 about television and film writing. It's like that. And Brett and Kia will join us. We'll stand to where Williams, Kia and Parker. Sorry. They had me listed as moderator, so I thought the one thing I had to do was like introduce you. My job's done now. You talk about TV, your experience in TV first, or? Sure, because there isn't much of it. I mean, yeah, I've done very, very little. I never really pursued it to tell you the truth. So it was only when things sort of fell into my lap, which has really happened that I did it. So HBO for a while was interested in me writing a series. I wasn't so interested. And then at one point, I made a different pilot, which they didn't do. I mean, they didn't pick it up. And then through that, I met Tom Fontana, who actually really liked the pilot. And so he did a short-lived series for a while called The Jury, and asked me to do an episode, because we had conversations about our experiences on a journey. So he thought, we want to do that. And then I. Adam wrapped that, too. Let's see how I'm going to show it to you. I have no idea, because I only did. I know Adam, but I had no idea he did this one episode. And it was very short-lived. No, yeah, it was really short-lived, just like this summer. And then I did an episode of The Wire, which were two very different experiences, because The Jury was brand new. And I kind of did whatever I wanted to. Tom Fontana's very way back. And what was Network, right? So that's probably what it was, as well. Well, actually, I think the main difference was that, besides that I can write fucking to this script, was that it's somebody who was very laid back, it was sort of like, gave me a big idea to do whatever you want, as opposed to The Wire, which was the fourth of five seasons. And they had a strong idea of what it was. And so. Which season was it? It was season four. Is that the kids in the school? Yes, which is why they asked me to do it, because my most widely produced plays called Breath Boom, which is about girl gangs. And so they thought he wrote my script date in time. They didn't really like it and asked me to do it. And I didn't watch the show. And because I didn't really watch TV much, and I told him, and he said, that's okay. And so I wrote that episode. I mean, in that case, I wasn't in a room that came out of Baltimore. Okay. They had a lot of novelists in that room. Yeah. I mean, not really. Richard Price, I think. Yes, he did write for them. And he wasn't, when I was there, he wasn't, because he wasn't on that episode. So he wasn't in the room. That's great. Yeah. You're asking me questions, but you have so much more experience to be able to talk to. Yeah. Well, my TV experience was, I had a pilot picked up by Noah Hawley who created Fargo. So that was a great experience. I mean, it's kind of like with film, too. It's definitely not the people you're working with, like the experience you have from it. I mean, I think I was most disappointed that they were smartest theater people. TV and film people. Because I always heard that we're someone smarter than them. We don't make money, but we're smarter. So I was really disappointed that they make money and they're smarter than them. But Noah was great. It was an incredible experience with Noah. He kind of guided me through the pilot and helped me develop it. It was just this random weird thing about professional wrestling itself. It was called A Woman Comes Down from New York and like inherits it from her father and my friends did. But it didn't get on the air. It didn't sell. How does that sound so typical? I know. And now they have a women's wrestling show that like every playwright I know is writing for. I think Pete Jones and anyhow, it was before Noah did Fargo. So he wasn't like, he hadn't won the Emmys and stuff. Now he could probably sell like, See, I never watched TV, so all I know is there was a movie club party. Yeah. There was a weird experience he was talking. He was going through the experience as he was making the show as we were trying to sell the other show. And he said that basically like the Coen Brothers just didn't respond to emails or anything. Like they really had nothing to do with it. And he just did his own thing. They just had to be kind of in the tone of the movie, essentially. And then now it's doing really well. It's a great show. But no, so the good experience I had was in terms of TV was with that pilot developing it with him, with ABC, and then taking it around. And I think everyone passed on it eventually. And then after that, I had a horrible experience in TV where I wrote for reality TV for like three years. It's a show I won't mention. But I literally faked an illness together in my contract at the end of that. Is this where they quite have breached a contract that they're not watching. But yeah, so it. Or he can't say an anecdote, it's a secret. There's so many, I mean it was completely fake. It was all fake. And I'll say there's horrible people on both sides of the camera. So it's like we weren't exploiting, we were all exploiting each other, I think. But I was basically, as a writer, what I would do is I would write an outline. It's about 11 to 12 pages of exactly what they were gonna do. You couldn't write dialogue because they weren't actors. And everything was fake. And they had very weird rules for Discovery Channel. It was actually, what we said, Amish Mothia. So there is no Amish Mothia, it's completely fake. I shouldn't say any of this. I actually do have one little question. There might be one, I don't know. I don't know. I'm looking at the camera now. It's just about to sue me. I just have one little question. Because this also comes from, because I represent the drama to Skeld, which I am. Oh yeah. And everyone should join. So my question regarding the writer's skill, did you, as a reality writer, did you get paid union rents because that's an issue? No, you know, I negotiated my own contract and the best thing I had was the fact that I didn't want to do it. So they kept giving me better and better terms, but there was no union at that time for reality TV. Now they're trying to create. But they're trying to create it for you, it's still legal. Yeah, I didn't get paid probably nearly as much as I should have. But I think it was like a couple of thousand a week. You mean a separate union? Separate union? There was no union at all. I know, I know. But now they're trying to create one. Separate union writer's skill? I think they're trying to go through the WGA. Okay. Yeah, and then kind of be representing through that. But that was a weird experience, but I mean, I don't think anyone will ever realize how hard people actually worked on that show and actually really worked to make it good, which, you know, it wasn't at all. But my mom couldn't even watch it. I think she watched the first episode, and she was like, well, it's not really my thing. You know, I was like, you don't have to watch it, it's fine, it's fine. It is the worst thing when your mom can't even watch it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not good, it's not good. But it was, it was, it was, it was someone experienced. You know, I learned a lot about structure. And then for TV, what I found interesting is like, you're really in terms of structuring like a pilot or structuring something that you're selling in network TV, or even a reality show is, you're selling products. So everything is pushing toward the act break, the five act breaks, which are trying to sell the five sets of commercials, essentially, you know? So you're almost like getting people just to stay watching so they might buy something. You know, whereas HBO is a completely different beast, you know, I'm assuming where you can just write, it's much more linear, you don't have to break it up as much, it's not just these little acts that kind of lead to a climax type of thing, or a cliffhanger to sort of. Yeah, I mean it was, because I went into it so raw because I hadn't done TV before except for that line up pilot, which that was for commercial TV. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm not talking about, well, not the pilot because that was HBO, but I mean that the jury, the type of thing, when I remember about it, I mean I must have thought it, obviously I must have thought of that structure because of that commercial. I don't remember that. But what I remember is Tom Thang Tanigay did this vague idea which was very political, which I really appreciate because I like to write political stuff and so it was kind of right up my alley and then it kind of did whatever I wanted, I don't know quite what happened at the end because I didn't really watch it. But he was sort of, yeah, whatever I wanted to do and worse with the jury, I was down there for two and a half days in the room and they knocked out the beads, which, yeah, I'm a sort of person, I was the only female in the room and except for the assistant who was an Asian man, I was the only person of color, but I was actually much more aware of being the only female in that case because it just tossed around was intense. But I, I mean, they were very respectful of me but in the end they didn't really were interested in my ideas about these. Of course they shouldn't have been because I don't know the show and they were very kind and respectful and very nice. But ultimately, so I left there with 41 beats to do in 59 minutes and I was thinking, this is why I can never keep up with the show. There's so much information but it was fun actually because even with what seems like, so no, they didn't say anything about first, next, second, and as a matter of fact, it wasn't even like they gave me an order. They just said in 59 minutes I had to get all this information out. So it was kind of fun in something with so many, I don't know if I would say rules, but it was like I had to get this in so it doesn't seem to allow a lot of freedom, but it was, it was creative the way I did it. So it was kind of fun. I find it film especially, I find it's much more comparable to poetry actually than really theater. I mean, a play is more like a novel. I've never wanna know what's gonna happen next when I'm writing a play but in film you have to know every single thing because it's all, to a degree too, like every minute is money. Every single page costs so much money and you have to get all, like you said, you have to get all the information in a certain amount of time. And you know also this was an interesting thing that I never thought of before until I got into that room was there's a little math thing going on because Oh yes? Yeah, because this actor has seven episodes. This actor has nine episodes. So they have to say how to use those actors, you know, in, to get their correct amount of episodes over the season. So there's that calculation which I hadn't thought of before. It's, I mean, so much of it's money. You know, like all of that stuff. Have you had experience in film? Have you written screenplays or? No, I had. This is why, I don't know, every day is tonight. I did once a, well-respected filmmaker wanted me to work on something and it was a great idea. But I don't like to do film because I'm troubled assholes. I don't have something. And so the relationship didn't last very long. And it's like, my collaboration stops. And then that was something great. Yes, and then it was a lot. It's funny you say that because like, I was on films at the summer, I had a film that was made based on one of my plays. But in terms of like the asshole factor, like, I don't know, I might say ego I guess. Because it's just, I was shocked at how like, I guess the dichotomy between every single different department in power, you know, whereas in theater it's like, it's so egalitarian and we're all in it together and we're trying to do this no matter what job you're doing. Theater artists, they do everything together, you know. Theater is always heavy. It's like a computer or something, you know. And then everything goes wrong the day before. And somehow the lights come on and the actors are just stuttered the next day, you know. So it's this magical experience where it's filmed. It's like, I went down there, they're literally delineating between like, who, what group of people ate first? You know, they're like the actors, those actors are gonna eat first and then the director, then the producer. And at first I was like, that's weird. And then I found out I was in group four and then I was like, I'm just like, what? You know, like, how am I so far down on the list? I mean, in theater we certainly had egos, but it's not like, like the church of Scientology where it's like, I think up there it's like, there's a tree, there's like a, yeah. So I think like, it encouraged this super ego thing and this, and this like clear delineation of who's important and who's not. I mean, theater, I feel that it's more about the story. Yeah, well, we all have our jobs and there's definitely power structure in this, but it's not defined, this part is important, this part is important. Whereas there, it's just seem like it's everything's about like, how and what. Yeah, and it's just too early in that relationship, but this guy was part of the film world. So, you know, that's kind of, so I didn't last very long. But he won't say, since, since it's going to happen this evening, I, my agent knows that I didn't like, first did it to throw her an adaptation of my novel, so, yeah. No, I, have you, so have you ever tried to adapt to any of your work before? Yeah, my experience with that was really interesting because, I mean, I had an incredible director. She was so nice and wonderful. She was James Braco's assistant director. So this was her first feature and I worked on a feature with her because she saw one of my plays which they're making next year called Pretty Good Perfect. On a much bigger budget, but this, I had this smaller play that had been kicked around a couple times and it didn't get named once as a movie because I think someone was like, cattle died because of a drought or something. And she's like, I think we could do this like really cheap and really quick with the same crew we're using for the next one. And she did it and it was amazing, you know. And one thing she did, she just like, she brought in the smartest people she knew and like so many people owed her favors because if you've been on a film set, you know everything an A.D. does and all the shit they have to eat. Can we say shit? On how many rounds? Well, you said fuck, so I can say shit. I'll find out soon enough, I guess. You can't say it. You can't say it? Oh, no. It's the internet. We can't say shit and we can't say fuck. I didn't hear about that. No, no. I forgot. I forgot. So how long do you stop saying shit and fuck and what do you mean by that? But anyhow, yeah, so it's like, it was a really kind of wonderful experience and a lot of people don't seem to have it though. But I feel like it's a better experience to less money that's involved. I thought. The more money that's involved, the harder it gets because like even on the next one, it's bigger. There's more voices, there's more money, there's bigger actors. And it just, everything like kind of I find in terms of the notes, the more money that's involved, the clearer everything has to be. You know what I mean? If it's a low-budget film where there's not as much at stake, someone can kind of walk through a field like Terence Malick. You know, there could be an American flag, like Six Slow Moves or whatever. But if it's a bigger budget, then everything has to kind of be on the nose. Whereas, you know, Indies can be a little bit, you know, closer to the cheek, I guess, or something, you know. It doesn't have to be as good. It can be more interesting, more ambiguous. But ambiguity kind of pushes a bigger audience away. It means it's less money. So I found film is so much about money. Even with the small budget one we did, I turned in the first draft, I think 110 pages. And the first thing the director said, she's amazing, she's incredible, she's smarter than me, more talented than me, everything. She said, every page over 100, this is gonna be a worse movie because we're just not gonna have as much time and we're not gonna have as much money. So she's like, you have to bring this in under 100. So I was like, wow, okay. I mean, like, of course you're gonna cut those pages when the movie's not gonna be as good. It's over 100 because every page in film essentially is one minute on screen. And even for any dependent film, that's about $10,000 a page. So it's like, when you're writing a page and you're thinking about what's going on the page and you're like, this is gonna cost $10,000. You know, everything becomes much more, you know, and it really kind of hypens your writing almost to a point where you're like, well, maybe I don't need him to just pet his dog here and look into the sunset because that would cost us, you know, what, I don't know, I'd make this semester teaching a class or something, right? So it just really is a completely different way of thinking, you know? And just because you write a good play, like you can't assume you're gonna write a good movie. It's like saying I wrote a good book, so I'm gonna, so now I'm a poet essentially, you know? And I do go back a lot to poetry because to me, I found that the words were kind of the least important part of the movie. The thing that I learned the most about the movie was I'm a huge outliner in terms of film on like the micro budget stuff I've worked on before is just like no card in every single scene. It usually comes out to about 60 no cards for a feature film. And we had those no cards for revival. Then they shot the movie and lines changed, things changed. I went back and I looked at no cards with my screen, I had a class in UNO and none of the no cards ever changed. None of them at all. Everything in the movie changed, but not one of the no cards changed. And that just showed me how important that foundation of the outline is for film and how the dialogue really is just kind of there to disguise the intent of what's happening because so much of its action, you know, so much of it's about activating scenes. And they don't want to stay one place too long. So even if you only have five locations, which is great, it means the movie's gonna be cheaper, you only need five places to secure, they want you to hop around between those places so it feels like a bigger movie. You're always trying to make it feel bigger and look better than the money that you really have, I guess. And then there's the festival circuit, which is like a whole different thing we're about to kind of experience. But yeah, I mean, I think it was rare because I had a really great experience my first time out in film just because the people I was working with were so smart, talented and kind of pure in a sense. I'm sure like on the second film, everyone will be jaded and smoking and wearing sunglasses and some other jackets. But the first film was just like, it was great, it was fun. I don't know. Should we open it up to questions now? What do you think? Are you having anything else? Hello, questions again? I have a question. These note cards, what was on, I forgot what your first name? Brett. Brett, what, so what was on these note cards? So like it's basically, what I always tell the students in my class is, also if you wanna study screenwriting, you know we're starting a screenwriting program, come sign up, you don't wanna miss it. So the note card basically, I just write action on it because film is action and that's the most important thing. And I try to avoid passive verbs and I try to just write, if you can write it in one sentence, it's great because the note cards are gonna be changed constantly. I Skype the director, chained into class, we did the film and she's a huge advocate of the note cards now because she went through the process with me and we worked in the note cards for maybe three months just completely throwing cards out, rewriting them, putting them in, throwing them out, putting them in, throwing them out, moving things around. And then I wrote the script in maybe two weeks and maybe I did a polish after that. The script is like the fun part. The work is really in kind of creating the foundation, the note cards. Like I've always said that screenwriting is kind of poetry on top of numbers and the numbers are the most important part of the script and the numbers are the note cards. So you'd write like one scene would be us having a panel. So we're here, we have a panel, one sentence, note card. The next scene is us going to lunch. We go to lunch. The next scene is a cousin dying or something and then the movie starts. But you want to put as little as you can on the note card because you're going to have to get rid of it. Like maybe the first 60 note cards you keep maybe 10 or 15 of them when you're beating out a movie. But that's where most of the work really comes in, I find at least, in terms of my process. So I wrote down 16, but you meant 60. 60, yes. Now 16 would get you about 30 minutes, probably through the first act. I find that the first act's about 15 note cards, second act is 30, third act is 15. So you always want a little bit more than you need, you're always going to come back. But you have to be ruthless with those note cards. And the most important thing I ever learned in terms of note cards came from the writers of South Park, actually. And they said that it took them like five or six years to learn this. And what they finally realized was if a card went, because this is how they outlined their episodes, if a card went, this happens, and then this happens, and then this happens, it's not interesting and it doesn't work. But if the card goes, this happens, therefore this happens, therefore this happens, you have to have the word therefore, and that creates a forward momentum in the film. It pushes you forward and it makes you want to keep watching because you want to know what's going to happen next. So that creates that forward propulsion and it's incredibly hard to do. Sometimes you'll write six note cards and you'll be like, this happens, therefore this down here happens, we've got to get rid of these. But I also find that if you rewrite your note cards, if you spend one day rewriting note cards, that's going to save you maybe a month rewriting the script. Because it's so much easier to throw a card out than it is to throw out pages or 10 or 15 pages. So that's why I'm always advocating that you kind of do that. With my class, I don't know if anyone else teaches it this way, but it's all about those cards. And they can go through the whole semester and if that's the only thing they have at the end, I'm confident they can go off and write their movie because that's where the movie is. And that was my experience on the film, like those are the things that never changed. And those are the things that make people interested in the movie, they want to turn the page and they want to keep watching. Just that forward propulsion. It's movement, it's constant movement in its action and you're trying to find out what happens next. So you're always searching for that word therefore. Yeah, this is my world, man, you know. I went out to LA and I live in LA now and I went out to LA in 2001 after optioning one of my plays that I had adapted in the Bialog Club, picked up by Fox Searchlight. And shortly after getting out there, one of the producers that Fox called me and said, Lee, I feel it need to tell you something, you know, no one's told you already. He said, I was here in LA, he said, the screenwriter was on the lower end of the total of what you were saying. He said, in theater, the playwright is king, not soul in home, you know. And everyone come before the screenwriter and surely, you know, I've optioned four screenplays been involved in developing two TV series and none of them have gone to screen. And that's okay, that's fine because that's what happens, you know, absolutely, it's still in the game, you know. Well, it's a different ballpark, you know, and you were talking about the no cards, yeah. What I found was that as a playwright, you know, I think I have a pretty good grasp of character and dialogue and, you know, all that. But in Hollywood, it's all about structure. Absolutely. It's all about the structure of the script. And even with that first one, it's a league, you know, your dialogue, you love the character, you love the story, damn structure, man. You know, and it took me time to, I mean, it took me a while to actually like get my handle. And I felt like, I mean, being a playwright and having the creative license that we have as playwrights, I felt like, you know, that whole structure thing was kind of confining me, you know. It's gotta happen by, this has gotta happen by page 10 and this has gotta happen by page 30 and, you know, and it's like, well, we already know that so, you know, what's the point, you know. But that's how they do things, man. They will like take a script and flip through it and look for those, still sign it, if they're not there, that script is false. Absolutely, yeah, it gets false. You know, no matter how good the script may be in general, if those things are not there, boom, it goes. You know, so. It's a completely different way of thinking when you're working on it, you know. You're recording a new art form. You really are. And especially, I know with, when I adapted my first, but I lost probably 75% of the dialogue, you know what I mean? That's why it's got to go, cut, cut, cut. You know, because it's all about thinking and writing visually, and like you say, moving the story forward visually as opposed to how we think, you know, using dialogue and words, you know, it's like, no, you know, what's happening? How's it, how are you moving it forward? I always say I hear a play, but I see a movie, you know, when I'm working on it. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I'd not sure as a child, but that's what I'm talking about. Thank you. So when you can, so I have two questions. But the first one is, with those 60 cards you're talking about the arc of a single feature, how do you relate that to television where you might have like a A plot line and a B plot line? Well, TV's, it's completely dependent upon what the show is for. So the show is for network. It's either a sitcom, it's either 30 minutes or it's an hour, it's 30 minutes. Everything has to be funny, there's three acts that means you're selling three sets of commercials. So everything has to build toward that. If it's an hour, then, you know, they want it to be dramatic and they want like big things to occur, but no one can change in TV either. Like that's the truth between a play and a TV show. They want very, very, very little change unless it's a pilot episode because they want the characters to say it the same so they can make 100, 200 episodes of it. So that's why procedurals do really well because the characters don't change but the stories change each week. So they're constantly looking for a vehicle to keep the characters from changing as little as possible. Whereas an evil play, you're always looking when you're saying, how is every character different? At the end of a TV show, you're always looking, how are they all the same? So we can then come back and do it again next week. So it comes down to really commercials whereas HBO like, as Keith was talking about, it's like a completely different experience it seems like because they're not selling anything. They've already sold HBO. You're paying for HBO so they don't have to sell commercials. So you're just, they have to tell good stories. They have to keep people interested in the stories. So it's a different beast. I haven't worked for HBO or Showtime or anything like that. Everything I've done has been selling box and stuff for TV so she just be better at writing for that, right? And the second question was once you have those 60 cards like, okay, this is it, these are our 60 and you're going in and writing the script, how do you keep the script fresh for you? Like, do the characters ever surprise you? Oh yeah, well for me the surprise always happens on the page. Like, I mean it's gonna be incredibly boring if you just transcribe that to the script. So you always have to kind of be open to the changes. The no cards you're doing everything right, the script, the mistakes you make, that's kind of your voice. You know, the mistakes you make and genre that work. So you want to just make sure that you make mistakes on the page they work. That makes sense. I always tell my students to break the rules well. Like you don't want very much dialogue and then look at a Tarantino movie. He breaks the rules really well because he writes really good dialogue. So it has to be toward that. So you still want there to be a life on the page. So you kind of look at it almost to the cards that's stepping the stone. It's like, this has gotta happen. This has gotta happen. This has gotta happen. Now how to get from here to here, that's gonna be fun because we're just gonna jump. You know, that's the leap that you kind of make. It's a much smaller leap you're making in film than in theater because like theater, when you're writing a play, I feel like the entire play is a leap. You know, you're just jumping out and you don't know what's gonna happen next. And you're kind of following the characters. Whereas in film you're following the story. Yeah. I feel like Phil Donahue here. Yeah. Yeah. So, your, so the play that got seen was that in LA? Where was the play? Oh, the play that got option? Yeah. No, the play where, okay, let's see. They saw your play. Somebody saw your play. And yeah, the play that got option. Oh, the movie that was made. Yeah. The way I first got into film was I had my partner at the time, her friend, brought her boyfriend who was a music video director, who was going to direct The Strangers 2. And he saw my play and he liked it. And he brought me in to rewrite a project he was working on that never got made. And through that, I got into the film industry just a touch, you know, and there were people looking at different plays to think about optioning them and they found the one that they liked that that switch was revival. And then it was optioned by two different companies and then it finally came around. And then this group of people that are making a different movie said they'd make that first. So it's like, again, the one thing I had to say just in terms of getting into film, getting into TV, you never know how it's gonna happen. No Holly even, he told me, he said, Hollywood is a party that no one will invite you to or let you come to, you have to break in and then once you get there, everyone knows your name and they love you and they're like, what took you so long? Basically, you know? There's no straight line, there's no straight line to Hollywood. There's no straight line to film or TV. So, to go back to my, yeah, no, that's all that's great. What coast did this happen? Oh, East Coast, it was a play in New York. So it was at, I think, 50, 90, 50, 99? Or, yeah, yeah, I was saying it wrong. There's like, there's two 59s in the E in there somewhere. So it was primary stages or? No, it was a company called Project Y, theater companies. It was a floater company that was using their stage. But yeah, he ended up just seeing it. And that's how I got reality TV too. The director of one of my plays, his brother, was like an exec who saw a different play and he brought me in to write trailers, basically, for their company and then from there the guy liked one of the things I wrote and they put me on a show that was set in Omaha actually about the Illuminati for sci-fi channel. Where Warren Buffett was running the Illuminati and I was like making all that up and then sci-fi didn't pick it up and they put me on to all things homage for a little while. Not that I've ever met an homage person. I know anything about that, I apologize now to the entire homage community for that part of my life. But yeah, so it's just, again, it's never a straight line. You just do the best work you can. I've never done a play. I feel like you probably feel the same. I've never done a play that I was proud of that hasn't led to something else, you know what I mean? Hasn't led to at least another production or a connection with someone that helped me get something else. I don't know, I always feel that. At least to me, you aren't the same though, eh? Any other questions? There was no reference of Art and Fink. I didn't know where I'd feel like that. I've got a writer here, Fink, all school. All right, well, that's it. Thank you, Brett.