Creative Principles

“Most people don’t know stand up is an indigenous art form to the states,” said Mohammed Amer. “It’s jazz, hip hop, and stand up comedy, as far as I know, which are the three indigenous art forms to the states. I saw stand up live the first time when I was ten years old and that was a moment of complete clarity for me, what I was destined to do.”

Amer, who goes by “Mo Amer,” said he didn’t understand how profound that moment was until years later. “That has truly helped me filter so much pain in my life. To be expressive in a room full of strangers, to have my own expression, my own freedom of thought, whether it’s a story or observation, it created a balance in my life.”

As an actor, Mo played Karim in the latest Black Adam film, and has also appeared on Ray and Crashing. These days, he’s best known for stand up work, such as Mo Amer: The Vagabond and Mo Amer: Mohammed in Texas. But he’s also starring in the series he wrote for himself, Mo, for Netflix.

“I had to educate myself, learn the craft, and I fell in love with it. Then I saw the landscape of what Hollywood was at the time and knew I was ahead of myself. From the future. The only Mohammad from the self, doing stand-up pre-9/11, so my reaction from the audience was very good but also very curious.”

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Gabe Liedman got his start doing stand-up. Because people were familiar with his voice, he started getting writing jobs on shows like Inside Amy Schumer, Kroll Show, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, PEN15, Broad City, and Big Mouth.

In this interview, Gabe talks about branding yourself with sexuality, not being fearful about your comedy, how TV shows misrepresent the writers room, why movements are stretched in network television, and how there’s freedom in “hand-crafted projects.”

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“I’m pretty sure that what started me writing was reading,” said Branden Jacob-Jenkins. “I was always bookish and I remember a day when I read something and thought, ‘I don’t think that was good’ and realized maybe I could do it better. Maybe I could tell stories.”

As a teenager, Branden wrote short stories, fiction, poetry, and everything in between. He entered some young writing workshops, then found his way to other “film nerds” who he thought were the “cool kids.” Through fiction, he started to find his voice.

These days, Branden is mainly known as a playwright, but following the success of people like Beau Willimon (House of Cards) and Elizabeth Meriwether (New Girl) who made the jump from stage to silver screen.

So when his agents asked if there were ever a TV show he would want to create, what might that be, Kindred was the answer. “I had re-read Kindred for about the fifth time in my life and I thought that it could be a TV show.”

“It became this Moby Dick for me for like ten years while I was chasing the rights,” he said of the new series. “Finally, it all slowly came together.” The description reads, “A young aspiring writer discovers secrets about her family's past when she finds herself mysteriously being pulled back and forth in time to a 19th century plantation.”

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The Peabody and Emmy winning production company has signed a multi-year production commitment overall deal with Netflix, with a first-look component for projects developed by Irony Point, encompassing stand-up comedy, sketch, variety, alternative formats and more. Alex and Daniel will serve as executive producers on all projects.  

In this interview, Alex and Daniel discuss their projects like Inside Amy Schumer, I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, Ugly Americans, and That Damn Michael Che, among others.

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“I started as an artist,” said Darren De Gallo. “In the back of my mind, I wanted to be an animator, so I got a job at Dreamworks as a PA in the story department. I was thrown in the deep end of a company that was just starting.”

Darren pursued acting not long after, then did some work as a storyboard artist, and then started writing. While pursuing these roles, he met his future wife Amy Adams (Arrival, Enchanted). “It was my wife that pushed me to write this script.”

In Sam & Kate, “a son returns to his small hometown to take care of his ailing father.” The movie stars Dustin Hoffman and his real-life son, Jake Hoffman, along with Sissy Spacek, and her real-life daughter, Schuyler Fisk.

In this interview, Darren talks about shadowing Mike Nichols and Joe Wright, conversations with Spike Jonze about character, how he creates his look books, being open to all ideas, and why creators need to be grateful for stress.

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“I played in shitty scream-o bands. I was in the radio club in high school,” said Brandon Dermer. “My friends and I made comedy videos that played in the morning announcements. I always wanted to be creating.”

Getting some attention from shorts in college, Brandon won with a fake trailer that led him to an internship and job in Los Angeles. Soon after, he was working on music videos for Major Lazer, Panic! At the Disco, and Diplo.

Today, Brandon is best known for directing the series What Would Diplo Do? and his latest film, I’m Totally Fine. The description reads, “A woman in mourning who takes a solo trip to clear her head after the death of her friend. However, Vanessa's self-care vacation plans change when she's met with a situation out of this world.”

In this interview, Brandon talks about his friendship with Jon LaJoie (Taco from The League), why he’s always looking for new collaborators, doing more than film school requires, working for Comedy Central, quality through quantity, and advice for getting noticed today.

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“Having been in acting class for as long as I did, you learn the vocabulary, how different actors approach character and that gave me a foundation. One of the things I love about Directing is what actors respond to…”

Clare Niederpruem is best known for directing holiday movies for the Hallmark Channel, such as You Light Up My Christmas, The Christmas Bow, Holiday for Heroes, One December Night, and A Royal Corgi Christmas.

Because of this talent to show movies with “Christmas in every frame,” Clare was approached to direct a less traditional Christmas movie. In Christmas with the Campbells, “Jesse (Brittany Snow) gets dumped right before the holidays by her boyfriend Shawn (Alex Moffat), his parents convince her to still spend Christmas with them, and Shawn's handsome cousin (Justin Long), while Shawn is away.

In this interview, Clare talks about making Hallmark movies, working with Vince Vaughn on a raunchy comedy, following your inner voice as a female director, why young creators have to constantly prove themselves and the difficulties of filming on location.

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If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60-seconds and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom on your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!

“Wednesday, for us, from concept until now, has been a three and a half year journey,” said Alfred Gough. “We came up with the initial idea which was teenage Wednesday Addams in boarding school. We had to track down the rights and then we pitched it to the Addams Foundation.”

As screenwriters, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar are known for Shanghai Noon, Smallville, I Am Number Four, Spider-Man 2 (2004), and Into the Badlands. Their latest creation is perhaps most similar to the creation of Smallville, the Superman origin series.

Listen to our conversation about Into the Badlands in Episode 52.

Miles Millar said, “Tonally, this is in the pocket of Smallville. Often times, the studio comes to you, but this time, it was our idea. We put together a 15-page series treatment with photographs, descriptions, log lines for episodes, and that led to a meeting. We had to do the legwork, write the spec treatment, but we felt passionate about the project and fell in love with the idea of doing this.”

“From there, we wrote the first episode, that’s when the pandemic hit. We sent the pilot script to Tim Burton’s agent, even though his agent said he’s never been interested in television,” he continued, “but the agent liked it and sent it to Tim. Four days later, we got a call, he loved it and wanted to meet.”

Tim Burton told Alfred Gough and Miles Millar that he “loved the script” and “would have dated Wednesday Addams in high school.” They shot the series in Romania about a year later.

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“I loved movies. I wanted to be on set. I wanted to be in the mix,” said Noah Segan, who is perhaps best known for being in every Rian Johnson movie (Brick, The Brothers Bloom, Looper, Breaking Bad, Knives Out, Star Wars - The Last Jedi).

Currently, Noah is the star-writer-director of Blood Relatives. The story follows “a vampire's loner lifestyle is thrown into disarray when a teenager shows up claiming to be his daughter, and she's got the fangs to prove it. On a road trip across America's blacktops, they decide how to sink their teeth into family life.”

In this interview, Noah talks about lessons from Rian Johnson, his love for genre filmmaking, why actors like short scripts, why screenwriters struggle with over-exposition, and how writers can fast-track their stories with bullet outlines.

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If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60-seconds and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom on your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!

“I made a fake trailer as a collage project — a remake of the shoemaker and the elves, with these evil puppets — and I think that’s when I realized I didn’t need to describe my process.” This led him to becoming a film director.

Finnegan is best known for Vivarium (Imogen Boots, Jesse Eisenberg) where “a young couple looking for the perfect home find themselves trapped in a mysterious labyrinth-like neighborhood of identical houses.”

His most recent project, Nocebo (Eva Green, Mark Strong) is about “a fashion designer suffering from a mysterious illness that puzzles her doctors and frustrates her husband, until help arrives in the form of a Filipino carer, who uses traditional folk healing to reveal a horrifying truth.”

In this interview, Finnegan talks about doing his own visual effects early in his career, why he hates “smash cuts” in screenplays, why some directors hate “over description,” how novice filmmakers can make interesting contained thrillers and how to make a good movie with the budget you have.

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If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60-seconds and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom on your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!