The Rich Roll Podcast - Brian Koppelman On The Artist Within, Nurturing Your Voice & The Importance Of Consistent Creative Practice

Episode Date: March 8, 2019

Today's guest was always creative, but never thought of himself of an artist. Then Brian Koppelman shifted his mindset. He adopted consistent daily practices to nurture his voice. He finally gave that voice the respect it deserved. And his life was forever changed. As direct result, this former music industry executive turned screenwriter, director, producer and showrunner has spent the last two decades churning out an avalanche of consistently great creative output as the co-writer (alongside lifelong friend David Levien) of iconic films like Rounders and Ocean's 13 and co-creator a little hit show you might have heard of called Billions on Showtime. Today we convene for a fun and highly instructive conversation about the interior life of a master storyteller and modern day artist — and the lessons that can be gleaned from investing our own creative instincts. We discuss how he discovered Tracy Chapman while still in college, facilitated her first record deal, and the hows and whys behind walking away from the music business to pursue his dream of being a writer. We mine why devotion to process over results, mastery over success, and love of craft is the path to a meaningful life. We examine how to overcome negative self-talk and how Tony Robbins and Julia Cameron changed his life. And we dive deep into how his daily habits — journaling and meditation paramount among them — have paved his road to long-sustained success. But, as a long time admirer of Brian, what strikes me most is his generosity. A source of personal inspiration for my own creative endeavors, Brian shares his copious experience freely (what works, what doesn’t and why) on his twitter feed (@BrianKoppelman) and as host of The Moment — his stellar podcast in which he shares conversations with all manner of successful creative people about the pivotal moments that fueled their fascinating careers. I think of him as a benevolent mentor at large to anyone and everyone seeking to live more fully, creatively expressed lives of purpose and meaning. So how does he do it? What can we glean from his example, habits and practices that can inform how we think about ourselves as creative beings? And why is this important? Even if you don't consider yourself creative, Brian will leave you questioning this assumption. Because deep down, we are all artists yearning to be fully expressed in that which makes us uniquely who we are. When we engage this inclination, the world is a better place. And we all deserve permission to do the work we want to do. Final Note: This conversation took place a few months ago while visiting NYC. Alas, my film crew did not join me, so this episode is audio only. Final Final Note: Season 4 of Billions returns to Showtime on March 17. If you’re new to the show, it's truly appointment viewing. So take the next week to get caught up. Season 3 was unreal and I can't wait to see what Brian, David and their amazing cast and crew have lingering up their sleeves. The only thing I know for sure is that we won't see it coming. It's both a delight and honor to share today's exchange with a master storyteller. I sincerely hope you not only enjoy it, but that you put his sagacious wisdom to work. Peace + Plants, Rich

You don't have to quit your job. You can find a half hour a day. And even if you think you can't find a half hour a day, you can. I'm not one of those people who says you don't need sleep. Like, you definitely need to sleep, but you don't need the extra hour online. You don't need the time playing a video game. The time that you're going to get in your car, drive to Starbucks, drive to wherever else, that's 20 minutes that you could sit and write something.

And if writing is not your thing, that's 20 minutes you could be taking photographs, or that's 20 minutes that you could be working. There are 20 minutes in the day, and those 20 minutes add up. It's much easier you could be taking photographs or that's 20 minutes that you could be working. There are 20 minutes in the day and those 20 minutes add up. It's much easier to say, I can't find the time than I'm scared I won't be any good. That's Brian Koppelman

and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host. This is my podcast. Welcome. Got Brian Koppelman on the show today. Very excited. Producer, director, screenwriter, former music biz executive. You know this guy, right? He's the mind, the co-writer behind some absolutely iconic films, films like Rounders, like Ocean's 13. But he is perhaps best

known as the co-creator, along with his longtime co-writer and best friend, David Levine, of the hit show Billions on Showtime, which I don't know about you, but I absolutely love. Along with this podcast, The Moment, where he has these amazing long-form conversations with all manner of successful creative people about the pivotal moments that fueled their fascinating careers. Brian is a guy I've been following for a long time.

He's an incredibly prolific artist, as well as this amazingly generous source of guidance and inspiration to the creative community at large. He's a guy who has inspired my own creative endeavors in so many ways. So how does he do it? How does he manage it all? How does he maintain such a high level of consistently great output? And what can we learn? What can we learn about creativity? What can we glean from Brian's example, his habits, his practices that can inform how we think about ourselves as creative beings and our own unique creative expression?

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His love for and his dedication to his craft, the persistence that he demonstrated to become successful, and how Tony Robbins and Julia Cameron really changed his life. We talk about the many habits that he credits to his long-term success, like daily meditation, journaling, The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron's amazing book. Journaling, The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron's amazing book. And Brian's is really the story of someone who was always creative, but never really thought of himself as an artist. And then the path that he blazes to make this dream a reality. And then the generosity with which he shares his experience.

What works, what doesn't, and why, to help all of us live more fully and creatively expressed. So this is a conversation about nurturing that inner voice, about confronting and overcoming negative self-talk and giving yourself permission to do the work that you want to do. Because in my opinion, at least, the world is a better place when we are living more fully expressed, more creatively expressed lives. Final note, season four of Billions returns to Showtime on March 17th, which I'm super excited about.

Season three was absolutely insane. So if you're new to this show, trust me, this is appointment viewing. So get caught up. And with that, I'll let the master storyteller do the rest of the storytelling. So this is me and Brian Koppelman. You know, you're about to get out the door and then you get the call that you don't have to, but the truth is it is fun appearing on a podcast where you know the host has a clear objective, a point of view, and a reason for doing the show. So this is fun for me. I'm

glad. Well, I appreciate you doing it. You're a busy man. You're wearing a lot of hats these days. And there's lots of Brian compliments I want to explore. The screenwriter, the dad, the meditator, the morning routine guy, the mentor, which is one of my favorite Bryans. And I love you when you're with Bill Simmons too. You guys just have great energy together. So yeah, I love listening to you in that context. And you're able to vacillate between all these different worlds from sports to entertainment, to music.

Like you really have experience and know your shit in so many arenas. But I think the thing that draws me the most to you beyond the amazing work that you put out and share with the world is this mentorship role. You've really made yourself available to the creative community to be an encouraging presence for those that have a creative spark and are challenged in bringing it to life. So I'm interested in like how you kind of matured into this role. Well, I have a great catholicity of interest. I always have, but it's always been centered around curiosity and obsession.

And so, I mean, in the case of Bill Simmons, he and I have known each other 20 years. And so that's a very easy and fun sort of exchange. And we met at this intersection of entertainment and sports in a way, because our first movie, Rounders, was in some ways a sports movie and had a lot of sports references. And Simmons used it to talk about basketball, and that's how we came together. And I'm thrilled to know that you're following the work that I'm doing that closely, man. And I think that there's something kindred in what you do and what I do. But it goes back to the fact that when I was younger, the answer to your question, which is why am I so available to people and why am I engaged and why do I become animated by helping people break

through creative blocks, by helping people figure out how to get to the core of what they want to do and then to try to help them do it. And of course, I am not someone who makes any money doing that. I do it completely pro bono on Twitter. But it's made you a media presence though, you know, unlike your writing partner, David, who's, you know,'s made you a media presence, though. Unlike your writing partner, David, who's not a media presence in the way that you are. Sure. I mean, that just breaks down to our personalities, in a way, and what we're each most engaged by. But it also, I think, ties into this, which is that David didn't have similar creative block when he was young. He didn't have a problem or not the same kind of

problem figuring out that he wanted to be a creative person. And he didn't have the kind of problem I did reconciling the feeling in me that I was trying to get out with my own perception of myself as somebody who wasn't an artist, who wasn't one of the anointed people, who wasn't chosen or picked to be an artist. I knew I was a smart person. I knew that I had a great verbal dexterity. I knew I had certain skills, but I didn't feel, and I knew I had a deep well of feeling that I was trying to communicate. I knew when I was really excited about something, I wanted to share it. I wanted to find out everything about it. I wanted to find out what was special about it. And I wanted to go all the way into

that world and explore it. And I knew I wanted to find a way to write about it and tell stories about it. But I had an incredibly difficult time putting myself in a lane that said, artist, creative person, someone allowed to think of themselves as a storyteller. And so because I was so jammed up and because I was so miserable, despite having success, and some of this comes, as it often does for all of us, comes back to a childhood where I was that kid who was always told, you're so smart, why are you so stupid? And not by my parents who were incredibly supportive, but by the school that I went to. And my own inability to sort of solve that juxtaposition for myself, I couldn't reconcile it either. So it wasn't just that the

teachers couldn't reconcile it, I couldn't reconcile it. you know? And I would look at some of the other kids, even as we're growing up in high school and doing the plays, and they just seemed like they had a kind of magic that I didn't have, right? And because of that, when I finally did figure it all out for myself or begin to figure it out, I felt so much more free. And I'm happy to tell you how that all happened, but I felt so much more free and so much more like myself that if I can find a way to help somebody get that feeling, I want to do it. So if I can give them practical tips, you know, I started doing this stuff of trying to guide people by telling them that most people holding themselves out as experts

were con people, con men usually, sometimes con women. And because it bothered me to see aspirants give their money when they had very limited money to supposed gurus of screenwriting who'd never written it. Right, the screenwriting, the ecosystem of instructors and so-called gurus who are going to tell you the secret exactly no one else will tell you yeah i felt so close to a kind of death i was never a suicidal person and i

was never gonna uh die of misery i was but you know i i've said before and i truly believe that when a creative impulse dies it's like any other kind of death and it has toxicity associated with it. And Amy and I just had our first child. I was 30 years old. I was in a job where I was making a good living and I was successful at it by most metrics, but I was not happy. because our first kid was born and I realized I didn't know how to be a good parent if I wasn't, if I'd become bitter, I wouldn't be a good parent.

And if I allowed this creative impulse to die, the toxicity would leach out onto the people that I loved. And that more than anything is what made me finally get to the breaking point of saying, I have to change my behavior. I have to find a way to believe I can do this work. I have to start doing the work. And figuring out how to break through and get there made a gigantic difference in my life. Yeah. But there was a tremendous amount of self-awareness around that

when you made that decision, right? So, like, planting a flag a little bit earlier when you're this creative kid who feels like he, you know, can't bring expression to this because it's not allowed or this is not the trajectory that you're on or these are not the signals that are being reinforced in your schooling, et cetera. I mean, what was it like at that time? Like, what was the awareness level at that time in terms of? When I was young? Yeah. Well, it's weird because I was also, I loved to play sports. And I wasn't an athlete like you.

I wasn't a world-class athlete, but I played varsity sports, you know? And I wasn't, again, not great at it, but I'm coordinated and I can play sports. And I loved sports. I would do all the plays. I would assistant direct plays. I even directed a play in my junior year of high school.

One kid got picked to direct a play. I got picked to do it. I didn't know that. So you were doing the thing. I was doing those things, but this is what I was going to say. It didn't, in doing those things, I would be the third lead in a show. I would direct the thing because I could, you know, I knew how to talk to the actors in a way who were going to be really good at doing it. I had assistant directed and like put in the time, but my self-conception was that like, well, I'm not really going to be able to do that. This is not a valid career trajectory.

And I think I know that I had ADHD in a way that it was back then was really not diagnosed. I'm 52 years old. So I grew up in the late seventies and eighties. I went to college in 84, graduated in 88. So my inability to complete work, I always knew I could write a paragraph that would make you laugh or feel scared. I could write a paragraph that would kind of dazzle you. But I couldn't write two paragraphs. Or if I could write two, I couldn't turn in the paper. My last semester of college, I had seven incompletes that I had to solve in order to graduate. And it wasn't willful, man. And this is what was the torture of it was, it was the books, if something for a person who

really has ADHD, the most painful feeling, I mean, other than something bad happening to someone you love, is boredom. Boredom is not the way it is to most people, to people who have real attention stuff. And so a book or an assignment that was like a book that was poorly written or that was about something that wasn't completely captivating to me, I couldn't read it. The book felt radioactive. I could, in college, I started to understand how to get around it, how to manage it a little bit, meaning I started to not feel as bad about myself. But when I was young, I felt terrible about myself and I felt I was lazy. And a lot of my life was about later. I went to law school at night ostensibly because I wanted to practice civil rights law. But in the end, what I realized, I went to prove to myself that I could do the work.

Right. Yeah. I can relate to that. I think that's why I did the same thing. Not at night, but that whole law school trajectory. Yeah. But meanwhile, you're this successful music industry executive, right? Like, I read that you discovered Tracy Chapman. I did. That's true. Well, yeah.

Like, nothing's ever simple, right? Right. And I hadn't read Viktor Frankl then. I didn't understand the way in which we have to learn to control our own emotions then. So I was prisoner to my emotions in a certain way. And I was, so yes, I had the ability, I was successful at doing that. And I had wanted to do it a lot of my life. And I've told the Tracy Chapman story plenty of times on my own podcast or other people's, but the shortest version of it is I was one of the leaders on campus of the anti-apartheid pro-divestment movement. And through that, saw Tracy playing. My father was in the record business, so I knew about that business. And then I set about trying to get Tracy record deal and produced her demos.

And executive produced her first album along with a guy named Don Rubin. And that all happened. And it was incredible. But I was spat out of that at the end of college having done that. Her album was number one in August of the year I graduated college. So I graduate in April. The albums are in May. The album's number one in August. I'm working at Electra Records. And suddenly that's what I am without the normal few years after college where you kind of figure

out what you are. Is this really what I'm supposed to be doing? I was able to do that job, but I was also not the perfect person to do it. i wasn't the best person to do it my kinship with what the artists did twinned with my even unknown to me desire to be the one doing the art made the whole thing really freighted and uh the big moment so we all have a few of these moments in our lives rich Rich, where something happens that makes us look at where we are, where we plotted on the graph. And one of those was my whole life, the things that I loved so much were music, books, movies, comedy, sports. And I would dive all the way in. As you see, if you follow me on Twitter or you hear me on other podcasts, I'll talk about all those things a lot. And I'll go very deep on those things because of how obsessed I was. But one of the sort of hallmarks of the way that would express itself was I always loved to share these obsessions.

these obsessions. And when I would hear a great piece of music, all I wanted to do was tell all my friends, right? When you're young, 18, 19, 20, nothing moves you more than a song can sort of take you to a place different than any other art form. But I was in the record business and I was, it was 1993 and The Counting Crows, August and Everything After came out. And, or sorry, the album didn't come out. What happened was a guy in an office near me had gotten a demo tape and called me into his office and said, come listen to this thing. And it was, he played me round here. And upon hearing it, instead of being filled with joy at, because I instantly knew how great it was. I knew they would be huge. I knew this was a world-class songwriter, a once every 10 year kind of talent. I was filled with rage that someone had heard it before me. I was filled with jealousy, competitive instinct, hatred. Yes. But I went home that night, and Amy and I had just gotten married, and I knew it. So I was able to say the strangest thing happened.

I heard this thing, and I became the exact person I never wanted to be. And so that was like one of the sort of markers for me. And that was another three years before, three or four years before I in earnest started riding rounders with David. But that was one of the moments where I realized, okay, Brian, you are not in a unified place right now. You are not comfortable in your own skin. You're not doing what you're supposed to be doing because your reaction was 180 degrees from what the best version of you should be. And I was able somehow to see that even, and I could see it before changing my behavior.

So I didn't quit my job and I didn't start writing, but I did have a moment of a dawning of a reality. And then, you know, what do we do? We show up for work the next day and get caught up in the petty stuff again. But somehow it lands, right? Yeah, I think that that's a beautiful encapsulation of the reality of the quote-unquote moment, you know, which is the name of your podcast. You're super interested in these sort of transformative, you know, moments in time in which people change their lives. But they're not necessarily crystallized to, you know, these episodic things, they percolate up over time with signals, and the process is really one of more paying attention to them and taking tiny little actions over time that aggregate and accumulate to what then becomes the moment that everyone wants to talk about. Yeah, I agree with you.

I also spent a lot of time afterwards trying to collapse the time of those processes. And that's part of what, like we were talking, joking on the way, walking into this room about how our morning routines can basically get so complex and take so long. They go into the afternoon now. In order to get ready for the day. But the idea, right, if you're trying somehow to unify your thoughts and actions, and you're trying to become comfortable in your skin, I have found, for me anyway, finding ways to check in on a more regular basis in an organized way, an orderly way,

a routine way makes a gigantic difference. So once I started journaling every day, which is the thing that I did started doing at 30 was morning pages as Julia Cameron describes in the artist's way. And I'm glad to have the opportunity to talk just a tiny bit more about it. I'm sure I know other people have mentioned it on the podcast, but on Twitter, often people ask me this question, you know, I'm super active. They're answering questions for people. And I'll say, do morning pages the way Julia Cameron describes, but what Julia Cameron describes, and you should go get her book, The Artist's Way, if you're somebody who feels like you're at a creative roadblock. But, you know, it's three longhand pages first thing in the morning. And I do them every day. I've done them every day since 1996.

I've probably missed seven days. Maybe I've missed 10 days. Do you ever go back and read them? Do you keep them? You read them. What you're supposed to do is maybe read them five years later. She says not before five years. I did it.

The first bunch of years I went back, and it's incredible. The stuff I started writing in the beginning about what I'd hoped would happen, all happened, you know, and it's not just the regular goal setting, but it was sort of taking myself, what happens when you do morning pages is in the beginning, it's very scary and very difficult. You're just going to keep your pen moving. You're not allowed to think you're not allowed to be a perfectionist. So for an ADD-ish perfectionist like me, because that was the other side of it, it was ADHD. And then when I would write, I would want it to be genius. If I would, I would have such standards that nobody could hit, and certainly that my intellect was not capable of hitting. So I had to, through the morning pages, get comfortable with just producing pages every day.

Then when you get comfortable with that and you're not going to read them, so there's no stakes. There's no stakes, right? What happens after a couple months is you're sitting there bored because you've got to move the pen for three pages, and you start telling yourself the truth. And you start asking yourself the really important questions. That's not the target of the thing, and you can't go into it trying to do that because the whole idea is just to dump your subconscious onto the page, just to write whatever the fuck comes into your mind. is eventually I see the truth on the page and I see who I'm supposed to be. And I see the ways I'm letting myself down. And I see the ways in which I'm allowing emotions to rule me and, or something happens that, that, that forces me to take action, you know, and that, but so, but so what happens is if I would have been doing morning pages, when the counting crows thing

happened, that whole next couple of weeks, it would have come back, right? A couple days, I would have checked in on that moment. It just would have happened. I know it. I would have started to go deeper into it. And perhaps I would have, especially if I had also been meditating then, which I wasn't, I think I would have more quickly been able to go, oh, something's wrong in a bigger way. And I have to address. Yeah, because you would have been integrated

in mind, body, and spirit. I think my experience, I started doing Morning Pages, The Artist's Way in 96. Yeah, 1996. Right when I- That's the same year I started. Is it? Yeah.

Right when I got out of rehab, a broken soul, and I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. And I can't say that I've had the fidelity to it that you have. I go in spurts, and I find myself always coming back to it when I feel stuck. And usually, those first two pages are, I don't know why I'm doing this, why am I writing this? Right, me too, yeah. And then at about page two and a half, even if it's just one thought or sentence, it makes it all worth it. And I went back and read some that I had written in like 2009, and I had that same experience. I was like, all these things that I was struggling with, that I wasn't sure about, they've all come to pass. And I think it's an exercise in adherence to process and being completely in acceptance and not attached to results because it's not a results-driven thing.

It's about just giving yourself over to something for the purpose of trying to connect yourself with yourself in a better way. Yes, and I think both of us are – it's funny, you look back and I find that I can sound to myself a bit glib about it. And so I just want to say that when I say this creative block felt like a death, what I mean to say is I was really sad. If I could just say it in simpler language, I was sad. And I had this really deep feeling that I wasn't living up to my potential. That there was a possibility for me to be a better version of myself. Now, we all have that all the time, right? I'm sitting here with

you now and I'm 20 pounds over where I'm even happy at my fat weight. And I know I could be better in that way, but okay. I can look at 20 other areas where I can, I feel, I know that I'm checking in and I'm doing the right thing. And I know the way in which I'm going to deal with weight. I've done it before, but at that time, and at various times, when I've been really low, when I've been sad, when I've felt, and it's always, I think, the feeling between, the gap between where I feel like I ought to be and where I am. And that doesn't mean in a material way either, right? At that time, all I meant for myself was, why am I so scared to write?

Why am I so terrified? Why do I think I have to put on like a Parisian's, you know, chapeau and get a bunch of pastel paints out in order to consider myself a creative person? But the fear and sadness leads to like anger and leads to all sorts of bad behavior. Unlike you, my only substance was pizza. But it's going to come out in some aberrant behavior or pattern. And so I just knew I had to find tools that I could go back to.

So the fidelity of the morning pages is, yeah, I say 10 days, I haven't done it. Maybe it's 20 days, but it's not more than that. Truly not more than 20 days. I haven't done it in all that time. Because if I go a day or two days, I found I'm just out of my rhythm. And it's hard, like shooting the show makes it really challenging because I have to get up so early. So if I can't do them first thing in the morning because I'm getting picked up at 5 a.m. to go to set, I will do them at 11 in the morning. Right.

I'll bring my journal in my bag and I'll just do them there. And it's not, I've been doing it long enough that I can sink right into the mode. Right. Even if I've been working a little bit. even if I've been working a little bit. And what about the meditation component? Speaking of the protracted morning routine. I never miss it.

So TM, that's your vibe. When did you get it? About seven years ago. Yeah. It was another one of those moments. It wasn't career-based. One of my kids had a health scare, and luckily, they were fine, perfect. But it was a health scare that lasted a few days. They were hospitalized for a few days, and it looked like it could have been serious.

Then it wasn't. But after that, the sort of ricochet of that, the long tail of it, really fucked with me. And I became pretty anxiety ridden. died and and a kind of anxiety that I couldn't fix the ways I normally fixed it in the past through through um like writing or through exercise like I would do those things and I would still feel fear yeah and so and I'll say I so I took Lexapro for six months because I feel no shame about, I think people, for me, I think people should use that stuff when it's necessary for the shortest window that they need to get past an acute phase. And then as long as their pharmacologist tells them

they should. But after about six months, I said to the shrink, I'd like to try, I'd like to get off of this. And I did, and I was fine. And the next time anxiety crept up, I'd like to get off of this. And I did, and I was fine. And the next time anxiety crept up, I decided to try a different mode. And I went, and luckily I got hooked up with Bob Roth who runs. Oh, cool. Yeah. Bob's been on the podcast. Yeah, I know. So I got hooked up with Bobby and he taught me to meditate. And so, and that was like, I say seven or eight years ago. And I'd say on that one, it's even better than the morning pages. I mean, I never, ever miss a morning meditation.

I do sometimes miss the afternoon meditation, but I feel shitty when I miss it. And I feel great when I do it. And it's, I mean, even just, if for no other reason than that's 40 minutes during the day, 20 in the morning, 20 in the afternoon, when I'm not online, when I'm not talking to anybody else, when I have to go inward, when I have to quiet my mind or let my mind race, but I can't do anything about it. I can't talk it out. I can't write it out. I have to just live in it. And I just find it insanely, incredibly valuable. It's interesting that you strike me as somebody who you make a decision to do something and then you do it. Like the fact

that you've been so consistent in those two disciplines alone, I think says a lot about you. Oh, it's the opposite. I'll walk the fuck away from something that doesn't work the quickest. Uh-huh. If something sticks, it's because it's giving me great value like i will i will if if i tried something and i didn't get i've tried a million things and didn't get value out of them or i didn't dig it i just would walk away i would say that's one of the other like lucky keys in my life and part of that this does have to do with like a bunch of privileged things but like that i that have always been relatively financially comfortable.

I do very little that I don't want to do. Yeah, but meditation and morning pages aren't exactly instant gratification disciplines in terms of gauging, like, is this working or is it not? Well, but within a month of doing meditation, I felt that, because the part that bothered me about the anxiety wasn't just the thoughts. It was that I had a lot of physical manifestations, you know, um People have a lot of physical manifestations of anxiety like your stomach can bother you You have back pain like all sorts of I had a lot of physical stuff

that just really very quickly like went 40 away and then by a month and a half into meditating it wouldn't be like 80 or something like that where all the the way in which my heart would race, all the physical stuff just fucking went away. So that was easy for me to want to continue. But I mean, you're talking about someone who could go to the gym for three months, four times a week, and then one day wake up and be like, nah, no.

So I've abandoned plenty of things. Because that does work. Yeah, no, I know that works. But I could just be like, I can't. It's cold. It's cold outside, and I just can't quite find my way there. So no, I'm not, I'll say, you know, our online personas and our personas on podcasts, I haven't said this before, but it's really important to say, which is in real life, I really try hard to be the person I am on my podcast, but I'm not always. So, like, I don't want to present, like, no, I don't follow through all the time on everything. Like, I fuck off like everybody else does, and I can get short-tempered like everybody else does and all the rest of it i aspire to be somebody who's constantly chasing this kind of unity and and peace and contribution to the world and i do it all the time but i'm i'm certainly nowhere near perfected or nowhere near

actualized in the way you haven't graduated from the human condition yet? No, man. I really haven't. I know. I so fucking haven't. But that's, you know, of course, I'm in the same boat with that. And it goes back to that permission piece. It's like giving people permission to express themselves and also to be innately human with their flaws and their weaknesses.

Yes. human with their flaws and their weaknesses yes but but becoming really comfortable in our own skin that's what i've now sort of like turned my attention to is how is acceptance i agree with you like accepting the human condition but beyond that finding a way to be comfortable enough with who we are that we can be really kind to everybody else. Because the more you're comfortable with who you are, the fewer hangups you allow yourself to have, the more you can just present not the Instagram version of you, but you. The easier it is to be empathetic to other people, the easier it is to show that empathy for other people, the easier it is to engage and find people where they are. And that's something that's really challenging.

And I am constantly in a battle to find, you find moments of grace, right? But most of life is hard. Right, but that's beautifully put. And I think that is, it's a laudable goal. Like, can you be the same person in every context? Like one of the mountains I've had to climb is just being a classic people pleaser, where I would chameleon myself depending upon the scenario or the situation that I'm in. And it's been a journey of just getting comfortable enough with who I am that it's okay.

And that the person I am presenting on the podcast, even though it's about the guests, it's my show, is the same person who's going to talk to you if I bump into you on the street or whatever context. And the person who, you know, gets into a road rage incident or, you know, whatever happens, you know, in the course of the day. Seth Godin's a genius at it. He's, I don't know if, have you had Seth on the podcast? No, I tried to get him on once and then I was going to go up to his, I was in New York and I was going to have to go up to his house to do it.

It's worth it. I just couldn't swing it. I do it. Maybe I'll make a point of doing it next time. It's worth doing. I listened to the recent one that you just did with him. But he's exactly, so he's one of my really close friends, and he's exactly the guy. He's really like the Buddha in real life, and it's amazing.

Because I've seen him in many contexts, and it's just who he is all the time. Is he super dapper all the time? Yeah, he's put to good. You're not going to see Seth not in a sort of like, just presents himself as you imagine that he would present himself. I want to say it doesn't mean you want to be a person who's run over either, right? Because that's another default some people go to. Like you said, people, please be aware, they want to be just only nice all the time.

I'm talking about trying to find a way to understand who you are in a primal way, be comfortable with that, and then work with that material to be as kind and good as you can within the context of living your life and going after what you want to go after. Yeah. And this is not the struggle of the artist. This is the struggle of every human being. Yeah, and this is not the struggle of the artist. This is the struggle of every human being. And I think it's fair to say that we're in an epidemic of people who are so disconnected from their highest self or the best version of who they could be. Yeah.

Because life's hard, man. And people are trying to just pay the bills, and they look at that pursuit as a luxury that's not available to them. I think that's exactly right. Yeah. So, let's go back to the moment. You make this decision that you're going to take a stab at this writing thing. So, leading up to that was Morning Page's work played a part in that. And this friendship with David. Yeah.

So, how does this, this like sort of come together? Well, if I paint a full picture where I was, I guess Sammy was born when I had four months left of being 29 or something like that. Yeah. So I turned 30. I was playing a lot of poker then. My wife threw this poker, this party.

And that's the other thing I'll say. A podcast episode of mine that everybody gravitates towards is the one i did with my wife amy and it's she's an incredible novelist and um she really recognized this stuff in me before i did that i could do this and was really clearly leading me there but um she threw this poker party for me with all my closest friends and my little boy was there on my lap at four months old. And I had this certain kind of a hollow feeling and poker party because I'd really been playing a lot of poker. I would go, my job at the time, which is in the record business, was to go out and see bands. And in between seeing bands, I would go to this poker

club. And then during the day, sometimes I would take phone calls at the poker club and have meetings at the poker club. And I was really into this life of playing cards. I loved a lot of stuff about it and played cards all through law school and like the character in the movie does. But then there was this one moment where I was in my office during this time after that party. where I was in my office during this time after that party, because I did have the notion at the party. I didn't just feel this way, but I noted it and I mentioned it to Amy afterwards. And the reason I brought up Amy is to say, surrounding yourself with people who want the best for you is also not just, it can be a talent, but it can also be something that you

focus on. And it's crucial to focus on it, right? Like we're just coming out of the holidays. And one of the things I said online that got the biggest reaction of like anything I've ever said online was I just, I said to people that if you're going home for the holidays, be really careful about telling your dreams to the people at dinner, because they won't mean to crush your dreams, but often they'll say something that sounds different to you because of your relationship with them than you meant, than they meant, but it can derail you. Yeah. And pretty sure I retweeted that. Oh, good. Yeah. Protect, you know, protect yourself in those situations, surround yourself with the right, surround yourself with the right people.

And so I was surrounded by the right people. And that made a gigantic difference to me. But I was in my office one night. I had never been a cigarette smoker. I'd never smoked a cigarette in my life. And I was smoking cigarettes. I'd smoked for about four months. And I hated cigarettes, was opposed to them.

Got through college, high school, millions of concerts without ever smoking even one cigarette. And suddenly, I'm a fucking cigarette smoker, and I'm eating like a bacon cheeseburger. And I'm supposed to be listening to all these demo tapes. And I suddenly catch myself with a cigarette, the bacon cheeseburger, a big box of tapes I don't want to listen to. And I did have the crystallized thought then that this isn't the life I'm supposed to be living. And I can't. I can't be this miserable in the work environment. I have this wife that I genuinely loved

and this kid that I genuinely loved. And then we had a second kid who I can't imagine loving anymore. And I went to Dave who was bartending. And he had been trying to be a writer. He'd been writing and bartending. And I went to him and I said, and I have to give credit to Tony Robbins too. Around that time, I read Awaken the Giant Within.

And it had a huge impact on me because it allowed me to start doing some goal setting. So this is before The Artist's Way. And through doing Awaken the Giant Within, I realized it was one of those things like pay attention to how you're feeling. Pay attention. Notice what makes – notice the things that are working. Notice the things that aren't. Don't be afraid to change. So I had done that stuff.

Not the NLP part of it so much, but the sort of look at your life, look at the distance between where you want to be and where you are. I'd given that book to David. And so I go to him this night and I say, dude, I'm getting to the point where I have to figure out how to write something. I can't, what do I do? And he gave me The Artist's Way. And I started doing the morning pages. And then soon thereafter, I walked into this poker club in New York called the Mayfair Club and called him and said, I know what the movie is. And he said, I'll write it with you. We'll write it together. And so we decided. And then this is one of those things. I mean, David had this incredible work ethic and didn't have any of the ADHD issues and didn't have any of the sort of exact kind of insecurities that I did in that area. And he said,

well, we'll do it, but we have to meet every day and we have to do this like it's a job. And so we worked, we met when he would get done bartending and before I would go to work, Amy cleared out, there was a storage space that every apartment or a building had one little tiny storage space, had a slop sink in it, room for one chair. And Dave and I went into that room every day, five days or six days a week. From when we decided to start, we went for two hours. That was it because I had to go to work. So two hours in the morning, we wrote rounders in four and a half months. Wow, four and a half months.

We researched it. I mean, the only part of the timeline I'm collapsing is we researched for a little while. So we would go out, go to the clubs, and then we would meet and outline it. But from the moment we said, let's write the screenplay, let's start writing dialogue, four and a half months later, we had the screenplay. And the next chapter of that isn't, oh, it sold and got made right away. There's a whole saga that gets built into that. The movie ultimately gets made, but then it doesn't, it's not the sense. Like, we look at that movie now and it's beloved. You know, I just listened to the Rewatchables episode with Bill.

And it was so, it's just, it's revered. And one of the questions that they ask and kind of ponder in that conversation is like, why is this movie so rewatchable? Like trying to like deconstruct it. And there's so many reasons for that. But the truth is, it is incredibly rewatchable. It is beloved. It found its, you know, legs in DVD and, you know, these sort of technologies that came

online, but it didn't happen in an instant for you. No, it was a failure at the box office, and it did okay critically, and it was a fresh tomato, but barely. But, well, first it was rejected by every agency in town, and I don't update my blog really, but I have a blog, and on there, briankopplman.com, I tell the whole story of how it was rejected.

But all the agencies in town rejected it. It was an incredibly great lesson to me about gatekeepers and not, not knowing anything. I wrote down everything that they said. And then the day after it sold, literally like in a movie, the day after it sold all the same agents who rejected it called to sign us. And I said to all these agents,

like, of course I said the truth. I was young enough that I was just like, dude, you said it was overwritten. You said it was underwritten. I don't know what those terms mean still. And then they would all say, no, it was my assistant. No, it was the reader. All this bullshit. But Dave and I knew right then, well, we have to be really careful about listening to what these people say from here on out because they clearly don't have any backbone and they don't believe the things that they say. So it sells. We, and then this part is incredible. We get to be on set

every day. We were part of making the movie and then we're in that business. Then that's the life we're living. I do want to say one thing, which is I didn't quit my job. So often, and John Acuff has written about this beautifully, I think in a couple couple of his books you don't have to quit your job you can find a half hour a day and even if you think you can't find a half hour a day you can i'm not one of those people says you don't need sleep like you definitely need to sleep but you don't need the extra hour online you don't need the time playing a video game you don't need the time at that you're the time that you're going to get in your car drive to starbucks drive to wherever else that's 20 minutes that you're going to get in your car, drive to Starbucks, drive to wherever else. That's 20 minutes that you could sit and write something. And if writing is not your thing,

it's 20 minutes you could be taking photographs, or that's 20 minutes that you could be working. There are 20 minutes in the day. And those 20 minutes add up. I say to writers who ask me, if you write one page a day, one page a day of a screenplay. A screenplay is a hundred pages. You can write three finished screenplays in a year at one page a day. A novel, you can finish a novel in a year, one page a day. So anyone can write one page a day and you don't have to turn your whole life upside down because the catharsis here's, and here's the problem with quitting. It's not just the pressure you put on yourself, which you do. It's you convince yourself you've actually taken action, but you haven't.

Yeah. Right? Quitting, walking away is very dramatic, and it might actually fill you with endorphins, and you might feel like you did something, and you can tell people you did something, but you didn't actually do anything. That's right. You just made it worse. but you didn't actually do anything.

That's right. You just made it worse. And because human psychology is so strange, the fact that you, what you just talked about is an incredibly doable thing, right? And people don't want to hear that. They don't want to hear that because that's scary because that means that they could actually do it. Yes.

They like to say, well, I can't quit my job so I can't be like you. And that's comfortable. And I think that keeps people stuck. Totally. Completely. You're completely right. I think Acuff's book, I think Quitter is the one where he talks about this really well,

where he talks about the way in which you don't have to. I wish I would have had that book when I was young. That book and Steve Pressfield's book, I wish I would have had that book when I was young, that book and Steve Pressfield's book. I wish I would have had when I was starting out, you know, War of Art. It's the best. Those, yeah, I wish I had that then because what I did, you know,

what I learned to do essentially was keep the resistance at bay. And that's whatever your pursuit is. If you can just find a half hour where you don't judge yourself, because that's what you were talking about. You're exactly right, Rich. It's much easier to say, I can't find the time

than I'm scared I won't be any good. So instead, don't worry about whether you're good or not. Just worry about, define success. This is a Tony Robbins thing, but I think it's great. It's like you decide how you want to, sorry, it's a Tony Robbins thing, and I think it's great because Dave and I executive produced I'm Not Your Guru, that movie about Tony, and I'm kind of all in on his work. But one of the great things he says is that you can define what a successful day is. So if I decide a successful day is, I'm going to do morning pages, I'm going to write, I'm going to take a three-mile walk. If I've completed those things, I've had a successful day. It's empowering.

It is empowering. And so if you sell yourself and you mean it if i spent 20 minutes chasing whatever x is but because i i know that like sort of the popular um there are many books and podcasts that have come out over the last bunch of years about how this idea of chasing your passion is foolish and that that there's no reason that giving that advice to young kids sets them up for failure. But I think that's because we forget to say the other part of it, which is, well, we have to work with incredible rigor to achieve it. Working with rigor to achieve something is never a waste of time because what you've learned at the end of that is how to work with rigor. And you can apply that to the next thing that you want to do. But working with rigor parts real hard, that took me

years to figure out how to do because not because I was lazy, but because I was scared. Scared of failing, scared of not being as smart as I thought I was, not being as good as I thought I was, scared of being rejected, scared of looking like a fool. But what you find, if you do the work every day, you don't actually care about that stuff anymore. Because in 100 days, you'll have 100 pages. But process and rigor is not sexy. We don't talk enough about that because we want to talk about the life hack or what's behind that velvet rope or download this program and this is going to solve your problem. That's true, but you're right. the thing that I fear most people who want to make a change don't know is that even for those of us who've made the change, it's still hard every day, every day that you have to write,

or every day that you have to find a way to do your show, or you have to stay on your diet, which I know is easy for, I mean, I've read all this stuff. I know why it's easy for you, but it's, it's, believe me, I have many challenges. Right. We, but that, that we still, we've just taught ourselves how to show up every day. We just haven't actually put a practice in place. We've put guardrails up for ourselves, but I could easily not write. I could easily fall into feeling, you know, way after the artist's Way, way after I started becoming a professional writer, I had huge career downswings. And it was terrifying to me. And it would have been so easy to, not just easy, like I could just see myself sliding into, well, this is over.

Well, this was a good run well but because i had a practice in place i could revert to it and i could apply myself the guardrails thing is huge and i think making it super simple almost binary is super important so whether it's like okay two hours before work every day or morning pages are non-negotiable like when i changed my diet it started with all right well i'm just not going to eat like meat and dairy. Like that's just off the table. Like it's not even a sentence. It's easy to understand and easy to follow. And it's a rule, right? It's a guardrail. And I think the more guardrails you establish and set up, that brings structure to that process and a framework that makes it easier to execute on the process aspect of it. Change feels cataclysmic, especially change that-

And it's vague. What does that mean? Also, all of us have- Right. It's totally vague. Also, all of us have- When you're on one side of the thing, it's easy to think that those who've succeeded at any of this stuff had something special. But that's special.

And look, Seth Godin and I went deep on this podcast because I bring up Bob Dylan a lot, who I do think is special. Bob Dylan. He took issue with that. Yeah, well, we had a long talk about it. But for me, but I don't find it disempowering to think that Bob Dylan is. So, yes, I believe there are. I'm an atheist, but you know, in the Jewish religion, there are 36 Lamed Vav, 36 holy people who walk the earth. They don't

even know they are that, but they are that. But the way I would use that is, yeah, there are some people who have extraordinary natural gifts. I've had the opportunity to meet Mark Schera, the great baseball player. And I've heard him say, you know, when I was seven years old, I could just turn on a baseball and hit the leather off the ball. I was just born with this. But that's not most extraordinarily successful people in the arts or in athletics. And it's not Michael Phelps either. Right.

You know, that guy had to show up for five hours a day every single day for 12 years. So, yeah, you might not be able to be Bob Dylan. I might never be able to be David Mamet. But I can be – it doesn't matter. I can still find a way if I show up every day to get the best out of my own point of view of the world, out of my own facility with language and telling stories and pictures. And so, but I fail all the time. And that's part of what I always want to be able to communicate with people to people is the most successful people, most of the most successful people that you look at,

I'm not including myself in that category of most successful people, but most people doing the thing that you wish you were doing are having hard days doing it all the time. They've just trained themselves to do it. Yeah. Back to the permission. They've just trained themselves to do it. Yeah. Back to the permission. Yeah. Give yourself permission to do this work. I was at an event a couple of weeks ago at Largo in LA,

and it was a live event with Rob Bell. Do you know who Rob Bell is? The keto guy? No, no, no. He's like a former mega church pastor. Oh no, I don't know who he is. Who's now become sort of a heretic in the Christian community,

but is an incredible public speaker and like a really beautiful guy. But he was doing this live event with Elizabeth Gilbert and somehow it came up, I don't know whether he asked her or somebody in the audience asked her, like, how do you describe what you do? Or what is your mission or what's important about what you do? And she said, I'm the person that gives people permission. And then she asked somebody from the crowd to get up and say, what do you need permission to do? And volunteers, she's like, I give you permission to do that.

And it's so freeing from somebody of that, you know, who's successful in that regard, whether it's you or her or somebody like that, to say, it's okay. I talked about that a lot when I was doing the Vine series that I did, where I was really talking about that you don't have to have, nobody has to give you permission to do the work that you want to do. And in this, you know, our friend James Altucher would say, all these gatekeepers have now gone away. You're in an industry where there's still gatekeepers, just by the nature of how that industry works. But in so many industries, those gatekeepers are no longer either there or important. And so with that being removed, that excuse is no longer valid. And again, it goes back to that's frightening for a lot of people, or it's empowering depending upon your perspective. Well, yeah, it's scary because then you only have,

a way it's scary is if you then frame it that you only have yourself to blame. Right. And if you think, well, this is my one shot. And if I fail now, it means I'm worthless. And often it's because there was someone when we were young who told us something about ourselves that we unfortunately believed. And that by doing and failing, we're going to reaffirm that bad judgment. So what you have to do, I think, is try to figure out what that is and who that was and how to just silence that voice.

Yeah. It's beautiful to hear you say that because when I watch Billions, which I love, goes without saying, I mean, it's it's so well crafted and there's such a precision to it that it's easy to look at that and say well whoever's behind this man these guys are like next level i can't even wrap my head around what it would take to construct that universe in that way well what we are is working professionals and look i'm I'm also not going to poor mouth it, right? Dave and I have worked really hard for a really long time to become really good at doing what we do. And you're in the middle of production right now still, right?

Yeah, I'm writing. The season is about to premiere. Yeah, I left this couch that I like to write on to come here. Yeah, we've shot, we're in the middle of shooting episode 8 of 12 of season 4, and the trailer just came out. And you can find it if you go to my Twitter at Brian Koppelman, you'll see a link to the trailer. But we're good at what we do because we've worked incredibly hard at it, but we've also tried to be really careful about continuing to grow, continuing to learn best practices, continue to ask questions of great filmmakers. So we'll show our work to people who we feel like are further along. We'll ask them questions about it. We will grind and grind and grind to make the thing appear effortless and great and like it just swings.

You know, we're lifelong obsessive obsessives about this and you know i i also yeah i don't want to make it sound like i just one day decided oh i should be i should create things i should tell stories it should be movies like i had memorized when i would was at college and i would go see a movie like she's gotta have it by spike lee or raising arizona by the cone brothers i would go see those movies three four five times in a row i would memorize the movies before you would just easily have it on VHS. And by then you could also,

they would come out six months later and I would just watch them over and over and I would memorize them and I would really think about the language and I would adopt that language for myself. And so like in 94, when Pulp Fiction came out, Amy and I went to that the night it came out and something exploded in my brain.

Here was a guy who was clearly doing everything that I, somewhere deep inside me secretly wanted to do. So right, 93 was the County Crows. In 94, I saw Pulp Fiction. That was another one of those things where it was like, well, you could do anything. Like you could make that rectangle on the screen happen in the middle of, you know, when Uma draws the little rectangle.

You could break all those rules. And something else kind of like fired in my brain that made me become aware of it. And Dave and I have continued one of the great lessons I took from that counting crows thing. A guy, a very successful guy, very, very successful guy wrote me yesterday on Twitter. And he said, Hey, I have a question for you. Do you get angry and jealous when someone else succeeds? Yeah. When you see someone got a show, and I said, dude, no. Like, I'd be a lunatic if I felt that way now in my life. I was thinking that when you were describing Pulp Fiction.

I was wondering whether it made you angry. Well, that was before I'd ever written anything. So everything then made me feel, no, it all just made me feel like a failure. Not angry. But no, when Dave and I wrote Rounders, early on in it, when I realized we might have a chance at this, I promised myself that I would never allow the way I felt in the movies and TV to be like the way I felt when I was an executive in the music business. That I would never harden myself to to the beauty of the art. And then I would go in to watch movies and watch TV shows like a fan. The second or third time I watch something, I'm watching it like a professional. But the first time I watch something,

I'm just watching it. And I'm just letting myself float away on it. And so I still get so turned on when I see something great. That's cool. So as long as you've been in this business and with all the success that you've had, you still avoided becoming sort of hardened and bitter. Yeah. If you look on my Twitter, you'll see a lot of negative comments from me about one thing and one thing only, and that's the president of the United States. There's a lot of that. Yeah, yeah. And those associated with him, but I'll never slam a movie ever, ever. I know how hard it is to make them or a TV show. It's too hard. Yeah. make them or a tv show it's too hard yeah everyone goes into it with the best intentions everyone's trying to do something great it's a miracle that

anything gets made uh yeah it takes it takes um it takes a it does take a lot of luck and i would also say when i mentioned privilege earlier and i try to say this all the time, and I think it's important to say it. When I, looking back at 52, to be like a white male in America at that time who didn't have college debt, if I didn't find a way to be successful, it was just entirely my fault. The world was set up for guys like me. It was just laying there for people like me because nobody knew about subliminal biases in that way. So executives weren't checking themselves on that. So someone like Dave and I walk into a room, we could talk sports with the guys in charge. It was almost always guys in charge. There was a lingua franca that we shared that made things much easier for me. There was also this idea in the culture that if you were a guy,

you could sort of out dream big and take your shot in a way that I think women and people of color felt it was much harder. And I didn't have college debt because my father was rich enough to pay for college. So I had certain structural advantages that it's important to say, so you might not be able to spend two hours a day, but so find 20 minutes at first. And the other thing that happens is you gain momentum. Suddenly 20 minutes does become an hour because suddenly that's the part of the day you look forward to the most. That's part of the day where you feel the most alive. I like how you just got really excited right there.

Well, that's what happened to me. So what do you think is what makes a great story? What are the elements of great storytelling? I think it's that the storyteller is incredibly engaged to share that story with you. I truly don't think intellectually about storytelling. I don't think in terms of acts. I don't think in terms of inciting events. I never have.

What I think about is, do I have an incredible curiosity about the story? Is there a world that's incredibly fascinating to me and to David? Because we tell each other the stories, right? Is there a world that's incredibly fascinating to me? Are there characters who I find incredibly compelling? Is there a language I start to hear? Because the language has always been a real key

thing for me. Is there a language that I can sort of hear in this universe? And then it's just not faking the funk. I'll say I'm much more of an instinctive writer than I am an intellectual writer. And so I can tell if something so I, I can tell if something's boring. I can tell if something feels inauthentic or not real to the environment or the world, but I'm really bad at prescriptive sort of instruction to people. I don't, I, you know, if I read your script, I can tell you that you have to move this story up close. I can, if I read your script, I could take it apart like a professional, but in the, and by the way, I will not read your script,

but in the, to generally people, but in the- Don't send by in your script and don't ask him if Rounders 2 is going to happen. I mean, yes, we're on his choice, it's funny. I'll make fun of you online in a very friendly, loving sort of a way, but yeah, don't send me your script. But I could do that, but I don't,

like really all the things that we've done, if you send me your script. But I could do that. But I don't, like really, all the things that we've done, if you think about Billions, it's completely unconventional. These two sort of leads, this third lead in the Wendy character, and then really Taylor, who's also a lead, and the way we jumble their stories together.

No clear-cut bad guy, good guy. We never talk about A, B, and C stories, really. I mean, once in a while, we'll throw those words around. But we're really trying to just make each moment completely compelling and that the characters act in ways that are both true and surprising. But there still has to be this balance between left brain and right brain, because part of this is a math equation. Like, how do you make all of these storylines fit together,

this puzzle that you have to construct in order to, like, tell the story properly? That comes back, well, that comes back to rigor, for me, anyway. That comes back to not, when I say don't fake the funk, not lying to yourself. Because if you've listened to stories and told stories for your whole life, you know when a story works. So, I don't actually apply the math in the way that one might think that I do. I'm aware of it, of course, but I'm aware of it in the way that a musician is aware of the rhythm of the two-four in a rock song, right? They just start, when a musician starts writing a riff, they kind of know what a riff feels like, starts writing a riff, they kind of know what a riff feels like, what a riff sounds like,

what the groove, how the groove locks in. So yes, musicians have a sort of innate understanding of math in the same way that screenwriters do. But I don't think in terms of, when I meet people who say they're great at story math, I'm like, I don't understand that. I just like telling stories. I don't really, I can't give you the answer. Is there like a channel? When you're writing dialogue, for example, are you just getting into some kind of flow state mindset where it just comes to you from some other place? Writing dialogue for me is the most fun part,

and it's the part that is the least conscious. It is, you know, these characters, you are, I know these characters and the situation. Oh, okay. I can give you one math answer. The one math answer I can give you is conflict. So there has to be conflict all the time. I would say a scene works dramatically when someone wants something and there's an obstacle that can be an internal obstacle or an external obstacle. So as long as the dialogue is engaged in solving a conflict, in getting someone over an obstacle, then you've solved the kind of story requirement. And then the dialogue really comes from a, I don't want to undersell, I was a kid who would, I remember the thing I said about boring books, they were like

radioactive. But the things I liked, I would read, I read four books a week, but they were just the books I liked. I would read word books all the time. I loved language. I always just wanted to learn vocabulary words. Not for tests. I didn't study for the SATs.

I just liked reading arcane books about like language and sentences and I would memorize movies. And so when I would memorize movies and I could quote back the dialect to you, something became innate. It's cellular for me, the rhythm of that kind of speech. And the only thing I ever did sort of consciously is sometimes I will read David Mamet. Like when I was younger, especially, I would will read David Mamet. Like when I was younger, especially, I would just read David Mamet to understand the restraint and rhythm of his early work.

Yeah. Are you able to tune out all the external kind of ephemera that is swirling around billions? I mean, it's so successful. Last season was like riveting. You're going into this new season. How are you able to like tune the noise out and just focus on like trying to do the best storytelling

that you can without being influenced by this gigantic enterprise that is the show now and all the people that love it? I mean, David, I'm glad that we're this age, not younger, because none of that, I like it all, and I'm fine with it. But you're very engaged with the fans. Like, you're like a fan yourself, the way that you kind of interact with people online

in those conversations. What's the line in Silverado that Kevin Kline says? I decided you either have to trust everybody or trust nobody. It doesn't make a difference. So yeah, the choice is either to be fully engaged or not engaged with fans and talking online. I'd rather be in the middle of it. We've already made the show. I'll say there's never been a moment that I'm writing it, that Dave and I are on set shooting it or editing it,

that I'm thinking about a comment anybody made anywhere what critic or a fan the world of the show is is its own world and part of being a working professional is being able to engage in that way and then shut that off and engage in the work i mean the thing lives in our imaginations the two of us it's it's just um these characters are could no sooner be sort of influenced by what somebody says in that way than a character that lives in a book you read 40 years ago they're their own thing and their world is its own world and it seems like the the question that you're trying to explore with the show and what's kind of central to it, please correct me if I'm wrong, is this idea of why is it that we can get on board with these characters who are behaving badly and doing abhorrent things, people whose values seem misplaced, who are interested in power and greed, who are very witty and charming, but are not necessarily behaving in their best self,

so to speak, and not just be on board with them, but be cheering for them. What does that say about us as humans? What does that say about America? And what does it say about this moment that we're in right now? I mean, what do you think it says? Well, I mean, yeah, I'm asking you. I know you're not going to answer this question, but just in the asking, you know, it's making us think about this. I love that you're asking the question. It's making us think about this. Completely intentional that you asked the question. Yeah. I mean, what I'll say about that is, David and I, we definitely made the decision not to have, in a very conscious way, we were not interested in having a traditional hero on the show.

We did not want a good guy and a bad guy. What we wanted was gray everywhere. We wanted to examine why tremendous verbal gifts, a certain kind of charisma, power, and money started to stand in for real qualities of character in our culture. We wanted to examine why wealth became not just something to go after, not a way to take care of yourself and your family, not a way to get your dreams, but an end in itself. Why we are in a country where people use prosecutorial positions to advance their own careers. We looked around and saw this. So who was popular in the culture and why? Meaning, I'm friends with Mark Cuban and I've known him a long time. We looked at why were Mark Cuban and Donald Trump, we're saying this in

interviews before Trump even announced he was going to run. And I even then took pains to say, I don't consider Mark and Trump in any way similar, other than they were both... One actually was a successful businessman, that's Mark, and then the other was held out to be so. And they were the two most popular reality stars in the country. And so we asked ourselves why. And that was a backdrop to telling this story. We also both live, David lives in Connecticut, I live Chris Christie, people who were supposed to be prosecutors, who used those positions to advance themselves, to become famous, to become powerful. And something about it struck us as incredibly compelling, because these people weren't reviled in the culture, they were celebrated. We were interested in

how far people would go with characters like that. And we were determined not to make either one heroic. You know, the first half of the first season, people find themselves rooting for Axe and they don't understand it. And then as Axe does worse and worse things, they somehow stay with him. Yeah. And the same thing for Chuck throughout season two and Wendy and Taylor. And so, yes, the show wants to ask these questions without giving a direct answer to them. And it's important to say if someone hasn't watched the show, the show is super funny

and entertaining. And that's really like, the main thing is that people really have a great time watching it. If there's a message underneath it, you can take it or not. Well, truth is stranger than fiction as well, because the question that you're exploring in the show is being writ large in real life at the moment on a level that if you had scripted that 10 years ago, people would have said was too extreme and unbelievable. I agree. 100%. All right. It is amazing how you can vacillate between rooting for Axe, rooting for Chuck.

And with the trailer that you just released, you said you're going to have to choose. And, you know, throwing Kate into it as well, Asia Kate Dillon as Taylor, like you're going to have to choose. And I'm like, I don't know if I want to choose. Yeah, you can love all of them. Can I? Sure, I do. I'll say Dave and I love all of them. Yeah. We love all these characters. I mean? Sure. I do. I'll say Dave and I love all of them. Yeah. We love all

these characters. I mean, that's the thing, right? You can't write them if you can't understand them. So I know how they, I do understand what they think of themselves. I do understand how they see themselves in the world. My moment with that, that I recollect, I mean, it's been a while since I watched last season, but the one that's, the moment that stands out for me, and I can't remember it completely specifically, but Axe and this other hedge fund guy, I think they were out on a balcony. The other guy was on some hard times and Axe asked him, well, how much money do you have?

Or like, how much do you need? And I can't remember the figure. It was some ungodly amount of millions. And they kind of say, well, you know, that's not going to be enough when he explains all of his expenses. So a guy said that. That rap, which was in the third episode last year, a guy said that whole rap to us. It was a real guy at dinner. What was that like?

Walked us through why $50 million wasn't enough money. Yeah. In real life. And it's so preposterous. He walked us through why $50 million wasn't enough money. Yeah. In real life. And it's so preposterous. He walked us through the reason why. And he really said that thing to us about the wife. He really said the thing to us about the wife is going to, you know, you have to give $2 million to charity so she can be on the charity boards. And you got to have the house out in the hampton.

And he said that whole run to us. And then we said to him, we're putting that in the show. And he said, yeah, please put it in the show. Yeah. And after hearing it and thinking about it for a minute, you're like, he's right. He can't live. He can't do it. He needs more.

Well, that's that rap. And then also at the beginning of the season, Lara and Axe say 300 million isn't enough. Yeah. I mean, watching the show, I mean, we hope that people are going to turn off while they're watching it. Maybe you understand the logic of their thinking. But I do hope that afterwards you will. Of course. Think to, you know, you will allow yourself to think about what do you really need.

Yeah. And why and what that stuff really means. Yeah. Yeah. what that stuff really means. Yeah. Yeah. Because the fact that I could hear that speech,

that exchange and go, oh yeah, I can see why he can't live on $50 million and then take a beat and connect with how preposterous that is, I think is a really poignant reflection on kind of where we are culturally. But in the same way that, you know, Gordon Gekko spawned ungodly thousands of traders and investment bankers, is this, do you have a sense that this show is having that impact on the hedge fund industry? They all watch the show.

Yeah, well, I know those guys that are already in there, but like kids in their college dorm who are now going to go into the hedge fund world. Well, we'll see, right? I mean, I know those guys that are already in there, but like kids in their college dorm who are now going to go into the hedge fund world. Well, we'll see, right? I mean, I certainly saw the effect that rounders had on people wanting to play poker and how many people that brought into the game of poker. Poker pros to this day will thank us. And Dave and I can't buy a meal around them because they made so much money off of the, what they call the rounders fish who got into it. So I do think, you know, popular culture, the things can affect people in that way.

But I have no idea whether that's gonna happen. That's not true, it's probably gonna happen. Right, well, and beyond that, the significance of Asia Kate Dillon playing Taylor and having a transgendered person. That is having a gigantic impact and we're thrilled about that. It's been really cool. Awesome to see people react and the letters Asia gets, the letters we get. They're remarkable, remarkable actor. And the fact that we were lucky enough to cast a gender non-binary actor to play

this gender non-binary character was a great stroke of fortune. It's a privilege to work with Asia. And the effect that Asia has had is that something, man, am I proud of being a part of that. And I will say, I didn't know that was going to happen. You never know if something is going to catch on. And that's what I, and that's one of the reasons I'm glad that there isn't math. So if we talk about how that character came to be, each of my children came home. Sam was at college and Anna was in high school. And within a very short time, they each came home and told me a story about having to say gender pronouns. So they're both cisgender people.

But they told stories of Anna said that every, her school was on a more frequent than even semester program. They had these intervals and every eight weeks or so, a teacher, they would start a new one. And the teacher would say, has anyone had a shift in gender? And I said, so what does that mean? And I said, well, you say, you announce your pronouns. My pronouns are, I thought, well, that's, what do you mean? As a grown man, I couldn't even understand it, right? At first time you hear it, it sounds nuts. So then Sammy came back from college and he said, I went to this homeless shelter to report a story. And it's a homeless shelter for teens.

And they come and they announce their pronouns. So now I just heard that twice. I went to the writer's room and another writer had had similar experience and we started talking about it and just came up with this notion of, well, there should be this gender non-binary who shows up at Axe Capital and then started creating this character who could be a blank slate, who we could think these things about, who Axe could see. We thought it would be fascinating if Axe saw himself in someone who from the outer appearances was so different from Axe, but they met in this special place of their intellect. But none of that was like calculated. It was like the opposite of calculated. It was like a fun thing I heard, a fascinating way the world was changing. I thought the stories were really

moving when I started reading about it. Then we interviewed gender non-binary people because that's part of how you do your job. You want to represent people properly. So we had a few gender non-binary people come to the writer's room and we interviewed them. We spoke to them about it, asked about their lives, showed them dialogue, talked through it, and then we're able to build this character. And then the magic happens. Asia Kate Dillon comes walking into the audition and suddenly the thing just takes on a life of its own. Were you immediately?

Asia came and read three times. And each time the character and Asia started fusing. But it was pretty clear. Did you have a sense that they would become as important to the story arc as they ultimately became because right away. Oh, you did.

Oh, right away. Well, we'd hope the character of Taylor would do that, but also we were smart enough. This is where the, the sort of, so you're making the art just to making the art.

But I mean, after three episodes, we called showtime and we should, we said, you have to make this person a regular cast member of the show. You have to sign this person up. And we told Asia, you have to make this person a regular cast member of the show. You have to sign this person up. And we told Asia, we invited Asia to be a regular on the series because it was clear before anyone ever saw it.

Three episodes in, it was like, well, that person has to be right in the cast like everybody else. Right. What's the movie you haven't made yet that you still want to make? What's the story beyond Billions? Well, there are two scripts that Dave and I have written that have come very close to getting made that ought to get made.

One is called Beat the Reaper based on a book by Josh Bazell and the other is The Winter of Frankie Machine based on a book by Don Winslow. Beyond that, I can't say. You can't? Nah. Because you don't know

or because you don't want to say? Both. Both. I mean, you can't talk. You can't? Nah. Because you don't know or because you don't want to say? Both. Both. I mean, you can't talk it out, right? Right. And also, sort of, what's the... I mean, yeah, I'm not going to say. Yeah.

Are you going to tell us anything about what's going to happen in Billions? I mean, the trailer, you know, we have great new people on the show this year, awesome new characters. Malkovich is back. John Malkovich is in the show, which is just awesome for us. That's one of the things, we were doing this long enough. We'd made two movies together

at the beginning of our career, stayed friends, not super close to each other all the time, but really never not in touch. And so I sent John a text last year and I said, would you come? We have this idea, it's a Russian oligarch.

You come do three episodes. And he just immediately wrote back, I'd love to. And then kept good to his word and did it. That's cool. It was awesome. Well, let's wrap this up. But I want to leave people with,

we covered it, I think, pretty comprehensively. But for people that are listening to this who do feel creatively stuck, who feel like they have this voice that they can't bring expression to, beyond giving permission and creating those guardrails, what's some kind of final parting words that you'd share? Well, first of all all i'd say this go easy on yourself don't add to that self-hatred don't add to that yelling at yourself that you're

disappointing yourself or whoever so take a breath and understand that it's okay, that everybody who's ever done this has felt what you're feeling. And then find a small action that you can do consistently. Do something. Do some little thing every day. I know every day sounds like a lot, but do it every day. Do something every day. Do morning pages. Take a walk where you're not going to listen to a podcast or you're not going to listen to a book. Find a way to be alone with yourself and hear your voice and nurture that voice in the way that you secretly know how. And just do it consistently. And know that you do have 20 minutes. 20 minutes you can, let's say you say, I can't write a page. Okay, write a half a page a day. You'll have written 150 pages in a year. And a year is a really short time.

And if you have an iPhone and you think you don't have enough time, go to that little thing that tells you how much screen time you've, how much time you've spent using your phone over the last week. And I guarantee you there's opportunity to free up. I reward myself when I'm writing. If I finish a scene, I'll go on Twitter for 20 minutes. Then I'll go back and finish the next scene. And you're able to cut it off at 20 minutes?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, like when I get the feeling, like, again, like I said, you know, I'll be writing a scene. I'll get to where I think the scene's right. A little dopamine reward. Dopamine reward and then back to work. Exactly right. Cool, man. Well, thank you so much, Brian. I really appreciate the work that you do. And

you are like, you are kind of like this self-help guru. I mean, the advice that you dispense on these matters is no small thing. I think this is something that we all struggle with. And I'm so happy to share it because I've took such advantage of it being shared by people before me. So, and the podcast I do is the only thing I want to direct people to at the moment with Brian Copeland, because I ask these questions to all these people. It's a great, it goes well with your podcast. Yeah. No, it dovetails perfectly. And you have fantastic guests. I've enjoyed the podcast for a really long time. I don't know how you find the time to do it while running this show. I don't either. But keep doing it if you can. Thanks, man. Thank you for having me here,

Rich. Yeah. Thanks, Brian. Peace. And I want to thank my niece's boyfriend. I'd like to say fiance, but it's not true at this moment. My niece's boyfriend, Noah, who introduced me to Rich Roll and is in the room right now. He introduced me to Rich and said, oh, you got to listen to this guy. He talks about stuff that you do and you'll love him. And that's what got me interested. And you had asked me to be on the show. It was perfect timing because you'd asked me to be on the show right when Noah was telling me to listen. Oh, cool.

So it was great. The synchronicity of the universe. I love it. Peace. Blance. That was awesome. That was great. I dig that guy.

I dig his work. I dig his message. Everything about that was just amazing. Hope you guys enjoyed it. Do me a favor. Let Brian know what you thought of today's conversation. The guy is a beast on Twitter. Hit him up at Brian Koppelman, K-O-P-P-E-L-M-A-N.

And again, season four of Billions returns to Showtime on March 17th, so check that out. If you're struggling with your diet, if you're really desiring

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on Spotify, on YouTube, all those good places. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, very helpful. And you can support the show on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. Thank you to everybody who has done that. Appreciate everybody who helped put on the show today. I do not do this alone. Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. In general, Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for video and editing services. We did not video this episode because I did it on the road, but they're the wizards behind the YouTube page.

Jessica Miranda for graphics. David Kahn for advertiser relationships and theme music, as always, by Annal YouTube page. Jessica Miranda for graphics, David Kahn for advertiser relationships and theme music as always by Annalema. Thanks, I love you guys. See you back here in a few days with the iconoclastic pastor and New York Times bestselling author and live wire, Nadia Bowles-Weber.

This one is a treat, you're not gonna wanna miss it. So until then, go out, create something. Peace. Plants. Namaste. Thank you.