 articles colliding at tremendous speed in this room and hopefully it's creating some good aesthetic vision for you when you go back to your rooms and write. So today we're talking about the difference in cross-platform writing, different media writing for film, writing for television, writing for the internet. And so my esteemed panel here, I'd like to maybe begin with going down the panel and just introducing the audience to briefly what's your experience writing or working in in some way with other media besides theater. And then I've got a couple questions for you and then I want to open it up and get lots of questions from the audience. So scribble down the questions that you have so that we can make great use of our one hour that we have here today. So, David, would you like to have me get it? Steve, are we attentional? I guess for most of my writing life I've been a bounce back between theater and TV and film and so I've worked in television and I've worked in film doing from like in the assortment things to studio kind of projects so I've always kind of balanced, I've tried to balance those things so I've probably had more film experience, screenplay experience actually than play experience. I don't realize where I'm going to sit in this panel but I should talk about it quite a bit. I have very little experience in film but I do have a recent experience which might be interesting which is the play that I wrote that is running here, The Favour, was actually made into a film last month. So the experience of doing that and how that was different than the actual play on stage was interesting to me. I mean they really are, the cast was different, the size of the cast was different, the way that it feels and how the story was different. That's my favorite. My primary focus is theater but I definitely am working in television right now and have been putting a lot of energy, especially we're starting development season now after July 4th it's like off to the races so. Focus in that area, I can feel comfortable with that when we're talking about TV stuff and a little bit of comic book freelance writing so. I'm a representation, I'm not a writer so I work extensively in all medium. My primary focus is the playwrights theatrical writing but I do represent David and as you can attest, every writer that I represent has a screenplay, multiple screenplays, multiple TV ideas, plays, short stories, children books, all sorts of different ideas that are sort of at the forefront of their brain and part of what it is that I do is to try to focus their energy and attention on what it is that they should be focusing on. I think a clear distinction should be made before we start getting into form and format is just some differences in terms of the placement of the writer in different medium. Though you may not feel this way, in the theater the writer is the king. You retain copyright, you retain ownership of your work and any producer that gets involved in producing the work they're essentially renting the work from you. At the end of the run it's yours. When you sell a screenplay it is no longer yours. It is owned by the studio and I know David has had examples, common examples, that you can talk about. They'll sometimes buy an idea and then completely want to rework it and the writer has zero recourse. I'm glad the worst moments in my life are comedic scribes. I don't think this could be a cowl. Sure, let's put them into the umbrella of comedy. The check clear. Would they have that clause in their mind that they own it throughout the universe? Throughout the known universe, which isn't to imply that additional universes are found, they will also own it there. It doesn't really give you a realistic idea of the enthusiasm of the project. It's why they wanted it for every planet. They really love this idea. But also, as it was pointed out in another panel yesterday, one of Susan Shulman's clients had a project where a studio bought it simply to bury it. Really? It was a competing project. It was a project that was going to compete with the release of Julie and Julia and they didn't want it to see the light of day. It's a fairly typical practice in Hollywood. That's fine. I'll just turn around. So the question I have for the panel and anyone, feel free to answer this. As you attend play, writing conferences, or in my experience, I teach a lot of playwrights. There are sometimes when you encounter a script, which was clearly conceived, not as a stage play, but as something other than a stage play. As you sit down to write a piece, at what point do you realize this idea can be encapsulated on stage? Or perhaps it's broader than that. It's got a different feel to it. It has perhaps a cinematic quality. When you sit down and conceive of an idea, it's obviously the first thought, this is a play, this is a screenplay, this is a TV pilot, this is a movisote for phones. Any thoughts about that? Did you say a movisote? A movisote? A movisote. I've never heard that. We need another panelist. We need a movisote. It's all the short content that telecommunication companies are buying to be able to set. No, I got it from context, but it was fascinating. Honestly, for me, and I think it's different for everyone, and I just got done saying earlier today, everybody has a different process, so everyone's going to approach things differently. Not that I never would, just because we're live streaming this, and God knows who's watching, but I haven't written a lot of screenplay, I haven't done a lot of screenplay work because for me, that's such a different set of muscles that I'm just not equipped with, and I haven't spent the time working those out at all. But it's a very different thing when you sit down. Once you're working in it, abstractly it's not that different, but once you're actually trying to develop television, it's a very different thing when I sit down to write a television show that's going to kick off something that you ostensibly want to run for a hundred episodes in disindication, then it is to sit down and write a play that has a beginning, middle, and an end, and then you're probably not going to write a sequel to. Those are very different things. And then the other thing I would say is that just for me, my theatrical work is theatrical. I don't know, I mean, that sounded stupid to say a lot, but it's very, very theatrical. So it's something that if you were to translate it to television or cinema, I think it would immediately die. And so it's just of those things for me to become very different. Talk about that. It's an aircraft carrier, screenplay. You know, Death Star, screenplay. It's about one person talking a lot, you know, it's kind of like usually sort of a general, you know, it's an action, you know, something like this, it should be on stage and it's like, you know, character driven, basically you have a lot of dialogue. But I'd say unless you're doing kind of a European, independent film, the first literature in death anyways, if you have, you know, more than a quarter of a page of dialogue, you know, you can't, it's a visual medium. It's a visual medium. You see that over and over. That things that are a small amount of dialogue on stage are just considered a ridiculous amount of dialogue in the film. And I think that's, that is the kind of character that you want to show. I think that distinction between visual and not, which is between film and theater, with television less so now, because everyone knows all the great television shows for character development and all the things that happen, all these great shows now is a totally different thing. So you can obviously do great character work in that medium. But similarly, in terms of selling stuff, in terms of writing a pilot or something, you don't need to, you can't express the kind of way that you're going to sort of arc of a character in a play. You can't do that in a pilot, because like on any of the great shows right now, you've got an arc that runs four seasons, so you can't do that in 28 pages of a pilot. So it's, it's been still just kind of put some into the category of style of writing that we need to embrace. Yeah, one of the most consistent notes I give any of my writers who are, you know, primarily playwrights but then write screenplay is show it, don't tell it. Because there is an economy of theatrical writing that good playwrights use in terms of telling the complete story using only the dialogue that the characters are giving. And playwrights also consistently typically wrap up scenes and moments and sort of fall back on, you know, they have great buttons on scenes. It doesn't usually happen that way in screenplay. There's just a continuity of action that is sort of propelling things through it. So this is a question maybe for you Bruce, as a talent writer. Well, first of all, let me, let me pull the room. How many people in here are just strictly playwrights? Raise them higher, don't be ashamed to strictly be a playwright, okay? How many people have dabbled in writing TV spec scripts? Like half hour, one hour format, okay? Screenplays? Okay. What about something for a different medium? Internet or anything like that? Okay. Everyone's so bashful. What happened to all the progress we made this morning? What about the novels? Let's liven it up. What about novels? Novels? Okay. Novela? Haiku? Yes. And I know that there's at least one sonic writer. You write sonics, is that right? Yeah, okay. So then let me ask you this question because I know when I lived in Los Angeles, at least for television writing, there was kind of a geographic necessity to be in Southern California. Now I know that you're in LA, you're in New York, and you're in New York. Do you see with any geographic necessity if you want to write film or television or new media to be in a certain market? There's definitely geographic convenience to be in Los Angeles. The process, and Dave, you might want to speak to this as well, and Steve can certainly as well, in terms of the development process in putting a TV show together, even a film together. Increasingly, a lot of writing is happening because it costs money. It used to be at every sort of writer's treatment, director's pitch, treatment, pilot, episode guide, you'd get paid. Well now they just do a step deal. Exactly, so you get a little bit along the way. Exactly. And for clients that I have that are based in Los Angeles, that are primarily TV and film people, they have three to six meetings a week. And the rest of the time they're caught in traffic. And it's really about the face time and going out and frequently it's a general meeting that turns into a, we have a project that we'd like you to do a writer's take on or we'd like to hear your ideas that you have. Certainly there's television production happening in other parts of the country and in New York. But there's as much TV film happening in New York as, well that's not how I was going to say, as there is theater in Los Angeles I know. It's a myth. But, again, geographic convenience for TV film. I just want to say, but I also think that, I think that that's true, but I think the flip side of it that sometimes we forget as writers is that when I was in San Francisco during this residency I was making trips I was driving to Los Angeles to have meetings. And you walk into the meetings and one of the first things they ask you is that if they're going to spend as much money as they're going to spend not only on the script but on trying to make the script into a thing that happens they want to know that you're serious and committed to it and maybe you've proved that, maybe you've demonstrated that through your other work maybe you're coming to them from a place of I've had plays of labyrinth or I've had play, you know I have a sustained kind of career but if you haven't they want you to live there because they want you to demonstrate your commitment to this thing that they're about to spend tons and tons of money on. And I don't know that that's always the right thing but just generally that is a true thing. So you're from the Bay Area and then chose to relocate out of New York? I'm from Atlanta and I went to Gradsville, New York and then I just happened to through this NMPN that Nan was talking about yesterday get a year-long residency in San Francisco at the end of that I had no idea where I was, what I was going to do because sans the residency money I could not afford to live in San Francisco at least the way I had been. So my agents got together and said you know you've been talking about trying TV if you really want to be serious and give it a serious shot you should take this opportunity where you don't know where you're going to go and just go to Los Angeles and see what happens. What about your experience? Are you originally from New York or did you move to New York for the I'm from Philadelphia but I moved to New York after college so I didn't know for a while but I mean my experience was to get a job writing for a television show and the majority of the writers were out there so LA said no argument that's what you've got to be. I've lived in New York, I've never lived in LA except for a small amount of time when I was working on a specific project so I feel like if you've got if your career is at somewhere where you can get meetings you can go out there and go and be able to get meetings that's the thing in New York if you're not trying to be a staff if you're not, if you don't have that access then I think the shoes factor of being out there is important because the writers everywhere you go you meet people and it really is because in New York you can't do that so if you're at a point where you're really trying to get connections I think being in LA is sort of invaluable because you always meet people that are involved and that's a way of getting your foot in the door so that way I've managed to not do that but it definitely has negative repercussions being in New York I think being a writer if you want to be a screenwriter or whatever it definitely is not the wisest choice because it's just it's no comparison in terms of how much work there is how many people you need but it's possible but I think anyone especially who's saying if you want to write television LA you kind of have to be there so because you were born in New York I just think it's hilarious that I'm sitting on this panel really I mean I have one 15 minute short film well actually there's a little more than that but so yes what do you want me to know you've also said some of the most amazing things at this conference not now though I think I should sit over there what well it was partly about this whole notion of geography because I think there's something that writers obsess about I think that for a long time as playwrights we all probably obsess with the fact that oh my god we have to move to New York and with things like the advent of National New Play Network this becomes less and less of a of a concern for writers nationwide in regional markets but I'm wondering if still there is this feeling for writers of other media being in one of the major capitals particularly in Los Angeles is it a driving concern of yours well you know for me I don't know that I can really actually answer that question I'm afraid of Los Angeles I just always feel ugly there I'm not, I don't function well in LA and I've never thought of myself as a person who television and I've never had the confidence and I started writing it's going to become like a therapy session it sounds like that doesn't matter yeah okay I just, I also didn't start writing until I was 45 and I really did take time out to raise my son so the whole, my whole experience of being a parent and being a writer and being an actress sort of moved me along in a specific direction and I did go to LA as an actor I've never as a writer and to make some I do believe that if you want to be a playwright you need to be in New York I do believe that that you get all the stimulation and you get to work with some of the best people in the world so that's very interesting to me and anytime three of my short plays have been made into short films and I've experienced that and one of them was actually made in Syria which was an interesting film just before the war and it was about a deaf child and so the whole experience was actually in silence and then that whole territory where it was filmed is now destroyed and the war happened a week later so my experiences have been intense and short and not really like these gentlemen who have heard the living and I've never done that but for me it's been a side sort of remarkable extension of trying to be a creative person this is a two part question for you now so if you've had the experience of having something that was originally written for the stage which has now been adapted that's what's your experience I have some friends who they just want to take the money and run and say let somebody else do the adaptation I can see this as a play or a short story I don't want to deal with the adaptations others want to have the right first to write the first script so that's what you're experiencing in that regard the second part of it is in tandem with that we know that as playwrights there's no shortage of people who are willing talk backs or critics in the press willing to tell us how to rewrite our own plays in Hollywood and in the entertainment industry it's magnified considerably the amount of people not only who feel that they have a right to but also do have legal rights to tell you because they've paid for it is the paycheck a little bit of a spoonful of sugar or how is it frustrating? it's not a small spoonful of sugar it's a bag of sugar I would suggest about the first part just for me is that like adaptation is an art form not everyone excels at it some people should take the money and run I think people who adapt or are very generally this is very general obviously get paid to do that because they're skilled at what they do and just because I wrote a play doesn't mean that I have the wherewithal or the skill set to turn that into a film although I'll probably in my contract have like a first shot at it if they bought it then it's there maybe they'll give me that first shot as a courtesy and maybe I'll knock it out of the park but probably after the first pass someone who does that for a living is going to come in and take over so I have to know that and then the second thing is that I think it's a very different thing it's about where agency rests because in playwriting you don't want someone to tell you wait to your play do you know what I mean? in television it's your show you can't make it without all these other people there's a difference you know what I mean? they're invested in a financial way that you cannot be and there's so many people that have to say yes to something like 700 people have to say yes and if just one person says no it stops at least in that venue and then there's other venues that you pursue so I don't know it's sort of like when you've sat in enough talkbacks as a playwright you stop hearing the crazy like you stop hearing that person who's like this part and I think it should be this and what you hear is okay they had a problem on page 5 with this thing what does that mean? like where is that coming from? and so when you start to approach television notes and I don't have any idea my understanding is that it's much more sharp invested but is that in television at least when you get notes from producers no one's trying to tank your show they're all trying to make it better and so the idea is because they want it to and so if everyone's goal is the same then it becomes listening to notes that you don't want to hear and going alright how can I satisfy this note and still maintain what I'm doing how can I hear where that note is coming from make the adjustment, make the change and still try and satisfy my artistic integrity but I feel very different like plays or my plays that's my play and if I don't like what you have to say about it then screw off in television you can't say screw off so you have to sort of develop a thicker skin and learn how to hear a note and not freak out and just kind of deal with it that's my experience I agree with everything that Steve just said with the exception or the aren't you like I'm wondering if I'm able to fight with the exception of notes that executives giving are all about trying to make it better for TV my experience is that executives are given or more often to preserve their own job and they want to be able to ride the middle so delicately that if it doesn't work they can blame somebody else if it works they can take the crisis but that's a given and you know a major significant difference in television even more so than film but it's certainly in film it's for profit it is so corporate driven that it's almost it's preposterous it's hilarious I've been in situations working in those environments where there will be a script reading of some sort with a room full of suits and somebody will literally say that character needs to be taller it's like okay you know and you have to know it's given as suggestions TV and film are given as directives they sound like suggestions that's how tall exactly they don't want to hear why is it that you want that character taller it doesn't make him freaking taller then with regard to do you want the playwright to cash the check and let somebody else do it etc as you said as representation I certainly want the opportunity and the ability to get my client additional work if in fact they're the one that's best suited for it if they're not I turn to the rest of my last one see if there's somebody else that can do it but yeah certainly as Steve said it's all about who has the chops to do it I disagree with everything these two said I agree with everything the rest of said but in terms of the theater and television since the goal is seeing it done getting it produced whether it's television or not in terms of taking the notes you've got to be very very careful about knowing what notes are taken what not the notes that you don't take you can stop the project by not taking the note and the notes that you take that will make it going sometimes you have to this is true theater but less sell but in television certainly if you can get notes so recently I was working on a pilot for a network and I got some notes I knew if I took these notes these are the notes that are going to make it not happen eventually I just knew it and so you can find ways to do rewrites that you can convince them you're not going to win an argument on the phone or whatever you say well you're not going to win that fight you can then do the work sell them and slowly convince them that's what these guys are saying people are fearful of their jobs they're fearful about making money when you're on a conference call these guys get bosses on the call they're listening to them they want to feel like they can give notes that sound intelligent yet critical yet leading to something and they often will be the notes that can stop it dead and so it's just not smart about how to get what you want being careful of having a clear idea of not like I got this note from the executive so if I follow this then I'm going to get my pilot shot of the show you're going to be like well what's the larger picture and I'm going to lose the essence of this character if I take that note and I'm going to lose the driving force of what the premise of this project is by taking that note you know better than they do so you've got to keep an eye on that with being kind of smart about it can I a little thing to say I did actually have a job I was hired by HBO to write a pilot on someone who what they wanted was a story of a woman who was an agent a a literary agent actually it was sort of a suitmaker's story and they hired me to write it and so I went off and I wrote a pilot and the note thing I find that those of you sitting in the room and know how to deal with them is crucial and I was very naive about that and when I walked into the room and sat at the table with seven men as the only woman in the room writing a story about a woman and what I was told in that room was that's not how women behave and I was like well fuck you I mean I couldn't really believe that that was the response and I didn't know how to be graceful about it and probably to a continuation of the job I just didn't I just sat there and had all that resistant in a lifetime of issues around it actually the actual note was that's not how women behave and they should be taller I think that's what she thinks see I would know and I didn't I didn't let's feel some questions from the audience cricket over here yeah and then over here Nina I have two questions if that's okay one is Bruce how did David get on the radar how long ago and what was that like how did you guys hook up and then how did HBO know breaking me in store David and I have been working together for about six years and the reality of how I sort of found David was I was at a point when I was developing my roster and it's really paying attention to what was going on and there was somebody else at the time who was on my roster, no longer on my roster who said you really need to pay attention to this friend like David Barcats because you were playing at the time or he was writing everything at the time and I went and saw a piece of his in a reading and I've never laughed so hard in a reading and I knew I had to work with this guy our relationship is I work with him primarily theatrically he has a representation that really handles his TV and film work that's not to say that I don't read his work and provide any sort of feedback that he's interested in receiving is that both parts of the question? what's the last way how did these two people find you the way that Colin Calder was the head of the goodness he's still now well it's actually a weird little story which is that I'm very good friends with the playwright Richard Greenberg few people recognize that and he's a good friend of mine and we decided years ago that we wanted to write a short play together for the E.S.T. Marathon and we wanted to combine our names and make it an anonymous person and just see just played this game at least Ehrlich was our name I can't believe I'm saying this there's a camera and all that I know I know so we wrote this thing together about a woman a ball busting woman who just took charge of things and I actually did it I performed it and it did well it created a little bit of a stir and it got a good review so Colin Calder came to see it and he hired he met with us and Rich didn't want to do it so I ended up doing it and I did that's how it happened what's very true is that television in particular has a real fondness and can be for playwrights at least they say that they do but they can't the primary reason they didn't like me just in terms of character development and imagination and things of that sort but then they often times have a way of sort of all the stuff that made them interesting and beating all that out of them Steve how did you find representation? in my first year I love when you said well I found him he was like on the streets that was the G version that was an alley actually I was going to ask if David's story is the same as Bruce's would you tell the exact same story that Bruce just told? yes Bruce had written I went to a reading and I never left on her he was the guy from the yeah that was being a mutual friend the same thing she said this guy you got to be that was my time was really interesting I was in my first year at NYU and I had I wrote the play that we were talking about on the same French family and some Bill Fennelly who's a director in New York passed it along to Mary Harden and Harden Curtis and then they called me in they said we'd like to have a meeting and I was like oh that's great so I went in and like through the entire meeting I was like so I was literally on my best part like what can I do to work with you and literally at a certain point she's like Steve like we're here to try and convince you to let us represent you so we can fall down and I was like I did not understand that that was the context of the meeting and so then I was like yes Mary Harden's got it so Harden Curtis are still my theatrical audience now what was that in the year 2008 my question's similar but it's about adaptation so I have these plays out there they're published in short stories and maybe hopefully a novel someday and A how do I try to maximize that opportunity for somebody to say oh we can turn this into a film and then the second part of that question is how much control like let's say my next play gets picked up it goes to Broadway somebody wants to turn it into a film how much control do I have or is it at that point I just have to let go and take the money or get it I feel like I'm jumping in and all so someone else do it all I was going to say is it depends who you are I would have like if I had a play that went to Broadway and then someone said we want to make a movie out of it we want to buy the rights to do this I would have a little or no input other than staying with Leslie and what you're going to get together with Leslie Richard Greenberg please do the adaptation I need you to hire a lease airline but you know Tracy I would feel relatively certain I could be completely wrong people watching on the internet but like that Tracy probably had a lot of input into August Osage County the adaptation of that that's coming out because he's a Pulitzer Prize winning Tony award winning playwright and also the producers of the film are the producers of the play so there was obviously an interest in taking that particular work and creating a successful adaptation I think I'm going back to what you said originally about the adaptation I think the wisest thing really is that if you were to play a play that you were worried about the adaptation as you're saying to let a professional do the fact is that even if you know the most amount of it there's been so many different mediums and there have been so few good adaptations of plays in the films and the reason why they generally suck is because they're holding on to what made the play great and if there's something that someone come in and because the thing that a playwright might love about is that he's going to fuck it up into the film I'm sorry I absolutely agree that there's somebody that can put your input in whatever but I think if a playwright sometimes it's not clear if it's a screenwriter some of the dust is so invested ego or certain aspects of it someone else is probably going to serve you better in the end it's going to be better for you well it's things that you wouldn't even think about like I'm totally going to steal a story now but Doug Ryan who's one of the guest teachers at NYU was telling us this story about the process of turning quills into a movie and that he went you know summon not summon but he was requested to come to first of all he was allowed to be on the set a lot which the director wanted which is unusual but then he was sort of requested to go to Kate Winslet's trailer and she said to him she was Kate Winslet but she wasn't like now we have Kate Winslet and so she said to him this is my favorite monologue in the entire script I love it it's really beautiful and he's like me too and she said I don't know if Doug Ryan doesn't make me nervous but she said thank you and then she said I really think that I can accomplish this with a look and he had to get over like all of his sort of like you know playwright pride to have this moment and so he said to the director let's you know he didn't want to offend her and so I'm probably bow training this if anyone repeats this story monologue and then we'll give her a chance to do the thing that she wants to do so she did the monologue and he said that it was like earth shadowingly brilliant every little nuance of it was his favorite thing ever then she did it with a look and she was 100% right and that's what's in the film and like it's not something that he would have done or noted you or any of that stuff because it's a completely different medium and that's the place where having never written a screenplay the idea that I would then look at someone and be like I'm going to do a stunning adaptation of my own play with no distance or education is like I don't know who I would have to be that's ballsy it's so interesting I love that story I mean everybody has their own process writing a television show it seems like we were talking about knowing the ending of plays when you sort of begin knowing where you're going and with the television show every episode you have to sort of know that ending what is the process like in the room with so many other writers hands in the pot how does it become complete essentially for like a season well it's typically a showrunner a showrunner is an individual he's essentially oftentimes the creator of the show and executive producer of the show they're also the head writer of the show they're the ones that control the writer room and controls sort of the overarching vision for the show interestingly you just said we've worked together for six years and you don't know I always have stuff that's true that's true that's true that's true the recent re-release reboot of Arrested Development there was obviously a lot of press around the creator Mitch Hurwitz that's how you pronounce his name and he was talking about how he had he had envisioned an entirety for an entire 5, 6, 7 season art for all these characters and how it was all going to sort of tie back in there were seeds of jokes that were planted in season 1 episode 4 that didn't pay off in the initial run of the show and if people were paying attention in episode 6 of the new season that joke is finally going to pay off it's a very, very specific it's a very different process being able to write half our poundies a little bit different because those are typically episodic storylines that are continued it's much more relevant for how long the drama is to have sort of a satisfying episode that also propels the characters and stories more they wouldn't have a sense too because they're going to have input it's going to have input on all that stuff like maybe I think if you're selling to like Cable it's a little less like you could definitely network they're going to have a lot of thoughts about where it's going to go but I can tell you the very first thing I got lucky and it was luck and sold something very quickly a TV pilot and it was bought outright but one of the reasons that Sony bought it was because at the end of the pilot it ended on page like 34 and then there was two pages at the end that was next up on Tief by the end of the first season so that they had a sense of not only because one of the questions you get at the end of your pilot from everyone on the planet is what's every week going to be what's the story engine like how is this going to run from week to week even if you think it's the most obvious thing in the planet that question is coming like it's coming and so at least for me it's coming so they want to know that you have a sense of not just what happens in the pilot but of the direction, it's what we talked about in tension you know what I mean, they want to know that you've got a plan for where you'd like for it to go and then maybe they're going to tell you to go somewhere different with it but at least you have a plan be on that pilot it's with Sony now because they bought it outright so like they have control over where it goes next I'll be writing it no do they keep you in the loop I mean it may be short for 10 years but in 10 years where they decide it does not I think they have 4 years actually but it's the executive that has oversight over it is working on it it was a really killer season last year for spec scripts like a lot of things sold from Pinch not a lot of spec scripts sold last year so I think they're still waiting to see what's going to happen this year but I was surprised that it sold frankly because it's a cable half hour with very few places that it can actually end up in the long run so it was unusual that's why I say it was lucky I was very lucky to your point of reversion after 4 years or 10 years and a script comes back that's great in some regards but any other executive is going to say well if Sony couldn't get it done in 4 years what makes anybody think that we can get it done that's true sort of but the only other thing that I would say is that you also what you learn really quickly and you already know all this but like what you learn really quickly and that I did not know is that studios have certain places that they can sell things because of deal mechanisms and then there are certain places where there's like certain places that Sony can go and make a deal and sell something and get it on TV there's certain places that Sony doesn't have a model for how to sell to so there's channels that you just can't go to and so there's outlets that some studios can go to and it is your project worth reinventing the wheel to try and figure out how to do financing with an existing studio and like those are things that you're largely spared from but then you'll ask weird questions like well why didn't we go to this network to try because it seems like it'd be a good fit and when the answer comes back there's no model in place to sell to them it's kind of like wait there's this whole other world of financing that you as a writer don't have anything to do with that you slowly start to become it's like peeling back layers you know what I mean where you don't always know exactly what's going on did you go ahead and pitch it did your agents submit it I worked on it I got really lucky and our producer Eric Jenderson is a really great writer producer who did band of brothers for HBO read an early draft of the script gave me some notes he was really committed because it's about dentist and his father was like the dentist for president for one of the president for Truman I think it was Truman's dentist and he was flying from San Francisco to give him like dental worker so he was invested in it because it was about dentist and he did two passes with me on the script of sort of like here are my notes and you know it was kind of things like it feels like you could pick this up and set it in a hat shop and it would be the same thing so like make it really about dentist don't just make it set in a dental practice and at first I was like screw your note and then I was like oh actually that's an obvious note it's important and it just meant that I needed to do hard work and so they had a pod deal with Sony and so the very first place that he ended it too was Sony and Sony read it and then a week later they bought it and so I didn't have to have a meeting with anyone the entire time this is what I'm saying it's a freak story, it's complete luck and if I were to present that to you a skill or having anything to do with my work effort that would be a lie I just got very lucky it was a secret it's true, you don't have to build me up I'm fine I'm just saying sometimes people will present to you sometimes people will present to you well I got into television because I was brave enough to take I handed my script to an executive and they said this and I'm like everybody's story, like Winnie Holtzman who created my so-called life and wrote on Thursdays and she wrote the book for Wicked and everything she told us like I remember at NYU she told us that it's like losing your virginity like everybody's story is different but it roughly ends up the same like at the end of it you've had sex and I think this is completely different and I think that's true of television too it's like how you get involved with television is completely your own journey and like you can't model it on what anyone else has done but at the end of it you've had sex but at the end of it you're in television as the resident of Luddite the title of this is writing for film, theater, or internet and you've been talking about television but what does internet mean in that thing? Bruce? Do you have plans to write exclusively? Not exclusively, probably No So it's a strange title, right? No stranger than Boba So I don't know It should be no surprise to anyone who's got a smart phone that there's an extraordinary amount of content that's being created now for the internet There's a show, is it called Blue? Oh it's on wigs I shouldn't make fun of it because it's like very things people started this network that's programming by women for women but not like lifetime where it's like movies of jeopardy So Blue is Julia Stiles Julia Stiles plays this woman who's got a secret her secret is that she's a prostitute she's keeping it from her whole family and the episodes are are they like a minute? Has anyone seen this? No it's longer It's more like nine minutes Nine minute episodes That's what we need, if you need a show like that What is it? Netflix Yeah Netflix is doing shows but Netflix is doing like for half hours and a hell of a long time They're doing kind of the rest development I think the reason that he was putting on the panel I mean I didn't plan the panel but as much as we may want to look down our noses at this short form content it's another opportunity to get paid for your writing to get paid for what you love to do Can I just like anybody in this room that like maybe you'll hate me because I'm on all the panels today but anybody that's like looking down their nose at short form programming should probably stop doing that because your short plays can be a calling card for you it's how people learn about who you are it's a great opportunity to come to things like this and get seen the exact same thing with webisodes like a lot of people enter television by creating these webisodes that they can film themselves their lower budget they are things that they can do with like if you borrow your friend like I've got a friend who works this video he's got a red cam I can get it for two days maybe I can film three episodes of this five minute thing and get it up on the air and maybe that doesn't mean it's going to become a television series but people can see what I'm doing in a way that's The cat got a development The broken cat The cat meme But I'm saying that's one way I think it's changing things that breaks down like if you can create your own content and put it up there and it actually gets seen like it ends up on funny or die or it ends up getting picked up by other I don't know what you can want to call websites, outlets on the internet then that's a way for managers to find you it's a way for agents in some ways like innovative to find you it's a way for an enterprising executive to see you know to see your digital version of Mothra's adventures and then go what is he doing I want to know more about him and find out do you know what I mean so in that respect Is it Baltimore Center Stage that they have a whole series of monologues they've commissioned writers to write short minute three minute monologues and you can go see some extraordinary writers from all over the country who've submitted to Baltimore Center Stage on their website you can just click through them all and they're paying writers to do that they're creating all this content and some of those writers have been contacted by other people who say hey I like that monologue is it from a play and they of course lie and say yes it is now we'll have a few interviews so yeah I think that the internet has sort of changed how we can be accessed as writers and how we can gain access to the industry I have two questions a follow up to this if you have some kind of a web so are you protected and then the other question is very simple and straightforward if you have a meeting and you want to invite industry professionals is there a time from the week it's a day that's better than others I'd say the first part you're never protected from anything if you're a writer you're never you can do all the little games now you saw your squib you're never protected from anything you have you can take that as a universal rule the other part of it um yeah I mean there's no sort of silver bullet on that I mean typically Mondays because that's when people are days off or you know there's typically no theater that night but that's changing too it's really subjective you know I when clients are putting together readings I try to pay attention to see what else is opening at that time it's when you're drawing attention and focus Thursdays open bar any time open bar is probably I agree about the protection I think there's a certain point where you have to stop worrying about it it's a little bit of a sharp name problem like it's like when you get you know I mean like if you're worried that someone's going to steal your webisode idea that only four people have watched on the internet and like I mean you know it becomes an issue of like at a certain point people can't take your ideas because they've been so saturated like if someone were to try and steal the idea for a rest of development it'd be really obvious that's what you were doing because it's a rest of development and many people have seen it like if someone tried to steal like at a certain point it's like you write a play you send it out if someone's going to steal that idea they're going to steal it I think that that happens far less often than people are concerned about when they're initially starting their writing careers I don't think I have met a single writer in my career who's ever had a story where they know for a fact that somebody stole their idea now I have had many people who said you know what somebody beat me to the punch my play's very similar but they got a production first and that happens all the time it's called Spontaneous Creation and you can't be a newer from that and very often when you submit to certain places they'll have you sign a release that says we are on the receiving end of thousands of thousands of ideas a day and there's such a thing called Spontaneous Creation and just because you send us a script that's about a dog that lives in Alaska doesn't mean that we don't have five other submissions they're also about a dog in Alaska and just because we produce a film that's about a dog in Alaska doesn't mean we necessarily stole your script and unless you have a paper chain where you set up the script they said thank you very much and then they took that script and had two or three meetings decided to pass on it and then made a film about a dog in Alaska you've got very little recourse and I think you're absolutely right you should not obsess about this I mean I even have students obsessing about well I'm not sure if I should take a playwriting course and share all my ideas in a workshop because I don't want somebody else to steal that idea this is a freshman student who's never written a ten minute play before I'm like I think it's a little premature to be obsessing it's also about the execution of the idea and if you sort of broke down at the most basic level the premise of just about every sitcom ever they're identical Seinfeld is about a group of friends in New York so is friends so is you know I'm sure they're more contemporary perhaps yeah how about your mother I just love that you were like everyone here's an example for me exactly I have a question for Les most of us went and saw the festival last night and saw Lesley's play The Favour which she just had the film done so I want to know in the film version do we go into the room and see mom and do we see the picture of the French boy I've not seen it until tonight so I guess I don't have to yeah who's ruined yes yes and yes it's once I wrote the one act for it one of the things that I like writing one act I always feel that it gives you something to do when other things aren't working out so well and it does give you some measure of control there are one act festivals you can get things out it's fast, it's quick it happens, it goes up there's a certain thing to writing the one act and telling the whole story in a short period of time and I had just had a play that was booked to open actually this summer and it was dropped the play was just dropped which was sad and humiliating for me so my response to that was to write this play because I had gotten a picture in the mail from a distant relative of my mother in a garden in France at the age of four and she had a big bone in her hair and a huge exuberant smile on her face and she was holding hands with the little boy and on the back it said Flavio and that was the whole thing she looked happier than I had ever seen her in her life and so I took that one little picture and I wrote the play and after I wrote the play I thought, you know, it's possible this could be a film and given that, you know, I'm 65 this summer I'm looking for new challenges and I got maybe thrown with something I could play with a little bit particularly a short film I happened to like the short form so I thought, let me bring the mother into the film and so I put the mother in the bedroom and every time she walks out we go into the bedroom with her and we do see in the opening shot we do see the mother on the bed it starts with her in profile and then it goes, you see the elephant sitting next to her and there are folks all over the bed because she was looking at pictures of gardens in France and you open up the book and there's the picture of my mother in France with the big bow and the big, super expression her face and this little French boy in a sailor out but it's the most amazing picture and then the play unfolds and also what happens is at the end now close your ears, oh no at the end now in the film Ralph goes into the bedroom and you see him standing by the mother's bed which is played by Olivia Dukakis and she so her eyes are closed and he leans over her and just as he gets to her she opens her eyes and looks right at him and he chooses in that moment to kiss her so he moves in and he kisses her and she closes her eyes and receives the kiss and then one tear rolls down her face and she just wipes it away and that's it so it wasn't it wasn't I mean it was like a one day deal and I was so fortunate that I sent it to this company the only independent film company I know it's run by women and it's called Fugitive Films and they actually gave me a full production I mean they really made a film out of this it was really, it was awesome it was awesome please put your hands together thank you