And welcome to another edition of The Movie Crypt. I'm Adam Green. I'm Joe Lynch. We are recording this episode way back on Thursday, December 5th, 2024. And it's an evening. episode in studio. When's the last time we had one of these movie crypt after dark? Sure. Sure. So we're all getting naked. Yeah. Well, this episode, I think this is going to probably run like.
Early February. Jesus. Yeah. So we won't do any housekeeping because whatever we talk about. The house is burned down. It'll all have changed. Well, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. By February, there's nothing left. So. We're good. So we're just going to get right into it. I'll let you do the honors, but then I have the first question. Okay, good. And I will keep it short. I'll do my best. So earlier this year, our good friend Barbara Crampton, she likes to have...
soirees where she just goes like, come over to my house. We'll have air one cheese and some wine and we'll just chat. And she likes to do like networking. like the gatherings and we sit down and, uh, you know, Barbara and I had been through the trenches thanks to suitable flesh. And so we feel very comfortable being able to commiserate and everything. But whenever she's excited about something, she can't wait to fucking open her mouth about it.
Like, oh, my God, I just did this most exciting project. So we sit down and she's like, oh, my God, we just did this most amazing project. And I got to work with Jeffrey again, knowing that I'm a huge reanimator fan, as our guest is as well. But then she goes, you are going to love this show. You ready? It's 80s, it's heavy metal, and it's Satan. And I'm like...
And this caters just to me. She's like, no, no, no, no. Well, I know the 80s and the Satan part. I'm like, what about the heavy metal? She knew that this show was built for me. And then I saw the trailer. And then I watched the show and I could not fucking get enough of this show. It's called Hysteria. It is all episodes are on Peacock right now. It's technically called Hysteria. That's right. Ready? Hysteria. Yeah.
There you go. With an exclamation point. Well, we have the creator of the show. The second that the pilot played, I immediately started DMing him and sliding into his DMs. And then by the end of it, I'm like, oh, you have to come on the fucking show because I knew that just coming into the. I'm so glad you're here. Now you can have your first question. All right.
This is usually where I'm like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah for 20 minutes and Adam had to circumvent. All right. This is such a random place to start because normally it's like, what made you want to become a writer? Yeah. But. Two of your early assistant credits. One of them was on American Horror Story. Yeah. I learned how to show run from Ryan Murphy. Oh, cool.
pilot that at the time was called Horrid Little Girls, but by the end of the week of shooting, they had changed the title to Saint Sass. Saint Sass? I think this was right before Nip Tuck. But watching... Oh, I can say this now because they don't exist anymore. But watching the WB just... ruin his show. Okay. And he just didn't give a fuck, but like nicest dude. So great. And I was just, uh, uh, I was technically his co-showrunners assistant on that show.
But anytime I see somebody who came up and worked for him, I'm always like, well, you must know what you're doing because the guy's fucking great. Like, he's just brilliant. I hope that was your experience and not like, no, he was a total asshole. No, you know, it's funny. So I wasn't his. assistant on it i was a just a pa i was an office pa and my making copies running running call sheets and stuff but you know it was an atypical job because my job was essentially be at the office from 7 p.m
until 7.30 or 8 a.m. the next day alone. Completely by myself. That's some night watch shit. I know. They were shooting out in Calabasas, I think. This was the Roanoke season. They built this house way out in the middle of nowhere. And my job was sit in the production office. If anyone needs anything, pick up the phone, but you're probably never going to get a call. So I had a full season's worth of...
Sitting in the production office from 7pm to 7.30, 8am. Not ever once did I get a call. Really? From production. Wow. So it was like I worked on the show. Yeah. I didn't meet anyone. You were like Mace the security guard in Reanimator. Yeah. Just kind of hanging out at the desk, you know, like, oh, there's no zombies around. I'm just going to chomp this cigar. Pretty much. Crazy. I mean, the only people that I ever interacted with were like the nighttime...
Janitors, essentially. Those are the only people. Funny you should bring that up. That was where I wrote like my first. I was just going to say, well, look at all that time you have. I know writing. Yeah, that I wrote my first pilot, not hysteria, but my first thing that like started getting a little bit of traction while I was there because for a season.
I had 12 quiet hours every single day. How nice is that? And getting paid. Getting paid. So essentially you were a paid writer. Yeah. Yeah. Come to think of it. That was your first paid writing job. Yeah. Maybe you can't benefit from the title, but fuck, man. Wait, sorry. One more question about your early days, and then we'll do this. the right way but I was just so excited when I saw it so you worked as a I believe PA on one of our favorite shows
that sadly only went for one season and it was the comedians. Oh yeah. Yeah. On FX with Billy Crystal and Josh Gatt. If you guys have never seen it, for some reason it's never streaming anywhere. You have to pay for it for some reason. But if you've never seen it, that show was so good. Yeah. What was that like? That was really fun. The thing that I take away from that job was that I made Larry Charles laugh. Ooh, wow. The beard? Yeah.
You made the beard move? I made the beard move. Wow. That's no small feat. It wasn't even a very good joke, but just when I got that response from him, I was like... Nailed it. Oh, okay. I got something. Basically the next Seinfeld or Larry David at that point. Yeah, no, but I really liked that show a lot. And Billy Crystal couldn't have been a cooler dude. I did an early, like for the pilot of it, I did a...
I was invited to a private table read with the writers and with Billy and Josh and all them. And I thought my job was just going to be, hey, come in and, you know, just like be there in case someone has to throw something away. Or like you need to go get lunch or something like that. And I sit down. Billy comes over, introduces himself to me. Hi, I'm Billy.
Totally. I know. And then I sit down at the table and someone passes me a script with a bunch of highlighted lines. Oh, shit. And I was like. No, no, no, man, I'm a PA. Like, no, no, no, that's... this is for someone else. I'm sure you're waiting on someone. And they were like, no, we, this is just a private rehearsal. We just want you to do some stuff. So I like, dude, I read scenes with Billy Crystal.
And never in a million years did I imagine that that would happen. But he was so, even in a table where he did so generous and just like it was, I. Okay. I love stories like this because you always, you always end up hearing about like. The bad experience where they treated you like shit or whatever. The very first.
Real job I had in TV so Diane Wilk who was co-show running that show with Ryan Murphy right before that one She was still running a show for Kelsey grammar. Okay called neurotic tendencies And I had never been on an actual TV series before anything. I show up and I know my job is I'm supposed to be getting coffee and just doing whatever she needs me to do. But they did a table read. This was at.
Paramount. And afterwards, she and so Kelsey Grammer was directing it, stayed behind to talk to the network. And I went back to the writer's room. first time in a writer's room. And it's all the writers from Frasier were like helping out on this. So Mark Reisman, who was show running Frasier, I believe he was like,
Taking charge. So they pull the script up and I'm not even the writer's assistant. I'm just sitting there. So I didn't know there was no seats other than at the table. So I sat at the table and I'm going to. whatever fucking Marilyn Manson shirt and jeans but like I look like a writer I'm assuming and they're like they pull up this one part and they're like this here like that didn't that didn't land did anyone else notice that anyone got anything
So I pitched a joke and it went in. Whoa. And so Diane, who's my boss again, this is like day one. Yeah. Comes in. And Mark was like, oh, he had a good. And she was like, you're pitching jokes. And I was like, well, oh, no, I didn't. He asked. And she could have just fired me.
Yeah. Right there. But not only did she not fire me, but at the next day at the read through when the joke landed well. Yeah. And Kelsey's turn around said, who, who, whose joke was that? And she points to me. She goes, it was him. And then I got to sit at the table, like for the rest of that, the make of that pilot. I don't think I got anything else in. It was a line for Gary Cole. So validating. He's so easy to write for because you could write.
shit and it's funny. It's his very particular cadence that he brings to it. But I always tell that story because like this woman was so good to me. And then, sorry, just to take it one step further, when the job was over, because she knew I had made this independent movie for $400 and I wanted to do a TV series. And she was just like, all right, give it to me.
And I'm like, you'll, you'll watch it. And of course I'm like, she's not really going to watch it. She's just being nice. And then it was like months later and she calls me late at night and she's like, you want to tell me why my 11 year old son is running around the house. yelling Jesus sucks big dicks. And I'm like, well, I know somebody watched my movie. But she was the first one to believe in what became Holliston years later. But I just love stories like that because...
It's only the someone was having a bad day or they were rude. Those are the ones that get out. But like Billy Crystal making sure he introduced himself to a PA. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I do want to throw one quick. story back at that because I have the opposite experience on a different show, not on the Billy Crystal show, but I got a line into a script. We're in the table read. The line gets a huge laugh in the room.
I feel so heartened. I'm like, okay, cool. It's the same feeling that you've talked about being like doing a set. You know, it's like when you know you got them in that moment, you get that response. With comedy shows, sometimes the other writers are ruthless and they'll try not to laugh because they don't want you getting a line. Well, as soon as it got a laugh in the room, I look over at the showrunner.
and he has a pen and he's scratching the line out. And that was such a weird mix of emotions of like... Five seconds ago, I felt this swell of pride and like, ooh, I can actually contribute in here. Snuffed out. And then it just got ripped right out of my hands and five seconds flat. Yeah.
But there are the good ones, too. There's the Billy Crystals. There's the, you know, there's... your your experience there i just like how in the first five minutes of the show we got you got your first paid job vicariously through you know and you work with billy crystal yeah like that's fucking awesome well okay let's back up now before i sorry i was just so anxious for that
But when did you first realize you could write or like that that was something you actually wanted to do seriously? And you grew up in Rhode Island, right? No, I grew up in Michigan. Okay. Yeah, I grew up in Michigan. I... I think I always wanted to write, but I didn't know how to put it. I knew when I was three years old, I went to a drive-in movie theater with my parents. They were showing. Okay, what was it? Jurassic Park.
Oh, my God. What a great first movie. Was that your first movie? Holy shit. Can I counter that, though? Because that movie's so dark. Remember when you went to go see, what was it, Ghostbusters? And it was so dark? Yeah. I don't think dark movies benefit from. for drive-ins. Here's why it did for me. It really affected me because the drive-in theater we were at was up against a forest.
Okay. So I'm watching the T-Rex paddock scene. Oh, that's fucking... As it's tearing through? As it's tearing through the fence, as it's coming out through there. No score for like 22 minutes or something like that. And my mind is just blown. And from that point forward... It was like, you know, a lot of kids, young children have their tape or their whatever that they go back to and they rewatch over and over and over. Mine was not Jurassic Park. Mine was actually Tim Burton's Batman.
I probably watched that movie. Another great one. That was one of the first VHSs that went on retail at that time. Oh, really? Yeah, because there was a window of time, because it took months, if sometimes a year, for some movies to come out. Do you remember how long Empire Strikes Back took? Years. years and batman was the first movie that you could buy for 1999 wow yeah so that that's why like everybody bought it that season yeah
So I would watch that. And then at some point it became that with, uh, and all through the house, the tales from the crypt. Oh yeah. Oh my God. The Zemeckis one. Yeah. I forget that that's Larry from, uh, LA law. That's Dr. Giggles. Yeah. I always forget when he's like, oh, he's insane. Darkman. Yes. Darkman, too. I love... That's my favorite Tales from the Crest. It's the best one. Yep. But I...
I would watch basically those two things over and over and over and over and over and just became obsessed with them. And then my parents, my parents were always like, we moved around a lot. I was a latchkey kid. I was alone at home all the time with their tapes.
and with their rentals and all that stuff. So I just watched everything. I saw everything for the longest time. I was always obsessed with movies and with whatever was new. When I was in high school, it switched from... renting to just going to the theater and watching stuff did you because you knew early on that you wanted to write or that you wanted to be in film tv you wanted to be creative yeah
I remember when I was a kid, I justified all of those very long hours in my room. When I finally got a TV with a VCR in it, I never left. Even going downstairs, that was the family space. upstairs like no i wasn't just jerking off i was i was absorbing everything and i justified it in my head as work yeah did you do the same thing I still do that I know I think all of us do at this point now we do but at the time I didn't realize I don't think that I was absorbing I was I just loved it
And so I just wanted to see all of it. Yeah. I was literally taking notes back in the day. Yeah. Same, same. I, I was, um, we had, uh, when I was in high school, we had like Comcast on demand, which was like, yeah, you could just go through all these different categories. of like stuff you could, it's like Netflix before Netflix.
And I would watch I remember watching tons of stuff from like something weird had a channel on there. Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, like dozens upon dozens of something weird movies. Are you ready? You've seen Bride of Reanimator, correct? Oh, yeah. You know, the crazy. like crazy hair dude, Johnny legend. Do you know who that is? No. Okay. He was the guy who owned something weird. Okay. He was this fringe.
hippie punk rock guy that loved fringe horror movies so he started a label there's a lot more to him than that but I remember seeing he would be in Fango all the time. Yeah. And they would have ads for something weird video. And that was where you got the real fringy shit. Right. Half of Frank Hennenlotter's movies were all on his stuff. So that's the connection. Knowing that you're a big Re-Animator fan.
of had to throw that out there right yeah um so i mean that's that was yeah that was high school was just digging through all of that stuff but also like you know going to the local video stores there weren't many we had like
They're all regional, right? It's like movie gallery and stuff like that we had out there, and I would go raid their stuff. But eventually, when I got a driver's license, it was like, okay, drive into Ann Arbor, go see whatever is playing Midnight's, go do that kind of thing. Was there a good repertory? Like section or there was a good repertory theater? There were two in the same block that did, you know, they do like Sunday matinees of maybe, you know, like I saw Gimme Shelter there. Oh, wow.
RoboCop there but then there was the midnight theater across the street that would show more you know sleazier stuff and like that's where I was I remember seeing a print of Texas Chainsaw Massacre when I was like 17 years old that was like pink. Glorious. It was so worn down. It was just pink. We just showed that. So we do a thing every month called Slumber Party Massacre where we show, like we watch along.
with the audience that's watching live. I found a 35 millimeter scan of Texas Chainsaw that is, it looks like someone dragged it through the fucking dirt. And that's the way you watch Texas Chainsaw. Since 95, when Elite put out the Laserdisc and cleaned it all up, there was a time where we were all like, my God, it looks so good. Toby Hooper's a genius. He wasn't making a documentary. but it lost its edge. Yep. When you watch that thing again, and it's just, it looks like...
it looks like it's been like assaulted. Yeah. It, it, it feels dangerous. It feels right. That's the way to do it. Yes. So like that pink crappy version. Awesome. So when was the first time you actually said out loud to another human being? I think I want to be a professional writer. I think I was 14. I was going through my, I'm discovering the 90s phase. I was going through like, I'm discovering.
Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, all the Miramax guys. Yeah, yeah. And like watching Clerks felt like this. This shouldn't be that hard. I think I can do this. Especially because it was Tarantino who was the video clerk. Yep. Kevin Smith was, you know, the guy that like, if he can do it with 20,000 bucks on a credit card, I can. And then Rodriguez is doing it for 7,000 giving his blood. Why can't I write? They gave us the license to.
So I once I had kind of gone through that, I was asking my teachers like my my ninth grade English teacher, like, how do you format a screenplay? And he's like, I. I don't know, here's a play. Go back to your desk. But see, right there, though, you were like, how do I learn this craft? I think one of the problems, especially when Kevin Smith started to hit, is everyone thought, in a good way, it was the...
Oh, if he could do that, I could do that. Yeah. But then no discipline, no voice, no anything, just fart jokes, dick jokes. abstract, whatever random conversations. I'm right here, dude. And they all thought they were, they were Tarantino. It's like, Oh, because you know, the Royale with cheese conversation. If they talk about what does that have to do with the story? So I, I,
My friends and I talk like that all the time about nothing. And then you got this just deluge of unshootable. And I'm sure you dealt with this too. Did you go to film school?
I went to... No, I went to a university that had a subconcentration in film. When we were going to film school, we went to separate ones, but 90% of the short films that came out were... diatribe based it was like it was all we want to be rodriguez or no mostly tarantino and kevin smith yeah just in a dorm room that was it there was no ambition
I don't want to say ambitions, but they made it seem like it was so easy, but it really wasn't. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I mean, that's where I started and then quickly, very quickly moved on to like. Okay, I don't think I want to make things like that. I'm just inspired by the fact that they went out and made it. Yeah, it's incredible what they did. So like my very first thing that I made was a 20-minute short film.
um that was uh like the evil dead meets super bad kind of it was it was like a super evil super evil bad damn it uh you're welcome where were you in 2007 Making Wrong Turn 2. There we go. So it was 20 minutes of me going out in the woods and shooting stuff in my living room and all that stuff with my friends. And I'm very clearly aping Sam Raimi shots. I'm like strapping an arrow to the bottom of my camera. You're doing the Raimi cam. The Raimi cam stuff. Yeah. Wasn't.
did you get that visceral thrill? Like I went to, um, I did a mod, I moderated a Q and a for strange darling last night. Yeah. You've seen it. I've not seen it. No, I saw that you did one. You know what? Let's kill this right now. You should go right now. It is amazing. But like we were talking about how there's some, there is a visceral thrill for any budding filmmaker when you do the.
the kind of Raimi cam shot where it's like two dudes that are holding each side of a plank and you're running through going really low across the ground and everything and you're jumping over your cat and everything and there's like endorphins that get released when you go holy fucking shit i just did a ramey shot yep there's something exciting about that oh yeah oh yeah no it was it was incredible uh it was there were about eight inches of snow on the ground
while i was doing it too so it's just like crunch crunch lifting my knees as high as i can trying to make it through um but no it was it was awesome it was uh the the film itself It was shot on DV, but we got a really nice response to it. We sent it to an Ypsilanti, that was my town, Ypsilanti Teen Library Film Festival. So it was a film festival for only teenagers held at the library in town. I was so thrilled when I got an email saying, basically, you've swept. And I was like...
Yeah, well, of course. You sweat the bookies? It's so good. And then they were like, there were two submissions. Okay. And one was for the librarian. Yeah, exactly. First short. So we do Halloween short every year. This past one was our 26th year doing it. But the very first one that started everything was called Columbus Day Week. People can... If you still haven't seen it and you listen to the show, it's on the Aeroscope website. I don't know why we leave it up because it's fucking terrible.
It wasn't supposed to be submitted. We weren't trying to, like, make our first short. It was just for a Halloween party. And we just wanted something our friends would get. And... When it was done, I didn't know who I'm supposed to send it to. So I'm sending it to any band's fan mail address that was in the album. Kiss, Ozzy. no clue what I was doing. So then we ended up making our first feature coffee notes, which became Halston, but we'd made it for $400. And again, not knowing any better.
I just, the first film festival I heard of, that's what we submitted to. Yeah. And it was the Nantahala Smoky Mountain Film Festival. And you're not expecting to get in. Yeah. And then we get in. And they're like, can you send us a print? And I'm like, what's a print? Because we shot it on Beta SP.
And then when we edited it, my editor figured out if you stuck a screwdriver, because it was edited tape to tape. If you put a screwdriver in the time-based generator and twisted it just enough, it would strobe the image. But then... we would layer the image back over the 30 frames per second and it looked like 24 frames per second. And back then screeners were VHS. Yeah. So a lot of people, they didn't, they'd be like, it doesn't look like film. I don't know what this is.
But they wanted a print. So we said the print is broken right now. We can't send it. And then we win. Best picture. And we're like, holy shit, we won. But I don't know what else. We didn't go or anything. But I've always said that. I'm like, I bet we were the only one. Like, who's ever heard of that film festival before? Did you get the allotment to use the wreath? Yeah, we got the wreath. And we got to use the wreath, I should say. And then...
The big prize was a Pelican case for lenses, but you can only fit one lens in it. It's this tiny little lens. What kind of lens? Oh, you mean it was like a small... Yeah. Oh, jeez. And so Will and I still share it to this day. He gets it for a few months. I get it for a few months. You shared custody over the Pelican case? But what you're saying, though, about like...
Oh my God, we got accepted into something. Oh my God, we sweat. And then you find out like, Oh, there really wasn't any competition, but that's, I'm always saying this to people. Like you always need to know the score. Like when you do have a win, understand why because it's not it's not because you're so great it's like what had to happen for that to happen
because it, look, we see it happen all the time. Like a movie will suddenly get made where you're like, how the fuck did that get me? And it's getting a big wide release. Right. What? You just don't know. Like you have no idea how things are going to happen. Yeah. How did you get out here? How did I get to LA? Yeah. So I went to the film program at the University of Michigan.
And, um, in the last semester that I was there, we had someone, uh, come by who was a former student then working at working title as like a development executive and did like a luncheon with all of the screenwriting.
you know, students and all that stuff. And I asked the question of like, how do I... work in hollywood as a writer while staying in michigan so i don't have to move and i don't have to pay money and i don't have to you know do all that stuff and he was like you don't yeah uh that's a very 2007 2008 answer yeah you know yeah
I still think if you're serious about it, you should come here. I do. Yeah. I know you don't have to come out to kind of, you know, foot in the door. Exactly. Yeah. Then after your foot's been in the door and been kicked. out many times then you get the fuck out you know or go to Burbank yeah or once you've gotten some stuff made and distributed yeah in a way that has been seen you anchor yourself maybe you don't need to be here but in the beginning
making those connections meeting those people getting to be an assist even if you're sitting by yourself for 12 hours right but being on a show that's a credit that everyone recognizes it's it is the landscape is very different right now and i've actually talked to younger right in the last couple of months about like do I really have to make that move I am still kind of set in the ways of when I came out here in terms of like
Yeah, I do think you do. I think it's good for people to do. You don't have to do it. But you better be making awesome shit that people out here are seeing. I never would have gotten my opportunity to write a half episode of a script if I hadn't been out here, if I hadn't been face to face with my boss at the time. I probably never would have gotten the opportunity.
to get this show made had I not been here and available to go pitch in person pre-pandemic before everything went crazy. Matt's got the best story about it.
The pitch for hysteria, which I swear to God, we're going to get to that soon. But we've got to start at the beginning. But isn't it funny, though, when you read on Deadline and all these other rags or whatever, how everyone's leaving L.A.? Yeah. Yet... the kind of industry hub where all the production of, like I moved out in 2002 and the, the kind of mode of thought back then was.
if you want to make, cause I was always like, I'm staying in New York. I'm going to be one of those New York guys. You know, I'm going to be like the next Hal Hartley and some shit. And, or, or at least, you know, Abel Ferraro or whatever. And they were like, well, that's great, but you can't make a movie here without.
going out to LA first and then bringing back the property or the production and then you set up here like no one's actually making shit here and if you are it's few and far in between right but everyone We stress this all the time. Everyone's path is completely different. So there's like, I'm always trying to be really upfront with that. When I'm giving people advice, I'm like, I can tell you how I did it.
Then you need to remember that was 26, 30 fucking years ago now. So things have changed, but just hear as many different stories as you can about what people did and then figure out what's best for you to do. Yeah. But don't. like when you asked that question of how do I do this, but, but still stay there, I'm sure they had gotten that question before and had an answer prepared, but, um, I don't know.
obviously we're glad that you did come out here and look at all these shows that you got to work on as an assistant on your way up. I wanted to ask because you were talking before about your love for film. Did you always know that you wanted to, because writing for film and writing for TV are sometimes two different disciplines. Now we're in this world of even if it's post-peak TV.
you know, where creators are coming from features into television or, you know, television. So cinematic. Of course. And a lot of times the TV series are way better than the movies that are getting made. But there was, there was a discrepancy for a very long time, you know, where it's like, wait a second, three days to make something that's supposed to look as good as what's on right before on HBO. But did you know, did you like...
Or were you attracted to the form of television over film early then? Or did you kind of fall into it? No, I fell into it for sure. I was always, you know, I watched a lot of TV too. It wasn't just film. Because you were also coming up at the time where... post-Sopranos. Good stuff was on TV. Really, exactly. Really, really good stuff. So I was watching, you know, I was watching Deadwood Live. I was watching West, not West Wing.
Shoot breaking bad live. I was watching so many things like as they were rolling out and it's hard to not be interested in doing that it was so funny the dawn of the golden age yeah tv again exactly when people i've read in so many things over the years when people talk about when that all started and they always cite oz The HBO show? I thought so, yeah.
Go back and watch the pilot. Oh, it's terrible. No, it looks like shit. It was shot on TV. It's the worst looking thing ever. I think it was the fact that they had Harold in the wheelchair spinning around upside down. And you're also going like, holy shit, J.K. Simmons is totally raping that dude. Oh my God. Whoa. The ideas were there, but the budget just wasn't yet. And then you look, if you go and watch like the final episode of Oz, like.
it's where that show went. Yeah. But when people are like, when Oz came out, you knew things were changing. And then like, I'm like, see, I wouldn't even go back further and say it was NYPD blue. No, Shield was after. Shield was in 2003. Well, even Hill Street Blues. I mean, there were shows that were starting to get, like... Cinematic. Yeah. But, like, everyone kind of goes, Sopranos. Yeah. Which is not wrong.
The Sopranos is so great. And I think it was the one-two punch of Sopranos and then Six Feet Under where you went, holy fuck, Alan Ball had the world at his fucking feet after American Beauty.
And then he pivots right into television and took all of that production value, but also the themes, some of the extremities that you can only get away with at the time in film and bringing it to television. You were coming up at a time that was like... perfect for the the debate because for us it was always like well
When we would do those Masters of Horror dinners, we would always hear from a lot of these older guys where they'd be like, yep, doing an episode of Monk. Got to keep the insurance. And it was almost like, oh, that's where the older directors go to.
kind of uh keep going you know it's funny you say that i have i worked on a show called stitchers which was yeah free form yep and we had a lot free form holy shit it was i mean it was called abc family when we started yeah and then they changed it to free i remember there was a There was a lull, a quiet that went through the office when we got that email. Free form. I'm like, all right, that's going to take time getting used to. But we had Steve Miner.
Yeah. Oh, my God. My first ever script was directed by John Battam. Holy shit. Which was the coolest thing in the world. Did you ever read his books? No, I didn't. They're great books. For a filmmaker, he's a fantastic writer. He's really good. Awesome guy, too. Super cool. Yeah, and a couple others, their names are escaping me, but I remember...
When Steve Miner was there directing an episode, I'm the showrunner's assistant, and I'm just kind of sitting there at Video Village. I'm like, you did Friday 2 and 3. I would have been freaking out. Yeah, and he was chilly towards...
a lot of he was chilly towards our showrunner and towards some of the cast and i think he had a very like he had a very distinct vibe those guys are just coming in and they are being as like managerial as possible because they just want to get their 37 000 so that they get their insurance yeah that's it i had a uh i had a wax work waxworks
vinyl was that what they were called yes yeah uh of friday too yeah that's right it was waxworks records that put that out and one day on set it was like near near rap everything's quiet everyone's just sort of like shuffling around and i was like um steve I don't want to bother you but I'm like I'm such a huge fan of Friday movies and like I love part two and I love part three and I just I have the would you mind signing this and then he was so warm towards me oh fuck yeah
Because that motherfucker made that franchise. Yeah. If it wasn't for Steve Miner. He's responsible for the mask. Yep. Yeah. We would not have the Friday that kept going. I had a meeting with Steve Miner once about doing a rewrite of... For some reason, I think Reese Witherspoon was attached to this. But it was basically Private Benjamin. It was like a remake of it. Interesting.
I'm sure this was a long time ago but I like you I was just like holy shit like even though we weren't it wasn't a horror thing it wasn't but I'm like I'm gonna fucking meet with Steve minor yeah and I go in And I literally, it was the most nothing. Like, it was just like, I barely even have memories of it other than when it was over being like, I just met like. the guy who made some of the most important shit in horror. And that's what it was. Like we were talking about like a,
It was basically a remake of Private Benjamin. That's the only way I can describe it. Yeah, but Steve kind of pivoted into like comedy and more family-based stuff. Yeah, totally. But me, the horror fan. Yeah. But it would be kind of like you're going to meet... James Hetfield but you're going to talk about produce for 40 minutes you can't ask any questions about Metallica it wouldn't have been appropriate for me to even be like
I think I might have tried up front. Oh, you know, I do hard because I don't even think Hatchet was out yet. I think it was in post. Yeah. because it anyway whatever it was just like an open writing assignment to like rewrite this thing right but I just remember that excitement of holy shit this is Steve Miner yeah but we're still like that like
everyone who comes in here are those dinners. Well, they don't really happen anymore. It seems it's been years, but, but you're just so excited because it's that one thing that they did. sometimes 50 things. But that one thing where you're just like, holy shit, you're the guy responsible for that. You're the woman responsible for that. It's just amazing. Yeah. So, okay. Sorry, I was just going to...
bring it back to TV. Good writing. Look at that. He's bringing it back around again. There was a point where I was so focused on, you know, I was taking every writing class that our film program offered and that included, you would do like a spec writing.
course where you do you know an existing tv show and then also a pilot like an original pilot um my spec was for um excuse me was for modern family so weirdly i wrote stuff for julie bowen a decade before i would end up writing for julie bowen which is pretty cool And then my pilot was like essentially the boys before the boys. It was like a Paul Verhoeven-esque. You had me there. You're right there. Verhoeven-esque. We are creating superhumans.
And a couple of them went wrong and were like memory erased and sent back into public. And now stuff's starting to pop up and they're realizing what happened and et cetera, et cetera. So I got really into those two scripts and loved doing them. And just strangely enough. We had a guest lecturer coming through at this point named Owen Gleiberman. Oh, of course, from EW. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he's, I think he was one of my favorite reviewers like for a long time. Yeah. He's, I mean, still, he still reviews. He still does. I think he's with variety now. Yeah. But he was a fellow graduate of my college. So he came back, did it. course and uh i i bonded with him and we had a good relationship and on his last day i met with him in his office hours and we were talking and he the last thing he said before i walked out the door was just
hey, TV's really having a moment right now. I know you want to do features. You should think about being a TV writer. When Owen Gleiberman tells you, the cinematic critic du jour tells you to go to TV, you go to TV. So I did. And so I did. I took his advice. And when I went out to L.A., I think I wrote significantly more TV pilots than I did features. And I'm still trying to break into the features.
arena right now but you know i've had more success in tv so so the audience understands i don't think it's really this way as much anymore but when you were talking about um your first spec was modern family yeah usually your first Agent or manager, even if you don't have one of those yet, they'll be like write a spec of a show that all the execs know. And just show that you can capture that show. And adhere to the voice. Get the voice of it down.
nothing's going to happen with that script. You're not writing it to try to sell it to the show necessarily. Right. There's a couple instances where that did happen in history, but, um, did you ever have to do one of those? No. Okay. My, Mine was Everybody Loves Raymond, which is a show you couldn't fucking pay me to watch. Nothing against anyone involved with that show. I know how good the show was for what it was, but I'm like...
Even though I had a sitcom, I'm not a sitcom guy. Yeah. Which was the point in doing that. But still, I had to learn it like music. Because my agent was like, right, Everybody Loves Raymond. Everybody knows that show. You can do it. And I'm like, I can't even watch it. Yeah. It's like, you can do it. And so, but it was like music to me because when you watch the show, if you just tune out what they're saying, there's a pattern to it where it's. I feel like I just watched an episode. Right?
Anyway. Really got the voice. But then I'm like, but that's not the one I want to write. And so the one that I ended up writing was a speck of Curb Your Enthusiasm. And they're like, show's not written, asshole. What are you supposed to do with this? So I had to learn everything the hard way. but I got a good response to my Everybody Loves Raymond despite the fact that I was not actually a fan of the show I should go back the next time I'm flicking through channels and it's on
I should watch like I started watching it. I have nothing against it. I just didn't. It's just, it's a very, it's a Ray Romano show, but Phil Rosenthal, the guy who wrote that was really, he's like the Larry David of it. He's got a show that I am fucking obsessed with. It's just. him going around feed Phil yes yeah it's I I can't get enough of that fucking show and watching that dude go around the world and eat shit and make really funny faces did you have to rate any other specs for like
Shows you were asked to do? No, I wrote an Ash vs. Evil Dead spec purely because I wanted to. That's what it should be. Did you like the show? I did. I love that. I thought it was awesome. I think that second season, that episode in the morgue is on par with anything in the film canon.
I think in the first season, the last two episodes basically, to me, formed another Evil Dead movie. It's the Evil Dead we never really got, that we never were able to get. I thought it was incredible. Yeah, I loved that show. All right, going from that. Let's talk about hysteria. Okay. I'm sorry. Hysteria! I have to. All right. First off, exclamation point. How did that stick? So how did it stick? I'm not sure it really has stuck because every time I go look at Peacock's...
Like social media, they don't put the explanation mark in there. It's like when Alien 3 came out and they were trying really hard to get the square. Yeah, the cube version of it. And every once in a while, you'll get like the smart ass who puts it in there. But for the most part, they couldn't. It worked for Mother!
Because that was probably like Aronofsky would like get pissy about it. So yeah, you got to get pissy about it. Yeah. I think the exclamation point came like in the moment it felt right. I was just like, yeah, this feels cool. The second I saw it on the poster, I went like, well, fuck yeah. Yeah. And then as I started, like as the art was coming in, well, way after production, I started doing some kind of like thing. I was like.
Why did that feel so natural to me? There is a movie that I watched a bunch when I was a kid called Prehysteria. Oh, yeah, the one with the kid from Last Action Hero. Also has... It did exclamation point at the end of it. Oh, wow. So I think there's some kind of there was some subliminal or subconscious like.
It just felt right because I had seen it before. You kept seeing it in the video store on the box. Yeah. Because that fucking kid's stupid grin with the really bad Corman dinosaur that was used in Carnosaur as well. And Eden formula. That dinosaur bit my head off. Wow. Yeah. But so a lot of this, a lot of the show, which is set in the 80s, it feels very lived in. It feels very personal.
Was that something where, because there's always the adage, write what you know. Right. And the show takes place in a very particular time. I remember when I was a kid, and you would see Satanic Panic on... Like I grew up in long Island. We had news day and they would have satanic panic articles. Yeah. And it was so much a part. It was, I likened, I, and I'm sorry if this sounds harsh. But it was like the same kind of panic that we had right before when Rock Hudson got AIDS.
Where it was like, holy shit, this is going to infiltrate our small town. And it could come from anywhere. And it was... I mean, the first episode is a perfect setup, but it feels like a curse. It almost feels like a J-horror film in a way where this thing that's almost unseeable, it's like invisible.
permeates a small town and turns it upside down right so like as a as a pitch fucking gold how did you get to that point when you knew that that was going to be like the the impetus for the show um well
It really was like such a grab bag of both things that I was interested in, things that were really timely at the moment when I was writing them. But just so much stuff came together. But to really back it up, I... only wrote the pilot of hysteria because i desperately desperately needed an agent like i that was your writing sample that was my writing sample to get an agent
And it came about because I had this thing that I'd been thinking about for like at least five years. I was like, I want to do a satanic panic show. It feels so timely. It feels like we're talking about fake news right now. That's exactly what was going on back then. I was in abandoned high school. All of that stuff. We didn't even get to that whole thing where it's like you clearly were a metalhead back in the day. I was I wouldn't say I was a metalhead. I was I was.
Very much like Dylan, where I'm kind of like the normie who's like dipping his toes into things. But of course, like I grew into it, you know, and my brother actually is like a very... hardcore metalhead. When Matt walked in, the first thing I said is, best use of white wine in a TV show ever. It is. For those of you who have seen the show, it's in the pilot. It's this...
Like you called it the Dreamweaver moment, but with weight. Yeah. Fucking. Yeah. Like that was the moment I'm like, yeah, I'm in. Well, thank you. But I really, really needed representation. I had been in L.A. for. seven years at that point there's one project that I couldn't get out of my head but for some reason wasn't writing I was just gobbling up every piece of research that I possibly could I was reading don't you though like at least acknowledge maybe now that that you were writing yeah
Yeah, 100%. For years, I've had this one script that finally is getting made now. And I go back and go, well, I only finally got it to page a couple years ago. But it was in my head. Yeah. percolating and I kept thinking of ideas and been like kept like slapping on more clay onto the vase or whatever for years. And I'm like, I count that as writing. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I first, I wrote the teaser, which is almost identical to what was shot. Really? I wrote the teaser in two.
2016. Okay. And then hit pause, research, research, research. I'm reading every single like Christian propaganda book about the Smurfs and the Ninja Turtles and all that stuff. And I am just taking in as much as I possibly can until I hit this point where I was like, I had this really low rock bottom week where I totaled my car. Spun out on the 134 and hit a the median I then
Two or three days later, my dog died and was sitting there like, okay, I've got a dead dog. I've got a wrecked car. I have no job. I'm... running out of savings i have nothing to my name i don't even have like an agent i've been here for seven years so i was like i have to go write this i have to do this thing that i've just been
gorging on for the past several years i drove up to big bear i rented a cabin i wrote for from i think it was like nine to six for five straight days and when i came home i had a finished pilot and From that point forward, it was a snowball going downhill. It was, I sent it to the agent. shockingly she loved it like immediately it was not like let me let's go back and forth let's develop she loved it she sent it to uh now my manager who sent it to his bosses who sent it to
John Goldstein and John Francis Daly. I was curious how they got involved, yeah. Yeah, they had worked with Good Fear on, I think, the Vacation film, the remake. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And... in like the span of like two weeks i went from like everything is totaled i'm a wreck this is awful to i have this pilot that people really seem to like
And now we're looking at like, OK, in about a month, we're going to start pitching this around town like it was lightning fast. It was just one thing after the next. And I know you have an amazing story about like. what happens next, but more importantly, how did you read that many books about Christian propaganda and not wind up in therapy? And now it's time for Hollywood Therapy. The doctors are winning.
That's right. It's time for everyone's favorite part of the movie. Great. This time for a Hollywood therapy with Dr. Arwen. This is where the three of us do the best job we possibly can answering your more personal questions on behalf of the good doctor. We would let her answer, but... What? She's a dog. That was the exclamation point. I feel like we haven't done...
Hollywood therapy in so long. Um, anyway, okay. Our question this week comes from Leanne. I need some advice guys, as you guys know. I got my bachelor's degree finally. Back in 2022, after blood, sweat, and literal tears, I finally got my degree in business and marketing to get my ass out of retail. For personal reasons, I cannot travel far for a job and have applied everywhere I possibly can.
can. However, every place has told me they want experience. I have 14 years of retail experience and a degree and was hoping 13 years in one place plus a degree would count for something. I worked full time even during the pandemic. Yay, essential worker. and somehow still managed a 3.7 GPA. Not many people in their 40s can say they got their degree while working full-time, and I even got my resume done professionally as a graduation president. I know I'm not alone.
I also know my toxic work environment is no longer a healthy place for me and can't quit until I find something else. Feeling helpless here and any advice would be greatly appreciated. Love you guys. Leanne, aka one of the OGs. Okay. Obviously, um... You know, this can actually apply to what we do because you're like, you're writing stuff, you're making stuff, but then every time you have. If you're even asking your agent, hey, I hear they're looking for a director on...
this is always my go-to the remake of ice pirates. Like, I think I'd be right for that. No, but you haven't done it before. Okay. But I've done all of this other stuff. Like what, how am I, I can't even just have a meeting. Like, and then you end up seeing who gets it and you're like, what the fuck had they done? Like, how did that happen? But that, that constant being told like, you're ready to, you're not right for this. Move on. You.
you know how to do it. You've studied, you've gotten like in Leanne's case, you got the degree you've put in all these years, but then they're like, no, you don't have enough experience. Like what, well, how do I get the experience then if I've done all this other stuff and you won't even give me a chance? So.
And our case in this industry, it's always like, well, you have to just go do it yourself. But in the case of marketing, like business marketing, I don't know how you really go do that yourself. You have to work. Kind of, yeah. That's a very isolated industry. And anytime that I've gotten like...
kind of rock bottom. I go, well, I, cause I vicariously got into marketing through, and I had the same experience that you did when you went from ABC family to free form. I was at G four and then you got the memo. Oh, now we're Esquire. And you're like, oh, shit. I got to let that sink in. And then our department got turned into the marketing department. So I got a lot of experience in marketing almost kind of falling into it.
now I sit there and I go, I had four years of marketing experience through them. Anytime that I go out for any job, oh, you don't have enough experience. I'm like,
Fuck, it's right there. That's an especially hard position to get in. Because they want you to be coming from another place where you already did exactly that. So I don't think anyone at this table... knows a ton about your industry, Leanne, but, and I'm sure you've probably already thought of this, but it would probably be the best way to just at least get your foot in the door and out of the place that you're in.
is even being willing to take like a lower level job than what you probably should be getting. That's what I was going to say. But just so you can at least... work somewhere where they'll get to know you see that you know what you're doing and then hopefully within a matter of time you'll start moving up and doing what you really want to do if any of those jobs even exist like it's so like two and a half decades almost three in this industry and like I don't have like a resume I don't have like
Like, I don't even know. Do you even know what a CV is? No. Yeah, well, when they say, oh, what's your CV? I'm like, what the fuck is a CV? What is a CV? It's essentially, it's a resume. It's like a new version of saying your resume. What is it, AI? Created or some shit. It's got to be a book. You are onto something in terms of like when you're in an industry like that, even when it comes down to.
There's a few writers that I know, one of which we might have on the show soon, that have their own show, and they pivoted into a new, like they pivoted into writing. but they couldn't get any spec work done. So they became a writer's assistant just to be in the room because the second that they were in the room,
They had those moments where it's like, okay, yeah, you should be getting us this, that, and the other thing. And I remember him saying, like, I think it was weirding people out that I was older than most of the people that were on the table. But then they started feeling like... Well, come on over, you know, just like, and, and then immediately, and it took about a year to do it, but because they went to the mailroom basically to get that job.
that's how they were able to get in so maybe that's what it is maybe it's just that she's got to kind of like go in a lower position just to get in the door Yeah, if that's even a possibility. But I think the most important thing, Leanne, is just don't stop. looking like keep yeah keep your eyes and ears open because it'll be when you least expect it suddenly you're going to hear about something or see something posted and that'll end up being the thing um i mean
we're about to get to, and Matthew's story, it's usually when you think all the doors have closed, then all of a sudden something opens again. Sorry, something you just said just... made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. And it's that first meeting when you realize... Now the people you're meeting with are younger than you. When you go from being the kid to the old dude. Try having the last name Green.
That was always the thing in the beginning of when I would start going up for generals and stuff. The feedback would be like, well, we like his writing and his voice is great, but he's a little green.
No pun intended. He's still a little green. He doesn't have experience yet. He hasn't done enough yet. It's weird enough, like last night, I got introduced as veteran director Joe Lynch. Like, veteran director? What the fuck? I still feel like I'm up and coming. I prefer that over fan-turned-filmmaker.
Well, yeah, or no, like podcaster turned filmmaker. That one just cracks me up at this point. But yeah, like the point and I think Adam is right. Are those guys going to be on again soon? No. And that is Arwen's final word.
Okay, so now we got to get into like the really good shit here because your story about how hysteria Sorry hysteria finally happened And then once it was actually happening what happened next is just fucking incredible yeah so uh it was set up someplace first right it was set up at another uh major streamer and we had sold it to them
Um, in late 2019 free form, not that's a very different show. Um, uh, we'd sold it. He said major streamer. So fear net. Oh, no, they were already dead for six years. So early 2020, we finalized the paperwork right before the COVID pandemic hits. So it was truly like three or four days before. everything shut down and now we've gone from okay we've sold this to you guys with the intent of like we're gonna get going on this we're gonna start you know getting ready to make it pretty soon here to
well, let's take this opportunity to develop and take our time with it. And so I spent the year developing out a Bible. I wrote like a 70-page Bible, and this is what I think the show is. See, that's what I wanted to ask you. before so rudely interrupted by the therapy question sorry all right was like the way that that pilot reads or at least how it
plays out in the first episode. Now it feels like if you didn't step away, if you stepped away from it, you felt like, Oh, there's a whole nother world. There's a lot of tendrils going. So I was like, Did you have any of that at least fleshed out a little bit for the pilot? I had a lot of it. Yeah, I was pointing in a lot of directions that I was pretty confident in that I knew like I...
You know, I think you can take stuff away from like, I didn't know exactly where Dylan and Judith were going, but I had a pretty good idea. I didn't know exactly what was going to happen with Anna Camp's character, Tracy, but I had a... Actually, that's not true at all. I knew exactly what was going to happen with her. It was more like the police officer and some of the secondary characters. I don't think I had a clear idea of what is their A to Z. But I...
I learned a lot of that while I was developing at this other place. Early 2021, the same thing that happened to so many other people. Essentially, they said like... Our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. We now have too much stuff on our development.
uh pile and we just can't we don't see a place for this so we're not going to move forward with it um to their credit though they said we're going to make this really easy for you guys to get out like you you can take it out you can share it with whoever you want to share it with We like you guys, we believe in this project, and we don't want it to just sit on a shelf and die here. So they were...
Pretty cool in that. And that's rare. That's very rare. They didn't have to do that. So people who are in the business understand there's a lot of times. Oh, Hollison's a great example. So when I first sold it as coffee and donuts, it was to. UPN with Disney Touchstone as a studio. When the merger happened between UPN and the WB to become the CW, all development was lost. Their policy was, well, we hold everything for at least five years because they don't want somebody else to get it.
Nobody wants to pass on something and then it winds up working somewhere else. So in those five years, I did Hatchet, Spiral, Grace, Frozen, and then got the rights back. Right. When the whole fear net, well, actually we, there was the G four thing for a minute and then they became asked where it's always a merger that fucks me. But it's, that's great that this big place was like, We're not going to do it, but we're also going to let it go. Yeah.
And we wish you the best. That's great. And they were really cool about it. I've heard from the people we worked with there since the show has come out and all that stuff. They're really cool and supportive. They're all great. But what happened was then we got it out of there. and it just sat there we couldn't get any bites for about a year just dead silent we were so happy okay it's no longer there anymore we can take it out
Everyone else has sort of stopped spending because of the pandemic and everyone's reassessing everything. And finally, we get a call from... To hear the rest of this episode, go to patreon.com slash themoviecrypt. For only $1 a month, you'll get every new episode, every Monday, downloaded right to your podcast app of choice.