011 - How to Collaborate Like a TV Writer

The Anatomy of Collaboration: Insights from a Writer's Room Veteran. Meet Oscar-nominated writer and director,  Rob Pearlstein, known for his work in both advertising and television, MacGyver, Scorpion, Someone Marry Barry, and more. Join Rob and Chauncey as they delve into the dynamics of  collaboration  exploring the intense, intricate world of writers' rooms and creative agencies.

The episode offers a deep dive into how creative professionals navigate the pressures and politics of collaborative environments to produce magic. Whether you're  an artist, a corporate executive, a CIA operative, or a junk bond salesman (okay maybe not that), this episode is for you.

In This Episode, You Will Learn:
1. The Essence of Collaboration: Rob discusses the necessity of collaboration in writers' rooms and compares it to his experiences in advertising. He shares practical tips on how writers and creatives can enhance their collaborative skills.
2. Navigating Difficult Conversations: Rob and Chauncey touch on sensitive topics like racism and sexism in creative spaces.
3. Survival Tips for Creative Fields: From "digging shallow holes" to understanding when to push an idea and when to step back, the conversation offers a roadmap for thriving in competitive creative environments.
4. The Impact of AI on Creativity: The discussion explores how artificial intelligence is influencing creative processes and the potential implications for creative jobs.
5. Rob's Personal Journey: From starting in advertising to breaking into Hollywood, Rob shares his personal and professional journey, including the challenges and breakthroughs that have marked his career.

Why You Should Listen:
- For Creatives : Gain insights into the skills and attitudes that help you succeed in high-pressure creative settings.
- For Aspiring Industry Professionals: Enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at how TV shows and advertising campaigns come together from concept to execution.
- For Fans of Creating Better Processes Everywhere: Get 6 concrete tips for smoother collaboration.

Written, directed, and executive produced by Chauncey Zalkin. Intro/Outro sound engineered by Eric Aaron. Photography by Alonza Mitchell with Design Consulting by Paper + Screen.

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Transcript

  Writers rooms are such a  laboratory for collaboration.   You're trapped in a tiny submarine with people all day every day collaborating with this  production beast bearing down on you of like you got to crank out another script every seven days. I think it's a really great place to learn collaboration.


Good morning.  Today's the day I share my interview with Oscar nominated writer and director. Rob Pearlstein. He writes for both advertising and TV and wrote eight hilarious feature. I called someone Marry Barry, that you can watch now on Hulu. I have been a fan girl of the writer's room ever since 30 Rock when I discovered there was such a thing, and though I don't write screenplays per se, my favorite podcast beside my own, is The Screenwriting Life, so when I learned, Rob is sharing the secrets of good collaboration from his time in countless writers' rooms, I knew I wanted to speak to him. 

Writing can be largely a solo pursuit. Which is what makes it so appealing to me, no red tape, but you need to collaborate once you set the pen down. Either in pitching with editors, with publishers, and for those lucky enough to get optioned and picked up by a network with the network. TV writers are a different beast as their whole gig is collaboration, and according to Rob and I agree that can go a long way to helping us collab in all sorts of situations with grace and calm. As a veteran of the agency world, which can be fraught with ego and politics.  a world he also inhabits, I wanted to hear more and you will too. Let's get to it.  Welcome to Actual People, a podcast hosted by me, Chauncey Zalkin, dedicated to meaningful conversations about the evolving landscape of our lives and the power of our own creativity and imagination to make magic. 

 I find collaboration to be something that is really hard but at the same time, it seems  the world's greatest bands and artists who are  probably temperamental and possessive of their creativity have been able to throughout time collaborate. 

Right you know until they have a spectacular implosion what interested me  in this was  I'd worked in several writers rooms and  it's just intense what's happening in a room. You put  eight creative people in there and there's so much happening creatively, politically,  diplomatically, socially,  it's very interesting  I would  try to find my way and work my way up in these rooms. .... You have to kind of learn the ropes and   it's not just a game of who has the best idea. It's how to know how to pitch and when to pitch and how you react to others ideas   you know, even facial expressions and clues, you got to watch yourself because like you don't want to show distaste for an idea  there's generally something to be gleaned from any contribution, but if there isn't,  you want to move on in a supportive way.

So I just started taking notes about things that I noticed  in these rooms. And I thought, wow, they're really a microcosm  or a case study in good collaboration.  And sometimes a case study in not good collaboration. So  I started to kind of look at who is really good at this.   I started to notice patterns and things that people did

There's a lot of,  known tricks or tips, if you will,  in the writer's world that can translate to other fields. really any field or social situations.  I don't claim to have made any of these up.  These are wisdoms that are swirling around writers' rooms and advertising creatives rooms and probably other rooms. I'm just trying to gather them and put a name to them.  

 I've made so many mistakes, you know, so that's why yeah notes on these things. Like how do I be better in a room? How do I, you know, read the room?   I have also worked in advertising for years and, and I think all these things apply in advertising as well. 

 This is the part of the interview where I awkwardly interject to talk about racism and sexism in a creative environment, because what he's talking about. Well, it's extremely  useful. I  sometimes have a problem dealing with  strong emotions,  when it comes to racism and sexism. Especially in advertising environments. 

I don't know anything about a writer's room. And what he was talking about made me think   how do you productively bring up  sexism or racism in a way that doesn't make people defensive.  And we never really quite ironed that out because that's not the point of this interview, but I just want to say that I'm going to bring a little bit of that  into this edit. 

So you can hear how I talk about it, because this is something that has plagued me. In my career where I feel like something's not quite right, and I don't know how to talk about it.  Sometimes I don't talk about it at all. And sometimes I overstated or it. Doesn't go over that. Well, so I wanted to bring it up and here's what I say. 

And here's what he has to say.

i've been in advertising rooms where    let's say they're trying to appeal to a black audience, but there's mostly white people in the room and  there's  subtle racism going on.

I feel mad  I feel like I'm supposed to speak up.

Right. 

 All of those issues of gender and race   come into play.  It's a thing to be aware of  and work at.

 In Hollywood,  it's changing slowly, but it's still not quite right,  I can just imagine them like, put the hot girl in the front, make her trip or do this thing or make this joke because it's still there. And then the women who are writing in that room  have to be like, ha ha. 

This is why you want a room with different perspectives, because they can tell the older folks, you know, hey, that's not really cool 

yeah, like put her in a bikini. Like, let's not put her in a bikini because that's toxic. 

Right.  You get people who are really good at structure say other people are really great at dialogue. Some people are great at the big ideas. Some people are good at funny, some people are good at drama, or action, or set pieces, or whatever it is, and then hopefully, all together, you create a great product, but  it takes a lot of  collaboration to make that stuff work, and I find the same thing in advertising.  In advertising, I'm a copywriter, so I partner with an art director, and it's usually just the two of us, but the same things apply.

... You don't want to put down their ideas in a rude way. You want to build on those ideas. So a yes and is like the most basic building block of any collaboration.   there's so many other things that I've learned and  some I've taken from advertising and brought into writer's rooms.

When I started out, I was at Chiat Day and it was  a really, really creative shop and it was really cool and I was taught dig shallow holes.  That was a phrase that they used to say,  stop digging deep on one idea, dig a bunch of shallow holes of various different ideas, right? Because when you go into a creative director, you don't want to go, here's my concept for your  milk campaign. 

And you tell them this idea  and maybe it sucks.  And you've spent three days blowing out TV ideas.  Films, digital, everything, right? You've got it down to like, what's going to appear on bus sides and they don't like the idea. And so why did you spend those three days digging this deep, deep hole? Way better to spend those three days digging shallow holes. So you come up with campaign idea number one, two, three, and you do a few executions on each just to give the gist.  But I have a question. I have a question about that because for me to get to a good idea of any kind, especially in that context, that creative would need to do the bus treatment and the TV to  figure out if it's  good enough, not completely polish it, but  every creative has their own  techniques and methods so how you get there is your own deal  but  in the creative process, if I'm a creative director, I want to hear multiple ideas and if I don't like your first idea, I don't need to know   the details of how you're going to get down. Let me give you an example from the writing world, the TV writing world.  If I'm the showrunner on, let's say it's an action show,  and you come in and you're a staff writer, you're a mid level writer, and you come in and you go, okay, here's my idea.

Our team has to infiltrate the Kremlin, I'm going to give you the most likely banal generic story. They're going to infiltrate the Kremlin to steal some documents and stop a nuclear bomb so I broke it into the teaser and four acts. In the teaser. And right there, the creative ...  can stop you and go, yeah, that's boring.

I I've heard that story a million times, or we just did an episode where they broke into the Kremlin or they stopped a weapon.  What else you got? And if you spent two days coming up with the teaser and four acts you just wasted everyone's time. That is inefficient. 

Absolutely. Yeah,  you want the bullet list   You want shorthand. 

You want   the big idea so succinctly, and if it's a really good idea, then the showrunner will understand. Oh, I can see how that could break into  four acts, or they'll certainly talk to you about it and go, Hmm, well, do you have a cool twist at the end of act one?

You know? And it's like, yeah, I do actually have that. So you might have some building blocks. I'm not saying you don't have anything.  This discussion leads me to think of another of the wisdoms  which is that in order to be efficient, a lot of writers rooms use a phrase . They call it WP, which stands for writer's problem. 

A writer's room will develop a story and develop the beats of the story. And they put them on a dry erase board divided into four or five acts or less if it's a half hour show, the beats are put up and then the writer who's going to write that episode will take those beats  and write an outline.

And from an outline, they'll write a script.  There are times when the group is breaking the story, which means putting up the beats, and they might hit a wall or have a hole in the middle of act two where they're like, yeah, something here has to do with this. And they might just write WP.  And it just means figure it out on your own, man.

Like that's what that's about. Because the groups energy and time is not best spent on them.  That's  another phrase to  keep things moving.   

There's rules for bolstering the mood of the room there's something called  the clap.

And I don't mean that as,  you know, an STD, , maybe I should rename it. , but  the clap is that at the end of breaking any episode, we would always in the writer's room break into applause. It was like, we wrap this one up at this stage. Now there's still a lot to go. They got to write an outline, write a script.

shoot it, edit, post everything, but it really boosts the mood of the room to feel  a marker on that path  that's important. I think you're trying to keep morale up. 

 Then there's  different ways of buying back a pitch if it falls flat. Some people will make a self deprecating joke. I've seen this work wonders for the mood in a room 

what is buying back a pitch? What does that mean? 

 I'll give you an example from  advertising but  I saw it really used all the time in TV. 

My very first job writing at Chiat Day, I had to pitch. I  couldn't believe I'd been  called up to the mothership of cool agencies and I was so excited. And I got this partner, Who was a senior art director and we were working together on this big restaurant brand pitch and fast food thing  and they brought all the creatives into a room and it was so intimidating. You're like a dozen creative teams and the creative directors, and we had to go around in a circle and pitch our ideas.  I was  brand new. I was  23 and my partner was like, you present dude. I, I hate public speaking. And I was like, Oh, thanks. Okay. And I pitched these, I thought funny commercials and they bombed, bombed.

It was like crickets in there and it was so painful and embarrassing. And I didn't know  that you should have a save.  You just hear  nothing but my rustling papers and I  pull out the next script and then that bombs and it was so painful. But you know what?

That's mean. I, I know I've been in that room because I worked at Crispin and it's heyday where Alex,  Alex would say, anything  this is the client pitch and they'd be like, Oh, great, great, great. That was my first experience at an agency. And then I went to my next agency. And there was a client meeting and the client would just sit there stony face.

I'm like, Oh, my, I would just feel like melting. And I wasn't even the one presenting, but I felt like melting into my chair. And I thought, Come on, be a little warmer to these people who worked so hard pitching  it's so painful. And yet It doesn't always happen. So the next guy showed me how it was done. He pitched his scripts and guess what?

They bombed just as hard. However, he had the best save. He  finished reading his script, waited for the laugh. No one laughed. It was stone silence. And what did he do? He took his script, printed on paper and crumpled it into a ball and threw it back over his shoulder and everyone laughed  and it broke the tension. 

Wow.

Yes.  Yes, and in TV, people do this all the time too, right? They'll have a pitch, and it doesn't quite sail,  and then they'll have this great save. So I just call that the save. You gotta have, like, a save. Do you have any other examples?  Oh God, I mean, I don't know. Sometimes people, like, make a explosion sound, or they'll purposely sink under their chair just to get a laugh, you know, or, or just a self deprecating comment.

 it's  a good technique to have in your back pocket if you need it, you know, and it also means you have to take, you have to have a sense of  humor about yourself. Absolutely. And I think the higher up you are on the food chain,  the more important it is to have some vulnerability and be self deprecating and say, okay, that idea sucks but, you know, maybe it sparks something in you, whatever, whatever it is. 

 I know this  must be part of your pantheon, but you need to have  emotional safety in that room. So you have to feel like the people  care about you when you're in the room and there's,  crickets and it's not like, Oh my God, I want to say something nice, but I have nothing to say, sometimes I feel like that's an intimidation tactic. It goes both ways  the listeners, they don't have to blow smoke up your ass and be like, that was great. It's so wonderful but do you have anything on that side of things where you... 

oh, yeah, I mean, I've worked with a couple showrunners I thought were like, really amazing at this.  My showrunner, Nick Santora was so good at this.  He Is  a hilarious person and he would start almost every day with stories of his life   he just tell us something funny that happened to him that was maybe a little embarrassing.  He later admitted to me  that there was a method to this that it was partly to ease everyone up and make them feel comfortable enough to share their own stories  that could maybe make  for really good television, ,  it also bonds everyone. It makes you feel safe If the showrunner is willing to embarrass himself,  then you can be too 

  you're not going to get good creative product out of this stilted environment where people.  Right. 

Do you feel that the writer's room  is similar to the creative environment?

I would love to get some backstory on how you moved from one to the other or where you started.  Tell me a little bit about how your relationship between advertising and, and, working on networks. Yeah.  I started out in advertising, but I always knew screenwriting was really interesting to me.

And once I got into some really cool agencies like Shyett,  I really loved it. And I still love advertising.  It's super fun creatively, and it's fast paced like television. , and I like that whereas features, of course, as everyone knows, are really much slower  in development. So I did copywriting for several years and it was a lot of commercials and,  print ads   digital ads and all kinds of stuff and meanwhile, I was writing scripts at night.  Eventually I  broke into the Hollywood world and  started doing that full time

 wait, you can't skip ahead to writing from writing scripts at night to getting into Hollywood like it's that easy. It's not. No, it wasn't easy at all. It was really, it was, it took a lot of rejection actually.

 I wrote a lot of scripts and was not getting anywhere. ,  show scripts,  pilots, . Yeah. So  at one point you were supposed to write a spec episode of existing shows  that was the way that you got staffed, which I didn't really love. I wanted to write original stuff, but that was what they wanted.

So I wrote some of those. I wrote some original stuff. And, um, How'd you know who to send it to?  You know what? I just by hook or crook, I'd find someone I knew in Hollywood in some place and be like, listen, I  have an aspiring writer. Can I, do you know anybody like a manager, an agent or whatever? And sometimes they'd be like, yeah, I know an assistant of a producer at Comedy Central and maybe they can help you. And then, you know, you just. And you live in LA, you didn't live in New York. This is all LA anyway. Yeah, although I had moved to New York for copywriting, and I was living in New York for a while. And you know, I got a few little bites here and there. And then, you know, I had a really crushing moment where I was at the Krispy Kreme on, on St. Mark's, and I got the call from ICM that they were not going to rep me after maybe considering repping me and I was just crushed. I probably had several donuts  to make myself feel even worse  All right, and  it took a while and then I wound up getting a break in this  Screenplay contest  long story short I had moved to new york in the dead of winter with two giant duffel bags during a snowstorm and I moved into this place on Avenue A and these guys who were going to be my roommates said, Oh, hey, um, by the way,  we think that the  previous tenant you made the deal with  is crazy and we don't honor any deals she did.

So you can stay here tonight, but you actually are not our roommate.  And I was like, what? You could have called me.  You've had my number for a month.  And I was , Oh my God, this is like the proverbial New York story. So , I went to two boots pizzeria to meet my friend and have pizza and complain and be like, great.

Now I have no place to live and I had to trudge through the snow for days. Well, I wound up eventually finding a great place.  And everything was cool, and then I see this guy at the gym, the guy who had had that place, and he goes, Oh hey man, weren't you writing a screenplay when you were staying with us?

Because there's this contest called Project Greenlight,  maybe you should try entering it. And I was like, Huh, okay, I'll look that up, and lo and behold,  I wound up making like the semi finals or something. about that, like the last 10 people. 

That's amazing.

I didn't win, but I got an agent and nine months of pitching and meetings and everything after I sold my first script and  started writing for TV and film.

 You never know,  that bad thing can turn into something really good.  I mean it's not as glorious but starting podcasting started with a little bit of a mistake.  Interesting. Yeah.  Some people  come into your life and they're not  going to be your best friends  but  it just pivots you. You're like I actually want to do this I'm in the middle of a bunch of pivots.   This was one of them starting a podcast, 

so now you just do both because you're a freelance writer. I do. Yeah, I do both. And, um, yeah, I write.  Advertising, I write TV, I write film,  I've done some directing,  I enjoy it all, really. Do you write funny?  Sometimes, I mean. Are you a humorist? Are you a humorist? I've done a mix, okay, and this is like good and bad for your career.

, it's certainly fun, but I think in some ways it's hurt my career that I've done a variety of things. so many different things.  But yes, I've sold comedy pilots. I've written comedy movies and sold them  and certainly a lot of the advertising I've done has been comedic but then I worked on dramas like hour long TV dramas 

We did like a really cute spot for prime video recently. Yeah, that was super fun.

And they made this amazing troll the legacy creatures. That was really good. Gosh, it was so cool.  But then,  I did work for the U. S. Army before that and that was not funny.  Uh,  Right. Slightest, you know, so you kind of have to be a chameleon if you're going to work in advertising for sure. You can pick a lane a little bit more in, television. 

 

 A lot of creative work is solitary  but you do have to collaborate. What would you say to people about how they would become better collaborators or find people to collaborate with?  

first of all, some of these wisdoms, if you will, from the writer's room  apply to any creative endeavor  like dig shallow holes.

I think is an extremely good  tool or precept to remember  no matter what you're working on.  Just give it a lot of forethought before you dive really deep. And that could apply to a painting. It could apply to a music piece.  I'm not saying that this is the way to go. There's all kinds of ways to go. It just can frequently work in the TV writer's room. I think others are an openness to combine ideas.  We had a, a phrase called chocolate and peanut butter that Nick rootin over it. , one of my shows introduced him, he's a great writer and amazing in the room and chocolate and peanut butter was this reference to this old Reese's peanut butter commercial, which was like, right.

Or they'd be a person carrying the peanut butter bumps into the person with chocolate. And then they're all upset because the chocolate and the peanut butter, and then lo and behold, it tastes great. Good together.  But we would talk that all that use that idea all the time as a reminder of like  You know what, this idea  that you're pitching right now doesn't quite work, but remember when Kim said ten minutes ago, this other thing,  chocolate and peanut butter.

And you put those together and all of a sudden you have this killer set piece or character arc. It's like, that's really fun. I can see what you're saying in shows I've watched. 

These complex situations that have this outcome because you're combining things. Yeah. And that's   a creative technique, right?  Reverse it, combine it, try to keep your mind nimble and open to accepting other ideas and being malleable with your own ideas and embracing of others.

  And then there's other things. I have one called she put in the time, and it's really about respecting those who have put the time  in the room and knowing your place.  And I've made mistakes in this regard where   you can be too excited and  talk too much in a room and take up all the air and that's not cool. When someone has put in the time, they've earned the respect and  a certain amount of deference, I suppose, doesn't mean you have to love all their ideas, but  you have to walk a line of diplomacy and respect and kindness just to get along with people in any field, right?   That's something that you want to be cognizant of. 

  That is so helpful. I think people should just meditate on that one.    

the way you have framed it  which is really helpful is not as a zero sum game us against them,  a lot of people talk about negotiation tactics, it sounds  like a battle, but you're talking more about how everyone can win. 

I'm going to change direction for a minute here. I am always an optimist and I'm hoping that things are going to get more creative, more innovative, more collaborative, but things are changing so fast in both  advertising and in media. there's been a huge amount of layoffs  it has  become harder and harder to work.  I want to  get your take on  where you see the future going.  You can mention AI or,  not, and then talk about how maybe some of these tips and lessons about collaboration and working together could help us get through this stage and era that we're in into the next era

sure, sure. I'll address the first one by saying that I'm no expert on the, the trends in, Hollywood or advertising,  there's certainly been a lot of upheaval with the pandemic, and then the writer's strike, and  I'm hearing that a lot less pilots are being ordered right now, the schedule of pilot season is in flux, and perhaps they're isn't really a pilot season anymore. People are open to buying year round and yet at the same time i'm hearing,  they're sort of backlogged right now with scripts.  Again, i'm not an expert. This is just what i'm gleaning from friends and from the trades. You know as far as collaboration goes and the creative process , I don't know how much that changes.

It feels to me like  it doesn't change, you know, maybe the writers rooms, whether they're a little smaller,  or they're a little bigger, or they're less frequent, whatever.   That process. has been around a while  , and it's really interesting getting a bunch of really creative people together in a room with a common goal of , let's break this story or let's brainstorm a new story.

You know, a lot of the time it's, it's the former because writers will come into the room with pitches for stories so the bulk of the time might not be coming up with a nugget of an idea, but rather figuring out how to bring that idea from just a germ to a 42  minute or hour long episode of television  or a season. 

Well, part of the  writer's strike was that writers were not really privy to the whole production.

They would just come in for their piece and leave

yeah. So sometimes the writer wasn't going to set to be there for the creative process of shooting the show. Right. So  unfortunately that means that you're down one really key creative player as it's being produced and I find it really helpful to have a writer on set because that writer is the eyes and ears of the writer's room so they can be there and they can talk with the director and the crew and the actors and help it become better   they might clarify story points, they might be on set to realize , this line isn't working.

Let's change it on the spot. , there's so many things that can be adjusted on the day. And I think it's tremendously helpful to have the writer. So, I'm all in favor of it, and I think there was a lot of concern that TV writers were not gaining valuable set experience as they were coming up the ranks because you need that experience if you're going to be a showrunner. You need to understand how all that stuff works. And, and you should get in the editing room as well. You should get involved in posts.  You need to do all that stuff  to see it through from beginning to end. 

So right now      it's done  you hand it over  and then that's it?  It depends on the show but in an ideal world,  here's the process.  you might pitch your showrunner or the room a concept for an episode.  let's say it's a procedural because it's kind of the simplest. There might be some storylines that connect to the larger season, but in general you're pitching a story for that episode  and that might be a sitcom too. It might be like hey,  here's the episode where this crazy thing happens.  You'll pitch a handful of those to the showrunner before you go to the room, you know, you might pitch it   monday morning and you might send them a bunch of ideas by email again I'm a fan of dig shallow holes so you don't need to go in deep  pitch five cool Story ideas maybe with a couple of the major twists ...  in there.

Then that story might get picked by one of the showrunners and they might say, I love this. This is our next episode.  Then you explain the idea to the room. The room works together for let's say, four days, maybe, maybe at most a week, to break that episode  into  the beats on the board. And then the writer, who hopefully, it's not always, but hopefully the writer who pitched the original idea, they'll probably want to write that episode, they go off, they write it. Outline, they get notes from the room or from the showrunner, then they turn that into, they then get notes from the studio and the network and, you know, everybody in the process.  Then  they'll write a script, you do the same notes process, and once that script is approved, you move on to pre production and hopefully that writer stays involved in that process and is looking at the locations, the casting,  everything. And then. You know, again, in an ideal world, they're on set.   Also because the dialogue would change due to  the chemistry between the two actors.   Something might not sound right , in situ,  ? I mean, you can't, yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, they might be on set and the line doesn't make sense with the weather or it doesn't make sense with the location, you know, or they're supposed to, or a wardrobe change. 

Yeah, absolutely. There could just be things changing the real world, right? So you like, you wrote it this way. Now, you make a lot of those changes before you shoot also.  So, let's say you've written a scene to be a certain way, and during the pre production phase you find a location that doesn't really work for that.

Let's say it's an action set piece.  We need him to not see the bad guy around the corner   but this location, the only one that we could afford and that was available on the day is an open air plan house so how do we keep the killer from his point of view until this exciting moment when the killer jumps out? 

You can work that out during the shoot, sorry, during the pre production phase.  With the director and you can stand on that location and go, huh? Well, you know, what might be interesting? Hey her could what we could do. What if instead he came through the window? Oh, yeah, this is cool. And then you change the scene, you change the script, and that might require a line of dialogue change as well,  you know, and then the same thing can happen when you're shooting on set so  these are reasons why it's really helpful to have the writer involved in the whole process.

I think about  David Lynch with Twin Peaks . The guy who was the carpenter.  Was building the set in the girl's bedroom and he just looked really creepy and out of place being in this  young girl's bedroom and David Lynch  picked him to be the villain.  , wait, that's terrifying. Let's have this guy.  That kind of  kismet is also quite important. So  how did you come up with doing this newsletter?

Why did you decide to do this? Because really, I was trying to be better in the room. That's, that's why I wanted to be better. And I started taking notes on what I saw other people doing, who really knew how to handle the intricacies of  a room and the diplomacy and pitching well and giving feedback well and pivoting and, you know, Being creative and, uh, all the things that go along with  the intense job.

I think that you should write a book about this because I know there's a lot of this out there, but having it all in one place under the umbrella of collaboration with those things that you just broke out are really interesting   , what's one tip let's say you're somebody who is more of a solo  a lone soldier and you want to be more collaborative. How would you maybe get out of your  shell to bring other people into the fold?

I'll give you one example that applies to production since we were talking about that.   a lot of times you're on set and there's a debate over which way to shoot something. Let's say the actor wants to say the line this way,  and the director wants them to say it a different way. 

Maybe the writer wants them to say it a third way.  but let's stick with two. Rather than sit there and debate.   , I like to say shoot it both ways. And that's a phrase a lot of people say, shoot it both ways. In the time it takes to sit here and debate it, we could shoot it both ways, and we can decide later and happy accidents may occur.

 We might realize  which version is good later.  If you can shoot it both ways just shoot it both ways. And keep moving and keeping nimble and creative rather than getting bogged down in a debate over well, I wouldn't say it that way and I wouldn't it's like, you know what maybe try it  maybe try it  Which is another phrase that I like.

, that one is called maybe they're right   maybe they're right is like a classic which I actually learned As a kid from advertising because of my dad who's in advertising and so his partner  who was an art director this really brilliant guy mario Mario carried a piece of paper in his pocket that said maybe they're right  And he brought it to client meetings and stuff.

So even when they were dealing with the most corporate of america And these, you know, suits as they would call them, are giving notes on the commercial that these guys have slaved over and is really creative. He carried that note in his pocket. As much as he didn't want to listen to what they were saying maybe, or thought, well these guys don't know anything, they're not an art director, what are they saying about, You know, the look of the film, what are they talking about?

But he would look at that note, it's like, maybe they're right. And that applies in every field.   I totally agree. Take the chip off your shoulder.  Look at it from another perspective. Everybody has some insight that you do not have. That's  the benefit of not being you , I think that's a really good answer to the question, if you're really creative and you have a vision, how can you bring other people into it without feeling like you're ruining your vision and that's staying open. So, you know, how would you stay open without completely compromising the idea you have in your head for something or, or should you just let that go? 

 every situation is different and I think it's not black and white,  you can find a middle ground where you might find that,  you know, let's say in the example we talked about, the actor wants to say this line this way, the director wants it a different way.  If you go by the notion that  hey, maybe they're right.

Maybe that actor does have,  um, with why they don't want to say this. Now, maybe they're not exactly right, but they may be have an intuition about what this character did, or they're thinking about their character all the time and their motivation. And so you might go, okay, okay, how about this third option?

Let's tweak the line this way. It's not the way you wanted. It's not the way it's scripted,  , or the way I want it. But there's a third way that solves your problem and mine. It's actually better.   It's important to  think  maybe they're right. And maybe they're not, but taking their perspective into account might change your trajectory. 

And you might find another solution that's better.  It is a little bit that peanut butter and chocolate, right?

Because that's a different flavor at the end. It doesn't taste like peanut butter exactly doesn't taste like chocolate has a different blends and and it's additive. 

 So, I was gonna ask, what are you really excited about now  in your career  as far as,  creativity or collaboration or the work that you're doing, what are you passionate about right now? Well, I'm, I'm always trying some new things. So, like I said, sci fi is a new field for me, and  I really am excited about this new script.

 Are you just doing this on your own or are you? Yeah, I, I, I spec'd out this pilot. Yeah. , and we're shopping that now. And I also have a detective series, which is a little more of a classic  but comedic detective show that,  you know, we're, we're working  to get out there also.

 That stuff's exciting to me and then in the meantime, I'm also doing some fun advertising work.  I do both. It's  a fun, exciting world, creating television and features  I love working with actors  , you can have a lot of fun on sets  coming up with things in the moment. I still get a lot of joy out of showing up to a set. 

If you had any fears  or self doubts about  when you're supposed to speak when you're collaborating  when to go for it, when to hold back,  how did you overcome those kinds of, questions  what is your  philosophy now  when you're working with people and you want to  make sure that you're contributing and  have something that you want to share 

 it really comes with experience   and I'm still figuring it out.

Like I said, I've made a million mistakes by talking too much in the room or not gracefully   taking criticism or or maybe not gracefully reacting to another maybe pushing my idea too hard  you can just  trip  on yourself and be Stupid  in a room. It's hard, you know Like you're really trying to walk this fine line of when I started out.

I was like, when do I talk?  You know, am I i'm like the young guy and you I kind of hung back for the most part at the beginning But you also don't want to not contribute  You're no use to the room if you don't speak up, right? Yeah, absolutely. They're, that's the weird balance. If you don't say anything, people are like why is this person here? 

That's right.  Now some people may be, might be better in the room and other people might be better on the page. Like their script is really good, but ideally you're doing both.  

How do you deal with people who are more junior than you that might be overstepping?

 I would listen to these things like  she put in the time  that's because I myself was that junior guy who was  maybe a little too big for his britches sometimes and be like, I know this idea is really going to work. It's really great. And like, you know, maybe you should maybe shut up, zip it.  Exactly. And I should have, right? So like you learn that you learn to pick your spots and pick your battles and read the room. Right. And,  , and also like know what you're working on. If you're doing a popcorn show for CBS, like I've done, you know, you gotta know what this is at the end of the day.

It's meant to be popcorn fun. It's not your place to get across a socio political message.  It's not the place to feel like you're  living out your dreams of being Fellini, right? You're doing package popcorn entertainment, and remember it, and that's cool. And if you want to do your cool little indie film on the side,  and get your DeSica on, then do it.

 First apartment I bought in New York, my mother was like, don't try to,  don't try to don't do too much to  don't spend, don't put too much money into this. You know, it's only so good  . Like, don't dress something up too much that isn't of that high quality. Save your money for the next thing,  it's like know your audience. Literally know your audience.

Audience and, and, and pick your battles. And you know, that comes down to the  locations and the cast and all these other things  a classic thing to do when you're a junior is  you're dying on every hill. You know, you're falling on your sword for like, oh no, that location doesn't work.

And you know, oh no, we have to get that actor. . It's like, No, no, that thing's being cut to pieces. It's being mutilated. There'll be one sentence left, like, don't be too precious about it. Um, and yet, of course, you want to maintain some level of artistic and creative integrity.

It's just a balance.  That sounds like someone who's fresh out of film school.  They want the A list actor or the coolest indie actor.  And this is where it really comes into like reading the room.  You can feel it when , a writer in the room is falling on their sword for a plot point that they think is really good and you can see the rest of the room shifting uncomfortably in their seats And  you get the feeling like this person is arguing too much for this. Like, make your case, great, pitch your thing, but if the room moves on, go with the flow. It's really important to go with the flow, go the way the room is going, because it's a, you know, again, make your case.

It's an organism.  And so it's like an amoeba. And if you're all stuck in this one area, And the other part sort of moving, you're pulling it back and it's getting misshapen. Yes. Yes. And you move a little bit, but not, not so much that you're like yanking everybody out of there.  Yeah. And you don't want it.

You want to, um, you know, this is goes in many fields, but they say, you know,  solutions, not problems. And if you raise an issue with someone else's pitch. pitch a solution.  These are just kind of basic things because you don't want to be the stick in mud who's slowing things down and go, well, I have a logic problem with this thing.

And, you know, make your case. You should, that's what you're there for. But if the room is like, I hear you, but we think it's cool. And you're not the highest level person. It's probably best to shut up  and let it go. Trust the others. And then maybe you'll learn why you're listening. You know, what's,  You know, if there's wisdom to get out of it, like you were wrong, or, okay, on the next thing, maybe I can bring my own wisdom to that. 

Absolutely. And apply it then, when it makes sense, and I have more experience.  if I really feel  strongly about it later.  Exactly. And, and it's also important to remember that we're talking about television, you know, in this instance.  So if something's illogical,  at the end of the day,  is this going to hurt anybody?

No, it's not. I think you, I think people can make a lot of leaps. You know, you see things with plot holes   but you go with it. You kind of go into the internal logic, you're just. trying to get  passively entertained. Yes, exactly. And so like, when I say , go with the flow, it applies to maybe creative things. But like, if not, when there's a safety issue on set or something like that, that's completely or if you're in a business where safety is an issue, I'm not saying go with the flow.

If you see a safety issue, right? Raise your hand and you bring it up more than once. , but in these instances, if it's like G I don't really buy that that action hero could jump  between one building to the next. It's like,  you know, dude  Raise it one time and then if everyone's like, dude, it's cool, it's going to look great  it's going to be awesome, then just go. Okay. You know, it doesn't matter at the end of the day, and you really save yourself for the bigger battles, right? Maybe there's a great character thing where you're like, gee, I really think it undermines this character to save this thing or do this thing. And I really don't like them anymore. And I, that's not a message we want to send as a show.

All Then, sure, that's a bigger conversation, but like, sometimes you just kind of go. Yeah, because the little things just kind of like blend in the background because people are waiting for those major beats and those plot points. 

Um,  what part do you think AI is going to play in  the writer's room if AI has a seat at the table,  in a way that's productive not negating the  human creative process. 

You can use it as a tool to get ideas, but I certainly don't think it replaces humans and our ideas and creativity, but it's a fast way to  generate some ideas. 

I was writing this pilot very recently, and it's a sci fi script, which is new territory for me,  and I was creating a world. I'm like world building, and as you're world building, you have to come up with ideas. Everything like what are these vehicles in this world? And I was playing with it. And then I decided eventually to turn to AI and go like, Oh, maybe this could spit out a few ideas because I wanted to use historical references.

And so I used AI to give me historical references of transportation  and it gave me a bunch of things. And then I was like, okay, well, why don't you combine this period and this period, you know, give me  transportation that I could have found in Florence in the 1600s and combine it with this other element of history and it'll give you these things and some of them are stupid, right?

But some of them are kind of creative and you're like, oh, well, that's interesting. But maybe if I take something from column A and column B, and then I combine it with this new idea I had myself,  that's pretty cool.  So I just think it's a, it's a cool tool. 

 It reminds me of, you know, when you're getting dressed and  you ask somebody for their opinion. I always used to ask people like, Oh, do you like this? When I'm wearing it and that they say no. And I still like it.

I know I want to wear it. I just want like, well, why did you even ask me if you're gonna wear it anyway? Well, I wanted to hear what you had to say, and I don't think you're saying the right thing. I'm just gonna ignore it. It's    a way to bounce your ideas off something  and get your gut reaction to it.

But I think people are really afraid of having that creative product then be convoluted  we're not really using it the way it's going to end up being used, honestly. Yeah, and also I think it's worth keeping in mind that it's scraping the internet, right? So by design. and definition, it is only doing that which has already been done. Isn't that basically true? I mean, I'm, again, I'm not an expert on AI, but you know, maybe if you ask it to combine this and that, but even then, if you're combining A and B, it's finding A and B pre existing on the internet.  So I think It kind of makes me feel like that we are not as original as we want to be, because I think it's spitting things out that sound like your standard LinkedIn post or your standard business

email or. Oh yeah.  It kind of almost is mocking us in a way  there's so much politesse and mannered language and jargon and it knows it and it's spitting it back to us. 

So we, we definitely have to keep hold of our creativity and imagination. That's the thing I keep saying, and I love it when an amazing show comes along.  

So let's  end this with, you know, give me some shows that you really love  that you admire it'd be great to have one or two that are new,  out now, but it could be some old stuff.  What are some of your favorite shows?  .... Well, I mean, I'm not going to be original in my two favorites, which are Sopranos and Breaking Bad. , I never saw Breaking Bad 

 it's just so, it's so gripping. , you know, I just love so much about it. And I love the cinematography as well. , which isn't something  I say about a lot of TV shows.   , the province of great cinematography is often features, but man, the cinematography in Breaking Bad is just gorgeous.

Um, I loved Beef. I think Beef, which we were talking about,  is so good and quirky and interesting and it takes unexpected twists and I love the characters and how flawed they are.   I  was  completely immersed. Okay. Have you watched Baby Reindeer?  Baby, baby reindeer.  It's out right now on Netflix.

It's this man's, he was a standup comic. It's his own experience of being abused. He has stalker, it's a complex situation and he wrote it and he stars in it and it's absolutely mind blowing. Wow. Okay. I want to. Baby, baby reindeer. It's English. It's English. It's out right now. It's one of the top ten,  I just sat there with   my jaw on the floor, watching this thing.

It's his own story. it's not an easy watch, but if you like beef Oh, that sounds really interesting. , the other thing I  loved was Poor Things. I just could not get enough of that movie. I thought it was so I didn't watch it.

I didn't see that either. Oh, it's so funny and weird and such a,  great story of this,  woman coming into her  own in such an original way. , and so quotable. I mean, my God, we, like me and my friends could not stop quoting it. So I highly recommend that. Nice.