What The Hell Is Michael Jamin Talking About?

On this week's episode, I have author, Joshua Fields Millburn of “The Minimalists”. Tune in as we talk about how he left corporate America and why he chose to live “The Minimalists” lifestyle.

Show Notes

Joshua Fields Millburn Website: https://joshuafieldsmillburn.com/

Joshua Fields Millburn on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshuafieldsmillburn/

Joshua Fields Millburn on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6576362/

Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course

Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free

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Autogenerated Transcript

Joshua Fields Millburn:

What happens is, oh, I'm going to leave and I'm just going to be a writer. And I had one boss that I had at the time said, look, if anyone could just quit their job and become a writer, then everyone would do it. And I looked at him and I said, well, I don't think everyone wants to do that first off, but second off, you're acting like I'm the first person in the history of the world who's decided to become

Michael Jamin:

A writer. You're listening to, what the hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity, I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts.

Michael Jamin:

Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin. I got a very special guest today. So today, this guy, I've been a fan of his work for a long time, and I discovered him a couple of years ago. It's Joshua Fields, Millburn, he's half of the minimalist. And these guys did a documentary, I'm going to give 'em a nice proper introduction. They did a documentary that I discovered which, and the message was so important. It's on minimalism and it's basically how you can live with more by having less, how you were richer by having less. And I just found that not only did I find the message so important, but I found their journey that these two guys put them on, put themselves on to be so inspiring. Just to give you a little bit of backstory before I finally let this guy get a word in edgewise, is that, so Joshua grew up, poor parents suffer, struggled with alcoholism. He decided, I'm speaking for him now, but this is what I picked up from the documentary, that he didn't want to be poor when he was an adult. I'm not going through that. So he managed to get jobs in management where he is actually making a good living, he's making money. And then at some point he realized, wait, this is not making me happy. And then he did a complete about face and reinvented himself. So Joshua, thank you so much for joining me. Let's, let's hear you talk now.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Oh, Michael, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, it's funny, I did grow up really poor and I thought the reason we were so unhappy when I was growing up is we didn't have money and not knowing that all these other things that were actually chaotic in my life, some of the things you mentioned, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, physical abuse and violence in the home, and extreme poverty was a part of it, right? It was a part of that milieu of discontent. And I just hyper-focused on that one component. So when I turned 18, I went out and I got that entry level corporate job, and I spent the next dozen years sort of climbing the corporate ladder. And by age 30, I had achieved everything I ever wanted, the six figure salary, luxury cars, big house in the suburbs with more toilets than people.

I really had all the stuff right? And all the stuff that you would consider to be the American dream, more closets full of designer clothes and all the nicest furniture and the status and the job title. And yet, as you mentioned, it wasn't making me happy. In fact, the closer I got to the pinnacle of success, it seemed to further away from happiness I got, which didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And then two things happened to me. My mother died, my marriage ended both in the same month. And we talked about those in the last documentary on Netflix. And really those two events forced me to look around and start to question everything in my life, not just the stuff, but the career and the relationships and all of these other types of clutter that I began to uncover.

Michael Jamin:

But it seems to me though, when you reinvented yourself, and we'll get to that part, you were kind of at bottom. You had, like you said, you lost your marriage, you lost your mom. Is it easier to reinvent? Where do you get the balls to do this? Is it easier to do that when you're at the bottom than as opposed if you were, I don't know, happy enough in life?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

In a weird way, I think it's simultaneously easier and more difficult. And I'll try to explain that. I think it's easier in the sense that if you've lost a lot of the comfort and the certainty that you have in life, now all of a sudden you are willing to make a change because you're experiencing enough pain that leads to a change. The outverse of that was my successful corporate life. It was never 10 out of 10, awesome. It was constantly between a four and a five on a one to 10 scale. It was just comfortable enough to not make a change, but not comfortable enough or not uncomfortable enough maybe to have any sort of meaningful experiences. And so there was a weird level of perpetual anxiety and discomfort that undergirded all of it, but at the same time, it wasn't enough pain to make a significant change. So why was it easier? Well, because once you have enough pain, you start questioning everything. Why have I been so discontented? Why have I given so much material meaning to all these material possessions? Who's the person I want to become because I don't like the person I have become so far? And how am I going to redefine success? Because this level of success, the so-called success that I've achieved, if I'm miserable, is it really success? Well, success with misery, that seems like failure to me.

Michael Jamin:

But what was the final moment that you said, screw it, I'm quitting my job and I'm trying something else. Now,

Joshua Fields Millburn:

When I got closer and closer to the executives I wanted to be like, I had this whole career mapped out that by age 32, I'm going to be a vice president by age 35, I'm going to be a senior VP by age 40, I'm going to be a C-level executive, ideally ACOO of this corporation that I'd worked for since I was 18. And I'd climbed the corporate ladder. I was the youngest director in my company's 140 year history. I was responsible for 150 retail stores, which I know with the whole minimalism thing is really ironic. But I climbed the ladder and I got closer to these guys who I really aspired to be like. And I realized, well, wait a minute. As I got closer to them, the illusion, the mirage began to sort of dissipate. And I saw them for what they were. They weren't evil or bad guys.

But I had one boss who was on his third divorce and second heart attack, and he was 50 years old. I'm 42 now. And I realized like, well, wait a minute. If I work really hard for the next 20 years, I can be just as miserable as these guys that I aspire to be like. But of course, what do we tell ourselves? We say, I'm going to be different. How am I going to be different if I follow the same exact recipe that all of these other guys are? And by the way, I've been following their recipe. If I continue to follow that recipe, I'm going to bake the same cake. And it became easy when I realized the fear of staying was actually more crippling than the fear of walking away. But

Michael Jamin:

Did you bounce this off at anybody? Hey, listen, I'm going to quit my job and to do, what was your plan?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Right? I was just going to write. I mean, my honest plan at the time was we had started the minimalist.com. I was making no money from it whatsoever. I was going to work. I paired down my bills to literally next to nothing. I mean, when I walked away from the corporate world, eventually in 2011, I made $23,000 that first year. So I took a 90% pay cut. Strangely, I was more financially free that year than I had been the last decade. It was the least amount of money I made in my entire adult life, but I was more free that year because I got rid of all of those expenses. I used to tell myself I need these things, or the truth is there were things I wanted. But you know what? I wanted more than that. I wanted freedom. So you asked, did I talk to other people about it?

Heck yeah. I did it first. I learned what a mistake that was. Really? Yeah, because what happens is, oh, I'm going to leave and I'm just going to be a writer. And I had one boss that I had at the time said, well, if anyone could just quit their job, become a writer, then everyone would do it. And I looked at him and I said, well, I don't think everyone wants to do that first off, but second off, you're acting like I'm the first person in the history of the world who's decided to become a writer. And my plan was, I'm going to work in this coffee shop in my local neighborhood, make enough just to pay my rent. I was living in Dayton, Ohio. My expenses were really, really low. I spent two years paying off all of my debt because I knew as long as I was tethered to debt, I was going to be tethered to this job, which means I was tethered to this lifestyle. And in a weird way, I was financing a car that would take me to work so I could pay the car payment for the car that would take me to work. I needed to get rid of all of those things that I wanted but weren't serving my freedom. I had to let go of those things so I could embrace the life I actually wanted to live.

Michael Jamin:

But was there any moment where you're even saying to yourself, I don't know, I think I'm kidding myself. You had to have been checking yourself with doubt even while you were convinced, I'm going for it, right?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah. Now maybe I have an irrational confidence in a way. I never thought all the things that happened would happen, and we took a rather circuitous route. I didn't know have a 10 year plan or anything like that. My confidence was like, man, I think I can make enough money to pay my rent working at a coffee shop, and then I can just write in my other hours. And that's all I wanted. I found out what enough was for me because all those other things, they weren't doing it for me anymore. I thought, if I just get the Lexus, then I'll be happy I got the Lexus. Well, maybe the second Lexus will make me happy. That didn't do it. Well, maybe the Range Rover will make me happy. That didn't do it either. Okay. And by the way, I didn't own any of those things.

I didn't own the big house. I had these things were all finance. I made really good money, but I spent even more money. So I had tremendous amounts of debt, about half a million dollars worth of debt, and I had to get rid of all of it in order to untether from that. And I realized those things never got me to enough. Enough is not about getting more and our society, it's actually about subtracting. And I knew I needed to subtract the things to get me down to enough. I already had enough peace, enough happiness, enough joy. Those things were simply covered up by all these external pursuits.

Michael Jamin:

I can understand Alexis not making you happy, but a Range Rover that surprises me Now, what kind of writing were you trying to do or were you doing that?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, it was just fiction. I was really into fiction at the time. I thought that's all I was going to do. The minimalist was this side project. My best friend Ryan, he and I, we grew up together. We grew up really poor. We've known each other since we were fat little fifth graders. And we climbed the corporate ladder together as well. And he actually came to me about eight months into my letting go, my simplifying. We were still both working in the corporate world together. And he came to me one day and he said, why the hell are you so happy? And I didn't even go around saying, look at me. I'm a minimalist now. I got rid of my stuff. I didn't say anything to anyone. I just started letting go of extra clothes that were in my closet or things that were getting in the way that weren't serving me junk, that was non-essential and clutter basically.

And I noticed that those material possessions were, and I didn't know this at the time, but they were at this physical manifestation of what was going on inside of me. And as I started letting go of this external clutter, I started clearing out some of this internal clutter, the relationship clutter, the mental clutter, the psychological clutter, the emotional clutter, the calendar clutter in my life. There was all these other types of clutter that I was not prepared for, didn't even know that I was clinging onto. And then when Ryan comes to me and says, why the hell are you so happy? It opened up this door for me to talk about this simplifying I had been doing. And so he started simplifying as well, and he's way more type A than I. And he's like, that's great. You've spent almost a year doing this. I need to do this right now.

And so we came up with this crazy idea called a packing party, which we made a film version of for our last film, less Is Now. And ultimately, that was the beginning of the minimalist.com. We were just going to write about that 21 day journey, and it was going to be a place for me to publish a few essays that I wanted to write about, but I just wanted to write fiction. And then what I realized is like, oh, wait a minute. A lot of people were finding value in these words. I remember the very first month we started the minimalist.com, 52 people, they visited the website, which sounds really unremarkable now, but at the time, I was so impressed by it. You got to think, throughout my twenties, I wrote fiction, and the only people who were reading my stuff were agents and publishers who were sending me rejection letters.

I had an inch thick stack of rejection letters of people telling me, no. Now, unbeknownst to me, a lot of the stuff was actually kind of garbage at the time. That's any writer that realizes that the stuff that seems so precious and gold, everything that comes off of my quill must be perfect. No, it was nonsense. But it made me the writer that I am today. And so I started [email protected], and I realized once 52 people turned into 500 people, and then it turned into four or 5 million people over the years, what I realized was that, oh, when someone gets value from something, they tend to share it with their friends and their family and their loved ones. Adding value, sharing value is a basic human instinct. And this was before the TikTok and Instagram and all these great ways to share these different things. People were actually forwarding our blog to their sister or their aunt or their uncle, or whomever it might be in their family, just sending off to 'em an email or a text message. And it just really began to spread word of mouth. I said, oh, maybe we actually have something here. Let's keep trying this out.

Michael Jamin:

Right? It's so interesting because people often complain today, it's so hard to go viral. You went viral before there was viral. It's like, well, because you had interesting things to say, and that gets shared. It's like, stop. People say it's so hard. Well, yeah, it's even harder when there's no such thing as viral.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah. And in fact, I don't even know that we ever had anything until our Netflix film came out, which the first one is now on YouTube, and that thing has even taken off. It's gotten a third life now. We did a theatrical release around it, and I could give you some really impressive stats around that. We had the number one documentary in 2016 in theaters, which sounds really impressive to you realize when in the hell have I seen a documentary in a theater. No one goes to theaters to see documentaries. So maybe 50,000 people saw it in a theater, but now 50,000 people see it in an hour or whatever. But before that, we never really had anything. And even now, we rarely have things that go viral. I think about when someone's playing baseball, the much more impressive players on a long enough trajectory aren't the people that are hitting grand slams and home runs occasionally.

Those are the viral moments. But we constantly had these singles or doubles. We were getting on base all the time. We were resonating with this core group of people, and there weren't things that many, many tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people were seeing. But it was like, oh, wow, a hundred thousand people read that article. Oh, wow. 23,000 people shared this one thing, whatever it might be. And it built from there. We didn't have anything that was just like, here's this huge viral moment. It was just these repeated things over and over. Oh, this resonated. Let me send this to my sister because I think it'll resonate with her too. But

Michael Jamin:

How did you go from the moment? How did you literally go from a very popular blog to getting a documentary on Netflix? What was that step?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah. Over the years, I became what I call vehicle agnostic. I remember when we first started the blog, Ryan came to me with the idea, we didn't even have the name for it. He was like, Hey, do want to, we didn't even know it was called a blog at the time. Do you want to start a website so we can share some of this story with other people? And I said, sure, we'll write a few things and we'll get that out there. It'd be great. It'd be a nice way for me to try my writing chops online. I've never done that before because all I really wanted to do was write books, specifically novels. I just wanted to write fiction, and I was rather married to that formula, that genre, that format, that vehicle to communicate my writing. And then I started realizing like, oh, that's one way to do it.

But some people find value in the blog, and then other people find value in a tweet and other people find value in. Well, eventually we started the podcast, which has now been our main vehicle for communicating things. It's even eclipsed what we've done with the blog in terms of listenership and then other people, they might get value from a YouTube video, and some people will get value from a long form documentary or a book. And so I've become vehicle agnostic. It's meeting people where they are as opposed to dragging them toward, Nope, if you want to read about this, you have to read a 300 page book between bound covers. No, it's meeting them where they are. We actually do a lot more audio books than we do print books now, because that is one way that people prefer to consume those materials. I prefer reading a physical book personally, but I'm not going to prescribe that to anyone else.

Michael Jamin:

Okay. So how did you wind up selling it to Netflix, though?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, great question. So we were in 2014, our second book came out in January 1st, 2014. It was called Everything That Remains. Ryan and I moved to this cabin in the middle of nowhere. Literally in middle of nowhere, there was one traffic light in 3,400 square miles. And it's sort of that romantic vision. You think we're in Montana, right? It's like, oh, wow. I say romantic, not like sexual romance, but romance in the sense like, oh, this little writer moves to the cabin. And man, when you're in Montana in winter and it's negative 26 degrees and it's in October, you realize all you really have to do is quite literally chop wood for the fireplace. That kept us warm and and we wrote the second book called Everything That Remains. It was the story of these two suit and tie corporate guys who walk away from the corporate world become minimalist. It was our journey. We went on book tour that year with it. Now again, that sounds like a really romantic vision. Book tour for us was like, we set up the book tour ourselves, and we did a hundred cities in eight countries, 119 events, 10 months of our lives.

Michael Jamin:

I have to interrupt. So much good stuff here. Yeah. You said this was, your book was traditionally published, or was it indie published?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

It was independently published, but we started, it's a long story. We started our own publishing company. We had a handful of employees there as well, and then it was traditionally published overseas. So we did a sort of hybrid model of it. Not self-published, but independently published and then picked up by other publishers.

Michael Jamin:

Right. Okay. So then you set up this book tour. You were side all this work. I have to point this out. Some people think, oh, you see the publisher made it happen. No, no, no. No one made any of this happen except you two guys, because you wanted it to happen. So tell me, so then, how did this book tour come about?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Well, thankfully, we had some experience in the business world. We knew how to run a business. We started our own business with a third person named Colin Wright, who's a prolific author by age 30, I think. He had written 32 books and independently published quite a few of them and gone the traditional route with some other things and had some things optioned by Hollywood. And we realized we had come up with this formula, oh, what is possible to do independent publishing, which is different from a big traditional publisher, and it's also different from Vanity Publishing or self-publishing. I kind of liken it to indie music. You have big acts who are huge mega stars, the Taylor Swifts and the Miley Cyrus of the world, and they thrive in that giant recording industry system. And then you have people who just are garage bands and they have fun jamming in their garage.

That's sort of self-publishing. But there's, in music, there's this whole other world of independent publishing or independent music, independent artists, especially now with the things we've gotten so easy. But even since the eighties and nineties, you've had independent artists who don't fall into the big label system, but aren't just garage bands aren't just jamming. They actually make a living. And we said, what if we model ourselves after independent musicians, people who are able to fill a 200 cap room, they can't fill up an arena or whatever. What if we did that? But we did it with book publishing, and eventually with that publishing company, we ended up signing nine different authors and showed them how to fail with us and took some of them out on tours. We did our own version of independent publishing for those authors, poets and fiction writers, all of that.

And we learned a lot along the way. So when we booked our own tour, it was literally us and a few employees and interns that we had there in Montana. We eventually moved our operations to the big city of Missoula, Montana, 70,000 people there. It was a writing school there at the University of Montana. In fact, our office was at the university. They had a startup incubator there. And so we decided, Hey, we're going to go on this book tour. We had been on a few before, smaller ones, but we want to do it right. We really believed in this book. We believed in this message. So what we did is we set up a hundred different cities, 119 events, and the message really began spreading. We did 400 media interviews that year, traditional media and non-traditional media, but everything from, we'd be on the morning news at 5:20 AM in Albuquerque now, I don't know, maybe 14 people are watching that.

But it allowed us really to develop our interviewing chops, and it allowed us to see what resonates with different people while we go out on these tour stops. Now, it wasn't sexy. Our business plan that year was, if we sell enough books tonight, we can stay in a hotel. If we don't, we're going to sleep in Ryan's Toyota Corolla. And then occasionally, sometimes listeners or they weren't listeners at the time, they were audience members, viewers, readers. They would let us stay at their spare bedroom or in their guest house, or sometimes we'd just sleep on the floor, we'd sleep at rest stops, whatever made sense. And it was quite literally living in the moment. We're going tonight, we're going to be in Des Moines, and then we have a tour stop tomorrow in Omaha, and eventually we'll work our way around to Halifax, Canada. And we're just driving around in Ryan's Toyota Corolla making that happen. And what I realized is that, yeah, early on, eight people would show up at a tour stop, but as the message began to continue, it really, it increased exponentially. By the end of that tour, thousands of people were showing up at tour stops, and we would have,

Michael Jamin:

Tell me about these tour stops though. Are you at indie bookstores or are you booking venues for yourself?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, initially we booked indie bookstores. In fact, all hundred cities. We did indie book shops except for two or three cities that just don't have an indie bookstore at all anymore, which is really sad. Las Vegas was a good example of that. I think Dallas didn't have an indie bookshop at the time. That's actually been fixed recently. But what we did is we'd book these with indie bookstores, and then when the crowds became too large for those bookstores, then they would find a local theater or a local public yoga studio or some open space that we could have these tour stops. We partner with these indie bookstores, and then they would help us with the space and these tour stops. So

Michael Jamin:

Who's paying for the space though? Or you guys

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Usually the bookstore would, they'd have some sort of arrangement with a local, they'd have a theater across the street. I remember we showed up in Indianapolis and 80 people R RSVP'd for that event, which you never know, because they're free events. Sometimes 80 people, r rss, VP and maybe 40 people actually show up because it's free. We had 80 people, RSVP, and we knew the bookstore only held about 60 people. You could maybe cram an extra 20 in there, but we had 400 people show up at the Indianapolis Book tour stop. And that's when I kind of knew like, oh, this is bigger than I thought it was ever going to be. And they had to find, they had a local theater across the street that was abandoned, but had recently been acquired by a friend of theirs, and they just let us use it. I mean, we had no plan. We were just kind of showing up and figuring out what would happen, holding court in the theater with no microphones, no electricity. We just found a way to make it happen. And it wasn't always pretty, but man, I think if we were trying to wait for everything to be perfect, we'd still be waiting.

Michael Jamin:

That's exactly right, because this is what I'm always yelling at people, stop asking for permission, put the energy in and then see you make it happen. That's what I find so inspiring. By what I mean, Jesus. I mean, you've literally reinvented yourself and none of it was easy, but you did it anyway. And now, do you still go back on tour?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, we've done 10 tours in the last 12 years, and they're appreciably different. The reason I brought that up is because while we were on the road, we didn't have any extra money to film a documentary, but we had our friend, Matt Vela, who is huge now, has a huge YouTube channel, huge following. But at the time, he was just a young filmmaker who was looking to do something meaningful, and he had reached out to us and we started talking, and he was doing commercials at the time. In fact, he filmed the book trailer for that book I talked about. I was like, well, we don't have a ton of money, but I can pay you. We're going to be doing a media event in New York. Why don't you come out film that and do a book trailer for everything that remains? And so we paid him to do that, and we said, Hey, do you want to come on the road with us for a few weeks during this long tour that we're doing, and we'll set up some interviews along the way, and that way we don't have to fly to all these different cities.

And so part of that tour, about six to eight weeks of that tour was just Matt in the back of the Corolla with all his gear and lighting set up. And while we go to a city, we say, oh, there are these great people we want to interview in San Francisco, or there's someone in Los Angeles you want to interview, or, oh, we're going to be doing a tour stop in Salt Lake City. I know we want to talk to these two people while we're in Salt Lake City, or we're going to be in Austin, Texas. Make sure we interview these people while we're there. We're going to be in Philadelphia. I know there's someone we want to talk to there. And so we just went around while we were in the city, we'd make time with any downtime. We had to film some interviews.

And at the end of it, Michael, I got to tell you, we had a thousand hours of footage. We didn't know what the hell we were doing. We had a thousand hours of footage. Now the first documentary is 79 minutes long. And I remember at the end of that tour, we just looked at Matt and said, okay, good luck with all the footage. Now, a lot of the interviews we didn't use, a lot of it was road footage and other things, and he pieced together something really special. We went through nine different iterations of that film, and eventually we pitched it to Netflix and they were like, not for us. And they were really the only streaming game at town at the time. This is back in 2015 when we were finishing up the film. There were a few other smaller services then that don't even exist anymore.

But Netflix was pretty much the only game in town, but I've always been the, all right, that's fine. You don't want it. We'll put it out on our own. Let's do a theatrical release, which I would never, ever do again. It's crazy. And we submitted the film festivals. We did a theatrical release, 400 theaters, us, Canada, Australia, and didn't get anyone's permission. We just figured out a way to do it. We found a distributor who was willing to work with us to get it into select theaters around the country. And so it was wildly successful in theaters for a documentary. And so we went back to Netflix and we were like, Hey, look how great it did. And they're like, yeah, still not for us. Sorry. Okay, no problem. Let's go ahead and put this online on our own transactional video, on demand, get it up on iTunes and Amazon and Vimeo. And we did that. And because we had already cultivated this audience through our blog and eventually through the podcast, which we had just started to help promote the film, ironically, the film ended up promoting the podcast way more than we anticipated, but we had built this audience. They sent it to number one on iTunes, and now Netflix came back to us and they were like, Hey, you know that film that you came to us with?

Michael Jamin:

See, I just had a long talk about this a couple days ago when people are begging to get into Hollywood, I go, if you want Hollywood to want, you got to smell like money, which is what you guys did. You stunk of money, which is because you had created this thing which people wanted. Now, Netflix, that's how you sell something. Netflix comes to you.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, and they did. And what they did is, ironically, they paid us less than we made from any other platform, so we made less money from Netflix. But they did something really great for us. They got us into so many more homes. They got us into, in fact, they only did the US rights initially or the English rights, but then it did so well for them on the platform. They licensed the worldwide rights for a three year period, and they re-upped those rights for another three years. So we spent about seven years on Netflix with that first film, and eventually just this year, we got the rights back and we put it up on YouTube on our own, and millions of other people that have seen it on YouTube now. But Netflix got us in front of about 80 million people. And so that changed everything.

It brought a lot of people into the podcast, and it also made them want to work with us on a second film. So they worked with us on our second film, less Is Now, and it became a Netflix, which ended up getting nominated for an Emmy, which I thought was a joke. When I got the email, I had to check the, I was like, oh, this must be some sort of spam nonsense. And what I realized is I wasn't pursuing any of these things specifically. It was just like these things were a great byproduct. Let's just sit down and create something that we really want to create, and hopefully everything else works out.

Michael Jamin:

Tell me about, so your friend, Matt, because I have so many questions here. When he came along on the ride with you, was he getting paid or was he doing this just to hustle himself to make his own projects happen?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, more of the latter. We just said, Hey, man, we want to make sure we give you a disproportionately generous portion of this film because I don't have money to pay you for this right now. And so you are also an owner of the film as the director. He was also the editor. That's actually his true talent. I mean, he's a phenomenal director, but he is a savant of an editor. So he just came on the road with us and owns a major chunk of the film as a result. Had we just paid him, I mean, sure he would own less, but what I like about this is making sure that we always take money off the table with any of these things. Anyone who works with the minimalists now, it's like, okay, I'm probably not going to make you a millionaire, but what I'm going to do is provide a atmosphere for creative work that you'll enjoy and find meaning in.

And also make sure you're compensated well enough for it, that you're not worried about money. And so, hey, this is a project we're going to work on together. We didn't know if anything was going to happen. Honestly, I didn't even know if it was going to be turned when you have a thousand hours worth of footage. I don't even know if you can turn that into a documentary, but if so, great. I mean, there's so many other projects we've started. That's the problem with the iceberg. You see only what's above the water. But we've worked on other films, we've worked on other books, we've worked on blog posts, podcast episodes, whatever, that never see the light of day. But that's just the way things, a lot of things hit the cutting room floor that aren't meant to be shown to the public.

Michael Jamin:

Are you worried about running out of things to say, because your message is simple, it's the less you have, the less fewer problems you have, but are you worried about, okay, what do I say now?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, what a thoughtful question. I think that's an important question too, because it's not about just continuing to regurgitate the 16 rules for living with less or whatever. Those things are helpful for people, but they're out there already. What I've learned is as I've uncovered that external clutter, I really found all of these other forms of clutter. So recently we've been talking a lot more about these other types of clutter that are creating dread or anxiety in our lives. Calendar clutter is a big one that comes up a lot. I didn't even realize how much calendar clutter I had because I was saying yes to all of these things. It sounded good opportunities on their own. But when I say yes to this, and I say yes to this, I say yes to this inadvertently after saying a thousand yeses, now I'm saying no to the things that are actually most important to me.

Everyone else's emergency is now becoming urgent for me. But just because something is urgent for you doesn't mean I have to take it on or I have to say yes to it. And what I realized is that calendar clutter is a type of consumerism. It's thinking that if I just say yes to all the right things, then my life will be complete. But it ends up stressing us out, and it's become culturally acceptable. In fact, it's become praised, right? Oh, what are you up to lately? I'm just so busy. Look how important I am. I'm so busy. Right, right.

Michael Jamin:

Please, I didn't interrupt you. Well,

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Busy is just a four letter word. It just means my life's out of control whenever I go around saying I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy. It means I don't have control of my own life.

Michael Jamin:

So what's interesting is you made this step, which is to forsake all these trappings to become minimalist. And as you became more successful, the trappings somehow find a way to encroach back in. Absolutely. And you have to keep checking that

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Consumerism takes many forms, and for me, it was the material because I thought that was going to make me happy or whole or complete, but then you replace that with other things. I remember when we first became unquote famous, people started recognizing us in public. It wasn't about like, is this enough? It's like, how do I get more of this? Right? But then you realize really quickly, it took me about six months, so maybe it wasn't that quick. It took me about six months to realize like, oh, this isn't why you're doing this, man. If you're chasing happiness, you're never going to find it. You were chasing it over here with the Range Rover or the big house or whatever. You didn't get it there. You're not going to get it from applause or veneration either. And what I realized over time is what enough for me is zero.

I don't need the applause. I don't need the praise. Those things are nice, and I'm not allergic to them, and I'm not shunning them either. Anthony Dello talks about as soon as you denounce a thing, you're forever tethered it to it. And I find that to be true. I'm not denouncing material possessions. I own stuff. I'm talking to you in a microphone. I'm wearing a shirt. I'm wearing pants. I'm wearing shoes, whatever it is, I own some stuff. I don't denounce things, but I also don't need things to be hold or complete. I am complete in an empty room, and I don't need material possessions. I don't need your praise. I don't need a specific relationship in order to make me happy. I can have those things. I can enjoy those things, but as soon as I need them, that's the type of prism.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, it's just so interesting because you've created the success for yourself, and yet it still has a way of sneaking back in, and you have to constantly check it. So it's a journey now. You're never there.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah. Yeah. I would say success doesn't exist because it's almost like it's a mirage, right? You see the successful person. I do this at some of our tour stops or live events sometimes, and I was asked the crowd, shout out one thing that you associate with a successful person. If I show you a picture of a successful person, what does that person look like? And it's almost always like an ad from a magazine almost. It's like it's a guy wearing a suit, so it's an expensive suit. There's some sort of expensive jewelry or watch if it's a woman, she has a nice dress and a nice handbag, and it's always the accoutrements of success, but it's never about the person's interstate. It's never like, oh, yeah, they're really at peace, or they don't really need for much. Now you can redefine what success is, but culturally, when we talk about success, there's a portrait of success that we're identifying. And now it's so absurd. It's like it's not just the nice suit. It has to be the Louis Vuitton shoes, or it has to be the Gucci wallet, or it has to be the Balenciaga, whatever. And these become the markers of success, but they're just trinkets. And even those things I'm not against necessarily, but they're not going to make you happy.

Michael Jamin:

Do you find yourself slipping into judgment though of people who have it?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

I used to, yeah, because I would pathologize needing those things, but now I don't judge. I identify because that's just me, man. Yes, I want to be accepted, or at least I wanted to be accepted. And I thought that those things were a shortcut. And so if anything, I have empathy for my former self who thought that was going to make people. And here's the perverse thing about it. Let's say that buying the right car or the right wallet or the right belt or the right shoes or whatever, does get you acceptance from a particular peer group. Well, man, you're being accepted for things that aren't even you. So are they accepting you or are they accepting the status symbols? But

Michael Jamin:

Let me get your help on something. I wrote a story about this in my book where it's like when I walk by, my wife and I go by, we take walks in these very expensive neighborhoods. It's pleasant to walk around in, and you look at a big house and a big, and you go, man, and my instinct is, yeah, but they're miserable. And she goes, you don't know that. I hope what they have to be do they have to be? Can't they be happy and have a big house and all that stuff?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Tell me. Yeah, absolutely. It's unlikely. It's

Michael Jamin:

Unlikely. Go on.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, it's unlikely because the constant need for more does not stop when you get the big house. What do you want? I mean, I live up in Ojai, California, and a lot of people live there in their third home. Their third home is in, I used to live in Missoula, Montana, and man, a lot of people have their second or third home in Missoula, and I'm not against that even, right? But when is it enough? What amount of square footage is enough? Here's a question. We never were stopped to ask how much money is enough?

Because more always sounds like it's better, which fine if someone comes in here and hands me bags of money, I'm not going to object to that, but that's not how capitalism works. What happens with capitalism? I'm not against capitalism either, but the ugly side of capitalism is now you're tethered to something. Someone shows up with a bag full of a million dollars. It's not no strings attached. There are definitely strings attached, and those strings are attached. It's taken away from my freedom. There's this essay that was in the New York Times a few years ago called Power. No, thanks, I'm good. And in that essay, they posit that the least free person in America is the president in the United States, the most powerful person in America as the least free person. Well, why is that? It's because to have dominion over everyone comes with a whole lot of strings. You're tethered to obligations, and by untethering from obligations, you may not be able to have the big house, but you might have something that you want a whole lot more, some tranquility, some peace, some equanimity,

Michael Jamin:

Right? I just wonder, does that take convincing of your stick? Do you have to convince yourself of that, or you just go, no, I'm in. I'm in.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

No, I think you just have to see it. You have to see it. Yeah, because I don't think any level of convincing ever works. I think it was Dale Carnegie who said, A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion. Still.

I love that because yeah, you can convince me that Michael Jordan's the greatest basketball player of all time, but if I don't actually believe that, I'm going to go back to my defaults. Kapil Gupta says, everyone defaults to their defaults. And so, yeah, you can convince me for a period of time, but unless I actually see it, and that's what happened when I walked away from the corporate world, I actually saw it. It wasn't just this hypothetical or cerebral exercise. It was feeling it viscerally. And then you don't need any convincing, no level of convincing is required. That's what love is, by the way. To love someone is to see them for who they are without trying to convince them of your love, without trying to manipulate them or coerce them, actually seeing them. And I think that's true with our material possessions, with our calendar, with that big house that you see in Beverly Hills or wherever. You know what, yes, you see it for what it is. You see the tethers that are attached to it, and if you want those tethers fine, but if you don't want what is attached to those tethers, realize that you don't actually want the house either.

Michael Jamin:

Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my content, and I know you do because you're listening to me, I will email it to you for free. Just join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos of the week. These are for writers, actors, creative types, people like you can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you, and the price is free. You got no excuse to join. Go to michaeljamin.com. And now back to, what the hell is Michael Jamin talking about?

Michael Jamin:

See, to me, what you're saying is you literally, I don't know, you took a leap. You took a leap of faith. I believe that this is not going to make me happy, and I believe this will make me happy. And you're someone who continues to make leaps. This is a little bit of a segue here, but you took a leap from being management into a writer, into a performer. Now you're on stage. Where do you get the balls to say that I'm a performer now? You know what I'm saying? It's a leap.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah. I don't ever think of it that way. I guess I just started doing these events because was happy that I remember once we did a tour stop in Knoxville in 2011. It was our first book, which is called Minimalism, and no one showed up, and we were at this little bookstore slash cafe. So Ryan and I are just there. It's a random Thursday night and we're drinking coffee, waiting on it. Is anyone going to show up? Oh man, no one showed up. And it's like, we'll give it 10 more minutes. We start walking out, it's half hour into the event, and we're walking out, and as we're walking out, there's this guy who and his girlfriend who are walking in, they say, Hey, you're the minimalists. And I'm like, yes, yes, we are. And they're like, we don't

Michael Jamin:

Even have an audience. That's how minimal you're yes.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

And they're like, we're here to see you. I'm like, that's great. You're the only people who showed up and well, so let's sit down, pull up a chair. Let's have a conversation. So we had a tour stop with two people, show up, and to me, that was one of the most meaningful experiences we've had. I didn't look at it as a performer. I've kind of been like, water. We just fit the vessel that we're in, and if two people show up, we'll have a great two person conversation,

Michael Jamin:

But surely

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Thousand people show up. We'll have a different conversation.

Michael Jamin:

But you must have some kind of pressure to feel like I have to entertain here. Not just educate, but entertain. No,

Joshua Fields Millburn:

I enjoy entertaining. I don't know that I have to. That would also feel like a prison, but I enjoy entertainment. I like shows that are actually shows, right? Conversations are cool, but I really like when people put the effort and get really obsessed about something, whether it's set design or it is audio, or it is the way the words look on a page in the type setting, whatever it is. I really appreciate the obsession. And yeah, I do like entertainment. I don't know. That's the point of doing what I do, but I don't think that it hurts. I mean, it's to be entertaining in a way is to be courteous to an audience. No one goes to the beach with a calculus textbook and says like, oh, I'm really looking forward to diving because there's no entertainment there at all. It's not delightful. And so I do enjoy delighting an audience, and I think it makes it what we're talking about a lot more compelling.

Michael Jamin:

But was there a moment there had to be of imposter syndrome. Who am I to be standing here? Who am I to be writing this book? Who am I to be? Was there ever that,

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, yeah. I guess that I never felt like an imposter. I just always felt like I was exploring. You're exploring. Yeah, because I'm not prescribing anything to anyone. Anytime I do, then I'll start to feel like an imposter isn't. Here are the three things that you should do to be happy. In fact, happiness doesn't even work like that. There's nothing you can do to be happy. Happiness can't be acquired. It can't be attained. It is already there. It's preexisting. We never go to a baby and say, well, here are three things you should do to be happy. You just see 'em smile and coup and laugh, and it's like, oh, well, why can't I do that? Well, I've covered it up with all the damn prescriptions, right? So I'm not prescribing anything. Anytime I do, then yeah, I start to feel like an imposter because who knows what. But people often call into our podcast and they'll say, do you have any advice about this? And the first thing I always say is, I don't have any advice, but I have some observations because I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you what I see.

Michael Jamin:

So it's really just about you maintaining your authenticity and speaking what your truth is and take it or leave it. It's whatever someone else's truth is, that's for them to decide.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, if I see a truth, I can observe it. I can put it out there on the table, and whether or not someone else picks it up, that's up to them. By the way, my beliefs don't really matter at all anyway. My beliefs don't matter. The listener's beliefs don't matter. The truth is the only thing that does matter. I was just talking to someone earlier today about this. If I told you I believe the earth is flat, does that matter? Does it change anything? No, but I think the adverse of that also doesn't change it. What do I tell you? I believe the earth is round. Well, so what? Congratulations. Right? The earth is round regardless of whether or not I believe it, and no amount of belief or clinging to a belief or changing a belief or convincing someone else that my belief is right is going to change what the truth is

Michael Jamin:

Right now. I'm jumping a little bit, but I feel like part of what your journey was, I wonder was it made a lot easier because you went on it with your best friend. It seems to me like I'm not sure if I could do this alone.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

In some ways it was easier, but a lot of times it was way harder. I are so different people. I mean, we're exact opposites in many ways. I'm super introverted. He's super extrovert. He's the most extroverted person I know. I'm the most introverted person I know. So if you look at us on a Myers-Briggs personality test, I am an ISTJ, he's an ENFP. We're literally exact opposite person. Excuse me, exact opposite personalities. But when we interact with each other, we're both mentors and mentees to each other. And I found that was really helpful to have someone there to help maybe keep me accountable. But other times it was, oh, man, it's hard to not want to change this person to pick up my beliefs. And then what happens is we start battering each other with our own beliefs or our own opinions, and we've moralized everything, right? Oh, you like cappuccinos more than lattes? Clearly you're wrong. I have a preference. And so it was harder, but it also allowed me to let go of a lot of that belief clutter that I was holding onto

Michael Jamin:

Belief clutter. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, that's what I picked up from your last special. It's not just about letting go of stuff. It's about letting go of preconceived notions. It's about letting go of. Yeah. I mean, that's what I found so inspiring by what you guys are doing, but I don't know, it seems to me, because you still have a business here, you have a creative business, you've reinvented themselves as creative people, and you're going on, I don't know, at the end of the day, you still got to pay the bills. You're taking a big risk. So to me, it feels like, does having that partner there put you at ease a little bit?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah. I mean, the weird thing is I still make less money than I did in the corporate world, and in fact, they even took a pay cut this year to make sure that everyone is being paid well, and I'm totally fine with that. There are a lot of things I could do that I don't want to do.

Michael Jamin:

You mean opportunities don't

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Do ads? On our podcast, for example,

Michael Jamin:

You don't do ads on your podcast?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

No, I don't like 'em. I like going to museums, and I can only imagine if I went to the LACMA and I went to the Picasso room and all of a sudden they were painting McDonald's arches onto his paintings. I wouldn't feel as good about the art.

Michael Jamin:

It's funny. I don't monetize either, but to me it's about something. What's the end goal then? What's the monetization process? Promote your other projects.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, I mean, that's part of it. I just enjoy doing it. We didn't monetize the podcast at all for years, and now we just supported on Patreon. So we do a private version of the podcast for patrons who want to support us, but frankly, that's a very small sliver of the audience. Everything else we do for free, completely ad free. We don't monetize our YouTube channel. I just don't like advertisers, and that's not a moral stance, and it's not a judgment on anyone else. It's just a personal preference to me. There's some people who just really don't like cilantro, and I'm not going to convince them that they should like cilantro or that, oh, you're morally wrong because you dislike cilantro. It's kind of gross to them. And advertisements on my podcast are just kind of gross to me. I

Michael Jamin:

Understand that. But it seems to me it almost like you're bi minimalism and then someone puts an ad to buy sneakers that you don't eat or whatever. I could see the disconnect, but also, you're entitled to have a business and you're entitled to make a living. And what you offer has value. I mean,

Joshua Fields Millburn:

I don't think I'm entitled to anything, but I can do any of those. There are no shoulds. There are endless possibilities. Endless coulds so I could do ads. There are a bunch of things I could do, but I just choose not to because rather not. And to me, I would rather just go work at a coffee shop than put ads on. I'll do the podcast for free and just go work at a coffee shop than put ads on. We have enough listeners that I could make seven figures a year from putting ads on the thing. So put my preferences where my mouth is, and again, it is not a moral stance and it's not me standing on a pedestal. I just simply dislike ads and I'm not willing to say yes to something that grosses me out.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Well, good for you. Who can't respect that, but what is it then that gives you joy? What is it that you're working towards? What are your other ambitions with the minimalist? What do you want to do?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, I don't look at success if I do look at success at all. I don't look at it as the big accomplishments. Those things can be fun as a byproduct, whether it's being a bestselling author or being nominated for an Emmy or whatever it might be. I don't shoot for those things. I try to map out my life to see what I want to do on a random Wednesday. What do you want your average Wednesday to look like?

Michael Jamin:

Okay. What do you want your average Wednesday to look like?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, yeah. Usually I want to get up, I want to exercise, I want to read. I want to write those three things I do first thing in the morning. I really enjoy those things. I'll get some sun. I'll go for a hike. I'll do some grounding. I might have a conversation like this or two, I limit the conversations that I have just because I don't want to keep saying yes to a bunch of things, because if I'm saying yes to this, I want to be present with you. This is a hell yes for me. We're having this conversation right now. Why distract myself with something else I have going on this afternoon or tomorrow or whatever? My point is that if you solve for Wednesday, there's nothing grandiose. I don't want, what do you want your average Wednesday to look like? Oh, well, I want to win an Oscar and I want to become a number one New York Times bestselling author, whatever it is. Those things can happen, but that's not going to happen. Your average Wednesday, what if I'm taking my daughter to, she doesn't go to, we homeschool her, but we take her to this, and so what if I spend an hour reading to my daughter? What do I want my average Wednesday to look like? Is appreciably different from the giant peaks that we often see on the success roadmap?

Michael Jamin:

I mean, you're so grounded. You use the word yourself, grounding exercise, and yeah, I just have so much. First of all, I'm honored that I get this conversation because I don't know. I just think it's so interesting to hear you're a very successful, I think you can be measured as a successful person in many different ways, but obviously the most important one is your happiness quotient and what gives you peace and joy.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

And if I find myself chasing it, then I know that I'm, I've been misled or I've misled myself. Really, the happiness is out there. The joy is not out there. Everything else that we seek is already

Michael Jamin:

Here. It's almost like a spiritual journey you put yourself on.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's really just identifying what enough is and letting go of anything that gets in the way of enough.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Yeah. That's so interesting. Now, do you also though, now that you have a child, I don't know, do you also worry about that? Do you worry for her?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

No. No. I mean, because I know that she's going to go, just last week, this is timely, but her boyfriend, I mean, the boy she holds hands with occasionally, she's 10 years old, okay. And he called to break up with her, and he asked her, can we just be friends? This is her first boyfriend. I mean, I didn't want to correct her and be like, Hey, Ella, you know what? You were just friends. You

Michael Jamin:

Were just friends.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

I have a big problem if you weren't just friends at age 10. But anyway, and so she's going through all this heartache and instead of pathologizing it and saying, don't cry, yeah, I felt the heartache for her as well, but real joy, real peace makes room for that. I could still be at peace at it and experience those. So-called negative emotions. I can feel the sadness for her. And she looks up at me and she says, I'm so sad, and I don't even know why I'm sad. Why am I sad? And oh, my heart was just broken. And then instead of me preaching to her, she asked a question, and that opened up the door for conversation. And I was able to explain to her, well, we get sad or we get upset. We get angry, we get frustrated whenever our expectations of the world, our worldview doesn't map onto reality. And right now you want things to be one way and they are another way, and being sad isn't wrong or bad, you're going to experience this. And by the way, by her experiencing it, that's how she moves on from it. And she moved on so much quicker than I would have. And that's what the beautiful thing about kids. When you have a kid, you learn so much about letting go. She has far less to learn from me than I had to learn from her.

Michael Jamin:

But I sound very obviously very zen and very at balance. But when you were starting this minimalism journey to get the word out there to do these shows and book tours and all, there must've been disappointments along the way and would frustrated the hell out of you, or no,

Joshua Fields Millburn:

All the disappointments happened later way after the success. What Really? Absolutely, man, it was all just a beautiful accident early on. I remember the first time we had an amazing tour stop where it was 2012, December, 2012. This was our second tour. Yeah, we call it the Holiday Happiness Tour. We did 10 cities over the course of maybe three weeks, and us and Canada, just 10 major markets. And we had people actually show up to these. I remember we had 70 people show up in San Francisco, and we had maybe 25 people show up in Washington, DC and 40 people in Boston. And all of a sudden we had people who were actually showing up to these things. And then we had this event in Toronto. It was at this co-working space that we had. Someone found it for us. They let us use it for free, and we show up.

And it was the first time I absolutely knew that, oh, our lives are going to be different after this. We showed up and there was another event going on. It totally blocked off our event. And this other event that was going on, there was all these people waiting to get in. I'm like, oh, they're totally going to screw up the small event that we have planned. And so I look at the organizer, her name was Melissa. I said, Melissa, what event are they here for? And she looked at me and she said, they're for you, dummy. And it was like a thousand people who showed up at this event.

Michael Jamin:

And this space was big enough to accommodate

Joshua Fields Millburn:

It? No, not at all. And they actually let us use the basement. And even then there were people, it was like sardines at a rock concert or something, and it was all gravy, man, I would've been just as thrilled if 15 people showed up that night, and it's easy to say as a Monday morning quarterback, but what happened is that started to build up these expectations in the future. Oh yeah, yeah. Now we need 2000 people to show up, whatever it is. And it's like, well, no. In fact, recently we just started doing these smaller events here in Los Angeles. We did five of them over the course of, I dunno, six months or so. We called them Sunday symposiums, and we made them intentionally small where only 200 people could show up. It was 200 seat theater downtown, and that was it. If you showed up for that, great. And every single one of 'em sold out. Let's do something intentionally small, and I'd love to do some events with 12 people, because to me, having the expectation totally ruins the thing. Whoever shows up shows up. If I need them to start showing up,

Michael Jamin:

Oh man,

Joshua Fields Millburn:

What's going to happen?

Michael Jamin:

So it was, once you hit that success, like you're saying, that's when you have disappointment, more expectations. So were there others? Man, this is just so interesting to me. So what do you do then, other than keep yourself in check? Because your natural inclination is to get more success, more followers, more fans and all that?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, for me, it was about identifying what enough is. But yeah, there'll be some disappointments along the way. There was this film series that were working on. Netflix actually encouraged it. And so I go to pitch them on it. I do all my own pitching. I don't have an agent do it. I just show up and I'll have them book the appointment, and it's just me in a room with whatever executives, and that's how it's worked. And then I show up and best pitch of my life. It went amazing. It was this project, a six part series, and it could not have gone better. The only way it could have gone better is they bought it in the room, which happens from time to time. I said, great, we'll get back to you next week. This is a Friday. And on Monday, my agent calls me, and this is a few years ago, and it was right when Netflix stock tanked. And he called me and he said, Hey, they let go of 75% of that team that you pitched,

And so you're going to have to put this on hold for a while. And so that's what I've done. I set it on the shelf, and it's unfortunate because I've spent more money on that project and more time on that than I'd care to admit. But the real reward is an action, and this sounds like a cliche, but in doing the work, and if it gets out there, great. If not, I got to enjoy the process of it. It only becomes a punishment when I need a particular outcome. And as soon as I need that outcome, man, then it doesn't make room for any spontaneity. Imagine if you are in New York City and you need to drive to la, but then what if halfway there, some amazing opportunity happens in Seattle or in Bismarck, North Dakota? You're not allowed to do it now because I have to be in Los Angeles. But if I'm in New York and I'm like, you know what, I'm just going to drive West and see what happens. And that's really what this journey has been for us. Let's just kind of go that direction and see what happens. We might end up in la, but we also might end up in Fargo, and that's okay too. But

Michael Jamin:

Given that your history of these guys, of bootstrapping everything, why not just do this project yourself?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, and I think we probably will. It's just it'll change the dynamics of it. We needed some money to do the big theatrical, delightful, entertaining things that we were going to do. And so that's great. And we'll probably end up doing the project on our own anyway. It'll just change the way that it looks. And I'm totally fine with that. I'm not married to a particular mold. I'm always willing to let go of this, so I can pick that up.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, I say that as well, that success doesn't really look like what you think it looks like. And so interesting that your pitch stories for Netflix. So I don't know. This has been such a, I don't know. I feel like this has been a good interview just for me to hear, just for me to hear. I need to convince of this stuff. And by the way, I've thrown, I went on a purge getting rid of stuff as well, but I always wonder, shouldn't I throw up more? Isn't there more I can get rid of? What do you do when you have to bring stuff? What do you do? I don't know. How do you decide what you're going to bring into your home?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, that is a simple question I asked, will this add value to my life? And I think we can only determine that truly if we've deprived ourselves for a period of time. I'm not a deprivation. I'm not an aesthetic. I don't live like a monk in a monastery. I certainly don't live like an aesthetic in a cave, but I will temporarily remove things from my life to see if I got any true value from those things. I wish there was a list I could hand you and say, here are the hundred things you should own, and then you'll be happy. That'd be great. And it'd be real simple. It'd be super easy too. Wow, here's the formula. But the truth is, the things that I've valued in my life, they might get in your way and vice versa.

Michael Jamin:

But do you feel like just looking around your house like, eh, I can get rid of this.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Oh, I do it all the time. Yeah. My wife and I are constantly interrogating the things that we own, because the truth is something that added value yesterday may not add value tomorrow. Certainly some of that added value a decade ago may not add value today. You don't get down to those a hundred items or a thousand items or 10,000 items that you own, and now you're complete. No, it's continuing to interrogate those because, oh, yeah, I really enjoyed this during that chapter, but it's time to graduate. It's like when you left high school, you graduated from it. If not, you end up getting divorced from an item. You're like, oh, this is causing so much pain and misery. I want get rid of it. Why not just graduate when I'm done with it, I'm done with it.

Michael Jamin:

But is there ever a moment where six months later or a year or two years later, damn, I wish I had those shoes?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, no. Yeah, it doesn't really work that way. I mean, regret is usually the story that we tell ourselves about the way things could have been had I done something differently. But the truth is that I've gotten rid of all of my things. I even did an experiment once where I got rid of all of my favorite things,

Michael Jamin:

Really,

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Really difficult because I told myself, well, here's my favorite shirt, my favorite shoes, my favorite pair of pants. Someone asked me in an interview one time very early on, what's your favorite shirt? What's your favorite shoes? What's your favorite pair of pants? And I gave 'em the answer. And I said, but you know what? They're just my favorites. I say, they're my favorites. I can let go of anything. I can let go of these. And it was difficult because, oh, I really like that there's some sentimentality tied up in it. But letting go of that prove to me, I can let go of anything else that's in my closet. If I got rid of my favorite things, guess what happens? Something else steps up and becomes your favorite. And they're just material possessions. Oh, interesting. If I hold onto it, you know what? Then eventually it's no longer going to be my favorite. If I let it go in advance, then that's fine too.

Michael Jamin:

A couple of years ago, more than a couple of years ago, my father, my in-laws, lost their home in a fire, lost everything. And my mother-in-law's upset by it. My father-in-law's like, I'm free. He goes, I had never felt freer.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yes, our last book, love People Use Things, which we did through a big traditional publisher, which I don't think I would ever do again, by the way,

Michael Jamin:

Why? Go ahead. Why not?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

I'm just not good at working for people.

Michael Jamin:

Wait, you feel like you're working for them? You wrote a book and you feel like you're working for them?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

I just feel like subordinating myself to their ideas. And I think that industry, while it makes sense for some people, doesn't make a whole lot of sense for me. Ironically, it was our least selling book, even though it was a New York Times bestselling book, it was by far our least selling book, orders of magnitude less

Michael Jamin:

Really?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Not even close.

Michael Jamin:

Because you think they changed the content so much that it didn't resonate anymore?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

No. I mean, I think it's probably our best, technically best written book, technically. But when you do that, I think sometimes you can remove the heart from it. And I also think that I subordinated myself to them. They must know best how to publish this thing. And the truth is, no. I know best how to get my stuff. I intuitively know best what resonates with people, and I've learned what resonates because I've spent time in the trenches. I mean, this is the only thing that I've done for the last, I've done it for 12, 13 years now, and I'm connecting with people every day, and I figure out what resonates. I know what resonates with them. And someone in an ivory tower who is really smart and has the best of intentions, they may not know what's going to resonate with an audience the way that I do.

Michael Jamin:

I'm so happy you said that, but is it also the marketing? Was it because they didn't really market it the way you could market it, or?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, eventually I had to hire my own publicist to go out and market the book

Michael Jamin:

Right out of your own pocket, of course.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

And it's like, well, I had already did that with my own stuff. When I started Independently Publishing, started my own publishing company. I can do that on my own. Now. They do a good job of distribution and stuff, but let's be honest here, what's the real distribution? Do I need my book to be in Target?

Michael Jamin:

Dude, you were just listening to my conversation. I did a podcast yesterday. I said the same exact thing. I said, it's Barnes and Noble. Well, a lot of people don't even go to Barnes and Noble. They get their books online. So what difference is it? Do I need my book in Target?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

I mean, I can get books in Barnes and Noble. That's pretty easy. You can get books in Target. It's a little bit more difficult. You can do that stuff on your own as well. It is not as easy as having someone else do it for you. But guess what? The lesson I learned from this is having someone else do it for me means it won't be done the way that I want it done.

Michael Jamin:

But what is the difference between, you said this earlier, between starting your own publishing company and indie publishing on your own. What are the differences, really?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

I'm not sure I follow the question. The difference between

Michael Jamin:

What, well, you said you started your own independent publishing company. Yeah. What's the difference between that and self-publishing on a platform?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah. Yeah. So the biggest difference I think is quality control. When you think about an indie band versus a garage band, the garage band's having fun and it's great. And you could even record that music. And it's not meant for a mainstream release to the public. It's maybe not even meant to be consumed by the public necessarily, maybe for a small group of friends or something like that. But it's a waste of time. If you filled up a theater and you put a jam band up on stage, most people aren't going to get the same amount of value they would from a really solid indie band. I mean, I think the pinnacle of that is someone like Radiohead who has all of the quality control of a major label, but they do things independently now. But you have so many other artists. I have a bunch of friends like my friend Griffin House or Matt Nathanson, who makes really great songs independently. They don't require a major label, but all of the quality control is there, the distribution, the editing, the mixing, the mastering. And so we have a whole, you're not

Michael Jamin:

Actually printing it yourself. In other words, you're still using a platform to print it, but you're just, when you say quality control, you mean of the written word quality control?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah. I mean, all the above. We've done both. We've done printing of our own books, but also, yeah, the tools are out there now that you can do print on demand, and how awesome is that as a tool? But the quality control in terms of like, okay, let's hire an actual editor. Let's have a cover designer. Let's have someone do actual typeface layout, so you're not doing it on your own. Someone who knows what they're doing professional to do this. Let's do proof readers and Alpha readers and beta readers having an actual quality control process as opposed to like, oh, you know what? I whip this up in Word. I'll get my buddy to look at it, and once he's looked at it, then I'm just going to throw it up on Amazon. No, let's go through the same process that a major publishing company would go through. Why can't we do that on our own? You realize that, oh, wait, I can do it on my

Michael Jamin:

Own. You can do it on, were you finding when you were working, when you did, and I'm keeping you along, and I promise, and I really appreciate all this. Every time you ask you say something, I'll have one more question, but I won't take you much longer. But do you find when you're dealing with these publishers and you're getting notes, part of me feels like they're just frustrated writers. They wish they were you. In other words, do you find that or no?

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I have, but that's probably just me projecting some of my own insecurities onto them. Right, because all writers are frustrated writers. Ultimately. Stephen King's a frustrated writer.

Michael Jamin:

Yes, I agree with that.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

John Grisham is a frustrated writer, and I think this genders pretty significantly too. Strangely, most of my audience are women, and that was unintentional. But I found that when I talk to women writers, there's a lot more joy and happiness and contentment there. When I talk to male writers, a lot of it is just frustration and pulling one's hair out or trying to put one's head through a wall. Yeah, I've found that for whatever reason, and that's not a heuristic that I would live by. I mean, it's not that all women writers are joyous, and all male writers are miserable, but it does seem to slope that way.

Michael Jamin:

So interesting. For what it's worth, and one of the reasons for what it's worth, so I am a TV writer. I've worked for the studios all my entire career, and I said recently, and people are surprised when I say this, that I don't write what I want to write. I wrote what people pay me to write, and there's a big difference. So when I want to write something on my own, I do it on my own with no expectations. But yeah, it's a job. So I got to take the notes. That's right.

Joshua Fields Millburn:

The publishing process with a major publisher was similar in that. Also, I don't generally do deadlines, and that was one of the worst things ever happened to me was to have a deadline. I know some people's really helpful for them. For me, it's crippling and anxiety producing, and it strips all the joy out. I love writing. I write every day. But if you sit me down and say, you have to write, I'm like, oh, what do you mean? I have to. That's why I never did well in school. You're being told to read something or told to write something or told to do something. I just don't like that.

Michael Jamin:

And is it mostly nonfiction, though? You're writing now, now,

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Yeah. Yeah, for the most part.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. So interesting. Joshua, I'm so appreciative of you lending me all this time and just getting to know all about your story here. Honestly, I want everyone to go check out the minimalist, go to their website, check out, watch their, one of the most important things you'll watch is how getting rid of stuff will make you feel freer and you'll feel richer in the process. Go check 'em out. I can't thank you enough for joining me here. Is there any other advice you have? Any parting words that last words

Joshua Fields Millburn:

Love people and use things. The opposite. Never works.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Wonderful. Joshua, thank you so much everyone, and thank you for joining me. What a great conversation.

Michael Jamin:

So now we all know what the hell Michael Jam's talking about. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for my free monthly webinars @michaeljamin.com/ webinar. And if you found this podcast helpful or entertaining, please share it with a friend and consider leaving us a five star review on iTunes that really, really helps. For more of this, whatever the hell this is, follow Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJaminwriter, and you can follow Phil Hudson on social media @PhilaHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Crane and music was composed by Anthony Rizzo. And remember, you can have excuses or you can have a creative life, but you can't have both. See you next week.

In September, I hosted a webinar called "How To Write A Great Story" where I talked about what a "story" really is, as well as how to use personal stories to help your writing. This episode addresses questions you asked in our Q&A session that we didn't have time to answer. There's lots of great info here, make sure you watch.

Show Notes

Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/

Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course

Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free

Join My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlist

Autogenerated Transcript

Michael Jamin:

It's not that The stakes of rocky areas are not about will Rocky win the fight? Who caress? Will Rocky win the competition? The contest who caress? No one cares if he wins. The stakes are, will Rocky finally feel like he's not a loser? Will he finally feel like he's not a bum? And that's something something all of us can relate to. You're listening to, what the hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity, I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of, what the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? Well, today I'm talking about, I'm answering questions. Phil, I'm back here with Phil Hudson. Hey Phil. What up? So why do these webinars every three weeks? And I try to answer questions during them and we don't have time to get to all of them. So I'm going to be answering them right now and Phil's going to feed 'em to me.

Phil Hudson:

That's right. He's

Michael Jamin:

Going to baby bird them to me. He's going to chew them up and dip 'em into my mouth.

Phil Hudson:

I'm going to spit 'em into your mouth. Regurgitate 'em. Love it. Yeah. You guys know the thing. We've been doing this for two years now, so we've got plenty of these episodes in the Can questions came up. We're going to dive into 'em Again, some of these things that were asked, we're not going to go over Michael because we've talked about 'em a thousand times,

Michael Jamin:

But

Phil Hudson:

There are always some of those things that are still being asked that worth talking about a bit. So we'll go through 'em. I've broken 'em up into kind of categories just to make sure that it's easy to get through. Just be more, there are a couple of questions about your course in this I thought were worth bringing up because that was a lot of the questions that came up in September.

Michael Jamin:

Let's do it.

Phil Hudson:

Alright, let's dive into craft

Michael Jamin:

Michael.

Phil Hudson:

Dr. Adam wants to know, and these are YouTube. YouTube usernames for

Michael Jamin:

Anybody interested? Yes. Doctor I

Phil Hudson:

Help you with Dr. Adam wants to know how important is it for someone else to edit your writing,

Michael Jamin:

Edit? Well, when we work in television, it's very collaborative, so your work will be rewritten often heavily by the showrunners or the writing staff. But it's a very collaborative process from the beginning. We all work together to break the story, meaning figuring out what the story is, and I teach this in the course, how to break a story, and then you get notes in the outline, the first draft, the second draft, and the table draft, blah, blah, blah. So it's very collaborative. But if you're talking about, I dunno if the doctor's talking about some other kind of work other than television writing

Phil Hudson:

The Good Doctor.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, I don't know, doctor, I'm not really sure what you mean other than I hope I answered your question

Phil Hudson:

To me. Either way.

Michael Jamin:

You're getting my bill.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, if you're billing the doctor, I love it. For me, this is a question more about, it's a common question I've seen with people starting out, which is getting feedback or peer review, if you will on things. I had a couple of friends over Mike Rap who's a writer on Tacoma d and Kevin who will feature the podcast soon and is in the screenwriting course. There were football and we talked a lot about this kind of stuff in writer's room stuff. They both work in writer writer's rooms and getting notes from peers even outside of the writer's room at our level, Kevin and I have probably spent 40 or 50 hours on Zoom now giving each other notes on

Michael Jamin:

Writing.

Phil Hudson:

That's incredibly helpful, but it's not so much that they're editing my writing, it's more of them talking about This didn't work for me, or Hey, I got confused here. And that's the feedback that you always talk about, which is the valid feedback is someone gets lost, they don't understand. It's not compelling. It's not really on page three. You have this ticky tack note where you overcapitalize a word or something like that.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, editing could be not so much getting answers from someone, but just getting questions. And the questions could be, if someone's reading your work, they could say, I, what were you going for here? I didn't get what you were going for. And then you get to decide whether you want to clarify or keep it muddy. And probably keeping it muddy is probably not the greatest choice. So you just want to make sure that your audience is along for the ride. And I was going to do a post about this soon where I think part of your responsibility as a writer is to make sure you're holding your audience's hand and taking them along for the ride and not letting go because you don't want them to get lost. If they get lost, they're going to find something else to do.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, it's an interesting too, when you work with people who know story structure and they've been in writer rooms and they're giving you these notes. There are times where this thing didn't make sense to me, but I understand what you're going for there. Or I would consider this doing a different way. But then you get a note from the other guy and they're like, I loved this part. And so that conflicting thing is like, okay, I can keep this one. That's a choice. But when they're both like, Hey, I got really bogged down in this piece, that's a clear sign. You've got to fix something.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, right. Thank you Doctor

Phil Hudson:

Alex Kier, any tips on writing a story with multiple characters and stories like love? Actually?

Michael Jamin:

Oh, well, first of all, stories have multiple characters, but you're talking about multiple storylines. And so love actually is not that uncommon. It's a fun movie, but it's not that uncommon. You're basically just having multiple storylines and all the storylines are united by this one thread, which is love during Christmas. That's it. And there's different types of love. There's Brotherly Love. The way the Rock Star character had for his manager, what was that guy's name? But there's brand new love the way the two characters who met on the porn set. That's like an awkward way of meeting. And there's other romantic love between a couple that's been married for a long time, and that was Emmett Thompson's character with Alan Rickman's character. Then there's Love, new Love Upstairs, downstairs, love, which was, what's his name? Hugh? Hugh Grant, come on. Hugh Grant, thank Hugh Grant's character.

I don't remember her name, but he was the prime minister and she was the lowly chambermaid or whatever she was supposed to be. And then you have another Love one character was a love where they can't communicate. So it was Colin Firth's character and I don't remember her name, but she didn't speak. She was the Portuguese maid and she didn't speak English. So you're just examining love over Christmas between different types of love and that's how they're all united. So that was the theme. And every story has to tell a version of that. Oh, then there's one of the love there was brand new love, like puppy love, right? There was a storyline between the kid and what's his name? He was like the young kid and his stepfather, Liam Neeson. And he's trying to coach him into, wasn't that in love actually, or is that something

Phil Hudson:

Else? I have never seen love actually.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, you got to watch it. So yeah. So those are my tips. So that's it. And you're just kind of integrating these very stories so each one can stand on its own. Each story can stand on its own. And you're probably, if I had to time it, I would imagine that most stories, so there was one other, there was unrequited love where the guy had a crush on his best friend's, new wife, Kira Knightly, and so all different kinds of love. And I imagine if you took a stopwatch and you timed out each storyline you'd get to, they, they're all approximately the same amount of weight in terms of screen time and that's it. And if they weren't, I imagine it's because some of the stories got cut down because we weren't quite as compelling on camera as they were in the script. But I talk about this a lot. Maybe I should do a breakdown in the course of love. Actually, I talk about

Phil Hudson:

This. People love that. And you brought love actually up in stuff in the course

Michael Jamin:

I did. Okay. We already talked about it.

Phil Hudson:

Well, I don't think you've done a case study. And for those who are unfamiliar, Michael has these awesome case studies in where you'll talk about movies you love Amle, and you'll talk about, I think, did you do Rocky Ferris Bueller's Day Off Castaway, just looking at films and TV shows and kind of breaking 'em down for story structure and talking about what works, what doesn't. And then you also hypothesized this, I imagine got cut in editing because

Michael Jamin:

As

Phil Hudson:

A writer, there's a thing here that could be here or was missing, that kind

Michael Jamin:

Of thing. Yeah, there was a scene that I think that was missing from love actually, that I imagine they shot, but they just cut it for the sake of time.

Phil Hudson:

But I think it would be worth doing that. I think the members in the course would be pumped to get another case study,

Michael Jamin:

But there you go. Take the course if you want to learn more. But that, it's a good question.

Phil Hudson:

You hit on something that you talk about in one of your webinars that we're going to be putting back into the cycle because people really liked it, which is how do professional writers create great characters? And there's this nuance you talked about in the September webinar that

Michael Jamin:

Became

Phil Hudson:

A full webinar, and it's about how you pick your characters. So I'll leave that a bit nebulous. So anybody's interested in that, come attend the next

Michael Jamin:

Webinar. Yeah, please do. Because free in the next one, I'm talking about either character or story structure.

Phil Hudson:

So when this podcast drops, it'll be like tomorrow, literally tomorrow, that's going to be the podcast that we're talking, the webinar we're talking about. And you can sign up at michaeljamin.com/webinar to get notified.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Cool. Leanne Allen, how important is it for the goal to be broadly relatable?

Michael Jamin:

Well, it's very important. I mean, the goals should be hugely important to the character, and it should be something that we could all hopefully relate to. I mean, if the goal is redeeming yourself in your mother's eyes, that's very relatable. If the goal is, I know if the goal is winning first prize, first place in a contest, who caress, it has to be more than that. It has to be more relatable than that. To be honest, I don't really care about winning contests, so I don't really care if your character wins a contest, but if winning the contest is a way for this person to finally feel good about themselves and their lives because it's validation, because they're a loner and because no one's ever looked at them twice and win this contest as a way of them being able to hang their head up high publicly, that's a relatable goal. Understand. But winning a contest in itself, who cares?

Phil Hudson:

And that's the value of what you teach in these webinars and in the course is the difference between plot and story. Plot point would be they have to win this contest. The story is like, why does this matter? To

Michael Jamin:

Why?

Phil Hudson:

How is this going to affect them? It's the internal need versus the external need. Winning the contest is the external, but the internal is the reason we watch it. And that's the relatable piece.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Awesome. Desmond Bailey, how do you not front load the pipe?

Michael Jamin:

Oh, well, boy, I talked about this a lot. I wonder why they're asking

Phil Hudson:

This. And just to clarify for people, this will be helpful. These are questions directly coming from the chat in the webinar when people are asking questions and they're questions we didn't get to in the q and a portion of the webinar, so this is something you had related to, or they're setting something you set in the webinar, which was don't front load your pipe or don't be pipe. And so maybe explain pipe and expedition to people.

Michael Jamin:

So pipe is what we call in the business, we call it exposition. So it's all the stuff that you need to know. It's the background story. It's the story before the story begins. And generally it's boring. Pipe is just like something you need to hear, not you don't want to hear it. You need to know to the characters. And so generally, the faster you can get to the pipe, the better, or you have to be artful about the pipe. So here's a bad version. You'll watch a show and you'll say, Susie, you're my sister. Why would I ever do that with you? My sister? A character would never tell another character, you're my sister. That's pipe. Because that character, she knows her sisters, Frankie, we've been best friends for 18 years, Frankie knows this. And so there are ways to get through the pipe artfully so that your audience doesn't feel like, Ugh, why people don't talk like that. Often a way to do this is by introducing a third character. So when a third character comes on the screen, the person who are you just talking to? Ugh, I was just talking to my sister. Now we know who that person is. Right? Sis, anytime you hear someone, a character calling the character sis, you roll your eyes. I've never met anyone who called her sister Sis.

Yeah, and I talk more about that in the course, but I just happened to watch, I was sent a short to potentially work with someone and they shot a miniature TV show. I guess it was sent to my agent or somebody. There was a lot of pipe in it. It was a lot of clunky pipe because they just didn't know how to do it Every time it just stops the story cold.

Phil Hudson:

So the question is, how do you not front load the pipe? Do you have any tips for how to do that? I mean,

Michael Jamin:

Obviously

Phil Hudson:

The character, but if I've got to get this stuff out, and maybe you don't need to get it out at the front, because I saw someone do this masterfully where a character was introduced very late in the film, and it added this beautiful plot point that tied back to something at the beginning and explained something. But it was intriguing enough that I got through two thirds of the film before this part mattered. But it's rare to see that. It seems like people are just, act one is laying down the pipe and getting you set in your wall.

Michael Jamin:

You

Phil Hudson:

Understand? And I don't

Michael Jamin:

Think

Phil Hudson:

What you teach us is that that's the wrong way to do that.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, because pipe is so boring. All that exposition is boring and you think it's important. You think you need it, and I'm telling you, you better figure another way around it. No one wants to hear it. So you could drip it out slowly as the audience needs it, or you could burn through it fast or you could, there's just a number of ways of doing it, but giving me entire scenes of pipe is not the way to do it. That's going to bore the hell out of everybody. No one wants to watch pipe.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, makes sense.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Awesome. So those are our craft questions for this episode or for this, but we've got breaking in one question on this, Kelli Art, what's the best way to get paid to learn writer's assistant? How do you get such a competitive job?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Well, so writer's assistant is a fantastic way, but it's not an entry level job because you have to know how to do it. I've talked about this before. I'm not qualified to be a writer's assistant. I don't really know the ins and outs of the job, even though I've been a showrunner several times. So the way you learn how to be a writer's assistant is you start off often as a production assistant and you hang out with the writer's assistant. You ingratiate yourself and you ask, Hey, can I watch you work? And then you learn how they do it. Then hopefully that writer's assistant falls deathly ill, and you take their job away from them, and that's how you do it. Then once you're in the writer's room, that's the best way to get paid to learn. You will learn so much that you'll get lost. And so it's a long process. But yeah, that's a wonderful way to do it.

Phil Hudson:

And if you're a writer's pa, we've talked about it on the podcast many times, you still get to learn. You're sitting outside of the room within ear, so if they need something, they call you. So you're sitting outside the room listening to them, break the story and tell jokes. And I had this moment where Kevin Heffernan walked in one time and he's just like, and I still really knew it was maybe a month into me being a writer's assistant. This is the showrunner for people who don't know. And he's like, how's it going? You watching a lot of shows? And I was like, Nope. He's like, man, why not? You're sitting here all day. And I was like, I'm just riding. He's good for you. And he just walked away because that's what most people do is they get in that room and they sit there and they just watch Netflix or they do something. But I treated it, and this is probably because of advice you gave me from what you did, is that is craft time. You're sitting

Michael Jamin:

Down,

Phil Hudson:

You are riding. So when they're breaking stories, I'm listening to how they're breaking stories. I'm listening to pitch things when they're not in or somebody's out, then I'm working on my stuff. It's just taking advantage of every moment.

Michael Jamin:

I learned this from my first roommate when I moved out here. I had one of these PA jobs and I was not happy with it. And he's said, just think of it like you're getting paid a lot of downtime. Think of it. You're getting paid to learn how to write. And I was like, okay, you're right. You're right about that. So in that downtime, I just started. And then of course you could read scripts, you could talk to writers, you could ask them, why did you make this change? You get to talk to people and they'll give you little tips hopefully.

Phil Hudson:

And by the way, Michael, this is advice. You kind of gave me the preamble to this advice really before I even got to la. But then there was a moment where you kind saw, it was two years in three years into doing this stuff, and you gave me that same advice. Just look at it as you're getting paid to learn. I dunno if you could see it in my face or something, but it was like,

Michael Jamin:

Well, it's hard. I know what it was. It's a souls. It can be so frustrating. You're so close to the job you want. Literally, you are three feet away from the job you want and you're there for years. And it's like, when do I get to move up to that other seat that I want to sit in? So it's very, how is it not frustrating? But it's just how it is.

Phil Hudson:

But it's not individual either. Like I said, I was just here with Mike Rapp and Kevin, and they're both worst. One has been a script coordinator. The other was a script coordinator who bumped and broken as a staff writer,

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

They were talking, they'd never met each other, so they're just kind of giving each other the resume. And it's like, yeah, I moved here and I was at Disney working in the parks for four years, and then I met someone whose husband was an executive and AB, C, and he brought me in for the pilot season. And then I got hired as a writer's PA on the Muppets. And I was like, this is it. I'm in, because it's the Muppets, it'll never get canceled. And then it got canceled, and then it was hopping between show to show from different job to different job for seven years until he finally got the bump. And Mike rep was not really any different. He moved here and he was in a production company and always dangling the carrot of, we ever get a show, we'll get you into, be in the writer's room. And six years finally got a show and got the job.

Michael Jamin:

But you know what though? I've been on shows where PA has worked on the show and the PAs have gone to some of the PAs who worked for me. One is big in Chuck Laurie's world, so he's like a exec or, and he's directed several episodes of Sheldon or Big Bang, one or the other. And the other one has done a lot of, it's always Sunny in Philadelphia. And another one is co-executive producer of Bob's Burgers. And these are all people who started off as PAs underneath me. And so that's where they are. So it's like it's

Phil Hudson:

Just a process.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, it's a process. You got to hang in there.

Phil Hudson:

I was thinking on my drive today, I went out and had to get some stuff and I drove around and I was like, yeah, I think people just think that this stuff is beneath them, and you can't have that attitude. I came at it thinking, look, this is just the path. This is the apprenticeship model. I want to learn from these people. And you talk about this, people always want to jump further ahead in their careers and become a showrunner and sell their first thing and do that. And we all want that because the dream, but you're kind like, you kind of don't want that. What you want is to learn how to do the job

Michael Jamin:

Because you'll get fired so fast if you don't have to do the job. I was going to answer a post like that on social media soon, but someone had a showrunner question. So I'll do a post about that soon.

Phil Hudson:

Awesome. Cool. Couple of questions about the course here. Tank a Soar. Do you have a lesson on how to write a French farce? And this is a topic that came up in the

Michael Jamin:

Webinar? Yes, good

Phil Hudson:

Question. So maybe define what that is for people. I don't think that's a term many people know.

Michael Jamin:

A farce is three's company did a lot of Farces, Frazier did a lot of farces. So it's a lot of slamming doors, people overhearing things, misinterpreting things, and only hearing the conversation and assuming that this person wants this thing. And it's a lot of doors slamming and just people crossing and misinformation. It's a lot of fun. And I said in the webinar that I wrote for Joe Keenan, who was one of the Frazier writers, and he created with Chris Lloyd, a show called Out of Practice that I wrote on for a year. And Joe is brilliant, brilliant at writing FARs. I don't know anybody better. I watched a show, a famous episode of Frazier, just to study for this. What could I talk about FARs? I watched an episode, I think it was, I dunno what it's called, the Ski Cabin episode or something. It was very funny. In my opinion, FARs is a really, they're hard to do well and they're hard to sustain. The stakes are always, to me, they're hard to sustain because the stakes are always, it's always about a misunderstanding. And so it's always silly. And so very, very hard in my opinion, to really write a really good farce. And I wouldn't necessarily start there if that was what your goal is, I'd start writing something a little easier. I don't know.

It is hard. And they're a little tortured, and that's okay. But yeah, I don't know. You're asking me how do I hit a grand slam? Well, let's talk about how they get on base first.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. And the question was, do you have a lesson on how to write a French forest in the course?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, there is no, and I thought about after I watched that episode of Frazier, I go, maybe I should do a lesson on that. And then I watched, I go, nah,

Phil Hudson:

I don't think I should. I think it personally, I just think it would be a mistake. You're going to send all the hundreds of people in your course down a rabbit hole of riding French farces, and they're going to get lost in that, I think.

Michael Jamin:

And there's no demand for it. Like I said, I think it's just don't start there. Don't start there.

Phil Hudson:

Shiny object syndrome. We find something new and that's what we want to do. And then the reality is you got to focus on the fundamentals. That's

Michael Jamin:

All that

Phil Hudson:

Matters.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Keith Shaw wants to know is the beat board, the unpacking of the crate? And for context, everybody, Michael has this story he's talked about on the podcast and brings up in the webinar occasionally about how to unpack a story. And there's this crate of parts, and then it's how you unpack that, and that's what a story is. I don't want to give too much away, but whatever you want to give away, Michael.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, I mean, so every writer room I've ever been in has a big whiteboard, and the s showrunner will send the whiteboard and we'll start pitching the idea and then we'll figure out how to break it on the board, figuring out what the act break is. First act break is second, act break middle to two top, you lay it out all the parts, and you look at it as a whole and does it hold together? And then that could take a week, and then you start writing an outline off of the board. So when they say the analogy, I talked about unpacking a crate. Yeah. It's similar to what a board is. The whiteboard is. It's like what's the order in which we're going to unfold all the, unpack the elements of the crate to tell an engaging story.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. James Moore, what's the difference between a log line and an outline?

Michael Jamin:

Oh, well, a log line is one or two sentences. And outline could be 10 pages if you're talking about a half hour TV show. So that's the difference.

Phil Hudson:

And line is you've alluded to, everyone needs a log line. If you don't understand it, you don't know what you're writing. And an outline is a step in the writing process. And it typically, it's a couple steps after you break a story.

Michael Jamin:

And the log line, a lot of people don't know if I ask you, what's your story about? And they go, well, it's about this and also about this, and also about this. It's like, okay, if you can't explain what your story is in one or two clear, succinct sentences, if you can't explain your story, then you don't understand your own story. And if you don't understand it, the audience isn't going to understand it. So it's really important to have a clear log line about what your story is about one or two sentences. That's it. Simple. Einstein said it. If you can't explain something simply, chances are you don't understand it.

Phil Hudson:

Yep. David Campbell asked a very similar question about the order. I think we answered that. So David, that should answer that question for you. JY Tau, does the course teach you how to get your work produced?

Michael Jamin:

Oh, no. And a matter of fact, that shouldn't be the goal. The goal, that course teaches you how to write a great script. And that's the only thing you have control over here. Most people want to skip that step. This guy's asking me, will the course teach me how to become a millionaire? No, the course doesn't teach you that. Does the course teach you how to give an acceptance speech at the Oscars? No. It won't teach you that. The course, all that is look, that comes later. Hopefully the course will teach you how to write a good script or hopefully a grade script. And everyone skips that step. They assume they already have it. And I'm here to tell you, you don't. And maybe you're the 1% that does great, but 99% of the people think they're in that 1%. And most people who go through the course say, oh, thank God, I wish I know. Now I have to go back and rewrite that script because I thought it was great. And now I'd realize it's not so.

Phil Hudson:

Amen. I'm one of those people. And this is a bit of the Dunning Kruger effect, which is this moment where you learn a little bit of something and you think you're an expert in it.

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

Then the more you learn, you realize there's a lot to learn. And then there's a certain point where you know more than you think. And Michael, even at your level, I hear you say this, sometimes I'm not as good as that guy, or I'm not that. And that may be factually true in terms of talent, but it's also, that's the humility of being an expert is knowing how little in this space,

Michael Jamin:

That's another thing is if you were to ask almost any showrunner I've worked with or worked for, they'll all tell you, oh, writing is so hard. It's the people who are just starting out who will tell you, Hey, I'm good at this. And you don't know what you don't know yet. And the more you do it, and now I'm at the point where I'll look at something, I'm like, oh God, I'm starting to unravel and I have to trust myself because it's like, is this the best way to tell the story? Maybe there's a better way.

Phil Hudson:

That's no different than my career in digital marketing though. I'm at the point where I can say I'm an expert. I've been doing it for how many years? Over a decade. But there's plenty of time still where I'm like, oh man, I don't know. Is this going to work? And then you have to

Michael Jamin:

Just

Phil Hudson:

Go back and say, there is a pattern and a history here of results that back up what I think I need to do. And I just have to go with that because million different caveats and details you got to pay attention to in all of this. And Michael, by the way, this is a big thing you helped me with was just focusing on the detail. Stop being so, I don't want to call it lazy writing, so much time and energy that goes into it, but it's the passing over the detail and the detail is the devil. It's in the

Michael Jamin:

Detail. Yeah, the little things stand out.

Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my content And I know you do because You're listening to me, I will Email it to you for Free. Just join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos of the week. These are for writers, Actors, Creative types, people like you can Unsubscribe Whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you, and the price is free. You got no excuse to join. Go to michaeljamin.com/and now back to, what the hell is Michael Jamin talking about Mishu Pizza.

Phil Hudson:

So if we take the course, do we get certified?

Michael Jamin:

Phil has tried to convince me to offer certification.

Phil Hudson:

I think there's a good certification. I want to be clear.

Michael Jamin:

Its the

Phil Hudson:

Type of certification we'll explain after yours. So

Michael Jamin:

Here's the thing, if I were, I have said over and over again that if you got a degree in screenwriting and MFA in screenwriting or certificate, whatever, the degree itself is worthless. You're not going to go into a meeting, you flash your degree. When I go into a meeting, I don't even talk about my college education. No one caress. No one caress where I went to college. It doesn't come up. All they care is, can I put words on the page that compel people to turn the page

Phil Hudson:

And the fight you got into with your wife the previous day? That's the story.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, we'll talk about that. Yeah, the degree, if I offered a degree, I think I'd be hypocritical. Hey, I have a degree from Michael Jamin University, or whatever the hell it is. I know some people want that, but I feel like, again, it's that's not going to open doors. Your script's going to open doors. And if I can teach you how to write a great script, that's more important than a gold star for me,

Phil Hudson:

My pitch for everybody was that Michael put out a certificate. So when you complete the course, you get that says, congrats, here's your fancy certificate, it's worthless. Go write something good. You go

Michael Jamin:

Write something. Yeah, we could do something like that

Phil Hudson:

That I thought would be kind of just chef's

Michael Jamin:

On

Phil Hudson:

The whole thing. Desmond Bailey question, do you build this story? I wonder if his name's Desmond Bailey question or if this is just Desmond Bailey has a

Michael Jamin:

Question.

Phil Hudson:

Do you build the story world first and then inject the characters or focus on characters and let the world procedurally generate as they navigate it?

Michael Jamin:

So I spoke about this though in the webinar, so I feel like he probably was jumping the gun. I

Phil Hudson:

Think it's a good question. I think it's

Michael Jamin:

Worth, yeah. Well, I answered it and I basically say you do it at the same time. And I think about what the world is first and who are the best characters to put in this world, or as I've said in the webinar, who's the worst character to put in this situation? And if you want to know what I mean by that, you're going to have to come to the next webinar where I talk about character. But that's the way I look at it. Who's the worst person to put in this situation?

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, there you go. Alec Cuddle back. My stuff is usually story driven and people criticize preferring character driven. Why is that?

Michael Jamin:

Oh, because plot is boring. Okay, what's this person's name?

Phil Hudson:

Alec Cuttle.

Michael Jamin:

Alec, alright, Alec. Okay. So I dunno if you're young or old, but there's a movie called Rocky, starring Sylvester Stallone. The first Rocky was fantastic. It won the Oscar put Sylvester Stallone on the map after they did Rocky, they did eight more Rocky, eight more. I don't know how many Rockies they did, including Creed and Creed One and Creed two or whatever. They've made countless sequels to Rocky. Every single rocky has the same exact plot. You put someone in a boxing ring and they get the shit kicked out of them, and then maybe at the end they're alive. So the plot itself for Rocky and most of the Rockies are not considered great. Only one won the Oscar, and that was the first one, even though the plot is virtually identical. So the difference between Rocky won and Rocky a hundred is the story. One had a just amazingly compelling small story, and the other ones lacked that. And so what this guy's Alec is talking about is it sounds like he's just got, I got a lot of plot. Well, who caress the plot is not the good stuff. You got to have a good plot. But it's, the story is what makes people cry. And if you want to know the difference between plot and story, you have to come to my next free webinar because I talk. It's an hour long discussion.

Phil Hudson:

Excellent. Cameron Billingsley, how do you know you have drawn out the anticipation enough when you're building anticipation in your

Michael Jamin:

Storytelling? Yeah. Well, I wonder if the person's talking about any kind of reveal or I guess we don't really know.

Phil Hudson:

I think this was specifically tying back to the crate, unpacking the crate.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, okay. Well, how do you know? It's like these moments have to be built to anytime you have a big reveal or a moment in Act three, whatever it is, the big fight scene, the fight scene in Rocky or whatever, you have to build to it. And it's literally putting the steps on a pyramid and then you get to the top. And then if you skip a step or if each step doesn't build, you're not going to get to the top of that pyramid. And the top is the view, the top is everything. And so how do you know? Well, that's the process of writing is taking your, how do you know when you've built the anticipation? That's all of it. So if I were to write Rocky, I'm thinking in my mind, I'm building to the moment when Rocky, at the end, when Rocky's getting the shit kicked out of him, boom, time after time again by Apollo.

And he keeps getting up and he keeps getting up. And I want to build that last moment where they're both down on the mat, or I don't even remember which Rocky it was. But when Rocky, the fight's almost over and Rocky's on the mat and he stands up again, just this guy won't go down. And that is even thinking about it, I get chills, but you have to build to that. That's what you're building to, which is a guy who will not quit. And why is it so important? When we talked about earlier in this podcast, it's not that the stakes of Rocky are not about will Rocky win the fight? Who cares? Will Rocky win the competition? The contest? Who cares? No one caress. If he wins, the stakes are, will Rocky finally feel like he's not a loser? Will he finally feel like he's not a bum? And that's something all of us can relate to, is that feeling, that self-worth. And so you have to build to that. How do you know? Well, that's everything. That's what you focus on. And if does help, if you're seen does not add one step on that pyramid, then to build to that final moment, then why are you have it in there? Why is it in the script?

Phil Hudson:

The next question from Willow is how do you know the difference between true story that should be included versus minutia and unnecessary information? I think you just answered that.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Because if you don't need it, why is it in it? Why is it in there?

Phil Hudson:

So tying all this together for people who are newer, and good recap for me, because again, you got to remind yourself of the fundamentals every day. You even talk about how you have to remind yourself, oh yeah, this is hero, obstacle, goal, kind of that stuff. So we have a log line, and the log line helps me understand what I'm trying to accomplish with this story. But that's typically based off of a theme and that theme, my opinion generally included inside of that log line, so that I understand this is what I'm trying to accomplish with this. So the log line for Rocky is, can a bum from Philly go the distance with the champ? It's not even, can he beat the champ? It's can he go the distance? And so everyone tells him he can't think he can, and then at the end, there's that moment when he gets up, you're talking about, and Apollo creed's like, soul is taken. Are you kidding me? He's

Michael Jamin:

Still

Phil Hudson:

Getting up. This guy

Michael Jamin:

Won't get down.

Phil Hudson:

And that's the moment where it's like, that's him getting up. And then he, Apollo wins and he's like, I did it. And it's like a victory for him because this guy won't stop and everyone's celebrating Rocky. And Rocky goes, Adrian, I did it. Right? Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

And I think the last line, Apollo says, there ain't going to be no rematch. And Rocky goes, don't want one. He doesn't want, he got what he wanted, and of course they made 10 more. But yeah, a beautiful

Phil Hudson:

Story. But they all stack and build all of these details build, like you said, you're building them to this and all of them play off the theme and the log line. And that's why all of these details, breaking the story, outlining the story, they all have to be there. Because if you're just, and we talk about how all these writers have different styles, and for some people it's making it up as you go. But professional writers, there's a process. You break the story and you do your thing, and then you do your outline, you do all these things, and then you do your rewrites and many rewrites because you're still figuring out those tiny details. But it's not like I'm going to make it up as I go because you need plant and payoff. You need these things and these symbols almost that allude to the theme and the theme plays throughout the whole thing. And if you're not structuring that like an architect, it's going to feel very hodgepodge Frankenstein. And that's a note you gave me Frankenstein together.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

So there you go. People are going to be pissed. I talked to you not long on your podcast, Michael,

Michael Jamin:

I'll tell you. No, no, no,

Phil Hudson:

No, no,

Michael Jamin:

No.

Phil Hudson:

Couple more questions here.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Justin had another question for short comedy films on YouTube. Max lengths is one minute. That's shorts.

Michael Jamin:

That's for shorts. Clarify.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Does short structure still apply to any length film? Curious how you would approach writing a story for a one minute film? This is a format question for people who are not in the know. YouTube stories are the equivalent of Instagram reels or Facebook reels,

Michael Jamin:

YouTube shorts.

Phil Hudson:

YouTube shorts,

Michael Jamin:

Right?

Phil Hudson:

And they are, excuse me. Yeah, so they're 60 seconds, and then I

Michael Jamin:

Think there's 90. You're saying there's 60,

Phil Hudson:

That's Instagram. Instagram is expanded to 90, but YouTube is 60. And that's what this is referring to, which is a medium on YouTube, not necessarily a cap on what you can put on YouTube.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. So I would say it's really hard to tell a complete story in 60 seconds, but you could tell one part of a story in 60 seconds and then another part, another 60 seconds. You could stretch it out. You might be able to tell a compelling scene in 60 seconds and a scene should have a shape to it, but don't think, can it be done? Yeah. I don't think it could be done that well. I don't think anyone's going to be that satisfied. I think you need more time to get that plane up in the air and land it. But think a bit of it like this, if a story is a journey, how far can you go in 60 seconds on a journey? Not very far at all. You can go to the end of the block. The view at the end of the block is pretty much the same, the view from my house. So I think you need more time. That's just my opinion now.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. To see good shorts that you've recommended to me was go back and watch the Broad City original shorts that were put on YouTube.

Michael Jamin:

Okay. How long are they?

Phil Hudson:

They can be 90 seconds to three minutes, but they're not full stories necessarily. They're more kind of skits and you introduce your characters and we learn more about them and more interactions in different episodes of,

Michael Jamin:

That's just really, I never saw those. I saw the TV show Broad, which I love, but I didn't watch the shorts. Got it.

Phil Hudson:

Someone had a question. Again, these are miscellaneous. Someone wanted to know when they could see your CNN interview. So the day we did this webinar, you had just gotten off with CNN and joined the thing. But yeah, you've been on CNNA couple times now, right?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. I think you can go to my website, Phil, right? Isn't it up

Phil Hudson:

There? Yep. It'll be live is MichaelJamin.com And then you can just go to the About tab and you'll see it.

Michael Jamin:

Is it on the bound? I thought it was going to be on the press

Phil Hudson:

Or something. It's press tab. Yeah, but we don't have the URL final right now, but by the time this comes out, it'll be out because we're doing some cleanup. We redesign on michaeljamin.com.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, it's Jill's doing a great job. It's going to be exciting. Appreciate that.

Phil Hudson:

Appreciate

Michael Jamin:

That.

Phil Hudson:

Jill Hargrave, she in

Michael Jamin:

The, oh, wait, hold on. If anybody wants their website redesigned, go check out Rook Digital, which is Phil's company. This is what he does.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, Shannon was plugged. Thank you, Michael. Appreciate that. Jill Hargrave, she's in the course, right? Jill?

Michael Jamin:

I don't know.

Phil Hudson:

I believe she is. Yeah. If you're writing a biopic, does the story definition apply as the story is at least one event in the person's life and sometimes many more events than just one?

Michael Jamin:

So if

Phil Hudson:

You're writing a biopic, does the story definition apply? I'm guessing is a biopic, is it the whole person's life, or is it a moment in this person's life?

Michael Jamin:

I don't know. It's kind of what you decide to write it about, I would assume. Yeah, it is what you want to decide. I've seen it both ways. You might write about JFK the early years, and maybe you're following his life in college in Harvard, I think, and that could be a whole thing. Or you could tell JFK's entire life story up until the moment he died. I mean, you could do that as well. But either way, you have to know how, and I talked about this as well. I spoke about, I really hope people come to this next webinar. I use an example of Amadeus, which is, in my opinion, the best biopic ever made. It's a beautiful movie. It's probably three hours long. There's an intermission. There's an intermission fucking movie. That's how long it is. It's my

Phil Hudson:

Amazing, my wife's favorite movie, by the way,

Michael Jamin:

Is it, is

Phil Hudson:

She wants me to name one of our children, Wolfgang. And I was like, come on, man. Wolfgang Hudson.

Michael Jamin:

I don't know Wolf. I don't know. I don't know. I'm Amm on her side.

Phil Hudson:

I'll let her know. She'll be pumped.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Yeah. So I spoke about that, about come listen to, I hope they come to the webinar. Well, she did. She heard it where I spoke about You're still just telling one aspect of his life of Wolfgang Mozart's life. You're not, there's a lot. They left out, the guy lived, I dunno how long he lived, but the movie's three hours and the guy lived longer than three hours. So there's a lot they left out. They only just filed this one thread of his life. And that's how you tell the story. So don't tell. In other words, don't tell. I feel like you don't want to tell the story. Someone's life story. You want to tell one story from their life.

Phil Hudson:

And Oppenheimer, I think is the very current version of that that did a great job. It is building up to help us understand why this person was uniquely put in this position, why it was taken from him, and then how ultimately he got justice with having to, because of his character.

Michael Jamin:

And there's a lot they left out, and I'm sure, I think it got some criticism for that, but what are you going to do? You can't tell everything. You have to pick a story.

Phil Hudson:

Yep. Yeah, adaptation. Right? It's a whole different segment of screenwriting. That is brutal. Absolutely brutal. Because you're just cutting things and combining things, and it's just a different part of the world. Helga G. How do you deal with the other characters in your life that might not be comfortable being in your story?

Michael Jamin:

You don't put 'em in. You don't put 'em in it. It's not your story to tell. I'm actually reading, I'm just about to finish a wonderful book by this Canadian author, Sheila Hetty, and it's called How Should a Person Be? And in this book, which is an auto fiction, so it's a true story. She uses some of her friends as characters in the story, and she talks about the blowback she got from that, which is so interesting. And I'm going to have her on my podcast soon, but I don't do it for that reason. I don't do it exactly for that reason, but I'll talk to her about it.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Awesome. Last question, Rob Kao, CAO might be C Chao, I don't know. Is that Italian? CAO? It's like CI. Ao

Michael Jamin:

Would C-C-I-A-O.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Sorry, Rob, ruin in your name. Within the last year, I've had an idea of writing a script with two specific actresses in mind. What do you recommend that I do?

Michael Jamin:

Well, they're not going to do it. Just know that, right? I mean, I write for actors all the time. It's just for them having someone in my mind as a placeholder. But I don't think if they're famous, unless they're the people actors in your apartment complex, then that's fine. And they're going to be in your movie, that's fine. But if you think if it's a star, they're not going to do it. So use them as a placeholder, as a template to give you as a muse. I do that as well, but I don't think I've ever written a role for someone. And they actually wound up taking it

Phil Hudson:

In the Tacoma FD spec that I wrote. I alluded to a famous actor who plays this type of person. I was like, just think this person. And the comment I got back, I was, oh, that was so helpful. And I know you have to be a bit careful with that because you don't want to, it can derail your script a bit.

Michael Jamin:

Actually, I want to take that back. We wrote an episode of Marin that we wrote it with Chet Hanks in mind, who's Tom Hanks' son. And we reached out to him and he took it. I got to say the guy killed it. He killed it. He was perfect and a really good actor.

Phil Hudson:

That's awesome. If you guys haven't seen Marin, go watch Marin. That show's incredible.

Michael Jamin:

That show's fun. Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Is there anywhere to go see The Hidden? Because they were two pilots, right? There was the first pilot and then

Michael Jamin:

It was a presentation, so it was only a few scenes. Got it. I don't know if I have it.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, I thought it was on Prime. I think I got it on Prime originally.

Michael Jamin:

Wow. Was part of what they

Phil Hudson:

Were doing. I'll go check. I'll see if I still have it. But yeah, it was, it's just a great show. Just massive show. And I was at an influential time when I was just really learning this stuff at a deeper level. So just seeing it play out in really tight scenes with limited characters and just

Michael Jamin:

Amazing, amazing. That's what was so fun about that. And I tried, we wrote some one episode where there wasn't enough of a stakes, and it was the one on dead possum where he finds a dead possum.

Phil Hudson:

I love that episode. That's the one I think of every time.

Michael Jamin:

That was a good one. But the original draft didn't have the storyline of him apologizing to his dying stepfather, not stepfather, his dying. It was missing from that. And we turned that draft into the network, and they thought, she was like, there's nothing here. There's nothing. The story's not about anything. And I'm like, don't you get it? That's the whole thing. I was trying to pull a fast one on her. I was like, but it's like waiting for Gau. She's like, no, I'm not buying it. The studio exec. And she was right. And so we wound up talking, Seaver and I, pardon? We ended up talking about it. We came up with this storyline where when Mark was afraid to go under the house to get a dead possum, that's just enough. There's not enough there. There's not enough debate for a story. And so instead, we had a concurrent storyline where he was afraid to confront his dying Father-in-Law because Mark broke up with his daughter. And in so doing, he kind of destroyed, he, mark was a coward. He didn't want to apologize to his father-in-Law for that. And so it was really a symbol. So when Mark was afraid to go under the house to get the dead possum, but he was really afraid of, was apologizing to his father-in-Law, those stakes are much higher.

And so those stories kind of work really nicely together, but that was not in the original draft. Yeah,

Phil Hudson:

That's a great episode. There's one of the biggest laughs I've ever had. I think it was like your, might've been your end of act two, your act two, bottom of Act two with the kid from

Michael Jamin:

When he says,

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, I was molested him

Michael Jamin:

Some. I think that was Seavers line.

Phil Hudson:

It's just like,

Michael Jamin:

What?

Phil Hudson:

Not making light of that degree. It's just the

Michael Jamin:

Context of

Phil Hudson:

It, the setting.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. It was like, you shouldn't have said that. That's

Phil Hudson:

Funny. Alright, Michael, there you go. There's a bonus episode for everybody.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, we're not making light of it. It was just that the guy confessed to having been molested as good, but it was like, no, we weren't talking about any of this.

Phil Hudson:

And then they have to talk and he's having this breakdown where this realization of he's a coward, and then now he has to be a surrogate father and listen to this kid. He's talking about his assistant and it's just like, the timing is just excellent. You guys handled it well. It's not disparaging or mean-spirited at all. It's just great. That was a

Michael Jamin:

Funny one. Alright, everyone. Yeah. Come to my webinar. Go watch that episode of Marin Dead Possum.

Phil Hudson:

Awesome.

Michael Jamin:

If you can find it somewhere,

Phil Hudson:

Michael, anything you want these guys to do other than come to the webinar,

Michael Jamin:

There's that. I'll be dropping my book soon. A paper orchestra, if you want to know more about that, that's

Phil Hudson:

Michaeljamin.com/book.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, is that what it is? It'll be book. Book. Okay. There

Phil Hudson:

Are a couple pages. You got AP Orchestra touring, you've got an events page, you got this. So I figured that was the easiest way to get people to the page is michaelJamin.com/book.

Michael Jamin:

And so the book is a collection of personal essays. If you want to learn more about what it's like to actually be a writer in Hollywood, but that's not what it's about. It's really about the premise is what if the smallest, almost forgotten moments were the ones that shaped us most. And so in the end, I have a little bonus section of the book where I talk about, so I perform the book as well. And if you want to come see that seem, be on the road, go to michael jamin.com/upcoming. And at the end of every performance, I do a talk back where I talk to the audience and they ask questions. And so I decided at the end of the book, there should be something like that where I talk about, it's basically a virtual talk back, right? I'm preemptively answering questions that people have asked me that I think people found interesting about the writing process. So that'll be in the book as well. So a little bonus for those of you who are interested in learning about writing, that'll be the last chapter. Yeah,

Phil Hudson:

Great. And the live performance still great. It almost a year. I can't believe it was almost a year ago. And it still sits with me as a father. It still sits with me.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Thank you. I want to start performing again. That'll hopefully start in February or March or whatever. Once that book is out, we'll start performing again.

Phil Hudson:

Great. Cool. All right, Michael, anything else? Thank you.

Michael Jamin:

I think that's it. Get on the newsletter. We're rev revamping the newsletter. We've revamped the podcast so there's more stuff, but better,

Phil Hudson:

More better, better streamlined, a little bit easy to get around. It kind of outgrew itself. So we talked about that on episode 1 0 4. But yeah,

Michael Jamin:

We didn't know what this was going to turn into, so we had to evolve it.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, it's a good spot. Great to be back on the podcast, Michael. Thanks for having me.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, thank you Phil. Alright, until next time, keep writing everyone.

So now we all know what The hell Michael Jamin's talking about. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for my free monthly [email protected]/webinar. And if you found this podcast Helpful or entertaining, please share it with a friend and consider leaving Us a five star Review on iTunes that really, really helps. For more of This, whatever the hell this is for Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJaminwriter. And You can follow Phil Hudson on Social media @PhilAHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It Was Edited by Dallas Crane and music Was composed By Anthony Rizzo. And remember, you can have Excuses or you can have a Creative life, But you Can't have both. See you next Week.

On this week's episode, I have TikToker and EMT Jack Raia. Tune in as we talk about how he uses his content to help educate people in health care. We also talk about how he balances making sure his content doesn’t take away from the potential severity of health situations. 

Show Notes

Jack Raia on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@whatsgood24.7.365

Jack Raia on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@WhatsGood24-7

Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course

Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free

Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter

Autogenerated Transcript

Jack Raia:
Cameras and healthcare tend to not really mix very well, especially when it comes to me just running around my cell phone camera. So that's definitely been a major roadblock in kind of the day of life kind of stuff

Michael Jamin:
You're listening to. What the hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity, I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts.

Michael Jamin:
Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin. Welcome back to another episode of my show, which I've rebranded as the Michael Jamon Show, because I want to make sure that there's more me in every mention of the show. And as you know, mostly I've spoken about, I've interviewed screenwriters, people, I've worked with directors, actors, and now after doing this for two years, I want to open it up to more people. We're just doing interesting things and there's a whole universe I don't know about, and so I'm learning about, and my next guest is going to teach us a little about that. His name is Jack Raya. He's the host of What's Good, 2, 4, 7. He's a big talker, so we're going to learn all about that. Jack, welcome. Thank you for joining me.

Jack Raia:
Thanks for having me on, Michael. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Michael Jamin:
Yeah. So let me tell everyone a little about you. So as far as I can tell, maybe I'm wrong, you're an EMT, you're in New York, right? Where in New York are you?

Jack Raia:
I'm on Long Island in Nas County, long Island.

Michael Jamin:
Interesting. My nephew's an E, he's a paramedic, actually. So I know a little about that word world, but you started, you have a very popular channel on TikTok where basically you act out, for the most part, you kind of act out scenes of what it's like to be an EMT. Am I right?

Jack Raia:
Yeah. Yeah. I categorized it as EMS, sketch comedy, I guess is what I've labeled it.

Michael Jamin:
And then what inspired you to start all this?

Jack Raia:
So it was honestly a series of coincidences that got me into TikTok. The first instance was back in the summer of 2020, a friend of mine just posted a random video on TikTok, and it was this new app that I wasn't even on yet. It was kind of labeled the app that's just for middle school girls to do dances on. Right. No one really knew what it was yet.

Michael Jamin:
That's exactly right. That's what I thought it was. Yeah, right.

Jack Raia:
So my buddy posted a video, it was lighting off fireworks or something dumb, and the video blew up. The algorithm just picked it up, and it ended up getting a couple million, I think over 3 million views or something like that. And my buddy had zero followers on TikTok. So that was the first instance of like, wow, this whole algorithm base for you page is like, holy crap, I guess it works. So then that summer I was like, all right, well, I guess I'll give it a shot. So I was the captain lifeguard at the time, and because of Covid that summer, we had to figure out a way to test the rookie lifeguards, drill them on saves without making physical contact, which is a little bit strange, but it's the way it ended up working. So I came up with the idea of having them save traffic cones. I was throwing traffic cones into the deep end, and I posted a video of one of those drills, and it blew up just like my buddies did. So I went from zero followers and zero views to 6 million something views and 11,000 followers. So that was the first instance of like, wow, this level of attention is so easy and addicting that I think I'm going to give this app a little bit of a shot. But

Michael Jamin:
Do you have other aspirations? I mean, you got a real job, you have a career.

Jack Raia:
Oh, yeah, of course. But given how I discovered the algorithm, I was like, you know what? Maybe I can do some other stuff on here. So I was experimenting with a bunch of different types of videos and characters. I used to do an Eminem character, like the rapper, Eminem Burns his finger on the stove, just a bunch of crap that I was just making in my free time. But then that following school year, a buddy of mine started doing these POV style skits, which was, I hadn't had any exposure to until I saw it on TikTok. So my buddy started doing APOV frat guy comes up to you at the bar, or POV, your Italian dad, or something like that. And at first we were like, dude, what are you doing? It's an app for just posting random crap and doing other stuff. Why are you putting yourself on there like that? But he just didn't care, and he just kept making his videos, trying to make each one better than the last. And I watched my friend one day, he had 10,000 followers and 50, a hundred, and now he's got over a million, and he moved out to la Oh, wow. And he really did it. So I watched him just not care what other people were thinking and just be consistent. And I was like, all right, well, maybe I could do this whole POB skip thing.

Michael Jamin:
But your friend wants to be an actor, right?

Jack Raia:
Yeah. Right.

Michael Jamin:
Do you want to act as well?

Jack Raia:
I mean, I would love the opportunity, definitely. My first love is definitely being an EMT and working in the S field. I have a private ambulance company job on Long Island nine one system, and I also work for an event staffing company that does everything from fashion shows to concerts to music festivals and stuff like that. So I really love doing that stuff, but I've realized through all these coincidences how lucrative social media especially TikTok can be. So I guess that's really all culminated to what I'm really doing here.

Michael Jamin:
Well, tell me then, how do you monetize on TikTok?

Jack Raia:
The main way is you build up enough of an audience to get brand deals. That's the way that pays the most, at least for most people.

Michael Jamin:
Are you doing that?

Jack Raia:
Yeah. Yeah. So the most recent, I guess notable one I had was for a video game company called Supercell that makes an iPhone game called Clash of Clans. So actually, they posted a contract through the app. So there's a creator marketplace on TikTok, and you can see different companies and scroll through and see they're offering different rates for different videos. And so I applied for this one through Supercell, and the objective was to use one of their sounds, which TikTok is pretty popular for. So when you open their app, clash of Clans, there's a pretty distinct sound that you're opening the game. So I just kind of figured I could work it humorously into an EMT skit, and it ended up doing really well.

Michael Jamin:
Now are they giving you a lot of notes? Do you have to go back and forth and tell 'em what your ideas?

Jack Raia:
It really depends. Every company has different wants and specifications when it comes to doing the brand deals. Some are super relaxed and they let the creator just like, Hey, do your thing, we trust you. But some others are like to nitpick and stuff like that.

Michael Jamin:
But you must be worried you, you can't do that a lot because then suddenly you're the commercial channel. Right?

Jack Raia:
Exactly. So you kind of got to pick and choose which ones you want to do and when there are other avenues though, the Creator fund is something I get questions about a lot. So based on the certain amount of views you get, it'll pay out a couple cents per thousand views or something like that.

Michael Jamin:
Are you doing that as well?

Jack Raia:
So they just changed it actually. They just released a beta program where now there's a much higher payout rate for videos that are over one minute long. So I'm kind of screwed because a lot of my videos are 30 to 50 seconds long, so I could try to stretch 'em out, but I feel like the quality of the video might take a hit at that point. But there's some people out there that they have a hundred thousand followers or something like that, and it's just them spewing their thoughts out into TikTok, and they post four or five times a day of them just talking or giving their opinion on stuff. And all these videos are minute, two minutes long, and there's people making 10, $15,000 a month off just this new beta creator program. Now,

Michael Jamin:
Do you think it limits your reach, though, if you're on?

Jack Raia:
So I think it has to honestly, and I'm confident in saying that TikTok is the least predictable social media platform out there. We're all at the mercy of the algorithm here, and it seems to be pretty random and definitely hard to predict. So some stuff happens to blow up, some stuff doesn't. I'll be super confident in a video that I make, and I'll be excited to post it, and it'll flop in comparison to other videos where sometimes I'll just post for the sake of consistency and just get in content out and, oh, crap, this one just blew up. All right.

Michael Jamin:
What is your schedule? How often do you post?

Jack Raia:
So when I started and I was really trying to give it a go, I was super adamant about sticking to one a day. No matter what, I don't care if I love the video, I just have to force people to see me every single day when I was really trying to grow. So the quantity over quality method works pretty well when you're trying to start out, but now I'm at the point where I try to be more selective and I try to make sure that video is up to standard, if you will. So I don't really stick to a hard schedule. It's more if I have a good idea and it comes to me and I'm able to flesh it out and I have an opportunity to film it, then great. But if I don't, it's like, ah, didn't get one today.

Michael Jamin:
And then how long do you spend on each idea? Do you write it down? What's your

Jack Raia:
Pre-production? Right. So my particular, I guess, strategy is 95% of what you hear me say on TikTok has been written down. At a certain point as I go through it, maybe stuff gets switched around or whatever, but the general premise, and I guess the pacing of the skid is totally all written down and stuff like that. A big part of my production is actually my little brother who's my cameraman, and
He's got a real knack behind the lens. I like to tell him he's, he's good at being able to keep me in frame the right way, which all of my videos have that banner title over the top. So sometimes we have to restart because my head clips into it too much and stuff like that. But other than that, it's just me and an iPhone camera. TikTok has given us the ability, or really social media in general to create content that can have a wide reach with not really a lot of equipment. So super grateful for that.

Michael Jamin:
On a given day, how much time do you devote to a video?

Jack Raia:
Sometimes

Michael Jamin:
Zero, writing it, producing it, and then posting it?

Jack Raia:
Well, I've definitely gotten faster at it. So when I would start the whole process, start to finish from writing the script to getting that final take, putting a filter on it and posting it be up to two hours, sometimes in the beginning, an hour or two hours easily. But now, if I have a good seed to build a skid around, whether it's a good punchline or a premise that I like, that I can kind of mold the rest of the video around, once I get that down, the whole filming process, 15, 20 minutes for me now, sometimes 30 minutes, depending on where I am, I live next to the train tracks. So when a train goes by, it'll totally ruin my take. Or sometimes I got to wait for the neighbor to stop mowing his lawn and stuff like that. But when I'm able to just film at the pace, I'd like to film probably about 20, 30 minutes to do the filming now as opposed to an hour before.

Michael Jamin:
Right. That's so interesting. And then how has this benefited you in ways that were unexpected? What has come from this?

Jack Raia:
So by far, it's the amount of people that'll reach out to me through Instagram dms, or even in my comments section, telling me that my content has inspired them to take an EMT course. Oh, wow, okay. I've even had some pretty moving conversations with people where it's like, Hey, man, just got off the truck after 24 hours. Thanks for bringing me a smile. It's nice to be seen, is what people have told me. Nice to be seen shedding a little bit of light and humor on some of the grittier sides of the EMS world. So people have noticed that, and I'm like, wow, I didn't even really mean to have an impact on people like that, but I have been. So that's been really, really cool to do.

Michael Jamin:
Well, I think people love e mt workers. I mean, you're there to save lives.

Jack Raia:
It's kind of hard to hate on sometimes. Yeah.

Michael Jamin:
But okay, but do you get haters? You must, oh yeah, of

Jack Raia:
Course, of course.

Michael Jamin:
And how does that affect you, and what do you do about it?

Jack Raia:
So I'm thankfully at the point now where I have a large enough audience where if someone leaves me a hate comment, someone that likes my content or is following me will go to bat for me in the comment section. I definitely don't entertain trying to argue with people in the comments or dms or stuff like that

Michael Jamin:
That, do you block them or no,

Jack Raia:
Not really, honestly, because not really. Sometimes getting a little bit of controversy in the comments and people arguing back and forth on each other can be good for engagement, unfortunately. But I've come to realize that no matter what kind of content you're creating, and no matter how good you are at it, there's people that are going to have negative things to say, people crap talk. Everyone from Tom Brady to the best comedians in the world, the best musicians, best artists, writers, it doesn't matter. You're going to get hate if you're putting yourself out there. People like to spread negativity for some reason. So it's just part of what comes with being, putting yourself out on the internet. So I don't really let it get to me too much.

Michael Jamin:
That's it. But it's interesting that you don't block them. You might be more mature than I'm sometimes I just don't want to hear it. Just, oh, goodbye, goodbye. I don't want to look at the negativity.

Jack Raia:
Thankfully, I don't get too much. I definitely got a little bit more in the beginning than I do now, and I know TikTok is pretty good at censoring a lot of stuff sometimes too good. Honestly, I've left comments that were meant to be positive on other people's pages, but it'll get flagged for being negative or insulting or something like that. So a certain percentage of negative comments won't even show up. I won't even know that they're there. But the ones that I do get, it's like, it's just part of it. It's like you got to take the good with the bad a little bit. Some of them are funny, honestly, some of them are pretty clever.

Michael Jamin:
You respond to, it sounds like you respond to a lot of people. Do you respond, even kind comments, you respond to them, everyone?

Jack Raia:
Yeah. Yeah. I'm definitely less responsive in my comment section than I am for my dms. If someone wants to reach out to me on Instagram and personally message me, I'm grateful for every time someone takes the time to reach out to me. I think it's crazy that people resonate with enough with what I'm creating to send me a message. I think that's crazy.

Michael Jamin:
Yeah. Interesting.

Jack Raia:
If you take the time to message me, I'll totally answer.

Michael Jamin:
Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my content and I know you do because you're listening to me, I will email it to you for free. Just join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos of the week. These are for writers, actors, creative types, people like you can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you, and the price is free. You got no excuse to join. Go to michaeljamin.com. And now back to

Michael Jamin:
What the hell is Michael Jamin talking about? Here's a question I tend to ask people who are creators. Do you notice a difference between the kind of people commenting on TikTok versus let's say YouTube or Instagram?

Jack Raia:
A hundred percent. There's almost like a generational gap between something like Instagram or TikTok. TikTok seems to be like the 25 and under Instagram seems to be the 18 to 35 or older. So the difference in humor and the difference in memes on each page is definitely different. And it's interesting that I'll post something on TikTok, it'll do well or comparatively will do well. And then once I load it into Instagram and I have that kind of Instagram mindset and that feel for that audience, I almost hesitate a little bit. I know that it's going to be perceived totally differently. There's a certain level of, I guess, being corny on TikTok that is being intentionally corny. They see the sarcasm in it, so it works on TikTok, but it doesn't come across that way on Instagram. So Instagram, it's just a different way that people view it. It's kind of strange, honestly.

Michael Jamin:
And what about YouTube?

Jack Raia:
So YouTube, I do put my stuff on there, but I don't really have enough of an audience on there to really get much engagement. I have two vlogs on there. I've made an attempt at the long form content, but it doesn't really compare to what I'm doing on TikTok and Instagram right now. I'd love to get my YouTube audience up in the numbers these days, but the only real comparisons I can make is TikTok, Instagram and Facebook are kind of the Holy Trinity of where I post my stuff and what I can

Michael Jamin:
Describe as well. Now, was it difficult at first putting yourself out there? Was that hard for you? I know you were inspired by your friend, but still,

Jack Raia:
It's crazy you say that because I look back at some of those older videos that I was making, and I have no idea how I had the balls to do that. I look at it now and I'm like, what was I thinking? How did I not care? I just kind of didn't, and I was kind of just enamored by seeing other people blow up on the app, especially my friend, and I was like, you know what? Screw it. Who caress?

Michael Jamin:
And how long have you been doing this now?

Jack Raia:
So the first time I ever posted on the app was summer of 2020. The first time I ever really tried to make POV skits and succeed that way was December, 2021, about a year and a half coming up on two years now. But it wasn't until last summer that I realized that this EMT character was what I was really going to try to stick with. So the whole

Michael Jamin:
Isn't that interesting that you naturally found your voice just by doing it over it? People struggle with that, and I kind of say the same. Just do something every day, and then you'll find your way, you'll find your voice. You'll just know what works and what doesn't work.

Jack Raia:
I used to be super adamant about rotating my characters. I had success with a bartender character in the past and a bouncer. I've done a teacher, a lifeguard, a whole bunch of different stuff. And I used to be pretty adamant about, okay, I did my Gen Z cop today, so tomorrow I'm going to do the Gen Z professor, and then I'll do the lifeguard, and then I'll circle back around to the EMT character. But I got to a point where the only one that I really enjoyed doing and the one that I was the most motivated to create was the EMT character. Well,

Michael Jamin:
Because that's the most authentic, that's who you are.

Jack Raia:
Exactly. Right.

Michael Jamin:
Yeah. You're playing a role,

Jack Raia:
And I discovered how valuable it was to really focus in on a niche instead of doing this myriad of characters just being kind of labeled as that e mt guy on TikTok was pretty valuable to

Michael Jamin:
How much of yourself, because you're doing sketches, and so this is a character that you've created. The character is based on yourself, but it's still a character, and you're still not showing all of us. You're not showing all of yourself. Right. And so what's the line and how did you decide on that line?

Jack Raia:
I am someone that I found it much easier to play a character online than it was to naturally talk to the camera and stuff like that, which is definitely the opposite for other people. There's creators 2, 3, 10 times my size where they just hit record talk to the camera, and they have this big, beautiful, successful video. But I don't know, when it comes to my, I guess, authentic personality and putting it on TikTok, I kind of spin my tires in that regard.

Michael Jamin:
Is it not comfortable for you or you don't want to?

Jack Raia:
I dunno. When I go to try to do some authentic stuff like that, I don't even know what to talk about. I have no real inspiration on what the video should be about when it comes to these TikTok skits, I'll have that joke or that punchline. I'm like, oh, that's good. And then I can craft a video around it, and then I'm excited to film it. So I'm definitely not opposed to being authentic and showing my real personality on camera. I just don't really know what it would really do or be about. So maybe one day, but

Michael Jamin:
Yeah, so interesting. And then, okay, so you mentioned that you're into, you would think about acting. You don't want to move to la. You're not that serious about it. You're open to it.

Jack Raia:
Right. So the way I see it, I live in Long Island by train. I'm less than an hour outside of Manhattan. So any sort of opportunities in the entertainment industry, I feel like I could probably pursue in New York if they were to come about. But the idea of moving to LA and trying to jump with both feet into Hollywood, I guess, doesn't have as much as appeal to me as it does. Kind of just making my videos, working on the ambulance, working at a concert. I'm kind of liking what I'm doing instead of really trying to jump into one or the other.

Michael Jamin:
I appreciate that. I mean, you're doing this to me. It seems like you have, it's the purest form, excuse me, purest form of expression. You're doing this, you want to be creative. This is your outlet.

Jack Raia:
And the honest truth is I like being a content creator, but I love being an EMT. It's honestly, the unfortunate reality is that if I could make as much as a content creator as an EMT, I probably wouldn't be doing much of the content creator stuff. Obviously, like I said before, the attention super addicting and it's fun to get recognized and stuff like that. But if I could flip the payrolls, I would,

Michael Jamin:
Well, let me ask you this. Why not do more actual day in the life where you got the camera, you're behind the wheel, the ambulance or whatever? Is it because you're not allowed to

Jack Raia:
Sort of? So I've done a little bit of that. I've able to, like I said, I have some vlogs on YouTube where I'm vlogging the work that I do as an EMT, but it's definitely much harder to do than if you were to do it with other jobs, with everything from HIPAA violations to if I were to deviate even one second or one minutia of my brain power to my phone or something like that while I'm in the ambulance at all, it's just not something you really want to get involved

Michael Jamin:
With. Yeah, I could see that. I mean, other than maybe cleaning the ambulance when it's parked

Jack Raia:
Station, right? Yeah, no, no, no. I can see that. But cameras and healthcare tend to not really mix very well, especially when it comes to me just running around my cell phone camera. So that's definitely been a major roadblock in kind of the day of life kind of stuff.

Michael Jamin:
Yeah, I can see that. I guess it's a naive question now that I ask that. Yeah,

Jack Raia:
Yeah. But I've had some success, so it's not like it's impossible, but its definitely more difficult. So it's not really that much of a priority for me.

Michael Jamin:
Creative. Are there creators or even famous people whose work you admire you were trying to emulate in your work?

Jack Raia:
Yeah. I mean, there's other EMT creators or EMS creators or even just healthcare workers in general that create content on the app that I really like. One of 'em is the name's Fire department Chronicles. He's a bald dude that makes firefighter skits and he's the best in the business. He kills them.

Michael Jamin:
Are you going to clap with him or no?

Jack Raia:
I mean, maybe one day. I haven't really

Michael Jamin:
Reached out to him that Okay, you don't know each other. Okay. It's great.

Jack Raia:
He's got millions and millions of

Michael Jamin:
Followers. Well, you're getting up there. You're getting close to a million.

Jack Raia:
Hopefully. I like to think I'm on my way. It

Michael Jamin:
Looks that way. Sure. And then you also sell merch. Are people buying? Are the people digging you?

Jack Raia:
Yeah, a little bit. It's a work in progress. This is one of the shirts. It's just bankrupt the funeral home. So it's kind of a humorous situation where it's like, imagine if healthcare workers could do their job so impossibly well that no one was dying. So the funeral home is like, oh crap, we're out of customers here. We can't really afford to keep the lights on anymore. It's kind of, yeah,

Michael Jamin:
It's a good message you got. It's positive. And I really admire you for putting yourself out there for just showing up. A lot of people are afraid to do that.

Jack Raia:
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you saying that. My goal is to do something greater for the emergency services community down the road. I'm making a couple bucks off each T-shirt here now, but I have plans to really increase it. I'm collabing with a much larger Instagram page soon. So we want to sell everything from hats, patches, stickers, t-shirts, bags, everything under the sun, donate a portion of each sale, and really try to give back to the community that's given me this platform is definitely a goal of mine.

Michael Jamin:
Well, I imagine you're becoming the face, you're becoming the face of EMT workers, at least in your area. I can only see good things coming from that in terms of raising your profile in the industry.

Jack Raia:
Yeah. I'll have to agree with you there, for sure. Yeah.

Michael Jamin:
Have others reached out to you? Other people in your line of work reached out to you and say, Hey, good for you for doing this? Or how do they react? Yeah,

Jack Raia:
Yeah. I get a lot of really positive messages from other creators and just from other, Hey, I'm an EMT and wherever, wherever I really like your videos, man. One message that sticks out to me in particular was, it's probably last summer I got a message and it was, Hey, I'm an EMT instructor out of Iowa. My class loves your videos. We watch your videos as an icebreaker every morning before class. Holy crap. Really? The whole class.

Michael Jamin:
That's really nice.

Jack Raia:
That's when it really started to hit me that I'm really impacting other EMTs and paramedic stuff in here. I was like, wow, there's some real serious reach here.

Michael Jamin:
Yeah. People don't realize that what you do actually makes a difference in some people's lives. It really does.

Jack Raia:
And with that, there's definitely a little bit of responsibility. There's two aspects of my content that I'm kind of trying to clean up in the future a little bit. One of them being is the disheveled kind of inappropriate nature that my character exhibits a lot of the time, showing up with his boots untied, still tucking in his shirt, which kind of happens due to the nature of the job. Maybe you're on a 24 hour shift, you just woke up, you're drinking Red Bulls or doing whatever and would hate for that to influence a new or future EMT. I would hate for them to think that it's okay to do that because of the nature of the job.

Michael Jamin:
When did you come to that realization now?

Jack Raia:
Pretty recently. So I've started putting, or I've went back and put disclaimers on a lot of my videos. It does not represent correct practice. I'll have people nitpick what I'm doing in the comments and stuff and it hit me. It's like it is important to, obviously it's a comedy skip, but it is important to note like, Hey, this is not the way you're supposed to be doing things. I'm over here trying to make a couple people laugh. This is in no way, shape or form the way that you're supposed to conduct yourself.

Michael Jamin:
That's an interesting realization that you're doing this for fun. And then you realized at some point you had a responsibility

Jack Raia:
Exactly

Michael Jamin:
To the world really to not just to your coworkers, but in your profession, but to the world, which I don't think not everyone comes to that realization. Yeah, I wish more people did because what you put out there is important and

Jack Raia:
It will affect people, whether it's subconsciously or directly. It will start to influence the way people see this job. And that goes for whatever kind of content you're making. Another aspect that I'm going to try to clean up in the future is I don't want to deter people from calling 9 1 1 because they think they might get this EMT that comes in with attitude and doesn't want to be there and stuff like that. Some of the videos I make, I'll be coming through that front door and I'm just like, oh, this is a bull crap. Call my kind of rolling my eyes and I'm making jokes about the lack of severity of the situation and I would hate for someone to see one of my videos and think twice about calling 9 1 1. So it's definitely some stuff that I'm going to address in the future, but I feel like I'm ahead of the curve hopefully, so that it hasn't really gotten too far yet where there might be some crazy instance or something like that. But it's definitely something that's on my radar to kind of address.

Michael Jamin:
Where do you think most of your followers are they being in the United States? I mean, I would assume,

Jack Raia:
Honestly, I'm not sure. I can check my analytics and it can tell me where people are from. The most recent time I checked my most followed city was Chicago, coincidentally enough. So it was like Chicago, Phoenix, Austin, New York wasn't even really up there.

Michael Jamin:
Isn't that interesting?

Jack Raia:
Yeah. But there's definitely a lot of local people that have recognized me. When I started at my private ambulance company in February of this year and my first ride along, I showed up, I walked into the building and put my stuff down and immediately went on a call with of my field training officers. So obviously we're kind of in call mode, right? But once we transferred our patient care and everything like that, my FTO was like, you, that guy. I was like, probably. I'm probably the one you're thinking of.

Michael Jamin:
Yeah. How funny. That must have been. Nice. So before we wrap up, I don't know, I'm very impressed by what you're putting out there, by what you're doing. You're simply a standup guy. What other advice do you give people who I don't know, who are interested in doing what you're doing? What else do you have to offer them?

Jack Raia:
I think that consistency is probably the most important aspect of trying to be any type of a creator. Whether you're writing a blog, making POV skits or making music, anything like that. Kind of just forcing people to be exposed to your content through you just keep making it and posting it is probably the most important aspect. And if you can do that and just make an effort to make each one a little bit better than the last, it will start to compound.

Michael Jamin:
And by consistency you mean once a day or what?

Jack Raia:
It depends, honestly. So with me, it worked once a day. Back in the winter of 2021, I had a winter break from school, so I was like, you know what? I got nothing to do this break, but watch the Sopranos and make TikTok. So no matter what I'm doing, I'm going to make a TikTok every day. I don't care if I love it, I hate it, I'm going to post it. So that was that first little spike in followers that I got and I was like, this can probably work. I think I got it down here. But

Michael Jamin:
I think it's great that you're really, that you're sharing your profession, you're making it light, you're trying to entertain people and you're doing a little something, but you're raising your profile. I see just good things, good things coming from it.

Jack Raia:
Yeah. I really appreciate it.

Michael Jamin:
Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you for joining me again. I really appreciate it learning your story. My pleasure. Very interesting. Everyone go check out Jack, Jack Raya, his channel's called What's good, 2 4 7 24 7. That's me on TikTok. I imagine that's your same handle on Instagram and Facebook. Yeah, that's it. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Jack. Really good for you. Congratulations.

Jack Raia:
Absolutely. We'll have to do this again sometimes. Thank you.

Michael Jamin:
Yeah, good stuff. Alright everyone, that was an interesting talk with an EMT Jack. We'll check him out on TikTok. Alright everyone, until next week, I got to think of a better tagline. You used to say, keep writing, I'll think of something else. Keep bullshitting. Alright everyone, thanks so

Jack Raia:
Much.

Michael Jamin:
So now we all know what the hell Michael Jamin is talking about. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for my free monthly webinars @michaeljamin.com/webinar. And if you found this podcast helpful or entertaining, please share it with a friend and consider leaving us a five star review on iTunes that really, really helps. For more of this, whatever the hell this is, follow Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJaminwriter. And you can follow Phil Hudson on social media @PhilaHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Crane and music was composed by Anthony Rizzo. And remember, you can have excuses or you can have a creative life, but you can't have both. See you next week.

On this week's episode, I have TikTok star Merrick Hanna. Tune in as we talk about the variety of content he enjoys producing as well as his creative process. We also dive into a little bit about his overall inspirations and creative goals for the future.

Show Notes

Merrick Hanna on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@merrickhanna

Merrick Hanna on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UC39he8ro-KtBHkq0NXOFyQw 

Merrick Hanna on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merrickhanna/

Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course

Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free

Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter

Autogenerated Transcript

Merrick Hanna:

I'm looking for popular TikTok routines, popular trends, something I can turn into my own because that's how I come up with ideas. I find something like a popular dance, a popular song. It could be even a hashtag or just a popular meme online. And I think, how can I take this and then make it into something original? And that is on brand for me.

Michael Jamin:

You're listening to, what the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity. I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts. Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin and I'm back with another episode. I've been doing some rebranding, guys. So the first couple of, I'm over a hundred episodes. So I've been doing this podcast for over two years. It's been called Screenwriters, need to Hear This. And mostly I've been talking to TV writers and to actors and directors that I've worked with, but then I've been railing against it for everybody. Guys, put your creative work out there. Just be creative, see where the energy goes, because it'll lead you somewhere. And so I'm rebranding the podcast right now. I think I'm just going to call it the Michael Jamin Show, where we just talk about what Michael Jamin is thinking of today, but whatever.

Who gives a crap what the name is called? The point is, I was at a movie premiere, I'm name dropping here. I was at a premiere a couple of, maybe a month or two ago, I don't know, maybe more than that. And this kid comes up to me, he says, Hey, I follow you on TikTok. I go, oh, do you? And I go, that's nice. What do you do? He's like, yeah, I'm on TikTok too. And I check him out. This kid, this kid's got like 32 million followers, 32 and a half, 32 and a half million followers. This guy gets more, his reach is bigger than all the networks combined, so his name is Merrick Hannah, maybe you know of him. If you don't know of him, you're going to learn about him now. Merrick, thank you so much for being on my show. I'm so honored that you're doing this. Welcome. Thank you

Merrick Hanna:

So much for having me. This is very exciting.

Michael Jamin:

It's exciting for me. And when I say kid guys, he's 18. He's 18. Merrick, I want to know, you're going to tell me all about this because I don't know what it's like to be you, to be like, I dunno, if you call yourself an influencer or a content creator, what do you call yourself?

Merrick Hanna:

Content creator mostly. I don't really influence people. I just make fun videos for the internet. So mostly content creator.

Michael Jamin:

And you're young. He's 18. Now I'm going to ask you, by the way, Merrick, don't use words that I don't know. Don't say bay. Don't say lit. You're going to have to talk to me like say fresh, say words from the eighties that I might

Merrick Hanna:

Understand. Got it. No cap.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, really fresh now. So tell me, okay, how long have you been making? So the videos in case people don't know. So mostly dance videos. He's a really good dancer, but sometimes just cute little sketches, stuff like that. So it's not limited to that, but they're short and they're fun. And Merrick, I think you just bring joy to people. Is that what you do?

Merrick Hanna:

That's my goal on social media is to just make fun videos that people enjoy, that I enjoy. It's a fun way to be creative.

Michael Jamin:

Okay, so how did this start? How many years have you been doing this?

Merrick Hanna:

Okay, so I've been doing social media specifically for, since the beginning of quarantine, however many years ago that was, I don't remember. All

Michael Jamin:

Right. That's not that long. It's 2020. So it's three years.

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah, three years. Because before that I was a working actor and dancer. And then at the beginning of quarantine, when the whole industry slowed down and I didn't have as much work, I decided, Hey, why not make my own content? Because I wanted to perform.

Michael Jamin:

Where were you working as a dancer and actor?

Merrick Hanna:

I had just done guest stars on Netflix and Disney, one episode sort of things. And I think I was about to do a reoccurring role on a show, which was then canceled right when quarantine hit.

Michael Jamin:

So you decide, I'm going to go on TikTok and just start making videos. I imagine the production value of the first videos were really not that special, or were

Merrick Hanna:

They? No, it was literally just my phone resting on my bed in my bedroom, doing some random TikTok dances that I found online that I thought were fun. And I got very lucky very quickly.

Michael Jamin:

You just blew up real fast.

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah, I had I think two videos that went super viral for no particular reason. And I thought, Hey, that's cool. I might as well keep doing this.

Michael Jamin:

But now I have a lot of questions for you. I would say a big, someone like you, maybe you collaborate with other dancers and people in your age group, someone whom has 6 million people. I would say that's really big. But dude, you have 32 and a half million people. That's not big. That's gigantic. At a

Merrick Hanna:

Certain point, your brain can't really understand that many people. At a million people, I can't imagine a million people. That's just way too many.

Michael Jamin:

And

Merrick Hanna:

So after

Michael Jamin:

It's like the population, what's the population of, I don't even know, you'll have to tell me, but are you able to walk out of your house and do you get recognized a lot or how does that work for you? You're famous.

Merrick Hanna:

It is sort of, I'm popular in a specific demographic of 12 to 15 year old people. I do get recognized, especially when I'm out performing. I like to perform in public on Hollywood Boulevard. And you

Michael Jamin:

Mean when you're shooting and performing though?

Merrick Hanna:

Yes, when I'm shooting and performing. But yeah, when I go to Universal Studios,

Michael Jamin:

I'll

Merrick Hanna:

Get recognized maybe once or twice. It's not too much.

Michael Jamin:

It's not

Merrick Hanna:

Too much. It's not like I'm famous, famous, famous. Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

Were you the first, I guess I already know the answer to this question, but when you first started doing these videos, you were already a professional. You already worked in the business as the dancer and a performer, but were you a little worried? Were you a little nervous about putting out your first videos, or were you just too young and dumb to even care? How do you feel?

Merrick Hanna:

I was not nervous when I started putting up my first tos because it really was just something I was doing for fun.

Michael Jamin:

I

Merrick Hanna:

Had no expectation of more than maybe a couple hundred people watching them, which is a lot, but it wasn't that much relatively. I do remember though, being very nervous when I posted my first ever YouTube video when I was nine years old.

Michael Jamin:

I was when you were nine. Okay. Well, when you were young, right? You were freaking out. Well, that's normal. I mean, you were nine, but you're probably bigger. I imagine you're bigger on TikTok than YouTube, or is that not the case?

Merrick Hanna:

Yes, I am bigger on TikTok right now. I have roughly three times the amount of followers on TikTok.

Michael Jamin:

And now I imagine you're monetizing both things that you probably make decent, make some decent money at this point now.

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah, I'm trying to, it is turned into a job for me, and so I'm definitely trying to monetize my social media without it taking away from the fun of it.

Michael Jamin:

The fun of it. Well, tell me what that means though. Are you doing brand deals or are you just monetizing through the app where they run ads on your content or something?

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah, it's a mix. I try and do a mix of brand deals and also monetizing on YouTube. Brand deals are tricky because they aren't very fun to do. It's like, oh, we want you to make a video talking about how great our cereal is. I'm like, well, let's not. How do you make that fun?

Michael Jamin:

How do you make that fun? So what do you do?

Merrick Hanna:

I'm very, very picky about what I do. I only really ever say yes to a brand deal if it's something that I think I have a fun way to make into an entertaining video. And so I don't, as a result of that, I do very few brand deals compared to other creators. But

Michael Jamin:

Tell us how it works. So did come out, they reach out to you. This is all new for, I got an older audience, we don't know, and I say old, I mean me. So they reach out to you, Hey, you got a big following. We like what you're doing. Will you promote our whatever, let's say serial. And then you say, let's say you agree to it. Do you have to bounce off the concept of them? Do they give you notes? How does that work?

Merrick Hanna:

Right. Sorry, let me back up, because I've been doing this for a couple of years now, and it's very, I'm in this world. So they'll reach out to me, and it really does depend on the brand. Sometimes they'll say, we want you to do this specific video, and sometimes they just say, we want you to promote this video game. We know you're a creator. Please just pitch us some concepts. So right now, I'm in the middle of doing a brand deal with a video game company that I've worked with before. And they reached out to me, they said, Hey, Merrick, we like your videos. Let's collaborate. Here's our video game. We want you to come up with some fun ideas. And so I wrote up three unique video ideas. I sent it off and they came back to me and they said, we like this one. Now you want, we want to expand on it, create a script, and then I'll shoot it, send it back, probably a couple revisions, and then I post it.

Michael Jamin:

And do you do all the writing yourself or do you have any help?

Merrick Hanna:

I do get some help from my dad, but I am trying to get better at writing. Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

So your dad worked for you and you say Better? Better. Is that what you, are you awful to him?

Merrick Hanna:

Don't

Michael Jamin:

Give me this garbage, dad, come back. I

Merrick Hanna:

Think that we work very well together. Work well

Michael Jamin:

Together. Yes. No, because it's interesting. I did a TV show for some very big YouTubers, Brett and Link. You must've heard of them, right?

Merrick Hanna:

Love

Michael Jamin:

Them. Okay, so they got very, obviously they're very big. And then YouTube said to them, we want to do a sitcom. So my partner and I were the showrunners of Link's buddy system for season two. Now what I was shocked to discover, this is all, remember I'm older than them. I show up and these guys have a big studio with, I don't know, 30 employees, 40 employees. They got a team of people. But you don't have that don't want, or do you want that or don't want that or what?

Merrick Hanna:

It's funny that you mentioned that, because I am actually sitting in my studio.

Michael Jamin:

You have a studio, so you have

Merrick Hanna:

Right after that door is a very large shooting area with multiple sets and a green screen.

Michael Jamin:

Interesting. And this is, okay, so, alright, so you have a big space and it's all covered by, of course, the revenue that you bring in.

Merrick Hanna:

Yes. This is actually very relatively new. I started renting the studio maybe four weeks ago, and I'm trying to hire people because for the longest time, I really was just doing it by myself in my bedroom.

Michael Jamin:

And editing it yourself?

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah, editing it, writing it, shooting it myself. And then I met with other creators, like how we were talking about with Red and Link.

Michael Jamin:

I

Merrick Hanna:

Met with a couple creators where I just walked into their movie studio, like you were saying, they had 20 employees.

Michael Jamin:

And

Merrick Hanna:

It kind of blew my mind because I realized, wow, I could actually have help doing this.

Michael Jamin:

And so do you have a small team right now of production, people setting up the green screen or editing or doing whatever you do?

Merrick Hanna:

Yes. I have a small team of my dad and two people. Wow, you're

Michael Jamin:

18 years old. This is pretty amazing. This really is amazing. It's very impressive. Maybe it's normal for you, but I'm super impressed by this.

Merrick Hanna:

It's not normal to me. No, this is strange. It's very strange. I still don't understand it.

Michael Jamin:

Even the effects that you do, I mean, some of them are pretty tech as far as I'm concerned. Are you doing this on Adobe? Where are you at Premier, or where are you editing most of this?

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah. I'm doing all of my effects videos on my laptop with After Effects, which is Adobe and Blender, which is a free software.

Michael Jamin:

So tell me what this is like so you come up with an idea you might spend, because I know, okay, let's take this back for a second. How many videos do you post in a week?

Merrick Hanna:

I post, right now I'm posting 14 videos a week.

Michael Jamin:

That's a lot. Sometimes

Merrick Hanna:

More, sometimes less. I try and get 14. Sometimes I am not as productive. I think this week it was more like seven 10, help

Michael Jamin:

Me out here because the night before, I do one a day and I try sick five or six days a week. And the night before I go to bed, I go, what am I going to do tomorrow? But you don't seem to have that problem, or do you?

Merrick Hanna:

Oh, I do. It's very, very difficult to come up with ideas. And sometimes at night I'm just sitting in bed like, oh, I can't find any routines. What am I doing?

Michael Jamin:

Are you looking for inspiration from other creators or what are you going to say?

Merrick Hanna:

Yes, I'm looking for popular TikTok routines, popular trends, something I can turn into my own because that's how I come up with ideas. I find something like a popular dance, a popular song. It could be even a hashtag or just a popular meme online. And I think, how can I take this and then make it into something original and that is on brand for me.

Michael Jamin:

And do you have a list of ideas, backup ideas? I have a list of backup ideas I don't want to get to, I guess they don't seem that good to me.

Merrick Hanna:

Yes, I do have a very, very long Google document with ideas,

Michael Jamin:

But the problem

Merrick Hanna:

With doing that is that trends come and go within two days on TikTok.

Michael Jamin:

But do you have to do a trend?

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah,

Michael Jamin:

You do.

Merrick Hanna:

Kind of on TikTok, it's really, really important for me to do a trend, and this is just because I've had years of experience throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks,

Michael Jamin:

And

Merrick Hanna:

It's always trends that do best. It's always when I take a trend, I say, how can I make this different, unique, put a fun spin on it, and then I make it my own? That's

Michael Jamin:

Now for people who don't know, a trend can be a trending song, a clip, it could be a trending. What else could it be? What else could it be

Merrick Hanna:

A trend? In the past, it's been a trending meme. There was a meme about the McDonald's grish shake for a long time where people would drink the grish shake and then die. That was the trend, and I thought, how can I make this different? How can I turn this into my own?

Michael Jamin:

See, this is interesting though, because as I scroll through many of your videos, obviously, like I said, many of 'em are special effects, different, and it's many of 'em are dancing, a lot of 'em are collaborations, but none actually, as far as I can tell, you're not talking to, you're not really, you're in character basically. They all seem to be in character. Is that right?

Merrick Hanna:

Yes. Yeah, they're all very in character, because I will do 30 takes of each video after I've written a script. And so it's nothing spontaneous about my videos. I know that a lot of people like to just sit down a camera and see what happens, but I'm more comfortable really planning things out and having it be a very produced video.

Michael Jamin:

Produced video. But part of the appeal, I think, is you must have fans from across the world because you're not talking, you're mostly dancing, and so you don't have to speak the language. Right,

Merrick Hanna:

That's true. Well, yeah, there's definitely pros and cons to doing that. The pros are that I have a very large fan base in Korea and the Philippines, and I think Russia, it's all over. In fact, I think only 20% of my followers are from the us, which is crazy statistic. Yeah,

Michael Jamin:

Interesting. So maybe it's the culture they're interested in. You're American, you must be the average American. Maybe.

Merrick Hanna:

It's funny, a lot of people think that I'm not from America, they just assume that I'm from where they are. Oh,

Michael Jamin:

Really? How do you know the comments?

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah, the comments. Because in the couple of videos that I've talked and they go, they're American.

Michael Jamin:

Wow, I

Merrick Hanna:

Speak English. That's crazy.

Michael Jamin:

This is something I've learned is that people will project whatever they want onto you, as long as you give 'em enough blank canvas. You know what I'm saying? That's

Merrick Hanna:

Interesting.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, they don't know enough about you, so they figured it out. I'm looking at this image of you and you have a red coat on, and I can only see the top of your torso up. And then, I don't know, maybe you have wheels instead of legs. You know what I'm saying? That's what, because people don't know. I don't know if you're tall or short. I've decided you're tall. What do I know? And so I think what goes on in social media.

Merrick Hanna:

Interesting.

Michael Jamin:

Tell me something else though. So I know you did one video, it's just recent, and you're wearing, it's up against a blue screen and you're wearing a blue body suit, and your buddy, he's walking on a treadmill, and it's supposed to be how, I guess you're supposed to be showing like, see, this is the gimmick where this is how we're doing it, but you're not actually going to share it, the actual version of that with you, blue screened out, right? It's all just a joke. You're not actually going to do the other version.

Merrick Hanna:

So what you're talking about is a really weird phenomenon that I've discovered within the past couple months

Michael Jamin:

Where

Merrick Hanna:

People really like seeing the behind the scenes and how videos are made, but they don't really care to see the actual video. In fact, in most of those videos, I'm not actually recording on the normal camera

Michael Jamin:

Because

Merrick Hanna:

For the longest time, I would shoot videos and then I would have a camera running in the back, and I would post the behind the scenes. And I noticed that the behind the scenes kept doing really well, and the normal ones wouldn't.

Michael Jamin:

The actual video of the, so the making of it does better than the video.

Merrick Hanna:

Exactly. And so recently, I've just been posting absurd how I made this video videos,

Michael Jamin:

Even though you never made the video,

Merrick Hanna:

Even though I never actually make the video, which is so strange. It's really bizarre. But people love it. And the more absurd and ridiculous that I make it, the better the more people like it. And I try and make them absurd enough that I'm not misleading people as to how videos really make, because I'm always a little concerned about that.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Okay. So what does concern you, you in making these?

Merrick Hanna:

I don't want people to think that's actually how I make my videos, because I want to teach people how to edit videos. Recently I've been doing live streams where I actually show the editing process, and I've been answering people's questions

Michael Jamin:

Because

Merrick Hanna:

I do want to show people how to, because I love editing and I want to share with other people how amazing it is. And so I try and make my videos ridiculous enough that if somebody was actually interested in editing, they would realize that it was a parody.

Michael Jamin:

So is this part of your larger vision then is to either be an editor or teach people editing or No. Is there something on the side?

Merrick Hanna:

It's not part of my larger vision. I can actually get into my larger vision.

Michael Jamin:

Yes. What is it? What's the plan?

Merrick Hanna:

So my goal, as I mentioned a bit ago, since the beginning, has been to, I have not actually mentioned this. My goal is to become a professional actor. Well, I am a professional actor, but to get more acting work, that has been my goal since the beginning. Since I first started at the beginning of quarantine,

Michael Jamin:

The

Merrick Hanna:

Industry slowed down and it didn't have as much work. I thought maybe this can be a way to continue working and bring in more attention to.

Michael Jamin:

And has that worked for you?

Merrick Hanna:

It has. In what way? Social media has brought me tons of opportunities, but it actually has gotten me booked on a TV show and a movie. So

Michael Jamin:

Did they reach out to you or what?

Merrick Hanna:

Yes. The

Michael Jamin:

Shows reached out to you. A

Merrick Hanna:

Couple examples. They actually have directly reached out to me.

Michael Jamin:

Can you share what they are or you don't feel comfortable?

Merrick Hanna:

I don't know. They've been, I don't know if I've actually announced that I'm on them yet, so I'm not going to.

Michael Jamin:

Okay. So a show, the casting director of a show find you and says, Hey, do they want you to read, or in other words, audition, or do they say, you got the role?

Merrick Hanna:

That's the crazy thing. They haven't even had me read. They literally just reach out to me and say, Hey, we want you on the show. And so then of course, my goal is to prove to them that I actually am an actor. I am an actor. Because when I do go onto these productions where I'm just hired as an influencer, the general idea is they have to teach me how to act. But my goal then is to prove that, hey, I actually do know how to perform. I can be a real actor here.

Michael Jamin:

Are these parts small or big?

Merrick Hanna:

They've been guest stars for one episode, but a lot of speaking, a lot of asking.

Michael Jamin:

Right.

Merrick Hanna:

So pretty big roles. Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

And did they expect you, I would think they expect you to talk about on your social media, right? Talk, Hey, watch me next week, or whatever, on whatever show, right? Yes.

Merrick Hanna:

Yes. They have strongly encouraged me to create behind the scenes tos. Oh, the past.

Michael Jamin:

I have not seen that. Have you done those?

Merrick Hanna:

Well, the show hasn't come out yet, so I haven't.

Michael Jamin:

Okay. Okay. So you shot 'em, but you're not going to air them yet. And

Merrick Hanna:

Yes, I will start to release them once everything comes out.

Michael Jamin:

Now, do they want that in writing, or is it just like a wink, wink, hey, or is that part of the contract that you'll put X amount of content out there?

Merrick Hanna:

I believe it was just a expectation that I probably would, because of course I would. It's a great opportunity for me. Yeah,

Michael Jamin:

Right.

Merrick Hanna:

Wow. Interesting. Don't, it was never in the contract. Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

See, this is what I say. You discovered something on your own, even though I yell at adults to do this all the time, which is basically you created yourself in other, you made these opportunities happen for yourself because you put yourself out there. And let me tell you something, Merrick, in case you don't know this quiet, I'm talking to Merrick, posting 14 times a week is a lot of work. It may seem like it's not a, it is a lot of work. How many hours a day are you doing this?

Merrick Hanna:

It really depends, but maybe 10 hours a day. Maybe

Michael Jamin:

10 hours a day.

Merrick Hanna:

It used to be a lot more because it used to just be me doing it. But now that I have help, I'm slowly reducing it because it's not good for my mental health to be working that

Michael Jamin:

Day. Yes. But why is it 10 hours a day? Exactly. How does it break down

Merrick Hanna:

A bunch of different things? So obviously the editing part of videos takes the absolute longest. People love visual effects, which is amazing. But because I have to post so much, it means that I really do have to grind it to get them out, because they take many, many, many hours to produce finding videos. I do have a lot of help with that, but it still takes a while. Scrolling through TikTok, just looking for new dance trends, new trends, and new ideas.

Michael Jamin:

It

Merrick Hanna:

Takes forever. And then shooting takes multiple hours.

Michael Jamin:

You have to learn the steps, and then you have to

Merrick Hanna:

Learn it. You have to set everything up, get the lighting, and then I do 30 takes, 20 takes a lot of takes normally. And how

Michael Jamin:

Did you learn about lighting? How did you learn? As you can see here, I don't know anything about, I work in the business. My lighting is terrible, and I have lights on. I suck at it. How did you learn all this stuff? All a lot about sound, about lighting, about production.

Merrick Hanna:

So in terms of lighting, I actually learned about lighting from some of my influencer friends who just showed me how to get nice, even lighting on your face. I would like to learn how to properly light scenes to be more cinematic, but I don't know how to do that yet. I've just learned how to very evenly light my face and make everything very bright,

Michael Jamin:

Because

Merrick Hanna:

That's what my videos normally do. And then in terms of sound and editing, it was just me goofing around on my computer and then thinking, Hey, I can use this for my tos.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty amazing. I mean, it's very impressive what you've done. Okay. So you've gotten a number of opportunities from this, and hopefully more, but let's say, all right, let's say they reached out to you and they gave you, I don't know, a gig on probably, let's say, 13 episodes on a show. Are you still going to make your TikTok videos? Whatcha going to do?

Merrick Hanna:

For the longest time, I was thinking about, oh, once I get a reoccurring rollout, I won't make tos anymore. But now that it's become such a big part of my life, I kind of like making them. I don't think that I'll stop. I mean, if I'm on a reoccurring TV show or rural, I'll definitely have to slow down my production, but I don't have a plan to stop.

Michael Jamin:

Are you worried about burnout or no, you're just too young to worry about it. You have all this energy?

Merrick Hanna:

Oh, burnout is a big issue, and I've definitely run into it before. I think the biggest reason that it hasn't been too much of an issue for me is because I produce so many different types of videos in such a variety of genres and editing styles and dancing styles, and every day I'm doing something completely different. One day I might be working on adding AUFO to the back of a video, and the next day I am with a K-pop group dancing. So all over the place that burnout has never been too much of an issue. So, okay,

Michael Jamin:

So at this point, I would understand that at this point, they must be, other content creators are reaching out to you to do a collaboration. You're not reaching out to them. You're bigger than they are, I imagine.

Merrick Hanna:

Oh, no. I still have to reach out to people.

Michael Jamin:

But are you reaching to big people or people bigger than you or small than you? How does that work

Merrick Hanna:

Normally? See, that's a weird thing because normally it's people who are smaller, have less followers than me. But it depends.

Michael Jamin:

I guess what I'm asking is when are we going to dance? Hey, listen, that's not what I'm asking. You know what I saying?

Merrick Hanna:

There's a strike.

Michael Jamin:

There's a strike.

Merrick Hanna:

What are we doing?

Michael Jamin:

I got some moves from the eighties kid, but let me ask you though. Okay, so they reach out to you sometimes you reach out to them?

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah,

Michael Jamin:

These are strangers. Basically.

Merrick Hanna:

I prefer to collab with my friends because it's more fun for me.

Michael Jamin:

But they weren't always your friends, right?

Merrick Hanna:

Friends? No, when I first moved to la, which was a couple of years ago, it was all strangers, and it was a very wild experience meeting so many people. But now that I'm bigger and I get to more so choose who I collab with, I like more just meeting with my friends because it's more fun.

Michael Jamin:

And so explain to me how this works. You'll do a video together, you'll post the same video, they'll post the same exact video or what?

Merrick Hanna:

TikTok doesn't like it when you post the same video twice, which makes sense. They want to,

Michael Jamin:

When two different creators post the same video or when?

Merrick Hanna:

Yes,

Michael Jamin:

Because I've posted videos. I've taken down old videos and put up old videos. They don't mind that, right? Oh,

Merrick Hanna:

That's fine. That's fine. In the past when I've experimented with posting the same video on two accounts, TikTok does not like that because they don't like it when you just take other people's content and repost it. And so they definitely detect it and shut it down. And so we will shoot four videos. Two of them go to them, two of them go

Michael Jamin:

Me.

Merrick Hanna:

We try and make it as even as possible.

Michael Jamin:

And you tag each other?

Merrick Hanna:

Yes, of course.

Michael Jamin:

Collabing

Merrick Hanna:

Is the best way to grow your social media account.

Michael Jamin:

Is it really? I mean, did you discover this along the way, or were you just following the rules that somebody else made up?

Merrick Hanna:

There were no rules. I wish there were. That would've been great if there were just rules, but no, there were no rules, unfortunately. It's just a lot of trial and error, seeing what works. So

Michael Jamin:

On a given day or a given week, how many, you must have a calendar filled out with your collaborations and

Merrick Hanna:

Yes. Oh yes. Just an hour ago, I was collabing with my friend Matt Sina, which is why I'm wearing this jacket,

Michael Jamin:

Right?

Merrick Hanna:

Because I bought this jacket because he also owns it. So we can have matching clothes and roughly every day I do a collaboration of some sort. I try to,

Michael Jamin:

In your studio space here, you must have a wardrobe department. You must have a props department, right?

Merrick Hanna:

Department is a bit of a stretch. It's a wardrobe cubicle.

Michael Jamin:

Okay. But there's a lot

Merrick Hanna:

Of stuff. We do have a wardrobe. This is our editing room out there is our shooting space, and then we also have a kitchen area for food and snacks, so we try to have a professional.

Michael Jamin:

I know your father's helping you. What was he doing before all this happened?

Merrick Hanna:

The same thing that he's doing now. He works as a data statistician. He runs his own company and he helps brands figure out where to put new stores, and he's still doing it. He, oh

Michael Jamin:

My God. Okay, so he's not full-time for you, just he helps you out all this?

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

And do you have any siblings?

Merrick Hanna:

I do. I have a younger brother. He doesn't really want to be in my videos very much because he does get teased about it at school, unfortunately. I was going to

Michael Jamin:

Say he, okay, so what is the negative side? What's the downside? Is that one of the downsides that

Merrick Hanna:

Yes, that is definitely one of the downsides of social media is that it does bring negative attention. It brings jealousy at times, which is always sad when it happens. My brother is experiencing the worst of it, I think.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, is it really? He's really getting a lot of it.

Merrick Hanna:

I mean, there's a couple people in his school who are jealous and are like, oh, your brother, he's on TikTok, so I feel terrible for him.

Michael Jamin:

What about the haters on, I mean, you have a very wholesome account, but that's not going to stop people from just hating you for no reason. So how do you deal with that?

Merrick Hanna:

Dealing with hate is a very difficult issue because there is no one good way to do it. No matter what you do, you're always going to get some kind of hate comment from over time. My strategies have changed. Originally I just decided, oh, I can just ignore them, but it gets to you. The hate really does get to you even if you think you have thick skin. And so I've resorted to using the block button quite a lot and pressing it really hard

Michael Jamin:

Because it makes me feel better. So that means you do look at all your comments?

Merrick Hanna:

I try to and look at all my comments, but

Michael Jamin:

At 35 million, you're getting a lot of comments on every, I mean, you're getting a lot of comments.

Merrick Hanna:

Yes, I do, and I still try and go through most of them. Obviously, if there's 600 comments, I can't get through all of them, but a lot of times there's maybe 200, 100 and I can go through all of them pretty easily.

Michael Jamin:

Do you respond to any of them?

Merrick Hanna:

I try to respond because

Michael Jamin:

Do all of them or some of them?

Merrick Hanna:

No, not all of them. I could never do all of them. I try to reply to comments that I think I have fun responses for or people that I know, but I try to engage with every comment at the least by just liking it, because people can see when I do that and I want

Michael Jamin:

Now, how important is that? And you're teaching me and you're teaching me. I'm not sure. I don't know if I always do that.

Merrick Hanna:

Sometimes

Michael Jamin:

I do, and sometimes I feel bad if I like someone's coming, but I don't like another, I don't know.

Merrick Hanna:

See, we've hit a point where I actually don't know I'm clueless. I don't know if that helps my social media account at all. I don't know if statistically it makes me get more views. I just like doing it because I appreciate everyone who comments and I try and show that I'm seeing what people comment.

Michael Jamin:

It helps. I'm not even talking about helping the algorithm. I'm really talking about do you think your fans like it or not? This is a weird question. I'm not sure if your fans always want you to respond to them. You know what I'm saying? I have done this. Sometimes I don't have fans like you have fans, but sometimes they'll say something nice and then I'll say something. Oh, thanking them, and then I think it makes 'em feel uncomfortable. They don't know where the conversation's supposed to end, so I don't want to make 'em feel uncomfortable either. But maybe you don't think

Merrick Hanna:

About that. I've never thought about it that way. I'm thinking back to how I'm a fan of some creators. If I comment, I'm thrilled when they reply to me because I love their content, and so I can't really think of a situation where it would make someone uncomfortable, but I never thought, do you talk about

Michael Jamin:

This with your other creative friends when you're No,

Merrick Hanna:

Not specifically making people uncomfortable by

Michael Jamin:

Or anything. Do you say to them, Hey, do you respond to every copost or do you block every post? You talk about this?

Merrick Hanna:

Yes. Oh, yeah. I talk a lot to my creative friends about what they do because everyone does things differently, and I've never really figured out the right way to do things

Michael Jamin:

Online, but

Merrick Hanna:

I try to and talk to everybody and see what their strategies are.

Michael Jamin:

It's so interesting. And then the blocking, because that even a negative comment is good for the algorithm, so you don't need to block them, but you still block them.

Merrick Hanna:

It's interesting that you say that because this is a bit of a non-sequitur, but I have friends who actually intentionally make

Michael Jamin:

Videos

Merrick Hanna:

Just for hate comments because they go viral with it. Yeah,

Michael Jamin:

I know,

Merrick Hanna:

But I don't do that. I have in the past made videos that are sort of a bait for that to get

Michael Jamin:

To

Merrick Hanna:

The comment, but I don't try and make fun videos that I would want to watch, and that's not really what I want to make.

Michael Jamin:

Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my content, and I know you do because you're listening to me, I will email it to you for free. Just join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos of the week. These are for writers, actors, creative types, people like you can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you, and the price is free. You got no excuse to join. Go to michaeljamin.com. And now back to what the hell is Michael Jamin talking about?

Yeah, but it's interesting, but your friends sometimes do just to get that boost,

Merrick Hanna:

And they're okay

Michael Jamin:

With that.

Merrick Hanna:

I have some creator friends I know who definitely intentionally make videos that get hate comments.

Michael Jamin:

Can you give me an example of what that might, how do they know it's going to get hate comments?

Merrick Hanna:

I have a friend who at least used to make really, really fake and over the top pranks, and so he would have super over the top reactions and obviously

Michael Jamin:

Set up

Merrick Hanna:

The camera is right in the middle of the room specifically just to get comments saying, oh, it's fake. Because the more people that comment that, the more TikTok pushes it out and the more people see it,

Michael Jamin:

But the more people see it. But then I wonder if you pick up followers. That's another thing I've got, another thing I want to talk about.

Merrick Hanna:

There are so many intricacies and things to talk about. I

Michael Jamin:

Was surprised about TikTok is when I started picking up all these followers, I'm like, what's the point of having followers if only a 10th of them can actually see my content? Why is this a metric that they're keeping track of? Do you know why?

Merrick Hanna:

What do you mean? Only a 10th of them get see.

Michael Jamin:

Well, okay, so you have 32 million followers. I'm looking at one of your videos, one of your more recent ones, okay. Had 1.2 million followers, which is a lot, but that's only a fraction of your not followers views had 1.2 million views, which is a fraction of your total follower account. You got this. So sometimes they go super viral and sometimes 1.2 million, which is nothing, which is fantastic, but still nothing.

Merrick Hanna:

Okay. We're getting into a territory that I talk a lot about and also confuses me

Michael Jamin:

Because

Merrick Hanna:

TikTok themselves insists that it doesn't matter that there's no momentum to say if you get a ton of followers on one video, it won't matter in the next video. I really think that's not true because of the following page. I think that maybe if you get views on the following page, because that's where you only see people who you follow, that helps boost the video.

Michael Jamin:

But

Merrick Hanna:

Again, we're getting into a territory because TikTok is very secretive about this,

Michael Jamin:

But

Merrick Hanna:

I actually, I'm not so sure myself

Michael Jamin:

Because there was a day, well, you were must have much younger, but when you had a following, let's say on Facebook, everyone would see your post because they were following you. But now it's not the way. It doesn't work that way anymore.

Merrick Hanna:

No, it doesn't. Yeah. This is one of the topics that really confuses me as well,

Michael Jamin:

Because

Merrick Hanna:

TikTok is very secretive about what they do, and it also seems like they change the way that their algorithm works from time to time.

Michael Jamin:

And

Merrick Hanna:

So sometimes I think I have it figured out, oh, more followers means that it boosts you this way and it transfers over this way, and then the next day it'll be completely different.

Michael Jamin:

Are you worried about, here's the thing that, are you worried about hackers taking over your account or TikTok shutting down your account and losing everything, or them changing the algorithm completely and then, I don't know, suddenly everything's gone. Does that worry you at all?

Merrick Hanna:

It does, and that's why I have tried to post on other platforms too,

Michael Jamin:

Because

Merrick Hanna:

For a while, as you may know, there was a big fear that TikTok would go away in the us,

Michael Jamin:

Right? They came back. Now they're still worried about it again. But it

Merrick Hanna:

Seems like it's been a constant worry for a long time, and that's why I've tried to diversify. I post on YouTube, I've started posting on Snapchat out of all places, Instagram reels.

Michael Jamin:

Right?

Merrick Hanna:

Specifically because I am worried that years and years of work will just go away because

Michael Jamin:

Do you have a mailing list as well, or do you not keep that

Merrick Hanna:

Mailing list? What do you mean?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, well get on my newsletter and then I'll send you whatever I want to send you. And that way you can email them whenever you're on a show or whenever you have something to promote, but you don't do that.

Merrick Hanna:

That is a bit of an outdated concept. I'm not sure that people really do that anymore.

Michael Jamin:

I do it and I have a nice list, but maybe it's amazing. Outdated. Okay.

Merrick Hanna:

Yes,

Michael Jamin:

Fascinating things is outdated, but if

Merrick Hanna:

There's anything, if there's, Hey, just to be clear, if there's anything that I want to post about, I just post it on my social media post everything else. Yeah. I've never had a need for that. I don't

Michael Jamin:

Think I should check on your link here again. I looked earlier, but you don't sell merch or anything like that, or do you?

Merrick Hanna:

No, I don't. Why

Michael Jamin:

Is that?

Merrick Hanna:

This is another weird thing that I thought a lot about. I've wanted to for some time, but I've always been afraid that what I'll sell won't be worth the money in a weird way, because a lot of my fan base are younger kids. I don't want to sell 'em a T-shirt that just has my face on it and that they'll buy and then never wear. I would feel terrible if I did that. And so I've always been, it's morally, it's weird for me because I don't want to do, you know what I mean? I see other creators pushing their merch. I'm like, why would

Michael Jamin:

Anyone

Merrick Hanna:

Ever buy this in a year? Everyone's going to regret buying this thing. I want to make whatever I have as merch something that I would actually wear and that people actually get their monies out of.

Michael Jamin:

I totally hear you. People have said to me, Hey, when are you going to come up with merch? I go, what a line of pencils? Do you really want a pencil with my name on it? And they're like, yeah, why? But I admire the fact that you don't want to just put garbage out there, but there's still demand people. I mean, if they want it, they want it.

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah. It's a tricky thing. I've talked to a lot of people about doing merch a couple of times. I thought, oh, maybe I'll actually do it because I found designs that I like, but it's never quite came to be. And maybe one day, maybe one day I'll do it.

Michael Jamin:

Right. How are you able to monetize on tick? I'm not doing it. This is all, I don't monetize any of my intentionally. But how does it work to monetize TikTok? Tell us how that

Merrick Hanna:

I don't.

Michael Jamin:

You don't? And why not?

Merrick Hanna:

For the longest time I was under 18 and I couldn't. But also, I don't think that TikTok really pays you well,

Michael Jamin:

They have a beta studio, which apparently people get paid a little more. No,

Merrick Hanna:

They do. But I think, again, I'm not part of this program. I think it's only for videos over 60 seconds,

Michael Jamin:

Which, and most of your are shorter. You won't make one

Merrick Hanna:

List. All of them are shorter.

Michael Jamin:

Interesting. I know they're short, but why is that?

Merrick Hanna:

Oh, my videos are short because it's what I like making the most.

Michael Jamin:

My

Merrick Hanna:

Fans like that. I've tried posting 10 minute videos. I've tried posting two minute long videos. And I think that my fan base, people who follow me, just watching the shorter videos more because it's all that I've ever posted. People are used to it.

Michael Jamin:

I know I'm jumping around, but do you give a lot of interviews like this where people are just asking you about you? No. No. But you must do a lot of podcasts and guests and lives or whatever.

Merrick Hanna:

The first podcast I have done and I think eight years.

Michael Jamin:

Interesting. Why is that? Have you been asked and you just said, no,

Merrick Hanna:

No. I don't really get asked to. You don't

Michael Jamin:

Get asked to.

Merrick Hanna:

My dad just said that. That's not true. Maybe I get asked and I don't have the time to.

Michael Jamin:

He said it's not true.

Merrick Hanna:

He yelled from outside the room. He's out

Michael Jamin:

There. That's not true.

Merrick Hanna:

He said, that's not true.

Michael Jamin:

Type down dad. Well, he would know. He handles that part of you. Dad, do you want

Merrick Hanna:

To help answer this? Also, I should give some context. My dad handles my business email and he helps me go through some unsolicited messages as well, because

Michael Jamin:

I don't

Merrick Hanna:

Really want to go through those.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, right. I'm sure. But I'm surprised you don't get asked. Okay. Your dad thinks you gets asked, but whatever. Either way, you haven't done a lot. We know that for a fact that you haven't done a lot. Now is it because there's part of you you just don't want to share? Or what is that

Merrick Hanna:

Supposed to sneak in?

Michael Jamin:

Here he is.

Merrick Hanna:

Here's dad. What's

Michael Jamin:

Up?

Merrick Hanna:

Invited to a lot of podcasts. You do get invited to a lot of 'em. Michael. Hi.

Michael Jamin:

Pleasure to meet you. But what's

Merrick Hanna:

The lean towards me? I can eaop.

Michael Jamin:

So he gets asked a lot to do podcast. My question for Eric was, does he do a lot of interviews like this where he is just telling me or telling people what it's like to be a content creator, which I find fascinating, but he's saying he doesn't get asked a lot. And you're saying he does get asked.

Merrick Hanna:

Yes. And I know that you don't really like doing things like this, so your podcast is great. I'm very happy that I'm here.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, I'm happy to have you. Fascinating.

Merrick Hanna:

There are many people doing podcasts. There are very few that have much in the way of listeners. And so

Michael Jamin:

Yeah,

Merrick Hanna:

Given that I know that you prefer not to do that sort of thing, I tend to filter for you unless something particularly interesting comes along.

Michael Jamin:

Right. Well, I'm honored that I made that cut. What I'm interested in is really is as the interview, which is really the journey that he's on, the creative journey he's on at the forefront, what your kid is doing. It's pretty impressive. But Merrick, is it hard for you to, or it doesn't seem hard for you? Is it uncomfortable for you to share that with? Because like I said, your videos are basically, you're in character. You're this character, this happy, fun, jokey guy, but your fans don't really know that about you. They don't know the other side.

Merrick Hanna:

For a long time, I preferred to keep it very scripted and produced and act all my tos, but I've been getting more used to talking to people because for a long time I was extremely introverted and I, not people. I've gotten a lot better with it. And I'm doing a lot more just personality content. I am live streaming on TikTok. I'm just talking to people.

Michael Jamin:

Are you? And so how long will you do that for?

Merrick Hanna:

To be clear, we put him in acting lessons when he was seven and eight years old because he wouldn't talk to anybody.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, is that right?

Merrick Hanna:

So we were not motivated by anything other than the fact that we thought that putting him in a situation where he might be forced to use his voice in front of other people his age would be good.

Michael Jamin:

And you were right.

Merrick Hanna:

And we found that not only was he great on stage because he doesn't, his unique little skill was that he didn't have any real sense of the audience. So he wasn't fearful, but he liked doing it a lot and was immediately hired by the professional company that ran the theater camps to be in their professional productions.

Michael Jamin:

Plus this is all very therapeutic. It is a good journey for you to be on. It's very good for you

Merrick Hanna:

To be clear up until a very old age. Very old.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Merrick Hanna:

Four. I only use sign language to talk to people.

Michael Jamin:

Really?

Merrick Hanna:

Because I didn't like talking to people that much. And so acting helped a lot with that. And doctors said not to panic because sign language is talking. So they said, don't

Michael Jamin:

Worry.

Merrick Hanna:

He is a talker.

Michael Jamin:

Right. More. I know that one.

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, is that one? See, now you're teaching me.

Merrick Hanna:

I'm going to leave you alone.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Thank you for chiming in.

Merrick Hanna:

Right. Well, and now we know anytime in the future somebody wants to do a podcast with America that has a bowling pin in the back

Michael Jamin:

And a parking meter.

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah. Yeah. Parking meter. We're on the fence with especially a writer's guild strike.

Michael Jamin:

There you go. There it is. Yep. So this is very interesting to me. So not only we learned that this helps you, helped you come out of your shell, but also, that's another thing I'm curious about. How much are we supposed to share of ourselves with the public?

Merrick Hanna:

You mean like personal lives?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Yeah.

Merrick Hanna:

This is an interesting one. I share relatively little. I think compared to other public figures, I try and keep my personal life relatively private. But what's interesting is that from what I've seen in the influencer world, a lot of people who do share a lot about their lives often aren't really sharing their real life. In fact, multiple times I have been invited to have basically a fake girlfriend for YouTube and share my personal life, which is not actually my real personal life. It's a very real thing. And so I

Michael Jamin:

Know it's,

Merrick Hanna:

Even though I share relatively little, I'm not actually sure it's that much less than other people because they Do you think

Michael Jamin:

That Because I know they have these, and you're not part of these, I dunno if they're called YouTube houses or in influential houses where they put people like yourself in an apartment for a month or whatever, and mayhem ensues. You must've been invited to these.

Merrick Hanna:

Oh, yes. Another way that, another version of those are social media squads, which I am very, very familiar with because I know a lot of people who have done those. I have been invited. Not for me. Definitely not for me.

Michael Jamin:

I'm really glad you say that. But people that have gone and what is their take out of it? It seems awful to me.

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah, awful. It is much worse than awful. In fact, there's actually a very big lawsuit about one of those right now that a lot of my friends are a part that involve sexual abuse, many terrible things

Michael Jamin:

From other influencers or create content creators, or not from

Merrick Hanna:

Content creators, and sometimes their parents too often. A lot of times it's the parents.

Michael Jamin:

So the parents are living there as well. I

Merrick Hanna:

Think like dance moms except influencers.

Michael Jamin:

Oh my God,

Merrick Hanna:

This

Michael Jamin:

Is horrific.

Merrick Hanna:

This is a very, very large rabbit hole.

Michael Jamin:

That's a whole different conversation. You're right. I've

Merrick Hanna:

Always managed to stay on the periphery of this, but I definitely have a lot of friends who are very into the weeds there.

Michael Jamin:

But there's a lot of people, a lot of kids of your age would kill even to have a fraction of your followers. They're chasing the fame. It doesn't seem like that's what you're doing at all. What is your advice for them?

Merrick Hanna:

For people who just want to chase the fame?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Well, I mean that's why they do these houses where they all live together, and that's why, yeah, I would kill just to have people follow me. So listen to me, I guess to be heard. Maybe that's what is your advice for them?

Merrick Hanna:

Go for it.

Michael Jamin:

Go for it. Go for

Merrick Hanna:

It. For it. I mean, right now in my position, the pros definitely outweigh the cons.

Michael Jamin:

What are the cons then?

Merrick Hanna:

I mean, the cons are, I am not in touch with a lot of my friends that from when I was before, I was a professional influencer, content creator, actor. I've lost a lot of friends a lot. Way

Michael Jamin:

You have a job now?

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah, because have a job and because I moved, I no longer live in the small town that I used to.

Michael Jamin:

Where did you grow up?

Merrick Hanna:

I grew up in Encinitas in San Diego.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, it's not that far away. And so you moved to LA to be closer to the business though?

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah. Again, it's not that far away. It's only two hours away. But still a lot of my friends I am not in contact with anymore. Which sucks. That's a huge, it can be very stressful being a public figure because I have to be careful about what I say.

Michael Jamin:

People

Merrick Hanna:

Are constantly trying to wrap me up in drama,

Michael Jamin:

And

Merrick Hanna:

I have accidentally gotten caught up in that before. And it sucks when it happens because

Michael Jamin:

It drives out of in way without you reliving it. But what kind of happened?

Merrick Hanna:

It's nothing. I commented, it was a reply to a TikTok comment that was taken horribly out of context. And it's only happened I think once or twice. But

Michael Jamin:

You got to be careful about what you say.

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah, super careful. I can't just post whatever I want. I have to be careful about that. But again, it's not too big of a deal.

Michael Jamin:

And what are some of the unforeseen pros that have come out of this that you would not have expected? Okay, you're hoping to get booked on a TV show, and that's happened, and hopefully that'll happen more. But what other that you would not have expected?

Merrick Hanna:

I've a lot better at my craft. I never thought that TikTok would help me get better at dancing, but it really, really has

Michael Jamin:

Just because you're doing it over and over.

Merrick Hanna:

And it's also helped me get better at editing. I've been, in a way, forced to learn many new editing techniques, and I've also gotten a lot better at acting through TikTok, which is strange that it happened, but it did. It's been super beneficial. And for me, that was super unexpected.

Michael Jamin:

And you also have this whole community of other content creators you now call friends. I made

Merrick Hanna:

A lot of friends through the way too. Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Merrick Hanna:

That's amazing.

Michael Jamin:

This is amazing. Is there anything else? First all, I want to thank you again. I know you're very kind to do this, but I'm fascinated. I give, first of all, a lot, like I said, a lot of credit to you. You invented this thing for yourself and all these opportunities came and you put yourself out there. You were not afraid. Or maybe you were afraid of being judged, but you got over it and you did it anyway. And you work hard for this. I know you do. I mean, I watch your videos. That's a lot of work. I could tell. It's a lot of work.

Merrick Hanna:

So

Michael Jamin:

Good for you. Thank

Merrick Hanna:

You so much.

Michael Jamin:

Is there anything else we can plug for you? We can talk. Let's let 'em everywhere. They can follow you on all your social media. Do you have the same handle for everything?

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah, it's just my name Marna. Everywhere. Everywhere. I Pinterest X.

Michael Jamin:

You're on Pinterest. What are you?

Merrick Hanna:

I posted once.

Michael Jamin:

You posted once and now you have a

Merrick Hanna:

Following. It's Americana everywhere. You can probably find me on every social media platform.

Michael Jamin:

Okay. I had one last question, but now I can't even remember what it was. I was so shocked that you're on Pinterest. Yeah.

Merrick Hanna:

Well

Michael Jamin:

This is,

Merrick Hanna:

Thank you again. Well, okay. See, Pinterest is, that was just a random account I created. Right? I'm mostly on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram? Yes.

Michael Jamin:

Okay. Will you respond to the people on YouTube as well, the same way you do on TikTok or no?

Merrick Hanna:

I try to. Generally it's less. There is somebody behind me taking a photo. I

Michael Jamin:

See that. Yeah.

Merrick Hanna:

Instagram story. Instagram. Oh, here. Quickly close for Instagram story.

Michael Jamin:

Nice. Right. So great. Put it on Instagram. So wait, what was my question? I have lost my train of thought. Oh. Oh, you respond to everybody on YouTube? That's what I was asking.

Merrick Hanna:

Yes. I try to, but honestly, it's less just because less. I mainly use TikTok even though I'm trying to get better about it.

Michael Jamin:

Do you, one final thing, I all these questions, so S two parter, but do you find there's a difference between the kind of people who follow you on each platform? What is it?

Merrick Hanna:

Oh, yeah. Huge difference. Different platforms just have different user bases, and I think that's most reflected in the kind of content that does well on each platform. So I'll give you a brief summary on TikTok. People love trends. People who use TikTok, seeing people use songs in different ways. They like trends, popular memes on YouTube, people don't care about trends at all. They just like good videos in general and more like skits. So dancing isn't as popular on YouTube. It's more people who like skits. And on Instagram it is just dancing.

Michael Jamin:

It's just dancing. People

Merrick Hanna:

Love, love dancing, and so yes.

Michael Jamin:

Does that mean you won't post a skit on Instagram or you do it?

Merrick Hanna:

I still do. Even if I know it probably won't do it very well because there's no real reason not to.

Michael Jamin:

And people don't also realize that the very act of uploading your videos to the fly, it actually takes time. Are you doing all of that yourself?

Merrick Hanna:

I used to. Now I have help.

Michael Jamin:

Now. You have help? Yeah.

Merrick Hanna:

I have two people helping me and my dad

Michael Jamin:

Who

Merrick Hanna:

Help me upload. Because you're right, uploading is a surprisingly annoying process.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, you got to tag. You got to put the hashtags in. It takes time.

Merrick Hanna:

It does.

Michael Jamin:

But do you find there's a difference between, okay, I'll tell you where I'm coming from. So I find that on TikTok, people tend to be meaner, but then let's say Instagram, do you feel that way?

Merrick Hanna:

Yes. I have noticed that. It's hard to say why, but I know exactly what you're talking about. It seems like there's almost the meaner comments get liked more, and so people are more incentivized to make fun of a person.

Michael Jamin:

I don't really

Merrick Hanna:

Know why. I'm just speculating, but you're not wrong. I have noticed that Instagram has a little bit

Michael Jamin:

Of that

Merrick Hanna:

On Instagram. It's interesting. It's normally older people who are mean. Are older people

Michael Jamin:

Mean to you?

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah. On Instagram, they're like, back in my day, kids would dance better than this.

Michael Jamin:

Okay, that's okay. But are they actually getting I'm, I don't approve of that. But it's not

Merrick Hanna:

Personally

Michael Jamin:

Hurtful.

Merrick Hanna:

That was a very PG version of what they say.

Michael Jamin:

Right. It's pg. Right.

Merrick Hanna:

Okay. It's worse than that. And YouTube people are generally nicer from what I've seen. But you're not wrong about TikTok having a bit more of that.

Michael Jamin:

It's unfortunate. And what do you do to wash it off the negativity?

Merrick Hanna:

If it's a pretty mundane negative comment, oh, you're cringe cares. But if it's anything more than that block, yeah,

Michael Jamin:

Just block.

Merrick Hanna:

Simple as that. I also try and use comment filters. I try and block words that commonly appear in hate comments, which does help, but people get around it.

Michael Jamin:

Wow. Yeah, people don't realize that there's just no point in being mean. I sometimes lecture people with posts, if you ever see in my posts, I thought I was talking about why it's really bad for your soul to be mean to people on the internet, but can't do that. Was

Merrick Hanna:

That I love seeing those videos, but I have to say, responding to hate just draws more hate. At least that's what I've experienced.

Michael Jamin:

But am I responding to hate if I'm doing a general video or what do you think? Is that what you're saying? You're talking about me specifically or no?

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah, in general, but also in general in content. I have friends who have gotten really angry at hate comments and have made videos responding to them,

Michael Jamin:

And that draws more hate.

Merrick Hanna:

It just seems to draw more people who want to troll. But I do enjoy watching those videos because I always want to,

Michael Jamin:

You want to do well. My feeling behind it is, maybe I'm wrong, but because I'm way nearer to this than you are. But my feeling is even if I get seen by haters, the haters, it'll help me find the audience I want found to find me. So it's almost like I'm okay with the trade off because it broadens my reach and helps find the people who do like me, so I'm willing to suffer through them.

Merrick Hanna:

That might work. Yeah. I've never, that's interesting. Yeah, it might work. I don't really know, but it's a good theory. So

Michael Jamin:

I wish people would realize that there are, there's so much people are hurting. So when people are hurt, they want to let you know that they're in pain by inflicting pain on you. So they're yelling, I'm in pain now. You should feel it too,

Merrick Hanna:

But you seem

Michael Jamin:

Like you got, what's that?

Merrick Hanna:

Also on social media, I've seen that a lot of hate comments get commented to you because people don't see you as a real person in a way, I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but especially with public figures, people online kind of see public figures are talkers as almost characters. And so I can just comment, whatever.

Michael Jamin:

They're just

Merrick Hanna:

A character on my screen. But it is very real and I wish people knew that.

Michael Jamin:

I mean, so I never, I'm a lot older than me, but I would never leave a mean comment on someone, not because I'm worried about being canceled just because it just doesn't feel right. Did you at any point, I'm curious, you're so young. I'm curious whether you learned this lesson because you're a big creator now or because you're just a decent person and you wouldn't do that?

Merrick Hanna:

Honestly, it never occurred to me to leave a hate comment. I wasn't on the internet a lot growing up, so maybe that helped, but it just, no, I fully agree with you. It never made sense to a lot of times hiding behind faceless TikTok accounts with random names makes people feel more bold.

Michael Jamin:

Yes. Well, that's another thing, random names, because on TikTok, you can have a random name on Instagram. You can as well, but I don't think on threads, you're real isn't. Wait on Instagram, can you find someone's real name out on Instagram or not? I don't

Merrick Hanna:

Remember. No, I don't think so. You can have anonymous accounts almost everywhere, and people feel a lot more bold to say whatever under the mask of anonymity, but

Michael Jamin:

Horrific. It's a horrific. Well, I got to say, I'm very impressed with you. I really hope that people go just check you out. Look what he's doing. He's bringing joy to the world and he is making a name for himself and good for you. Thank Merrick. You're a good kid. You're a good guy. I wish you much continued success. I hope you keep on booking big roles, bigger and bigger. I see great things for you. Thank

Merrick Hanna:

You so much.

Michael Jamin:

I'm so impressed. Good for you.

Merrick Hanna:

Yeah, and thank you so much for having me on the show as well.

Michael Jamin:

Thank you, Merrick. Thank you so much. Alright everyone, that was an interesting chat. Again, go check out Americana across social media, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, snap, snap, LinkedIn. He's not on LinkedIn. We'll get him on LinkedIn next. Okay, everyone, one day until next week. Thank you so much.

So now we all know what the hell Michael Jamin is talking about. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for my free monthly webinars @michaeljamin.com/webinar. And if you found this podcast helpful or entertaining, please share it with a friend and consider leaving us a five star review on iTunes that really, really helps. For more of this, whatever the hell this is, follow Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJaminwriter. And you can follow Phil Hudson on social media @PhilaHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Crane and music was composed by Anthony Rizzo. And remember, you can have excuses or you can have a creative life, but you can't have both. See you next week.

On this week's episode we have Scott Reeder who is a Prop Master for film and TV. Some of the projects he has worked on have been "Pitch Perfect", "American Crime", "Walker" and many many more. Tune in as he talks about how he comes up with ideas for props that are needed for filming as well as going viral on Tiktok and how he deals with it.

Show Notes

Scott Reeder on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scottpropandroll/

Scott Reeder on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1048397/

Scott Reeder on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@scottpropandroll

Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/

Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course

Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free

Join My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlist

Autogenerated Transcript

Scott Reeder:

Well, part of it, I felt like a little bit of imposter syndrome. Like, well, what? I don't really deserve these accolades because I'm just doing, I'm just not doing anything that great. I didn't think, and I was like, well, how can I keep this up? I'm going to run out of stuff to talk about.

Michael Jamin:

Yes,

Scott Reeder:

But I've been able to just, I just keep going. I've always come up with, so you're listening to, what the hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity. I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts.

Michael Jamin:

Okay. Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin. Welcome to the Michael Jamin Jam. Today I'm jamming with Mr. Scott Reeder, and who the hell is he? I'll tell you who he is. This guy is a prop master on a bunch of movies and TV shows, and I don't know him personally, but I've been following him for a very long time, and he's actually also a talker. So Scott, I'm so inspired by what you do, and I'm opening up my podcast. I'm spending the next couple of sessions talking to, I usually talk about screenwriters and I interview TV writers and people like that, but I also want to open up to people who are doing interesting creative things and social media, and you are for sure one of them. So thank you for coming on my show, dude.

Scott Reeder:

Oh, thanks for having me.

Michael Jamin:

I'm excited. I'm excited too, because I've worked obviously with a lot of prop masters and you post a lot on social media, and honestly, I don't know, 99% of what you do. I'm like, oh, that's how they do it. I have no idea you guys are magicians, because to be truthful, I'm not supposed to notice what you guys do. That's the whole point. When you bring a prop on set, I'm not supposed to see if it's a gag or a gimmick or anything. It's supposed to look real. So I just said, oh, that must be real, and you expose on your TikTok channel how all this is done. It is absolutely fascinating. Everything you put out,

Scott Reeder:

Well, it could be a scene in a burger joint with a guy taking one bite out of a burger, and I would've to have like 30 hamburgers. So it's those little things no one thinks about,

Michael Jamin:

But there's also a crossover a lot of people don't think about is what you do, what set decoration does. There's a whole, okay, for example, if you have a scene and the horse is on set and a horse takes a dump, that set deck, or is that props

Scott Reeder:

Nowadays? I believe the animal Wrangler would probably do it.

Michael Jamin:

There's arguing over set over who's going to do that, right?

Scott Reeder:

Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. There's always, well, I mean, not always arguing, but what I try to do is when I do my breakdown of a script is make contact with everyone involved with every gag or every scene and make sure, okay, am I doing this or you? And that's typically what I say it up to them and say, do you want me to do this? I'm totally cool with doing it, and that's the way I'm not coming off. I'm trying to

Michael Jamin:

It

Scott Reeder:

Off. Right,

Michael Jamin:

Not keep your head, but now, how did you get in? Because you've done, I should run through some of your credits. I'll just go through a you pitch. Perfect. Walker, Texas Ranger, machete, machete, machete. You've some great, the list goes on and on. How did you get into this and why?

Scott Reeder:

Well, I always wanted to work in media and communications of some sort. Oh, gosh. I'll try to keep it brief. I was going to the University of North Texas in 19 88, 89, and there happened to be a movie filming in town. It was called Daddy's Dying, who's got the will written by a playwright named Dale Shores,

Starred Beau Bridges, Beverly DeAngelo, and I found out that there were filming at a hospital. I just showed up. But yeah, I just started picking up trash on set and working as the lowest rung non-paid production assistant. It was 1989, so it was a long time ago, and then I, it's all about networking. It's all about getting your foot in the door. Then I interned at a film at the North Texas Film Commission, which was great because we'd get scripts from producers they wanted, and I got to read 'em early on in the process. I was the guy that would go out and take pictures of, it could be a prison or restaurants, just locations to try to draw producers into our neck of the woods.

Michael Jamin:

Interesting.

Scott Reeder:

Yeah, so that's how I kind of got my start.

Michael Jamin:

So tell me, when you start doing props and you have to make whatever puke or you have come up with all sorts of inventive ways, especially with food, to make something look so it doesn't melt or it doesn't go bad, or you did something with a stick of butter yesterday, you had fake butter, so it doesn't melt onset. How do you come up with this? How do you're like a magician? How do you come up with these, basically you're an inventor. How do you invent all these things to make it look like butter or whatever?

Scott Reeder:

Well, we break down the script. We come up with, we get with every episode, we will have, as you know, you have directors meeting and typically the writers are involved on that and all the concept, and then I know what they're expecting of me, and I'll go from there and I'll just call around. I've got a lot of connections, a lot of friends that if I haven't jumped that particular hurdle, I have friends that have. So that's just kind of how,

Michael Jamin:

Really, okay, so it's word of mouth. How do you, that's it. Then

Scott Reeder:

If I were in LA I would be hiring a food stylist,

Michael Jamin:

But

Scott Reeder:

There's not enough. There may, there are some commercial food stylists in Dallas. I'm in Austin. There really aren't many people here for that. So we have to really up our food game as prop master, an assistant prop master and prop assistant.

Michael Jamin:

Then how do you, because we were talking earlier, you're based out of Austin, and I was like, I just assumed. So all your work is basically local and you get enough work locally?

Scott Reeder:

I work locally when I can.

Michael Jamin:

Is that most of the time though, isn't

Scott Reeder:

It? But occasionally I'll have to travel

Michael Jamin:

Occasionally, right?

Scott Reeder:

Yeah. I did Nosferatu for AMC in Rhode Island, and so when things get slow here in town, I'll travel on. I did a movie in Mississippi in 2019.

Michael Jamin:

And how do you get most of your work? You don't have an agent getting you work, do you?

Scott Reeder:

No. Word of mouth. It's just relationships I've built with producers and word of mouth.

Michael Jamin:

So how does that work basically when it's like, how do you know when it's time to, oh, there's nothing going on in Austin. Do you give it a couple of weeks, a couple of months? What do you do

Scott Reeder:

Typically? Hopefully I have a job lined up and we try to play on a few months ahead. If not, it's just wait around. Now what I do, Michael, is I'll fill in as art director on commercials.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, really? Okay.

Scott Reeder:

So actually I'm lined up for one starting next week, and I haven't been that fortunate with commercials through the strike because when the actors went on strike, even though companies can still make commercials, they're holding back on their campaigns right now.

Michael Jamin:

Why is that, do you think?

Scott Reeder:

I don't know, but there's, there's definitely been a slowdown. Interesting. Now, part of that could be the Texas heat. I don't know, but it's definitely slower than normal. But yes, I would try to line jobs up at a time. I'll call around, let some people know that I'm available, but a lot of people know me will say, oh, Scott shows ending soon. I'll give him a call. That sort of thing. It's a very small community.

Michael Jamin:

I bet. Do you prefer to work in TV or film?

Scott Reeder:

My bread and has been television. I like both. If I go through a full season of television and I have enough time between seasons or it's a picture wrap of a show, I like filling in with features.

Michael Jamin:

What is the difference for you between the two?

Scott Reeder:

It's a big difference. It doesn't move nearly as fast.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah,

Scott Reeder:

Because

Michael Jamin:

You're not doing as many pages a day.

Scott Reeder:

Correct. You might do two or three pages a day.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah,

Scott Reeder:

It's just a whole different animal really. If I'm doing a television show, I'm not on set as much in Perpetual Prep. I'm always working on the next script, and if it's a feature, I will prepped it ahead of time and on set, and I'm more hands-on at camera and whatnot, how many, which I like that part of it.

Michael Jamin:

People don't realize that when a prop is required on set, you'll have backups and backups for the backups. That's the worst thing that has happened. If something goes wrong, the one gets yelled at.

Scott Reeder:

Oh, correct. Yes. We always try to have multiples. Now there are those items that are one of a kind, and you just got to cross your fingers, pray and let everyone know, Hey, this is the, oh, don't play with this. Between takes. It's the only one we got, but that's rare. We typically have multiples of everything.

Michael Jamin:

How many multiples is enough, do you think?

Scott Reeder:

Yeah, it just depends on the scene. I like to have at least bare minimum two. If it's an item that's involved in a stunt, you'll want to have four. Food scenes are crazy because it's hard to determine, because a lot of times the actor might improvise and eat a lot more than you think.

Michael Jamin:

So

Scott Reeder:

I always go overboard on food scenes.

Michael Jamin:

But they give you a budget. I mean, they also say they don't want you to waste. How do you know they don't want you to come up with too much? Because then they're paying for that.

Scott Reeder:

Yeah. Well, the first couple, if we're talking about television, the first couple episodes or when you kind of feel it out, you'll buy heavier.

Michael Jamin:

And

Scott Reeder:

Then my assistant will call and say, Hey, you got way too much last time. Dial it back, this particular director. And we get to where we know how the directors work. You'll have one director that'll do six takes another director two, and moving on. So you get to where you understand the personalities of everybody and how they work and how they operate. Well, this particular person, the last food scene they went through a lot. So we'll get a lot.

Michael Jamin:

Now, do you prefer low budget or high budget, or does that not make a difference to you?

Scott Reeder:

Well, I prefer a bigger budget,

Michael Jamin:

Really,

Scott Reeder:

To be honest. Yeah, it's a lot of times if you're working on a no budget feature or a really ultra basic cable show, I'm not going to name names, but they, they literally give you pennies and you're trying, it's just so much harder when you could just go buy something than have to scrounge it or limit your amount of takes because of the budget or limited amount of props you have for a take.

Michael Jamin:

Now here in LA there's tons of prop houses. I mean, what do you do when you're shooting in an area that doesn't have houses? Does Austin have any good prop houses?

Scott Reeder:

What you do is you open up a prop house. That's what I did 20 years ago. I opened up a little prop shop. It's not near the scale of the Los Angeles prop houses,

Michael Jamin:

But

Scott Reeder:

I have a little bit of everything. It's kind of

Michael Jamin:

The newest art. That's amazing. So it's just a warehouse and you rent out to other prop masters, not just yourself, but to other productions?

Scott Reeder:

Correct.

Michael Jamin:

Wow. And

Scott Reeder:

I actually rent all over the country. I just had a bunch of stuff come back from the Kevin Costner movie that was shooting in Utah.

Michael Jamin:

There's one prop house that's going out of business in la. They're having a fire sale, and I'm like, go get rid of that. That stuff is important.

Scott Reeder:

Well, hopefully one of the other, either history for hire or independent studio services or hand prop room will go in and get some of that stuff.

Michael Jamin:

And so do you specialize your prop specialize in something? No,

Scott Reeder:

Not really. I have a little bit of everything. I've got occupational props, a little bit of old West, some period stuff. I've got police gear, lots of military. I try to keep things that you can't find at Walmart, basically.

Michael Jamin:

Right. Or

Scott Reeder:

Else the sub decorator will just go to Walmart, typically. So I specialize in harder to find things.

Michael Jamin:

Is that something, do most prop or many prop masters have their own prop houses, or is that something just your

Scott Reeder:

Not really. No. I was just the first to open one here. I think a lot of people will have prop trucks that they'll keep their kit on, and they'll have a general assemblage of props that they'll stock props that they'll bring to every, and they'll leave a portion of their truck empty for the hero props that they'll bring on some. I'm sure some have storage rooms, storage facilities, somewhere

Michael Jamin:

Where

Scott Reeder:

They store things.

Michael Jamin:

Well, this explains to me, it seems like a very entrepreneurial in spirit, which explains to me, or maybe it doesn't, but how you started on this TikTok journey that you've been on, because this is very interesting what you do.

Scott Reeder:

Well, it's totally accidental. During the early days of the pandemic, my daughter was scrolling on TikTok. She was 17 at the time, and she's laughing at some videos. So I'm like, what you laughing at? That sort of thing. So I downloaded it and I saw some people attempting to tell dad jokes, and I'm thinking, well, I can do that,

Michael Jamin:

And you can, you're good at it.

Scott Reeder:

And with some that I'd written or taking really old jokes and adding punchlines to 'em, it was just fun. It was a fun hobby during that time where there was no, where the whole industry was shut down. And I got back on the Amazon show that I was on called Panic, and one of my assistants, I can't remember which one it was, but they said, Hey man, what we do is interesting. What if you work in some prop stuff?

Michael Jamin:

It

Scott Reeder:

Might be interesting. So I was very careful because you want to be careful not to interfere with any NDA you may have signed. So I just kept things up in the lockup. I didn't go out on set. I just started, here's a breakaway beer bottle, this is what it's made out of, and this is how we safely break it. Boom.

Michael Jamin:

And

Scott Reeder:

That's how it started, just breaking crap on my head, and it just went from there. Of course, the one that took off was silent props, which was pool balls. And I had, of course, I thought everybody did this, but apparently not.

Michael Jamin:

No,

Scott Reeder:

I wasn't aware of that. Prop masters.

Michael Jamin:

Go on. Yeah.

Scott Reeder:

Well, they were painted.

Michael Jamin:

Right. I'll explain just people listening. So when you have a scene on a pool table in the background, you don't want to hear the clinking of the balls, so you don't use pool balls. Instead, you use

Scott Reeder:

Go ahead. Painted racket balls.

Michael Jamin:

Painted racket balls, and they're about the same size.

Scott Reeder:

Exactly. Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

And is this something that all prop Masters know, or did you just figure this out?

Scott Reeder:

Well, it was accidental back way back on necessary roughness. The original back early nineties football movie, we had a bar scene, and for stunts, we painted racket. We had a football player landing on a pool table. Right. So we had all these painted racket balls, but well, we realized, oh, they don't make noise, so that's helpful too. So that's kind of how it started. It was, yeah, because stump prop,

Michael Jamin:

People don't realize when you shoot a movie or a TV show, you don't want noise in the background. So you'll later impose put in that noise, the set is quiet, and then you wind up putting in the noise. For some reason, it seems so silly, but that's how it works.

Scott Reeder:

The sound mixer, Michael, I don't know if you probably know this, but if we're filming in a kitchen,

Michael Jamin:

Or

Scott Reeder:

Especially in an industrial kitchen in a restaurant, I don't know how the people on the bear do it, because you got to go in and unplug everything. You got to unplug anything that has a compressor,

Michael Jamin:

Right. It might

Scott Reeder:

Make noise

Michael Jamin:

Or,

Scott Reeder:

Which has boned me a few times because I have stuff stored in a refrigerator and the sound mixer is like, oh, we got to unplug that. And I'm like, yeah, yeah,

Michael Jamin:

Right. So now you've got to bring a backup fridge.

Scott Reeder:

But everything shoes, the sound mixer has what they call mold scan and they'll put it on the bottom of people's shoes. Yeah. What else? There's all kinds of stuff. I spoiled the crew of the show that I've been working on because once they saw my videos, they were like, well, well, do you have silent pinging pong balls? And I'm like, well, I can figure it out.

Michael Jamin:

Alright, so what's silent ping pong call made out of?

Scott Reeder:

I just found foam balls on Amazon and painted them,

Michael Jamin:

But it

Scott Reeder:

Was that simple. I just measured them.

Michael Jamin:

But the paint has to, it has to have a sheen. It can't just look crappy. It really has to look real.

Scott Reeder:

Yeah. Well, pinging pong balls are kind of more satin. They're not glossy,

Michael Jamin:

So

Scott Reeder:

You just do just a satin gloss on 'em once you put your paint on. And yeah, they turned out pretty good.

Michael Jamin:

That's amazing.

Scott Reeder:

But yeah, the first video I did we're talking, it was 2020. I had garnered about a hundred thousand followers on TikTok, strictly on dad jokes.

Michael Jamin:

And

Scott Reeder:

Then I did this one video with the silent pool balls and the silent grocery bags, because grocery bags are a big deal. You know how noisy paper grocery bags are, and I came up with this joke as I was filming and I was like, should I do this joke? It was at the end of it, I took the pool balls and put 'em in the paper sack and said, and now the sound man is not annoyed with my ball sack.

Michael Jamin:

That

Scott Reeder:

Was the joke. And I filmed it and I'm like, should I leave the joke in? I was really torn. I was like, yeah, I'll leave the joke. And I signed off my phone. I got in my car, I had about a 30 minute drive home, and I stopped at a convenience store and looked at my phone and it was already up to, I mean, we're talking in half an hour. It had like 20,000 likes,

Michael Jamin:

And

Scott Reeder:

It was insane. That one went up. That one got over 12 million views.

Michael Jamin:

That's really a lot. And did it make you nervous when it first happened?

Scott Reeder:

Oh yes.

Michael Jamin:

Okay. Let's talk about why.

Scott Reeder:

Well, the thing is I'm, I've never been social media savvy. I've never been that dialed into it. I did have an Instagram account, but I maybe had a hundred followers

Michael Jamin:

And

Scott Reeder:

Somebody at work said, Hey, hey, Scott, when are you going to post on Instagram? I was like, well, I don't know. My hands are full with TikTok. And they were like, well, dude, how did you get so many followers? And I looked at Instagram and it was at like 10,000.

Michael Jamin:

I was

Scott Reeder:

Like, oh, geez. So I've been kind of forced into branching out to other platforms when I've already kind of got my hands full because all this, I'd say 75% of my content has been done while I'm also pulling a 12 hour day on a TV show. So it's a lot.

Michael Jamin:

People don't realize it's a lot because, but there's a lot to talk about here. I'm very interested because first of all, you have something like 1.7, I think million followers on TikTok, which is huge. And this is only how many, two or three years you're doing this?

Scott Reeder:

May of 2000, may of 2020 is when I started, but I started slow

Michael Jamin:

And

Scott Reeder:

Then got into, then I guess it would be, I'd say July of 2020 is where I really started picking up. Yeah,

Michael Jamin:

But why did it make you nervous when you started going viral?

Scott Reeder:

Well, part of it, I felt like a little bit of imposter syndrome. Well, I don't really deserve these accolades because I'm just doing justm, not doing anything that great. I didn't think, and I was like, well, how can I keep this up? I'm going to run out of stuff to talk about, but I've been able to just, I just keep going. I always come up with something.

Michael Jamin:

Right. What's the agreement you made with yourself? How many times a week do you post?

Scott Reeder:

I try to post at least four times a week.

Michael Jamin:

Okay.

Scott Reeder:

I can't knock. I wish I'm one of those I can't get. Early on, I was doing two a day, but it was just

Michael Jamin:

Burning

Scott Reeder:

Me out, and I'm also trying to do stuff for YouTube and whatnot. So it's just

Michael Jamin:

Separate different content for YouTube?

Scott Reeder:

No, it's the same, but I'm trying to get, I'm filtering. I'm trying to work on some long form as well. But yeah, then YouTube. But like I said, I always feel like I get forced into other platforms. I found out in early 2021, there was a YouTube page. They had 90,000 subscribers. It was called the Prop Master. It was my profile picture and 40 of my videos.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, you're kidding. What'd you do?

Scott Reeder:

I went and I did copyright claim on every, I stayed up all night, copyright claiming every video. How did you

Michael Jamin:

Prove it?

Scott Reeder:

I sent links to my account because for that, they were just taking them off of TikTok, so I sent links to my TikTok. I sent direct links so they could easily see the date it's dated.

Michael Jamin:

I cut you off. Were you about to say you hired a lawyer?

Scott Reeder:

I hired a lawyer just in case, but luckily the person ceased and desist. They immediately pulled all the videos down, changed the name of the channel, how Find though Away did, what's that?

Michael Jamin:

I'm sorry, I cut you off. They walked away with what?

Scott Reeder:

They walked away with all the subscribers. There's no way to get those subscribers back, which really pissed me off.

Michael Jamin:

What was the name of the page though? Were they using your name?

Scott Reeder:

No, they weren't. It was just called the Prop Master, but it was my profile picture

Michael Jamin:

Off of

Scott Reeder:

TikTok and it was all my videos. And

Michael Jamin:

How did you find them? Discover them.

Scott Reeder:

You know something? There's another creator named Garden Marcus. He's a gardener on TikTok, and his manager reached out to me and said, Hey, this person has been made a fake account on YouTube. So they reached out to me to warn me. They said, it looks like this guy's doing your content too.

Michael Jamin:

Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my content and I know you do because you're listening to me, I will email it to you for free. Just join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos of the week. These are for writers, actors, creative types, people like you can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you, and the price is free. You got no excuse to join. Go to michaeljamin.com and now back to, what the hell is Michael Jamin talking about?

This happens to me all the time, not on YouTube, but you must have 'em too. You have fake accounts with your profile picture. They spell your name wrong with one letter, and they're just trying to scam people. I guess. I'm not sure what the point is.

Scott Reeder:

I don't know. But yeah, I bet there's six or eight on TikTok. It happened to me again just about, I found out about it three weeks ago on Facebook. I never have had I've, like I said, I've always had my hands full with Instagram and TikTok and YouTube, and I always keep saying, well, I'm going to eventually branch out. I had made a Facebook, a Scott Prop roll Facebook page and posted some videos back in 2022. I didn't, but I didn't get any views, so I gave up on it and then I found out I looked and this, I just happened upon it. I just did a search to see if there were any fake accounts on Facebook, and sure enough, this person made a Facebook page, said, Scott Prop and Roll spelled exactly the same. They've got 69 now, now 70,000 followers. So I always take that as a challenge. I'm like, okay, well boom, I'm going to start posting my videos. And of course then you get a little let down because they don't get any views then. But it's the same thing as with YouTube. Same exact thing with the algorithm. It's like you post about 20 videos and you got nothing, and a few weeks later, things start kicking in.

Michael Jamin:

And

Scott Reeder:

So I've played massive catch up. I haven't quite caught up with the fake me, but I'm close to the fake Me is at 70,000. I just hit 60,000. But are

Michael Jamin:

You going to try to take down the fake account on Facebook?

Scott Reeder:

I did. I reported it, and they came back with, we can't take down fan pages, so I've just got to keep at it.

Michael Jamin:

But it's not a fan page though.

Scott Reeder:

No, it's not. It's definitely not. People don't realize how frustrating this is Michael. My mom was following the fake.

Michael Jamin:

True. Now, people don't realize the amount of work that goes into this. The night before, I've had to post five times a week the night before. I'm like, oh, crap. What am I going to talk about tomorrow? Do you get the same thing? How much thought goes into the night before?

Scott Reeder:

Well, I just have a list anytime I get an idea, because I'm real bad about not writing stuff down, but I've gotten a lot better, especially with doing content, is I just keep a running list and the night before I'll look at that list and if I haven't already fleshed it out already, and then I'll

Michael Jamin:

Come up with, the thing is, your content is very family friendly. What you do is very interesting. Like I said, it's like watching a magician, and yet I can't imagine why someone would troll you, and yet I'm certain people troll you because people are jerks or do they not?

Scott Reeder:

I've been really lucky it hasn't been that bad. Yeah, there've been the occasional, and typically it's like if someone gets mad at me about something, which I really don't give people much reason to be mad at

Michael Jamin:

Me.

Scott Reeder:

The first thing that they said is they call me old man, and it's like whatever's like, okay, now what? I'm an old man on TikTok that probably has more followers than you, is what I'm thinking in my head, but I never say

Michael Jamin:

It. Right. So you don't respond in any way to these people?

Scott Reeder:

I do not. I do not. I watched way too many people respond. There are some accounts out there that are more kind of vlog and they eat that up that gives them content.

Michael Jamin:

It's

Scott Reeder:

Like if someone says something snarky to 'em, they jump on it and they'll make six different videos about a guy that talked bad to him. That's just not my style.

Michael Jamin:

Engage with, you must have super fans too. Do you engage with them?

Scott Reeder:

Yeah, I try to.

Michael Jamin:

Okay. Yeah. You like a little, so every comment or some comments, because it can be overwhelming. You have a huge following.

Scott Reeder:

Well, I will keep my eyeballs on the comments on a video for a few days, but yeah, you can't keep up with it.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah,

Scott Reeder:

Once it's been posted over a week.

Michael Jamin:

Okay, but you

Scott Reeder:

Do try to

Michael Jamin:

Respond. See, that's something I'm troubled with is then I'm spending way too much time on the app. The problem is, and I appreciate all the kind comments, but I'm like, how much time am I going to spend on this thing?

Scott Reeder:

Now?

Michael Jamin:

Are you monetizing any of this?

Scott Reeder:

I've recently been trying with the TikTok beta. Have you done creativity beta?

Michael Jamin:

So what is that?

Scott Reeder:

That's been the best thing. It's the most profitable because TikTok, I was on the, since 2020 on the creator was the standard creator plan,

Michael Jamin:

And

Scott Reeder:

It's more like if you do a 61 second or more video, the payoff is almost like a YouTube long form. It's really good.

Michael Jamin:

So you are actually okay, because I haven't done it yet, and I thought they may actually decrease my reach if they have to pay you. I thought my mind is they might punish you.

Scott Reeder:

To be honest, my reach went up on the longer videos.

Michael Jamin:

How long do you usually go?

Scott Reeder:

What's that?

Michael Jamin:

When you say longer? Longer than what, like three minutes or four minutes? What do you

Scott Reeder:

No, I do 61 seconds.

Michael Jamin:

That's long to you is 61 seconds.

Scott Reeder:

Well, yeah. I mean that's long to them. As you do over 60 seconds,

Michael Jamin:

It's

Scott Reeder:

A whole different payment structure. It ranges anywhere from 70 cents per thousand to a dollar, 16 per thousand views. Just that adds up.

Michael Jamin:

It adds up. Right. So you're not doing this for the money, but it's nice to get the money.

Scott Reeder:

Correct,

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Scott Reeder:

Especially during a strike.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, for sure. Okay, so it's significant, but now, was there a moment though when you just wanted to stop or quit or?

Scott Reeder:

Well, there are times where I feel burnout, that's for sure.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Scott Reeder:

But I've always just kept grinding.

Michael Jamin:

What have been some surprising advantages that have come from this that you would not have guessed

Scott Reeder:

Michael? Number one, I want to say you've had the best questions out of any podcasts I've been on.

Michael Jamin:

Really?

Scott Reeder:

You really do. You really

Michael Jamin:

Enjoy

Scott Reeder:

This? So really the coolest thing to come out of it is, okay, I hate to do this. I got to go back a little bit. I was worried when I first started doing these videos that other masters in Los Angeles would think, who does this guy think he is telling them how we do our job?

Michael Jamin:

Yes.

Scott Reeder:

So I was worried. So I was kind of waiting to see if there was going to be any backlash. Well, I got a call from a prop master named Peter Clark, and he said, Hey man, I just want to let you know I've been watching your videos and I'm learning from your videos, and I really want to tell you I appreciate what you're doing. I kept, this

Michael Jamin:

Is a word respected prop master that you looked up to.

Scott Reeder:

Yes.

Michael Jamin:

Wow. Go on. Yeah, go on. I cut you off. So I'm sorry.

Scott Reeder:

I had so many questions, and then I got other calls stating the same thing. Then next thing, I was invited to be a founding member of the Property Master's Guild, which it's similar to, it's not a labor union, it's similar to the Art Director's Guild or the Set Decorators Association, something like that. But there had never been one. And I came in before we opened the doors to the Guild. Here I am a guy in Texas on a founding group of prop masters. And it was,

Michael Jamin:

Isn't that amazing?

Scott Reeder:

It was truly a pinnacle of my career, really being just the biggest honor is having other prop masters that I've been idolizing for years. I just went to in July. So because of the rider's strike, all the prop trucks were parked at Independent Studio services, which is the biggest prop house in la. And so I flew out for the, we were going to have a tailgate party, and every prop master, if you were a prop master and you were in la, you were at this party. And we had prop masters coming in from Canada all over the place. And it was the funnest event. It was just absolutely amazing. But I've got to meet the guy that prop mastered Patton was there, all these retired prop masters were there. The guy that was Dennis Parrish, who was also the founder of one of the big prop houses, bill Petrada, who did Starship Troopers. Well, movie's going way back. But yeah,

Michael Jamin:

You must've been a little bit of a celebrity there must. Everyone recognized you.

Scott Reeder:

It was a little weird, but I felt I was gotten used.

Michael Jamin:

Got used to that. And so you were worried at first of being judged. And then of course that's not, I mean, that's just a lesson in and of itself. Everyone's worried about being judged about being an imposter, and now that's not what happened. But to be fair, you were staying in your lane. This is what you know, and you're talking about what you know. And so it is kind of like this unfounded fear. You didn't need to be worried, but tell me about what happens to you because it's a little bit the same thing when I'm walking on strike at the picket line at the writer's strike, I get recognized. Where else else would I get recognized? If not on a picket line on the rider's strike, that's where I would. So it is a little what happens to you when people, but you have a huge following. You must get recognized outside of these circles as well. Maybe at the supermarket, wherever

Scott Reeder:

I have, I haven't gotten used to it. I mean, it doesn't happen all the time, but occasionally.

Michael Jamin:

And then what's your way of handling this?

Scott Reeder:

Well, typically they just say, Hey, can I get a selfie? And I'll take a picture with them, and that's it. Thanks for watching my videos right's

Michael Jamin:

Funny. It's really crazy. Yeah, it's a trip. Because yeah, you're in their lives every day. They see you every day, and you're somebody special to them, and you are. You're making them laugh in 61 second increments so that you can get your payout. Now, I know when I watch your videos that I will never see one that's 59 seconds because

Scott Reeder:

You're true. Not anymore.

Michael Jamin:

You'll stretch that to 61 to get your payday.

Scott Reeder:

I will. I went back and I posted an old video that I'd done that I thought, I bet there's probably a lot of my followers that haven't seen it. And it was 59, it was 59 seconds. I went back and I always do my head turn. Now I always do my head turn at the end. I'll say my stupid joke, and then I'll ponder it. So I just slow mode my head turn.

Michael Jamin:

How much time will you spend on a post? I have a rule that How much time will you spend on a post producing a post?

Scott Reeder:

I don't time it. And they're all different because some of them, I'm doing commentary because I've done well, kind of dueting videos that I find on Instagram, typically other filmmaking videos, because I branched out a little bit to where if I see that there's no one's doing videos, discussing a poor man's process show, they'll show it, but they won't tell the audience what's going on. So they're limiting their audience, right? Like, oh, well, this is strictly for filmmakers,

Michael Jamin:

But

Scott Reeder:

When I started, I'm like, well, what they're doing here is this and this. So the prop man is over here shaking the car, and then the gaffer is spinning a light. And I just say, what all is happening in this shot?

Michael Jamin:

And

Scott Reeder:

Those videos have done well.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, for sure. Yeah, for sure.

Scott Reeder:

Same with stunt people. You know what I've had to worry with though, is the dangerous content violation. Because even if you're showing a clip

Michael Jamin:

Of

Scott Reeder:

A stunt from a, it could be die hard. It actually happened to me on Die Hard

Michael Jamin:

When

Scott Reeder:

I was talking about rubber glass, that that's what they walk on. And it got a sensitive content page slapped on top of it, which totally, it just pulls you off the FYP. It's just like you might as well not have even posted it.

Michael Jamin:

And

Scott Reeder:

So I've got to be real careful about, because even in their community guidelines, they have added in there, even fictional violence. Interesting. So if it's a movie clip, yeah.

Michael Jamin:

See, the problem with what I have to do to go viral, I have to piss people off, which I'm not comfortable doing. You have see something controversial, but you don't really have to worry about, I think you just go viral when something's truly interesting that blows people away. The secrets that you reveal. Well,

Scott Reeder:

Like I said, I'm doing that because I did a joke, it was mainly a dad joke, but I incorporated, it was about a rubber cinder block where I show that the cinder block is rubber. And I said, we use these to keep the actors from getting hurt. And I threw it at my assistant and it hits him in the head,

Michael Jamin:

And

Scott Reeder:

Then the camera goes to me. I'm just doing it all like this with my hand. And then off camera, he just nails me with it. At the end, after I tell the horrible punchline to the joke, he nails me with it. And I put in this, I folded in, which I like. I love doing, I'm an amateur Foley guy. I love taking the props that I have and trying to make sounds to him. Just loony tune stuff over the top. But

Michael Jamin:

In the app, it's actually hard to do that in the app. You're talking about editing sounds in the app? No.

Scott Reeder:

Yeah. I rarely edit in the app.

Michael Jamin:

Where do you edit? What do you use?

Scott Reeder:

I just use in shop. It's an app that I found that way. I'm not dealing with watermarks, and I'll just kind,

Michael Jamin:

It's called in shop.

Scott Reeder:

Yeah, I-N-S-H-O-T in shop.

Michael Jamin:

I'll write this down.

Scott Reeder:

And I think I pay maybe 99 bucks a year, but it's been worth it. Every penny and its tools are easier for me anyway. So to do, because when you do a vocal, well, it says voiceover, but you record your sound, you can move it around a lot easier.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, because a real, and then you add, when you upload it to TikTok, then you add the big captions. Is that how you or you add Well,

Scott Reeder:

Sometimes off the, I'll put 'em in. The ones in InShot kind of match the ones TikTok has.

Michael Jamin:

Maybe not,

Scott Reeder:

But it's worth giving it a shot. How funny. But that's just what I've been comfortable with.

Michael Jamin:

Interesting. And you don't use because there's cap cup, you, you don't like that?

Scott Reeder:

I haven't.

Michael Jamin:

You haven't tried it?

Scott Reeder:

I haven't really tried it that much.

Michael Jamin:

See, I'm interested in whatever's the easiest. That's why I've been using shooting and TikTok and then uploading the Instagram only. It's just laziness. It's just like the less I can do, the better. But maybe your way might be better. Might be easier. I might have to look into this.

Scott Reeder:

It's worth trying. It's a pretty easy to navigate. That's why I did it was because it was easier. It was easier to navigate, I thought, than TikTok. But yeah, I just haven't gotten into cap cut.

Michael Jamin:

Right. Oh, interesting. So I'm learning something today. And so has this helped you professionally? I mean, it's nice to be recognized by your peers, but is it getting you work?

Scott Reeder:

Not really, because I've kind of been on the same gig. It's like when the strike's over, I've got a series. I've got a season four of

The show that I was working on. And so yeah, I mean, it's been, the coolest thing is showing people, and it's really a lot of kids out there. My audience is 18 to 34, probably similar to your audience. I think we probably have a lot of the same age range. It's people learning, oh wow, I didn't know that profession existed. And ooh, this is a possibility for me. Showing them that it's out there and everyone wants to know, well, how do I get in the business? And I know you get that question probably 10 times more than I get it. And you just got to be tenacious and proactive. And if there are no films shooting where you live and you want to be on a film crew, you move to somewhere that makes movies and TV shows. And it doesn't have to be just LA anymore. It could be Atlanta, it could be la Atlanta, Vancouver, North Carolina, new Orleans or New Mexico has a pretty good, you could make a living.

Michael Jamin:

Now we talked about a little bit about imposter syndrome, but was there a moment, even when, for me, in the beginning it was like, who am I? Isn't this AP just for teenage girls who might even

Scott Reeder:

Be talking,

Michael Jamin:

Who cares about me? How did you feel that way? And are you over that?

Scott Reeder:

Yeah, I think I'm kind of over it. You get to where it really thickens your skin a bit. You get to where, because some people are, like you said, there are those trolls that it doesn't matter who you are, they're going to go after. I did have one scary situation where have you dealt with any kind of stalker situations?

Michael Jamin:

No. And I hope I never do. What was your story? What

Scott Reeder:

Would you do? Well, I'm trying to be vague about it, but there was a guy got ahold of my cell phone number and was just blowing it up and then texting, leaving long messages, and I didn't call back because he didn't sound something wasn't right. And these text messages that I got worried me and I went so far as to go into, luckily with the show I was working on, I was friends with the HR lady and said, Hey, what do you, I was like, Hey, I know you've got to deal with that. Some of the actors

Michael Jamin:

Have

Scott Reeder:

This happen. What do you do?

Michael Jamin:

What'd she tell you?

Scott Reeder:

And I just really, it was almost like dealing with a troll in the sense that it got to the point where there were profane messages left because of my not responding.

Michael Jamin:

Yes.

Scott Reeder:

But eventually it ended, eventually it ended. It went on for a year, a year and a half.

Michael Jamin:

Oh my. But you didn't take any, first of all, why didn't you block them?

Scott Reeder:

I did. And they called back from a different number every time. Every time they called, it was a different number.

Michael Jamin:

And eventually they just got bored. You're saying?

Scott Reeder:

I'm hoping.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, just a nightmare.

Scott Reeder:

It really was. It was. I mean, we're talking calls at 11:00 AM 11:00 PM 2:00 AM

Michael Jamin:

What does your family think about all this?

Scott Reeder:

Well, that kind of stuff. I tried to not really worry them too much that it was happening. I mean, my wife, I told, but no, the family's great. They, they're loving it.

Michael Jamin:

They get kick it. Your kids are not embarrassed that dad's doing this. I think it's cool. They think

Scott Reeder:

It's cool. No, my son eats it up. He is 12, almost 13. And this is kind of a funny, I accidentally made him a meme. I'll tell you what, three years ago, I didn't know what the word mean meant. So that's how backward I'm, so I did a video again with the rubber cinder block saying I was making a joke that when you're a prop master, you can't p prank your kids anymore because they're desensitized to any impending doom. And so I said, Hey, Watson, my son's going by on a scooter, and it was all staged.

Michael Jamin:

And I

Scott Reeder:

Had him go by on the scooter. I say, Hey, Watson, cinder block. And I throw the cinder block and he doesn't even flinch. He just keeps moving. It bounces off of him. Right? Well, a year later, someone and the video did okay. It was pretty well received, but I wouldn't say super viral or anything, but someone took that three second snippet of me saying, Hey, Watson cinder block. And they froze it right before the cinder block hits it and it blew up. I mean, right now, if you were to type in, Hey, Watson, it'll probably finish your sentence and say Cinder block, and you'll see hundreds of videos. And then people did like fan videos. I bet there are 15 different animations of it. And there's a game in Roblox called Item Asylum. And one of the most deadly weapons in item asylum is the cinder block.

Michael Jamin:

And

Scott Reeder:

When you throw it, it's my voice saying, Hey, Watson, cinder block. Never got a penny for it. But I think it's funny. That's a trip. My son was very proud.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, that's

Scott Reeder:

A trick. Yeah. And then every YouTuber, I'm talking, the top YouTubers were like Wilbur Soot and Jimmy here. And a lot of these big gamer YouTubers were, there was the trend where they were doing the, you laugh, you lose videos. And that meme was in every, you laugh, you lose video

Michael Jamin:

Out

Scott Reeder:

There.

Michael Jamin:

Now you mentioned that you've done a lot of, I guess, podcast interviews. Who's reaching out to you to try to have you on their, and why? What's that about?

Scott Reeder:

Well, I've done, a lot of times it's other talkers starting podcasts. I did film festival. I did a film festival podcast last week. Prop, the Prop Masters Guild has a podcast. I did that one, but I did, Erin, what's her name? Erin McGough is her name. And she's a documentary filmmaker.

Michael Jamin:

I

Scott Reeder:

Can't remember the name of her podcast, but she's got one. I don't know. I've done quite a few now. I'm trying to remember 'em all. There have been just general podcasters out there that are just kind of general all purpose. They just go on topical things. I will say this, you know what I avoided was when rust happened, I got a ton of costs.

Michael Jamin:

I bet

Scott Reeder:

I got a ton of costs. And I kind of talked it over with my friend who's a line producer and was like, man, I don't know if I feel comfortable taking these calls. A prop master, not an armor. However, we are the ones a lot of times that hire the armors. And I was like, so basically I turned down every interview because I didn't really want to get defined by that.

Michael Jamin:

You didn't want to wait, I would think. Okay, so you didn't want to wade into the controversy and you didn't want to, what else? I mean, obviously it was a tragedy.

Scott Reeder:

Yes. I just didn't want to capitalize on it.

Michael Jamin:

You didn't want to capitalize on it. Right. That's what it was.

Scott Reeder:

Plus tie yourself to that. So if you're on CN and every major network talking about it, then you got to get connected to that. And I really didn't want to be connected to it in any way. I did one, I did a TikTok, like a three minute one talking about a couple days after it, because so many of my followers were like, come on, Scott, you got to weigh in. So I weighed in on my TikTok and YouTube and just said, well, look, I waited until the sheriff's department had put out a statement to where we kind knew what they say the events were, because the first couple days they kind of kept it hush hush. And so I read the sheriff's statement and then based what I said on that was what the protocols were, these are what the protocols that we use, and they worked. They're good protocols. That's how we've kept people safe for many years. But they breached every protocol. They broke every rule

Michael Jamin:

In the book, my

Scott Reeder:

Personal opinion. And I just said, these are the protocols that we use and this is how they performed their duties. And this is, of course, resulting in,

Michael Jamin:

Never worked on a show, worked on a show. As far as I know, I've never worked on a show with weapons, with blanks. But we did do a show where we had a dummy gun. It was a rubber gun. And I remember having to talk with the ad saying, no, let's do a safety meeting. I want to make sure people know it's a fake gun and still treat it as if it's a real gun. But I don't want anybody being scared. Let's just talk about it Anyway, I don't know. I'm overly nervous

Scott Reeder:

For sure. We always try to do safety meetings on that, even if we're using an airsoft

Michael Jamin:

Or

Scott Reeder:

A rubber gun. But I've worked with, that's the whole thing, conventional blade fire. If you're working on a lot of action films, I've been around it for the last 30 years. I don't personally like to armor, to be an armor. I prefer prop master, and I'll always bring an armor on. So no, so I'm not losing focus,

Michael Jamin:

But it's certainly a different license. You have to have to be an armorer

Scott Reeder:

In LA there,

Michael Jamin:

But

Scott Reeder:

There aren't a ton outside of la. It's just, it varies state to state.

Michael Jamin:

Right. And I can

Scott Reeder:

See, so producers really have to do their due diligence and making sure that they really check the resume and do reference checks on the person they're going to hire. That's so important with that position.

Michael Jamin:

Well, for sure. But as with the stunt board, anybody like that, anyone where someone can get hurt for sure. And so I can see you actually not wanting to be, I guess, the face of that controversy. Is that what it was?

Scott Reeder:

Oh, yeah.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Scott Reeder:

And I knew that there were other people that could weigh in a lot, be more informative than I could because I'm not a, not an armor room. And there are other people better suited for that. To me, there are several prop houses out of Los Angeles that have wonderful weapons departments. And if you think about it, I think I got it from New York Times. I think the number's this since 1990, I think it's 43 deaths have occurred on film sets in the us. And this isn't because there are a lot of other ones, but if you go worldwide, but the two of them were, well, Brandon Lee was one,

Michael Jamin:

Helina,

Scott Reeder:

Hutchins was other. Those are the only two firearms related, I mean, film sets are dangerous, especially if you're on an action show where there's a lot of vehicles. Most of those deaths were equipment related or from falls, people falling off of rigging motorcycle car, but not always stunt men. A lot of them were camera operators

Michael Jamin:

That

Scott Reeder:

Got killed because they're mounted on those insert vehicles too. The camera department, they put themselves out there and put themselves in dangerous situations just as much as the stunt guys on occasion. So I have a lot of respect for all of 'em. But because it's firearms and it was a star that it's just, it really put us all prop and armor are folks under the magnifying

Michael Jamin:

Lens. Yeah, right. That's interesting.

Scott Reeder:

So you just hope that it promotes positive change. If something's going to come out of it, that's what it'll be. It's just people more aware and because of that, hopefully it kept the worst accident from happening that would've happened. Right?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. People also don't realize, because listen, I'm not on set a lot. I'm usually in the office writing, but when I'm on set, I'm like, oh my God, the crew, they work so hard. They work so hard for so long. And then at the end of the day, if you don't go over, let's say, sometimes you go over and then if you're out in the middle of the nowhere, you have to drive home or wherever you're driving to. And then you go home and you unwind, try to unwind for a second, fall asleep as fast as you can because you got to go back to work the next day. It's exhausting. It's a hard, it's not an easy life. The crew works hard.

Scott Reeder:

No, but that's where segue into Union standard policies before it was nine hour turnaround, which means from the time they call wrap or no, I think it's from the time that you shut your truck, when you actually physically leave, when you physically leave the base camp or the

Michael Jamin:

Set,

Scott Reeder:

And then you're supposed to get nine hours, nine hours isn't much nothing. Especially if you've got a 45 minute or an

Michael Jamin:

Hour

Scott Reeder:

Drive home.

Michael Jamin:

Right.

Scott Reeder:

So now I believe it's, I think it's pretty much a 10 hour turnaround across the board.

Michael Jamin:

But even that, it's like, but people don't understand. So you race home after your exhausted day and then whatever, brush your teeth or whatever, and you hope to fall asleep as fast as you can because you don't have enough. You can't waste time. And you don't know. It could be happening. Your day could end at three in the morning. You don't know what your day ends. You could have, it's true. It mean splits.

Scott Reeder:

What's rough is working on Robert Rodriguez stuff, troublemakers here in Austin, their studio, and I worked on a show called Planet Terror,

Michael Jamin:

And

Scott Reeder:

This was before Machete, but that movie was a hundred percent night shoot.

Michael Jamin:

I mean

Scott Reeder:

Every bit of it to where I might've turned that

Michael Jamin:

Down.

Scott Reeder:

Three months of working from 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM and a lot of those locations being remote, an hour plus drive.

Michael Jamin:

And you knew that going in though, and you still wanted to do it.

Scott Reeder:

Yeah, I'm older and wiser now. Michael,

Michael Jamin:

You might not have done it now, right? I'm not sure I'd want to take on it. It's a hard job working, being, yeah, the graveyards too.

Scott Reeder:

And the horror movies. Horror movies are tough.

Michael Jamin:

That's a good point

Scott Reeder:

On prop people, because typically they're very proppy. There's going to be a lot of weapons,

Michael Jamin:

Lot of, and it's going to be dark,

Scott Reeder:

And it's going to be dark,

Michael Jamin:

Which

Scott Reeder:

Is a lot harder to move around and get. It's easier to hide from camera, but that's about it.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, that's about it. Wow. Scott, this is such an interesting conversation. I want to thank you so much for joining me today. I learned a lot. I want to tell everybody where they can follow you. So all your social media handles the same. Scott prop and

Scott Reeder:

Roll, Scott prop and roll. Yeah, that's TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

Michael Jamin:

Facebook and YouTube. But you said YouTube. Did you say YouTube and YouTube.

Scott Reeder:

Oh yeah.

Michael Jamin:

Okay. Go follow. It's such an interesting behind the scenes peak at, I don't know about the magic that goes and all the practical, which is so interesting. The practical, not the in-camera special effects, but the practical props and stuff. Wonderful. You have such an engaging channel, and thank you so much for putting it all out there. You're a great watch on TikTok and Instagram, so thank you again, Scott. What a pleasure

Scott Reeder:

Having you. Well, I enjoy following you. I enjoy everything you do as well.

Michael Jamin:

Thank you, man. What a pleasure. Nice talking to you. All right, buddy. Thanks so much.

So now we all know what the hell Michael Jamin is talking about. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for my free monthly webinars @michaeljamin.com/webinar. And if you found this podcast helpful or entertaining, please share it with a friend and consider leaving us a five star review on iTunes that really, really helps. For more of this, whatever the hell this is, follow Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJaminwriter. And you can follow Phil Hudson on social media @ PhilaHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Crane and music was composed by Anthony Rizzo. And remember, you can have excuses or you can have a creative life, but you can't have both. See you next week.

I’ll tell you I’m talking about. When I first started sharing my professional journey, I focused on people who were interested in screenwriting. But over the years, my audience has expanded to include all sorts of creative types: actors, artists, novelists, playwrights, performers, and more. With that said, I'm rebranding my podcast. I’ll still talk about screenwriting, but I’ll interview a wider variety of people living their own creative lives. I hope they’ll inspire you to do the same.

Show Notes

Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/

Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course

Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free

Join My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlist

Autogenerated Transcript

Michael Jamin:

But also it's like when you put energy into something legit energy, not like thinking or dreaming, but when you actually do the work, things

Phil Hudson:

Have a way of

Michael Jamin:

Manifesting like, oh, there's opportunities have a way of appearing because

Phil Hudson:

You've put work into it.

Michael Jamin:

Like these various

Phil Hudson:

Press opportunities

Michael Jamin:

That I've done and other things that have sprung out because of that. That's just from doing the energy

Phil Hudson:

Of posting on social media

Michael Jamin:

And just sharing as much knowledge as I can.

Phil Hudson:

You're listening to, what the Hell is Michael Jamin talking

Michael Jamin:

About?

Phil Hudson:

I'll tell you what I'm talking

Michael Jamin:

About. I'm talking about creativity, I'm talking about

Phil Hudson:

Writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself

Michael Jamin:

Through the arts. Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin and I'm new. I'm all new right now because I've done a rebrand on the podcast. It was called, obviously Screenwriters Need to Hear this. And then Phil and I were talking and we kind of wanted to open up the conversations a little bit so it's not just about screenwriting and so it's more about, I was really getting to talking about people doing all sorts of creative things. I just think it's inspiring. We'll still talk about screenwriting of course, but I wanted to open up the conversation to more people who are doing things that hopefully inspire all of us to just live more creative lives. And Phil don't get upset. Phil is still here, still is not going away. He's very much involved in all this, but the title of course of the new show is What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? And will be answering that question. What the hell am I talking about? Go ahead.

Phil Hudson:

I think the focus in our conversations were really about creativity because you're a bit more than just a screener. When we started this, it was with a specific purpose. We should also point out this is episode 1 0 4, which is two years of doing podcast,

Michael Jamin:

So it was

Phil Hudson:

A good time to take a step back. Reassess. Things have shifted a lot in the industry. Things have shifted a lot for you personally. What you've done over the last few years is pretty phenomenal in terms of growing a following, becoming a bit of a celebrity, becoming a bit of an expert in a lot of news, which we'll talk about. So yeah, it's just a shift to I think, speaking a little bit more to who Michael Jamin is beyond just being a writer and a showrunner, but being a true creative.

Michael Jamin:

And I should mention, so Phil speaks with authority because he runs a digital marketing agency called Rook, SS e o. So this is, he knows what he's talking, he knows the space Well, but without further ado, I guess this episode we were just going to talk a little bit more about how far the changes we've made, what we've seen in the past two years and hopefully maybe what we're moving towards.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, I thought it would be fitting, Michael, just to kind of talk about some statistics around what the success of the podcast, the success of your work as doing your own personal marketing. And I want to remind everybody that the whole point of this was so that you could market your book. So you're taking and eating your own advice, and I think it's very important for people to know, if I think of Michael Jainism, what are some of the things, your catchphrases and the things you say? Some of those are don't wait, put it out there. Put yourself out there. Right.

Michael Jamin:

Stop asking for permission is what I say.

Phil Hudson:

Stop asking for permission.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah,

Phil Hudson:

There are a bunch of those that could be really good slogans for hats, which

Michael Jamin:

You

Phil Hudson:

Should

Michael Jamin:

Consider. A lot of this really, and I guess maybe it's fitting that just that I am the first interview of what the new brand is because a lot of this is about reinventing yourself. This whole journey that I've been is about reinventing myself. I was a sitcom writer. That's what I was until I started going online and making a podcast and posting every day and now I'm something else.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, it's definitely morphed. So let's talk a bit about that. Right. So we're 104 episodes into the podcast. That's big. I think the statistic I saw a week ago is that the average podcast has six episodes, which means

Michael Jamin:

Most people It's a lot of work. Yeah,

Phil Hudson:

It is. It's a lot of money too. I don't think people recognize that you're investing in editors, you've

Michael Jamin:

Got

Phil Hudson:

People doing graphic design. There's a lot of it. There's the hosting of the site. I mean, every time you do a webinar, a site crashes and I have to freak out

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

Run in and make sure we're back up. And yeah, it's a whole thing. So there's a lot that goes into this, but it's 104 episodes on lots of different topics, all centered around creativity, largely around Hollywood and screenwriting. But I personally, as I've gone through and produced and helped edit some of the episodes, it's very clear to me that you get a lot of joy from having these creative conversations.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. That's what interests me the most. Yeah, and

Phil Hudson:

It's not so much about like, Hey, you're a screenwriter. It's like, hey, you are a creative person

Michael Jamin:

Who's

Phil Hudson:

Putting themselves out there and trying to make something happen,

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

Your audience speaks to this as well. So in the digital marketing space, when we think about this, we think about an avatar and an avatar or a persona. It's your ideal customer. It's the person you're going after. And anytime you're doing marketing, it's a mistake. Or if it's folly, to not do that, you want to understand who you're targeting. And it was very clear two years ago, well, I'm a writer, I'm a TV writer. Let's talk about what I know, which is screenwriting to people who are screenwriters. And I pointed out you should do that because there's a lot of BSS out there.

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

What is your take on that two years into this? What is your take on BSS advice and advice in general? Maybe through the lens of the questions you get asked,

Michael Jamin:

What is my take on it? I feel like you're prompting me to say something. What are you getting at Fell? I don't

Phil Hudson:

Know. I'm not trying to lead the witness. I just want to know what is your take on the marketplace for screenwriters having been immersed on the public, but then you're getting all these questions from people. You did a bunch of live q and as for a year, just talking to people and your following, and there's a series of 10 or 15 questions everybody's asking,

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

It's all pointed towards sell your stuff. You know what those are. So I'm just wondering for you as a showrunner who kind of stepped into the world of what's being taught by the gurus and

Michael Jamin:

By the

Phil Hudson:

Experts, what are you seeing in the marketplace for screenwriters?

Michael Jamin:

One thing I said during the last webinar we did, we do free webinar every three weeks, and I said something that I think a lot of people were astounded by. I said, screenwriting is simple. It's not easy, but it's simple. And I think a lot of people are trying to sell you the complicated version so that you buy more from I'm the only one who can explain it to you and therefore you need me. And I don't know in the writer's room, that's just not how we approach writing simple. I also think there's a lot of bad advice out there, I think. So just be careful. Be careful who you're taking advice from. I don't know, it's a little heartbreaking. Someone posted today, actually, I did a post and someone left a comment saying, everything this guy says me is true because he did coverage in a coverage service. He

Phil Hudson:

Goes, yeah,

Michael Jamin:

People use pay me for coverage. I didn't know anything and I'm telling people what to do. This is a gig this guy picked up. It didn't seem like a lot of people I know, not a lot of people, but I've heard stories of people who've done coverage for a temp job for a month or two and then left because they left feeling a little bit gross about themselves. Why are you paying me? I don't know what I'm talking about. And so they left.

Phil Hudson:

Okay, so this is the world that, so I guess I might've been leading the witness a little bit because my point is, this is the world I understood because prior to meeting you and having the stars align, and we met years ago, and without me knowing who you are, and everybody knows the story by now of how we know each other and became friends, I was very much in that world and I was looking around trying to find that type of feedback and information, and you really shined the light on this for me. That man, there's a lot of people out here pretending like they know what they're talking about.

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

I think you've done a valuable service in these first 100 and 304 episodes of peeling back the curtain, explaining how the process works, educating people. So I just wanted to reiterate, there's a lot of value in what you've done, and that doesn't mean that you're not going to continue to provide value to your listeners who are screenwriters. I think you're just shifting into really none of it all, which is be a creative and do creative things because there's value in the act, not because you're trying to sell a pilot.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. I said something else that people kind of resonated with. Maybe it's worth repeating, and I'll probably say again in my webinars, I say do more of them, but I interviewed, I directed Brian Cranston many years ago on a show called Glen Martin. He was a guest star. It was an animated show, and I directed, it was silly. He played a fun role and was then afterwards I thanked him. We paid him probably 800 bucks. He wasn't doing it for the money. And I thanked him that was scale. And he said, oh, no, no, thank you. And I'm like, thank me. Whatcha talking about you're Brian Cranson. At the time he was doing breaking bed, and he said, it's just nice to have a pallet cleanser. As great as Breaking Bad was in probably my favorite show of all time.

It was so dark that he was living with these negative emotions, anger, fear, jealousy, rage, all that stuff to be in the character. And when you are in that, your mind doesn't know a difference When you're playing this character 12, 14 hours a day in film and you're acting angry and vengeful and all that, whatever those emotions he had to play, your brain doesn't know the difference that whole day. You've been angry and vengeful, and then when you go home, how do you get it out of you? I mean, how do you just experienced all that all day? And it just really made me think about what it's like to be an actor to actually live in that. So he was thanking me because the script that we did was so light and fun. He was like, oh, it's like a, it was fun. It was fun.

Palette, cleanser, which he needed. And then it just got me thinking a lot about just creativity as a whole. And then when people write, when they write their scripts, novels, whatever it is, regardless of whether you sell it or not, you are enjoying that burst of creativity and you're playing out all the characters in your head and your mind doesn't know the difference between you pretending to jump out of a plane and you writing about jumping out of a plane. You're trying to get it all on paper. You're really trying to live it in your heart. And so that I feel Carries with you when you write, regardless of whether you sell it something is a bonus, great, you got money for it. But if you don't sell it, you still get that. You still get that rush, that bonus. And so there's no reason not to write, don't think of it as the pot of gold is in the journey. It's not at the end of the rainbow.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Let's talk about some of the statistics of the podcast, and I love that. I want to circle back on that topic of the journey, the joys in the journey, not the destination, which I'm sure I'm slaughtering that saying just some things, right? So 104 episodes of the podcast, over 200,000 downloads of the podcast, people from I don't know how many continents, but just basing it off of the last webinar we did this last Saturday. I counted probably 13 countries on about four continents, right? That's a trip. Italy, you've got Europe, you've got people in Asia, Australia, south America, you got Central America, you've got America, you've

Michael Jamin:

Got

Phil Hudson:

Canada. I mean, you've got people, it's a global reach at this point, and you're kind of that figurehead to put that out.

Michael Jamin:

There's so strange.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. So hundreds of thousands of downloads on the podcast, which is incredible and that may not seem like a lot, but for the industry and for your niche,

Michael Jamin:

This

Phil Hudson:

Is really good. These are great numbers for that. We've pulled some stats, and you might know this a little bit better. At one point you were in the top three podcasts on screenwriting, is that right?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, I was bouncing around and

Phil Hudson:

We fluctuated between 5, 6, 7, 10. Anybody who wants to help support go leave a review, a written review on iTunes, that does help a ton. But yeah, so major reach, major opportunity. When you started this, I wanted to ask, do you remember how many Instagram followers you had when we sat down in your garage and I talked about here's what you need to do to be able to grow your following and do this. Do

Michael Jamin:

You remember how many? I don't remember.

Phil Hudson:

No, because it wasn't something you're paying attention to. I didn't know. But how many Instagram followers do you have now? It was less, would you say less than a thousand? Probably.

Michael Jamin:

Probably close to 160,000 now, I think. Yeah,

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, 160,000.

Michael Jamin:

How

Phil Hudson:

Many days have you missed posting on social

Michael Jamin:

Media? Since we started this two years

Phil Hudson:

Ago,

Michael Jamin:

I promised myself that I was going to post every day. So I post, I would say on average six days a week. So sometimes I take a day off.

Phil Hudson:

So for anybody looking to grow a following, again, Michael's telling you to do this. He's telling you to bring something to the table and you did this and it's brutal. It's not like a 32nd recording.

Michael Jamin:

I

Phil Hudson:

Mean, you communicated to me at one point you're spending 20, 30 minutes on this every single day to get one video out because you're doing multiple takes

Michael Jamin:

And you're

Phil Hudson:

Trying to condense it. You're thinking about it outside of that 30 minutes. You're then doing the technical, and I don't post this for you, you do this, you post it, right? Because you want it to feel authentic. So there's work involved. But again, you're eating your own medicine,

Michael Jamin:

You're

Phil Hudson:

Doing what you tell people to do. You're putting yourself out there in two years down the road, you basically nothing to 160,000 followers on

Michael Jamin:

Instagram. TikTok,

Phil Hudson:

Let's hear it.

Michael Jamin:

Well, TikTok is, I think it's something like 444,000. But that's the thing. It's like I made a promise for myself. It wasn't too ambitious. I didn't say I was going to post five times a day. I was like once a day,

Phil Hudson:

And I think I was advocating for two to four, which is what the experts would tell you to do. And you said, that's not sustainable for me.

Michael Jamin:

No way.

Phil Hudson:

Especially for someone who doesn't want to be in the limelight, which is you very much were like, I don't want to be this person. I'm happy being a writer, but you have this project you want, which is your book

Michael Jamin:

You want. I also think it waters down a little bit the message if you're constantly, I'd rather do quality than quantity. But yeah, all of it. I want to say Phil, everything that I, all the advice that I give people about becoming a screenwriter or whatever, becoming whatever it is you want to be a creator is either advice that I have done or I am currently doing.

Phil Hudson:

So there's no hypocrisy here, which is a really key thing, really key takeaway that people can learn from you beyond the followers. Let's talk about that's led to definitely, and we saw this happening beforehand. You'd post a video about why aren't there cats and TV shows? And Yahoo would pick it up, and then all of the riders on Tacoma FD would just give you crap for it. You popped up on their Yahoo page. But beyond that, and with your status and the work you put in, all of a sudden you become a trustworthy expert in your field because you have a following and you're noticed. It's not that your knowledge are on the subject or your capacity as a writer has changed.

Michael Jamin:

You're

Phil Hudson:

The same capable person and now all of a sudden there's a lot of interest in writing and Hollywood, and you're the guy to go to because you have a following and you're known, right? So this is this secondary effect of I want to get my work out there, so I need followers so that I can have an audience to engage with and potentially prove to people that there's a demand for what I have to put out. And that turned into being covered on Deadline. The Hollywood Reporter, the New York Times variety, and you're in deadline like 17 times, by the way.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah,

Phil Hudson:

Right.

Michael Jamin:

You're

Phil Hudson:

In some local newspapers, Newburyport News, you were with the A R P

Michael Jamin:

C

Phil Hudson:

Tv. Yeah, the seasoned writers of the world, Portland TV had you on for three segments on one of their shows.

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

I think that started a little bit before Good Day Sacramento, multiple times in Yahoo N, our c nl, which is New Zealand, is that right? Nls New Zealand, I think. Yeah. Or the Netherlands. Yeah, Scripps News, the Guardian Newsweek, the Washington Posts News Junkie, right. Newsweek a couple times. And this last weekend you were on C N N.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, it's nuts. They just reach out to me, I'm like, sure, I'll do it. Would not have predicted any of this was going to happen two years ago. No.

Phil Hudson:

So you're not doing this for the fame, you're not doing any of this because you feel like you're going to get something out of it from your writing career. You're doing it because your publisher says, Hey, we don't care how many emails you have on your wife's business list or anything like that, or how many people are interested in your writing?

Michael Jamin:

Which

Phil Hudson:

By the way, prior to even four years ago, 10,000 emails was enough to get a book deal. And now, I mean, I've seen that number of times from people now, it's like, yeah, you need followers putting you on the spot here. So I apologize, but I recall you telling me that you had specific feedback from some of these agents, like, man, Michael Jamin can write, I want to be his friend. Do you remember some of that? Do you want to talk a little bit about what some of those rejection letters were? Oh,

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. I don't know if I have in front of me, but basically it was, oh, actually I do. This

Phil Hudson:

Is not planned, by the way. Michael didn't know I was going to bring any of this up. The whole premise here is I was going to interview Michael and talk about this stuff.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, I got letters from when I was first putting my book out there from publishers. Oh, we love this book. The guy doesn't have a following. They wrote to my agent, do you have anybody who writes like this? Who does have a following? I mean, it was that crazy. They said, platform drives acquisition. I said, what does that mean? You need to have a following. I said, well, what about the strength of the writing? Everyone loved the writing. What about the strength of the writing? Oh, no, no, no. It's about what can we sell? I was like, damn. And that really was a stab in the heart,

Phil Hudson:

And I think for the average creative branching out with just writers, but the average creative one, rejection, litter, and it's like, well, I guess that's not in it. I guess mom was right. I guess dad was right. I guess Billy's dad was, right. It's hard to be a writer. I should give up. And you hear about these people who submit over and over and over again until they finally break through.

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

You took that and said, I don't want to do this thing. I don't want to be a public figure, but I have this creative work that I know people need to read. And it's a personal work that you did on your own. No one paid you to do it. You wrote for

Michael Jamin:

Free.

Phil Hudson:

And then I

Michael Jamin:

Remember, which turn, go ahead. Go ahead.

Phil Hudson:

I was going to say, then I remember I get a text from you and you're like, Phil, any chance you can come over, I want to talk to you about some marketing stuff. I come over, come to your garage. I break your chair. Let's see that

Michael Jamin:

It had already broken. It's already broken, but okay,

Phil Hudson:

Had to replace a chair. And he asked me, what do I need to do? And I just laid out everything I knew, and then we started putting the wheels into motion. That was roughly 25 months ago,

Michael Jamin:

Couple

Phil Hudson:

Months ago.

Michael Jamin:

And it's one of those things like, I didn't want to do it so tough. How badly do you want it? How badly do you want it? And there can be a downside to having whatever you want to call this level of fame. It's internet famous, not famous, but you are putting yourself out there for haters, for trolls, for wackos, all sorts of weirdos. I mean, you wouldn't believe how, I mean, do I have to tell you? There are people on the internet are crazy. So there was that, but I was like, well, this is what it takes now. So it actually made me matter. When the publishers told me this, I was furious. How dare you tell me what I can't do? You don't get to tell me what I can't do. Only I get to do that. And so that just lit a fire under my ass. And then when I

Phil Hudson:

Read this book,

Michael Jamin:

Oh my God, it actually changed me. It's kind of a weird,

Phil Hudson:

I don't really want to plug the book

Michael Jamin:

Very, you can tell

Phil Hudson:

Me I'm

Michael Jamin:

Interested

Phil Hudson:

In this, but you can tell me. I'll

Michael Jamin:

Tell you. It was a very new agey book. And so a lot of the advice was, some of the advice I thought was really good, and some of it was like, I don't know. I think you, you're going out on a limb with this one. But it was one of those things, you take what you want and you leave the rest. And what convinced me was this one passage where he said, you've already gotten what you wanted. It just hasn't happened yet. And I was like, that's it. That's it. I already have it. It just hasn't happened yet. And then I was like, alright, what do I need to do to make it happen?

Phil Hudson:

That's it. Yeah. You remember you reading me that exact quote several times throughout this whole process? Yeah. I

Michael Jamin:

Love that quote. I always tell people on my podcast, whatever here, or I say it on the webinar, I was like, this is what you need to do. If you're willing to do it, then you need a skill. We don't know your level of skill and then you need a little bit of luck, of course. But here's what you can do to increase your odds. Are you willing to do it? And most people aren't so fine.

Phil Hudson:

Well, that's my point about the podcast, right? The average podcast is six episodes,

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

It's because the consistency, the lack of immediate gratification, the, oh, I only got three people to listen to my sixth episode and I put a thousand dollars to get four episodes

Michael Jamin:

Made, or

Phil Hudson:

Whatever it is, that's enough to turn people off. But this is kind of your whole point is, okay, move on. And there's nothing wrong with learning that you're not fit for something. There's something wrong with, there's nothing wrong with saying, Hey, I understand that something I want to do. Maybe doing it the Hollywood way is not the right way for me.

Michael Jamin:

So

Phil Hudson:

Instead, I'm going to go back to just doing it on my own and I'm going to make short films and I'm going to support my local film community. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with recognizing, Hey, I've got family obligations, so I'm not going to be able to move to New York and try to get my art in a gallery. So I'll just paint on the weekends and I'll just take that hour to myself every day to just put in the work on my craft. And you never know what can come from that. But the point is, it's about sticking with what it is. And that's, I think your message that I've heard. I don't know that I want to say that it's evolved. I don't know it's ever evolved. I think it's always been your message, which is if you want to make it happen, you got to make it happen. But the act of doing is enough, right?

Michael Jamin:

As you

Phil Hudson:

Said, the goal, the pot of gold, that the rainbow is not the pot of gold.

Michael Jamin:

It's the

Phil Hudson:

Experiences along the way, finding the pot of gold that are the pot of gold.

Michael Jamin:

But also, it's like when you put energy into something legit energy, not like thinking or dreaming, but when you actually do the work, things have a way of manifesting like, oh, this opportunities have a way of appearing because you've put work into it. Like these various press opportunities that I've done and other things that have sprung out because of that. It's like that's just from doing the energy of posting on social media and just sharing as much knowledge as I can

Phil Hudson:

With zero expectation of getting back. You're planting seeds that hopefully will produce fruit when your book is available and people can buy it on Audible and buy a paperback or a hardcover. And at this point too, so still, you've made the decision not to go with a traditional publisher, even though at this point you have hundreds of thousands of followers.

Michael Jamin:

Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my content, and I know you do because you're listening to me, I will email it to you for free. Just join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos of the week. These are for writers, actors, creative types, people like you can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you, and the price is free. You got no excuse to join. Go to michaeljamin.com and now back to what the hell is Michael Jamin talking about?

Phil Hudson:

When you'd ask people, how many followers do I need? They couldn't tell you, tell you. They just knew you needed followers, but they didn't know what the number was.

Michael Jamin:

And then I got resentful, okay, now that I have these followers, why am I cutting you in? Tell me exactly why I'm cutting you in. What exactly do you do? Nothing. They get me in Barnes and Noble, that's it. But people don't buy books at Barnes and Noble. They buy it online. Why am I cutting you in? It made me mad. It made me legit in the beginning. I was like, I need you. And I was like, I don't need you. What do I need you for?

Phil Hudson:

How freeing is that feeling?

Michael Jamin:

It's wonderful. I just got my copy back from I, my copy editor, read the whole thing and whatever, looking for typos and stuff like that. And he loved it. This is a professional. He's like, how do I share? I want to give this to my friends. I was like, oh, thank you. But one of it's like, why am I cutting? It's just like this is the year, it's 2023. It's like, you don't need to ask for permission from these people. The publishing is, the side of the business is very similar to Hollywood in the sense that what do we need these people for? You don't need Hollywood if you want to do, you don't. You just don't. You can do it yourself.

Phil Hudson:

On that note, I went to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu today, and it was a smaller class, middle of the day. There were literally two other people besides me. They're both instructors. It was paying for a private, which was awesome. And in some downtime, I was talking to one of the guys, he's like, yeah, I quit doing Juujitsu for five years. And I was like, oh, why'd you stop? And he's like, well, a couple of years ago, I lost everything I was doing, worked in, I'm an actor and I worked in the industry. And then that started a conversation, and then he started telling me about all the stuff he's doing now. And he's like, we just decided to do it ourselves. We're making short films. We're putting it out there. We're winning tons of awards on this festival circuits. And he's been in Netflix shows, he's been in things. He has an I M D V page, so he's not just some guy. He has talent and skill, and he's even going out and put it in. And I was like, dude, good for you.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. But when you look at the people who break, the people who are break in today, they're all doing what I'm doing. They're people, for the most part, they're not begging for work. They're making work for themselves, and they're making a name for themselves. And so they're building equity in their own name as opposed to knocking on doors and begging.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, I, we've touched on this in a past podcast, but I've heard an agent refer to it as Plus writer plus. What is the plus you're bringing to the table? So maybe it's a following, maybe it's ip. Maybe you wrote a book that's a Amazon bestseller. Maybe it's you worked at the Onion and you're coming in with some clout because you had that experience, right? Maybe you were brought on the Harvard Lampoon, whatever it is, there's a plus and a following is a plus, but that's the value add. It's not enough. And you've told me this before, and I've quoted it often, and I think about it when I write, and this was, man, this was like 7, 6, 7 years ago.

Michael Jamin:

You

Phil Hudson:

Read something I wrote in film school, and it was a speck of a Mr. Robot. And you said, Phil, it's obvious you're a competent writer, and this is really good. But that's the problem. It's not great. And so it's not enough to be good. You have to be great, but you also need something else. And you have to be willing to put that out there and get that work done. To me, I've been very hesitant to grow following because of the public nature of that and some of those things. And you tell me some of the things you have to deal with in your dms and people saying things, anti-Semitic things, all kinds. It's crazy, horrible things.

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

You still stick it out and you do it. But yeah, the plus for me might be my skillset and technology. It might be my ability to run social media pro campaigns to the point where searchlights and this formerly Fox Searchlight, but searchlights people when they meet me are like, man, I need to fill in every project we have. And that's just the hustle and the grind. And you all have that. You listening to this have,

Michael Jamin:

That's exactly right. And Phil, this is what I was going to say as well, is everyone listening to this? Take inventory of what you have. For you, Phil, it's your vast knowledge of digital marketing, but for other people, they have other skills. So take advantage of what you have and then incorporate that towards building your brand or whoever you

Phil Hudson:

Are. Yeah, we might have talked, go ahead.

Michael Jamin:

Well, if you're a truck driver and you're like, what do I got? I drive a long distance truck, dude, you got a lot. Because you have, I dunno, whatever, 10 hours on the road where you're with nothing but your thoughts, turn off the radio. Not a lot of jobs like that where you can actually think and do your job at the same time. Think about something else. And so, yeah, you could write your screenplay, take notes into a recorder, and then when you stop the car later or the truck later, type it up a little bit and make notes. But that's a huge asset you have, which is you have time. You actually have time where you can think and concentrate on something while you do your job. That's a huge

Phil Hudson:

Asset. It's a blue sky time. Blue sky time is hard. It's the space and the stillness that is hard to generate in a chaotic life with family and obligations and work. So if you can find it, and reiterating one of the most powerful notes you've given me, which is, do you listen to audio books or podcasts in the car? And I said, yeah. And you said, don't,

Michael Jamin:

Don't, don't listen to me either. I turned it off your story. Think

Phil Hudson:

About your, yeah, write your

Michael Jamin:

Story. What

Phil Hudson:

Is the problem? I'm trying to solve a huge breakthrough for me in my ability to spend time. I was so busy packing my day with so many obligations,

Michael Jamin:

But then I was

Phil Hudson:

Spending hours in LA traffic doing runs for the show,

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

It's like, oh, here's the space.

Michael Jamin:

So it's

Phil Hudson:

A great note, but everyone has that note. And going back to something you said earlier, luck is not, you talked about everyone needs a little bit of luck, but that definition, and I think I shared this in episode three, luck is where opportunity meets preparation.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, yeah's

Phil Hudson:

The preparation. It's the time spent. It's the other adage, when's the best time to grow a tree 20 years ago,

Michael Jamin:

When's

Phil Hudson:

The second best time? Right now,

Michael Jamin:

You

Phil Hudson:

Don't have a tree, so get out and build a tree. Grow your tree, right?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

So yeah, man, kudos to you for putting in the work and the effort. And I'm close enough as your friend, I've been able to see this and see your growth and your push to be able to do this. And I'll also say that even as someone that I considered to be competent, functional adults who's very successful, I've noticed your resilience increased quite a bit over

Michael Jamin:

My resilience.

Phil Hudson:

And that's not saying that you were some pushover or anything. I'm not suggesting that in the slightest, but I've just noticed that your ability to just take the bumps and the bruises of all of the BSS you're dealing with, it's just made you, I think, a little more focused and clear on what you want out of it. And that's why you have this reaction, this is my interpretation to me, why you're having this reaction to the publishers now. It's like, why am I giving you any of this? You didn't fight the fight. I fought the fight. I've been here. I've been in here day in and day out, so screw you. And that's a level of resiliency and confidence. I think that I'm not saying you didn't have that, just

Michael Jamin:

It took a lot for me to get there. It changes things. It took a lot for me to get there, but it was like maybe on the second book, maybe I'll do with them or not, I don't know. But I also know they haven't earned my book. And I've also heard too many stories from friends of mine who have had books traditionally published where the marketing department drops the ball and they promise one thing and then they're awol, and then that's it. Because at that point, you don't have the margin to do any more marketing on your own, so it's dead. And so it was never about the money for me, but I became a little angry as I was building this up. I was like, well, why am I cutting you in? It doesn't make sense to me. What do you bring to the table? Nothing other than Barnes and Noble, which I don't really care about. It's like, okay, sure. If it was 1982, I might worry about that. Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

This is, I think clicking for me. You're familiar with David Goggins, the former Navy Seal?

Michael Jamin:

I don't think so.

Phil Hudson:

He wrote a book called You Can't Hurt Me.

Michael Jamin:

And he

Phil Hudson:

Talks about how he was just abused as a kid by his father.

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

Then what that taught him to do was to be able to just separate his pain. And it created a lot of mental toughness to the point that he was in the us. He was in the Air Force, tried out for Air Force Special Operations. He became a Navy Seal. He went through three hell weeks because he kept getting rolled back for injuries. He had a point where he had fractured legs and he would duct tape them so that they weren't hurt when he was doing runs. I mean, he ran a hundred miler in one day with no preparation to the point that his kidneys were failing. And he just does ultra marathons nonstop. He's just kind of this figure. He's become a bit of a meme with the same younger people, but I've known about him for a few years, and he talks about his book and he's like, I got offered $300,000 from a publisher from my book,

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

I just thought, you haven't been through what I've been through. It is basically what you're saying. It's like, you haven't earned this the way I have. Is my life worth $300,000? And he said, no. So he took all of his savings, which was about 300,000, and he self-published his own book, New York Times bestseller. Did the hardbacks, did the whole thing.

Michael Jamin:

Why didn't it take him 300,000 to make a book? It shouldn't have taken fraction of that.

Phil Hudson:

He did all of the publishing himself. So he didn't publish through a self-publisher like Amazon. He didn't even want to partner with Amazon, so he became his own publisher.

Michael Jamin:

So

Phil Hudson:

He literally printed up hundreds of thousands of copies, and then he leveraged all of his relationships with the Rogans and all these people with these platforms because of the life and the experience that he had, and multiple time bestsellers, millions of copies, sold books,

Michael Jamin:

Two

Phil Hudson:

Books, and he's a millionaire because of that effort. So it's that same resilience mindset I think that I'm hearing from you. And that's probably why I made that connection

Michael Jamin:

Just like, screw people. I'll do it myself. I don't need you. That's how I feel. Whatever, I'll do it myself. Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

That's awesome. Before we talk about the new podcast, I just wanted to see, are there any takeaways for you over the last year? Are there anything that really stood out moments or conversations we've had with you, with other people, us on the podcast or with other students in your course?

Michael Jamin:

If you listen to some of those other episodes where I'm interviewing people, you'll hear various versions of the same story that I tell their own, which is kind of like, screw it. I'll just do it my own. It is just people. The reason why people are, I interview, I guess, successful people, and the reason why they're successful is because they haven't quit yet. That's it. They just didn't get around to quitting. And so I think that's what it is. Until you quit, you're just a success. That hasn't happened yet. It just hasn't happened yet,

Phil Hudson:

Which is why you don't quit.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Anything else stand out to you?

Michael Jamin:

I don't know. Can you think of something?

Phil Hudson:

The one lingering thought that I have is I think that people, you set a really good example for people on your social media about how to handle naysayers

Michael Jamin:

Because

Phil Hudson:

You get a lot of negativity, and you talked about this, you could go after them. You're a professional comedy

Michael Jamin:

Writer. Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

They don't stand a chance. And I have witnessed just the witty quickness, the decimation of a soul in a writer's room, all in love,

Michael Jamin:

But

Phil Hudson:

The capability of a professional comedy writer to just tear someone down. And it's almost like with great power comes great responsibility. That

Michael Jamin:

Cliche

Phil Hudson:

From Spider-Man, it's like you opt to take the high road, which is,

Michael Jamin:

And I'm always torn by that. Sometimes I'm like, I can easily take you down. And sometimes I do. If it's warranted, if they come out with me a certain amount of energy, then I can match the energy. But I'm torn. I also feel like, well, it's not enough that I, on one hand, I tell people I'm a comedy writer, but unless I show it every once in a while, people are, how are they going to believe me?

Phil Hudson:

And so

Michael Jamin:

It's a line that I dance. I dance, it is like I don't want to be mean, but I also,

Phil Hudson:

It's not negative energy. It's not done with maliciousness. It's done playfully. But I think it just, you stand up for yourself when it's appropriate.

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

Again, that speaks to some of that resiliency that again, you could decimate 'em,

Michael Jamin:

You retrain yourself. I'm totally pulling punches, believe me when I'm pulling, because sometimes I've got a bunch of clips I haven't posted yet. I write them. I'll spend a half hour on 'em, and then I'll sit on it. I don't feel, and then I look at the next day, I go, oh, I can't put that on. It's funny, but it's just too mean. That's

Phil Hudson:

The adage of when you're at work and you want to send that email, don't send

Michael Jamin:

It.

Phil Hudson:

Write it out. Don't

Michael Jamin:

Send it. Get

Phil Hudson:

It out of your system. Move on.

Michael Jamin:

Right. I took a guy apart the other day, I just haven't shared it, so screw it. That guy,

Phil Hudson:

You don't even share those with me.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. But also I also do, and I made a post about this. It was like, how do I want to show up every day? How do I want to be seen? And I don't want be the mean guy. I don't want to be a bully. So I'm allowed to think my negative thoughts. I don't always have to share them.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, yeah. No, and that's a valuable lesson for people in a world where, as I've often said, you remove the opportunity to get punched in the face for anything you say or do, and all of a sudden people start speaking up a little bit more than they probably should. And I'm not advocating for violence,

Michael Jamin:

But

Phil Hudson:

Even a verbal punch to the face can often be enough. And

Michael Jamin:

It's

Phil Hudson:

Pretty easy in our society to just sit behind your keyboard

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

Zero consequences for what you say and do. I call this out? I call this out in our webinars while you're talking, Cynthia, your wife is doing a great job of just getting questions, and I'm just kind of checking the chat to see what people are talking about. And man, there's some trolls rolling into your webinar too.

Michael Jamin:

Thank you. I never see them. Do you block 'em? What do you do?

Phil Hudson:

No, no. People take care. They take care of it. And we can talk about another experience we had where someone went after me on a podcast too, nepotism, do you remember that? Called me out for nepotism

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

All that.

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, your listeners had my back and they went after 'em. And it is just a very stark difference between the community you've cultivated of people who are just respectful, sincere creatives looking to break in and chase their dreams and all the people who say they want to do it and are not putting in the

Michael Jamin:

Work and the nepotism on your part, to be clear, I suppose that was when you were in and out of foster care as a child. Is that when you experienced all the nepotism?

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, it might've been that. It might've been when I was in the group homes. It could have been when I lived in my aunt and uncle's house and I couldn't do sports because I had to work

Michael Jamin:

Effectively

Phil Hudson:

Full-time in high school. Could have been any of those times. Could have been

Michael Jamin:

Of those times. Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

But your point to that was you knew one person tangentially through some girl when you moved here, there wasn't even an nepotism for you. And I knew you, and yeah, I've been blessed to have that opportunity, but we've seen enough people come and go, you have to earn it. Right?

Michael Jamin:

It's so funny when I tell that story. When I moved to Hollywood, I knew no one in Hollywood, but a girl I was friendly with in high school, she was a year younger than me. I found out that her brother was living in Hollywood and was trying to do what I did, which is bright sitcom writer. And so I called him

Phil Hudson:

Up, and then

Michael Jamin:

We wound up becoming roommates. But then when I tell that story, people go, oh, so you did know someone. It was like, I knew some guy.

Phil Hudson:

He was

Michael Jamin:

Just as unsuccessful

Phil Hudson:

As

Michael Jamin:

Me, and we

Phil Hudson:

Became

Michael Jamin:

Roommates. He was just a couple years older than me. So I guess that's how I knew someone.

Phil Hudson:

But that highlights this thing. I was going to say, and it's just a quote that stuck with me for years. I think it comes from Jim Rowan, which is there's two ways to have the tallest building. One is to build the tallest building,

Michael Jamin:

Which

Phil Hudson:

You have done the other ways to tear everyone else's building down.

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

So if you're afraid to pursue your craft, sometimes tearing everyone else down is a bit easier than facing the empty page or the blank canvas. It's

Michael Jamin:

A lot easier. It's a lot easier.

Phil Hudson:

And the high road, which

Michael Jamin:

You've

Phil Hudson:

Been an example for

Michael Jamin:

An

Phil Hudson:

Exemplar, is just put your head down, do the work, provide value,

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

Then the benefits will come eventually.

Michael Jamin:

And I really hope this episode doesn't seem like we're just patting me on the back. I hope it serves be to get you guys to do what I'm doing in your own way for whatever you want to do.

Phil Hudson:

And Michael saying that, because Michael didn't know what I was going to talk about or bring up here, this is me bringing this up because these are the things that I've observed as your friend, as a co-host on the podcast, but also just as someone who's just trying to do the same thing that everybody who listens to your podcast is trying

Michael Jamin:

To do,

Phil Hudson:

Which is break in and chase their dreams.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, I'm exactly like you guys. Only, I'm doing it for writing. That's all for publishing,

Phil Hudson:

Which speaks to the transition to the podcast, which is the title of the podcast. What the hell is Michael? What

Michael Jamin:

The hell is Michael Jamin talking about?

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. What the hell is Michael Jamin talking about? At this point, you can see the cover has changed, so it's going to be the same feed. You don't need to go resubscribe. None of the old episodes are rebranding. They'll still be live and available the way they were. But it's just a shift into talking about creative things. And I think you got some cool stuff to kind of display. I guess people might've already heard the intro.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, we could do that. We

Phil Hudson:

Put on this episode. But you want to talk more about that, the podcast and impetus for the change and why we were here?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Well, there was that. The new music is by my friend Anthony Rizzo, who did all the music. He was the composer on Marin. It wasn't my friend. Then. I just met him on Marin. And then he also did the music for my book, a paper orchestra, which would be dropping hopefully this winter and keep pushing it

Phil Hudson:

Back. Yeah, we haven't talked about that. You've put in a ton of energy and effort into recording the audio book and making it your live events, which I wanted to point out part of this transition, and you've always talked about how when you're in a writer's room, you end up acting out the parts, like when you're doing Hank on King of the Hill, you do Hank's voice and you kind of mimic him. You're doing Bobby, you do it. So you've always been a performer, but I don't know if you've been a performer in the sense that you are with a paper orchestra where

Michael Jamin:

It's

Phil Hudson:

A stage show and you're there and you're being vulnerable and emotional, and you're making it a thing, and you're practicing and you're working with talented coaches like your wife, Cynthia, who is a very talented

Michael Jamin:

Actress,

Phil Hudson:

And Jill Sch, who is a legendary actress, and you're investing in all this coaching to put on a presentation or performance for people. And I have not heard audio book, but what I understand is it's going to be very similar experience to come into a live show.

Michael Jamin:

I think so. And it'll be a little more intimate than a live show in your ear because it's an audio book. I'm much closer to your brain, and I want to talk to more

Phil Hudson:

Creators

Michael Jamin:

Like this. But what I'm personally inspired by right now, and that maybe it'll change in five years, but I'm inspired by people who tell and perform their own stories. To me, there's something, so you're an actor. You have to be a writer and a performer at the same time, as opposed to doing something like creating something. That's fine. But when you're telling your own story, it's like, man, you're really putting yourself out there. And I think when I see people do it, I'm like, all right, that's interesting. Maybe I'll change in five years. So I mean, standups do that, but they don't do it. They're going for the laugh usually. They're not usually going deeper than that, which is fine that when you go into a comedy club, that's what you expect. So that's kind of what I've been exploring and being motivated by.

Phil Hudson:

That's another Michael Jainism that stood out to me. I wrote it down when you were talking earlier, go there. You have to be willing to go there. And we talked about people who are not willing to go there. And we've heard people, other writers say, I'm not willing to go there. And you've called it out privately to me, did you hear that person? Did you hear what they said? And you have to be willing to go there. For a long time, I wasn't. And through your help, I've been able to do that. But yeah, you're talking to people who go there.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, that's the job. If you don't want the job, find another job. It's

Phil Hudson:

Emotional vulnerability

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

Being willing to put yourself out there and not just on a social media perspective, but truly emotionally vulnerable in your stories and what you've called mining your life for stories and putting that out there.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Yeah. To me, that's the exciting stuff. And I didn't invent this, so it's just when I see others do it, I'm like, wow, why I should be doing that too.

Phil Hudson:

So obviously I'm not necessarily a co-host of this anymore. I'm still helping produce the thing. We're still making sure that that's

Michael Jamin:

How hear a lot the technical

Phil Hudson:

Side. I'll still be popping in on podcast episode.

Michael Jamin:

We'll still be talking about screenwriting, I'm sure.

Phil Hudson:

And I had this cool experience, and I don't think we've talked about this when I was on touring with the broken lizard guys doing their social media, just sitting there talking to them and seeing this rabid fan base of people who just love them from this thing that they created. When they did it, they put themselves out there.

Michael Jamin:

And

Phil Hudson:

It really lit that our tour spirit I had back in 2000 8 0 9, when I was really dedicating myself to screenwriting. And I have actually been working on a feature that I would like to star in and direct and do that whole thing on the indie level. Just now you talking, just an exercise. What about

Michael Jamin:

As a short first, why not doing it as a short

Phil Hudson:

Could definitely do that. Yeah. Why?

Michael Jamin:

To

Phil Hudson:

Me, there's a feature in there for sure that I want to write and just get out of me, but definitely worth doing a short, yeah,

Michael Jamin:

Go watch as we talk about this. Go watch on Vimeo, I think Thunder Road, that scene we talk about, go watch the church, the Churching. That was a feature, but that scene stands on its own. If you just saw that scene, you would've thought, oh, it's a short, I thought it was a short, I thought it was a great short, I didn't realize it was part of a bigger, so do something like that. And then when people see that and they're blown away, you'll say, oh, well, there's more to come. Just I need you to donate $5,000. And then they pay for the rest.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. That's great advice. Great advice. So yeah. So anyway, this beautiful shift in the tide of creativity and your shift, and that rubs off. What can we expect from the podcast in terms of guests you're interviewing? What does that look like for you?

Michael Jamin:

I reach out, I got to continue to do more. I'm doing another one tomorrow. I'll be reaching out. These guys really inspired me. So there's a movie that I saw on Netflix many years ago, I dunno, maybe five years ago from these guys called The Minimalists. So I reached out to one of them. He's going to be on the Tomorrow, and they're fascinating. It is.

Phil Hudson:

Joshua Fields Millburn, and

Michael Jamin:

He's the one coming on, and he's gracious enough to come on, and I'm sure he's going to think we're going to talk about the message. And the message is very important. The message is how you can live, how you can have more in your life with less how you don't need to buy this, how you'll be happier if you get rid of that, and great message. But he's in for a surprise because we'll talk about that. But I really want to talk about how he created himself, how he, okay, then how did you sell a show on Netflix? Okay, now what is it like to be this person? Because he wasn't, he was just some guy who's middle management before he did this, and now he's the guy who has this message. Even though the message has already been said before by other people, he still put a different spin on it to me. And I find that inspiring, that somebody who invented himself, what does that feel like? What are the insecurities that come with that? What is this new fame ish thing that he has? How does that feel? How does he continue to push himself? I don't know. I'm looking forward to the interview. I'm curious to hear, and I bet you he hasn't spoken about that.

Phil Hudson:

That's awesome.

Michael Jamin:

I did an interview, I dunno if it, no, it hasn't aired yet. The guy I follow, a prop master that I follow on TikTok named Scott and Scott Reeder, and he's great.

Phil Hudson:

Great. I follow him too.

Michael Jamin:

He's great. He just talks about all the props and how he makes these props, and we spoke a little bit about that, but we were more talking about how he invented himself now. And halfway through the interview, he says to me, this is the best interview anyone's ever done, because I didn't really care about the boring stuff. I want to know how he invented himself. What all of us, I think are trying to do right now. That's part of Before we Die, we, that's, who else can we be before we die?

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, that's profound, man. I'm excited. I've loved listening to the interviews you've already done on Screenwriters. Need to hear this. I'm looking forward to those.

Michael Jamin:

It's

Phil Hudson:

Good stuff, man. I'm just really pumped for this new stage. And again, I do think it just speaks a little bit more to who you've become because not that you've outgrown yourself as a writer, it's just you've evolved a bit as a person into being a bit more than that. And I hesitate to even say that too, because I know this is who you are. This is who you have been.

Michael Jamin:

But this is what writers too, I think it's like, all right, what else can we explore here? That's part of the fun. That's the fun part being, being a writer is that you get car, right? You get carte blanche to try new things because maybe I can write about this worst case scenario. I can make a story from it.

Phil Hudson:

I was about to say, that's advice you've given me multiple times, which is it's a write-off. You can go take a

Michael Jamin:

Basket weaving class,

Phil Hudson:

Right? Go take a

Michael Jamin:

Dance class. Why?

Phil Hudson:

It's an experience. Go take an acting class. And I remember you did a workshop in Acting for Life and it was a comedy workshop and you were kind enough to invite me to attend that. And I was already studying with Cynthia and Jill at the time there. And yeah, I remember you just putting out that same thing. It's great. You're studying acting, it's going to make you a better writer.

Michael Jamin:

And you've

Phil Hudson:

Given that advice on the podcast too. So it's really fascinating to me. And I'm just kind of realizing this in this moment, man, I thought I was getting all this great free advice that was particular to Phil Hudson and now you're just

Michael Jamin:

Giving it to

Phil Hudson:

Everybody, man.

Michael Jamin:

Everyone. I hope so. I'd like to try to do, we'll see if I can make that happen where I go to, that's something I'm going to try to make happen where I can tour to different cities, put on a show, and then the next day maybe a writing seminar afterwards in that city so I can to help offset some of my costs. And then we could just talk about writing that day. We have a little writing workshop or something, so maybe I'll try to do that.

Phil Hudson:

God, that's awesome. It's the first I've heard of that. That sounds like a great,

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, it's just so many things that have to happen before that. I got so much on my plate right now. I can't even think about that. But we were talking about that. Wouldn't that be interesting?

Phil Hudson:

It's a great idea. Well, I imagine Cynthia will be with you.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, yeah,

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. And that's awesome. Now you're getting someone who's been on Seinfeld and the friends and just all

Michael Jamin:

These

Phil Hudson:

Great, I mean very talented, very, and I will say not only talented, but very perceptive,

Michael Jamin:

Right? Oh yeah.

Phil Hudson:

And I think I've shared this on here too, but there was this moment where I just couldn't get there. I just couldn't get there. And Jill's just saying, what are you feeling? And I

Michael Jamin:

Was like, I don't know.

Phil Hudson:

And she turns to the class and she's like, what is everyone? What's he feeling? Everyone's like, he's mad. And I didn't even realize I was mad. And then the next class, I'm struggling in this scene. And then Jill's like, what are you struggling with? What's going on? I was like, I don't know. And then Cynthia's like, is it the intimacy? Is he having trouble with the intimacy of the scene? And I was like, holy shit. Yeah. I think that's what it is. I am not willing to go here. And I had to work through all that stuff. So she's just so perceptive and so kind. You can't even be not mad. She's calling you out because it's done with so much love and compassion. It's a beautiful thing.

Michael Jamin:

We've had these moments, by the way, when she directs me from my audio book where the outtakes are not pretty, the outtakes are me yelling.

Phil Hudson:

But

Michael Jamin:

It's funny, one of the

Phil Hudson:

Stories in my book

Michael Jamin:

Is called The House on Witherspoon Street where I'm a kid in college. They're all true stories. And it builds to me giving an on-air interview to this woman who's this eccentric woman who had a talk show. She was lovely, but she's larger than life and it's in the book. And then my editor said yesterday, he goes,

Phil Hudson:

Do you

Michael Jamin:

Happen to have that interview? And I was like, well, actually, I think I do. And I found the cassette from 30 years ago. And so we'll put it in the bonus section of the book where now you can hear me, you can hear me as a 19 year old or whatever it was. Has that scene unfolded? That's like

Phil Hudson:

Steve LE's break dancing

Michael Jamin:

Commercial, but it's stranger than that because you'll know now what I was thinking in my head

Phil Hudson:

While That's awesome.

Michael Jamin:

While it was going on. That's a

Phil Hudson:

Great point.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, it's a fun little thing.

Phil Hudson:

It's cool stuff, man. I love it. I'm pumped. It's a good shift for you. I think it's a good shift for your audience. I think it opens it up a little bit. Hope it's a little bit more accessible to your audience. Your audience is far more than just writers. It's

Michael Jamin:

Great. I don't want to just, when it called screenwriters, you hear this. Well, does that mean I don't want to be a screenwriter? Well, okay, but do you want to do anything creative? Yeah, sure I do. I want to write a poem. Okay, good. Now listen, you can, the

Phil Hudson:

Other thing is how does this apply to novel writing? How does this apply to playwriting? And we have a testimonial video from a guy who does financial writing, and he took your course and he's like, it made my financial writing better.

Michael Jamin:

He's

Phil Hudson:

Able to tell a better story about

Michael Jamin:

Finances in a finance journal. And stories are what gets people hooked. Whatever you want to sell, sell it with a story. People are interested in hearing a story very

Phil Hudson:

Often. That's you,

Michael Jamin:

Right?

Phil Hudson:

It's you in the room, it's you idea, it's your

Michael Jamin:

Acting,

Phil Hudson:

It's your

Michael Jamin:

Art.

Phil Hudson:

All of that is story.

Michael Jamin:

By the way, I hope to do some more public speaking. So if anyone has a,

Phil Hudson:

It works at a corporation

Michael Jamin:

And you want me to do public speaking, we have a number of talks,

Phil Hudson:

Keynotes. We can talk about that, Michael. I do a lot of that with some clients.

Michael Jamin:

Oh really? Oh good. We'll talk about that. Keynote

Phil Hudson:

Marketing. Yeah. Well, good stuff. Anything you want to add? I mean, we had talked, I think, a little bit about potentially putting the music on. I think everybody's already heard the music on. We've heard some of it. It's

Michael Jamin:

Funky. Do you

Phil Hudson:

Want to play it? It's a

Michael Jamin:

Funky, let's play some of it. Okay,

Phil Hudson:

Let's do it. So you're going to share it with me, and then we'll have Dallas cut in the actual track. Dallas is our editor. We'll have him put in the track so that you can hear it raw, not through Zoom.

Michael Jamin:

Here's my

Phil Hudson:

Theme song as composed

Michael Jamin:

By Anthony Rizzo, who's the composer from Marin, who he also did the score for my audiobook. Yeah,

Phil Hudson:

It was just

Michael Jamin:

Fun. And I dunno, it kind of puts a smile

Phil Hudson:

On my face. Makes me want to hear more. This is a random thought, I don't know have thought about in a long time, but I was driving to Utah one time and I stopped at a gas station in Nevada and there was a song playing and it was that song Everybody walked the Dinosaur.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was not was I had that album.

Phil Hudson:

Do you remember this? I put it on my social media and you commented and talked about that song.

Michael Jamin:

No, I don't. But no one's ever heard of was, not was, but Don was the guy who wrote it.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, that song was on a gas station pump. And I posted it and I was like, what a jam. You were like, yeah, I know who that is. You talked about

Michael Jamin:

Was not, was

Phil Hudson:

Got that same vibe. It's good. Good stuff.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Alright, well, is that it, Phil? Are we done? Did we hit it?

Phil Hudson:

I think so. I mean,

Michael Jamin:

Yeah,

Phil Hudson:

Just reiterating to people, you're still providing free screenwriting advice, free writing advice and creative advice through your newsletter, the watch list. You can go to michaeljamin.com/newsletter to access that or iwatchlist your upcoming shows You'll tour. Your tour will be coming up at some

Michael Jamin:

Point. Go to michaeljamin.com/upcoming. And a lot of this, by the way, I have to thank just the people who, my listeners, people who comment and follow me on social media, like, wow, I'm not even a writer, but all this applies to what I could do at work. I was like, oh, I didn't know that. Well, thank you. I'm glad it does for you. So that kind of feedback helps me. Yeah,

Phil Hudson:

Well, awesome stuff. We're not getting rid of the screenwriting course, we're not getting rid of any of that stuff that's still there @michael jamin.com. Go sign up, free post on

Michael Jamin:

Social for free, free webinar michaeljamin.com/webinar. We got a new one. Yeah, we're

Phil Hudson:

Always

Michael Jamin:

Changing things up, so come see

Phil Hudson:

Us there.

Michael Jamin:

Phil's there as well.

Phil Hudson:

I am there messing stuff up on the technical

Michael Jamin:

Side, so thank

Phil Hudson:

You're subscribe. It's my fault there's a lot of any technical issues, just blame 'em on me.

Michael Jamin:

But we're working through 'em. Well, Michael,

Phil Hudson:

It has been a pleasure to do this podcast with you for two years. Man, I can't believe that just went by. I've had two

Michael Jamin:

Kid and a half. Phil, thank you for all your help doing this and your support. So yeah, I mean this is, you've been incredibly helpful,

Phil Hudson:

My honor, man. And looking forward to this next stage of

Michael Jamin:

Your

Phil Hudson:

Journey here too. It was great.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Alright buddy. Alright everyone, thank you again for listening. Start Funking out. Let's hit that funky beat.

Phil Hudson:

Is that the new outro? Not stop, keep

Michael Jamin:

Riding. Yeah, it'll be what?

Phil Hudson:

Funk out. Keep that funky funk out. Get the funk

Michael Jamin:

Out. Get the funk out. Alright, everyone, get the funk out. All right, thanks so much. See you. So now we all know what the hell Michael Jamin is talking about. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for my free monthly [email protected]/webinar. And if you found this podcast helpful or entertaining, please share it with a friend and consider leaving us a five star review on iTunes that really, really helps. For more of this, whatever the hell this is, follow Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJaminwriter. And you can follow Phil Hudson on social media Phil aHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Crane and music was composed by Anthony Rizzo. And remember, you can have excuses or you can have a creative life, but you can't have both. See you next week.

On this week's episode, I talk about all of the different types of "producers" there are working in Hollywood as well as what some of their specific responsibilities might be. Tune in for much more!

Show Notes

Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/

Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course

Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free

Join My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlist

Autogenerated Transcript

Michael Jamin:

I would prefer to do another show like that as opposed to a big budget show faster. Let's shoot it faster. I just like it better.

Phil Hudson:

Buddy. System was pretty quick too. I mean, we shot the In six

Michael Jamin:

Weeks. Yeah, buddy System was equally fast. And even still, it feels when you're on set, it's like, oh, this is so boring. Even still, it takes a long time to get each side.

You're listening to screenwriters Need to Hear This with Michael Jamin.

Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin, back with Phil Hudson for another episode of Screenwriters. Need to hear this. At least until we rename the podcast. We're toying with that idea to open it up. But I don't have an idea yet. I don't have a name yet. So for now, this is what we're going with everyone. That's

Phil Hudson:

News to people. I don't think people know that

Michael Jamin:

Yet. No, it's news. You're leaking. A

Phil Hudson:

Little hint.

Michael Jamin:

I'm leaking a hint and it's because I want to open up the conversations a little to broaden out. So it's not just about screenwriting, but also about people who are interested in the arts and reinventing themselves and just putting it out there. So we're going to hang on to that, but for now, we're going to keep talking about this subject, but we will, I'll still talk about screenwriting, so don't want to panic. I'm still going to talk about screenwriting. I just want to open up to more inspirational art stuff. And

Phil Hudson:

I think for you, two years into the podcast, it started as a thing during Covid to help people out with this specific space. But your social media has grown to include all creatives and a large percentage of the content that people are consuming on your social media. Forgive me for calling it content, but that is being consumed by people who are more in the creative fields. We have people who've signed up for your screenwriting course who are financial analysts, and they write about finance and they talk about the value of story and story structure. We got artists, novelists, all kinds of people. And so yeah, this makes sense to me, especially as you've kind of outgrown the persona of just being a TV writer and being more of a creative inspirational figure in the space.

Michael Jamin:

So that's what the plan is. But until then, we're sticking with this name. But okay, everyone, so today I thought we would talk about the title of today's episode is What the Hell Is a Producer? Because no one knows. It's like one of these terms in Hollywood that everyone, it can mean so many different things. It's unclear exactly what a producer does. And I think everyone, when I post on social media, everyone gets it wrong. So we know what a writer does. The writer writes, we know what an actor does. We think we know what a director does, but often people get that wrong. But that could be another episode. But as far as a producer, it means so many different things. So I'm going to break it down and you're going to help me with this. Phil. First we're going to take a step back. So right now the Writer's Guild is on strike against the producers, the Alliance of Motion picture and television producers or the A M P T P. So that's very misleading. It sounds like we are striking against producers, but we're not in this sense. The producers are the studios. So think about Warner Brothers, universal, Sony, Netflix,

Phil Hudson:

Amazon, yeah, apple.

Michael Jamin:

So they produce film intelligence shows. So we are striking against the producers of film and television shows, but we are not striking against film and television show producers, which would be, I know that's confusing P G

Phil Hudson:

A, right? Is that where you're going? Right.

Michael Jamin:

So that would be, when you think of the P G A, sometimes you watch a film and it says someone's name, the P G a, that's the Producer's Guild of America. So those are people who are producers. They work on the show or the movie that's being made. So anytime you have a film or a television show, you have a production staff and they are there every day and they are so on a TV show in particular, the writers will dream up a sequence or a scene or whatever it is, and then they'll sit down with the producers whose offices are right next door and say, can we make this happen? Your job? We thought of it, but now you have to actually make it happen. And sometimes they say, we can't. You have to. You're going to break the bank. And sometimes they say, okay, we can do this. And those people are producers. Okay, but that's in tv. I'm going to talk more about TV first.

Phil Hudson:

And there's a note too here too about the P G A, I don't know if you're going to touch on this, but they're not a union that is basically a group of people who have kind of unified or they've basically agreed to be an association, but because they are technically employers, they cannot unionize.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, really? And so are you in the P G A?

Phil Hudson:

I think I'm eligible, but I have not joined. I've not pursued it, but it's definitely open.

Michael Jamin:

But don't you get your don't they help provide health insurance,

Phil Hudson:

I believe is the D G A and P G A. They've pooled. So basically these producers have agreed to pay into these funds and do these things to provide pension and healthcare for their members. But the difference is they are not effectively a union. I think legally they cannot be a union. So the term guild can be a bit confusing, right, because there's the W G A, which is a union, not

Michael Jamin:

Really, I don't think WGA is considered a union. I think it's considered.

Phil Hudson:

I thought they were. I thought that's why they're able to strike because they are unionized. No

Michael Jamin:

Thinks

Phil Hudson:

The collective bargaining is by Definit definition of union. I thought there's a great point.

Michael Jamin:

I thought there. There's some what add. I thought there's some differences, slight differences, but okay, so now we're going to talk about producers

Phil Hudson:

Of, it's two different unions. So it's the east and the west combined forces. So there're two different unions that are working together

Michael Jamin:

In what? Oh

Phil Hudson:

Yes. So the writer's Guild East is a union and the Roger's Guild West is a union. And then they join and that's the guild. That's what they represented, two different unions.

Michael Jamin:

So when we talk about producers on a TV show, this is so unclear and I'm going to try to clear it up and it's going to be still confusing. So producers, like I said, on a TV show, their job is to, for the most part, make it happen. Make whatever we dream of, make it happen. So if we set a scene that takes place in the amusement park, the producer's like, okay, how are we going to shoot there? How are first we got to rent out of Ineson Park, we have to move the cameras there, we have to license, have to buy the space out. And that's producing it. If you want special effects, they're going to have to make sure all those people are there on the set that day. They coordinate the whole damn thing. And there's many different levels of producers, the line producers, the one who deals with mostly making sure we're on budget, making sure. Then there's also like you are, you're an associate producer. What's your job as an associate producer?

Phil Hudson:

So the saddle associate producer came up this season. It was recommended by an actual producer, savvy Kathy or Kathy, I always mess up her last name, but S'S awesome. She's a 24 and they were trying to figure out a title for my new role. And there are specific titles they can't use because they are managed by union. So facilities manager and things like that. And in basically live tv, anyone who manages the stages or the set or controls things on the ground, that's an associate producer title. So she's the one who encouraged everyone to give me that title. My role was very much, I was an assistant to the producers. I kind of handled anything that they wanted to delegate down. I had their authority to make things happen. My first day I fired somebody because that person was breaking rules and I had to do that. I handled plumber issues, I handled facility issues. I was in charge of making sure that everything got cleaned. If someone needed something, it was my responsibility to make sure that that got coordinated with the production office. So it was basically a liaison between the producers and the other people and the rest of the set. One thing that I found funny is there's this, I might've talked about it on the podcast and forgive me if it's redundant, but there, do you know who Jordan is on Conan Conan show? He's one of his associate producer?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

So his skit came out of, I believe this came out hearing it from Conan. It came out of the last writer strike where they didn't have anything and one of the other producers was like, Jordan, you have such interesting interactions with him, maybe you should just record those. They're just fascinating to watch. So he became a figure on the show and he had Jordan on a podcast and Conan's like, what is your title? He's like, well, I've had many titles. He's like, but what is your title currently? And he's like, it is associate producer. And Conan goes, if there has ever been a more meaningless title in all of television, it's associate producer. I was like, it feels accurate. It's an honorary title. You get respect on set, people respect what you say, but it doesn't really come with many perks.

Michael Jamin:

Sometimes it might just be a catchall for something that they don't know what to, I started my career as a joke writer on the Mike and Maddie show, which is a morning TV show. I was a writer, so I used to write jokes, but they didn't want to pay me. If they had called me a writer, they would've had to pay me Writer's Guild minimum. And so instead they didn't want to give me that title, they just called me a segment producer instead. And so they could pay me less. But my job, I suppose, was producing segments of it's morning TV show. And so the segment I was in charge of was the morning chat when the hosts are just talking from the camera and they're making jokes about stuff. And then also sometimes we would do remote segments. We did one thing where Dr. Ruth was giving them a tour of some sex store. And so I was there on site just pitching jokes for the sex toys. So I was a producer, but did I really know how to produce? Nah, it's really rare. No,

Phil Hudson:

But that's a very typical thing. Even from cable shows, morning shows on cable, those are producers. You have producer titles. So my friend's sister was dating a producer on the Late show and he was a producer, but what was he? He was effectively a joke writer. He wrote jokes for the show and he was responsible. But I know people in Utah and New Mexico who are producers and their segment producer, they go out and they like, we're interviewing the person who makes the largest cookie in America. They make sure it gets done. That's it right

Michael Jamin:

Now, here's where it gets a little confusing in tv. If you watch a TV show, you'll often see many titles that have the word producer in it, producer, supervising producer, executive producer. Many of those people are just mid to high level writers who don't really have the same functions. They don't do the same jobs as the producers do who work next door who actually make it happen. So is no overlap in the job responsibilities, but the job responsibility of say, executive producer who is probably also the showrunner would be, and also maybe some lower producers like supervising producer. You might be in charge of casting, you might have some editing responsibilities. You also have to know how when you write the whole season, you often will say, is this producible? And that comes with experience. So for example, if I was on a show and we're breaking episodes one through 10 and I see too many locations, it's my job as let's say a co-executive producer to say, we don't need all these, we can combine scenes with locations here. We can be more efficient, even though I'm not actually producing it. I'm wearing my producer's hat that we say.

So just so know that it's not all producers on a show or actually on the production side we're also, yeah,

Phil Hudson:

I had a friend who was an actor and she made a comment once, she's like, all those producers at the front of a show are just writers, don't you? And I was like, that sounds great. I would like that. But the term for co ep, which is what you and your writing partner are on Tacoma FD have been many times, my understanding of this is you're effectively qualified to run the show and often need to do that when the executive producer is off on set or dealing with the casting thing or managing calls with them. So you're running the room, you're making sure it happens. And I've heard that term referred to as the strong number two.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, the number two. Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. So you're the boss, you're there to make sure that the ship stays going. I mean, yeah, it's basically the showrunner's, the captain, you're the first mate you take over when they're need arrest or break and you have the same authority to get things done

Michael Jamin:

Basically. So those are our producers. Now there's a common misconception that sometimes people think in TV that producers are the people who raise the money, they put together the money for the project. I want to assure you, we don't touch a nickel. It's like we don't spend our own money. The studios are the ones who are in charge of raising the money. It's their money. So we never open our wallets only in rare exceptions. So for example, I've been involved in projects where someone might be an executive producer and they may put together let's say 10 or $15,000 to shoot a presentation, which is like a down and dirty pilot, a cheap pilot just as a sales tool, but they won't spend a lot of money. It's like very little. They're not investing. A TV show might cost a million dollars to shoot, we're talking about 10 or 15 just to put it on its feet just to show people kind of what it looks like. And this doesn't even happen a lot for the most part in tv executive producers are not in charge of raising money. They don't touch it. We work for the studios. The studios, it's their money that we're playing with. So get that out of your head. It's not a money position in television.

Phil Hudson:

And I think this is another definition thing too, where it can also be confusing because there is often another executive producer who is that guy who is doing that at the studio. They get that title, right?

Michael Jamin:

Well, they don't usually get the title. They don't usually get the title at the studio. So that's the catch. They don't get a title. They work for the studio.

Phil Hudson:

I thought I've seen, I think

Michael Jamin:

They might have a production deal, which is a pod. So for example, often this is why it's so confusing. Often a producer will have what we call a shingle at a studio. So the studio Warner Brothers is paying their overhead. They give 'em a pod, which is a producer over overall deal, and they say for two or three years you have a pod at the studio where you will help develop TV shows. You'll find writers, you'll maybe put together talent, maybe directors, you'll package it, you'll kind of work on the package together and then pitch us the studio, the idea, and then if we like it, we'll shoot it. And if not, we won't. But the person who has the deal, sometimes they're just a highly paid actor on a hit show. They may have a shingle. Sometimes they're just really straight up producers who have a shingle and they will get an executive producer credit on the TV show. But the studio has their own people in charge who oversee the production on the creative side. Development executives or current executives do not get credit on it. It'd be a Warner Brothers show. So I don't recall ever seeing them ever get cut credit on a show unless they sometimes get fired or leave the studio or whatever, and then they get her own production shingle. So that's common.

Phil Hudson:

And that makes sense because the credit that I'm thinking about, that person who has that EP title, there are three of them and two of them are managers who sold the show. So they did that. They packaged things for Warner to come. So sometimes, and the other was the producer of this production studio making the show, and they were line producer, but also had a producer credit.

Michael Jamin:

Sometimes a manager of the talent of you, the writer or the actor may get a producer credit because they negotiate for it. It's not uncommon. Often those managers, it just depends on what they do. Often they don't show up. They might have a parking space right in front of the sound stage and they never show up a hundred percent.

Phil Hudson:

So that's true for Taco fd. And they do show up. They show up for one, maybe two times this season, typically once they pop in, spend about half a day, bring their kids and then they go.

Michael Jamin:

So it's not really, that's just not their focus. Their focus is on kind selling shows, not actually making them, but occasionally I know some of them. Dave Miner is actually pretty active. I know he helps out. He's

Phil Hudson:

One of the ones I'm thinking about. Yep, that shows up.

Michael Jamin:

He's a manager at Three Arts who also has a executive producer credit on his show, and he's involved more in the day-to-day, but not, it's the degree that the runners want him to be helpful and he is helpful, but it just depends on really the relationship that the producer wants to have on the TV show and what they want to do and what the showrunner is asking of 'em. But I've been on other shows where they have done very little or I was on one show where the producer, the executive producer was a manager of the talent and it seemed like she did everything in her will to help get the show canceled because she was completely inept. And eventually the show was canceled. Then I was like, boy, are you dumb? But it happens. So okay. But again, they don't raise money, and this is on the TV side.

They don't raise money with the exception of occasionally, maybe they want to help make a presentation or they put some money together, but they're not financing the show. In the rule in Hollywood, you don't want to put your money. Now if you are creating your own TV show, as I'm talking to my audience, how do you guys break into Hollywood? And I'll often say, Hey, put it on film, put it put up your YouTube channel. In that case, you are putting your own money. Yes, you'll be executive producer putting your own money up, but this is until you break in. And even then, I don't recommend you putting a lot of money. I'm talking about a couple of thousand, not a million

Phil Hudson:

Listen episode. Was it 99 where we talked about that? I think we hit on that 99 or 1 0 1. But yeah, think about that. Your story is probably not going to be worth but's. Still a good learning experience, but

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, it's not a great return on investment. But on the film side, it's a different story. Well, I should say it can be a different story. So if you're making a film, a producer, or it might have a similar function as a producer overall, Dylan and tv, they help put together the project, they have a deal or a shingle at the studio. But again, they're not putting together the money the studio is putting together the money. On an indie film, it's a little different. Often people, the indie filmmakers have to fundraise and so they'll often say, Hey, if you give $5,000, I'll give you an executive producer title on the show. And so in that case, they are helping raise the money.

Phil Hudson:

Yep. They're finding financiers to do it. And they're typically the ones I know of from the indie films that I've been a part of or seen marketing campaigns. They're typically made their money on pharmaceuticals or their lawyers and big time lawyers or their business people, dentists. And they just, again, we did talk about this recently, but oftentimes those people did not pursue their craft in order to pursue the paycheck. And this is their way of participating. Some of 'em, it's a new venture they're trying to get into. But yeah, that thing oftentimes, yeah. And oftentimes they're looking at it as a tax. They have money they have to spend anyway. It's okay if it takes a loss, why not put on a producer hat and help make an indie film?

Michael Jamin:

So this idea of when people say, I want to be a Hollywood producer, why? What exactly. Often you don't even know what that means. At the end of the day, if you want to be a producer, you are a producer today I'm a producer. And it just means you are going to hustle to make it happen. And I've worked with many producers who were really just people who hustled. They didn't have some great know-how. They were like, okay, I have a script. How am I going to get this script into the hands of this actor who I don't know? Well, I'll hide it inside of a pizza box and I'll deliver a pizza with a script inside. I've known producers who've done that. They're just hustlers and they've managed to put people together. And so that's what a producer is. A producer just makes it happen.

And so sometimes when people say, how do I become a producer? You do it. You just do it and worked. I had on my podcast, Jim Serpico, who's the producer of Marin, he, he's just like a normal guy who hustled, who was always figuring out ways just to make it happen, to get, if you wanted an actor, he's like, we didn't have an in with the actor. He goes, I'll figure out. I'll call someone who I know, someone who might know someone who might know this actor. I'll make some calls, give me a minute. And that's what he was, he was just a guy who was hustling put to just kind of make it happen. And that's how we learned that ultimately cervical learned a lot more about the business. He was very hands-on. He was helping scout and he knew how to shoot and he was really very helpful to have on set. But he really was just a guy who just wanted to do it. I'm here to get it done. That was his attitude.

Phil Hudson:

I'm thinking about Richard Perello, who is the producing partner of Broken Lizard, and I had the opportunity to be the producer's assistant on Quasi. And when I was doing that job, the line producer, he's U P M and line producer, and he was also a producer on Quasi, and he's also that on Taco. He's guy named Matt Melin. He sat down with him. He made it really clear the producers in film are very different than TV because you can have all of these producers in TV and you have to service them. But on film, there's really one producer, and that's the producer on set. They're the creative producer and that's very much what Perlo was. So his whole point was serve him. If the guys need something, get it done. But if you can hand it off to pa, do it. Just be there for Rich.

And that's what I did. I was there. I was there before him. I had his coffee ready, I had his sides ready. I'd set up his chair. If he had something he needed done, I'd run it. I knew what time to go get his coffee after lunch, I'd go get his lunch order. I do all of those things. And at the end you think me, because he's like, I just needed to spend that much time. You think you for taking care of me. It allowed me to focus on the set. And when I was there observing, sitting behind him in the chair in video village, he's like, we need more greens here. We need this here. And he did the same thing. He worked with the guys through their indie films on all of their indie film projects and just learned with them negotiating, figuring out how to get things done. And like you said, they're just hustlers. They get things done.

Michael Jamin:

So if you want to be a producer and you keep, and you're asking, well, how do I break into Hollywood to be a producer, then you're not a producer because the producer is someone who just gets it done. I will. They figure it out. And so I would say if you want to be a producer, you spend some time on set, learn what all the various jobs are, observe, and then find some kid with a script fresh out of film school or not out of film school and say, Hey, I want to work with you. Let's produce your script.

Phil Hudson:

Now you're I on the same line of logic. I had another conversation recently with a 24 because they've told me they want to push me down this producer path and they're open to working with me outside of Tacoma depending on what happens if we get picked up. And I said, well, what would be, because the next step for me would be a production supervisor, which is part of this producer path. Then the next would be assistant U P M U P M, line producer, and then potentially producer. And I said, what would make me a good production supervisor? And they said, learn the production side. Learn budgeting. If you could be a line producer's assistant, if you sit in on those conversations about money and how much that rig cost or that lens costs and how much we can afford to do this or that, said, there's no way that's not going to be helpful as a producer. And then she said, I know you want to be a writer. So the other thing is the best collaborators also understand production and budget because they are more willing to give and take. They know what to fight for the creative, they know what to let go of. So it's only helpful as someone who wants to be a showrunner as well.

Michael Jamin:

Also 8 24, they make some really good stuff. I know it's not exactly what you want to do in terms of writing, but it's like

Phil Hudson:

It's not something that I turned down no had conversations to about not bad. Yeah, we had conversations about me going to Houston to be a production supervisor on a film, but it was all dependent on the rider's strike. And this was back in April, and I talked to her recently. Everything's been pushed into next year on most of their production slate. They do have waivers from the Writer's Guild, which I don't think people, a lot of people understand. And the waiver is really that they've agreed to every single term the Writer's Guild put out, and they're a small indie film. They're not one of the big studios. And because of that, the Writer's Guild like, sure, if you're going to meet our demands, go ahead and make whatever films you want to do. And they're just continuing to make 'em happen.

Michael Jamin:

Hustle,

Phil Hudson:

They're hustling. It's same thing.

Michael Jamin:

Hustlers. Yeah. So that's why anyone who wants to be a producer, you can be a producer and you don't have to ask permission. Would

Phil Hudson:

You say it's street smarts more than book smarts here? Because I know the book smarts are important from a budgeting and a finance perspective, but I also seems to me someone who can just make things happen. That's the job, make it happen.

Michael Jamin:

For example, we're on set on Marin, we're shooting on book locations, the low budget show, we're shooting some neighborhood, and the minute they see the people see these trucks, the film trucks, because everything comes in these trucks, all the equipment, for some reason the leaf blowers show up that day.

Phil Hudson:

Lawnmowers are on, they

Michael Jamin:

Call each other the minutes that the director yells action, suddenly the leaf blowers show up out of everywhere. You can't shoot with a, and so the producers say, just hand out a hundred dollars bills. That's what a producer do. Hand out a hundred dollars just to get 'em to go away. Yep.

Phil Hudson:

Because it's costing him $10,000 every minute or whatever, every hour. It's

Michael Jamin:

Definitely a shakedown with these guys. Do

Phil Hudson:

I think it's 10 grand an hour on a low budget show? It's 10 grand an hour for the set. I talked to this, I was talking to someone about the cost of that. It's crazy. So it's worth a thousand dollars to keep the machine running,

Michael Jamin:

But that's what a good producer will do. Also, if it looks like rain, a producer will figure out, alright, we'll work with the associate producer, first assistant. Yeah, first ad to figure out what the shooting schedule will be. Okay, we will move this around. And sometimes the director will get into that conversation as well as the showrunner, but often you'll just turn to the producer. What do you want to do as a showrunner? I don't really give a crap. What do you want to do?

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, that's the other thing that's interesting that I don't think a lot of people understand is when you're making these projects, I always in my head assume they would be shot linearly and they're not. They're blocked shot because they have to be because the expense of moving the equipment and setting up shots, it's such a time suck, and you're paying all those people for those man hours. It's just easier to shoot. We're in the garage, shoot everything in the garage right now. So you have actors coming in and they're shooting the last scene of a movie, first thing, and they have spent maybe two or three rehearsals with their co-stars, and it's this incredibly emotional moment, and then they have to jump right into the levity of the first act. It's really fascinating that the complexity of a schedule, and that's again, something I would've assumed a producer would do. And no, the first ad does it and then the producer vets it to make sure it's going to meet the budget. Like the line producer.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. And then before that, seen a shot. As the part of the showrunner's job, we'll run up to the actors and say, okay, just to refresh your memory, shooting so much out of order. Sometimes we're shooting not just scenes out of order, but we're shooting entire episodes. We're shooting episode two and episode three at the same time.

Phil Hudson:

Block shooting episodes. We would do that all the time on Tacoma.

Michael Jamin:

And so we would run up to the actress before we're doing, before each scene, just to refresh your memory, this is where we are in the storyline. This is what you're playing here. If you read it, you might think, okay, I should be happy. But now you're mad at this person from the earlier scene.

Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them to you for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you and it's absolutely free. Just go to michaeljamin.com/watchlist.

Phil Hudson:

That's another thing I've seen too, which I think is incredibly valuable, is really good showrunners make the actors sit down and read the scripts out loud with them to make sure that they read everything. Because I've seen a propensity for actors to just read their lines and they don't understand how it fits into the full thing. That's not all actors, it's definitely not all actors, but I've seen a lot of actors do that.

Michael Jamin:

I have not worked on a show where that was a problem, but now that you mentioned, I have to probably keep my eye open it, but I'm sure in some shows actors can get lazy. But I haven't worked on, because Marin was a little different. Marin, he was the only regular because of the budget and everyone else was a guest star, meaning we would hire that actor for maybe five out of 13 episodes. They were not regular. So regular means you're on every single episode. So if you're a guest star and you're only doing five episodes, you you're going to come prepared. You're not going to sleepwalk your way through it. And so Mark was always prepared, and although often he was always prepared, but easily confused given how much he had to do in every single episode. So you had to go, just remind him where he was emotionally in each episode. But for the actors, the guest stars, they were always well, oh

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, you're on it.

Michael Jamin:

You're on it. Yeah, they're on it. They knew they were not going

Phil Hudson:

To work. Hats off to circuit codes on that too. What is it? How many days? A two and a half days to shoot an episode.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. And towards the end we got three. But that's crazy.

Phil Hudson:

That's wild. It's crazy wild. We had, I think is it eight days? We would block, shoot. So over two weeks we'd shoot two episodes. So I think it comes out to be like five days per episode, and it's still skinnier teeth getting by to get everything.

Michael Jamin:

So we were really running gun, and I used to say, as long as someone's finger was in the lens, we got it move on. There wasn't enough time. And so we would shoot everything in a, we would shoot, we block the scene, shoot the first thing in a first run in a master, which is kind like a rehearsal, but you're in a master, so you're everything, you're wide. So if the actor's not perfect, it's fine. You're only going to use the master to open the scene at the end, the scene, and then maybe a couple of times in the middle. And so we'd shoot the master and then go into coverage, which means going immediately to closeups. Wow.

Phil Hudson:

No mediums or anything like that.

Michael Jamin:

Very few. And then you

Phil Hudson:

Didn't have time.

Michael Jamin:

You don't have time. And occasionally in each episode we would give the director maybe one or two vanity shots like, all right, fine, you want to set up a crane or whatever. But you don't have many of those. But I worked on another show, God, it was so annoying. It was the director, we had more time. And he decided to put a camera, it was a car scene. He wanted to install a camera on the edge of the car so he can get a closeup of the wheel as the car was racing down the street. And we used that chauffer half a second, and it took hours to set the stupid shot up. And I'm like, why are we doing this? What's the point of this? Is anyone impressed by seeing a wheel of a car as it races down? Who cares? That's not what this show is. So sometimes I feel like you can more, you can waste time with shots that are completely unnecessary for the audience is not going to appreciate it more. I don't think anybody's going to appreciate it.

Phil Hudson:

Well, anyone listening to this who is interested in indie film, what you're describing, and the way you shot Marin is indie film. What is it like on average? And correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's three pages per day is a good shooting day for a TV show or a feature. And a feature might be half a page because they're doing bigger, broader.

Michael Jamin:

No, we were doing sometimes 11 pages a

Phil Hudson:

Day. Indies is 10. Yeah, I was going to say in is 10 you're doing,

Michael Jamin:

Sometimes we did 11. It was like, man, we got a lot to do. A lot to do. It's crazy. Oh yeah.

Phil Hudson:

I can't imagine that the crew just hustling nonstop.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, they were hustling and there's just no time to waste. But when you watch that show, no one thought. No one thought it was like it was sloppy.

Phil Hudson:

Felt like every other high quality film. And I think what's cool about that too, and I think you learned this when you study indie film, is there's a style that comes out of that. The minimalism almost adds to the value. And then we've talked on the podcast previously about the value of an art director or an art supervisor and how they can come in and really change things. In our Marin, we talked about the photos and they're out of focus, and that's where the art is. The Nissan Cent and everything else that's happening in the scene, the music comes into play to pick things up. But yeah, it's fascinating.

Michael Jamin:

The thing is, I would prefer, as crazy as that sounds, I would prefer to do another show like that as opposed to a big budget show faster. Let's shoot it faster. I just like it better.

Phil Hudson:

Buddy system was pretty quick too. I mean, we shot the buddy six

Michael Jamin:

Weeks buddy system was equally fast and even still feels when you're on set, it's like, oh, this is so boring. Even still, it takes a long time to get each shot, so I don't get it when, but also, there wasn't a lot of people being self-indulgent on Marin. A lot of actors was like, no, stop horsing around. Know your lines. We don't have time. So it forces people to focus. And you know what? The crew, they loved it. I think they got paid less than other shows. There was no overtime on Marin, but they loved it. They wanted to go home with their family. They didn't want to spend their lives on set. They were happy to work 12, 13 hours a day. Go home.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, I want to highlight one thing that you were talking about here. What you're describing as a showrunner is why the showrunner is the executive producer. You have to dictate what shots are important. You have to dictate the stone, the tone and style of the show. You have to make sure your actors are prepared. You have to make sure your actors understand what are going on. And I know there's specific union rules about who's allowed to talk to the actors and who isn't allowed to. The doctors who can talk to the background and who can't. But the fact that the showrunner is there to serve the entirety of the production rather than just the ego of an actor and understanding things at every detail, the nuances of which ash tray, what colors the car we're using, you're making all of those decisions to sculpt and build this that is a producer.

Michael Jamin:

And often you, let's say a black car and the producer says that car's going to cost a thousand dollars more than a silver car. He is, all right, let's get the silver one. I'll live with it. But also, there were times, plenty of times when we were running Marin where it's like the director would set up a shot and I'd yell off, we're not going to use this shot, so keep it going. I'm telling you, because the short winner has final say over cut, not the director in tv. So I'd say, I'm not going to use this shot. So don't waste time getting it. Spend your time somewhere else on a different shot that you'll like, but not this one. Because that comes

Phil Hudson:

From decade, a decade plus of doing the work of writing and being on sets. And I think that's another main thing that they're talking about with the strikes, the ability for writers to be on TV sets has gone away. Because unless your showrunner wants to invite you to the set, which praise to Kevin and Steve, they will always invite the writers when their episode is shooting and they can come sit in video village and hang the actors and watch their show get made. But a lot of productions, writers are not on staff and they have to work. So they go get another writing job and they're sitting in another room writing. You don't

Michael Jamin:

Learn any of this stuff. Yeah, you're not

Phil Hudson:

Learning how to be a showrunner. That's a lot of what the writer's guild striking about right now too, is staffing minimums, but also standards of how many people you want to have on set so people can learn the job of running a show.

Michael Jamin:

Right? There were times where, let's take, I see you're shooting. It's an emotional scene and they're covering in a, well, let's say they shooting in a wide, and it's an emotional scene. I'm not going to play it in a wide, I'm playing in a closeup. It's emotional. I'm going to be in a closeup or let's say it's a two shot. And also I know to make the joke pop, I'm not going to play it in a two shot. I'm going to play, jokes often have to play in singles or overs. So someone says a joke and the other person reacts to it, and it's the reaction that's funny. And if you play it in a two shot, it's not funny. And so there are things like this that you learn on set as an experienced showrunner or whatever writer you'll learn on set that you are not going to learn if you're not there. And so yes, this is partly what the strike is over. Sometimes you're getting shot coverage and they've crossed the line, and so these shots don't

Phil Hudson:

Match. Do you want to define that for your listen, so

Michael Jamin:

Hard to explain without drawing it out, but basically,

Phil Hudson:

Do you want me to explain it or you want,

Michael Jamin:

I can explain it, but it's hard to imagine what

Phil Hudson:

It's, who will crossing the line? Because you'll see an image of it. But I think for the listeners, you want it in their car.

Michael Jamin:

So imagine you're shooting, okay, so imagine you are shooting a multi-camera that come on a stage or any play on a stage. So the line separates the actors and the audience. There's a line there, imaginary line. And so the audience never crosses the line to watch come across that line to be on the actor side. And the actors never cross the line to the audience's side. And so when you're shooting a scene, imagine that the cameras are on the audience side. They're always behind that line and they never cross the line. And the problem is once you cross that line with a camera, the images get flipped.

Phil Hudson:

So it's very disjoint when you cut in post because all of a sudden someone was on the left and now they're on the right. Right.

Michael Jamin:

So if I'm talking to you in this shot here, we're doing this video podcast. I'm looking right at Phil, and Phil is looking left at me. That's how it's always going to be. I'm always looking right at Phil. And we

Phil Hudson:

Intentionally talked about that when we were setting up the video podcast. Who's looking right? Who's looking left? So that there was this line, so it wasn't disjointed. I don't set my camera up on the right hand side, and I'm on vacation, so I have this other camera. But normally if you look at it, it looks like we're having a conversation looking at each other.

Michael Jamin:

For the most part. Maybe in a movie or TV show, the camera's not going to cross the line because it becomes disorienting unless the director wants to disorient you, which is okay, that's a creative choice. The

Phil Hudson:

Other place would do it. And there's a book on directing. I read really early on in my studies that talked about this as principle, and it was really hard for me to understand. So that's why I'm saying Google it like Michael was telling you to do. But imagine there's a parade coming down the street and you're watching it from this angle, and if you jump to the other side, it's flipped. That's the flip. But if your camera moves on a dolly around the other side in your brain, you now understand, but you can't go back to the other side now. So you can flip it, but you can't hop scotch back and forth because

Michael Jamin:

That's the T. Yeah. Can reestablish a line. You can always establish a new line. But one of the most difficult things for a director to shoot, it's not a car chase. It's not an exclusion. It's four people sitting at a dining room table. It's wild. That's really hard to shoot.

Phil Hudson:

The blocking in that is wild. You see, they literally chart it out in a CAD software and it says, this person's looking here and this person's looking here. And you have where your camera goes so that you remember meticulous about that,

Michael Jamin:

Which is why you'll often see as a cheat, you'll see if it's a table one character sitting on one side and then two characters sitting on the other side, they're not sitting all around the table, they're just sitting on opposite ends of the table. And even that's kind of difficult to shoot. And I'm not a director, although I have director, but I still, when I have to work on scenes like that, I have a pencil and pad making notes to figure out if we're shooting on the right side of the line. It's so complicated.

Phil Hudson:

Yes, it's a three-dimensional chess. You're just, yeah,

Michael Jamin:

It's easy. A good DP can do it, no problem. They can see it and

Phil Hudson:

They'll tell you,

Michael Jamin:

They'll warn you. Yeah. And the script E, they'll be able to help you as well. But often the director is not so much of a help because that's just not what they're worried about. Or maybe they don't have the experience to worry about it. And so as a showrunner, I busied myself one season of Marin learning all about this, but it took a season to figure out how to do this because I dunno, I'm a slow learner. But anyway, so that has nothing to do with being a producer, but Well,

Phil Hudson:

It does because you have to pay attention to those things, and you have to know those things. So as an executive in your audience right now, that is not predominantly, we talked about the beginning, but largely screenwriters or people who are interested in film, I think that it's really important for them to understand that you're not just showing up smoking a cigar in a chair, barking orders. You're focused and paying attention. You have binders with notes. You have everyone coming to you with a thousand questions over and over again.

Michael Jamin:

And I'm lucky because I have a writing partner. Well, if I don't have the answer, I can punt it to him and he'll probably have the answer. But we often divide responsibilities that way. So I understand the camera's a little better. And he does. He does as much of the other. He's really good at figuring out where we are in the script and whose attitude, who knows what at which moment. Like, man, how do you remember all this stuff? But he also looks at me the same way. How do you know all this stuff about the camera? And that's why when people say, I want to be a showrunner, it's like, hold on. Do you know what a showrunner does? It's a hard job. Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

The Rider's Guild has training programs on this because it is difficult, and again, it's part of the strike because they're, is my opinion, just my opinion. But I think a lot of times, corporations, I get it. Their job is to maximize profits and their job is to satisfy the demands of their shareholders. And it's a quarterly game four times a year. They're just making moves to satisfy that. And the Writer's Guild looking at it as 20, 30 years down the road, they see this hole where there's going to be a gap where no one's going to know how to run a show when this group of showrunners retires or moves on. There's not going to be anyone with that skillset and that knowledge because they don't have the repetitions and the time on set and the observation, and we haven't even talked about post and the value of being in post to learn these things too. And we can't use that shot because this, or there's a better take. The notes that I have to manage and maintain for the showrunner in order to get, I give him the lemi so that he can sit and post and understand what shots were taken, all the scripting notes, everything. They're going through everything to make those decisions and posts. And it's largely that stuff. Then those decisions being made on the day when they're filming. Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

The thing is, you mentioned the showrunners program at the writer's club. I had a guest on here, Alex Berger, who I worked with many years ago, and he's at the level now where he's ready to get his own show. He just hasn't gotten his own show, but he took the showrunner's program at the writer's club. It's a free program you have to apply for though. And he says that he learned a lot. And I was like, oh, tell me what you learned. And I was interested to know what he learned, run three shows, but it doesn't mean I know. No, I'm doing it because I never went through the program. But I was like, oh, that makes sense.

Phil Hudson:

I found out about that show. And again, I've talked about this documentary many times, but it's a showrunner, the Art of TV writing. But that's great. And they go in and they talk about that program, and they interview the director of the program and what the job is. And the thing that really stood out to me was quality scripts on time. That's the main thing. That's your job. That is the linchpin. And my assistant, Kevin, I hired an assistant in my agency who's a script coordinator, and he worked on a bunch of shows, but he was telling that one of the shows he was working on got canceled because the showrunner was not turning in scripts on time. And a very well known showrunner too.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, it definitely happens. And on most of the shows we do, we try to get all the scripts done in pre-production. And the crew, the production staff is so grateful because that way they can plan ahead. They can decide which episodes to shoot. It's a hard enough job as it is without getting the script the night before. Imagine getting the script the night before and then telling 'em, okay, now you have to find, I don't know, a roller rink to shoot in the day the next day. How are they going to do that? So you have to get, this is when things get dangerous, when people are overworked or working late and cutting corners. So it's the job of the showrunner. And I think what the problem is, is I've been lucky I've had studios because these low budget shows that the studios are very, for the most part, hands off and they let you do your job. But on a high budget show, the studio may throw out a script the night before. We don't like it. And it's like, well, damn, do you understand what kind of stress this is going to put? Not just on the showrunner, but the entire crew in

Phil Hudson:

The families of the crew and the showroom as well. I know there are people on our crew who are working on the reshoots of Thor Love and Thunder, and they were working 14 hour days, seven days a week for two weeks straight. Terrible. And it is just like, Hey, it's going to make a billion dollars. We'll pay all of the overages and it'll all come out in the wash. We just got to get it done. And they did it shooting on a studio in Burbank, and then they have to drive home at three or four in the morning and then have turnaround.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Oh, I mean, these crew members really hard, hard, it can be a hard job. It could be a hard life. And so

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, you're getting home at 4:00 AM and then going to bed, you miss your kids. You wake up. I mean, even just, and I'll just say this, when I had my first kid, we were shooting quasi, my kid was almost a year old, and there were days I didn't see my kid, weeks. I didn't see my kid leave in the morning before she got up. And I'd come home before she went to bed or after she went to bed. That's heartbreaking.

Michael Jamin:

Heartbreaking. I hate that. Right.

Phil Hudson:

So it's what it was, and it was 30 days of that, and then it was over, and I was just very grateful

Michael Jamin:

At, you can see the end in sight. At least you can go, okay, it's 30 days. I could. But if this is your life and okay, it's 30 days now, but your next movie is also 30 days, and then 30 days after that, a different movie, that becomes really hard. Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Well, I think that speaks to as well, what your priorities are and what you want out of life. We talk about how if you want to be a writer, you have to learn how to write and you have to write for free, and you have to get notes and get feedback. You have to learn all these skillset sets. But I don't think a lot of people think about the quality of life that they want to have. And there are a lot of people, I think when I told you I was having a kid, you were telling me that you had an assistant or someone that you knew was a really good writer, really talented, and they just moved out of LA because it just no longer fit their family lifestyle. I can't remember who you were telling me.

Michael Jamin:

I don't remember who that was.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, I remember I had the conversation. It was like literally you were telling them that. And then I was like, well, by the way, I'm having a kid after that. Because things shift and things change. Priorities change when you have a family, priorities. If you don't want to have a family and you're happy and you just want to make a career awesome and good for you, it's a balance. And I have a very supportive wife who lets me chase my dreams and do my things, and she hopes,

Michael Jamin:

But it could also be feast or famine. It can also be, you don't want to turn down this job. You don't know when your next job's coming. So

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, imagine if I didn't have an agency that I'd built for the last decade. I'd be in a real bad spot right now with two kids. Yeah,

Michael Jamin:

Exactly. Yeah, right. There are a

Phil Hudson:

Lot of people like

Michael Jamin:

That. I said, you're smart to have this other income stream, multiple income streams in Hollywood. Yeah. Well, there we go, Phil.

Phil Hudson:

Good stuff. Any other thoughts on producing or

Michael Jamin:

I don't know. I think I hit it. Do you have anything you want to add to this?

Phil Hudson:

No, I think it was a very helpful conversation. I hope people, I found it very enjoyable personally. I mean, just hearing you talk about these things and the nuances, it's just kind of sets the stage for what the job really is. And I think the mistake or the folly we often run into as creatives is we have this delusion of grandeur that we're going to make it in Hollywood and we're going to win an Oscar, and we're going to do these things. And you have to have a little bit of that suspension of disbelief, which is what we ask our audience to have. We have to suspend our disbelief about the reality of what our world looks like to chase our dreams and our goals, but we also need to be grounded and understand what the stakes are. And I think that's one of the values that you bring in the podcast. And what we see from people talking about is just, we just read the reviews the other day, just going through a bunch of 'em, and you and I we're really appreciative for anybody who's leaving reviews. So if you enjoy,

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, please go and leave us a review on Apple, if you like our

Phil Hudson:

Show on iTunes. Yeah. But yeah, it's like people are just like, there's gold. Every episode's full of gold and wisdom. I just really think that it's a credit to your realistic take on of this, Michael. I just think you're just preparing another generation of writers and producers and creatives to just understand. You may never make it in the way you think you will, but it's still worth pursuing if you want to just keep doing it.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, yeah, and that's a good point because I do know before I wrap it up, I have spoken with people who chase the money after college because for various reasons and all that may be completely legit, maybe they didn't grow up with money, and so having money in the pocket really felt good, some stability, but then they reach a certain age where the money does no longer fill the hole, and so then they start chasing, they want to do something a little more creative with their life.

Phil Hudson:

There's a Ben Fold song called The Ascent of Stan, and it's talking about this corporate guy who gets laid off after 30 years and he goes home and he puts his slide deck in and he projects it onto the wall and traces it because he's going to paint this thing and it's just all pointless. What has my, basically when it's like, what has my life been, I put 20, 30 years into this corporation and they just escorted me out one day and here I am just trying to find my art again. And it's like, what's the point? And that's reality. But

Michael Jamin:

You don't need anyone's permission to start making your art today. Maybe we'll talk more about that in another podcast, but yeah, don't wait for, just start doing it. Start creating it. Love it. Alright everyone, thank you so much. We got a lot of good free stuff on my website. Go visit it and you can get all the things. You can get a free screenwriting lesson. You can get an invitation to my free screenwriting webinar, which we do every few weeks. Got another one coming up. Well, I dunno when this airs, who knows? There's

Phil Hudson:

Always one coming up at this point, which is, there's always one, a lot of really good feedback.

Michael Jamin:

You can learn more about my book, a Paper Orchestra. When that drops, you can see me on tour. You can just get the book, the audio book working on. You can get a sample script that I wrote or a couple simple scripts you could get. What else can you get,

Phil Hudson:

Phil? The newsletter, weekly

Michael Jamin:

Newsletter we give away. Phil's in charge all giving Phil's in charge of giving it all away. I

Phil Hudson:

Just take from Michael guys, it's all

Michael Jamin:

He gives it away.

Phil Hudson:

I'm Robin Hood and we're just handing it to the masses,

Michael Jamin:

But it's all go to michaeljamin.com.

Phil Hudson:

Asked me to give it away. To be clear, everyone, Michael's like, Hey, if I wanted to learn from someone, I don't want to read their script. Can we put my scripts up here? I'm like, yeah, I'll figure out how to make the form and the email auto drip campaign work and make sure the tags are functioning.

Michael Jamin:

Yep. He's the digital marketer. So you go check out ruck ss e o as well if you're all your digital marketing needs. Okay, everyone, thank you so much. Until next week, keep writing.

Phil Hudson:

Thanks guys.

This has been an episode of Screenwriters Need to Hear This with Michael Jamin and Phil Hudson. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for Michael's monthly [email protected]/webinar. If you found this podcast helpful, consider sharing it with a friend and leaving us a five star review on iTunes. For free screenwriting tips, follow Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJaminwriter. You can follow Phil Hudson on social media @PhilaHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Crane Music by Ken Joseph. Until next time, keep writing.

On this week's episode, Writer Adam Pava (Boxtrolls, Lego Movie, Glenn Martin DDS and many many more) talks about his writing career, and why sometimes when he writes features, he doesn't always get credited. Tune in for much more!

Show Notes

Adam Pava on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adampava?lang=en

Adam Pava on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1106082/

Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/

Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course

Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free

Join My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlist

Autogenerated Transcript

Adam Pava:

I think that's the main thing is have samples that show exactly what your voice is and exactly what makes you different than everybody else, and what you can bring to the table that nobody else can. I think that's the first thing, but to get those open writing assignments, I think it's just a cool errand to even try because they're just so risk averse to hire anybody that hasn't done it before. I think the better shot that you have is to make smaller things and then they'll seen you've done it. You're listening to Screenwriters Need to Hear This with Michael Jenman.

Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin. Welcome back for another episode. I may be retitling the name of my podcast. So I'm, I'm going to be vague for everyone, but I'm here with my next guest, Adam Pava, who's a very talented writer I worked with many years ago on show called Glen Martin, d d s, and he works. We'll talk. I'll let you speak in a second. Pava, you just relax. I'm going to bring you on with a proper introduction because you've worked a lot, lot of features, a lot of animation. So I'm going to run through some of your many credits. Some of them are credited and some of them just are not so credited. We're going to talk about that even though you've done the work. So I think you started early on on shows like Clone High, Johnny Bravo, I'm going to skip around.

You worked with us on Glen Martin d d s, but then you've also done Monsters versus Aliens Dragons. I'm going to jump around, but wait, hold on. I'm skipping a lot of your credits, Pavo, a lot of the box trolls you've done, you work a lot with Lord and Miller on all their stuff, all the Lego movies, goblins. You have something in the works with Leica, which is one of the big animation studios which you're attached to direct as well, and then also some other shows. Let's mention My Little Pony dreamland. What else should we talk about? A bunch of the label, it's hard to talk about the credits because so many of 'em are things that are either in production or development that they're not supposed to talk about yet, or they're things that I was uncredited on. And so it's a weird thing.

And why are you uncredited? How does that work? It's super different from TV and movies. So back when I worked in tv, I did tv. I mean, back when we worked together it was like what, 10, 15 years ago? Something like that. But I did TV for the first decade of my career and everything you work on, you're credited, even if you're just like the staff writer in the corner who says three words and doesn't make, get a joke into the script. You're one of the credited writers. Movies are a different situation. It's like one of these dirty secrets of Hollywood where they always want to credit one writer or a team of writers. Sometimes it'll be two writers that get the credit if both of 'em did a huge chunk of the work. But the thing that usually happens these days on big studio movies anyway is they will go through three or four writers over the course of the years and years of it being in development and all those writers who worked on it before the final writer or sometimes just the first writer and the last writer will get credit and all the ones in the middle won't get credit.

Or it's like the W G A has these arbitration rules where it's like, unless you did a certain percentage of the final shooting script, you're not going to get credit at all. So even though the guy who brings catering gets credit and every person on, so will you arbitrate for credit or do you go into these projects knowing that you're not going to get credit? Usually I go in knowing that I'm not going to get credit or I will. Sometimes there'll be a situation. I did about a year's worth of work on the Lego movie, the first Lego movie, and Phil and Chris, Phil Lauren and Chris Miller who directed that and wrote the first draft of the script and the final draft of the script. They're buddies of mine and so I'm not going to arbitrate against 'em and I want them to hire me in the future and I love them and they really wanted, they're written and directed by title, and so of course I'm not going to arbitrate in that sort of situation.

And also to be fair, I don't think I would win that arbitration because they wrote the first draft and it was already the idea and it was brilliant and it came out of their minds and it was awesome. And then they had me do four or five drafts in the middle of there where I was just addressing all the studio notes and all the notes from the Lego Corporation and all the notes from Lucasville and all that kind of stuff while they're off shooting 21 Jump Street and then they come back. So you were just doing it to move it closer and then they knew they were, yeah, exactly. They knew they were coming back onto it and they were going to direct it and they would do another pass. They would do multiple passes once it goes into storyboarding once it's green lit. So I was just trying to get it to the green lit stage, so they had written a draft and then I did a bunch of drafts addressing all these notes and then we got a green lit off of my drafts and then they came back on and they started the storyboard process and directing process.

And the story changes so dramatically during that process anyway that the final product is so far removed from the drafts I did anyway, but it was a valuable, my work was needed to get it to that point to where they can jump back onto it. But very little of that final movie is anything that I can take credit for and I wouldn't want to take credit away from them on that. So I do a lot of that kind of work. Did they have other writers that worked on Legos movie as well, or just you? On the first one, it was them and me. There was these two brothers, the Hagerman brothers who had done a very early treatment, but that had set up the original idea for the movie of Allego man sort of becoming alive. So they got a story by credit, and then they definitely always have a stable of writers that they bring in to do punch up work and to just watch the animatic and give notes and stuff like that.

So there's a whole bunch of people that are contributing along the way. Funny, they come from tv, so they really run it. They run it as if they're still on TV a hundred percent. They have their writers. And so I've gotten to work on a lot of their projects as one of their staff writer type people basically is the idea. So it's all uncredited work, but it's great work. They're such great guys and you're working on really cool things every time. And so now there's a new, in the last few years, the W G A started this new thing called additional literary Material credit. And so if Lego were to have come out now, I think I would've gotten that credit on it, but at the time, that didn't exist, so I got a special thanks. And how did you, oh, really? Okay. And how did you meet these guys?

They gave me my first ever job before I knew you. I mean, I had written a movie script that was an animated movie. This is like 99 or 2000. I was just out of grad. I wrote it while I was in grad school. And Wait, hold on. I didn't even know you went to grad school. Did you study screenwriting in grad school? Yeah, I went to U S C screenwriting. Oh, I did not. I hide it from you. Why do you hide it? For me? I don't know. It's a weird thing where I feel like a, it's like I was in this weird secondary program that wasn't part of the film school. It was the master's of professional writing and screenwriting. And so people would get confused and I didn't want to lead them on, but also I just feel like it got me to a place and then I was like, I didn't want be part of a good old boys club where people are just hiring U S C people or whatever.

That's the whole point of going to USC for Yeah, people ask me, should I go to film school, get an M F A, and my standard answer is, no one will ever ask for your degree. No one caress about your degree. The only thing they care about is can you put the words on the page that are good a hundred? But why did you, but what it did offer me, and I'll get back to how I met Phil and Chris in a little bit, but this is a good side conversation. It gave me an opportunity to do some internships on a couple of TV shows. And that was super, super valuable. So when I was at U SS C, it was 99 and 2000, and so I interned my first year on a little show called Friends, which was still on the air. I was on the air at the time.

I was just the stage intern. So I was moving the chairs around during the rehearsals and fetching coffees and getting frozen yogurt for cast members or whatever, just shitting my pants, trying to be a normal human being around all these superstars and was not, I wouldn't say it was the best experience of my life. It was definitely one of those things where I was like, everybody was super intimidating and everybody was really busy and the cast were in the middle of a renegotiation, so they're all showing up late. It just felt like everyone was angry the whole time. And I was like, dunno if I want to work in tv. But there was one writer's assistant who was just like, yeah, because on the stage you're a writer, you need to be in a writer's room, you should be an intern in a writer's room.

And I was like, oh. And then so I was able to get an internship on Malcolm In the Middle, which had just sold, it was in his first year, so it was a summer show. So I jumped onto that in the summer and was able to do that. And then in that writer's room, I was like, oh, these are my people. These are actual, wait, you were an intern. They let you sit in the writer's room one. It was like for doing all, getting the lunches and making the coffee and all that stuff. Linwood was nice enough to let me just observe in the room for one day a week just to, well, if I didn't have other stuff I needed to get done. So it was super nice as long as I didn't pitch or say anything and I was just, I never would.

But it was cool to, that experience showed me that show was so well written and it was so tight and those writers were all geniuses or I thought they were all geniuses. And then I'd go in the room first, I would read the scripts and I would think, oh my God, I'd never be able to do this. And then I got in the room and I'm like, oh no, they're just working really, really hard and banging their head against the wall until they come up with a perfect joke. And then by the time it's done, it seems like it's genius. But it all was just really hard work, really long hours to get to that place. So that taught me like, oh, maybe I can be one of those people. If I'm just one cog in this room, I could do that. And so that gave sort of the confidence to do that.

So I had done those. Getting back, I can loop back into the Phil and Chris thing now because this actually connects really well. I had done those internships. I graduated U Ss C and I had this script that I'd written as my final project or whatever, and it was an animated movie, and I thought you could just sell an animated movie, but I didn't know, they didn't teach me this in grad school that at the time they developed 'em all. It was like only Disney and Dreamworks were doing 'em at the time. This is 2000. And they just hire directors and sort of were an artist in-house to sort of create the stories or back then that's how they would do it. And so I sent it to some agents and the response was always like, Hey, you're a really funny writer. This is really good.

I can't sell this. I don't know anybody that buys animated movies, but you should write a live action movie if you can write it as good as this. And so I wrote another movie that was Live Action, but it was silly. It seemed like it might as well have been an, I go back and read it now and I'm like, it's basically an animated movie, but it didn't say it was animated, it was live action human beings. And I submitted it to a small boutique agency at the time called Broder. I don't know if you remember them, Broder Crow, we were there. Yeah. And so Matt Rice was an agent there at the time, and he had on his desk, his assistant was Bill Zody. I dunno if you know him, he's a big name agent now, but he was an assistant at the time.

He read that script that I wrote and was like, oh, you know who this reminds me of these other clients that Matt has, Phil and Chris. And so he passed it on to those guys and they were looking for a writer's assistant on Clone High because they had just sold their first TV show. They were a young hotshot writers that were just deal. And so I met with Phil and Chris, and they hired me as the writer's assistant on Clone High, which was like, they were the same age as me. They were just like, we don't know what we're doing. But they're like, you've been in a writer's room, you've been knock on the middle and I friends and you, I didn't know anything. I didn't know what I was doing at all, but it said on my resume that I had had these experiences.

So they thought I would be a good writer's assistant for that reason. But they were the coolest dudes from the very beginning. They were just like, you're the writer's assistant, but also you should pitch in the room. You should act like you're another writer. We have a really small staff, we have seven writers, and you're going to get episode eight. I mean, it was crazy. They were just like, they gave me a lance and that never happens anymore. How did they get an overall deal when they came? Oh, it's the craziest day. So they went to Dartmouth, they made each other at Dartmouth and then they were doing cartoons while they were there studying animation. And one of Phil's, I think it was Phil, I think it was Phil won the Student Academy Award for a student film that he did. And it was written about in the Dartmouth Alumni magazine.

And there was a development exec at Disney whose son went to Dartmouth and read that article and was like, Hey, called them in their dorm room. And we're like, if you guys ever go out to la lemme know. We'll set a meeting. And they literally, the day after they graduate just drove to LA and then called 'em up and we're like, we're ready to get hired. And it worked and they got hired, it worked. They got hired just to do Saturday morning stuff, and they did that for a little bit and everything they were doing was too crazy for Saturday morning, but it was like Disney. But then Disney was like, well, you can start developing stuff for adult Disney or for primetime stuff. And so they came up with the idea for Clone High, and it originally sold to Fox as a pilot to be after the Simpsons or whatever, but then it didn't get picked up and then M T V picked it up and then they had a show.

So it's crazy what a trajectory their career has. Yeah, I know. And now they're running Hollywood. Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah. They were good guys to meet right away mean honestly, it was like to become friends with them and just to ride their wake and get some of their sloppy seconds and some of the stuff that they don't want to deal with, it's honestly, it was great. Did they call you a lot with stuff like that? Hey, we don't want to do this. It's yours less now than they used to. I mean, there was a point where I was one of their stable guys that they would call. I think they have met a lot of people in the 20 years since then, but early on it was like, I mean, even their first movie was Claudio with a Chance of Meatballs, and they brought me on to help rewrite the third act at one point.

And it was just from then on, they would always send me their scripts and just add jokes or to give feedback or whatever, and they've always been like that. And then I've noticed the last maybe six or seven years as they've gotten these huge deals and all their projects are now just these massive things, it's not quite the same relationship where they would just text me or email me and be like, Hey, read this. Now. It's like they have a whole team of people. They have a machine now, but we still are friends. And then things will come up where they'll hire me for things here and there. I wonder, honestly, I don't want to make this differe about them, but it's so interesting. I kind of think, I wonder what it's like to be that busy. It almost feels like, oh my God, I'm too busy.

They're so busy. They're the hardest working people I know. It's like people always wonder how this stuff comes out so good. And it's not that, I mean honestly, it's just good because they stay up later than everybody. They never stop tinkering with things. They're never satisfied. They always think the next thing they do is going to ruin their career. And so they run on this fear that propels them that, I mean, they harness it. It's not like it's a secret. They know that this is what makes them great and utilizing all their friends utilizing, they're the kind of people that are the best idea in the room wins. If you could be the PA or the head of the studio and if you have a great idea, they're like, let's try it. And they also try a lot of stuff that doesn't work and they're given the leeway to go down a lot of dead ends and then realize that's not the answer, and then back up and then try it again and try it again and try it again.

And that's how a lot of animated movies are done. And so it drives everybody crazy, but also creates amazing product. That's what, because I've interviewed a couple of guys who worked at dreamworks, which John Able who does a lot of the kung movies, and he describes it the same way. I was like, wow, it's so different from writing live. It's so different from writing live action. The whole experience sounds exhausting to me. Do you find it the same? Yeah, I mean when I first started in it, I was like, this is ridiculous. Why don't they just write a script and then shoot the script? And then over the years, I've learned to love the process. I mean, I was frustrated early on when I would realize how much gets thrown out and how much changes and how much. It's just, it's out of the hands of one writer.

And I think a lot of it is also just ego thinking that you could do it better than everybody. And then once I embraced, oh no, you have a bunch of really brilliant storyboard artists and you have a bunch of really brilliant character designers and head of story and a director and all these different people who, and layout artists and even the animators themselves, they all add something so vital and valuable to it, and you learn stuff from each of their steps and then you're just given the leeway to be able to keep adjusting and adjusting until you get it right. And that's why animation comes out so much tighter often than live action is just because you've been able to see the movie so many times and keep tweaking and tweaking until you get it right. Now there is a point where sometimes I feel like you can take that too far and then it just becomes like, oh, we had a great version, four drafts to go and now we've lost our way, or we're just spinning our wheels or whatever.

See, that's why I get lost sometimes. I've been in shows where you rewrite something to death and then someone says, we should go back to the way it was, and I'm like, what was the way it was? I don't even remember anymore a hundred percent, and I've stopped ever thinking You can do that. I used to think I would hold out hope though they'll realize that the earlier draft was better. They'd never do. It's like everybody forgets it, and then you just have to have the confidence to be like, well, we know we'll come up with something better together that it'll be from the collaborative mind of all of us. And then I think now I've seen actually the last few years, there's a little bit of a tightening of the belt budgetarily, and that leads to faster schedules. And so instead of having seven times that you can throw the story up from beginning to end on the storyboards, like the reels and watch this movie, you can only do it three times or so.

That gives you a little bit more of a window of like, okay, we got to get it right in three drafts or whatever, in three storyboard drafts. And who's driving the ship then in animation? Is it not the director in this case, it's Lord Miller, but they're the writers. Well, Lord Miller are often the directors, and so when they're the directors, they're in charge when they're the producers, they're in charge When they're on the Spider Verse movies, for example, they're the writer or Phil writes them and then they hire directors. But Phil and Chris are the producers, but they're sort of like these super directors. They're very unusual. Yeah, it's not, yeah, that's an unusual situation. But other movies somebody do at dreamworks and there's somebody do at Leica Leica, it's like the director and the head of the studio, Travis Knight, who it's his sandbox and it's his money because he's a billionaire that funds the studio.

He has the ultimate say, and so the directors are always working with him, but it's always collaborative. It's always like you get in a room. When I'm working at Leica, it's always like me, the director and Travis trying to figure it out, and he's trusted me to be, I feel like he doesn't trust a lot of people. He is kind of closed off in that way, but once you earn his trust, you will be in that room and you'll figure it out together or whatever. But every movie's different, and sometimes I'm on a movie just to help fix it for a little bit, and then I'm just a fix it person that comes in for a little bit. Sometimes I just add jokes. Sometimes I just, there's been movies where it was a mystery animated movie and they're like, can you just rewrite the mystery?

I was like, what a weird assignment. But I had three weeks still. But in this case, they're calling you. How are you getting this work? Just reputation, they're calling you out of nowhere? Mostly now it's reputation. I mean, sometimes I'll be submitted to it. I mean, the first time it's always like you have to be submitted. And I mean, I can tell you how I got hired on box rolls. That was a big breakthrough to me. I mean, it was after I'd done, so Lego was obviously just having known and worked with Phil and Chris forever, and then they got hired on Jump Street, and they needed somebody that they trusted to dear the ship for a while while they're gone. And so I was able to do that, and that was a huge big break. It was like, you couldn't ask for that. I just, I'm the luckiest guy in the world.

But after that, at Leica, they had a draft of a movie before it was called box Rolls, it was called Here Be Monsters, and it had been in development for years and years and years and gone through a bunch of writers and they hadn't quite figured it out. It was kind of a mess. It was a big sprawling story that had a lot of moving parts to it, and they had heard that on Lego, I was able to harness a lot of the crazy ideas that Phil and Chris had and put it into a structure that made sense. And so they asked me to come in and do the same thing, or before they even did that, I did a punch up. I got hired to do a punch up on that movie, and I knew that it was going to be a huge opportunity to impress them.

I really, really wanted to work at Leica because at the time, they had only had Coralline come out and I loved that movie. And then I had seen maybe ParaNorman had come out or it hadn't come out yet, but it was about to, whatever it was, I knew it was a new animation studio doing really unique original stuff, and I got asked to be part of this round table, and it was all these heavy hitter Simpsons writers. It was like J Kogan and Gamo and Pross, all these people that you're like, these are all legends. They've done a million shows and they get hired to do punch up all the time. That's like their bread and butter, right? I'm not so sure anymore, but okay, no, no, but this is in 2011 or whatever.

And I was like, I am going to take this script and analyze it and come up with character moments and come up with, I'm not going to be able to compete with those guys with the best joke in the room necessarily. I'll have good jokes to pitch, but I'm going to have like, oh, what if we adjust the character to be more like this? And where those guys were all, not those guys specifically, but the room in general, these were all guys who were maybe reading five pages ahead and then pitching off the top of their head. And I spent a couple of days writing jokes in the margin and ideas in the margin, and I killed in that room. I got a lot of stuff in and to the point where a few months later when they needed a big overhaul, they asked me to come in and do sort of what I had done on Lego, just take this big thing and hone it down into, so it was a rewrite job at the beginning, and then it turned into three years of working with the director in the studio to change that story.

We threw everything out and started over basically a couple times over the course of those years end up, but how are you get paid? Are you getting paid on a weekly scale? Because I don't know how that would work. Do you get paid? It starts off with a draft and then it'll be a typical thing like a draft in two rewrites, but you quickly run through those and then they keep needing your work. At least they're not getting free work out of you. They're picking no, then it turns into either a day rate or a weekly rate, and that's where I bought my house.

I made so much money on my day rate. They would literally just, Leica would call me and just be like, oh, we're going to record an actor in a few days. Can you just go through all their scenes and write three or four alts for every joke? Just have a bunch of stuff. And I would spend a few days doing that, and then a day rate, you get paid really, really well, that stuff adds up. Or they would be like, we just need one more pass on the third act, or we just need to go through the whole script and remove this character. And so all these little weekly assignments, and then you're just like, that was very lucrative doing it that way.

Michael Jamin:

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Adam Pava:

You usually, because done so much animation and it sounds like you always set out to do animation, is that I did set out to do it, and then I didn't set out to only do it. I thought I could do both, but you kind of get pigeonholed a little bit. It's hard. I've gotten hired to write a few live action movies, but there were always a live action movie that had an animation element to it. It could be a hybrid movie or be a family movie that they think, oh, because you've done family work, you can do this. But nobody would ever hire me to just do a horror movie or whatever. And I don't know if I'd be the right guy for that either. I think my sensibility tends to be more animation based, but also, I think movies are such a different thing than TV where there's like, they're so expensive.

If you're spending $80 million or whatever, you want to hire somebody that's done it before. So it's really, really hard for the studio bosses or even the lower level executives to fight to hire you if you've never done that kind of thing before. And so you get, it's not pigeonholed. I love doing it and I love the work, but it's also, I get why I get hired for certain things and not for other things. But also I feel super lucky because animation is one of the only parts or the only genres of film that has not shrunk over the years. Movies in general, they've stopped making live action comedies almost completely, except for stuff on streamers. They don't make rom-coms anymore. They barely make action comedies. It's like they make superhero movies and Star Wars movies, but then animation movies are evergreen. And so I feel really lucky that I sort of fell into this area that there is still work to be had.

So yeah, I mean, you really have put together a really pretty impressive career. And I know not all your credits, not all your work is credited, so what I mean? Yeah, well, it's either uncredited or there's so many projects that died Vine. So it's like you read my, I said you that list of credits and it's like I'm looking at it over earlier today. Oh, it's just a list of debt projects, but that's expected. When you go into it, you go, okay, they're not all going to go. That's expected. It's all right. I was looking at my, I was organizing my, it's a strike, so I have time to do these things, organizing my folders on my computer and putting everything in, and I had over 150 folders of each. One is its own project, and not all of those are work that I've done.

Some of them are like, I got sent this thing to pitch on, and then I had one meeting and it went away. And some of 'em I did a few weeks on, or some of 'em I just did day work on, but 150 projects over the years. Some of 'em I'm on for a year or two or three years. So it's insane. And so the hit ratio is super low of, I got really lucky when I transitioned out of TV and went into movies. It was like the first two things. Well, I sold a thing to Dreamworks that didn't get made, but then right after that, it was Lego and box trolls. They both came out in 2014, and I worked on both of 'em, and I was like, oh, this is going to be easy. You work on a movie and then it comes out and then it's cut to 10 years later and it's like nothing else is my name on it has come out.

I've worked steadily. I've worked really well. I've been very happy. But it's definitely, it's a different thing than TV where you're just working and getting credited all the time. Well, yeah, but it also sounds like, I don't know, it sounds like to me, maybe I'm wrong. It sounds like you don't need to hustle as much doing what you do. No, I feel like it's the opposite because on TV you can get on a show and you're running for years, but on a movie you always know what's going to add, but they're coming to you. People are coming to you with offers, in other words. Oh yeah, sometimes. I mean, yes, the ones that end up happening, that's true. But there's so many that I'm just on a list at the studio, but I'm in a bake off with six other writers and I don't get it.

So you put a lot of work so people don't know what to bake off is. So this is when you have to pitch to get the job and you have to put in several weeks of work. That's the worst. That's just the worst. And that's the majority of my life. Oh, is it? That's like, yeah. Yeah. So there's definitely, I mean, between Phil and Chris and Laika, I have, and a little bit of Dreamworks now. I'm doing my third movie for them right now. So that's pretty good over 10 years, three movies. But other than those places, it's always like you're getting sent stuff, but that doesn't mean they want you. It just means they want to hear a bunch of takes, and so you have to try to fight for the job if you really want it. Or I used to spend months or maybe eight months coming up with the take and having every detail worked out.

And then I realized over time, they don't actually want that. They want a big idea and some themes and some ideas of what the set pieces are, and they want to know that you, I mean, honestly, it's, I don't even recommend that young writers go out for them because you're not going to get it anyway, because they're always going to go with somebody that has done it before. Especially, I mean, not always, if you might be the rare exception, but so much. Well, then what do you recommend to young writers to do? Dude, I don't know. I mean, I think you have to write great samples. I mean, I think that's the main thing is have samples that show exactly what your voice is and exactly what makes you different than everybody else, and what you can bring to the table that nobody else can.

I think that's the first thing. But to get those open writing assignments, I think it's just a fool's errand to even try, because they're just so risk averse to hire anybody that hasn't done it before. I think the better shot that you have is to make smaller things, and then they'll see you've done, it's not even try to get these big studio things, get a small indie thing if you can, or make your own thing if you can, or just try to work your way up in a smaller way. I mean, all the big name directors out there all started on small indie movies. And I think that's got to be the same for writers now too. So many fewer movies. Is there anything that you're doing on the side just for the love of it that you're creating for yourself? Or is it, I haven't, in the last few years, I haven't.

I've just been busy with work, but during the pandemic, I had plenty of time. Nobody was buying movies, and I am wrapped up on something and I had an idea that I thought was going to be my next big sale, and that it was an idea about a virus that went, it was a comedy thing, but it was this idea where it was sort of based on the idea that Christmas is getting longer and longer every year, where people put up their lights in decorations sooner and sooner, and you start seeing the stuff for sale in October or whatever. And so I was like, oh, it felt like Christmas was a virus that was slowly taking over the world. And I was like, what if it's a zombie movie, but Christmas is the virus? And so it was sort of a Christmas apocalypse thing where Christmas takes over the world and one family didn't get infected and had to fight back.

So I was like, this is going to be a big seller. And then I was like, and then Covid hit, and it was like nobody wanted to buy a thing about a virus taking over the world, so I literally spent the pandemic. To answer your question, I wrote it as a novel. Instead, I wrote it as a middle grade novel, a y, a novel. Did you publish it? Not yet. We're trying. So we're out to publishers, and it took a while to figure out literary agents, which are very different world and everything, but the idea is to hopefully sell it as a book and then be able to adapt it as a feature. But yeah, it was so fun to write, and it was so freeing to not be stuck in 110 pages and to, I mean, I already had the whole thing outlined from the pitch when I was going to pitch it, so I knew the structure of it, so I just kept it as the structure of a movie, but I expanded on it and got more into the character's heads and that kind of stuff.

But I had such a fun time writing that, and I was just like, man, someday when the work dries up, I am going to look forward to writing novels instead. And oh, yeah. The funny thing is when you describe the literary word going out to publishers, it's not that different from Hollywood. You think It is. It's not. It's the same hell. Oh, absolutely. But you and I haven't had to deal with breaking into Hollywood in a long time. And then in the literary world, they're like, oh, you've written movies. We don't care. We don't care at all. So it's starting over. And U T A tried to help a little bit, but they're like, we don't really know what to do. And then, so it's, I've been, my manager has been introducing me to editors and stuff, literary editors, and they've been really receptive, and it's been good trying to find the right one and the person I jive with. But it's very much like, oh, you're starting from scratch all over again. And for less money, no money. I mean, literally, I don't know how you would make a living off of this. I mean, I think we're spoiled a little bit, but what was the money they were telling you? Can you say, I don't want to say you don't, but it was basically about, it was less than a 10th that I would get paid on a movie.

It was about my weekly rate. So I was telling you, I do weekly jobs on movies, and it's like if I do a weekly on a studio movie or I could sell a novel, or you could work five years on a novel, and I'm like, oh, this is not a way to support a family, but it was really fun. Someday when I'm just doing it for fun, I would love to do it. Wow, how interesting. Wow. So your best advice, because you're not an animator, you're not even an artist, are you? No, I don't draw or anything. I just love animation. I just always loved animation. So I don't know. I think when I was in seventh grade when the Simpsons started, and that blew my mind, and I was like, I remember telling my dad, I think I want to write on this. It was the first time I recognized, oh, people are writing these jokes. It was very, I think, more self-aware than most comedy was. And I was in junior high and I was just like, I want to be a writer on a show like this. I never was a writer on that show, but a bunch of other stuff.

Now, as far as directing, because I know you're attached to possibly direct this project, where does your confidence come from that to direct? I mean, I don't know if I have confidence in it. I mean, I would want to co-direct it. In animation, you often get paired with another, if you're a writer, you'd get paired with an experienced animation director who comes from the visual side. So either an animator or a store wear artist or visual development artist. And I just feel like some of the projects I've been doing, you sort of act as more than just a writer anyway. You're sort of meeting with the creative heads all the time, making these big decisions that affect the projects. And at a certain point, I'm like, well, if I write something, that project that I, that's at life that I was attached to, it probably won't even happen at this point.

It's been a few years, and it's kind of sitting there waiting for Travis to decide if he wants to make it. But it was a personal project to me, and it was like this would be the one that I was like, I would really want to see this all the way through. And I'm sure at that studio at this point, he's, Travis himself who runs the studio, is kind of directing all the latest projects anyway, so I would be co-directing with him. And so he would really be in charge, and I would just be, they're up in Seattle, right? Portland? Yeah, Portland or in Portland, yeah. So do you go up there a lot for Yeah, when I'm on a project, so usually it's like if I'm just writing it before it's green lit, which is most of the time I'll just fly up there for meetings just to get launched or whatever, and then go back up after I turn it in to get notes. But if it's in production on box trolls, and then there's another upcoming one that I did a bunch of production work on, they'll fly me up there to work with the board artists and stuff. And that's a crazy, that place is so nice.

It's like a wonderland. I mean, it's like this giant warehouse downstairs that they have all the stages and they're all covered with black velvet rope, I mean black velvet curtains. So to keep all the light out and everything. And that's where they're moving all the puppets and everything, the stop motion. And then upstairs it's like the offices, and it just feels like a corporate office building with cubicles and stuff. It's very weird. But you go downstairs and it's like there's people animating, there's this huge warehouse where they're building all the props and they're like armature section where they're adding all the skeletal armature to the You never went with us to, because Kapa was like that in a cup of coffee in Toronto when we did Glen Martin. Yeah, it was amazing though. Similar. But Kapa is doing it on a budget, and these guys are spending so much money, it's not a viable way to make money to make these animated stop motion animated movies.

They don't do it to make money. He does it. He loves it. Oh, really? Oh my gosh. Yeah, because Travis Knight is the son of Phil Knight who've gone to Nike, so he's got sort of a lot of money, and it's his hobby shoe money. He's got shoe money, but he is a brilliant animator. He is a super smart, interesting dude who wants to make things that are different than anybody else. And so it's an amazing place to work because nowhere else do you ever have the conversation of like, oh, we could do this if we wanted to do it, where more people would see it, or we could do it this way, which is cool and we want to do this. It's fun and weird.

Not that he doesn't care about an audience, he does care about an audience, but it's not most important to him is making something that's awesome to him for the art. And so it's a very different way of looking at things. But I've been in situations there where it's like we're doing upstairs, doing a rewrite with me and the director changing the whole third act or whatever, and then I go downstairs and just tour the stages and the workshops, and I'll meet a puppeteer who's like building this giant puppet who's telling me this is the biggest puppet that's ever been created in Stop motion, and here's the 17 different places where I can articulate it. And I'm just thinking like, dude, we cut that yesterday upstairs. Oh no. And he's been working on it for a month. Oh, no. But I can't say anything. I'm just sort of like, oh, yeah, that's awesome.

It's so great. You're doing great work. Anyway, I'm going to get back upstairs. That's so heartbreaking. But they burn through so much money just doing it all by hand. It's so crazy. But it's so beautiful, so I love it. And so you were literally upstairs, they gave you a small office and you just start typing? Yeah, that's literally, I mean, usually when I'm there, it's like they just put me in some random cubicle that nobody else is using or it's not a cubicle, a little office that is or whatever, somebody office. And you'll stay there for a few days or a few weeks or what? Yeah, exactly. Depending on how much they need me. So it either be a few days or a few weeks. And then on box rolls, I was up there. I would be up there for a week, relining some stuff, and then I'd come back home for two weeks and write those pages up.

And I mean, I'd be writing in the evenings after the meetings and stuff too, while I was up there. But when we are rewriting, it's a train that's moving and it's like the track is you're running on a track and you got to keep pressure. What did you think of staying there in Portland? Did you like it? I did it. It's hard because my family's here and life is here, but if that movie had gone that I was attached to Coder Act, we were planning on moving there for that for three or four years. That's how it would take. Interesting. Would you have sold your house here or just rented it out? I'd have rented it out, I think. Interesting. Yeah, you, it was like we were having all these conversations, and then it's the longer it goes, we're like, that's probably not going to happen.

We don't have to think about this right now. How interesting. That's so key. It really takes that long, man. Oh yeah. They're so long. And then also, it's like there is this weird thing in animation where it's not uncommon for a movie to go through two or three directors over the course of its many years in production. So it's like, why? I know. Just because they're beasts. And sometimes in the same way that you're changing the story so many times over the years, sometimes you make such a drastic change that it's no longer the vision of that director, and it's just not a right fit anymore. And I've seen that happen on a lot of movies that I've been on. I mean, Boxtrolls didn't end up with the same two directors that it started with. One of the two stayed on it, but the other one didn't.

Oh, no, this sounds very frustrating to me. It sounds It does. And then other movies up there have gone through different directors, and so I was like, even if I had gotten hired as the director, I was in the back of my head. I always knew this might not last even if I'll do my best and I'll try to make it work. But you haven't even started and you're finding I'm being fired. Yeah, totally. But I mean, it's a weird thing. It's not TV where you're on a show for a year and then hopefully you get the second year if you get one. It's like in movies, they fire and hire different writers all the time, and so directors less, but writers, it really is pretty common. I've been on both sides of it where it's like, I used to take it really harder, fired off a movie.

You're like, oh my God, did they not like the draft? I did. And usually it's like, no, we liked it, but now there's a director on it and they want to take a different direction. Or Oh, the director has a friend that they want to work with that they work with as a writer. Or other times I've been that guy that a director has brought on to rewrite somebody else, and I always try to be super nice about it. Now that I've seen both sides of it, I always try to reach out to the previous writer and be like, Hey, I just want you to know it's in good hands. Or sometimes if I'm the one that's fired, I reach out, be like, Hey, if you want to know where the skeletons are buried, happy to get in lunch with you. Just to be like, here's the pitfalls to look out for.

This is where people don't realize that people on the outside just don't realize what it's actually like when you're the writer. You're a successful working writer. And I think they have a very different vision of the reality of a hundred percent. I didn't know the job was, I thought the job was going to be writing the whole time. Most of the job is it's playing politics with the studio and the executives and the director and Well, what do you mean politics, getting navigating the notes? What do you mean? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like the notes, but also the personalities. It's like a lot of the job I feel like is to go in and to make everybody feel comfortable with where you're taking it. Because you walk into a room and sometimes you could feel like, oh, the director thinks they're making a very different movie than the head of development thinks.

Then that's different than what the producer thinks. And that's different than what the head of the studio thinks. It's like I've been in a room where it's like Jeffrey Katzenberg is just like, guys, guys, guys, you're all thinking about this all wrong. And you just have to be like, okay, how can I find solutions that makes everybody happy, that make everybody happy? And that's a huge part of the job. I mean, honestly, when I did the Lego rewriting with Phil and Chris, that's what the whole job was, was just like, how do I make Warner Brothers who didn't know what they had? They thought it was a toy commercial. They were very skeptical of the whole thing, Phil and Chris, who wanted to make some beautiful art. And it was cool with cool ideas. And Lego Corporation who wanted to make a toy commercial and Lucasfilm who didn't want their characters to be in it, and DC who didn't know whether they should be or not.

And you're just like, how do I get in a room? And and usually if you come up with a great gag or great joke that articulates the, that illuminates the tone of the thing. So they all go, oh, okay. That's the thing. So the round of notes, like you're saying, oh, it's incredible, but for everybody and everyone's got conflicting. I don't even know walking into that job, and all I care about is I don't want my friends, Phil and Chris to think I fucked up their movie because they're trusting me just so I keep it moving. But I would think even for them, it's like, how do I get this movie made when I have so many competing notes and to their credit account, great, but still that is a hundred percent to their credit, they have a genius ability to, not only are they great writers and great directors, I think more than that, they have this sense of how to make everybody in a room think that the ideas came from them.

It's like, yeah, they're great at, they'll go into a room, I think sometimes having some ideas in their pocket, but it feels like the room came up with the ideas together, and then everybody's like, yes, we did it. Pat ourselves on the back. And everybody, the executives' seem happy. But sometimes it actually does come out that, I mean, those brainstorm sessions really do create a new idea, and sometimes it's them trusting the process that that's going to work out. And sometimes I think they literally are like, well, we can go this way or this way, but I know it'll be easier if they think they had the idea. So let's go this way for now. And then later they know it's going to change a thousand times anyway in the storyboards, and then they could figure it out for real later. Because all these see people like that.

They're very well paid, but in my opinion, they're earning every penny of this a hundred percent. They're earning every, it's not that easy. This job, I feel like I've gotten better over the years where I've taken my ego out of it. I used to have a much bigger ego, you might remember, but I feel like I can be, now, I can just go in a room and be like, I'm just going to try to help. I'm just going to be like, how could I make everybody feel comfortable? How can I make everybody feel like we're on the right page together and create this thing? I know that it's like the process is going to take years and years, and the relationship is more important than the individual story note or whatever. It's like that's what's going to matter over the long term of this project.

It's that we all trust each other and that we can make something great together. And that's more important than fighting for a joke or fighting for a story moment or a take, or even exactly, either. It's about fighting the relationship, and I've said this before, it's about the relationship is the most important thing, and sometimes you have to sacrifice what you think is the best story, the best moment for the greater good of the relationship. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Wow. I feel like this has been eyeopening even for me, and I feel like my eyes are fucking opened. You know what I'm saying?

We've done some movie work, but obviously we work mostly in tv, but the movie side, the movie side was never really appealing. I remember because we shared the same agent for our futures, and I remember he gave us a conversation. I was like, I dunno if I want to work in movies again. It's weird. It sounds hard. It's different because in TV you're the boss, right? I mean, when you're the showrunner, you're the boss. Yeah. You've been there for a long time. And in movies, you're never the boss. I mean, I gave up on, I mean, before I worked with you, there was one TV show I ran and I co ran with my friend Tim, and we were the bosses, and I hated it. I did not enjoy it. It was like all the meetings and all the decisions and the budgets and the interpersonal relationships and all that stuff.

I was like, I was not good at it back then, and I don't know if I'd be better now, and I just was like, you know what? I just want to be part of a team and I want to be a writer. And it's like in movies, that's what you are. You're just part of this big team in a different way. I mean, I guess when you're a staff writer or coming up through the ranks and tv, you're part of a team too, but you can be like, you're also a much more integral part of the team, the one writer on it at the time. Or in movies, you're like, when you're the writer, you're the writer and they all look to you for that one job. Or if you're on a staff when I'm on a show with you or whatever, you might look to me for one type of, it's very different. I'm a cog in this room.

It's never, you never have to be a hundred percent on your A game every day for you can showing it in a little bit coast. Wow. Adam Paval, what an interesting conversation. This is enlightening for me. Very enlightening. Yeah, man. Are you having everybody on from the old days, Brian? Well, I had Alex Berger on a while ago. We talked a little bit about that script that you guys wrote together. Well, there's two things on Glen Martin. You were always pestering me to do a musical. Yeah, I think, I don't know how to write a musical. And you're like, this is why I've work in animated features. I've written three musicals since I, so lemme let you do the movie. I was like, dude, I don't know how to do so go ahead and knock yourself out. That was fun. And then you guys came back with that Christmas episode. I thought you guys both hit it out of the park. I was like, let's shoot it, let's shoot it.

I think it took, because that was all second year stuff and it took a little bit of time to figure out tonally what we were doing and then just to get a little crazier. And then, I mean, those episodes were like, yeah, I could be a little bit more myself of writing the weird stuff that I wanted. I mean, the other one I remember fondly is that weird Funshine episode. Was that the musical one or was that, I don't remember. Dude, fun cine was, it was like the planned community in Florida that was basically celebration Florida and they all realized that everybody was on being drugged and were lactating out of their breast and all that. Oh, that's right. Now I remember the guy, there was a scene where there's a pregnant man or something. It was fucking nuts. And I was like, oh, now we're writing the show that I could write.

The first year, I think it was a little bit more like I was a little square pa in a round hole where it was like I didn't have a family at the time and it was a family show. It was about a dad and a mom trying to navigate their crazy kids and I was like, I don't know what the fuck. Crazy in that show. It's a shame. We didn't do more seasons. We weren't nuts. It was fun. It was a fun time. For sure. I got some of the puppies right over there, so see, yeah, I got the one you gave me of me that one from the college episode. Oh right, the college episode. That's right. We put you in. You ran the gauntlet I think, didn't you? I think that, yeah, that's exactly right. Funny. Yeah, funny. Adam, Papa, where can people, is there anything want, we can plug people, find you.

Are you on social media? Is there anything? I'm not super active. I'm on Twitter. You can find me on Twitter. Adam Papa or Adam or whatever it's called now. X X, I'm on X, but don't really, I'm not super active on it. I don't have anything to plug. Everything's going to come out in four years. Yeah, right. Yeah. Look for Adam Papa in four years when something drops to the movies. That's the process. Dude, thank you again so much for doing this. This was a really interesting conversation. I haven't talked yet, spoken to anybody about this kind of stuff. You are a wealth of information. Alright. Yeah, it's fine. Everyone, thank you so much. Until the next episode drops, which will be next week. Keep writing.

Phil Hudson:

This has been an episode of Screenwriters Need to Hear this with Michael Jamin and Phil Hudson. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for Michael's monthly webinar @michaeljamin.com/webinar. If you found this podcast helpful, consider sharing it with a friend and leaving us a five star review on iTunes. For free screenwriting tips, follow Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJaminwriter. You can follow Phil Hudson on social media @PhilaHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Crane Music by Ken Joseph. Until next time, keep writing.

In August, I hosted a webinar called "How To Write A Great Story" where I talked about what a "story" really is, as well as well as how to use personal stories to help your writing. This episode addresses questions you asked in our Q&A session that we didn't have time to answer. There's lots of great info here, make sure you watch.

Show Notes

Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/

Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course

Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free

Join My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlist

Autogenerated Transcript

Michael Jamin:

Art is about taking something inside of you and expressing it in a way that helps you understand yourself and helps you understand the world around you. And in that way, people can see it or watch it and enjoy it and help them understand themselves. I think there's that greater good. I don't think craft necessarily does that. I think craft can sometimes be, the studio will give me a note and I'll say, okay, I can do that. That's what you want. I can do that. I don't think it's necessarily playing for the greater good. It's what they want and they're paying me. You're listening to Screenwriters Need to Hear This with Michael Jamin.

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode. We're doing something unusual today. So Phil is back with me. And as you may know, every three or four weeks I host a free webinar where I take one subject and kind of educate you on it. And at the end, if there's time, I answer questions because about an hour long. And so usually we answer a lot of questions, but we can't get to all of them. So we save the questions that we can answer and we didn't have time. And we're going to answer it here for you today on this podcast. And by the way, for people who don't know, the webinar is always free, but afterwards, I also do a V I P room for people who if they want to pay a small fee, then they get to be in a smaller chat with me and we talk. I try to answer their questions as best I can specifically. So if anyone's interested in that, you go to michael jamin.com and I dunno where they would sign up for that on michael jamin.com/course. Probably.

Phil Hudson:

Oh, for the vip it's /vip.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, /vip. Okay.

Phil Hudson:

We're fancy here, Michael. We use high tech stuff like links, short links.

Michael Jamin:

So there you go. But now I'll answer the other questions. Phil hit me.

Phil Hudson:

I was just going to say there are a lot of really good feedback and I found that there are people who don't sign up for your course who also sign up for that v i p, and they ask some really interesting questions. And then after that I think it kind of pushes 'em over the edge to feel like, okay, this is something I can do, and then they're a little bit more inclined to invest in themselves. Some really good questions out of this V i p, and this is based off of the August webinar, and that topic was the pep talk Every screenwriter needs to hear, which is slightly different than Michael Jamin's known tone of just smashing your hopes and dreams on the rocks of reality,

Michael Jamin:

Which he's a problem. Yeah, I don't want to just do that. I want to make sure that people get, I want them to be grounded in reality. That's what I'm, I'm not trying to smash it's dreams, but I want to be realistic. Once you find out if you know what the reality is, then now, okay, now we can figure out how to get in once there's a way around every problem. That's what I,

Phil Hudson:

And that comes from early on when we were talking about the marketing for this. How do we help you grow your audience? How do we do this? And you were like, I will not sell the dream. I will not be one of those guys who just promises the dream to make a buck. I can't do that. And I was like, okay, well, it's going to hurt your ability to make money. He's like, it's not about that. I just will not do it. And so you've leaned into this sincere, radical honesty, I guess you could say, and I think overwhelmingly almost immediately people were like, wow, this sucks to hear, but I'm so glad you're saying it. It just resets the expectations a little bit. And even for me, having learned from you and been to film school and worked in the industry now for almost seven years, I still think about this, Hey, this is a script. Whenever I write a new script, this is not, I'm not going to sell this. That's okay.

Michael Jamin:

It's a writing sample

Phil Hudson:

And it frees me up to just be whatever I want it to be, not hoping that my entire life is dedicated to this one story I'm writing.

Michael Jamin:

I see good things coming your way, Phil, by the way.

Phil Hudson:

I see good things coming my way as

Michael Jamin:

Well. Yeah, because you're putting the work in and obviously you've already, it may be hard for you to see because you're in it, but the distance that you've traveled at only a few short years in Hollywood is pretty unremarkable.

Phil Hudson:

I'm keenly aware of that. Honestly, I'm humbled to be where I am. I'm humbled to host the podcast with you. I think I even pitched somebody else to co-host the podcast with you, and you're like, why wouldn't you do it? Why can't I just have you?

I don't need to, or I don't want to assume to be the guy. I do think I bring a skillset to this podcast of asking the questions the listener wants to ask, and I think that's really what I do. But yeah, I'm incredibly humbled. I think I've got some really interesting things on the horizon, and I've already had some great things this year as direct result of you and the stuff you're putting out in your course and the great feedback I'm getting from people in your course, by the way, super talented people in there just giving me feedback and making me better.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Thank you Michael. Alright,

Michael Jamin:

Let's do it.

Phil Hudson:

Okay. Structurally, we broke this up into a couple and we've kind of found a pattern here. There's kind of craft questions, there are breakin questions, there are course questions, and then there are miscellaneous questions. So I take all the questions, kind of broke 'em down, and then I'm really focusing on things that you haven't said before because there are a lot of questions we get that are repetitive questions. Should I move to la? Should I move to la? What about this? How do I get my script in the right hands? And you've addressed those tons and tons of times. So if you like this, go listen to all the other q and A's where we get questions from social media, we get questions from your course members, we get questions from the webinar starting with craft, because I think that's really what we're here to learn is how to be professional writers. I'm going to mess up a bunch of names today. You ready for this?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, that's okay.

Phil Hudson:

Shi suey, shagan. No clue

Michael Jamin:

That you said it perfectly, however,

Phil Hudson:

Nailed it. How do you win the battle against that blank screen when trying to create?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Well, the problem is you don't know what you're doing. Listen, the blank page is always intimidating even when you do know what you're doing. But if you are this locked up, it's because you just don't know what a story is and you don't know. That's what the course teaches you. How to take an idea, identify if there's enough meat on that bone to turn it into an episode of television or a movie or whatever. Not every idea is worth turning into. It doesn't have enough there. So the course helps with that. I think all that the writer's block that you're experiencing is because you don't know what you're doing. Of course you're going to be blocked. Of course you don't know what your characters are going to be doing, so at least come to the free webinar, at least I can help you with that much if you don't want to buy the course. The webinar will help a lot at michaeljamin,com/webinar

Phil Hudson:

And all the other free resources you have, like the free story lesson on your website, michaeljamin.com/free. It's another great place to start. Absolutely true. If you don't know where you're going to go, you get stuck. And for many of us, it's that middle of act two, what's going on? What do I do now? How do I get my characters to this really bad thing that's going to happen? Whatever it is. And understanding the structure as you put it out, it's just so easy to grasp and understand. It's a no brainer. I clearly know where I need to go and what needs to happen here from a strategic perspective, and then tactically I can lay in things to get me where I want in a surprising way.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Perfect. Oh, if I may, when you're rewriting, print that thing out and use a red pen, man.

Michael Jamin:

Red pen.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Michael Michael's pro tip hand amboy. What is the best way to keep improving in screenwriting or storytelling?

Michael Jamin:

Just keep writing. I would write your episode or your feature, put it aside, write another one, put it aside, write another one, and you'll find that as opposed to just keep on working on the same piece, finish it and write a second one, then the third one, and you'll find that script number five is much better than script number one will ever be. You have to just let it go and continue doing something else. So that's my advice.

Phil Hudson:

Awesome. Chelsea. Steve, how in depth do you prepare a beat sheet or treatment to pass to a co-writer? Is it important to be specific or broad out of respect for them?

Michael Jamin:

Oh, well, I mean, you should be doing the beat sheets together. I mean, I would think that's how you get on the same page. My partner and I do everything together. We break the story together. We come up with a beat sheet together. We come up with the outline together. That's how you do it. I mean, you don't want to, if they're your partner, I dunno why you wouldn't bounce ideas of each other that's, or else why have a partner.

Phil Hudson:

Another really early podcast episode we had was writing with a partner where you talk about this process and there are several schools of thought about how to work with a writing partner. There are tons of resources and different writing have different things. One person sits at a keyboard, the other does, and I think you guys do that that way. Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

Vers been, I used to be the one at the keyboard, but for the last couple of years he's been the one at the keyboard. Although now we both have, we use collaborate so we both can type at the same time, which is really annoying.

Phil Hudson:

That's awesome. Yeah, so there's a bunch of that and there are other people who do it, but I think the real juice of what we're saying here, what you're saying, Michael, is you shouldn't be breaking your story separate. That's not Yeah,

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, yeah. You got to be on the same page.

Phil Hudson:

Yep. All

Michael Jamin:

I'll tell a quick anecdote. One time Steve and I were working on a script for, I think it was Taco fd, and we were writing the outline together and we got into a fight over what this one scene was supposed to be. And I wanted one thing, he wanted another thing. And then I said, what do you think this story is about? And he told me, and then he goes, what do you think the story is about? I said, I think it's about this. We weren't even clear on what the story was about, so we had to stop, agree on that and then move forward.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, that cleared up everything, I'm guessing.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Great. Nina in your course, isn't she? Yeah. Yeah. Nina, I'm so worried about alienating my audience for too long. Is there a theory about this

Michael Jamin:

Alienating? I wish I knew. In what way? I feel like you want to hold your audience's hand. That's how I feel. There are other filmmakers who may feel differently when I get lost. Sometimes when I watch watching, I'm like, I'm lost here. I dunno what's going on. And so that's not something that I like to do in my writing. I like to make sure that, especially if you're writing on television, because you're writing on tv, you go into a movie is one thing. You have their attention. There are hostage if they're sitting in the movie theater, but on TV show often people will be on their phone, they're reading a magazine, they're doing everything at the same time as watching a TV show. So I want to make sure they're with me the whole way or else they're not going to be engaged.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. I wondered about this one too. What does she mean by alienating, right? I don't think you ever want to really alienate your audience. I think there's suspense, there's audience superior versus audience inferior. Does your audience know more than the character? Does the audience know less than the character does? And there's different tactics and tools you can use as a writer to build suspense, and they each have their own purpose, but alienating would be, yeah,

Michael Jamin:

That's not on my list of things to do.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Sorry Nina, if we had the misunderstanding here, but let us know in the private Facebook group putting us in there with a clarification, and I'm sure Michael hopin

Michael Jamin:

Into that. Just to be clear, the private Facebook group is just for members of my course, so you have to be a paid member to get into that. But there's a lot of good stuff going on there. These people are very active, and I answer more questions there for them.

Phil Hudson:

We'll jump down because there's literally this question under the section Mark Brozinsky. Is there a Facebook group we can join to network?

Michael Jamin:

Yes, there is. And once you purchase, you get a link to that and you should definitely take advantage of it. There's a lot of really smart people trading scripts. They're doing table reads once a week. They're giving each other notes film festival. And it's unlike, they got a festival coming up, which I can't believe, and it's unlike, there are other Facebook screenwriting groups where people are pretty mean. It's almost like Reddit, screenwriting Reddit, which is the dirtiest place on the earth, but that's not what this is going on in this group. It's really very professional and supportive. I think we were smart to gate that group and say, you have to be purchased because it hasn't turned into a cesspool.

Phil Hudson:

I can tell you from the e-learning side of my digital marketing career, that when people ask, and we had this conversation with the client a year ago when they were relaunching their online membership course for a specific topic, but anyway, very well renowned company, lots of people. And I said, you need to have a community manager that's in there full-time, keeping out the R riffraff. There's spam, there's ugliness, there's all these things. And if you don't have someone doing that, it's just going to get bad. And most of these things are set up by one or two people who just wanted to start a group. And I've had nothing but bad experiences in those groups. Nothing but bad experiences unless there is some unifying factor, like an alumni group tends to perform a little bit better, be in easier place, you have a problem.

Michael Jamin:

But we don't have that problem with our group. Nope.

Phil Hudson:

In fact, you have people who self-police. I get messages from people who are like, Hey, I shared this thing. Did I break a policy of self-promotion? I was like, you shared something you produced that came out of the course. I don't think, I think that's celebrating your hard work. You're not offering to pay to read someone's script. You're donating your time every Tuesday night to run a table

Michael Jamin:

Group. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Phil Hudson:

You're good.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, you're good.

Phil Hudson:

Awesome. Tomer K. I've noticed in the blacklist scripts that there's a trend of making meta commentary about the script itself. Referencing page numbers or the reader. What are your thoughts on this? And maybe define what the blacklist is for people?

Michael Jamin:

Well, yeah, I mean, the blacklist, there's really, the blacklist started as a site where unproduced professional scripts that were sold were just never produced. And it was an honor to get on the blacklist, but now there's something, now it's something else. There's two lists, right, Phil?

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, there's that list. But then there's also, you can sign up for the blacklist and pay a monthly fee to host your script so people can access it and read it and give you notes. And you can pay a hundred bucks a pop to get notes and reader feedback on your script and get rated. And that's a little bit, I think more of the commercial side of it.

Michael Jamin:

Isn't that what they're talking about?

Phil Hudson:

That's the blacklist. There's also fellowships and things. So by no means are either of us knocking the blacklist. It's just a difference in what this is. And I think what they're referencing is the original that you're talking about,

Michael Jamin:

The original list. They're thinking. There's a lot of meta jokes in it and meta references.

Phil Hudson:

I've not read them, but I believe that's what they're saying. That is the blacklist I placed on the blacklist top unproduced scripts.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, so I can't answer it then.

Phil Hudson:

But from a style perspective, do you think that's an appropriate style of writing?

Michael Jamin:

Well, if they got on the blacklist, on the legit blacklist by doing this, who am I to say? No, I just think it tends to be cheap. Breaking the fourth wall or meta. You got to really be careful. Ryan Reynolds says that well in the Deadpool, but it can become a crutch and it becomes, the problem was when you do it, you're telling the audience, this is a movie, and it takes them out of it. You've sucked them into it. This is how I feel. When I first started, I thought all this meta jokes were great. Isn't that funny? Where self-referential isn't that interesting? But now that I've matured as a writer, I feel like you're spending all this time and energy to suck people into world, to make them suspend disbelief. And now you're going to pop it with a joke, and now you got to put more energy, get 'em back into it. I don't like it. I think I don't like it. Others can feel differently though.

Phil Hudson:

And in the Deadpool comics, he would break the fourth wall. So that is not something that he's doing in film. He's living in the character. And I think it's something everyone expects from Deadpool, but he's going to have a commentary with you, and it's Ryan Reynolds. If there's anyone who can do that, it's Ryan Reynolds. Right? I could do that. I don't know many people who could fourth wall just for people. I just want to make sure everyone's clear on that. It comes from stage place specifically where there are three walls, and then there's a line, and that line is three walls or the set, and then the fourth wall is the audience. And so they're either facing the audience or they're communicating with each other, but they don't turn to speak to the audience unless it's a narrator or it's someone else having, there's a specific need for that.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Fourth and wall is when you literally acknowledge that there's an audience watching your play, which is kind of odd, but it can be fun.

Phil Hudson:

Some of the first screenwriting courses I ever paid for talked about that. I was supposed to know what it was, and I got so lost. I had to go look it up. And man, that was very confusing. So I want to make sure we define that for people. Yeah, yeah. Projecting much, Phil. Cool. Pf, oh, I wanted to ask, I have a follow-up question on this. So there are screenwriting books that are kind of renowned, specifically story books by Robert McKee, more so than screenwriting books, where he says It is cheap for a writer to reference. We see, we hear, and I actually write in that style, and I get a lot of really good feedback on that. We see this happen. That's just a personal choice. I don have a problem with it. I've never had no bump on it. You read my scripts, you've never bumped on it. To be clear in the book, he clarifies that overused in the transition from, I want to say it was like it might've been silent films to specific moving into something else. So it was as a crutch, people leaned on at a certain point in the 1990, in 19 hundreds. So maybe we've got past that watch is why it doesn't bump. But I said, you answered the question, you don't care.

So that's not breaking the fourth wall in that.

Michael Jamin:

No, no, no, no, no. You're just, yeah, that's a stage direction.

Phil Hudson:

Yep. Awesome. Yeah. To me, I'm inferring camera movement more than anything. Yeah.

Michael Jamin:

Okay,

Phil Hudson:

Cool. P F H, should I vet my idea before I write it so I have an idea to pitch? But once you know it is doable, then I can perfect it. Basically, I had to rewrite this question. It was a bit confusing. Does that make sense?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. I think what they're asking is, this is what I would do. You have an idea of a movie for a movie or a TV show or whatever, put it in a sentence or two sentences and then pitch it to a friend. And if you can't explain it succinctly, then you've got a problem. So just saying it out loud, even if you don't have a friend saying it out loud, describing it is a good waste to the, oh, okay. I know what the story is. Sometimes you don't even know what it is and you can't clarify. So for sure, say it out loud and see if your friend is interested. If that sounds grabby, it might not be.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. In that two sentences, would you say that separate from a log line, or would you call it a log?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, that's basically a log line. But if you want to expand, if you want to make it a paragraph, if you find that a log line is like two sentences, but if you want to make it a paragraph, that's fine too. But don't make it a page. Just make it short and brief.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. One script, early script, I wrote, the log line was about a small town. It's about a small town pastor who kills people. And it was interesting. See your face. That's an interesting enough logline. Yeah, I'd be interested in that. And then the questions are, well, what's it about? Why does he kill people?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. I would go a little more detailed than that because if you pitched me out, I would say, maybe tell me more.

Phil Hudson:

Correct. And it's really more of an elevator pitch than anything. It's just a way to just slide it in. But the log line would be a full two sentences. Yeah. Cool. Course related question. Only one other. Today, melody, we answer a lot of these questions throughout the webinars. There's not a ton of these. Melody Jones, I have to do major research for my project. Should I take the course first or get my research done, then do the course?

Michael Jamin:

Oh, I would say take the course first. That way you know what kind of questions to ask and look for. Unfortunately, we couldn't answer this for her, probably live. But yeah, you may start asking yourself questions that you don't even need the answers to. So

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, I would absolutely agree. In fact, the script I'm writing right now, I am doing a lot of research on, because it has a technical skillset that I am very familiar with, but I don't know the intricacies of. And so by doing my research, I'm looking into that. But I broke the script first from a story perspective, not a plot perspective. I said, what's the story? What do I want to tell? What's going to happen? How are my relationships going to play out? And now it's looking at it thematically to say, how can I utilize this experience they're going through from a technical perspective to elevate that story or to add stressors? How can I use this to get to this part where they get in an argument or whatever? So

Michael Jamin:

Absolutely. What's also interesting, side note, but I'm rewatching Wolf of Wall Street, and I may be a quarter of the way through, but every fricking scene that I'm watching right now, everyone is interesting. The acting is brilliant, but every scene is written. There's something really interesting going on each scene. There's nothing lazy about that script. It's like, if you watch, you could show me one scene. I'd be like, Ooh, that's good. So think about that when you're writing your script. Is this scene amazing or not? Because that one, it was movie. Every scene is amazing.

Phil Hudson:

That's awesome. Yeah. You guys are freebie for you guys. I love that. All right. Breaking in. You ready to talk about breaking into Hollywood? Sure. Cool. There's a curse word in here. So to keep our non explicit label on the podcast F the Void, is there a chance for writers that are not from the US to find success in Hollywood? Like say, south American writers that want to make you big?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Well, there was that guy. Sure. I mean, the guy, the writer who did, ah, man, what was he? Australian? No, he was South African. It's the, ah, man. What was that movie called? District nine.

Phil Hudson:

And he did a bunch of stuff. They're all great.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. And so for sure, you can make your stuff wherever you are. And to some degree, if you make a TV show in a foreign country other than the us, often it's easier to sell those shows to the US because it's IP that already exists. And for some reason, sometimes studios want that. So Wilfred, for example, I wrote on Wilfred, that was an Australian show. It did really well in Australia, and we adapted it for America here. It's not uncommon at all. So yeah, don't let that hold you back from creating great stuff.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. From a purely cinema history perspective, a lot of the best cinematography came out of Mexico when Eisenstein moved there. So there's great stuff. You've got Rito, you've got all these amazing filmmakers coming out of Central South America. And North America. You've got Tero Titi out in New Zealand. You

Michael Jamin:

Got right. I'm going to mention him. There's a movie, I'm just, I'm going to search it right now. Yeah. There's a movie I watched a couple of days ago, the Worst Person in the World. It's a Norwegian movie. Loved it, loved it. Thought it was so well done. The title was terrible. What's the title? But everything about the movie was great, except for the title. The Worst Person in the World. Yeah, go watch that. Yes.

Phil Hudson:

But there's some great films even just come out of Europe, the UK and Europe, which I think we're going to get. That's the next question is uk, maybe that one we answered in the thing. But anyway, but it's like once that musical is just fantastic and it's out of the uk. So yeah, I think oftentimes people group like UK and America is Hollywood, but they are different. You have BAFTA and you have the B, B C and the way they do their things, and then you have Hollywood. And the other thing to keep in mind too is with streaming, I mean, I get a lot of recommendations for Spanish films and TV on my Netflix, and they don't know that I speak Spanish.

Michael Jamin:

I think they Do

Phil Hudson:

You think they figured it out? I think they

Michael Jamin:

Do, man. They might. You'd be surprised. But

Phil Hudson:

I get some Korean stuff too. I get

Michael Jamin:

Ads in Spanish because I speak Spanish too. I'm like, why? How do they know

Phil Hudson:

It's not zip code related? Maybe it's zip code related. Maybe it's just la, right? But yeah, anyway, I get a lot of that stuff. And so just because maybe you get something and you sell it to Netflix, Ecuador, and then all of a sudden it's being streamed all over the world. You've got all of the Spanish channels, and then you make it here. I have to, ah, here's a great example. Squid Games, squid Games, South Korea blew up huge. Right? Huge. Parasite. Parasite. South Korea.

Michael Jamin:

But there's a catch. It has to be good.

Phil Hudson:

Better than good has to be great,

Michael Jamin:

Right? Yeah. It has to be great.

Phil Hudson:

But that's the role for everyone in Hollywood too. And there's a lot of people here who are not willing to put in the effort to get to that. Right? Yeah. And I guess follow up question from F the void, do you know any writers that are not from the US or any first world country that have made it in Hollywood?

Michael Jamin:

Well, I've had Canadian writers on my show before on the podcast. You can ask them how they did it. Other, if you come from a non-English speaking country, you're going to have a more difficult time in the sense that even if your English is really good, it may not be perfect unless you've been here a long, long time. And so that's the catch. It's hard for you to write dialogue in a language that it's not your first language. It may

Phil Hudson:

IMS idioms and all that other stuff too.

Michael Jamin:

So you do need to have really, not just a firm grasp of the language, but you really have to know it. You have to speak as well as a native speaker, but with just maybe just a slight accent. That's the only catch.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. But there are also things like Selena, there's a girl I went to film school with, and she's a writer on Selena, and she's from Mexico, and she's a second. She just got naturalized just a bit ago, but she's right around Selena before she was a US citizen.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, often. Interesting. Yeah. So if you get on a, there's demand for people with diverse backgrounds if the show is about that background. So

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, it absolutely was. I think that whole writing staff were Latin American.

Michael Jamin:

Right? Right. Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them to you for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you, and it's absolutely free. Just go to michaeljamin.com/watchlist.

Phil Hudson:

Cole, our film festival is a good route to take for a script you wrote to get looked at.

Michael Jamin:

Well, you're not looking at it. You're shooting it, right? I'm not sure what the question is.

Phil Hudson:

Film festivals often have screenwriting screenplay contests attached to them.

Michael Jamin:

Oh,

Phil Hudson:

Interesting. And I can tell you, having been on staff for many of those indie film festivals, that is what pays the screenwriting contest is what pays for the cocktail hours and for the other things.

Michael Jamin:

So you're saying it's not really a way to be discovered?

Phil Hudson:

It depends on the film festival.

Michael Jamin:

Right. Oh, okay.

Phil Hudson:

Alright. So there are film festivals that I think matter. I think they're also, I think what you really want to talk about. We actually do a webinar on a little bit deeper on this, which is available on your website to purchase for like 29 bucks worth watching. Which

Michael Jamin:

One is that? Which episode was that?

Phil Hudson:

I think it's how to get past Industry Gatekeepers.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, okay.

Phil Hudson:

I want to say that's what it was. Yeah. Thanks for clarifying. But yeah, I think what you really want to look for are fellowships fellowship. So you have the Sundance Film Festival and their fellowships that they offer there. Blacklist has a fellowship. You have the academy, the Nichols Fellowship. Awesome Film Festival comes up in another question here. That's one. That's a film festival where they do give screenwriting contests awards, and there are industry people who attend that. So it's a different thing. Tribeca, some of those bigger ones, south by Southwest. If they have those options, maybe go for those. But if you're talking about the Westborough, whatever film festival, maybe skip it. Maybe Skip Save the 40 Bucks on Film Freeway.

Michael Jamin:

Okay. You heard of the film. He knows more about this than I do.

Phil Hudson:

Daniel Celiac, poor guy. If someone is still in high school or early in college, what can they do to get closer to the industry?

Michael Jamin:

Stay where you are and just write, write and make your own stuff. As a kid, I shot my own stuff on a super eight camera. Now you can shoot on your phone. I didn't have sound back then. Just keep working on your craft and read anything and get inspired by our art. Draw upon it. Don't look for a job right now. I mean, if you want to look for a job as an intern or PA or something, that's fine. But don't start thinking about starting your film, writing your screenwriting career. Just start working on Become a good writer. That's the first step.

Phil Hudson:

And I was going to suggest PA Intern Volunteer. I started volunteering at the Sunrise Film Festival because that's all I could do. And it was because I was in the recession of 2008, nine, and I just had to work and I had to work two jobs. And so I would volunteer at the Sunrise Film Festival, and I put in those hours for four years. And then that's how I got my first real break through Sundance to do some stuff aside from the work I was doing and how I met you. We've talked about previously, great bv. Michael mentions moving to Hollywood if you're serious. What about those in the uk, for example, who physically cannot get a Visa to move there?

Michael Jamin:

Right. Well, there is an industry in the uk. I mean, they do make great movies and great TV shows there. So I don't know what cities, if it's London, I don't know where the centers are, but stay where you are and become great in your country, and then we'll get you, we'll send a visa your way

Phil Hudson:

When we want that. There's a specific visa that gets you over. It's like you're an expert in your field that America wants to profit off of you by taking taxes.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. The minute America sees dollar signs on you instead of just pound signs,

Phil Hudson:

You get that special visa.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Great. Bv, I just got your pound sign joke, by the way. That was clever.

Michael Jamin:

Thank you,

Phil Hudson:

Bev. No, I did that one. Lauren Gold. Any specific tips for fiction novel writers who want to transition to screenwriting?

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, create, write a bestselling book, and it'll be so easy. They will, Hollywood will come after you with buying their rights, but if you have a book that's not selling, honestly, the book doesn't even have to be good. It just has to be a bestseller because then it comes with the built-in market, and so is 50 Shades of Gray High Literature. I'm not sure, but I know a lot of people read it and loved it, and so they turned out into a movie. So it's about marketing. So these bestsellers have a built-in marketplace and look at a lot of these movies that are being made. They're adapted from movies. They're just hit books or hit books.

Phil Hudson:

And it can also be other things like The Martian, right? It was originally a blog post, a series of blog posts that we, on his

Michael Jamin:

Website. Right? I know it was a self-published book. I didn't know it started from blog posts.

Phil Hudson:

I believe it was a blog. He would post blog posts. He would publish basically a new chapter as a blog post was bought, and then he would spin on from there.

Michael Jamin:

So there's a guy who wasn't asking for permission, he wasn't waiting to be discovered. He did it anyway. He built the mountain himself

Phil Hudson:

At Twilight. Those were stories that she would tell her sister. And she brought that book and blew up. Yeah. Cultural phenomenon.

Michael Jamin:

Twilight was self-published. Did not know that.

Phil Hudson:

My understanding is that, yeah, I believe it was. And someone else, correct me if we're wrong, they'll definitely scream at me because it's such a big hit. That being said, I believe 50 Shades of Gray is a fan fiction of Twilight. That's at least what I've heard.

Michael Jamin:

I didn't know that. Okay.

Phil Hudson:

Awesome. I'm going to just offend half your audience who love those two franchises.

Michael Jamin:

That's okay.

Phil Hudson:

You're welcome, everybody. Rob, as I produced my own plays, staged comedy shows and web series for a while, great. Now is a way to break in. Is this a valid way of doing it? Does the industry care about any of this?

Michael Jamin:

Yes, of course. But the problem is you're doing all these great things, but maybe you're putting the work in, which is great, but maybe it's not good enough yet. It's okay. Keep doing it until you get good. Or maybe it's great, but it hasn't found an audience yet. So it does need to have an audience. The minute you have your web series gets discovered by a couple million people, Hollywood will find you because you are bringing more to the table than just your desire to cash a check. You are bringing an audience. But if you don't have that yet, then one or two things are happening. One is maybe your writing isn't good enough yet, or your show is not good enough yet, yet means you can keep working on yourself. Or maybe they haven't found you yet in that's the case. You still have to keep putting it out there just until you're found, until your audience finds you. Either way, you have to keep doing it. That's it.

Phil Hudson:

Andrew Spitzer, would you agree that ultimately you're selling yourself and your skills rather than a product? You got

Michael Jamin:

To bring more to the table, and like I said, than just a script. And so what am I doing on here? I'm selling myself. I suppose I have a following on social media. It helps me get more opportunities. And so I still have a body of work and people know that I'm a good writer. But yeah, I come with this other end, this other, I bring more to the table than just me,

Phil Hudson:

Just my work brother. Sorry. Yeah, and I took this too. No, no. It's your podcast, man. I'm sorry. I stuck on your toes, Mr. Jamin. I did it again right there.

Michael Jamin:

No,

Phil Hudson:

I was going to say I took this as an, I think it's a bit of both, and I think the order is a little bit different, but my perspective of this, you have a product. That product is so valuable to someone that they want to buy it because you were able to craft that product. And because of that, now your skill sets are valuable and you are now selling your ability to continue to craft products like that one. So you have to have a sample that you've already checked the box. You can make these people money. If you can't do that, there is no evidence of your ability and your skillset. So there's nothing to sell.

Michael Jamin:

Okay.

Phil Hudson:

But I think it goes for your script. I think it goes for getting an agent. I think it goes for getting a manager. I think it goes for opening doors to meet people. You have to have something that is valuable to them. And it might be audience like you were just talking about. That might be enough, right? It might be your IP from the story you wrote and self-published.

Michael Jamin:

Sometimes it'll be approached by an actor, a big actor who has a terrible idea for a show or whatever, because you're going to be in it. And so you're a good actor. So that's bringing a lot to the table, their presence.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Sidebar here. Is there truth in the statement that there are certain actors who are not able to open a movie, who are not able to, that they come and they might have a name you'd recognize, and they might have some idea of a following, but they're not necessarily someone a studio would bank on?

Michael Jamin:

For sure, but I can speak more to this from the TV side, but for sure, I know even John Travolta, Quentin Tarantino wanted to cast Travolta in Pulp Fiction. And I think there was some pushback from the studios. He was a, has been. He was a washout, even though super talented guy. And Tarantino saw him and thought, dude, this guy is still a huge star. He can't walk down the street without people yelling. Vinny Bobino, people love him. And so he pushed, he fought for him, even though the studio didn't believe he could open a movie, and he did open a movie.

Phil Hudson:

He did. Did he ever?

Michael Jamin:

And then think of all the other opportunities that came because of that. But sure, the studios, at the end of the day, they're not so concerned with, is this actor a good actor? They want to know, can this actor put asses in seats? Will they sell tickets? And that's why some actors were not particularly good actors or great actors, but they can put asses in seats. That's what counts.

Phil Hudson:

Yep. Awesome. That's what I thought. I just wanted to get some confirmation there. This is a Phil Hudson q and a. Are everybody I can ask my questions too. Awesome. Lappe two TV or Lippe tv, whatever. If a short film is being optioned to pitch as a series, is it better to keep the short hidden while it's being shopped around, or is it okay to post it online?

Michael Jamin:

Well, it's

Phil Hudson:

A bit of a one percenter for you, right?

Michael Jamin:

This is

Phil Hudson:

A one off question.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. If you put your short on YouTube or whatever, and it gets a million views, it's a lot easier to sell. It's a lot easier to sell.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. What I got from this question is, I made a short, somebody has optioned that short. Is it a mistake to now put that on YouTube? Does that advice still apply there?

Michael Jamin:

You'd have to talk to the person who optioned it, because now it's theirs. They have the rights to go to talk to them.

Phil Hudson:

Cool. Len Lawson, should I ask a potential producer to sign an N D A before reading my script?

Michael Jamin:

I wouldn't. But it depends who, I've never done that. But also, don't show it to the producer who's got a handlebar mustache. Who are you showing it to? Make sure what have they done? Look 'em up on I mdb. Are they legit or are they just someone who's claiming to be a producer? In which case, you better build a rapport with them. You better know whether you can trust this person or not. But I wouldn't. I would never ask. And I've told my scripts to tons of people. I don't ask for an N D A.

Phil Hudson:

I wouldn't either. It's just friction. I think about this in terms of friction, and we talk about adopting habits or influencing people to take action. There's this whole nuance of digital marketing called conversion rate optimization, which is, how do I get more people to take the action I want them to on my website, whether it's the headline or it's the colors or it's pattern interrupts, or if it's offers or bullet points, all that stuff. And to me, you want to reduce friction. How do I remove obstacles? And in sales, the best way to overcome an objection is to kill the objection before it becomes one. And that's a massive objection.

Michael Jamin:

Were to, I'm not a producer. I'm not an agent. I don't want to read anybody's script. I'd say right up front, I'm not. But if someone were to ask me for the favor, say, Hey, will you read my script? And then for some reason I was feeling magnanimous that day as opposed to every other day of the year, then I would say, all right, I'll read your script. And then they asked to ask me to sign an nda, a I'd like, forget it. The deal's off.

Phil Hudson:

We're done.

Michael Jamin:

We're done.

Phil Hudson:

And that's what you're doing.

Michael Jamin:

But

Phil Hudson:

I think it also speaks to the psychology of people who are breaking in, who are so concerned. Someone's going to steal their idea. And that's one of the most prominent questions we get. This is that question asked a different way.

Michael Jamin:

Everyone is so convinced that they have an idea that's worth stealing. That's the funny part. Everyone thinks their script is gold, and most of 'em are not.

Phil Hudson:

By most, we mean a lot of them. A 99.99. And that's a hard thing for me to admit too, guys. I thought I was going to win an Oscar with my first script. I thought I was that prodigy. I've talked about Prodigy syndrome before on the podcast. I thought that was me, and it's not. And letting go of that's been so freeing for my creativity and my enjoyment of the process. So just look at it this way, if you think this is all you got, that's a problem. And that's why you're freaking out. My opinion is steal my idea. Awesome. Go for it. Why? Because that validates the fact that I got something and I got a lot more of that. Right?

Michael Jamin:

Right.

Phil Hudson:

But also, please don't steal my stuff.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, don't steal the stuff that's for me to do.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Everything Jamin writes, I actually write, I'm his ghost writer. I've been a ghost writer for 26 years.

Michael Jamin:

Yep.

Phil Hudson:

I submitted a pilot, Nolan. See, I submitted a pilot to the Awesome Film Festival. Is this a good move? Is it bad timing with the strike I submitted before I knew there was going to be a strike.

Michael Jamin:

There's no bad timing. I mean, you're not going to take, if you become a hit at, if you win some prize, great. When the strike is over, you can capitalize on it. I don't think there's bad timing.

Phil Hudson:

No. I think there's specific advice on this from the W G A that I've seen, and it basically says that if you win anything that was done before the strike, it's whatever. But it's what you do with that after. So let's say that you submitted to a strike that was funded by a studio in the A M T P, and then you win. And part of that prize is to have a meeting with a producer that is in breach, because that is happening after the fact selling. Even having a meeting with them is a breach. It's crossing a picket line.

Michael Jamin:

So just to first say, Hey, thank you. I'm so excited. I can't wait to have this meeting with you in a month or two. When this R is over,

Phil Hudson:

You don't want to take that meeting to ruin your potential for a career because you can't get in the W G A and when the strike's over, they can only hire people who are in the W G A and they will not hire you because

Michael Jamin:

They won't give a crap about you. I mean, if you think you're going to build a friendship with them, they're going to be gone.

Phil Hudson:

Nope. They're going to make their payday and move on. And then when the Writers Guild qualified writers can come back, they will get their high quality scripts back from the people who write 'em. And you'll be sitting there just wasted opportunity with the Austin Film Festival. However, I believe it is technically, and I could be wrong, but I believe it's in, and I did submit this year, by the way, to everybody. I'm in the same situation. I'm not concerned if I win, awesome. I'm not planning on winning. It's just a benchmark, a litmus task for me to say, did I qualify? Am I good enough? Where am I at in what I consider to be a respected film festival? And you take what you get out of it, you accept the accolades, and then you move on and just avoid anything that crosses the picket line. Don't take this as an opportunity to scab.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Cool. Four questions. Michael, you think we can do it?

Michael Jamin:

Let's blow through. Let's do it.

Phil Hudson:

Shauna Ibarra, miscellaneous. How do you find mentors or people who can give you feedback?

Michael Jamin:

You got to earn it. You got to earn it. You got to get a job or an internship or something at a studio, at a production company and work your butt off. And then after six months say, Hey, can I show you my script? But it's not like mentors are just lining up to help you. Or maybe they are. Maybe they're retired people, I don't know. But that's the connections part. That's the work you have to do. This is your job is to make connections, and it's to give first. And that's what I would do.

Phil Hudson:

I was given advice from a production supervisor and a producer that at a certain point you get an ask and you should take your ask

Michael Jamin:

That time. You have to earn that ask first. Right?

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. And there are many people I've personally worked with in Hollywood where I probably have that ask, and I'm not taking that ask because I don't want to waste their time.

Michael Jamin:

You're saving it

Phil Hudson:

For when it's time. Yeah. Erica little since screenwriting is not audience facing, like acting. Is it an ageist industry? Since it is generally Hollywood based.

Michael Jamin:

Ageism is the last accepted in Hollywood that said, there are plenty of examples of people who are older who are still breaking in. So it's not like it's impossible, but they're still favoring the youth. But it's not impossible, especially if you do it yourself. I am always yelling at you, do it yourself so no one can stop you as you're older, you have wisdom, you have more life experiences to draw upon, and you might have a couple of bucks in your pocket so you can invest in yourself.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, good point. Aaron Kami, what is your advice on how to make writing and screenwriting a less lonely pursuit? Especially when writing is a hobby. How do I meet and learn from others or get feedback, et cetera?

Michael Jamin:

Well, that's kind of one of the pluses of our course that Phil and I have is that there's a private Facebook group just for students. And it's a community. They trade scripts, they have table reads, they have a contest coming up. That's the community. That's their graduating class. That's their cohort. That's one way to do it.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Any other thoughts? Are you

Michael Jamin:

No, it's like I said, I think, I don't remember if we mentioned this or the last podcast, but it's a really good group of people where it's not, yeah,

Phil Hudson:

I was on top of this one.

Michael Jamin:

Oh, okay. So I've already mentioned it. So yeah, it's really high quality people in this group,

Phil Hudson:

Solid feedback. And even playing field, they're telling you things based off of what matters, not things that they've heard or read in a book. It's like, this is how a writer's room is going to give you notes. Here's a document, here's a workbook. Michael prepared with the types of notes that matter. That's the feedback he get.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Okay. Last question, Scott. Koski wants to know, Michael, would you consider your book art or Craft?

Michael Jamin:

Oh, good question. When I'm writing for tv, I consider that craft. I consider it. I know it is. I'm getting notes. I'm getting feedback. It's very collaborative. I don't think art at its core, and this is open for debate, but I think art, its core is not about compromising. And when you work with a bunch of people or when you're collaborating, you are going to compromise it. Compromises have to be made. And so it's everyone's work. And that's why I feel like it's craft. But I was thinking about this last night, and then I was like, well, what about Michelangelo? Sistine Chapel? He took notes on the Sistine Chapel. He was working for the Pope. He had to put some angels in there that he didn't want to put in. He had to compromise his vision. But you certainly wouldn't say the Sistine Chapel is not art.

It certainly is. So I'm a little confused as to what my definition is. Even I'm other words, I, I'm contradicting myself. I do think art is about taking something inside of you and expressing it in a way that helps you understand yourself and helps you understand the world around you. And in that way, people can see it or watch it and enjoy it, and help them understand themselves. I think there's that greater good. I don't think craft necessarily does that. I think craft can sometimes be, the studio will give me a note and I'll say, okay, I can do that. That's what you want. I can do that. I don't think it's necessarily playing for the greater good. It's what they want and they're paying me. I also don't think design is necessarily art design. Sometimes a can be about selling something. So the design of the Apple boxes that they sell their phones and really beautiful, well done. But the design has an intention, and that is to sell this image of apple, of this blank slate, this pure white open for possibility, creative, blank slate. So is that art? No, I don't think so. I think it's design. I also, so there's art, craft, and design, but you can have your own opinion, feelings. And this debate has been raging for centuries.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. I apologize. You might've answered this for you. Your book, is it art or is it craft? Oh,

Michael Jamin:

For me, the intention was only art. I was drawing upon my craft to make art. Whereas I don't usually draw upon my craft to make art. I usually do it to make a TV show. And so the book is called a Paper Orchestra. And when I wrote it, I was very, very, I was struggling with this. I've read similar books that were written by television writers. And to me, they felt like they had, I could tell they were written by sitcom writers. That's not to say that it was goofy. It just felt like it wasn't deep enough and it felt like they had taken the network note. Often we get notes from the network with the networks, can you round the edges off? And when you're writing on a network TV show, we'll often anticipate these notes and we'll do the notes in advance. But for this book, I was very insecure about it. I was kept on arguing with my wife, does this feel like it was written by Sid Car Rider? And sometimes she'd say, yeah, and sometimes she'd say, no, no, no. And so I was always pushing myself. I wanted to be seen as an author, not as a sitcom writer who wrote a book that feels like a sitcom. And so whether or not I achieved that, that's up for the individual to decide. But that was my intention. And I think intention's important. Think it counts for something.

Phil Hudson:

Absolutely. And it sounds to me like you took the craft that you've been working on for years and years and utilize it as a litmus test for your art.

Michael Jamin:

And if anyone wants to sign up when it drops or when I start touring, it's michael jamin.com/upcoming. But it's interesting because when people have enjoyed it and performed it as I performed, or when they've read,

Phil Hudson:

It's fantastic.

Michael Jamin:

Thank you. It's very visual. So I think when I write these scenes, I think, oh, what are we watching in our mind's eye as this scene goes? So there's that. I do write as if I'm a screenwriter. I don't know if I'll ever be able to get rid of that. And I do write, it's not high literature. I understand that. I don't know if I ever could write high literature, and I don't think, it was never my intention.

Phil Hudson:

I think it just speaks to the value of art. And you said it's to the greater good. And I think sometimes the greater good is what do I want to write? What is best for my soul?

Michael Jamin:

Yes.

Phil Hudson:

That's the intention. And that is the greater good. And that's the difference between canon fodder is the term that comes to mind. I don't know if that's appropriate, but it's just the BSS that can be mass produced, the AI generated content that can be mass produced versus the singular thing that only Michael Jamin could do because it spoke to his soul and came out of him based off of what he needed to express at this moment and what was going on in his life, reflecting on all of the experiences he's had.

Michael Jamin:

And that's interesting because how I protect myself from ai, because people say, what are you doing about ai? AI cannot write my stories because it hasn't lived my life. And these are very personal stories, so it just can't, AI might be able to do other things, but it can't do what I'm doing. Yeah.

Phil Hudson:

Yep. Beautiful stuff, man. I love when we end on these great little notes like that because I think it's incredibly valuable to people who are struggling with this. I know a lot of writers think they're artists and they want to be artists, and you are. You're doing something pure. And with the right intention, regardless of the quality that you can do now compared to everybody else, it's the best you can do with what you have right now. That is

Michael Jamin:

Art. And that's the advantage that an amateur or non-professional screenwriter or writer has over what we do. I'm a professional writer. It means I get paid. People are paying me to put out stuff that maybe I don't necessarily want to do, but I'm taking the money so I have to do it. But when you're writing for yourself as an amateur or you get to write whatever you want and you don't have to compromise and you don't have to worry about the money, you already have a job on the side, what you're doing, not you, but what those people are doing is more pure in that sense. You are writing because you just want to write, it's closer. It probably has a closer chance of being art than what I do when I take the paycheck.

Phil Hudson:

But it's probably also the thing that is going to get you into the machine to become the professional paid writer who does the craft?

Michael Jamin:

If you don't, right? If you stop thinking about, can I sell this and start thinking about how beautiful is this thing I'm making? And we were just talking to him a minute ago about Wolf of Wall Street, how I'm only a quarter way through, but every scene is so interesting. The writing is so great in every scene. Not lazy, nothing lazy about it, man. Yeah,

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Well, it kind of leads to the end of the podcast. And so before we jump the gun, what do we say? Keep writing. That's Keep writing Do

Michael Jamin:

Phil. Great. Another great talk. Alright, everyone, keep watching. We have great stuff for you on the website. We like to always like to plug that. If you go to michaeljamin.com, what you can get is a free lesson on how to write. You can get on my newsletter, which I'll send you the three tips that I think you need to watch every week. Three lessons for you to pick up free. Also on my website, you can sign up for my book for when it drops a P Orchestra. You can sign up for my webinar, which we do every three weeks, and you could sign up for my screenwriting course. That's going to cost you. You can get a free writing sample that I've written all this stuff. Go get it. Yeah, it's all [email protected]

Phil Hudson:

And there's other valuable things you have on there too. You can get the webinar rebroadcast. This was the pep talking screener writer and he's here. You can go get that. There's also the VIP Q and a, so these are the questions we couldn't answer in the main one. There's a VIP q and a. You can go sign up @michaeljamin.com/VIP for the next event and just have a chance on Zoom in a small group to ask questions directly to you. And

Michael Jamin:

Let me clarify so the webinars, because I'm glad you brought that up. So the webinars are free if you attend live, they're free. If you miss it, we send you a free replay for 24 hours. But if you want to catch the old ones because you're like, Hey, those are really good, those are available on my website for a small fee,

Phil Hudson:

But they're lifetime access, so you buy it once. It doesn't have a take clock. It's like jurors, you have access. It's in there with the course. If you buy the course, you get access to all of them and the webinar, when you attend, you give away a free access to the course. So somebody will win that. And a pretty nice discount as well.

Michael Jamin:

Yes. Alright, Philly, we did it. Thank you everyone. Until next week, as Phil likes to say, keep writing.

Phil Hudson:

This has been an episode of Screenwriters Need to Hear this with Michael Jamin and Phil Hudson. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for Michael's monthly webinar @michaeljamin.com/webinar. If you found this podcast helpful, consider sharing it with a friend and leaving us a five star review on iTunes. For free screenwriting tips, follow Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJamin,writer. You can follow Phil Hudson on social media @PhilaHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Green Music, by Ken Joseph. Until next time, keep writing.

On this week's episode, I talk about my thoughts on going to Film School. We also talk about what some industry insiders think about this and whether or not it helps your career. Tune in for much more!

Show Notes

Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/

Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course

Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free

Join My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlist

Autogenerated Transcript

Michael Jamin:

Because I don't want to make it harder for my, when I'm working in a writer's room, I don't want to make it harder for myself. I want to make it simple for me to think about these problems. So I don't want to make it harder. The job is hard enough as it is. Why make it harder? Make it simpler. You're telling a story, it's not heart surgery. You're listening to screenwriters. Need to hear this with Michael Jamin. Hey everybody, welcome back. I'm Michael Jamin. I'm here with Phil Hudson and today we're answering the question, or at least we're asking it. Who knows if we'll have an answer? Should I go to film school? I get this one a lot. Let's talk about it. Well first of all, Phil, you might be better than me answering because you actually went to film school. Where'd you go?

Phil Hudson:

I went to Santa Fe University of Art and Design and I got a bachelor's, a fine arts in film story development from a film school

Michael Jamin:

There. How many years is that degree?

Phil Hudson:

It's a four year degree. Took me, oh my

Michael Jamin:

God,

Phil Hudson:

It's a bachelor's program. So it wasn't like master's an n, NYU U Master's in film. It was a bachelor's degree. And I remember when I was contemplating going, I had just really met you. I'd been working with your wife for a while and I asked you, should I go there or should I go to Hollywood? And you said, well, I don't know how valuable film school is outside of the network. You'll build there, but the work's here, so that's a personal choice. And then you said, well, at least you'll be able to teach college. And I said, well, I don't know if I will because it won't have a master's. And you're like, oh no.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Well how much did that degree cost? Not necessarily you, but most people.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, so the school was $30,000 a year, so it's $120,000 to get a four year degree. And I think at the time the average student would take about five years to get a bachelor's degree. So it actually, it would be $150,000 for

Michael Jamin:

That degree. I just Googled U S C film school and it's 53,000 a year. And I dunno if it's two or three years, but either way it's enough to give you heart palpitations.

Phil Hudson:

To put this into perspective, my brother, he's a lawyer, went to law school in Idaho and he's a lawyer in Montana where he passed the bar and I think his degree cost him $120,000 to be a lawyer.

Michael Jamin:

To be a lawyer. And you can immediately start earning that back the minute you passed the

Phil Hudson:

Bar. Oh, he's making more money per hour than I am now. He went, I mean he really took his time and now he was scraping by living on student loans, building up debt to get through film school with a family. I mean he's building five to six billable hours per day at $200 an hour. He is making more in a day than I make as a PA

Michael Jamin:

On. Yeah, right. But film school, so should people go to film school? Here's the thing, you're going to graduate with a lot of debt and we don't know when or if you'll ever pay that off. As far as I can tell.

Phil Hudson:

I can be transparent on that too. I had a Robert Redford scholarship and a talent scholarship, so my cost all in, aside from what I paid, I have $40,000 in student loans from school and my school closed down. It doesn't exist anymore.

Michael Jamin:

So do you have to pay back your loan then? I

Phil Hudson:

Do.

Michael Jamin:

You do. Even though, who's it going to? They don't have school.

Phil Hudson:

The federal government loaned me the money and then paid the school. And that is something I can never get rid of. It's you can't file bankruptcy on it. It lives with you till death. You will always owe that money unless you pay it back. The other side of this is there is a way that I could challenge that and say, well, my school's gone because the school actually never sent me my diploma. So I walked, I have the itinerary, the photos, the whole thing, but I never got my diploma from the school. And there's a process to go get it through the parent organization laureate to go get that, but it's a bit of a pain in the butt. And they messed up my transcripts because I did that four year program in two and a half years. So I really expedited things. I saw them writing on the wall that it was going to shut down so I could challenge it and I could get that waived and then I would lose my degree. So I've wasted two and a half years, so it's not really worth fighting to me. I'd rather have the degree. So I've just got to find the time to go fight that other battle for you.

Michael Jamin:

Well, just so people know, I've worked in TV for a long time, 27 years, and most of the writers that I work, if you want to be a screenwriter, very, very few actually went to film school. I was at a party a couple weeks ago, a friend of mine who told me he went to film school and I've worked with him for many years. He's like, you went to film school. It just doesn't come up. And when you get hired for, no one's going to ask you to see your degree. No one caress what your G p A was in film school. No one caress if you went or you didn't go. All they care is can you put the words in the page? That comp compelled people to turn to the next page. And you don't need just the fact that you have a degree or even an M F A in creative writing or whatever. The degree is worthless. The knowledge that you gain might be worth something might depending on who's teaching it to you. And I think that is more dependent on not necessarily the school or the program, but who's teaching that semester, who did they get? Often these are adjuncts and sometimes the adjuncts are working screenwriters who have a break in their schedule and want to teach. And you may find one that's great, but these adjuncts don't get paid a lot of money. So it's not what I mean a lot of money. I'm talking about

Phil Hudson:

A couple hundred bucks a month.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, I mean the people I've talked to for a semester, maybe they make $4,000. It's not a lot of money, so they're not doing it for the money. And it's not a long-term career option when you're only making four grand for a semester. It's ridiculous. So it just depends on who they got that semester. You may get somebody great, you may not. So the knowledge you get may be fantastic, but again, it's a trade school you're getting, if you want to be a filmmaker, do you want to learn editing? Do you want to learn lighting or maybe, but as a screenwriter, no, you'll learn that in a million other things. There are way less expensive options, including our course that we offer that will teach you probably more in that area of specialty in the writing aspect. But I don't teach lighting

Phil Hudson:

And I decided to go because I was always a bit more interested in being an ourour, shooting, writing, directing, producing, editing, just kind of understanding the full gamut. I also have a bit of a control need. I need to be able to understand, and this comes from being in the tech space where I'd have engineers telling me something was going to take three weeks to get done, and then you learn how to code it and you realize they're just milking the clock. And so it comes from I'd like to understand the full process so I can better work within that process and hold people a little bit more accountable from a leadership perspective. But yeah, that's smart. Smart. And your note on film school is interesting too. On the writing side, no one cares on the production side. I've actually had conversations with people who roll their eyes when they hear you into film school.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, really? People, producers, you mean

Phil Hudson:

Art directors?

Michael Jamin:

Why did

Phil Hudson:

They roll their every department?

Michael Jamin:

Why did they roll their eyes?

Phil Hudson:

I dealt with this when I was a missionary. When you're a missionary, you've been out doing this stuff for six months and then you're asked to train somebody new. That guy's coming from a place where they taught them how to be a missionary, but learning how to be a missionary versus being a missionary, just different things. Learning how to make a film and learning how to do a setup versus how a set actually runs. They're different things. The education may be correct, but the environment changes things. And so without fail, people who come in who said, I went to film school, think they know how to do it, think they know better than their superiors and it creates conflict because those people think they're better than the people teaching them.

Michael Jamin:

Phil, we didn't have this conversation off the air. So just so you know, I worked with a producer on one of my TV shows, the line producer, he was the producer and he said the same exact thing. He said that when he hires PAs for the show and most of the PAs come out of film school, whatever, a hundred thousand in debt, he goes, I have to untrain them. I have to unlearn them everything they learned because they think they know and it's just not how it works. And I was like, really? He goes, yep, that's how he goes. He doesn't prioritize hiring film students. He just as well hired someone who's not a film school student, have them learn on the job and learn instead of being winding up a hundred thousand in debt, they get paid. Although not a lot, but they get paid to learn.

Phil Hudson:

No, you get paid. I always described it, and I need this too, because when I moved to LA I was 31 and I'd already had a very successful corporate career and I could have pursued that career. When I was in college, I got prospected to go be a chief marketing officer at a bunch of startups in San Francisco paying way more money than I make now. And I turned 'em down because I was way more passionate about this thing I want to do in film. But I always described it to people like I knew, I knew I was going to get coffee for people. I knew it was a lot of yes sir, no, yes sir, no ma'am. However much you need, what can I do? Because it really feels to me like it's the apprenticeship model out here. This is a trade where you learn under someone else who has done it and you not only learn how to do it by the book, but you learn all the tips and tricks and hacks. They had to figure out that were passed down to them as a lineage from the people that taught them who learned it from the guy who was running around with the horses in 1908.

Michael Jamin:

So another thing that you might get from film school. So in other words, let's break it down. Okay, the diploma is not worth anything, but the knowledge you might get, especially in terms of screenwriting, might be valuable. Just totally depends, but you can spend a lot less on it. You might get context depending on where you go, depending on your graduating class. And if you are willing to stay in contact, if you stay in contact with your people, if you're friends with them, if you're not, those contacts are worth, your graduating class is worthless if you don't know the members of your graduating class. And like I said, it's an expensive venture and it didn't help you get, okay. So when you got your first PA job, did they ask if you went to film school?

Phil Hudson:

No, I think in fact when I interviewed it was probably one of those situations where I was disqualified because of it. Oh, really? Because in the interview it was for Brett and link's buddy system. You got me the interview, you told me I can get you the interview, I can't get you the job. You got her on the job. And I showed up and I disqualified myself by telling them I wanted to be a writer. That's really what disqualified me. And then, yeah, no one has asked me once, not a single person has ever asked me if I went to film school.

Michael Jamin:

And so I had to

Phil Hudson:

Bring it up once or twice out of defense because someone was trying to belittle. This is like I ran into a really toxic person in her season of Tacoma Tea recently, and that person was belittling me by trying to explain to me things and I had to say, yeah, I learned that in film school. And then she looked at me and was like, yeah, I went to film school too. I understand. I know how to calculate it. I get it.

Michael Jamin:

But there are things in terms of screenwriting that you did not learn in film school.

Phil Hudson:

Oh man. And this is no knock on anybody. You talk about good professors and bad professors. We had an adjunct professor named Ed Kamara, and he's a legend. He wrote Lady Hawk, which was a huge hit in the eighties. He wrote the Bruce Lee movie. He has actual credits under his belt, retired lives in Santa Fe, and he would come and teach one class per year. And it was intermediate storytelling and I got way more out of that class than I did any of my other writing classes because he was telling you, here's how you write a screenplay. And we had to write a screenplay to get credit in the class. But compare that to my first class and nothing against the professor, but we spent four weeks learning audio visual format for PSAs, and then we learned how to use Celtics because he wrote the book on Celtics and we had to buy the book on Celtics for his course.

It was a lot of stuff. And then I had this really interesting moment we've talked about in the podcast, but this is a real thing that happened to me. He asked the room, we finally got into story and structure. He asked the room, what's the definition of a story? And I just perked up and I was like, I know this because it's literally the first thing you had taught me via an email. He asked me that question and I looked around the room and people raising their hands and people are getting it wrong. And I just said, it's a hero overcoming an obstacle to achieve a goal. And the teacher turned around and changed his slides because he didn't have that definition. So yeah, I've learned way more, I would say outside of film school, about screenwriting through you and the stuff you've taught me also from just sitting down and writing, the real benefit for me was that it forced me to write,

Michael Jamin:

But also you can build and if you want to talk about your graduating class since I brought it up, but you can build your community outside of, you don't need to go to film school to build a community of people, of like-minded people who want what you want, which is to become either filmmakers or screenwriter, whatever it is. But it's like you can build a community, especially online because you don't need to do that now. So much about the world has changed with the internet and social media so much. It's changed so rapidly that, but I think so many people are still stuck in the old model thinking, well no, this is how it has to be done, myself included as well. I sometimes feel that when it doesn't, the world is changing.

Phil Hudson:

We can talk about generative AI and all of those things because pretty steeped in those. I sent you a bunch of guides yesterday about how to do some content on chat G P T and stuff, but tool, like you said, technology has just changed things. MySpace was a thing when I was in high school and Facebook was brand new when I got off my mission in 2008, and I barely, I had to figure out how to use that, but YouTube wasn't a thing. I remember sitting in my first class in film school and one of the assignments was, I want you to write down on a piece of paper, who is the filmmaker that inspired you to be a filmmaker when you were like 12 years old? And then he said, if you were inspired by a YouTuber, come talk to me. I have a different assignment for you. And I was like, what? YouTube was invented in 2005. I graduated in oh four, right? It's just text change things. So I agree with you on that. But in terms of your network and growing a network, my network in my film school, I went to school with a bunch of really passionate people about film, are way more technically savvy than I am. Could make a picture out of a camera I can't even imagine because they just had access to better technology than I did. They were much younger than me,

Michael Jamin:

But

Phil Hudson:

I've found most of 'em didn't understand story at all. And the ones who did, there's a small group of us who made it to la. Out of that group of people, there's like four of them still here. One is working at an agency, one is in the W G A and writes on Selena. She's amazing. You should go check out Selena Blank on her names Alexandra, but it'll come up to me. And then there's one guy who was an announcer, really put in a lot of effort making these happen. And now he's a head of creative development at a pretty well-known studio. That's it. That's really it. I've got a couple of friends who still live in la, but they're not doing anything in the industry writing related. They're doing the visual effects and things, but they all want to be writers, directors. That's what they did. But the group that I think I associate the most with is actually your group from the course.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. You associate meaning making connections with

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean prior to that, obviously I know people on set. I need people on set. We trade scripts. We kind of have those things because working with people and then you learn, everybody wants to be a writer. Everybody wants to be a director. Not everybody. There are some people who are like, I love lighting and I love camera and that's what I want to do. But a lot of people want to be writers and directors. And so you can meet a lot of like-minded people that way. They're the events and things in LA that you can go to networking events. There's social media meetups now there's Zoom meetups with people. But your group, I want to highlight because the value of that group to me is these are people who've invested in themselves to learn from a professional who knows how to do it.

And we are all sitting down in this group, and it's a group of people who are highly motivated. They're taking it very seriously. They understand the fundamentals the same way that we all do. And then now we're slowly lifting each other up to become better. And there's new people joining every month, and those people are jumping into this ecosystem, but very proactive. We trade notes with those people. The notes are way better. I mean, those are my peers. One comes into town and we meet up, we go pick it with him and Warner Brothers, he comes to my house, he eats food in my home. That's Dave Crossman we talk about all the time. But lots of people in the LA area that we meet up with and do those things. That's the networking that really matters.

Michael Jamin:

So just to be clear, I have a screenwriting course and that comes with a private Facebook group. That's what you're talking about. And what I see, it's interesting. I am a member of some public Facebook groups screenwriting, and I don't go there. I don't know why I'm in there, but I don't go there. They're dark, they're dark places. People are mean, they talk shit. They don't know what they're talking about. It is just toxic. But that's definitely not the sense in our group, which is very much more supportive, not, and not only that, we haven't even talked about this film, but someone, I think it was Crossman in the group, decided to, Hey, should we do a film, a screenwriting contest? Film

Phil Hudson:

Festival. A film

Michael Jamin:

Festival? And so I was like, that's fun. That's a good idea.

Phil Hudson:

You told them to do it on a podcast. You said, you were talking about on the podcast you said, and not crossword, but you said, you know what I think our group needs to do? They need to just do a thing where they can exhibit the stuff they're working on and then someone did it,

Michael Jamin:

Someone took the initiative to do it, and I'm all for it. I'm not involved in it, but I'm all for it. I'm like, that's a great idea. And it just helps. First of all, it raises everyone's profile in the group with other, amongst themselves, but also that'll spread. I mean, they do this and one of these things does well, if everyone agree on, Hey, this movie's really good, or the screenplays, I don't even know, is it a movie or is it a screenplay? It's

Phil Hudson:

Short. It's produced stuff. So it's taking your content and then producing it as a short,

Michael Jamin:

Right?

Phil Hudson:

So Imagine Festival,

Michael Jamin:

Imagine the top three entrants. Everyone agrees, these are the three favorite that will have legs that people will talk about that they'll share that outside of the group. They'll say, I mean, I don't see a downside to this. All I see is upside. And I was, I was actually thinking about what stopped them from doing this two years ago. And the answer, and I came up with the answer and the answer was, one, someone felt like, well, this is a lot of work, which I get it. It's not a lot, but it's work to organize this. And then the second was probably, they're probably thinking, well, who am I to do this? Who am I to be the person? What am I? I'm just a person. Why should am I to say I'm capable? Well, why are you not capable? Who are you not to be the person you're just as good as anybody else? What's the problem? But it's overcoming that little mental barrier that you created for yourself thinking, who am I to make a film a contest? Well, you're you. That's who you are now. You're the guy, now you're the guy, the woman creating this contest and raising your profile in the process, which is only a good thing. So it's only good for the winners or the contestants. It's good for the people who are involved in doing this.

Phil Hudson:

And we've talked about it too, the proactiveness in that group of people, they have reading groups and that's booked out for six months where they know for every week who's reading these scripts. They're exchanging notes. They do pitch fest. They bring in people outside of the group, professionals that they know. They shared their network with you to hear you pitch things. Right? Wow. Yeah. It's nothing but

Michael Jamin:

Good for them. I mean, seriously, I'm not organizing this. They're being proactive, which is what I encourage you to do. Control put, this is your destiny. This is your fate. You got to make these opportunities for yourself. And it's only good, good things to be the person, even if you're just a connector, even if you're just the person that links two people together, now you are the connector. You're also valuable. So

Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them to you for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you and it's absolutely free. Just go to michaeljamin.com/watchlist.

Phil Hudson:

No, this is the value of leadership. It's just leadership

Michael Jamin:

Is what I was even asking too. Are you getting involved in that? Is that what you

Phil Hudson:

I'm going to, they don't know this. They'll listen to this. I don't know. But yeah, I've got this final that I did in film school. Every project I've ever done, the audio has just been trashed. It's just been correct. And the problem this time was my cinematographer didn't enable the on-camera audio. And so I did have a good audio person getting the audio, so I just was able to scrape it enough to get an A on my final and get out. But I never finished the project. So that's a project that's sitting there. My friend Ken Joseph, who does the music for your podcast, he's going to do the music on as well. And I'm just going to finally cut it and submit it. And then I'm probably going to put something together with a couple of people from the Tacoma crew who aren't working right now and try to just get something shot and submit it just for fun.

Michael Jamin:

See, and this gets you off your ass, just lets a fire under your ass to do. But I bet you the, I

Phil Hudson:

Can't not show up Michael. Not that I have any clout, but it's like I'm number two in the group just because of my tech admin status. And so if I don't show up, what message is that sending to people? And so I take that on myself as my responsibility for helping be involved and support the troubleshooting that goes on. Okay, I need to be an active

Michael Jamin:

Participant. How many winners are they going to choose?

Phil Hudson:

I have no clue on that.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Well, I look forward to watching the winners. I'm not going to judge, but I will be. I'll enjoy the victors. I'll enjoy their work. And I mean, again, that's just people taking initiative of their own careers. That's what you're supposed to do.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. I mean, this is what you've been preaching for two years, man. You've been saying this. It's like no one's going to help you. You got to do it yourself. I think this is just a lost American skillset. That is a very important one.

Michael Jamin:

This is not film school. They don't have to go to film school to do all this. No, this is where the conversation started.

Phil Hudson:

And on that note, it's like, do you have to go to film school? Absolutely not. My answer is no. Am I glad I went to film school? I don't know that I would be in the same place today if I hadn't. I think that I had to go through a lot of that stuff. Are there benefits to going to school and getting a degree in general? I think so. I think as someone who grew up poor and I just had this chip on my shoulder all the time, that I was less than. So going and getting a classic education from a liberal arts school, having my eyes opened a little bit more by being encouraged to read stuff I would've never read on my own. I took classes on feminist literature because that was the course that fit into my schedule to check that box.

And I took the look through it, history of science fiction. Wow, learned so much about this genre that I love and saw the influence of that. So there's a lot of those benefits I think from a personal development perspective. But I'm also an autodidact. I mean, I've got shells full of books that I can just read and learn on my own, and I believe anybody can do that. So it's each their own. And with kids, my wife is not a believer in college and secondary education doesn't really care because it's not something that ever called out to her. I definitely see the value. And so our decision is it's up to our kids to decide and we'll support whatever they want to do. But I also know I've built a very healthy marketing career on my own that did not go to school for,

Michael Jamin:

The thing is to graduate though with a hundred hundred or $150,000 in debt,

Phil Hudson:

It's insurmountable for a lot of people, especially, and I think this is what the strike highlights is, people in Hollywood have this opinion that riders are just driving Lamborghinis and they're loaded. And the answer is no. They're middle class people. They just live in a city that requires more money to live in, but they live a middle class lifestyle that would be the equivalent of a upper middle class lifestyle. In any other suburban area of America doing any other middle class job, there are outliers. It's a bell curve. There are people who make way less. There are a lot of people who make a lot more, but the average in the bell, they're just middle class people and they're in my neighborhood. I mean, I just moved into this new neighborhood a year ago, and in my neighborhood, I go to this church and there are four people in the industry in the church. One's an editor at Sony, one was the head gaffer for N C I S, and he's retired now. And the other one's a composer for film and tv, but they live in what I would call an upper middle class neighborhood. They're not in the Hollywood Hills. I'm further away from LA than I've ever been. This is where I could afford to put my family.

Michael Jamin:

Right. So it's just a little hard to think about having that amount of debt is

Phil Hudson:

When you can go to school for six, seven years and then start making 1200 bucks a day as an attorney.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. So do you really want to add that for the same debt?

Phil Hudson:

The same debt? So it's crazy.

Michael Jamin:

So it's probably just a better way to spend your money and your time probably. I would think. And again, I didn't go to film school. One of the best writers I've ever worked with didn't go to college. She was just a high school graduate. So it's a question of can you put the words on the page? The degree will not open doors for you. No.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. And that ties into limiting belief, people talking all the time is you have to go to Harvard to make it in Hollywood. Yeah. It's like, no, there are recruiting groups. There are kind of cliquey things that can happen for sure. And this is, I don't know, so I apologize if this is incorrect, but I've heard that the Simpsons largely hires people from Harvard,

Michael Jamin:

And that was really, that news is 30 years old, so I don't even know if they're hiring anymore. The Simpsons is not what it once was. And people aren't leaving that show. If you're a writer on that show, you're not leaving because why would you? So I don't know how many writers they hire, and I don't know if I know it once was a feeder. You go to the Lampoon. If you did the Harvard Lampoon, then maybe you get some contact.

Phil Hudson:

But that's a qualification, right? You to work at the Lampoon, you are qualified because you have to have a certain joke set, a style of jokes. So I mean, that just makes sense to me. I know there's a big U Ss C producing, I wouldn't call it click but network. If you went to the producing school at U S C, that has value to people in the producing side. They know the quality of the education that you had.

But I mean, that's alumni networks and that's been around for forever. No different. The difference here is I know that if I need to find a job tomorrow, so let's say the strikes end tomorrow and Tacoma FD is canceled, which is not, but if it did, what's my next step? My step is to send out emails to everybody I know that I've worked with in the four years I've been on Tacoma fd, letting 'em know this is the kind of job I'm looking for. Lemme know if you hear anything. And I know that my work ethic will shine that if there's an opportunity, they'll ask me. They'll recommend me that,

Michael Jamin:

Right?

Phil Hudson:

That's the same network. I got that working.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, yeah, right. You built that yourself really. So, and another thing you can do if you decide to take a course or a class, and I've talked about this before, so apologize for repeating myself, but whoever your teacher is, it says if it's screenwriting, ask to read their work. It's okay. That's okay. And you could say, I'd love to, before you sign up, I'd love to read what your work is. And then they'll give you a script. If they're not willing to share their work, what's the problem? It's a red flag. If you read it and you're not sure whether you like where you think it's good or not, there's a simple test. When you turn to page one and you get to the bottom of page one, do you want to turn to page two? It's the bottom of every page. Do you want to turn the page and find out what happens next?

If you're on the fence, it's not good enough. It really should be captivating. You should want to, it's entertainment. If it's not entertaining you, that's how you judge. There's no secret language to figure out whether, and I didn't know this when I first broke into Hollywood, I didn't know this. I would read a script and I go, it looks like a script. I don't know. Or I was doing coverage for a publisher. Would this book make a good movie? So I was reading a lot of books and they'd say, do you think it'll make a good movie? I'm like, I guess I remember reading, taking months to read or whatever weeks to read a book and thinking, this is dreadful. I guess this, it's a good movie. No, it is actually less simpler. It shouldn't feel like torture, turning the page.

Phil Hudson:

And that's a real thing. And we're having read so much stuff now pretty quick.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah,

Phil Hudson:

It's going to suck.

Michael Jamin:

So ask to read their work, and if you don't like it, then don't study from them. They're not going to. It's really as simple as that. And if you do like it, great. Maybe you'll study from still. Doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be a great teacher. Sometimes they can't crystallize it. They just might have some raw talent that they can't really, it doesn't mean they're good at sharing their knowledge means they have some kind of thing in them that, so there's that.

Phil Hudson:

Well, and let me pay you a compliment too, Michael, because we've had a lot of people go through your course and one of the common testimonials we get or reviews we get is just how easily digestible it is and how packed with value it is. And I remember we've had two people in particular. One Bruce Gordon left you this great review. He said that, and I'm paraphrasing, but he said that learning the whole course, the learning process is so easy to get through that it's impossible to not get value out of the backend. And we had someone who recently signed up within the last month who is literally, this is her job is learning systems, online learning management, and she wanted to know what platform we were using because she was so impressed with it. And I was like, it's the most popular platform. Everyone uses platform. It's not that. It's the fact that you're teaching valuable stuff, organized in a way that makes linear and logical sense that anybody can grasp.

Michael Jamin:

There's no secret from it is just like I try to explain it in very simple terms so an idiot can get it. I'm not interested in, oh,

Phil Hudson:

And I'm an idiot. You've said things that I've heard a thousand times over in books and courses. And it wasn't until you said it was like, oh no, duh.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, because I don't want to make it harder for my, when I'm working in a writer's room, I don't want to make it harder for myself. I want to make it simple for me to think about these problems. So I don't want to make it harder. The job is hard enough as it is. Why make it harder? Make it simpler. You're telling a story. It's not heart surgery don't make so complicated.

Phil Hudson:

And you're structured in the course that you talk about your bottom of act one. The way you define that. Oh my gosh, that just made so much sense. The first half of Act two. Oh my gosh. Makes so much sense. And I remember I was lucky enough, I came out to Disneyland with my family and I swung by your garage to talk about marketing stuff for your wife's company. And we were just hanging out where you were recording. And I remember sitting there and you were like, well, what can I do for you? And I was like, oh, I don't know, man. I'd just love to know what you think about story. And you broke the whiteboard out for me the same way you do in the course. And I was in film school at the time, and the way you laid it out, just I wanted to cry. It was like, this is so

Michael Jamin:

Easy. Yeah, see, it's easy. We don't make things harder. My partner and I, we try not to make things harder than it has to be. And that's not to say it's formulaic or facile, it's just like, because you could tell a complicated, nuanced story, but you don't have to make the beats of it complicated. You don't have to. Geez, because we got to do this every week.

Phil Hudson:

I was watching Get Out on the plane, I'd never seen Get Out. I've bought it. I wanted to watch it. I just never made the time. And I watched it on the plane yesterday and this thing happens. I was like, I know where we're at. And I checked the time. Oh, we're there. Oh, beat by beat by beat.

Michael Jamin:

It fell right

Phil Hudson:

Into it. Of the greatest films of the last five, six years. Beat by Beat by beat. It's the same story structure we use in Tacoma fd we use in King of the Hill, wherever it is. It's the same thing.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, same thing. The way

Phil Hudson:

Jordan Peele does it, I could never do cause surprised, fascinating, great, that's him. But it's the same structure,

Michael Jamin:

Right? The structure is the same, right? So that's where you put the structure is just like that's building a house. Okay. If you know how to frame a house, you should be able to frame the house and then the color of the paint and the tiles, all that stuff is that's the decorations. And that requires your taste and how you want to execute it. That's fine. But don't make the structure the hard part.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah. Structures are not hard. You have a foundation and you have stuff. That's it. Everything else, the way you put it in your electrical system, what type of water heater you use, the piping you use, how is it connected? The junction box, that's the complicated stuff. That's you, that's your craft. But the framing that, that's a process. So one thing I wanted to tell you is I was at dinner with Paul Soter when I was on the quasi tour, and we were talking about writing in the writer's room and TV and all of this stuff, and I told him this advice that you gave me, which was one, learn hotkeys. If you're going to be a writer's assistant and two, shut the F up. Your job is not to talk in the room. Your job is to sit there and take notes and listen and learn, and that's what you're going to do. And Paul Soder paid you and your writing partner or great credit, he said, yeah, I remember my first season in Tacoma. I just remember sitting there and wanting to shut up and say nothing and just learn from these guys. Oh, wow. Although they have great career in indie film and doing major studio films, they were still learning from you too because of us. I think it goes back to the simplicity with which you're doing it

Michael Jamin:

And those guys, they're movies. They made some really fun movies that people really love and they've made quite a few. They've made, I don't know how many, maybe probably less than 10 movies, but it's quite a few. But it's probably not more than 10, right? It's eight

Phil Hudson:

I want to say. But yeah.

Michael Jamin:

Okay. Let's say it's eight. And many of them have done really, really well. These low budget movies that have really made some money and they have a huge cult following, but they've only told whatever, eight or 10 stories. Whereas when you're in tv, when we started, we were doing 22 stories a season. And it's that repetition that you really is. That's where you really learn how to figure out what story structure is. And you do 22 episodes over my 27 year career, it's like, okay, it becomes a lot easier to know what a story is and how to break a story. Whereas in the beginning of my career, I was like sitting in a writer's room watching the other more senior writers break a story. It was like a magic trick. It's like, how do you know how to do any of this?

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, it's cool, man. So to answer the question, do you need to go to film school? My answer is no. And for most people, I would actually encourage you not to because you're going to get the debts, you're going to get the student loans, and none of it's going to help you progress in your career. Is there a chance it's going to help you with your craft and get better at your craft? Yeah, absolutely. I think a little bit of it's luck of the draw though. Like you said, it really depends on the teachers you get. Depends on how committed you are. Is it going to make you a better writer? No.

Michael Jamin:

Are there far less expensive ways to get the same amount of knowledge and connections? Yes, absolutely. It might require a little more work, but think about how much money you're saving.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, there's a doctor, a pretty renowned doctor now, Peter Atia. Have you heard of him?

Michael Jamin:

No.

Phil Hudson:

Dr. Peter Atia. He's in the health and fitness and lung. He's a longevity doctor. So he literally how to live Chris, he's a Chris Hemsworth doctor, and he

Michael Jamin:

From Harvard, this guy,

Phil Hudson:

I don't think it was Harvard, he was John Hopkins. He was a Al intern at John Hopkins. But anyway, he's a book just came out just a couple months ago. Really, really good book about longevity. And he had talked about this thing called Arian Olympics, which is how do I live to be 100 and still be able to get down on the ground and play with my kids and put something in the overhead compartment? All of the things that kill people, old people, they don't have that. But he was talking on a podcast about vaping and nicotine and all that stuff, and he's like, I don't have a problem with nicotine. The problem is the device and it's the tobacco. And this is, for me, I always view things in two types. It's risk and reward. And there's levels. There's a scale of risk and a scale of reward. And I think this applies directly to film school for people the risk, is it like getting hit by a tricycle or is it getting hit by a bus? And the reward is, am I step bending over to pick up a dollar? We're picking up gold coins

And there's an offset. If the risk to reward or matched, it might be worth pursuing If the risk to reward or misaligned, it's not. And my opinion here is it's the financial equivalent of getting hit by a bus to pick up dollars. Because you're going to go to la, be a pa, and you're going to make minimum wage for 4, 5, 6 years and you may never get out of that. I know people when the A M T P, excuse me, not the mtp, but the biopsy strike was going on, they were talking about how they never made it past writer's assistant because they'd get on a show and it would get canceled, and then they would get on a show as a writer's assistant and it'd get canceled six years down the road. They have it become a staff writer, even though they're knocking at the door because luck of the draw.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah, there's luck there. Yeah, for sure. Alright, well there's your answer, Phil. How's that for? All right, well, before we wrap it up, let's tell people what more they can get. We have a lot of resources free. Forget about paying Phil the same. I got a film school here. It's free.

Phil Hudson:

Here's the big one, Michael, you talked about if you want to learn from somebody, read their stuff. Well, you give away your stuff. You had me put this on the site, so it's on your about page, there's a form. You fill it out, and then Michael will send you a bunch of actual written and produced episodes of TV show. It's like King of the Hill and a bunch of other stuff in there. But you can go read your produced writing and then go watch the show, which is, I think, a step beyond. It's like you can immerse, see what you did and see how it ended up end result, which is pretty cool. So michaeljamin.com. I want to say it's about, but you can just go to the main magazine, I think it's

Michael Jamin:

About.

Phil Hudson:

Yeah, and you can go get it there. And that'll be sent directly to you. The free lesson, the same lesson you taught me, the one I talked about with my professor. You can get that lesson in a longer format with more detail, with more entertaining. And that's michaeljamin.com/free. It's how to Tell a story. You've got a paper orchestra stuff, webinar, which we going to talk about. Yeah, webinar. Webinar. Every three weeks. Now we're doing a webinar. It's about three absolutely free

Michael Jamin:

Webinar.

Phil Hudson:

Come join Michael for an hour, get your questions answered. We've been doing this private v i p thing where you just do q and a with people for about an hour or so after. And the results coming out of that. People love that. They're big fans

Michael Jamin:

Of that one that is not free. There's a small fee for that to cover some of our expenses, but,

Phil Hudson:

But you don't have to do that. And you answer questions throughout the whole webinar as well. And we often put 'em on podcasts. So again, access to a professional writer I would've killed for 10 years ago that I never had, and then a paper orchestra book. I think that was something you were going to talk about. You were going to tell us a little bit about that process. You're doing the audiobook, right? Oh,

Michael Jamin:

One of the things. Yeah, I'm excited. That'll be dropping in a couple months because we're still producing the audiobook. And what I've always, when I was writing this, it's a collection of personal essays, but there's stories, it's not about, it's not an essay. It feels like a story. It feels like you could shoot it, it feels like an episode of television show. But I wanted people to, at the end when as I was writing it, I want people to feel something and feel something like laugh and then feel this maybe discomfort at the end or something to hit 'em in the heart. And I want them to sit in it, and I don't want them, as I was writing, I was like, how do I get people to just sit in this and not turn the chapter once the chapter's over, I want 'em to sit in it. I don't even want 'em to turn the page. I want 'em to really just feel it for a while. And in the audio book, how do you do that in a regular book? You can't. You can only hope that they do that. When I do my show, as I perform this, as I say afterwards, my goal is I want you to go to your car and just before you turn the ignition, just sit in it.

I'm rocked. I'm too rocked to even turn the ignition for a couple half a minute or whatever. But for the audiobook, I'm actually able to do this. I'm actually can force you to do this because I do the story. And I gave each story the audiobook to this composer that I work with, Anthony Rizzo on Marin, who's working with me on the audiobook. And I said, if this story, if this piece, this chapter was a piece of music, what would it sound like to you? And so this is his chance to do his art. He came back with these beautiful scores. So at the end of every piece, every chapter, it goes into music that he wrote. And you just listen to it and it's like it carries you out. It carries the last note of the stories, the note, the first note of his score. And it really forces just, and some of they're up and some of them are down, and some of them are happy and some, but it is wonderful how he did this. And so the audio book, I think this makes it more of an experience. And I haven't heard an audio book done this way,

Phil Hudson:

So that's so cool. And this, having had the privilege of seeing you perform this live last year in la it did that. It did that for me. I still think I'm thinking about it now. I think it was your story, I think it was called Ghost, is that right? Goul.

Michael Jamin:

The Goul. The Goul, yeah.

Phil Hudson:

And yeah, man, just thinking about that, all that emotion comes right back. Yeah,

Michael Jamin:

The score he did for that, the score he did is fricking haunting. I was like, man, this is really good. So I'm so excited.

Phil Hudson:

So the cool thing is for people who can't see you live, they can get a taste of that performance of you live with it sounds like plussed up with some amazing music too.

Michael Jamin:

And I do hope to tour with it, but obviously not to every city. It has to be your, I guess, bigger cities. But, and so if you want to know more about that or be notified when it drops, it's michaeljamin.com/upcoming. And yeah, we're working on it. But

Phil Hudson:

The only other thing was the newsletter. The watch. Oh, the newsletter to do weekly, your top three things. Also updates. We started adding updates like what podcast episodes coming out, what webinars coming up, that kind of stuff. Just a little bit more informational, but the value is still there. With those three free pieces of content delivered every Friday, right to your inbox. We proactively work to not do anything marketable or salesy to that newsletter. So if you want a lot of free content and you don't really care too much about some of the other stuff that we're doing with the course and that you're safe there, go sign up for the watch list because it's really meant just to be a value add of content that you're putting out already. Just digesting it and getting it to people directly in their inbox.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. Yeah. So Phil's in charge of all of that. Phil, you do a great job just in keeping all of that up to date and keeping your website up to date.

Phil Hudson:

We just did a whole revamp on it because when we changed systems last year, there were a lot of people who wanted marketing that were not getting it because we tried to protect that watch list so much from any types of salesy stuff. And you're really big on that. You don't want to be a salesy guy at all. So we did clean that up a bit. So if you haven't been here from Michael and you start, it's because we clean that up, but we even just set it up so they can manage their own list. So if they want to be marketed to and they decide they don't, they can unsubscribe from that. But keep the watch list. We really did a lot of that stuff, trying to make it better.

Michael Jamin:

Yeah. And thank you for all that. Yeah. Alright, everyone, thank you. Another a great episode, Phil, and I'll be back very soon with more. Until then, keep writing.

Phil Hudson:

This has been an episode of Screenwriters Need to Hear This with Michael Jamin and Phil Hudson. If you're interested in learning more about writing, make sure you register for Michael's monthly [email protected]/webinar. If you found this podcast helpful, consider sharing it with a friend and leaving us a five star review on iTunes. For free screenwriting tips, follow Michael Jamin on social media @MichaelJaminwriter. You can follow Phil Hudson on social media @PhilaHudson. This podcast was produced by Phil Hudson. It was edited by Dallas Crane Music, by Ken Joseph. Until next time, keep writing.