Table Read - DreamWorld - Writers Room

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Join Executive Producer Shaan Sharma ("The Chosen) as he engages in a captivating dialogue with acclaimed Screenwriter Sonny Postiglione ("Vampire Diaries" & "Bloodline.)" Together, they delve into the intricate art of storytelling, dissecting characters, narrative arcs, and the subtle nuances of human observation. This isn't just another podcast; it's a riveting exploration into the heart of creativity and Hollywood craftsmanship. If you have a passion for the magic of the table read, the intricacies of writing, or simply crave an insider's perspective on the world of fiction, this episode is an absolute must-listen. Prepare to be enthralled as Sonny, a true master of his craft, shares his invaluable insights and experiences with warmth, wit, and an unparalleled depth of knowledge. Oh, and fear not the looming specter of spoilers! Rest assured, we'll be treating you to tantalizing clips from episode #1, ensuring that your journey through our conversation remains an unspoiled delight. Be sure to mark your calendars for the unveiling of episode 3 of "Dream World" next Tuesday, where the magic continues to unfold! About DreamWorld "Dreamworld" transports us to a place far beyond imagination, where the fanciful inhabitants of bedtime stories roam free behind magic barriers. But when grief-stricken Cassidy arrives via Father Time’s whims, he discovers this wonderland in peril. The villainous Sleeper has shaken Dreamworld from its slumber after the untimely death of Princess Marigold, imposing a cruel new order devoid of “happily ever after.” Yet rebel Jack and his motley crew of fairy tale renegades still fight to restore their realm’s happily-ever-afters. These valiant “Redeemers” - Red Riding Hood’s feisty granddaughter Scarlett, lovesick ex-pirate Bluebeard, towering gentle giant Mastodon - join Cassidy on his time-twisting quest. Fantasy and reality collide as enemies become allies, innocence turns to experience, and make-believe becomes life or death. Layering postmodern wit atop old-world sublimity, “Dreamworld” casts ageless characters in a newly complex light. The big bad wolf howls with regret, Cinderella asserts her dignity under oppression, and the skin-deep hero discovers his commanding heart. By making fantasy painfully real, the creator renews its power to inspire hope. Sword fights and sorcery abound on this spirited cinematic adventure, clearly crafted with epic spectacle in mind. Yet swashbuckling showmanship belies sensitivity. When forces of evil shatter to reveal frightened souls, when a sound heart guides a wayward giant home, “Dreamworld” transcends sensation to find timeless truth. We all must wake up and battle dragons, but castles await those brave enough to dream.

I am here with Sonny Pestiglione, the writer of Dreamworld. He was also the writer of Love and Darkness from Season 1 of Table Read Podcast. We just finished the reading. It was so much fun. How are you feeling? I'm super excited. Great. It came out ten times better than I could ever expect. Really? Yeah. I mean, the voices, you never know what you're going to get when people are doing creatures and all these great characters. But the cast is incredible. That's so great to hear.

Yeah, and this is Sean Sharma, one of the co-founders of Table Reap Podcasts, along with Mark Nell and Jack Levy. And lead of the Dreamworld. I was honored today to be able to play Cassidy, and thank you for trusting me with that opportunity. Kids, I need to tell you something. No, another story first. Mom hasn't called yet.

It's only fair. Come on, read Snow White, just till she calls. Okay, one more. I'll read Snow White. Read it like Mom does, with the voices. Cassidy nods, his heart breaking. Reuben slowly walks over to Tessa's bed and slips under the covers. Okay, here we go with Snow White. You brought a great humanity I thought and I think that was good. That's great. You're a very innocent

dad in this crazy world which I think is very important to have that grounded person while we have these big, wild characters and personalities. What were some surprises today from you hearing it all come to life? Because you've had this script for, you said, almost 20 years. Yeah. I think one of the main things was that there were lines that I didn't expect to be funny. But when, you know, in the hands of these characters and in the hands of these actors who created these great voices, a regular line that I didn't mean to be funny became funny.

What's an example? Can you remember one? Ah, I don't remember. There's just so many of them. And the ironic thing is, is I think it is heavy subject matter but it does bring a lightness to it and I think a lot of the demons took their lines to the next level I think ice princess everything she says is pretty hysterical to me just her reactions to her father her reactions to Prince Charming when she doesn't recognize him, I thought

was amazing. She was one that was great. Jack, Mastodon, Georgie Porgie, they all just had that little twinge of off-center, and it just makes it so spicy. Don't do anything stupid. We're here for the magic beans. Nobody has to get hurt. Under which Mastodon draws a mini Gatling gun which fits around his right fist. Mr. Bank President, I am the fabulous Scarlet Hood and we have come to rob this bank in the name of the Redeemers. Suddenly we hear footsteps running across the roof toward a stained glass skylight built into the bank's ceiling. The footsteps stop, and Jack comes crashing through the skylight,

conveniently landing right next to Scarlet. Jack, mid-twenties, is a thief with an eye patch covering his right eye. Ah! Is there a better man than I? Here he goes again. Do you see this as live action, right? Or animation? You know, I think it could go both ways because I think, you know, in a world that's driven by IP,

our business, this is like one of the ultimate IPs because you have two dozen IPs. Of course, if you're looking for something that has roots, each of these stories goes back 100, 200, 300 years, sometimes five or 600 years in Europe. And they tie into so many different countries' cultures. Exactly. And they're all based in something that we all know. Everybody, every culture in every country reads their children one of these books. So where did you even come up with the idea to tell a story like this with all of these well-known fairy tales and nursery rhymes? Somebody asked me this, and I remembered today. I was flying to see my brother.

I was in New York at the time. I was off from working in Hollywood for a few weeks. And my brother was in Florida. So I went. I was flying down, and I was in the airport. And I think I saw there was a children's section of books. I was looking for a book and there was a Little Red Riding Hood book and I just kind of looked at it and was like, wouldn't it be cool if she was a werewolf?

And then as I was walking, I'm like, yeah, she could be a werewolf. And then the big bad wolf could be her wolf, like a dog. And I was like i was like i could do a movie like that and then i said you know be funny if like jack jack the beanstalk was in like jack was like a thief and then on the plane i just started writing down well let me see if i can just see how many characters i can create an alternate version of and it just kept going and then i was like oh well merlin can be the big sorcerer. He can be the sleeper. And little Bo Peep, she can lose her sight because she gets in trouble because her sheep do something bad, which ends up being the sheep eat the magic beans.

And I was saying, we can call her the shepherd. And it just starts to flow. You can take Humpty Dumpty and have suddenly that be like an owner of a gentleman's club. Owner of a gentleman's club. And when I wrote Cinderella, I'm like, oh, Cinderella. So fun, because you've got not only the recognition of these characters that are in stories we've grown up with, all of us have grown up with, but then, so you've got this curiosity of,

oh, I want to see how these characters are portrayed in something other than the stories we've heard them in. But then you've also got the altar world, the dream world version of them when it gets all messed up, where you get to see a totally spicy new side of all of these kind of well-known characters. I just think this is really primed for people to be very curious about how this is portrayed. What do you think would be rated? I, you know, I think we do have some, not subject matter but there's definitely a level of violence in this I think like a middle

it's not like an R rated PG-13 I think I think and also I'm not opposed to editing it to make it a little lighter in certain places you know it was it was written at a different time when I think we were a little

less sensitive to certain violence and now we're were a little less sensitive to certain violence. And now we're obviously a little more sensitive to the world around us. But I think overall, there's a lot of emotion in the shows that we've just filmed and recorded. I mean, it's the loss of who we are and the loss of who we could be. And I think a lot of our characters express those two sides. be. And I think a lot of our characters express those two sides. Because even though some of them have great lives now, they're not necessarily what should have been. And so they take up that honor of fixing it, even though they're going to lose everything. And I think that's the definition of a hero. None of our good guys, and scarlet and massadon you know they

don't think twice about it they they talk a little bit but when cassidy says that he has children that's when mother it convinces mother who's the mother to all these children like oh this guy's real and your performance when you say these are my children, that's the thing that convinces her. And the story hinges on convincing her because then she has Jack and everybody, you know, go and do their mission. So I like the emotion in it, but it doesn't, but that's not our selling point. You know, it's selling when it's fun

and just the transformation of all these great characters. And I love the demons. The demons was one that I was like, oh, what can I do with dwarves? How can I make them cool? I want to say the demons are a little more fun to me than the dwarves. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

You're the seven. You're my Betts. Betts is a tad reductive, boss. More like friends with killing benefits. I'm sorry, I haven't been myself lately. Us too. Seems to be going around. Anyway, this guy was trying to put the moves on ya, and that's a no-no.

So now it's time to step up to the plate. You don't owe him nothing. Sleazy's right. Killing's got to be done here, and you're the only one who can do it. Buck steps with you, boss. Yeah, you know? But you start writing the names.

Like, I remember I wrote some of them on a napkin when I was on the plane, and I was just writing, like, dumpy and meany and creepy, and I was like, it just, the thing about stories, and it's the thing that I've always said and why it's so hard to pick a story to write, because the right story kind of writes itself and comes out. I think when you're writing the wrong story, it can be hard and it's a challenge. And I remember writing this one was very easy because the story kind of, in a weird way,

because of all the mythologies of the characters, it kind of becomes what it becomes. Like they're looking for the golden egg. Well, the golden egg is a big thing in Jack's story. And so you're like, oh yeah, that's a great MacGuffin because you always need like the thing or what's the diamond or whatever the thing's going to be. And so it just kind of made so much sense as I started building it and it was easy. And those are like, as a writer,

when you sit down, the hardest thing is not getting sidetracked or losing hope or focus because you can't quite get the story where you want it to be. And this one felt right from the beginning. I never was like, oh, I'm not getting it. It kind of came out quickly, and then it took time to write each scene and do all the nuances. But I had the bones pretty quick because it's like, oh, yeah, they got to go back in time you know uh which

is a tried and true trope which always works and then you get to read up on all the all the different fairy tales and nursery rhymes too and you start to learn things you didn't know like i didn't know bluebeard killed his wives i just thought he was a great pirate and so you start to see all these different things yeah that was one of the most heartbreaking parts of the story was knowing that staria would disappear if Dreamworld went back. I know. And it's somebody who Bluebeard came to really care about. And you know that he's going to go back to being the murderous pirate.

Well, the funny thing was is I needed a girlfriend for Bluebeard. And because I, there was like two choices. It was like Rapunzel, which I couldn't quite, because of her hair and what she's known for, it didn't quite fit what that character was going to be doing. Well, and she'd just slow everybody down with her hair getting caught. Exactly. She could throw her hair at the beast.

So I made up Staria. And I think someone, a note I had gotten back from someone was like, you know, Staria and Starlight, Starbright, it doesn't quite make sense, Sonny. And I was like, yeah, but like, and I was like, oh, that's it. That's actually the thing. It doesn't make sense because it doesn't work because she's not real. And that would be so much harder for Bluebeard to accept and make her more heroic. Because in a lot of ways, the script

is about doing the right thing. And if she's willing to do the right thing, knowing she's going to disappear, then the others have to do the right thing. What was the thought process behind giving General Pan, General Peter Pan, a lisp? You know, I wanted him to just be different and that was it instead of the swashbuckling hero yeah exactly i wanted him to have a little bit of a lisp because you know

the real peter pan was like the the head of the lost boys he was the leader so he was the most popular so i wanted to give him something that was like made him a little detracted something that was a little bit of an insecurity not he ended up with a hook but and he ended up with a hook you know and so um it that it was just it was those fun conversions like where even as a as the audience you're like no no we want to go back to the real dream world we don't want to have this michigas like exactly exactly you know or like dragonfly is like a little buzzing... Oh, I love dragonflies. ...flies or fireballs. Oh, poor Tinkerbell turned into a little demon.

Exactly. She's blowing, you know, there's fire coming out of her mouth and she gets eaten by Prince Frog. You know, you're known for writing these, you know, top hit dramatic projects, like TV shows that we've all watched. But this is more whimsical and more fantasy and all that. So is this, this like what's closer to you and the kind of stories you want to tell is it the dramatic stories like that or more of the whimsical fantasy type of stuff you know i think they all are parts of me i think the thing when i go into a meeting and somebody says so what do you like to write? I can't say what I like to write. I only know when I hear the story and I leave a room and I'm saying, that's a story. Like, for instance, when we did Love and Darkness, Love and Darkness, I was working on a Warsaw

Ghetto story. And it was good, but all the characters that we used for Love and Darkness were in that. But it wasn't quite right. And then I met with Scooter Braun, and he told me this story about his uncle or his grandfather. Sorry. And his last thing he said was, and he was hungry and there were these tough Jewish people in Hungary who used to kill Germans if they came up their mountain. I'm like, I'll be back in two weeks. And I was like, that was the thing.

And you never know when you hear the story. The Vesekucha. The Vesekucha. weeks and i was like that was the thing and i never you never know when you hear the story the vesicucha the vesicucha and you hear the thing and you're like that's where i'm gonna you know put all my eggs in the basket and that's just sort of how i write like i never know what that thing is that's going to drive me but but it it is also uh it has a commercial aspect to it like a commercial bell has to go off and for this one i remember back when i wrote it was like there's nothing like it out there and and even still there's nothing like it out there now because most of the times a studio or you know will redo one story right peter pan is now a cop and that's the movie or snow snow white is now the a dictator

but that's the movie it's not all of them together and i think that's the advantage of something like this happening because those are great but you know what you get with those these this is so different because you get to see the the wide birth of every character of everybody's lore and i think that's i think that's more fun and i think it's more appealing to a buyer or a studio i think someone hears it and they'll see oh wow like there's no way someone doesn't know one of these stories and therefore we should uh do some business here here. The industry is definitely going through a change, especially after this last year. Oh, yeah.

And I think some of the shine is off of all the same kind of superhero types of movies. So going back to stories like this that remind me more of things like The Princess Bride or the kind of golden age of these romantic fantasy kind of imaginative worlds, I really look forward to people hearing this. So what are you working on these days? What's next for Sonny? Well, I'm developing a cop show right now off a Danish property. That's very exciting. I'm doing some business with BET

Plus. We have a pilot over there and putting that together and seeing if that's going to move forward. And they're great over there and trying to find the next story to write. And that can be a very lonely place because you look for inspiration everywhere. And when you don't find it, it can be frustrating because you're trying to find gold somewhere. And whether you walk around the mall or you go to the movies or I'm playing with my daughter or me and my wife are at dinner or we're watching TV, I'm always like, there's part of me that's trying to absorb everything that's out there and see what happens. And you never know. I had had an idea years ago. I was sitting in a doctor's office. I was going for a checkup on my elbow.

I hurt my elbow working out. And I came up with an idea. So it's sort of like you don't get, I don't think ideas come when you sit at a computer screen. This is the one time I advocate for writers, don't sit at a computer screen. Except if you're going to do research. But it's like that's when you're walking around or you do go on a vacation you go away for weekend because your subconscious is always working and you never quite know what it's going to pick up so you change your location to let new stimulus kind of jog the imagination yeah you know

you i think you can't put out without taking in and on my schedule that i've had you know i just you know i handed in this project to bet i was writing hard had, you know, I just, you know, I handed in this project to BET. I was writing hard, you know, after the strike ended, I started picking up the pen again. And I wrote hard for a month. And, you know, you're putting out all that energy and all that creative energy. The tank's empty. So trying to come up with a new story, you know, is hard. And especially, you know, as I was doing that, I'm doing notes on this.

I'm developing the cop show. I have some other projects that I'm doing. I go for things that I love. I go for things that aren't out there. And I go for things that make me keep thinking about it. Like when I first met my wife. We met and I couldn't stop thinking about her and it's like oh that's it and i think that's how when it's right it writes itself yeah and it just

you sit at the coming out and coming out and again going back to this that's how this was i remember i was when i flew down i landed with my brother and i had a laptop with me and i just said i just gotta just do a little writing in the morning, and it's like three hours later, and I'm still, I'm like, Midas, and oh, and he can be able to turn things into gold, and it just keeps coming. Oh, they pull the sword from the stone, and that's how he kills Marigold, and that's the sword that killed the sleeper.

And it just comes out, and it's a beautiful process, but it can be frustrating. And I think not giving up on it and accepting the uncertainty that you're not always going to get the answer when you want it is the key to getting the answer. Well, in that particular story of Midas's greed killing his own daughter is just the symbolism in that everybody can relate to or something. Well, so what is one of your favorite stories you've experienced over the last year, whether it's a movie or a TV show, what's a piece of storytelling that you really just loved? You know, I really liked the new Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Amazon. I love it. I think it's super creative and inventive and fun and so different from the original

that it doesn't feel, it feels like its own thing. And I'm a big fan of both actors, and I just thought the writing was incredible. And I really, I've enjoyed that quite a bit. I've watched some Korean dramas. I love international dramas. You know, there bit. I've watched some Korean dramas. I love international dramas. You know, there's a lot of good stuff out there.

And, you know, I just have a daughter, a young baby, so we don't get to, you know, we start watching something and we don't come back to something. Well, either fall asleep or don't come back to it for like, oh, what were we watching again? Oh, this thing. But I made it through the season of that i watched the new season of true detective which i was quite impressed with it's it's a shame

that people are saying negative things about it i thought uh isa lopez did an amazing job well then i can't wait to watch it it's a it's a real it's really it's a really smart uh version of that show that's fantastic you know yeah i, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Well, Sonny, I just want to say thank you so much for a second time doing us just the incredible privilege and honor of telling one of your stories and allowing us to live in this fun world for an afternoon. And then so many of you listening will be able to enjoy it as well. So thank you so much.

Thank you for being the star of our four episodes and bringing it, man, and bringing Cassidy to life. It was awesome. Thank you. Oh, shoot, we went a lot longer than I thought we were.