S3E44: Is Show Biz Dead?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This podcast is a collaboration between costart and Touchstone Productions and the Dads from the Crypt podcast. Hello, young. [00:00:14] Speaker B: Shady shot. Is this who you were picking fairies with? No. He seemed like a cute little bow. Oh, don't they all? [00:00:38] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to another episode of the how not to make a movie podcast, one way or another. I'm Alan Katz. If you're a regular listener to this podcast, or if you catch us regularly on our YouTube channel and hey, likes there are always appreciated, you know that we've always got our finger on the movie and tv business's pulse because, of course, we always want to know, is it alive? Is it dead? Is it dying? Between the pandemic and then the writers Guild and the SAG strikes, on top of the financial impact of the streaming wars on everyone but Netflix and Disney, apparently the movie and tv business, in Los Angeles at least, are really in dire straits. Production has fled town, and it's probably not going to come back. Sitting in today and talking about how bad it is, why, and what it could mean to your favorite tv shows of the past, present, and future is our very good friend Ed Tapia. Now, regular listeners and watchers know that Ed, back in the day, was the greatest assistant of all time. In the intervening years, Ed became a top notch tv producer in his own right. He knows how to make a dollar look like a million. He produced shows like the Glades, American Crime, Marin all american, and its spin off all American Homecoming, and he's worked on features like Bordello of Blood, Halloween, and Halloween two. So in addition to moaning and groaning about how things are, reminisce quite a bit about how things were and why making tales from the crypt was such a special and unique creative experience for pretty much all concerned. So in addition to moaning and groaning about how things are, we'll reminisce quite a bit about how things work and why making tales from the crypt was such a special and unique creative experience for pretty much all concerned. Of course, it's always good fun to catch up with old friends. So with that in mind, especially, here's Ed Tapia. How are you? [00:02:52] Speaker B: I'm good. All good. All things considered been a rough go. [00:02:58] Speaker A: What? I guess that's the point of the conversation. What are those, all things considered that we're about to consider? What are all those things? [00:03:08] Speaker B: Well, I mean, the industry over the past couple of years has contracted to a point where I think a lot of people are stunned by the severity of it. I mean, we all knew there had to be a consolidation there was way too much product being made. They were spending way too much money. The streamers were all losing money. And first Covid and then the strikes really exacerbated that. And it's been rough. I mean, February, it'll be two full years since I've had a line producing job. [00:03:40] Speaker A: Really? [00:03:41] Speaker B: Yeah, two years. And I'm not the only one. I mean, the majority of my line producing friends, I was lucky. I was on a series and all this was starting off, and I was lucky to work through Covid. I got the job with Yellowstone, and then we went into season three of homecoming. So I was working. I was in good shape. But a lot of line brief friends of mine had maybe had one job since COVID Because the combination of all the stuff that got shut down from COVID and then the strikes and then the contraction, I mean, it's like a triple whammy. And I find it interesting. A lot of people are just keep thinking that it's going to get back to normal. And there is no back to normal. There's a new normal. We just don't know what that is. [00:04:30] Speaker A: Indeed, I've had conversations recently with people who are trying to get into the film business and what film and tv business, what. What can one say to them? It's. One wants to be encouraging and mentor like, but it seems a little. [00:04:49] Speaker B: The art director's guild came out with a bulletin. I don't know if you read this, about three, four months ago, and I'm paraphrasing, but they basically said to young people coming up out of art schools that want to get into the art department and production design to basically find another career, because they can't in good conscience say that this is a career in Los Angeles at least, where you can or will be able to make a living. I mean, and it's interesting because you have so many great people out of work that the studios are really sitting, you know, in a really sweet position because you have first assistant directors that are working in second seconds. You have, you know, I've heard of a show where literally every grip in on the show is a former key grip. You know, so you have key grips. They're stepping down to hammers and thirds or rigging grips just to keep working, add to their pension, keep their health. [00:05:50] Speaker A: Plans, which means all the people who used to work below them aren't working at all. [00:05:56] Speaker B: If you have a choice, you know, a production designer and art directors, why wouldn't you hire, you know, just somebody we know? For example, if Greg Melton's not working. And a production designer wants a great art director. And Greg is willing to say all art direct. I mean, I'm sure Greg's probably working, but somebody like him, he may even become a set designer or he may work as, you know, as a set decorator, even, depending on the union. [00:06:21] Speaker A: I mean, assistant, props. [00:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. No, that's exactly what's going on. You have prop masters that are working as thirds. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because there's so few jobs being greenlit in Los Angeles. And, you know, I get all of the production, you know, tracking boards, you know, the production weekly and the tracking board and the DGA list. And there's a healthy business. It's just mostly not domestic. There's a lot of stuff in Europe. A lot of it's in the EU. A lot of it's in South America, Mexico and Canada, of course. And I have agents calling me on a regular basis. I got clients looking for work. Do you have a show? And I keep saying, I don't have a show, I'm looking for a show. And it's been. It's been interesting to see how many different people have handled it. Some people are choosing to just take their pensions and retire. They're close enough, and they've got a ton of equity in their house in Los Angeles. They're moving to Utah, they're moving to Tennessee, they're moving to South Carolina and living a great life. Others are choosing to stick it out and fight it out, going into debt, whatever it takes. And I've been luckier than most because I picked up a couple of budgeting, scheduling jobs. I've done some commercials, I've consulted on some budget features that were in trouble. And even though it's been two years, we're still okay. And it's, you know, I can't say that about a lot of my friends. Half a dozen friends I've talked to in the last week are, you know, working with bankruptcy attorneys, just trying to figure out what's the best. What's the best avenue going forward. [00:08:03] Speaker A: Yikes. [00:08:04] Speaker B: And it's tough because there's no real answer. If the answer is there's not enough green lights, there's not really much you can do. [00:08:13] Speaker A: It is. Well, let's. Let's. Let's go at it. That seems like, like the entry point. How did we get here? What caused this to happen? I've got my theories. What's. Yeah, what's your theory of the case? [00:08:28] Speaker B: My theory is that I. There was such a glut, such an explosion of production with relatively new companies to the film and television business that kind of just kind of blew up the paradigm. You know, the old model, the old linear model of doing things for a price. You'd sell it for a network, you then own the rights as the studio to then sell it to other market just got blown up because, well, the. [00:09:00] Speaker A: Old model was advertising based. [00:09:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:03] Speaker A: And it was all based. [00:09:05] Speaker B: What's fascinating is that the new model is coming back to advertising because now most of the streamers are, you know, are offering an ad based model and a non ad based model. You know, whether it's Peacock or prime, they're all coming back to that same model. But before that all happened, they spent exorbitant amounts of money on productions that to this day, I don't know how they're ever going to make money back on it. I mean, they lost so many billions of dollars. I think they're the last thing I read. I think there's two streamers that are actually profitable and barely. And that's Netflix and Disney. And Disney only became profitable this year, is my understanding. The rest of them have, I mean, at Apple and a prime video, I mean, it's a loss leader. You know, they spend so much money and I think that there was a reckoning that they had to cut back. They were all chasing market share. And the funny thing is about streaming. [00:10:05] Speaker A: Subscribers, it was subscribers became what they needed. And there are only so many subscribers out there. Really. [00:10:12] Speaker B: Well, not just that. Is that just because you have a great show doesn't mean you're going to keep that subscriber. Most people pick and choose. They'll drop Max to get. I mean, most of them keep Netflix. Like at our house, we keep Netflix, we keep Disney. Plus we keep. I keep Peacock because I love the Premier League. I watch the soccer. You know, I get up every Saturday to Sunday morning to watch, you know, the Premier League. [00:10:37] Speaker A: I'm getting up 430 this coming weekend. [00:10:39] Speaker B: Spurs? [00:10:40] Speaker A: Yeah, spurs, baby. [00:10:41] Speaker B: Where's your team? [00:10:42] Speaker A: Spurs, my team, yeah. [00:10:43] Speaker B: Mine is Manchester United. [00:10:45] Speaker A: I'm so sorry, this is tough. There's a whole other conversation that we will drift into, but carry on. [00:10:54] Speaker B: I also follow Wrexham. I get up to watch the Wrexham matches. [00:10:56] Speaker A: Sure, sure. Well, you know, one of the great things, all right, about the streaming age, for all the, is it's made available. Every last bit of international football, really, of quality, of any quality is available suddenly. [00:11:10] Speaker B: Right. But most people, you know, they'll, they'll sign up for a streaming program to see a specific show and then two months later, they'll swap it out. You know, they'll go from Showtime to Max to stars, depending on what's on. And so it's not like it's all speed dating. 100%. 100%. I mean, my assistant, my assistant would basically swap them out once a month. Literally. She'd be watching one. She'd binge everything. And it's funny because, I mean, it's such a different mentality, because when you were growing up, you and I were growing up, it was appointment television. You would have to watch it at a specific time or there wasn't a chance to see it. And the model now is so different because I remember asking my sister, are you going to go see Dune? She goes, no. God, it's 3 hours. I'm not going to waste 3 hours in a movie theater. I said, oh, what are you going to do this week? She goes, I'm going to stream an entire season of Bridgerton. So 8 hours, 8 hours or 10 hours in front of the tv for Netflix was not a problem, but 3 hours in a movie theater is a problem. [00:12:11] Speaker A: And you know that an awful lot of that time in front of the tv watching the show, they're going to be doing it this way. They're going to have, they're going to have their phone in front of their face. [00:12:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Or an iPad. And they may not be watching it on a tv. You know, they'll be watching on a computer. I mean, and then there's that. [00:12:29] Speaker A: Or on their phones. [00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And so I think, in my opinion, too, I think some of the streamers have never really gotten television, because when I think of television, the television I grew up on, the television you grew up on, it was inviting people into your home. You know, you got to know these characters, whether it's the big Bang theory or friends or cheers or going back to LA Law or Hill street blues, these are characters you were invested in every week. And once the season ended, you couldn't wait for the next season. It could be three, four years now between seasons. [00:13:06] Speaker A: The old way of thinking was when you went out, when you created a show, and you went out to pitch them, because it was all based on syndication, and the magic number for syndication was 65. You had to get to 65 episodes because that was 13. An ad cycle was 13 weeks times five times a day, 65. So a show had to be an idea for a show had to be basically 65 variations on a theme. It was not a continual story, you know, with a single kind of chronology, because people weren't going to watch in syndication in chronological order. Right. And so that whole way of thinking. But part of, all right, so you were thinking of 65 variations on a theme involving a bunch of characters. Now, here is the important part, that it was understood because people used to watch tv in their living rooms, that these characters families would be inviting into their living rooms on a weekly basis. And so that was kind of the question, would people want to have these people in their living rooms every week? Part of just, if you're going to, if you're going to spend your time taking the tv shows, this is part of the calculus. Bake it in, bake it in, bake it in. And streaming changed that, right? [00:14:32] Speaker B: 100%. [00:14:33] Speaker A: But streaming didn't drop from the sky as is. There was a model that it was looking toward, and that was HBO and Showtime. But HBO really, they created the idea of a subscription for a premium tv experience. As we've discussed, their ad slogan, it's not tv, it's HBO. And I would contest, I insist that because we changed HBO and we changed HBO's culture and the way that it thought of itself and its place in the marketplace. Yeah, I think we helped in a very small way. We were the little snowball starting to roll down the hill, which eventually grew into streaming, which eventually wrecked the whole fucking thing. [00:15:26] Speaker B: Right. You know what's funny, Alan? With all the, you know, I've been really fortunate since you and I worked together, you know, 25 years ago, or however long it was. I've been blessed with the showrunners that I've worked for and the projects I've gotten to do, and yet I, whenever I talk to anybody about any of my work, the one thing they always respond to is tales. I mean, it's amazing. Even people that should be too young to even know what it is, much less have seen it. And I've looked for it. You know, I find the random episode on YouTube and things like that, but it's shocking to me that somehow this entire generation has found that show. [00:16:04] Speaker A: I can give you a quick update. Uh, the partners are in the midst of making a deal to have it stream. [00:16:11] Speaker B: Oh, that would be cool. So I think it'll do very well. [00:16:16] Speaker A: There's a entertainment journalist named Kristen Lopez is doing an oral history, a book. [00:16:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:23] Speaker A: Okay. I'm sure she interviewed. Okay. Yeah. So. So, yeah, Kristen, there's, I do a lot of live events now, and I really enjoy live events. It's amazing how many people, young people, people in their twenties, their parents are in their forties, and their parents grew up on tales from the crypt. That was the horror show that, hey, it broke their horror cherry. A lot of people watched it in spite of their parents telling them how, you know, you may not. And a lot of people, a lot of people, it turns out, watch them watch tales from the crypt right beside their parents because some, I guess it was the crypt keeper kind of made it acceptable in some twisted way, when. [00:17:17] Speaker B: You think of it. Yeah. When you think of some of the nudity and the gore that we had, like I said, these kids come up to me that are like, you were barely alive. How do you know this show? It's like, oh, yeah. We used to sneak downstairs and watch it. We were seven, eight years old. Like, get the hell out of here, really? And they, they can quote me episodes. I mean, it's, it's, it's both amazing and terrifying at the same time. [00:17:42] Speaker A: You know, all good things have a renaissance. [00:17:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:17:45] Speaker A: And, and we're having hours, and, and I, I think it's really just beginning when Kristen's book comes out, I think, and because the partners are finally going to allow it to stream so it can generate a little coin for some of us, but also that helps create, it, helps further the brand. [00:18:12] Speaker B: Well, also getting back to the work on tails, I'm still using the stuff that I learned from you and from Gil and from FA in my own producing because, like I said, I mean, one of the most fun shows I've done in the last ten years, Washington, a show that's actually, it airs on Hulu. It's streaming on Hulu. It's three seasons. We did it in Atlanta and we did it for radical media and IFC. It's called Stan against Evil. [00:18:40] Speaker A: Oh, sure, sure. Oh, sure, sure. What you did with really, a handful of coins. [00:18:47] Speaker B: We had no money on that. We flipped the car. We blew up a car. We blew up a demon every episode. We burned witches at the stake. And we had so much fun. And I kept thinking back the stuff that we did on tails and how we did it. And I was blessed because Dana Gould, the comedian, was our showrunner and head writer and wrote most of the episodes and was on set all the time. And I love Dana. I mean, he's an amazing collaborator. And I would tell Dana would write this big thing that we couldn't afford, and I'd say, dana, we can't do it. We don't have the money. He's like, well, what can we do? And I'd give him some ideas, and he would just rewrite everything. And we pulled this off with, you know, with John C. McGinley, who's again, an amazing collaborator. He'd come on set knowing his lines, ready to act. Boom. If we did more than four takes, he goes, what was wrong with that? What was wrong with that? We don't need to go again. Let's move on. And he was right because he knew his character so well. And Dana wrote to it. But again, it was that base that I got on tails, you know, and from you, I learned, you know, how we control the script, and if you need to control the budget, you need to control the script, and we would just change things. And again, I had an amazing team, just like we had on tails. I mean, I had a key grip named Chris Birdsong. Shout out to Chris in Atlanta. Anytime we'd come up. I mean, we. Here's a perfect example. We were going to blow up this demon at this actual location, which was like a moose lodge. It's very popular in the community. I mean, they're crowded every night. We don't have much of those in LA, but back in the east coast, they're everywhere. And we had planned this demon explosion where it basically turned into black dust. And it was practical. There was no visual effects. And about 2 hours before, as I'm doing, I'm on set, I'm trying to get ahead of saying, okay, how are we set up for the next shot? How are we going to blow up the demon? And the special effects guy goes, how are we going to handle the cleanup? Goes, what do you mean, the cleanup? He goes, it's going to be black dust and like a 20 square, you know, 20 square foot area. And it's really fine. It's going to be hard. It's going to get in everything. I'm like, maybe we should have discussed this before. You know, how it happens. It just happens on set. So I go to Chris Birdsong, and Chris is like, no, I got this. He macgyvered a three sided plexiglass container, and we blew up the demon inside of it. It looked brilliant. It was ten minute sweep up job just out of stuff he had in his truck. The magic that we pull off daily that most people will never see and never appreciate. And it's that sort of stuff that I learned on tales. [00:21:43] Speaker A: It's the crafts. There was we. It was a remarkable place where a lot of craft came together. And I certainly, I was not terribly experienced myself. I learned pretty much everything I now know on that show as well. It's not like I walked in that door filled with knowledge. It was. It was really the nature of the collaborative environment that we created for ourselves and maintained. [00:22:13] Speaker B: If somebody had told my 25 year old self or when I met you guys that a couple decades later, I would have worked with Joel Silver, with Bob Zemeckis, with Dick Donner, with John Ridley, with Dana Gould, with getting to know Tom Hanks, I would have said, you're out of your freaking mind. You know, the, like I said, I've been blessed. You know, I got to work with John Ridley right after he won the Oscar for twelve years a slave for two seasons on american crime, you know, and we worked in Austin, Texas. It was. It was such an amazing experience. You know, Timothy Hutton, Felicity Huffman, Regina King all got nominated for emmys. I mean, it was working with Dana, working with Mark Marin, you know, around the corner from you in Highland park. It's just if somebody had told my 25 year old self that I would be fortunate enough to do that, I would have said, yeah, I'm good. I'm good. I've been really lucky. And it all started with you guys. [00:23:09] Speaker A: It's funny, I've never lost that same pinch me feeling when I look back. And I grew up a film buff, I loved movies. And suddenly getting to work with people who were the movies that I love, like Malcolm McDowell, Donald O'Connor, Tom Hanks it. And I don't think you're not a star fucker. I'm not a starfucker. It's not. I feel in awe of their talent. It's the process, but the opportunity to get to work with them. To me that is the most special thing, to get to be working through. [00:23:56] Speaker B: Problems, you know, on a set, on. [00:23:58] Speaker A: A day, to co create this content with them to. Yes, to problem solve. Because really, yes. That's what storytelling is. How do we solve the problem of telling this story and doing it together? [00:24:12] Speaker B: Also getting to know them on a human level, you know, completely separate from the work. I mean, on American prime, we did this. There's this amazing shot. If you ever get a chance, Google american crime. One shot dancing. We did like a. I want to say it's seven, eight minutes. It's one shot. And it cost over half a million dollars. Wow. [00:24:35] Speaker A: If it's available on YouTube, it's going to be playing. It should be playing underneath us. [00:24:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. We had 3000 extras in the performing hall in Austin, Texas. It was a dance troupe that we got, I think, from Mexico. We had that camera that they use at NFL games, plus a techno and it literally took a month of planning, and it involved every one of our cast members. [00:25:08] Speaker A: What kind of a budget did you have on that show? [00:25:11] Speaker B: It. No, it was a normal budget. We saved up for it. I mean, we saved up to be able to afford it, because John gave us a heads up early that it was going to be, you know, a big. [00:25:21] Speaker A: But still. You weren't doing that on Stan, were you? [00:25:24] Speaker B: No. God, no. [00:25:25] Speaker A: You weren't thinking of those terms? [00:25:27] Speaker B: No, no, no. That shot cost us half of an episode on Stan, you know, and. But the point I'm making, though, is that it was such an amazing experience to be able to pull something like that off. And after we got that shot, we still had some work to do outside, and one of my best experiences on that job, and, you know, again, I don't want to sound like I'm putting celebrities above everything, but Regina King and Andre Benjamin were in this next scene, and they were being mobbed outside, so we brought them inside the empty arena at this point, and it was just the three of us talking for, like, 45 minutes, learning about, you know, Andre, his love of music, and how every city he goes into, he has a go to music studio, because that's where he goes for his mental health. Being in a studio, mixing tracks, that's where he goes, so it doesn't matter where he goes. And he took the job with us. I hope I'm not speaking out of school because he wanted to be close to his son. You know, we were shooting in Austin, and this kid was going to school nearby, and he wanted to be there for his kid, you know? And I get emotional thinking about it because it was so damn sweet. And learning about Regina's upbringing, you know, in Los Angeles and how tough it was for her because, you know, there were some. Some people that didn't think she was black enough, you know, because she went to Westchester High School, you know? And just getting to know these people on a human level, you know, is so, um, it's just kind of inspiring to see what they go through and learning from them, you know? And. And like I said, john. John's just an amazing filmmaker. If you haven't seen five days at Memorial on Apple, you should. It's about the aftermath of Katrina. I mean, he just keeps putting out good stuff, and I was lucky enough to work with him for, you know, three seasons, and I'm just thankful again, if I. If somebody had told my 25 year old self, I would have said, yeah, I'll take that deal. I'll take that deal. [00:27:29] Speaker A: It makes the vicissitudes worthwhile. [00:27:32] Speaker B: It does. It does. And it makes it harder when you're not working, because that's my joy. That's my happy place. You know, my happy place is being on a set and what's going through the business. And I'm not the only one. You know, most of us that get into this business struggle for a long time before we reach any kind of level of just regular working, much less success. Having that taken from you, I mean, it's like an addict, you know, needing a fix. And for me, not being on a set, you know, for almost two years. [00:28:06] Speaker A: I. I understand the feeling. I. I ain't been on one in two decades. [00:28:14] Speaker B: Well, you can do things, too, though. [00:28:17] Speaker A: But for a lot of the two decades, I wanted to be on one. And, yeah, not being part of a team, that community of that unit, I missed it terribly. But when I look at the state of tv now, I think, and were I trying to get back into tv, if that was. That was my make or break, I would be. I'd be trying to kill myself again. But I think because of the success of the how not to make a movie podcast and things that happen afterwards, I've turned my attention to podcasting. [00:29:03] Speaker B: That's great. [00:29:04] Speaker A: That's great. [00:29:05] Speaker B: But the truth is, though, there is some amazing work being done in what. It's hard for me to call it television because it's more of an amalgamation. I mean, we see it on. On tvs and we see it on computers, but a lot of this stuff is features, you know, that they're doing for Netflix. I mean, that's not tv at that point. You know, they're big features. They're big. They're just not being shown in movie theaters or they're there, you know? [00:29:31] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. There's the. The level of artistry continues to go through the roof. It's the delivery system that's. That's all cocked up and. And, yeah, the distribution system, and therefore, how anybody gets paid for all this, it's all fucked up. [00:29:52] Speaker B: I can't keep up with how much good television there is. I mean, I could watch Apple TV alone for the next year and still not run out of content. Same thing for prime, same thing for Netflix. My wife could watch Peacock forever because of the horror movies. You know, they've got that whole, you know, NBC Universal library. What libraries behind all of these streamers. [00:30:20] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. And what streaming did is it did set off a golden age of tv content. It didn't have a way to pay for it all, which was why it crashed and burned. But it suddenly, because the feature business is dying in its own terrible way, and it's all superheroes or tent poles. There's nothing in between. And maybe teeny weeny little movies, but there's nothing in between. It made the tv business well. When we all started doing tales from the crypt, the movie business was over here and the tv business was over here, and they had nothing very little to do with each other. Yes, the occasional Tom Hanks or Robin Williams would go from tv to feature films, but if you were going from feature films back to tv over to tv, it meant your career was dying. It was over. And one of the things that HBO, that tales from the crypt did at HBO is it. It put those two worlds together. It put a feature film scale and scope inside the little tv box. And it suddenly made. Over the course of time, tv began to get ambitious because it suddenly realized it didn't have to behave like network tv. And everything's just this, you know, cookie cutter way of storytelling that you could. You could be the Sopranos. You could tell a story that the networks would never, ever touch and tell it with a feature film kind of. [00:32:11] Speaker B: You could. You could create a serial killer as your hero. You know, with Dexter. You couldn't do that. That would have been. You could have never gotten that passed any of the networks back in the day. [00:32:24] Speaker A: Right. And because practice and standards and practices would have killed it dead right there. [00:32:29] Speaker B: Think back to the wire. You know, you couldn't have done the wire on any network. I mean, David Simon, bless him, tried with homicide, life on the streets. But he just. Kevin, I mean, his tirades against, you know, the broadcast standards back in the day were hilarious because he's like, you can't let me show it, but it's on the news, you know, an hour before my show. [00:32:48] Speaker A: Utter, utter madness. But, yeah, it was. Even though the scale and scope of a show like the wire wasn't feature film sized, but this was more like the intimacy of independent filmmaking and the performances. Yes. And so it's still. It stopped behaving like tv and it started behaving like feature films made for tv. [00:33:15] Speaker B: Yep. [00:33:16] Speaker A: And that opened up a whole way. Well, gosh, we never thought you could do that on that little box. Well, streaming set, all that suddenly. [00:33:28] Speaker B: I also think to a point, technology is part of that, in that we. 70 inches in our tele, you know, in our living rooms, which looks like a movie screen, you know. Oh, gosh, yes, I remember my 1st 42 inch flat screen, I was like, it's, I'm at the movie theater, you know, because I had a small living room, so that thing was huge, you know, in front of me. [00:33:48] Speaker A: Popcorn's cheaper and so is the soda at your house? Yeah. Hey, man, you want to pause and go to the bathroom? [00:33:56] Speaker B: When you think about the screens and the dolby that you can get in your house, you know, my wife and I have this bed all the time because we still love going to the movies, but it's like, is it worth it? You know? And we still will go. We still go, you know, once a month at least. But a lot of my friends haven't been to a movie in five years, you know? [00:34:17] Speaker A: Indeed. And we took. That's what streaming added. The additional storytelling benefit of telling a whole story in one fell swoop instead of, you know, the thing about it, the thing about a 22 order is that it sucks the life out of the creative people. It's. And the 20, the orders that were part of, part of network tv, that was all to feed the 65 monster, right? [00:34:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:55] Speaker A: And really in terms of just getting the best out of everybody, those short seasons, actually, yeah. [00:35:02] Speaker B: The, the other way that they help, Alan, the other way that they help is that if you have this great book, you can tell it in 10 hours or 8 hours or 6 hours, as opposed to trying to squeeze it down to two. And, you know, back in the day, you'd have to squeeze it down into 2 hours. And now, I mean, slow horses is perfect example. On Apple TV, every season is a book, and they do it in 6 hours. You know, every one of their seasons is a different book, and every season is six episodes. You know, that's just one example. All the Harlan Coban novels on Netflix, every one of those shows is one book. And there are sometimes eight, sometimes ten, sometimes twelve episodes, as long as it takes to tell the full story. And you can actually don't have to cut out entire characters, entire subplots. You can tell, you know, you can give the depth of the book, you can go into the background of the characters, you can go into the nuance. [00:35:55] Speaker A: It can be more literate in a way than a feature film has the time to be right. [00:36:02] Speaker B: And I don't know what it's like in your house, but my wife and I are constantly watching at least three different shows, you know, just kind of rotating through them. And as they finish, we just roll into a new though another one because there's just so much good content. [00:36:15] Speaker A: Most evenings begin with which shows are we watching now, exactly? And. Oh, no, no, we just finished with that one. And. [00:36:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:23] Speaker A: And the fact that you can watch. [00:36:25] Speaker B: Under whose profile is it? Under whose profile is it, indeed? [00:36:28] Speaker A: And when you suddenly, for whatever reason, you're watching a show that you can't stream the whole thing, and you realize, we got to. I gotta wait till next week. What year am I fucking living in here? [00:36:41] Speaker B: Yeah, we wait for. Right now, mergers in the building is one of the ones we're working our way through. And we. Tuesday nights, they drop, and we watch it every Tuesday night. You know, and it's funny because in some ways, it's like the old days where we're doing appointment television, but we also know that if we miss it on Tuesday, we launch a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, which we didn't have that option. [00:37:04] Speaker A: The programs themselves. And the way that people get it became much more user friendly. [00:37:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:37:10] Speaker A: And much more satisfying to the storyteller. [00:37:13] Speaker B: Yes, 100%. [00:37:16] Speaker A: It's. As Gil and I were, we're still working on that tv show together, that series. Are you afraid? But it's. Yeah. The process of taking a show to. [00:37:37] Speaker B: Market, I don't even know what that looks like these days, given how many different types of buyers there are. [00:37:45] Speaker A: It's. It's crazy. It's. And nobody knows. And because it's like a multi headed animal. And Netflix has its own culture, and people seem to come in and out of Netflix, and no one seems to ever know. Well, you go to this person. No, you go to that person. You go to this person. It's such. Excuse me. It is such a. The whole business has become a bunch of people walking around going, well, I'm not sure. It seems. [00:38:18] Speaker B: It's interesting you say that, because I have at least a dozen friends that work at Netflix, and I'm surprised how few of them actually work in similar teams, even though they're all in scripted 1 hour series. And it's surprising. I mean, they kind of know each other, but they're. I mean, there's a lot of team elements, and having never worked there, I don't. I don't know how that breaks down, but there seems to be a lot of. And they're good people. They're. They're good execs who know their stuff. [00:38:49] Speaker A: They're making great product, aren't they? [00:38:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Especially on the production side. I mean. [00:38:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:53] Speaker B: Yeah, they worked in production. They know. I mean, they're not. Not people that came into it, you know, with no disrespect through, you know, from accounting or marketing or something like that. They're the. They're production people, you know, and they know what they're doing and they're good at it. [00:39:08] Speaker A: They've consistently, consistently made. Netflix has consistently made really excellent product. They have great taste. They seem to anticipate really well where the taste could go. Would go. Will go. Squid games. I mean, what a. [00:39:26] Speaker B: I'm looking forward to season two. [00:39:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, hey, and I just finished the. [00:39:33] Speaker B: Gentleman, which is amazing. It's great. You know, based on the feature, I thought the feature was good. And when I heard there was a series like, oh, how can I go back to the. Oh, no, it's better, you know, again, because they could. They could get into the nuance. You know, they did eight episodes, I think, and it was. It was solid. Really enjoyable. [00:39:51] Speaker A: Back when we were doing tales from the crypt, you had to twist people's arms sometimes to get them to do something on the little box. And now you don't have to twist anybody's arm. Yeah, anybody. [00:40:03] Speaker B: Exactly. I mean, you have the top filmmakers, you know, developing stuff for Netflix. I mean, there's very few people that won't take a meeting with prime Video or won't take the movie with Apple TV. You know, it's those. Because. And to be fair, from a budget point of view, they're doing shows bigger than some of the features that we consider big movies. I mean, masters of the air is, my understanding, was over $300 million, you know, on Apple TV, it was brilliant, and it was really well done. And my wife and I loved watching every episode, but that's a lot of money. And I'm not smart enough to understand how you make a profit on that. That's a whole different world. [00:40:48] Speaker A: Yeah, that. And therein lies the problem that seems to be biting everyone in the ass, because someone must be asking the question, because they're not. Now, suddenly, in this country, they're not spending. In this city, they're not spending any money to make anything. [00:41:06] Speaker B: I had a meeting at a pretty big streamer, and I'm not going to mention any names, but I was told by the head of that streamer, who I've known for a long time, to not tell the people in that meeting what we did stand for, because they would not understand it. He literally told me, do not give them a budget number, because they won't know how you did it. They won't believe you, first of all, but then they won't know how you did it. And when I was asked, I said, I hemmed an odd and never answered the question. But, I mean, what all of them are trying to do now is turn their $20 million shows into $15 million shows, their 15s into tens. They're tens into eights. They're eights into sixes. But it's hard when you've created that culture and the showrunners and the casts and the directors are expecting what they've had for the last five years. And that's what's kind of biting everybody right now is, you know, and what happened, too, with the strikes is that it gave the studios and the streamers the permission to get rid of all the stuff that they considered dead weights. A lot of deals got canceled. A lot of put projects got canceled, a lot of overall deals sent back. And with that went jobs. And, you know, Alan, I'm one of the most pro union line producers you'll ever meet. I mean, for years, I had several union business agents on my resume as references. I mean, I had the head of the Teamsters on my resume. I had the IA. Mike Aggie's the head of the IA in Atlanta on my resume, because I've always treated the unions as partners. Going back to, going back to Lyle and Cusumano at the Teamsters, back when we were doing tails, you know, we looked at them as partners. You know, Joel had a problem with that sometimes, but we always had great relationships with them, you know? [00:43:07] Speaker A: Indeed, we, yes, we. Our problems were always Joel's relationship with, with, with the IA. [00:43:13] Speaker B: And so I've always looked at that, you know, as, I've never looked at them as adversaries. I always looked at them as partners. And. But, but I thought, I thought that. I thought that the strikes were misguided in the timing, given what we knew the rest of the business. And when the DGA settled right away, I thought that the SAG and WGA would also settle relatively quickly. I was actually pretty surprised because I thought the downside would be exactly what's happened now. And I said so at the time. I mean, this isn't revisionist history. I thought it would be. I thought it would create a massive, massive contraction. Because I was following the business news. I knew what kind of trouble they were all in in terms of what they were spending. It wasn't a secret. They were all losing billions of dollars, and it just wasn't sustainable. [00:44:11] Speaker A: Their business model was wrong. [00:44:13] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:44:14] Speaker A: Well, I would compare the streaming business model to our experience making weird world. Now, if you remember, the partners made a deal with Fox, a license fee number. The number of the, here's the number to go. You know, that this will be made for. But no one ever told us the number, right. No one ever told us that number. And then we were told, go write a script. So we wrote a script and we, I forget where we were coming back from. And we, we suddenly, I think we'd. [00:44:49] Speaker B: Handed the, that was after we came back from Bordello. [00:44:54] Speaker A: From Bordello. Oh, boy. Just a hit. The hits just kept on coming. [00:44:59] Speaker B: I remember when we were reshooting the stuff we had to bring back from Canada. You were writing the script for Weird World, right? You and Scott? [00:45:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:45:10] Speaker B: I remember having meetings at that hangar that we rebuilt everything at. [00:45:14] Speaker A: Yes. We sent the script to Fa and Fae budgeted the script. And he said, here, and I remember the call, he said, here's our problem. We have 1.8, I think, and the script was coming in around 3.9, something like that. It was just, they not even in the same zip code. [00:45:41] Speaker B: Right. I remember 1.9, but, yeah, right around that area. [00:45:44] Speaker A: Yeah, it was somewhere in that. And, and we, we were supposed to start shooting relatively like it, like, like a couple weeks, like we start casting. [00:45:57] Speaker B: I still remember Fa's memo, bloodthirsty cuts. [00:46:02] Speaker A: And we hired Bill Malone, and Bill said, but the only way I can do this, you can't do, you can't shoot this in any kind of normal way. We got to move quickly. So we agreed to buy him a steadicam for the duration, and he and the steadicam operator were joined. [00:46:20] Speaker B: Gunning. [00:46:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was the same kind of situation where one thing had nothing to do with the other, and, yeah, that was chaotic. And, well, here's the other thing that. [00:46:34] Speaker B: I've just become aware of recently. I mean, I have YouTube tv like a lot of people do. I looked at what's available to add onto it. I thought there was a lot of streaming companies. I had no idea there was that many streaming companies. I mean, I thought there was maybe 20. There's probably more like 50 or 60. It's like everybody's got a streaming company, including at least three dozen I had never heard of. And I like to think that I'm on top of this stuff. I mean, if you look at the possible add ons to YouTube tv, it just keeps going and going, going. And there's no way that those companies can be profitable. There's not enough subscribers out there. [00:47:19] Speaker A: Indeed. [00:47:20] Speaker B: I mean, there's going to have to be some sort of consolidation. And I don't know how it happens, but you know, the, I know, I know stars, lions in stars, is doing something with them. I think they might be spinning it off into its own company, but I don't know how. I mean, I don't know what happens with Paramount Plus, I mean, I think they're combining with CV's, but there has to be some sort of consolidation. And again, I don't think it goes back to what we all consider normal. I think it's a new reality and we don't know what that looks like yet. We really don't. [00:47:56] Speaker A: You were clever enough to see what was going to happen when the two unions struck. You called that shot absolutely correctly. What do you think is going to happen here? [00:48:11] Speaker B: I think that, I hate to say it, but I think Los Angeles is going to have a rough time in terms of production. I think that the studios and the streamers have become so internationalized. Is that a word? [00:48:27] Speaker A: Um, yeah, sure, sure. [00:48:30] Speaker B: I think that the audience really doesn't care, um, you know, where a show is shot, and I think that the studios and streamers, as business decisions, are going to take more and more stuff where it's less expensive to shoot. I think certain shows will stay in Los Angeles because certain casts will refuse to go. And that's kind of the only way you'll be able to keep a show in Los Angeles. [00:48:56] Speaker A: And how important is cast going to continue to be when really so many shows, it's not. The cast isn't. The cast doesn't drive squid games? [00:49:05] Speaker B: No, it depends. Yeah, it completely depends. The squid games are the outlier still because every show is still looking for who's the showrunner and who's number one on the call sheet, pretty much. That's still, that's still a thing, and I don't know how long that lasts. But, you know, if I showed up at a studio with a great script and Regina King, I'd probably get a pickup. You know, that's just, that's just the reality. You know, if you show up with, Tim Allen seems to just sell a show every time he, you know, every time he comes up with a concept, you know, he sells a show, he's got a new one coming out. I think that still matters to certain audiences. And if they can figure out a way to, to get a concept in a script that takes advantage of that actor for that audience, they're going to keep doing that. But you're also going to see, I mean, Atlanta, which has been unbelievably busy for the last decade. I mean, I was one of the first ones to get there in 2008 on a feature called Halloween. And the union was tiny at the time, and it exploded. And they're struggling now. I mean, probably half of their studios might go out of business this year. I mean, their stages, because those started five years ago. The building and planning of those started five years ago when they couldn't build them fast enough. And I think there's going to continue to be production. I think content is king still. But you also have. We're also living in a different world. I mean, you have shows on the networks that if they get 10 million viewers, they're considered huge hits. Yet the reality is that something like 95, the top 100 shows last year were NFL games. That's the truth. I mean, in terms of watching scripted and unscripted television on the networks are still viewed by an audience that's much older and much, much more static. You know, most, most of the younger generations are getting their stuff on YouTube, on TikTok, and they're streaming when they want. [00:51:25] Speaker A: I just saw a thing on the rap called about super skinny content. Are you even aware of this? [00:51:35] Speaker B: No. [00:51:36] Speaker A: There's a company called Real Short. It's vertical short form platform. Vertical short form platform. These are. Was it. I think episodes are 60 seconds and a season can be 80 episodes. [00:51:51] Speaker B: That is an even more extreme version of the Quibi model. I actually met, you know, on doing Quibi project, and it didn't work out for me, but they ended up shooting it and they were, I think there were eight to ten minute episodes shot in a cell phone format, and they were backed by Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg, if I remember correctly. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I think so. And they spent a ton of money trying to get this off the ground and they couldn't make it work. But now 60 seconds, even shorter version of that. And so it wouldn't surprise me. [00:52:27] Speaker A: Yeah, there's the company. Real shorts is reporting to the rap that in early 2024, they took in a stunning $40 million in September from people watching their stuff. [00:52:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, because, I mean, Doctor Scott, Scott Galloway, I don't know if you've ever followed him. At the start of the strike, he wrote a very big article, I say New York Times, New York magazine, where he made the point that the networks and the studios and the union were fighting a war from 20 years ago, because he made the point that a network show that gets 10 million is considered a hit. Yet a youtuber like MrBeast gets 100 million views. So where is really the market if you're fighting over this yet? The market's over there. And if you're a hime, know, if you're a 22 year old guy, you're not watching network television, but you are watching YouTube. You are watching out kick, you are going to barstool sports, you know, and it's, and people are creating their own content, you know, I mean, there's massive, massive stars on tick tock that I've never heard of. [00:53:38] Speaker A: I'm not on TikTok when with the, the are you afraid? Project that Gil and I, the tv project, two of our partners, James Janice and Chelsea Rebecca, they do a website and a podcast called Dead Meat. And Dead Meat has 6 million subscribers. [00:54:03] Speaker B: That's, that's healthy. [00:54:08] Speaker A: Indeed. [00:54:09] Speaker B: Well, I remember when I was doing, I was fortunate enough to produce Mark Marin's series for two years, and Mark was great. And Mark used to always joke that the tv money was never close to the podcast money, his w two f podcast, he always joke. He'd say. I was like, yeah, the tv stuff is great, but it's not close to the podcast money. And at that point, Rogan hadn't really taken off yet, but Mark had one of the biggest podcasts in the world at that point. [00:54:35] Speaker A: Indeed. [00:54:36] Speaker B: I was working with him when he had Obama on, and I remember what a big freaking deal that was. [00:54:42] Speaker A: Sure. [00:54:44] Speaker B: And then to hear him say, yeah, tv's it is what it is. But the podcast where it's at, and. [00:54:51] Speaker A: I agree with him as Gil and I, as my experience with Gil and the tv business just reminded me in that world to take an idea from my head out into the marketplace. There are thousands of assholes standing in the way. Thousands. And at any point, any one of those assholes can kill that creative project dead just because they're an asshole. Podcasting is kind of peer to peer. There's only one asshole standing in my way, and it's me. And so long as I create the content, really, relatively speaking, to put it out into the world doesn't cost anything relative to putting out a tv show. It costs nothing. Now, you got to advertise, and that really is where the bulk of the work lies. But it's kind of, it's kind of Napster coming for us. All right. What Napster did for the tv business, what it did to the music business, it finally did the tv business. [00:55:58] Speaker B: You know, that's a good way of putting it because, again, I mean, my two most recent assistants, both were very big on social media, and I'm not. And they would point out these content creators that were just doing skits, basically, but we're talking 1215, 18, 20 million people would watch these on a regular basis. And when they would show me them, I would be impressed. I'm like, that's actually funny. That's actually good. That's entertaining. I can see why you follow them. And I have friends that do the same thing with TikTok. They tell me about these things. They show them to me, and I'm like, okay, I get that. And you don't need a studio. You don't need anything. There's no filter. You just do it. And if you do it often enough and you're creative or funny enough, you're going to build an audience. And then they tell people, and they tell people, and it becomes exponential. [00:56:53] Speaker A: And then the irony is the shitheads at the studio will come looking for you. Theyll come to you. [00:57:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:02] Speaker A: I mean, I will confess that is part of my strategy with my little company, Costard and Touchstone. All the stories that im doing as podcasts would make great tv series. And rather than have to go and cap in hand, knock on the door to any of the streamings, first thing you have to do is try to put it into their head. So what's the IP? And really, that's the big struggle. Make them understand your ip. Well, here, everyone knows what the ip is. It's in the podcast. It's on the table. And so rather than have to go sell it, my expectation is with some of this content, my goals with all the content is, yeah, after I've made my money, after I've made pretty good money from the podcast, they're going to come and they're going to go, hey, this would make a great tv series. And I'm going to go, yeah, I think you're right. I think it would, too. What's it worth to you? And they'll get out their checkbook and they'll write a number, and I'll look and I'll go, well, you know, you need to add a few more zeros in the decimal point. Really needs to move over a couple of places. But, you know, after you've done that, get back to me. And if I can flip the power dynamic simply by controlling the ip, that's. [00:58:22] Speaker B: What a lot of the, that's what a lot of these young people are doing. Exactly. Exactly. [00:58:26] Speaker A: They're smart, and that's really the way to play these, these fucking assholes. [00:58:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:58:31] Speaker A: So, yeah, it is. It is I'm always looking for podcast stories that can have a second life. [00:58:40] Speaker B: Right. Just to go a little bit further into it. I don't know. I don't know what linear television looks like ten years from now. I just don't, you know, because the seasons are getting shorter. I mean, there's still some shows out there with 22 episode orders, you know, your Chicago fires and your. [00:58:59] Speaker A: Sure, yeah, the factory stuff, you know. [00:59:01] Speaker B: Your procedurals that, you know, I don't mean any disrespect, but, you know, they're very similar. You know, episode, episode. But once again, it's that thing we talked about. People like those characters coming into their home every week. They're successful for a reason. [00:59:14] Speaker A: You know, they're a particular thing that appeals to a particular audience. For as long as that audience continues to exist, it won't continue to exist forever, however. [00:59:23] Speaker B: You know, I think of law and order, especially the SVU, because total side story. Mariska Hartigey was my second baseman and outfielder on the softball team some 25 years ago. [00:59:41] Speaker A: Mariska, the first thing that I really had made was an episode of Freddy's nightmares. [00:59:47] Speaker B: Oh, that's funny. [00:59:48] Speaker A: And she was the female lead. [00:59:50] Speaker B: Yeah. And she was great. She's always been. You know, back then, she was a wonderful, wonderful person. And she played softball with us for, like, three years. It was great. And so I've been thrilled for her success. I know she'd remember me. She might. We had a lot of softball games. A lot of fun. [01:00:03] Speaker A: Hey, you know, she. She did it on her terms. She didn't feel compelled. Like she had to be a movie star too. And she is, man, she must have a stack o cash. A really. A genuine pile of fuck you. A pile of fuck you money. Her mother could never have imagined. [01:00:21] Speaker B: I would love to reconnect with her, only to find out who's running her dad's and nursery. It's still open. Still open on Fountain Avenue. [01:00:30] Speaker A: Oh, my. I used to live right around the corner from there. [01:00:32] Speaker B: Oh, my plants is still there. Selling plants there every day. And, you know, my late wife used to go there because he had such a great plant collection. And so, yeah, I would love to find out who's running Mickey's. Small world, huh? [01:00:52] Speaker A: Oh, always, Ed, it has been so much fun just sitting, just shooting the shit with. With real. Yeah. One sort of kind of question, what's up with this fucking business that. That some of you are still in? What. What do you want to do in the future? What. What. What are you trying to do? [01:01:12] Speaker B: I still love it, Alan. I mean, I'm, uh. I've been very fortunate. Like I said, I've been, uh, I've been taking meetings. I've had close on a couple of gigs. I'm not gonna lie. I was number two on a show that's gonna be a new series for NBC. This season came down to me and somebody else, and the other somebody else was a really good friend of mine, and he got the job. [01:01:31] Speaker A: They still made the wrong choice. [01:01:33] Speaker B: Well, he's a good guy. He's a good guy. And I'm up for a couple things now, so not good. You know, we'll see. We'll see what happens. You know, you were talking about earlier about the sense of family. What I love most still is putting together the team as a line producer. I love putting together the team at the beginning and making sure that all the personalities meld and merge and work. And there's this weird cycle that happens every time you put together a new show. Season one, you get the best people you think that are going to work. Then you realize anywhere from three to five year department heads is just going to suck. For that reason, you know, you replace two or three people, sometimes four or five, you know, between season one and season two, and then season two, you think you got it, but there's always one or two that you got to replace season three, maybe a third. By season four, it's hovering so smooth. It's running itself, you know, and that's. That's the, that's the joy, because everybody loves coming to work in that situation. Everybody can't wait, and it really becomes a family because at that point, everybody knows. You know, whenever we start a show, I always joke with them. I say, yeah, we're still at the point where we all still like each other. [01:02:47] Speaker A: You must go, well, hey, look, it's just a fact if at some point in the creative process, you're not. You don't want to kill each other, you're doing it wrong. [01:02:56] Speaker B: Right, right. And, you know, it's funny because, you know, I have a great reputation with crew because I always tell them flat out, your job is to fight for everything you want, your department. And my job is to tell you what you can actually have. But don't do my job for me. Don't tell me, oh, I can't ask for this because it'll be over my budget. It's like, no, on this episode, maybe we need more for props and less for set deck. So I'll take it from set deck. I'll give it props, but your job is to fight for everything, everything that you need for the show. Because I'm not giving any money back to the studio, and I'm going to put it all on the screen as much as I can. But I can't have you doing my job. It's not your job to watch the budget. That's my job. Your job is to be creative and to make the show look as good as possible and to get every last thing you can get for your department. And it's funny because a lot of times, the first time they work with me, they think I'm bullshitting them. And it takes a little while for them to actually trust me because if I tell them I don't have it, it's because I don't have it. And if I tell them, no, we can do this, I'll figure it out. They know I'm going to do that. And there's too many line producers, sadly, that just look at the budget only and don't think about the creative side of it. And I try very hard to do both. And again, I've been really lucky with the showrunners I've worked for because they've trusted me, but more importantly, I trusted them. The two shows that I've done where it didn't work out for me was because the show runners really didn't care about the budget. And that puts me in an impossible situation and puts the UPM in an. [01:04:28] Speaker A: Impossible situation, indeed, yes. Someone going to take the fall for that spending? Yeah, yeah. [01:04:35] Speaker B: The person in my position. You're working for two people, you know, the showrunners and you're working for the studio. But ultimately it's a studio that's paying all of us, you know, and I just like the showrunners that say, let's not tell the studio I can't do that and do that, you know, if there's a problem, they need to know so that we can figure out how. [01:04:54] Speaker A: To fix it or otherwise, suddenly they don't trust you at all and you're completely fucked. [01:05:00] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. Exactly. [01:05:03] Speaker A: Don't get fucked. Don't get fucked. [01:05:06] Speaker B: I'm looking for the next gig and I'm. Hopefully it'll happen soon because there are some, there are some things that are starting to trickle. I mean, I keep hearing people say that 2025 early is going to, you know, where it's going to start up. I'm actually starting. If you would have told me this, if you would ask me this yesterday, I wouldn't have. I would have a different answer. But today I've gotten a lot of information that makes me think that there will be a fair amount of shows being greenlit. I just don't know whether they'll be here. Canada, Atlanta. We don't know. We don't know. But there's definitely some stuff that's starting to get past the development stage. [01:05:48] Speaker A: So we can end on a note of hope. [01:05:51] Speaker B: We can. We can. And it's a true. Yeah. A true note of hope that I think it's about to change. [01:05:58] Speaker A: So much the better. Yeah, I like those true notes. That would just sound a little flat. Yeah, you don't want those flat notes. You kind of suck. Thank you again, Ed. It is always such a pleasure catching up. We we need to get our families together. [01:06:17] Speaker B: Let's do it. [01:06:18] Speaker A: And thank you, everyone, as always, for listening. We'll see you next time. The how not to make a movie podcast is executive produced by me, Alan Katz, by Gil Adler, and by Jason Stein. Our artwork was done by the amazing Jody Webster and Jason, Jody, along with Mando, are all the hosts of the fun and informative dads from the Crypt podcast. Follow them for what my old pal the Crypt keeper would have called terrific crypt content.