Table Read - PV and Franny - After Show

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

We sit down with writers producers, and the cast for a conversation about PV & Franny. ___ At a school where no one knows who's inside the football team's bulldog mascot costume, where a game of hide-and-seek has been going on for the better part of a week, where Dale Wilson, the world's nicest bully, desperately wishes kids would stop giving him their lunch money, two wayward fifteen-year-olds are about to start a band.  PV & Franny is a stylized and occasionally surreal 30-minute single-cam comedy about young love, growing up weird, and making music. It follows PV, a confident, take-no-prisoners punk rocker in training, and Franny, a sensitive and taciturn singer-songwriter type, as they navigate falling in and out of love, artistic collaboration, and the perennial difficulty of tuning a B string. It's Sing Street meets The Other Two, with a healthy dose of cult classic The Adventures of Pete & Pete for good measure.  Written by the talented Tommy Wallach, and narrated by Ty Burrell, Fred Armisen and other notable names, the two-part series tells the story of two young souls who cross paths in school. Franny is immediately impressed by PV's musical talents, but their connection takes an unexpected turn when PV seeks Franny's help to solve a personal dilemma. Tune in to discover the heartwarming dynamics of friendship, intimacy, and the complexities of young love. In addition to Burrell and Armisen, the star-studded cast includes Liam Richardson, Kensington Tallman, Rahm Braslaw, O’neill Monahan, Samantha Morelos, Eileen Fogarty, and Ruben Ray each adding their unique flair to the narrative.  ____ Follow Table Read (@TableReadPodcastLA) on Instagram for more info! Visit: https://www.tablereadpodcast.com/ Contact: [e-mail]   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

that was bad man that became bad we are recording are we actually recording now? Yes. Are we recording? Oh no, stop with the buttons. This is terrible. Hold on. Wow. This is like shock jock stuff. It is. It is. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. I'm going to have fun with that one.

Every time. Every time. Every time. Every line of dialogue. Like a network sitcom, no matter what. Hysterical. So, Tommy, where are you from? Poughkeepsie. All right, Jack, take it away. Take it away?

There's nothing to take away. So we just wrapped Table Read, our most recent recording. Our sixth script record. It is our sixth script. And we had a script by writer Tommy Wallach that's just incredible. Tommy is here with us. Hello. I'm here.

Erica Schechter is here with us from Desert Whale. Hi. And we just did a reading of this incredible script, Peavy and Franny. And Tommy, tell me a little bit about you and tell me a little bit about this script. I can do that. Probably what's important about it is it's a script about music. I grew up in music world. I was a musical theater actor as a kid.

I was doing like eight shows a week. Oh, don't do it. That's great. That's solid. Thank you. It is funny. And then I kind of switched over to trying to be a singer-songwriter, sort of Rufus Wainwright, Ben Folds-y, piano-based stuff. And I was trying to do it when I was a teenager. And I got really excited about this idea of

a couple of teenagers starting a band together, because that's such a unique and special time. And there have been shows and movies, a lot of them about musicians and bands, but very few about that really special teen time. So you want to start a band? No, I want to continue a band, but with more musicians than I have now. Oh, how many musicians do you have now? One. What do you play? Guitar.

Lead a rhythm? Yes. What about you? Primarily Casio, VL Tone, Monophonic, Synthesizer, and Glockenspiel. Cool. So what do you primarily casio viola tone monophonic synthesizer and glockenspiel cool so what do you want to call the band what's your name again franny there's a movie called sing street which is amazing it is that that does that does this this kind of area but um not a series so i got really excited about that and that's sort of where it came from and how long ago did you write the script uh a while this has been around so I had the script probably four years ago maybe even five uh and my sort of team I'm doing air quotes my team at the time uh was just like no

no we don't we don't get it no no so it never it wasn't even like sent out to people it was just like kind of a thing in a drawer and then i got a new manager as happens sometimes in this business and she loved it that's netta and um she sent it to everyone on earth and that's when desert whale came on board yeah yeah talk about that were you one of the people who did the reading or was it placed on your desk for someone else or did you discover this yeah so desert whale for context is ty burrell's production company and uh i run it with him and this netta had reached out she said she has an amazing script something that we would be crazy not to consider um she sent it to us and i read everything that comes across my desk and with the help of briska um and the minute i read it there was something

there you know you read a lot in this business, and it's very easy to tell very quickly if something has something special, and this script was undeniable. It's one of the best scripts to this day I've ever read. So what was it? You read scripts every day? I mean, listen, I love the script.

It's incredible. It's so funny. Tommy is a genius, but break it down. What was special about the script? It was so funny and so charming, and so it occupied its tone from the moment you read the first page, you just fall into this world.

It's surreal, it's heightened, but it also has air conditioning. That's an airplane. It is an airplane. Okay, an airplane. But we're just about to take off. We're on the jet. We didn't tell the audience.

The script is so surreal. It's so heightened. But it's also so grounded in this relationship between these two kids. And everyone's been in Franny's shoes and had a crush. And everyone's, at least I've been in Peavey's shoes and hated everyone. You're right, Franny. It must have been one of those terrible musicians. You've passed your audition. Let's start a band. She puts out a hand to shake, but as Franny reaches for it, Peavy pulls back.

Just to be perfectly clear, once we're in a band together, there can never be any sort of romantic relationship between us. Oh, why? I mean, not that it, but why? I just thought it was so relatable and it was just so in itself. There's a lot of scripts that you read that aren't fully there. They're not, they aren't fully there. They don't have everything. They are funny, but they're not structured well or they're not about something special enough. And this one just checked every box.

It checked it for us too. The minute that you sent it to us, we all read it. And immediately we thought, well, why isn't this something yet? Because it was so good. And the aspect of the kids and their music and when we saw the songs. It is such passion and weirdness in those songs.

It's so freaking beautiful. It's interesting, while we were reading the first act, and I said this to you, and I don't know if I said this to you, Tommy, I thought, who passed on this? Because I think it's so brilliant. And, you know, once we kind of get it fully formulated with music and sound effects and everything, I think it's undeniably something that needs to be seen as well as being heard. I'll tell you who passed on this. The fraternity of Hollywood yes-men who are only looking for things that are like something else.

Hold on. Say that fraternity of what? I said, well, the problem is it's Hollywood superficial yes-men who are only looking for things that are like something else. Hold on. Say that fraternity of what? I said, well, the problem is it's Hollywood superficial yes-men. Thank you, Mark. We have to lighten that up because we do want this to be so. Well, Tommy, you know what I mean. I mean, the networks, you know, that's what they're buying. What they're buying is this kind of sitcom.

Yes. You know, it's no different than Hollywood when they're buying superhero films and not romance. They're buying action, not drama. Well, I could tell you that everyone who read it had amazing feedback. And you can tell. When people pass on something and they didn't like it,

you get the Hollywood pass. You get the, yeah, yeah, it was really great, but, or like, it's just not for us. With this one, every pass was very intentional and thoughtful. And it really, I think, came down to programming, their slates. And if we're being honest, scripts in the young adult,

shows in the young adult space, just don't attract super wide viewership that drives ad revenue and that drives a ton of eyeballs. This script, in my opinion, is a script that everyone can relate to. But in terms of buyers programming their slates, they, across the board, were not looking for YA. And there were some buyers who had YA projects already on their slates.

And I thought, well, what a fantastic companion. And they're like, those didn't do great for us. I do think also this is a moment in Hollywood where there's some disruption, obviously, even before the strikes with restructures on the corporate level. So I'm holding out hope. I'm going to say they're going to spend this strike summer evaluating their slates and saying, we need more YA.

Yeah. And YA means young adult. Oh, that was very nice. Yeah, so I was a young adult novelist. So that was how I got into screenwriting was I wrote books first. And I wrote in the young adult space a bunch of books. And I've been through this a lot so things that got optioned I adapted a couple of my things one is a movie one is a series and in both cases I got the same kind of response which is like why are programming is kind of tough for us HBO was like we're trying it with this thing called euphoria we'll let you know how it goes truly

how did that go by the way you know I actually I think you have a you have a smirk like maybe it went terribly did it go terribly I watched a smirk, like maybe it went terribly. Did it go terribly? I watched a couple of episodes of that. I thought it was interesting. It was a very interesting take. It's also a runaway hit. Yes, absolutely. It's huge.

Yeah, so very different vibe from this, though. The closest thing to an inspiration show to this, and I'm showing my age here, because a lot of people don't know this show, but long ago there was a TV show on Nickelodeon called The Adventures of pete and pete i don't know if anyone remembers this show. I do.

But it was amazing. I'm sure nobody watched it. It was... I did. Okay, awesome. We both did. I mean, I had, yes, I had like bootleg DVDs of it. It was a show for kids that, you know, in the credits,

one of the, like the 13-year-old boy, his tattoo was a character that was in the credits this is live action this is not animated um their bus driver who took them to school was played by iggy pop actually iggy pop and they cast all of these new york performance artists in all of the roles it was the most surreal wonderful thing i would be terrified of iggy pop or my school bus driver he was terrible he was kind. Yeah, that was the energy. By the way, Tommy, I think you were a little, you weren't as generous to yourself as you should be.

Tommy's a New York Times bestseller. His book, his novel, We All Looked Up, is phenomenal, and especially anyone who enjoys listening to Peavy and Franny should read that book. It's phenomenal. Absolutely. Tommy, I wanted to touch on that. I mean, do you come from an entertainment family? How is it that you're playing instruments

and writing books and receiving of screenplays? No, so Franny's story is my own. I was raised by a single mom, only child, and my mom was an airline pilot. She was the 10th female pilot in America, actually. Wow. So no, just a lot of time alone. That's where it all came from uh yeah and what

are you doing now outside of pv and franny what are you doing yes i uh do a lot of film and tv stuff though not right now obviously we're on strike uh go strike i own an escape room uh the number one escape room in la oh it's we're called hatch i was gonna say give me a plug is there a website i'm doing it remember that hatch we're called Hatch Escapes. Our room is called Lab Rat. We're building our second room, which is this epic thing. It actually stars an actor named Jordan Belfie, who is on Entourage, and an actor named Tony Revolori, who was the

bellhop from the Grand Budapest Hotel, which is also kind of a touchstone for Peavy and Franny. There's something I haven't told you, Agatha. Okay. You stole a painting. It's very valuable. Maybe five million clue banks, in fact. I don't know if anyone's even noticed it's missing it but something should happen to me and misha gustav you steal

art one picture anyway we need to make a plan for your survival hide this it's in code and you might need a magnifying glass to read it but it tells you exactly where and how to find boy with apple don't take less than half the retail asking price also zero i'm a baker baker. Filmed, obviously. He's not going to be live in the room. That would be insane. His career would have to take a very bad turn. And then I also just wrote a musical. I spent the past year and a half writing a musical that's a retelling of Frankenstein

set in the 1950s, and I'm doing a developmental reading of that up in New York in September. So those are the main things. Fantastic. Just a few things. A couple things. Erica, what's on slate for Desert Whale? What's on hold for Desert Whale?

Yeah, take the strike out of the equation. We have a couple projects that we sold last year or the year before that are still alive, still kicking. Hopefully we'll pick them up. We have a sitcom at ABC called Forgive and Forget written by this phenomenal writer Eugene Garcia Cross about basically a father-son story. It's a comedy about Alzheimer's but it's really based on Eugene's personal experience. The most forgettable comedy on this world. I couldn't push that button right there. I know right. I know no I you know

it sounds crazy but. Called Unforgettable. Right. Forgive and forget. Okay, all right. Close. You would have gotten there. It's a father-son story, and estranged father and son, they're polar opposites. The father gets diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's and has to reconnect with his son, and then they have to live together under the same roof.

And it's a project that, like this like what we love as a company is stories that can make you laugh can warm your heart maybe even make you cry i think the best comedies do all of that well thanks you guys thank you both thanks so much for making this all happen yeah what did you think of the screams Those were the greatest screams. They were really impassioned screams. Yeah, because on the demo, I had to do the screams on the demo, and they were so lackluster. Well, we're going to talk to Kensington,

and we're going to bring up the screams. I don't know if you guys can hear that plane. That's a plane. I think it's a plane. Oh, shit, we missed it. talk to Kensington, and we're going to bring up the screams. I don't know if you guys can hear that plane. That's a plane. I think it's a plane. Oh, shit, we missed it. We missed the plane, yeah. Awkward. Coming to you live from the Burbank Hollywood Airport.

That's what I said, we're on the tarmac. We're about to take off. Guys, thank you very much. It was really, it was our pleasure bringing this script to life today, because we love doing this, and when we find a script that just speaks to us, myself, Jack, and Sean, we really want to push hard to make it the best that we can so thanks for writing something so brilliant

thank you erica for trusting us uh with this and bringing it to our attention yeah and for you know thank you guys for putting it together absolutely phenomenal performers today and and a plane and a plane. And a plane. Thanks, you guys. Thank you. We'll chat with Liam. Jack and Mark back.

That's pretty good. Who are we here with? So this is Liam Richardson. Liam is playing Franny. And Kensington Tallman is playing PV. These are our leads in the fabulous Tommy Wallach script, PV and Franny. Hi, kids. Hi. How was your experience today?

Absolutely incredible. It was awesome. Excellent. It was so cool. Now, did you enjoy the characters? Did you find them relatable? Yes, 100%. I love PV. I think she just has so much confidence, and I think that's what I love about her the most. And I just really connected with her in a really unique way, and I think the script was so brilliantly written,

and I just had a blast. Everyone was so awesome. Oh, yeah, Tommy did a great job, and you did a beautiful job bringing Peavey to life. Now, are there things that you found relatable about the character that you see in yourself? No. No, we got to try that one again.

Okay. What I want to know is tell me things about the character that you found relatable and tell me things about the character that you found enviable. I loved that Peavey had this amazing, I think the confidence. Because I think I myself am pretty confident, but I also would love to have more confidence. And I love how she just, she doesn't say sorry. She just doesn't take no for an answer.

She just is herself. What about the album? I'm torn at the moment. Either my sorrow is depthless or where's my pony? They're both really good. I know. You want to hear a song? Sure.

PB stands up and shouts at the barista who's been playing a tranquil Nora Jones tune. Hey! Hey! He turns off the song. She sits cross-legged, cracks her knuckles. This one's called Don't Touch Me. And so I think that was a really important lesson that I learned from Peevee, knowing that it's enough to be yourself and it's enough to just be who you are.

Absolutely. Liam, tell me a little bit about Franny. Tell me what you relate to about Franny. I find Franny way more relatable than I probably care to admit. He's just like a doofus. He's an awkward, lovable guy. And I find a lot of things relatable. I don't know if I find anything enviable maybe about him. I relate a lot of things relatable. I don't know if I find anything enviable, maybe, about him. I relate a lot to his awkwardness. Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to let you know you've been invited to join my band, our band, me and PV. PV wants me to join her band?

Yes, we both do, our band. So rehearsals are on Thursdays. I'll text you back. He really wants to do something right. Like, he really wants to get this thing right. Absolutely. So, mm-hmm. The script deals with the, you know,

partly the chase and the retreat with, you know, Franny kind of chasing after Peavey and Peavey kind of going, eh, no. He's setting up boundaries very quickly. Great. Platonic bandmates for life. First rehearsal tomorrow? Sure. Oh, wait, boundaries very quickly. Great. Platonic bandmates for life. First rehearsal tomorrow? Sure. Oh, wait, I can't. I've got Chinese class.

We'll have to do Wednesday. Do you find that that's kind of a real-life scenario in your age group at this particular point in life? Definitely. That's definitely something happens to people in day-to-day life. Yeah, I think 100 i think you know people saying like oh you know like if we're in a band together oh if we're doing this project together oh like if we're working together at a wherever i think yeah i think like you said

i think it's very relatable in that sense yeah so kensington you were fantastic tell me a little bit about what you're doing now and how it is you ended up in Hollywood on screen. Thank you so much. Well, I've been doing some on screen and animation stuff and I just, I love acting and I love performing and I love art so much. I want to continue acting and I'd also love to produce one day and direct, even write. I think just continue to do what I love. This was such a fun experience. Yeah, I heard you say you've done voice work before. Where else have you done voice work? I am doing some animated things for Nick and Disney,

which is some Disney Junior and Nick Junior stuff. And then I have some upcoming animated projects in the future. Yeah. And Liam, tell me about you. You're a musician, you're an actor. Tell me how you ended up doing this and what you've been up to. Yeah, I've always been a part of the voice acting community. My mom's a voice actor,

so I've always loved this line of work. And yeah, I play the guitar, and I play keyboard and ukulele and bass. So you are Franny. Yeah. I don't know anything, anything, anything except that I like you That's why when I saw the script, it spoke so much to me. And I'm also going to school for animation,

so when I read it, I was like, this is totally an animated show I would watch. It was an awesome experience. I really enjoyed, especially working with Tommy. He's such a cool guy. I like him. Yes, he is. Jack? I think we're good. I got the backstory. We're going to be good to go.

Guys, you guys were fantastic. The show will probably be out in about six or eight weeks, and I'll keep you in the loop so you can hear it, and I look forward to working with you both again. Yeah, you guys did great. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us today. Enjoy the rest of your day. You too. You too. You can overlap.