I really wanted to bring humanity to that. So there are just things that you just, you just run out of time for and that you don't have, you know, it could be red tape, it could be finding the right subject, it could be all of those things.

And you know, there's a great story, but you can't tell it at that particular time. Amazing.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: Thank you.

Lorien McKenna: Yeah, that pisses me off.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: Both of your answers,

Monique N. Matthews: the extremes.

Meg LeFauve: Yeah. All right. Jeff's going to ask the last one.

Monique N. Matthews: Sure. And then the last question we have for you guys is if you could go back and have a coffee with your younger self before you got into documentary filmmaking, what advice would you give

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: that person?

Meg LeFauve: Oh, my God, shaking her head just for the people on the podcast. Like, I don't know. That could mean so many things right

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: now.

Meg LeFauve: Please leave this,

Monique N. Matthews: you know, I think in terms of going back and documentaries and talking to a younger self is you don't know, like, just tell the story like, you don't like you think that. When I thought that when I was younger, there was a plan and you realize you don't know the plan. You don't know what's really going to just, you know, explode the way that you needed to explode.

So, you know, as much as it hurts you to feel authentic, and that seems like you're trying to tell these stories that no one is paying attention to, that is how you find the heart. So just be okay with being lonely sometimes because it's, it's, it's, it's, for your artists, it's kind of worth it. It's not kind of, it is worth it.

Yeah, I don't like that.

Lorien McKenna: That's always a very scary, even now, right? Even telling myself that yesterday. What? There's no plan?

Meg LeFauve: Well, and that's, I guess what I like what you're saying too, Monique, is that holds true to an individual project, but also to your career. To that young person who's like, well, what's the stepping stone for my career?

And I want this. And you're like, you don't even know. You have no idea where you're going to go. You have no idea what you're going to do. And the world and the universe can think so much bigger than you. So just start, right? Like, it's just the career. Just start going. All right, Linda. I've given you, I gave you a little time

Monique N. Matthews: there, girl.

Come on. Yeah, I know. Get

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: it together. I would tell myself just, I don't know. I have like nothing great to say, but I'm like, Keep going. But I, I did keep going. So,

Meg LeFauve: Well, it doesn't have to be something you didn't do, but you can just, maybe you wish you knew sooner. Maybe it's just something you wish you knew sooner.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: I wish I knew sooner. Following is a great piece of advice. Right, right. Learn how to raise money for

Meg LeFauve: a great piece of advice. Yes,

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: yes, it is. Yeah, find a sugar mama. The yeah, that it's that it's okay that you don't know what you're doing. You kind of can't know until you know, right? And so, you know, there's, I felt like I had too much paralysis around.

I don't know what I'm doing and and that, what is that? It was okay to fake it till you make it.

Meg LeFauve: Thank you guys so much for being on the show. We loved having you guys with us.

Monique N. Matthews: Thank you

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: so much. I've learned

Lorien McKenna: so much. Like I think the most, the most impactful, the thing with the most impact. Is how similar the mediums are in terms of process, research, character, trust, all of it. And

Meg LeFauve: You guys were so passionate and so clearly in love with what you do.

So thank you so much. It's just

Lorien McKenna: baffling and terrifying. So I really, really value it. I mean, I'm sure it is, but

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: thank you so much. Thank you so much. And, and I don't know, I'm just going to say this. When I was co directing my first documentary, I had an idea. I didn't know how to, I didn't even know what you did for documentaries.

And I was having dinner across the table from a documentary filmmaker. And I was like, Hey, I have this idea. What do you think? And she thought it was a great idea and I was, I just thought of not knowing what I don't know, but I didn't know I knew how to tell a story. I'd produced scripted films before, so I'm like, I know that part and together she'll teach me the documentary part.

And that is literally what happened. So there, it is the marriage of, it's all storytelling. It's all storytelling. It's just a little bit where you're pointing the

Monique N. Matthews: camera.

Meg LeFauve: I love it. Monique, thank you too for so much for coming. All right, you guys. So before we go quick, tell us where we can see your films.

Anything else that's coming up? So, yeah,

Monique N. Matthews: so birth and justice. This is actually we're going to be at the DTLA film festival on Thursday, October 19th, which I think is when this is airing at 6 PM. So you can catch us there. We're also on PBS. I think we're behind the paywall right now though, but you should, you could probably go to pbs.

com and still watch it.

Meg LeFauve: And Monique, can people go and purchase it on like Apple or anything or not?

Monique N. Matthews: I don't believe it's on Apple yet. Not yet. Okay. It's pbs. org. I'm sorry. I don't think pbs would be dot com. pbs. org. No, not yet. It's I think it's just PBS and we're still playing at different festivals.

Awesome.

Linda Goldstein Knowlton: Fantastic. It's so good. It's so good. Go watch it. Split at the Root. You can see on Netflix.

Meg LeFauve: All right.

Lorien McKenna: Thank you guys. And remember, you are not alone and keep writing.

Throughout the 21st century, video games have become one of pop cultures most valuable mediums, and their narrative ambition grows with each passing year. Today we feature two of the industries top writers, Shanon M. Ingles (Batman: A Telltale Series) and Stephan Bugaj (Tales From the Borderlands) to discuss how the industry has evolved from a writing standpoint, and how you can break in.

TRANSCRIPTION

Meg LeFauve: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the screenwriting life. I'm Meg LeFauve and my partner in crime, Lorien McKenna is out today. So Jeff is stepping in.

Jeff Graham: Yes, I am here and I am thrilled to be here, of course, chatting with two leaders in the video game slash interactive screenwriting space. We have Stephan Bugaj and Shannon Ingles.

Meg LeFauve: Stephan is currently the CCO of Genvid Technologies and he has also held senior creative roles at Hanson Robotics and Telltale Games, overseeing creative and story for beloved narrative games, including Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead.

Jeff Graham: Shannon is a writer and narrative designer that has worked with Telltale Games as well, 2K, and Santa Monica Studios.

Jeff Graham: She also operates her own narrative studio, Martian Brothel, and is known for her work on Marvel's Midnight Gods and God of War Ragnarok.

Meg LeFauve: Today we're going to be chatting with Stephan and Shannon about their experience in the interactive narrative media space, how they broke in, and what a career in the medium looks like, and the craft of it, which I'm so super interested in.

Meg LeFauve: So welcome, you guys. Welcome to the show.

Stephan Bugaj: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, thanks. I'm really excited.

Meg LeFauve: Cool. So, these guys are, have agreed to jump in with our adventures in screenwriting, AKA what our week was like I'll start, I'll just go first. My week was about process and three different ways.

Meg LeFauve: Well, it was kind of about process. Process, craft, and lava, which on our show, you guys, we talk about lava being that kind of, you know, when you're writing and it starts to get hot and burning and you may be thinking, I don't want to deal with that. In terms of process, my son, Aiden, is in college and has stuff to do that.

Meg LeFauve: Of course, he was supposed to do this summer and he didn't do it. Now he has to go back to school and he's like, I got to do this. I try really hard. I don't get involved with the creative, but I do get involved with his process and he was stuck in perfection mode and literally sitting there with his head in his hands.

Meg LeFauve: I've got nothing. This is all horrible. Meanwhile, he doesn't. Like, I can see that he doesn't. There's a whole whiteboard full of stuff. And it really was just about saying, I, even though you feel that way, you have to do it anyways. You know, it's, I guess the theme here is staying in. Like he was caught in perfectionism and that was telling him he had nothing and he needed to freeze up and stop.

Meg LeFauve: And it's just like, okay, stay in. And then on the Facebook page, we had somebody talking about, they were freezing up because their plot just didn't work. It just, none of it worked. And suddenly they're thinking, maybe I'll go do something else. I'll do a different idea. And I was like, no, no, no, you have to stay in.

Meg LeFauve: You got to break the cycle. You got to just stay in. And it doesn't even really matter if the plot works. It matters so much more to stay in and keep going because maybe the whole plot's going to go out the window, but you're going to find something else. You know, write a hundred crazy ideas, go to the engine of the story, go to the theme.

Meg LeFauve: What is this about? You know, maybe you're not making it hard enough on your character. You know, I always love to try, what I did this week was, when I got stuck and didn't want to stay in, I was like, okay, what's the, because of the plot, I was like, what's the craziest thing that could happen right now?

Meg LeFauve: Like, that I wouldn't even know how to get them out of it. And I'm so, I'm sure in video games, this must be what you're trying to do all the time. What is the craziest thing that could happen right now? And then the lava part of my week was my husband and I are writing a passion project during the strike, and, I just suddenly got really grumpy.

Meg LeFauve: I got really grumpy, you guys. Like, everything he said, I was like, What? I don't know. And he was like, What is happening? It’s going really well? And I'm like, I know, it's going too well. And I realized I was in Trying to pull out of the process because I was loving it so much. I was loving what we were doing.

Meg LeFauve: I don't know if you guys have ever had this experience where suddenly it is starting to work and you are starting to love these characters and it's starting to pop, but because it's a spec thing, you're like. I really cannot get rejected now on this. I really, I don't know if I can face the nose. I don't know if I can face those blank looks when people don't get it.

Meg LeFauve: I don't know if I can watch this die. Like the more I love it, the harder it's going to be to watch it die. And things do die, even though you love them, even though they're amazing. It doesn't mean the market wants them. It doesn't mean it's a good fit right now for this thing. So it was just me having to stay in.

Meg LeFauve: In terms of my theme, even though the lava was coming up, that I was getting really nervous about how much I was loving it and opening my heart. To what could happen, which is it still doesn't go. It's still dies. So that was my, my week was don't pull back, stay in Stephan, how was your week?

Stephan Bugaj: My week was pretty intense and crazy as CCO of Genvid, I am basically a supervising creative director on our three projects.

Stephan Bugaj: That we have announced. So bouncing around between narrative and cinematics and design issues. But I am also doing a lot of writing. So I was intensely writing scenes and doing narrative design on one of our projects, hands on and training another team to do. What we do in our format and working with them in the room to get them exposed and learning about the ways that we do narrative design that that we do writing for our format.

Meg LeFauve: So are you kind of like a producer writer then? Because you said you're actually writing and you're doing producerial things. So in terms of…

Stephan Bugaj: it's right, it's like, it's kind of like a television showrunner. So there's a lot of there's. It's producing, but it's also directing like the cinematics directors also are people that I'm working with to find our look and how we're going to make everything Compromises you have to make because production is all about compromises.

Stephan Bugaj: Writing is all about dreaming and production is all about compromises.

Meg LeFauve: But it's always like, I used to get that advice. Do not compromise already in the script because it's only going to be a series of compromises after.

Stephan Bugaj: When you were talking about things that are going to die, I or, or not, I also have some specs that are, are carved out of my agenda deal that I've been talking to some folks about as like, Oh, maybe we could talk about this when the strike is over.

Stephan Bugaj: And. My way of dealing with scripts that might die is to just refuse. And this is something I, when I was back, when I was at Pixar, I went to the very first producers guild conference and they had a great session called Gordon on Gordon where Larry Gordon interviewed Mark Gordon, Mark Gordon interviewed Larry Gordon and Mark asked Larry.

Stephan Bugaj: What's your strategy for getting something made? And Larry said, I, when I love something, I latch onto it and I take it to everyone in town and they say no. And then the next year I wait for all those people to have been fired or died. And I take it to everyone in town and they say no, and then the next year, I wait for all those guys who've been fired or died.

Stephan Bugaj: And after a few years or decades, I finally find someone who's too dumb to know that their job is to say no. And the movie gets made.

Shanon M. Ingles: Oh, my God.

Meg LeFauve: Thank you. That really helps me today, actually, that it's all in my hands that I just have to have a stick to it. It is. And by the way, that's where Stephan and I met at Pixar and we had some fun times there.

Meg LeFauve: All right, Shannon, how was your week?

Shanon M. Ingles: Bye. I, I'm also extremely busy. I am working on one of the projects that Stephan is overseeing from the narrative side. So I'm the lead writer and we're, we're trying to close it. So it's finishing scenes, overseeing scenes, revisions, notes, continued.

Meg LeFauve: You mean close?

Meg LeFauve: Okay. Sorry. I'm going to be the novice.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, so you know it's getting the scripts done completely so they can, you know, go to voice production.

Meg LeFauve: So if this was a TV show, you've got to get those scripts done so you can put them into production. Exactly. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah.

Shanon M. Ingles: So that, that's that part. And the lava part.

Meg LeFauve: What's the

Shanon M. Ingles: lava part? YEah.

Shanon M. Ingles: I think I think it is when you're really, really busy and we call it. I mean, I don't know if you guys call it crunching and TV, but we call it crunching. So towards the end of productions, there's a lot of work. There's a lot of overtime. And so you have, I sort of get that Jack Nicholson irritability.

Shanon M. Ingles: When people start texting me or bothering me when I'm writing, right? Especially so when you, when you're, sometimes when you have a lot to write, you feel overwhelmed, right? There's a lot going on. You don't know where to start. And you're like overwhelmed the amount of scenes or the amount of notes or the things that you know that you want to change here and there.

Shanon M. Ingles: And so once you get into the flow, the zone of like, okay, I'm feeling the scene. Now I have a plan. I can see a way forward. And you're in it. And then and then it's then when people start calling you, people start texting you, people start running your time. It's

Meg LeFauve: almost like the universe saying, Are you sure?

Meg LeFauve: Are you sure that you want to keep writing? Are you sure you don't want to be distracted? Yeah, no,

Shanon M. Ingles: no. That's exactly what's happening. And so no one's doing that when you're like, oh, I want to procrastinate and I need to take them off. Like or I can someone come out and like get a drink with me right now.

Shanon M. Ingles: I need to step away from my computer. No one's available. But as soon as I'm like. I have it. I'm in like the emotional space of the scene. Someone's like, just texting up a storm. It's it, it drives me crazy and I feel like a jerk. And I feel like, I'm just like, why are you texting me? I'm like, I'm your friend.

Shanon M. Ingles: I'm like, I'm busy. Don't you know, I'm busy. Don't you know? I'm like finally busy though. I can tell you wanted to hang out. And I'm like, that was eight hours ago. My whole life has changed. I'm a different

Stephan Bugaj: person. I forgot to mention my lava. So I'll tell you, it's funny. So. beIng also a writer. I have to vent my director slash producer feelings somewhere that the writers won't see it.

Stephan Bugaj: So I will make a copy of the script to write my initial notes and I will write all of the angry notes that I'm not going to tell anyone where I'll be, where I'll put, where I'll put notes in that are things like, have you considered writing something good? And then,

Shanon M. Ingles: and then I'll go through

Meg LeFauve: and delete all of those.

Meg LeFauve: Of course, you've never, ever said that on a Shannon script. Wow. You have never, ever said that on a Shannon script. Ever. Of course not. Because it's always genius.

Shanon M. Ingles: You better, you better like delete and

Stephan Bugaj: wipe and Then I

Meg LeFauve: delete them all. those. Yeah, really, Stephani, God help you. Exactly. If one of those gets out, oh,

Shanon M. Ingles: that would be bad.

Shanon M. Ingles: Giving, giving notes can be stressful sometimes when you are dealing with a volume of content. And, you know, the Martian Brothel partnered with Genvid on Silent Hills. So, when I have like seven people, like, that are, that I'm, that are on my team. So, like, that, that's five writers and two narrative designers.

Shanon M. Ingles: And not, you know, like you have to sort of walk, check yourself when you're getting stuff. Like, that's not what I asked for. Or like, I know you can do better than this. Like, or like, why did you know this is not ready for me to look at yet? You know, and I think, but it's also remembering that everyone else is working really, really hard and really, really fast.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah. Not all projects had the luxury of like a, of a, a luxurious, like television timeline or a, or a feature film timeline. And in video games, especially when you're talking about our like. Some of these games take like 60 hours to play through, and I'm not saying all the cut scenes are like that, sometimes the cut scenes are only three or four hours for most of them, but there's other stuff.

Shanon M. Ingles: There's quest dialogue, there's the barks, all that have to match up, and it's just an incredible volume that a very small group of people that are doing. So you have to be able to, yeah, get the right feedback to people, but in a way that won't discourage them, won't disrespect their work, won't disrespect their intelligence or their talent, but also sort of, not, you don't want to demoralize them.

Shanon M. Ingles: You want them to like find the thing that makes them happy or gets them inspired within that, within whatever their section of the right or like the scenes just fall dead.

Meg LeFauve: It's a whole other skill. It's a whole other skill set, right? To give notes and especially to manage and give notes and not be under pressure and be on, you've got to write your own stuff and yeah, it's an incredibly difficult.

Meg LeFauve: Different skill

Shanon M. Ingles: set. Yeah, and one of the things I let people do in, in my rooms is I let them criticize me back if they think I'm like being too harsh on something and I let them like, you know, basically bitch about like what's happening, you know, or like their, their perspective or like the note,

Meg LeFauve: right?

Meg LeFauve: Like you feel like it's better to bitch to you in your face so you can deal with it versus behind your back. Maybe a little

Shanon M. Ingles: bit, maybe a little bit. I'd rather, because I'd rather them let me know. I'm sure they do it behind my back, it's fine. It's exact, like that's part of it. Even if people really like you, they're still gonna, they're still gonna bitch,

Meg LeFauve: right?

Meg LeFauve: It's so funny, because when you're in that position, you have to realize that they do need to bitch behind your back in a way, just to blow off steam, even if they don't even mean it. Like, I remember the first time I was producing a movie, and we were on set, and I walked into the bar, and everybody stopped talking.

Meg LeFauve: And I realized, oh right, I'm the boss. Nobody wants me here. Nobody wants me in the bar, hanging out with them. They want to like bitch about whatever. Yeah, it's a totally different experience. But you get to be the lead creative. So I'm so excited to talk about it. So, but first, Jeff, how was your week?

Jeff Graham: It was good.

Jeff Graham: I'm Working on a feature right now and I'm very early on it. And that thing is happening that we sometimes talk about on the show where like, I'm finding that all of the side characters that are helping my protagonists are much more interesting and fun than my protagonists. And that sometimes happens where you're like a character shows up in a scene and you're like, Oh sh*t, like, should the movie be about this guy?

Jeff Graham: So it's fine. I'm, I'm having fun and just kind of being open. And but it's funny how sometimes it can be hard to make your protagonists is dynamic and kind of.

Meg LeFauve: Round, you're not giving them permission to be, you know, have faults and mess up and do all the fun stuff that the side characters get to do.

Meg LeFauve: Right.

Jeff Graham: I think that's right. And there's that thing too, where maybe you're protecting them from even a larger journey that they need to be taking in this story that you haven't even considered for them. You know, like maybe you are trying to withhold the big, you know, second act reveal that it should be showing up earlier to make your story more dynamic.

Jeff Graham: So it's

Meg LeFauve: what's ironic about it is the actors want to play the other role too. Like they don't want to play that boring guy either. So you that what happens is you just let that go on and now you want to cast your movie and you can't get casting well because your lead is the least interesting. And yet that's the Part that has to get the casting to get the money, you know?

Meg LeFauve: So I, I always do kind of gut check that in terms of the lead has to be the most interesting person. Yeah, it's interesting. Does that happen in games

Stephan Bugaj: too? Well, in games you have different situations. So if you've got a game where the player is supposed to inhabit and embody As an avatar, the main character, that main character has to be the least interesting person because you want to allow the player to imagine an idealized version of themself in all of these moments.

Stephan Bugaj: Oh, that's so interesting,

Meg LeFauve: but I,

Shanon M. Ingles: but I, but I disagree with this narratively and I'll, I'll, I'll give my spiel on it in a minute,

Stephan Bugaj: but yes, so a lot of first person games end up with a very boring main character, but lots of interesting characters around them because they're leaving a hole in the middle for you.

Stephan Bugaj: But if you're trying to write a complete narrative, which you should for all games, but especially for narrative games like something like a Telltale or like the kind of mass audience interactive TV stuff that we're doing at Genvid, you have to have interesting main characters because they're not a hole that the audience is filling.

Stephan Bugaj: They are characters that the audience are making decisions for and around, and that needs to be interesting in the same way that a film or television protagonist needs to be interesting. So Shannon, go ahead. You can rant about the hole in the middle of the story.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, the hole. But yeah, but just going back quickly to your original ask about actors, I think, you know, it's voice acting is a little bit of a different world than screen acting.

Shanon M. Ingles: And so you are gonna, you're gonna probably get The best voice actors kind of dominate the entire industry because they can pretty much do any kind of voice. And so they're going to go for the, the leading role because it's the most work and it's a work thing, right? It's the highest pay, the most work.

Shanon M. Ingles: So it's, it's, they're not, their faces aren't represented. I don't, you know, I don't know if you've ever watched the game awards, but like nobody, nobody knows that people aren't celebrities, like forward facing celebrities and video games. You know, there's voice actors, like people don't recognize them when they walk down the street.

Shanon M. Ingles: Typically, there's maybe a couple that maybe some people who are superfans would know. You know, the same thing with writers, the people that make it because they're companies.

Meg LeFauve: Nobody knows writers in any, any other medium either. I

Shanon M. Ingles: mean, that's, that's true. That's true.

Meg LeFauve: That's why, that's true. Don't get, be

Shanon M. Ingles: fooled.

Shanon M. Ingles: Nobody knows writers. That is true. That's actually one

Meg LeFauve: of the reasons. What about in creating the story though, in terms of like creating a great story for a game in terms of that main character?

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, so I think that What Stephan is talking about is usually RPGs, so like an RPG like Fallout you know, Grand Theft Auto and things like that.

Shanon M. Ingles: You have like a blank slate character and you can completely customize their body, their appearance, tattoos, I mean it's gotten better and better. And everything about them. But the, the issue with some of those games is that there is a story, the story gets started very late because that, that person is a complete blank slate.

Shanon M. Ingles: I sort of disagree with that from a narrative thing, narrative perspective, because I think people think that they They can't have it both ways, and I think that they can. I think that you can create a main character for an RPG, but also give them something, an immediate want and need. Something horrible that just happened to them, like their, you know, sister dying, or them needing money to pay rent, so they decide to go be a drug dealer.

Shanon M. Ingles: You just do, I don't know, like, just stealing from the plot of Go there. But you can do that, and still have it customizable. Completely gender and everything because so many of these, so many, so many of these stories are based on like universal human wants and needs and conflict anyway, and that puts the player who's inhabiting that character in a position to try to get the character what they want or decide that it's not good for them and get them something else.

Shanon M. Ingles: Oh, I love

Meg LeFauve: that because, you know, we talk about that all the time in terms of want, what do they want and how hard that is for emerging writers to really understand how that has to drive everything. Is that every scene? It's like that

Shanon M. Ingles: thing in a scene where you feel like that person's ache, right? That ache, that hole in them for whatever's happening in the scene, even if it's a comedy, especially if it's a comedy,

Meg LeFauve: especially if it's comedy.

Jeff Graham: We call it longing on the show often we'll talk about want yearning and longing and how like in every scene you can kind of feel the different ways that your protagonist wants and I think like longing is an interesting thing I think even early in your script to think about like what that long game goal is

Stephan Bugaj: the additional trick in any game where you allow the player to inhabit the main character if you're going to give the character

Stephan Bugaj: You're trying to get the user the player trying to get the player to accept those as their own. And if you do that successfully, when you come up with obstacles and conflicts and turns, you have to be able to get the player to accept the turn as an interesting turn that they are interested in for themselves, not something they've done wrong.

Stephan Bugaj: And so if you get them to buy into, like, say, a false want, and then you replace it with a deep need. You have to do extra work to sell it in such a way that it's kind of like pitching an executive. You need to make the player believe it was their own idea before you actually implement it.

Meg LeFauve: I actually, I, I, I, I, I, I trumpet this horn all the time that in act one, you have to create a world and a psychology so that I want what they want.

Meg LeFauve: I want it so badly. That I'm going to watch them go through anything and everything and be involved in all of that act too. And if I don't want it, or I'm like, you don't need that, or, well, I don't think you should have that, or, yeah, okay, get it, don't get it, I don't care, the movie's over, like, it's just over, like, why go forward, right?

Meg LeFauve: And so much of act one is just Building that, I mean, it just takes so much. So, so many world. And so I, I, it's so amazing to me to hear and not amazing and unexpected, but I love it that it's the same in games. I love it that it's the same in games.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, I mean, I think story is story, you know, right?

Shanon M. Ingles: Like beginning, middle, then you have a protagonist that wants something or protagonists that want something that are in conflict with what they want. And it goes, the best games honor that. Well, the best game narratives we'll say.

Meg LeFauve: Now, what is choice design, and how does that come into WANT?

Shanon M. Ingles: Oh, so this is really, this is really interesting.

Shanon M. Ingles: So I worked at Telltale for almost three years, and I, and I wrote and designed the scenes. And what I mean by that is that you write the scene, and you also do the dialogue choices. And it allows you to have a dramatic scene where the person, the player can characterize The, the character and what they want and affect the relationship with someone else.

Shanon M. Ingles: Like you can kind of be mean to Alfred if you want Batman, or you can like Romance Catwoman or you know, betray her and things like that, right? It's very fun. But it only works if the character wants something like it. Not every choice in a game will honor this because it is hard. But the best choices are character wants something, there's an obstacle, and then the choice.

Shanon M. Ingles: space is how you're getting around that obstacle. And the best choice space, you have the, I call it like the internal and external motivation. The external motivation is like kind of more the plot want, and the internal motivation is sort of like the emotional yearning want, right? And if you put those two things, if you can manage it, not all choices are like this, but if you can manage it, you put those two things in conflict with any choice space to get around an obstacle, then it's incredibly difficult for people to make decisions.

Shanon M. Ingles: And that's exactly the space you want to

Stephan Bugaj: be in. So when you're doing choice design, you are literally designing a choice that the player or the audience collectively in a Genvid project is going to make on behalf of a character. So you're giving them a setup. In which you're creating a proposition that there is a decision that the character needs to make.

Stephan Bugaj: They're going to say something. They're going to do something. They're trying to overcome an obstacle. They're trying to decide on a path. And you create the proposition. You do some work so that the audience, the users, the players will understand the risk reward proposition for each of the potential choices around that decision.

Stephan Bugaj: Because you're giving them... In a branching narrative 234 options that they're gonna choose from. So you're setting up the situation where they know what the question is, they know what the stakes are, and you're giving them some idea of risk and reward propositions for each of the choices. If you do this, this could go right, but this could go wrong.

Stephan Bugaj: If you just won, this could go right to this to go wrong and so on. You do that in the most artful way in the setup, right? You're trying to like all writing, you're trying to find the right balance between text and subtext between what you wear on your sleeve and what you're Allowing the audience to interpret.

Stephan Bugaj: And then you, the, the game, the engine, the, the interactive TV show will bring up. The choices, ABC, ABC,

Meg LeFauve: and so are you saying that, especially Shannon, when you mentioned, do you want it to be hard for them to know what to pick? Because everyone has pluses and minuses. You kind of want them to be in a quandary, you know, because it's like some of my father when said to me, well, Meg, it's not a moral choice unless both things have good and bad.

Meg LeFauve: Like that's an actual moral choice. Like, is that what you're trying to put them into? And wow, this could go to sh*t or be great for every choice.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah. So it's it's it's moral, but it's also sort of putting people's different motivations at odds. So like, you know, a great example of this comes from the Wolf Among Us.

Shanon M. Ingles: And I played that game. That's why I end up ended up applying to telltale because I liked it so much. And in it, you play as Big B Wolf. It's based on the fables. Graphic novels. He plays Bigby Wolf, and he's a detective in Fable Town, and everyone remembers how he was before, where he was the big bad wolf.

Shanon M. Ingles: And so people, he has like a reputation for being violent. He's not trying to be like that anymore. He is in love with Snow, who works for the mayor, Snow White, Colder Snow. It's, you know, it's, it's very good subtextual. You know, and there's these murders that are happening and you have a chance to like, kind of have to be brutal or to interrogate people to get answers to save other people.

Shanon M. Ingles: But if you do that, snow won't love you. So you're putting these two things and, and it's just like this really subtle thing, right? So it's really like, Someone mentions his crush or feeling on snow once in the first episode to him, which he denies, which means he really loves her, right? Right. He didn't talk about it at all.

Shanon M. Ingles: In fact, you know, they're friends, but you can tell there's like this tension, right? There's no, and you could tell that she just, she wants, she wants him to be a better person, you know, and he doesn't feel good enough for her. And you put those tensions into it and Ooh, like it's, it becomes a lot harder to make some of those, those more kind of procedural investigative decisions that are just the plot.

Shanon M. Ingles: Like, yeah, I really want to bust this guy's head now, but like, if I do that still, he won't love me.

Stephan Bugaj: You put relationships at stake, especially in the risk reward propositions. There can be tactical and pragmatic concerns as well, but you want those balancing against relationship issues, moral issues, ethical issues, so that the best kinds of choices are ones where The player wants to take a certain action, but the consequences for doing it are maybe not worth it, but the weaker action that they might take while the emotional consequences may be better, might not actually achieve the goal that they're trying to reach or project the kind of characterization for that character that they're hoping to project, and you're putting those things at odds so that you can try and Allow the player to have fun figuring out which compromises they want to make in terms of how to act or have this character act in this particular particular situation.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah. I mean, I think what what you're doing is you're taking the conflict that you would just see in a scene and that a character just in a movie or a TV show would be experiencing it. That conflicted, I have to make this decision and now you're making the player do it . I love

Meg LeFauve: it. So then it branches, right?

Meg LeFauve: So I wanna talk about how do you plan this kind of branching? Like is it like we have an a narrative line and then there's things branching off of it? Like, how do you even start? I guess I want to know, how do you write it? How do you start this kind of branching narrative?

Shanon M. Ingles: It depends on the kind of game you're making, okay?

Shanon M. Ingles: So there's like huge RPGs that have like a more of like a critical path storyline. And then they have all these side stories that you don't have to, you don't have to engage in them, but they can be really rich. Cyberpunk 2077 does a really good job of this. There's some of their side quests are their strongest part, some of the strongest character moments because you can actually have relationships with people and get to know people.

Shanon M. Ingles: But then you have some things sort of like more like Telltale where like it's, or like, Deck 9 which is like very linear and you're just, you're literally, there's no real gameplay other than the story. So you're making decisions all the way down. There's different ways of designing it. Usually, like, in a telltale scene, you'll just have dialogue choices.

Shanon M. Ingles: They don't, they don't really matter as much. Some of them, it's not for your character relationships, but there might be one choice, two choices a episode that would really branch and maybe affect something in the next episode. Branching means producing more things, and so a lot of people will limit branching.

Shanon M. Ingles: I always, I always when I'm trying to explain this to my my screenwriting friends, I try to make them think about branching in this way. Like, take the, a big major moment in a movie and branch it. And I, I like to think about the English, the end of the English patient, because I think it's a good choice space.

Shanon M. Ingles: His lover is dying in, in the cave. And in order to save him, but in order to save her, he has to give him all, all of his maps to the Germans, to the Nazis. Now that's a choice. Now you have two different endings. So you already know what one ending is. What's the other? Write that. Please . Good. Doesn't that sound good?

Meg LeFauve: Yeah. I want, yeah, I wanna write that. I wanna write that. Yes. Right. What do you call it? Choice juice. What do you call it? Choice space. Space choice. I'm gonna ask everybody now even on their features, what's the choice space? Where is your choice space?

Stephan Bugaj: Well, the way that I would Choice Fuel? Yeah, the fuel.

Stephan Bugaj: Yeah. I mean the, the, the way that I would teach writers who are coming from a linear medium to do telltale style branching narrative choice design. Is to give the example. I'd say, Well, okay, so you have a scene where Bob could give Jim a high five. He could give Jim the cold shoulder or he could punch him in the face.

Stephan Bugaj: Now, when you're writing a movie or a TV show, you're going to work through all three of those in your head, and you're going to choose the one that feels right for the scene here. You just write all three and let the player decide.

Meg LeFauve: But don't I then, okay, but don't I then have to start branching it out?

Meg LeFauve: He punched him in the face and now they're, but at what point in your brain, are you having to know that whatever he chose chooses, I've got to get him back to this track or no, or no, is it an infinite and just keeps going? Do you know what I'm saying?

Stephan Bugaj: Depends on your budget. If you have zillions of dollars, you can branch as much as you want.

Stephan Bugaj: But for people who have more normal work circ*mstances the You have to bring things back in. And there's, there's a few things that you did there, which is your coloring inevitabilities. So you could have Bob and Jim high five, cold shoulder or fight, and then they're going to go do the heist together, no matter what, and what you're going to do is you're going to do a callback to that earlier choice.

Stephan Bugaj: Where during the heist, there's going to be an opportunity for Jim to like. You know, help Bob, not help Bob, whatever. Or even just have a line of dialogue where he's like, f*ck you. We're doing this anyway. Or we're in it together buds forever, whatever it may be. And you're coloring inevitably the heist is going to happen whether or not they have their blow up or their best buds.

Stephan Bugaj: It's just going to be, how is it colored? By that previous decision, you can also branch things where they don't have the heist, but that again is a, it's, it's trade offs where you're looking at, I'm going to produce a certain amount of content, what's going to be the most interesting variations to have, right?

Stephan Bugaj: And everyone in the audience thinks they want big variations in what happens and emotionally responds to variations and how people relate to each other. So everyone says, Oh, you did a bad job because you didn't branch things that happened extensively. But what they actually emotionally react to and make YouTube videos about posts on Reddit about his character relationships.

Stephan Bugaj: Yep.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, I mean, another good way of saying this, too, is you want to contain it right like you can't make it you can't take If you only have the budget for like 10 hours or eight hours, you can't like suddenly make it 20 because you want to do all this branching. So you have to be smart about how you do it.

Shanon M. Ingles: And I think to stuff I think what's fun is also getting at is like it has to have emotional impact, it doesn't matter how much you branch you can you can say oh I you don't want to like for. One thing that I always, I'm training new interactive writers and, and narrative designers is a callback isn't repeating what happened.

Shanon M. Ingles: It's the emotional consequence of what happened. So if you were mean to someone, the character shouldn't be like, you were mean to me, they should just be cold to them, right? Or it's in the way that they speak to them. And that has more of an impact. If you're taking an example of like. Stephan is, we'll use Stephan's friend Bob.

Shanon M. Ingles: Bob will be her punching bag, right? So you have a choice of punching Bob or doing, you know, or being nice to him. What you can, you don't have to see him again in the story for a while, right? Then let's say the bank robbery happens, and now he helps you, right, based on that, or he calls the cops on you, or he takes, or he like betrays you and takes your money based on something that you did earlier in the story.

Shanon M. Ingles: And by the way, the earlier in the story it was, sort of like, it's like that rubber band theory, right? Of like, it was a hard, it will snap back because it was like an act one and now you're all the way towards the climax and you're like, Oh sh*t, that decision I made an act one. Wow. Oh, I shouldn't have done that in that moment because now he's going to screw me.

Shanon M. Ingles: That is, that's, that's kind of the spaces, some of the spaces that you want to

Meg LeFauve: be. I love that. Yeah. And you've also talked about the knowledge of human behavior. Is that like, can you talk a little bit about that in terms of, because this is all in the same pot, right? Relationships and emotion. And, you know, you know, I love human psychology and I'm always thinking about it and why people do what they do and why I would expect her to take the orange.

Meg LeFauve: But of course she's not going to take the orange because to her. That is a completely different experience than to me because of her psychology and her worldview. Are you talking about that psychology that you're using? Or is it even deeper in terms of just all human beings as human beings act?

Meg LeFauve: Certainly

Shanon M. Ingles: there's like a couple of things going on. So my, my, my undergrad was in psychology and I did like cognitive psychology and, but I also am really into like young, young Ian. Like theory, but that's more of a literary theory, if you know what I mean, that is not evidence based psychology and they don't teach it that way anymore.

Shanon M. Ingles: But I like to use, archetypes are great, I love to use the DSM when I'm creating characters too, because I feel like all characters are like, kind of disordered, and they're usually kind of, Cluster B, because they're the most entertaining people to watch. They're always getting themselves in trouble.

Shanon M. Ingles: Wait,

Meg LeFauve: can we say what DSM is for our listeners? Can you tell us what DSM is?

Shanon M. Ingles: It's the Diagnostical and Statistical Manual. It's the manual that, that the, in most of the, in most countries used to diagnose like a mental disorder, like a mood disorder. You know, even if you're just depressed, right? Like all of that, that's what they use.

Shanon M. Ingles: So. I like to use it in character creation. I don't always get to, but I, I, I prefer to use it because, like, I'll just put it this way, like, the most memorable characters are really disordered. Like, if you take all of the Seinfeld characters are kind of all psychopaths, and that's what they, and they never change, right?

Shanon M. Ingles: They never arc, and that's what makes them so funny. Like, George Costanza's character, you know, like, Pretending that he is, you know, disabled and all of that was he's, he's a jerk, right? And so that's the commentaries

Meg LeFauve: there. Very true. It's very, very true. And I'm going to get this manual and start this. I'm just gonna have some fun with this.

Meg LeFauve: I think it's, I think I intuitively do it because I believe everybody's neurodivergent. I just do. Other people, some people are really good at faking it or using it to quote unquote success. But in fact, it's just not a nerd. Nobody's neurotypical. I guess that's what I'm saying. So I'm totally in your

Shanon M. Ingles: ballpark.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, drama. Drama isn't like normal everyday healthy life, right? Drama is like about like terrible events that are happening and terrible people doing terrible things to each other or like rising to terrible challenges. It's not about anything normal and it's not about normal people, generally speaking.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah,

Stephan Bugaj: and there's the, there's the character design and development aspect of understanding human psychology and then there's also how it plays into the narrative design and the choice design. And there's a couple of aspects there. One of which is you use the fact that characters and humans are complex to smooth over some of the issues with things like you've had a particular relationship.

Stephan Bugaj: Decision. You've seen it play out where someone's had a fight or they've gotten along conditionally based on the player input, and you might play that out for a couple of scenes, but you also might have some things after or even interleaved where they behave differently towards each other. And you use human motivation psychology and the fact that people are complex to motivate the idea that they might just behave differently towards each other because of the situation and the motivations around it, in which they don't need to be fighting or being best buds.

Stephan Bugaj: They might feel the opposite because of what's happening right now. And the other aspect is in choice design. People generally want to make the nicest choice for the characters. Not me. This is just, this is just statistically true. All of the research shows that people are statistically nice. And so you want to design choices where you have three good options with risks or three bad options with potential upsides and to balance those out in ways that they're, they're conflicted about which of the good options are the goodest and carry the potentially the least risk.

Stephan Bugaj: And maybe. tweak the relationship that they're willing to risk as opposed to the one that they're not. Things like that. If you give people good choice, good choice and bad choice or even worse, good choice, bad choice and bad choice, you've made it not a choice because most people will just choose the good choice.

Stephan Bugaj: So you also have to take that into consideration when you're doing choice design. Because people generally want the best for the characters and you have to make them have to work for trying to decide what's actually the best.

Meg LeFauve: I love that. And by the way, I think this applies to all great narrative, right?

Meg LeFauve: I think I think it applies. And what I also love about what you're saying, in terms of thinking about them all as slightly disordered, is it immediately, immediately Just obliterates perfection as a, as a, as a, as a thing in your head that that you're unconsciously trying to make your characters perfect or protect them because there's not you and they're separate and they're disordered.

Meg LeFauve: And you can kind of almost embrace and love them for their disorder. As we, I do love everybody I know for their disorders. I love them. It's why I love them. So it takes that perfection and it immediately brings the lava up closer because you're dealing with something that's a little bit more. Rocky. And there's probably an unconscious reason you're choosing that particular disorder because it may be as close to you or close to somebody you're dealing with there.

Meg LeFauve: So suddenly that personal love is starting to come up and create much better narratives. So I love this technique. And if I was teaching, I would make everybody do it.

Shanon M. Ingles: Fun. It's a great procrastination tool, too. I I

Meg LeFauve: watch it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Good. We need those.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yes. Okay. But it, but it, yeah. No, I mean, it's for that.

Shanon M. Ingles: I think I had some really good mentors early on that really encouraged me to put your characters in the worst possible situations ever. But that's what that, what it's for. You take, I mean, it is, there's like, you know, you take a character's kind of mean and you, and you figure out like what their buttons are, and then you put them into like this, this terrible.

Shanon M. Ingles: Obstacle field that this is going to push their buttons until and hope that they make it out the other

Meg LeFauve: side. And that's what, you know, it's funny because you know, Andrew Stanton always talks about expectation. That's what he's talking about. Like, I know this person's buttons are this, and we've just put them in a place where we're going to punch those buttons and the expectation of, oh my God,

Shanon M. Ingles: what is going to happen?

Shanon M. Ingles: This means that, right? Yeah. And letting the player now push those, figure out what those buttons are. Whether it's in text or subtext, it's, it's stronger when it's the subtext, but you know, you have to balance that game. Like all of that, of course. And you have limitations also in game, you know, in game development, because everything's animated.

Shanon M. Ingles: So you don't, you know, sometimes you just get, you can't show because literally you don't have the budget to show, so you have to tell that's one of the hardest things about game writing for me. But yeah, it's

Meg LeFauve: an animation too. Sometimes.

Shanon M. Ingles: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And, but yeah, I mean, if you, if you figure out like what.

Shanon M. Ingles: What their buttons are as a player, you can push them. And I'm, I'm, I'm the person, you know, that likes to be a little mean to my, my player characters. I like to put them in hard situations. I think that is a reflection of how I like to write. So I was going to say

Meg LeFauve: you're a writer. Of course, you're going towards conflict.

Meg LeFauve: You, you, you know, I don't like conflict in my real life, but I like writing. Right. So I think that's just part of the writer brain. All right, let me ask you about adapting material into this medium and how you do that. And what's that like?

Shanon M. Ingles: Oh man. So I've worked on like mostly adapted stuff or pre existing stuff because that's just also part of the video game industry in general.

Shanon M. Ingles: There are like once in a while you might be working on an original IP, but like, when you're working with major corporations, they already have deals to do franchises that they think are going to be good for business. They're very similar to like film and TV and they're, they're hiring up that team.

Shanon M. Ingles: So it just depends, you know, some IP holders are easier to work with than others. There's already a lot of framework of what you can and cannot do. And a lot of it's just based on other projects that they have, right. They don't want things conflicting. And so you have to figure out how to tilt. to insert your voice and your originality and within the framework that you've been provided with into like the little box that they've put you in like this is what we're doing these are the characters that we are okay that we're allowed to use we can't do this person can't do this and this person can't do that i mean working on marvel's been like my sons i learned so much about marvel

Meg LeFauve: I was going to say, when you were talking, I was like, this sounds familiar to me.

Meg LeFauve: yeAh, yeah. It's Marvel. Yeah. I mean, because that's what it is. That's the IP and any IP you're going to have that. How do you actually craft a story off of that IP that can have these choices? And is there anything you can tell us about or tips for anybody who wants to go into this part of the business?

Shanon M. Ingles: Sure, I mean, I think it's, it's both honoring who the characters are, right? Like, you're dealing with someone like Tony Stark, or Captain America you know, Captain Marvel. Honoring that, but also sort of being able to, like, infuse them, give them a little bit of new life. And also the choice design is around their character, right?

Shanon M. Ingles: Like, if you, like, you know, Steve is a goodie, you know, he's like a really good, good hearted guy. He doesn't like evil choices. Like when we were designing Midnight Suns, we had a friendship system. So being, you could kind of be mean to people and you could be you know, really nice. And then you can also, it's also dependent on the kind of combat you're doing.

Shanon M. Ingles: And of course, Captain America is going to be like, if you. Like you, if you become like a more dark character. What was fun for me on that project was writing for the characters that were more dark aligned, that were your friends. By the way, and still allies, they're still good people, they're just the goths, as I call them.

Shanon M. Ingles: The goth girls, which were Wanda, Magic, and Nico Minero. And they're all, you know, and the, and Nico and Magic are less, lesser known. a marvel character, so I had a lot more freedom with them. So you were, you, you had to figure out like, okay, so in the friendship system, kind of the dark choices is something that's going to let You get closer to magic.

Shanon M. Ingles: Magic likes it. So why? And so I'm thinking about magic and I've done a and this did a lot of research on her, um, in terms of like her childhood. She was like kidnapped and brought to hell and became a dark sorceress. And now she's here. And she doesn't like it when you are overly nice because she thinks that you're full of sh*t.

Shanon M. Ingles: She's, so I decided to write her as one of those people that, the way I kind of infused her character with honoring who she is as a Marvel character is that she's that friend who is really hard to get to know, but if you win her friendship will be loyal to you too. You know, until the day that she dies forever, right?

Shanon M. Ingles: But it is one of those little, she's a little icy. And if you're like, Hey, I want to be friends with you. She's like, f*ck off. But if you're, but if you kind of like challenge her or like, be like, you know, if you just, you challenge her and you speak your mind a little bit more directly she really responds to that really, really well.

Shanon M. Ingles: And, and I remember when that game came out, people were really recognizing that because typically in game writing people, the way that things are designed is if you are nice to someone, they will like you. If you act in these certain ways, I and they and actually people were much more interested in magic as well because like she's not an easy made friend.

Shanon M. Ingles: So she's like a challenge. And so people started projecting this romantic tension between them because the conflict and it was really interesting what was going on in people's heads when they were interacting with with her. I love that. Yeah,

Stephan Bugaj: I think any adaptation, you have to start with the pillars of the IP, the story that you're adapting.

Stephan Bugaj: Okay. And then play to the strengths of your medium. So, you know, for example you're doing a star Wars story. It's going to be a morality tale. It's going to be about the underdog versus overwhelming power. There's going to be a strong distinction between good and evil. There are going to be people who are allies and enemies, people that you thought you could trust who you can't.

Stephan Bugaj: There's going to be people who you thought you couldn't trust that might make a turn the other way. This is just part of the franchise. Like, that is going to be there. It's what the audience expects. It's what they're coming for, right? You also have to have space opera and certain specific things, but like, at the heart of it, there's a certain kind of story that you're telling.

Stephan Bugaj: And then you find your own version of that story to tell, and that comes down to a negotiation with your rights holder, creatively, as to what you can and can't change. And you're going to build the choices around the things that you can change. Because the audience, the players, want to be able to change something so they feel like they mattered.

Stephan Bugaj: So if you can change character relationships, you're going to make choices around the character relationships that you can change. If you can change character ethics, character morality, character personality presentation, you're going to make choices around which version of this character am I playing.

Stephan Bugaj: if You're allowed to create new characters in order to do that, you're going to create characters that fit the franchise archetypes. In this case, heroes and villains, anti heroes who choose between heroism and villainy, that sort of thing. And... Allow the players, the audience to make those decisions.

Stephan Bugaj: And that's exactly how we're approaching right now. Not just silent Hill that Shannon's working on, but also we're doing a borderlands project for borderlands, echo vision, and we're doing a justice league project called DC heroes United. And it's all a similar approach at the very high level, which is.

Stephan Bugaj: Understand what makes each of those universes interesting to the audience at a level of core pillars and keep that. And then talk with the creative representatives from the creators from the originators from the company that holds the rights about what you're allowed to alter under user influence and then give the players the audience those things to change.

Stephan Bugaj: So that is what makes it their own. And then you build from there. I have a

Meg LeFauve: friend, Jess, who is a young woman who's a writer, and she's thinking about moving into video game writing. So I asked her, Hey, what do you want to, what do you want to know? So here's a couple of questions from her. A lot of them you've already answered.

Meg LeFauve: Can you name the best role playing games in the last 10 years? Like, what are some of your favorite written video games? What do you, where do you think the writing is just like? Yeah. Amazing. Something that you an emerging writer who should study.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah. There's a lot. Yeah. I want to recommend a few different things because there's different ways of having narrative.

Shanon M. Ingles: In a video game so more traditionally, I would look at like the last of us. I would look at God of War Ragnarok 2008. I'm sorry, God of War, not the game I worked on God of War both, but God of War 2008. You can say your game, that's fine. I would look at Telltale's Walking Dead from 2012, which was kind of a seminal game for for a narrative.

Shanon M. Ingles: I'd look at The Wolf Among Us. So that that's more of like the more of the linear choice space, right? The Witcher is a really, really amazing and beautifully well made RPG. So if you're interested in RPG writer, people love the Mass Effect series as well for narrative design and role playing. And, but then I would look at things that are a little more indie, like Hades.

Shanon M. Ingles: You know, is an amazing game, and it has a really elegant narrative design, but it's not scene writing, but the writing is good and the narrative design of it is good and how the story unfolds is good, you know, it was dominated and won BAFTAs, it's great, it's like, games like unpacking is the same thing, another indie game that was a BAFTA winner that is, it's all visual, it's basically a story about, you go in and you un, like, it's like you go into a room and you unpack stuff from a box and it goes, it follows someone through their entire life and that's all it is.

Shanon M. Ingles: And it made people cry. Wow. That's amazing. Right? Because it's like, because you remember, like it tells a story. So there's different ways of telling stories. Another big one for RPGs is a disco Elysium. That is one that people really, really gravitate towards. I think it, it, it's, it's a really irreverent and it's written in a way that I don't think people were

Stephan Bugaj: expecting.

Stephan Bugaj: Yeah. Disco Elysium is pretty great. I mean, Shannon mentioned a lot of excellent options. I. I personally, it also depends on what kind of tone you want to write. So mass effect last of us, I

Meg LeFauve: think she's more fantasy.

Stephan Bugaj: Okay. Cause like, so fantasy kind of stuff, then, you know, I mean, I last 10 years, I don't know what his time, a flat circle.

Stephan Bugaj: I don't know what, I don't know, I don't know what years, I don't know what years anything is. What comes to mind I would look at in the high fantasy space. I would look at planescape torment. I would look at the never went through series. I would go all the way back to the Ultima series, which is one of the genre defining fantasy RPG series of all time.

Stephan Bugaj: And I personally really like comedy games, so I also recommend, because many games take themselves way too seriously, so I also frequently recommend that writers look at things like Borderlands 2 or Tales from the Borderlands, which I worked on The Stanley Parable. Disco Elysium is kind of a nice mix between irreverent but also serious high stakes.

Stephan Bugaj: So there's a lot out

Meg LeFauve: there. Yeah, that's great. No, that's amazing. Those are great. So her other question is, how do you when you're designing your main storyline not get lost in branching things? And, and her second question, which I think is still in this bucket is, how do you not Have too many non playing characters.

Meg LeFauve: I think, do you see what she's trying to figure out? How do you design a game so that it has the richness and the branching and the non player characters, but still, like you said, this has to be made for a budget. So how do you keep it kind of on the track?

Stephan Bugaj: You write the core narrative of your main protagonist first, then you branch the very ending of that core narrative of the main protagonist, and then you work backwards.

Shanon M. Ingles: That's a good way of seeing it. I mean, I, I think for me, it's, it's, it's sort of like writing a movie if you look at, it's not usually that many key characters, right, that are in a movie. That's all you, all you need anyway. So you, you just take that and then you figure out how you branch those relationships.

Shanon M. Ingles: You, you track them obviously. And I would only make decisions on things that you know that matter. That's

Meg LeFauve: great. Okay.

Shanon M. Ingles: It's like editing, right? It's the same thing. Like this line's not working, choice isn't working. Throw it away.

Meg LeFauve: Right. The choice isn't emotional. The choice isn't hard enough. The choice isn't complex enough.

Meg LeFauve: Yeah. Say here's her nerd question, which I love. iF you've ever been a dungeon master for a dungeon and dragons campaign, how does writing out a D and D campaign compared to writing out a role playing style video game?

Stephan Bugaj: They're fairly similar. And, but what you're doing is you are creating structure around all of the on the fly improv and ad hoc decision making that you're doing as a dungeon master.

Stephan Bugaj: And you're putting that into structure and character dialogue and choice design because you're not going to be sitting across the table from every hopefully millions of users making those decisions on the fly. So you're basically choice design in terms of thinking like a dungeon master is you're presenting scenarios to yourself and you're writing down the two, three or four ways that they might play out and then giving the user the opportunity to choose.

Stephan Bugaj: Between one of those four options or three options or two options and having that

Shanon M. Ingles: play out. I have never been a Dungeon Master.

Meg LeFauve: I don't, me neither, but it sounds super, I wish I was. Honestly, if I could go back in time, I wish I, as a kid, had found that game because I think I would have loved it. And

Stephan Bugaj: there also, to be clear, there are no non nerdy questions in writing.

Meg LeFauve: Writing in general. That's true. This whole show is nerdy. Okay. So for our emerging writers who are listening or writers who do other things and are thinking, I really want to move over to video, writing, video game, writing, what our media writing, what would you say, you know, when people ask us, we always talk about what kind of samples they need.

Meg LeFauve: Right. What for, in your business does a writer need to show what they can do, like in terms of what are you looking at to hire people or, or

Shanon M. Ingles: what would you suggest? Honestly, I'm looking for the same thing that I think, you know, a showrunner is looking for, voice. At the end of the day, like that's just something that you can't, you can't teach, you can't train you.

Shanon M. Ingles: It's just something that someone brings with them. So I actually try to make it a role to ask for feature length samples because there I, I, I, people disagree with me, but I feel really passionate that they're game writing and people feel like game writing isn't the same as screenwriting or other like it's not dramatic writing, which it is dramatic writing, it's completely dramatic on the screen.

Shanon M. Ingles: Most of what you're seeing are actual scenes like if you look at the last of us who actual dramatic scenes, there might be hours of them in it, right, just from that perspective, forget the interactive part right. And so people sort of assume that they don't need to know how to write a scene or write a long piece scene, like even like an hour of television, because.

Shanon M. Ingles: They don't, they don't think that they need to even like know how to write like a feature, like screenplay, just like 90 minutes, an hour of a teleplay or whatever. But like what they're going to be, what they're asking for is, well, you trust me with 200 million budget to help you write a four hour movie, right?

Shanon M. Ingles: And like, so, so that's the first thing I say is like, this isn't less than film and TV. That's also part of why I, I'm in the industry as well, is because I, I want to elevate as well, like what our craft is and what we can do story wise. So, you know, come in, like, just come in like anyone else who's trying to get a job as a dramatic writer.

Shanon M. Ingles: aNd and I, and it's honestly, when you're reading Samuels, it's his voice, because I can teach narrative design, right? Every studio has like a different way of doing things, and you might need to write a lot of combat barks. There might be game, you know, like, Mission like it like mission dialogue, which is like when a non player character is telling the player to go on a mission, but it'll but you know, but it's still a scene because you want it to make it feel like that.

Shanon M. Ingles: There's an interaction there. It's not just like go that way. And there's gold, right? Like you want to make it feel like it's like a cool interaction that you had with somebody on the road. So that, that's my first thing is, is just sort of don't, don't take it less seriously as if you're trying to break into movies or games.

Shanon M. Ingles: And by the way, you shouldn't, because it's getting really competitive. It is not the same way it used to be like five, 10 years ago. It's not, I, when I, when I put out calls for writers, I straight up just writers that are right now, because I did a call writers, writers that are striking in TV, right?

Shanon M. Ingles: Like I get a lot of TV writers. Coming my way and it's gonna get more and more competitive that way. And so I'm telling people to like, please make sure that you are putting the effort into your own craft before you are coming into a video game space. Yeah,

Meg LeFauve: great. I love that. That's, it's such good advice because it's the advice I give all the time on the other side.

Meg LeFauve: And you know, voice is, is not perfect and it's not perfect and it's lava. That is what creates voice and of course craft and all blah, blah, blah. But those two things, well, that's you, that is it.

Shanon M. Ingles: That's it, because that just differentiates you, right? Like I had a really good mentor say that scene writing is like an impressionistic painting, and he'd be like, what, who, what paintings are worth the most?

Shanon M. Ingles: The impressionist, it's not an exact perfect portrait. It is a sloppy, emotional reaction to something. You can feel the, you know, a field of flowers. You can feel that, like, you know, So I, that's, that's sort of what it's, it's, it's hard, it's harder to, unless you're really good at reading scripts, like it's, it's hard for other people to sort of pick up on that, but when you are, you see it right away and you're like, Ooh, that person's

Meg LeFauve: exactly, yeah.

Meg LeFauve: Yeah, you didn't describe it the way I thought she didn't. What, who is she? And you know, that neurodivergent, what, what is she doing? Oh my gosh, that's so cool that she would make that choice. And I kind of think I would wish I could have made that choice. And suddenly all that stuff starts kind of like, I'm sorry, this is my soap box that I'm on right now.

Meg LeFauve: Oh, it's

Shanon M. Ingles: true. It's just sort of like, yeah. I mean, and I think a lot of times too, people are copying what they've seen. Yes. Instead of letting it inform them on how to like, bring what they want to say out. Yeah, great,

Stephan Bugaj: great point. Voice is definitely the most important thing. You have a sound, but you asked like, what kind of samples should you create?

Stephan Bugaj: I mean, feature samples, sure. TV samples are also valuable. You can also go and get your hands on something like back like gem or twine or something like that and do something that is a branching sample. That is particularly useful if you're trying to get in as a narrative designer or a hybrid designer writer.

Stephan Bugaj: Where the linear writing is not necessarily the only thing that's important. It is a more difficult but also higher paid job than just being a writer where you need to be able to write great dialogue and craft great scenes to be able to do the branching stuff. So if that's your goal. Get one of those tools and start learning to create interactive samples that you can share that you feel proud of that feel that show your design voice as well as your writing voice.

Stephan Bugaj: And in terms of like people who might be doing something else that want to come over into into gaming the television experience is very valuable. Because it's a room and a lot of game writing feels like a room. It's a group effort. It's a team sport. So having that room experience can be very valuable.

Stephan Bugaj: So, like, if you're looking to do, say, an internship or an entry level thing and you've not found a way into games, a television room would be a good place to go on your way there because it has a lot of overlap. I love that.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, I, I also, I also just want to add like, it, the, I, so when you're writing for some of the bigger games, you are also doing the choice design, like when you are write, an RPG writer that is an interactive writer, that means you are doing the choices.

Shanon M. Ingles: You know, when I worked on Ragnarok, I was doing a lot of side quests. I was also designing the quests. It's not, you know, so I just want to also, you know, tell people that that sometimes I feel like there's like people like to say that there's this straight delineation between narrative design and writing.

Shanon M. Ingles: I don't, I haven't actually experienced a whole lot of that. So I don't want to, I would rather let people know that like, if you want to practice choice design, like writing, like a scene, there was a choice and people react to it. That's actually really strong writing sample because at the end of the day, if you're saying that somebody else is putting the choice in for you, you're saying they're designing the scene while writing is designing.

Shanon M. Ingles: It's the same thing. You're designing the conflict. If you're the writer, it has to come from that. Doesn't mean that is writing. All that

Stephan Bugaj: said, I would much rather have a strong writing. Linear writer who has a voice who can craft scenes with good characterization that are efficient and punchy and have a good feel and flow and who understand story structure than someone who has mastered the machinery of creating graphs and can't write a scene.

Shanon M. Ingles: Oh, sure. You have to be both sort of like saying that there is, it's like, it's sort of like saying that my analogy for, for screenwriters is sort of like saying, well, you need a camera designer to basically tell you what happens in the scene and you just write the dialogue to it. Right. That's not right.

Shanon M. Ingles: Writing. So it's the same thing with interactive is it becomes the same thing. Now, sometimes there's a narrative design positions that are a little different, but a lot, honestly, even in some of the bigger studios and air designers are also writers and everyone was kind of doing the same work. So it's, it's, it's, it's very confused.

Shanon M. Ingles: It's a, it's a, it's very confusing, but it's

Meg LeFauve: fascinating. I mean, I just find it fascinating. You know, thank you guys so much for bringing us into this world. Honestly, I could talk for another like two hours, but I know I have to let you go. So, we always ask the last our guests, the same three questions at the end.

Meg LeFauve: So now we're going to ask you the end questions. All right, Shannon, don't look scared. Okay. thEse will not be moral choice juice questions. Well, maybe What brings you the most joy when it comes to your writing or creative life?

Stephan Bugaj: Having an audience get joy of their own out of something that I've created or helped create.

Shanon M. Ingles: I mean, I, I think it's just, it's when you're in a, it is when you're in a scene and you've been working out for a really long time and then you're smiling when you're rereading it.

Meg LeFauve: I love when that happens. When you're, but they're all

Shanon M. Ingles: like, exactly. Ooh. It's like, it's, it is, it's a weird, it's, I'm very process oriented.

Shanon M. Ingles: Like I'll, you know, like once something is shipped and gone, I'm, you know, I'm already kind of thinking about the next project. So I, for me, it, it's, it's cool when people love it and stuff, but also because the world's so critical, I don't, like, I can't put my joy onto that. Because then I'll just die. Like, you sort of have to.

Shanon M. Ingles: So,

Meg LeFauve: so for me. You have to love it. That's right. I have to love it.

Shanon M. Ingles: So when I'm in there and I'm like, especially if I'm like, oh, this is going to be hard for the player, or like, oh, I totally screwed them over. Like I, it's a little, I'm a little,

Meg LeFauve: oh, I can't help it. You're amazing. Okay, what pisses you off about your writing or creative life?

Stephan Bugaj: Finite budgets.

Meg LeFauve: That's so true.

Meg LeFauve: I mean this usually you guys, you guys must love your jobs because this is not normally so hard to answer.

Jeff Graham: I mean, there's a lot, it's usually the opposite where people wait for a long time on that first one. They jump right in with the second question.

Stephan Bugaj: Look, there's a lot, there's a lot of things about professional writing, professional being a creative writing design, cinematography, that's frustrating because it is all about production, compromises and every day.

Stephan Bugaj: You're killing your babies. You're doing something that you're considering half assed. You're going and having to make some compromise that you're like, Oh, if only we didn't have to do this, my perfect vision would finally be implemented. But if you let that piss you off... You're going to be an angry person all day, every day, so maybe don't do that.

Meg LeFauve: That's fair. Okay. That's fair.

Shanon M. Ingles: It's a similar thing. I mean, it's funny because I do love my job, but I do get angry a lot. And so I'm trying to, I'm trying to like pinpoint of like why I get angry and when I think there's a button. Yeah, I think it's like being asked to do something really, really, you know, it's being asked to do something but not getting the resources and budget to be given it right, but being so sort of like having all the responsibility of the power that can be a button for me.

Shanon M. Ingles: I think also, like,

Shanon M. Ingles: I feel like it's also sort of like, especially when you're a freelancer, because that's what we do in our studios, that we go from project to project, there is a feast and famine, so there is, I'm either like overwhelmed, like I want work, I want work, and then I have too much work, and then I am, it's hard for me to go and do things, you know, like, I'm just overwhelmed with it, and then.

Shanon M. Ingles: And then when you're on the other side of it, you're, you feel, yes, you have lots of spare time, but then you feel like the emptiness inside of you, because you're not working all the time, the great void. It

Meg LeFauve: is true, it

Stephan Bugaj: is true. So the things that actually do piss me off, one, people who give notes from a position of ignorance and do it in a way that is assertive and comes off as if they know everything.

Stephan Bugaj: That one really pisses me off. It's not, it's not uncommon.

Meg LeFauve: I have actually seen you in this state, I believe.

Stephan Bugaj: I think you maybe have. And the other one is when someone phones it in. Like, if you, when you get something from another creative that you're collaborating with and it's obvious they don't care or don't care about the same things that you do, that also pisses me off.

Stephan Bugaj: Fair enough. Go do

Shanon M. Ingles: something else conflicting notes can be frustrating, but I don't think they pissed me off. I just, I sort of just want people to resolve them. So, like, when you're working on a project, there's a lot of stakeholders and you're getting, like, different notes and they're saying exact, exact opposite things.

Shanon M. Ingles: And, like, I've just learned to sort of be like, Zen with it. And I'm just kind of like, You guys make the decision about what note you want me to go

Meg LeFauve: with. And it's great advice. It's great advice. When it's a situation of being in a professional situations, you can do that. You can be like, you know what, you guys, let me know what note, cause these are opposite.

Meg LeFauve: I know when it's your friends, you're going to have to go deal with that and figure out what the note you want to follow. But all right, Jeff, what's the third one?

Stephan Bugaj: Wait, hang on. Just, sorry, quickly. Conflicting notes from people who know what they're doing. Great. No problem. They can be frustrating. They can be annoying.

Stephan Bugaj: They can be time consuming. That's fine. Notes from people who don't know what the hell they're doing, who insist that they do, that's what pisses me off.

Shanon M. Ingles: Lava is

Meg LeFauve: arriving.

Shanon M. Ingles: Now we have entered the darkness. Lava is arriving.

Jeff Graham: Well, and I find that there, there can be a correlation between people who are absolutely definitive about notes, kind of in the way you're saying, Stephan.

Jeff Graham: And a lack of creativity and understanding about the process. Like it, I do find that people with a sharp creative instinct and emotional intelligence are usually a little more generous and kind of gentle with notes. There, I think there could be a correlation with kind of what you're talking about, which is very interesting.

Jeff Graham: So the final question we ask is if you two could go back and have coffee with your younger selves, sort of right on the precipice of your career, what would you tell yourself?

Shanon M. Ingles: I mean, actually, this is a really happy thing for me. I mean, I would, I would say you, you, you're going to do what you wanted to do.

Shanon M. Ingles: Like, I've been a writer since second grade. That's what I wanted to do. So I think my backup career was psychologist. Maybe I'll do that when I'm retired, but like, I just decided to try writing first because you, you want to kind of try it when you're younger. Right. So if it doesn't, if it, and like, if it didn't work out, if it was really, really bad, I'll just go back to grad school.

Shanon M. Ingles: And you know, I'll, you know,

Meg LeFauve: Any advice for her?

Jeff Graham: Ooh.

Shanon M. Ingles: No, you're worth At an earlier age, I feel like that is one of the biggest struggles that I think most people have, but like professionally, you know, don't, don't feel so intimidated. Don't feel like an imposter when people offer you things or, or give you compliments, like, no, your worth don't take less than that.

Shanon M. Ingles: And don't work for that awful guy in Los Angeles. Don't be his assistant. Don't do that. That was a bad, bad. Bet you learned a lot though. I did, but I don't know if there's the lessons that I want, like it's the kind of lessons that I don't want to have to use again.

Meg LeFauve: Fair enough. All right, Stephan, what's your advice for your younger self?

Stephan Bugaj: Gosh, I mean the know your worth advice that Shannon suggested is definitely solid advice that I would give my younger self. I don't know, I'd probably tell myself generally to make it easier on myself. No, you're worth. Don't be so hard on yourself. You know, forget about the imposter syndrome thing.

Stephan Bugaj: Forget about the whole shtick of the self deprecating artists and just go for it. And I would, yeah, and I would also give anyone who is not me the advice to definitely do not attempt to replicate my career path because it was very circuitous and difficult and you should be, you should be more focused and targeted in your approach.

Shanon M. Ingles: Yeah, I think too I had a fear of success for a long time that I had to get over. You know, and it was funny because I had, when I went to, where I went to film school and at UT, I went to graduate film school at UT Austin and I had like a, a really talented screenwriting professor who like sold a lot of screenplays and stuff, nothing ever, everything got canceled like every time, but I mean really big high profile projects and he ended up coming to teach.

Shanon M. Ingles: And we were, we were talking about being a showrunner. You know, people, you know, he was writing another spec or something. And I'm like, well, if you get the spec, what are you going to go like run the show? And he goes, no, I'm afraid of like, I'm afraid of success. I don't actually want to do that. I just want to sell it.

Meg LeFauve: Well, and I think a lot of women are taught to be afraid of success because we're taught to be afraid of our own power as a way to keep us small. And again, I don't think it's by other women. Or in the culture, but I think it's a big deal to, I think self sabotage and afraid of success is a big thing to think about if you're our listener and you're starting to get a little, a little quiver in your tummy as I say that, because maybe it's just something to think about, right? What will happen if you are successful?

Meg LeFauve: What will happen if you are powerful and a creator? What will happen? Right? And there, it feels like there will be loss. But in fact, there won't be right there might be to the P things that need to fall away. But I, it's, it's a, it's a big thing for me to help, especially women negotiate that.

Stephan Bugaj: I think also there's a another piece of advice that you just made me think of in terms of not, uh, not denying oneself the opportunity for smaller successes.

Stephan Bugaj: If you're always out there trying to sell the 250 million sci fi blockbuster, and you never let yourself write. The 50, 000 horror movie, or, you know, the 150, 000 rom com or the comic book that you didn't even get paid for, then you're denying yourself an opportunity for building your career and you just like, it's like being a baseball player who can only swing for the fences.

Stephan Bugaj: You're going to lower your batting average. And. Most people aren't sluggers. Most people aren't sluggers. Most people are not

Meg LeFauve: sluggers and the odds are against you. Just statistically, the odds are against you. It's great advice. Wonderful, wonderful advice, especially for our emerging writers. You've got to really consider what you're swinging for and.

Meg LeFauve: Enjoy and, and go after those small successes and not, and

Shanon M. Ingles: not forget why you're not, forget why you're doing it. Because it is, it is hard. I mean, when you're a professional writer, you're a professional writer. I mean, I, I was, I, I brought on some interns this summer and I was interviewing them and I, when they asked me questions, you know, they were like, so this was, you know, these are all your ideas when you're, you know, making a video game.

Shanon M. Ingles: And I'm like, no. So what happens is this multi-billion dollar corporation. Decides they're going to do something and they're hiring me to execute on the narrative part of it. Like, and I think we can, as professional writers, we get used to approaching things as work. And I think probably, probably what Stephan is getting at is that it's Not letting go of some of those personal passion projects, even if it's just doing some photography or taking dance classes, or like, what's another smaller goal that you can do for yourself?

Shanon M. Ingles: Because even if you're working on a really high profile project, sometimes video game development can be like five, seven years, you can't even announce it or talk about it for years. So you just feel like you're in this hole of like. You know, I guess for me, I don't know about other people, but for me, there is a nice feedback loop.

Shanon M. Ingles: It used to be, I used to do freelance journalism and stuff. And part of the reason that was is because I would put something out in the world and I would get some feedback on it. Right. And the same thing of like put a game in the world and like people like it or they don't know, but you're constantly getting feedback working at telltale.

Shanon M. Ingles: I was kind of lucky because things were coming out every few months because we were making these little episodes. So you're constantly getting feedback, but there was a period of time when I was just working right after telltale where. Nothing came out for like four years.

Meg LeFauve: No, it's true. It's true. And I also think those small artistic things that you're doing, I don't know, deciding that you're going to learn the cello or like whatever.

Meg LeFauve: It doesn't even, it can be, you're going to make a short film on your phone, whatever that even as a professional, you should be doing that to keep the, the, the saw sharp. You know,

Stephan Bugaj: but also, yeah, you keep the saw sharp with personal projects, but also don't be afraid to take the smaller jobs because sometimes people see that they're beneath them and.

Stephan Bugaj: I have a story, which may be apocryphal because that's how stories go, but Ned Beatty, when he won the Academy Award for Network after that, when he would teach younger actors, he would say, never say no to any role because you never know when you might win an Academy Award for one day's work. Oh my

Shanon M. Ingles: God.

Shanon M. Ingles: I love that. That's actually, that's amazing advice. No, it's true. Yeah. I, I, I do think that, you know, It was hard. I remember going to LA and it was really, really hard because I was like, I went from being like, I was like a writing fellow and grad school, film school in Austin. And you're like, super cool.

Shanon M. Ingles: You know, you're like TAing and it's a different world. And then you go to LA and everyone is trying to do kind of what you're doing. You're not special anymore. And now someone's yelling at you about how your cappuccinos aren't great. And you're, you know, I do think that. It's good for people to understand they're trying to break into this kind of business that they're not going to come probably to Hollywood or, you know, or into any kind of game development and have ultimate automatic success.

Shanon M. Ingles: They might have to take some other steps to get there.

Meg LeFauve: And you don't want it. You don't want automatic success. It's too, too much, too fast. Those people tend to not always run out. Yeah, they don't. They can't because they don't have the muscles. They don't have the experience or to, to, to make it through.

Meg LeFauve: You guys, this has been so amazing. I just loved having you. Like I said, I could talk for two more hours with you guys and pick your brains. I'm fascinated by what you do as writers and creators. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Shanon M. Ingles: Thank you. This is a real honor. And so thank you so much.

Stephan Bugaj: Yeah, absolutely.

Stephan Bugaj: Thanks for having us and we'll come back and talk with you for another two hours.

Shanon M. Ingles: Anytime. Please do. Yes,

Meg LeFauve: I would love that. Part two. Yay.

Jeff Graham: Thank you so much, y'all. This is great.

Meg LeFauve: Hey, before we go, I wanted to mention that we're going to be at AFF this year, and on Saturday, October 28th, after our panel, we are going to have a party.

Meg LeFauve: Woohoo! The Stephen F. Austin Bar. It's in partnership with Final Draft. We love Final Draft. We both use it. And, you know, it really is the industry standard for a reason. Everybody uses it. You gotta use it. So come on over to the party. Get some swag. Get some fun times. Meet each other. Meet 5 to 8 on Saturday, October 28th at the Stephen, uh, Austin Bar in partnership with Final Draft.

Jeff Graham: And for more TSL support, you can check out our Facebook group where tons of folks are finding support from both emerging and pro writers. And also it's just a great place to find comfort during what we can all admit is a pretty challenging time right now in our business. So we love it over there. It feels like a little life raft kind of in the sea of chaos of our industry.

Meg LeFauve: It is. I love jumping on it there every day. Yeah, seeing how I can help you guys and I'm really enjoying the patreon where we've got more and more people coming over Come over check out some workshops Interact with me and laurie and we love helping you with your stories because we always want to support you and have you remember You are not alone and keep writing

Today, we do one of our favorite things: answer YOUR questions. As is always the case, a theme emerged across your questions and our conversation, which boils down to one of the hardest and most important questions we face as artists. How are we supposed to feel validated in our work, especially when it's hard?

Don't forget to join us for our FINAL DRAFT in Austin this year on Saturday evening at Stephen F's Bar & Terrace after our workshop. We are so exciting to be partnering with Final Draft!

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

TSL was on set this week! (Exciting - more soon)...but because our bandwidth was stretched a bit thin, we're going to be rebroadcasting a fan favorite: the lava episode!

There may be no topic we discuss more on this show than lava, so we decided to put an episode together unpacking the entire volcano.

The Austin Film Festival is many things, but one if its most infamous opportunities is the annual 90-second pitch competition, where writers join to do just that: pitch their story in JUST 90 seconds. In the industry, we call this "the elevator pitch" and its more important now than ever.

To help us unpack the nature of elevator pitching, we're featuring an amazing roster of guests: TSL veteran and super producer Sheila Hanahan Taylor, Austin Film Festival Screenplay Department Director Alyssa Alvarado, and the five brave souls who are joining to pitch them!

TO BUY YOUR AFF PASS: https://austinfilmfestival.com/product/film-pass-2/

TO PURCHASE FINAL DRAFT: https://www.finaldraft.com/

TO JOIN OUR PATREON: https://patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

There is nothing worse than writer's block when facing a rewrite, but there's hope! Today we discuss 6 Essential Strategies To Tackle a Rewrite.

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

You finally get the meeting, make the connection, and a bigshot producer is excited to read your script. But you panic. Is it good enough? Is it READY? Today, award-winning independent film producer Ted Hope walks us through those always complicated questions, and answers TONS more along the way.

FOR MORE: https://tedhope.substack.com

You finally get the meeting, make the connection, and a bigshot producer is excited to read your script. But you panic. Is it good enough? Is it READY? Today, award-winning independent film producer Ted Hope walks us through those always complicated questions, and answers TONS more along the way.

FOR MORE: https://tedhope.substack.com

TRANSCRIPT

Meg LeFauve: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the screenwriting life. I'm Meg LaFauve

Lorien McKenna: and I'm Lorian McKenna and welcome to part one of our two part conversation with celebrated indie film producer, Ted Hope. Today, we'll be talking about indie film development, but stay tuned for our part two dropping next week, where we'll be chatting about the state of the business and indie production.

Meg LeFauve: Ted is an award winning producer who is recognized as one of the most important champions of independent film in our business. Ted is co founder of Good Machine, This Is That, and Double Hope Films. His credits include The Ice Storm, The Brothers Macmillan, American Splendor, In the Bedroom, and Happiness.

Lorien McKenna: He parlayed his independent producing experience into launching and co running movies for Amazon Studios, but has now moved back into the indie space, maintaining a first look deal with the studio. His most recent production, Cassandro, directed by Roger Ross Williams and starring Gail Garcia Bernal, comes out this fall from Amazon Studios.

Meg LeFauve: Hey, Ted, welcome to the show. I'm so honored to have you here.

Ted Hope: Thank you, Meg. Thank you, Lauren. I

Meg LeFauve: was lucky enough years and years ago to be a mentor at the Sundance Producers Lab. And I of course had heard of Ted Hope. I was admired from afar, but to sit at a table and watch his mind work and work on story.

And specifically for this episode today was truly amazing and astounding, and I loved it. And so I was so thrilled, Ted, when you agreed to be on the

Ted Hope: show. I think that was the first Sundance creative producers.

Meg LeFauve: It was. It was the very first one. That's how long ago. Yes, it was the very first one. I

Ted Hope: also had financing falling apart on a movie while we were doing it.

Meg LeFauve: Why wouldn't you remember that burned into your mind? Okay. So first, before we get into talking with Ted, we're going to do our segment adventures in screenwriting or what happened this week. And Ted has agreed to join. So Laurie and start us off. How was your week? It was good.

Lorien McKenna: I I was have been thinking about how lucky I am to get to be a part of this podcast and get to talk to these amazing people and how much inspiration and challenge I get from all of these writers and creators and directors and producers that we talked to on a recent episode.

We talked about. It's not that I don't have to write. It's that I get to write. And so I've been really trying to start my day with that so that I don't feel the, Oh my God, I have so much to do and write. When am I going to find time to write? It's more Oh, I get to do all these things. And then I get to write sort of carving out the time in that way and one of the things that I missed since the pandemic is just being able to drive, because that's when a lot of creative stuff sort of starts to bang around in my head.

I recently had the opportunity to take a very long drive and I came up with two Hello everyone. Ideas for new TV pilots that I'm going to write and both are very exciting to me. But because I had that long drive where I got to sort of like ruminate and sit around and roll with it, I didn't, I didn't give myself the opportunity to be like, Oh no, I can't do that.

It's too complicated. It's too dumb. I got to go do the next thing. So I think part of it for me is I get to write, but I also get to carve out those spaces So I can walk or drive where I'm alone and I get that blue sky internal. Rattling around in my own head kind of place because that's so fun and I feel cheated of that in a big part because of the pandemic because I wasn't driving back and forth all over, you know, the West side and the valley and all that stuff.

So I'm trying to be not optimistic because that's not my jam, but I think it's generous with myself and my creative process. So that's where I am right now.

Meg LeFauve: Awesome.

Lorien McKenna: Awesome. And we'll see how long that lasts. Okay. Time stamp it. Let's see what happens next, Ted. How was your week?

Ted Hope: Well, first, just like getting to hear that and react to it is so interesting to me, you know, and on a couple of bases, you know, I run a free at a pretty high volume of projects and it's me and the, the creative team, whether that's a writer director or, you know, separate writer and directors.

One of the things that, that I find as an indie producer, I, I'm not going to solve any problem with money. I'm only going to solve it with passion and insight. And everything is an exercise in building trust and confidence is how long. You have to plan for right. You know that, like I remember sitting down when I first went into Amazon and saying I wanted to allocate a minimum of three years for development of each of my projects.

And on the series side they were saying, but we only allocate six months. Why does it take you so damn long. Right. And I, I think in some of it is like I get one shot to get it right. I want to get it, get it right. How do you structure for that long term effect? Because when I think through my, my week, I had three writers three separate projects make like nice jumps.

Like in the, in the race to complete the, the, the, the, where we were like, and these have been ongoing for well, each of these projects are well over a year, closing in on minimum of two years on it and done several times previously, but then wow, things are firing again and like a new headway. It occurs and and I always try to think through how can we as collaborators engineer that process to get to that jump?

And certainly some of it is the quiet time of pondering. I find it interesting like how we, we inadvertently structure that drive time. I, I do miss my, that I don't miss much having, having had a job that I had to go to, but I actually do miss my drive time. I, I take regular walks. I take regular walks without headphones.

I live in the West side in Santa Monica and, you know, like today was interesting. It seemed like dad's day to walk the dog or the baby. All the dogs and babies are being writ, walked by their dogs. But I actually look at people to see if they have headphones because I actually think the writers don't have headphones, right?

I get great joy I write a, a newsletter on Substack, Hope for Film. My wife write, writes a, a newsletter on Substack, Question of Peace, where both wouldn't call ourselves writers. But we love doing this and we both look forward to it. And one of my problems is I know how I work and so I have to do a really rigid cutoff line.

I only get to write Between eight and nine, I am right, except for the weekends. I can write. And so I love that time. And so, it's yes, I know I should be exercising, you know, during that time. It's a great time. And I, but I, but a lot of times when I had just a start of an idea. I use that writing time to kind of that walk that that time that writing time as walking time to essentially outline what I'm going to say, right, you know, so I was like, okay, I'm going to walk for it for 45 minutes, and I should be able to produce 15.

You know, headings 15 subjects that I'm going to touch upon during that time. And I'm pondering, I'm looking at the blue sky. I'm looking at the dads or the moms walking the dogs or the babies. And you know, I'm, I'm just, just keeping my head open and it's the most refreshing thing that I get, you know, I love both New York and L.

A. I was energized by the kind of random access inspiration you get in New York of just walking on the streets. You know, I see more people in half a second in New York City than I'll see on my entire 45 minute walk, you know, on the west side here. But. I don't get like the, you know, I might be firing on all synapses, but I won't get the in depth thought to kind of solve it.

And I think that in much the same way of my minor creative practice of, you know, writing a newsletter versus the longer term collaboration I have with the writers. Finding those ways to kind of structure the, the breakthrough, the aha, right. Is such a big part of the process that even, you know, I think I'm 35 plus years in on this now, like I'm still on, I'm finding new prompts, new methods to do it.

New successes and new failures and like that's every week and precisely like hearing like the joy of the two ideas from you like I get to hear that idea of the person that is been stilted or blocked, you know, thinking they're coming to the end. All of a sudden say that that. And occasionally they say, God, thank you for being here with me through this process and doing it because you don't get much of that structure.

Our industry hasn't structured that as, you know, whatever you want to call the producer in that equation is the, the, the sounding board, the, the. The person that pokes and provokes, you know, whatever it is that we do let's think this out. We don't have much room to just ponder and wonder. Yes, we don't.

And

Meg LeFauve: even when we do, like me, I suddenly start to avoid it because my week is basically taking walks very much in tune with you. And I have a new podcast I am listening to because I'm trying to avoid my writing. So I'm not pondering and looking at the trees. I'm actually just trying to listen to somebody else's world.

And I'm listening to, julia Louis Dreyfus's new podcast called Wiser, where she's interviewing women in their 70s, mostly in their 80s and even beyond about what they learned about life. And the two takeaways I have for me personally was Jane Fonda talked about no as a complete sentence. And I was like, all right, yes, I do not as a woman have to explain in a million different ways why I'm saying no to that.

And because, you know, I say this to my son, you know, if you say yes to somebody else, you're saying no to you because you're giving that time away. And sometimes that's appropriate and sometimes it is not. And the other one was Isabel Allende, who of course her hour and a half was amazing. But her and Julia had this whole riff on.

If you're creating, you have to love it. You have to be in it and love it. And you can't wait to get there. And you're so passionate about it. And she was like, and if you're not, then don't do it. And I was like, Oh, I literally was like, Oh sh*t. As

Lorien McKenna: a writer for hire. That's always a little tricky, right? I

Meg LeFauve: don't, I very rarely feel like I can't wait.

Like I just, that's just not me. I find it. And I know there are. Other very well known writers who talk about it as torture. I'm in that camp over there until it isn't. And I know that like sometimes it is my fear. It's the buildup. It's that it doesn't work. You know, like Ted, like you were talking about and you haven't had that breakthrough or you're starting.

Starting is always the most hard for me. I just can't get into the pool. I do not in real life jump into cold pools. I don't. I go down the steps very slowly. Little bit, little bit, little bit. That's unfortunately. How I do, I do this. So, I mean, it was also just a good reminder. That's how people's processes are either.

What we're doing and I are talking about on here each week. You have your own process, and it's good to hear that Isabel loves, she's not passionate, she's not sitting down to write, I think that's spectacular. It's not me, and that's okay, and that we're all gonna do our own process, and I'm getting so in judgment about my process that I'm not doing anything.

So, I just need to take a break, I needed to take this mental break. I will start tiptoeing back down into the water until I find the passion and the enthusiasm and why I agreed to do the project to begin with. So one more

Lorien McKenna: thing about this, listening to you talk I realized that my process is very much binge.

Right. There'll be nothing. And I'll think, Oh my God, I have no more ideas. I'm the worst. I can't think of anything. And then all of a sudden I get the idea that I love and I keep forgetting that every single time that that that fallow period is necessary somehow. I and I forget. So right now I'm super energized and excited and I'm going to go dive in straight into the deep end of the freezing cold pool.

But most of the time I don't even go to the pool. So it's sort of like, how do I. I'm

Meg LeFauve: really not that. Yeah, it is. My process is nothing and procrastination and then worry and judgment about it or just full in binge. And by the way, I eat cookies the same. I either no cookies or I eat all the cookies. It's just how my brain works.

And it was Ted. Ted's what podcast did I say? I

Ted Hope: was coming on, but it's so interesting to me, you know, because I think like on one hand, you've, you've defined Indie. Right? I don't indie is a difficult term, not my favorite. phrase, you know, but I would, I think what it actually encompasses for most people is passion and love, driven by passion and love, you know, akin to the French amateur, doing it, not professional, doing it for love.

And that's kind of really the dividing line of professional screenwriting and indie screenwriting, right? That but. I think a big practice for everybody always is the broadening of our love, right? Like, how do we find the things that, that we enjoy that excite us in smaller and smaller details and start to start to feel like the, the secret alphabets that they start to put together, right?

Like the connections that are, that are there. And that is such a fun process. There's a great show up in New York at the Morgan library. I'm not going to get the artist's name, right? American female artists. I think of Armenian background. And it's called something like uncommon denominator. And she had the curators of the library pick some articles that they loved that had never been exhibited.

And then with her work and other things that she liked, she put together a connection. It's one long sentence, the whole exhibit. And it kind of shows the kind of ready made nature of art. It shows common inputs. It shows how, you know, art and conspiracy is often about like filling in the blanks that really are not there.

One creates art and the other thing creates some sort of wild, you know, theory that doesn't probably have much to do with the real world. But they, they operate in that when we see two things, we want to understand how they fit together, right? You know, and that gives birth to a lot. The more that we find that we cherish in different little ways from objects to people, to places, to processes along the way, the longer we can have that spark that helps us dive in.

I, you know, I have to sometimes, I've worked so hard to develop my, Breath that sometimes I have to push these other things down because I'm faced not with one wormhole, a rabbit hole, but 20 in front of me at the same time. It's just ah, what am I, what am

Lorien McKenna: I going to decide? I feel seen. I feel seen by this wormhole analogy.

I'm getting a little, I'm losing my breath right now. Just thinking about

Meg LeFauve: it. So Ted, let's say you've got these wormholes in front of you, which are probably personal, but also professional in terms of the different projects that you have and what's working, what's not. I'd love to just take you, take it through you know, what, why, why would you choose a project as a producer?

And then. Developing that project, you know, there's the vision of the filmmaker but there's also your input and getting them past their blind spots. So, can you take us to those, through those two steps for you

Ted Hope: in the development process? The, the first part of selecting to sign on for a project, you know, is really like how your own radar or pattern recognition works at assessing somebody's devotion to reach the finish, right?

Like, how do you. I talk with other producers quite a bit that, you know, how do you recognize particularly when they might be more of a neophyte or somebody transit oftentimes when you work in the indie realm, somebody who's been successful one aspect or certain types of story wants to try something else and they bring it to you.

And sometimes there are reasons why they haven't ventured out of that safe space to, to more of an experiment, experimentation realm. So the first thing is are they actually someone with a completion urge? Right? I'm trying to figure that, that out and what is their own energy to it? Because I know that it will always take longer than what they suspect.

The common thing, often for me. Is somebody telling me, okay, just for the sake, it's January. We want to shoot by the end of the year. We know we're not done yet in the script. Will you help us get it, get us there and find the financing and package it Ted. And when I say yes. I'm already in. I'm not saying I'm adding two years to the process, but I know that's really going to be the case.

And so I'm trying to understand that they're there. And because of it, that next piece is like, am I going to enjoy my time with this person having drinks and coffee and dinners and zooms and meetings? Are they going to be someone that that I feel are enriching my life? Yeah. Right. And that I feel good about being with as a person, right.

Which isn't to say that I work with a handful of difficult people. I don't shy away from difficult people. I find I love somebody that is rigid on making the best thing they can possibly make. And that generally makes them. Difficult, quote unquote along the way, but I do want to feel good about them as somebody I spend time with and how they think and what their values are and all of that.

So like, how do I assess that?

Meg LeFauve: And have you also at this point? Obviously, if you're gotten to the point of having a drink with them or to, to assess if you click and if this is going to work as a partnership, you must have had some spark towards that material, right? Is there something inside the script for our writers that you as a producer are looking for in the storytelling?

Ted Hope: Well, there, there is, but both. You know, if I'm saying like, let's just say, I feel like it's going to take me three years in development and two years to get it made, right. I have to think that I'm going to still be sparking with ideas through those five years time, right? Like there, there isn't a place to stop.

And any of it, the writing, the filmmaking, the finessing, the positioning. So I want to have. New ideas on a constant basis, and I have to feel that this material has that. Well, I'm somebody that that loves complexity. I recognize that most nuance nuance and particularly in the film. Itself and what you present is going to be lost on most people that most people because the speed of which stories unfold in the sensory overload of cinema aren't going to be looking for all the same clues that I am.

I've had to learn that really the hard way. I will always lean towards nuance and then you just kind of recognize at a certain point the audience isn't seeing the same difference between this scene and that scene. They equate them. They're not challenging it and you can't chase that. But that nuance and complexity is what's going to keep me being strong.

I think everyone I know would agree like the two hardest bits of the process is reading new drafts. And watching new cuts, that's really, really hard to come in with beginners eyes with full heart and soul and see it for the first time. Every time you turn the page or, you know, turn off the lights to watch, you know, how do you, how do you keep that alive?

I have a whole host of themes that, that attract me. Right. And, you know, like I, I do believe that as a professional, not the amateur side from the heart as a professional, I always need to speed up my recognition processes, the ways which I know, again, recognize, that this is right for me, and I'm going to do a good job.

And I, you know, that's factored in. With for me to do a good job. I'm all I always have to be learning. I always have to be experimenting. So I'm looking at the material in whatever pass I received it in and asking myself what's it going to look like when we start to unpack it and go deeper and deeper and deeper?

Right? So, so it has

Meg LeFauve: to have that richness and complexity or you're going to run out of steam pretty quickly. So these are not black and white. Ideas or thematics, they're complex and no one answer,

Ted Hope: I would think. And they're ongoing. There's a that I don't think most people I would even argue should know, but I think most people don't know in those early drafts of the script yet.

What really are all the themes that generally speaking, when I read a script and I try to do my, my process and dive, I'll come up with somewhere between 15 and 30 themes that we can look at. For the movie that we are working to try to to structure and I don't think we have to get it down to one mind you like no do I think it's an A and a B, I would be much more inclined say ABCD and E, but we're not going to really be storytelling probably the latter three, we're going to be that's going to be more within the aesthetic of what we're doing.

And it's for only those that are the deep Fans, but those deep fans that's going to give a project it's long life right along the way, but to then think like what what happened for me, to jump into a parenthetical rabbit hole. Was I, I always had a very story character theme related development process.

I had partners that were also committed to that in the development. We, we balanced each other well, and we would work the script from that. And I kind of looked at that always is what producers do, right. You know, try to make sure that what the intent of the author. And that can be multiple people is, is landing on the page, helping to develop expectations for, for the audience and can ultimately be tracked.

We can say, this is where we think the audience is. When I started collaborating as an executive with many producers, I found that incredibly lacking. Right. That the producers and not necessarily because by, by their own design were often lacking at that kind of deep knowledge and understanding of the script.

And they were frequently weren't even interested in developing it. Right. And I, I felt like I always like one of the problems to solve as I see in the film business is how to lift the good into the great, great. IE genius, I think, is always there. There are those that are going to do it right. And then those that are going to do it maybe one or two times, there are those that are going to do it 15 times, but that's a set group and frankly, they don't really need too much of my help.

Right. But there's an ever expanding group of folks who actually are really good, who can deliver that C plus B minus B, maybe even B plus thing, but we haven't developed the processes to get them there. And that's where I think a team effort often exists to bring it to that next step. How do we do that?

And I find it interesting that as you know, a industrialized cultural community. Enterprise. We haven't tried to get those refinement processes in place to lift things up. And so that's what I when I went back to independent producing really wanted to do with my projects. How do we put the time in to make it from what's already really good into that much better?

And the challenge of that, I think, is that We are such a results oriented, such a speed oriented accomplishment oriented. Industry and culture that if you speak openly about the amount of time that's required, you know and who that's really for, because it's still film in the film industry, I think, is still generally one that's focused on concept.

We go to see what we already think we want and know, right? As opposed to just the execution of it. And so there's a argument, particularly in corporate halls that, you know, you don't have to hit that fine target, far better to aim for the thing that has a big, easy. You know, goal in mind. And if you deliver 80%, you basically get the same audience as if you delivered 95%.

But the type of work I love that shows, you know, humanity, and the specificity of that individual and their lived experience within it. Requires that incredible refinement, right? And the beauty of it when it's delivered is I think it lasts across time, right? It has, it's not disposable, which is what I feel a lot of it is.

So how do we develop the processes for indie film for that, which is driven by passion to bring out that specificity in a way that still lands and then gives the, the, the work, the legs to live for eternity. That's, that to me is like a good question for everybody. Yeah.

Lorien McKenna: So I do not have the answer to that, but I was really intrigued by your idea of completion urge and that that's what you're looking for in a writer. So what are, you know, that's, okay, do I want to spend time with this person? Do they have completion urge? Are they going to get the work done? Are they going to communicate with me about what their blocks are and all that?

What kinds of questions are you asking a writer who say brings you that B script? Like it's in there. You can see it. So like you sit down with them after you've read their script. Tell us about that conversation.

Ted Hope: Well, I think it begins with, with kind of, you know, let's say those 15 things that I've kind of warmed to and when I've read the script, all these different things that I think that can be explored.

I'm going to talk about what those themes are, right? And I'm going to have it as a conversation, right? That's a long conversation, right? That I would argue that's probably six to eight hours of discussion, right? And you can't tell somebody I want to have A preliminary conversation with you for eight hours, , I have to say.

Lorien McKenna: That sounds dreamy. Yeah. Someone reads my script, does all this work, and pulls all these things that maybe I don't even know I'm aware of. 'cause that happens too. And then you wanna talk to me about my script and my work and my journey with this project and possibly as a whole writer and creative for all day.

I mean, I hope there are snacks, but yes, that, that's like a dream kind of, yes. So I, I mean, I would love it. Maybe other writers wouldn't, but that would be very exciting. What I'd be looking for, for the writer's perspective is what have you, how are you seeing this project in a way that maybe I didn't see, but also challenging me in terms of things that you notice in terms of Okay, structurally, maybe there's something's broken here and you're not fully pushing through this one theme here, like working through my blocks.

Is that something you do?

Ted Hope: Well, yes, but interesting on how you, you raise it because I feel that You know, we are, we, we, we made a determination determination as a industry and a culture that foregrounded for lack of a better term, storytelling. Right. Plot first. Right. And then, you know, a lot of times people say that Indy is character specific and, and driven second.

Right, but the question of the thematic, right? And then the structure and form are way in the back, right? And I actually like to move that stuff forward because I think we make wrong choices in the end. If we don't understand where we wanna, you know, head to and drive to. So, and I think that there is, you know, both a logic.

But also an impulse and something that is the lack of a better term more mystical right where we have a feeling like I love what you said that, you know, Jane fund is no is a is a full sentence full conversation I would I would say that it took me as somebody who likes to. Cry and poke and unravel and try to put back it.

It took, you know, it was a long time in my career before someone said Ted. I know the answer to this and it believe me like my eyes are actually starting to water just saying this but believe me when I say like it is my driving force of why I want to make this movie. And if I tell it to you and I share it to you, it's going to unravel.

And so I'm going to ask you. Not to ask me about that again, trust me that it's there and know that it's a driving piece because that puzzle, that thing that is driving me forward is in every detail of what I'm telling and you're going to feel it, right? And your mystery as to what it is, you know, like it's germane to me personally, but the mystery of what that is and why we care so much about something, right?

Which is, you know, generally love and loss and, you know, and hopes and dreams. We all will feel, we will all feel that, but the expression of it, Ted, I'm not, I don't have to share. And I, I accept that often. Like when I begin a process, I set, you know, like it's so important that one, it's a safe space and you can share anything, you know, that it's between us.

And two, you have to also say that I've got this now. I'm like, because I, I've done these processes that, you know, literally are probably close to 40 plus hours of time. And at other times with people, you're five hours in and they're like, I'm ready to go. And I don't need any more of this.

Meg LeFauve: Well, because your brain does start to fry after a while.

If I have an eight hour conversation, I wouldn't be able to do it. I'd be like, okay, let's do. Two hours and then break and then come back tomorrow and I have to process

Ted Hope: I mean, I can't even do that. I know like I spread it out. It's got to be spread out hours maximum.

Lorien McKenna: See, I'm all like, let's get in the pool and freeze to death all day and then climb out and collapse and let it all

Meg LeFauve: swim around.

I want to go back to what you said about I'm assuming the creator who can say to you, I need you to trust me that it's in here and I don't want to articulate it. Is a well known proven creator because I do remember when we were at the Sundance lab working together on those projects, which are all more emerging or have done one feature or so projects We were very diligent, and I don't think we planned this, but you and I were very diligent about trying to help them articulate what this is about so that we knew how to help them develop it, because otherwise we would develop it into something else that it isn't.

That there's no way for me to help you get to where you want to go unless there's some kind of articulation, even just a pot, even if it's not the thematic, I know this is somehow about redemption. I need a word. I need something. Or we're going to turn it into something that it's not, you might get very excited about it because it seems good, but then when you go to write it, you won't be able to do you remember that process?

I mean, you might, I don't know, you've done so many, but and that's where I brought up Jody's definition of this, which is the big, beautiful idea in here. You know, she always would ask that, like you had to articulate it to her. Any writer or director walking in knows Jodi's. you had to articulate it to her.

What is the big, beautiful idea? And I think that's different when you're going to an actor and you're further down the road. You've done 15 drafts or something. So certainly at the beginning, I would have deep respect for somebody who can't articulate it yet. But don't you think at some point they have to be able to articulate

Ted Hope: it?

It's two steps. And two different things, actually, in that I do believe in process, you know, like you can go down the wrong road and spend a fair amount of time. And that's not wasted time to then have. Solved why that isn't the right path and you go back because there was something in that path that pulled you towards it that gave you some confidence and you need needed to explore it because you need that conviction later and on every page and in every decision, particularly if you're a writer director, that's going to go forward the Ted Ted, you need to trust me moment is much more on the why it's something matters to you personally.

Right to understand like I'm looking for the that commitment to get you through the next five years. And if something you're saying to me, I don't think is within your experience. And as you've shared, as you've shared, and yet. It has some form of logic flaw that is being presented on the page.

I'm going to be pushing. And that's when that came up. But the, the, the person that shared that with me was a first timer that has proven themselves to be a great artist, you know, and Kind of operating on different principles than many of the folks within our industry does. And I find that super fascinating.

Like you can see the personal for me, I can see the personal in their work, even though it's not necessarily it feels distance from their lives. How do

Meg LeFauve: you know, though, if you were working with a newer person, that they're saying, I don't need to articulate it is avoidance because they are not wanting to go into

Ted Hope: that heat.

I think it's the dedication of everything else, right? I think, yeah, you, that a lot of times, and this is why I like time and process, a lot of times people are practicing avoidance and you clock it. And you are going to say like, how am I going to come back to this? Right? Cause what you're trying as a creative collaborator is, you know, you're trying to problem solve, you know, you're trying to inspire and, you know, sometimes you go over the wall, sometimes you go through the wall, sometimes you go under the wall and I'm willing to do all of that.

And I try to be sensitive to okay, now's not the right time. The great breakthroughs are timing. Right. So you're like a lot of it's interesting. Like I, someone say, what is, what are you trying to do in your career in terms of development? Right. And it's developed pattern recognition, develop a sustainable practice.

Engineer serendipity. It's things like this that you're trying to to do and find that secret alphabet of connection between all of us, right? I'm a big believer that the the more specific and individual and truth emotionally truthful, you deliver the more universal it gets, which is often like Totally taking us into terrain that we haven't been in before, but recognizing what is our shared humanity in that process, you know?

Lorien McKenna: What do you mean by pattern recognition? You've mentioned this before. What is that when you're talking

Ted Hope: creatively? It's too much time in the Amazon zone, I guess, right? But, but you know, what are the circ*mstances that we've been in? That that lead to repeated results and how do we use those to our advantage, right?

So I believe that if you want to have a sustainable and generative life. Creative life mind you a sustainable and generative creative life that that there are certain things that are going to serve you really well to, to be able to, to have the endurance for the long run and a regular output and like to me.

I'm a big believer in that generative piece because I think you have to be willing to do bad work that you probably don't even hide in your sock drawer. You, you lock it up, you burn it, put it in a locked safe in the back of your sock drawer never to come out again. But and you, and that's like an important piece to, to have, you know, and you're going to find the better way to apply those quote failures to something later where they fit.

And, you know, it's not a, it's not a loss, but to me, like where that starts is a practice of observation of trying to look at. Your world, your community, your industry, your relationships, your personal circ*mstance, right? And the, essentially, you know, the system that encompasses all of that. Trying to capture that and understand that and see that clearly.

And then to do the same thing for those that you are, things you are passionate about, right? I think it's a super helpful exercise for folks to say, all right. In no more than five sittings and hopefully less than five sittings, I'm going to write out a hundred different things that I love, right? I'm going to write that down.

And then when I'm done, I'm going to write one to two sentences on each of them, however, that matters to me. Right. And we're not going to just list the people or the foods or our favorite albums, right? Like we're going to try to keep them distinct from each other. All of these hundred things. You've missed

Meg LeFauve: an example.

Can you give us one example? If we're not listing our, our food and our

Ted Hope: people? Well, I, I would, I would say, yeah okay, Miles Davis. I love drinking coffee out of this glass, which is a thin lipped. Glass without handles, which is small. So, so like it doesn't overheat, doesn't get too cold. I poured out of a very specific thermos.

And that glass and the process, you know, I do pour over glass carafe. I really enjoy all of that process. It's meditative to me. You know, it's really important. And I feel at home in my space when I do it. You know, I love that. It's beautiful. I have a lot of hummingbirds around my house. Just sometimes they get into the house.

My wife seems to be the one that, that has to always capture them and free them again. But hummingbirds are so remarkable, right? Every time I look at them, I'm like amazed at that at them, you know,

Lorien McKenna: I love it. What you're talking about is specificity, right? You're somebody who loves this particular glass for these reasons and how it makes you feel.

So when you're writing, you want to imbue your imbu, imbue,

Meg LeFauve: how do you say that word? I like imbu. Let's just do

Ted Hope: use that. Put in. Imbu is probably a better way. Imbu

Lorien McKenna: is better. Imbu, I just don't know how to say things or whatever. They

Ted Hope: used to say that I had dyslexia of the mouth.

Lorien McKenna: Oh, I call that loggeria, where it's just a vomit, word vomit.

Ted Hope: Yeah, mine was like, just scramble like scrambling the word, like what?

Lorien McKenna: You put them in a different but what you're talking about is give a character who finds such value and peace and centered grounding in this particular glass for these particular reasons. And then the specificity of that as you were talking, I was like, yes, I love this mug because of its weight and what it has a picture of me on it, you know, and how I, how I am in my family.

It gives me a certain feeling just like other coffee mugs I have give me a certain feeling. And, and sort of when you're a character, it doesn't just. Get some coffee. There's a specific mug or a specific way. They have a relationship with that coffee that tells us who they are. And I, I think it's such a great exercise that you suggest.

I'm teaching a class tonight and I'm like, I'm going to have them do this. I'll give you credit. Of course.

Ted Hope: It's fine. Everything I have is to be stolen and better advantages, but to kind of tie it together. And how it gets to pattern recognition is a little bit like these things become aspects of, for lack of a better term again, mantras of sorts, right?

One of the things that really helped me in my creative was defining for myself what I felt were the qualities of better film, the qualities in cinema that live something from good to great, mediocre to magnificent. What are those things? And it was a three year. Conversation with my with Vanessa, who became, we got married soon after where, you know, I had someone that was interested in this too, and we could, we could parse it out.

And that initial list that I did was 32 qualities, which I found curious later because that was, you know, you know, Mozart and, and Beethoven also found 32 qualities of how you elevate a mediocre waltz into something magnificent. I kept going because as much as I'm a completist and have that completion urge, I somehow think that we still can, you know, find the full list of what all those things are, but I also find it playful.

For myself, but the main thing was once I had that list and had worked so hard on it, and it's available on the internet, you can find it I think it's on my original hope for film website, but it, it became a way that I could look at a script. look at what was happening on set, look at a cut of a film, look at a finished film.

And when I, because frequently it'd be like, you feel that thing bump up against you, but you're not sure why it's not working for you. And by having that list, it was kind of a checklist that I could go through and say, Oh, it's in this. And extending that practice forward to start to find the things that spark for me, the things that I love, the processes, the themes, capturing these things that we care about, right?

And, and trying to organize them and pond, give us the time to ponder them. I think help us in our creative processes to see both what we're aiming for, what might be the missing step along the way. And how else we want to structure, but even more than that, to me, it is all of those things that give it that complexity and nuance specificity that becomes profoundly interesting for me in the, the five years of endeavor, bringing something to the screen.

Right, each one of those like I was having a conversation with an executive today about a project that you know what what I what attracted me to it and what we were aiming for because we, you know, we still have a ways to go. And it was how I find it so fascinating what I would call the forces of chaos and control often enable the opposite of what they are intending.

Right. So control leads to chaos. Chaos leads to control. And I find that. Okay. You just

Lorien McKenna: broke my brain with that statement,

Ted Hope: by the way, one step further, because I actually think the things that enable this. And I, it was something I've known for a long time. And so I was saying like, obviously we can't say this is the studio pitch, but we're going to put it on the poster.

But it's one of the things that why I'm excited about it. What I think enable it quite often are the the structures such as family. Government, you know, society and our natural push, pull, yin, yang, whatever we want to say within that often is why we rebel against sometimes the things we love most. And I find it really fascinating place to dwell.

And so, In this instance, you know, I would call it more like the, the fifth theme of what we're exploring in the movie, but why I think it's so rich. And even though I've worked on it for two years now, I am happy to say whatever it takes, I'm going to get there because we find new things on a weekly basis.

You know, but you have to, you have to kind of capture that before I, I've already captured that as a theme that I like. And then seeing the small things of, you know, when a parent tells a child not to do something and you know, they're really saying I've got to stop doing this myself. Right. And you see, cause I don't want you to become what I am now.

Right. That's a sentence. In a blink of an eye in a moment, but if we can feel that again, like my eyes well up. Right. You know, like parents want something better for their kids, you know, and often they, they lead a discipline that either is going to cause reinforce that circle of abuse or what have you is that has trapped them or might finally say I'm never going to let myself do that ever again.

Jeffrey Crane Graham: I have an emerging writer question. I'm thinking of all our listeners who are listening to what a generous producer you are and how much you're willing to get in the weeds with your writers and spend time with them in development. And it leads to, I think, a tricky conundrum that emerging writers sometimes face, which is that we hear Don't let anyone see your work until you've redrafted it a hundred times and it's perfect and you know it's ready, but also put yourself out there and get your work up on its feet.

It's just so interesting to me. If I had the chance to send you my material, my brain would be saying, spend 20 years on it before Ted sees it. Don't let it like, but I'm also hearing you say, I'm okay with a C plus draft if I know that writer has voice, I'm not exactly asking a question here. But I would love to hear you weigh in, because I wonder if some of our emerging writers’ brains are doing the same thing mine is right now.

Ted Hope: Well, I think there is a clear question, right? You know, who do you give your material to, and when do you give your material to them, right? Personally, I think that as an independent producer, you kind of had to get to the place and it should take you a while to get there that you can manage 25 projects, but you can't manage more than 25 projects, right?

The reason you kind of need to manage 25 projects is you need to be able to make at least one and ideally two movies a year. And I think that it Yes. Thank you for You know, each movie is going to be a minimum of three years. And you know, you need about eight shots for every movie to get made because different things happen.

This actor said, yes, they're no longer available. They're no longer looking for this. They have a competing project, you know, like that, that to me is the, the math. Probably if you want to have a sustainable career, you have to get to that 25 projects by say like year five. Of your regular working career, right?

That's going to take you a little while to get to that place. But once, you know, as a producer that you have a feasible sustaining life, you want to be building that, right? It's super hard to get there, but that's the volume that I work at. So I really don't have room to take on anything new, right? I have room when something falls out, right.

Or it gets made. Right? Those, those, those things occur, and I generally have stuff that I want or filmmakers that I want to work with. I do process, you know, basically there's three categories of work. This is, these are active projects that we're turning drafts in on a regular basis. This is deep development, more in kind of the assessing where, where we are.

And this is super early stage when I'm acquiring the rights to stuff that takes way too long, you know, takes a, you know, like the, the great American novel has become a option agreement. And I don't understand why everything takes too long. We have to fix that process because it doesn't serve anybody. Along the way, but it, the, the fact that clearing rights takes so, so damn long now, I put that in a separate category.

Because experienced producers often already have built a bit of of a slate, you do need to find ways to kind of work the farm team. There are, like, other producers who Often want to work with me who are keeping me abreast of the work that they're doing and they're saying they want to get it to this place and they understand that the workload like, you know, I, I feel badly like sometimes I've accepted a script because I've said I, I, I was curious about it.

And because of the incoming drafts and other professional responsibilities. A year has gone by and I haven't read that script. I just want to shoot myself and quit the business as a, as a result of ever having to say yes, you know, so, you know, the, the questions to me for the incoming writers, how do you evaluate.

How do you put yourself in that producer's shoes and put yourself in the most favorable position? Personally speaking, I love when somebody has already a collaborating team, as long as they're open people. Some people try to hold the relationship as primary, and I don't think that works well for anybody.

And once I get a sense of that, I kind of want to walk away. But if there is a collaborating team that has gone through some things and needs further support and help, I welcome that. And whatever work somebody has done to find their vision is always positive, even if it's not complete or it might go in a wrong direction or they didn't have the proper tools.

You do get no true, you know, you get one chance to have someone read your first draft. I've, I've worked there's a Oscar winning screenwriter I worked with, who said to me they only wanted me to read it. And they wanted when anyone else to look at it for them to think that it was the first draft.

So they wanted to know that I would work with them, like we structured a deal so like it benefited them to, you know, if they created a project that they thought was going to actually get green light, green lit, their quote would go up on their, you know, production bonus. Right. And so they were willing to do all the work.

And, you know, three, four drafts. That never quote got submitted to the studio. You know, we're all the first draft. And so when the first draft went inside into the agency, you know, to go to the studio, the agency went gaga and wanted to throw every, all their top talent at this script my God, this is the first draft and it was quote that draft that it got green lit and got all the attachments that made the movie happen.

But it was engineered around the idea. Is how do we make sure that when people look at it, they look at it as this is the first draft and wow, we've solved all the problems, you know, and it was keeping other people's eyes away and with a trusted collaborator. Right,

Meg LeFauve: because I remember when I worked for Jodi, we would develop a project and go through multiple, multiple drafts.

But I know that when I'm handing it to Jodi Foster, even if she's not going to act in it or direct it, but she's a producer and she has, she reads scripts at a certain level. As long, she's still going to say it's a mess, but right, I love this piece and this and now there's enough there to take it and bring that level of of reader in because we got close enough.

I mean, to me Ted, you are a certain level of reader. So when you say I want younger or or other collaborators, they're doing that churn of getting it to a place. And if there's a clarity to the thematic and the idea and how it works with the storytelling that you know, it's funny because as the writer, you're like, Oh my God, I've already done like 10 drafts and or eight drafts and now, now we're starting.

And the answer is yes, now we're starting because we have the movie. And I think for emerging writers, when you don't have access to all these layers and levels of readers, it can get complex and hard. You almost have to develop them yourself. That's why you have writers groups and things to help you get to a level.

And now it's time you could launch to the next level, right? I think when people say don't give something until it's perfect, they're talking about the Ted Hope level. Like I would not give the Ted Hope level something unless it's really been worked right and vetted. And then I trust you. I don't know Ted that well, but I'm going to guess he's still going to be like, great, we can start.

Ted Hope: And then the truth is like when you then start to say to submit to a studio or something along those lines, that's a whole other process to, you know, and you see sometimes how the system that we've developed might get in the way of actually making that happen that, you know, that. There's a benefit to having the script sent in, I think by agents, but it also cuts back, you know, cause it shows his business and people are there, but it cuts back on the dialogue of trying to hear I want to hear that smart executives thoughts of immediately what they read and what work and where they think the barrier is.

And I want to hear it with my ears, not do another set of hands that will, you know, Can't help but color it with the whatever they favor.

Meg LeFauve: This is my biggest, I have two big things that I hate where it's developed in the industry. One is that they're responding and giving notes to my agent and I don't understand why.

Why aren't they calling me? Why are they giving notes on story to my agent? Like I don't even get it. It's not talk to me. Let me dig into your brain. Let me Let me, let's get, but I just don't think executives at studios right now, and maybe I could be wrong, are developers, they're not, they're, they're kind of giving I don't know.

I don't even know why that's happening. Maybe we can talk about it. And I, and I hate the ghosting when they, when they pass, they just kind of ghost and leave, which I've said that so many times on this podcast. You guys are bored, but I, I just don't know why the agents. And I, again, I don't think my agents are inserting themselves.

I don't have that sense at all. It's just this new thing

Ted Hope: that's happening. Well, I would say and I credit Vanessa, my, my spouse on this, really. Giving me this theme that I love and work, but I love it in practice too, which is us in the system and the system in us, right? How does that get manifest?

And in the film business, what we're experiencing, which I think is part of the real disruption beyond technology, although fueled by it. Is how what was once a cultural industry based upon scarcity has become a much larger industry that's built around abundance. And how do we manage for that? Because I would say that in all of the professional ranks, right?

They are understaffed. Right. They're understaffed in the executive suites. Now that a lot of people would disagree with me on that for a variety of reasons, but I actually think they have way too much on their plate. And what should be not a transactional business, but should be a cultivation business.

We should be farmers, right? Not, not just harvesters, right? That because of that. They, they, they, they move everything like what most development offices are, are PR agencies, right? To keep the relationship with the creative community so that they might get the thing that's even better, right? And I felt that, that from the immediate time I started working as a script reader when I, in my early 20s, right?

It's, wait a second, they actually don't care about most of these projects whatsoever. They want to figure out, is this person going to deliver something better later and how do I service them? So that it comes to me first. Right. And there's a big piece of that. And then the second thing is because they have way too many executives that have somewhere between 80 and 125 projects, I would assume on their, you know, per view that they're tracking.

And, you know, because of that, they, they just see everything as a transaction. And it's yeah, if you don't get back to me within two weeks of that pitch, yeah, it means you're not buying it probably means that if you know if you don't get back to me in three days, it means you're not buying it. I get it.

Right. Yes, I would like to be human. I would like you to treat me as human, I would like you to show that you value my relationship. And I would like to see that you believe that by us working together you sharing what you think is important and I share what's important, we will get to something better.

But they don't really even value themselves to that, their, their filters and funnels, right? You know, and the fact is, they all got great education. They all started because they love cinema. They all think about it all the time, right? Give me some of you. Put yourself on the line too, you know, but that's not what our industry is right now.

And it's because I think of the abundance we're in that abundance, but how we find ways to, to make that work better will determine what the next 10 years of creative enterprise looks like. I will

Lorien McKenna: say there are some executives who do what you're talking about.

Meg LeFauve: Yes, absolutely. There are some.

Ted Hope: No, I got to talk to one of my somebody that, that I've always admired and respected for their story insights today, and it was such a delight to get to talk to that person.

Wow. I want that every day. I was like, come let let me develop with you.

Meg LeFauve: Yeah, I mean, that's really my point is I want more of the I want. What is your insights you've made? What is it they're looking for? What what is lacking? Where are we hitting the wall? What I love that conversation.

That's half of the reason I want to do this, because I love that it back and forth and interaction of digging and insight. So I miss it when I don't get it when it becomes a call to the agent. I just feel more and feels

Lorien McKenna: prescriptive instead of. Sharing in the process, creative,

Jeffrey Crane Graham: right? Yeah.

Ted Hope: Yeah. Which

Meg LeFauve: is what we, and I also understand they might be thinking, well, you're the, you're the writer, you know, but I'm like, okay, I don't know.

I miss it. I love that part of the process.

Ted Hope: I think like a question always, and to me, this starts like with every script, like in what the creative process is, is how do you plan for longevity? You have to ask yourself how not to get jaded. What you're expressing on each of those is folks have gotten jaded.

Right. And really we're in the job of delighting. Our audiences. That's what we have to do. Right. And how do you keep firing on that? Well, first of all, I think you can't get jaded, right? So in questions of what you have to determine to have a sustainable and generative creative life. One of the first things I think you want to ask yourself is what is it that I have to do so that in 15 years time, that's a long distance, but short because you're going to have at least three of those games, I think that, that what is it you have to do?

So you don't, so you feel even better about all that you're doing and the world you're living in and the industry you're part of than you do today. You have to keep that spark alive, right? You know, and I think that for most people, it's going to start with things like, Do no harm. Right? But obviously we've seen lots of people who seem to get off on that on the opposite of that to within our industry, you know, but I think for a lot of people like you're doing those things like I want to be, you know, the golden rules of life.

I want to be treated as I would treat anybody else and so on and so forth. Setting those for yourself, right? I think helps you keep a lot of that noise out because a lot of things that get in the way of writing. Have And then accessing those beginner's eyes that that celebration of unique circ*mstances is all like the, like, why are people so f*cking horrible?

Like, how do you keep that noise out? You keep that noise out by saying I'm not going to put myself in those situations. I'm going to think through what it is that I need. So I get that drive or that walk or the playtime with my family or the walk with the dog or the, you know, You know, whatever the favorite food or drink or whatever people like to do, like you need to structure your life because your creative life depends on it, you know, balance and saying no, I, I don't want saying no.

I think the balance thing. I don't really agree. Like people, people always say, Oh, you got to figure out that work life balance. I would argue as much as I love my family, as much as all these other things, I want to stress all, all I really want to do is make good, interesting stories and work. And my delight, my personal joy has to be managed.

I have to manage that to make those stories, right? Like we don't professionally prioritize that nearly. Enough. Like I find I laugh more on every single zoom call. I'm on than anyone else on the call. Right. You know, you guys are pretty good. But, and we've

Meg LeFauve: been muted. So you haven't heard half of it. Right.

We have been hysterical the whole time.

Ted Hope: But, but that, but that's really like a key thing to keep us generative, but that's what it's in service for me. Like I want to keep making stuff. It's what I have most fun doing. It, what gives me hope and, and strength and and to do that, I have to prioritize my joy, but I do it for my creative processes.

I so love what

Lorien McKenna: you said about management instead of balance because balance is an impossible goal. And so I'm setting myself up for failure and disappointment and beating myself and feeling like sh*t if I give too much time to my family or not enough time to my work, but if it's about management. I feel like I can do that.

Meg LeFauve: I can manage it. And I love what you're saying about delight. I think that's the little spark I've been missing in terms of diving back into a project is I'm already anticipating all the problems and what won't work and the notes that I'm going to get and there's too many producers on this project or whatever is happening that my worry brain is like already projecting out.

Who knows? PTSD. Who knows? Right. Versus I took this project for a reason. Like I have delight in it. I'm not talking tone now. I'm talking my own delight of that potential. You use the word about potential circ*mstances. And yeah, that that's where I have to take the walks or do something to get back to that and took, take the rest and manage it out and not.

Not give myself problems. I don't actually have, honestly, and I'm both making them up in

Ted Hope: my head. I agree. It's so much on both of those things. And I think that they're connected maintenance and delight. And I think that that too often we looked for, for understanding too fast okay, so I like to put little dwarfs on this, you know, on the Path as I walk and I like to have, you know, the, the rabbit hole to fall into.

I don't know why I don't think it fits yet, but I'm putting it there. Now I'm reading that script and I'm like, what the hell is this? You know, dwarf and rabbit hole doing here. A fair answer to me is I really like dwarfs and rabbit holes and I'm going to figure this out. Perhaps in the next draft or the other one, or it won't be there.

Like sometimes that's going to be the thing that sparks, right. It's just to me, just like planning your walk and planning your drive, right? Like you found these things that you love. You are inserting them into the, the, the process. They give you a reason to look forward to the day in solving it.

And you will find the secret code that's there that connects it all as you go forward. Because, again, this is like something else I think we, we, we've gotten distracted for, right? And we talk about this in like workplace politics and, you know, relationship dynamics, right? That how, you know, women are expected to have already proven themselves and anything they do, but we're willing to say the man will still deliver that everyone.

Is it an act of becoming and every work is in an act of becoming and that's the pattern recognition that we have to also develop the becoming the faith in the process, right? There's something more, you know. As a friend of mine said to me today, Athena's owl fly, fly flies at at night. Right. Or flies. It does.

Right? Like the wisdom is only going to come later. Right? We, we have to be willing to wait for that, but we can structure, we can engineer the serendipity that allows it to fly. Right? And the pieces of it, like it's a you know, the maintenance line like. There was a, in a Kurt Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus. I think it opens like everyone wants to do a bill, be a builder and no one wants to do the maintenance.

Right. You know, and it's like the maintenance is exactly what what's always needed because your best work is still yet to come and you have to get yourself there. So what are all the steps that are needed along the way and how do we. As your collaborators always, if not just beginners eyes, also looking at things in the state of becoming right.

And that's where I think by trying to develop things like pattern recognition, we get more sophisticated. In it, particularly if we've been rigorous in our efforts to capture those details along the way. What is this world that I'm living in? What is my culture and community? What are the things that delight me?

And how do we get there time and time and time again? Right. And with that I think that as much of it's being process oriented, it's the opposite of formulaic, right? I was having another conversation this morning with a collaborator and just say saying, like, how do we infuse the attic and Arctic comedy.

Into all work, like just that there's something like I find real fun and pleasure in like the things that feel like it's on the verge of falling apart. That's a prankster and a trickster. My God, the Beatles and hard days night whatever that feeling. How do you get that that. Fun chaos into stuff within a studio system that no longer sees that as hip and flavorful, but it's every time someone sees it, I know they love it, you know,

Meg LeFauve: well, I love that because you're really helping me.

I think that in Listening to you, I'm realizing that I think part of my brain unconsciously has been clamping down on structure. All the outside in stuff I have to do in order to deliver this project, be that, you know, if it's a TV thing, what's the story engine? And if it's a genre movie, what are the genre tenants?

And there's, I think I've sucked the fun out of it. I've sucked the delight. I've, I've sucked the curiosity, the discovery, the, out of it. And so I think part of it is not writing. And I am going to hold in my head the black hole and dwarf because this is the fun of writing. I don't know why there's a dwarf there.

I'll figure it out next draft. In terms of my own personal process, we're not saying you hand that to a, you know, executive, your own personal process, let the dwarf be there, let the, like we have on this show all the time, like we just had, we just recorded, you know, there are wonderful outside in things to think about at a certain point in your draft, structurally, you know, reversals, midpoints, blah, blah, blah.

All of that is super important. I am not taking that away, but it's not the creative process. The creative process is there's a dwarf standing in a black hole. I don't know why because it's a dream It's a dream that's coming up and i'm just so invigorated With the thought that I can do this Like why do I think that on my on the first draft that i'm doing this with my husband that he and I have to Create the thing.

No, we don't we can actually put a dwarf there with a black hole and it doesn't matter because we're just gonna Explore. I don't know. I'm invigorated. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it.

Lorien McKenna: Yeah, I'm really excited about this idea of being able to manage. I, I, I don't know why it never occurred to me.

You know, mental illness is something you manage. Physical illness is something you manage. I mean, I don't want to think about my writing as being an illness, but let's be real. But yeah, I'm never going to achieve balance. It's about managing, managing my time and managing my expectations around, like you said, Beck, what is the assignment?

And right now, as I start this new project, my assignment is joy and delight and fun. And whatever the f*ck comes up, I get to write it down. Let's do that. I am so lucky that this is my job. I mean, you know, eventually it will get paid

Meg LeFauve: for someday, right? We're allowed to say there's a black colon dwarf.

Like, how cool of a job is that? I literally, I've gotten too down into the job job of it. And that's not the fun part. So we're going to go on and on. We do have to wrap it up. We have to see Ted. I'm sorry. We're just going to keep you here forever.

Ted Hope: Yeah, we have a whole lot. I want to put a a tag on what you were saying, because I think that some of what we're talking about is a privileged position after a lot, lot of experience.

Right? Because it is the mechanics of everything that allows the work to get done. And it is the repetition, you know, through repetition, you know, we in instinct, you know, we, we can, through that repetition, we, we learn how to solve all these problems and it becomes instinct and it's centered within us, you know, for structure.

Right? You, you know, character arcs, you know, you, you know, all of these different, the genre tenants, right? It helps to have them down, I think, to kind of give a refresher course sometimes, like I'm going to read my genre 10 commandments before I, So, you know, begin work on this, but it's inside you already because you've done that, that work.

That is part of the process of getting there. Much harder is how to keep that openness, delight, joy, becoming, you know, a comfortability with the unknown. Like I would argue, our lack of acceptance in the unknown is where most of our societal Problems start to come from, like, why do we need to answer the unknown?

Right? Like it's actually pretty fun. Like I like to go into a world. I'm not sure what's happening next, but yet we try to get rid of the unknown and we, we start, start to structure our lives. So we have less and less of it. And I'm saying like, that's where you want to bring that in and not see it as your enemy, right?

But see it as your tool and, you know, play thing.

Meg LeFauve: Absolutely. It's so helpful for me right now because I have been seeing it as my enemy and it's shutting me down versus the delight. Man, the dwarf in the black hole can not wait, can not

Lorien McKenna: wait to make a t shirt like a garden gnome. That's what I keep saying.

Ted Hope: Well, it works for Emily.

Meg LeFauve: Yeah. Thank you so much for being here. We're going to ask our last three questions in the next episode, I think, because that'll be our wrap up with you. But thank you so much. And we can't wait, Ted, for the next for the next episode.

Ted Hope: Yeah, great. Super fun. Thank you. It was really fun with you guys.

Thank you so much, everyone,

Jeffrey Crane Graham: for tuning into this week's

Ted Hope: episode of the show. Part one of our conversation with producer Ted Hope.

Jeffrey Crane Graham: As Laurie mentioned at the top, we are back next week with part two, so make sure you're subscribed. Stay tuned and the rest of our conversation will be dropping

Ted Hope: in your feeds in exactly one

Jeffrey Crane Graham: week.

See you then.

Every writer can point to a movie that made them say: "THIS. This is what I want to do." And today, Meg, Lorien, and Jeff share the movies that turned THEM into writers. Yep, we're movie nerds too.

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/TheScreenwritingLIfe

TRANSCRIPT:

Meg LeFauve: Hey everyone, welcome back to The Screenwriting Life, I'm Meg LeFauve.

Lorien McKenna: And I'm from Lorien McKenna and today we're going to be talking about the movies that turned us into writers or the movies that inspired us to believe that we could be writers.

Meg LeFauve: We're going to be talking about the stories behind watching the movies we loved and why specifically they inspired us to pursue a career in writing or unspecifically.

But first we're going to talk about our weeks or what we like to call adventures in screenwriting. Lorian, how was your week?

Lorien McKenna: My week was very exciting and exhausting. My daughter was in a play this last weekend, all month. She went to this month long summer camp that was putting on a play and rehearsals all day.

And it was you know, eight hours she was there and it was really hard for me because it's the first time she's been in an, An environment where she didn't have a nurse for her type one and I got there the first day and I have all her kits and there's a woman there. She's Oh, I'm a T1D mom. I have two kids with T1D.

So immediately I felt ah, okay, so she's safe. She managed herself really well and I felt very proud of her. And then. This weekend they put on Bye Bye Birdie, it was middle schoolers doing Bye Bye Birdie, and you know, the, the play has its things, but Quincy loved every second of it, and they had four performances, and I am absolutely exhausted because of the, she didn't want to wear her pump during the shows, and I'm like, backstage, and you know, it, it, and you know, I'm a theater person, and so I really didn't want to push her into this, and she sort of came at it by herself, and she wants to do the next show, and the next show, and So I feel excited that she's going to do this thing that I love, but at the same time, you know, she's going to do this thing that I love.

So I know what it is. Then, you know, there's a lot of heartbreak in it, but it's also so fun. So that was really fun. And then in terms of writing, I am not writing and I am currently in the middle of an existential crisis about my career as one does during a strike. And I am struggling to figure out what is sustainable for myself and that sort of, what is my big want?

Right? We ask this of our characters what is it that you want? So I'm trying to figure out what, what I want. Big picture. Like when I close my eyes and I imagine what I want, what is it? So yeah, I don't know. And I think it's circ*mstantial and situational. And once I get a job, I'll be like, okay, I'm back in at gung ho, but it's really tough right now to focus.

I have a story I love and I pecked out a little scene a while ago and I was like, yeah, I just don't feel connected to my writing self right now in a way that I find really sad. And I'm. I'm trying not to go full morning, right, because I don't want to give it up and I don't want to lose it. But I'm struggling with that writer self right now.

And I know I'm not the only writer feeling this right now, or artist and actor and all the professionals in our industry, but it's rough. And I'm trying to fill all my time as much as I can with other things, you know, reading other people's scripts and. Coaching and going to plays and doing all the things, but I'm struggling a bit about my identity as a writer in the world.

So that's how my week is. Meg, how's your week?

Meg LeFauve: Well, first, let's ask Jeff, how is your week?

Jeffrey Crane Graham: I feel the same way, Lorien, and I I think like the way I'm kind of feeling is it's like I know we need to write for ourselves, but it's a little easier when it feels like the world has any interest in you as a writer.

And it's like right now, the messaging that we're getting from the leaders of our industry is f*ck you. Which is really hard and you can't be motivated by external things. But I just got off a call with our distributor. My movie was supposed to come out tomorrow and like we're pushing it, which is fine.

Because we can't like promote it. And I was like pitching a little bit before the strike and getting some notes with producers and now that's. Gone and I don't know it is like really scary and I yeah, it's just hard it we shouldn't write because we feel like the world wants our stories because we should just write for ourselves, but it is hard when it's like objectively right now.

It kind of feels like just a middle finger to everyone in town. So that's kind of where I am, which is, I don't know. It's just, it does feel a little

Lorien McKenna: feel good week here on TSM. You're

Meg LeFauve: adjacent. You're adjacent.

Jeffrey Crane Graham: Yeah, it's just kind of bleak right now. It's like a little bit how it feels. I'm also trying to just kind of, I don't know.

I know the solution is to get back to the page. I was working on a pilot that I liked, but I'm kind of like, who do I send it to right now? Does anyone give a sh*t? I don't know. So that's kind of how I feel.

Meg LeFauve: I'm approaching it like you know, projects take a while. They take many, many drafts. Passion projects always have to take a back seat to money and, you know, everything else and suddenly they get their day right now, right now they get their day, the sun is shining on them and it never shines on them because we never look back at our passion project.

So. I'm trying to concentrate on that and you know, I'm only honestly, I'm only doing it like half a day because for the same reasons that you guys are feeling to the voices creep in about what's the point or will this ever happen and all that kind of stuff. But keeps me sane to stay to put that energy in those.

All those thoughts and all those worries and ener and, and energetic chomping into something and, and put it, get it out of my head and onto the page through a character. And because the space has opened up I'm trying to fill it with that and, but because it's opened up the passion project I'm working on and I'm writing it with my husband, it's something I wrote a long time ago and we're coming, I'm coming back to it with him and Let me just say, there's a lot of lava in there.

And so the space is, you know, allows that lava because again, I can't be, I can't throw it away because there's no excuse right now to not let the lava come up. And I didn't quite realize how much until we had to take my son to a appointment and we dropped him off. And it was one of those things of we'll just hang out for an hour.

Cause otherwise, by the time you drive home and come back. So we went to a coffee shop nearby and we started talking about this project. And. It was the simplest thing that he said, and he said something like Well, I mean, couldn't she just stay with her? Just move in? And I was like, No! And he was like, Wow, okay.

Why? Why not? Because she can't? No! She was like, thank God he's my husband because he knows me so well. He was like, oh, we're right. We're right on it because that was a very big reaction. Now, it takes 30 years of marriage for him not to be like, you can't talk to me that way. I just asked a simple question and trolling it to you know, collaboration nightmare.

He was able to hold the space. We're in a public place, by the way. And this thing started to rise in me like a leviathan in this coffee shop as he just started saying, well, I mean, you know, it is, you know, this person is used to care for doesn't care for anymore and she never let her come back. She never let her come back.

Okay. But maybe, just, what, what,

Lorien McKenna: why

Meg LeFauve: won't she let her come back? And the more he just kept asking questions, the, I just started to really lose my mind. So much lava, you guys, that it literally felt like a comet had smashed into the coffee shop. And everything was going flat. I can't explain it. It's like all of a sudden you're out of time and that's when you're like, Oh my God, this lava is so big and so up and just came right into this coffee shop.

And it's good that

Lorien McKenna: you're with your husband because that sounds a little bit like PTSD.

Meg LeFauve: Well, whatever it is, it's attached to nothing. Like it's, it's not Oh, he said that. And then memories came back or, but there's nothing happened. I can't, I have no conscious awareness of what this is attached to.

Right. Nothing. And and he doesn't either. Obviously, he's I'm just going to hang out here with you. And I was like, OK. And I was able to say, OK, this is clearly something. This is lava. Let's just I don't want to run away from it, but I don't want to damage myself either. Let's keep talking about the story.

Right. I don't want to start therapy and dig into me. Let's just keep talking about the story. Let's use it for the story.

Lorien McKenna: Because people ask us all the time, how do you keep yourself safe from the lava? And I think it's that, which is focusing on the

Meg LeFauve: story. Yeah, I'm not like, oh, let's go talk about my childhood, because that's And I don't even, I've been in a lot of therapy.

I don't need to. And I was like, okay, let's just, so why I go, and I cannot even tell you what shifted that I think he said the word home. He said, well, do you think she wants to go home? And I was like, yes, of course she wants to go home. She's not allowed to go home. And he's but is there any universe in which she could be allowed in the door and be stay.

And it was so big that I, I got tears in my eyes. Again, I'm not thinking about anything but the story. I'm literally seeing her standing in the doorway with her aunt. I'm seeing the aunt's rage at her and hurt because she's done something to the aunt. And I'm just, and I was like, and I said, maybe, because what would happen if the aunt took a step backwards and let her step into the house?

And so I just imagined that, right? Okay, let's see. It's just a story. It's not happening. And I just let her step back, and let my character step into the house, and I just felt this shift. Internally. Like electricity around me. It just shifted. And I was like, yeah, that's what, cause we were stuck on something.

We were stuck on the engine of the show. In terms of all the pieces that we wanted. But they wouldn't go together, right? In terms of a show. They went together if I was writing a novel. But as a show, it didn't work. It just didn't work. I couldn't get the engine to go. And as soon as she stepped into the house, and I realized that she's gonna live between this house and the other house.

That's the show trying to create that balance. And because I wouldn't let her in the other in this house, there was no show. It was all this fractured pieces, right? Like kind of parallel story storylines happening that weren't converging in the pilot because I kept them all separate. But as soon as I allowed her to step in the house, I was like, oh.

And by the way, now I can say because I can say without lava, without PTSD, I grew up next door. I grew up. My mom had five kids, she couldn't handle it. And I pretty much slept, ate, everything next door. So this is very old. It's preverbal. And it really was again. I didn't talk about that. Then the coffee shop, I didn't.

It's literally right now talking to you that I realized. Oh, my God. I just said there's two houses. Like it's OK. It's a week ago, people. I just doesn't matter. Right, right. But I didn't the lava wasn't up there. It was there to service the story, if that makes sense. It wasn't there for my therapy.

It wasn't there. It was just there to say your character. Needs to stay in this house. It doesn't mean that she's a hundred percent welcome. She is not a hundred percent welcome. All of that stuff. I'm being true to how I felt. I'm not shifting that deep emotional response I had. I'm not changing my story to make it work.

I'm just allowing the story to take a step ahead of me of what I've done before. Cause I've gotten her always up to the door and then been told to leave. And then she always turns around and walks away. Flipping the bird, right? Mm-hmm. . But this time, sitting in that coffee shop with my husband, I, I just let her it step in the door and suddenly I was like, that's the show.

Now I understand the show and I can have the show I want. 'cause it started to really twerk into something I didn't want trying to make it work, you know what I mean? Because I'm like, well then all of these fractured pieces, I just have to cut them all out because they don't go, they're gonna be like parallel storylines.

They don't intersect the a storyline. So I guess we just have to do. This a storyline, it's totally going to change. And and I was feeling so sad, right? That wasn't the show I set out to write. It was a show. It was probably a good show. Honestly, it's probably a show we could have sold. To be honest with you, it's the show that would sell.

But I don't want to write that show. But I couldn't get the pieces to go together because my psychology, my lava needed to come up. And risk. So I'm not the lava was not about going back in time or getting stuck. The lava was actually trying to make me move a little bit forward. It was trying to say.

You're not that kid anymore. You're an adult and you do have experiences of going home. Of course you do. Remember those? Remember when somebody opened their arms to you? Remember when somebody was mad at you, but they still loved you? Remember all these other times? Give her some of that, not just this singular.

Wound. Give her a little bit more of that. And it wasn't so it was even more authentically me, even though I would have thought it wouldn't be. So I just bring this up because people talk a lot about lava and how do I work it? You know, often when you have this kind of like fracture, like moment, you're very tired for the rest of the day because your psyche, it takes a lot of like energy in your body to actually do this.

And my husband was very cool about it. So we're not going to talk about anymore. We've got that. We've come to this. That's the show and we're gonna talk about it tomorrow now because you're exhausted clearly, you know to him he's like It's just a choice. It was just like, there was no tangles on that.

And that's why you have to be careful, I think, in a big writer's room because sometimes those tangles can come up, right? And you gotta be, you know, respectful of that. There's a lot of tangle over there. Now, that's not maybe the showrunner's show. But that's your tangles, right? And you're trying to be brave and bring it here.

You know, I I've seen that in the, not TV writers rooms, obviously, but in, in rooms with people. So that's something that I did. That was a pretty extraordinary. And then

Lorien McKenna: go ahead. I want to add something just listening to you, which is why I love doing this podcast, because I learned so much on the show and I've been working on this pilot and I've written it several different ways.

It's very high concept. I love it. What I realized recently, so I got all these notes on it and they're all kind of. You know, move this around, do this. It's, you know, structural stuff that would fix it, but I haven't quite been able to figure out how to approach it. And I realized, I think last week that I didn't have a main character relationship.

Duh, right? It was just this woman alone moving through this really cool world and this really cool experience. And I know what the end scene of the pilot is. And then listening to you talk, Meg, I wonder if my fatigue around writing. And the fear of the industry is less that and more, listen to you. I got kind of emotional, I have to find the main relationship and the one I've created isn't true and I'm really scared of what it could be because I'm afraid I will get stuck in the lava because I feel that welling up, you know, the pain, the pressure behind my eyes and I just kind of lose my breath like, Oh, I have to, she has to take a step out of her comfort zone right now.

Everywhere I have her is. She's where she seems off kilter, but she is still very much in a position of power. And what I haven't done is take her to the upside down world. Really? I've take, cause I, I thought I had, what was the upside down world in act two of this pilot, but I realized I have to put that at the beginning of them.

Pilot. So then I'm like, and then where do I go? I realize I have to get her to that other world that I know who she has to confront. And I was saving that for like episode five, which I was never going to write, because this was just going to be a sample and not a show. I was going to pitch. Oh my God.

That's so

Meg LeFauve: funny. I do that too. I'll do that in episode three. No, I

Lorien McKenna: don't want to know. Right. So I'm realizing now that I have to have her go there. To this place that I know exactly what it is. Like I created a look book for this thing a long time ago, but I, I've makes me feel so vulnerable and it's not an existential crisis about my career.

It is not that it is, it is this particular piece that I'm writing. I mean, it is that, of course, like

Meg LeFauve: that is part of the fire. I mean, I think I just wonder, and again, I'm just voicing stuff as I experienced it too. So, but I wonder if. The love, of course, could come from a wound that you suffered. You know, absolutely.

It could be coming from that. And by you, I mean, any of us. But I don't think that the character is stuck in that. Your characters don't have to be. Even if they have that exact wound, they don't they're not stuck in it. I wonder as writers, we're connected to the highest, I believe, consciousness of the universe moving through us.

Right. That we are there. It's conduit. It knows it's fine. It. It is here to evolve and move things, not get stuck in them. That's not what it wants. It doesn't want to come here and pool inside of you like a dirty swamp. It wants to move through you. And so let it start writing her, not just the wounds. That makes sense.

Which is what I

Lorien McKenna: teach in my class. You're just observing. You're not creating or generating. You're just there in the world witnessing what she's doing. Where is she going? What's behind that door? I'm an amazing writing workshop instructor.

Meg LeFauve: I'm a I know, easy to say, harder to do.

Lorien McKenna: But then I sit with my own work.

I'm like, there's no door there. There's no door. Why? There's gotta be a door. I don't even know what that is, right? It's, there's no door, literally. And I, And it's funny, I've been thinking about this a lot too, like what my lava is, like my lava is not literal lava, mine is the ocean. And I try to think about it like when I'm standing on the edge of that ocean where the water is barely touching my feet and I can't imagine drowning so I back way away and I have my characters rise up from that and meet me in a safer place.

But what that does, I realized, is it creates such a distance. Between me and them that I brought them so far away from the lava that there's no door and I have to actually stand in that water with it on my bare feet so that I can see the door. And I know this all sounds kind of spooky, wiki, whatever, but just in terms of,

Meg LeFauve: they're just metaphors.

Like again, all I had to do, I didn't have to have her be accepted and be hugged and be all that stuff and the wound healed and none of that. All she had to do was step into the threshold. And the other woman didn't push her out. That's it! No more! And we'll see as we go, and as this develops, and what new things come up now that she stepped in the door.

I'm sure it's gonna go. But it's going, it's activating the story, because the, the, the storyteller in me... is using the lava to get to something different. It's not wallowing in the lava, it's using it to get to the next step, right? Oh no, does this have to get in the

Lorien McKenna: water?

Meg LeFauve: Yes darling, the story's out in the water.

Yes, it's out in the water.

Lorien McKenna: There's spooky monsters in there. Literally my thing is a water thing too, like I'm literally writing about the ocean.

Meg LeFauve: But you know the monsters are just part of her. But the monsters are just part of her. Absolutely.

Lorien McKenna: You know that. She is the ocean, but and I, I think to right now where I am in the world with the strike and my career, everything, it's I, I feel stuck.

I feel like I'm trapped and stuck and I'm realizing I have to go through the door.

Meg LeFauve: Yes. Right. If he needs to get in the water, she's a fish. No wonder she's stuck. Yeah, well, she is a fish in

Lorien McKenna: the sci

Meg LeFauve: fi, but lots of metaphors happening. But the other thing that made me think of Laurie is on our Patreon, we were taking a story from a woman who was writing a series.

And I just thought it's worth bringing up here in terms of, oh yeah, I know, but your pilot is the first act of your. And so many of us do that, right? And then we help spitball ideas for her of what, where she could go and what else could be happening. But even you just said, you know, sometimes I'm like, it's in the third episode.

And you're like, nope, that is act two of your pilot sh*t. Or the other thing, remember she did another woman in the patron. Had really done this incredible backstory and I just kept saying that's not the same show. Like it's not even the same tone so they don't know what show they're buying because are they buying this pilot or are they buying episode two, right?

What is the tone of the show? It has to hit immediately. Go! So that's just stuff that came on the Patreon that I thought was worth bringing up into this discussion because that's what

Jeffrey Crane Graham: we're talking about. Meg, thanks for mentioning the Patreon. I will say just quickly, I love our Patreon. We have such a good time over there.

And I think like it allows us to dig in a little bit and the way that you're hearing Megan Laurie and talk about. So if you've been curious, I'd recommend you check it out. Speaking of our community, I do want to quickly read some Apple podcast reviews. We just adore our community. And getting feedback from you all on Apple podcasts is such a great way for us to feel like we're connecting with you.

So just to shout out a couple of our listeners, I'm going to pull up some reviews. I'm going to start with Michaela who said I'm so glad I found a screenwriting podcast hosted primarily by women I've been craving these conversations in the deep dive into the female perspective for years There are a few good screenwriting podcasts out there and they do give useful tools and tricks But so far none of them have managed to keep my whole being as captivated as you have You have inspired me and given me the vocabulary to define patterns in my writing that I did not have names for That's exactly what we were just saying everything we talked about is kind of a metaphor for the experience of writing, which I love She says I soak up every word you say like a sponge.

I've never felt more seen Appreciated and inspired, please dedicate an entire episode into the matriarchal storytelling structure. That's good advice. Jessica Bettinger mentioned that on the show. We should bring her back to dive into that. So thank you so much, Michaela, for that review. I'm going to quickly read a review from Hank as well, who says I could ramble on forever about this show, but I'll try to keep it short and sweet.

Meg, Lorien and Jeff seem love seem like lovely people who just want to help those of us who have a dream to make movies, regardless of what point in that journey around this podcast will be an informative and fun weekly listen. Thank you so much, Hank. We really appreciate it. And if you haven't dropped us a review it really is helpful for our show because it helps other listeners find the show.

So that's on Apple podcasts. We're at seven 50 and I think we can get to a thousand by the end of the year. I'm putting that out in the universe. So let's make it happen.

Meg LeFauve: Thank you. He says, yes, thank you so much. Those are amazing. Helps us keep going.

Jeffrey Crane Graham: Yeah. Well, should we jump into our topic y'all?

Meg LeFauve: Yeah.

Who wants to go first, Jeff, it was your idea. You have to go first.

Jeffrey Crane Graham: I can start with one of my movies and then I can go into my second one later, but it was kind of a fun assignment. We have two amazing interns, Patti and Nick, and they've both just been so wonderful on our show. So thanks to both of them.

Patti had this idea to kind of talk about the movies and TV shows that inspired us to become writers. I think all of us can point to at least one movie that was kind of like the movie that like did something. I think there are certain movies that we can point to that kind of. Do something visceral in us.

So I'll start with a movie by friend of the show, John August, actually. He wrote this movie called big fish. I'm sure most of us in the chat have seen this. If you haven't seen big fish, it's a wonderful, wonderful movie. But I always say that big fish, I watched it when I was about. Eleven, I would say, and it kind of felt like the first movie that showed me what movies can do.

It just has this like amazing imagination and story logic about it that I found really deeply inspiring and I just couldn't shake it out of my head. For anyone who hasn't seen Big Fish, the movie is really about storytelling and about the purpose of stories and what they do to our relationships.

The main relationship is between Billy Crudup's character and Albert Finney's character who play a father and son. And Billy Crudup's character has kind of become estranged from his father because he resents these kind of overblown, tall tale stories that his dad used to tell as the two of them were growing up.

But when Billy Crudup's character learns that his dad is dying, he goes back to try to reconcile their relationships and put together the pieces of the life that his dad... Told Billy Crudup's character he lived and the life that his dad actually lived and the whole movie becomes this meditation on What's true?

Kind of what what's lowercase t true and what's capital T true and It's really just worth watching, but I think just a couple takeaways from that movie that really spoke to me are that for a movie to be about storytelling, John August's writing and Tim Burton's direction are doing so much just with the idea of stories.

And as an audience, we're questioning kind of if what we're seeing is true or what we're seeing is kind of fantasy. But we start to understand as we watch the movie that something can be true in a way that's not necessarily factual, but True in a deeper way so I find that to be really interesting that the form of the movie is sort of dictating the themes of the movie in such a powerful way, and I'm going to give away the final scene of big fish.

So if you haven't seen it. Go ahead and skip forward a little bit, because it's just like one of those beautiful endings to a movie ever, but this whole time Billy Crudup's character is kind of resenting his dad for the stories that seem overblown and dramatic, and at the very end, it becomes his job to actually tell his dad a story and kind of utilize all of those exaggerate, exaggerative and kind of big idea storytelling that his dad has done his whole life.

And it becomes his job to have to do it as he says goodbye to his father. And it's, it was really an intangible way for me to understand this character pulls thing that Meg has put language around. That movie just kind of in an invisible way communicated to me that the thing that the protagonist of your film is so afraid of and so scared of, they're going to have to do at the end of the movie.

Like they're going to have to face that mountain themself and find that power in themself. And of course, like I'm learning all this subconsciously as I'm watching the movie, but it's cool now how I understand writing more and I have a better idea of structure to see how that movie taught all of this to me just by watching it.

So I will say that scene I'm talking about. That is John August's favorite scene that he's ever wrote as well. So it's kind of cool to hear the creator of a movie say that the thing that made me want to become a storyteller is one of his favorite parts of his own career. I joked on the episode. I said, I know it's not my place to tell you, but that's definitely the correct answer that you just said about, about your favorite scene.

So I adore big fish and those are just some of the big takeaways for me. It really made me fall in love with movies. So that's one of the movies that I'm bringing to the table today. Definitely worth a watch. Love it.

Meg LeFauve: So mine, of course, is a

Lorien McKenna: story about me. So everybody buckle up. So, and mine isn't really so much movies that turned me into a writer, but plays and movies that inspired me to think. To imagine that I could write for the screen and sort of make that transition from theater to film and TV. So I, my family loves theater.

I've gone to theater my whole life. You know, I was, I worked at the Ukiah Players Theater in my little hometown and we'd go to Oregon Shakespeare Festival. And on Broadway, I would go to a lot of Broadway in New York. My grandparents lived in New York. And the very first play I was in was a murder mystery.

I was so terrified to be on stage that they had to rewrite the part so all I was was like an arm that came out from behind a curtain and grab somebody and I shook the whole time. All I remember is being terrified. Of course, now you see the gorgeous dramatist in front of you but I had very humble beginnings in the theater.

And then in high school, I did plays and monologues and improv competitions. And I sort of found my identity in that place being on stage and telling stories. So I always saw theater as about words and me telling stories. In college, I went to New York to visit my grandparents and I got to see angels in America and Perestroika on stage in one day which was like a full day of Tony Kushner, and it was sort of.

Like a mystical experience for me and, you know, the, when I remember the, right before the lights go down, you know, the shaft of light shoots across and the dust particles sort of float in the air. And I just remember that feeling of, this is my temple. I am theater. This is where I belong. And that's sort of way that any 21 year old feels about something they carry about passionately, you know, and, and that I was special somehow because I got the play.

And then I signed up for a playwriting class. The next semester and I really loved it and then eventually I pursued my MFA and I got to study with wonderful playwrights and wrote some really terrible plays and I really figured out though what I loved and what I didn't love. And so that when I wasn't liking something, I didn't have to stay and watch it.

So I remember very aggressively standing up in the middle of a play at intermission that I didn't like and leaving, right? It was a sort of this. Again, a very young person's idea of how to assert yourself. I wasn't rude about it. I didn't throw popcorn or whatever you eat at a theater. I don't remember haven't been in so long, but that I got to understand what I liked and didn't like.

And then it just, because it was on stage and theater, I didn't have to love it. And then in 1999 when I was in grad school studying my M F A, I got to go to Sundance as part of my, part of my grant grad school program. And I saw 14 movies in 13 days. And I met amazing people like Peter Bogdanovich and I got to see Cookies Fortune and Robert Altman was there.

And I got to go to the midnight premiere of the Blair Witch Project. And it was the first time I ever was exposed to, in a. Real way improvisational filmmaking, you know, I got to talk to the actors after, and it was so cool that you could combine improv and actors and writing and filmmaking all together.

And it was sort of reminded me of Carol Churchill, who was a British writer in the sixties who would bring unfinished work, sort of like animation, unfinished work and have the actors improv. And then she would go home that night and rewrite it according to. help and input from the actors and the directors.

And when I got back from Sundance, my husband was like, let's go see Shakespeare in love. And I was like, how dare you? I am a Shakespeare purist. I love Tom Stoppard. He's mine. You know, Arcadia and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Like he's the theater. How dare movies try to take him and pervert his work and Shakespeare.

And I had this whole thing, but I agreed to go. And I made a sit in the last row in the corner by the exit because I had to just get up and leave. But I said, I loved it. I mean, I loved it. And it was really, for me, all these things came together, right? The theater, my love of theater, and dialogue, and the sort of multi views of Shakespeare's life and the real life in that world.

And it was the first time I really looked at it and was like, Oh, it's all part of a beast. You can do all the things. You don't have to pick. I don't have to be a Shakespeare purist or only theater. And that seeing a play. Up and so much more than just a play on its feet. I got to be in the world of the play and I thought I want that it took me a long time then figure out how to do that because playwriting format is so different than screenwriting format and thinking visually.

And it was It was those three experiences, right, which seems so disparate, right? Angels in America, and Blair Witch, and Shakespeare in Love, but for me, they added up to owning all the things I love, right? I love All About Eve, which is a play about theater, and You're a movie about a play and theater and so many of my favorite movies are based on plays and I love dialogue and I think that's why I gravitated more towards tv ultimately because I felt like I could play more in the dialogue space for me it was like this story this long journey of Finally realizing that I had a place that didn't have to be in a box.

It didn't have to pick that I could take a little bit of all these things that I learned about. And that I had to get over myself in order to embrace other possibilities, right? I don't have to be just theater and just dialogue and a purist. Like I can love. All these things, which I was probably just growing up, but that's how I grew up in the theater and on movies and I still encounter those moments like when I saw Fleabag, I was like, I wish I had done that right just her mastery of the performance and the structure and the, the words, you know, so, yeah, I still have those moments where I'm like I'm inspired to get back to the page.

Anyway, that's my story. Those are my movies and plays. Meg?

Meg LeFauve: Before I talk about mine, my son had, is just home from a trip he went on with his class and college. And he said to me, you know, he's a directing student, as I've mentioned on the show. And he said to me, mom, I found out that Paul Thomas Anderson did not go to film school, but what he did is he picked out his five favorite directors and then he researched what were their five influences.

And then he took those five influences and researched what were their five influences. And he did that enough times watching, he's watching all the movies, right? So, he's every five influence, he watches those movies and then he watches what influenced those and influenced those and influenced those.

And then you start to see it coming together. Then you start to see, they're all talking about John Ford. They're all talking about this. Then he started, so in essence, he's giving him some film school, right? He's going all the way down. in terms of inspiration to the kind of core tenants of it. And so my son said, this is a great use of chat GPT.

Chat, chat, GPT gets a little bit overwhelmed by it because it, the branches go so far out that and Aiden had to teach it how to do it and what he wanted it to do. But it can quickly tell you, you know, this director's five influences are these movies, and then it can take it and break it and break it and break it.

And I thought that was such a great way if you're looking, we could do it for writers, right? If you pick your favorite writers and see what their influences were. And my sense of the cool thing is if you, within three generations, now the influences are plays and art and because there's no, it's just starting.

So you're actually going to see the origin roots of the entire art form starting to move up through, right? So I thought that was a great suggestion in terms of inspiration. And I'm going to try it with. With writing and see what we can get and what influence I'd love to know what Aaron Sorkin's let's say three, cause five's a lot in terms of the branching three influences were, and then look at their three influences and see if we can see the train of the inspiration and the tenants of writing being born in essence through all of these people and coming up.

So I thought that was pretty cool. In terms of thinking about this and what inspired me, the first thing I thought of was. When CineStory was just beginning you would go and every mentor started, opened up the CineStory with going up on stage and showing a clip of the movie that made them want to do what they do.

And every year I picked the same movie until I got in trouble for picking it, which is I would always pick Sophie's Choice. And I would show the choice. And after I, and I would talk about why, and I, again, this is a little side funny thing, I came off the stage, and now you're supposed to go to a co*cktail party, and a novelist, screenwriter, Richard Price, who wrote The Color of Money, just comes storming over to me.

And he was like, What the f was that? He goes, why don't you just take a puppy up on stage and shoot it in the head? I'll never forget that for the rest of my life. It's like Richard Price. I so admire him. He's so mad at me because I so upset him with this clip. But I, inside, I was like, yeah, that's, that's the clip.

That's why I picked that clip. Because look what happened to you. And it's not, because It's so human, and it's so devastating. And it is the reason this whole story exists, because this is the secret, which is why I won't tell you in case you haven't seen the movie. This is the secret that she's been carrying because it flips back and forth in time, and why she is struggling.

to stay alive because of this secret. And she's carrying this secret. And what in the in the filmmakers and the and it comes from a book and the author and the writer exploring what those heavy secrets do to us, both as persons, as people, but as societies and as cultures and what we do to each other and the inhumanity and the humanity and what creates those secrets is inhumanity to man and women.

And I just loved all that, like to watch that and see all of that. And this beautiful long movie, but to still down into a single moment of a person's life, that is literally one word, three words is so powerful. And That I, I just love, I had always been a storyteller in terms of writing little stories and things, but to watch it on film and how much of that moment is visual how much of it is the acting and where the camera is.

And I don't even know, I don't understand that when I'm, so when I'm watching this movie I was in high school I understood it somewhere inside of me. I understood that this they had created this thing with the incredible Meryl Streep, of course. I mean, I could literally, if for today's show, just name every Meryl Streep movie and be like those.

Right. I mean, come on. Right. Let's just let's just do Meryl Streep members. Kramer versus Kramer, the French lieutenant's woman. Silkwood out of Africa. Cry in the dark. All of them. All of them have deeply impacted me in terms of stories and the stories I want to tell. Death becomes her. Yes. Well, she does fun things, too.

Postcards from the Edge. I love that movie. Postcards from the Edge. Why not? Right. Carrie Fisher telling the story of her and her mother. It's Meryl Streep. You know, and Meryl Streep's choices are always very attuned to me and why I like to tell stories, all the humanity she's bringing up inside of people and their their complexity.

And plus, let's talk about Sophie's Choice. It's an adaptation. I love books. I love adaptations. It's history. I love history. You know, it's a third person telling her story because he's trying to figure out what is happened to this woman. What happened? It's like this mystery. What happened to her? What happened?

Who's drawing you through with all these threads? What happened? What happened? And then you find out and you're like, I kind of wish I didn't know, which is the point. Do you really want to know what happened? Because most of us don't, most of us turn a blind eye and we want to forget what happened. In World War II.

We want to forget, right? Oh, now Florida's rewriting history. Sorry, but I'm going to say it. But this movie is all about, yes, you can't forget. She's carrying it for everybody because it happened to her. You carry, you know, let, let her be by all of us, you know, confronting what happened to her. So it's really about, to me, it's not about, there are terrible bad guys in Sophie's Choice.

Terrible, terrible bad guys, but it is still about humanity, right? And for me, it really became about point of view. And, you know, this movie made me want to go into film. I no way was ready to say I want to be a writer, right? What that film accomplished is beyond my comprehension of ever accomplishing still honestly today, but it's worth, but I never would have thought I could have written, but I wanted to be part of it somehow, some way, could I hold somebody's purse while they go do something like, what can I do?

To, in order to be part of this. And it kind of started to draw me towards that direction. I became a screenwriting major in college, but then I. But eventually went back because eventually in the late 80s and early 90s, there are these movies that are coming that really started to make me go back to my first love, which is film.

I was in advertising, but suddenly Steel Magnolias, Dead Poets Society, Field of Dreams. Comes out in one year. The next year, Awakenings comes out and Ghost and Dances with Wolves, which I, some people hate, I love, and Jacob's Ladder all come out in the same year. Signs of the Lambs and Thelma and Louise come out in the same year.

Like they are just this juggernaut of human stories. Told in all different tones, ensemble, you know, all, all different ways. Broad, for Genron's like Field of Dreams or Ghost, right? Dance of the Wolves or really beautiful, tiny movies that I don't know if people have seen and they should see, like Awakenings, I Will Cry, just thinking about that movie.

But they're all asking questions about the humanity and who we are. And all of them, from Sophie's Choice to all the movies I just named are about connection, right? And can we get back to connection? And almost all of them that I just named, not all of them, but they're fleeting connections. It doesn't mean you're going to connect forever and it's not going to make everything better.

But even if you can just have the, a moment of deep connection and seeing each other and recognizing and appreciating and respecting and being with each other in the most sacred way, that's worth it. Even if then that connection moves on. And to me, that's what movies can do to an audience. Right. Like we as writers can create that feeling of connection and that if you are not alone, right, that feeling of you are not alone, that human feeling of you are not alone.

People feel what you feel. You're not the first person to be here. That gives you such a sense of relief. Right. And and so that's what I wanted to do. Right. I wanted to help create. Those movies, and I first did it by being a producer with Jodi, and I think the movie that switched me over to, I might need to be a writer which is funny, because then when I was on the press tour for Inside Out, I did the Hollywood Roundtable, and they asked this question, and this is the movie I used then, right, because I've shifted, you're shifting, right, and you're getting braver, and okay, now I'm going to step out even further we, Jodi, I, and Stuart Kleiman, and I think Julie Bergman was still there, and some executives from her company.

There was a new filmmaker coming out of Australia. They had an early print for us to see. I remember we all drove over to Century City to sit in this little tiny theater, and they were going to show it to us because we want, they want us to get to know this new director coming. And it's the piano, which it's Jane Campion's piano, the piano.

And I, I couldn't even stand up at the end of that movie. I, the lights went up and we all just sat there what just happened to us? What just happened to us? It was so profound. Talk about an early, for me, I'm sure in terms of feminist terms, there's many more movies before that. But for me, for a female director to tell that story was.

You know, in a weird way, a precursor to Barbie. It's, it's, it's the filmmaker. It's the, it's the dramatic version of it, right? It's the and just, you know, the scene now there's a spoiler. So jump 30 seconds if you don't want to know, but you know, the scene, it's the movie is so amazing in the way that it takes.

And this is what I'm honest, you guys, it's what I'm trying to do with this passion project. It takes these what seemingly disparate storylines and stories. They're all put together, all these people, but given what they all want, who they are, the context of the world and the time that they're in that just that whole context around them, there is this sense of inevitable tragedy that's coming, that this isn't going to end well because none of them are going to get off the train they're on, right?

If any one of them just stopped at any minute and said, No, I'm going to shift. I'm not. But they're not going to. And the imagery that she's doing to forewarn you of what's coming. And so that moment where, you know, he cuts her finger off, it's so feels so inevitable. And it's such it's such a violation, obviously, of her body.

But it's her voice. She doesn't talk. She only plays the piano. That's and he's trying to own her and take her. It's just and just Sam kneels. Horribleness and heartbreak, even as he does it, right? Because he's such a great actor. The pain that he's in, the the horribleness of what he's doing, all coming together in that moment.

It's funny because in the Hollywood Roundtable, I mentioned this scene and I said, it's really hard for you to say what words are on the page, because. Everything has to come together for that to work. Right. But somebody did write they wrote that. Right. They wrote the plotting to that moment. They know what they're writing.

They know this is the moment. This is the worst thing you could do to her. And she is culpable some part of herself for because she didn't get off her track either. Right. Again, I'm not saying she's culpable for him picking, you know, chopping her finger off, but all of them are part of it. They're all part of it.

So I just I love the inevitability of it. What the filmmaker was talking about, how she was using every aspect of that film. To say what she wanted to say, the culmination of it and that, after that movie, I, I couldn't say I walked out of there saying, I want to be a writer, but if I try to now look back when it started to move, I think it started to move there because again, there I am, history, women, voices, blah, blah, blah, that I wanted to be closer to that.

Right. I wanted to be more of a creator. I was a creator and that I was producing. I was helping other people tell their stories. But I wanted to have my own voice. That is a movie about voice. Right. And wanting to live. You know, the penultimate action she takes. Right. Is it this choice to live? Right. It's funny because now that I'm saying this right now today, Sophie's choice is not that choice, right?

So it's wanting to tell those stories, specifically women's stories and and what it, the experience of that, but just the experience of being human. And that somehow when we tell the authentic story of being human, we can touch other people and connect to them and let them feel not alone, right?

That is what I wanted to do. Right. And these are some of the movies that did that for me and helped move me into trying it myself. So as

Lorien McKenna: you were talking, I was like, Oh wait, my three stories must have some connection like that. Right. And I was like, Oh, at the end of angels in America, Harper leaves Joe to start his new life in San Francisco with a little bit of hope, right?

He walks away from love. At the end of Shakespeare in Love, she doesn't walk away from love, but he does. I mean, they, they don't get to be together and she starts a new life and, but walks away, moves away from love to start a new life. And then Blair Witch is, they're just dead in a corner somewhere, presumably, right?

So I'm like, Oh, okay. What is my fear?

Meg LeFauve: That's the darkest, bleakest version of your, of what could happen.

Lorien McKenna: Yeah, but, but they, but they set themselves up to do that, right? They go on that trip, they go into the woods, they get themselves stuck in that trap and it's all through their own fear and terror, you know, like they're terrorizing each other about what could happen essentially.

I mean, this is how they shot the movie, right? They were literally being terrorized by the film crew. And I'm thinking, oh, that's. That's the piece that I'm missing in what I'm writing right now is the choice. I write a lot about what if it's like being stuck. Should I stay? Should I go? Do I love him? Do I not love him?

And I was like, Oh, it's not quite there sometimes because I haven't made them make the choice. of walking away from love to start a new life. And I'm like, maybe I've been driving towards that. That'll be the end of the season one. But I'm like, oh, what if I start there? Jesus. Right. I'm not going to go back and rewrite anything.

Meg LeFauve: But no, but this is a writing exercise. Have her start there and see what happens. But just

Lorien McKenna: as a sort of where I've been, the things I've done in my life, these huge leaps I've made. Right. I'm going to walk away from teaching. I'm going to go work at Pixar. I'm going to walk away from Pixar, which I loved. I loved teaching.

Walked away from it for this new thing. Loved Pixar. Walked away from it to move to LA. Right. So, it's It's this thing I do and I, and it's terrifying because I feel like I'm, it's more about that I'm walking away from instead of to, and which is why right now I'm probably like, I'm just going to move to Italy.

Meg LeFauve: Right? You are walking to, but you are walking to. Right. But hear what you said. It's not about walking away. It's about walking to.

Lorien McKenna: Right. Right. But my point of view right now, because I'm stuck is I'm walking. away, escape, instead of taking the powerful narrative choice of I'm walking towards the problem is that I don't that big want I was talking about is I don't know what I'm walking toward.

So I'm in that terrible, terrified fork in the road, right? But I'm realizing it's in those movies. And that's maybe speaks to more what I connected to. And then the other stuff blossomed out of like language and theater and my own ridiculous snobbery, which you don't have to have, you know, and, but it also, it was walking, being able to walk something I love, but not walking away from plays in order to love and embrace screenwriting, right.

That I can bring my love of theater to my love of.

Meg LeFauve: They didn't have to fully walk away. Right. You thought you had to walk away, but you didn't have to walk away, walking

Lorien McKenna: away. It's bringing it with you. Right.

Meg LeFauve: Because you were gathering. You were gathering. Viola gets to

Lorien McKenna: be in love and now she's going to go have this new adventure where, but she's going to take that with her as horrible as her new life is probably going to be.

But like I, I, I, yeah. And I'm just realizing, oh my God, I learned so much on the show about myself and my own writing and then I have to hold onto it somehow. Right. Like how so. But it's about that. That I'm in the bottom of the second act, I feel like, you know, so I, I instead of running from post midpoint, I have to figure out what it is I'm going to and act three and feels real sticky right now, but Okay, here I am.

And in that. Storytelling space again, right? And Meg, you're yours is so lovely and beautiful about the human condition. I'm like, I'm going to run away. I'm a runner.

Meg LeFauve: Well, we're all runners. Believe me, we all run. We all run. It took a lot for me not to run out of the out of the deli or to say, you know, let's talk about, you know, that new stove that we need instead of this story.

You know, we really need a stove, right? I mean, we can't be

Lorien McKenna: vulnerable, right? I mean, it's being vulnerable. It's being vulnerable to these movies and these stories. Right. And sometimes they hit. Sometimes they hit and sometimes they don't and then you go back years later and you watch it and you're like, oh, I just wasn't ready to appreciate this movie, you know, so I think too I mean, it's what we talk about all the time, being vulnerable, making yourself available for your issue, pain and lava and other people's too, right?

Meg LeFauve: And maybe sometimes you meaning a person, a writer is down inside and you're starting to feel that lava rise and you don't know what to do, do 10 things and we'll see which one you resist the most. Yeah. You know, not the one that you're like, Oh, like that's all rump, comforting, cozy. No. Which one like made you like, I literally, when my husband was like, or what if she stayed?

I was like, Oh, Oh, wow. We have to do

Lorien McKenna: that. That's been said. I always used to joke that that was a lot of my career at Pixar. People would come over and be like, Oh, we want to give you this promotion. No. I'm happy where I am, right? Oh, you should do this. No. And I've been doing this thing about directing my whole, no.

No, I'm never going to direct. I had a rant about it this weekend. Oh, well now. Oh my gosh, you guys. And I was on the phone call with someone today and I was like, I'll direct that. sh*t.

Meg LeFauve: sh*t. What am I talking about? Now we know.

Lorien McKenna: But I, but I sort of like have been resisting

Meg LeFauve: this. Oh, but I don't know what I want to run towards.

I don't know. I don't know. Hmm. What could it be? What could it be? You literally just told us. I don't know. It's all sticky and I don't know what I want to run towards. I mean, this week I said I might direct something, but oh my God.

Lorien McKenna: I'm not, I'm just not bossy enough to be a non kidding. I know directors

Meg LeFauve: are bossy.

I do. I do. I protest. No, that's not

Lorien McKenna: true at all. Oh, I'm 100% kidding. I'm too bossy as a director. So, okay, fine. Fine. I'll send you my copay . No, you've said it. I'm gonna take it back and I'm going to direct the movie I wrote. How about that? There

Meg LeFauve: you go. I love that. I love that. There you go. Yeah,

Lorien McKenna: that sounds super easy.

Jess directing your own movie that you wrote is easy, right?

Jeffrey Crane Graham: If you No, but I, I'm joking. It's interesting. Well, it is interesting because I had the exact same thing and I was. So resistant to it because of fear. Yeah. And, I don't know, I've, I've always felt like you'd make an amazing Director, Lorien. I mean, you also understand actors, that's a huge part of it, because you were one, you know?

That's a huge part of directing, is just having empathy for the people in front of the camera. I'm

Lorien McKenna: gonna direct my movie. There we go. See? If I'm sure our listeners are having similar experiences, and I wish they could come on and talk with us in the same way oh,

Meg LeFauve: they can on the Patreon, you know,

Jeffrey Crane Graham: on the page.

Come check us out over there if you want to talk back. Yes. Yeah.

Lorien McKenna: Well, I thought this was a great episode of skeptical at first, I have to say no offense, potty, but I, I feel like it has transformed my life. So thank you. Thank you, buddy. Oh, yay.

Jeffrey Crane Graham: It was really fun to get to hear. It's fun when you get to hear writers you really respect talk about what they love.

You know, there's something humanizing about remembering that whoever you have on whatever pedestal you may have, they nerd out and dork out about movies too. You know, that's kind of what we do and that's the, that's like the juice of our business, right? That's the magic of it. So it's a good reminder that even if someone seems unattainably far in terms of what they've built in terms of their career They were like a nerdy film dork, just like you are listening one one time, and they probably still are, you know, and that's it's important to remind ourselves of that, I think.

I hope you're

Meg LeFauve: a film dork or a TV dork, because that's what you're going to be doing. And you need to know

Lorien McKenna: what you're doing, but you're going to be in TV. You must go watch old and classic TV shows, because when you dig into what inspired TV shows, it's a lot of other TV shows that

Meg LeFauve: You got to go watch.

All right. So, yeah, let's do that. Let's take your three favorite TV shows. Look at the showrunners. Ask Chat GPT what inspired, you know, what TV shows inspired that showrunner and just start looking at the influences coming up through time. You know, nobody's nobody's creating in a vacuum like we're not.

We're all watching things and they're amalgamating and coming together and, and reforming and reaching and changing and evolving. Right. So, yeah, it's not like we, you know, people drop out of the sky and they're like, ta da, genius. Right. Everybody's, everybody's. Speak for yourself, Megalophones. Sorry.

Other than Lorraine McKenna, of course. All right. Thanks so much for joining us on today's show. Let us know your biggest inspirations on the Facebook group. That would be super fun. Oh yeah.

Lorien McKenna: It would. And if you haven't joined, you should check into the Facebook group. We're having lots of conversations about craft and emotional writing.

And occasionally I pop in and admit something really embarrassing about myself. So look for

Meg LeFauve: that. And I like to post crazy memes. About writing. We've also got our Patreon going on as we mentioned in the show. We are, I mean, I thought the last Patreon was amazing in terms of I got so much out of it for my own show.

Just of us trying to figure out what is going on. Why isn't this working? What is TV? What is TV? But I thought the three ideas were all really great and they were very inspiring in terms of really fun to work on and. So, come on over because it's really, really fun and we're really getting, you know, cooking over there.

For us. Do it for

Lorien McKenna: us so we can learn more. How about that? Yeah, exactly. How about that? And remember, you are not alone and keep writing.

Though it can sometimes feel like a prison, screenplay structure is actually a very freeing element of the story process. Jill Chamberlain, a veteran script consultant, is obsessive about structure, to the point where she has created a popular technique to re-consider how we approach our work. On her technique, producer Callum Greene (Star Wars Episode 9) offers “the Nutshell Technique is like the Rosetta Stone: it cracks the code behind why we love the movies that we love. It goes way beyond tired old beat sheet ‘formulas’ and instead guides you to organically write the story youwant to tell.”

FOR MORE ON JILL (BUY BOOK/CLASSES): https://www.jillchamberlain.com/the-nutshell-technique

TO JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

TRANSCRIPT:

Meg LeFauve: Hey, welcome back to The Screenwriting Life. I'm Meg LeFauve.

Lorien McKenna: I'm Lorien McKenna, and today we're thrilled to be joined by script consultant, screenwriter, and teacher Jill Chamberlain.

Meg LeFauve: Jill has consulted on projects for major studios, Oscar- nominated screenwriters, top showrunners, and many spec writers.

She created The Nutshell Technique to give us a new way to talk about structure in our screenplays. Her book on

Lorien McKenna: The Nutshell Technique is a manual a lot of professionals use and is taught in film programs. Hi Jill, welcome to the show.

Jill Chamberlain: Hi, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor.

Meg LeFauve: We're really excited to dig in here and give our writers especially, not only, but especially our emerging writers, some new tools for their toolbox.

Sure. I know that my son read your book in film school and he was like, mom I thought I knew and I knew, but then all a sudden I could see it like, I've got it. So it's just such a wonderful thing to keep shining the light in different ways. Whoever, I just really another way to help people see it and get it.

So we're really thrilled to have you here. We're, but Jill, it's also is game for doing adventures in screenwriting or what happened this week to us. Lorien, how was your week?

Lorien McKenna: was good. I just. An hour ago, came back from Sinistory TV retreat up in Idyllwild, so I just drove down the hill and I have such a great time at Sinistory, it's such a wonderful community of writers and mentors and producers and managers, and it has this wonderful feeling of Camp for grownups.

We talk about story the whole time and it's equalizing in this really lovely way. Like so many of the writers that go there are, have projects in production or have made things. And so it's not just like I'm the mentor and then you're like this right, baby in writer. It's nah, we're all writers.

We're all in this together. We just have different experiences. And I feel so well taken care of when I'm there by the organization. They, the food is there. I don't really have to think about anything. Like here's your schedule. Here's where you have to go. Here's your free time. So I feel like, ah, I can relax.

There is a lot of nature, which I'm not a big fan of, but, a lot of people seem to respond that kind of thing. So many people there had heard about Sinistory through our podcast. A woman came from Germany, a woman came from Australia, and it was just really lovely. But I had such a hard time with it because people wanted to come up to me and be like, Oh my God, I love your podcast.

And what I did instead of taking the compliment was you want to take a picture? And then so I got to Being a part of a community without actually taking a compliment. So it was really

Meg LeFauve: lovely. Except they got to take your picture.

Lorien McKenna: Yeah, Jill,

Jill Chamberlain: how was your week? It was a mix of things as it often is.

I'm actually writing on something, which I haven't, my, I have not put my name on something in over 10 years and I am co writing a a spec. for a TV half hour and I have a very satisfying feeling of finishing everything I needed to do and handing it back to my co writer, which feels so good.

It's now her problem for a couple of days. Totally. And I'm also in the midst of classes and this is a kind of a fun period where people have finished their beat sheets and now are going to be moving on to script. So we're getting towards the end. That's exciting to see. And I had some good consultations, both like helping people.

I really like when people bring me early on and I helped with breaking story where they just dump all their ideas on me. And then hopefully we can walk out or they can walk out with a story afterwards. So that always feels really

Meg LeFauve: good. Okay. My week was one. I realized that it is true. You only have so much willpower every day.

So if you're trying to be on a diet and you're trying to actually exercise. You have, and you're dealing with your special needs son, who's having some sort of, I don't know, testosterone y transition, I don't know, teenager ness. There's not that much willpower left to sit your ass down and write. It's weird.

There's just not. I'm still So weird. So weird, Meg. Of all the things. And I know in my brain, it's you should do this first! first, but then I need to eat cookies. Like it just doesn't work. I have to figure it out. But the fun thing that happened was my son was home from college this weekend because he had to come up and do some stuff for school.

And we took a walk cause we like to take walks. Then he talks and talks and I listen. But he also was talking about making short films and an idea he had. And he is like most humans. often your ideas start with situations, right? And I'm excited to talk to Jill about this too, in her view of it, because he had all these kind of events and things he wanted to happen and possibly happen in a short film.

And I'm not saying they weren't cool events, by the way, like they were cool, but there's no character, there's no relationship, there's no but because he's just starting and I was like, okay let's just back up and let's, okay, something in your life, what was really emotional to you?

What was an emotional moment to you? Now he's 19, right? And he was talking, he talked about the time that He had already not been accepted onto one baseball team, and he had to go try out for the next one, and he couldn't get out of the car. Because he was so afraid they would pass, too. They would.

And how, we helped him get out of the car, and to try. And he goes, yeah, but I can't do that! It's just so simple! It's so sentimental! It's so sentimental! And I was like, okay I think it's simple, that's true. And we just, I just came to this thing that I wanted to share with everybody, which is, you can have a simple thematic, as long as it's emotional to you.

Which was... He had needed to get out and try, even if that meant failure, that was important to him. And he is right. The kid's version is more simple because it's really the parent who has the problem, which is you're going to convince this kid to get out of the car and go try and he might fail. So it's just, it's a little more fraught, not that much more fraught, but we came to this idea. That sometimes if the what is simple, then what I want to be more complex is the how, like what I'm going to love about the character and make this super specific and not just any parent and any kid going for a baseball game is how the parent gets the kid out of the car.

That suddenly becomes interesting and worth a short film. Or you can have a very complex how, like he thought about a time that an authority figure really did something completely not good, not cool, like injustice. And I was like, okay that's simple. What's more complex? Weren't you being an asshole?

And he was like, and I'm like, weren't you being a teenage jerk? When this person lost their temper? And he was like yeah, maybe. No, so part of this is lava, right? To get to the complex how. You gotta go into your lava. What really happened? And suddenly a much more complex how. Of two people who have a point of view, and yet they are not communicating, and it's much more complex, and nobody's right, nobody's wrong.

And now the what, in terms of what they're doing, can be quite simple, because there's so much going on in the how. So it's just an interesting thing that we came upon, and I don't think it's just for short films, in terms of, where is the complexity, right? Is it the com Is the how the complex, or the what complex?

And yes, you can have both complex, but that's super high story math, in my opinion. But Yes, Laurie, and I'm just gonna say,

Lorien McKenna: no, this is speak so much to exposition to write like a lot of emerging writers spent a lot of time setting up characters setting up behaviors, but the behaviors exposed in that conversation in that car, the specificity of how they're responding to each thing, because that exposition that you probably don't need is what's going to drive those behaviors right like the belief system and the patterns and all that so it's like when you're thinking about That scene or that short just

Jill Chamberlain: get to it start,

Meg LeFauve: Right now He seems simple to him still because it was basically a parent and authority figure in a child and that's just a role That's just those aren't characters yet.

Those are roles. And so I was like who is the parent? Who is the child and he's I don't even know the parent cuz I'm not a parent, but I'm a brother So maybe I could make it a brother And I'm like, okay, if it's a brother, then what if you also, just as a writing exercise, make the kid he's trying to get out of the car, your brother, which is a special needs kid.

And suddenly, the how has much more juice. Because, especially when kids won't, my son won't understand abstract thought. He's gonna get angry if he's over emotional. And you're only 19 and trying to be the authority. And yet you can't really be the authority. And you're trying to teach him something that he doesn't understand.

He just knows he can't get out of the car because he's going to fail. Like it just got much harder on the main character, who is the brother, to make this how happen. And the harder it is, the more interesting it is, the more complex that how is. Again, we're still going to get to a relatively simple what?

Which is you just have to try. But the how was such more specific and interesting because the characters became specific and interesting and all driven by which wrapping us back to Jill, their want and their flaws and they're like, that's all the stuff that suddenly we started talking about and not necessarily in those in that language.

But I think that's what we were starting to dig up by talking about his real life experiences with his brother. So just my little segue back to to Jill. So Jill, I'm so excited to talk to you about how your book and you outlay out these concepts of structure and character and creating structure from character.

But before we do you want to talk a little bit about your background as a screenwriter and maybe how it contributed to you creating this technique?

Jill Chamberlain: Yes, sure. Yes, I started as a screenwriter, a frustrated screenwriter. I was in New York City. I had a little bit of paid work, work for hire. It's not enough to live off of.

And I kept coming up against a note, which was akin to, this isn't a story. This is a situation. And I knew there was a problem. I knew something was missing. There was something missing. But no one could explain to me how to fix it. And so I stalled. I was unable to, I could tell this was definitely a problem for me and I couldn't go no further.

And so I had to stop writing. And let me say a couple other ways to say it is, if I can take your protagonist out of your script and your script works just as well and put it to put a different one in and it works just as well. You have a situation, my friend, not a story, right? A story is unique to the protagonist, but I had a hard time figuring out how to get plot and character arc to merge.

And in fact, I found they merge in very specific ways. I stopped work. I stopped working and I started analyzing movies and I should say I have very good training. I was privileged to study at Columbia University. I had a study privately with a mentor named screenwriter named Doug Pats and, but I needed a system.

I needed everything on a page basically. So that's what I created. And it's a one page. Schematic, where I link up the eight elements that are required to tell a story. And one thing that's really different about my method I want to put out there is it's not, most things that deal with structure are going to deal with a linear beat sheet kind of structure, right?

That you need to hit 15 or 22 or however many pre prescribed beats. And my method's not a beat sheet method. It is. We have. Yes, there are a few moments we need to dictate. We have you have a first scene. You have a last scene. We have something at 25%. We have something at 75%. But other than those four moments in time, I don't the other elements are not moments in time.

They're about the connection between those moments. Those are not for random moments. There's a connection. That's the emotional connection that is time. This character to this journey. And so and when it came together, it just all of a sudden, everything has makes sense. And it's been a wonderful lens to use both with teaching and also with my clients.

It's just helps me get to the core of the problem very quickly. Everything, almost everything seems to come back down to that to the structure.

Meg LeFauve: Now, when I was a consultant in Australia, if I said the word structure to most of the writers, not all of them to be fair, but to a lot of them, they would like, basically, I would be kicked out of the country.

I wasn't, but it was just a deal. Don't say the word structure to me. Don't, why are you prescribing? It's not just Australia. It's not just Australia, but yeah, no, I know. But it was it stood out more because they would say that's the way an American would do it. So it was very right.

But you can get that anywhere. And, where writers do consider this kind of word or system to be, that means you're going to get the same thing over and over. You're just, dumbing us down. And another guy said to me here in America once. So what is your response to that?

Jill Chamberlain: Oh, I've got responses to that.

I was at it. So I was at a party once where I rated to a student and she introduced me to a prominent documentary filmmaker, whose name I will not mention, and introduced me as her teacher who wrote a book on story structure. And he gave me this attitude that was. Structure smucture. And so I said to him, let me understand with your documentary films, or is it just, do you just stick a camera on one person and have them talk for 90 minutes with no cuts?

And he said, no, of course not. We cut to different things. We employ editing. And I said if you employ editing, you're employing structure. That is all structure means. Structure is the events that you are choosing to show in the order that you're choosing to show them in. That's all structure means.

So what, and I think what we've been, we've internalized structure so much, first of all, right? We've been watching, films as a culture for over a hundred years, and we've been telling stories for, early humanity, I imagine. That a lot of people don't even realize that there is a structure right to the stories.

You realize that when you're, great aunt Betty is, it's telling events in her life that lack structure and she goes on and on. Maybe right? It occurs to you. Oh, this person doesn't know how to tell a story. But most of us understand or internally we feel it. You just don't realize it's there.

It's not just an American movie. And ultimately I think structure is incredibly freeing if you find the right structure and my goal is not to, I don't want people to feel hampered in it is to identify a couple of things. It's not many things. A couple of things. And then it gives you enormous freedom to discover things on the page.

You've already thought the, underlying skeleton. And you can put it aside once you figure it out and you can live and breathe on the page and trust that you're not going to write yourself into a corner or write yourself to a scenario where you have absolutely no idea how to end it.

And it's like the concepts behind improv. Right? Improv comedy is not just people running around being goofy on stage. It may seem that way sometimes, but it's not what it's supposed to be. There's structure to it. Even if it's as simple as, I need a location from the audience, right?

That's giving you some structure that then their imagination could go off of. But without that structure, it's just chaos. It's not anything anybody's going to want to watch. So I find it very freeing, but yes, there can be resistance to it. I

Lorien McKenna: want to ask you so much about like your, what the next nutshell technique actually is.

Can you talk about what it is? But I want to. Bring up something a lot of new writers tend to write like. 40, 50 pages of act one. And for me, that's a symptom of not embracing this, the structure of storytelling. What, how would you diagnose that when you get a screenplay that's like just all act one and then some stuff happens and then it ends?

Jill Chamberlain: Yeah. First of all I don't like to put too many solid rules down, but one I have is. You gotta get us into act two by 25 pages or so. 25 to 30. There is something about us as an audience that we don't want. We've about a 25 minute attention span before that we can handle of set up introduction before something needs to happen.

That's what's that's, act two is ostensibly what the movie is about. That's the guts of it. The what it's really about is what they learn in the end. But ostensibly, that's where we feel that the story is really begun and that the characters are really being challenged. And. So you're definitely gonna have problems with that.

And and similarly, if you haven't figured out your structure, another common thing, but the 45 pages makes me think of is people who it's super common. Everyone's got a great idea. They haven't they haven't really gone beyond a premise and they think it's gonna give them enough, enough juice to get them through.

It's not if, we can start stories in lots of different places, but really you they only end, there's only one way to end a good story, typically, right? We find to find that inevitable, yet unexpected ending. There's one way. And so if you don't know your ending yet and by the way, I can't claim I'm, I've been perfect about always knowing and ending when I've gotten involved with something.

But if you don't know your ending you, or at least the, an idea of it, you don't really know your story. And that's what, one of the things with my method is it's, we're setting up things in act one and act three. There's almost nothing in act two, you'll notice. It's, but I believe if we set these things up properly.

It's going to maintain and we're going to be able to push through act two, even though it's twice as long. As long as you maintain conflict, you're going to be able to get through act two. And so if you're getting to so a more common scenario, as I see, is that someone who starts writing and they get to about page 4045 and they use steam.

Because they didn't figure it out. So if you had known if you figured that out, even though we're not predetermining what's happening, the second act, you're not going to lose that steam. That's why you're losing steam is you're guessing I'm maybe going to go there, but you don't really, you don't have confidence with that.

Lorien McKenna: Yeah. And I do want to just say that. I am the writer who will happily write 45 pages of act one because it's so fun. So I'm not sitting in judgment of people who do this. It's how I discover what it actually, where I'm trying to go. But you're absolutely right. At page 45, I'm like, Oh, wait, now something has to happen.

And I don't so I'm not sitting in judgment of emerging writers or any writer who I've read that's done this. It's me. I'm the problem. It's me.

Jill Chamberlain: Yeah, and nor am I, I understand everyone's got their process, but it is something I do force people and some in my classes to do this and they're not, some people are not used to it right at all.

I do definitely get resistance where people are used to just writing and discovering and it's okay, I want you to try it my way. I want you to try it my way, and we're just going to talk about it, but we're not going to read your script until your story elements are working. That's my rule.

We're not going to talk about it or read it. And the, we'll spend a couple of weeks just looking at this piece of paper until people get it right. And that's not the way a lot of people are used to working. And I do get some resistance, although pretty inevitably people are. Glad I forced them right that it made them realize I'm going to write less.

I'm going to write fewer drafts this way right that it forced me to discover those things in my head a little bit before I got on the page.

Savana Vagueiro da Fonseca: It's interesting as Savannah here. It's interesting as someone who has audited your class and, as an emerging writer myself, I think. One thing that this method gave me, and just talking about structure as discovering your character in this particular format and this method, it gave me some confidence too to actually just get to the page.

Like I, this might be a very like baby writer sort of observation, but having an idea of where, how low my protagonist is going to get and knowing where I want to take that, that the bottom of the bottom, really gave me that structure and that confidence to just get on the page.

So that's something I just wanted to add to as like another benefit of have

Jill Chamberlain: embracing a structure. Yeah, it's freeing, right? It's freeing. If you figure these things out, yes, you're going to have to deal with things along the way, but you are going to be pretty confident that you understand the story and yet can be free to discover things as you write on the page.

Meg LeFauve: Okay let's get to it because now I'm even more excited for people to hear so and obviously in one show we can't do a whole book and But and get into the details too deeply but in general what you know, I know in the book. There's a checklist We can go over the checklist. Like how can we explain your technique to our listeners?

Jill Chamberlain: The simplest metaphor for explaining it is something I call Fat Tootsie. So let me explain what Fat Tootsie is and then I'll walk through the nutshell for it. So imagine you, we have the movie Tootsie, right? So Michael Dorsey, out of work actor, can't get a acting job to save his life, and he gets a part on a soap.

And I'm going to change just two things. He gets a part on a soap, but instead of it being a part that's a female character it is a they have a character that's an obese man in the fictional Soap opera town and he really wants a part, so he's gonna pretend he's actually a fat guy. He's gonna get a costumer to make him a fat suit and a makeup artist to make prostheses for him.

He's gonna pretend he's actually a big guy and he is gonna get the part. The other change I'm gonna make is that he'll tell Julie the love interest, he's gay. So Julie feels just as comfortable with him as. She felt with the Dorothy persona and so she doesn't perceive any sexual tension between them and everything else I'm going to keep the same.

We tend to find it funny in movies when men are dressing up as women. It could also be funny having a little guy like Dustin Hoffman pretending to be a big guy, right? And so he's got to get in and out of his fat suit and he's hiding, trying to hide his identity. The very similar movie when you think about it.

He grows to where he can't stand it, and so then, live on the air, he's gonna pull off his fat suit and reveal he's little old Dustin Hoffman. That is Fat Tootsie. And why is my movie Fat Tootsie a situation, not a story? Does anyone want to?

Meg LeFauve: And I'm cheating because I know that Sidney Pollack said he didn't want to do the movie until he realized it's about a man learning to be a better man by being a woman.

So there's an emotional thematic that Sidney Pollack very much as the director wants to explore through this character. So thematically there's a deep theme that it has to be that he's dressing up as a woman and that he's learning to be a better man because of it. So that the emotional thematic, the character is going to go on aligns to the plot.

And the fat Tootsie, my question immediately is what does he, what is this about? What, why what is he learning? So suddenly that's where my brain goes. Yes,

Jill Chamberlain: exactly. And, and Sidney Pollack, I actually quote him in the book, said that he turned down Tootsie. 100 times because it was just a one joke movie about a guy in drag.

And it wasn't until he honed in on that, that idea of I was a better man as a woman than I ever was as a man with you. So what was missing was the flaw, what you're, the thematic element, but it boils down to me, the flaw that he is a guy who doesn't respect women. He doesn't, and by the way, it's not as egregious as his arrogance.

But I would argue at the end of the movie, I think he's going to be just as arrogant on his next movie job. The element that has changed is that he's gone from the flaw. This is the first of my eight elements, the flaw of someone who doesn't respect women to someone who does respect women. And so the other the other elements are the.

Start with the want. He wants an acting job at 25%. The point of no return is that he's offered the acting job again. I'm trying to externalize it. He could have. Yes, his choices were there were choices involved to get there. But there was part of it was outside of his control. There happened to be a female producer who liked what she saw.

And and so that moment when she says you've got the job, he's Gotten his one. So in the point of no return, the protagonist is going to get their want, but they're going to get their want with a big catch. Super important, a catch, right? It's this big thing has happened. You got what you want, but you're getting something.

Also, you don't want because that's what we're going to be exploring. That's the juice. That's going to get you through act two. That's what the movie ostensibly is about, right? So the catch being he has to pretend to be a woman, right? That's ostensibly what we think the movie's about. It's about an actor who gets a job and has to pretend to be a woman.

What it's really about is a guy who doesn't respect women, who has to literally walk in women's shoes to learn respect for them, right? But he doesn't know that yet. We don't know that yet. And then in I break down stories between Aristotelian comedies and tragedies, and that just means happy, just happy ending, sad ending.

So we're not talking haha, it doesn't have to be a haha comedy. Happy ending or sad ending. And so Tootsie is a comedy, and so that means they're gonna hit the at the 75 percent, they're gonna hit the crisis. Crisis is two things. It has to be their lowest place. We want them to hit rock bottom. And it is also the opposite of the want.

This part's tricky. It's not just vaguely the negative. It is the thing you want you now hate. So he wanted a job It's 75%. He wants out of the job. Literally the opposite. Now we're going to start act three and back three starts with the climax. The word I use in the nutshell technique is the climatic choice.

At the heart of a climax the protagonist is making a difficult choice. And so his climatic choice is to pull off his wig and reveal that he, on live television, that he's a man. This is the beginning of him stepping towards the strength that he's going to learn in the end, which is respect for women.

It's a halfway step. He still hasn't apologized. But telling the truth is better than lying. But he doesn't get his happy ending yet. He has to do more. So in the final step, he's going to tell Julie, the love interest that he's learned and that he's changed that he realizes that he only learn to be a better man by literally walking in a woman's shoes.

So those are the eight elements. Floss strength and then linear, we have the want pointed overturn, which has the catch attached to it. Crisis choice and final step. And I'll just say for a tragedy, we would have the same structure, but instead of hitting rock bottom at 75 percent, they're going to hit the triumph, which is the highest moment of achievement and the ultimate version of manifestation of their want.

And then they have a climatic choice and a final step, but those are going to be In a negative direction because they fail to move towards their strength.

Meg LeFauve: I think that, and again, the book is really super clear and again, or you can, guys can go download her the steps from off of her site.

I think in terms of what we can get across today, what I find powerful is flaw to strength. If we're not talking a tragedy that this, these are I call them character poles, right? That's how I define it. Different words, probably same thing. So can you talk about what you mean by a flaw and a strength and how that is creating these poles for the nutshell technique?

Jill Chamberlain: Yeah, the flaw is the story. It is the story. I always have to remind my emerging writers of that, right? Without a flaw, you don't have a story. You have a situation. The flaws, the whole reason why this character is being put on this journey is to face that in themselves. It's the DNA. So a flaw, by my definition, it needs to be something they can control.

It needs to be a fault, something we would blame them for. I like to think Seven Deadly Sins kind of flaws, although I think the Seven Deadly Sins needs an update. I don't, slovenliness? I don't know, that doesn't sound that bad to me. But, you want to think, we always, in, in my workshops, I always ask writers to dig deeper.

What is really the underlying flaw that all of this is stemming out of? Because if you don't have a flaw that, and I think this is really important, if you haven't identified the flaw, you are basically just having your protagonist be a victim of stuff happening to them. And even if your character is a victim in some senses of the word, if they're a protagonist, there needs to be something in themself that they, the reason why they're...

Being victimized that they're going to have to face in themselves, right? That's why we're torturing them and putting them through that. And if you make them flawless, then you're just saying that they're a victim of the world. And that's not really a story. If

Meg LeFauve: that makes sense. And totally, I say this constantly, like all the time, like just having sh*t happen to them and they're a victim of the world is not a story.

And again. People are victimized. It's not, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about that they are actively creating their own life. Whether we at the Act One understand that or not, we as a creator have to understand

Jill Chamberlain: that. Yes. And and then the strength is the direct opposite. And so it's important to finesse the wording of that.

I say, we have multiple flaws. And that's something in the workshop and with working with writers. We'll play around with a couple flaws because we have multiple flaws and they get to keep multiple flaws. You don't have to take away, Michael Dorsey is both doesn't respect women and he's Arabic.

He has lots of flaws. But the central flaw to the, that's key to the story, the nutshell flaw, I find typically in a comedy, a story with a happy ending. You may have lots of flaws, but you're probably only going to learn one thing. And so that's very often how I identify which is the primary flaw.

It's what are they really, what are we seeing in that climatic choice in the final step? What does that, what change is, does that represent? Are they, Asserting themselves when before they were meek, or are they humbling themselves when before they were full of themselves? What are they doing differently to solve the problem?

And once we identify that, I go and we want to make sure that the flaw is the 180 of that. The exact

Meg LeFauve: opposite. And the other important step of this that I, have been beating my drum about a lot lately is want. That want drives story, period. Yes, we need to have flaws and needs and all that under, and some writers are really good at that and then they've got no want.

And some people are really good at the want and they've got no... Emotional need and all the other stuff underneath. So can you talk a little bit about want because I think in the book, in my memory, you talk about set up want versus the actual want and what's the kind of difference and you talk about, fill in the set up want last in terms of your chart.

Can you just get into that a little bit?

Jill Chamberlain: Yes, and so first of all, I want to warn you, it's the surprisingly the most complicated part of the nutshell, because it surprises people because we, I think most writers do have an instinctual sense of what my character wants. And, but the thing that you think the characters wants.

May not be the best way to set up the story and because just like we have multiple flaws. We have multiple wants. So the one I'm talking about in this is that and I call it the setup want to distinguish it from it. It may not be the capital W want. It may not be their biggest want. It may not be the want that they say, it's just the want that they're going to get in the point of no return.

Because what we're setting up is be careful what you wish for. On some level they're not a victim on some level. They asked the universe for this and this is happening to them. And so

Meg LeFauve: it may or may not be an example of a setup want versus a big. W capital W. Yes.

Jill Chamberlain: So the classic example for me is Groundhog Day.

Great classic, important movie, I think. And I was watching that movie for the umpteenth time while reading three different versions of the script you can find as you do when you're obsessed with structure. And I noticed in the versions of the strip script that are out there, none of them contained the setup prompt, but it's in the movie.

It's actually in the movie. So at some point, and I was not a part of that process, I don't know it, but at some point, maybe on the late side, they realize we're missing the setup want. We're missing, even Phil, the jerk weatherman, doesn't deserve to simply be a victim of the universe playing this trick on him.

He actually asked for it. We look at his first scene, his big want. I would say he talks about a network that is scouting him, right? That's his big want. He wants a network job. He doesn't get that. So it's not the setup one. It's maybe important one. I'm not saying he doesn't want it.

He said he wanted it. I believe him. But it's not the want that set up sets up the story. And so that's why very often I say do it last because it often we need to figure out the shape of the story, and then go back and it's a little bit of, I like to think of it as irony icing on the cake that we're doing a clever thing with words here.

So the want that is in the movie, it's not in any of the versions of the script you'll find is they added a little bit where the weatherman who Is covering for him, says, he goes to Puccitani, there's a substitute weatherman, and he's saying take your time, Phil, spend an extra night there, because I'll be happy to cover it for you, because this guy wants more on screen time, and Phil says, please I want to spend an extra second in Puccitani, so his setup want, Is to spend no more than 24 hours in Paxitani.

Look at the wonderful irony of what happens to him at the point of no return. External event, he wakes up, it's Groundhog Day, the second day in the row. He got his want to spend only 24 hours in Paxatani, but the big catch is he's going to live the same 24 hours again and again, right? So it's not his big want, it's not any of the obvious wants, it's related to him, he's such a, and his attitude is Paxatani is such a horrible place I don't want to spend more than 24 hours there.

And the universe says to him Phil, you're such a horrible guy. We're going to grant you your wish, but we're going to make you spend the same 24 hours over and over again to get it right and learn how to be a good person.

Meg LeFauve: And now what, just so I'm clear, cause I'm, I think I'm following you, but I want to make sure.

So we have a setup want versus the actual want. So the setup want is I want to spend as little time in Puxitani as I can. And what's the actual want?

Jill Chamberlain: So I don't use, I don't define things

Meg LeFauve: that way. Okay. Maybe I don't define it. Good

Jill Chamberlain: thing I asked. Yeah, sometimes, it's sometimes the actual want and set up want are the same thing.

I like to use the Tootsie example because if he wants a job, he gets a job. That one's obvious. I'm just saying that the one that they actually get and that relates. At what happens at 75% as well with the crisis and triumph is can sometimes be a subtler one, right? As far as you know what they need, that's the strength they need to learn to be a better man or to not be so selfish, right?

In case of Phil that's what they need, but the want can be there can be different wants

Meg LeFauve: there. The other thing I want to talk about, and I know we have to go here soon in a minute is one of my favorite parts of the book, because I. And of course sometimes you read these things and you're like, I know this, but I didn't know I know it.

But I love seeing it in black and white. So there's a chart in the book that I love on page 126. Which is how the flaw colors the climactic choice and begins the downfall for a tragedy. And in my mind, when I hear the word tragedy, I think of Sunset Boulevard, it's going to be black and white, it's going to be noir I have such a connotation to that word.

But when I was reading through this list of movies that are tragedies, and you're very clear, super clear delineation. of the setup want and the flaw and where they end up in that choice. I'm like, oh, my God, of course, they are tragedies. So just one flew over the cuckoo's next Chinatown, the Shining, Annie Hall, the usual suspects, being John Malkovich, Memento, the social network.

Suddenly, I'm like, oh, my God, they all are tragedies. And I love those movies. And maybe this is what I haven't been doing. I just I keep thinking of the simple and yet profound idea of transformative characters who transform and wake up. Versus don't wake up. And I just love that. Let's just pick one here.

Memento, he is set up on as he wants to find his wife's killer. The triumph is Teddy gives him the name and location of the killer. The flaws, denial and the climactic choices Teddy's Polaroid don't believe his lies. Again, it's very specific to the movie. But seeing it so clearly, because I think also up in the air, like I didn't think of up in the air as a tragedy.

And yet in your book, it's solely clearly is because he didn't wake up in time. He didn't wake up in time and he was going for the wrong thing the whole time. So can you talk a little bit about this? I just took a long time because I was so excited because I was like, Oh, this is woke up my brain. Can you talk a little bit about the, how this works in the tragedies?

Jill Chamberlain: Yeah, and my subgenre I love are romantic comedies that are actually tragedies. It's an interesting, like up in the air and Annie Hall. Yeah, the idea is that so two important things about the tragedy. One is. Tragedy is not all down. Tragedy is actually up.

Their act two, unlike a comedy, things are going great because your flaw benefits you in the short run. So they're just going up up, king of the world when they get to the top. And tragedies are tricky to be, I think they could be great, but to be satisfying, first of all, they have to be up.

Up can't just be down. And then they need to make that choice that makes us say Oh, why did you do that? We were late. We were not. It's not shocking that did it because we know the character, but we're like, Oh, why'd you do that? If you'd made a different one, you could have had the happy ending.

Why'd you do that? And yeah, it's an opportunity where they could have changed, but they fail. And that's going to bring them, their, the flaw

Meg LeFauve: wins, the flaw wins, right? And and they pay for it and they pay for it. And there's so many movies that are this, and we don't even realize that that they are this, cause again, cause we're thinking of Oedipus and eyeballs coming out.

So I'm like, it's no, this is. So interesting. These characters are so interesting and the up up. You think of Godfather, right? Like he is just going up up. Like he's becoming the son. I just love these characters. I love them so much because what a hat trick. And the, and this book can help you do it.

What a hat trick to connect us emotionally to somebody who's going to have a tragic end, right? So powerful.

Jill Chamberlain: Yeah, they're tricky, right? There are, it's not, you do need to hit a couple of these things, right? Like I said, people think colloquially when you, we use the word tragedy, it just means down.

Nobody wants to see that. That's not satisfying. We want to see someone where we're rooting for them in a sick way, even though they're a, we know George Clooney doesn't deserve her because he's a cad, but we're we're charmed by him and we're enjoying it. But then when he makes that choice, we're like yeah, you do what

Meg LeFauve: like what a hat trick for the writer first and then the director and then the actors and everybody else to pull off that you have connected us to this person.

Again, we don't have to like them. I'm not talking like ability, you have somehow found a way for us to f*cking love them and connect to them, even though we don't like them, or we know what they're going to do, or we're really worried about their tragic end. You're just so compelled. I think usually it's skill, but that's not always but no one's better at this than Michael Corleone.

That's why he is becoming this thing, because he's so much better than his brothers at thinking this through and the strategy. And it's just so fascinating to watch his strategy and how he's taking stuff on. Oh, I could talk about this forever. The book is really a great tool to put in your toolbox.

I you know, I pull things out after I have my lump. I know that Jill. Would encourage you to do it before the lump. I think it's whatever you need. Just it's just another great tool to, Put your story through its paces and illuminate your own self, right? That's how I always like to use these tools is you're illuminating what you're trying to say, not what Jill's trying to get you to say or Meg or Lauren are trying to get you to say, what are you trying to say, right?

What emotionally, thematically with this piece, why is it personal to you? You can use these tools to get away from that, or you can use them to dig deeper. Our wish for you is that you take Jill's book and have it in your arsenal to dig deeper and find out, illuminate what it is you're trying to do emotionally with your story.

And if you use it it should bring up some lava people. It should be like slightly uncomfortable to. force you to make choices as a storyteller and to force you to commit to things as a storyteller, even just for a version, even just for a writing exercise, yes, we are not prescriptive.

However, if you have a huge emotional pushback to the idea of starting a page on rewrite or just. Taking a worksheet and trying it out. My question is why? It's just a writing exercise. It might illuminate something for you. It might actually bring something up. So thank you so much for being here, Jill.

Just it was fun and it's a lot of information. It's poor Jill trying to get this out so fast. But her worksheet will be there. Her book.

Jill Chamberlain: First of all, thank you so much. You actually Summed it up really well that is the purpose of the book. It is about helping you figure out what is the story underneath all these plot details and character details that are flying around your head.

That's what I'm forcing people to do, is to think about what, and it is about helping you figure out what it is about and by boiling it down to these really essential elements. So thank you so much for summing that up. And I will say also, I do, we talked about it. Doing it beforehand. I know showrunner who actually uses it in post and people are using that way to shape and add things in ADR when they're like, Oh, we forgot the want, we forgot to make the full apparently.

Yeah.

Meg LeFauve: You use it in television too. Is it a different book or is it the same book?

Jill Chamberlain: Thank you for bringing that up. It is I do not have a book specifically for television. It works exactly the same. It works exactly the same, and it's per episode. Each episode is like a little mini feature film with a beginning, middle, and end.

I With a point and no return and a climax. I have a class on television and I work with a number of showrunners. Who use it for developing that. But I didn't, the book does not mention one word about television.

Meg LeFauve: It doesn't. That's why I'm so glad we brought it up because I'm actually working on it on on a feature, but I'm also working on a TV show and it's the TV show that I was like, Oh, I think it's a set up one that he's talking about.

So Jill, we ask everybody the same three questions. What brings you the most joy in your creative life? That could be as teaching and consulting, of course, is creative. It could be your own writing. What brings you the most joy?

Jill Chamberlain: But one of my favorite things is when I work with writers, whether it's through my class or individually and.

I'm able to help them crack their story, and I've had writers tell me, they've been working on something for 10 years, they couldn't figure out the right way, the right vehicle to make it work, or things, involved, I had a student who's gay, and is in Costa Rica, and grew up in a a Catholic family, and had to go through conversion therapy, and he was able to come out with a screenplay and it was incredibly satisfying and to see him be able to find a way to tell his story in a way that worked.

So it's very satisfying to me for that.

Lorien McKenna: So the second question is what pisses you off in your creative life?

Jill Chamberlain: What pisses me off when I see writers not putting in the work and particularly I see it when they're not, I think I'm particularly sensitive. It's one thing if you harm yourself, but I, in a workshop situation that they don't really pay attention when they are critiquing and helping other writers, because that's.

So important. And it's not only is it an obnoxious thing to do, it's also where you learn so much from critiquing and the importance of writing groups and working with other writers and people who are going to, you're going to come up with. And so that kind of selfish thinking that would probably piss me off the most.

Yeah, same. And

Savana Vagueiro da Fonseca: Jill if you could have a conversation with your younger self, what advice would you give yourself?

Jill Chamberlain: I think, I bet I'm probably not the only person to say this. I have no idea. But I love being in the no f*cks left to give. phase of my life. And I've spent way too much time worrying about what other people thought and how I came across that it was incredibly unproductive.

In fact, can put you into therapy and set you back. So I, I'm so glad I don't worry about that anymore. Fame.

Lorien McKenna: I am in the land of no f*cks, the f*ckery less land. Like I, I have no time. So I hear you. And yes, it is. I'm thinking about this question too. What would I tell my younger self? And it's like all these things.

And it's Oh my God, let go of the burden of. Of caring what people I don't even know and actually don't care about that much, like, why would I care? So yes, that's brilliant. I'm

Savana Vagueiro da Fonseca: very much looking forward to the promised land.

Lorien McKenna: Go there now. Come cross the border. Come on over.

Jill Chamberlain: You're welcome. Anytime. Yeah. Thank

Lorien McKenna: you so much, Jill. It's been really wonderful talking with you and yeah, thanks for being on the show. We feel really honored. Oh,

Jill Chamberlain: my pleasure. I'm the one who's honored. Both of you, all of you do so much for the community with this podcast and I really admire your work as writers.

So it's really been a thrill and an honor. I'm so happy to talk with you today.

Lorien McKenna: Thank you so much to Jill for joining us today. And if you want to check out her technique, the nutshell technique, you can head over to her website at jillchamberlain. com. And of course, if you want to get more TSL love, you can go to our Patreon where we do workshops and there's a community over there.

And of course our Facebook group. The screenwriting life, which is just this wonderful place where it's all about community. And thank you so much to Jeff and Savannah for producing today. And remember you are not alone and keep writing.

As collaborators and showrunners, Kat Likkel and John Hoberg know that shutting down ideas is never helpful. This was only emphasized when they joined Pixar's Elemental team as writers. Today we discuss how to collaborate well with others (and ourselves), how to bring our personal experience into our work, and duckboat. Yes, you read that right: duckboat.

Join Our Patreon: www.patreon.com/TheScreenwritingLife

TRANSCRIPT:

Meg: Hey everyone, welcome back to The Screenwriting Life. I'm Meg LeFauve.

Lorien: And I'm Lorien McKenna. And today we are thrilled to be welcoming writing partners, John Hoberg and Kat Likkel to discuss Disney and Pixar's Elemental as well as their impressive career as TV comedy writers and showrunners.

Meg: Kat and John's writing partnership spans over two decades, working on shows like Galavant, My Name is Earl, Better Off Ted, and Blackish.

Lorien: They're joining us today to talk about their career in TV, discuss the dynamics of working in a writing partnership, and of course their work on Elemental. But first,

Meg: Kat and John have agreed, because I've made them, to join our first segment, which is Adventures in Screenwriting, or what'd we do this week? So Lorien, you go first.

What'd you do this week?

Lorien: I have no idea. But what I'm working on is trying to notice the expectations I set on myself and, like, in terms of my goals or relationships or anything, really, all the things I have to do and notice it without judgment so that I can understand what my process is. So usually I'll be like, “Oh, my God, I ran out of time.”

Fill in. I'm X failure. And then it bottoms me out. And then the next day, I already feel like I'm in a deficit. But instead, I'm trying to work on noticing. Okay, I didn't plan that very effectively. Like yesterday, I got off an airplane from, you know, the Midwest. I was tired. My kid, take my kid to the doctor.

And then I realized, Well, she is going to her concert, she's going to need a new outfit, and she tween freaked out all over the mall. So by the time I got home at five o'clock, I was like, I'm not going to write for two hours today. That's not happening. I'm tween exhausted. So sort of noticing, why did I think I could do that?

Was I setting myself up for failure on purpose and then just sort of letting it go? Okay, what did I learn? On a travel day, I probably shouldn't schedule much. You'd think I would know this by now. But I didn't. I had bigger, I had some, I thought I was somebody else. So, You

Meg: and I always have bigger meals.

Yes. What is that phrase?

Lorien: My eyes are bigger than my –

Meg: – stomach. A plate is bigger. Something clever.

Lorien: So I'm trying to notice it without judgment, without immediately trying to fix or assess or analyze. Just like, okay, that happened. And then give myself a week to see what I'm actually doing in the course of a week, how much writing time I'm actually getting done, was my goal even realistic around my writing?

So it's really hard because, you know, I don't have anything due really. I am writing for myself right now. So it's it's confusing to not to judge myself. Like, I don't know what to do with all that extra space in my brain. Right. What? Wait, if I can't judge myself. Oh, and then I feel less awful.

It's so weird. Anyway, so that's what I'm working on. And the reason I'm working on this is because I have a group of writers I've brought together and I'm running an accountability workshop with them. And I realized the things that I'm teaching them are the things I have to be doing as well. So, you know, teaching always brings up all this stuff like, Oh, you got to do it too, dummy. So that's what I've been working on this week, trying not to feel awful.

Jeff: One thing I really like about that, Lorien quickly, because I feel like I'm taking away something about what you're saying is that's how we should approach our characters, right?

In a nonjudgmental kind of objective way, like, just let them speak to us and let their flaws feel meaningful on the page. And, you know, not always try to fix them. Because when we try to fix our characters too quickly, we prevent our stories from being interesting. So I love the like, kind of observational objectivity you're taking with yourself.

And I'm stealing that. I think that's really good.

Lorien: Well, it comes from my approach of working with my characters, because I think you have to love your characters no matter what. You have to get them to trust you so they show up for you so that you can tell their story. But it's so hard not to judge them.

And I thought, what if I applied that to myself? And I allowed myself to maybe, this is going to be really hard to say, loved myself no matter what. That's not real. That's impossible. That's not real. Sorry I said that. I feel deeply ashamed. Deeply ashamed. Lock me in the cupboard. Anyway, so yes. And then maybe I could apply that to other people too.

Oh God, I'm evolving. I don't like it. Okay. Someone else go. Someone else

Meg: go. Kat and John, how was your week?

John: Do you want me to start? Yeah, go ahead. It's actually a really fun week. We we've been working on a stage musical for a little bit and the producers flew us out to New York to work with our lyricist and the producers for a week and we've got like a downtown like space where you can hear other people like practicing for musicals and things and we have fun.

It's so, it's showbiz. It feels like showbiz, like people with leg warmers walking around.

Kat: I expect Gene Kelly to come in and,

Lorien: How many jazz hands do you see a day? A lot.

John: And I'm going to get back tomorrow, I think, just so I feel like I'm really in the moment. It's really cool. It's something we got bit by the musical bug when we worked on that show Galavant.

And this has been kind of a dream is to do a stage musical. And we're working with Glenn Slater, who's the lyricist from You know, he did School of Rock, he's Alan Menken's lyricist, and he just knows what he's talking about. And what is exciting and also really hard is, it's a different style of writing, and Lynn is an expert, and we're new at it, and so it's a lot of fun.

learning again. And it's kind of, it's scary and fun. Like having lunch, we turned in the first act and you know, you try to read between the lines on the emails you get beforehand. And so we went into lunch with the producer and, you know, and they were really happy with it, but you can tell it's like, yeah, it's a great first draft.

It's like, wait a minute, it's

Jeff: done.

John: So anyways, it's been really exciting. Yeah. Yeah.

Kat: For me, my writing week, aside from this, I'm not going to duplicate what he said. I got my first big set of notes on the book I just wrote. And so I'm walking around our hotel room, like, venting. The F word is coming out a lot.

Talking things. I'm talking about how dumb they are. Hi, if you're listening, you're not really dumb, but it's like, yeah. So I'm just like, I right now, as soon as this computer closes and we're doing something else, I'm going to go right back to talking about how dumb you're not done. They are not

Meg: so you're in the first stage of getting notes, which is f*ck you.

Kat: Yeah, well, I mean, I thought it was beyond that because this is like the second rewrite. I've gotten, you know, a couple of sets of notes from them already. So for me, this was, I thought this was a polish. I thought this was like, Hey, now we're going to all be on the same page. And I just got like,

John: so.

It's like we're two separate Muppets and I'm like, New York, and the cat's like raging.

Jeff: It's a really weird energy.

Kat: I need a scotch.

Meg: Well, that just tells me that writing is writing. Could be a novel. Could be a musical. It could be a script. Could be it doesn't matter because you're going to get those notes.

And either appreciate them and sing New York, or you're going to rage and need a scotch, right?

Lorien: I think that's so valuable to hear, because sometimes I think, what if I just wrote a book? And I imagine this, like, easy version of writing, right? I get to write a whole book. And or what if I go back to playwriting?

I just write a play, you know, but I forget that writing is writing. And there's always somebody who's going to give me notes. And it's always going to make me mad and then make me sad and then make me figure it out. So It it's all the same. There is no glamorous alternative. We just pick and execute.

John: It's, we're making the sausage and it's ugly when you make the

Kat: sausage. The best part of writing is when you're sitting alone in your room and you're just focused and you're doing it and you feel like you're flowing and it's just like, nothing can touch me, this is great, I feel like I'm on a magic carpet ride.

And then you crash. Yes.

Lorien: Or suddenly there's no carpet anymore and you're just falling through space.

Kat: There was never a carpet. There was never a

Lorien: carpet.

Meg: Never a carpet in the first place. You were in a sewer. You didn't even know it.

Lorien: Exactly. The matrix cord gets pulled out and you're just in the pod. Yeah.

Meg: But you guys have had a very long experience with writing that the magic carpet does come back, don't you think? I mean, it is a constant shift between magic carpet ride, no, we're in the sewer, magic carpet ride, sewer, until finally. You're like, oh my god, like I would think and you guys tell me as showrunners, you know, there's the show and we like it Like does that happen you the carpet comes back,

John: right?

I think we trust that it comes back now. I mean, a hundred percent trust that it will, you know, it will come back. I mean, the good thing about running a show and stuff is there's no time to worry because you're, there's, it's, you're so busy. It's so insanely busy and there is no. Well, I don't feel like writing today that you don't have time to kind of get caught up and worrying about it.

You just kind of have to do it. Actually, that's what I liked about and hated about the job. Yeah. Is that it took away any of that sort of, what do I think? What should I do? And it's like, you just got to act which. And you just got to trust that what you think in that moment is right. Hopefully, you know, more often than not, it is.

Yeah. And sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's terrible. Sometimes you get in the edit and like, wow, what was I thinking? But luckily, right? So you can fix it in the edit. I haven't

Meg: run a show, but I've had that experience at Pixar where you're like, This is totally, we know. No, yeah, no, that doesn't work at all.

Lorien: What happened to me in post is I was for sure we got a shot. So I spent like a lot of time digging through the edit, digging through all the dailies. We know we have that shot because that shot will fix all of this. And we never got that shot. Like I must have made it up on that day on set or something and when I don't know what happened to it, but it was there.

We got that shot.

Kat: And on set, anything can happen. It could be like you were getting ready to tell somebody about to get that shot and then somebody came up behind you, went. We have an actor who won't come out of their dressing room, you know, it's like and then you're Every all your plans are at the window.

Yes.

John: What's the thing? I love this thing. I'm probably gonna get it wrong there's the movie you plan to shoot the movie You thought you shot and then you're left with the movie you actually shot Yeah, that was always the thing that was a little shocking, when running a show And it was a thing that would keep you up every night like after you've, you wrapped, it's like, what did we actually shoot?

Sometimes you shot what you thought, but usually you didn't a hundred percent.

Lorien: And surprisingly at Pixar, even though we had absolute control over every single shot, it's still, there were moments when that would still happen. Be like, why didn't that? We literally can control anything we see and hear, and yet it's still not the thing I thought we did.

Great. I'm sure you both had that experience. All three of you had that experience.

John: So. That was such a unique experience. I mean, it really was. I'm so glad we did it.

Meg: Well, I'll just quickly do my week and we'll jump into it and well, first I listened to this amazing episode of the hidden brain all about our pleasure, dopamine addiction in our brain because of our current modern world and how pleasure and pain is a seesaw in your brain.

And if the higher the pleasure goes, the little kind of neuron gremlins will jump on the pain part. And try to get you back even and and how you can't literally think you're going to have a life of pleasure all the time because your brain literally will not let you do that. It has to balance out with some kind of quote unquote pain.

I exercise for me or whatever, like you don't want to get out of bed or whatever that pain could be. It doesn't have to be physical pain. It could be existential pain, whatever, and I was like, oh, well, and then they were talking about how. To have this in your life. So, you know, make, you know, do exercise in the morning.

Get it out of the way. Get a lot of gremlins on the one side of the seesaw and your brain will. Start to balance out the other side. And I was like, well, we're writers. So, like, we do, that's all we do all day long is gremlin jumping on both sides of the cinema. We have a lifetime

Lorien: gremlin tea party.

Right? It's like,

Meg: come on in. It literally is like, carpet, I'm on a magic carpet. No, I'm in a sewer. This is terrible. Pain. Carpet. I mean, I mean, I just think we have a very special seesaw in our head because we work it out so much as writers. But it's a great episode if you guys, anybody wants to listen.

And then just in terms of the writing process, my husband and I are writing together a passion project. And we just had, which I thought speaks to you guys because you guys are collaborators as well. Like, we had this weird conversation. It's not an argument, but kind of... Talk about wires crossed where we were talking about the same character and yet somehow we weren't and why Are we disagreeing?

Are we together? No, he would do that, but he would do that. I would be like he's a supporting character why would we spend all that time doing that blah blah blah blah and finally I was like, wait a minute Who's in your head? And he was like, somebody, I can't remember, it was like Cary Elwes. And I was like no, it's Kyle Chandler.

Like, it was just the guy from, like, we had completely this assumption in our head of who this person was. And it really helps to just pick an actor or a face or something so that as a team... We're not even actually disagreeing on in a bad way, it's like, oh, wait we, it was so clarifying for this supporting character, and maybe it's because it's a supporting character, you don't ever think about it, but they're gonna, they're supporting, they have to actually impact the plot, so it was important so that was just an interesting kind of collaboration moment in writing, which I'm really excited to talk to you guys about collaboration

John: It's just don't collaborate with a spouse, that's all I would

Meg: say.

No, which I'm doing, thank you. I know why

Kat: I, why

Meg: literally Joe said to me, man, we're spending a lot of time together.

Jeff: Yeah, I've been married 24

John: years. I feel like we should get credit for 50 years. Like we've spent so much time together. I don't think we're ever further than like 15 feet from each other.

Usually

Well,

Lorien: I've been married for 23 years and I still feel like I should get credit for 50 even though we don't write together. That's a long f*cking time.

Meg: It is, it's like dog years. I mean, I love being married,

Lorien: but. Yeah, same. But at the same time, always. Always, you know, so we all get credit. But yes, you guys have a particularly odd for me.

I can't imagine working with my husband. Like he, he worked at Pixar for a little bit while I work there too. And I would see him and I'd be like, just pretend we don't know each other walking. This is my space. You showed up. Great. You're here. I love it. I love that you're happy, but like stay over there. I got stuff to do.

Meg: I think that still happens. I mean, we're writing together, but there's moments I'm like, you know what? I just need my space. I just need to leave and go write this. And does that not happen for you guys?

Jeff: Yeah, we have our separate space.

John: Like we, I know a lot of couples are like, well, we have to have dinner together every night.

And there's sort of this because they've been at work apart from each other, but we're very good at I'm having our own space and like we have a second place that we go to. And sometimes one of us will just be like, you know what, I'm going to go up and I'm going to go to Solvang for, you know, a couple of days.

And, you know, or do you want to come? And if the other person doesn't want to, we're fine with that. I think it's because we banked those 50 years that, but it, you know, it really works to have that time alone. And we actually, this is kind of going to sound strange, but we drive separately everywhere.

Like if we go to meetings, even going to Solvang, if we're going for the same time, we always drive separately. And I think it's just giving us that little bit of, you know, our own place. And

Kat: you have a getaway option. Yeah, I think every couple needs their own private mental space that they can go to that they don't have to constantly be sharing it, particularly when you're writing together, you're so enmeshed in each other's thoughts and that you've got to have that time to break away.

Otherwise you will just, you'll go mad,

John: you know, well, we had a rule when we first started, the rule was, yeah. Because we would, you know, we would talk, you know, you talk about work, you know, with people you work with, we would just talk shop all the time. And we finally had a rule when we started working on shows, it's like we couldn't talk about work anymore once we got out of the car.

And we'd sit in the car sometimes for two hours talking about work. We really held to it because it, otherwise it just sort of, there were no boundaries anymore.

Kat: It bleeds over and takes over your entire life. Yeah. I feel like

Lorien: that's such a great idea, like with parenting, like with any sort of collaborative project you have, even with friends, you know, Meg and I have written projects together too.

And like there comes a part or even with this podcast, right? Like sometimes we have to go spend time together just as friends. We're not going to talk about writing. We're not going to talk about the podcast. We're just going to go hang out. And I just think in any relationships, it's so important to do that so that you remember your friendship, your partnership, whatever, isn't just all about.

The one thing. This is great. I'm getting all this marriage advice. The biggest thing I've got, though, is that I need a place in solving that I can just say, Hey, do you want to come? I hope not. I'm going to go. Okay. Bye. And just take off for three days. Like, that sounds dreamy

John: for three weeks. What's going on

Kat: right?

Give us a call. We'll give you the key to the guest house. I

Lorien: love it. I'm great. I seriously am calling you out for this.

Meg: Like, hi. I do have a question. Do you guys literally write? Like, do you put a page up and write together on the page? Or do you block it out? And then he, you know, somebody takes a piece of it and somebody takes a piece of it.

And then you come back together. How do you actually collaborate as writers?

John: We've tried it all and there were lots of fights early on when we tried to write like the actual script together, the first draft of it. And what we finally came to is we would outline like very detailed outlines even where you might have an exchange that says, she says this, he says this, but we would agree on the outline and.

Then the rule was you're not allowed to freelance at all when we go to script and we'd split up scenes and it might just be like, I have, I like this scene. I like this scene. But what we discovered is you can't then just go on a flight of fancy. And it's like, if you do that, you start to get invested on your flight of fancy.

And now you've brought it back. And then we would fight. So the idea would be you bring back this draft that is the outline exactly. And then now you can both put it on the screen and be like, man, this outline was terrible, but it's no longer us anymore. It's that outline was terrible. And then we go through and rewrite this terrible outline that somebody wrote into a script.

And that seems to work best. Yeah. And

Kat: then, and by the way, I used to be the flight of fancy person. John's being very, I would go off and then I would like have an idea and just run with it. And it's like, I work in I kind of tend to work in thought bubbles, like, Oh, you know, and then it goes down. And so I would put all this time into the section I was writing and then I would hand it in to John and he, yeah.

It would just be, it would have affected stuff that he was writing, you know, and so we had to make a hard and fast rule. But then when we team up together, we could talk about those thought bubbles. You know, those extra... Were

Meg: you writing your thought bubbles like on a different document or something so that you could keep track of it?

Or did you have the brain that you were just keeping track of it?

Kat: I will, I would, now I'll make a note. I'll make a note of it and, you know, and keep it. And you know, so that we can talk about it later, but it's like, those two things have to be very separate because once it's written on the page that we're like, eventually going to be turning in, it's like, no that's in there.

Now that's just, it's, I'm sorry. It's down there. There's no backspace,

John: but I feel like you need to play. You have to play. And I think What it was is we were playing separately until we made this rule and now we're playing together like so It's probably a terrible boring draft now We get to run off on these crazy little flights of fancy But we're doing it together because we're both finding that part fun And so now it's like all bets are off we can run anywhere we want because it's us as a team doing it But there's something so daunting about sitting there with a blank page and then trying to argue over how to phrase the slug

Meg: line.

Yeah, no. That's horrible to me.

Lorien: When you write individually on your own stuff, do you all, do you do that too? Do you outline, write the boring draft or the brilliant draft, whatever it is, and then go from there? Or do you do, how do you guys differently approach it when you're writing by yourselves?

What's writing by

John: yourself? Ah,

Lorien: okay. I don't understand. Answered.

John: I do, I think I love an outline. I love an outline. And then just working off of that. But

Kat: what I do like what I did with my book is I how do I do this? Came up with my idea and then I spend a lot of time cleaning house.

Going to get coffee and just having little things come to my head that I write down and sometimes it would be a page or a couple of pages. Sometimes it would just be a paragraph. Sometimes it would be a note. Hey, think about this. And then eventually I'll compile all those things together. I was like, for my book, I probably, the book is, I don't know, 200 and It's 20 pages long.

I think I probably have 500 pages in my computer and a lot of it is just stream of consciousness kind of whatever that eventually I picked I plucked this out of it. I plucked that out of it. I plucked that out of it. Those were the good thoughts and the rest of it was just the stuff that got me to those thoughts.

So I'll spend a lot of time writing all that stuff down. This is the long way of saying I spent a lot of time writing that stuff down and then winnow it down. And then that's what like he'll see, or that's what will go into my draft. One,

Meg: a couple other questions on collaboration before we jump over to elemental. So if you're in a. A writer's room and you're show running, how does that teamwork now? Because is it the same thing? It's, you're getting to outline and how do you, if you have disagreements in front of other people or do you have any rules in terms of being in that room?

John: You know,

Jeff: what

John: We learned from a lot of the best showrunners in comedy between Victor Fresco, Greg Garcia, Dan Fogelman, and we would kind of pick up some of the things that they would do. And Dan Fogelman, we really learned a lot from because he would sort of sit there and let the room talk out.

Stuff a lot of times and see where it wanted to go. And then he would be there and he would always throw in ideas and we always throw in ideas. But part of your job is like, you have an idea of where you want it to go, but now you just let the room pitch on it. Cause they may come up with something even better.

But you also have to be pretty decisive about where you want the room to go. Otherwise it just bleeds out. And so we would usually start every morning, just the two of us. And we learned this from these showrunners. Coming in with a really clear plan of here's what we're going to do. Here's what we want and let the room know that we want to get through breaking the first half by lunch.

And so now we're on the same page and we probably already talked out what we think it should be in some form. And so we kind of have a path of what makes the most sense. So that way it's like you're getting, I think you're getting the most out of your staff because a staff that doesn't know what you're looking for is that's your problem.

And it's not going to be a very helpful staff. Well, and

Kat: once they know what you're looking for, they can also they'll, you know, you get them focused to pitch on those kinds of things, but also. Always listen for that off idea, that thing that you that off piece thing and we've tried. I used to me particularly, I would come into the room with like, it's going to be this.

It's going to be this. It's going to be this because this is what it is in my head. And and, and I've learned, I learned a lot more to listen to the offbeat idea, which I should know because I'm the one in the writer's room when I'm not running it. I'm the one in the writer's room who's pulling stuff in from left field.

Usually that's something that may not end up in the script, but maybe spark something else. But when I was sitting in the driver's seat or in the cop chair, I I would shut that down and other people. And so I had to learn to. Let all of that run and let people let your team talk stuff out you and take from them and harvest from them the things that really work.

Harvest, I know it sounds, I'm a user. Your room sounds

Lorien: exciting.

John: Yeah, everybody's tied to a chair and we harvest there. Yeah, there's like a

Lorien: ritual after where, you know, you

Meg: have to. But I think everything you're saying is kind of what's happens in all of our heads. Do you know what I mean? You could be a feature writer and your intellect brain comes in and goes, and today we're doing this and this is our outline.

And this little voice goes, but what about this? Like you had that idea in the shower and that's kind of cool. And you're like, no, we're not doing that. Like I do think it's just, it all just comes out of your head. And it's suddenly in the room was what it sounds like to me. At least in my

Kat: head. I

Jeff: don't know.

And

John: then the danger when you first start doing it, when you have to run a room, there's a moment of panic where it's like, this is like, we call it balloons where it's like you're holding a bunch of balloons and all of a sudden like you let go and balloons are floating away everywhere. And you're like trying to grab the balloon.

Kat: I had a story. We had a story. I know we did.

Jeff: And you want to be like, stop off

John: roading. Let's get back on the path. But then that's insecurity, you know? And it's like, okay, you know what? We knew what the path was at the beginning that we liked. You got to just chill out and let it kind of roll.

Meg: And what's your advice to emerging writers who want to get in that room and be a writer at that table?

Like, in terms of writers that you think, you know, mistakes you've seen or you've done or good

John: things. You know, I think the job of every writer on a staff, from staff writer to co executive producer is to help the showrunner try to row in the direction they're wanting to row and try to help them find that direction.

The upper level writers should be... saying, well, here's what I think. And they can push back a little bit more. They've got the experience, but for, I think emerging writers in your first few jobs, but I really do think it goes all the way up until it's your own show, you want to be the one to help the show runner find what they want.

Like if the show runner comes in and it's like, I want this to be an underwater ballet this week and everyone in the room, it's easy. Anybody could say that's, that doesn't make any sense. This isn't an underwater show. There's no music. Be the person who tries to figure out how to make that work. And if you're that, you will not get fired.

People want that around the person who tries to help you see your vision through. And that's what we started doing early. Like, and it's fun. It's actually fun to try to figure out how to make something work. That might not work.

Kat: Right. I had one moment where we were breaking it a story.

I'd been put in charge of a room and we're heading to, we had a bump towards the end of the story. Like it was a sitcom. So it was a bump in the final act and one of the writers and he was a younger guy who was not experienced in the room and he pitched a fix that meant going back to page one and rewriting the entire thing.

And I, he pitched it out and I was like, so you want us to go back to page five. And it's like, and I walked him through the whole thing and I was, I have to say I was probably a little harsher than I should have been because it was like four days of work. It was four days of work that he was just like unthreading.

And it was like, literally, really, you want us to go back to act one and do this. So that we now have to rewrite everything after that rather than let's work on this moment here because we know we can find a fix.

Lorien: Okay, but I have to ask you a question. That's what Pixar was. That's Pixar, right? I saw that

Meg: Over and over.

I'm saying the exact same thing. Like, we had somebody on Inside Out 1. Who is a genius and I think is amazing, but he would listen after and it was like six hours in the room and you're exhausted and you're like, we have something we have chiseled this out of our souls and worry and nothingness. And he would go, Are we in the mind and I'd be like no, don't you dare.

And then, but Pete really loved that he loved. allowing any curveball to come in because he just, you know, and because it's features, it's very different, right? You're not on a TV schedule, right? Bop. How was that for you guys? What's the Pixar process and how does it, that was your experience of it?

John: I remember on the first few days, because there's these rules, like, if you're a staff writer on television and you pitch problems without a positive solution, you can get, you know, you do that three times, they're not going to want you in the room anymore. And especially, like, support staff do not pull the legs out from underneath the story.

And I remember, like, on day three, it's that feeling where you have a piece of coal and a little bit of, like, like, straw and you're blowing on it, like what you're talking about, it's like, this is going to be a fire. And I remember one of the support staff just literally just stepped on it. It's like, that doesn't work because of this.

And our director was getting into the idea a little bit. And I just remember us like, what just happened? Like, that doesn't

Jeff: happen.

Kat: And then it killed

Jeff: it. Yeah. And it was like, wow. So that was different, but

John: we kind of adjust. I think we adjusted to it a little bit when we got the game, which is, okay, let's just try another path.

And but it was an adjustment, but I feel like television rooms. Kind of were the perfect I mean, we worked our way up from Staff Writer through every level, and so, we'd kind of seen it all before in different ways, and so I think that really helped. It was like we went through a training ground for

Meg: Pixar.

Yeah, I mean, I think that in any room, you're gonna get naysayers, or people who are really trying to help, and naysayers isn't even the right word. They're really trying to help by saying, I'm nervous, that doesn't work. Because I can see you're gonna walk into a wall, right? And I do think it takes, it just takes experience to have the solution, right?

Listen, Andrew Stanton was on this show, and he was like, Nobody tell me what doesn't work unless you have a solution! Like, this is part of any creative process that's a group process, right? So I don't think it's special to Pixar, even. So, you have said about Pixar development, how character based it is?

And that in television it can be more plot based. How did you guys find that? Did you love it? Did you find as writers you had to shift? Or was it what was the experience of moving so character? And I would assume thematically based.

John: Yeah.

Jeff: I feel like when we first got

John: there, the, you know, the movie was in a sort of that iterative stage where it I think the big struggle with Elemental was you know, there was this question early on and Meg, you were in a lot, so many of these meetings, is it a romantic comedy or is it a family story with whether it's trauma or whatever?

And it was like, How do you find those two things? So the movie started to feel like two different movies because it's like the first attempt at a solution where the first half is a romance and the second half becomes more about family. And I honestly, I think we came in with the attitude of this needs a little plot.

It's, it doesn't have an I want that goes all the way to the very end. It has an I want that gets halfway through and then it becomes a new I want. Right? And so I, and we talked to Pete a lot about this in the beginning. Like, how do we. Is there a, we always call it the moonshot goal, that it's like, it's the big one that gets all the way to the end.

And I think for us, I think it was helpful to have a couple people who were used to you have the characters in television that are established and now you've got to find where I want and what's the obstacle. And so we kind of came in with a lot of that attitude I think at the beginning. And and I think it was helpful, but it also, you know, I mean, it can lead you slightly into directions where you aren't going after just character drive, which to me was the most exciting thing to start to learn.

I feel like we went to graduate school, by the way, in writing, at being at Pixar. It was spectacular. I say

Lorien: the same thing. Yeah. I went to, I got my MFA in playwriting, and then I showed up at Pixar, and I was like, Oh, structure.

John: Right, the structure is coming from the characters I want and the obstacles to that, versus it's a plot you're overlaying to put this character through.

And and I think that was, it was interesting to have that shift.

Jeff: I find that often in my feature writing that There is an I want that kind of deflates at the midpoint. Would you mind elaborating a little bit specifically on that? Because I think it's like really valuable and I see it happening in my own writing.

Meg: And I haven't It's very common too. It's very common to in early drafts. How did you guys, how do you deal with that? If it's happening or how do you try to make it not happen?

John: Well, can And can we speak specifically about Elemental? Is that helpful? I think the biggest thing with Elemental, finally finding it, was, because it was this constant balance of is it romantic comedy or is it, you know, and it was the I want, what's Ember's I want?

And there was an early version where she knew she wanted to leave the city. Almost like a Disney princess at the beginning, singing about I want to leave this town. And that felt very young. I remember Pete was like that's not, The experience that I had it, I didn't realize the burdens and things like that until I was in my mid twenties.

And so we started toying with like, I want to take over this shop. Right. But that's what we started to discover is that's a very intellectual want in a lot of ways.

Jeff: And so.

John: And it also kind of fizzled out because when you had this romantic comedy, it's like, okay, do I want the shop or not? And there's love.

And so we finally kind of landed on, I want to be a good daughter. Like, that's what I want. That's programmed into Ember at the very beginning of this thing. And I think the reason that Bao works at the end of that movie is because that's, she finally gets the, you're a good daughter moment at the end. So that's what I would say.

If it fizzles out in the middle, it's probably not a big enough goal or it's not a deep enough. Deep enough. It's not something it's almost like find the thing that they don't want to deal with and make it the hardest possible thing to pull out of them. And to us, it's always a sign like we're not digging deep enough if it feels solvable halfway through the thing.

Kat: And I think one of the ways we eventually got to that was because like John said, we did go through the. I want to take over the shop. You know, kind of is that was as John and I always call it the house number that sort of the simple goal that you're going for.

I'm looking for that house number. And and then it becomes discussions to, to, you've got to question. We started to question. And I think with, when you're looking at anybody's goal, it's like, why do they want that? What does that mean to them? What is the deeper drive behind it? It's not just, I want to be a good daughter.

It's all about how does she feel about herself? What does she feel? She owes her father, you know, all of those things. You've got to look at everything. You've got to always ask the question, why, when you think you found the simple goal. The next question is, but why that goal, and you got to keep you just got to keep on peeling it until you get to the center thing that.

Almost has no words. It's that thing that you feel so deeply that it almost doesn't have words. And I think for Ember, it was so deep in her and she didn't have the words for it. I want to be a good daughter. I want to be a good daughter to my dad. And I want to make him happy. And I want to fulfill that thing in him rather than fulfilling something in herself.

Jeff: Do you remember yeah. And it feels like

John: so many of those stories, it's like people have all these intellectual barriers they've put up their lives normal somehow. And then you're kind of, your job is to just rip them away from that person until it there's Ember at the end of that movie sitting on the bridge.

And Meg, I remember we discussed this and it's like, how do we get to the gorilla emotion of that, where there's no longer words, just want to scream and throw something. And if you're not there. Yet, then that's where you got to get, I think, is like to the point where you can do is scream because that is, it's so raw versus it's intellectual or it's something you've put up in front

Meg: of yourself.

And it's so the way you get down into the human condition. That's why the audiences can relate to it no matter where they are, how old they are. It doesn't matter because it's just about being human. And so much of what you're talking about, too, is trying to dig down to that so that. The audience can want it too, right?

Like, so many times, be it Pixar or wherever, you're like, she wants to be class president. She wants a shop. And you do those many drafts trying to make that emotional. But it's just not emotional. Because, like you said, what does that mean for her? What does being class president mean for this? person because that's going to be the kind of common human thing that we're all like, yeah, now I want you to be class president.

So I do. I totally agree. And it is so much of the work. And you're saying, right, that's also where then the plot comes out of that.

John: Yes. Yeah. I think that's, I don't know. I feel like it is that what do I want? You're trying to solve. You're trying to solve this deeper want and she, and you know, you may not, you know, you want to be a good daughter.

So now you're going to the extreme ends of the earth to try to preserve that. And in Ember's case, it's, I want to be a good daughter, but there's always that, but, and the, but is you know, to be a good daughter means take over the shop, but I have this temper. And then the temper around the midpoint is revealed to be actually, it's her telling her she doesn't want to run the shop.

So now it's become a deeper, more active. Obstacle, but it is why it's the plot because every bit of that plot is I want to be a good daughter in some form all the way, you know, to the end. Now, I know

Meg: that this was a very personal movie to Pete, so can you guys talk about coming in and like you said, you need to row in the direction the director is.

You know, put the boat, but I think as a writer, it also, you have to find what's personal to you about it, meaning that human thing in order to write it. How did you guys thread that needle in terms of writing this film for Pete and yet having to find what was meaningful to you guys?

John: So, okay. So this whole thing of am I a good daughter?

Right. I want to take over this thing. Bizarrely. I had a grandfather was a fighter pilot. I was expected to be the grandkid to go into the air force academy and all this other stuff. And then I became a hippie stoner at one point and then decided not to do that. And he forever, he lived to be 103. And we became really good friends later, but it was bad for about six years.

And even at a hundred he took a dig at me. He's like, I'd hate to go to my grave without flying a high performance fighter.

Jeff: But I

John: could really relate to this sense and it's as far

Jeff: from Pete's.

John: specifics as possible, but it's the exact same emotional thing to lock into, which is I let down someone that I greatly loved and admired because I wasn't that person.

And so for me, that's how I was able to lock in. Yeah.

Kat: Well, for me I'm in, I didn't have a fighter pilot grandfather. But my family is an immigrant family. I'm second generation American Dutch. Nobody, Dutch are not the glamorous sort of the glamorous immigrants. We came with wooden shoes and white bread.

But but it was a, there's a culture there that was very much, in my family at least cannot speak for all Dutch people across the world, but in my family, it was very much, you live a very practical life. You you look for that practical job that is going to support your family. You know, you make sure there's food on the table.

You make sure your bills are paid. You make sure, you know, all of these very, like for me, it felt like very in closing. Things and you weren't allowed

John: to read the color comic.

Kat: Yeah. Oh, yeah. And it was a very Dutch Christian reform. Is a kind of where that I grew up in is it is can be very beautiful.

Very conservative religion. So I was not allowed to read the colored comics on Sunday. I had to wait until Monday. The thought of being like actors were like that, there's something really sinful there. And it was like, you were just meant to stick to the practical goals. And there was a lot of stuff that was forbidden and I was very much, I remember in my Sunday school class, always asking the question, why.

to our pastor. It's like, why is this? Why is this? I became the why girl. It was like, very annoying to everybody. And and so it's like, I understand. Dude, I had a, I didn't understand what my own want was for a long time until I finally realized I had this creative thing inside of me and I thought I wanted to act.

And so that was where all my first stuff was. And I kept it really quiet because in my family actors, that's a sinful thing. It's like actors are like, you know, don't, you don't want an actor in the family. And so I never told anybody about it. And finally, I do remember one day in Sunday school our minister actually asked us all what we wanted to do.

And I very bravely, I was terrified. I finally said, I think I want to be an actor. And he paused for a second and he said, good, the world needs more Christian actors.

Meg: Okay. It's something that's something. Then

Lorien: there's a stone to lay down there. It was,

Kat: you know, but it was like Ember. I think that I want inside of me was very strong and it leads you, it, it leads you where you need to go. If you listen to

Jeff: it. I think a lot of it

John: was getting in hearing Pete's story and then finding those things you relate to and I think that's how you do.

That's how you do it on a television show, which is what is this person trying to say the leader of this and if it's a human story, it is a human being who has this desire. You can relate in some form, and it's finding that thing that you relate to and going all in on relating to it. I think that's where we really connected.

Yeah.

Lorien: So in the story, there isn't really a clear personified villain, right, which is usually what you get to in real life. We sort of butt up against that, like kind of what you guys are talking about. And so how did you navigate that story wise, plot wise, her emotional journey through? Right. I want to be a good daughter.

What's the villain to that?

John: You know, it's funny because we had in the first version we did, it was almost a Chinatown storyline. Meg, I think you saw it where it's like Wade's mother was a villain. Yeah. They were going to blast through Firetown with a water gun. I was

Lorien: expecting her to be the villain.

Right. When we were about to meet her, I was like, okay, Here it comes, you know, not because I wanted it or needed it just because that it was just felt set up that way a little bit. And I was really happy when it wasn't. I was like, Oh, delightful. You know, like, Oh, I loved it.

Jeff: I, you know, and I think one of the things also is there,

John: there's a place where Bernie and I think they tried it out a few times as they needed to, where Bernie was the antagonist and you've got to try that on and.

You know, and it was funny. I think we learned a lot from having the villain with Wade's mom, where it was like, this feels like it's a love story. And can we do Bernie? Cause he was a lovely guy in that version for the kind of the first time they were at Ember and Bernie Warren at each other's heads.

And we all found out, wow, we really like that. We like where Bernie is and attacking Ember or she, he's not the antagonist. And then there was this discussion of like, do we, what if we don't have that? Cause it feels like the simpler way to go is Bernie is going to be actively against her. And in some ways, I guess he's the antagonist because the expectations he's putting on her are what Are in the way, but he's almost like a benevolent jailer in some ways.

And I think that's, was a lot of work had to be done to make that actually feel like tension and feel compelling. Yeah, but it was, I think it was a lot of the tricks of the last three. Screenings was how do we make that work?

Lorien: Yeah, I love what you're saying about trying stuff on, right? You gotta go down that path and down that path.

Like what you said earlier about, well, that might not work, but let's go down a different path, right? So you have all these options

Meg: open. Well, you're trying to make one thing work and you realize, well, that doesn't, but we figured out this. And I just want our emerging writers to hear, that's why you're writing many drafts, you know?

It's not why you're, to have this expectation that you're just gonna write it is not real.

Kat: Well, in writing is free. It's like, honestly, sitting down and writing is free. We had a guy that we worked with who it's like you'd go down a pathway and he'd say or you'd pitch something. He's like, let's put on that sweater and see if it itches.

It was like, Oh, please.

Jeff: But it's a, it's not a bad saying. It's not a bad

Kat: saying, but it's like you've got to be willing to go down those pathways because those pathways will teach you something. Either give you be a very clear nope, noping out of this, or like, you know, that's not complete.

That brings me something, but not everything. What else do I need? Or like, boom, that's it. You know, you've got to be willing to try pathway after pathway before you find the right one. It's in

John: a way it's embracing failure, which is so hard to do. It's like, how do you embrace that? A lot of these paths are going to fail and that's part of it.

You learn more from failing than you learn from succeeding, you know, truly. And you know, it's funny. I remember pretty early in our career, we, Cat and I started playing. This song, the United President's United States of America song, We're Not Gonna Make It. Do you know that song? Before every pitch we would go into, we'd just sing it in the car at the top of our lungs.

And the lyrics are all about how we're gonna fail. We could never possibly make it as a band. And we had decided early on, this job is about taking chances and a lot of those chances will fail. And I think that is advice both for the career, just embrace it. It's part of it. It's why a lot of writers like baseball, because if you're batting 300, you're a great baseball player.

Like comedy writers. If you're hitting 300 in the comedy room, you're doing pretty good. Three out of 10 are hitting. And I think it's embracing failure on the page too. It's because you're going to learn more from that than you're going to learn from getting it right sometimes.

Lorien: So how do you manage that?

Writing is free, but there's also this constant urgency to get it done, to figure it out, right? You do have deadlines, you know, there's the screening coming up, or the pages are due for the session, you know, for the shoot tomorrow, and also as we age, as we get older. And so how do you, what tricks do you use to manage that, right?

Yes, this is probably not going to work, obviously, right? We're just, we're going to fail. We're going in for the big risk. We're going to fail so that you don't. I don't know if that's quite what you were saying, but that's what I say. I'm going to jump off the bridge. I might as well just jump off the bridge wearing a feather boa and pantaloons, you know, shooting water

Kat: guns.

John: I think when we jump off the bridge with pantaloons and water guns, we think it's the right direction.

Jeff: Well, obviously,

Lorien: I mean, why else wouldn't you do it? But they'd be like, and I'm going to add a hat. Yeah, but you know,

Kat: so

John: it's somewhat I feel like I heard Andrew Stanton say this is it's you're gonna make a lot of mistakes to get it done fast in some ways, as he said that.

And I think that's been our attitude also, which is we will do our draft. So if we're sent off on script to write, you know, on staff, we have an episode due. We'll write the first draft of that thing the day one and it will be horrible and it but we will get it through it and it's awful. And that allows us that little window of time.

So now that we can, you know, kind of try stuff. Yeah. Is that an answer?

Lorien: Yeah. And so for a writer who might be what they call writer's block, right, which is not something I. Like to agree with is a thing that exists, like I can't write. I don't want to write. I don't know. I'm afraid to write. Just sitting down and writing that thing sort of will save you time in the long run.

Whereas if you spend a week being afraid to sit down and write it for all the reasons, that's when you run out of

Meg: time. Yeah, absolutely. I just, my son's going through this right now on something he's supposed to write for school and I spoke to a young filmmaker who's been working on something for years and I was like, you just got to write this.

You just, and it's kind of both of them were like, but I don't know this. And I don't know this in the audience. And this person said this and this person said that, and this person said it needs to be this. And it's just like, just write it as badly as you can just literally just let it suck. And people just, it's such a block.

And I would assume that when you're in a TV room, I know at Pixar, sometimes tough sh*t, like it's do like, you don't get to do that. Like it does train your brain that you don't die when it's terrible. It doesn't feel great, but you don't die. What's your

John: experience? There is no, like, we couldn't think of anything if you're on staff.

There's no, like, oh, well, I just couldn't think of anything. It's like, think of something. It may be the

Jeff: worst thing in the world. Can

Lorien: you imagine? Can you imagine being in a room and saying, I couldn't come up with anything.

John: Like, great, we'll get someone who can. Thank you. Yeah,

Kat: exactly. I don't feel like it today.

There is no, I don't feel like it today. And, but I do think you just sometimes you have to sit down and say, I'm just going to write some sh*t. I'm just gonna write some sh*t and it's just like and it's gonna be sh*tty and but you usually find One sentence in there that you oh, did I just put those words together that's kind of cool Can I build on that or did it lead me somewhere?

I didn't expect to go that inspires me for something else or it's all just sh*t Now I've gotten that off my plate and now let me try this again.

John: There's this Neil Simon book, is that the one wake me when it's funny? I think maybe, but it's Neil Simon's and I remember he talks about writer's block and he says writer's block isn't having no ideas.

It's having too many ideas and no confidence to choose one of them. And so I guess what we're saying is that's your problem. If you're not writing is there's too many ideas and you don't have the confidence. So start whittling them away. Just grab one, try it. And then now, you know, that's not it. Throw it out.

And it's a way of kind of breaking through that. I think.

Meg: And I'm having that, I've had that experience with my husband collaborating on this project where, even just yesterday, he was like, What if we did this? And I was like no! But I know he's gonna pitch it for the rest of the day. And I, and it's gonna be quicker just to, you know, move the outline page over here and be like okay, if we did this crazy thing, Which is crazy.

What would it be? And we just started banging it out. Bang. And yes, it didn't work. But we did find something. He felt heard. We tried it. Like for collaboration too. I would think you got to try it. Even if it's feeling not good to one of you. Do you look at there? You guys can't see them.

But they're both laughing and looking at each other. So I'm interested to see what's going to happen

John: right now. We had this thing that we figured out because we used to battle over which way to go, like you're talking about. And then sometimes we just wouldn't have time. And then we came up with this thing that was the third way.

It sounds all very like, you know, yoga, like retreaty kind of talk, but the Matrix . But it was like if the, we argue a little bit and if we can't agree on one or the other, we literally have to come up with a third way and it can't be. My way, but 10% different or yours, it has to be completely different.

And right away, you discover if someone's going to be like you, I don't want to go over the third way. You care more about it than I do. Let's just do your way or you can do this third way. It works fantastic. And I think that's how we resolved all that is it's like third way. And truly someone will just be like, I don't want a third way.

We'll just, let's just do yours.

Lorien: It's like a threat. Third way. Get on board. Or third way, and that's going to be a lot harder and take a lot longer. But I think it's such a great option because it could be the answer.

Kat: Yeah, it really could be. It's

John: in that third ways, honestly, is where we've come up with some of the craziest sh*t you've ever seen that we put that we've loved.

Kat: Yeah, that we've ended up really loving.

Lorien: So how would you suggest somebody on their own do that? Where, okay, I tried this, ugh, I tried this, ugh, okay, I gotta come up with more ideas. But then you have to let go of those ideas one and two without dragging any legacy things into the third way. By yourself, that sounds really hard.

You know, because I'm always trying to build on things. Maybe I'm just coming up with an excuse not to write this afternoon? I don't know. Like, I'm very complicated, but I'm not judging.

Jeff: We have this thing where we

John: We'll save a file as like crazy try. Right. And then now that crazy truck, cause you have the other version and now this is just, this is like Looney tunes.

We're just going to try something completely off the rails and now it's in a different document and somehow it feels like it's not destructive. And I think. It's safe.

Jeff: Right. It's a crazy try,

Kat: guys. It's a crazy try. You can do whatever you want. You could, you know, they could suddenly break out into, you know, a p*rn movie in the middle of your script, you know, but it's not in the paper you're going to be turning into anybody.

John: No, that's the p*rn try. We always do

Jeff: the

Kat: p*rn try. I'm sorry. I confused that with the p*rn try.

Lorien: Did you say the p*rn try? Yes. I mean, that's cool. Whatever you need to do to get through to the draft .

Meg: Oh

Lorien: my God, that's amazing. No, I really, I do that. Yeah. I have like so many files that iterate through the day so that I can feel like I have something that might work.

Kat: And then the important thing about that though is I am terrible at organization, so organizationally, I'll have all these different tries and then at the end of the day, I'm like, which one was the one I landed on? And then I have to go back through and it's like, but what will normally happen when I do that is like, Oh, I like this sentence from this one.

I like that thought from that one. And I like that thought. And so I kind of end up doing an amalgamation.

Lorien: This organization is actually a process superpower.

Kat: That's it. That is my, all, that sentence is my middle name.

John: These cats are so disorganized, I can be like, Oh man, the only version we could find was my way.

Oh well, let's just do

this. It's all a head game. It's like, How on earth do you convince yourself to move forward? Like, it must be like what running a marathon's like. Or even running a hundred yards. I wouldn't know either of those things. I wouldn't

Meg: know those

John: things. . I wouldn't either. I never wanna know those things. But here's

Kat: the thing, here's the thing.

It is like, I mean, I've been really mad when I've been driving, you know, like I'm on the freeway and suddenly the perfect phrase comes into my head that like, oh, that's the answer. That's the thing. I'll remember this, I'll remember this, I'll remember this. And then I get home and I have no idea what it was.

I can't, I can pull up two words in my brain. But I can't remember that it's like waking up from a dream and it was like such a clear dream. And now in the light of day, I have no idea what it was, but I'm left with a feeling. And and then all you can do is go with that feeling. And because it's like, in a lot of ways, the exact words are not important.

It's the thought and the feeling behind it. So, you know, as long as you can remember, I think, I feel like as long as you can remember what that felt like, you can recreate it. It won't be exactly the same. It won't be the exact same words, but that thing will still go into your project.

You haven't lost it.

Lorien: Yeah, I think that's really powerful because there have time, have been times when I have written the thing down somehow, like on voice text, or I've woken up and written it down, and it's not as good as I thought it was, but the feeling is there. Like I had this dream and I wrote down in the middle of the night, duck boat, and I was like, sure it was it.

And then the morning I woke up, I'm like, duck boat, but I can remember the feeling of the dream still, even though duck boat is absurd, but I will one day make duck boat. I just don't know How to quite translate it, but I remember the feeling and that feeling felt so good of this is the idea, you know, it has all these elements, but you know what I wrote down was duck boat.

So who knows what you would have written down in the car had you had the chance, right? It's you were holding on to the feeling.

Jeff: Yeah, I was always

John: picture spouses of writers and how hard that must be for like you're living with someone who suddenly just goes duck boat and like runs out of the room.

Lorien: Or I'll do this, I'll be like, Okay, to my husband, I have this idea. And I start pitching it through, but I haven't thought it all the way through and I get to the point in the middle of the scene and I'm like, and then Okay, let me just back up a little. So earlier, what I think happened is... Like a bad pitch, the poor thing.

Yeah, it's the worst pitch ever, and he's like, I lost your, I'm what? And I'm always like, okay, never mind. I'll go write it down. So in a way, I use him as this, I punish him as my sounding board. But yes, like, duck boat, and then...

John: Where'd she go? No idea.

Meg: This has been so much fun, you guys. Kat and John, I was so excited to have you on the show.

And we always end every show with the same three questions. So we're going to ask you guys what the first question is, what brings you the most joy when it comes to writing? Who goes first?

Jeff: You

John: go. Honestly, I think it's getting getting the laugh. Oh, I hate to say it, but it's like, whether that's on the page or whether it's On screen or with the crew that will never be or in the room and it'll never get in the script.

I think I kind of live for that a little bit. And I remember when I was in college, I first got into improv. I was like, ah, this, I think I want to do this. I want to do stuff, make people laugh. And someone was like, that's so giving, like, you want to make people laugh. And I was like no, I want to make people laugh.

Like, it's a selfish thing.

Jeff: Then I think I come to realize

John: that I think it's like, It's a connection is ultimately what it's about. If you can get someone to laugh with you, you've made some kind of connection in some form, but yeah that's what brings me the most joy in showbiz. Kat doesn't have anything that brings her joy in shaping.

I don't have anything that brings

Kat: me joy. You just got notes today, so. In general. No, I think when I the thing that really brings me joy is that feeling where I've cracked a moment. There's a you've suddenly, you're driving or you're half asleep or you're talking to somebody and suddenly that unexpected thing Leaps into your head and that you didn't even see coming and and and you get the chance to write it down.

I mean, my notes are full of like one sentence things that I know I'm going to use for something at some point, but it's like that, that, that. That, I don't know how to describe it. It's like that moment where a beautiful little thought that's just perfect for what you need or what you can save to use later just suddenly appears.

I think it's magic. It's just, it's magic. It's beyond words. There's something in our brain that is just beyond words. And I love it when That plus the words connect, that's my greatest joy, I think, in

John: writing. Which from now on should be called a duck boat, having a duck boat.

Kat: Having a duck boat.

Lorien: I mean, I'll make a t shirt. That will be what that idea actually was, is that I had to make a t shirt. It's all coming together. All right here's the second question. What pisses you off about writing?

John: I think the thing that pisses me off about it, and I guess this is collaborative writing, is when someone kills the play of it in some ways.

Like, I'm talking about that thing with the little thing you're blowing on to try to, like, here's an idea if, and, you know, someone steps on it and is like, maybe there's fire over here! And that feeling when people are shutting people down instead of rolling with it. I think that's, if I catch myself getting...

angry in showbiz. I think that's it. But we worked with a guy who said, if you ever get angry in showbiz, it's because your ego has been hurt. He's like, always, if you're angry, it's because in some form your ego has been hurt. So maybe that's not why I get angry when people step on it because we're not collaborating.

It's because I wanted my idea to go through.

Jeff: It can

Kat: be both. I think it is. Yeah. I think hearing no is the thing that is and it's like hearing no from an editor, a producer, a whatever, I hate hearing, it's like the thing that I hate the most is hearing no from somebody you're collaborating with or that no inside your own head is, and so I guess that's just, I'm talking about just generally negative, negativity.

Everybody hates negativity, but it's like, I hate hearing. No. Particularly when look, my idea may not be the greatest idea ever, but don't say no. Please don't say no. Say yes and say, you know, well, what if we, whatever. But just don't say no. It infuriates me. That's a great answer. Good to know.

Lorien: So, no, that's not the answer, you guys.

Yeah, we're gonna cut that from the show. And it's not funny. No.

Jeff: It is funny. It's just so unhelpful, right? I was just getting, working with someone on something, and I felt like I was giving a lot of no's, and I was like, this is just not helpful. Like, at best, this is very unhelpful right now, so. I totally agree.

The last question we ask, and this will be interesting because you guys are a partnership. But if you could go back and have a coffee with your younger selves, what advice would you give them? And I think I would love to hear you answer that maybe individually. And then also as a team, I'd be curious to hear

John: I think it'd be different.

What I would say as a team individually, I think I would say, don't stop wasting. Don't waste a bunch of time in your twenties.

Jeff: Worried

John: people think you're stupid. If I'm a hundred percent honest, I think I wasted too much time. Like this is good. I don't know. Did I talk about that too long? And it's like, it's a waste of energy and it doesn't do any good.

They're going to think you're stupid or not. I don't know. I can't do anything about it.

Kat: That's

Lorien: good advice. I think for me to hear right now and for so many of our listeners to be reminded of. So thank you. Stop worrying about what other people think.

John: That's I mean, I guess that's a broader way to say it.

Stop where don't waste your time worrying what other people think. It is a complete waste of your time.

Kat: I got to go with that one. To be honest it's like, it is a thing. It's like the, no, it's like, don't listen to the no. Don't waste your time wondering what other people don't waste your time wondering if you can do it or if you're allowed to do it, don't waste your time on that, just.

Say yes to yourself and do it. Try it. You might fail, but say yes to

John: yourself and do it. Can I tell you a lovely thing Kat did? Yes. We were back in Battle Creek where Kat grew up before her family moved to Kansas. And we went to a mall, because that's the there was only where we were staying, that's where you could eat, like, BW3s or another thing like that.

And so we were eating, like, BW3s and we're like, oh, there's a movie theater in this mall. We walked around the corner and they were playing Elemental, and so there was a poster up, and Kat had gone to that theater when she was younger. And so she's like, I want to get a picture. Of the movie poster, and as we were doing that she was suddenly like, You know what?

Cause there are a bunch of teenagers working in there. And she's like, I'm gonna go in there, And I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell them I used to go to this theater, And that I'm one of the writers on this movie. Cause I wish someone had done that for me. Which I think you would have told your younger self at the coffee.

And she went in, and I was like, Oh, don't do that is such a, Setting yourself up for no one giving a sh*t. sh*t. I was ready to be like, Guys, come on. Let's all, let's be happy about this. But Kat went in and told these these people that and they were so excited and they gathered around and took a picture with her.

And it was really, it was

Jeff: so sweet, all about inspiring and it was

John: like, you can do whatever your dreams are. It doesn't mean leave town, but you can do anything. That was what she wanted to pass on to

Lorien: them. What I love the most about this story is the generosity and that it did not come from spite. And how you like me now, there's two different ways to have done that and I like your way, but I know what I would do.

So,

Kat: If you saw the faces of these kids, I'll send you, I'll send you guys the picture. Oh, yes. But yeah, I wish somebody could have done that for me. I wish somebody come to me and said, you can do a cat, you know, whatever it is that you want to do. It doesn't matter if you're from a small town, it doesn't matter if you're not from a rich family.

It doesn't matter, you know, it's all of those. roadblocks we put up for ourselves and we say we're not worth it or that's out of my reach. I don't, you know, it's not, it really isn't. And I wanted those kids sitting there and I one of them in particular reached out to me afterwards and told me how much it meant to him that I had done that.

And I gave them all my email address and said, if they ever, you know, whatever, but but it really, and I think. I got as much or more out of that than they did because it felt really good to be able to pass something along and then remember myself from that time, you know, feeling hopeless, thinking that this was it.

The little town of Battle Creek, Michigan was going to be the end of my life.

John: And they were like, do you guys remember when that lady with all the buffalo wing sauce on her lips came in?

Lorien: Dreams can come true.

Meg: Thank you so much, you guys, for coming on the show. I was so excited to have you on and you did not let me down.

You guys, it was amazing. Thank you so much for being

Lorien: here. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you guys.

Meg: This is great. Thanks so much to Kat and John for joining us on today's show. Elemental is, I believe, still in the movie theaters and look for it soon on Disney Plus. Please join our

Lorien: Facebook group where a lot of people are finding support and connecting.

It's emerging writers and professional writers and artists and creators in all disciplines. And it's a great place to find some comfort and a little bit of stability during what's going on in our industry right now.

Meg: And also come on over to our Patreon, we've got a lot of people over there and it's a wonderful place.

We're gonna really enjoy interacting with everybody and hearing your stories and helping you honestly. It's been super fun.

Lorien: And I have started to post a little bit more on the Patreon, sort of a little accountability things once a week. So if you're interested in that, come on over and check it out.

And remember, you are not alone and keep writing.

In today's TSL episode, Meg gets personal about her lava, and how a recent production of Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George is helping her to rethink the beauty of moving on from a creative project.

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

TRANSCRIPT:

Meg LeFauve: Alright, this is The Screenwriting Life. This is Meg LeFauve. I'm here with producer extraordinaire Jeff Graham. Just he and I today. I talked to you guys a lot about lava and put your lava in your work and I'm just sitting in a pot of lava today on this week and I thought, okay, let's just go on air real quick with you guys and talk about it and kind of an experience that I had that I wanted to share with you guys.

I think it's relevant to artists but also just to be vulnerable and share with you because I keep asking you guys to do it. So here I am doing it. I'm wrapping up a project and it's by choice. I'm a little bit burnout, but it's also the project is moving on. When whatever stage you're at, when a project ends, maybe it's because you finished the movie.

Maybe it's because you sold the script. Maybe it's because. You were writing and they're bringing in another writer, maybe it's because there's a million reasons that we as artists and writers can be done with a project maybe you've decided just to, you know, that you, it's not for you anymore, that you've grown past the project and you're going to make it.

Put it in a drawer for a while, but whenever you hit this place, sometimes it can feel like morning. It can bring up a lot of lava especially if the circ*mstance around it is maybe triggering or touching on or kind of illuminating something from your past, your childhood that was challenging.

In my case and this is the lava bit. I I pretty much grew up next door to my family until I was seven years old. My mom had five kids. She had been an only child. She had five kids, all under the age of eight, and was just completely overwhelmed. And there was a... elderly neighbor couple next door who had never had children.

And I just somehow ended up living there. I don't know. This was like before people thought about these things, I guess. You know, my brothers and sisters were very jealous of me. But, you know, looking back, I can see that I didn't really understand at that young age. Why I wasn't part of my family, like, what was happening?

Why wasn't I living over there with them? Listen, it was great to live with the Halls as they became now the couple's name. They kind of became my adopted grandparents. You know, I got to eat anything I wanted. I had toys over there. She made my clothes. I mean, I literally slept over there. And you know, I remember my mother saying when I was older, Well, you know, you just seem so happy.

So, so whenever I end a project, if the project is continuing on without me, I can get a little bit wiggly because it's starting to churn up a lot of my lava about being left out or kind of not part of the group anymore, abandonment, I guess, I don't know. So, I, this particular round has been very hard for me and I'm surprised at the depth of it.

I'm honestly. from a kind of intellectual frontal lobe, part of my body, completely fine with it. I'm actually relieved and excited to move on to other projects that are cooking, but there's some part of me that's just pulling and pulling me down. And number one, I have to give myself space to just feel this and be in it.

Maybe take advantage that it's up and walking around to kind of heal that part of myself. But the reason I wanted to do a show about it too was I had this experience where art and somebody else's storytelling actually helped me so much. So I wanted to share that with you guys. And it also happens to be a creator that is a Jeff is also a huge fan of.

So I, Just, I feel like this is the universe at work too, you guys. Like, I randomly, totally spontaneously, a friend of mine said, do you know that Sunday in the Park with George is playing up in Pasadena? And I was like, no, I think I remember loving that. I don't remember anything about it, but I just remember loving that when I saw it 20 years ago.

Let's just go. And we just, spur of the moment, bought tickets. And we went and it is all about what it feels like to make art and it's so insightful for all of us out there doing this creative manifestation that I just wanted to take a beat and go through my experience of this beautiful musical and walk you through it a little bit because I think it might help if you ever get to this spot or just some things to think about.

When you're on this journey manifesting art you know, I, because I'm who I am, after I had this experience, I went and looked at a lot of Sondheim interviews and one of them he started in such a beautiful way, which is really what Lauren and I talked to you about a lot on the show is why he created this show.

So let's start there. One of the show above all to tell people that art is not an easy thing to do. There is. A natural myth about the artist, I had it myself when I was a kid, that you sit in your room, whether you're a composer or a painter or a writer, and wait for the muse to come. And I've heard people say, oh, so and so is so talented, as if all they had to do was get up in the morning and the painting was made, or the song was written.

And they don't understand that it's exactly as much hard work, and maybe harder, than making a shoe, or anything that you make out of nothing. So, you know, how many times have we talked to you guys about this? And there's the genius. It's hard for him to you guys. This guy has, he changed theater. He changed the way we receive stories in the theater.

And he is saying the exact same thing to you. You know, I read that he, his, the time he liked least was when he had to take a song he wrote and have the act, have the actor sing it for the first time. He would avoid that. He would just put it off and put it off, because suddenly, right, there's the chasm.

What's in his head and handing it over to somebody else and letting it come back. He talks about how he has to know and be able to explain to the actor every single word and why it's in there, you know, so just an incredible creative talent. And in this particular show that he did with James Lapine, let's not leave out the writer of the, of this beautiful musical You know, it starts where he's starting right here in this interview about, you know, the blank page and how do you, what do you do and how do you ever start?

And it's a beautiful song. You guys should listen to it. We're going to play some other songs today, but about how to start a creative journey. And then in the, and if you don't remember or know this play, just to this musical, just to remind you, it's all based on a painting by George Surratt, which is pronounced Surrah, if you're not American, which is And that he was a painter who from far away, it looks like solid color, but if you get close up, it's all just dots.

It's all just dots that he's layered on top of each other to actually create color. So you might think that her hat and the flower. You might think that her hat is black, but he didn't use any black paint at all. And you might think that her flower on her hair on her hat, excuse me is a certain color, but it's actually you know, 12 colors all put together that forms this vibrant color when you look at it.

So he, there's this wonderful song about creating art where the painter is kind of doing what we talk about in the show. George Sirot is having to not. Go and hang out with his girlfriend, basically and she's pretty pissed about it, because he's working, and he's doing his art, and just how important that process is to do, and that we do have to sometimes go into a bubble, we have to go into this sacred space and give up other things, and I did have that experience on this project that I'm pretty finishing up, it really was a bubble that I went into and it was a privilege to be in the bubble.

But it was an intense bubble and it was about wanting to get it right. And so, this is also a favorite song of Jeff's, right, Jeff? You're here with me. Yeah, I

Jeff Graham: think you're talking about Finishing the Hat, which is, yes, I think it was also Sondheim's favorite song that he wrote. And his first memoir is called Finishing the Hat.

And let's play a little bit of it just because it's such a lovely song. And then I think I have a couple thoughts about it, but let me play it just so, folks can hear.

[GEORGE] Finishing the hat,

How you have to finish the hat.

How you watch the rest of the world

From a window

While you finish the hat.

Mapping out a sky.

What you feel like, planning a sky.

What you feel when voices that come

Through the window

Go

Until they distance and die,

Until there's nothing but sky

And how you're always turning back too late

From the grass or the stick

Or the dog or the light,

How the kind of woman willing to wait's

Not the kind that you want to find waiting

To return you to the night,

Dizzy from the height,

Coming from the hat,

Studying the hat,

Entering the world of the hat,

Reaching through the world of the hat

Like a window,

Back to this one from that.

Jeff Graham: I could kind of listen forever to that song. It makes me emotional. It's just so good. But what I love about this show is, it's about obsession, and we talk about want, and, you know, you were mentioning it, but Sondheim, to me, like fundamentally changed the art, like the art form of American musical theater, because up until now, Everyone was writing about love and romance and, you know, nice things.

But, you know, he co wrote West Side Story. And like, that was one of the first shows to talk about gang violence on American Broadway. Then it became one of the most important American movies of all time. But Sunday is actually my favorite Sondheim show, because I see the most of Stephen Sondheim in the show.

It's about an obsessive artist and everything that you have to give up. But this song is also about the beauty and the reward of siphoning off some of those other things that people yearn for because the process. Not only is the process of creation so gratifying, but as an artist, it's, I mean, this in a good way, it's kind of that sickness that we have, right?

It's the only it's in us and it has to get out. And I just feel so seen by this song where it's, you have to finish the hat. There's nothing else. And I just think it's so gorgeous.

Meg LeFauve: I read that somebody, gosh, who was it? Maybe it was Josh. We, and I can't remember who said that when they were young, they played this song for their parents to try to explain to them who they were and what they wanted to do in the world.

So that was really impactful when I went to the show and I was like, Oh wow, he's talking about me. He's talking about this experience that I just had for years on this project.

And then there's another really fun song that we're going to play a little clip of about the other side of it that we also talk about on this show, which is the politics and the business and the social side of it, because you don't get to just be in your bubble alone. Sometimes to even have the bubble, if you're a writer director, you're going to have to go out there and raise funds.

If you're a writer, you're going to be out there pitching, trying to get the job, but also once you get the job, there is a lot of politics involved in, just the act of creation, you know, in terms of working together in terms of the director's the director and your job is to support them and, you know, finding the place for your own creative art within that context there's studio executives, there's money being spent, there's all kinds of things that still go into the writing process that when for the writers who are pros out there listening that, you know, very well.

And for the emerging writers, you will know very well. It's a whole other skill set to, to learn. And that you can't really, you can't really do this without it. He talks about that a lot. How if you want to be a musical theater, you're going to have to do this. And I'm telling you, if you want to be a professional writer, you're going to have to do this.

So let's just listen to a little bit of that song.

George

Art isn't easy-

Even when You're hot.

Billy (spoken)

Are these inventions of yours one of a kind?

George

Advancing art is easy-

Yes.

Financing it is not.

A vision's just a vision

If it's only in your head.

If no one gets to see it,

It's as good as dead.

If has to come to light!

(spoken) I put the names of my contributors on the side of each machine.

Harriet (spoken)

How clever.

George

Bit by bit,

Putting it together...

Piece by Piece-

Only way to make a work of art.

Every moment makes a contribution,

Every little detail plays a part.

Having just a vision's no solution,

Everything depends on execution:

Putting it together-

That's what counts!

Harriet (spoken)

The Board of the Foundation is meeting next week...

George

Ounce by ounce,

Putting it together...

Harriet (spoken)

You'll come to lunch.

George

Small amounts,

Adding up to make a work of art.

First of all you need a good foundation,

Otherwise it's risky from the start.

Takes a little co*cktail conversation,

But without the proper preparation,

Having just a vision's no solution,

Everything depends on execution.

The art of making art

Is putting it together

Bit by bit...

Meg LeFauve: So that's a super fun song, right?

Like it's a very positive way to look at it, right? Like he could have written that song and been like the devils and why do I have to do, you know, kind of what we think on us, why do I have to do this? And you know, all kinds of things about, but he didn't, it's the reality. And he, that's what I think the genius of the song is a kind of acceptance of this is part of the creative this is part of the craft.

And then, you know, where my lava came up, and sitting in this theater next to my son Julian, my special needs kid, and my friend Annie at the end of the show, George's great grandchild is also named George, and he sucked creatively. And as a matter of fact, he feels like he has to change his art.

He needs to find a new project. He's feeling kind of lost artistically. And he's in the park where his great grandfather painted this famous painting. And I guess you could say the ghost or the visualization of the woman in the painting comes to him and they and she has a message for him.

And I, you guys, I sat in this theater and I cried and cried. I'm going to cry right now. I felt like, oh, the universe sent me here to hear this song, that this is what I need to do, where I am right now, not just with this project that I was on, it is about that for sure. All the words in the song, she could be, and they could be singing to me about this project.

But also that love, a part of me, that little girl. Who lived next door could be singing to her too. So this song we're going to play in full. So here's my lava song, you guys. And it was a ladder out and it's a ladder in at the same time. I've listened to it, I don't know, a hundred times since we walked out of that theater.

And it's just really helping me process. So I thought I'd share it with you guys.

[DOT, spoken]
It is good to see you, George. Not that I ever forgot you. You gave me so much.

[GEORGE, spoken]
What did I give you?

[DOT, spoken]
You taught me about concentration. At first I thought that meant just being still, but I was to understand it meant much more. You meant to tell me to be where I was, not some place in the past or future. I worried too much about tomorrow. What about you? Are you working on something new?

[GEORGE, spoken]
No. I am not working on anything new.

[DOT, spoken]
That is not like you, George.

[GEORGE]
I've nothing to say

[DOT, spoken]
You have many things.

[GEORGE]
Well, nothing that's not been said

[DOT]
Said by you, though, George

You might also like

[GEORGE]
I do not know where to go

[DOT]
And nor did I

[GEORGE]
I want to make things that count
Things that will be new

[DOT]
I did what I had to do

[GEORGE]
What am I to do?

[DOT]
Move on

Stop worrying where you're going
Move on
If you can know where you're going
You've gone
Just keep moving on

I chose and my world was shaken
So what?
The choice may have been mistaken
The choosing was not
You have to move on

Look at what you want
Not at where you are
Not at what you'll be
Look at all the things you've done for me

Opened up my eyes
Taught me how to see
Notice every tree

[GEORGE]
Notice every tree

[DOT]
Understand the light

[GEORGE]
Understand the light

[DOT]
Concentrate on now

[GEORGE]
I want to move on
I want to explore the light
I want to know how to get through
Through to something new
Something of my own

[GEORGE & DOT]
Move on
Move on

[DOT]
Stop worrying if your vision
Is new
Let others make that decision
They usually do
You keep moving on

[DOT]
Look at what you've done
Then at what you want
Not at where you are
What you'll be
Look at all the things
You gave to me

Let me give to you
Something in return

I would be so pleased

[GEORGE]
Something in the light
Something in the sky
In the grass
Up behind the trees

Things I hadn't looked at
'Til now
Flower in your hat
And your smile

[GEORGE]
And the color of your hair
And the way you catch the light
And the care
And the feeling
And the life
Moving on

[DOT]
We've always belonged
Together

[GEORGE & DOT]
We will always belong
Together

[DOT]
Just keep moving on
Anything you do
Let it come from you
Then it will be new
Give us more to see

Meg LeFauve: So through that whole song in the theater, I sobbed and my son reached his hand out and just held my hand. There was just so much in there for me. Both in terms of, you know, letting go of. Of one project, trying to think God will ever be inspired to do anything else, all the doubts and worries coming in about new projects and also the deep desire and want to do something of my own you know, I love when she's saying, stop worrying if your vision is new, let someone else make that decision.

They usually do move on. You know, so many of us don't start because we're so worried about. If the vision, is it new? Is it unique? Is it good enough? And she's, she and the creators are saying, Yeah, that's not your job, right? Now she brings him back to inspiration by saying, look at what you've done. And I do need to do that.

I could feel it in the theater. Like, I've done something, right? And then when she says, you know, she's bringing him back to inspiration with light, right? And When she says we'll always be together, like part of me is like giving up a piece of myself to move on from this project. But you know, I'll always, me and the project will always be together in what I created, even if it changes, and it will change because this is the art form we're in, I don't get to paint a painting and then it's done.

Lots and lots of other artists are going to come in and create their own unique thing, and that will happen to every writer. You're going to hand your scripts off to other people to direct. You're going to hand them off to all kinds of creative beings who are going to come in and manifest that but you will always have That script you wrote even if it changes you will always have that experience and you will always belong to that and It will belong to and then of course, you know when she ends it by saying anything you do Let it come from you and it will be new Give us more to see, you know, that is the philosophy of this show, you know, and it was like, Oh, right.

I have a whole podcast about this with Laurie and Jeff, like, you know, singing it back, you know, Sondheim and James Lapine are singing it back to me that we are all of us, myself and Laurie and Jeff and Savannah and everybody who's listening. We are part of a sacred troop. Of artists, and we're all on the journey and we all have to go through these steps through this process and it will bring up the lava, just the process itself of art and.

Sondheim and James Lapine, look, they made a whole musical just about it, just about this process. And I just wanted to share it with you guys because it really deeply affected me. And I'm always telling you guys to Sit in your lava. So I'm sitting in mine and was given this little lifeline of this song and this show and so Just something I wanted to share with you guys.

Jeff Graham: the thing I look first of all, thank you so much It's like such a gift just for I'm not to make any of this about me But I just got like the final QC approval on the movie So I've been like making excuses like I've been like changing a frame and being like I'm still working on the film But I'm f*cking not like it's been done for months.

It's just been like then It's done. And like literally today, I liked the email was like, it is done. So it's the terror of starting something new too. And, but I think what I love about this show, and first of all, I think Steven Sondheim would have loved our podcast. Don't you? He might've, who knows?

He might've listened to it, but I think everything you're saying where he's speaking to artists, it's like a reminder that he was also speaking to himself, right? Like this show is so clearly therapy for him. You know, he was. In the middle of his career right now, and he had these hits, but he was feeling stuck and he saw his exact life in the life of George Sarah.

And it rather than trying to say something radical, he just tried to tell his own story. And in that way, it's resonated with. So many people and so many artists. So it's just, he's living in the lava in this show too. It's just such a good reminder.

Meg LeFauve: Yeah. And you know, sometimes if you are in the lava, either because in your career, you're wrapping a project or I don't know, there's other things happen, right?

You do a project and it's disappointing or you're, like I said, you're putting in the drawer or, it will bring stuff up and I think it's good to rely on other artists to help you through that process and I am gonna just have to, I think, sit with that little kid who lives next door and let her also have some space here and some oxygen and light.

Let's just use the metaphor. She's gonna need some light. And I know, I also know in my heart that it will move through, it'll pass and I will process and it'll, I'll be inspired again. And it's part of the reason I wanted to quick do this little mini episode because I said to Jeff and Lorien, and it's going to go it's, I'm here now and sitting in the lava.

I'm sitting in, and by the way, we say lava because it burns, but you know, lava is also incredibly beautiful. It is fire and light and movement and sitting in it right now, I can also experience that even, you know, the strange beauty of being that child next door and how it did make me the artist that I am.

And I can't ever wish it away because then I wouldn't be where I am right now. I wouldn't be who I am. I wouldn't be the storyteller that I am. So The love isn't something just to get through and get rid of, we have to appreciate it, we have to acknowledge it, we have to say thank you, and embrace that part of ourselves accept her.

So, and so much of this and that particular song that we just played, yes it's move on, but with gratitude and appreciation and acceptance. So that I can move on to the next thing and stage of my career or life or whatever's going to happen. So, thank you guys all for listening to this little mini episode.

I don't know, maybe we're going to call it Meg's Lava. I don't know what we're going to call it. Haha, but Thanks you guys, and remember, keep writing, and you are not alone.

Despite being a multiple Academy Award winner, celebrated producer, and feature/TV director, Jodie Foster is still aiming for a singular goal: to tell truthful stories. On today's show, we discuss how Jodie processes her work, how she collaborates with others, and what Robert De Niro taught her on the set of Taxi Driver.

Join Our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

TRANSCRIPT:

Meg LeFauve: Hey everyone, welcome back to The Screenwriting Life. I'm Meg LeFauve.

Lorien McKenna: And I'm Lorien McKenna.

Meg LeFauve: Today, we are thrilled to be chatting with Jodie Foster.

Lorien McKenna: Jodie is an award winning actor and filmmaker who has worked on all sides of our business, in front of and behind the camera, as a producer, an executive, and director in both features and TV for nearly five decades.

Meg LeFauve: Jodie and I worked together for many years when I was an exec at her production company, Egg Pictures. Pretty much everything I know about storytelling, I learned from Jodie. So for me, it's particularly exciting to have her on the show today. And for you all to get direct line to her wisdom. So Jodie, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Jodie Foster: Wow. My pleasure. Yeah. This is a perfect way to spend a Tuesday. I love it.

Lorien McKenna: Yes. Welcome. But before we get started, we're going to be diving into our weeks on what we like to call adventures in screenwriting. So Meg, how was your week?

Meg LeFauve: I'm going first this week. Okay. Well, my week, and I know that both of you have had this experience:

I'm at the end of a project, and it's that period of, I'm not gonna say mourning, because it's alive and going, like, it's not like it died. But I'm no longer going with it, as writers often are, you, you step off, and into production it goes, and, but it is a process, it's still an emotional process of trying to get back to your regular life, and yet, I still have to get a next project, and I, I have a next project because I need health insurance.

And I, but I don't, I'm tired, and I need to process this baby being grown before I start going up the next mountain, which just looks really steep. I think because I'm tired. And then all that family stuff, that during this intense work, you just kind of put over there and all those doctor's appointments and all that stuff that you promised your kids that you're like, yes, as soon as this job's over, we are doing that.

Well, here it is. It's all here. And really, my kid will take no excuse anymore about what I'm doing because that job's over and I'm just like, “Oh my gosh, who am I?” It's just a process. I'm in the process. Let's not call it mourning. What are we going to call it? I know. I don't know what this is. I don't even know what this is.

So I don't know.

Lorien McKenna: It feels like Sisyphus to me. You're like in the bottom of that pit, rolling it up. Am I going to get to the top? Roll it up a different way.

Meg LeFauve: I don't know, Jodie, you're right. Jodie, you have projects end. As everything, as an actress, they're going to go on into edit. As a director, eventually the premiere comes.

Jodie Foster: Well, I just, I actually, I'm sort of in the same boat. I just finished a project and I was in Iceland for six months, which was extraordinary. There is this really amazing sweet spot that happens where it's. It basically starts at the beginning of the wrap party and it goes through the wrap party to the point that you're in the car on the way to the plane.

You're packing, you're in the, on the way to the plane, you get on the plane, you eat the peanuts. It's just this perfect sigh of presence, I think, where you feel like I did something really hard, but it's over and I don't have to do it. And. I don't have to worry about anything in the future because I just finished this really hard thing.

And then it's just this sweet spot of perfection. And then real life comes and real life is great. You know, you're back to tacos and you're back to picking up the dog poop outside and all the things that you sort of missed while you were gone. But the little anxiety creeps in of like, you know, what am I without my next thing and I can't believe I didn't attend to that task that I kept thinking I was going to attend to while I was gone.

So, and then that moment kind of disappears. So, I really like to try to stay in that, that little piece of perfection from the wrap party to getting off the plane at LAX and try to remember that feeling of Having done something really hard, and the grind is over and you don't have to go back to it, but you can still keep all the beauty of all the relationships that you've just come from, and all those memories sort of alive for that moment.

Yeah.

Meg LeFauve: That's really true. It's about, I need to also remember the accomplishment. You know, that a lot has been accomplished. I have accomplished a lot on this project.

Jodie Foster: Yeah, and it's hard to celebrate until it's over, right? You can't celebrate until it's over. So even, I mean, I did manage to celebrate a lot when I was younger.

When I was in my 20s, I could definitely celebrate before it was over. I mean, I would night with people and stuff, but somehow... I got this weird vigilance as I got over where I was like, I can't let my hair down because I've still got to learn that monologue or I still have, you know, scene 42 to do and I can't really let it down until I finally crossed off all the boxes on the, on the Staples calendar.

And and I just wish I could get that feeling to last longer, because I know it's all about perspective. I wish I could get that feeling to last longer, but it only lasts from basically the wrap party until I get off the planet.

Meg LeFauve: And I'm definitely in the hyper-vigilance. It's almost like the hyper-vigilance of the project has now just transferred over to, I have 700 emails in my inbox and I must have zero.

I must have zero. Like that's what I'm doing now. What am I doing? Anyways, sorry. Okay, Jodie, how was your week? Well, we've kind of started to talk about it because are you in the sweet spot still?

Jodie Foster: Well, no. You know, I was all week because I have been someplace amazing that's beautiful and extraordinary.

But, you know, there's a, there was a lot of fish and potatoes and beets. And you, you long for really dumb things that you're just used to. You long to the things that you're used to that six months ago, I'm sure I was bored by. But right now, it just, I'm just in that like, “Oh my god, avocados are amazing!”

Or I'm so glad I get to go to the gym again! Or just, you know, things that six months ago were sort of what I was trying to escape from. And now this circular creative process means I just want to get back to it. So, I'm like appreciating everything this week. Like I had, I had, You know, I had sushi for the first time in a long time.

I was like, “Oh my God, this was amazing.” Like everything, basically everything is amazing.

Meg LeFauve: You're like Rip Van Winkle, like woken up and come back to your life. Amazing. Lorien, how was your week?

Lorien McKenna: Good. I continue in this sort of process of trying to figure out work life balance and how working from home being a writer and a mother and you know, it's real mushy for me.

But this weekend, my husband went out of town. So it was just my daughter and me alone. And yeah, It was this great opportunity to focus and, and be intentional about the time I spent with her. Of course, it was a weekend. I still had a couple of work meetings, pitch stuff, you know, I had to stop, but it was very much about communicating so clearly to her since my husband isn't here to like hang out with her.

So it was like, I have a meeting from 10 to 11:30. I'm going to go down to my basem*nt and I will come up. And then I had to stay to that because I didn't have the backup. And it was just this, it just felt so clear to me. And then when I was with her, I was with her. I wasn't thinking about projects or things going on.

And I have so rarely felt that. So it felt like very, I felt really revitalized by that. And like, now I'm thinking like, how can I bring that intentionality when my husband is here? Right. And that even when I'm in the flow and doing something and she comes down to my office and ask me a question that somehow I can turn off what I'm doing and then engage with her instead of like, ah, get out of here.

I'm busy. You know that that sort of thing because I feel like I'm doing that with her when I'm working. And then when I'm with her, I do the same thing with work that comes like more email. So I'm this is a constant struggle for me. I don't know that I'll ever really achieve greatness in this place. But this weekend I felt really great.

Not in control, but like connected to myself in a way that felt really good and satisfying. So I'm trying to figure out how to reclaim that feeling, you know, with my husband, maybe with people I'm interacting with, you know, I'll continue to let everybody know how it goes, which is always a wild ride of, “Here's how I f*cked up this week on what I was intending to do. But and I felt like it was just really, it was a gift to spend that time with my daughter because we're always so busy.

Meg LeFauve: But I tried that this weekend too, because my husband's away, except I have a teenage boy.

Lorien McKenna: Mine’s an 11 year old girl.

Meg LeFauve: It's a little different when the testosterone is on. I'm just like, God, why are you so mean? Like, I just asked you what you want for dinner. What?

Lorien McKenna: I don't know.

Meg LeFauve: It's just boys. Okay. Okay. Let's get on to the good stuff. Let's start asking Jodie some questions.

Jodie Foster: I like all of this. The creative process is like, I think it takes a whole lifetime.

I mean, you know, the work life balance and the creative process. Like how, how do I show up whether it's at my desk or on set? And how do I be the most open, creative person I can possibly be and come up with ideas, and have faith that I'm going to come up with ideas, and not be filled with anxiety that I won't?

And you know, how do I do all those things? And I don't think, first of all, I don't think we ever resolve that, but I do think that you kind of need to turn 60 or something. It's some of it is just about being young. I think when you're young, it's really hard to have faith. It's really hard to feel like you're on the right path.

It's really hard to balance things and allow your instincts to take over. And, to have a plan, and know that the plan is probably a good plan until the next plan that's better comes along. I mean, all those things, you don't, I don't know. You just don't have faith in yourself until you get old enough to not care anymore.

Meg LeFauve: it's trusting yourself too, right? Like you, what you just said about, you have to trust that when you show up. It will come even if you're full of anxiety about that. It won't come.

Jodie Foster: Yeah, there's that there are other art forms, writing other art forms that are a little less clear but acting is really clear because a you're basically using yourself your face your body, and they say action and like, you don't have any time.

You just have to, it just has to happen. And if it doesn't happen, it sucks. And if it did happen, it's great. And there's nothing you can do about it. So it is it's the minor bird for a creative process of figuring out whether you're in the right space. And I love working with younger people because they bring all that excitement to the table, but I also watch them torture themselves.

I just watched them like. You know, hang their head after they've done a scene. I think that you do that, just the torture, how you torture yourself creatively as a young person.

Lorien McKenna: I think that's really helpful. I did that thing that way. Let's move on to the next thing because bringing the ways that you were maybe not as great as you thought you were bringing it to the next thing is what hurts the next thing. So you're like this trail of overthinking that's just polluting everything you're doing.

But you do have to learn how to be like, “Okay, okay. That happened this way.” And, and then you move on. I mean, that's what you're talking about, right? If I understand you correctly, I'm just trying to like, “okay, how can I do more of that? How can I compartmentalize?”

Jodie Foster: Yeah. And how do you do it without experience? Like years of experience? I don't know. I'm sure people do.

I'm sure there were people who were born, you know, that just go, I'm here and now I'm perfect. I can, I'm just good enough and I'm just going to show up and see what happens. Like, I don't even know if I want to know those people as young, young know it alls.

Lorien McKenna (laughs): We've all met those guys. We've met them.

Jodie Foster: Yeah.

I was definitely not that way. And on my last show, it was just so much fun watching the young, younger people come to the table and feeling like. Oh man, I don't have the energy to work that hard. You guys are really working hard. I don't know if I can, you know, I don't have that energy anymore. I think I have faith that I did it before a bunch of times and I'm pretty sure I'm going to come up with something when I get there.

Wisdom, I think that's called. Maybe. Yeah.

Meg LeFauve: So Jodie, when I worked with you, you said something that I've carried with me forever. You would say, what's the big, beautiful idea in here that if I wanted as a producer your exec to bring you a project, that was the first thing we had to talk about.

What is the big, beautiful idea? Can you talk a little bit about that? Do you still use that phrase or think about that? How are you approaching as a, as a director and an actor? I mean,

Jodie Foster: Yeah, it's it's basically, you know, how do you find the personal connection between the what you're, you know, the piece of art that you're trying to make and you and the lived life.

And when you find that you will be moved. And when you are moved, you will make something that has the possibility - I'm not saying it's great - but it has the possibility of greatness because it's true. And you know, as I always say, like, I only ask myself one question over and over and over again, whether it's as an actor or as a director.

I mean, all I ask is, is it true? You know, is it true that he would wear that blue hat? Like, Is it true that he would walk in that door and turn on the light or would he not turn on the light? You know, all of those questions really, it's almost like, with an optician - when you go to the optical place and they look at your eyes and they just say, you know, is it better or is it worse?

Is it better or is it worse? You know, if you just keep asking yourself that question, is it true or is it not true? Then you will find yourself making a personal movie that has a connection to a big idea, an idea that in some ways is larger than you because it lives inside you and you don't 100% understand it.

I guess that's what I'm always looking for, certainly as a director and even as an actor, in order to work on screenplays and, you know, come up with ideas for the character is trying to make those, that personal connection and saying, is there one overarching idea that every time that I think about it, it, it stops my breath.

What is that in the show? Because we are here to serve that. That's what the movie is here to serve. Whether it's the language of props or the language of production design, the language of acting, all of us are here to serve one big beautiful idea and we bring our various languages in order to, to, to achieve that.

Lorien McKenna: Can you talk a little bit about, I love that idea, is it true? And so many of us have great ideas and we ask ourselves questions like that. In the execution, if you can't quite get it there, what's your process around that?

Jodie Foster: You know, I guess. you try to find something else that's true, right? I guess you move on to the next thing.

If you're like, wow, this is just, I'm not feeling it. This is not working. You know, that's where the more simple question, I can be a very heady person that I'm very intellectual and I'm really good at writing book reports and, you know, all that kind of thing…a very intellectual approach. But at the end of the day, I have to ask myself that question as a director, as an actor, does it play or does it not play?

You know, does it work or does it not work? And it's a really simple question, you know, when you're looking at an image, and you're a camera operator and you're looking at an image and you're watching the actors. That's the question that you ask yourself. You know, does it play? And you can sit around and talk about why it doesn't play and try and figure out why it doesn't play, but you're better off saying, okay, well, what does play?

And why is it playing? And how can we, you know, how can we move? And there's, because there's got to be a reason. If it doesn't feel truthful, and you know, it's not coming across, it's not communicating what you're hoping, you sort of have to open up your eyes a little wider and say, well, you know, what's over there?

Maybe that, maybe that'll do it. You know, you start opening up the box of hypotheticals. You know, what if, what if she didn't have a husband? What if she wasn't married? You know, what if she, what if her dad was dead? What if he's, you know, I often come into this thing where I'm trying to make a character work, and trying to make a character work, and there's just something false about it, and it's not working, and strangely, sometimes I get very busy by just killing them off, being like, well, what if, what if he didn't exist?

What would happen then? So you, come up with these hypotheticals in order to help, hopefully, get you to the place where you can suddenly see the truth of the scene or the movie or the play.

Meg LeFauve: When you're a director taking it on and you're kind of trying to bring that big, beautiful idea, truth or, you know, the way you described it, kind of that centering or rudder for every department. To articulate it into words, you know? When I was at Pixar or Disney, and you're going through all the development, even if you got a word, we would just stick that word on the wall. Is that something that you can articulate and that's why you take it on as a director? Or do you ever go through the process of trying to find the articulation of something that you feel?

Jodie Foster: Well, yeah, that's our job. We're always articulating. We're always communicating something that's internal, something that's emotional, something that's physical. You know, the way a, composer has to explain why he's choosing the violin, why he's choosing the trombone. And I find that process, I love that process.

There's nothing I love more than talking about things that are. Somewhat unexplainable, you know, that shouldn't that that can't be really understood by language and to try to find parameters sort of language parameters in order to communicate to people and different people, whether they're actors or whether they're technicians, you know, they respond to different things.

And I can always get better at that. I'm not as good at that as, as, as I would hope to try to respond to different performers and say, Oh, this person is, you know, needs this type of language in order to get to that place or this person, I have to approach them a certain way. It's That's like a lifelong pursuit of understanding how to speak to people so that they can live up to their best potential.

Cause I can't do it for them. I'm here just to inspire them, you know, inspire them and say you know, I can say the train is leaving the station at eight and I want it to arrive by 9:30, but I can't tell them how to drive there. They have to find that themselves.

Meg LeFauve: And when you're building a character I don't know if you remember this, but when we worked together, you said to me once that when you built a character, you often started with shame and fear because the character was, all the behaviors were trying to protect them from that.

Can you talk a little bit about how you, okay, you've gotten this part, you've taken it, now you need to build this character? Or even when you're a director and you're in development with a writer and you're building characters that way.

Jodie Foster: Right, yeah. I think that's a really good, I don't want to say it's a starting space, but it's a good, it's a good place to get to at some point.

To figure out what it is that the character's trying to hide from the other people. What it is that they're ashamed of that they haven't been able to express in their lives for fear of being rejected or for fear. Of feeling like a failure or, you know, the even larger question that comes out of that is: what is it that they're acting on that they don't even understand that they're acting on, you know? What historical parts of their life, what historical wounds are affecting the present moment that they're having in relationship with these other characters or in the choices that they're making.

I just saw a great, this great show BEEF, I'm sure which you guys have seen and really enjoying just. I was really enjoying watching that to see characters who are intelligent people, but who are reacting from old historical wounds that they don't understand, and they can't control themselves. And to watch them do that as a pattern over and over and over again, I mean, I find that really fascinating.

So these are all the discussions like that you get into in that room, whether it's that rehearsal room. Or whether it's your hotel room inside your head, because I don't usually bore other people with this kind of thing just asking myself that question, you know, what is it that the character is trying to do?

Trying desperately to not have other people see and what is it about them that they're ashamed of that they're trying to actively work against. I think that that can be very revealing. And I try to get very specific about those things because. You know, I don't want to present the audience with a huge soup of ideas that have a thousand ingredients.

I want to be specific about the breadcrumbs. And I can feel all the hundred ingredients in my own body, but I want to be specific with the audience so that the audience can. And, you know, in, into it in a way that doesn't feel just too random.

Lorien McKenna: You've talked a lot about experience and your wisdom. When did you come to this conclusion? Like, was it as an actor? Like, when, when did this happen for you? What was that moment of aha?

Jodie Foster: Well, this is, this is not the answer that you want to hear, which is that, look, I didn't choose to be an actor.

I was a little kid. I was three years old and I, it was the family business and I went on auditions, because…I don't know, I just kind of fell into it. And I liked doing things well. So I liked listening to direction. And then when somebody would say, move your foot in that direction, and I would do it, they would say that was good.

And I liked that. So I became an actor through being a good technician. And I really thought that's really what making movies was when the, you know, was accommodating a camera and knowing about lenses. And, oh, if you know, I do this particular gesture on this line, this will help the director. So I grew up really, really being fascinated by the technique of making films, because I loved movies, and I loved TV, and I loved all that.

And otherwise I didn't ask myself any questions, because honestly the one direction that I got as a kid was, be natural, be yourself. And so I thought, Oh, well, I guess that's what acting is. I guess I just have to be myself. So I would be natural and be myself. And then somewhere around 10 or 11, I thought this is a really dumb job. I thought, you know, note to self, don't do this when you grow up.

But then at 12, I did TAXI DRIVER with Robert De Niro and he kind of took me aside before we started shooting and kept doing these rehearsals with me where we rehearsed the lines over and over again. And I found this process incredibly boring and I couldn't imagine why we had to keep rehearsing these lines over and over again at different coffee shops.

And then he threw some improvisation at me once we knew all the dialogue by heart. He threw some improvisation at me and I suddenly understood what it was to build a character. I guess, I guess it had never occurred to me before that I was gonna have to do anything more than just be natural. And I was just giddy.

I can't remember coming home and going to the Essex House Hotel and coming up in the elevator and just, you know, seeing my mom and just being completely giddy because I couldn't believe how I had made this discovery that acting was building a character and that I had not been giving enough of myself.

And that's why it had been, it had seemed unchallenging to me. And then in fact, there was everything satisfying about the job. I just hadn't brought enough of myself to the picture. I did understand that I, I understood that as a young person that there was a craft to it. And and I guess that continued for a while.

But I still somewhere in the back of my mind thought that it, it would just never was going to be a satisfying enough job. And that eventually I was going to do something else and hopefully something that had to do with films. And I guess as the years go on, I have moments where I have these eureka moments where I go, “Oh wow, this is really, this is, yes, this is who I am and this is what I do.”

But a lot of the time it is balancing my love of the technical art of filmmaking and an appreciation of instinct. So, balancing intention and allowing, you know, balancing those two things.

Lorien McKenna: Thank you for telling that story. I got chills and I got a little emotional and teary because it's how I felt when I finally was like, I'm going to do this.

I'm going to devote myself a hundred percent to writing and making that choice. Every single day. It’s a challenge sometimes. And I just, it's a, such a joy to hear you talk about it in that way, because like, yes, it's about discovery and I have to give myself to it over to it, but to myself, right. It's a commitment to feeling good, you know, and, and powerful and interesting and engaged in my own life.

So thank you for that. And after this, after we're done, I'm going to go have a good cry, but I'm going to keep it together for the rest of this and then later I'll go have a big weep session. I don't have any chips in the house, but you know, I'll make do.

Meg LeFauve: I also think what you're talking about is very much applies to writing and the act of writing because it is, you have to have that intentionality. Right? I'm sitting down here to have this intention. I think the story's going to go this way. This is what I think it is. And then, but be able to be spontaneous.

And it's moving. And it's changing today. And I don't even know why we're going down there. And I'm on a deadline. I cannot have it changed today. But it's changing. And if you resist it sometimes, you do get that kind of flatness that starts to come in. Because it's thought through. It's an intellectual version of your story.

I was just working with a young writer yesterday and I could see it. I could see the moment her brain went “Yeah, we're not going down that road” and just went off the other direction. It was just a gentle process with her to have her see it. You know, to have her see the truth that you talk about coming through and trying to come up into the script. And the bravery it takes we call that on this show, it can feel like lava sometimes. That, “is that, is that true?” can feel like fire, it can feel…make you feel very, very vulnerable.

But that is also what you taught me, Jodie, in working with you, that that's the richness, that's, that's where the human condition is, is down in that stuff. And I'm not talking tone now. It could be funny, it could be scary, it could be Martians, it could be anything. But that truth you talk abou. It's amazing to hear it.

Jodie Foster: It’s the pot at the end of the rainbow that we keep, you know, going through all the boring stuff to get to, you know, and enduring the bad coffee and the throwing away the white pieces of paper and all of that. All the, the tough grind of it all in order to get to those little tiny bits of gold.

But you know, the hardest thing with writing is that you guys are alone. You know, you're alone for a lot of the time. And so much of the creative process that I'm used to happens as…you know, you show the photographic paper to oxygen and stuff happens, stuff happens because some person that you're working with asked you a question or the person that you're working with isn't good at.

Or can't bring this one part of the character because it doesn't feel true to them. Or they had some idea about a funny hat they were going to wear and suddenly everything has to change because it comes into contact with other human beings. And of course, as a director, this happens 140,000 times a day because other factors, whether it's the weather, whether it's the schedule, all of it impacts on some idea you had in your hotel room all by yourself.

And that, that is the challenge also for all of us at working with writer/directors because they come up with something in their hotel room and they think it's perfect and it's just amazing and they live with it for months and months at a time. And then they come onto a movie set and they are unwilling to understand that the whole beauty of it is that it's all going to change the second that it comes into interaction with other people.

Meg LeFauve: Yes. The writer in me is like, “Oh, but it happens in animation all the time.” All the storyboard artists working and, and that's what’s constant.

Lorien McKenna: That’s I love so much about, you know, working at Pixar and TV. Right? You, you get to, you bring a script. You're like, it's perfect. It's approved. Let's go. And then all these people start asking you questions.

Is this really the prop? Is this what I'm wearing? I can't say this line in this way. This, you know, it's not true. And so that was the fun of it. You know, sitting on set rewriting was a little challenging, you know, every day, but that's the fun of it. So you're right. Sitting alone. I find that part, the hardest part, sitting alone and writing.

I like the. The noise of other people's thoughts and voices and stuff.

Jodie Foster: Yeah. That is the beautiful thing about being a writer is that you can when you're all by yourself in your hotel room, you can inhabit all these other voices. And these other people come in and say bullsh*t. Erase that. Delete that immediately.

Lorien McKenna: Oh, it's like you can hear my inner voice. That's exactly what she says. “That's bullsh*t. Erase it.”

Jodie Foster: I just worked with a writer/director, Isa Lopez who I think might be my favorite director I've ever worked with. It's really has been my favorite experience. The TRUE DETECTIVE experience.

She really loved the process of throwing things away and saying, well, what could be better? And now that we're in the room and we see that the ice is melting in this particular direction, you know, how do we, what else can we come up with?

And I think I could watch her getting giddy over that process. And yes, sometimes it was painful because she had, you know, slogged over something and now here we were throwing the trash. But hopefully the actors don't do it in order to, or even the technicians don't do it in order to just achieve power.

Or for the wrong reasons. To get control or to hear the sound of their own voice or, you know…I think my character would wear a motorcycle jacket because they're cool. Hopefully the intentions, we're all driving in the same direction, you know, and hopefully there’s centeredness that starts playing a part in, you know, the decision making.

That, those are all the things that you have to sort of weigh.

Meg LeFauve: In terms of driving in the same direction, does that come back to that big beautiful idea? Is there discussions with the director, writer/director, about her intention of that thematic, you know, and that that's really what is the centering piece, right?

Jodie Foster: Yeah. And always coming back to that.

And, and I do believe because I make personal films and this is also something amazing is, you know, we think our big beautiful idea is one thing, but I promise you by the time that you're in the cutting room, you realize that it has morphed into something more specific that is more beautiful and that was inside you that you hadn't entirely fully reckoned with that didn't really come out until you finished the process.

It's, you know, kind of like the baby got born and then you realized that they walked and talked a certain way and that that was more true than the first ideas that you had, the first intentions that you had.

Meg LeFauve: I know this might be unlikely, but do you have any examples of those kinds of ideas for our, especially our emerging writers who are starting this path?

Like when we say big, beautiful idea, what it is that we mean, you know, because a lot of them might be like, you know, Love is true, or like those kind of you know, Hallmark card, that's not what we're talking about, right? We're talking about an emotional insight into the human condition. I'm just trying to think of an example we could give them.

Jodie Foster: Yeah, I mean, gosh, I probably have a hundred million, so I'm going to try and find one that's specific. I mean, NELL, you were a part of that process as well, or at least, you know, you were around that process. NELL was a play, and the play was a beautiful play, but we worked with a different writer, and suddenly it turned into a lot of different things, and there were a lot of ideas that came through.

It was many years of working on that and I guess I always thought of NELL as I, I guess I, I always thought of it as, and everybody else thought of it as as this person who was independent and was really I don't want to say a wild child because that was, that's probably misleading. But that she was so beautiful because she could be alone and could live, could live in the moment and that she didn't need society.

And we, we kind of operated on that principle and then somehow towards the end of the development process of we're moving into the movie, I realized like, “Oh my gosh, it's exactly the opposite.” The man in the story is attracted to this idea of, you know, who is a person who can exist on their own doesn't need people.

I want to find out who that person is. And what he ends up finding is somebody, we don't realize it until the end of the movie, but who is entirely and completely defined by another person, in this case, who was her twin, but who happens to have died. And so she was entirely in relationship with another person and does not know how to be alone at all.

But the person's just not around anymore. So she concocts the person. And pretends that the person is there because there's no other way for her to to be in the world. She wouldn't be able to live if she didn't, if she didn't have even the phantom of that person with her. And I thought that was such an interesting idea for the film and, and we operated on that idea.

And then, gosh, and then when I finished the movie, I realized... Wow, I wanted to make a movie about all of these things, but I realized that I had kind of done that in my whole life where I had continually just created new relationships because I couldn't be alone. And I would just put somebody in that seat.

I just kept putting someone in that seat. And I'd be like, Oh, you're good here you sit in that seat because I can't be alone. And I found people that. Left me alone a lot so that I could pretend I was alone, but there was still somebody sitting in the seat. So there was a sort of interesting revelation about making a movie that I thought was about learning how to be alone, and it actually ended up being.

Being a movie about learning how to be in real relationships.

Lorien McKenna: Meg, I have a question for you. Did you just cry all the time when you were, when you guys were together?

Jodie Foster: We laughed a lot! You laughed a lot.

Lorien McKenna: I'm sure, but like, I don't know, I'm really affected by listening to you talk. I feel so emotional. It's just, I feel like you're speaking to my humanity in a way that I'm finding, not surprising, but like, I'm moved.

Meg LeFauve: It is. It is. And and it was. That's why it, I told you that everything I know about storytelling, I learned from Jodie. Are you listening? I mean, the depth of understanding.

Now listen, I will be honest and tell you when you had to go pitch to her, because she's so smart there it was. I wasn't afraid of her. I was afraid of not, you know, did I, am I, like I would start that overthinking process, right? And then you would have to be like, no. It's like all I can bring her is what I love and why I love it and why I think she might love it, and do you love it? I think this is such a cool idea, and I don't even know where it goes. It's only in half the script, but isn't this cool?

And she'd be like, oh my god, that's cool. Or she'd be like, no, I don't get it. And that was, you know, like, you could get intellectual up in your head about anybody who's as insightful and amazing as Jodie.

But it also teaches you to be to constantly, is it true, go back to yourself, I also learned that from her, in terms of those relationships. So I'm talking to you like you're not even here, Jodie.

Jodie Foster: I mean, look, we come up with these ways creatively, we come up with creative paths because, because they work, right?

You're like, okay, how do I make a movie that is... Moving. Okay, how do we do that? Oh, I know, let's come up with something that's moving, and then we make a movie about it. Right? So, you, you learn through experience of, and as an actor, I really feel lucky that I, that I don't think I had much of an actor's personality, but I got forced to be an actor as a young person, and man, I had to come up with ways of finding how things are moving, because if I didn't, I would suck.

So I had to be like, “okay, what moves me quick? I gotta, I gotta find it because otherwise I'm just going to be bad.” I don't really know how to act without truth. I, the only, the only thing I know how to do is be truthful. I don't really know how to do anything else. So I had to find stuff really quickly. There was an exercise that I did that really, I really felt came, came in handy that I did for for masterclass which was.

You know, let's just say we're all we're going to today we're going to come up with a really moving short. Okay, and it's it's going to be a 20 minute short. All right, what are we going to make it about you tell me a story, you know, you tell me a story from your life. That keeps haunting you and keeps coming back to you and talk to me about that moment just about that moment just one moment and the moment can last 20 seconds, but just talk to me about that moment.

And then then then we're going to go off in different tangents, but we're going to create a we're going to create a scene and script. Around that feeling and then we're going to come up with plot and then we're going to come up with backstory. Let's do it the opposite way. Let's start with the feeling and then mushroom out and talk about how, what are the parameters and the structures and the form in order to get there.

And that to me is like a really, that's another thing I ask people to do sometimes is go to a movie that makes you mad because you didn't like it and then ask yourself. Okay, now you're the writer/director, what would you do to save this movie and to make this movie reflect you and to reflect all the things that you want to say about your life?

And it's a good exercise to go back in and say, Oh, you know, what I really hated about this movie was it was this big, epic, dumb sci fi film, but it was supposed to be about, you know, his quest for asking questions about loneliness. Okay, well, what would you do? Well, first of all, I take away the sci fi thing, and I turn it into a two hander.

Okay, well, who are the two people? Like, you just keep asking yourself questions, and then suddenly you've turned, you've turned something that you hated passionately because it betrayed you, and you've made changes to turn it you because it's very much you.

Meg LeFauve: I saw a movie this weekend and I'm doing that. There you go.

Jeffrey Crane Graham: So much of what we're talking about is so valuable because it's a reminder that the creative process is so fluid, and it's about flexibility and openness. But is it ever the job of a writer in development to stand on a laurel that they really believe in about the project?

You know, we talk about that hill to die on. And having worked with so many writers in development, how do we do that elegantly, as writers, when we're working with a brilliant producer, but we really believe something should stay or stand as it's changing in development?

Jodie Foster: Oh, well, I have ideas about that. I mean, I, yeah, I encounter that all the time.

You know, sometimes, look, what, what moves me as a, as a one person, something else totally different may move someone else, and I am here to serve the script, and I'm here to serve the director. So, as an, as an actor, I'm here to serve the writer, the writer and the director. So, I have to really listen and say, what is it about that idea?

Okay. So tell me, why is that? Why do you, you know, and really interrogate it and say, okay, all right. I get that. Maybe there is a negotiation. There's a midway point, which is, you know, I can't have her coming on horseback because that just feels phony. But I like the idea that she's close to nature and you have a response to that nature thing.

Okay, is there another animal? What's the other animal? Do you feel that same way about pigs? Why would, you know, you're creating it together. So you can, you can keep one eye, you can keep the, the, the big beautiful idea, but also still kind of surgically be able to Kind of take away some of the distractions of the shaft that may be hindering the actor's performances or maybe even hindering being able to communicate effectively to the audience.

Meg LeFauve: Jodie, the other thing that you taught me that I use all the time is…we had a young writer come in and I warned her you were going to ask this question, so she should have been more prepared. And you said, “why this antagonist, like of all the people that could come into her life, why is this the person that's going to crack her open or transform her? Why this antagonist for this protagonist?”

And it's such a great clarifying back to that big, beautiful idea. Why this antagonist? Is that something that you still believe? You know, it was a while ago when we talked about it.

Jodie Foster: Yeah, I mean, I'm always, as a director, and, you know, ostensibly as a writer, even though I don't write very often, I need to have every one of those characters be a reflection of some part of me.

So I'm often, the person that I work on the most is the antagonist and you know, the quote unquote “bad guy,” you know, because I need to find that bad guy in me. And I need to know why he or she did it. I need to know where it comes from. I need to know how their mother treated them. They have a point of view and it really, everybody has a point of view, but very importantly, the antagonist has a point of view and you can't understand the protagonist, of course, until you understand why that what the antagonist is doing in the, in the movie.

I mean, you know, that it's a little bit different for television sometimes because television can be circular. And it's just about experiencing environments sometimes, but a movie is a short story. It's a beginning, a middle, and an end. And everything is meaningful. If there's a prop that's highlighted in the script, it better be meaningful.

And if the character has a line, ultimately it needs to If it's not meaningful for the big idea of the movie, cut it out. If it just sounds cute, or sounds pretty, or is amusing, cut it out. Because it really needs to serve the big story. So, yeah, there's no such thing as not having an answer to a question in a movie, as a director.

You know, as a filmmaker, when somebody asks you a question, you either have the answer, or you say, wow, I don't have the answer to that. Isn't that interesting? That's interesting. Okay. Well, let's keep going and let's see why that is. Yeah, you have, you have to have an answer for that. It can't just be the bad guy's bad because I needed a bad guy.

Meg LeFauve: And Jeff, you had a question talking, speaking about TV directing and creation. You had a question about that.

Jeffrey Crane Graham: Well, I've loved your entree into television. I think ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK is one of the best TV shows of the last decade. And I love your work on Amazon too.

But I'm curious…as someone who just was incubated in film, was there any conversation you had with yourself about trying television and moving over? Because truthfully, I feel like ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK is sort of on, like, the early side of the prestige television wave. Like, was this a conversation you were having with yourself at all before you made the move?

Jodie Foster: Well, I was excited about cable and television and streaming and all that stuff. But I also recognize my place as a director. You are not the creator and you're not the person making those decisions. So basically the director is there, you know, entirely to serve the creator's vision. And that was, you know, really fun for me to do that on Orange is New Black and on House of Cards and, you know, to work with these amazing creative voices.

I know my place though. And at the end of the day they have the right to recut you. And they make the final decision on casting and they've probably already worked with the production designer on the sets before you get there. So your level of responsibility is very different.

You're, you're there to serve as a member of the team. And I, I love that as long as I can make my own movies, I really love being able to serve in television.

Jeffrey Crane Graham: Speaking of your own movies, is it okay if I quickly ask about MONEY MONSTER?

Jodie Foster: Sure.

Jeffrey Crane Graham: Because I love that movie. And one of the things I really like about it, and I think it's true of a lot of your work, is it's filled with a big, beautiful idea, right?

And it's thematically rich and it's challenging. It's about the capitalist industrial complex, but it's still a popcorn thriller. And you know, I'm still going to go and have a great time. And I re-watched it last night and I was like, gosh, this movie's fun. I'm on the edge of my seat and I'm still being fed these important ideas.

Can you talk about that as a writer? Because I feel like, especially on early drafts, sometimes all we're doing is the big beautiful idea and we forget that we're telling a story.

Jodie Foster: Yeah, that movie, I have a lot of it's a bittersweet movie for me, right? Because I don't you know, some movies you'll leave and you'll feel like, yep, I left everything on screen that I wanted to say and everything was exactly how it was intended.

And that, that was definitely not true with that movie. I mean, that is what happens when you make a studio film that costs more than the normal movie with big stars. There are different demands on you and there's different fights that you fight.

So I don't know that that film is the most reflective of who I am, but the ideas in it for sure are things that that were really in my soul, you know, about men and failure. About ow men, it's almost like they have this primordial failure nugget that's sitting in their body and that tortures them their whole lives.

You know, what if I'm a failure? What happens if I'm a failure? And a lot of that is in the eyes of women. Whether it's their mother, whether it's their girlfriend that there's a kind of hurt that they carry with them that can propel them to violence. And can propel them to misogyny and can propel them to cheat and lie and steal because they don't want to be a failure in their eyes or in the eyes of women.

So that was really, that was at the core of that movie for me and I thought that was very interesting to have those three male characters each of them completely different. So you know, the host played by George Clooney and you the guy who comes to take him hostage, Jack O'Connell and the antagonist and all of them are reacting from the same kind of very male phenomenon.

Yeah. You know, I did want to, I did want to make a mainstream movie. I felt like you could do both. I really wanted to do both. And I also. I like to make a movie about deep things, but I also like it to be fun, and I like to see the comedy in it, because that's a reflection of who I am, I'm not like a particularly dark person, I'm kind of like a, you know, a witty, language based, funny person, so I have to have both I, you know, not everybody liked the film, so it's hard for me you know, I can't really have a perspective about that, cause I, I know a lot of people were disappointed, in the tone, really. That, you know, there was a lot of comedy and it was also a thriller and there was a lot of pressure for it to be one or the other. And I tried to keep both, but, you know, I tried, I'm not sure I, I achieved it.

Meg LeFauve: I think you did.

Jeffrey Crane Graham: I love that movie. I like it for that reason. I feel like it's aged very well in that way. I know it's not my place to talk about why the movie's good or not good, but I really, really like that movie.

Jodie Foster: Topically, it aged really well, but unfortunately at the time, I think people didn't really appreciate that, right? There was this scourge of people who were saying like, I am, I'm a white guy, and I am aggrieved and all of these, you know, the, the, the financial world have, I feel manipulated.

I feel like heck, like I can't get ahead. I feel like it's unfair. And this was before, just before Trump. So I felt like there was. You know, there was a lot of stuff of the undercurrent of America that was in the film that I think people at the time didn't, hadn't quite gotten yet. So I do feel like it was a tiny bit, maybe like six months to a year ahead of its time and that perhaps if it had come out a year later, people would have understood that there was stuff to be looked at in that arena in the financial world.

Meg LeFauve: And yet, because you're you, you also present all of those people as human beings. It's flawed, messed up human beings, but they're human beings, they're not monsters, necessarily. Or it's like, what makes a monster, I guess.

Jodie Foster: Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, that's, that's what I'm always looking for.

And I was really hoping, you know, with George, because George Clooney is somebody that people really respond to, and they love him. And they just have this, like, happy feeling when he walks in the room. And he is a total asshole in the film. I mean, he's just a complete schmuck of an asshole who takes credit for things he didn't do.

Who is, you know, he's...doesn't acknowledge the woman that is behind him that does everything, he he's starstruck, he's sexist, you know, he's all these things and we hopefully do watch him change through the course of the movie, not change and turn into a hero. He changes because he acknowledges that he f*cked up and he messed up people's lives and he becomes a human being.

So, that's what I was hoping for. I don't know if I got there. We'll see. I have not seen the movie since the last time it came out of the out of the mix.

Meg LeFauve: Jodie, maybe this is too open ended, but you know, a lot of people who listen to this podcast confront the anxiety of the creative process.

Yeah. And I think they use it as an excuse to say, well, that, that means I'm not talented or that means I'm not really a writer or that means, you know, and it's a lot of our show is about, no, that, that means you are an artist.

Can you talk a little bit about the anxiety of the creative process for you?

And I know we'd spoken beginning a little bit about as you age, it shifts and changes, but it does seem to always be part of the process, like it just seems to be an element of it.

Jodie Foster: Yeah. Yeah. Thank God that you're anxious and don't think you have all the answers. You know, I think it is a part of the process.

I think if you're, if you create something and you think it's just perfect, just the way it is, and it's just extraordinary, and everybody should just, you know, lie down and and pray in front of it you're bound to make it really terrible. You're just bound to make it terrible, people.

Part of the humility is part of what makes great art is continually questioning yourself and, you know, wondering whether it's good enough, wondering if you're good enough, wondering if the truth is true enough.

I think that's an essential part of the process and that humanity is what allows you to have relationships with people and those relationships are what allows you to have good creative partnerships.

Lorien McKenna: I really respond to the, is it true enough? Because I can overthink and beat myself up. And then I ask the question, am I making it different or better?

But I think asking, is this true is a much more powerful barometer of why I'm making the change or why I feel like making the change, what I'm changing it to. So I think it's a real gift. So thank you for that. Cause I think that will make me feel more curious rather than falling apart and overthinking.

Meg LeFauve: Yes. It's igniting curiosity.

Jodie Foster: Yeah, and look, you know, when you're working with actors, you know, sometimes there are things that bug them. A line bugs them. A blocking bugs them. Or a piece of clothing that they were asked to wear in the script bugs them. And you can't just cast it aside and say, well, that doesn't matter because it's right for what I plant.

You have to listen to that, you know, and say, okay, all right, I get that. Well, A, why, and B, what's the alternative that's going to allow all the other pieces to come together too? But also listen to yourself, because things bug you too. And sometimes you can't solve it in that moment. You know, that's the hard thing.

You can, you can look at a, you've, you've written 10 pages and you're like, oh, this bugs me, but I don't know why you just have to keep going. And eventually down the line, whether it's a year or six months or a week things will happen and you'll figure it out. And you can't possibly have all the answers in that moment.

All you can have are your feelings about it. And then you can park the answers and say, like, I'm going to figure out the answer later. I'm just going to acknowledge that I have a feeling about it. I'm going to write it down and come back later.

Meg LeFauve: Amazing. Jodie, we always, thank you so much for being here.

We always end the episode asking the same three questions. What brings you the most joy in your creative process of being a director and or actor?

Jodie Foster: You know, what's crazy is….

You do this thing that's hard, but you do it with these people. You do it with 125 people. And we are all there in the middle of the night in the freezing cold with our, you know, dumb REI outfits on. And hot pads on our shoes. And we're not, you know, the boom guy's not holding a boom because that's all he ever wanted to do was hold a stick. You know, he's holding it because he wants to be a part of something meaningful. And when you're there with all those people, you're creating this meaningful thing in a context with a group like a summer camp. And it's a once…it only happens once. That moment only happens once and you can't recreate that context.

You know, Iñárritu said to me, a whole bunch of people got a thing and he got an award and he said, “what's crazy about this award…is that it's like me and my wife made love and she got pregnant and we had a baby and now everybody's going like congratulations. You made this amazing baby” and he's like, “I didn't do anything.”

“I just had sex with my wife and yes, that was a great moment and it was amazing and truthful and beautiful.” But like, “I'm not responsible for what came out of this moment of truth.” And I guess that's what I like the most about the creative process.

Lorien McKenna: Okay. The second question is what pisses you off about your life as a creative?

Jodie Foster: Well, you know, you're probably I'm gonna try and give me a pep talk and tell me I shouldn't feel this way, but no, never feel really mad at myself and really like, it doesn't go away that I feel that I was given all of these amazing opportunities that I was either too lazy to pursue, or I didn't do it, I was just too busy doing something else that didn't end up even being fulfilling.

I watched all of these opportunities that were given to me. And I don't even know why they were given to me. They were given to me because, who knows? Maybe they were given to me because I had, you know, white skin or blonde hair or I had a great education or a whole bunch of privileges. But I still look back on them now and think like, why didn't I do that thing?

Why didn't I call that guy back? Or, you know, he offered for me to do this thing and I didn't do it. And I do feel like sometimes like I didn't live up to the promise that my mom had for me or that I had for myself, that I know that's crazy because I did a lot of stuff. But, I'm still tortured by the, by all the promise that I didn't fulfill.

Meg LeFauve: We say yet. Of course, I would talk you out of that, but there's still a yet.

Lorien McKenna: That really resonates. I think as you get older and you start to catalog all the missed things because you, I mean for me, this is not a pep talk, but like I didn't know it was an opportunity at the time. I wasn't ready to take it on.

Like, why didn't I call that guy back? At the time, I thought he was just calling me. As a pity or who even is that like three years later, I'm like, Oh, my God, I just realized who that is and what that meant. And, you know, so it's part of it is, I just didn't know, or I wasn't ready, or I would have failed anyway, so part of it is that, but then, you know, I am on this journey of, “you know.”

I'm on a journey. Yeah. So not to talk you out of it, but like just in my own experience, I think probably a lot of our listeners to like some of it's just ignorance. We just didn't know.

Jodie Foster: Yeah. And look, those opportunities get less and less as you get older, you know, there aren't as many people out there.

Who wanted to discover the great young, whatever, right? So you, you turn a certain age and there are, there isn't a platter full of donuts that are being passed to you all the time.

Jeffrey Crane Graham: And the last question we have, Jodie, is if you could go back and have a coffee with your younger self - and you started your career so young, this will be an interesting answer I'm sure, for you - but what advice would you give that Jodie?

Jodie Foster: Yeah, I don't know if that it's so much about career. I think it was more about personality. I think that I could say no and that I had the freedom to decide what I wanted to do. Like this new generation of young people have an understanding of that, that they can say no, that they can say that feels uncomfortable or I don't want to in my heart or that isn't my instinct.

I guess I thought as a woman in the 60s growing up, I thought I had to make everybody feel good and I had to make men not feel bad and I had to say yes to things that I didn't want to do.

And I just wish I knew that I had a choice.

Meg LeFauve: Jodie, thank you so much for being here. It was as spectacular as I anticipated knowing you. Yeah. Just your incredible intelligence and depth of humanity.

Jodie Foster: Well, there's nothing I love more than talking about making movies and talking about the creative process. There's nothing I want, I love more.

And I wish that it was a full time job and I could actually get paid for it. That would be awesome. I said, I want to be a professional, like an opinion person where you call them up on the phone and it's like, 500 an hour, and you just give your opinion.

Lorien McKenna: I think you just invented that job. Congratulations. You're the official opinion person of Hollywood. There you go.

Meg LeFauve: All right, Jodie. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Jodie Foster: My pleasure. Love seeing you, Meg. I can't wait to hear about everything.

Lorien McKenna: Thank you so much to Jodie Foster for joining us on today's show. TRUE DETECTIVE will be coming out in the fall on HBO.

Meg LeFauve: If you haven't yet, come on over to the Facebook group. There's a wonderful community over there ready to help and support your creative process. And I mean that, I know it sounds like a tagline, but I mean it. There is, we are having incredible conversations over there. People are asking questions, so come on over and join us.

Lorien McKenna: Thank you so much to Jeff and Savanna for producing. And remember, you are not alone, and keep writing.

Though she got her start in multi-cam sitcoms, it was a bold sci-fi dramedy rom-com that made Pixar interested in hiring Brenda Hsueh to co-write Elemental. On today's show, Brenda discusses how her voice has evolved as a writer over the course of her career, how she brought her own experience into her work as a writer for Elemental, and how she has learned to elegantly argue for what she believes in when collaborating.

JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

With hits like BRING IT ON and STICK IT, writer/director Jessica Bendinger is known for her subversive and surprising takes on female girlhood, using archetypes in a way that audiences have celebrated. Today we discuss what archetypes are, how we can use them, and what the future of our industry looks like.

FOR JESS' BOOK/PODCAST: http://www.jessicabendinger.com/

TO JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

Hi all! Today, Savana and Jeff revisit their conversation from part one of their conversation about SET! Today we discuss some of the most essential vocabulary and set dynamics that you need to understand before you take the plunge!

For internship inquiries, email thescreenwriting@gmail.com with the subject line INTERN, and include a cover letter and resume. Please note that we are only considering credit-eligible students!

To join our Patreon: www.pateron.com/thescreenwritinglife

We bring our "beginning" miniseries to a close with this instant TSL classic, wherein Meg gives many pep talks.

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In our continued conversation about where and how to begin as a screenwriter, we take your (excellent) questions! We talk about outlining, cards, character development, and how to quiet our inner critic.

TO JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/TheScreenwritingLife

So you want to be a screenwriter. Now what? Today we discuss some of these important questions to ask before you jump into a draft - questions that are JUST as valuable for emerging writers as they are for professionals.

Emmy-winning TV super-producer Javier Grillo-Marxuach is back. This time, he chats about his wonderful essay "WHAT I DO ON THE PAGE." clarifying that ultimately, the basic mechanics or writing are also the advanced mechanics of writing.

HERE is the essay we're discussing: http://okbjgm.weebly.com/uploads/3/1/5/0/31506003/script_essay.pdf

HERE is Javi's first appearance on our show: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/46-writing-great-tv-characters-w-javier-grillo-marxuach/id1501641442?i=1000522797405

HERE is our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

Podcasts are one of the fastest-growing mediums today (see THIS SHOW), and they can take on many forms. Today, writer/director Susan Busa Leshner discusses her podcast series THE AMERICAN IMMORTAL, and how she turned it from an idea into a quickly growing audio drama with multiple episodes, a completed first season, and a second season on the way!

TO LISTEN TO THE AMERICAN IMMORTAL FOR FREE: https://theamericanimmortal.com/

TO BECOME A PATRON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

Karyn Kusama is known for film classics like Girlfight, Jennifer's Body, The Invitation, and a NEW TV classic, Yellowjackets, which she executive produces.

Karyn's work is celebrated for its thoughtfully subversive approach with feminist themes across multiple genres, and today she discusses HOW she uses her body as a barometer to seek truth in her work.

It's a scary and unprecedented time for our industry, but we're immensely proud of our guild's fight for the basic dignities of its members: writers. As negotiating committee members, our guests Michele Mulroney and David A. Goodman have been on the front lines of this historic strikeand are here to help us understand exactly what writers are fighting for, why the stakes are higher than ever, and what you can do, wherever you are, to help support the cause.

CuritsGwinn has worked on some of the most acclaimed shows of the 2010s including The Walking Dead, The Leftovers, and Stranger Things, but he's the first to admit that each room has been a valuable learning experience, even for a writer as seasoned as he is. In this candid conversation, Curtis opens up about the lessons he learned across multiple writers rooms, how to stay spiritually grounded in such a rocky business, and why a 1984 Halloween Costume helped secure his spot on Stranger Things.

When Charlie got to post-production of his feature writer/director debut, he was crushed to discover that the film simply didn't work. At that point, he was faced with two choices: ditch the movie and move on, or dig in, dive into his lava, and head back to set for reshoots. He chose the latter, and his new film FOOL'S PARADISE, drops in theaters next week! On today's show we also talk about the genesis of Always Sunny, Charlie's comic voice, "pushing" your tone on the page, and how to write "unlikeable" characters.

How did Kelly Fremon Craig manage to convince Judy Blume to let her adapt Are You There God, It's Me Margaret? Tune in to find out!

We're thrilled to be joined by award-winning writer/director Kelly Fremon Craig. She's the award-winning writer and director of two feature films: The Edge Of Seventeen starring Hailey Steinfeld, and Are You There God, It's Me Margaret, which will be released in theaters tomorrow. Kelly's work is celebrated for its unflinching depictions of teenage girlhood, which The New York Times calls "smart andachinglybittersweet." Hi Kelly!

However you feel about Starz' award-winning show BLINDSPOTTING, one thing is for sure, you've never seen anything like it. Today's guest, showrunner Rafael Casal, likes it that way: confronting his audiences with genre-breaking, even medium-breaking decisions in the production. For Rafael, as long as the writing remains deeply committed to truth and honesty, the writer is entitled to "break the rules. "

RafaelCasalis a poet, rapper, actor, filmmaker, and showrunner who is best known for Blindspotting: a feature-film-turned-TV-show that he co-created with his longtime creative partner Daveed Diggs.Casal's work explores the complicated social dynamics of urban life in the 21st century, particularly in Oakland, where he grew up.

Jump behind the scenes with us to experience the highs and lows of producing one of Pixar's most celebrated and subversive films: Turning Red from the minds of Domee Shi and Julia Cho, who wrote it.

Domee Shi began as a story intern at Pixar Animation Studios in June 2011, and was soon hired as a story artist on the Academy Award-winning feature film INSIDE OUT. In 2015 she began pitching ideas for short films, and soon was green lit to write and direct BAO which won the Academy Award® for Best Animated Short Film. Shi most recently made her feature film directorial debut on TURNING RED which was also Oscar-nominated. Her TURNING RED co-writer Julia Cho began her career in the New York Theater scene, writing a number of celebrated plays which scored her the Windham-Campbell Literary Prize in 2020 celebrating her body of her work. Her work as a playwright earned her spots in a number of prestigious writers' rooms including BIG LOVE, HALT AND CATCH FIRE, and PAPER GIRLS, which she co-executive produced.

Jane Anderson is an award-winning writer of plays, television, and movies, with over three decades of produced material, some of which she herself directed. Jane's work is known for its rich and complicated depictions of female life, with films like THE WIFE, which was Oscar-nominated, and shows likeOLIVEKITTERIDGE, which won multiple Emmys, including two for Jane.

ANNE LAMOTT EPISODE: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/33-anne-lamott-make-your-writing-fears-work-for-you/id1501641442?i=1000510993110

Every writer should experience set life at least once in their life, whether they're directing their own work, supervising production on their episode, or even just helping out as a PA. Every set has it's own rules and universe, so today, we wanted to unpack those with our own stories and advice!

Kelly Edwards' multi-faceted career has multiple phases: she has worked in development, platforming shows like LIVING SINGLE, GIRLFRIENDS, and MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE. She has also worked as a diversity executive for studios like HBO and NBC Universal, ushering in diverse creative talent for NBC, USA, Syfy, Bravo, and Telemundo. Now Kelly has taken her decades of producing experience to do the very thing we talk about on our show: write. Kelly has sold multiple scripts and was recently staffed on a scripted show.Having worked as both an exec and a writer, Kelly has a rare understanding of our business from both sides, which is the main focus of her recent book: The Executive Chair, which you can buy here!:https://www.amazon.com/Executive-Chair-Writers-Guide-Development/dp/1615933301

It's a TSL first as we explore a crossover episode with Matt Enlow and Oren Kaplan of the popular JUST SHOOT IT PODCAST to discuss pitching, free work, social media, and what directors are really looking for when it comes to the page.

All of us have goals in our career, but how do build the steps to actually get there? Or perhaps more importantly, how do we be intentional about budling the steps to get there? Not only is scaffolding an essential part of career-building, but also in our work.

Joe Robert Cole, known for marathon writing sessions, has a simple litmus test to assess his own work: how does this make me feel? He calls it "Method Writing," and it's an essential part of his process.

Joe Robert Cole is an award-winning writer/director of both television and features. He has co-written two Oscar-nominated movies with Ryan Coogler for Marvel, BLACK PANTHER and last year's BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER. On the TV Side, Cole worked as a co-producer on Murphy's widely-acclaimed People v. OJ miniseries, earning an Emmy nomination for writing the episode "The Race Card." He has also directed two features, including ALL DAY AND A NIGHT.

Though Dana Stevens wrote one of 2022's buzziest and most exciting movies, The Woman King, she has decades of experience in both film and television. On today's show, we discuss how Dana got involvedin The Woman King, how she approachedthe film's extraordinary action set pieces on the page, and what she learned while showrunning.

Jeremy Doner is a co-writer on one of 2022's most exciting movies: ELVIS, directed by Baz Luhrmann. For his work on the script, Jeremy is nominated for an Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award. Before Elvis, he was staffed on two critically acclaimed TV crime dramas: DAMAGES and THE KILLING, writing multiple episodes and scoring WGA-award nominations for both shows.

On today's show, he discusses how he got involved with Elvis, why he connected with the story, and his "take" - one of the most important components of pitching a biopic.

Dustin Lance Black is an Oscar-winning writer/director, known for writing the films like Milk and J. Edgar, in addition to creating the award-winning 2022 crime miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven, starring Andrew Garfield. Black is a fierce LGBTQ rights advocate, serving as a founding board member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, and writing 8, a courtroom drama reenacting the overturn of Prop 8 in California. On today's show, we discuss the common pitfalls of writing biopics, how Lance uses his own life to inform his work, and the research and work it takes to avoid cliches in our writing.

Allison Tolman's first major television role made waves in the industry, even scoring her a Critics Choice Award for her portrayal of Molly in FX's acclaimed debut season of Fargo. She has worked in Network TV on shows like Brooklyn 99 and Good Girls, Streaming TV, starring in Marc Cherry's Why Women Kill, and Premium Cable Fare, recently guest starring in Starz' Gaslit across Julia Roberts.

Alison, a writer herself, is joining us today to discuss what she looks for when vetting material, how she collaborates with writers during productions, and to share wisdom on her experience in the industry, both on and off set.

ROOM TONE INSTAGRAM: @weareroomtone

Constanza and Doménica Castro are the founders of271 Films, which tells stories that bring meaningful perspectives to an audience, that connect them to their humanity and their emotional intelligence. Today we discuss what they look for as they vet work, and how they found the courage to tell their OWN stories.

WE ARE HERE:https://271films.com/we-are-here-fyc

271 WEBSITE:https://271films.com/

RISING VOICES:https://tribecafilm.com/films/indeed-presents-rising-voices-2021

There are some lessons that can only be learned through experience, time, and let's be honest - failure. Today, tons of professional writers anonymously share their ups and downs in the business by sharing what they wish they knew early in their career. It's a must-listen!

Why is it that the New Year so often invites trepidation, fear, and panic as we consider our achievements as artists? We consider that question today, while rethinking new years resolutions as a concept to feel more generous, achievable, and thoughtful as we approach the new year.

We’re closing out 2022 with a LIVE panel from our time at the Austin Film Festival. Thanks to Joe Forte for joining!

TO JOIN OUR PATREON: www.patreon.com/thescreenwritinglife

It's that time of year when hundreds of Holiday Movies air on screens all over the world. Whether its Hallmark, Lifetime, Disney+, Netflix, or Apple, or even Theaters, it's one of the hottest markets around for emerging and professional writers, and for Holiday screenwriting Queen Eirene Tran Donohue, one of the best ways to break in. Listen to her break down why!

Diving back into your work after a round of notes can feel overwhelming, especially when we get thoughtful notes that can feel contradictory. How can we possibly incorporate every suggestion into our next draft? Spoiler alert: you can't. Instead, focusing on one ELEMENT of your rewrite can be the ticket to moving forward. Keep it simple; pick a pony.

It's becoming and increasingly common (and important) question: are we allowed to tell stories about characters whose lives don't reflect our own? On today's show, UCLA psychologist Dr. Yalda T. Uhls answers this question, in addition to addressing questions around TV programming for kids and adolescent viewers, and unconcious bias in our writing.

One of Netflix's most celebrated animated movies of the year comes from our very own Meg LeFauve, whose beautiful script for "My Father's Dragon" was brought to life by Nora Twomey, one of our industry's most celebrated animated directors. Nora and Meg discuss how the movie came to fruition, what the development process looked like, and why precision and attention to detail in our storytelling is the key to finding success in our work. Thanks Nora!

There are few jobs more mentally strenuous than that of a writer. Rejection. Writers block. Notes. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

But today, bestselling author and thought leader Dr. Kristin Neff - renowned for her decades of research - is here to teach us about the beauty and the POWER of self-compassion. It will fundamentally shift the way you see you execute your creative life!

PURCHASE KRISTIN'S BOOKS: https://self-compassion.org/store/

Patrick Osborne may have won an Oscar for his short film FEAST, but finding the conviction to stick to his creative "North Star" while writing is still a journey. Find out how he does it on today's episode.

Patrick Osborne - is An Oscar, Emmy, and Peabody winning (and even Grammy Nominated) Writer/Director and animator. Patrick animated on a bunch of Feature films like Surf's Up, I am Legend, Bolt, Tangled.. Wreck it Ralph before getting a shot at Writing and Directing with his 2014 Disney short film FEAST. Since then he has traced a less than conventional path in the entertainment business, that includes creating a live-action Sitcom (Imaginary Mary) - and even directing concert film for one of the world's biggest pop stars, Billie Eilish.

Tone is consistently one of the most challenging things that Screenwriters face. What is it and how do we capture it on the page? We're thrilled to be joined by super-producer and friend-of-the-show Sheila Hanahan Taylor to unpack ALL of that today. Buckle up!

Today, we take more questions from our brilliant listeners about: script readability, pilot v. feature format, and how to (as always) mine more emotionality from our characters.

Meg and Lorien are BACK from their labs (Africa and Italy respectively - casual), and they have LOTS of thoughts. We discuss how to be great mentors, and of course, for our listeners, great mentees. This is your ultimate writing lab guidebook.

SEE MEG AND LORIEN IN AUSTIN

MEG + Joe's Workshop

Saturday October 29, 2022 9:00am - 10:15am CDT

St. David's Episcopal Church, Eden's Center 301 E 8th St, Austin, TX 78701

TSL MEETUP

Saturday October 29, 2022 8pm CDT @ Stephen's F Bar

701 Congress Ave., Austin, TX 78701

Matthew Gentile has wanted to be a filmmaker since seeing Dog Day Afternoon as a 12-year-old. After graduating from AFI and winning an Emmy for his short FRONTMAN, Matthew's debut feature is about to drop theatrically This Friday. How does a first time feature filmmaker snag Tom Pelphrey, Jacki Weaver, Idina Menzel, and Ryan Phillippe for his cast? He gets into all of that today.

Lorien is still living her best life in Italy, so Jeff and Meg hit the mic to take YOUR questions, wherin we discuss main relationships, subtext with your lava, and widow words!

Do you have a pen and paper? Might want to grab them now...

Andrew Stanton wrote and directed Finding Nemo, Finding Dory, and Wall-E, all of which consistently rank among the best films of this century, and best animated films ever made. In live action storytelling, he's become a critically acclaimed director, working on shows like Stranger Things and Better Call Saul.

Andrew is considered one of the finest storytellers working in our industry. Andrew has given lectures for TED and Google, and he's joining us today to help us in our own understanding of story.

How did one writers group produce 3 Nicholl winners in 6 years? Hard work, dedication, and a highly conscientious and regimented approach to getting sh*t done. Today, Nicholl winners Alisha Brophy and Scott Miles get into ALL of the details of their notoriously successful writers group, and how you can succeed too.

What is the Metaverse, and why does it matter? Ask Ben Grosmann...

In 2013, he was nominated for an Academy Award for the film Star Trek Into Darkness. In 2012, he won an Academy Award for the film Hugo. In 2006, he won an Emmy for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for the Scifi Miniseries The Triangle.

Whether it's the logistics of procuring rights, the challenging of changing an ending, or the fear of meeting that author who originated the story you're telling, adaptation invites a LOT of questions. Today, we discuss them!

Jen Grisanti thought she had her dream job as a studio exec at Paramount/CBS, but when her contract wasn't renewed AND she was working through a very public divorce, she realized she was given the greatest gift she could have a storyteller: wounds and a potential to heal those wounds. This new philosophy has helped Jen create a new approach to writing, which she has been teaching writers all around the world for the last 15 years.

To hire Jen or read or books, go to http://www.jengrisanti.com

Dan O'Shannon has worked on some of American television's most iconic shows in history, but for him, every new project is a refreshed exercise in humility and starting again. Dan talks about what makes something funny, how to draw UNIQUE comedic characters, and what it really takes to succeed in our business in writer.

DAN'S BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/What-Are-You-Laughing-Comprehensive/dp/1441162933

Yes. That's right. Today we're bringing you ONE HUNDRED lessons we've learned about writing, in honor of...yes, that's right, our 100th episode!!! Enjoy!