The Watch - What the WGA Writers' Strike Means for Television, Plus Scott Neustadter on Bringing 'Daisy Jones & the Six' to the Screen

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

Chris and Andy break down the WGA writers’ strike and talk about who's affected and who's involved (1:00) and how the shows 'Citadel' and 'Dead Ringers' show the full spectrum of what's at stake for TV creation (26:55). Then Andy is joined by Scott Neustadter, who adapted 'Daisy Jones & the Six' for TV, to talk about what is was like bringing the music show from page to screen (50:10). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line, the $300 million spy. It's Andy Greenwald. Happy Thursday. Yeah. How are you? I'm okay, man. So today we have a little bit of a split episode. We're going to talk for a little bit about some new TV and the state of TV.

And then Andy tell people about our guests this afternoon. And then you know what? I feel like people have the wrong impression of us, Chris. I think they think that often we start things and we don't finish them, you know, or that we, like, write checks that we then can't cash. And the most recent, and that's not true, as our recent podcast deep dive into the works of Miyazaki proves, we always make good on the things that we say we're going to do. We watched and loved the first two-thirds of the Amazon Prime show, Daisy Jones and the Six.

We said we would talk about the rest of it. It's been a minute. There was some travel. There's some illness. some more travel. But look, we're making good. So the second half of today's show is my conversation with Daisy Jones and the six co-show runner Scott Neustadtar.

Yeah. Where we will talk about the entirety of the series, its journey from page to screen, all the stuff that we didn't really get to cover and the questions we had about how it made and what, to my mind, made it super successful. And that will be coming in the back half of the show. I think it's worth noting that the conversation that you had with Scott took place a little while ago and it took place before the writer. strike. And some folks in the WGA, some writers, have decided to not promote, you know, current shows or

projects that they're working on as a sort of act of solidarity or as one of the sort of, just sort of like planks of what they're doing to protest the lack of a contract from Hollywood, essentially. And so it's worth noting that Scott recorded this interview with Andy beforehand. And that kind of leads us to the main topic of what we're going to talk about today for a little while, which is the writer's strike. Yep. I'm on strike. I am not on strike from, I mean, I think one thing people know is that you and I are both Jay-Z in the booth. We do not, we do not write what we do here. So this does not fall a foul of the Writers Guild of America, of which I am a proud member. So this is fine, but I am in completely.

complete solidarity with Scott and the rest of the writers. And we'll probably be hitting the picket line this afternoon when we're done recording. So this is a big deal. And it sucks, but it's important. Yeah. So I think if there's like anybody out there who's like, I want to hear both sides, you're probably not going to get it from the watch. Andy obviously is in the WGA as Andy's friend and is also somebody who I think my

sympathies are pretty obvious. like I obviously like I stand with you man and I'm interested to hear from your perspective what the first few days of this has been like. So Tuesday night I guess is when that was when Monday night. Okay. So basically the broadest strokes here is that the working agreement between the Writers Guild of America, which is the representative organization and union for all screenwriters, their basic agreement with the AMPTP, which is the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television producers. That's who I was referring to what I was just saying against Hollywood, but I couldn't remember

the acronym. I often forget it, too. It's not very memorable. That basic agreement expired at midnight on Monday. And there's been a lot of expectation and a lot of fear and concern that a strike was looming, a lot of preparation for the potential strike. But negotiations were expected to go down to the wire, as they often do. And six years ago, we were in a similar place with the studios.

And at the very last minute, a deal was struck and a strike was averted. I think there was a lot of pessimism in the industry, but then there were these little sparks of optimism. There were people that I was speaking to who still thought a deal could be made, primarily because the process had been successfully opaque, which is to say that if things were super acrimonious, the assumption was that leaks would start to get leverage on the other side well in advance of the expiration of the deal. That wasn't the case. And so some of us, including, you know, born optimists like me, thought that something was going to get averted. Is that going to be your Jason Bourne movie, the born optimist? Born optimist. Yeah. That's just in the sense that being optimistic got me shot three times in the torso and I woke up in the ocean. So yes, I think so. That was not the case.

The sides were so fundamentally far apart that the writers walked away from the table with hours to go on the clock. And the strike was Feta Compli at that point. And writers are on strike starting at midnight that night. And that means, for people who don't know, that means like truly, truly pencils down. And that's one of the things that is truly disappointing because it has put a freeze on people's livelihoods and their ability to earn money for their families. It's put the freeze on a lot of promising projects. I know people who are writer producers, which is the job, you know, who are show running projects,

and maybe they have two episodes left to do in post, and they walk away. They cannot, in good conscience, fulfill the obligations to the show. And so those episodes might get finished without them. Yeah. And they might not have a say in something that they've been working for years for, maybe their whole life for it to bring to the screen. Like on a personal level, I had three scripts that I'm very happy about,

very excited about, really was enjoying working on and getting closer to the finish line for three different studios. I can't touch them. They're frozen now. And that's the thing too with you, I know that every day you wake up and the first thing you say to yourself is, God bless another chance to write. I love writing. That's the thing. I love, love, love writing. The actual act of writing. There's nothing that makes you have here. The truth is, as I'm learning this week, the only thing worse than writing is not being allowed to write. It's like, that is actually worse. And I should remember that. So yeah. And I think that the revelation of how far apart the sides were, WJ put out a very

succinct document that you can find on social media or Google or the internet, basically saying like what the ask was and what the response was was sobering and infuriating. And the Gulf is so wide that I think this is going to last for a long time. Do you think that there's AMPT Twitter like, is there like Hollywood exec Twitter where they're talking trash and like they're commiserating and they're being like, here's where we should meet to like while people are picketing outside of our studios. I don't know if there's that Twitter,

but there definitely is like shitlord Twitter where people are like, oh yeah, they're like, I could replace you now. Robots should replace you. Yeah. Like that's a really cool attitude. I think one of the things that this has really laid bare to me, and I'm curious your perspective,

on this too, of course, is that, like, this isn't a conventional negotiation that has happened in the past, where the writers are like, we don't feel like we're paid fairly, and the studios are like, grumble, grumble, we don't have the money. And then everybody moves a little bit, and everybody gets paid a little more, and some concessions are made, and the great work of Hollywood cinema and television goes on. This is an inflection point in what has been happening to the American economy, the global economy for the last few years, not meaning the writers are more special. It's just that laissez-faire techbro capitalist indifference and repaciousness has gobbled up every industry and transformed it and turned everybody into Uber drivers attempting

to increase shareholder value for the already rich and has broken almost every industry it's come in contact with. And now it's running up against an industry where there actually is a strong union and it'll be really interesting to see what happens because of that. And it'll also be interesting to see how the AMPTP fares because that is a loose conglomeration of the studios. Yeah. And that is not the same people. And they're actually in competition with one another. And it is not this, it is, it is not a uniform group of people with shared goals, interests, or profit margins. What we're talking about is a group that includes companies

like Sony, the studio. Sony does not have a streaming service, yeah. Who need television and television shows because that's the business they're in. It also includes Netflix, Amazon, and Apple, who will be fine if the strike lasts for six months or six years. It doesn't necessarily matter. Okay, Netflix probably doesn't, but Amazon and Apple certainly would be fine. And I also think, fundamentally, as all the traditional studios have tried to chase the models and streaming models of the tech companies, that it's laid bare that they're in very different businesses.

You know, I think that on some level the traditional studios, at least some people in their DNA are like, we are in the, we're in the myth-making business. We're imaginers. Like we make creative things. 100 years of Warner Brothers, yeah. And that's what we do. Everyone else is like, we made an algorithm, and we're going to devour the fucking world with it, and you're a cog that is responsible for feeding into it. And I think those are very different things, and I think they have very different outlooks

on what the actual value of the writing is on a fundamental level. So it's one of the reasons why I'm both depressed, infuriated, and skeptical of this resolving anytime soon, because I think the needs of each one of these entities is different, which might lead to a deal with some of them, if this fractures the AMPTP. Who knows? Yeah, no, I think it's like, I'm just going to ask questions that I sometimes know the answer to

from just knowing you, but I think would be interesting for our listeners because you're not a typical case in Hollywood screenwriting, right? Like, so you spent most of your life in the media industry writing about music and then writing about television, and then you made the jump into writing for Hollywood and writing for television shows and thinking about screenwriting. And you have had your own show, right? Like, there, one of the reason why I'm bringing all this up is that there's this really one of the most fascinating sort of narratives in this work stoppage and in this labor disagreement is that there is been this destruction of the ladder that is usually there for people who, when they come into this business or they go into the business of writing for television,

that there are these steps that you go up, right? And you start out and you might be an assistant, and then you might be a story editor and then you might get, you know, you're part of a staff, but along the way, there was this real culture of mentorship and talent nurturing that went on in that business. And I always thought it was pretty admirable from afar.

You know what I mean? Like, I always thought it was pretty cool. It obviously wasn't as diverse and, like, open as it needed to be. And I think that there have been steps to address that. But I've noticed that a lot of people have been like, hey, man, it's really fucked up

been able to go to a set, you know? I've never been able to learn how to do the next job. And then you have some people who feel like they're being thrown in on the deep end. And they're like, well, I've never run a show before. And now I'm running a show. Who's going to teach me how to do this? There are a lot of tendrils here. And there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen that led to this terrible circumstance. And one of them has just been the continued devaluation of labor and imagination and creativity and also like the attempts to pivot things for free work. And one of the things you'll hear about is mini rooms and backup scripts and stuff. And like, instead of of greenlighting a project and staffing it appropriately and seeing it through, there's a lot of

hemming and hawing and like attempts to sort of defray costs and be like, yes, write a couple scripts and then we'll give you a mini room of a few writers for two weeks to break the season. And then all those people will go away and we won't have to pay them anymore and you can write the season or whatever. And so there's no investment in the people who are creating it that robs, it robs everything. It robs the creatives and it robs the final product, I think. In my own experience, I had a full room for 20 weeks with brilliant group of writers. all of whom were credited on an episode, none of whom, except for my brilliant co-EP, Eva Anderson,

due to other circumstances of needing a physical body of a producer and needing her mind on set, none of them were allowed to come to set. Their contracts ended before we started production. So they're all technically writer producers. Some of them had the title of producer, but they were not welcome to set to produce their episodes, which is both robbing them of something of experience. It's robbing the show of their perspective. But your point is it's robbing the future of the industry.

because the things you learn on set are completely different than what you learn in a room, just writing scenes that don't cost anything and you can put them anywhere you want. And then you end up with this continuing cascade of problems, right? Where, like, exactly to your point, people are suddenly given a chance to make their own show as they should, but they don't have the experience on set and they're set up to fail, especially with this world of, you know, massive IP, big budget things that are important to the bottom line, not necessarily to the creative idea at the root of it. So that's rotten all the way down. But one of the other major points is the idea of residuals and writers being paid for the appreciation of their work.

You hear a lot of stories about writers who wrote for the previous era of TV, living off of the residuals for their one script of Big Bang Theory or whatever. Yeah. Because in the old days, when TV writers wrote for quote unquote TV, every time a show aired, you would get some money for it. That doesn't seem outrageous. If it was aired a lot because it was popular, you would get more money for it. But now if you watch Big Bang Theory, well, maybe Big Bang Theory is not the right example, but if you watch an episode of shrinking six times, I don't think that it changes materially what the person who wrote that episode makes.

Or if an episode of Abbott Elementary becomes the number one stream show on Hulu, the writer of that show doesn't get any participation in what happens to it on Hulu because those deals predated the hiring of the writers or the making of the show because it's already pre-sold to these streamers and things. You use my show as an example. I wrote a basic cable show. At the end of 2020, I got some really nice surprise green envelopes because they reran it.

Remember reruns? And that's also one of the reasons why every writer in the room, including the writer's assistant, got their name on a script because when those episodes re-ran, they got a check out of it. There have been no reruns. I know this is going to shock people. There have been no reruns on the USA Network of Briar Patch for quite some time. And so that is over and done with.

And so one of the asks in this is for the streamers to be less opaque with their numbers and that if you write on a show like Bridgerton, for example, which just seems like they're proud to say is a record-breaking. It's a record-breaking show, yeah. Then you should participate in that success. It shouldn't just be you get your one-time payment and then you're off on an island hustling to work in three more mini-rooms that year to make ends meet. it shouldn't just be, you know, the participation is just for the limited period of time,

while everyone else basts in the success and rakes in the profits for it. And to the point about set visits, that was suggested that writer-producers should be paid to be on set to produce their episodes. And the response from the AMPTP was they would consider instituting a lottery-based unpaid internship program for Hollywood-based productions. That doesn't seem like your worse. The reason why I brought that up and the idea of, you know, how people progress through an industry is because it seems to me that there are both

economic questions where, you know, when my mom says, like, what are they striking about? And I kind of explain like, well, there's no more residuals and the episode seasonal, the episode episodic orders are getting shorter. So people, if their staff writers, have to find two, three jobs a year to make the money that they would have made if they had been on a 20 episode show. And, you know, now that there are no quote unquote reruns and it's just like, you can just watch this episode 4,000 times on Netflix or Amazon if you want, but that doesn't necessarily register as it being on lifetime at 3.30 p.m. before the news comes on or something like that. All of these things contribute to the economic changes that happen. But then you've got these systemic changes like the

ones I'm talking about with progressing through the industry. How much of this stuff do you think came out of the pandemic? How much of this stuff was kind of like baked into the way television production may have changed with the introduction of Zoom rooms or the introduction of and the idea that maybe set could only be visited by a certain number of people who were like in tier A of COVID testing, like all this stuff that kind of came out and then got and then it transferred over because I think that happened in a lot of different industries. I mean, look at commercial real estate. Like people are just kind of like intermittently in offices now. Like there's for better or for worse. And I think that there's like a lot of stuff that's residual from the 2020 to 22 that's like still here.

I think it exacerbated things. And I think that the desperation that everyone felt was also preyed upon by people in power in terms of what people were willing to do for a chance or for a paycheck, how much extra work they were willing to do or what kind of reductions in their quotes they would take. I think the difference in the analogy is to make something, you still have to be in production. Hundreds of people still need to gather in a place to get actors in front of cameras and to roll. and they've found they brilliantly the brilliant people who work on TVs and movies figured out a way to make it work during COVID

with incredibly intense and expensive testing protocols and et cetera you can't work from home and make a TV show you know what I mean so I think there were things that were taken advantage of but I think the fundamental work remains the work and people need to be there and so also now you're going to start seeing stuff where it's just like oh house of the dragon won't be affected because all the scripts were written before production.

Okay. That's going to go great. Like, scripts, it's great to have scripts written before production. But making TV and filming anything is a living fluid medium. Like you see things on the day and you change your mind or an actor can't say the line or you've rethought something. You need to read, make the show again in editing, you know, and make the lines work and write new lines often for ADR or for people to do

to come in and to make it work. Like, that's not really possible to claim that that's the case. And I think that's just kind of a hedge to be like, you know, it's a power play for leverage to be like, actually, this won't affect us because we have all these things in the pipeline. I think, you know, streamers do have things in the pipeline. I just got a press release for a really exciting new show starring Zoe DeChernell called, what is she eating or something? Where she, like, ask questions about food. So, I mean, like, look, who am I to stand in the way of that? But I think that people are going to feel the bite.

from the sooner rather than later. And there's a cascading effect of labor things here because the Teamsters and everybody are standing with the writers and refusing to cross picket lines, which is incredible. The Directors Guild comes up in negotiations in about a month, and I would imagine that they would also stand with the writers. So this is the beginning of what is essentially going to be a Hollywood shutdown, and we'll see what the appetite for that is. I'm not going to ask you to prognosticate on how long you think it's going to last, but I am curious whether you think that the perfect storm of the directors coming up and and the sort of, I would say the,

uh, market sort of one way traffic in terms of public opinion that I've seen so far aside from aforementioned shitlords. Like, I mean, do you feel like there's, there's room to come together here? I guess I'm,

I mean, you're not on a negotiating committee, but do you feel like that there's daylight or that there's like a point where people can kind of compromise here? I mean, I'm not, as you said, like I am not involved in those conversations.

and I have no idea. I feel really pessimistic today on day three of the strike. Is that because it's raining? Because yes, A, it's raining. And, you know, I'm going to have to dress extra warmly. It feels existential. It doesn't feel financial at this moment. There were aspects of the negotiation that were made public

where the guild asked the producers, sorry, the studios, to be like, can we acknowledge that writers are human beings? Not like to be nice to them, but like to not replace them. with fucking chat GPT bullshit. And the response was to have an annual meeting to discuss advances in technology. Which means, no, they're not taking that off the table.

Like, that's interesting to them, which speaks to the devaluation of work, but also, like, what are we fucking doing? Like, you know, you were joking about this and spoiler in this weekend succession pod about how, you know, I like to listen to other podcasts to get my news. And, you know, our boss, the sports guy,

had the new owner of the sons on. Ishbia, yeah. And I have no formed opinions. I've done no research on his mortgage business or who he is as a person. But one thing that I was struck by was he was like, I'm already very rich and of a successful business. And when I bought the Phoenix Suns and the Phoenix Mercury, it's because I fucking love basketball and I want to make it real fun for people.

And what struck me was he was just like, he understood the business that he was buying into and he wanted to celebrate that business. A lot of the people who have become the players. in television. And I know, look, creative industry is an oxymoron. I get that. But like, they want to maximize shareholder growth and, you know, it's succession. They just want growth. That awesome, what does Kendall say last week? Like, awesome growth. Unbelievable growth, man. Hockey stick. That's what they want. It is not necessarily about, like, let's work with really smart,

creative people on the writer side and on the, even on the development executive side, and then bring in all the other industries and build something, right? Like, let's, like, all this chat GPT shit, Chris. Like, I'm not interested in seeing what chat GPT would write if asked to write a script for fucking young Sheldon. I don't even think it's interesting as an exercise. I watch stuff because I want to see a human being bring something into the world. Like, that's interesting. And so when you get to the negotiating table and that's like, that's not even being recognized, that worries me.

So, look, everybody wants to get back to work and everyone will get back to work. And there will be financial gains made. there were small things that were already agreed upon that actually aren't that small. Like, if your title on a show is staff writer, which is the entry-level position, you are not paid for the scripts you write on top of what you do because it's assumed

that your job is to write them. Everyone else with titles like co-producer is paid for your script because you're also a producer. I see. And that's being changed. That was already agreed upon. Did you know that I've been doing that to you for the watch?

I did. I have a strongly worded email to Jeff Chow about it, but I could send it after we finish recording. Okay. So here's... I'm feeling down about it now. A deal will be made. There will be breakthroughs. I'm not sure when they will happen. But on a fundamental level of like, what are we doing here and what is this business going to be? I have no idea. It doesn't feel great. From an outsider's perspective, I wanted to ask you whether there was any point in your time involved with working in this industry,

that you were like, are we sure this isn't too good to be true? Because, like... Hold of it for me. No, but I remember when these tech companies got involved with content in the first place. Yeah.

And a lot of what you heard was like, they give you tons of money and no notes. You know, and or this is the place everybody wants to sell to these guys. Everybody wants to be a part of this. Everybody wants Cindy Holland to work on their show. Everybody wants the fire hose. Everybody wants this. I don't think everybody woke up one day and decided that the economics of that thing

weren't fair. But I'm playing a little bit of devil's advocate here because I'm curious to get your take on it. Like, do you think that the tech-based studios are like, we never said we were going to give you the numbers? Like, we never said that. Yeah. Yeah. And you also look at the Baden switch they did, which is, you know, I didn't live out here then. I think you had just moved, but we weren't as, I don't know if we're connected, we weren't paying as close attention to actually how the game was being played on the ground. But when Netflix showed up in town, you know, and like did this wild splash of overpaying incredibly for House of Cards.

And with, you mentioned Cindy Holland, who I never have met, but she was the head of creative development at Netflix and was widely respected for her taste. And they were doing things like House of Cards. or Master of None and making these awards plays to be taken seriously within the creative community, right? And that worked.

They became serious players and put out really great shows. And then that was no longer, there wasn't a lot of growth in that. You know, the greater growth was international spinoffs of, is that cake? And so Cindy was out

and a different team came in and it was gourmet cheeseburgers served around the world and Glow gets canceled in the pandemic after three seasons because why not? Because they don't actually care about seeing the story through. And no, I will never forgive them for that. But I don't think they were dishonest.

I think that everyone, including myself, certainly, and probably many times on this podcast, were overly credulous. Yeah. There were some, like we often are with everything in this country, like that there are backstops to protect an industry or to protect the way things should be done or, you know, handshake agreements and everybody's friends here.

or like we all respect the final product. Like, that's not the economy that anybody exists in in the world. And I think the stakes on the ground have changed. And we've spent weeks recently talking about how, like, some stuff coming out of HBO because of the Warner stuff feels fear-based, you know? And it's the tech stuff, I think, infected everybody.

I want to sort of pivot to talking about this show called, it's called Citadel. That's on Amazon. And there's a way to do that in which we, kind of, I don't think it's fair, despite my feelings about the show itself, to only view it through the lens of a now ongoing writer strike, right? Right. But I do think that it is indicative of maybe some bad habits in Hollywood that have now become, there were vices that became habits to steal a wine from the Doobie Brothers. And so you have a tech company in Amazon who is looking to

create massive owned IP. They are in the blockbuster business. They're in the Jack Ryah business, the Lord of the Rings business. They're still making weird stuff here and there and they're still, you know, you still get your zero zero zeroes and your paper girls and your, you know, random, like random cool show. Okay, but that's the thing. And then you get something like Citadel, which is a $300 million Rousseau brothers,

I don't know, three, five different showrunners or writers working on it at various points over the last couple of years, starring Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jones, international spy thriller that was pitched as the first brick in a new

franchise mansion, right? That you could spin this thing off to all of these international markets and make different citadels in different languages around the globe and have a truly international hit. That was how it was sort of

originally pitched at Amazon by the Rousseau's. And then you, go ahead. Actually, it wasn't pitched by the Rousseau's. This is actually, again, it's almost too easy to talk about this in the context of the strike and I want to be mindful of that. Jen Salky, the head of content in Amazon, pitched it to the Rousseau brothers. Oh. Saying she wanted for a show that would align with their global strategy.

And what could that be? Everybody likes spy shows. It can't be zero zero. It can't be zero. It apparently cannot be zero zero. That's international. It is backwards, top-down thinking, and it's also where we're at. Like, yeah, get rid of the writers and get more citadels.

But please, go on. So you watch this show. This is a, I believe it's, how many episodes is this first season going to be? They ended up with six made episodes and with a price tag of $300 million. And the episodes themselves are about 40, 45 minutes. long. I think the first one's a little bit longer, but then they become much more, I think savally so, network TV hour long drama length. It is a incredibly violent, incredibly glib, almost like tongue-in-cheek spy thriller. You know,

like the actual plot, which involves a off-the-book secret international spy agency that was created essentially to keep other spy agencies in check has been operating. To do good in the world. And has been responsible for everything good that's happened in the last 60 years or whatever. And they are unceremoniously like brought down in the first episode by a evil specter-like organization run by, not run by Leslie Manville, but like fronted by Leslie Manville. This is G.I. Joe basically. Yeah. It is. It's G.I. Joe and Cobra. It literally is that. And I think that.

that is, you can kind of see the mood board of where it's like plot wise, it should make about as much sense as a Transformers movie. Tonally, we want John Wick meets, like, almost like the office with

like these sort of like winking to camera comedic moments. We're going to overpay people like Stanley Tucci and Leslie Manville to like class it up. And we're going to have Richard Madden, who's an actor I like, clenching his jaw to get through an American accent and be the James Bond of the show. And here's the thing. I watched the first two episodes

and I was like, in a vacuum, I'd probably keep watching it. You know, like, I'm a disgusting person and I'll watch any fucking thriller you throw at me pretty much. And I watch the Terminalist and I watch these shows and I really don't care. I don't respect myself. Is it fair to judge a show, not only in the context of when it's coming out in the face of this labor situation between the writers and Hollywood, and this show has such an inflated budget

and such, it honestly just seems like a waste of money. And I don't mean that to be like cruel towards it. I just, when you watch it, if you can find the $300 million dollars, like, I, and I said the same thing about the Grey Man, which is the show, the movie that they did for

Netflix and was pitched in much the same way that it could be the first in a series of films. Is it fair to view this in the context of the strike, but even more so, is it fair to view this in the context of its price tag? I also want to caveat this and say, I love Stanley Tucci. I adore Leslie Manville. I hope she bought something really nice with the salary she got for this. I also, not just because of the strike, do want to express support or empathy for the original writers. I think Josh Applebaum and his writing partner, and whose name is not in front of me, I apologize.

And then David Weir came in. He had done the show Hunters for Amazon and took over, which I think then basically went back and rewrote everything and was like, they started filming the show in 21. They reshot most of it in 22. It went from 10 episodes to 8 to 6. So much of screenwriting at this moment is problem solving, is being hired to walk into a catastrophe and do your best to make everyone think

that it was always meant to be this way and to paper over the messes with clever jokes or Mr. X. whatever. That is 50% of the job right now, and I don't begrudge anyone trying their best, both to make a living and to try to make, to turn something around. I mean, everybody wants to be the, what is it, Mason, Mason something of Citadel and be the hero. It's a very human instinct. So I want to be sure to say that before taking out all the scalples that I haven't used and maybe a couple buzz saws in a couple years, because I think that this show is essentially reprehensible and morally bankrupt.

And I'm sorry. Like, I don't judge you. You're my friend. Everyone has vices. I'm not saying that, like, I'm going to get lines from this show tattooed on my neck. I'm saying, like, as I'm sitting on an airplane flying,

you know, across the country, like, I was like, I'm not turning this off. It is about nothing. It is for no one, and it gives you nothing. Like, it's shocking to me

that the Russo brothers have just become these shit merchants of the most, strip down basic, like, I don't even understand, like, Cliff's Notes version of what made Marvel good, which is like, let's spend a lot of money for made up places not rooted in any reality and have everyone joke. And then their kind of like, you know, killer app iteration is to also have everyone shoot each other in the head while they make jokes. It's so end times to me. It's just so noisy and it's so vicious and it's so ugly. And it's so ugly.

And it's also made up in the same way that in a movie I liked very much, you know, you could almost admire the chutzpah of Top Gun Maverick being like, all of the enemies are Cobra Commander. They're not from any nation and we won't offend anyone. This will become a big hit everywhere. And we're just putting Maverick in a video game. Right? And like that's what they've done here too. Or it's just like, we're not, we're just heroes and they're just bad guys. And nothing else matters because we need to expand our brand around the world. We joked about this. But like, one of the most, like, you could just, you just could see where this came from, that this didn't come from someone's like Passion Project idea. Like, within moments when Richard Madden's amnesiac master spy is raising his children, I think his closest neighbor is Hawkeye. Yeah, it's worth setting it up that this entire show opens with it. I wouldn't call it thrilling, but if you just, if I just read you the recipe list, the ingredient list for this recipe, and I said, high speed train going through the Italian Alps,

two master spies doing a little... To sexy master spies, doing a little Mr. and Mrs. Smith are ambushed by a rogue niche of other spies who are bringing down the house and wiping out this agency. I think I'd probably have your attention a little bit.

Absolutely. The first shot of the show, I was like, okay, cool. It's like a cool 360 upside down, turns around on the train looks beautiful. Right. but very quickly it's nothing. They're glib with each other. With that,

nothing lands. There's no stakes. Everyone just punches and punches and shoots and shoots. For what? Like that's, there is no there. We're not in a real place.

This isn't a real train. These aren't real people. But it's also not inception. It's not, you know, there's no, it's not the highest technical achievement. Exactly.

And then it jumps to eight years later. Richard Madden's character is an amnesiac and he has a loving wife and he has a daughter inexplicably named Hendricks. And they, not after the gym. I think after the guitarist.

And they live nowhere, right? They live in the absolute middle of nowhere, kind of like where Hawkeye lives with Linda Cardalini. So this guy doesn't remember he's like an international agent of mystery, but does remember the music of Jimmy Hendricks. Apparently, yeah, it's selective amnesia. You know, what he also remembers is the secret code you can get from Uber Eats in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Because as good as Richard Madden looks, the delivery bag from Uber Eats in the eighth minute of the show looks even better, baby. Yeah. And it's awesome. There's basically a moment where he's, he's having, having like a nightmare dream remembering like his, his sort of amnesiac life. He wakes up and his daughter, Hendricks is like, Dad, the pancakes are ready. I think she says ready, not here. And he comes downstairs and you're like, oh, they're going to have like this country kitchen and someone's going to have made pancakes. And there's just this giant Uber Eats bag sitting on the table with nothing else around it and like a key light over it so that you can see with branding. And it's like, like, it's like, like, you know, it's like, like, you can see with branding. And it's like, like, But these people kind of live in the middle of nowhere in the country and they've ordered pancakes. And that's the show. That's the show in a nutshell.

So here's the thing. This is the future that they want where all the ideas come from, you know, the fucking disgusting brothers essentially on succession. And the peons that they fire over. It's fucking Calispetron, brother. It is. You are woke in me. And the idea of building something. something top down. Remember when

loss was a success and then for the next three years every network had another lost that all started with a crazy fucking grab you idea but none of them remembered that people like loss for the characters, not the polar bears. This is what this is but really large and really expensive. And I think that

what's interesting to me is what feels like a very, look, I don't want to say broken culture, but I would say suspect culture from a company like Amazon in the TV space. Because what it's putting out is chaos. Good things can come from chaos, but it's chaos. Later, we're going to talk to Scott about Daisy Jones and the Sixth and Amazon show that is relatively

straight down the middle in terms of what its potential appeal. I loved it, and I would love more shows like that. Amazon made that. Amazon made Fleaback. I'm not saying that they can't make good things, but it's really more interesting to me to be like, in the same month, they gave us Citadel and they gave us dead ringers, which we could also touch on. Both shows are absolutely insane, unhinged, and borderline irresponsible. One of them I love because it's the type of wild unhinged energy that I think is really fascinating. But I think a sober company could make more successful versions of both of those and not have them be in complete disagreement with each other.

It is not a fair comparison, but I think it's really, it is telling. that both things are absolutely wild and messy. One is messy in an artistic way, and one is messy in an amoral way. But there's a messiness here that I think does represent some of the concerns about the industry that we were talking about in the first section.

Not to make everything tie up into a neat bow. No, that's my thing is like, I don't really, I think that this show in and of itself is worthy of critique and everything, and it doesn't matter. But the fact that it needed, that the idea seemed to try to reverse engineer where they would be in five years

with like five other citadels airing in Italy, South America, India, and in the states, and that they would have launched this massive franchise when I don't think I could even explain to some but like even just saying the words out loud a secret spy agency unbeholden to any nation state

that is responsible for everything quote unquote good that happens in the world. Like, that's, I feel so fucking, I feel like I'm having a stroke by saying that. Yeah. Also, you know, what the show prioritizes is the high stakes, potentially lucrative world building, right?

It starts the way it starts for a reason. It doesn't start with Richard Madden living a quiet life, and then suddenly Stanley Tucci shows up and gases his entire family to help him and says, guess what, you're Jason Bourne? Right. And off we go. It says, this is the second.

see glamourous, fun, nothing matters, bang, bang, world that this is, that we're going to create for you. And then there's some people, but whatever, we'll get back to the shooting soon. It's a bummer. So talk to me about Dead Ringers then. Talk to me about why that's like the other side of the coin. So did you, did you have a chance to check it out? I did. I did. Just, how would you compare it to this is going to hurt? Like, just in terms of like, I know that you have an unslakeable thirst for just like extremely graphic human birthing, content? So, which are power rankings? So I think this is going to hurt is at least spoke to me on a human level more than Dead Ringers does, but I also think that we're watching something

incredibly special with what Rachel Vace is doing on that show. Yeah. So Dead Ringers, this, being on Amazon also just feels like a glitch in their otherwise successful Matrix in that there was a moment when people were like, what's in the IP library? Let's go. Dead Ringers was a David Kronerberg is a David Kronerberg film from 1988 starring Jeremy Irons as identical twin gynecologists. It is, you know, I can't say it's like a Hall of Fame movie, but it's a pretty interesting and perverse movie. And Alice Birch, the playwright who's worked on Succession and done other TV scriptwriting

work, has taken this, brought it into the present, and radically refashioned it by casting the absolutely brilliant Rachel Weiss as twin identical twin gynaecologist in New York City in the present day. And this show is worth watching for her performances alone. She is fucking on one, except she's on two. Like, it is turn, okay? It is, I know I've said unhinged six times, but it absolutely is. And just the fact of casting her and making the leads women has radically refashioned the source material in what it means, because the idea of of childbirth is intensely now centered in the female experience in a way that it wasn't before

when it was just sort of like an add-on to the sort of creepy Jeremy Irons character. Not to devalue the movie because the movie is pretty wild and good. I just mean that it is a very, very different, very intriguing, unsettling, perverse TV series that is also brilliantly directed, I think, by Sean Durkin, who did,

what's the Elizabeth Olson movie, right? Martha Marcy May Marlene, I think, is what he did, but he also did this movie called The Nest with Carrie Coon. That is Enjulah. That's fucking awesome. I just kept, I was watching this. And, like, look, your mileage may vary on this. This show is not for everyone for any number of reasons,

whether it's like the just the absolutely ours goes to 11 nature of Rachel Weis's performances or the extremely graphic childbirth stuff and the emotional trauma that may trigger people related to all of that. But for me, it was also like, has off. Kiltre, as this show seems, like it felt like kind of a fossil of an era that already is in the past, where TV was, we're going to take this old thing, but we're going to get this pretty fucking smart and interesting writer, and we're going to get a filmmaker, and we're going to get a star, and we're going to blow it out. That was what packaging was. That was what my experience was when I was trying to get Briar Patch made at first. and the majority of those packages all fell apart. People drop out.

The shows don't get made. People's vision gets replaced. It gets watered down. It gets turned into what everything else looks like or gets more in line with the culture. People weren't trying to take those kind of home run artistic swings anymore. This one slipped through. I just feel like this one slipped through.

It's filmmaking. It's star performing. It's weird. One of the hard things about watching television in the age of Citadel is being able to tell the difference between these shows. You know what I mean?

Obviously with Deadringers and Citadel, you can tell the difference. But I was checking out this show that's coming out on Apple this weekend called Silo, which comes from Graham Yose who obviously worked on famous screenwriter, but worked famously on Justified. And this is another kind of dystopian

future sci-fi society and, you know, like a society that, you might recoil from or that seems creepily, like, plausible or whatever. And I was looking at, like, the sort of list of Apple shows, and, you know, you've got stuff like foundation and, uh, invasion and to some extent for all mankind. And, you know, like the aburability, probably because Apple has like a very kind of uniform press or uniform kind of aesthetic to the way that they present market shows at a certain point, that you're kind of like, can you separate between

these shows? Can you even like distinguish between them? And I think silo is quite good. Um, But it's almost like when you're only using this heavy bat, you can't distinguish between home run hitters or any other kind of hitter. And it's really cool that even as we are like saying like Amazon, you're bringing about the creative apocalypse by getting like chat GP Russo to make a born movie into a six episode shit sandwich, like they're also putting out dead ringers. And, you know, for as much as, I don't know,

sometimes it's hard for me to kind of negotiate how I feel about everything that's happening with the fact that, like, are we ever going to get away from the fact that TV is essentially made by tech companies anyway? Yeah, and I also don't know, the answer is no. And I also don't always know what we're chasing because I think it's always worth saying, although I think people have listened to us for a long time, know that we are sometimes speaking from the perspective of different constituencies and from different perspectives because we're interested in all of it. when I was talking about the writer's strike, I'm on strike right now. So I'm particularly impassioned about that.

I also, for the sake of both podcasting and the sake of the culture, I do have this weird, perhaps outdated desire for things to be a minute. Like, I want things to be good in a like universally understood way. I want things to be, it's not necessarily monocultural. But like, and so when you get something like Dead Ringers, like I want, I would love for their, I love for. Citadel to just be like straight down the middle fastball. Like it's easy, it's enjoyable and it's well made with intention and specificity,

even though it is made for literally any Amazon subscriber who's also buying paper towels anywhere in the world. Dead Ringers, I really love the fact that it is a wild swing. I haven't finished the series. I don't know if I would say like this is a creative success. It nailed it. It was complete aesthetic vision. I'm celebrating its idiosyncrasies.

but there's a part of me that also wants things to be developed. You know, again, like I'm arguing both sides of my mouth here. I'm like, let the writers be free, but also the studios and the streamers and the executives have a role to play to help shape it and give feedback and make things the best version of what they are, of what they ought to be. Maybe this is all just like a slow segue into why I think Daisy Jones is good. Yeah, it's not Barry, which I think we don't have time to talk about today,

but I think is doing something so extraordinary. And I think it is unquestionably the best show on TV. And it's like increasingly becoming just absolutely unique and important for what TV can do and what it should do. Maybe we'll just punt that to next Thursday so we could talk about it in more detail. But like, Daisy Jones is, to me, was successful because it succeeded on its own terms. You know, and one writer can't do that on his or her own. One director can't do that. It is a collaborative medium.

There are a lot of cooks involved. but they all have to be, do Cook's row or are those people in boats? Everybody's got to be moving in the same direction. And this is a moment in Hollywood where that does not necessarily feel to, it doesn't feel like that's true. Andy, we should probably wrap it up there. And you can get into your interview with Scott. Thanks to everybody for listening.

I hope this was informative. I hope it was educational. You know, as with anything, things change sort of quickly. And even as we were recording the AMPTP, T, P, P. responded to some of the writer's demands. And I would not describe this as like, you guys are right. Let's all come together. So obviously, this podcast might be a little bit dated by the time you hear it,

by the time you actually listen to it or whatever. But we're just trying to give you Andy's perspective as somebody in the WGA, who is facing a time of great uncertainty in his industry. And as we get into this interview, Scott Neustetter, you know him and his partner from writing movies like 500 Days of Summer and the disaster artist. Scott came on solo because this was kind of his baby, his labor of love. And as we mentioned, we recorded this pre-strike. And there are spoilers all the way through the last episode of Daisy Jones and the Six.

We really talk about what his vision was for the series as a whole. We talk about decisions made in the finale. Casting, recording. I love talking to him about it. I love that show. So hope you enjoy the interview. We were produced by Kai and MacMullin. We'll be back with you guys on Sunday night after the next episode of Success.

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Okay, so now I'm thrilled to be joined in the studio at long last, long delayed. We finally made it happen. Scott Neustowder, the co-show runner, executive producer, writer on one of my favorite shows of the year, Daisy Jones and the Six on Amazon Prime Video. Long intro. Scott, welcome. Thanks so much. I'm psyched to be here.

We talked about this. Got delayed a little bit. but it was worth it in the end. Yeah, I can't wait. I mean, I'm excited to listen to the second half of your discussion of the program. No spoilers. We loved it. Excellent. And, yeah, I just, I mean, first of all, congratulations on the adaptation.

Thank you. Yeah, it was six years in the making. It was a long, long endeavor. That's amazing. And I feel like one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you about it, and we were just talking a little bit about it off mic, is I found the show to be so extremely pleasurable and such an easy, enjoyable watch. And hidden in that ease was clearly a ton of work. and a ton of decision-making.

Yes, and interestingly enough, coming from the movie world, decisions that I actually got to weigh in on and have some authority over, which was a new thing for me. Right, because if people, I'm sure they're familiar with your CV, but you and your writing partner, Michael, have mostly been in the feature space. Disaster artist, 500 days of summer. I'm sure as movie writers, there are two dozen scripts that you prefer to those two that have yet to be made. Lots of things on the shelf. But that's the frustration, right?

We're in a movie, you write the script, and then some people take it, and if you're lucky you get to be a little bit along for the ride. In TV, you're driving the car for a long time. Yeah, it was interesting. You write a screenplay, and it's kind of like, you know, giving your child up for adoption. You can't really weigh in on how it's raised. Sometimes they invite you to the set and ask you questions, but really it's an invite only if you're lucky. And then you go to the premiere and that's that. But TV was a whole different kind of animal where even, you know, the director, after the yell cut, they turn to you and they say, are we good? And I really was flabbergasted. Did you do the thing where you looked over your shoulder to make sure there wasn't someone sending behind?

Are you talking to me, really? But it was great. I mean, to have that kind of authority for a change was a definite breath of fresh air. And I just loved this book so much and really cared about this, that I had to kind of have something to say about every creative choice. So let's talk about that. So Daisy Jones was adapted from a book that I have yet to read because I wanted to watch the show first. But Taylor Jenkins Reid wrote this book, a bestseller, beloved by many people. It sounds like you had a similar experience when reading the book.

that started your interest in the project. That's right. So this began 2017. Taylor had written a handful of novels, and I was unfamiliar with her. She gave her new manuscript to her manager, and the manager loved it and said, I'm going to show a few people that I know are big music fans because I think they'd really get a kick out of it, and I was one of those people. And, you know, I flipped for it. I really read 100 pages, and I knew I wanted something to do with this. And I texted my wife, Lauren, who had just started running film and television for Reese's new company, Hello Suncha. And I said to Lauren, we've always wanted to work together. What do you know about this Daisy book? Because I just assumed she would get all the Glenn Garys way before I would.

And she's like, I don't know what you're talking about. And I said, you have to get your hands on this. You guys are going to love it. And I knew Reese was going to love it too because maybe six or seven years before that, around the time of 500 days of summer, we had a general lunch. and she said, what's your dream project? And I was like, I don't really know, but definitely something that has to do with Fleetwood Max rumors. And we spent the rest of the lunch

just talking about Stevie Nix. We are very aligned on this, just sitting across this table. It's the single best story. It's the best story ever. It would make for such an amazing thing. In fact, I arranged a run-in with Lindsay Buckingham once for to say to him,

please let me tell your story. And he was like, okay, kid. Yeah, you're the first to ever ask me that. Lindsay Buckingham has been on this podcast twice. because of my devotion to him, where I basically just do my version of the Chris Farley interview, where I'm like, remember that time you were banging on Kleenex boxes on Tusk? And he's like, I do remember. And I'm like, that was cool. He apparently replied to a TikTok. People were doing TikToks about our show and Silver Springs. And he replied to it. And I'm not on TikTok,

but it was really like the highlight of my life. That's, first of all, good for you, though, to be aware of cybersecurity issues and not be on TikTok. It was really weird. TikTok. I had it for five minutes and was like, nope. It's not for. I think we're about the same age. That's not for us. Before we get into the specific adaptation, it is interesting that you are really drawn to a project that both on the page and in reality, the inspiration, Fleetwood Mac story, not the only inspiration, but one of the inspirations for Taylor's books, is about a great love story that fractures in pursuit of great art. And here you immediately emailed your wife and said, let's do this together. That was risky. You know, I only, I met my wife because she read my 500 days of summer script. That's how we met. Wow. which is really a script,

an autobiographical about my situation with an ex. And when I look back on it, I realized that it's basically just Silver Springs in the movie. And I was always drawn to these kinds of things, but it is ironic that that was my first instinct was, let's do this together. And then Reese and Lauren and I kind of had to do the full court press on Taylor and be like, no one else.

You have to let us do this. And it worked. And you guys are still, you and your wife are still making albums together metaphorically. You did not break up because of this. That's good. I would do it again any second. We'd have to have her here to ask if she would.

Funny story. She's in the... No, that's fantastic. So when you... So you met with Taylor and you talked about it and it sparked something in you. As we said at the beginning, you had worked mostly in movies. So was the original thought that this is a movie or has the industry changed so much that you immediately knew that the best avenue for it would be a longer form series? If I could figure out how to do the two-hour version of this book, I think I would have done that.

I just couldn't figure it out. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that, like, what I loved about the book was how I just wanted to disappear in this world for as long as possible. And I realized that, you know, the opportunity to kind of spend as many hours as you can in an escapist way with these characters and in this universe and at the record plan in Sal Salcido, it just would be the most fun show that I could imagine. And even, you know, despite the fact I had no experience with it, it was the only way I knew how to tell the story. I mean, I completely agree with you. I think one of the things I said, maybe you heard me say it on the podcast is like one hour into this. I was like, I hope this runs

a hundred more hours. It was originally 13. This is the place that you want to just exist in. And so, and that's interesting because I think that is, traditionally that's what TV is good at. I mean, movies are much more pointed. You go into the theater, you're not going to spend more than, I mean, maybe the New Sorsese movie, you're going to spend four hours. But beyond that, a limited amount of time, TV, you can really sink in and live in. Yeah.

And the, but for the fact that the book had such a terrific ending that I really wanted to also include. Yeah. That's why I would think this is a limited series and not something that we could have done many seasons of. Like maybe there was a season of recording the record. Maybe there was a season of touring. But I loved the way it wrapped up so elegantly and beautifully that I felt like it would be a cheat to all of the fans of the story to kind of delay that and stretch it out. So what were the conversations like with Taylor to say that you had a take that would be distinct? You know, that what would make this filmed entertainment as opposed to the book?

Like what was what did you immediately spark to? What did you immediately almost see in your head in terms of the visual storytelling that that you wanted to bring to it? The fun thing about this is that the novel is written as a fake oral history. So it's basically a ton of interviews of people looking back on the most exciting time in their life. And she plays with, you know, memory. And she plays with everybody kind of making themselves the hero of the story in their memories. Yeah, the Rashamon of it all. And what that does for, you know, in an adaptation is it invites all of this invention and extrapolation that is required to tell the story.

Because when they're referencing moments, they brush past them really quickly. on to the next one, but that scene that they just referenced doesn't really exist. So I knew that was going to be a really fun exercise for writers of television to kind of build this world out and, you know, elaborate on all the things that we're already in love with. So one thing that I know from my own less accomplished experience in screenwriting is that as soon as you say the word music, executives, eyes go dark. Like there is not a lot of long track record of successful, fictionalized music shows, movies, things. It's, You can count them on one hand, probably.

It's something that continually enchance and excites people, but ultimately falls apart, I think, because of, and this is the way it was described to me once, was the kind of uncanny valley of, like, there are real songs in the world, and in real bands, if you make them up, they have to be good enough. It has to be believable.

There's that plausibility thing that shows like this often crumble on. So what were those conversations like with studio partners and then with network partners and even just internally creatively, how you're going to solve that? because I'm sure you've had a similar thing where everyone's like,

we love the vibes here, but can you pull this off? Yeah, I think that I kind of approached the novel in that way with my arms crossed saying you're not going to take the Flewood Mac story and make it better. And then as I was reading it, I was like, I just love this so much.

And it is kind of better. And the idea that we would get to write this music that they keep referring to and they're using all of these really intimidating adjectives. It's timeless and it's classic. And we would get to make that record. I saw it as a real opportunity, definitely the most fun thing I've ever done in my career. And I think when we talked about it with Lauren and with Reese, that's one of the reasons why Amazon made the most sense.

Because I think they were looking for material that only would work on Amazon. You know, if they could sell the album, they would sell the book. They would be across the flywheel of all of the Amazon platform. This seemed like such a perfect down-the-middle thing that hopefully would get us over the hump. of some of the more snarky, like, but how do you do music kind of stuff? I also think one of the things that's worth saying is the six and the story that the Taylor wrote and that you brought to the screen, it's not Fleetwood Mac, and that's kind of what makes it interesting. And when watching it, you know, not really being familiar with the book and Flewwood Mac being

used as shorthand and that being my favorite band, maybe ever. Right. I think one of the interesting things about it and ultimately smart choices is that Billy is not Lindsay. Exactly. I mean, it's not a one-to-one. Daisy is not Stevie either. But there's something that she chose to explore that was quite different, whereas Lindsay is like a very eccentric, kind of like introverted genius type. The Billy character is much more rooted in like a working class American family band tradition, which allowed you to tell a different type of story.

There's a lot of Springsteen in him. There's definitely a lot of fogarty. You got, you know, some Tom Petty action, definitely a lot of different kind of people. You're right, there's almost no Lindsay in Billy whatsoever. None of the guys really are Flewittwood Mackey. I think I actually doubled down on the Karen character and she's very Christymic me, but that probably isn't even in the book either. But I did love that in the novel, there's these two women, and they're not competitive. They're completely supportive of each other. They have different things that make them tick. And yeah, I just, I loved all of that. And it was an easy facsimile to be like, well, look, it's like Fleetwood Mac. And that's the most famous example we have of artists putting their heartbreak and all their feelings into the art.

And that's kind of the, that was the North Star. Well, so let's talk about that. Because I think this is probably breaking all interviewing 101 because you've heard me say this and I feel it's true. So I'm sort of like seeking something like a prior. I apologize. It's like a home game for me. A little bit. But like you probably heard me say this. I think that one of the things that I found most impressive

and ultimately most rewarding about the show is that it felt like your North Star in crafting it was let's get the emotion right. Let's tell the emotional story. Let's not waste time making sure that we show where Joni Mitchell was standing at the chateau or not the chateau or where they are geographically in Laurel Canyon in regards to the that we know because that feels like a loser's game to me. That feels like you're going to please people

who, you know, have back issues of rock pile, you know, guilty. But that's a much smaller category than the potential audience who understand an emotional family connection. Yeah, I would, I would credit my wife a lot with that because I think that she loves music, but not in the same way that I do. And she's not going to watch this show unless that's what it's about, unless it's about the emotion, unless it's about the characters, the love stories. There are so many love stories in this and that's really, I think the thing that keeps you coming back. And it's just set in this world, which I personally find very fascinating and sounds like you do too, but not everyone was going to.

The things that I think they're going to respond to are the family dynamic, the relationships, the love story. So those were always kind of going to be front and center. And really this was, I think some of other music shows are often getting lost in the minutia of the music. Yeah. And they don't really, they're not character forward. They're not human forward. And it was important to us to even when you are watching them as rock stars and they're up on that stage, the humanness is really the thing that's going to make you care.

And so we always kind of kept the focus on that. As boys of a certain age, we probably both tried to impress people with our mixtapes and record collections. And I think we probably know the track record of that. I still remember sitting in my car with a girl who definitely wanted me to kiss her and all I was doing was talking about the Velvet Underground. And to this day, I remember this like so vividly. Were you just making like a passionate case for Doug Ewell? Or were you just trying to tell it like the whole project? I don't even know.

I don't even know. So what was your, in terms of building the creative team, this is before casting, because I am curious and also about like bringing in the people who wrote the songs. What was your system of checks and balances? Obviously your wife and Reese are there as voices in the room. You built a writer's room. How did you keep yourself focused on the core of the story? Because it's a big story. It's a big cast.

It's an expensive production. You know, there's a lot to cover. but I did think that it had a North Star from first episode to last. Yeah, I think the book was obviously a great roadmap for us. And my lack of experience in television, I kind of came at it from the place of like, I think I know what the entry and exit points of every episode should look like. There were more of them when we were sketching them out in the writer's room. COVID wound up shortening the season a tiny bit.

But we knew kind of where we were going to start. We were going to end. And after that, it was kind of just feeling. in the gaps. And there were a lot of gaps to fill because of the way the book was written. But we had a huge writer's room. We had an unbelievable, like, assortment of experts to talk to to kind of keep us on the straight and narrow. And we would say, like, we have an idea where maybe we do this. And Kim Gordon would say, that would never happen. And having someone like that around to kind of tell us was really helpful. And we spent time talking to Nancy Wilson.

We spent time talking to Bernie Toppin about collaboration. And we had such an unbelievable roster of all-stars to go to, that I felt like that really kept us in check the whole time. You talk about collaboration. I mean, I think that's some of the most powerful and amazing filmmaking in the series, these moments of Spark. We're all chasing those moments in our life,

no matter what our job may be, to capture that moment of creation is really something special. And it's interesting to hear that you did bring in... So you had experts who had been... who'd written songs, who'd written songs with people, who had that kind of love and war collision of ideas and cutting each other

and ending up with something better, but also keeping track of the idea that you want people who don't work in music to understand that moment because it's like falling in love or it's like collaborating at whatever job you might have, right? That's, again, that's that balance. Yeah, no, exactly right.

I think disaster artist was a good example of, you know, if you were trying to get people to go see a movie about this movie, it feels a little inside baseball. It feels like it's for a very niche audience. but everybody wants to see a movie about friends who are going after their dreams. And so to try to make it a little bit more, they could be doing anything. They could be opening a restaurant.

They could be playing sports. It doesn't matter. Like, it's really about the friendship. And this was kind of an example of that. There's something else that the show did that you may have heard me talk about that I was really struck by, which is that the strength of the female characters and their primacy to the story, and particularly like Camilla Maron's character and her incredible performance throughout, was really noteworthy, not just because these were great performances and really well-written characters,

but it was doing something that really heartened me, to be honest, which is there was a sense of a feminist corrective lens being applied to an era that often isn't seen through that lens. But it did not feel like something that I think we're all creatively struggling with now anyway, which is everything throughout history to be judged through a 2023 window. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, totally. And I'm curious about how you were able to pursue that. how you were able to give some truth and veracity to that and honor it?

I think it was a balancing act. I think the fact that we had the source material where Taylor really was so thoughtful about all these things and her female characters are so extraordinary that we could write to that and always use that as a backstop. I don't think we did a lot of like, well, they shouldn't say this and, you know, it's an inappropriate for this to happen. Right. We didn't do that.

I mean, it was the 70s. They smoked cigarettes in everyone. in these scenes. It's actually kind of crazy. But the more kind of authentic that we could make it to the time period and to these people, the better it seemed like, even if it was going to cross a line or rub some people the wrong way. I mean, we stayed away from some of the more political aspects that we might have dipped our toe in. And that was a choice very early on. I think I wrote a line for Tim Oliphant where, like, you know, Billy is talking about he's writing folk songs and protest songs. And he's like, no, we're not doing that here. Like, I forget the line is,

but that's like my mission statement. Like, this show is not going to be about that. I thought about that. I think Chris and I even discussed that. Like Vietnam is happening. All these things are happening. But I don't know how that makes the show better. No, and in the novel, the Chuck character who doesn't go, doesn't join the band because he becomes a dentist.

He goes to Vietnam and he dies. Wow. And they don't really talk about RIP Chuck. Wow. So they don't ever talk about how that impacts the band, losing a friend in the Vietnam War or any of that stuff in the book. And I feel like it was the kind of thing that would threaten to take over. It would become a source of very large emotional stuff for all these characters that would get in the way, potentially, of what we were doing, which was much more about romance and love and that kind of stuff. So the Fleetwood Mac of it all.

So that was intentional kind of to just put, it's in the background, it's there, it's part of the fabric, but we don't kind of attack it. But I also think one of the least understood or appreciated skills of writing for the screen is putting down the fence and keeping it there. You could tell any story. You could spend a lot of your capital chasing accuracy or versimilitude and being like, well, this was happening here and all of these things. But how does that serve the patch of grass that you fenced off as your story? It's very true. There would be one person on the internet that would be like, she refers to honeycomb as a Ricky Nelson song. He didn't actually write that song.

Someone else wrote it. And it's like, okay, but he did sing it. So maybe. Maybe she was wrong. But also, what are you watching TV for? Exactly. like we will live with that. So there's two pieces of two giant leaps of faith, I think, involved in making a show like this.

One is, can we get the music right? Can we make anything sound worthy of this kind of rapturous attention? And I do want to ask about that. But the other is, can anyone be these people? You know, I don't know where when and where casting began, but I imagine you were writing before that started. And you're writing towards a dream, right, that someone can pull this off. where we're always doing that when we're writing for any actor, but to find an actor who can also be a rock star is a whole other thing.

So what was the mindset and like the leap of faith optimism of that? And then when did you land? When did you actually find the people who you found who ended up being incredible? So initially we talked about potentially getting musicians who could act and quickly realized that that is such a small list that probably, and also there's so much more acting than there actually is music, that that would be a disaster. So we cast a wide net.

amazing casting directors, Kim and Justine. And the first person to raise their hands was Riley. Yeah. And she came in and said, I love this book. I love this character. I really want to play this part. I'm not musical, but hopefully that's okay. Yeah. Well, she definitely doesn't have any in her and we were like, is she not music? Maybe she just doesn't know yet. But, you know, my grandmother plays the piano and I certainly can't. So I don't know that it's. That's true. That's a good point. But we put her on a microphone with our music directors, Blake Mills and Tony Berg. And they wanted to see, that we were excited about. So Blake Mills was in early.

Blake was in early. One of the first kinds of things that we did, we're talking about this out of order. But when it comes to the music, we knew that was really an important component of this, if not the most important component. So we had Blake in the boat and working with him on music, and they wanted to be a part of every decision we were making.

And I should say, I mean, I don't know Blake. I've never spoken to him, but he just seems like the absolute, like he was made in the lab to do this job with you guys, because his role in the LA music scene does seem to be this incredible connector where he has you know, he has Phoebe Bridger's phone number

but he also has Ben Montentch's phone number and it's continuing the sense that this is a vibrant place for the creative community. And Blake and Tony were operating out of Sound City. Yeah, it's perfect. Which is the craziest, like it's just a miracle.

So we took the meeting, we were going to go with someone else and we took the meeting just because it was Sound City and I wanted to go there. Yeah. And Will Graham and I were sitting there and Blake was playing music for us

and we were like, oh my God, we have to, This is, he just won the job. And when was, this is what year in the process? Oh my God. 2019, many years ago. And we, you know, we explained the situation and we explained to him what this was going to entail.

And Blake was like, all right, look, I love what this sounds like it could be. I'm not sure they knew exactly how much work it was going to be for them. But he, you know, understood the assignment and also was like, I'm also, you know, going to write all of the disco music. And I'm going to write the, you know, the psychedelic track that the opening band plays before the Dunn Brothers come out in Pittsburgh and he wanted to have a hand in virtually every single original song of

which there ended up being over 25. Yeah. And it was really just so fortunate for us to have someone like that delivering on this promise. What must it have been like for Taylor? I mean, I haven't been able to ask her to hear it. Like, she's, Aurora exists in the world now. Yeah, we

had a run through of the first five songs and we brought a bunch of Amazon executives to Sound City and sat in the booth where, you know, They recorded the Fleetwood Mac album, the first Flewad Mac album with Lindsay and Stevie. And we were all in the same booth. It's exactly the same room. And, you know, Jen Salky was there and Reese was there and Taylor was there.

And everybody was crying. Like, it was amazing. That's really, that's quite a moment. Okay, so Riley comes in and guess what? She's a rock star. She's on a mic like this. And they call us afterwards and they said it's not polished. There's no training.

But she has this quality that actually is better for rock and roll vocal. which is there's just a certain special timber that's not perfect and the imperfection is what's going to make it great. And so we were like, amazing, done. So that's easy. And then from there, we realized that like anyone with a little bit of music background

that Blake and Tony could sign off on would work for us. And the only one we couldn't find was the Billy. And we spent a really long time trying to find Billy. We cast everyone else in the band. We were really excited about everybody that had come in and we felt that it was coming together in a perfect way, except for the fact that we're missing the other second most important thing.

And then as it happened, I think Sam Claflin was busy when we started looking, and then he got unbusy towards the end of the process. And we were like, great, have him come in. And he flew in. And he tells really funny stories about they put him and did the same thing with him, put him in front of a microphone. And he came prepared to sing a 70s rock. song and he chose your song by Elton John.

Okay. Which is not what we're looking for. No. Very different vibe. And then he, so that was not great. And then they were like, let's not, let's, why don't we just jam? And I think Tony started playing Come Together. And Sam was like, I love Michael Jackson.

And they were just like, oh my God, this guy. But then, you know, and he's British. So he's not even sounding apart. And he's never played guitar. And he was really terrified. But when they got him to a certain place and realized that like he also kind of had that quality. And what I noticed is that he's just the amazing British Thespian who can imitate. So he was listening and listening and listening to

Blake's version and he could start to sound like Blake. He could start to sing and it would be you wouldn't know who you were listening to. And from there we were like this actually could work. There's also an interesting quality to what you're saying that that works for the character because to use music as an escape valve like the Dunn brothers do, there is an imitative quality. they see people and people are screaming if they do the moves and move their bodies or sing a certain way. And one of the best things about the show is that they get to a certain point. They make a record. They're doing fine.

But he's not good enough. And I think that's another amazing credit to Blake, because if you listen to the music, the music that the Dunn Brothers make is a certain kind. Yeah, it's fine. The music that Daisy makes by herself also a certain kind of singer-songwriter thing. It's really not until they come together that the popness of it explodes. And so you need that alchemy. But you can hear it if you listen to the music that was written. And I think all of that was super intentional.

It also speaks to something that I think as fans we know and probably people listening understand as well, which is that pop music, rock music is never about, it can be. But on a deeper level, it's not really about craft. It's not really about skill. It is about passion and a moment. And the marriage of those two things. And that's kind of, again, I think that's the show, your show understood that. You know, it wasn't, it never makes the argument that this is the best album of all time or this band deserved to make 100 albums.

It was a moment. Right. That's exactly right. And it's a question of, would they have been able to make that moment if they didn't have all the histrionics that were happening at the time? Right. And can you separate the life from the art, the art from life? So COVID affected everything, obviously broad. That's the, that's the sentence.

That's the period at the end of that sentence. But it did affect the production here as well. But I think I read in some of the press even before the show came out that at least the cast feels like it allowed them to get closer to have different chemistry. COVID was not good for anything. No. Don't get me wrong. But for this particular show, we really benefited a lot by the stoppage that occurred. We were set to go in April of 2020.

The world shuts down in March of 2020. Our band had kind of been going through what we called like band camp. They would be at Sound City. they had coaching all day. They had like a movement guy teaching them what to do on the stage. They had to learn all these original songs that no one had ever heard before.

They had to learn how to play their instruments. Some of them were not that proficient in their instruments. That three-week band camp wound up being 18 months of practicing. And to their credit, they didn't move on to other things. They didn't stop doing it. They kept it up on Zoom. Everybody retreated to their own pockets of the world, and they were still zooming with their guitar coach.

They were still learning the music. they would get on Zooms with each other and play. And when they came back, and we were finally ready to go 18 months later, they had all these inside jokes that bands would have and they had this camaraderie that you can't fake. And I think if we had gone in April, we would have had to fake all of this.

But by the time they came to us in September of whatever year it was, a year and a half later, they could do everything. And there was no faker involved, which was just like so fortunate. It's unbelievable. It was very lucky. And I also appreciate the point you're making

about like the inside jokes and the family nature of it, because that's, again, one of the things that makes the show very special is the sense that that's what they are. Yeah, we were very confident that we would be able to do

whatever we had to do to make them sound good on the big stage. But it's those smaller rooms when they're just playing the guitar to each other and they're just having shooting the shit, really.

Like, that is the kind of thing that I don't think actors can pull off as well as these guys could because of the fact that they had that experience doing it for so long. Also, what do you think it was that you, so again,

like someone like Camilla Morone, who I keep coming back to, loved her performance so much. I was not familiar with her. I think there are people who know her previous careers or tabloid stuff. Like she's a known person. She was not known to me. And I was like, she's incredible and she's the heart of the show. Similarly, like Suki Waterhouse, I've seen be an actor before. I know she was a model before that. They are kind of the heartbeat of the show. And I'm curious about what you felt, there's such a relaxed intimacy to their performances and to the whole cast, but they really stood out to me. Do you credit the,

that time? Like, is that part of it, or was it also something to do with the material or something that click during production? It's probably all the things. I mean, I think they're super talented. We'd not known Cammy's work at all when she did an audition, and we watched her tape, and it was absolute love at first sight. Having Riley on board already kind of up to the bar for everybody, and how are we going to find a Camilla that, you know, could go toe to toe with her in a way? And when we saw Cammy, we were really. like, well, that's what we're doing. That's it. No more. No more people. And she, we chemistry read everyone. So, you know, Cammy would have to do a chemistry read with Riley. She'd have to do a

chemistry review with Sam. She'd have to do one with Will Harrison and played Graham. She'd have to do one with with Suki. So everyone did a chemistry with everyone else to make sure that they had that thing. Because if you don't, I think in any project, if you cast it wrong, your work could out for you. And so it was really important to us to get that right. But it was really finding these people who really felt like they embodied the character. And Cammy Moroni especially loved the book so much. And she loved that part so much. And it was so protective of her character.

It would always say to me, like, you know, oh, I don't know. Like, are you sure about this? Like in the book? And I would be like, I know. We stress tested it a lot in the writer's room. I feel like I know exactly you're coming from, but I really believe it's going to work. But that was, I just loved that kind of devotion to the character. Just on a craft level, and I think I said this.

previously on the pod, like the things that, you know, especially with a longer series or any, a non-movie, let's say, an episodic thing, what you're looking for from the beginning is like little things that you can trust the driver, you know, that you're in good hands for this story. And it may be like a small thing, but for me, the Camilla's relationship with Riley is one of those things. The fact that there is genuine affection there, there's respect there, that it's not an afterthought to give that relationship the full attention of your emotional storytelling was really notable to me. And, you know, I don't, obviously there's the book blueprint that I'm not familiar with, but I imagine also that there were, you had a writer's room where there were fierce advocates

for that relationship, even though that's not even the primary, secondary, secondary, or even tertiary thing striving your story. No, it's, thank you for saying that. It is in the book. It's a really important part of the book. We kept trying to craft more scenes between the two of them, but, you know, if it felt inorganic, we didn't go for it. But we did always love it when they were together, loved their dynamic, loved that Kami could separate the potential, like, relationship threat from seeing how this is better for her husband. This is better for this band that she feels a part of. And it's better for her life. And just understanding that, you know, in a way, it's a sacrifice and in a way it's not. But she took that risk. And that's why I think we derive so much of the

emotional currency from. Yeah, and I think it's also interesting. I mean, the show is framed as a looking back through like a behind the music type lens. And by the way, the 90s hair is truly incredible. The oliphant wig is special. It's all really special. It deserves some attention. But that it's an interesting collision because one of the things that I think people like us learn to appreciate as we get older is that the bands that we loved making this incredible art were kids. And imagine being stuck doing anything or being held responsible for anything or being forced to live up to anything that you do when you're 22 or 23. And so that emotional dynamic that you're talking about is an adult maturity, an adult vision of like what life or love could be laid on to this very young story.

And I thought that was kind of compelling as well. Yeah, no, that's cool. I think some readers of the book would fault us for some choices that we made because they would say, well, that didn't happen. There's no way that, you know, you can't just say that something happened that didn't happen in the book. And in fact, I think once you realize, no spoilers, who they're talking to, you start to. you start to wonder like, oh, wait, maybe they're not telling everything. Is that device in the book as well? Yes, yes, it is.

And so there's a... That killed me. It's great. I think it was... That's part of the reason why I wanted this to be a limited series to kind of have that reveal. But I think, you know, if they, knowing that, I think you start to hear what they're saying through a different lens and realize that maybe they are, you know, censoring themselves and not being completely forthright.

And there's also little things, you know, like... Another big sort of thing is the Camilla Eddie element. Yes. And fans of the novel were like, where did that come from? That was nowhere near the book. Camilla would never do that. And in fact, there's this great scene in the book where Billy is talking about how Camilla goes to lunch with an old friend and she disappears for way too long.

And he wants to ask her where she'd been, but he can't. But he says something to the effect of like, I know nobody has lunch for six hours. And they never say what she was doing because it's kept ambiguous. us and you can do that in the novel. We have to make choices. And we really kind of just double down and said, well, you know, here's where she probably is. Also, the currency of this world is everyone sleeping with each other. That's both the Flewwood-Mack language, and it's the 70s. Exactly. One last casting thing was Tom Wright as Teddy. You love Tom. It's, from what I understand, it's a change from the book in terms of who the

character is. But also, I found his performance really fascinating. It is not a typical performance. in a lot of ways for the screen, like it's very understated at first. And then it really earns its power over the course of the run. I was really struck by it. Tom is an amazing actor. He grew up working with John Sales. So that kind of understated acting is definitely something that he's so gifted at. Yeah, it's just like when you, I know you said that your partner's more of the sports guy,

but like if you bring in a pitcher who, if you've had a fastball around the mound, you throw in someone who just throws like a slow loopy curve, you're like, wait a second. And you take a step back and you know. notice and it really pops from the first episode. Yeah, and he could have done just a Quincy Jones kind of knock-off sort of thing if he wanted to, but no, he brings so much nuance and so much empathy to that character. Like, he's the greatest. Was the conception of the character, like, A, as an opportunity to cast someone different in the part and tell a different story with that part? Because I believe, am I writing the book that he's a British guy? Were you just writing it

to be open to an actor to decide who he was going to be, or where were you? And how did the marriage with Tom come about? I was really interested in the Tom Wilson version, and somebody that nobody ever talks about, but who was, you know, recording with Bob Dylan and Paul Simon and all these people in New York. And then the Quincy Jones of it all as well. And I just thought that was an opportunity for us to kind of explore that. And then we found Tom, and it was the no-brainer for us. It's also an example of where the, okay, so, you know, you're not tracking like where David Crosby was at all moments,

but there is real, real music knowledge behind it. Just to that sort of deep understanding that for as much as we, especially as young fans, want our heroes to be godhead geniuses who came up with everything like in between swigs of Jack Daniels, there's always a third person. There's always a fourth person. There's always a producer.

There's always someone pushing, guiding, shaping. People seem less precious about that now because songwriters are famous in a different way. But that's always been the case in the music business. Yeah, I always thought that it was kind of like, you know, you go into the studio and you play through a song and suddenly you've got O'Camputer. And that's not what happens.

There's many iterations before the finished product that you learn from and you build off of and things change and just recognizing that it never comes out completely fully formed the first time. So you've said a number of times that this is a limited series. I had some maybe we're leaving this open vibes from the end. I don't know if that was intentional or if that was just wish fulfillment. I was surprised to feel those things. but I did feel that.

Well, it was always unlimited, but all of my endings basically are just trying to do the end of the graduate. I do it every time. That's the best. Or the Michael Clayton ending. Yeah, or the sideways at the door. And in this particular case, we answer all the questions, which was important. And then on the way out the door, you kind of ask a few new ones. Yeah.

And if people want to know the answer to that, then, you know. Daisy Jones and the Seven. We could discuss. My most favorite version of another season of this would be. be like a different band and a different era, a different genre of music, and you could kind of like white lotus it. That would be super fun. But I know the people are going to know what happens to these characters and want to see them next. And I do too. And yeah, if Taylor has more ideas, we would definitely enjoy it. Because they don't sing together again. I think that's left.

I think that it's a really interesting ending because all I know is that they don't hug and kiss and fall into bed. Yeah. Like, there's so much to explore between the two of them. There are so many things that I feel like they have to, you know, speak out loud before anything can happen. Yeah, it's true. Including writing songs.

And by the way, that's another thing that I think is noteworthy that for like, again, like I said this you before you recorded, like the fact that this was just a deeply pleasurable watching experience is one of the reasons why it matters so much to me. And that's not easy. That's not less important than like a really harrowing, challenging thing. that explains the world, the darkness of the world. But there's also some stuff that really flouts convention as well, which is they don't sleep together.

It is a love story that is essentially a platonic and creative one. Yeah, we talked a lot about that in the writer's room. Like maybe they should, maybe they, you know, what if we pushed that even further? And I think it was really important that they never do, that this is an emotional affair more than it is anything physical. There's one kiss, which some people say did not happen in the book. I think that's up for debate.

But even that is like scandalous on the internet. But it's the 70s. And like to us it was not, it felt fairly innocuous. Yeah. And the fact that they don't sleep together, I think, tells you that they both know what would happen if they did. That things would change. And I think there's an element of fear involved in that, like a line crossing. And what would it do to the music?

How would it, you know, maybe this is what's fueling all of these great songs. I just thought that stuff was really fun. So we're talking about this a bunch of weeks after the series has aired in its entirety, which I'm grateful for. I'm glad we can keep doing it. This is also kind of in a weird way of reflection of how strange all media is in that you work for six years on something. It comes out over a period of relatively few weeks, but it's there. It's only been a month. There are people today watching it for the first time. Hopefully people will continue to watch it for the first time. But it's increasingly hard to feel like, I mean, the show is about a cultural moment, and it's very hard to have those anymore. So what is the state of both you and Daisy Jones at this moment? Like, do you think there is Is there potential for more storytelling in this world? Is there potential for more music-based storytelling from you and the creative team that was behind this show? Yeah, I think it would be great to do all those things. You know, if there's an appetite for it out there, we would love to hear that. I think the actors would love to play some shows if they could ever kind of get in the same room together.

I feel like scheduling is going to be really hard, but they want to have that experience. And I think the world is sort of interested in something like that. I would love to hear another album from these people because I think it's just so great. But yeah, all of that is just, all of it's on the table. Nothing's off the table. I'm just glad, like, and, you know, this is probably, this is a longer, maybe conversation over drinks,

but like the movies that you and Michael, you know, became known for, there's a romance to them, there's a spirit to them, and it's harder to find boxes for that type of storytelling these days. I'm sure that you've had some experiences or frustrations as well. I think it was significant. to tell a story like this. I mean, obviously it's wrapped in. There's a best-selling novel, and you said there's like Amazon's strategy to sell everything. This all really worked for that. But I do think it's just worth putting a marker down for like this is really like human-based,

emotional, romantic storytelling. And I was happy to see it. Thank you. Yeah. That's the only thing I enjoy as a fan. So, you know, my guiding light is like, what do I want to go see? And it's always stuff like this. And there wasn't a dead body in the first scene. There's no villain. I've never written a villain. I don't even know how to write a villain. It's so, yeah, I'm very grateful for that. That's really good. But Daisy Jones in the seven. That seventh.

Is the villain. You don't know who that, yeah, that could be anyone. That pitch is free, but the rest will have to discuss. Anyway, Scott, thank you so much for talking to me about the show in such detail and for the show. I really loved it. This was so great. I really appreciate him.