The Watch - Preparing for the End of ‘Succession.’ Plus, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage on the Making of ‘City on Fire.’

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Chris and Andy talk about the forthcoming end of ‘Succession,’ discuss what they will miss most about the show, and make some predictions for the finale (1:00). Then, Andy is joined by ‘City on Fire’ showrunners Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage to talk about adapting the show from the book (26:56) and recreating 2003 New York (44:27). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guests: Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need supports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. And I am an editor at therigger.com and joining me on the other line after a flawless Twitter spaces session to make a great big announcement. It's Andy Greenwald. Thank you.

And thank you to the Patriots of this great country for supporting me. Chris, by the way, I feel like I should be hosting. You're on the other line. You're so rarely host when I'm on the show. You so rarely take the first run. It's wrong. And I would feel uncomfortable. but you are 5,000, how many more, 6,000 miles apart from each other right now?

A lot of hours. It's 6.15 p.m. here in Stockholm, Sweden. It's bright as noon outside. I'm still trying to get over it. I'm out here for some Spotify meetings, long-delayed Spotify meetings since, like, when the ringer was acquired. I'm here with a lot of my coworkers. It's great to see you. It's great to see Kaya.

I miss you guys, but it's been fun so far. Chris, what is the go-jo quotient? Like, how similar is it? to that episode of Succession. They get asked about that a lot. Succession has been coming up so much. I've been in England and Sweden. And I know that sometimes it's like Succession only has X amount of viewers.

But whoever they are, I am around them all the time. Whether it's like they're just bringing it up, whether you overhear people talking about them in a pub, whether you overhear people talking about it online to go to the movies or whatever it is. People talk about that show a lot. But that's the self-selecting 21st century condition. or in other words, no one knows who built the silo. That's what I'm saying.

Dude, I'm still watching silo because I'm here and because nothing works. Like, I can't watch many of our favorite streaming services over here. So even as I'm here, like, there's like this huge rush to figure out how to watch Vanderpump among some of my coworkers. How do you say peacock and Swedish? No, obla, man. It doesn't work over here. They're not here yet. So Peacock, Paramount, Max was working.

HBO Max was working. and then the other day I was going to watch 100-foot wave and it was just like, we've switched to max and we're now not available in Sweden. Well, that's a bummer. Also, I thought it was because it would have to be, they'd have to retitle the show in meters. A 100-foot wave is meaningless, absolutely meaningless in Europe.

We have some notes that we want to get through. We want to run through the business of the town, but I should say that later in the show, I'm going to be joined by old friends and frequent watch guests, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. who brought you such television shows as The O.C. And Gossip Girl looking for Alaska, the runaways,

and are going to be here to talk about their new Apple TV Plus series, City on Fire, which is midway through its run. I think four episodes are available out of the eight. So they're going to come on and talk to me once we break the transatlantic and cross-continental connection. I want you to ask them about the, so this is an adaptation of a Garth Risk Helberg, right? A novel that was set in the 1970s of New York City,

but was updated to the 2000s, early 2000s. And it's just got my brain spinning about different novels that I think I want to update, but not quite to the present day, you know? Oh, absolutely. But also, I just think about the different aesthetics of taking a book that was initially optioned to be set in the 70s, as the book is, around the 77 blackout. And the original screenwriter of the project was our guy Richard Price. Hell yeah.

Josh and Stephanie, who are magnificently talented and good friends, but are also very, very different than Richard Price, and they updated it to our time, our legendary era of 2003. Quite different. I was watching the first episode, and I saw A1 records, and my heart grew a little bit. It was cool to see some of the sites. Chris, they resurrected Don Hills,

which has been shut for many years. It is a club downtown New York. We spent a lot of time in, and apparently it was just locked up, and everything was still inside, which is a little disturbing. So I'm out here. Everybody's talking about succession.

Many people are talking, people coming up to me on the street, tears in their eyes saying, sir, sir, can you believe that the last great prestige show is ending? And, Andy, I just wanted to do a little bit of a temperature check with you before we get to Sunday night's episode.

Now, in full disclosure, hilariously enough, I may not be on the final episode of Succession Recapping with the watch. That is a twist. Just because I don't know when I'm going to be able to see it and what time it will be, and whether or not we're going to be able to make time.

I will weigh in on this at some point on the watch, but it may not be on Sunday night or Monday night or whenever, whenever it is that you do yours. Does it sway you to know that I've reached out to Elon and his team about setting up the comms to make this possible? Is it you and DeSantis are going to recap the last step? Me and Casey DeSantis, is that what you said? Yes.

She's the fun one. It's funny that people are coming up, first of all, people are going to be saying who won the finale of succession. Who lost me? I lost my guy. Because it's over? I lost my number one boy. I know. It's so weird.

We'll figure something out and we will have shows for you guys. Maybe I'll just call you like cousin Sally used to call Bill. Yeah. I think that would be great. Now, I won't be recording at the time, but it would be great to hear from you. I think it's interesting that people are coming up to you on the Swedish streets talking about the lost. of the show. Tears in their Fika. People are coming up to me on all sorts of real and virtual streets being like,

you absolute dolt. Shiv is the baby of the family. And my 20-minute long run last week about how Roman exhibits baby behavior is completely moot. Can I ask you a sincere question? Yeah. When did we talk about that after the episode? Yes, on the Sunday night pod, yes. Okay, because I have no. recollection of you making a big deal about this, and people seemed very upset. I was like, did he really

for what? Like, I agreed with you also. I thought Roman was the youngest. For what it's worth, you were on like hour 21 in London. You had adopted, not even hour 21. You, you, you would adopted a new and controversial sleep schedule of trying to sleep for two hour increments over a 40 hour span. So I think I could have said, Roman is Mondale the dog in disguise. And he would have been like, it's a really good point. It's a really strong point. So I would like to apologize about that. I still think my, I'd like to think my observations about Roman's character and behavior are are apt. I'd also like to turn this around and say, well, why isn't it more obvious that Shiv is the baby? I think she's clearly written as the middle child, but maybe that's because

she's just the most sensible in some ways and often is the swing vote, which I feel like is kind of middleish. Also, who's to say Succession's not a folk song open to interpretation? I just saw an interview in the Hollywood reporter with Brian Cox where he was like, maybe Logan's not dead. Yeah, I think Logan. Maybe he just wanted to. to set this all up so you could see his children's behavior. Like, I know it's not a specific one-to-one online thing, but Brian Cox is tweeting through it. Like, Brian Cox really liked the press run of five weeks ago

and is starting to feel a little lonely, and that's kind of interesting to see. You say maybe it's open to interpretation. I would have agreed with you until Casey Blois, the head of HBO, email, no, texted us from Cannes to say he was just talking to Jesse Armstrong and the team of executives. to confirm that Shiv is the youngest. So we got fact-checked from the top,

and thanks everyone for your thoughts and prayers and comments. The other thing we were wrong about, before we get into just any finale preview, is I was saying that, you know, HBO does have a seemingly unlimited budget. They just plop Pope Davis in, pay her episodic to stand in a pew. And I was like, the place they could have cut corners

is they did not put Sophie and Iverson Roy in the SUV on the streets of Manhattan. But those kids tweeted from the SUV. They were there. So again, I apologize. I apologize. I just got a couple things wrong, but, you know, we're honest here. So now we can pivot. I think accountability is what makes this show such a long-running success.

And I think it's what makes- Our show, not succession. No, I think accountability is what we look for also in the DeSantis 24 campaign. So are you approaching Sunday night with a, what is it? Is it dread? Is it excitement? Is it melancholy? Is it instant nostalgia for what we've already experienced?

What are your feelings going into this last episode? It's been a while since we had one of these. We had a finale, a series finale of a long-running show that we talked through a lot of and that we weren't already like, hey, I think you guys may have driven this car right off the side of a cliff, David Betioff, and David Wise. I feel very excited because I think, and we'll talk about this more fully next week, I imagine, we have two shows that are choosing to end at their absolute creative peak, which is Succession and Barry.

And the feelings about disappointment or wishing it would come back or they still had some gas in the tank, those will come out over the next few weeks and certainly we'll start feeling it in a year when we wished we could, we kind of wish the show was back. Just the exhilaration of them being like just ripping, ripping out the tubes like a, like a ER patient that wait, you know, like in a movie where they wake up and like, I don't want to be here. I know I've not received the medical care, but I am out of here. I think that's kind of thrilling, and I'm very excited about where it's going to end.

I think that it is doing so with full creative vigor and direction, and, you know, the show is set up to be in a place where everything is cascading down at the same time. So I'm expecting a very, very exciting finale. I don't, you know, there's going to be no sense, I think, of, like, fan service or petering out. I think this is the, I'm steering into the positive of something ending at the top and not waiting for any decline. Yeah, I think the thing that has really been hitting home for me over the last few weeks, especially, even as I think you loved the funeral episode, I think I loved America decides, not more or less, but they were like, you know, just personal favorites is, I'm going to really miss like how fucking funny this show is. And that maybe loses a little bit of its traction when we're kind of caught up. up in the fan dueling of who is going to come out on top or run the company or, you know, whatever.

And I am probably most curious about how this self-engineered final destination for this show, what the consequences are of the drama of the entire series that sort of gets resolved in this episode to the extent that it will be. I don't think that death is the only way to fix anything here or to, solve anything. But I do think that if we've had a, not a critique, but a note of succession over the last two seasons especially, it's been, huh, like, you know, nothing really matters. You know, like, whatever happens on any given episode tends to, like, work itself out in the next episode, even if it's just because out of convenience, these characters are placed in the same

space again physically and they have to have banter with one another. And that's not going to happen two weeks from now. This is it. So what does that mean for how they wrote the series, how they wrote interactions between the characters, will there actually be a period at the end of the sentence? You know, I mean, I think that with all the, like, behind the scene stuff that we've heard from interviews with Jesse, but with some of the actors, it does sound like there was some fluidity in terms of, like, how they were thinking about this season, whether there would be another season. I'm sure it was written as the final season, but that there might have been some, I don't know,

maybe not some ellipsies, but some semicolons, you know, where it's like, ah, and then maybe Maybe this could have happened. And I wonder if that thinking influences how they write the final episode. I will say, though, that, like, we've seen some shows end. And you're like, the penultimate episode was really the end. And the last episode is the, like, everybody having their final conversation and their hug, aka Breaking Bad, I think, to some extent. This does not feel that way.

I feel like there's still a lot more plot they have to get through. There's still a lot more deal-making. I think there's going to be a lot of scars guard based on the trailer. so I'm very excited for it. But I have a lot of, I'm very curious to see it whenever I actually, too. I've realized that maybe it's due to my

somewhat nervous disposition that I've generally loath to make very loud public predictions or pronouncements. But considering how confident I was that the San Antonio Spurs were winning the draft lottery last week. And just also about the birth order of the Roy Children in general.

I put myself out on the front street in the wrong way. And you were also just like Ron going to Twitter. as a brave new step into the future, which really, that walks hand in hand with some of his core tenets of his campaign. Yeah, but I backchanneled that one. I communicated my approval. There are a couple things that I feel pretty confident about.

One, broadly, is that I, I'll just say it, I think I'm right about what the show is ultimately about in the broad strokes. And what I mean by that is, and this is natural. I'm not saying this is the wrong thing to do. This is fun. This is one of the reasons why we love serialized TV. But I do think the conversations about who's going to win, about who's going to lose, about who's going to end on the top, I think are a little bit misguided. I don't think this is a show that is going to, you know, as you point about death being the thing, I don't think people are going to end up in the grave in this episode, literally. I don't think that it's going. According to Brian Cox, there might be some people jumping out of the grave like The Undertaker. I would love that. And so would he. I think that the consistent message has been that this is kind of a poison chalice and that you can quote unquote win the title of CEO, but what is your empire?

What are the ruins that you're ruling over? And what has become of your soul or your connections to anyone else who've known you? So it still seems most likely to me that Kendall becomes his father to a degree. That seems like that the trajectory we've always been on. and the trajectory that was brought into clear focus last week. So if we're going to get into the prediction game of that, I think that makes sense, but what that means for everyone else. I agree with you. I agree with you with while I'm also willing to be completely surprised.

I would love to be surprised. I think the one question mark to me, and again, I think that this hasn't been the nature of the show, so I don't think we'll do it. But is there going to be any flash forward or glance at the future or even just sort of suggestion of the future? I think they should go full six feet under. And down to the use of the CS song, you know, like just bang, bang that jam and then have like what happens as Kendall is like, you know, in 2062, you know.

Well, I think that's also, that's the question because to your point about like nothing mattering if the show just continued on and on and reversing itself in the pursuit of good jokes and good drama, I think ending now makes sense because I feel like it's baked in. whatever end point Jesse chooses has to feel significant because I think underneath that is the sense that these are people who cannot change, who cannot be happy, and will continue to wriggle and squirm for potentially decades in an attempt to kind of fix the problems inside of themselves.

So where he puts the period at the end of the sentence is going to be particularly, is everything. I mean, that's a pretty obvious observation to make. But I'm really curious to see how he does it within the framework of what, I predict will be a standard episode of succession in that it won't suddenly go wobbly and montage at the end.

Yeah, I don't think so either. I don't think so either. I think the house style has been very successful, so we'll stick with it. What else is happening in the town, man? Like, I'm so far removed from the streets. I'm so far removed from what's happening inside of Silicon Valley slash Hollywood right now. I think that's the problem. I did want to just touch on one little kerfuffle from this week that I thought was interesting.

It lasted about 18 hours, which I believe is the time difference between us. So it probably didn't happen to you at all. But as you alluded to HBO Max became Max this week. And one of the victims of the transition was the traditional credit order that has been guild mandated and understood within movies and TV for decades. So someone pointed this out on Twitter. It went viral. People started noticing that instead of, you know, if you'd look at, I'm just going to pull an example. I don't even know if it was on there.

But like taxi driver, it didn't say director, Martin Scorsese, screenwriter, Paul Schrader. It said creators. And it listed Scorsese and Schrader and all the executive producers, as if everybody had done the same thing and who did what didn't matter. Yeah. And this was pointed out. People got very upset. And Max corporate pivoted very quickly from digital. digitally deleting the booze of college students from David Zazlov's commencement speech last week to

handling this next crisis, which was by saying this was an oversight, like, you know, it was a rush to transfer things, and it was a U-I thing, and we can, we'll address it. Now, first of all, they had to say that, because as I said, credits are guild mandated, and there would have been legal action if Martin Scorsese was not listed as the director of the movies he directed. So, of course, they were going to say that. I do think it's significant. I do think it matters because it strikes me as saying the quiet part loud. The credits are the mistake. The mistake.

Yeah. Because I think it is a very, very noisy, even if it was accidental tell, as to what the tech corporate overlords think of what business they're in, which is to say that taxi driver, van derpump rules, last chance kitchen, blueie, whatever. This is content. It's just content. It's just stuff that goes in boxes. and the people who make content are no different than people on TikTok. They're just content creators

doing their best to just fill the void. And it seems prissy or highfalutin or even just old-fashioned to be like, hey, I wrote that. Those are my words. Or I'm interested in who wrote that because I might want to see other words that they wrote. And I found it very dispiriting,

very, and hopefully kind of a flashing warning light to our good friends in the directors guild, for example, who are currently negotiating with the same AMPTP that the writers are striking from. I don't really have a take on this as much as my joke about the Silicon Valley slash Hollywood thing was not really a joke because one thing that I think is becoming really apparent to folks who are following the, I guess, lack of negotiations, the straight up like the labor issues afflicting Hollywood right now are. is the sort of influence of Silicon Valley slash tech companies on the movie and television

making business. And that the thing that we grew up thinking of as Hollywood and the levers of power in making movies and television are really now, for the most part, subservient to, if not literally tech companies like Apple and Amazon or Netflix, they think like tech companies. And they have to think like tech companies because they're making technology products in a lot of way. And culture, in my experience, technology moves at a different pace and with a different set of standards. It's not a qualitative judgment, but a different set of standards than say the idea that you

might have in your head of how at a movie studio there are departments for everything. And everybody is like, all I do is take still photographs on sets and then think about how they should be serviced to publications. or all I do is make sure that the tiniest edge of a font looks good when we blow it up to billboard size and put it in Times Square or whatever. And I don't know necessarily that engineers who move technology products think about things in the same way. You think about when you get an iPhone update and then you get another one because it's

fixing the bugs in the previous update. And you're right. It could be very much a shot across the bow at, quote unquote creators and how they're viewed by technology companies. But it could also be that that was a bug in the update that they rolled out. And now they're doing it, which isn't to say it's good because you can see the cultural clash between these two things. And it actually is a little bit chilling because you have to imagine that that's going to make

it even more difficult going down the line for these people to find common ground. I totally agree with that. I don't think there was malice behind this. I think it would be, even just it beggars belief that they would provide. the guilds, like, as they're sitting down trying to negotiate with them. I mean, they're not sitting down with the writers, but they are sitting currently, but they are sitting down with the directors at this moment. And nobody cares about it directed by or a film by credit like directors do. So, and Leslie Linka Glatter, the veteran director who's head of the DGA was incensed and,

you know, commented on it immediately. But I do think that it's a very revealing mistake about the culture clash that may, the cultural divide that may be ultimately impossible to bridge. And And then I just think, you know, there's just little movements that you should just, people who are industry watchers just should keep an eye on. I mean, there's no news from the writer's strike. Like, as Mike Scher, who's one on the negotiating committee and the veteran showrunner, whose new show with our buddy, Shea Serrano, Primo, is on free V now. I can't wait to check it out. He, you know, as he said in an interview recently, he's like, Sherman Oaks isn't that far away. Like, they will go negotiate with the studios as soon as the studios ask to negotiate again, but they're focused on the directors right now.

But there are, I think there is unanimity in the sense that people believe whatever is on the other side of this is going to be different. And that might be different only inside the industry before it reaches outside the industry. But you just look at little things. You look at this. And then the next piece of news that that's in deadline is that the co-heads have scripted at our baby, AMC, veteran programmers who have good relationships with people in the town and have worked on successful shows for AMC, Emma Miller and Carrie Galooly, are jointly leaving. AMC to go work at Netflix. Right, just right before we took over. Right before we took over.

Now, some people say we leaned on them, and I think that's unfair. We are strong but firm. You know, we are not Logans, we are Uans, I think, and that we are ultimately, you know, on the side of good. We're just a little crusty. You know, maybe we don't, you know, present well in meetings. But genuinely, like, this is a specific instance. Their decisions are their own.

It is probably unfair to just turn that into tea leaves. but you just notice that like which fish can survive in this shrinking ocean. This doesn't mean AMC is done. I hope not. It's not necessarily pulling a thread that will lead to something,

but you just should notice they didn't displace the current heads of scripted to Netflix. They just got added to the team because Netflix makes a lot more stuff than other people do. And so, you know, just noting, just noting it like you would

with an anxious thought or feeling. You note it. I have nothing really else to hit you with I know that Quentin Tarantino is it can. He'd announced that his film next and last feature film will be the critic, which has been this much discussed idea. Initially, some people thought it was going to be about Pauline Kale.

It turns out it's going to be about a movie critic who works at a pornography magazine in the 1970s. That seems right. And then the only other bit that I saw today before we got on was just that Citadel, and I really bring this up for you, has been renewed for season two. I know that that was a real... They were kind of, the ref was underneath the tarp looking at that one an instant replay for a while.

But it's coming back season two and Joe Russo is going to be directing the entire season. It's so great. I mean, that alone just gets me fired up, you know, that he was just like, it's Al Pacino and Godfather 3, you know. He was ready to just cruise into retirement, legacy of great work. And he was like, no, this story needs me. This is what I need to turn my attention to. So, look, I mean, it's a.

this is still part of the same conversation we're having. Like, I think Citadel is pretty objectively and subjectively awful, but it's probably very successful. I don't know if it's successful to justify the cost, but then again, the cost doesn't really matter to Amazon in terms of what its objectives are globally. So this was Feta Completed, it was going to get renewed. And so the great work goes on.

I thought you were going to bring up the fact that Blur made a surprise new album and the first single is really good. But, you know, if I was hosting the show, I would have led with that. And then just watch the listeners just... Watch the listens go down. No, I like to front load with really important news, like us commenting on Ron DeSantis's Twitter announcement 48 hours later. And just like things we got wrong about succession last week.

Because, you know, it's the only thing better than podcasts or podcasts about podcasts. The relistenables. Andy, I can't wait to listen to you and Josh and Stephanie talk about City on Fire. I'm going to check out some more episodes as my vacation continues. Well, my vacation really starts. I was still working.

This is the idea of dispersed workforce, you know, or, you know, like, I'm remote. We're not judging you. We haven't seen, Kai and I were talking about it. We haven't seen too many pictures of like apparel sprits at midday on your social media feeds. I am going to go get a grony. So it was great to see you.

It was great to see Kyia briefly. And I can't wait to listen to your interview with Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. Honesty, integrity. Ryan 24. And we will be back in some form. We will have a podcast after the succession finale, and we will have more podcasts next week

in the wake of the end of succession in Barry. But now, yeah, let's get into my interview with Josh and Stephanie. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last-minute beach day, a spontaneous hike or an outdoor movie night

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Get savings with yellow sale signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. Okay, now I'm thrilled to be joined once again by old friends of both me in the podcast, Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. Welcome to, I feel like it's the fifth studio you've spoken to me in over the years. And how do you feel about this one? Very personal.

Love what you've done with the place. Thank you. Yes. Is that your rock garden in the hallway? Yes, I'm the one that came up with the name Studio Six. I just thought that really had a nice, catchy thing that made people feel comfortable. Thrilled to have you guys in, we're going to talk about your new Apple TV Plus series City on Fire and a bunch of other things. But right at the top, we should say the circumstances of this interview.

It's a funny time in Hollywood. We ran into each other. Not funny, ha-ha. Funny like Joe Pesci and Goodfell is funny. We ran into each other on the picket line last week or the week before. At the Paramount Studios. And talked about what was going on and how maybe we could still find a way to talk during all of this. Yeah.

I mean, it's definitely different people of different perspectives on behavior during the strike. I think for us, the show premiered two weeks ago, post-strike. And out of solidarity with our guild, we did not attend. our premiere. We did not attend our press junket that Apple put on. We did not attend our FYC event. But because we've been friends for close to 20 years now,

we felt like this was a safe space to talk. Yeah, we kind of got to know each other the same year that the show is set, which gives us a lot of things to talk about. It's kind of shocking. Yeah, I was the first thing, I mean, look, I was always going to be in the tank for this because I was in New York

in that particular tank during the air of the show is set. And we should say that City on Fire is based on the novel by Garth Risk Halberg that was quite popular when it was published a few years ago. And that book is very much about downtown New York City and the music scene. But it is set during the blackout summer of 1977. You have, I think, very cleverly and successfully updated the book to another memorable blackout summer in which there was a lot of good music downtown, which was summer 2003. Summer 2003 is when the OC premiered. So I think that's pretty trippy. Like this era is both nostalgia for us, but also very much lived experience, right?

Talk to me about the decision to pick that era and also how quite different, I think, your 2003 was from the characters in this show. Well, I had read the book originally when it came out. Josh and I were both very interested in it when it got published just because of, you know, the world it was set in and how it was described. We both bought it. It sat on my bedside table for several years. And it makes an impact.

It is an extremely big. big book. It's a nice doorstop, paperweight, yeah. It's got stuff inside that you can look at, even if you don't read it? That's true. So that's why you recommended it to Josh, because you knew if it was not illustrated, he never would have picked it up. And when I read it, I was really struck by, to me, what felt like, oh, make such a great, like, limited series or sort of a long form narrative if it was adapted because you could kind of organize the material in a different way. out the mystery and the investigation, and that, to me, I was sort of starting to see like a clean throughline of that. Then, of course, it was not available because a big part of the narrative of

the book is that it was bought in galleys by Scott Rudin's kind of, or optioned by Scott Rudin's company to adapt as a feature. Yeah, although you thought maybe it was an FX series as well? I think it started as a few. I think everything Scott Rudin starts when he always would, he famously would do a lot of things, but famously with books, he would go in galleys and say, like, I'm going to make a major motion picture, Oscar-winning thing with this. And then often they would not come to fruition because how do you turn Cavalier and Clay by Michael Chavon into a two-hour movie? And I think there's now, some of those projects move to TV. And I think that version of it was maybe set up at FX for a while as a potential miniseries. Yeah, interesting.

Anyway, it shook free. It did. And so when we originally got our deal at Apple, we just made this big long list of like everything that don't worry about like if we have access to it, if it's available, if we can afford it, just like what are some projects that we'd love to do? And that was on the list. And it turned out that it had become available. So then we started talking. And Stephanie's like, now you must read this book. There was no more avoiding it.

There was no more avoiding it. And the 1970s is like a pretty big lift for production. Like it's very expensive and time consuming. A lot of resources go into recreating. that, especially New York in the 70s, is like virtually impossible without, you know, a lot of visual effects. Where do they shoot the Mandalorian? I feel like you would have a better opportunity to recreate 1970s, New York.

You could do that on the volume. Yeah, the volume would feel real weird. So there was that issue. There was also, like, for a younger audience, the 1970s is now a very long time ago. Sadly, even for some of us in this room, it feels increasingly like a long time ago. Yeah. And then we were also talking about how when Garth was writing the book, he was kind of using the 1970s as a way to talk about the period of the early 2000s in New York City. And we were like, well, we could kind of flip that and we could use, could actually set it then.

And then when we realized that like, well, there was a blackout. in the summer of 2003, that really got us thinking about like maybe this would be possible and it could be a really fun way to bring in all the things we love about the book, but updated in a way that still felt relevant. And we also had a lot of conversations about kind of that time period in New York. And now that having 20 years have passed since 9-11, that people would feel comfortable with storytelling in that space. and not feel like it was too soon or exploitative or...

Yeah, and we thought it would be stuff of saying an easier lift production-wise. And how different does New York look now than it did in 2003? And then COVID hit. And suddenly we were like, what are we going to do with all these outdoor eating shelter or shacks, whatever they're called? Oh, right. All the yurts and things. Yeah, there was all these, there was some stuff kind of post-COVID. But in the same way, you know, as stuff was saying,

in 1970s, New York was a period where people were not sure if, New York was going to survive. Post-night 11, people were not sure if New York was going to survive as a city. And when we started working on this during COVID, it was another kind of existential moment for New York. So all these time periods were kind of speaking to each other and echoing each other thematically in a way that was interesting to us as well. I also just found like the spirit of adaptation really appealing, right?

Because I just generally think that books are books and they exist and everyone should read them and enjoy them, even Josh sometimes. and finding what you as creative people connect to in it and love about it or intrigued by and then being able to take that for a ride is, you know, helps the spirit of the piece. And you can feel that in the pilot of what you guys did. And we went to Garth with it and we said, hey, what do you think if we, you know, updated and changed the time period? He was actually very excited about it and was like, that's what adaptation is for. The book is the book and the TV series is going to be its own thing.

And so his support actually gave us a lot of wind in our sales to move forward. I mean, his middle name is Risk. Right? I mean, like, he was ready for it. So just drilling down a little bit, like what was, you said there was, I mean, it's a one-to-one thing. There's a blackout. There's a music scene. What were the more challenging things, separate and apart from production values that you felt were difficult in terms of finding the analog for 2003 or finding, you know, grounding the book in 2003?

Well, we also wanted to kind of pull through that thread of the 1970s that was in the book. which we wanted to do in a subtle way with the production design and the costume design and thinking about how the characters would be pulling that thread themselves. And the idea that the city brought and sort of brought people to it that we're looking for that kind of experience. Like everyone is nostalgic for like New York in the 70s. Even if you completely miss the boat on that, you're trying to kind of pastiche that experience and bring it into your own world. So thinking about how we could do that

with how we built the Fallenstery and how we kind of had this idea that somewhere in that house is this giant pile of like thrift or clothing that everyone just kind of put on in the morning and built their looks. And then also in thinking about the music. I think that's so smart too

because at the time, being in New York, like what everyone was obsessed with was 1981, which was 20 years before. and except when you yourself are in your early 20s, that basically is like the Victorian era. Yeah. And so now from this vantage point being like, that really wasn't that long ago.

And the people who were in ESJ were probably working their day jobs being like, oh, people care now? You know, it's not exactly like everything is cleanly partitioned to be one era or another. It's always in a conversation with itself. Yeah, exactly. And the idea that people are always nostalgic for the moment of New York that they feel they missed, you know?

So now obviously there's a, you know, a lot of the actors in the show, the younger actors were born around this period, like Wyatt Olaf was born in 2003. That's tough. It's tough to hear it. And Chase, Sweet Wonders, is only a couple years older than that.

And so, you know, they're nostalgic for this period of New York. You know, and Jemima Kirk lived through this period very vividly and talks about it, you know, and was probably at Don Hills and up to stuff. And, you know, for her,

that's like the last moment that New York was cool. You know, that's her perspective now. Of course, it was also the year that CBGBs turned into a John Varvados. So there were people who had been there since the 70s who would look at that period as like the beginning of the end. And that's what's interesting about that New York experience is everyone gets there and feels like they just missed it. Yeah, there was no moment during my time in New York where I felt like, I got it. This is like I was here to receive it.

And I was there 99 to 2016. Everybody was just trying to, you know, well, we'll do our best. but there's always the person right before you sort of looking down their glasses being like you don't know what it used to be like. Yeah. Yeah. And that period kind of post 9-11, pre-occupy Wall Street, it's a really fertile, interesting time in New York, in the country. It's just it felt like a rich, a rich time to set the show.

And then obviously we've talked a bit about, you know, meet me in the bathroom where you are featured, thanked. I'm a talking head. Yeah. I'm in there talking about all the times I missed going to miss shapes. I was like kind of like the, what's the reverse Zellig where I was just outside and didn't quite make it in? And that book also was like a really wonderful, really wonderful book, but also really made it feel like that was a moment. And that is a moment that's worth kind of even as a backdrop in the show chronically. Yeah, I think the thing about, and shout out to my friend Lizzie Goodman, who wrote that great book.

Like, what's, it's kind of amazing to talk to everyone in that and realize that that moment, most of those bands didn't quite make it. Like, it's the story of bands who almost did and had a moment or fumbled it or were popular insularly, you know? It's not really, history isn't really written by the winners always. No, and as the inspiration for our band in the show, Jonathan Fire Eater, was kind of one of the big inspirations that we talked about with Jonathan Leahy, our music supervisor, in figuring out the sound for this band. So I think the other thing that I really enjoyed and appreciated about the show is, I think you keenly understand something, which is that, an era isn't a TV show. One of the things that I really loved about the pilot particularly is just the, I think it's really well constructed, not to get too inside baseball about it,

but it's really brilliantly constructed and it's really dynamic. And it's remarkable how efficient it is in terms of introducing these strands of the world, introducing the importance of a band, and then showing us the band and getting through it all in that first hour. What was the process like for you guys? You've been working together now, as we said, for two decades. What was it like saddling up again and trying to tackle something like this and turning it into, even just in the context of that first hour? Well, it was a big project because I think the sort of what I felt reading the book the first time and then revisiting it, like really with our thinking caps on, really going like here.

We do have actual thinking caps. Are they matching? Yeah, they're like a. That's cute. A little sleeping cap. Sorry. Yeah. That's because you go to sleep and then Stephanie.

Stephanie does all the work and they wake up and it's done. Incredible. I don't have to read the book. that that idea that like there was sort of this beautiful mind map of how to like adapt the show turned out to not be true like the beautiful mind map was like phase one and then there were like 11 more phases and that became pretty clear as soon as we started writing that as much as we had in our minds kind of cleared out like and and winnowed down the story that there was still more story and more characters that needed to come out so that was sort of the next the next phase and then hearing out how to start the story in a way where you were introducing everyone and unlike a book that has chapters where this chapter is about this person, this chapter is about that person. We were never going to get through the story if we didn't start weaving all the storylines together.

And pulling them tighter. And also, we ended up writing this ourselves. It's the first time we didn't have a writer's room, which may not be an option moving forward, depending on how this all goes with the strike. But that was just because it was COVID when we first started. The idea of doing a Zoom room, we had other shows that were doing a Zoom room, and they just felt really challenging. And the book is so long. It's like 900 pages that we felt like by the time anyone else finished the book, we would have already broken a lot of the season.

So it's the first time that we've ever just kind of done it, the two of us, which was a really fun, exciting challenge that we will never do again. We figured out finally how to use the collaboration feature on final term. This is some really inside baseball. That is a scary tab. I'm very impressed that you crack that code. You could like teach a seminar. And, you know, every adaptation is different. You know, this book obviously we keep talking about is voluminous.

And there's a lot of characters. And there were some major characters that we actually excised out of the book and gave their role to some of the other characters who were in the book. So they would have more agency. William, you know, character in particular kind of absorbed one of the other major characters from the book that we cut. But like when we were adapting, looking for Alaska, that was. was obviously a book where, first of all, some people view it as a, you know, know that book inside

and out. And if you don't include this one line, it's, you've ruined the whole thing. Yeah, it's a sacred text. It's a sacred text. But that was really about addition, you know, it was about how do we fill the book out and go to some places and change some, and break from the perspective of the book and fill out some of those supporting characters. And this was a, this was a different task. This was about kind of, not whittling, but sort of molding the clay in a different way, you know, subtraction, I guess, is the simplest way of putting it. And I think that one of the most remarkable things for me as a fan of your work over a period of time is I don't, I don't know if you see the clip of like, how does he keep getting away with it?

Like, how do you guys keep finding generationally appealing, talented, attractive people to be in these shows? Like, you know, it's as true of City on Fire as it was with Looking for Alaska or The O.C. or Gossip Girl. like it is really casting dependent, I think, in a way, because you have to, and it's very, very hard to find young people who can carry the load of some of the stuff that you guys write or that people want to watch. Chase Sweet Wonders and White Olaf, who I was not familiar with either of them before, are fantastic. And immediately, I was like, I'm interested in them, even though I don't understand the full tapestry of what they're involved in. Have you got this casting down to a science now, or is it dumb luck every time? Well, shout to Patrick Rush, a casting director. It starts with the right person in that job.

Who did O.C. with us. Who did Looking for Alaska. He did Chuck with us. He did runaways and now sitting on fire. So we've worked with him over many, many years. Shout out to David and Lindsay, who did gossip girl casting. But he has a great eye for this and knows kind of, he's just keeping tabs of who's out there, who's bubbling, who's ready to have their moment. It was interesting because this was our first time casting entirely on Zoom.

And so we had to do a chemistry read. with Wyatt and Chase, and you're like, how are you going to do a chemistry read on Zoom? Like, how could that possibly work? And yet, there was chemistry. So if there can be, if chemistry is happening on Zoom,

then it's probably going to happen when we're all together on screen. And, and you had, so what was it like navigating with Wyatt this world? Like, was it like telling him he's going to be in Westeros? Yeah, we've kind of used to this, I will say, because we had this a bit,

we've had this a bit now, as we've, we started, we were in the same generation as the actors that we're working with. And obviously now it feels like we have the fireside chat. And these actors sit at our feet and are like, tell us about the aughts. What was it like? So we've kind of gotten used to that role.

Do you invite them over to sit on the Teen Choice Awards surfboard that you have in your office? We start off. We hand them a trio. And we go from there. Give them a Zoom. Be like, no, no, eyebrows. That was on purpose. That's what we were all doing.

Speaking of like just the sort of generational shes, shift. So, as you said, like, there's an energy to things like the O.C. where it was like kind of, I mean, no one on the production side was in high school at the time, but the age difference wasn't too far apart. It is farther apart. Now, do you find yourself having a different interest in the young people's stories in these stories as you are telling them at this point in life? I don't know that we have a different interest in them. A perspective, I guess. Interest is the wrong word. I think we're still super compelled by those stories.

I will say, especially Josh, having experience as a parent, or maybe a little better at those stories that we were in the O.C. Although the O.C, we did come from a very pro-parent perspective, and it was so far from where we were in our lives at that time. But there is a moment where you start to go, A, there's that moment when the actor comes in to read for the parent role, even on the CW, where it's a young parent, and you're like, oh my God, I could now be playing the parent on this particular show.

And yeah, I think you definitely start to identify with some of those stories. But also, we love having these young actors around and getting their experience and trying to weave as much of them and their personality and what's interesting to them into the shows as well. I think we like to listen. And I think, like, working with Jemima on this was really interesting because she was sort of having that experience of like, oh, if this was, you know, not even maybe 10 years ago, but like five years ago, like, I might be playing.

Yeah. She literally was a girl. Not too long ago. She's a woman and mother. Yeah. And then using some of that in the story, like, we rewrote the first big fight that she has with her husband, Keith, to include a reference of like, you know, I was that girl. And then I'd strangled her so we could have this, that idea of like growing up and and putting, some of that like carefreeness, that, you know, exuberance, that selfishness, a way to be an adult and then feeling that like you're kind of getting punished for that or you're like, now something's missing from you that you gave up in pursuit of something else, which that kind of a story felt sort of unique and timely, I'd say, kind of where we are in our lives. Yeah, no, we have different perspectives on some of the, how these things, can play out in adulthood. But also New York as a city of perpetual youth and

the promise of perpetual excitement in youth and that's in the show as well. And like, you know, Keith goes downtown. You know, I should have said this at the beginning, but like we're not really going to spoil, I think, we haven't. I don't see any reason to spoil particular episodes. We're... Just the end. When we're recording. Yeah. It was all a dream.

No, I mean, the big tip off for Regan, for Jemima's character that Keith is up to no good is that he's listening to the Libertines. Oh my God, yeah, I wanted to talk. There are these little things where I'm like, okay, When they're flipping through the vinyl and the one behind the record that's important is the thrills so long to the city or whatever, I'm like, yeah, I played Big Sur recently. That's a pretty good track. Someone's paying attention back there. And I do have to see. You mention the club Don Hills, which was the site of like, I think Miss Shape started there. But Tis was the big club night there before. And I think broadly Josh got it right when he said that people were up to no good. I think it was primarily an up to no good spot. I'm just going off of what I've heard you say about the scene. Yeah. Oh, no, that's right. I'm the... I'm the guy you go to.

You resurrected it. Like, you just, you went there and you filmed there, and it was there. Is this accurate? Yeah. I mean, it was basically there. It was kind of like a storage facility. Like, it was a lot of just tables on top of things. But it was there.

And Aaron Osborne, a production designer, got very into, like, recreating it and bringing it back to its 2003 glory, down to the wallpaper. That is the actual wallpaper that was on the wall in 2002. Yeah, they reproduced it. And Jesse Parrots are. director had spent a lot of time in there as well. And so he also was like, this wasn't over there. It was over here. And like the wallpaper and we actually cut a scene that took place in the bathroom. But the wallpaper in the bathroom was the same. And so... A lot of stuff happened in those bathrooms.

Well, by the way, I was to say every single person in our crew who was around in that era was like, man, I spent some time in the bathroom at this place. And we're like, yep, those walls could talk. That's actually something worth talking about is that I think this show more than any other was one, where we really went to the crew and said, like, bring your own experience to this. It started with a conversation around 9-11, which we had at the very beginning of the show in our first big concept meeting, to just say, like, normally it wouldn't be the case that, like, if you're the prop master, people are going to ask you to weigh in on the wardrobe or the set design. But, like, if anything feels ever, like, we're not being respectful or something feels thrown away in a way that doesn't feel good to you, like speak up. If you have a personal story that you want to share,

that you want to incorporate, speak up. On the first day that we started shooting, we actually did the Charlie Sam walk by of Ground Zero, and we had a moment of silence at the top of that day, and Bobby Kennedy, our AD, gave a really lovely speech. You can always count on a Kennedy. Totally. Those Kennedys give good speeches. Depends which Kennedy we're talking about. That's true. It's less political moments. It might be a great trickier. No relation. So it started with that, and then it also just kind of went, it went into like the Don Hills

experience, it went to the Lower East Side experience. And people were really activated to just bring themselves and put themselves in the show and the work they were doing, whether it was like the onset painter doing the graffiti or some of the people that we worked out, reached out to be like our ghost artist or everyone was just like there and and bringing their own experience in a way that I think made that part of the show feel really rich and really dense because no one was relying on like the internet to like tell them what to think about something. I also imagine that's good in a way like anti-COVID measures in terms of like the chill of being separated for so long that we can actually bring everyone in

with their own enthusiasm and their own invested interest. And I mean obviously I can only speak from my perspective, but I appreciated that in the show, which is to say that, like, at the age that I was and that some of the characters were, when 9-11 happened, it was fucking horrible, but it was also horrible in a crazy distancing way. I was lucky enough not to be personally touched by it. It was just the city I lived in, and you went on with it thinking, I guess this is what happens when you're 23 or 24. And then there's concentric circles beyond that, that adults, and I think as an adult now, it would have been much more, much more affected by it, just because of this nice feeling of being connected to the world.

world and everything like that. I think that it was well done in terms of how president was for some characters versus others. Yeah, and you're always going to be careful not to be exploitative. And, you know, it is a time period of stuff was saying earlier where it's been 20 years, but for a lot of people, it still feels like yesterday and it's still a little bit of a third rail to even try to to draw some elements from in a fictional storytelling context. So it was something that we, you know, tread gently and as respectfully as we could. I guess in this, in this, in this spirit of nostalgia and looking back, I wonder if the experience of making the show and being like deep into 2003 from these characters' perspective and from just a New York perspective

has caused you to have any different thoughts about the OC, which is now 20 years old. It's funny to think about how our art is always looking backwards to a degree, even if it's set in the present, because what informed you, Josh, in terms of the creation of the OC was things that had filled you before that point. You know, and so to think about those characters coming home if they ever come home so far through four episodes, they don't go home very often. But if they did and turning on Fox at night, they would be seeing Seth Cohen, which is like a world away, even though it's all 2003. Yeah. And we actually, funny, we set looking for Alaska in 2005, which is when the book was published, and it just felt like it was hard to imagine those characters

living in a post Instagram world, just the way they were rendered in the book. And we did have a moment where one of the characters is watching. You hear a little bit of the theme song in the background, as a reference. Here it did not feel like these people were watching the O.C. at night. Or had televisions. Or had televisions.

Yeah, they weren't coming home to appointment. I know. We were like, we were just kind of, I guess we're going to become like Oliver Stone was to the 60s. That's going to be us

to like the TRL era. Which, you know, that's a corner for us. He's had a long career. Yeah. I think you would have to make a movie called the Libertines, right? Right. Just to go at a conspiracy theory

about what happened to them. What did we know what happened to them? We do. What has your relationship with the O.C. been like recently because I know that Rachel Bilsson and she was co-hosting with. Yes. Doing a rewatch podcast that you guys were involved with or guested on as well. What has that been like to be nostalgic about something that I imagine doesn't feel too distant? It's been great. I mean, I will say the, again, a little bit with COVID and pandemic, just that idea of like reaching back out to people who were important in your life and just because of how life. goes, kind of can fall away. That was already in motion. And the podcast really, I think, just accelerated that. And we have now been back in touch with people that we hadn't talked to in a really long time on the show. I think the most surprising thing for us is when the show ended, I think we were like, well, that, that failed. You know, that was my takeaway. Just, it was a

bumpy road. About the whole project or the way it ended? I mean, I had a hard time kind of separating those two ideas. It's just like, it ended. I fucked this up. And, you know, that's on me. And I'm going to hang my head in shame. And then we moved on very quickly and we were doing other stuff. But I think the thing that's been really wonderful and been very helpful with perspective is that it feels like more people want to talk to us about the OC now than they did even when it was first on.

And either because it means more to people now as they get older when they look back on that time in their lives or because of streaming just how many more people. can discover the show or rewatch the show. And so the fact that, like, we made something and 20 years later, people still want to talk about it, say they still listen to the music from it, or it helped shape their musical identity, or they married this person because they reminded them of Seth Cohen, or which we've heard. A couple times. A few times, yeah. Or like they go down there and try to find some of the, you know, some of the pier, the diner, the bay shop. They're not going to find a bait shop, but they can look. That's really kind of been really gratifying. And so the podcast, the idea that we also got to hear from the actors and their experiences and how much

it meant to them as well. Because when these shows end, everybody feels like they're just trying to get out of there, you know, cast-wise. And so I think everybody now has had the opportunity to kind of appreciate that show as an important chapter in their careers and lives. Yeah, and some of those things that we feel like we failed at at the end of the day, if you created something that people, you know, love watching. are still talking about 20 years later, maybe that's not a failure. Exactly. I think it's not.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, and again, that's just also the fog of war, I think, when you're in it and you're just living and dying by all that stuff. You kind of, but now that we've had this opportunity yet to see the picture. Also, too, I would say the pandemic and how, like, streaming content, uh, content actually, like, help sustain people through a really, really difficult, uh, period that, especially early on, we were very much associated with, like,

guilty pleasures, you know, whether that was the OC or gossip girl or maybe even Chuck to some degree. But knowing that those were big pandemic rewatch shows and that they actually like help people feel grounded and safe and comfortable in a scary time kind of reframes that notion of what a guilty pleasure is to something that's like just a pleasure and just makes you feel safe. I think we got it. Literally, we literally won an award for the OC called the VA H1, guilty pleasure of the year award. And I remember when we received it, I was like, is this good? Do we want to win this award?

And now you're like, hell yeah, I would take them all. That I feel like, I mean, I hope that idea is just so dated, like of a guilty pleasure. Like, life is too fleeting to worry about anything if it's, like, if it's pleasure. Like, as long as no one's hurt, that's fine. Pete is a guilty pleasure. And God bless it. Yeah, let's enjoy things. And I was like, you know, I don't know the, the actual, like, feelings about it, you know, how it went down so operatically behind the scenes of the soap opera.

Like when you see with this podcast, you see Ben McKenzie take time away from his anti-crypto crusade, which I agree with, by the way, to like, you know, reminisce about what the show meant to him. I mean, people appreciate times in their life, especially when they have some perspective on it. Absolutely. And that's been really nice. And again, just reconnecting with everybody. And I think everybody feels really good about it. And everybody still is identified with that show, you know, in a really significant way. And I think at first, for some of the actors, that was scary. Of course. Because you're like, am I going to ever be able to go on and do other things?

But I think, you know, they've all proven that they can and have. Yeah, they can do ex-Nilo now, right? Like, they can do the next iteration of their band. Do you see how I did that? Because that was a reference to City on Fire. That's why you are you. Do you guys, so we're going to be posting this today. We're recording it Thursday.

I believe episode 5 of City on Fire goes up tomorrow. Or tonight, right? Or late tonight. Yeah. And that's five of eight total. You guys want to, again, no spoilers. Do you want to do the drive time DJ, like, set up what's to come? You want to, like, any needle drops you're excited about, anything that you should think people should get on the train now before it fully leaves the station on its way back to Long Island?

There are trains and stations. I'm still trying to segue here. It's great. No, Liz Garbus directs the next two episodes, five and six, and she did an incredible job. Five is sort of like our 1970s, like, thriller episode where there's chases and intrigue. and it feels really big. There's boats. Wow.

I mean, you're talking about production things in terms of like period pieces. You have a whole scene with a helicopter in the background, and I'm just looking at the helicopter being like, these motherfuckers got a helicopter. It's good to work for Apple sometimes, I guess. For sure. And I think for people who've watched the first four and are craving, I think four gets you to that place where you're like,

okay, I really want to know what happened. this next set of episodes really dials that in so that the focus becomes clearer and the stories start, the characters start to interact with each other and their stories cross in ways that like feel really juicy and fun. There's a big flashback coming up in episode six that takes us back to the 80s. What was the 60s in the book? Oh man, even better. That really hurt our heads to try to figure out the math of like, so if they're younger in the 2000, you're like, oh God, it's actually not that long ago.

I do this all the time. I mean, somebody just did that, right? If Marty McFly went back in time today, he would go back to 1993. It's horrific. And yes, I do this all the time in my head, and it's not great. Yeah.

Well, I'm excited to see where the show goes from here, City on Fire is on Apple TV Plus. I love every opportunity to talk to you guys, and I'm sure I'll see you on the picket lines. And then hopefully we'll see you on our screens once all this is resolved with whatever comes next. Thanks, Josh and Stephanie. Thank you.

Thank you.