The Studio: How to Introduce Your Main Character

I'm Jacob Kruger, and this is the Write Your Screenplay Podcast. This episode, we're going to be talking about Apple TV's award-winning series, The Studio. I want to get deep with you all. Into how to introduce a character. We're gonna be looking specifically at Matt Remick, the Seth Brogan character, and then I'm gonna show you how that gift of that introduction translates.

Down the line across that pilot and through the entire season, and it makes every other element of your structure easier to build. Let's start. With the first image. First images tend to break down into one of two categories. Either the first image is going to include your main character. Or your first image is going to set the world of the show in which your main character is going to live.

In this case, we are setting the world of the show. We start with a snowscape and a house that looks like maybe a cabin in the woods. We push in. A door opens and out comes Paul Dano. And it's not by accident that they're using a recognizable star. This is the world of the studio. series is going to be populated by cameo performances of extremely famous actors.

And the moment Paul Dano arrives and the way we watch him go through that door, we already know that we're in some kind of cheesy action movie. And so we're gonna continue. Paul exits the door, the window explodes with gunfire. He ducks, runs for the car, takes on a gunman, we get a fight sequence with a knife, we get a maniacal laugh. Out of Paul and And then we get this really over-the-top cheesy Die for me, die for me, baby, dialogue out of Paul Dano.

He's overacting the hell out of it. He's setting the world for us. Cheesy studio movies. This is not the world of independent film. This is over-the-top action. Then from Afar Paul Dano gets shot, we see the squib go off in his belly. He staggers towards the car. A figure in a trench coat whose face we never see confronts him, and there's a cheesy exchange between the two of them as Pauldano breathes his last breath. So it's you, huh? You think you have what it takes to be the ball.

Shit, s crown so fucking heavy it would break your neck. We're in a cheesy action movie hearing cheesy action lines, but what's really happening? The hook and the theme is being given to us. This is the world that Matt Remick is gonna enter. He is going to inherit.

The crown of the studio, and we are gonna watch it break his neck in every episode. Paul Dano continues, I'm the only one keeping us from being a thing of the past, which even there is a little bit of a reference to movies and the challenge that movies are having getting people to come to the theater. And then he continues. You're gonna do good, kid. You know how I know why? You had the best teacher there is. Paul takes his final

Squib in the belly and the director yells cut. So even though the very first scene does not include Seth Rogan, what's really happening here is we're setting the tone of the movie over the top, silly, the world of studio pictures. We're setting the theme of the piece, this crown that everybody wants that that is really too heavy to wear. And We are setting the thematic relationship between Rogan, Matt Remick, and Patty Lee, Catherine O'Hara, his grizzled boss whose job he is about to take.

then in case we didn't get it, we're gonna pull back and realize we've been watching all this and on a monitor, we're gonna Pan to the right, we're gonna see the director who's delighted with the terrible performance. We're gonna see Paul Dano ask if he's doing it well. He's got needs some notes, he wants some direction from the director. Right, this is

The world that Matt Remick wants to be a part of, the art of movies, because he loves movies. Now we don't even know this yet. We are watching, we don't know yet, but we are watching through his eyes, and we're about to meet him for that. Now the writers and director are also setting up something really cool, which is that n every episode is shot nearly

perfectly as a wonder, right? We've talked about winners a lot on the podcast because we're actually starting to see a lot of them come out of the studios and even independent films like the brilliant Aaron Brown Thomas, one of our faculty members, uh just had a wonder at Sundance. We're seeing more and more of

this, uh, even though it's an incredibly hard thing to do. And in the studio, the the purpose of the Warner is to help us feel the franticness and the relentlessness of the pace. We don't even get a cut. to relax into. We're getting the world of the piece, we're getting the tone of the piece, we're getting an image of the thing that Matt Remick most wants to be a part of. And we're getting the visual style of the piece. And we're

Still at the very beginning, we're probably about a page, maybe a page and a half into this script. So here's where we go from here.

The director gives Paul Dano his one note, he wants a little bit of resignation. We follow the crew as they move into action based on the director's direction, and we meet Matt Remex. We move past him and we catch him from behind, and then we come back around to see his face. And what that does is it creates the feeling.

of this man who is alone in this busy world, right? All these things are happening around him. Paul Dano is getting notes. Now he's making jokes about having blood in his underwear and needing to change. And And we are meeting Matt and we're already getting his want. Now. Because we have a great actor in this role, Seth Rogan, he's actually delivering the feeling in that very first image. We see the desperate look on his face.

Now, I want you to understand that you can't write that because you don't know you're going to get Seth Rogan in your movie. or in your TV show. It would be great if you did or if you got somebody of that caliber. But you are an early career writer? And you don't know. And even if you're a late career writer, it's very possible that they're gonna cast a movie star who is

Wonderful at star power and has a huge audience, but actually can't deliver this exact look that you need to know exactly what's going on in his head. This is the very first image of his face, and we see his desperate desire to be a part of So how do you deal with that as a screenwriter if you can't write that look? Because you can't write that look.

Even if you do write that look, your reader, who probably doesn't have any acting training and is skimming through your script, is not gonna see the Seth Rogan version of that look. Your reader is going to see the pantomime overacted version of that look. If you are depending on a look, sure, you can do that as a direct. But you can't do that in the script. So you have to figure out okay, if I know that what this character wants is to be involved. How do I activate that?

How do I get the character making a huge choice from the very beginning of the show, from the very first time we see him, a choice that captures his desperate desire? You could go as far as to say that the definition of a main character in most shows and most movies is someone who has a desperate desire that they are willing to pursue. Now it doesn't really matter what that desire is. We just need to see them taken out.

At the very beginning. And we need to see them take an action towards that desire in a way that is so them, that instantly captures how this character is slightly different from every other character of that.

Now, the Matt Remick we're about to meet, he is a Rube, right? That is who he is. He is gonna be the butt of every joke in this series. But we've seen a million of these characters. So you have to ask yourself, what makes this character a little bit different? And that comes down usually to a very specific want and a very specific way of getting. And so if you continue to watch, we start and we see everything moving around Matt Remeck.

And Matt Remick completely isolated on the set. And then we watch him make a choice. He approaches the director, putting on a fake smile that we know is fake based on his previous look, and he makes a bad joke. Bloody underpants. Don't let HR hear about that one. We can see his dominant trait in this. Because Matt Rameck's dominant trait is that he wants people to like him.

This is the thing that's gonna get in the way and make being a studio head absolute hell for Matt. This is what we would call the how of the character. And what we're seeing here is a vignette. Of the character. He's being a rub, but he's being a rube in a very specific way, in the Matt Remeck way, which is trying to fit in in a world in which he is not wanted. Trying to put on a smiling face when he's feeling terrible, trying to act like everything's okay.

and trying to be involved because this is what he wants more than anything. He wants to be involved. So we're gonna continue. So the first thing that happens is the director mistakes his name. He goes, Tommy, welcome. And Matt goes, it's Matt.

Right. So we get this big fake welcome, this big bad joke, this big fake welcome, and we realize the director doesn't even know who he is. So you can see this is great writing, right? These are the writers attacking the one thing that Matt Remick wants, which is to be included. To be important, to matter, to be liked, to be invited into this thing that he loves more than anything in the world.

But he's a frickin' studio executive, and nobody in the world wants to deal with him. We're gonna now play this game again with Paul Dann. He introduces himself to Paul Dano. We can see that he is in awe of Paul Dano. And in fact, he shares with Paul that he watched the movie that Paul directed and he loved it.

Now this is related to another element of who Matt Remick is. Matt Remick is a man who loves movies. He may be a studio executive, but he is a man who loves movies. It is the thing he loves most in the world, and he loves good movies. He loves independent. independent movies. We're gonna learn more about that later. Right now we're watching him do his thing, which is he's gonna try to connect with every star, with every creative. These are the people he wants to be included with.

And for a moment, it seems like he's gonna get what he wants because Paul Dano's surprised that he watched this movie. And then literally in the middle of the conversation, Paul Dano turns away and goes back to the director and goes, oh, I have an idea. Two beats create a pattern. Beat number one he makes a goofy joke trying to please the director, and the director mistakes his name.

Beat number two, he makes a genuine attempt for connection with Paul Dano by talking about a movie that Paul Dano directed that not a lot of people saw. And Paul Dano wants to talk to the director. And now we as the audience get the pattern. And the pattern is that Matt Ramick wants to be included and nobody wants to deal with him. Even though he's a pos who should have power and position and status in this production, he does not.

All the status belongs to the creative. He's just the guy that they've got to deal with, right? And this is his central problem. This desire to be liked and this lack of recognition of who he is in the eyes of the creatives around him. This is the central problem that's gonna drive every single episode and make Matt Remex hell.

Now we should take a moment right here to talk about static Because one of the things that allows the studio to work as a series is the status games that are getting played among the actors. Now it makes sense, right? We're in the world of Hollywood, and Hollywood is a world of status. But the truth is, nearly every script is a collection of status gains between the characters.

And one of the ways that you can have a lot of fun writing characters, especially powerful characters, right? The Matt Remick character technically has the highest status of anyone in this room. He is the development executive. He's the guy signing the check. He's the guy paying all of them. He's the guy who can end their movie or give them the extra money they need. And he's about to become the most powerful guy in the studio. He's about to run the studio.

So there is the first level of status, which is the status that your character is in the world. And Matt Ramack's status in the world is quite high. Then there is a status that your character feels. And if you watch this interaction, you instantly get the status that the character feels. The character feels low. So you have a very interesting struggle inside this character. He is high, but he feels low. And then there's a third element.

Which is what status is the character playing? In this case, he's playing low status. He's playing low status to the director. Ha ha ha. Uh, blood in his pants. Don't let HR find out about that, right? He's playing low status. He's not coming in and going like, hey. I don't like the way you shot that. Let's talk about this because this is not gonna work. We have a character who is high, who feels low, and who's playing low.

And we have a director who is lower status, who feels higher status, and who's playing low status. Same Tommy. He's acting as if he likes and is so happy to see this guy because this guy has power, even though he feels higher status than Matt Ram. And he is lower status than Matt Remick. And if you want to add one more level, these characters are doing something to each other. by misremembering Matt's name, The director is lowering Matt. status. So he's playing low.

To lower Matt status, right? And so there is a whole struggle inside of this scene, inside of this little tiny scene that is a status game. Where we're actually getting structure inside the scene because we are watching the character move in relation to the status that he is, the status that he feels, the status that he is playing, and the status that's being imposed upon him.

This is an incredible way to get structure when you don't yet have structure in your show. Now the same thing happens when he interacts with Paul Dana. Matt comes in, he plays high status. I saw your movie. Yeah, that little movie that nobody else saw. I saw it. You should direct more. That is Matt Remick playing high status, showing him I'm one of you. And he's playing high status to raise Paul Dano's status, to make Paul Dano feel good.

Paul Dano is lower status than Matt Remick, even though he's quite high status. He feels high status. He is playing Oh, you saw it. Right? Do you see him playing low status? And then he switches and plays high status by breaking off the conversation and talking to the director. And he does that in order to lower Matt Remick's status. in order to very subtly show Matramek. I don't need to talk You could also suggest that Pauldano is playing high staff.

towards the director, showing him that he's got his own ideas for how he wants to do this. So all these characters are playing status games together, right? And so even though we don't have a lot of conflict in this scene, we literally just have a high high. Hi, Mr. Director. Oh, I misremembered your name. Hi, Paul Dano, I saw your movie. Even though we really just have two introductions, we have all this structure because of the status games the characters are playing with each other.

And if you watch throughout the studio, you will watch Matt is going to continually be high, feel low. In fact, even when his status gets elevated, he still continues to play low status. because he feels low status. Except every now and then He will choose to play high status in order to assert the authority that he's supposed to have that he doesn't feel. And the brilliant thing that the writers will do again and again and again is every single time that Matt Remick plays high status.

We are going to watch him create hell for himself. The consequences will be unfairly terrible. And that is, in fact, where most of the fun of the studio is gonna come from. Now, why is this important for you? Why have I spent

15 minutes talking about the first few minutes of the script. Well, first off, the first few minutes of the script are the most important moments of your script. They set the world, they establish the character, and they determine is the audience going to keep watching or stop watching. But more importantly, when you especially when you are writing a pilot, your first few minutes are a blueprint for everything that's going to follow.

Your first few minutes establish the patterns out of which you are going to derive everything else in your movie or in your TV show. In fact, your pilot. Your full pilot is going to establish the patterns out of which every other episode is going to grow. If you're gonna shoot your pilot as a one-er, you're probably gonna shoot the rest of them as a one. If Matt is going to be a people-pleasing rube in the first episode.

He's probably gonna be that in episode after episode after episode. If Matt struggles to feel high status, no matter how high status he is, he is probably going to continue to play low status. And if Matt Occasionally plays high status and with disastrous results, he is probably going to continue to.

So Paul Down turns to the director, he goes, What if I went from regret to resignation to acceptance? Right. So he has his own ideas. And again, they're making such incredible use of this wonder because we are back on, they're not even in frame as they're having this conversation. We are back on Matt Remex. And we are watching him be once again alone and useless on this set. We now know what Matt Remick wants. He wants to be included.

The biggest mistake that screenwriters often make when introducing their main characters is that they don't go for their wants strongly enough. They think, oh, we get it, he got dissed by Paul Danao. He got dissed by the director. We got it. We understand he wants to be in. But if the main thing that happens to the main character happens by other characters rather than by him, her or themselves, what that means for us is that our main character is not driving this.

And especially in the first image, actors don't want to play passive characters sitting by watching things happen to them. They want to play characters who are making huge choices. And this is what happens with Matt. We sit on Matt as he watches the conversation that he wants to be included in happen.

We watch his face as he comes to a decision to do the thing he knows he shouldn't do because he's smart enough, even though he's a rube, to know that he's being excluded. And we watch him try once again to get the thing that he wants. He approaches the director and he goes, hey, actually, I have an idea. Despite being dissed, he is gonna get included. He is gonna give an idea.

Because he cannot tolerate being excluded. The scene can't happen to him. It has to happen by him. And the director says. Buddy, we're good on ideas. But I'll see you at Charlie's party, right? Yeah, of course. I'll see ya there. Big thumbs up. Just from these first three minutes and twenty-four seconds of the studio, we already understand who Matt is, what his problem is, and what his journey is. This is what we would call the normal world.

or the ordinary world that we're watching right now. And it's important to remember that ordinary world, normal world cannot be boring world, right? These are the most important elements of your scratch. This is where the audience is getting hooked or not hooked. And that means they need to be driven by your main character. Main character who desperately wants something. That's desperately hard for them to get that's trying to get

Right. We understand that Matt is in terrible pain. Great to see you, Paul. Keep it up, right? Pretending a connection with Paul, even though it's really clear that Paul has dissed him. Right? We are watching. A man desperately trying to pretend like he feels great when he really feels terrible.

This is the man that's about to inherit the crown. So then we follow him and we meet our next character. Now this is an important thing to remember when you are building a TV show. Your pilot is not just telling the story of the main character, it's also telling the story of that character's world. Because just as we are going to invite these characters into our home and they're gonna become part of our family. The characters that they interact with in the pilot are going to be their family.

Now, part of the engine of the studio is that in each episode we are going to have there's going to be some studio stuff happening and that pattern is set right here at the very beginning. And there's going to be a hot relationship between Seth and Quinn. In this episode, Quinn is his assistant. She's soon gonna get elevated as he gets elevated. But theirs is going to be one of the hot family dynamics that's going to develop over the course of the series.

As uh the great Jerry Persiggian who uh teaches uh TV comedy writing for us, Emmy a winning showrunner of Uh, the Golden Girls, the Jeffersons, married with children. As Jerry Persigio once said, every TV show is just a family that can't get away from each other. And this family, we're starting to meet its members. So member number one is Seth. Member number two is Quinn. We saw Matt's status get elevated when the director said, I'll see you at Charlize's party right now.

But we know the game is to constantly de-elevate, constantly lower the status of Matt Remick. So this is how it happens. Matt asks Quinn, hey, was I invited to Charlize Thrones party tonight? And Quinn goes, What? No, why? Why would Shalise Thuron invite you to her party? You're always asking if you're invited to people's parties, right? Now, the you're always asking is a little exposition for us, right? That's telling us this isn't the first time this has happened.

Matt has a delusional point of view of who he is. His desire to be connected is so strong, and his his disconnect from reality is so strong. His desire to be liked is so strong that he is constantly hoping that it's gonna be different. But we also have a really interesting status relationship between these two characters. Matt is high status compared to Quinn. He feels high status compared to Quinn. And he's playing high status compared to Quinn.

But Quinn feels high status compared to Matt and is playing high status compared to Matt to lower Matt status. We get this nuanced, complicated little relationship between them.

And we start to feel like this is not your normal studio head. Right. And this is starting to lead us into the hook, right? The hook of any show is gonna be ironic. Right. If you're making breaking bad, right, you have a guy who can't even stand up to his boss at a car wash who's going to turn into Heisenberg. And here in the studio, we have basically the same character, a guy who is so desperate to please.

who's about to inherit control of one of the most powerful organizations on earth. So this is the ironic hook. And this is something you almost always want to think about with your main character. Even though it's possible to take a character uniquely prepared for a situation, if you think of a movie like Taken or a movie like Superman, Superman is uniquely prepared to save the world.

Liam Neeson has a very particular set of skills that is absolutely perfect if his daughter happens to be kidnapped. But often it's actually more fun to take a character who doesn't have the right skill. For the situation they're about to be put in.

Because that gives you so much more room to play and also your character so much more room to grow. So finding that ironic twist, who is the character and what situation are they going to be put in? Well, that is what your opening really is designed to do. Scene one is telling us this is who the character is. Scene two with Quinn is reminding us this is who the characteristics.

Scene three is gonna put the character in the situation that they are least suited for. And bang, bang, bang, in this episode, in basically three, three and a half scenes, we'll talk about why I'm calling it three and a half scenes. We already know the problem that the character is going to have. You want as quickly as possible, it could be two scenes, it could be one scene, as quickly as possible. You want to demonstrate who your character is. You want to get them pursuing their greatest want.

You want to get them making big choices that demonstrate how they are as a human being. You want to set the pattern, and then you want to put them into the ironic twist. So that your audience goes, oh, I get what this show is. So that your audience can pitch the show to themselves. So that your actor can go, oh, I get what this show is. I get what's going to be fun about playing this character.

So think about your opening scenes like that. Who are they? What makes them special? What makes them uniquely fun? How are they pursuing their want? What is their pattern? And then what's the most challenging position I can put them in?

The most ironic position I can put them in. So we follow Quinn and Matt in their golf cart as they head to his morning meetings. And their dialogue is about what's going on at the studio. They've got a meeting with Jenga. The worst possible IP for a movie. Previously, they've met about Rubik's Cube. The studio wants to make these movies about nothing, which of course is exactly what our studios are making movies.

And Quinn, this is a really fun interaction, right? Because unlike the relationship he has with Paul Dano and the director, his relationship with Quinn, we can see that these two are actually P's and a These two, despite the fact that she's playing low status to his high status, these people actually see movies in the same way, and Quinn actually likes him.

And he actually likes Quinn, right? She's his teammate and they are both upset about the same thing. So he says, look, Patty, Patty Lee, Patty is the head of the studio. Her corporate overlords wanna make these IP-based movies, so I gotta take these fucking meetings. Quinn asks, so what do you do? Do you make the Jenga movie? And he goes, No, you take the meeting because I'm making an actual good movie.

Now what is this? In the first scene, we got Matt's scene objective. What does he want at this moment? What does he want? Real simple, he wants to be included. In this scene, we're getting Matt's super objective, the great dream that is gonna drive the entire series. He might work at a studio. He doesn't want to make studio movies. He wants to make great movies. We understand what he disagrees with his boss about. And we know the ideals, the heroic ideals.

To which Matt would comply if only he were in charge. We're not making that crap. We're only making great movies. Now, this is a slight spoiler, but you've probably figured out by now. If you have a character who has a clear heroic ideal, Who has a strong super objective? Who wants to please people? What do you need to do?

You need to get him to make some version of the Jenga movie. You need to make him do the thing that he said he's not gonna do. You have to push him to the place where he violates his own super objective and his own moral code.

Now, most people would think you would do that at the end, but what great writers do, the moment you realize what needs to happen in your script, you do it at the beginning. You're going to supercharge your pilot. You're going to go as far and as fast as you can in the pilot. And that is going to allow you to have the runway for all the places you're going to go that we didn't see.

See, most writers are afraid that if they supercharge their pilot, if they get their characters to make the biggest worst decisions early, suffer the biggest worst consequences early, that where will I go with the season? But the actually the opposite is true. If you wait, if you slowly parcel out the little crumbs of goodies, no one's gonna make it to episode 12, episode 8, episode 10, episode two of your series. We want to watch characters who are super.

And more importantly, no one's gonna be cast in your show, which means your show's not getting made because actors don't wanna wait around for episode three to get to do something cool or episode eight or episode ten. They wanna do something cool right. Now Now here's the really cool thing. You've already noticed that scene number one gives us the grit.

out of which scene number two gets developed. And you already see that scene number two gives us the grist out of which scene number three and scene number four are going to be developed.

Well, the same thing is true with your pilot. New writers often think that TV shows are about plot, right? And they gotta keep figuring out what happens. But at the point you're trying to figure that stuff out, your engine is already broken and your series is probably gonna end. What we're really doing when we build a TV series is we are pattern match.

We are looking at the structure of the pilot and we're just doing it again and again and again and again and again. And in fact, if you watch every episode of the studio, you will watch them play the same game again and again and again and again. And again. In other words, they're not deriving new privileges. They are putting you through the same pattern in a different way. In this way, a really great pilot is a blueprint for everything that's gonna follow.

Because it cracks the series engine of your series, that special recipe that's gonna allow every episode to feel both the same and also different. Now if you've taken my Write Your TV series class, you know how that works, right? You know how to write a Bible that captures your engine and how to write a pilot that is actually a blue.

But here we can look at how down to those little micro moments, the little micro moment of introducing your character, that we're already starting to put that pattern in place that will eventually emerge as the engine of the show.

So we're going to continue with Matt and Quinn. We've learned that there are peas and a pod, so they're going to play the same pattern again. Just like Paul Dano and the director played the same pattern twice so that we can understand this is what that relationship is and that this is what this relationship is. And every time we do the pattern, we want to make sure that we outdo in some way. So it doesn't feel like we're staying in place.

So we in the first little interchange, we watch them be peas in a pod. We're gonna watch them be peas in a pod again. So Quinn agrees. It's so depressing. I'm 30 years too late to this industry. And Matt agrees. If I were in charge, which he's about to be in charge, if I were in charge, I'd be focusing on making the next Rosemary's baby. Or some other movie that wasn't directed by a pervert. Right. So we get a little joke there because this is a comedy.

Right. But what we're really watching is we're watching again, we're getting that super objective. If I was in charge. And this tells us exactly what needs to happen in the show. Once he ends up in charge, he has to not focus on making the next Rosemary's baby. But at the same time, just like in that first scene. If the character doesn't act on his want, we're not gonna care about him. So somehow, over the course of this series, we need to watch Matt Remick.

Both pursue the impossible dream of making the next Rosemary's baby in today's market, as a head of a major studio that's owned by a corporate overlord. And we have to watch him compromise those ideals. And it's that pressure that's actually going to be the fun. Of the series. We have to watch Matt vacillate between feeling low and playing low, and feeling low and playing high.

And we have to watch as the people around him continually lower his status to the status that he feels rather than the status that he is. And that's the game we're gonna watch. Over and over and over again. Over the course of the studio. So the joke continues. Quinn says, perverts make great movies, and Matt says they really do. So we ended the first scene with the joke, Did I get invited to Charlie Saron's party? What are you talking about? We end this scene with the joke.

Perverts direct great movies. They certainly do, right? So there's also a pattern here that our scenes end with jokes. And we're gonna try to repeat that pattern and outdo that. So we follow them into the building, past the guided studio tour, where people are talking about the history of the building as a shrine for movies, right? This is again thematically everything that he wants, right? And it is not what the studio is.

So the tour guide says it was built to to literally be a temple of cinema. And Matt turns to Quinn and says, Temple of cinema, and they want me to make movies out of wooden blocks. Right. So now we've had three beats on this pattern. Right. We totally get it. We get the super objective. We get what Matt wants. We get how Matt believes he's gonna be a hero, and we get exactly what Matt thinks he's gonna do.

Even if we're barely watching, we know the one thing that's important, which is who Matt is, how Matt is, and what Matt wants both in the small picture and in the big picture.

We're now gonna march him into the hook of the series. And what's really cool, we're only four minutes and thirty seconds in. If we're smart viewers, we already know what's gonna happen. If we're inexperienced viewers, we're about to find out. So now we're gonna meet Sal Saperstein, played by Ike Barenholtz. Sal is Matt's best friend.

Sal is also going to come in with a vignette, right? With a very distinct action that is exactly who and how he is. So the first thing he does, he sees Matt, he grabs it and he says, Do I smell? And Matt says, Yeah, you kinda smell like vodka. And Sal responds, Oh just vodka that's fine.

So we already know that he's a bit of a party man, right? And he's got a bit of a problem. In fact, we're gonna get to watch him snort some coke a little bit later, right? We we already are establishing a pattern that these two are friends. that Sal is raging hard, right? They are different car characters, but they are buttons.

So he gives a little story. He got drunk with Pedro Pascal last night. He got the thing signed off. And this is the next little vignette we're getting of Sal. And we're starting to understand, okay, Sal might be an addict.

He might be a party man. He might have been out all night, but he's also always effective. He's always trying to move things forward for the studio. And he is the player of the studio game. He is the ultimate player of the studio game. He is the opposite of Matt, even though they are best friends. He would be delighted to make the Jenga movie and he would be delighted to follow it up with the Tetris movie. That is who Sal is. He just wants to move his deal.

Now we have met three of the core members of this family. We have got the peas in a pod of Matt and Quinn. We've got the strongly contrasting best friend who is a studio man. and really doesn't care about movies, but sure cares about the drugs and the fan. And of course, Sal, this is part of the game. Sal's first little vignette is I got drunk with Pedro Pascal. How badly would Matt wanna get drunk with Pedro Pascal?

This is also a beginning of a new pattern. If throughout this series, even though right now Sal and Matt basically have the same job, and Matt's about to be elevated to the next level. Sal is going to be loved, celebrated, invited, and included with all the celebrities. that Matt so desperately wants to be liked and included.

And Matt is going to continually, even though his status has been elevated, be excluded from those relationships, right? So all these games are starting to develop. So we've got the patterns of the main relationships, bang, ready for the home. Sal shares that Griffin Mill is in the building. Griffin Mill is the corporate overlord. How do you know you need a corporate overlord? Well, because one got mentioned in the earlier scene. Sal goes. This means Patty's out.

And I kinda think that I'm gonna get her job. And Matt responds, I kind of think that I'm gonna get it. And then a promise is made between the two of them that this is not whatever happened, it's not going to affect their relationship, which is also a promise for us, the audience. We're going, oh. Something's gonna happen and how is it gonna affect their relationship? Right. Now, I'm not gonna spoil it, but

The writers actually make some really interesting choices to play against our expectations of what might happen between the two of them. It is going to put pressure on their relationship. Well maybe I am. It is gonna put pressure on their relationship, but it's not gonna be Sal's jealousy. It's gonna be the flip of that. It's going to be Matt's jealousy of Sal. Because even though Matt is wearing the crown, the crown is a miserable crown to wear.

And even though Matt is the guy in charge, it's Sal who's getting the one thing that Matt wants, which is to be included. And in fact, it's going to be Patty, his mentor and former boss, who's going to get the one thing. Spoilers ahead. who's gonna get the one thing that he wants in his super objective. Now that she's not studio head anymore, She's gonna get to make

Great movies. The very movies that Matt wishes he could make. And that's gonna get locked in, of course, at the very end of the pilot. It's not gonna happen to him, it's gonna happen by him. Because at the end of the pilot, Another spoiler ahead. Matt is going to make a deal with Patty because of mistakes that he's made. That's gonna give her the opportunity to do the thing that he wishes he could do that he can't do now that he's a studio head. Okay, so let's go back to this.

I told you basically it's three and a half scenes. The scene with Sal is basically a half a scene. It's all just set up. We're getting the relationship, but we're really it's just the lead in, this is the given circumstances, so that we can understand what it means when he gets summoned into Griffin Mill's office. We go back to Quinn because this is one of the hot relationships. Quinn's got the information. Patty has, in fact, been fired. And Griffin Mill wants to meet with Matt.

So we get a bunch of exposition about Patty, she's a total disaster, she's really upset. We get to watch Quinn and Matt be peasing a pod together. Again, even though these are little mini scenes, what this is really doing is this is setting the world for the big scene with Griffin Mill we're about to watch. We're five minutes and forty one seconds into the pilot.

So we get this great reaction from Matt. Yes, I knew this was gonna happen. I mean, it's very sad. I love Patty. This is gonna be another piece of the conflict that's gonna weave through the whole pilot and through the whole season. He is replacing his mentor. He disagreed with all the decisions his mentor made, and now he's gonna be put in a position where he has to make the same decisions and do the same thing.

So Quinn asks, does Griffin not like you? Which of course pokes directly at Matt's worst fear, which is people not liking him. And Matt says, I don't know. I've only met him a few times. He's very hard to read. And then the phone rings. We are six minutes into this episode. We know who the hot relationships are, and we're about to meet the next one. And Griffin Mill is gonna offer him the job. Except Griffin Mill doesn't want to make films. He wants to make movies.

He wants to make big dumb movies that make a lot of money. And his one concern about Matt is that he's heard Matt wants people to like him. And he's heard Matt wants to make films. Of course, these are two concerns, but the fun is watching Matt, who wants to be liked, who wants to be chosen, who wants to wear the crown. Watching Matt pretend that he doesn't want to do any of those things. And then agree to make the worst possible piece of IP, the Kool-Aid movie.

We are now locked into the hook. We have a guy who wants to be a filmmaker and who wants to be liked by the artists whose films he makes, who wants to make great movies. We're gonna watch that guy get forced to make the Kool-Aid movie.

But as I mentioned earlier, the character can't just want it on the inside. He's gotta want it on the outside. He's gotta take actions towards the super objective. I promise you that there were going to be spoilers. Now the real spoilers are coming. Over the course of the the rest of the pilot, what we're gonna watch Matt do is try to turn Kool-Aid into a real movie.

It starts because he doesn't want to meet with the obvious choice to write the Kool-Aid movie. He wants to meet with an auteur. Well the agents quickly shoot that down. He then gets a meeting with Martin Scorsese, who is pitching a movie about the Jonesboro suicides, the original drank the Kool-Aid cult suicide. And Matt comes up with a brilliant idea. I'm gonna get Martin Scorsese to direct the Kool-Aid movie. He buys Martin Scorsese's script for$10 million.

And suddenly he greenlights the movie for more than Martin Scorzesi is asking. All he wants is for the title to be Kool-Aid. And Matt thinks that he is a genius. He has done it. He has managed to ma marry art and commerce. But of course, his dream is an impossible dream. The brilliant Maya Mason character played by Katherine Hahn, who also plays high status to Matt's low status, thinks this is the dumbest idea ever. She thinks Kool-Aid is genius, and Matt's idea is total suicide.

She's prepared a really stupid video of the Kool-Aid man doing a hot TikTok dance. And Matt has to before he's ready march into Griffin Mill's office and pitch him what he's doing with Kool-Aid.

And that's when we get to watch Matt crumble. W Matt ends up showing the video. He ends up pitching Stoller's pitch, the the guy that he didn't want to write the movie, who's now he screwed up the deal with. Um, he pitches a pitch he doesn't control because he realizes that there's no way he's getting away with his genius plan. But Mills, he's not a dumb corporate overlord. He's heard about a$10 million screenplay purchase. What the hell is this guy doing?

Which is when Matt has to come up with a reason and come up with a reason he died. He tells his boss that he acquired the script for ten million dollars, so that it would never get made, because after all, we can't have the Jonesboro murder story. competing with our image of cooling. Right? And of course Griffin Mills thinks. Great. So now we have Matt being celebrated by destroying the one thing he wants more than anything in the world, which is to make a real movie with Martin Scorsese.

But even now we're not done, right? Because we gotta push it to the extreme. How badly can we torture the character? So what happens? Matt finally gets what he wanted in the first scene. He gets invited to Charlie's Therone's party. And at that party, he has to tell Martin Scorsese what he's doing. He

Kicked out of the party by Charlize, Martin breaks into tears. Steve Busemi, who's supposed to be starring in the piece, relates to him that this was supposed to be Martin Scorsese's last movie, right? He is now not just not gotten to make the movie. He has now destroyed the thing he wants most, which is the acceptance he he could have had from Charlize, from Marty, from Stebu Semi. He has destroyed the super objective that was driving him.

And now he has another problem, which is that Patty Lee has convinced the writer who controls the idea that he just pitched to his boss not to do the movie. Because of the way she was treated by the studio. And now he's gotta go deal with his angry, disappointed mentor. Who basically blackmails him for a sweet deal that's gonna allow her to do everything that she ever wanted.

And more importantly, everything Matt ever wanted. And we're gonna end right where we began. She's gonna tell him all the terrible things about being a studio head, how terrible that job is, how heavy that crown is, and then she's gonna tell him. You'll make a great studio head. You know how I know? You learn from the best. It's the Paul Dano line from the beginning.

This is what I want you to understand. It may seem as I'm talking about status and making the worst thing happen as quickly as possible and getting your character active and all these things that you have to do, that you have to write and rewrite in order to get your first image, your first pages, your First five minutes that great, it might feel like I'm slowing you down. It might feel like, wow, where do I go from here if I put all my best stuff at the very beginning?

But the truth is what you're actually doing, whether you're writing TV or whether you're writing a feature. Is all that great work that you do early and the way you introduce each character is all the stuff that you are gonna reuse later to develop season after season and episode after episode of your If you are enjoying this podcast and it is helping your writing, please follow us wherever you get your podcast.

write us a five star review. And if you would like to learn more about how to use these concepts in your own writing, then take a moment and check out our incredible online TV writing classes. We've got inside the writer's room with Emmy Peabody and Golden Globe Award-winning showrunner John Strauss. We've got my write your TV series class. We've got workshops. We've got master classes. We've got ProTrack, our one-on-one mentorship program. So come check us out and I'll see you next episode.