732 - Something Very Bad is Going to Happen

Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and this is episode 732 of ScriptNotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, we have a very special guest. Haley Z. Boston is a writer whose credits include Brand New Cherry Flavor Hunters and Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities. She's also the creator and showrunner of the excellent Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. Welcome, Hayley.

0:02

Thank you. Happy to be here.

0:26

I'm so excited to talk to you because I want to talk about your show. I want to talk about horror, about relationships. I want to dig in on the state of streaming shows and mentorship and showrunning, and I want to talk to you because you are the ideal person for all of these conversations. So I'm so grateful to have you here.

0:27

Thank you so much.

0:42

I want to answer some listener questions too, but in our bonus segment for premium members, I'd love to talk about red herrings and misdirections, because your show does it really well. But I wanted to discuss more generally the role of red herrings and misdirections in storytelling, which is right up your alley.

0:43

I think making a horror show is very challenging because when you reveal the monster, it's no longer scary.

0:59

Yeah.

1:06

That's the real challenge in horror. And then trying to get the protagonist to stay.

1:06

Yes.

1:12

And not have the audience yelling at the tv, like, just leave. Which I have read. So some comments online that do yell at her, which I would like to defend myself by saying, she does try to leave.

1:13

She does. And so in the bonus segment, I want to get into a little bit more spoiler territory here, because one of the things I loved so much about your show is that I watched it completely cold. So I watched it because my friend Mike said, oh, this is legit. You should absolutely watch it. And it's like, okay. And I started. I hit play not knowing whether it was a movie or a series. Oh, wow. And just went for it. And so I love it. For that, we have to talk about some parts of it, but I'd love most people to experience it kind of cold. And then the bonus segment will spoil some more things. All right, can we talk about who you are and sort of how you got to this place where you're making a show?

1:26

So I grew up in Oregon. Portland, Oregon, with two doctor parents.

2:02

All right.

2:05

I had no idea that you could be a writer.

2:06

I didn't either growing up. I didn't know it was a thing.

2:09

Yeah. I don't know how that was possible that I didn't know. Like, you don't think so? Someone's job is to write a script and then, I mean, you just have no idea.

2:11

Well, you probably know, you know, there are authors. You know, there are people who write books. But I didn't know that there was a job to write all the things I love to watch.

2:20

Yeah. So I. I became aware of writers after I saw Juno in 2007.

2:27

Yeah.

2:36

Diablo Cody was a hero in 2007. I must have been 12 or something. 11, 12. I still didn't know anything. I was writing a lot, but as a kid, I wrote about a dysfunctional family that I made up.

2:36

Yeah.

2:49

That had, like, lots of big problems like drug addiction and alcohol abuse.

2:50

Absolutely. And it sounds like it was like, maybe was it different than your family? Because it sounds like she adopted a stable family.

2:56

Yeah. I had, like, a lovely family. And I don't know what that is. Escapism into something dark. I think at that age you can be drawn to darkness.

3:02

Oh, yeah.

3:13

It's like the opposite of, I think, a lot of comedy writers who escape darkness into humor.

3:14

Yeah, for sure.

3:18

I was, like, escaping safety and I became really interested in the feeling of being afraid. And I saw the Strangers at a sleepover.

3:19

Yeah. That's gonna knock you off your rocker. Cause again, it starts as a very normal thing and it just goes haywire.

3:30

Yeah. And so that movie got me really into the feeling of being afraid. And I started watching horror movies with. And then I started watching them alone, and I started to understand more about what being a writer was. I read your blog, actually. Oh, that's so funny.

3:37

Yeah, that's great.

3:54

I was aware of Diablo Cody, John August, and Aaron Sorkin. Those were the three writers I knew.

3:55

Yeah. So in my era, it was Premier magazine rather than the blog. It was Noor Ephron. It was like I might have heard of who Billy Wilder was, but I hadn't read it. I didn't experience him. Yeah.

4:02

And then I didn't know. I mean, I was writing a script in a Word document, playing around, but I assumed I was going to become a doctor.

4:11

Yeah. Because two doctor parents, of course, that's who you should be.

4:20

You can't make a stable living as a writer. You can. That's what I thought when I was 16. So I was like, well, this is all side stuff and I'll just become a doctor. And then I developed a phobia of needles out of nowhere.

4:23

Sure.

4:38

So that wasn't really a viable option.

4:39

But in a weird way, kind of a helpful phobia. Cause it steered you off a path that you were not destined to go down.

4:42

So true. And so I was afraid to go to, like, a film school because I still wasn't sure what it all meant. So I went to Northwestern, which is where my parents met. I was still kind of following some kind of path in my head. I mean, I applied to the film

4:47

school and I thought to myself, well,

5:03

if that doesn't work out, I'll just go be a chemistry major and continue down the doctor path. But I took a screenwriting class first quarter of college, and the professor said, you're good at this. And I was like, great. Okay. And then I had to figure out how the industry works from there.

5:06

So after Northwestern, how did you actually make your move to actually really doing this? Did you come to Los Angeles? What was the process?

5:26

I interned in LA every summer of college. Hated it. I hated interning. I hated answering the phone.

5:33

So let's talk about it. So how did you get those internship jobs? And what were you doing and why did they suck so much?

5:42

So I got the first one through Northwestern. It was. There's a lot of Northwestern alums out here, and so some alum. There was some network. I actually came to LA to do the interview. And I think they were impressed by that. And so I did that. And then I just kept kind of meeting people and I interned at studios and agencies, and I was told to work at an agency. So I did. I worked at wme. That was my first job in the mailroom.

5:47

It's a very classic entry space. So back in the day, when I was going through the startup program at the mailroom, you were literally sorting mail as part of the job. And I'm sure there is some of that now. What were you actually doing when you were in the mailroom?

6:16

Yeah, it was sorting mail and delivering it. There's a lot of fear that's instilled upon you in that job, where it's just a lot of people being like, you have to know every single agent's name and who they are. And there's a lot of studying. And I knew I wanted to be a writer. I was told to lie about it to get the interview. And so in my interview, I lied and said, oh, I want to be an agent, blah, blah, blah. And then I made it my mission. I was like, once I get the job, I'll be honest and say, I want to be a writer. And so I did that. And I was in the mailroom for a week. I was lucky. I got on a desk really early and I worked for two different agents for one year. I was like in and out.

6:28

I hated it.

7:18

I want to hear about what you hated. But also, you probably took something out of it. I hope you were reading a lot.

7:19

Yeah.

7:23

Did you read everything across your desk?

7:23

Yeah. I mean, I work. I worked for a book to TV agent first. And that was lovely.

7:25

Yeah.

7:30

And I learned a lot. I read a lot of books and I. I learned a lot about that side of the business. And then I worked for a motion picture led agent and I did less reading because I had a lot of work. And I met some writers who were lovely and some of my boss's clients who agreed to read my writing. But I learned a lot about what agents do and how the industry works. That helped me. You know, once I had an agent and then I worked for a showrunner. And so I left that job and worked for a showrunner for two years. Network tv. Yeah.

7:30

And so was a showrunner who had a show on the air at that point. So it was development.

8:04

Yeah, A showrunner with a deal. Carol Mendelsohn, she did csi and at the time I worked for her. That was. That show was done and she was, you know, trying to get her next thing off the ground. So I learned about pitching and how to deal with network notes. I'm not working in broadcast, but it was really interesting to see. And staffing. I was the assistant reading staffing samples.

8:08

I want to get into all of that because you had to do this yourself and figure out what made sense for you. During this time you're doing wme, you're working for a showrunner. Are you also writing? Did you find space to actually do your own work?

8:35

Yes, I made that a priority. I had heard stories of people who come here wanting to be writers and never write. And so I had a, like, slasher movie that I wrote in college that I was rewriting. And that's what got me repped.

8:48

Right.

9:03

I was still an assistant for a year, you know, trying to get work.

9:04

So you got repped. Did you get a manager? You get an agent who was both. Okay, great.

9:08

I met my manager at a networking event.

9:11

Those things I always dread going to.

9:14

But about to work here, sometimes they work.

9:16

Tell me about that networking event and sort of, what was it about your meeting this rep that clicked in a way that they agreed to read you?

9:17

It was a, I think junior Hollywood holiday party.

9:24

And you could go there because you were working at wme. Like, how did you get into that?

9:29

I think it was open to, like, any assistant.

9:32

Okay.

9:35

And I met this young manager who had just been promoted. We were, you know, same level.

9:35

That's crucial. Yeah, you're rising at the same. Like, they're hungry. You're hungry. Rise together.

9:40

Totally. And she asked to read my script, and I sent it to her, and then, you know, didn't hear anything for months. We had a drink, and she was basically like, I'm too new to sign you. Like, without someone else on the team. And she was like, but can I send your script to some agents that I know? I was like, of course, yes. So she sent my script to a couple agents, and then I met with my agents at vrv. I met there. They really impressed me. I didn't do the thing where I met everywhere. I felt like they were very passionate about me, and I valued that and ended up signing with them.

9:45

That's great.

10:26

I was repped and trying to get work, and I had this one feature script and no TV sample. And I was like, I want a staff. And my TV agent was like, well, yeah, write a pilot. And it took me a year to finally agree to do that.

10:27

Any sense of why you were resisting that?

10:45

I don't know. I've always wanted to work in film, and I'm now, like, writing a movie that I want to direct. But the idea of working in TV and having a group of people and being a part of a team was also exciting to me. I just don't know what I was thinking when I was 23, and, like, I don't need up.

10:47

You have to give yourself some grace for being 23 years old. Yeah, it's a thing.

11:07

So I came up with an idea for a pilot, and I was in Albuquerque assisting my boss on a pilot shoot that she was doing. And I was like, I'm going to write this pilot while I'm here, because I don't have any friends here. And I had this idea, and I every day would sit and struggle. I wrote one page, and I had another idea that I was like, it's about teenagers and ghosts, and I didn't want to do.

11:12

Yeah.

11:37

So I pushed it away. I was like, I'm gonna be a serious writer and write a serious pilot. And then I'd given myself a deadline and told my agents, like, it will be ready on April 3, or whatever it was. It was, like, a week before the deadline, I'd written one page of my serious pilot, and I was like, I have to get this done. So I had, like, four days where I'd finished my job on this pilot, and then I was supposed to be back at work, and I was like, screw it. I'm writing the Teenage Ghost. And I wrote it in four days, which has never happened to me since. That script got me out of assistant land. I sold it to Amazon. I got my first staffing job like crazy.

11:38

Yeah. Because it's the thing you were supposed to write.

12:25

Yeah.

12:27

It just took you a while to realize that it was the thing you were meant to do.

12:27

Yeah.

12:30

Slasher and this ghost story. So, again, the horror general space talked about horror because I was reading an interview you did for the LA Times, and you have this quote. This genre has been so much about women as in studying feminist theory and horror. Especially back in the 70s, the genre forced men to relate to women. You're watching a woman survive, which is ultimately something that's so powerful. I'd never seen it phrased that way, but it's so true that women are almost always at the center of horror. Did you study that in class or the realization you came to yourself? Tell me about your relationship to horror and how you think it. Because your show also encompasses that.

12:31

I don't think it was something specifically that I studied in school. I've always been drawn to the genre, and I think because it explores often taboo subjects in a very visceral way. So it gets to these feelings that I think you don't otherwise feel so intensely. I read Men, Women and Chainsaws, which talks about this feminist theory behind horror. And so it's, you know, something I stole from that. But I got really into reading about horror because it. I was trying to understand why I resonated with it so much. And I really do just think it's about exploring these visceral experiences and putting characters into your biggest fears and allowing yourself to kind of face your own fears. I'm actually a very fearful person, and that's what I love about horror. I still come home after I saw Weapons. I was scared to go to bed.

13:05

Understandably. Yeah.

14:10

And the show is. So much of it was me exploring my fear of commitment, which I feel I healed through making the show good.

14:11

We talk about sort of women being at the center of horror. And I'm thinking back to the first episode and the body horror that is shown there. So not Rachel picking at herself, but also the conversation in the diner about her fear of childbirth and fear of having a giant baby and being ripped apart by a giant baby from the inside. There's a viscerality to it that is just actually true to a woman's experience of going through life is that it's. A woman's life is gorier than a man's life.

14:19

Yeah, that's true.

14:47

And it feels appropriate. I wanna talk a little bit about the pilot and then we'll get into sort of how you got there. But I printed out the first two pages here and I was wondering if you could read through some of the first page here because it gives a sense of what your voice is like. Because this first page has no dialogue and classically we're like, oh God, no one's talking on the first page and no one's gonna read it. And you made some very smart choices of like, these are short paragraphs. We're drawing you down the page. It is in courier prime. It looks delightful. Good use of some underlining, some bolding. Do you mind reading this first page?

14:48

Sure. Wow. I haven't looked at this in so long.

15:22

Yeah.

15:25

A wedding band plays the song Shout by the Eiley Brothers.

15:25

We enter mid song late to the

15:29

party open on interior summer house ballroom night.

15:30

We've been dropped into a wedding in full swing in a decadent ballroom in the dead of winter.

15:34

We're in the middle of the dance

15:40

floor surrounded by wedding guests. And they're doing the thing you do to this song. You know, the thing where you crouch down during this part. A little bit softer now. A little bit softer now. A little bit softer now. A little bit softer now.

15:41

Once the people crouch down to the

15:54

music, we can see a stunning table with an enormous, elegant, perfect wedding cake on top, positioned in front of breathtaking floor to ceiling windows looking out on a snowy paradise. We're not going to leave this shot. We won't see the scope of the space. That's for the finale. This is only a tease. And our view of the wedding cake is obscured again when all the guests rise to this part of the song. A little bit louder now. A little bit louder now. A little bit louder now. A little bit louder now. And the guests are rowdy and drunk and sweaty and alive. This is the most fun wedding you've ever seen. You wish your wedding was this fun.

15:56

Look at everyone.

16:32

They dance and dance, packed in young and old and everything in between. We watch them for longer than feels necessary. Then a harsh jump cut on the same shot. Only now it's silent. Later, no music. Only the sound of someone shouting per the song. Wailing, screaming, choking for breath between sobs. The table has been Knocked over. The cake is on the floor. The wind howls outside. Snow falling in buckets. A Russian wolfhound licks frosting off the fallen bride and groom. Cake toppers off. Someone's long, drawn out wail of grief. We cut to interior car moving highway day. A woman's left hand on the steering wheel. Engagement ring sparkling in the light. A big, stunning diamond chiron. One week earlier than six days until I do.

16:33

That's great. And then we're gonna meet Rachel and Nikki, our central couple here. The reason why I asked you to do that is it's so. It's specific, but it's also a voice. It feels like it's a person doing this thing and people are looking at the pages themselves. You use italics in smart ways. Bolds in smart ways. You're really drawing us through this. There's a nuance to things that just really works. And so if I'm a person reading this saying, like, oh, should I keep reading? Of course I'm going to keep reading. Because it just feels confident and just every moment sort of piques my curiosity.

17:22

Thank you.

17:52

When you were first describing the show to people, did you know it started like that? Do you know what it had that feel?

17:53

The show is quite different than my initial vision for it. I came up with sort of the thing, the very bad thing first.

18:00

Yeah. Oh, great.

18:10

And then figured out how to end up there.

18:11

Well, it's a classic sort of mystery, like who done it. You're working backwards because watching the show, you make the wrong assumptions about what's gonna happen, which is intentional. But you didn't know that. So you knew what the ultimate thing is, which we're not gonna say what the thing is. Did you know that it was going to be a family wedding at an isolated house?

18:14

Yes. Okay, that part. Yes. Initially, it was Portia, the sister's wedding.

18:31

Oh, interesting.

18:37

Rachel was just going to meet this family for the first time. And then in the development process became sort of more streamlined for it to be Rachel's Wedding. So, I mean, I think the visual sort of the snowy wedding was something that was there from the beginning. But I definitely figure things out in the writing.

18:38

Okay.

19:00

And so I'm one of these writers where I'm like, I'm being taken on the journey.

19:01

Yes.

19:07

I don't like outlining. It's really hard in the professional world to be someone who's like, I don't like outlining. How do I pitch something when I don't know the character yet?

19:08

Yeah. And so you and I are a lot more like that. And so it can be tough. And so I'm really. I really now want to fast forward to talking with how you work with the room when you are a person who's intuitively sort of going your own way. So talk to me about. You have this idea, this snowy wedding. We have this family. What is the first shape of it? Who are you telling it to? How does it become a thing you're starting to write a script for?

19:19

So I came up with the idea in 2020. It was my 27th birthday.

19:40

Nice.

19:46

And that's when I came up with the idea. And I was in a writer's room that was pretty time consuming. So I didn't have a lot of time to write and focus on this. So I would just write emails to myself. And I do a lot of thinking while I'm driving or taking a shower or walking. So I would just write these emails to myself. And they were themes or scenes or dialogue. It was anything, really.

19:48

Would you gather them together intentionally?

20:14

I mean, it was just like one email thread, and I would just shoot off these little things.

20:17

Love it.

20:23

Character names, title, like, anything. And then once I had time to really sit down and figure it out, it was like a year later. And so I had all these emails and I just sat and wrote. I knew at that point it was gonna be a road trip, and I just went along for the ride. And I didn't really. I think at one point I'd been like, they find a baby in a car.

20:24

Yeah.

20:49

So, okay, how do we get there?

20:50

Yeah.

20:52

And in the initial version of the pilot, you don't meet the family.

20:52

Yeah.

20:57

And then that was another thing that was kind of the system came in and said, you can't have a pilot where you aren't meeting all the characters. So I started talking about the show as like, it's a horror show about marrying the wrong person. This always happens to me. I pitch ideas to producers and execs, and there's always a, like, that's not gonna work. And so I write the script and present it with that to back myself up. It's execution dependent.

20:57

Yeah.

21:30

This is happening to me right now as I'm pitching my movie and going, I should just not pitch it and

21:31

just rewrite the movie. Yeah. It is tough. And I will say that over the course of my career, there's definitely been times where it's like, why am I on my ninth pitch for this thing? Where it's like, I could have just written it by now and Shown them what the thing is. Yeah, it's that tough balance.

21:35

I mean, it's a risk, right, because you could write it and no one could want it.

21:49

I've done that, too, which I don't

21:53

think is a waste, because at least

21:54

you have the thing. You have the perfect version of the thing that you have done. So you've written this script. Now, how does it end up at Netflix? What were the other conversations?

21:56

I pitched the show to, I don't know, maybe 12 producers. And we ended up having enough interest to split territories, which I think is rare in tv. You know, I pitched to the duffers. They had not read the script, and their response was like, this seems like a movie, and all your comps are movies. Like, I don't know.

22:06

You can get why they say that. Because as I said, like, I didn't know that it was a series. As I started watching, like, oh, I get where this movie is going. There was like, oh, no, this is a series, and I'm on the wrong. So I understand that instinct. But ultimately they came around.

22:27

Yeah. Well, then they read the script, and it was like, the next day they were like, we want to do this.

22:40

Great.

22:45

They had a deal at Netflix, and so it was clear that I would go.

22:46

And they had the little success at Netflix, too. Netflix does like them.

22:50

So.

22:54

Yes.

22:54

And they have had one other show that they were producing, but neither had been made. So it was a good time, and

22:55

it feels like a good fit. It's a very different show than Stranger Things, but it's not completely different. Not out of the wheelhouse, totally.

23:04

So I was honored that they were interested. And I was a big fan of Stranger Things from when it first dropped, so I was nervous to meet them, but they're lovely. And then I pitched to. I had two other producers that were interested that we took to all the streamers, except for hbo, who didn't want to hear the pitch, which is fine. So we went around, pitched, and we had a couple offers, and it sort of came down to Netflix and Apple, and Netflix had a better deal.

23:12

That's right. That's awesome. So you've written a pilot. My instinct is that Netflix is reading this and they'll say, we love this, and there's things we know about sort of how stuff needs to work. And so, like, we gotta meet the family. We gotta do these things. I'll say, watching the show, I'm like, wow, this thing seems really expensive. And there's no standing sets. And at the very end of the first episode, we get to, like, oh, this is a standing set, and it's gorgeous. But we're gonna be on that set for a long time, which is tv, which is great. Yeah, yeah. Which is terrific. But you had staffed on a show, but you'd never run a show. You'd never done all these things. What were the things that, looking back now, if you could, you know, magically email yourself to let you know, like, these are the things you need to keep in mind, Hayley, what would it be?

23:43

Running a show is so hard.

24:26

Yeah.

24:28

And I was told that. I was like, I'm ready. Ready to run a show. Put me in. And I was warned. You know, it's interesting because the Duffers protected me from having, like, someone come in with more experience and. Cause that can be a tricky situation, which was fantastic. But also, I was thrown into the fire a bit and had to figure these things out on my own. And, I mean, I think having a really strong North Star for what you're making is so important because the whole process is just other people coming in and sharing their ideas, which is incredible. But you can lose sight of what the show is. And that's another reason why I like to write something first, because I need to give it a spine. I have a thing I say where it's like, if I'm telling you my ideas too early, it's like a baby. It's like a floppy baby, and someone's gonna come in and, like, put their sticks in my baby, and so I gotta make sure the baby can walk before anyone else comes in and tries to push it over.

24:29

I've seen your show, and I know that stick figure people are dangerous. Signs of trouble. So, for sure, this resonates so strongly with what I was doing, because my first show, I had done Go, and then I sold a show, dc, for the WB network. And my equivalent of the Duffer Brothers was Dick Wolfe, who was not a caring, generous person and collaborator. And we were trying to shoot the show on stages in Toronto locations in D.C. and Post and writing in Los Angeles.

25:42

Wow.

26:09

You can guess how well that worked. Not at all. And like you, I didn't know what I didn't know. Maybe you were more confident and could ask the questions and sort of get the answers you needed. But I just. I was. I had imposter syndrome and was afraid to sort of tell people what I actually needed. And it was tough.

26:09

It's really hard. I had a great producer, Andrea Sperling, who comes from the indie. Indie film world, who was with me on the ground in Toronto.

26:24

Good.

26:33

Every single meeting I was doing was the first time for me. So go into a production meeting, things would happen afterwards. I'd be like, is this normal? Is that normal? Should I be worrying about this? And because I felt so confident in the story, that's really all I needed. And I knew I was well supported. And that's advice the duffers gave me was like, you're going to get all these notes and you have to feel confident about every creative decision that you make because you're the one who has to stand behind it. That was what I did. And yeah, it's challenging to enter a space for the first time and be like, I'm the leader.

26:33

Yeah.

27:13

And I was worried people wouldn't respect me. That was my biggest fear.

27:13

I feel the same.

27:17

But for the most part they did.

27:18

That's good. Yeah. Before you started shooting in Toronto, you were writing the whole season. And so you're a person who likes to write things yourself. And I'm sure you did a ton of writing, but you also had some other people working. Was it a challenge to get used to working with other writers on a thing to discuss? I have to imagine it was. Again, sending yourself that email back in time. What are things that you learned along the way?

27:20

Yeah, I mean, I think having a strong group of writers with different skill sets was very helpful. I had a. A married couple in the writers room that were both non traditional TV writers in that they were chaotic and liked to blow things up and go, I know we just broke these two episodes, but like, we should flip em. And I loved that because I think I put my writers through a bit of hell. There were a lot of things I would do differently next time. I was kind of chaotic in running the room and that I was just like, it was so much harder than I expected because I am someone who figures things out on the page where I would see the outline and just go, like, I don't think so. And then I would make it everyone else's problem and come back in and go, okay, we need to change this. So it was great to have a team of people who were down for that. I don't know how. How to do it differently and end up where we ended up. Because you kind of have to go through this process of going down, like every path just to make sure that

27:44

there's something interesting right there that you've

29:00

been saying, yeah, so. And I. And I felt armed with that when I got to prep and on set and talking to actors because they Would have ideas that were a path I went down. And I get to say, well, I tried that and here's why it didn't work. So, yeah, I mean, it was very helpful to have. I find it helpful to have a lot of other people bringing different ideas in. But again, it comes back to that, like North Star and knowing that's a cool idea, but it's not this show.

29:02

So you had your producer on set with you in Toronto. Did you have anybody from the writing room with you in Toronto? Yeah. Would that have been helpful?

29:30

Yes.

29:37

Yeah, I can imagine. There's gotta be times. Were you block shooting? Were you doing an episode at a time? How did it work?

29:37

Oh, God, it was insane. We shot 72 days.

29:42

Oh, that's not very much.

29:46

For eight episodes.

29:47

For eight episodes?

29:48

No, 72 days. We were almost always shooting two units at once.

29:49

Yeah, that's where it gets rough.

29:53

So it was like, you know, we were prepping episode five while shooting two and three at the same time with three different directors. And I was just running back and forth between everything. It was chaotic, but we got everything somehow. I don't know how. Good planning, I guess. And I was just writing the whole time. That was another thing. I was told that that's what would happen, and I didn't believe it. I was like, no, the scripts are in good shape. We had 20 weeks to write the show. I left the writer's room with. And casting started during the writer's room. I left the room with six first drafts. The pilot had already been written and rewritten many times. Six first drafts and no finale.

29:55

Yeah.

30:41

And I was, like, alone in Toronto, rewriting every episode just to do the network notes, like, let alone production needs and actors opinions and directors. And so that was insane. And I'm writing the finale while we're shooting.

30:41

And I would say that based on my conversations with showrunners, that's really common and yet not a great way to make the best thing you want to make. Yeah. And it ends a lot of exhaustion. That sort of comes with that.

30:59

Yeah.

31:10

Let's answer some Lister questions. But I think some of those questions may sort of tie us back into things we were just talking about. Do you want to start with Cary?

31:11

Yeah. I'm currently in my first ever development process with a spec I wrote. I attached producers and did essentially a page one rewrite of the script per their notes. Now they have pages and pages of more notes on the rewrite. Sometimes I feel like since I'm a younger writer, I'm getting more Notes than someone older or more established might have. You found this to be true in your early days. And how do you not lose confidence in your work during this process?

31:17

It's not that I remember it. It still happens. It's just that it's being able to recognize that, okay, this is a note that it's really important to them that actually needs to be addressed. And this is just a thing they're saying or they're diagnosing something that is not working for them, but they're trying to provide a solution that's not the right solution.

31:42

Right.

32:00

How are you feeling?

32:01

Yeah, I definitely understand that I got notes on the show that mostly in the edit, where I would get notes that were like, you can't do this, or a note about an editing thing that I was like, oh, I'm subverting that. Like, that's intentional. But because you see me as someone who doesn't have experience. Yeah. You think you're explaining something to me. So I get that.

32:02

It's frustrating.

32:27

I think I have had to learn how to handle the politics of seeing the bigger notes, trying to address the ones that feel true to me. And you don't have to take their ideas. You have to diagnose the note behind the note and then defend why you made the choice you made. And I think that people become more confident in you if you have a strong opinion about, you know, I hear you. This is how I'm understanding your note. This is how I addressed it. And they. They'll relax and understand that you know what you're doing.

32:27

Yeah. What you just said, the. I hear you. Sometimes they just want to know that they actually. The message got through and they actually understand what they're communicating. And also, this is how. This is what I'm doing, and this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. And finding the right ways to do that that makes sense is tough. And it's. There's a gendered component, there's an age component, there's. All that stuff is true. And so you and I can both be hit by the same note. And it's going to come. We could say the same thing. It's going to read differently based on who we are.

33:05

Totally. And I think having a relationship with your producers or studio exec, where you're calling them, and when we were getting notes on cuts, Netflix would just send emails. And I was like, let's talk on the phone.

33:30

Yeah.

33:44

And you can kind of get through a bit of the understanding of where the note's coming from easier if you have a real conversation about it.

33:45

I was just on a kickoff call on a project today, and they asked, like, do you like to see written notes or have a phone call? And I said, written first, but then a phone call. It's really whatever works for you. And it was good that they asked. That's smart. I had a question about casting, because this is your first time casting. I love casting. Did you love casting?

33:53

Yes.

34:10

Yeah.

34:10

It's so fun.

34:11

It's so much fun. Cause it's all possibilities and nothing's permanent. And it's just you get to play, which is great. You have these talented actors come in, you see, like, oh, it's especially gratifying when sort of no one gets it right, and then suddenly you get a person who gets it right. Like, oh, it was not crazy that that line actually does make sense. It's just that the right person has to embody it. I thought Camilla Moroney is fantastic. And everyone must note that she does think that the Rachel seems very much your energy. And it was just a really good fit. I hope it was a great experience doing that.

34:11

Yeah. It's so funny. I have told her that I'm going to blame her for this, but I met her and she was like, oh, I'm going to copy your look for the character. And I was like, okay, it's not based on me, but go ahead. I was a fan of hers since never going back. I thought she was so great, and she's a very naturalistic actor, and she brought so much to the character, and she's very smart and hardworking. I'm lucky that she did such a great job. And I was in the edit, like, just, oh, thank God. I don't have to.

34:43

Yeah, you're not cutting around a person. Yeah, yeah. I've been there at cutting around a performance, and it's tough.

35:15

Yeah.

35:21

Yeah. How did you like being on set and what was your experience being on set? Where was it great that you were there? And when did you say, like, okay, I know what. I can walk away. Tell me about that.

35:21

I think being on set for the, you know, setups and rehearsal and the early parts of figuring out a scene was really great, and I enjoyed being there and helping to answer questions. I am also a director, and it was hard for me to not be able to do that on the show.

35:31

Absolutely.

35:51

So then there's a certain point where it's like, I don't think I'm helping by sitting here and, like, whispering things to the director. Like, she. I'm gonna let her do her thing.

35:53

And, like, we got really good directors on that show, too. But you're always gonna do things differently. And so, you know, it sounds like you're there for blocking, making sure, like, that it's the right scene, that it's the right thing. And you probably had tone meetings before everything, too, so you know what the thing is. But, like, you don't need to be there for all the coverage if you know what the scene is.

36:01

Totally. There were some. I think, like, the finale, I spent more time on set and scenes where I felt like there's a lot of layers here, and I want to make sure that it's all being communicated. But, yeah, I mean, I was also just doing so much writing during production.

36:21

You need to actually do that stuff.

36:38

Yeah.

36:40

I have a question here from Danielle about splitting scenes. That feels right.

36:40

I'm writing a script where the first half of the film, we see what we think is happening. And in the second half of the film, we see what's really happening. For some scenes, I have the beginnings in the first half, and we don't get the true ending till the second

36:44

half of the film.

36:55

How can I make it clear in the script that this is a continuation of a previous scene? Can I just write that in the script, or is there a specific terminology for that?

36:56

Yeah, you split some stuff up. You made it clear in what we just read that things are going to be divided. I think she should just say what she's doing. People try to be too clever. There's some sort of magic lingo. Say what you're doing and just trust that people are actually reading your script.

37:04

I agree. I think always go for clarity. In what? I'm big in audience understanding. I got made fun of in a writer's room for always being like, well, the audience thinks this or the audience this. It's like, oh, Haley speaks for the audience. You kind of speak for the audience. Of course.

37:19

Yeah.

37:36

So I'm really. When I'm writing, I am thinking about the reader and I'm thinking about what the feeling is of the scene and what you should feel watching the scene. So I write a lot of things that never gonna translate to screen, but I think help the reader and the actor and the director, if it's not me, figure out the tone and what you should take away from the scene. So there's like a line in the script where I think Nikki says to Rachel, everything's gonna be okay or nothing bad's gonna happen. And there's a line that's like, well, that's the title of the show. I like to have fun with that. But, yeah, I think just be completely clear what you're doing and people won't be confused.

37:37

In your script, in the PDF, we got the word blood is in red every time we see it. A very specific choice. Watching the show isn't going to show up. But that was a choice you made. Tell me about that.

38:17

I just wanted to make it clear the blood is very significant in this show and I wanted the reader to be aware of that. When I was talking about, you know, the look of the show, I wanted no red except for blood.

38:28

Yeah.

38:46

Which actually I in part hired my costume designer, Courtney Mitchell, who did a fantastic job because in her interview, she pitched a bunch of red. And I was like, that's really bold to go against what I said. And so Rachel does wear a bit of red. But, yeah, I wanted to highlight that so I didn't end up keeping that in the rest of the show while we were getting into production drafts and everything. Cause my revisions were in red.

38:47

Yeah, exactly. It's getting confusing.

39:16

But I did do it in the finale. I don't know. You gotta have fun with the writing.

39:17

Yeah. Make it an enjoyable read and people will actually read it. That's a secret. All right, let's jump ahead to our one cool things. My one cool thing is that I'll link to a blog post by Daniel Frank. He calls it the Five Babkas thing. Basically, it's where you have a tasting, a party where you just do a tasting, where the idea is you're bringing five different examples of a thing and everyone's going to taste them and try them and discuss through things. And we've done similar things with Austrian white wines. Or it's just a good excuse to get people together. And sometimes you just need a point of focus. I went to a birthday party where they got all the hot sauces from Hot Ones and a bunch of chicken wings. And everyone just did the hot Ones challenge, which was fun. So just as an idea for an excuse to get people together, you're going to try five different things with thing and everyone have a point of discussion. It doesn't have to be a wine tasting. It just can be anything. So I'll link to this post. But just any good excuse for getting people together I think is a fun one.

39:21

Yeah, I love that. I want to do that.

40:17

Yeah, we'll do that. What kind of things would you want to sample or have people compare and Contrast.

40:19

Running the show gave me celiac.

40:23

Oh, no.

40:25

I was told by a showrunner you're gonna get an autoimmune disease.

40:27

Yeah.

40:30

And you're right. So I think maybe like gluten free pastries. Gluten free pastries around la. I'm like, new to it, so I don't really know what.

40:31

There's amazing ones in Los Angeles. And so in your gluten free quest, there is. La Provence Bakery on Olympic has a gluten free chocolate chip cookie, which is the best chocolate chip cookie you've had in your entire life.

40:39

That's amazing.

40:50

So. And we actually did a tasting here on Scriptnotes once. We did a cookie tasting, a cookie challenge. And it was fun.

40:50

So that's great.

40:57

Yeah. And again, like, things that aren't alcohol based is also a great idea too.

40:57

I got some, some whiskey from a bunch of different companies who are trying to woo me right now.

41:02

Yeah, sure.

41:09

I did a blind taste test with some friends.

41:10

Yeah.

41:12

Comparing, like, which company gave me the best whiskey.

41:12

Restaurants too will get like the beer flight or the. Or like the tequila flight. So you can actually taste different things. It's like I don't want like a full drink of that thing. Like just a sip to see, like what the difference is. Great. I love it.

41:16

Yeah.

41:27

Cool. Any one cool thing to share with our group.

41:27

So I've been listening to the radio. The real radio.

41:30

The real radio. Okay, so tell me about the real radio.

41:33

Well, I only listen to one thing. I mean, I listen to kcrw. I'm trying to become more worldly. So I put on the radio.

41:35

Yeah.

41:42

And I discovered there's a show on KCRW called Freaks Only, which is like every night, I think. Or maybe it's only Wednesdays, I don't know exactly. But I put it on and it's just like weird music for Freaks Only. I tried to put a song from it in the show and everyone hated it. It was like me and my editor

41:42

were both like, yeah, well, what's the song? I'm sure I'm going to love it.

42:05

It's called Atomic Wave Dance.

42:08

All right.

42:09

It's just like a weird electronic jazz song. I don't remember who it's by, but it's great. And so I put it in the show and then the producers were like, is that song like how attached are you? And Netflix was like, I don't know about that song. Which made me like it more, of course. But I lost the battle. But I love discovering music via specifically that show. But Things like that. I listen to a lot of obscure music. My brother had a radio show called Abstractions that doesn't exist anymore. But it's something that my brother and I have nothing in common except for our music taste. So I will send him a song from that show and be like, this is a very you song.

42:11

While watching your show. I did Shazam at one point. It was a Paul Anka song and I loved it. Was that always scripted in there?

42:56

No.

43:02

How'd you find that?

43:03

My music supervisor, Tiffany. It plays a role in the show, and I don't remember what it was initially, but she found that song and I didn't know who Paulinka was, but there was a song in episode four, you Are the Blood by the Castanets, that was written into the end of the pilot.

43:04

Nice.

43:22

Originally, I listen to music while I write and I make playlists for every project. And I love the part of the edit where you're placing music. It's so fun.

43:23

That is our show for this week. Script Prince is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Cillelli. Our outro this week is very appropriately by Gloom Canyon. If you have an outro, you can send a link to askjohnaugus.com that's also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You'll find transcripts@johnaugus.com along with a sign up for a weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. I'm realizing, Hayley, like the posts you read on johnaugus.com are still there.

43:36

Oh, wow.

44:02

Everything you've ever read on johnaugus.com is still there and searchable and accessible.

44:03

Amazing.

44:06

Yeah. That's just wild though. The Scriptnotes book is available wherever you buy books. You'll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube, including probably clips from this. We're recording some video for this. We'll see. Yeah, why not? You'll find those on YouTube. Just search for script notes and give us a follow. You'll find us on Instagram at Scriptnotes Podcast. We have T shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You'll find those at Cotton Bureau. You can find the show notes with links to all the things we talked about in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all our premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign on to become one@scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we're about to record on red herrings and misdirects. Hey, Lazy Boston, an absolute pleasure to talk with you. Congratulations again on your show. It's just a delight. Something very bad is going to happen and it's something very delightful is going to happen if you've watched your show. Thanks.

44:07