Welcome to the Navigating Hollywood podcast . My name is Allen Wolf and I'm a filmmaker and an author . This episode is an encore of my interview with filmmaker Scott Teems , who had two number one movies in 2023 . Insidious , the Red Door and the Exorcist Believer . I hope you enjoy the show . Today , we are joined by filmmaker Scott Teems .
His projects include Halloween Kills , that he co-wrote with David Gordon Green and Danny McBride , and upcoming will be the Exorcist , which he also wrote with those same writers , and Stephen King's Firestarter , which he adapted for the screen and will executive produce .
Scott adapted Stephen King's the Breathing Method , which is in development with Spy Glass for director Gore Verbinski , and he wrote the upcoming sequel , insidious Five . Scott also wrote the screenplay adaption of the best-selling novel Cutting for Stone .
Scott's previous credits as a writer-director include the award-winning films that Evening Sun , whole , brook Twain and , most recently , the Quarry . Scott was a writer and executive producer of the popular Netflix series Narcos Mexico , and he wrote , directed and produced three seasons of the acclaimed Peabody Award-winning Sundance TV drama Rectify .
Well , scott , you're so impressive . Welcome to the show .
Thanks , Allen , good to see you , buddy .
Great to have you . My first question , after reading through all the incredible work you've done , is why don't you smile in any of your pictures ?
I have to keep up the mystique .
That's what I wanted . I wondered if you were sitting at like a persona of like . I am a serious person , I make serious stories , but I looked I really looked for pictures of you smiling . I couldn't find one of them . That's funny .
Well , oh man , I feel ashamed now , that could .
I'm just campaigning for at least one smiling picture of you , you and my wife both .
That would be a good win for all of us involved .
That's funny . You know , I don't have .
I don't have any lips . It's weird , I don't know . I don't like smiling . Sorry , trying to keep up that image , oh gosh .
Well , I yeah , I think you've got a great smile , so hopefully we'll see more of your smile . Well , the work you create is very intense , thrilling and dramatic . How did you develop those sensibilities ?
I guess I was just born with a bit of a jaundice to eye and a sort of healthy dose of pessimism , it goes along with a non-smiling vibe . I don't know I didn't purposefully develop them , I suppose I those just always been the kinds of stories I've been drawn to , and and ever since , not only as a filmmaker and writer but also as a film watcher .
As a young person , I was just always felt myself drawn to those darker stories and I think I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out why and uncover some of those reasons and or as part of the exploration of sort of some of the stuff I write about is sort of searching for those reasons and why I'm drawn to those stories .
Did you grow up in a very serious household ? Not serious , I mean , I come from .
Georgia A lot of laughter . My dad is a very funny person and you know just lots of jokes . I think I probably always felt like an outsider . I think I was trying to reconcile a lot of these different feelings as a young person , like feeling like I didn't quite fit and didn't belong .
Coming from the South , there are certain sort of expectations of masculinity that prevail not just in the South , but it was in that way where I come from . And so for me , as a young kid who was like there were sort of three sort of facets of who I was . I think I was this sort of jock kid like football player , like all my friends were .
There was this person who was had this new faith in high school , trying to sort of figure out what I believed about God , if I believed about God . And then there was this artist who was sort of silently blossoming over here in the darkness and trying to figure out how to reconcile those things . They didn't all coexist very well .
So I think , feeling that , the wrestling of those with those things , with those ideas , who was I ? Who did I want to be ? How do I become that person in this place ? Do I have to leave this place to become that person .
You know lots of those questions that tended to push me toward more dramatic kind of stories perhaps , and that I could ask deeper , bigger questions , I guess .
When you were growing up , did you feel like the artistic side of you you had to hide ?
No , I don't think it was frowned upon and in the active way . I just think I was interested in stuff that other people weren't Like . When I was in high school I got into , like , european cinema there was nobody around that I could go see and I liked metal . I listened to . I mean listened to earth , I listened to , like I listened to heavy doom .
Metal I listened to . I was always like listening . I just also beaten path a little bit from mother folk , but I also , you know , love people and I had lots of friends and I was very fortunate to grow up in a really just a warm environment with people I liked to be around .
So you know , it wasn't like I'm not suggesting that I was like some kid who had no place . It was more like the person inside of me was trying to figure out who they were and versus the person I was as a child , I mean I'm still trying to find out who I am .
You know , it's not like I'm in my 40s and it's still I mean hopefully we're all growing and evolving , not settling for who we are , and that's certainly what I'm trying to do .
Well , something I really appreciate about your work is its level of authenticity . I remember watching rectify and marveling about the realness and depth of the story and characters . What was your experience like writing , directing and producing that series ?
I mean it was really probably the most fulfilling creative experience I've had I in part because it was the most collaborative . There were four seasons of that show . I worked on the last three . It was created by a guy named Ray McKinnon who I had , who was in my first film . So I directed Ray in that evening some of my first movie .
He also produced that movie , so he got very close and then he asked me to come work on his show a few years later . It was like a family in the best ways a lot of honesty and just a freedom to really express yourself , to push for things , to fight for things , to tell the best story because we all believed so deeply in the story we were telling .
We all believed in Ray's vision so much and he empowered us to bring ourselves to that story . It just made you passionate for it . And it was doubly so for me because the story was set in Georgia . It was about people and places that I knew . Ray is from Georgia , so we had that extra level of connection .
I had that extra level of connection to the material which made me that much more passionate about it , which I think is a huge reason why you felt that authenticity in that show , because we were people who lived that and knew that world and those characters .
It was my first time working in television , so to have the space and the time to explore deeper character over a period of that show was 30 episodes , I think , in total , and so having that long period of time to really it's more like a long novel , you know really being able that's the beauty of television to tell long form stories and dig deeper .
Not every single moment , every single beat has to advance the plot or the story , as it has to usually in feature films . So it was just a real you . Just you're able to have so much more nuance and subtlety when you're doing that kind of long-form storytelling .
How did you first get started in storytelling ?
I always wanted to make movies . As long as I can remember , you know , I was always the kid who had the camera my dad he would have . He was always like what we would call now an early adopter . It was not like a phrase back when we were growing up but like we had the first video camera on my block .
We had the first VCR , you know , and we had this like black and white video camera we bought like in 1980 . That was attached to the , literally attached to the VCR , but like the thing on my dad is he would never then update the stuff . So we had that same camera when I graduated from high school 15 years later .
But we I had a camera in my hands from a very early age , a video camera , super eight , whatever , and so I started making movies in middle school . I had a teacher in the eighth grade who really encouraged me and let me make little movies in lieu of book reports , and so I made these little movies in eighth grade .
All through eighth grade I made like we were doing , like Greek mythology , and I did this story on Hercules little movie , but I made it about his two little brothers and it's called Mercules and Jercules , the two little brothers I mean .
So A classic .
Classic and so . I did that and we just made these little movies and but she really encouraged me and kind of gave me that permission to sort of try that out and explore that sort of part of who I was becoming as an artist and who I wanted to be as an artist . And it went on from there , and so I went to film school .
Where did you go to film school ?
I went to Georgia State University in Atlanta . The whole time I was in college it was in Atlanta . It was like Atlanta's the next place Atlanta's the next place for film . We're all like , yeah , whatever , it's not gonna happen . It's not gonna happen and I graduated and it didn't happen .
So I moved to New York and , of course , moved to New York and , like , a year later , georgia film explodes . That's okay , cause I'm glad it wasn't happening because I might have been influenced to stay and I think the best thing I ever did was to move away . And why is that ? Because it made me get out of my comfort zone .
It made me have to really decide that this was what I was going to do . Because moving to New York , especially where the cost of living is so high and I'm there every day and money's just burning a hole in my pocket I was newly married , I got married , got out of college . Every day you're there . It matters because money's just going out the door .
And there's no time to screw around , and so I think for me , if I had been in the comfort zone of my home town , I would have .
There's the tendency to fall back on the backup plan to like well , I can still work my job and do this on the weekends or whenever I have time , and I know myself and I need to put my feet to the fire and I think , knowing that I had a wife to provide for and a couple of years later we had our first child and so growing a family not wanting to be
impeded by living in New York , wanting to like we wanted to have a family so we were going to do it . But that just creates , obviously , a higher cost of living , more pressure , but it was good pressure because I had to really ask myself why I wanted to do this . Is this really my passion , enough to pursue it ? Do I have the talent ?
I had to be really honest with myself . All these questions that you must ask that I think you ask a lot quicker when you are paying $4,000 a month in rent and you're working making $10 an hour selling shoes in Long Island City , which is what I was doing at the time .
I just felt like it really helped me focus and it really helped me not waste time and I think I progressed a little quicker probably than I would have if I just stuck around Atlanta .
So did that experience in New York then lead you to developing that Evening Sun as your first feature film .
Indirectly . So I moved to New York and I got a job and there was a community of artists there called the Haven that I got involved in pretty soon after landing there . This was artist of all types .
I mean New York's great because there's actors and singers and dancers and writers and playwrights , screenwriters , all kinds , and so we have this community of artists . We're supporting each other , meeting together regularly , all in our 20s , mostly young folk , you know , just trying to pursue their dreams , and so that was a great community .
Through that I met a guy named Terrence Berry who ended up producing all my short films and then he produced that Evening Sun . And Terrence also funded me to go to Act One . He helped me . I couldn't even afford to take this screenwriting class called Act One , which is what's seminal for me .
I took it in 2001 in New York and it was a huge , huge deal for me and I made a lot of people , made a lot of connections that all were building on top of each other . But Terrence , I couldn't , like I said , I was paying 10 bucks , making 10 bucks an hour selling shoes , and I couldn't afford the tuition to go to this summer program .
And Terrence , to his great credit , and I always thank him for this put the money up for me to go . He believed in me but his money was in my office . He said I want to be a producer , I want to produce your work . I'm going to send you to this thing . And he did .
And that was the beginning of our partnership and we made a few films together and then I wrote a bunch of bad scripts . I was in New York for about five years .
We wrote a bunch of bad scripts , made a lot of short films Each one a little less bad than the one before it , and played some festivals and that kind of stuff and kind of got my sea legs sort of and doing making movies and writing and sort of figuring it out , and moved to Los Angeles in 2005 .
And the first thing I wrote when I got here was that evening sun and then that took about three years to get it made . But Terrence was a huge part of that and having that New York community was a huge part of that . And those people are still my friends today and a lot of them live here in Los Angeles . It's just been the through line .
Having that community has been such an important part of my story and my journey . For me and my wife and our family it's been imperative . I saw some of those guys just a couple of days ago and we see each other regularly and it's invaluable .
And how would you say , looking back , that that experience making the evening sun shaped you as a filmmaker ?
It's the first movie you make , your first feature . It's seminal in so many ways and it set the table for everything that was to come .
But just as a but personally , it really just affirmed this hope that I had had that the kinds of stories I wanted to tell , which to a large degree remained small southern stories about men and violence and God and how those things intersect and collide and explode together , that those kinds of stories could connect to people .
That evening sun , it didn't make any money , but it won some awards , it got me representation , it built a ton of bridges for my career , which was great . But more than that , it connected with people .
And it didn't connect with 100 million people , but it connected with people when they saw it , when they had a chance to see it , and that's why I want to tell stories . There's great value in escapism and those things have a place in the world for sure .
It's just not what I want to do , despite my resume how you might perceive my resume , especially writing studio movies and we can talk about that , but I don't see them that way .
Well , your newest film is Halloween Kills . What was it like continuing the story of the serial killer Mike Myers ?
It was a thrill to work on a franchise . That was my first sort of franchise movie and that was fun . For me . It was more fun to work with my old friend , David Gordon Green . That was the first time we'd had a chance to work together . We've been friends for a long time . He was a real early supporter .
David is a kind of guy who just really helps his friends and helps people that he believes in . David was a real big advocate for that evening's son . In fact he emailed Roger Ebert and asked him and told him about the movie and told him to watch it and reviewed it , which is one of the kind of great thrills of my early career .
So David's always just been a friend and a fan and a supporter . So this is the first time we had a chance to work together , which was a ton of fun . It was also great to work with Blumhouse again , who I've done several projects with . This is our first released film and those guys are fantastic .
So it was just fun to work with my friends on that movie . And when you get to make a big , scary blockbuster movie it's a different kind of thrill and sort of scratches that itch that you have as a kid when you want to make movies .
And the review of the film Variety wrote , quote never was there a film truer to its name . They've sliced up with kitchen knives , hollowed out with a fluorescent strip light , bisected with a chainsaw and impaled on banisters . The body count is phenomenal . We love this stuff , you know we do . Unquote .
Why do you think audiences love to see that kind of violence ?
I mean that review is a little over the top . I would well . I would start by saying I'm not entirely convinced this is a healthy love In fact , often it's not .
And what interests me is really trying to scrutinize that fascination with violence through the acts of violence themselves and in some instances , like a Halloween , kills me , to understand our complicity as members of the audience in that violence . That's something we're really interrogating about in Halloween kills , I mean that's literally what the film is about .
It's about mob violence and herd mentality and the sort of disastrous ramifications thereof . And now , look , is it lofty for me to sit here and say Halloween kills is about like , has all these big ideas ? Maybe , but if you're not trying to say something , then why the hell are we ? Are we doing any of it ? Like , I'm not ?
I'm not interested in just killing people . For me this stuff means something . It's not violence for violence sake . Now look at the end of the day , I don't direct the movie and I don't I can write it . I can try to give some sort of substance to what's happening . Ultimately , it lives its own life .
The director makes his choices , her choices , and the audience has their own interpretation of that . And people are going to choose to see what they want to see but . I certainly am at least trying to talk about something a little bit deeper inside of this shell .
I mean , that's the beauty of working on a big movie that's going to reach 100 million people , or whatever it is . You have a big much bigger platform to say things and a much bigger responsibility . Sure , I'm trying to ride that line and find that balance .
You can be a lot more direct and subtle in nuance when you're making the quarry of that evening sun , because you know there's much , much , much smaller budgets , but you also have a much , much smaller audience , and so there's a tradeoff . You know you have to be a little more blunt , maybe a little less overt over here for the bigger audience .
But you're saying something and it's all about threading the needle and finding a way to have a point of view . A point of view is all I care about and I want to see . I don't care if I agree or disagree . I want you to have a point of view . I'm interested in that , in your perspective on things .
As a storyteller , if you're telling , if I'm watching your movie , I want to know what you think about this . I don't want some neutral position . I want to express something and I'm interested in that . So , I'm just trying to do the same thing .
No , no , no , no . The juke is tocue Again . Give it a shot .
Get in bed , you have to revoke your phone call . Is those extra data available in this world ?
Author David Irons said that the high profile and things that attract your failure and a fair隶ity in your life are very Wheeler and I think at least playing you , you can add to the fore disruptive data and find with your philosophy when it's got so much snarky , it's a very snarky review , which is totally fine . I mean it's fine .
I'm not here to criticize the critics when you sign up to write a franchise sequel . I mean I'm writing Insidious Five , I'm writing the Exorcist . I've Wrote Halloween Kills . You know that comes with the territory . People love to like just shoot bullets at the thing . That's been around for a long time and that's totally fine . I don't mind that .
But , like I say , I believe there's something deeper happening in Halloween Kills and some people will be willing to take a deeper look into what the film is saying and some people won't , and that's okay . I wrote it for the people that will . That's what happens with art . I mean , like it's people are gonna misinterpret it .
I would say that's a misinterpretation , but that's okay . That's their interpretation of it and hopefully there is room for interpretation . If it's too didactic , then it's what's the point . It's like an out of pamphlet . Art , hopefully , is more subtle and nuanced and it's about the whole experience and therefore it's open to an array of interpretations .
I try so hard not to say some people are gonna get it and some people aren't . I don't like that language Cause maybe there's nothing to get .
Maybe I'm fooling myself .
Maybe it's all maybe it's what does he say Unclouded by conscience or delusions of morality ?
I mean , come on , Maybe that's maybe that is , maybe that's what it is . It's hard because when you hear the bad stuff , like that's the stuff that kind of stays with you and the great stuff tend to be like oh yeah , and find reason to dismiss that . So I apologize for not reading the wonderful things that people are writing about . Halloween kills .
No , it's good . I like to interrogate this stuff . I think it's interesting when I did read those reviews . There seems to be an unwillingness to engage the movie and anything other than the surface level , which is fine , as to be expected , but hopefully audiences will and we'll see something underneath .
Well , you mentioned when you're growing up that you experienced a faith journey . Can you describe what your spiritual journey has looked like ?
Yeah , I grew up in the church . You know , when you're from the South it sort of comes , at least in the 80s , when you grew up in the 80s it sort of , and before that obviously it comes with the territory .
That you're just expected to go to church on Sunday . Oh yeah , oh yeah , it's a cultural expectation .
And then in the 90s , as I got into high school , that expectation began to shift , you know , and I think there was a change really , where that expectation went away , that obligation went away . People stopped going to church . My family sort of stopped going to church because there wasn't a judgment anymore in the community if you didn't go .
But then I started going to this group called Young Life that I found through my high school , my friends there and that's where I sort of had an encounter with .
Jesus and what does that mean ? To have an encounter with Jesus ?
Hey , I was introduced to this idea that a guy was a personal God , was available to people to have a relationship with . This is an idea that I hadn't really ever had before , even though I had grown up in church , hadn't heard it in that way , so I started wrestling with that .
Then just had some encounters and some personal spiritual experiences that just confirmed to me there was something bigger happening , some things that I know to be true in my own life , and then began to see the Bible in a different way , began to read it in a different way , and that is how I connected with Jesus .
Mike Flanagan , who's directed many horror films and TV shows , such as the Haunting of Hill House , said recently , quote horror affords us the opportunity to really look at ourselves and the things that scare us , that disturb us as a society and individuals . It's incredibly powerful unquote . Do you agree ?
For sure . I mean , I was never a big horror fan growing up and not even as . I became a young writer , I was talking to Scott Derrickson . He was sort of explaining his philosophy on horror . He had made some horror movies at that point , this was probably 15 years ago , and he was just .
He was saying how horror is the one genre that treats evil as a real thing and that naturally opens up so many opportunities for spiritual exploration and conversation . And that's why he was attracted to horror and that provoked me to look at it in a new way . And it was not long after that that I began to pursue my first horror project .
And so and I found that to be true Evil can be treated as a real entity and therefore dealt with in a serious way . That can provide a lot of interesting opportunities . I mean , I think that's what Halloween ultimately is about .
I find it refreshing when movies don't psychologize evil away , when they don't try to say evil is something only caused by circumstances . In the ring , which was a remake of the Japanese film Ringu and directed by Gore of Rubenski , who you're not working with the main character thinks the girl is doing evil things because she had a terrible childhood .
But I love the twist when she realizes the girl is doing it because she's evil . And you know , with your spiritual perspective , do you feel like that gives you a different point of view on the issue of evil when you approach these projects ?
I hope so . I mean , I think another film that does a similar thing is Silence of the Lambs , where ultimately , the viewer is forced to reconcile the fact that Hannibal Lecter is just evil . The trick is , as a person of faith , trying to navigate these waters . Is Hannibal Lecter evil or is there evil inside of them ?
Can Hannibal Lecter be redeemed in the grand sense of the word and the Christian sense of the word ? These are the questions . That's what the quarry is ultimately about . I mean , it's really about this guy who murdered people , who , at the end of the movie , is asking for forgiveness . Does he deserve it ?
And that's really what the not spoiler alert if you haven't seen it , but I mean , that's what the movie is about and you have to wrestle with that question . And of course , there can be obviously the psychological damage that comes from abuse is a real thing and that can cause people to do terrible things . But also evil exists in the world .
I believe that and that's also a . Thing .
And you can let it in and you can nourish it in other ways and you can not defend yourself against it or whatever . I just love wrestling with the questions and I like that . The ring does that and Lambs does that . I'm trying to do it too , in my own little way .
How have you used your background to approach the upcoming sequel to the Exorcist ?
You know it's early days still with that , but I think it's just exciting to have a platform to explore these ideas in a more overt way . I think that's what's interesting , and to have collaborators who are open to these ideas .
I mean , I think one reason they're like having me around is because I do share a certain perspective and I have a faith and that's a big part of my life , and that it's not for everyone on that team and so you know I can add a different perspective . I mean , that's really how the best ideas are made Rectify .
Rectify often gets quoted as being one of the great portrayals of a Christian character on television , which it was fascinating .
This character Tawny , and I think the reason is because she's not a caricature , she's a sort of warts and all representation of a person , a full human , and the reason that she was able to be created as a full human In large part because of Ray .
She was Ray's creation but as we moved her and progressed her through those four seasons , the last three years , that writer's room was made up .
There were five of us , including our assistant who worked with us a lot , and in that room , the five of us , you had a Protestant , me , you had a sort of lapsed Catholic , you had a non-practicing Jew , you had a secular humanist and you had a stone-cold atheist , and the five of us wrote this show together , and so what happens ?
is you .
Everything has to pass the sniff test . Everything , nothing , no propaganda gets through . It has to be honest and truthful and if it's truthful , it will make its way through that gauntlet of people , all different perspectives , and so , for that character , anything that I wrote or anyone else wrote that smelled like propaganda , it wouldn't make it through .
What you end up with is a refined sort of version of a real person , a real character . You need to be tested , you need to put your ideas in the world and have people push back on them . That's collaboration , that is , that's truth-seeking as honesty , that's a humility to be wrong .
And if God is real , if Jesus is real , if these ideas are true , then there's no harm and no so fear in putting them out in the world and letting , letting them live , because if they're real then they will survive . If they're true , you know , I don't have to protect them . If God is real , I don't have to protect him . He will be real .
There's power in that , I think , freedom in that , freedom as a writer to explore all the questions , all the concerns , all the anxieties that come along with living in the world . Man , it's hard to live in the world . It's hard .
It's hard to make movies , it's hard to tell stories , hard to live in the world and Not get , not come away with a bunch of bumps and bruises .
But if you have a faith and then you don't have to try to protect or deny that you know and it can , you can pour out through your work and your art and I think the more honest art Makes for a better world .
That's just my opinion , I assume the new fire starter film stars Drew Barrymore . She's an adult . She's still setting everything on fire . Is that it ?
I pitched that but nobody went for it . No , it's not , it's a retelling of the story . What's what's cool about that is I've done a couple of King adaptations . What I liked about the opportunity to do fire starter was that we already have the original movie , which is pretty Pretty by the book literally by the book adaptation .
It follows the book pretty closely and so that's already there . That exists , and so I had freedom to explore . You know a sort of another way to take to tell that story . It's the same story essentially , but it's just you know another way in . We don't need the same thing we already saw . I'm trying to create a new perspective .
Yeah , I'm excited that movie shot this past summer and so it will come out next year sometime and it's very exciting now , when you're adopting something for Stephen King , do you work directly with him ?
No , in part it's because he's got any at any point 30 to 40 projects in development , I mean like , and he's writing his own stuff still , it's just , it gets incredible .
But you know , king has this wonderful , amazing thing he does where he will let people option his stories for a dollar and If the stories are available and there's very few stories available , but ten years ago there were a few more and I got I had .
I option one , that's how I sort of broke through , ultimately to kind of start a career running more commercial movies , as I optioned the breathing method Myself for a dollar from Stephen King Through his agents .
It comes with this Contract , which is really intense and but the the core of it is basically you have six months from the time they give you the contract to deliver a script to Stephen King , who then has Script approval , and so I , and if he approves the script , you keep going , if he doesn't , you're done and you've wasted a dollar in six months Of your
life .
So this is true of any , even studio , films . He's he's optioning them for a dollar .
Yep , you can . Yeah , he will , because he gets paid when it gets made . So he can afford to do that .
Like I've optioned several stories and if I'm negotiating for a short story like that evening sun or a novel like the quarry , I'm optioning these things that might pay two grand or five grand or twelve hundred dollars or whatever To get to lease the rights for a year to try to make the movie and then you got to pay for it when you finally make it .
Well , king doesn't need your two thousand dollars , right ? So he just says have it for a dollar , try it out , see if you can get it made , see if you can write a good script , and when you do , then he gets paid on the other side of it .
So he makes his money when it's made or he gets a gross or whatever .
So it's a fantastic system because it lets young writers like me he's my option . He reads the script , he says yes or no and then you go on and that's it . I've had very little interaction with him , but he so far as liked what I've done with his stuff and he's approved everything .
So we'll see . How do you stay spiritually healthy in Hollywood .
I don't think it's any different in Hollywood than anywhere else really . I mean requires discipline and commitment and focus and it just has to be a priority . For me , it really is about grounding . It's about grounding and my faith , grounding in my family and which keeps you humble .
I mean like , and you have kids , you know kids will make you humble real fast . They don't care what movie you made or whatever .
Was there a moment during your career when you felt discouraged and wondered what your next project would be ?
What time is it ?
Yes , every day , every day that's what you know , that's what faith is . I mean , that's what I think , that's .
You just keep climbing that hill . Best advice I ever got when I , when I took act one and these two writers , kristen Kathy Riley great writers . They came to teach us one day and they said look , every one of our friends we know who have made it . By making it , they meant simply that they make their living as a writer .
They don't have to have another job . For all of our friends who do that , it's taking them on average about ten years , and I had come to New York that about six months earlier With the delusion that it would take me about two years to figure out if this was gonna happen or not .
And I was newly married and we said let's go up there and give it a couple of years . It didn't work out , We'll go back and we'll see .
We got to go try , and so that idea of ten years was like the scales fell from my eyes and I was a whole perspective shift and I was able to come home and talk to my wife and say , look , I think it's actually going to be more like 10 years . Are we prepared for that journey ? Are we together , prepared for that ?
I think a lot of the struggles you and I have both seen marriages fail , friends leave , things fall apart for people and I think a large part of that is because of expectations . You think it's going to be one thing but it's really going to be something else and therefore your expectations are unmet . That's where problems start in about two years .
Then the person's like what's going on ? When are you going to give up your silly dream and move on with whatever ? So I was able to go home and say , OK , how about it's more like 10 years ? Are we down for this ? And we were like , yeah , let's keep going . So seven years later , I made that evening sun , but that was an indie film .
It made it for a million dollars and I worked on it for five years . I made a sum total of $20,000 in that film . $20,000 will last you five weeks in Los Angeles as you know , so it's not like I was living on that money . So even though that movie got me an agent and it got me all that stuff and it won awards , it was just a little indie film .
So you couldn't take that film and then parlay that into writing some big movie , because it just wasn't that , it was about an old guy on a farm . So , cut to , two years later I'm dead broke , haven't done another thing yet , can't get anything off the ground and I'm desperate .
I have at that point I have three young kids at home and I'm broke , I'm getting very hopeless . And so I called a friend who I knew produced reality television and I said I got to have a job , I need something .
And he gave me this job very graciously and they sent me down to West Texas to direct a reality TV show and it was a really really , really , really hard , hard , hard experience for me . I didn't like what we were doing . I was alone in West Texas for the summer and people there . It was tough , it was really tough .
So , and I got really despondent there and thought this is probably it . You put a camera in front of someone who knows they're supposed to be entertaining on it . It's like pouring gasoline on a fire and then they wanted more gasoline on that fire to do these outrageous things that I found sort of reprehensible .
And I found myself being asked to direct this stuff . So I spent a lot of time I prayed about it . I talked to my wife about it . I was really torn about it and I said I can't do this .
But yet we had all these bills to pay and we said look , we're going to have faith , we're going to trust that something better will come out of this if you really can't do it . I don't want to put bad stuff into the world . I don't want to make the world a worse place by the stuff I put into it .
And I was so grateful to my friend and I didn't want to let him down . He had gone out on a limb to give me a break . I felt terrible about that . I was going to say I don't believe in what you're doing here . It was really hard and I came back home and I left that job early .
I got home and about a month later I got my first studio gig writing a job . It came out of that , and that was the fall of 2011 , which was exactly 10 years after I took Act 1 . And I haven't stopped working since . Wow , the 10 year rule is the takeaway from that . Unmet expectations is really important .
Properly calibrated expectations , I think , are the key to life in general , but especially to our relationship .
At the end of your life , what kind of legacy would you like to leave behind ? I ?
want to be known that I was an honest person , that I had integrity , that I was kind and then I put something of value into the world . So that's really if I can do that , if I can get one of those things that'll be a success . I'm aiming for all of them . We'll see how it goes .
Fantastic . Well , thank you so much for being my guest , scott . I really appreciate hearing about your journey and your work . It's a filmmaker . Thank you for just being so open about your life . If you work in entertainment , be sure to check out the complimentary courses and other resources available at navigatinghollywoodorg .
There are courses for pre-marriage and marriage and the Alpha Hollywood course , which gives entertainment professionals the chance to explore faith while building community . You can find out more at navigatinghollywoodorg . Please follow us and leave us a review so others can discover this podcast .
You can find our other shows , transcripts , links and more at navigatinghollywoodorg . I look forward to being with you next time .