Intro: Condragulations
Let Me Run This By You: The David Chase method 
Interview: We talk to Blake Hackler about surviving multiple theatre schools on both sides of the equation.
FULL TRANSCRIPT (unedited):
And Jen Bosworth wrote me this and I'm Gina . We went to theater school together. We survived it, but we didn't quite understand it. 20 years later, we're digging deep talking to our guests about their experiences and trying to make sense of it all. We survived theater school and you will too. Are we famous yet? 

1 

00:00:28

Good morning. Did you quit your hair? No, 

0 

00:00:31

It's just dirty and crumpled up. 

1 

00:00:35

Let's see a shirt. This is my, I always wear this. My RuPaul can dry. Do you know what? I've never seen that shirt on you. Oh really? I've never seen that shirt. It's amazing. Oh yeah. RuPaul is just like, yeah, I I'd love to have, you know, the dinner party question. Who would you have? Let's say five, five people living or dead. Okay. Your dinner party. Well, Frida Kahlo. Yeah, of course. Maya Angelou. Oh yeah. Prince. Although he would be so weird, like he's a good point. Good point. He'd have to prefer, okay. Frida Kahlo, Maya Angelou, prince James Baldwin. 

1 

00:01:17

And I don't know who the fifth one is. You know, you should probably, I guess somebody kind of dumb in there because that's such a smart group that it might be. I would be intimidated at night group. Okay. Not that she's dumb, but I was thinking maybe she's not dumb, but she would, she would definitely add levity is Joan Rivers. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh my God. That would be amazing. Might be the best answer to that question. I have let me run this by. You have to start over. 

1 

00:01:59

So, so I wrote an outline in two days, Monday and Tuesday was outline days. And then I had, and I, and I turned my outline into my mentor, who I love, but who, you know, because she's a mentor triggers me and I've had to work through like yesterday. I'll talk about what I had to work through with her, had nothing to do with her, of course, as we know nothing to do with her. So I wrote the outline in two days. So my outline was 11 pages and she wrote me back and said, you're in good shape, go to script. And I told you this yesterday, but she wrote back. And so she'll put notes on like a format, usually Adobe or Google docs. 

1 

00:02:39

There's one of those, but I didn't see the notes. So I thought I was in such good shape that I could take that I took none of her notes and just went to script. So it was a setback. So then I got, she wrote me and said, I feel like you didn't take any one of my notes. Is there a read? And I thought what notes it was a whole company situation. So then I wrote her and said, of course, Don, of course I would take your notes. I just didn't see them. And so then basically I had to start over and changed my outline and then re go back and do a second draft of the script. So I wrote, I've written two drafts in four days. 

1 

00:03:21

Yep. I mean, congratulations. That is quite a feat. I'm so proud of you. Thank you. Thank you, beans. And I, my question to you is, and I talked a little bit about it yesterday, but I want to get into it. I, and it's kind of like what we talk about with the theater school of phew state or blacking out or not. I, I have a hard time in the thing being present in the moment, and I know I'm not alone, but like during the writing, it's almost like I have to access a different part of my brain that has to not be present in order to get the work done because my brain will judge the shit out of it so hard. 

1 

00:04:06

And I was thinking maybe at the theater school, we couldn't take in all the things that were coming at us. So we had to shut off the part of the brain that remembers everything could be. I mean, I, I tend to think about it as, because the theater school was so much about reflecting you back to yourself and if you weren't ready to see that it was too overwhelming to you, you had to shut that part out. But yeah, I think that, I think that old thing about, you know, when the student is ready, the teacher appears, I think that's really true. You have to be all the, all the factors have to conspire to make you in a place to be able to face something a hundred percent. 

1 

00:04:55

Like, I think that mostly we don't face anything at a hundred percent in our lives. That's too overwhelming. Some we're lucky to get like 50% or 60%. So yeah, the judgment monster inside of us takes up a lot of space and you probably have to do some gymnastics to get yourself to put that month. Maybe that you give that monster another task while you're trying to. Right. What I w yes, exactly. And so what I did was I thought, okay, well, I also was on a deadline because I had set myself up for a situation where, you know, I just needed to get it done without getting too much into it. 

1 

00:05:36

So I don't look like a total ass, but I, but it's a good thing. It's all good things. But I, and, and this, we talk about, we've talked about too, how in Hollywood people probably pitch things that they don't have the full draft written. And that makes me feel better because I was like, okay, so the bottom line is I, I pitched something that I didn't have a script for duh, but that's what I'm, that's what I did. So I think the, the thing that, the way that I got it done was because I thought about it and I thought, okay, well, even if people had deadlines, they could choose to not get it done. Right? Like, just because you have a deadline, doesn't mean, you know, but I'm such a rule follower that I'm like, oh, there's a deadline. I'll do it. That helped. But the other thing that helped me was literally the structure of the process, trust the structure of the process of the David Chase method. 

1 

00:06:26

That is the big, big, huge outline. Then you get your outline approved, and then you can take, you can though each of those slug line paragraphs can stand alone, right? So you can move it anywhere in the script. So you literally cut it and paste it. So what that means is nothing is set in stone, which I love. And everything's a work in progress, which I also love as a psychological tactic for like living life work in progress, not perfect. And then it gives me freedom. And so then when I sat down, when I had the outline in the, in the order that I felt for the moment was really good. 

1 

00:07:09

When you sit down to write the actual quote script, all you really doing is shortening your, your outline and adding dialogue. That sounds great, by the way, is that also the Matthew Weiner way? Cause I know he worked for this apprentice. Okay. I'm sure. I'm sure I bet you there. Exactly. Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense to me because one of the things I really love about the Sopranos is that it's, it tells t...