Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - The Greatest Gatsby

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Soren & Daniel talk about the transition from Cracked to writing for TV, how hard it was to learn the structures of their respective shows, the colleagues that showed them grace, and how to write your Greatest Gatsby. Find Soren & Daniel on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.social You can support the show and get a bonus episode of that very show every other Friday for $5/month at www.patreon.com/quickquestion. Subscriber episodes are also now available on Apple Podcasts.

If you're doing your shopping while working, eating or even listening to this walk, then you know and love the excitement of the shopping. But are you afraid of getting the best deal? Rakuten members, yes. They store the brands they like and make important savings, in addition to cash returns. And you can also start making money from your favorite stores, like Old Navy, Best Buy and Expedia, and even accumulate sales and cash returns in your favorite stores, like Old Navy, Best Buy and Expedia,

and even accumulate sales and cash returns. It's easy to use and get your returns through Paypal or check. The idea is simple. The stores make Rakuten to send them to people who store it. And Rakuten shares the money with you in the form of returns. Download the free Rakuten app and never miss a good deal.

Or go to rakuten.ca to get more for your money. It's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. I've got a quick quick question for you alright The answer's not important I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite? Who did you get? Who would I be? Who do you remember? What's it out there? What did I do? What do we know? Oh forget it I saw a movie Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers

If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren Daniel the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask Each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast senior writer for last week tonight with John Oliver author of how to fight presidents and John Oliver jr. Daniel O'Brien joined as always by my co-host mr. Soren, will he soren say hello? Jesus what a development. So you found out who your real dad was. I recently

guested. Hold on sorry I'm Soren Bowie I'm a writer for American Dad. Hi everybody. Okay Dan what the fuck. I recently guested on the thrilling podcast from Katie Stoll and Cody Johnston, the Even More News podcast, and they do theirs on video as well. And so that came out on YouTube. And they've got, I get very curious about audience overlap, because there are still so many people who I, I, I'm explaining why I found myself in the comments, reading YouTube comments, like a little warm. Um, I, oh, this is a long preamble to describe why you actually read any comments. Okay. Go ahead. I do want to hear it. I'm curious. I'm curious how like effective my own messaging and, and branding has been. Okay. okay because to me it's very clear I wrote things on cracked and I was like very loud about what my job title was on

cracked at the end of every column I wrote and was very public-facing person there and I was really active on Twitter so when I left cracked to me that was like news that surely everyone would know about. And then when I left there for, or when I left unemployment for last week tonight, I thought surely people have been following my career and they know where I'm at. And some people did, but a lot of people based on those comments have no idea where I work or that we do a podcast together, it's very surprising to me just how like, how little control we actually have over like, telling people where we are and where they can get updates

and like what we're doing. Yeah, messaging, like all of our important, like the whole fucking reason we all got Twitter in the first place and got all these social media things was so we can like give people updates and tell them where they can they can find us. It hasn't been very effective even for people who are like died in the wool fans of ours just by virtue of the fact that they're they've kept up with Katie and Cody but still somehow like Have no idea what you and I are up to

anyway, I was reading the comments to learn about messaging and the effectiveness of messaging and because I am pathetic I was like, let's see what all of these new people think about how I look now because maybe I was I was just like stroking my own ego. We'd, you and I had recorded that day and you were talking about how great my hair looked and I was just like stroking my own ego. You and I had recorded that day and you were talking about how great my hair looked. And I was like, this is- I see in general, Dan. I'm going to say a little- go a little further just real quickly before you say this. Everything about you, you just look good, man. It's clear you've been working out.

It's clear- This is like very funny that you've taken some pride in who you are. You said everything about you and then your screen froze. So I don't know if you kept talking. And it seems like, it seems like a pretty crucial part of the conversation. I was saying everything about you. It looks like you like, you've paid some real attention to how you dress, to the shape of your body that you have been working out clearly.

Like you look good, man. You know what you do? You look like, you look like a groom who's about to get married. Somebody who's like, you know what? I gotta put some shit together. I gotta get myself sorted because everybody's gonna be looking at me

for long periods of time. Yeah, and you wanna look good and you wanna feel good on your wedding day. So when people have stopped me to say that I look trim, I'm just like, yes, thank you. I'm fucking starving all the time. It's real. It's a real bummer of a way to exist. But anyway, I thought I was kind of looking okay, too. And I thought let's, if there's something that I'm absolutely fishing for in those comments,

which I'm not so proud to admit, I'm wanting people, this is a specific group of people who proud to admit. I'm wanting people, this is a specific group of people who followed our work when we were in our 20s, then have not kept up with us for the last at least six or seven years, and now they're seeing us again. What I'm fishing for is, is it just me or is he aging backwards? That's what I what I'm I'm thinking like this is what I'm hoping to get out of this to feed my worthless ego so I can I can like continue on for another day and There were a lot of dirt. There were a few very kind people in there, but I was so Struck by the sheer amount of people who said, is it just me

or is he starting to look like John Oliver? Maybe they just spent so much time together working with each other that it's rubbing off. A thing that doesn't happen. And I, like, really, like, John is famous for being on television and being on stage and in movies. He is not an unhandsome person. He's a tall man with a nice smile and people come from all over to see him. It's not... it's not an insult. It's not the look I'm going for. It's not a thing that I have ever

thought when I look at him at a meeting and I'm just like, we could be twins. Because the man is like 11 years older than I am. And just has like a completely different, in my opinion, facial structure than what I've got going on. And just know the, my, you can see my ego falling right off a cliff as I go into this thinking like, I'm looking fucking tan, I'm looking young, I'm looking in shape. Now to just find some confirmation from people.

Oh, what's that? I look like a 47 year old man? A British man who doesn't go in the sun? Oh, oh drat. Oh dear. Oh bother. I don't know why I'm surprised at all by this, but like, the fact that you went into the comments thinking anyone was even going to be talking about what

you looked like, I was like, that's audacious. Like, there's no way, like, they're going to be talking about, nobody does that. Nobody does that. And then you go in the comments and that's all fucking anybody's doing. They're going to notice, first of all, which I expect people to notice when you look different or the same, but then to be like, and now I got to tell everyone and they're doing it and that you're finding like enough that you can create a scatterplot graph of how you're trending within the audience is amazing. I don't like the way it's trending either. I don't think that that's right.

And if there's any sort of solace I can offer you, Daniel, it's this. Do you remember Sweet James? The accident lawyer in Los Angeles whose billboards were everywhere? Yeah. Yes. So there was a time when Daniel still lived here, or maybe you were. This podcast is for everyone. Yeah. I think he's also in Vegas too. So we've got like oh, yeah our big hotspot the big quick question hotspot in Vegas People thought for a long time this accident lawyer looked like Daniel and they were not afraid to tell him that and this accident lawyer here Here's the only thing that looked like Daniel the guy would wear a vest which is like something didB used to do. Like uh, very early days of crack, like a vest was part of your signature in Agents

of Crack and stuff. And then he had glasses. And that was pretty much fucking it. That's the only thing that looked even remotely like Daniel. Now, what I would hope that that lesson had taught you, and something that I figured out very early on with my own career, because I was trying to be an actor for a while, so that was all about how you look, is that the any the tiniest little thing it reminds somebody of somebody else and they're like, you look exactly like this person. So for a very long time when I had actual blonde hair,

any any other human being on earth that had blonde hair, people were like, oh, you know who you'll look like? You'll look like the guy from Cobra Kai or like they, any other blonde hair person in the world. And now that I have sort of like a gray hair and like this haircut, fucking, it does not matter how close I am to these other people. That's what they assume. They're like, you're Steve Kerr. I have guys walking up to me at the gym, like fighting away other people to get to me to be like, you look just like Steve Kerr. And I'm like, okay, thank you.

Wow. Thank you. Steve Kerr who is famously like 65 years old. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. He just had to miss like a quarter of his season because he injured his back coaching. Coach too hard.

Coach too hard without stretching. You don't do that. And so I wouldn't, they're just excited to know that you are in some way associated with John Oliver and they're excited to like announce that connection. And so they're doing that. Here's the one I always get. It's not like a, you look like this person, but as soon as people know that I write for American dad and I'm on something else where they get to, they get to give

them that information, they are so pumped to be like, that joke should go on American dad or like that here's something for American dad. No, that's, I could totally see Stan saying that. Like they just want to be In it like they want to like you know And they want you to know and you want everyone around you to know that like this person knows you a little bit better Than anybody else which is like I get that impulse just like cutting through the noise, but it's they're They're just ham-fisted at it. That's all yeah They used to the thing they used to do and again,, and again, it's all coming from a kind place,

I imagine. But I think we've talked about this before, where people have commented on things, Twitter and elsewhere. It's like, I can really hear your voice in Last Week Tonight. It's really coming through. There's some stuff that I just know is yours. And I want to be like, lock that down that's not the job don't say things like that this is John's show and his voice and I'm just I'm a chameleon

doing that thing do not yeah what the fuck up about hearing me I mean yeah a whole episode about airbud that was just a coincidence I'm gonna say that airbud episode that was so clearly obsessive pop culture disorder. You can't be like, hey look at that, it's just another general episode of that last week tonight. There he goes again talking about a 90s movie about a dog playing basketball like he always does on this news show. There's a, occasionally I'll like hear from somebody who's excited that like ever since Soren's been writing for American Dad, like the show has been great. And I'm like, that's so kind of you. And then they'll be like, I love this episode and this episode and this episode. And I'm like, yeah, those are all Bret and Robert's episodes.

I agree. Those are really good. Those guys are really good writers. They're not mine and they don't take a lot of input. So thank you though. That's I appreciate it. We don't, uh, I don't always play the, which jokes are yours game with fiance. Some of the times she, she has a really great ear

for things that are mine, but sometimes it's just an episode where I didn't get a lot of stuff in and she's enjoying it, the episode. Like, come on, which jokes are these? And I'd have to just be like, I was largely a structure guy on this one. This was like, this story was my pitch

and I sort of like, a lot of my energy went into framing from being totally honest with you but which is an important thing it frees up the other people to do the jokes that you like also it's what makes room is that's the runway to the jokes yeah like you have to you have to you have to build the room before you can decorate it baby to build the room before you can decorate it, baby. Yeah, I also, I will occasionally watch the show with either my, my parent, my mom, or with my wife and just sort of like watching them, because I know when my jokes are coming up in somebody else's episode, I know in like something I pitched like a story note where I was like, it would be cool if like it went this direction and it got in.

I'll just like check in with them, see if they're getting anything out of it. And so rarely am I pleased. Yeah. So rarely am I seeing what I want to see. I was, I can't remember if I've ever asked you this, did you have a viewing party for the first, A, the first episode that you worked on and you got material in and B, the first episode where it was, it said on screen written by Soren Buie.

No, I didn't do anything for, written by Soren Buie. Cause those are- No, I didn't do anything for, like my first joke or whatever, I didn't, I wouldn't even be able to tell you what it was. It wasn't, that didn't feel like a victory. It just felt like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. I was like, oh thank God. I did something that they actually want. But for my first written episode, I had... I hope that you have something like this.

I had my mom and my dad and then my good family friends from growing up who were sort of like a mom and dad that I had as well. They're daughters, I call my sisters, but they're very, very close family friends that we've had our entire lives. And we were all together. Now, and so Colleen was there too. This is not the demographic for American Dad. This is, this is, there was other than my wife and I, everybody else was over 70.

Okay. And we were watching American Dad, a show that they did not know, that my mom calls Modern Dad. Excellent. And Stan would hate that. They were, it was as bad as a reception as you could imagine. Silence, pure silence as we're watching it. Occasionally, the other couple would look at each other like,

we're still doing this, huh? We're still watching this. Is this going well? And then my mom saying, trying to help the situation, my mom going, well, I'm sure they changed a lot of your stuff, right? Holy cow. Yeah. Brutal.

It's just like brutal. And got to the end and was like wow I I'm so glad that I had all those years it cracked to prepare me for people hating my shit Yeah, so badly I think mine was brutal in a Different way because I was I was crashing with my brother and sister-in-law in New Jersey before I found a place out here when I first started last week tonight and I was so pumped and I would would watch it with them every week we would watch it as it came out and I would shamelessly say that was my joke or or like make a big show of turning and

looking at them to see if they're laughing at it so I can get pretty good bit that's pretty good take credit for the jokes that are mine and like no regrets I was very excited and pumped to get jokes on on HBO and to see my name in the credits and everything like that. In retrospect, and they were excited for me, like it was a big event for all of us to do this together. In retrospect, just because I didn't really understand what went into making an episode of the show, I don't... it was like one joke an episode that I was like, yeah, claiming credit for. And at the time I, you know, were

throwing... it's a room full of ten very capable comedy writers giving a million different joke options for every potential setup and I was just thinking like, you know, it's whatever we all, everything, the whole show gets written by all of us together. Uh, and sometimes I'll get one joke in, sometimes I'll get a bunch. Sometimes I won't get any. And that's just the nature of television. Nah, I'm pretty wrong about that. I get a lot of jokes on now because I'm better at the job. I figured it out. Yeah. And in the beginning, in the beginning as I'm just sitting there in the ocean thinking

like, it's crazy that we all get one joke on and that's how the show gets written. It's like, no, there's a lot of heavy hitters carrying you on their shoulders, buddy. Yeah, to the credit of my family, friends, and my own mom and dad, my first episode is kind of mediocre. I didn't really get it yet. I can think back on my writer's draft and be like, oh yeah, oh yeah, you didn't really know the show. You didn't really know what you were doing.

And yeah, it felt the same way where the first time in the room, generally on a comedy show you have like a section that's it's just not hitting and it's not the laughs aren't coming so you'll the last for a new joke and so you have a whole group of people and you're all gonna come up with like 15 versions of that joke that are just the you whatever you think can beat it and then all those get read in the room to the rest of the writers and everyone kind of like it becomes clear based on like a laugh-a-meter basically which joke is like hitting the writers and everyone kind of like it becomes clear based on like a laugh-o-meter basically which joke is like hitting the best and which one's going to work for that scene and the first time that I did that and and had a joke that actually like stopped the room that

like made everybody laugh so hard that's when I was like I was like going to go home and just brag to cully yeah I was like you wouldn't believe it. I made all of those those funny people at work. I made them laugh. Also very humbling to realize, oh, I should have been doing this the whole time. That's what the job is. Oh, I see. I'm supposed to be fucking do you. I've been calling myself a structure guy. You're just throwing stuff at the wall. You're doing jokes you already know work. Like you're doing jokes that you have to know. You have to believe in it when you put it even out there. Yeah. It was a, we were kids, man. We were young. We didn't know any better.

I was like 35. You guys have to understand this was 2018. Yeah, different time. We were all on so much fucking coke back then. At some point I will talk on the show, I'm sure, about all the mistakes that I made when I first started the show and why I should never have been invited back after that first season because I was, it was a, I I just didn't I didn't get it and I didn't I wasn't willing to just sit there and listen to figure out how the show worked I was just so panicked and desperate to prove myself that I was just jumping from landmine to landmine it was brutal I so I came in, um, in season five that summer. So the show, I put like three months in before the show went on hiatus in between seasons

from just like August to November, however much time that is. I remember that. they in that time I apart from my packet for the job and my in the room interview skills apart from those things I gave them no compelling reason to keep me it is purely just them having been around the block with writers on the show long enough that they know that no one is gonna figure it out in three months and especially no one's gonna figure it out Coming in at the end of the season is is like kind of a difficult time Everyone's got senioritis. No writers all of whom are our friends now. None of them wanted to be like Alright, let's take this kid under my wing and like show them the ropes here. They were so

Done with the season and certainly just didn't didn't have like the the patience to deal with someone who was like I Love it here. Not only am I excited to be here at this show Gosh, New York is big just this like somehow corn-fed moron who was just like, let's all go around the room and say our comedy heroes, please! And no one wanted anything to do with me, so I was like a bad culture fit in the beginning and not getting a lot of jokes on and not... Like baseline terrified as I am all the time, but I still would argue that I was not scared enough. I wasn't checking in with myself and being like, hey, you should do like an audit of how much you're getting into the show and then like make some panicked

decisions based on that. But like I- I was just like so happy to be there. And if I got, again, if I got one joke on, I was like, this is, you can't say I didn't contribute. That's comedy, baby. I did, I did. I can point to something that I made here. Paycheck, please. But it was truly like my end of year meeting

was not a scary thing at all. I was just like, I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for having me. And if you have any advice. And they were like, yeah, I mean, just don't be afraid to get a little bit weirder with your jokes. Just push it a little bit farther. We will never tell you to pull back. So just like, you know, they were as gently as possible. That's a rock. Letting me know, like, you are not giving us the thing that we hired you for. You are not giving us you're not surprising us. You're doing very capable.

Last week tonight jokes, but like, this was the advice they were giving me was like, go, go for it. Act like you Act like you're trying to impress us and you want to keep this job Getting jokes that you're getting notes that your jokes are are Maybe milk toast but at worst predictable. Yeah safe fucking rough I didn't I didn't Take that I with as much fear as I probably should have at the time. I was like, okay, I'm... you guys don't really know me well. I'm so weird. You're not gonna like it.

You're not gonna like how weird and obsessive I get with certain jokes and bits. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no, we're gonna like that. And that, like, Smash cut to now where I've been writing different versions of Shell Silverstein eight more pussy than elf jokes every year into every script and they're like they're still not telling me to be less weird, but I can see that like Is this what you guys thought you were getting is this? Yeah, I turned it up It's easier for me to turn it down or turn it up This is what you want. I could do a lot of Roald Dahl too. Guy ate a lot of pussy over there as well.

Yeah, I can't count the number of times that I was told by senior writers, like right or more senior to me, to just shut the fuck up and listen in like the nicest terms. Nobody ever said specifically that, but like they were so kind about it and like you don't have to solve every problem. I was like, yeah, but I'm going to get a lot of them. The room would get quiet and it was just like this instinct in me of like, we're stuck. We're stuck. And I would, I'm just going to start throwing stuff out there because somebody should. And that was, that was such the wrong fucking instinct early on. Anyway, I, I never I it was very tough early on and

it was tough by my own doing. I was a I was young and dumb. A young boy of 35. And I think it's better now, although I'm sure that like if the show continues or I go on another show and I look back on this in six years, I'll be like, oh, dude, you were so you didn't you didn't even get it. He still didn't get it. Yeah. co-worker, former co-worker Jill Twist, who in season six, like after we come back from the hiatus and everyone recharged, it was very clear that she had made the decision in between seasons because like two weeks into pre-production she and no one had done it before or since with anyone but she was like, hey let's have a meeting the two of us and I was like just a couple of peers talking and she just like very patiently was like going through a script that I had submitted to

the show and sort of going through like here's what works about this just very like didn't put on any kind of like airs about hey kid I'm gonna teach you the ropes here yeah but just had like, just by observing the quality of my work and the the bigness of my smile, just knew that I was like a lost lamb that needed very basic guidance on like what the job is and how it works. And it never felt like a lecture or school to me. It was always just like, oh, this is a cool, rare conversation. I'm glad to be getting this. But in retrospect, that was like, oh, you're really like going completely out of your way to save my job. It also doesn't feel that way either. It

doesn't feel like they're doing this heroic kindness for you either. It's just like, oh, and now this part of the job where somebody else talks, I read my work, they must read it too. oh, now this part of the job where somebody else talks, they look, I read my work. They must read it too. Like you don't realize like what effort it is to do that. Incredibly basic stuff where she was like, now you can write as many jokes in a script as, as you can think of as many as you want, but what we would never do, you would never play a video clip in this show and then come out from that without a joke unless it's really like frustrating or really bad. The clip is so sad that you have to go like that's awful or that's terrible or she's right or whatever. Unless it's one of those you this is where you absolutely have to put the joke in to the script because she'd probably

notice that I'd gone through a video clip without a joke. If I couldn't think of one, I just thought like, well, skip that one for now. But at the time, we're just like, oh, hey, that is the structure of the show I've been writing for three months. That's a good point. I never noticed that before. Ha ha ha ha ha. It's amazing to think that you could start a job and be so bad at it. Because in my mind, I'm like, every job I've ever had I've been great at. I think to myself, I've always been really good at all my jobs. And then I think back to getting hired at Cracked. My first year as an editor and then having a meeting with Jack at the end of it that was like your performance review and not getting a raise and then like hearing him

talk about the work that I had done and I didn't fucking get it yet. I just didn't understand. I was not a good editor and I was like late on my column sometimes and my column was also all over the place. Like it was it was was clearly, he's like, just, it was opposite conversation where it was like, just having the clear joke, have like a clear joke. Have like, cause I kept trying to do layers and layers and put hats on hats, my column. And it was like a nonsense.

And, and looking back on it, I was like, oh no, I think I was bad at every job for the first 12 months of it. And then I kind of figure it out. every job for the first 12 months of it. And then I kind of figure it out. It's so funny talking to people who, who don't work in writing or comedy. And just like, as I'm explaining the structure of a last week, tonight episode and it was like, yeah,

we'll have some like expository setup language that gets to a clip. And then we come out of the clip with a joke joke and then we have some more exposition and then a clip and the show is like navigating from clip to clip with jokes in between there and the people I'm talking to are like yeah skip I know this skip ahead I've seen the show and I want to be like well I didn't know that when I started here I was very surprised to learn five months in that there was a rhythm to it. I Don't know where you all found out It's miss structures hard

Structure is tough. I just like just it was a tough. I think just like just it was a lack of noticing patterns for me because when you just sort of watch the show uh it feels so effortless yeah unclinically it just feels like this is a comedic monologue basically it's one person on stage talking with some clips and as long as I'm like writing it and I feel like in terms of flow I'm putting jokes in where I feel like a joke could work or where there hasn't been a laugh in a while then it seems right to me it seems like I'm handing in a script that is a lot of information and a bunch of jokes isn't that what we do and in a way it is but also like you can't you can't not catch the patterns that have been in every episode of the show. Turns out you can. Turns out you can.

Turns out even if you're a musician you can be tone deaf to that kind of thing. Like yeah I I understand I totally understand man. Let's try to me figuring out and even to this day. Okay. So I know how to write a half hour comedy now, but in the beginning and like when I look back at my old writing sample, which was a pilot, I'm looking at my act breaks and everything and I'm like, Oh, no, you didn't get it. You did not understand like what a three act structure was at all. And like going through my first season and like helping other people with their episodes, helping it's very generous word for what I was doing at that time.

Uh, I also didn't have like a real strong understanding of how a three act structure worked. Now, when I'm like thinking about how to write a feature, I'm terrified. I would have been way more likely to try and write a feature when I was not a television writer at all because I would have just I wouldn't known I would have just been like yeah, now you just start writing and then it goes wherever it wants to go like a book and And I didn't understand that there's like a real a real anatomy to it that you have to follow Or you watch something like that and you're like, well, this is, I guess I kind of like

it, but it feels all over the place. Like, it doesn't feel like there's a beginning, middle and an end. And even a drama, like if I was writing our drama now, I think usually they do those as four acts. I'm like, what, what are we doing with the middle two? What are those going to be? What are we doing? I feel like that's why I'm going the coward's route and just maybe I'll focus on books when last week tonight goes away because a book is allowed to just be a thing happens and a thing happens and a thing happens until

you get tired until your hand cramps up and you don't want to write anymore and and that is is like safer to to me because I don't i have been writing comedic television for seven years professionally and before that was writing uh sitcom adjacent web series things on crack.com all told i've been writing for almost 20 years now and if we switched bodies tomorrow and I had to break an episode of American Dad, I could not fucking do it to save my life. I don't know how to structure. I don't even know that I can write for animation. I don't know if it's different. It seems like it's got. Seems like it's gotta be. I, yeah, no, I mean, that's, I would not be able to, that you talking about like the cadence

and everything of the show. I remember early on when you wrote your submission for last week's night and you had people like look at it and punch it if we could like same thing all friends do when you're like looking for a new job. You're like, Hey, we just look at my jokes. Will you see if there's anything you think you could beat? And, uh, looking at that, you had other people's notes in there already. And I was, I'm like, I'm reading it. I'm just like looking for like jokes. I'm like, Oh,

that's good. This can be funny. This can be funny. And then I'm seeing like Ben Joseph, break it down. Friend of the show, Ben Joseph. And he's like, yeah, he's like, this is the, this doesn't really follow the structure of the show. Like this doesn't follow the format. Like, it's gonna be like, this kind of... this is what the setup kind of looks like, and this is what the blow is gonna be. And I was like, uh-oh.

He just got that. Just like, watched a couple episodes and was like, okay, I get it. Yeah, like a musician listening to a song and being like, okay, I could do that. It wasn't about beating a joke or anything. It was him shrewdly noticing like, hey, you have this sentence, but we're going to move on and talk about Canada. John Oliver would not let Canada go without a joke, even if it's just like Canada, America's hat or a country you think of so infrequently you didn't realize that's not Canada. It's blah, blah, blah. These kinds of jokes where where Ben is not like

trying to write the funniest joke in the world. He just knows like you he wouldn't let it sneak by. You'd have to make a joke about the thing that he said. Yeah. And so that made me, it was very clear to me then too that I was like, oh, I don't, I can't write for last week's night, I would not be good at this. I also don't understand, you could do it. I'm reading every article that I can get my hands on about the Deadpool and Wolverine movie because I liked it and it was fun and I like Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman a whole lot. And more than anything, I would like there still to be an entertainment industry in 10 years, so I'm just like consuming stuff about it. And Ryan

Reynolds was talking in an interview about how they had like three or four different versions of Deadpool 3 that they broke as in like they found out what the story structure was and they'd written outlines before settling on the one that they wanted and like some of them were were written before like they got the go ahead that Wolverine could be in this movie so they're just breaking totally different Deadpool three movies out there and I hear about that like you you know how to write one movie? How did you do that? What do you mean you threw them out? Those scripts are out there somewhere probably a lot of great stuff in there What if the first Deadpool 3 was like the last thing

you would ever write? Not because you died or anything, but because we all have a finite amount of ideas inside of us. Yeah, and then we're used up. Yeah, that's terrifying. It's really terrifying. It's really, it's a,

I'll say like breaking a story, if it's yours on our show, if you're like trying to break the story that you came in with that idea for, and you were excited about, and you get to a point where you're stuck a little bit, there's like a real genuine panic from that person. And no one else in the room ever feels it.

Cause everybody else knows this thing happens all the time. You're gonna get to a point where you're like, okay, this like, you're not marrying the emotional arc with the story arc and something's feeling wrong somewhere, but the foundation's broken. And so you're trying to fix it and you're like, everyone's kind of circling it and trying to figure it out. But the person who's in charge has the ability to say, let's just not do this idea. Let's tear the whole thing down and start something else. And so you're constantly like, your hand is just on that button, just like waiting. You're like, this isn't going good. This isn't going good.

Everyone hates it. I'm going to just push it. And, and you can watch it. There's like, I think it's like three weeks in, like right when you make the stores like should be crystallizing. There's going to be like the little tiny screws that all need to be turned. And you just start to freak out and you can watch everybody just be like, is this, is this anything? Is this still a thing?

Do we care about this? Oh, what a career. What a life. I'd love to go back to it. Love to go back to work. That would be so nice. Oh yeah, that's right. I can't.

Right now my career is just sort of working out and being with my kids. That's cool. That's cool. Panicking that I don't have any money. Could you go to like city council meetings and be annoying? Could you be one of those guys? It seems like. Absolutely.

Yeah. There's no money in that for you, but it seems like It's it's perfectly suited for People with with time on their hands who want to kill an afternoon without spending money and just seems like you can go and Raise hell about bike lands or something probably I Mean get guaranteed just like keep my chops up Just get me in what it's like to be performing in front of people and just get up there and talk about how I want to do drum circles in the softball field, even though they have the rights to the field. You're solving problems.

And those meetings do go late. I mean, it would be after my kids go to bed. Yeah. I don't know. Colleen used to have to do a lot of that for environmental purposes and she'd like try and get people in her life to go do to go testify. And it's, it's tough, man. Those meetings are pretty, pretty brutal. It seems like they're, they're, they're very, um, kook heavy. Yeah. Unfortunately, those are the, yeah, those are the loudest people. Yeah. This is just based on my understanding of town hall meetings, which comes from Gilmore Girls Parks and Recreation and the worst of the worst compilations that end up on YouTube that are very fun to watch.

I don't know how close it is to the actual truth though. I think they're just like that, but way more boring. Did you use to cover that beat? Were you the one who used to send me like town hall? Yeah. Yeah. I'm writing a pilot about it right now. Oh, cool.

Do you need any help? Oh, we should give a shout out to our friend of the show Jason Pargin who's got a show. Well, it's in the works, it's in development, but it's based on his the Zoe Ash series, the one that started with futuristic violence and fancy suits. Yes, futuristic violence and fancy suits. And it's very exciting. They're making a television show out of it. He already had a movie made out of John Dies at the End, which was his first novel novel but now they're making a whole television series out of one of his book series and that's fucking so great for him. We love to see one of our buddies thrive and succeed. We love to see... if you haven't read these

books they're hilarious because they're written by Jason. They're very funny with his trademark keen eye for observational comedy about humans behaving terribly. They're also, if you couldn't tell by the title, they're like ambitious in scope. And so I'm very TV networks taking chances on ambitious shows that are written by funny and talented people. He really did just not... Go ahead. Go ahead. I was gonna say it's really it's a it's he deserves more credit for the fact that he just jumps genres too. Like he went from John Dies at the End which is like a really good comedy horror like really really well put together, smart, funny comedy horror. And then he's just like, now I'm gonna do science fiction. And everyone was like, okay, yeah, you do that well too. This is

great. This is great. Do whatever you want. Did you read I'm Starting to Worry About This Big Black Box of Doom? Not yet. no. Oh, that might not be, this might be my privilege on display. I read an advanced copy of that, that might not be out yet. I don't know if it is, yeah I see it. Another very good standalone book from him that is like not sci-fi or horror, it's more grounded story about real people doing stuff. And just like, yeah, man, you're good. You're one of those like good writers.

That's cool. How'd you do that? Oh, you do it every day. You work really hard on it. Oh, that's not for me. Is there another way? Do you, is it like a back door to what you do? I just got, this is, this is very appropriate for our conversations. I just got this book called

The Work of Art that specifically gets into like how you make something out of nothing and they interview like different like songwriters and book writers and they go through like your old notebooks and stuff so you can see like the actual process of like the charts and graphs that George Saunders puts into his books that yeah yeah it's it's a it's it's massively intimidating book for me to read it goes against I've been trying to read more books to give me confidence to write. It sounds like I'm talking about reading bad books. I'm not. But I am like, I'll read a book and then I have my notebook that I have my I write down lines that I like or like thoughts that I have about the book. And a lot of

it is just a lot of my notes are just to pump me up where I'm just like Okay, you finished this one in three days reminder Books can just be a series of funny things that happen You can just you could just start you just start writing a book if you wanted to Daniel That's important, but with this fucked it you could do that. It's very this book very wild is very humbling and I'm not gonna leave it with the feeling that I can do it too, because some of these people think and talk about writing in ways that is very alien to me. Yeah.

I mean, the thing I can't get past with writing something big and audacious like that is that you are, you're starting with something and not knowing how it's gonna look. Like, you don't have the whole thing exactly crystallized in your mind, like the finished product, because you can't. You can't conceivably do that. In fact, you can't even hold all of those ideas in your head at the same time. They have to be laid out in a row basically to see how they all fit together. Like you can't just juggle them. And so you have to write something and then you have to go back.

It's like building, I think of it like building a house. You build a house and then you're like, okay, I didn't do a very good job. There's a lot wrong with this thing. Where should I start? And then occasionally you'll like start fixing pieces of it and it starts to look good. And they're like, oh, okay, down here, I should have poured a foundation. That was a mistake. I should have done that.

No way to do that now. So I'm just gonna throw this one away. I'll burn it down, and then we'll just build, we'll do one with a foundation instead. There's something else I take great solace in, and this'll, to start, get some some eye rolls, but I really like the Great Gatsby book, sorry? Great Gatsby of Ascalf's Gerald? Oh, interesting. Yeah, I'm Ascalf of Gerald. I liked it a lot. I, for a while, that was my, my like annual, I'm going to read this again. I'm going to read it once a year and like learn new stuff about it and learn new stuff about myself because I like this book so much. And I thought

it was just like a perfect book. And I still think that then I one year was like, let me read a bunch of other F. Scott Fitzgerald books, the stuff that he did before this, to see if it's also good. And a lot of it is him trying to write Great Gatsby, but not being a good enough writer yet. But you can see a lot of the themes are in there, a lot of the obsession is in there, a lot of the class stuff is in there. And it's very clear that like he needed to ramp up to doing his masterpiece, and in the meantime wrote like crummy versions of Great Gatsby, and I think about that a lot, and just like, if I could write, there's no law against me writing like three shitty books

I could write... there's no law against me writing like three shitty books if I can one day write a good one. No one's gonna fire me from books. I could just like, I could write something that is not as good as Great Gatsby. For sure I can do that. And then maybe someday someone later will see like, oh, I see, I could see he was working through his story for years before he nailed it with this final book or whatever. I guess so, but there's also no guarantee that along the way you're learning anything from the experience. That you're actually taking the time to be like, oh, I see why this is broken. Sometimes you just fucking write through that shit. You're just like a bull in a china shop and just like write and be like, this isn't working, but I'm just going to keep going. And not really thinking about why it's not working.

And then you're never getting the note either. And so you're just like, I'm a good writer. I figured it out. I just, I made a path. Yeah. I do kind of want to write the same book over and over again and just like let everyone see. Because you know, you can tell a deal is square when it's arrived at transparently. So if you can see me working it out in these

books and I would just call it like American Wanderer or whatever. And then a couple of years later, I'd come out with a book, Better American Wanderer. And just until eventually Best American Wanderer where I just keep publishing the same book and it's just like, don't read the other ones. This is the one. This is the one. Read this one. Read No Reason to Wander.

That's where I figured it out. That was the one. All right. I think I'm all done now, guys. It's called Greatest Gatsby. That's how you know. Can't top that. The other terrifying aspect is that let's say you start and you're like,

well, I'm going to give a permission to suck myself permission to suck. When I write this, I'm going to write something and I'm just going to get it down and I won't. And then you write it and then you sort of fix it and everything. And then you're like, okay. I mean, that wasn't bad. That's okay. That's a good start.

And then you can just never do that again. Like that was the one, like great Gatsby, F Scott's Gerald wrote stuff after a great Gatsby. Great Gatsby. People have albums after like their white album or whatever, whoever did the white album, I can't remember at this point. Like at this point, so you, you may never top that again. Like that may have been your zenith right there.

And you don't know. It's really, really scary, dude. Yeah. Anyway, we'll keep doing it. Yeah, we're gonna keep doing it. It's fine. Do you wanna wrap up the show? Yeah, I would do.

Thank you for listening. This has been Quick Question with Sorin would do. Thank you for listening. This has been Quick Question with Sorin and Daniel, although you wouldn't know that by the structure we just gave you. Speaking of not following structure, we didn't ask each other a single question this episode, but that's the way it goes sometimes. You can follow us on X at quickquestion.something. And X, quick question, dot something. I don't know. I say get off of X. I say don't, I'm going to walk all that back. Don't try and find us on X.

And in fact, take yourself off of X. Don't stay on that website. It's bad, man. You're supporting somebody terrible. You can find us on Instagram. You can find us on, you can find Daniel and I on Blue Sky. We're both there doing jokes. You can find us on YouTube. You can watch this if you've only been listening to it and

You can also find bonus episodes on Apple podcast or you can do it on our patreon You can subscribe to our patreon and you can find bonus episodes of us. Usually we answer questions from you guys on those If you liked our theme song, that's me Rex You can find their music anywhere you listen to music. Just type them in. And then if you want to find their full albums, you can find them at merex.bandcamp.com. I want to give a big shout out to our president daddy of all things podcast related, Gabe Harter, who is the glue and the spirit of this entire podcast. You'll never find him. He might as well not be real. He might be the...

You know what? He lives in your heart. He lives in all of our hearts. You know what I found out today about Gabe? And he can cut this if he... if I'm doxing him. And so on. I can't remember if we knew this information previously, but our pal Gabe, his father, is a magician. Like us! Like we talk about being! Oh, that's so exciting. Okay, one of these days we're gonna talk about Gabe's dad. Sorry, Gabe. And his mom writes books. Another thing we claim to want to do. Another thing we claim to want to do. Jesus. It's not inconceivable to me at all that those two found each other. In fact I feel like all magicians and writers should be married.

Okay that's all. Thank you. Goodbye. I've got a quick quick question for you alright The answer's not important I'm just glad that we can talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? Who do I be to remember? Words without words, word at all though

Who do we know? Oh forget it I saw a movie Daniel O'Brien Two best friends of comedy writers If you're a comedian, you're a comedian If you're a comedian, you're a comedian If you're a comedian, you're a comedian If you're a comedian, you're a comedian If you're a comedian, you're a comedian If you're a comedian, you're a comedian If you're a comedian, you're a comedian If you're a comedian, you're a comedian If you're a comedian, you're a comedian I'm going on Sore and booey Daniel O'Brien

Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here