What The Hell Is Michael Jamin Talking About?

On this week's episode, I have Writer/Executive Producer, Jonathan Collier (Bones, The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Monk, and many many more) and we dive into the origins of his career. We also talk about his side hustle and how that came about! Tune in as we have so much more. Show Notes Jonathan Collier on X: https://twitter.com/collierjonathan Jonathan Collier IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0171927/ Jonathan Collier on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Collier A Paper Orchestra on Website: - https://michaeljamin.com/book A Paper Orchestra on Audible: - https://www.audible.com/ep/creator?source_code=PDTGBPD060314004R&irclickid=wsY0cWRTYxyPWQ32v63t0WpwUkHzByXJyROHz00&irgwc=1 A Paper Orchestra on Amazon: - https://www.amazon.com/Audible-A-Paper-Orchestra/dp/B0CS5129X1/ref=sr_1_4?crid=19R6SSAJRS6TU&keywords=a+paper+orchestra&qid=1707342963&sprefix=a+paper+orchestra%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-4 A Paper Orchestra on Goodreads: - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203928260-a-paper-orchestra Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/ Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Jonathan Collier: It was after season eight, and I thought they were trying to get me to go to King of the Hill, and I had whatever, I had the chance to stay at Simpson's. And I thought, well, there's no way it goes past season 10. Michael Jamin: Yeah. Or any show goes past season 10. Jonathan Collier: It just doesn't happen. And so I left. I thought, I kind of felt badly leaving, but I thought, what's much better? Do you want to show with some like in it Michael Jamin: You are listening to What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about conversations in writing, art, and creativity. Today's episode is brought to you by my debut collection of True Stories, a paper orchestra available in print, ebook and audiobook to purchase. And to support me in this podcast, please visit michael jamin.com/book and now on with the show. All right, everyone, welcome back to What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? My next guest is an old colleague of mine, old friend from my days on King of the Hill before I let him talk his name's John Coly or welcome to the show, but let me tell you what he's done. The Sky's credits are pretty incredible. So you sit back and relax. Lemme tell you what he's done. So he wrote on The Simpsons. Okay, we've heard of that show and I'm only giving some of the highlights, some of the highlights, some Scooby dos, which I did not know. King of the Hill Monk, the Good Family Bones, the Good Cop Law and Order. I mean, this guy has done well. He's done a lot. But thank you so much, man, for doing the show. Jonathan Collier: Oh, it's a pleasure, Michael. Thank you for having me. Michael Jamin: Let me tell you about who you are because I remember very clearly walking to my, on my way to my office on King of the Hill. Yours was, I would always walk past you and I would often stop and say hello. Or sometimes I would just sit and you always had a big smile. You're always so happy to greet me and have me there. And I never felt like I was getting in the way you Yeah, come on in. Come on. You're always very kind. Jonathan Collier: I am endlessly in search of distractions. Michael Jamin: Well, I do remember walking past you on days when you're on script and just looking miserable. I Jonathan Collier: Am. Thank you. Nope, that's exactly it. Well observed. I am never more miserable than I am alone in writing. Michael Jamin: But why is that? Do you feel? Jonathan Collier: Oh, it's a horrible thing to do. TV writing is one of the most fun, engaging, productive things you can do if you're with other people. And I love that part of it. And the small portion of the job that relies on you being alone entails, I should say, you being alone and actually writing something without people around is misery for me. Michael Jamin: But is it the comedy part? You also do drama now? Which one is harder? Jonathan Collier: Comedy is harder. Michael Jamin: Okay. But yeah, I would agree with that as well. But is it miserable to write drama as well? Jonathan Collier: I find the process of keeping stuff alive and interesting and propulsive is really, really hard. Michael Jamin: And how do know? You know when it's alive? Jonathan Collier: What, sorry? Michael Jamin: How do you know? Jonathan Collier: How do I know when it's right? Michael Jamin: Yeah. How do you know? Jonathan Collier: Part of what makes it so miserable is you can always second guess yourself. And even more so when there's jokes involved. Michael Jamin: Yeah. Well, for jokes for sure. And what was that transition like for you? I'm amazed that anyone can do it. Jonathan Collier: Oh, I got very lucky. What happened was that King of the Hill was, we got canceled. You remember? It was time. The show got canceled. It was canceled two times. Michael Jamin: We left after the first time. Jonathan Collier: Yeah, left. So it got canceled. And I really realized it was for real when they started moving our furniture out of the office Michael Jamin: Because you were going to squat there. Jonathan Collier: I had every intention of squatting. Michael Jamin: You thought it was all Big bluff until they moved at the furniture. Jonathan Collier: And so that was happening. And I had done comedy for about 17 years at that point. And I didn't love doing for camera comedy. I liked doing animation and there were no real single camera comics, comedies on the air at the time, and I didn't quite know what to do, but I knew I stopped watching comedies. I kind of could feel the sweat on them and the work on them because I worked in so many comedy rooms. And I got really lucky, which is that Andy Breckman, who was running Monk at the time, who created the show, he used to have three guest writers come in every season. And he did that because he felt like he kept him on track. If you came in as a guest to the room in New York, it made him concentrate and work harder and make sure that in five days you would break a story. Michael Jamin: Why? Because people flew in, you mean? Jonathan Collier: Yeah, because the network would fly, the studio would fly you into New York and put you up and they would only keep you there for five days. Michael Jamin: Okay, that's interesting. Jonathan Collier: I got one of those. So I got one of those guest shots. And the other thing I got way I got lucky was Michael Jamin: Wait, but how did you get that guest shot? Jonathan Collier: I got that guest shot because this is embarrassing. My agent at the time who I didn't think was doing enough for me, got me a meeting with Andy Breckman, and I thought it was just one meeting with Andy Breckman, who's a great guy, and I love the show, but who knows if it's going to turn into anything. I fired my agent, moved on to another agent, and then Andy called me up and said, oh, we want you to do this episode a month. Michael Jamin: Right. Jonathan Collier: But there was no, Michael Jamin: But I've already fired my agent. Jonathan Collier: That was done. What happened was that, anyway, Andy used to only hire comedy writers to do guest episodes. Michael Jamin: Why? Jonathan Collier: Because his theory was that he could teach a comedy writer how to write a procedural. He could not teach a procedural writer how to be fun. So anyway, they flew into New York, I was in the room, we broke a story and I wrote it and it went well. The whole thing went well, and I got very lucky again because no one had ever really left the show or been added to it. This was the fourth season and one writer was leaving and Andy offered me the job. So I came in and went on staff the next season. Michael Jamin: How many seasons did you do there? Jonathan Collier: I did two more seasons and then the writer's strike of 2007 happened. And when that happened, I didn't know how long that would go on. Mike and the Good Family was starting up and they got what was called a strike waiver, and there were certain production companies and one was MRC, media Rights Capital, and they made a deal with the WGA, with the Writers Guild that they could do shows that were during the strike and it would not be strike breaking to work on those shows if they agreed to abide by the Wgas terms, the writer's terms. The WGA was using that as a tactic to try to force the studios to, Michael Jamin: And it's funny, they didn't really do that this last strike. Jonathan Collier: No, I don't think it really helped. Michael Jamin: You don't think it helped? Jonathan Collier: I don't know if it did or actually, no, I can't say if it did or not. I thought all I can say is I think this last strike was better run than the first one. I think a lot was learned from the first one. Anyway, I left Monk because I got a job right away rather than being strike. Michael Jamin: Right. Let me ask you that. When you're on Monk and you are with procedural writers who are not comedy writers, when they would pitch something that you and I would call a clam, or if you would pitch it in the room at the Simpson, the King of the Hill, someone would say, right? Was there a lot of that going on? Were you the guy who said, yeah, that's not really a joke? Jonathan Collier: Well, no. At Mon though, you had, first of all, it was comedy writers. It was a small staff and it was four people whose background was comedy, including Andy Breckman, and then one High Conrad, who was just a terrific mystery writer. And he had written something like 200 mystery books. Oh, Michael Jamin: Wow. Jonathan Collier: And the way he got on was that Andy met with him and took him out for lunch and said, look, I love your mystery books, and you have two choi

Do you watch The Daily Show? If so, don't miss this awesome podcast episode featuring Vance DeGeneres! Show Notes Vance on Wikipedia: https://taylorwilliamson.com Vance's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taylorcomedy/ Vance on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2743976/ Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlist Automated Transcript Michael Jamin (00:00:00): To me, I'm guessing the goal of it was just to be creative and make music. That's still, that's it. But do you have, are there, are, is there, are there other future ambitions? Is there more ambitions there more you hope to get outta this though? Vance DeGeneres (00:00:13): Just, just the enjoyment of, of being musically creative. Right. And and that, that's it. I mean, I, I'm under no illusions that I'm going to get another record deal. Right. You know, capital Records is not gonna call and offer me a deal again. Right. but that's fi that's fine. You know, the, it's, you know, it's a fun band. It's, it's a good band. And we play lo we play live gigs, you know, like two or three times a year. Right. and we make, we make our records. And that's, that's enough, right? I mean, it's just fun. Michael Jamin (00:00:49): You're listening to Screenwriters Need to hear this with Michael Jamin. Michael Jamin (00:00:56): Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin. Welcome back to Screenwriters. Need to hear this. I got another good guest for you. This is another reason to sit through me talking because my guest is actually an old friend of mine. And his name is Vance DeGeneres, comedy writer, TV producer, film producer, film executive musician. And I met Vance many years ago and can tell Quick story, Vance. And then I'll let you chime in for the rest of the interview. Please. First of all, I first please. I gonna just get the elephant outta the room. Yes. Vance. His, his little sister is someone you may have heard of Ellen. Ellen Generous, but we're not talking about her now. We're talking about you Vance. So stop bringing her up. Vance DeGeneres (00:01:34): Yeah, yeah, please, Michael Jamin (00:01:35): Please. So, I'm met Vance many years ago. I'm a first job as a, as a comedy writer. I was a comedy writer and show on the Mike and Maddie show. It was a morning TV show. I was very nervous, very excited, didn't know anything about the business. And Vance was the other guy, the other comedy writer. And we shared an office. And I just did. I was like, Vance, I, I don't really know what I'm doing here. And Vance was like, it's okay. We'll be okay. I'm not sure if Vance knew what he was doing, but I did everything. You did Vance. I wore shoes to the set. I wore a a jacket to the set. I did whatever you told me to do. Whatever you did, I just copied. And you were, and Vance DeGeneres (00:02:12): It, and look, look where you are today, Michael Jamin (00:02:14): . I'm sitting in front of my computer screen in my garage. Vance DeGeneres (00:02:18): , can I, can I, can I just say I I do have to to thank you because we're not for you. I wouldn't be able to do this. Michael Jamin (00:02:30): That's right. We did a lot of that. And you got, you got a nice lot of, Vance DeGeneres (00:02:33): You taught me to Michael Jamin (00:02:34): Juggle. I taught you that. I didn't, what else You taught me to juggle. Didn't I teach you how to love as well? Vance DeGeneres (00:02:40): Well, I was gonna say, yeah, I was gonna say that, but since you brought it up Yes, Michael Jamin (00:02:45): Vance has, go ahead. Vance DeGeneres (00:02:48): No, I was just gonna say, you know, we I think we laughed a lot in that, in that office. It, it was it was an interesting job. Michael Jamin (00:02:57): Did we make anyone laugh? , I'm Vance DeGeneres (00:03:00): Six months Michael Jamin (00:03:02): . We made each other laugh and then on six month time they showed, they showed me to the door . Vance DeGeneres (00:03:10): Yeah. And yeah. And I didn't last a lot longer. Michael Jamin (00:03:13): You didn't, I don't remember. But you've had such an amazing career event cuz you have done something. Like you are truly a very creative person and you've made a career out of being creative, but not pigeonholed in any one category. Like, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna start by telling, refreshing your memory, how you've, how much you've worked in the business. I guess you first started, you were a musician, you in a, in a band called House of Shock, which was Gina Shock, who was in the Go-Go's. You formed a band with her, right? Was that your first band? I Vance DeGeneres (00:03:43): No, no, no. I, no, I, well, very quickly, I, I had, I had been in bands since seventh grade. I had my first garage band. Right. and then I was in a s a really successful band in New Orleans called The Cold in the early eighties. Michael Jamin (00:04:01): Right. Vance DeGeneres (00:04:02): And and then I moved out to Los Angeles in 85. And the Gogos had broken up and a friend introduced me to Gina and we put together house of Shock. And so she and I were partners on that. Michael Jamin (00:04:17): And you toured a lot of with her? Vance DeGeneres (00:04:19): No, we didn't tour a lot, but we rec we Gina and I wrote, wrote the album and it came out, we were on Capital Records, Uhhuh . And and that came out in 88. Michael Jamin (00:04:30): Now, when you moved to LA was it to become, I mean, it's weird, you know, you're very, very funny, very talented comedy writer. But was it, is music really your first love and look at your background there? Vance DeGeneres (00:04:42): My first love is music. But I had done bef Okay. . I, I've got such a, such a a checkered a career path. Originally I had done, oh boy. Yeah, this is, it's too much to get into. But I, I was the original Mr. Hans with the Mr. Bill Show, and I Michael Jamin (00:05:04): Wanna talk about that. Okay. So that came first Vance DeGeneres (00:05:07): That Yeah. After yes, when I was 18, I guess I, I met this guy Walter Williams, and we, we got an apartment together and we started doing, we were both Big Bob and Ray fans. Right. you know Bob and Ray, Michael Jamin (00:05:25): Right? Yeah. Ellis dad . That's how I think about it. Yeah, Vance DeGeneres (00:05:28): Exactly. Exactly. but they used to do this improv improvisational comedy. And so we thought, yeah, we can probably take a crack at that. So we started doing little comedy bits and then started shooting little tiny movies. And Mr. Bill was one of the movies. And anyways, so, you know, what happened then? Michael Jamin (00:05:49): Well, for many people who, who don't, I wanted to tell them, so Mr. Like, Mr. Bill was a, a little claymation character on Saturday Live, A little sketch they did on Saturday Live, or in the early years of sa And this Mr. Bill was like, before the internet, it went viral before the internet virality was a thing. And it was like this, I remember everyone was talking about Mr. Bill, Mr. Oh, no, Mr. Bill. And it was Mr. Hand was the char, another character. And like everyone talked about Mr. Bill cuz it was like this sketch on Saturday. It was recurring sketch that everyone talked about. And so yeah. Go into that. That's a, that was when I found out you were Mr. Hand. I was like, you're Mr. Hand. Vance DeGeneres (00:06:26): Yeah. Well, oh yeah. Well, it's, it's a, it's a a very long and a very frustrating story actually. But I, I'll just tell you that we started it in New Orleans and we did these, you know, we, we started doing nightclubs in New Orleans there. This was before there was even a a comedy club in New Orleans. This was in 73 45 Uhhuh six. And so we would do these kind of live shows where we did comedy and we showed, we showed our eight millimeter films. We'd set up a screen, Uhhuh, and then when Sarah I live came on we sent in a reel of our shorts and they liked Mr. Bill and they put that on. Michael Jamin (00:07:11): How did you know, you just sent it to like, what do you mean you sent it? Vance DeGeneres (00:07:15): Because, because they they had a thing, Lauren, Michael said, Hey, if if, if you have some funny short films, send them to us and if we like it, we might put it on. Right. So we we sent 'em a, a reel of our, our shorts and they liked that particular one. So Lauren aired it and it was during Mardi Gras in New Orleans when it first aired. And, and Saturday Night Live was preempted for one of the parades, Uhhuh . So nobody in New Orleans got got to see it. But they invited us down to the N B C affiliate to watch it in the control room. Uhhuh . So we got to see speed. Michael Jamin (00:07:58): How, but how, but did you do several of them? There's We did, Vance DeGeneres (00:08:02): Yeah. Right. We did. And then we, we well we had a weekly radio show in New Orleans called the Mr. Bill Show, and where we did little sketches, and then we even did eight local TV show few episodes. Michael Jamin (00:08:17): Like 18 when you were doing this. Vance DeGeneres (00:08:20): In 19, yeah. 18, 19, 20, kind of a big. And and then once it was on Saturday Live, we we picked up a third, a third member named David Derickson. And we moved to, we got a, we got a loan for $3,000 and moved to New York and got a, a one bedroom sublet. And we did the the improv once a week on Monday nights, we would do our standup. And then we we made a couple of other Mr. Bills. And after the second season, I, I decided to, to leave the act. And I moved back to New Orleans. And then my friend Dave, who, who was a third member, took over as Mr. Hands. Michael Jamin (00:09:08): What, when you left what to go back to New Orleans, what, what were you, what was it to pursue at this point? What did you wanna do? Vance DeGeneres (00

On this week's episode, we have music manager Dave Rose (Lit, Marcy Playground, Stryper and many many more) and we discuss his journey starting out as a bassist and what it’s like managing today vs. the pre-digital age. Tune in for so much more. Show Notes Dave Rose Agency: https://www.deepsouthentertainment.com/ Dave Rose on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daverosedeepsouth Dave Rose on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daverosedeepsouth/ A Paper Orchestra on Website: https://michaeljamin.com/book A Paper Orchestra on Audible: https://www.audible.com/ep/creator?source_code=PDTGBPD060314004R&irclickid=wsY0cWRTYxyPWQ32v63t0WpwUkHzByXJyROHz00&irgwc=1 A Paper Orchestra on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Audible-A-Paper-Orchestra/dp/B0CS5129X1/ref=sr_1_4?crid=19R6SSAJRS6TU&keywords=a+paper+orchestra&qid=1707342963&sprefix=a+paper+orchestra%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-4 A Paper Orchestra on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203928260-a-paper-orchestra Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/ Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Dave Rose: I'm so amazed that people pay me to do this. I was doing it long before I knew you could make money at it. And so the pinnacle for me is really that this continued joy of the business of music Michael Jamin: You are listening to. What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about conversations in writing, art, and creativity. Today's episode is brought to you by my debut collection of True Stories, a paper orchestra available in print, ebook and audiobook to purchase And to support me in this podcast, please visit michael jamin.com/book and now on with the show. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about conversations in writing, art, and creativity. And today I got a special guest for you. Musicians out there. You don't deserve any of this. This is a wonderful treat for all of you. Don't say I never gave you anything. I'm here with Dave Rose from Deep South Entertainment and he is a career music manager. But Dave, first of all, welcome. I got a billion questions for you, but did you start off, are you a musician as well? Dave Rose: Thank you. Good to be here, Michael. Man, mutual admiration all the way around. This is exciting to be here. But yes, I started out as a musician. I was a, yes, I started out as a musician. I mean, yes and no, there's a story, but I became a musician out of necessity. Michael Jamin: How does that work? No one becomes, that's like the last thing you become out of necessity. Dave Rose: I know. Isn't that funny? So I was managing, and I very much put that in air quotes. Say I was a freshman in college and I had a local band decide they wanted me to be their manager. I was showing up at all their gigs and selling merchandise and unloading the van and doing all the things that I thought I could do to help. I just loved being around music. One day they said to me, would you be our manager? And I didn't know what the hell a manager was. I still don't. But they said, well, you could start by getting us some gigs. And that's not what a manager does, by the way. But that's when you're in college, that's what you do. Michael Jamin: That's not what a manager does then. Okay, you have to elaborate on that when we Dave Rose: Can get into that for sure. So I got 'em 20 gigs and we had it all booked up and we're all ready to go. And we were two weeks out from the very first gig, big string of shows, playing skate ranches and pool parties and all the places that you play when you're just starting out anywhere and everywhere that'll give you room. And they came me and they said, our bass player quit and he's moving, so we need to cancel these gigs and we can no longer, we will audition new bass players later. I said, like, hell, you are, I've been watching this. It doesn't look like it's that hard to play bass, so here's what we're going to do. I'm going to cram myself in the basement with you, Mr. Guitar player, and you're going to teach me all the parts to these songs. We're going to go play these 20 shows with me as the bass player, and when we come back, you can audition bass players. That's how. And they were like, yeah, that's not how that works. I said, well, that's the way this is going to go. And so they did. I crammed myself in the basement and learned to play bass in two weeks, and it was rock and roll. It was three chord rock and roll. Wasn't real hard, but apparently I picked it up pretty easily and I played bass in a band for the next 10 years, but that should have been my first indication that I was not a musician. I learned how to play just to keep a band. Michael Jamin: But you must, if you played for 10 years, you're good enough. Dave Rose: Yeah, I mean I figured it out along the way. Michael Jamin: Wow. But then at some point you went to full-time management. Dave Rose: Yeah. Yeah. I ultimately segued into full-time management, and that was, I started this company putting out compilation CDs. That was a big thing. I started in 1995 and in the mid nineties, these sort of mix tape CDs were a big thing. And I would find local and regional bands from around the area and put 'em on this compilation CD and put it out and see what happens. But from the very first CD we put out, we had one of the biggest hits of the nineties, a song called Sex and Candy by Marcy Playground. And my intention was I would stick my band right in the middle of all these big regional bands or bands that I thought was going to be big and maybe my band would get some attention too. And I think nine bands on that first compilation got record deals accept my band. So that was kind of my moment of realizing, yeah, I'm definitely not, I'm way better on the business side of things. Michael Jamin: So then tell me then what a manager music manager does exactly if they don't get you work. Dave Rose: Sure. It's very different, I would guess, than in the film and TV business. And I would love to learn this from you, but I'm guessing in the film and TV business, the person that gets you work is the agent. Is that Michael Jamin: Yes, the agent and not the manager and I have Right, Dave Rose: And that's what it is here. So a manager in music, I'm put it in the simplest terms, but it's like if the entire career is a wheel, the manager and the artist are in the center of that wheel. And all these spokes are things like booking agents and publicists and record labels and publishing companies and people that do film and TV music and all the accountants, the crew, all the thing, the attorneys that make the machine, the wheel turn. The manager is making sure all of those things are working. So it's sort of like being, I compare it to this, it's being the CEO of a band, but if you're, Michael Jamin: I'm sorry, go on. Dave Rose: That's all right. The band is owned by the band or the artist is owned by the, they own their company, but they retain an artist manager commission, an artist manager to manage their career. Michael Jamin: But if that band is going on tour, are you expected to go with them? Dave Rose: Only if you're in country music. Michael Jamin: Okay. Why is that? Dave Rose: It is different. Country music is one of the few genres that still very much lives and dies by the radio, and so the relationships with local radio is very important. So a manager should be there to kind of nurture those radio relationships from town to town to town. Now, if you're in rock and roll or hip hop or almost any other genre, Americana folk bluegrass, most managers do not travel with the band, Michael Jamin: But a touring manager would No, Dave Rose: A tour manager. Exactly. A tour manager does. And the tour manager is exactly, it sounds, it's the manager of the tour. So it deals with getting the bus from point A to point B and where do we park and what do I mean? It's way more than that, but it's the finance of the tour and they report to the artist manager. Michael Jamin: Now over the years, I've heard you mention this, you have a very, very big it's successful TikTok page, which is how I found you. You've managed a bunch of really big acts, right? Dave Rose: I've had some, yes. I've had a lot of, and I still do have a lot of big acts. It's been just amazing. I keep waiting for somebody to knock on my door and go, okay, gigs up. Time to get a real job. Michael Jamin: Can you share some of 'em with us? Dave Rose: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So I got my start with Marcy Playground, and I'm still with them 26, 7 years later. But one of my first big clients was the piano player, Bruce Hornsby, who was in the Grateful Dead, and he had a bunch of hits in the eighties and nineties, but he's had a very, very unique career. He is done albums with Ricky Scaggs and Jazz Records, but Little Feat, the classic rock band of, they're just so iconic. The band Lit who had one of the biggest rock hits of the nineties, that song, my Own Worst Enemy, some of the country acts that I've worked with, Laney Wilson, who just won a Grammy, and yeah, I worked with the band six Pence, none The Richer who had the mega hit Kiss Me. And so yeah, it's been not to just, one of the bands I've been with the longest 23 years is an eighties rock band from LA called Striper. They kind of came up in the ranks with Moley Crewe and Bon Jovi and that kind world of big hair and Sunset Strip and all the things of Hollywood, but they're a Christian man. They sing about Jesus. So they're very, very different than that. Michael Jamin: At this point. Are new bands finding you or are you reaching out to them? How does that work? Dave Rose: Yeah, they usually find me at this point, I don't develop a lot of new acts anymore, mostly because I've

On this week's episode, we have actor Cynthia Mann Jamin (Friends, Ahh! Real Monsters, Angry Beavers and many many more) and we discuss her journey as an actor and director. We also talk about how the two of us met as well as what it’s like working together. Tune in for so much more. Show Notes Cynthia Mann Jamin IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0542699/ Cynthia Mann Jamin on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/prime-video/actor/Cynthia-Mann/amzn1.dv.gti.ca37e830-61b1-44db-8fe5-979422acb482 Cynthia Mann Jamin Shop: https://www.twirlygirlshop.com/ A Paper Orchestra on Website: https://michaeljamin.com/book A Paper Orchestra on Audible: https://www.audible.com/ep/creator?source_code=PDTGBPD060314004R&irclickid=wsY0cWRTYxyPWQ32v63t0WpwUkHzByXJyROHz00&irgwc=1 A Paper Orchestra on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Audible-A-Paper-Orchestra/dp/B0CS5129X1/ref=sr_1_4?crid=19R6SSAJRS6TU&keywords=a+paper+orchestra&qid=1707342963&sprefix=a+paper+orchestra%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-4 A Paper Orchestra on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203928260-a-paper-orchestra Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/ Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Cynthia Mann Jamin: If it wasn't something that was organic for you, it would be torture trying to become this person that you think other people want to see, or you got to position yourself like this other person over here. But it really is about finding your unique voice because that's all we have. Michael Jamin: You are listening to What The Hell Is Michael Jamin talking about conversations in writing, art, and creativity. Today's episode is brought to you by my debut collection of True Stories, a paper orchestra available in print, ebook and audiobook to purchase. And to support me in this podcast, please visit michael jamin.com/book and now on with the show. Michael Jamin: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode. I have a very special guest today, the very beautiful and talented, I'm going to call her Cynthia Mann, although she's now currently Cynthia Mann Jamin and she's my wife and Cynthia. I met years ago, I was a writer on a show called Just Shoot Me, and she was the guest star and she was a working actor and she worked on many shows including she was a recurring on Friends. She had, I dunno, five or so or six episodes on Friends Recurring on Veronica's Closet, Seinfeld, er Suddenly Susan Will and Grace, all those shows of the nineties, all those musty TV shows. She did almost all of them. And now she is the director and producer of my one man show as well as the audio book. So I thought a paper orchestra. So she did all of that. So I thought we would talk to her about that and about her experience working in Hollywood as well as directing and producing my audiobook for all of you people who aspire to do something similar. Hello, Cynthia. Cynthia Mann Jamin: Hi Michael. Michael Jamin: Hello. My beautiful wife. She's in the other room. We're pretending we live far apart, but actually we live very close to each other. Cynthia Mann Jamin: You could say we're roommates. Michael Jamin: This is my roommate, Cynthia. So thank you so much for doing this. Thank you, most of all for producing and directing my show. And I don't know, where do we begin? What should we start with? Cynthia Mann Jamin: Well, I think it's, the thing that's interesting is people might want to know how is it working together and why do we work together? Michael Jamin: I don't have an answer for that. You're cheap labor. That's why we work. I don't have to pay you. Why is that? Why we work together? Cynthia Mann Jamin: Well, it's funny because it goes all the way back to when we were first dating. I think if you want to talk about that because Go ahead. Well, we love doing projects together. Michael Jamin: Projects, we call them projects. How the Canadians say It. Project, Cynthia Mann Jamin: Yeah, projects. And when we first met it was kind of like, well, we had this common interest of he's a writer, I'm an actor, but it's like you can't sit around all day and just write and act. So we would find common things that we like to take walks, we like to do hiking. I taught you about Run Canyon, you were running in the flats. And I'm like, what the hell are you doing? Why are you running in the flats? Why don't you run up a hill? Michael Jamin: I didn't realize you could. It was so steep. And then you said you ran it. So I said, oh, alright. I guess I could try running it. I Cynthia Mann Jamin: Totally ran it. I ran it all the time. I had, I had really muscular legs. You Michael Jamin: Did. I Cynthia Mann Jamin: Know you did. Yeah. And I still do. But yeah, so we would find little things to do and I would take you around LA and get you lafy and teach you what Celestial seasonings Michael Jamin: And Cynthia Mann Jamin: Stuff. Yes, tea Michael Jamin: Is and also Whole Foods and Mrs. Gooch's. Mrs. Cynthia Mann Jamin: Gooch's. Yeah. This is way back. We Michael Jamin: Would go to all this. She didn't approve of the supermarkets that I went to. So you Cynthia Mann Jamin: Can go in there. I'm not going to get my food there you there though. Michael Jamin: And so many ways You helped me a lot with art because you are an artist. You were a starving artist when I met you. Cynthia Mann Jamin: Oh yes. Yeah. Well, barely getting by. I would say would barely getting by. I've had every survival job you can think of. I've done singing telegrams with the monkey that goes like this, and I've done sold shoes and I've waitressed and I've done a million survival jobs. So in my thirties I finally started to get acting jobs and I was a professional dancer for a while. And Grit didn't go to college right away, only finished two years of it. Later in my thirties when I met Michael, I was going to college and working and going on auditions and all of that. And when I met Michael, it was one of those crazy auditions where the casting director, Deb Burki, who I'm forever grateful for, she brought me in just to the callback. She didn't even read me first because we had had a relationship and she always appreciated my work and thought, oh, this is good for Cynthia. Let me just bring her in straight to the producers. And I remember Steve Levitan was there, probably Andy Gordon and Eileen because it was their episode and Eileen Khan and I got that job. She called me the next day and just said, yeah, you got it. And I was like, oh, yay. I'm so excited. And they only booked me for three days. So when I went on the set, it was at Universal because I didn't really know what Just Shoot Me was. It was a new show and I don't think it was airing yet. It was just the first six episodes. So nobody really knew what it was about or the tone or anything. And I just went in, did my scene, went home prepared to come back the next day for shoot day. Really? And you guys sent me a script at nine in the morning or something like that and said, we rewrote your scene because we found a better way to write this scene. I don't know, you can tell me the behind the scenes of that. I don't really know why you did that. Michael Jamin: I don't really remember why that was rewritten. It was a long time ago. Cynthia Mann Jamin: I think it was. Maybe it just wasn't exciting enough or something. And you wanted the dialogue to be between me and Laura more. Michael Jamin: I don't Cynthia Mann Jamin: Remember. Instead of the roommate. And so you guys had me into the writer's room before, which is very unusual. You never really go into a writer's room to work out a scene. But because we were shooting it that day and we had to go straight to the run through and I think the network was going to be there. You didn't want to mess around. And so you gave me notes and we rehearsed it and Laura was there and the other scene partner who, I'm so sorry, I forgot his name. Chris, Michael Jamin: I want to say. Cynthia Mann Jamin: Yeah, Chris. And then we just went and shot it. And then I shoot the scene at night and I'm like, oh my God, this was so much fun. And it was great. And I'm like, all right, I'm going to go. And who's standing right next to me as I'm walking off the set and kind of hanging back and it was you. Michael Jamin: It was me, Cynthia Mann Jamin: It was you. Michael Jamin: And then you said you wanted to marry me. I said, I don't even know you. Cynthia Mann Jamin: I complimented your tie. That's right. And then you said, I did a really nice job. Yeah, you did. And I said thank you. And then we were talking about, I think you said, so what do you like to do for fun? Or something like that. Yeah. We went and I asked you that and you said you swing dance. And I had already been swing dancing at the Derby many times with my friend Brendan. And we would go and swing dance. So Michael Jamin: My Cynthia Mann Jamin: Knees went weak when you Michael Jamin: That's right. I took, it was either you or Brendan I took you. Cynthia Mann Jamin: So then long story short, there was a couple of weeks that went by and you called me and said, hi, this is Michael. And I said, I don't remember that name, but you're making it up because he has that name. And then you said, no, it's me and I would like to take you out for coffee. And I said, I don't drink coffee. I drink tea. Michael Jamin: Yeah, we had tea instead. Cynthia Mann Jamin: He said, that's okay, huh? Michael Jamin: Yeah, yeah. Right. Cynthia Mann Jamin: And then I remember this, Michael, on our first date, I hung back in my car because I think I saw you walk in. I'm like, I got to be a little late. I got to make him wait for me a little bit. So I made you wait just a little bit. And then I go in and the woman comes and says, so do you w

On December 30th, I hosted a webinar called “How Professional Screenwriters Overcome Writer’s Block” and I talked about why story structure is so important in getting past this block. This episode addresses questions you asked in our Q&A session that we didn't have time to answer. There's lots of great info here, make sure you watch. Show Notes A Paper Orchestra on Website: - https://michaeljamin.com/book A Paper Orchestra on Audible: - https://www.audible.com/ep/creator?source_code=PDTGBPD060314004R&irclickid=wsY0cWRTYxyPWQ32v63t0WpwUkHzByXJyROHz00&irgwc=1 A Paper Orchestra on Amazon: - https://www.amazon.com/Audible-A-Paper-Orchestra/dp/B0CS5129X1/ref=sr_1_4?crid=19R6SSAJRS6TU&keywords=a+paper+orchestra&qid=1707342963&sprefix=a+paper+orchestra%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-4 A Paper Orchestra on Goodreads: - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203928260-a-paper-orchestra Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/ Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Michael Jamin: Everyone wants to be a showrunner, which is again, why it's so freaking Michael Jamin: Hard. I want to make all the decisions, but you don't know based on what you Michael Jamin: Don't know what you're doing. Why would you want that? Is it an ego thing you want to tell people you're a showrunner or don't you want to learn? Do you assume? When I was starting off, I didn't want to be a showrunner for 10 years. I didn't want to be a show runner. Like, this is a hard job. I don't know how to do it. Michael Jamin: You are listening to What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about conversations in writing, art, and creativity. Today's episode is brought to you by my debut collection of True Stories, a paper orchestra available in print, ebook and audiobook to purchase and to support me in this podcast, please visit michael jamin.com/book and now on with the show. Michael Jamin: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? Well, we're doing another q and a from one of our webinars and my special guest host is Kevin Lewandowski, script coordinator extraordinaire. He helps out with a lot of my projects, social media projects here and he's subbing in for Phil and he's doing a great job. So welcome Kevin. Kevin Lewandowski: Thank you again for having me. Michael Jamin: You screwed it up. You already screwed. No, I'm only messing with you. You're doing great. Thanks. Kevin Lewandowski: Yeah, I'm not going to apologize for not being Phil anymore, so fair Phil. But no, I'm happy to be here and this how professional screenwriters overcome Writer's Block is one of my favorite topics to talk about. Oh good. So I think it's super, super interesting and there's been, when we dive into it, I'll say my favorite line that you always say that just unlocked the excuse sometimes we use for when we have writer's block. Michael Jamin: I'm curious to know what your favorite line is. Kevin Lewandowski: Alright, I have so many Michael Jainism that I think my all time favorite is Shit Happening is not a story. Michael Jamin: By the way, we have that on merch now, guys. Yeah, we do. We got merch and you can go get it@michaeljamin.com/merch where all the crazy things that I say, you can get it on a on mug or a notebook or whatever. We got merge. Go get it. I should have plugged it before, but I forgot. But anyway, these questions came from our last webinar that we did and if you're not on my webinar list, sign up for it's free. Go to michael jamin.com/webinar and you can sign up. You can be invited when we do our next one. And so yeah, Kevin, we had a lot of questions people asked. We didn't have time to get all the questions answered and so here they are n Kevin Lewandowski: Here we go. These first couple of questions are going to be about kind of course related stuff. So this first one is from David Zilo. I feel like we see his name a lot. I feel like he comes to these webinars a lot and ask a lot of questions. The question is, how does the story structure change when say a character does not, cannot achieve a goal in the tragic story, for example, Michael Jamin: Doesn't change at all. It's the same old story structure that we use. Whether the character achieves their goal at the end or not, it's the same damn thing. Kevin Lewandowski: Yep. Michael Jamin: The guys you're just asking, he's just asking at the end, what if the last two minutes are different, so what? Nothing. Kevin Lewandowski: Yeah, I think it's always more interesting for me when that character doesn't achieve their goal. I think the breakup with, but yeah, Vince v and Jennifer Ston, they don't stay together in the end. No. It's one of the few rom-coms that I think they decide to go off the beaten path and not have Michael Jamin: Them end often. We call this the joyful defeat in a movie or the character doesn't get what they want, but they get what they need. Yeah. Kevin Lewandowski: Next question, Rob. Robert, when is the latest the stakes should be made clear? Michael Jamin: The sooner the better because the story does not start until the audience knows what's at stake. And so until then you're boring them and you're daring them to change the channel or read another script or do something else with their time. So the sooner the better, and that's a note you'll get from a network executive. They'll always say, can we start the story sooner? And so wherever you have it, they'll give you that note. If it's on page four, they'll say page two. Kevin Lewandowski: In your experience, is there a realistic, for instance, if they were like, oh, it's on page three, we need it on page two, have you ever run into We just can't. We need a little bit of room to be able to Michael Jamin: Set Kevin Lewandowski: Something Michael Jamin: Up. Absolutely. And so you'll move it up a little bit, but sometimes there's only so much you can do. Kevin Lewandowski: Yeah. But yeah, like you said, they'll always say, oh, can we start this sooner? Yeah, we'll take a look at it. We'll take a look at that. Coley Marie, can the goal change or appear to change? Michael Jamin: Yeah. Yes. And often it sometimes will. It's like because something happens and what the character thought they wanted is not what they want anymore. So yeah. Kevin Lewandowski: So how do you feel about, because sometimes it's, is there a fear of if you start writing it too much of a change, can it almost feel like, oh, okay, now we're following a different story to, Michael Jamin: It usually happens kind of like an act top of act three with the character discoveries. This thing that I wanted turns out I don't really want any. I got what I thought I wanted and it's not what I want. So that's usually late in the script. Kevin Lewandowski: Yeah. So you're saying in top of act two, if they wanted to, Michael Jamin: It wouldn't be top of Kevin Lewandowski: Act ride a pony at the end of act one. Top of Act two should be like, well, I want to win this prize at the Carnival Michael Jamin: Now. Yeah, top of act two is one. Well, this is what we teach in the course. What tab of Act two would be, so yeah, Kevin Lewandowski: Arius Kennedy. So should we avoid high stakes conflicts? Michael Jamin: No. The higher stakes are good. High stakes are good. Higher the stakes are better. You want to avoid low stakes conflicts. Kevin Lewandowski: Yeah, low stakes conflicts are not that interesting. Heather Marie, vital, how do we find conflicts for TV shows with main characters without getting stale? That's kind of the job of a writer. Michael Jamin: Yeah, that's right. That's exactly, that's the job without getting stale, it's like, and again, this is not her concern. Concern. Your concern is to do it once and then let's a showrunner worried about it getting stale. Right now your job is to write one great script Kevin Lewandowski: Are Barry, when it comes to an episodic show, there's the overall show conflict and then the mini conflicts of the episodes. So I'm assuming they're talking about, there's the A story, the B story, the C story, Michael Jamin: Or maybe they're talking about the overall arch of the show. I'm watching Show Gun right now and I'm only on episode one, so it seems like the overarching stories, how is this one? I dunno if he called the futile Lord going to maintain his position in the kingdom, but within each episode he has a challenge that he has to overcome, so to make that larger prop goal happen. Kevin Lewandowski: Meg Parker Wilson, when you are writing a TV show, do you plot out the entire story pilot to finale and then create all those moments episode by episode in terms of the arc and the structure? Michael Jamin: No, it's too much work. It's too difficult. What you really, and again, this is not something that she needs to worry about, but maybe she's just asking me out of curiosity, we'll come up with a pilot and we'll have that pilot broken. We know what that story is going to be and then we have a vague idea of what season one might be. But I'm talking vague, just enough to bullshit our way through this because it'll change when we're breaking the story. As we discover writing and digging into the character, we'll discover something that might be better. So what are we going to do? Not do it just because we said we were talking out of our ass that this other thing was going to be better, Kevin Lewandowski: Right? Yeah. I think Vince Gilian, creator of Breaking Bad, I think he says something very similar. Yeah, we kind of have an idea, but part of going through different story ideas is you discover stuff along the way. Jesse Pinkman was only supposed to be four or five episodes, and then now they realize how much chemistry those two charac

A Paper Orchestra on Website: - https://michaeljamin.com/book A Paper Orchestra on Audible: - https://www.audible.com/ep/creator?source_code=PDTGBPD060314004R&irclickid=wsY0cWRTYxyPWQ32v63t0WpwUkHzByXJyROHz00&irgwc=1 A Paper Orchestra on Amazon: - https://www.amazon.com/Audible-A-Paper-Orchestra/dp/B0CS5129X1/ref=sr_1_4?crid=19R6SSAJRS6TU&keywords=a+paper+orchestra&qid=1707342963&sprefix=a+paper+orchestra%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-4 A Paper Orchestra on Goodreads: - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203928260-a-paper-orchestra Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/ Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/screenwriters-need-to-hear-this/exclusive-content

On this week's episode, we have actor Jamie Kaler (My Boys, Tacoma FD, Robot Chicken and many many more) and we talk about his career path as well as his experiences doing stand-up. There's so much more so make sure you tune in. Show Notes Jamie KalerIMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0435695/ Jamie Kaler on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Kaler Jamie Kaler on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamiekaler/?hl=en Jamie Kaler on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/jamiekaler A Paper Orchestra on Website: https://michaeljamin.com/book A Paper Orchestra on Audible: https://www.audible.com/ep/creator?source_code=PDTGBPD060314004R&irclickid=wsY0cWRTYxyPWQ32v63t0WpwUkHzByXJyROHz00&irgwc=1 A Paper Orchestra on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Audible-A-Paper-Orchestra/dp/B0CS5129X1/ref=sr_1_4?crid=19R6SSAJRS6TU&keywords=a+paper+orchestra&qid=1707342963&sprefix=a+paper+orchestra%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-4 A Paper Orchestra on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203928260-a-paper-orchestra Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/ Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Jamie Kaler: He goes, Hey, just so you know, when you do watch it, we were running long for time. So we cut the tag. I go, you mean the reveal where I kissed the woman? He goes, yeah, we ran out of time and we cut it. I go, then everything I did up to that moment has no justification whatsoever because this is the craziest thing. He goes, I know. He goes, what are you going to do with tv? I go, all, whatever. And I moved on and I was like, couldn't care less. But Michael Jamin: You are listening to What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about conversations in writing, art, and creativity. Today's episode is brought to you by my debut collection of True Stories, a paper orchestra available in print, ebook and audiobook to purchase And to support me in this podcast, please visit michael jamin.com/book and now on with the show. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? Well, today I'm talking about acting with my guest, Jamie Kaler. This guy, before I bring him on this guy's credits are crazy. He works a lot and so I'm going to blow, yeah, blow through. I'm going to do the abridge version. If not, we'll be here all day, but I'm going to go way back. I'm on IM db now. I'm only doing the ones that I decide are highlights. But Jag, he's been on Fringe Friends. Suddenly. Susan Carnival, third Rock in the Sun, king of Queens, grounded for Life, married to the Kelly's Arrested Development, Spanglish, seventies show. What else Will and Grace, the Family Stone? Who remembers that? Monk New Adventures of Old Christine Sons and Daughters. How I Met Your mother, my boys. We know 'em from that. And then did I say Parenthood? Did I say shake it up? Did I say Austin and Allie? Did I say Teachers of the Year? I don't remember. I'm skipping crazy Ex-girlfriend. Jesus, dude. It doesn't end the middle Dads in Parks. Oh, we'll talk about that. Heather's robot Chicken. American Housewife. Most recently Taco fd where my partner and I created the character of Polanski. Jamie, that was exhausting. Are we done with the interview now? Jamie Kaler: Honestly, it was so much fun being here, man. All right, everybody, take care. See you later. Michael Jamin: That was such good advice. Sorry, you guys all missed it. Dude, you've been around. How did you get into acting? How does someone get into acting? By the way, Jamie Kaler: People ask me nowadays, and I go, dude, it's nothing. I mean now it's like don't even move to la just start a YouTube channel in upstate Minnesota and try to blow up. And then once you have a following, then you're set. Michael Jamin: But we were talking about on your podcast, the parent lounge, but I know you think it's like a burden, but I think it actually works in your advantage to you, to your advantage because you're really good at it. You're good. You have a great social media presence. You're quick on your feet. It seems to me this, even though it requires more work for you, it actually works in your favor. No, Jamie Kaler: You mean social media doing it this way? Yeah, of course it is, but I already did it. So now I'm kind of the same way that I used to go buy wigs and glue on mustaches and actually lit myself on fire on stage at Acme Comedy Theater when I was doing crazy shows on Friday and Saturday nights in the nineties with that fervor of what are we doing today? We're going to Goodwill, we're going to get some costumes, here we go. And I remember renting equipment, trying to shoot shorts and trying to clerks, and Ed Burns had made the brothers McMullan or whatever, and it was like, come on, we're making film. It was super hard and it was painful and it was costly. And nowadays you can do it with your phone. But I'm older, I don't quite have the drive. I also am watching two little kids. So the time in the day is where I used to go, this is my day. I'm going to go do this now. I'm like, I dropped the kids at school. I had to go to the cleaners. I taking care of the two kids. I got to pick them up. I'm coaching soccer today. So yes, I will say though, especially watching you and you're a writer, but now you have to become a social media guru to get people to see what you've created and you're an artist. But nowadays, gosh, I was posting something this morning about the pregnant pause is gone pretty soon. Humans are going to evolve where the eyes instead of side by side are over the top of each other because horizontal's over everything's vertical. We need to flip our eyes. And years from now, no one will take a breath because we've dictated that. The breath makes people lose attention though. You can take a pause. People go Michael Jamin: Done. I Jamie Kaler: Can't. He took a breath. I can't. Michael Jamin: Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. So I just had this conversation yesterday. I dropped an audio audiobook, and so some woman said I was doing a live, she goes, oh, I bought your audiobook. I love it, but I listened to it on one and a quarter speed. But I'm like, but when I take a pause, it's because I want to put a pause there. I want to give you a moment to soak it in. It's not arbitrary. Jamie Kaler: I wanted to take a Richard Pryor act from his comedy special and cut all the air out of it. And so you would take a 50 minute, one hour special where there's a groove. He's in the moment. It would be like if you took Buddy Rich and you took all the space between the drum beats out. You're like, a lot of the art is in the space, and we have forgotten that. And now it's like it's a machine gun or people's brains shut off. Michael Jamin: This is something when we're shooting a sitcom, often, we'll tell the actor, make sure you hold for a laugh here. Hold for the laugh. You will get one. Yeah. What do we do about this? Jamie Kaler: Well, I don't know because I was watching, have you watched Show Gun? Michael Jamin: No. Am I supposed to watch that? Jamie Kaler: It's new. It's based on the book. Oh my gosh, it's glorious. I had never read the book. 16 hundreds. Futile Japan, A simple, brutal, vicious life of it's gorgeous. They had a full society. It's like the 16 hundreds. Wait, Michael Jamin: Where am I watching this? What can I get? Jamie Kaler: It's on FX and on Hulu and Portuguese and Portugal and England are the two powerhouses on the earth, and they are at war, and they're basically fighting for ownership of the east, even though the east are, they're like, wait, we're here. No one's going to own us. So it's all about that, but it's just this beautifully, I mean, it's like art. It's like going to the museum, seeing this story unfold, but people's brains nowadays, some do just riddling. 30 seconds of garbage on TikTok will get a gillion times more views than that. Because I talked to somebody who said, Hey, have you seen Shogun? Someone's like, oh, it just seems slow. And I was like, it's one of the greatest stories of all time. It's one of the bestselling books of all time. It's history and gorgeous and art, and it's beautifully shot. And they're like, ah, boring. I don't have time for that crap. Michael Jamin: We have, right? So what do we do Jamie Kaler: If everything accelerates? There has to be a point where the human brain, it's like when they go, oh, this TV's 4K, and you're like, dude, I'm in my fifties. I can't even see 5K. I can't see any K anymore. It's like so resolution. It doesn't really matter. At some point your brain can't accept Michael Jamin: It. Well, worse than that, so my TVs, I have a nice plasma plasma, but it's probably 15 years old at a cost a fortune when I got it. But the new ones, the resolution's so clear, it kind of looks like you're watching a bad TV show. You know what I'm saying? You watch a expensive movie and it looks like it's bad TV because I'm seeing too much. Jamie Kaler: The human face is not supposed to be seen with that much resolution. You see people and you're like, oh, that dude had a rough night Michael Jamin: Where you Jamie Kaler: Used to be able to hide it, and now you're like, no, no, no, no. Michael Jamin: Right? But then now have you had these conversations with your agent and your managers, or is this just when we were talking about building your social media following, are they telling you this or are you just like, your friends are doing it now? I got to do it too. Jamie Kaler: You mean why try to build this? Well, it's also, listen, it's funny because my wife will give me grief sometimes, and she goes, your stories are too slow. Which is crazy because I'm one of the fastest speakers who's ever lived. Sometimes when I'm working, people go, you need to bring it

On November 18th, I hosted a webinar called "How Professional Screenwriters Create Great Characters", where I talked about how to come up with interesting and unique characters, as well as how tapping into your everyday life interactions with people can help with this. This episode addresses questions you asked in our Q&A session that we didn't have time to answer. There's lots of great info here, make sure you watch. Show Notes A Paper Orchestra on Website: - https://michaeljamin.com/book A Paper Orchestra on Audible: - https://www.audible.com/ep/creator?source_code=PDTGBPD060314004R&irclickid=wsY0cWRTYxyPWQ32v63t0WpwUkHzByXJyROHz00&irgwc=1 A Paper Orchestra on Amazon: - https://www.amazon.com/Audible-A-Paper-Orchestra/dp/B0CS5129X1/ref=sr_1_4?crid=19R6SSAJRS6TU&keywords=a+paper+orchestra&qid=1707342963&sprefix=a+paper+orchestra%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-4 A Paper Orchestra on Goodreads: - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203928260-a-paper-orchestra Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/ Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Michael Jamin: And why are we rooting for him? We're rooting for this meek man who's going to die soon to make some money for his family, but also to feel like he's alive for the first time in his life because he's just lived this very meek existence. And so that's why we're rooting for him. That's why we like him. And when he makes mistakes, he may go off track, but we hope he comes back. We're still rooting for him. You are listening to What The Hell Is Michael Jamin talking about conversations in writing, art, and creativity. Today's episode is brought to you by my debut collection of True Stories, a paper orchestra available in print, ebook and audiobook to purchase and to support me on this podcast, please visit michael jamin.com/book and now on with the show. Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin and you're listening to, what the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? Well, today we're doing another q and a from II's free writing webinars, and there's a lot of questions that people had. We couldn't answer 'em all on the end. We ran out of time, and so we're going to address 'em here. But this episode, Phil, I'm here with Phil Hudson. Phil Hudson: What up, Phil? Michael Jamin: Today's episode is brought to you by a paper orchestra, which is my collection of personal essays. It's David Saris meets Neil Simon on sale on my website, michael jamin.com, or you can find it anywhere. Books are sold, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, apple Books, all those places. Go get it. Go check it out. It's a fun read. Yeah. Okay. Phil Hudson: Worth checking out all the versions though too. I was just listening to the audio book and we talked about this in your episode about the book itself, but the music cues and the intros, very well done. Very well produced. You're also telling me about, thank you, Phil, how hellacious of a process it was to do it Michael Jamin: To Phil Hudson: The quality you like. Michael Jamin: Yes. Because you only get to put it out once, but yeah. But thank you. So Phil got the audio book, but it's available ebook and print as well, however you consume your written materials. Love it. Alright, Phil, we got some questions. Enough about me. Let's ask me some questions. Phil Hudson: Yeah, let's talk to you some more about you. This is from the November 18th webinar. These are like you said, q and A stuff, and the topic of this webinar was how professional screenwriters create great characters. This was, I think, a first run on this topic. You hadn't done this topic before. Michael Jamin: It could be. Yeah, this was a good one. Yeah, this turned out to be a good one I thought. Phil Hudson: I think so too. We can tell, there's some metrics we can tell in terms of how long people stay, questions that are asked, how long it goes. And I was going to say too, we didn't get to these questions because typically when we first started doing this almost a year ago, February will be a year doing these. It was like 30 minutes of lesson and then it was a bunch of q and a and that has transitioned into about 45 minutes of lesson and then a little bit of q and a where we can get it. And then we even have VIPQ and A now where you can just pay a small fee to join for an hour after and you just talk to people on Zoom and they get to go live and ask you questions and some really, really good questions being asked in that. So if you're interested in attending these webinars, go to michael jamin.com/webinar where you can sign up for that. But then you can also sign up on that page to get into the VIP. If you want to ask Michael directly a question that you have if you Michael Jamin: Can't get to it. So to be clear, the webinars are always free, and if you want to spend extra time with me, that costs you something. But I should also say right now it seems like we have four that we're going to have a rotation, but we may keep adding different topics, but right now we have four good ones, so if you missed it, just sign up and maybe we'll do it again. Correct Phil Hudson: Me if I'm wrong, but I think some of the topics you've come up with have come from the q and a that you do on these topics. How do I overcome? Writer's block are like, I'm really struggling with a character or development. So they kind of incept the idea of like, okay, here's a topic we should go down. So lots of great value there. Alright, well again, just for housekeeping, we do split these up into topics. So we have kind of general topics. We have craft breaking in questions related to your course or the webinar topic and then miscellaneous. So we're going to start with K Craft. I think again, people want to know how to do the job, which I think is helpful. Michael Jamin: Yes. Phil Hudson: So Chad, Chad Siime or cme, I don't know how to pronounce that. Sorry, Chad, Michael Jamin: He doesn't, doesn't know either. Phil Hudson: He probably's probably making it up. Was it like Ari, one of the writers in Taco, they pronounced their name. It was changed at one point. Michael Jamin: Yeah, he says his own name wrong. Poor guy. Phil Hudson: I know someone who was a Heinrich and then when World War II happened, they changed it to Heinrich, Henrik Henrich because they didn't want to be associated. Michael Jamin: Yeah, yeah. Phil Hudson: There you go. Chad asked, do you have examples of writers who have successfully experimented with story structure? What principles did they stick to and where did they deviate? Michael Jamin: I don't really know. I mean, I don't really know if I have a good answer to that. Every time I watch something I go, oh, it falls into the good. I guess there's some really high level writing. Christopher Nolan. Okay. So I would say many of his movies do not fit what I would teach, like Memento, but Forget or Inception. I don't know how many times I've watched it and I still don't understand it. So it's a great movie though. Phil Hudson: Yeah. But I would say that I can see that clearly the writing structure in those. Michael Jamin: You can. Okay. Phil Hudson: Oh yeah, you're definitely an inception too. It's like how do we get on this journey and how are we making decisions and where this stakes, all that stuff. I think it's all, Michael Jamin: A lot of it playing at the timeline, memento when he's playing with it. I don't even know what year it's supposed to Phil Hudson: Be. You're right. But I wonder if that's, it's all there and it's just been split to change and mess with your head a bit, but it's all there, which is why it resonates with people. Michael Jamin: But I guess my advice is like, listen, if you want to operate at the high level, that's great, but let's just get to the professional level first before you become the master Phil Hudson: Level. And Christopher Nolan's a great example of that because he had made a feature before he did Memento, so he had a full feature. He was making short films all the time in film school before he even started experimenting with timelines and things like that. Yeah, okay. Listen to me just arguing. Michael jamin on his own podcast. Michael Jamin: What do I know? You might be Phil Hudson: Right, maybe my head did get big. Kevin and Steve. Alright, Marianne wants to know, you have such a great understanding of human nature. Was there something you've always been good at or did you develop it as a writer? Michael Jamin: No, I didn't. I have a very low emotional iq. My parents are great people, well, great parents, but terrible, low emotional IQs themselves just because that's the household they grew up in. And so it's not a knock on them, it's just like this is the product of your parents. This is how they communicate. And so a lot of this I learned I gained from my wife just from being with her. And then the rest of it, of course, I learned as I became, I became a writer because that's your job as a writer is to really understand people and to get into their shoes. And one of the, it's so funny, I've spoken about this in the past, but my first writing teacher was a guy who really wanted everyone to be in psychoanalysis. That's what he called it because he was so old. They don't even call it like that anymore. It's psychotherapy. But he thought every writer has to be in psychoanalysis because if you don't understand yourself, how could you possibly understand someone else and you or a character? And I think he's absolutely right. I didn't want to believe he was right, but he is right. If you don't understand yourself, and most people do not, and we know this because they go through life unconscious of the people of the damage they're leaving, of the people they're hurting because they're just not even aware of it. And you see

On this week's episode, I have actress Paula Marshall (Euphoria, Walker, Gary Unmarried, and many many more) and we dive into the origins of his career. We also talk about how she dealt with being a new mom and working on a sitcom at the same time. There is so much more so make sure you tune in. Show Notes Paula Marshall on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepaulamarshall/?hl=en Paula Marshall IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005191/ Paula Marshall on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Marshall A Paper Orchestra on Website - https://michaeljamin.com/book A Paper Orchestra on Audible - https://www.audible.com/ep/creator?source_code=PDTGBPD060314004R&irclickid=wsY0cWRTYxyPWQ32v63t0WpwUkHzByXJyROHz00&irgwc=1 A Paper Orchestra on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Audible-A-Paper-Orchestra/dp/B0CS5129X1/ref=sr_1_4?crid=19R6SSAJRS6TU&keywords=a+paper+orchestra&qid=1707342963&sprefix=a+paper+orchestra%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-4 A Paper Orchestra on Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203928260-a-paper-orchestra Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/ Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Paula Marshall: But a lot of parents, they go to jobs and then they come home or they don't work at all, and then it's just mom 100% and they're probably exhausted and happy. Some of my friends, I feel like they're like, I'm so glad. Finally I get to whatever. And either they're retiring and they get to go travel and like, no, I'm an actor. I'm looking for a gig, whatever. I don't think actors ever truly retire. I think we don't. I don't. Michael Jamin: You are listening to What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about conversations and writing, art and creativity. Today's episode is brought to you by my debut collection of True Stories, a paper orchestra available in print, ebook and audiobook to purchase. And to support me on this podcast, please visit michael jamin.com/book and now on with the show. Welcome everyone. My next guest is actress Paula Marshall. She has been, I worked with her years ago on a show called Out of Practice, I think it was like 2005. But Paul, before I let you get a word in edgewise, I got to tell everyone, your credits are crazy long, so your intro may take a long time. So I'm going to just give you some of the highlights to remind you of your incredible body of work here. Really these are just the highlights. She works a ton. So well, let's see. I guess we could start with One Life To Live. That might've been your first one. Grapevine Life goes on. Wonder Years Seinfeld. I heard of that one. Perry Mason diagnosis. Murder Wild Oats. I'm skipping here. Nash Bridges. You did a couple Chicago Suns Spin. City Cupid Snoops Sports Night, the Weber Show. It doesn't end. Just shoot Me, which I worked on. I didn't even know you were on that. Maybe I wasn't there. Hitting Hills and Out of Practice, which we did together. Veronica Mars, nip Tuck, shark ca Fornication. You did a bunch of Gary Unmarried House friends with Benefits, the exes CSI, the Mentalist, two and a Half Men Murder in the First Major Crimes. What else have we got here? Goer Gibbons, I dunno what that is. You have to tell me what that is. And then Modern Family Euphoria. You did a bunch of them. Walker. Paula, I'm exhausted and I'm going to steal your joke here. You can because I'm going to say you're Paula Marshall, but you may know me as Carla Gina. That's what used to tell me Carla Paula Marshall: And I know Carla, Michael Jamin: But know Paula Marshall: She's like the younger version of me. Slightly shorter, Michael Jamin: Bigger, bigger. Boop. But you have done so much. I'm going to jump, I'm going to jump into the hardest part. I'm wondering if this is the hardest part for you is being a guest star on a show because you have to jump in with the cast, you have to know the rules and everything. Is that harder? Paula Marshall: Yes, a hundred percent. It's harder when I guest star on any shows, if I haven't seen the show, I watch three or four on YouTube just so I know who's who and the vibe and the energy. When I guest star on Modern Family I their last season and some could say I canceled the show by being there. I've been called a show killer Michael Jamin: Before. I remember You don't let Right. Paula Marshall: I still have not let that go. I like to say I've just worked on so many different shows at its peak and then it died anyway. It's hard because they're all in a flow and depending on the other actors, how cool they are to kind of throw the ball at you. Michael Jamin: But do you have to identify who's the alpha dog on set? Is that what your plan is? It's Paula Marshall: Pretty clear right away. Really? Yeah. I mean besides whoever's first on the call sheet, I remember one of the producers of Snoop's, David Kelly's first big bomb. That was me. Michael Jamin: It was a sure thing what happened? Paula Marshall: You know what? I'm not sure. Well, when it was supposed to be a comedy quickly turned into a drama, it was not great. But as one of the producers of Snoop said, you don't fuck with the first person on the call sheet. You don't fuck with him. And so you identify that person and depending, it's funny because I've worked with so many great people and so many assholes too. Like David Deney. Damn, is he cool? He's so nice. When I worked on fornication with him, he set a tone for just the set, the crew, the actors, this freedom just to try things. And I remember during my, it was like the first day naked throwing up, Michael Jamin: Wait, were you nervous? Why were you throwing up? Paula Marshall: Hello? Of course. But I Michael Jamin: Remember you're never nervous, Paul, let me tell you who you were. I'm totally nervous. No, you're the most self-assured person probably I've ever worked with. You're very confident. Paula Marshall: Thank you. I'm acting Michael Jamin: Acting. Paula Marshall: But California occasion, it was my first day onset naked, fake fucking. And I remember standing there, it was yesterday, and either tweaking you and touching you up. And I say to everyone, what's amazing, what I'll do for $2,900 when a strike is pending? It was the writer's strike way back in the day. And I remember getting this part on fornication and I'm like to all the girls in the audition room, when we used to have auditions in rooms with other people, I looked around, I'm like, we're not going to really have to be naked. We're not those type of actresses. And they're like, no, no, no. And I'm like standing there. Yeah, yeah. I was naked. Michael Jamin: Was that your first time in a show being naked? I mean Paula Marshall: Topless Michael Jamin: Show Paula Marshall: On a show? Michael Jamin: Yes. Because you were in a model, I'm sure as a model, you're doing wardrobe changes all the time. Paula Marshall: I used to model. I was naked a few things back in the day. Michael Jamin: So were you really nervous about it? I mean, I imagine you would be, but Paula Marshall: Standing there naked is one thing. You just kind of have to dive in the pool, in the cold, cold pool and let it go because you got to put on the confident jacket, I guess I obviously wore a lot around you, but I mean it's more uncomfortable, the fake sex scenes, it's more technical and awkward. It's just but nervous. I dunno. Yeah, you're excited. But I'm also excited when I walk on stage on a sitcom before, if I'm not already in the set, when they start rolling, I'm backstage. How's my hair? Shit, how am I doing? Okay? I get hyped up until you do it once and people laugh and you're like, oh, Michael Jamin: Okay. Are you worried about going up on your lines at all? Is that at all you're thinking about? Paula Marshall: Yes, especially now. Oh shit, my memory. It's just that prevagen, I'm going to look it up later, but yeah, you do. But if you in a sitcom situation, we run it, we rehearse it all week. Still Michael Jamin: The lines are changing all week. That's all I Paula Marshall: Know. But they're changing all week. But then you run it and you drill it on TV shows like euphoria or whatever. Yeah, you run it. But then again, they don't really change the lines at all. But yeah, you were a little bit, but then you got a great script supervisor that you're like, I'm up. And then they say it and then you go back and you do it. But yeah, always, I'm always really nervous until maybe the second take Michael Jamin: Of any, the hardest thing it seems to me is just like, okay, you're naked and you have to forget that there's all these people there. You have Paula Marshall: To Michael Jamin: Completely, it's almost like you're crazy to have to be able to forget that, Paula Marshall: Michael, when you paid $2,900. That's right. I was shocked. That's all you get for being naked. Yeah, you do. You are nervous. But I don't know. I was 40 then, so I looked pretty good naked, although I only had four days notice. Back then we didn't have ozempic, so I was like, okay, I can't, no salt, no bread. And I remember in that shot that the camera guy, they decided in the moment, Hey, can you walk over to David? And then bent over, he's on the bed and then kiss him. I'm like, well, that depends. What's your lens there? You got there? And I'm like, how wide is your lens? And he looked at me and I'm like, I'm a photographer. I like taking pictures. So I know. And I'm like, so I'm going to bend over with my white ass and I had four days notice on this and my ass is just going to be in the pretty much. And you're like, okay, I could do it. But you hope for body makeup. I don't know. Don't you think I had any, I should have demanded body Michael Jamin: Makeup. And this was probably even before there were, what d

I’ve been a television writer for the past 27 years. While I’ve written on some amazing shows, the work that I’m most proud of is my new book, A Paper Orchestra. It’s the funniest, it’s the deepest, and it’s the one that will hit you hardest in the heart. These are the deeply personal, true stories of an awkward, sensitive man searching for the things that are most important: identity, love, forgiveness, and redemption. It's available now for your reading pleasure. Show Notes Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/ A Paper Orchestra on Audible - https://www.audible.com/ep/creator?source_code=PDTGBPD060314004R&irclickid=wsY0cWRTYxyPWQ32v63t0WpwUkHzByXJyROHz00&irgwc=1 A Paper Orchestra on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Audible-A-Paper-Orchestra/dp/B0CS5129X1/ref=sr_1_4?crid=19R6SSAJRS6TU&keywords=a+paper+orchestra&qid=1707342963&sprefix=a+paper+orchestra%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-4 A Paper Orchestra on Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/203928260-a-paper-orchestra A Paper Orchestra on Website - https://michaeljamin.com/book Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/ Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Michael Jamin: Yeah, but the problem is they don't help you. They design the book cover. You don't get a choice of what the book cover is. Maybe they give you three choices, but that's about it. They decide how they want and they decide what the title of the book is because you sold 'em the rights. So why am I giving away all this power to someone who hasn't earned it? Why am I making them rich? Why am I giving them any creative input at all when the whole point of this was for me to have a hundred percent creative input? You are listening to What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about conversations in writing, art, and creativity. Today's episode is brought to you by my debut collection of True Stories, a paper orchestra available in print, ebook and audiobook to purchase and to support me on this podcast, please visit michael jamin.com/book now on with the show. Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin. Welcome back to What the Hell Is Michael Jamin talking about the podcast where we explore art, creativity, and writing. Oh, it's a big announcement today, Phil. Phil's back, big day Phil Hudson: Back. Happy to be back. Thank you for having me. Michael Jamin: Big day. We're finally building up. This has been a long project. Phil book, my book, A Paper Orchestra Drops or dropped if you're hearing this. It's available, it's, it's already Phil Hudson: Dropped. It's available yesterday, so go get it now. Michael Jamin: It's called a paper orchestra and it's a collection of personal essays. If you're a fan of David Sedaris, I think of it as David Sedaris meets Neil Simon. And this has been my passion project for years. I've been working on this and I'm very excited to put it out in the world. As you can get it on print, you can get it on audiobook, you can get it as ebook, however you consume your books, and you can get it everywhere. You can go get it on michael jamin.com. You can find it on Amazon, on Barnes and Noble or Audible for the audio audiobook. Anywhere, anywhere you get Apple. If you want to get the ebook, it's everywhere, Phil. It's everywhere. Phil Hudson: It's like you got a real publishing deal except you didn't. Michael Jamin: Well, I'm doing it myself, Phil Hudson: And we'll go into that. I want people to understand you chose to self-publish this at this point, but that's not how we started. And we've talked a bit about that when we changed the podcast title and we talked a bit about it. We're talking about your live shows, but I think this is like, let's celebrate Michael Jamin a little bit today because you're always talking to people to build the mountain, to climb. You are now at the top of that mountain, and I imagine you're looking over and saying, oh crap, look, that other peak there I've got to get to now. Michael Jamin: Yeah, I already am. Yeah, for sure. Lot of it. And I hope this inspires a lot of you. There's so many people who are like, I want to sell my screenplay, or I want to help me break in, help me, help me. But there's so much that you can do. So unempowering disempowering, you're basically hoping that someone else is going to make your career, buy my script, make my movie. But there's so much that you can do on your own, and you may think it's more work because you're doing it yourself, but it's actually less work because now you don't have to count on someone else to do it for you. You can stop begging, you can stop worrying about all the rejection because when you're selling your scripts or trying to, you're going to get rejected by 99 out of a hundred people. But if you just build it yourself, there's so much you can do. The year we live in, it's so empowering. Everyone has a phone and you can shoot on your phone, you can make a movie. Everyone has a miniature movie studio. There's so much we all can do and on our own. And so I'm just going to share a little bit about the journey that I've been on when I started writing this book. So basically this started well over four years ago, maybe five years ago. I told my wife that I was just at a point in my life where I felt a little disheartened by, a little bored by what I was writing in television because when I write for tv, and I'm very grateful to have a job and a career, but I'm always writing what someone is paying me to write. And I'm very rarely writing what I want to write. I'm paying what someone pays me to write or what I can sell, but that's not how I started writing when I was in college and in high school. I just wanted to write what I wanted to write. And so I went for a walk with my wife one day and I was like, I have a really bad idea. I'm thinking of writing a collection of personal essays, which is what David Seras writes. And I love his writing. I've read everything. He's written multiple times. You show him your card, you got a card back there, don't you? Oh yeah. Yeah. He actually, I sent him a piece of fan letter, a fan mail three years ago. But I've read him so much. I knew that he would respond. He talks about, I knew he would respond. It just took him three years to respond, but it was very kind of him. So yeah, so I started writing. I wanted to write this project. I wanted to write what I want to write. I wanted to tell stories the way I wanted to tell them without network notes, without a partner, without. I just wanted to see what I can do on my own without having someone telling me what to do or breathing down my back or saying, no, it should be this or that. What can I do? And so I told that to Cynthia and she said, that's a great idea. And I said, but you don't understand even if I sell it, I'm not going to make a lot of money from it and it's going to take me years and years to do. She goes, you got to do it anyway, because if you do, you will find yourself in the process. And I was like, okay. And at the time, I was really in a bad place. I was just very upset about stuff mentally. I was in a bad place. I was like, okay, I'll start writing. And that's what I did. I remember I had listened to a lot of David C's audio books, but I had never read him. So I was like, I better read him. And then I bought a bunch of books and I read the first one. I remember I was lying in bed. I was reading the first book and I'm about halfway through and I'm thinking, where's this guy going? What's he doing here? Where's he going with this? And then I got to the end of the piece and the ending was such a wonderful ending. I was like, oh my God. And I almost threw the book across the room. I was, I was so mad. I was like, this is going to be so much harder than I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be easy or natural, not easy, but just considering I'm a writer, I didn't think it would be that difficult. So then I just started studying him and I got all his books and I read them multiple times over and over again, and the more I read, I was just trying to look for patterns and trying to learn from him. And that kind of just began, that was the beginning of this journey just to study, study what I wanted to do. Phil Hudson: You're constantly telling people to study their craft, and you talk about story and story structure. You have a course on that. Most of your content you put on social media is dedicated to helping people understand that your webinars are often about resetting people's expectations about what a writing career looks like and helping them focus on what really matters. And the undertone that I've witnessed over the last two, two and a half years of this process with you of at least starting the podcast and helping with social media and that stuff, it's all based under the reality or the realization that creativity is worth doing just to be creative and that there's value in that process beyond monetary pay or paychecks. Michael Jamin: Well, yeah, for sure. When I first started writing these stories, the first two, first several were not very good. I was writing in David Sari's voice because I didn't know how else to do it. The ironic thing, as a TV writer, I'm always writing in someone else's voice. I'm writing in the character's voice or the voice of the show, but this is my voice, and this is the first time I actually had to do that. And so because I'm a good mimic and because I had just read so much of him, I was kind of writing, I was kind of the writer like him, and I thought the first two stories were good. And then I set it down for a couple of weeks and I read it with fresh eyes and I thought, oh, this is terrible. It felt like a cheap knockoff. It felt like me pretending I was him and I hated it. I threw all

On October 28th, I hosted a webinar called "How To Write A Great Story," where I talked about how to come up with interesting and unique story ideas, as well as how tapping into your everyday life interactions with people can help with this. This episode addresses questions you asked in our Q&A session that we didn't have time to answer. There's lots of great info here, make sure you watch. Show Notes Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/ Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Michael Jamin: Yeah, you better figure that out because your story needs to be about one thing everyone wants to throw in the kitchen sink. And it's about this, but it's also about this, but it also has elements of this. It's like, no, no, you don't know what your story is. You got a hot mess. You can't kitchen sink it. Your story's about one thing. And if you think it's about two things, congratulations. Now you have a sequel or you have another episode, but your story's about one thing. And if you think I'm making it up, read stories that you've enjoyed and ask yourself the same question. What is this about you're listening to? What the hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity, I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts. Hey everyone, welcome back to What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? And today I am answering your questions and I'm back here with Phil. Welcome back, Phil, Phil Hudson: Good to be here. Thank you for Michael Jamin: Having me. We had a delay because I borrowed some of Phil's mic equipment for a few weeks and then I gave it back to him with the wrong card. And then Phil, you learned a lesson. The lesson is no good deed goes unpunished. Phil Hudson: Oh man, I feel like's. I'm Michael Jamin: Happy to have taught you that lesson. Thank Phil Hudson: You for teaching me that lesson. I feel like the theme of every story I've ever written is that you get screwed either way. Just so everyone knows. Sometimes high tech is low tech and we have these awesome zoom recorders and they only allow you to have a 32 megabyte SD card. And then the American way of gluttony. We bought massive SD cards for the podcast, missed an SD card somewhere. So Michael Jamin: Here we're won't run, but we're back and we made it work. We had a little delay. And so today I have these webinars every three weeks or so where I talk to people about writing. And anyone's welcome to join. It's free, go to michaeljamn.com/webinar for the next one. And we have a rotating list of topics that I cover and they're all writing related. And so these are some of the questions I didn't have time to answer during these webinars. Phil Hudson: And you are often testing new subjects too, so if you've attended them in the past, make sure you come sign up so you can get into those. Michael Jamin: Yeah. Phil Hudson: Alright, well, we've got several topics and as we do, I tend to group these together based on subject matter, and these are raw questions just ask during the podcast. So I apologize in advance for ruining people's names and mispronouncing everything, but let's start with craft. I think that's the thing people care a lot about is how do they get better at writing? And s sl junk indie author asks, how does the story structure fluctuate depending on genre, I should say too, this is from your podcast, how to Write a Great Story, which is one of your My Michael Jamin: Webinar. My webinar. Your Phil Hudson: Webinar, yeah, yeah. Excuse me. Your webinar, how to Write a Great Story, which is one of your most popular webinars that we have. So if you haven't signed up for that, go do that the next time it's up. So how does the story structure fluctuate? Depending on genre, if I'm writing a horror, but I'm used to fantasy, what are some things I need to consider when structuring my story? Michael Jamin: I really don't think there's that much of a difference, to be honest. I think if you're writing a mystery that's different, and I think writing mysteries, people do it wrong all the time. Rich are a little harder to do, but you're just telling the story structure is very similar. You're telling a scary story. A horror story is just a scary story. A fantasy is just, it is a fantastical story, but they're just stories. I mean, everyone gets hung up on these genres. You get to decide the tone and the tone of your story is scary or fantastical, but it's still a story. Phil Hudson: Yeah. Something that you told me privately that I think is interesting for everybody listening, you were approached by a publisher who said, we want to make you the next Save the Cat. We want you to publish this book series, and you've never read any of those things. But for those of us who have, this is commonly taught, what are the tropes of your genre? What are the things in your genre? What is the story structure of your genre? And it's like you read between the lines and it's like what you've said many times. You're taking something apart and reassembling that and it's not the right way. You need to start with structure and then move forward. It's the same reason you do a foundation and then a frame, and then you do the rest of the house. Michael Jamin: You can paint the house any color you want, and that's whether it's scary or funny or dramatic or whatever. That's just color of paint. But the house still looks the same for the framing, still looks the same regardless of what paint you want to put on it. Phil Hudson: Awesome. Just Mason May. How does someone overcome the concern that our work won't live up to its potential? Michael Jamin: Oh, it never does. To get over it, you'll never be happy. You'll never be, oh, I should have done it. This. When you're done, you're always going to look at it and go, I wonder if this could have been better. I think any artist is going to feel that way, but if the question is how do I make sure it's good enough to even share, well, then you can just give it to your friend or your mother or whoever and have them look at it and read it. Take your name off the cover and ask them, did you enjoy reading this? When you got to the bottom of the page, did you want to turn the page or not? And if you wanted to turn the page, you did a good job. And if you didn't, something's wrong. Phil Hudson: Right. Aside from that, what would you recommend people do to overcome the fear of rejection or the fear of someone hating their work? Michael Jamin: I get over it. I mean, that's the job you're signing up for this. Hopefully no one's going to be too mean to you, but just know that when I was starting off, I was no good. No one's good when they start off. I mean, no one starts every single artist you admire, musician, actor, writer, whatever, performer, they were not good when they started. Listen to them in interviews. They'll say as much, so you get better. The more you do, the better you get. Phil Hudson: Yeah. We watch these kids shows now that I've got small children, and one of our favorite shows is Bluey, which I've talked about before. And they just dropped a bunch of new episodes yesterday, and one of the episodes is about drawing. And the daughter bluey is not good at drawing, but the dad's not good at drawing, but the mom's really good at drawing, and then the little sister doesn't care at all. She's just a kid and she's just drawing whatever she wants. And so the dad's super conscientious, self-conscious of what he's drawing. And so bluey the protagonist becomes a little self-conscious of her drawing, and they tell the story that the dad made fun of when he was a kid. So he stopped and the mom, just, her mom incentivized her, encouraged her, you're doing great for a 7-year-old. And she was like, oh, and that was enough. And then she became a wonderful artist. So at the end, bluey and the dad are both freed up to draw the things that they got made fun of or were worried about. And it's this beautiful allegory of just, Hey, just let it go. Who cares? That person's just being a jerk and it's because they envy what you do. That's Michael Jamin: A good lesson. That's a good lesson from that show. Phil Hudson: Yeah, it's a great show. I bet we should watch it with your kids, Michael. Michael Jamin: My kids are too old to watch TV with me now. Phil Hudson: Yeah, that's scary. It's so sad to hear that. Rachel Zoo, I would like to get my motivation for riding back and for everybody. You have this other webinar you just put out, which is about how professional writers overcome writer's block. And I think that kind of addresses this, but this was before that. But what general thoughts do you have about getting motivation back to write? Michael Jamin: Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, I can't motivate anyone. I mean, if you don't have the motivation in you, then it's not going to get done. So you have to be self-driven. But probably what you're experiencing is the fact that you just don't know how to do it. And so when you don't know how to do something or you think you're bad at it, it's not fun. Why would you want to do anything when you feel like you're horrible at it? But once you learn how to do it and story structure can be taught and it doesn't make writing easier, it makes it easier. It doesn't make it easy, but it makes it easier. So I think the problem that you're facing is you just dunno how to do it yet. So come to some of my webinars and that'll help you a lot just to learn. You're flailing. I don't blame you. It's no fun. When you're flailing Phil Hudson: For everybody who is unaware, you also give away the first lesson of your online course for free @michaeljamin.com/free. And you teach this be

On this week's episode, I have TikTok Star Mackenzie Barmen. We talk about what she has already accomplished in her very short time in LA, as well as some of the projects she has planned for the future. There is so much more so make sure you tune in. Show Notes Mackenzie Barmen on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mackenziebarmen/ Mackenzie Barmen on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mackenziebarmen?lang=en Mackenzie Barmen on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAP_cFPc2fqGTe50YhOlkDg/videos Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Mackenzie Barman: There's a part of me that worries on some level all the time, but then there's a stronger part of me. I think that's pretty delusional in a good way, that I'm like, no, I am certain that I'm supposed to do this, and I just can't falter. I just, I'm doing, Michael Jamin: You're listening to, what the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity. I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts. Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of, what the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? Well, I'll tell you what I've been talking about. If you've been listening to any number of my podcasts or by social media, I've been saying the same thing a lot. I've been saying, if you are an aspiring whatever, if you're an actor or a writer or performer, put your work out there. Just start doing it, and the more you do it, the better you get. And then my next guest is someone who did just that and is doing that, and I discovered her maybe a year or two ago, and we're going to talk, and she's big. We're going to talk to her about her journey here. Mackenzie Barman, thank you so much for coming here. Lemme tell you when I first found you, and then you'll Yes, please. Then we'll tell you were doing a bit, it was a piece on you were reciting nursery rhymes, and you playing two characters. You generally will talk about this, but you generally do two characters have, and you're both, and usually it's kind of a sweet and naive version of you. And then there's kind of a meaner more, not sinister, but cynical. And I guess she puts you in your place. She's a little, and she wants up making you cry a lot. And so the sweet one was talking about nursery rhyme, and the other one was telling you, you're so naive, you have no idea what these nursery rhymes are about. And so that blew up and that's how I found you, and it was really funny. I love Mackenzie Barman: It. Thank you. Michael Jamin: Well, tell me, what is this? So you're huge on TikTok, you have almost 3 million followers, which is Mackenzie Barman: Almost Michael Jamin: Huge. I've written for shows that haven't been seen by anywhere near 3 million people. So you have a giant following, but tell me, so why did you start doing this? Mackenzie Barman: Well, I was an actor in the pandemic, and I didn't really know what to do with myself. And so everyone was on TikTok for fun. That was when TikTok was really blowing up, and I kind of just decided to start making videos and then not taking it seriously at all. But then I was like, well, it gives me a kind of a platform. And no one was really using it like that yet. But I started to see some sketches pop up and I was like, huh, or viral videos, whatever. And then I ended up just at random seeing somebody write about a nursery rhyme in a Facebook status. And I was still using Facebook, which I don't, and I was like, oh. And I learned in that moment what that nursery rhyme meant. So I just on a whim made that first Michael Jamin: Video. So that was one of your first videos? Mackenzie Barman: Yeah, it was one. I did a whole series of those ones. So I did it and I just kind of improvised it. And the next morning I woke up and it had gone kind of viral, and so I made another one, and then I made another one and they kind of just blew up. And so, yeah, it was kind of random. Michael Jamin: But your intention, it was boredom or was it, you said you wanted to have a platform. What was your goal? Mackenzie Barman: Well, it was a little bit out of boredom, but it was more so like, well, let me put myself out there. And I used to go to a lot of casting director workshops and when I lived in New York City, and they would always say the same thing when YouTube was really big, make your own web series, put yourself out there, all that stuff. And so that's always been in the back of my mind, and I've always kind of considered myself a multihyphenate. I also shoot and direct and all that stuff, so I was like, I need to do that. So that's why I've always kind of focused on acting, being the primary thing in my videos. Let's get to that. Michael Jamin: Yeah, I was going to say, it's really smart. You show a range. I mean, you have, like I said, the sweet side, and then the other side is, and sometimes you play well, you're always playing characters, but to me it's smart. You're showing your range as an actor. Mackenzie Barman: Yeah. Michael Jamin: What do your reps have to say about all this? Mackenzie Barman: They love it. I actually got my managers through TikTok, they found me and oh my Michael Jamin: God, really? Mackenzie Barman: I had already had voiceover representation through my agency, but I didn't have a manager or anything. And I met my manager, Rachel. I loved her right away. And they love it, and they love the content and that it's acting first and the series and all that. Michael Jamin: So they give you any feedback or No, they just like, we love it. Mackenzie Barman: No, not really. They just let me roll with it. Yeah. Michael Jamin: Interesting. And then what other opportunities have come from all this? Mackenzie Barman: Gosh, well, one of the coolest things is the relationships that I've built with other creators, especially actor creators. And you just kind of know when you vibe with some people or when I watch certain people, I'm like, I know our brains work the same way. So I seek those people out to become, I love getting to know the people that I admire. It's cool to meet people talent first, and then it's doing a play with somebody. I Michael Jamin: Know you collaborate with people sometimes. I've seen some of those videos you've done. Mackenzie Barman: I've done a couple. I'm going to be doing more now that I'm in LA and with a lot more people. But that's been a really cool thing that's come from this. Did Michael Jamin: You start this in New York your first three years? Yeah. Oh, really? Mackenzie Barman: Okay. Yeah, I just moved to LA a few weeks ago. I was in New York Michael Jamin: City. Oh, when you said you changed your apartments, I assumed you were moved, okay. From in la, but you're Oh, you're, well, welcome to la. Okay. Thank you. Wow, this is a big adjustment for you. So what prompted you to move to LA then? Mackenzie Barman: Well, my managers are out here, and since TikTok, I've really, it's funny. I was always kind of like, I wanted to really be such a chameleon and not hone in on any one thing. I didn't want to just do comedy. I didn't want to just do drama. But now with TikTok, it's really pushed me more into comedy, and I've found that I really do love it. So out here, there's so many comedy opportunities, and I'm going to be doing part of a live show on December 10th, and just being, I just needed to be out here. Michael Jamin: Okay. So how did you get, you've only been here for three minutes, so how did you get this live show already? Mackenzie Barman: Through a friend of mine, actually, through social media. Someone you, oh Michael Jamin: My God, so smart. I'm always yelling at people. They're like, do I have to be in la? I'm like, well, this is where everyone is. I mean, why would you know? What were you doing? Were you doing a lot of theater in New York? Mackenzie Barman: Yeah, so I did a lot of regional theater. I did an off-Broadway musical, and then when the pandemic happened, I was really trying to shift into more TV and film work. I really wanted to be on tv. I still do. That's really my big focus is to be on tv, be in movies. But I was kind of transitioning and doing the casting director workshops and doing all those things, and then the pandemic hit. But yeah, mostly theater. I'm a theater girl Michael Jamin: Now. Did you study, where have you studied? Did you study in college? Where did, yeah, Mackenzie Barman: I went to a SUNY school and I loved it. I went to SUNY Potsdam in upstate New York, and I studied theater and theater education. I didn't really start doing plays until high school and in high school. So Michael Jamin: You're from New York? Mackenzie Barman: Yeah, I'm from New York. From Michael Jamin: New York, okay. Mackenzie Barman: Yeah, born and raised, upstate New York, near Albany. And then, yeah, I moved down to the city to be an actor and do all that. Right. Michael Jamin: Wow. You've only been here three weeks and so much has already happened for you already. Mackenzie Barman: What do you think? Yeah, I'm trying. Michael Jamin: What do you think It's a culture shock. What do you think? Mackenzie Barman: Right now, I'm in my lust for life extrovert phase where I'm like, because a homebody pretty much, I'm an extroverted homebody, so I like to be home a lot. But right now I'm just trying to be out a lot, meet people that I've, and just kind of be really social, Michael Jamin: Been amazing. How did you get into play? Okay, you moved here. Did you stay with a friend when you found your, how did, because I'm telling people come out. How did you do it? How did Mackenzie Barman: It was a pain? So I visited last August, and I stayed with one of my managers. Actually, I crashed

On this week's episode, I have choreographer Phil Wright. We talk about the huge risk he took moving out to Los Angeles from a successful career in Miami. He dives into some of the famous people he has worked with as well as what his most viral video is. There is so much more so make sure you tune in. Show Notes Phil Wright on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phil_wright_/ Phil Wright on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philwright_ Phil Wright on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PhilWright Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Phil Wright: And it's hard because we're working when we're not working, there's no punching and punch out clock with Michael Jamin: Us. Phil Wright: So it's tough. So getting the brain to relax and just actually sit down and watch a movie and not worry about camera angles, or how did he save his line to make him funny? Michael Jamin: Really? Phil Wright: I've lost, and which I'm trying to get back to. I've lost the concept of just being a consumer. Michael Jamin: You're listening to. What the hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity. I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts. Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin, another episode of, what the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about, guys. So as you know, I'm really into talking to creative people who've just done interesting things and have invented themselves in ways. And so ordinarily I talk to screenwriters and authors and actors and directors, people like that, but I just discovered this guy I want to introduce you to. His name is Phil Wright, and he's the first dancer choreographer I'm talking to, which I think is so, I don't know. I got a lot of questions for you. Phil. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for doing this, Phil Wright: Dude. Thank you for having me. I'm such a fan, man. You don't realize I'm such a good fan. I watch your page all the time. I'm always interested in what you're getting into. Ah, Michael Jamin: That's very kind. I'm a fan of you. I have to know doing something, which is really interesting. Not a lot of people can make a living as a dancer and even a choreographer that's even fewer people. And yet this is, so where did this all begin then? Phil Wright: Okay, so originally from Miami, Florida. I moved to LA about 10 years ago. I had stepped into the dance world accidentally, I guess because I wasn't really technically trained per se. I didn't start at a young age. I started dancing on the streets. That's when we had crews, and if you weren't part of a crew, then you were a nerd. And I wasn't a nerd by any means. I wasn't book smart, so you had to be a part of a crew, and that's what it was. So it sort of kept me off of the street, out of trouble and fast forward, moved to LA about 10 years ago and just rebranded myself in what I was trying to do with my career. I actually started teaching children to start things off. Kind of got like, you know what? I think I could do better. I think I could, when you Michael Jamin: Say teaching children, you were teaching at schools at where? Yeah, Phil Wright: Teaching at local dance studios around the neighborhood. And honestly, it just started off like, Hey, I need some extra money, man. So I'm serving tables at Applebee's, serving two for twenties and three o'clock rolls around. I go teach a class and do my double shift, go right back to Applebee's and do the same thing all over again. And we won't talk about poker nights. But anyway. Michael Jamin: So you were starting at the bottom, but when you moved to la, did you hope to get in music videos? What was your aspiration? Phil Wright: Well, I mean, first off, I had sort of established myself in Miami. I started teaching for the Miami Heat Dance Team. Oh, really? Miami Billboard Awards, the Latin Billboard awards. And I had sort of caught fire in Miami, and I had an apartment in BIS Camp Boulevard. So I was fine. I didn't really need to move. Michael Jamin: So that must have been hard. You're going to leave all that behind. Phil Wright: Yeah. Yeah. Michael Jamin: You wanted a bigger pool or what? It was Phil Wright: Huge. It was a huge sacrifice. And then at that time, my girlfriend, well, now wife, I just came home and I just sort of got motivated by my friends who had moved from Miami to la. Michael Jamin: And how old were you at this point when you decided to leave it behind? Phil Wright: Dude, I told my kids this all the time. It's never too late. I moved to Los Angeles when I was 26 years old. Michael Jamin: Right. Okay. Well, you're still young, but, but yeah, Phil Wright: But in artistry world, especially if you're in front of the camera, not behind the camera writing or Michael Jamin: Directly, Phil Wright: If you're in front of the camera and you have eyes on the camera, you have to be, I don't know, fresh, I guess. I don't know. Michael Jamin: Well, especially dancing, because it takes a wear and tear on your body. I mean, it really does. Definitely. Phil Wright: So during that time, you would consider that, woo, that's kind of late in the game. So I moved to LA and started all over, man. I had gave up everything and I had dreams, and I gave it all up and moved to LA to sleep on the floor in my friend's apartment, one bedroom apartment with roaches crawling on me, just, Michael Jamin: And then where did you start from? I should mention, because I haven't said this before. You're huge on YouTube. You've got well over a million followers. That's a big deal, man. That's a very big deal. Thank you. So I mean a household name, but you are making quite a name for yourself. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Phil Wright: I like to say this broke, gets creative really quick. Michael Jamin: Yes. Tell me how Phil Wright: The motivation to, it's not money per se, it's sort of just being productive. You know what I mean? If I can stay productive, the money will follow. But when you don't necessarily have opportunities knocking at the door every single day, you have to sort of create those opportunities. Michael Jamin: So how were you doing that? What were you doing? Phil Wright: This was the time when Instagram was around and we had our 15 second videos. These were 15 second videos. And I would go out on the street, gorilla style, no permits. I hope they won't catch me now, but no permits, no nothing. And I would get the most popular song that would drop at midnight, photograph something, get two or three friends, and record a dance routine in the middle of the street. Michael Jamin: And this, was it Vine or Instagram? Phil Wright: This was Instagram during the time. This is after Vine. Michael Jamin: Okay. Phil Wright: Now, strategically, what I would do is get the teachers that were already teaching in the classrooms, but I wasn't teaching during that time. No one knew who I was. I knew who those people were because I took those people's classes. So they knew I was a great dancer. They knew I was good people. So they would say, sure, yeah, Phil, we'll dance with you. And no one really, at that time, videos were not big. They weren't a big deal. So I would get them and they would just, Hey, look. And my pitch was like, I only need 15 seconds your time. That's it. 15 seconds, we'll do two eight counts. That's it. And you'll make a new appearance and then you bounce out. But Michael Jamin: What was your expectation when you were putting these videos up? Phil Wright: My expectations were to get into classrooms, to teach classes. Michael Jamin: Oh, okay. Why? Because you need a following to get to teach in a classroom. Phil Wright: Absolutely. Michael Jamin: Really? Phil Wright: Absolutely. See Michael Jamin: That I did not know, even in a small little private studio, you need a following. Phil Wright: You need a following. If people don't know who you are, they're not coming to take class. Michael Jamin: But I would think that my daughters went to take dance class and there was a studio in the neighborhood, and we went there. Phil Wright: Yeah, I mean, well, I'm thinking, I'm talking more of entertainment, not your residential. Michael Jamin: So these classes are more, Phil Wright: These are professional Michael Jamin: Dance classes, classes, Phil Wright: Debbie Reynolds Dance Complex. These are where the pros go to Michael Jamin: Try. Okay. Phil Wright: And my hope was is to grab these teachers and let them be a part of my video, and I produce it. Well, I cut it. I get on my little editing app, cut it up really quick. And my hope was is if they were ever absent, the studios would see that and say, oh, wow, who's this guy dance with? JR Taylor. Oh, Jr. R Taylor's out next week. Let's just get this guy, because JR Taylor must know this guy. Michael Jamin: So funny, because I did a post a while ago where I said, get in the neighborhood, get as close as you can physically possible to the person whose job you want, pick up their scraps. And that's exactly what you did. You just pick up their scraps. And now you're that guy now. Phil Wright: Yeah. And you know what? I actually had a friend of mine, we guess, I don't know, associates, and he came to me, and during that time, I had asked him to be a part of my video. At that time, no one knew me or this and that, and he declined. He was just like, no, I don't have time and everything like that. And now, fast forward six, seven years later, I invited him to my house, to my birthday party. Actually, dude, I've never told you this, but I have to apologize. I didn't know you. I was like, dude, that's water on the bridge. Doesn't matter. You didn't know me. You

On this week's episode, I have author Shelia Heti, book writer of Pure Color, Motherhood, Alphabetical Diaries, and many many more. We talk about how I discovered her writing and why Pure Color meant so much to me. She also explains her writing process and how she approaches a story. There is so much more. Show Notes Sheila Heti Website: https://www.sheilaheti.com/ Sheila Heti on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Heti Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Sheila Heti: That's what I was thinking. Michael Jamin: It was work harder. Sheila Heti: I was like, I got to work harder than any other writer alive. Michael Jamin: And what did that work look like to you? Sheila Heti: Just always writing and always not being satisfied and being a real critic of my work and trying to make it better and trying to be more, try to get it to sound and more interesting and figure out what my sentences were and letting myself be bad and repeat myself until I got better. And I don't think that I ever let that go. I'm not sitting here today saying, I work harder than any other writer alive. I do remember having that feeling when I was young. That's what I need to do. That's the only way Michael Jamin: You're listening to What the hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity. I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts. Michael Jamin: What the hell is Michael Jamin talking about today? Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm talking about, honestly, one of the greatest, I feel, one of the greatest writers of my generation. Yep, yep. Her name is Sheila Hedy. She's the author of I guess 11 books, including Pure Color, although it's spelled with a U, the Canadian Way, a Garden of Creatures, motherhood, how Should a Person Be? And her forthcoming book, alphabetical Diaries. And she's just an amazing talent. So she's an author, but I don't describe her this way. And by the way, I'm going to talk about Sheila for about 59 minutes, and then at the end I'll let her get a word and then I'll probably cut her off. But I have to give her a good proper introduction. She's really, really that amazing of a writer. So author isn't really the right word. She really is, in my opinion, an artist who paints with words. And if you imagine going up to a Van Gogh painting, standing right up next to it, and then you see all these brushstrokes, and then you take a step back and you're like, okay, now I see the patterns of the brushstrokes. And you take a little step back, oh, the patterns form an image. Then another step back, you say, oh, that's a landscape. It really is like that with her writing. She has these images that she paints with words, and then they form bigger thoughts and you pull back and it's really amazing what she does and how she kind of reinvents herself with each piece. And so I'm so excited and honored she for you to join me here so I can really talk more about this with you. Thank you for coming. Sheila Heti: Yeah, thanks. That introduction made me so happy. Thank you for saying all that. Michael Jamin: Lemme tell you by the way, how I first discovered you. So I have a daughter, Lola, she's 20, she's a writer, and we trade. I write something we trade. It's really lovely that we get to talk about. And so she's off at school, but she left a book behind and I'm like, all right, what's this book she left behind? Because that way I can read it and we can talk about that, have our book club. And she left Pure Color. And I was like, oh, I like the cover, so I'll take a look at it. And what I didn't realize, it was the perfect book to discover you by because it's book about among other things, about a father's relationship with his daughter. So I text her, I say, I'm reading pure color. She goes, Sheila Hedy's, one of my favorite authors. If I could write anybody, it would be her. I'm like, all right, well, I got to continue reading this. And then a couple of days later, I get to the part and I send her a text. I say, you and me would make a great leaf. And she goes, that's my favorite part. The tree. That's my favorite part. You're also an interviewer. You've interviewed some amazing writers. Joan Didion, Margaret Atwood, big shots. And so I'm sure as an interviewer, you give a lot of thought to your first question. So I was trying to, I better give a lot of thought to my first question, and I kept coming back to the same one, which is pure color. It's such a big swing. If you were to pitch me this idea, you'd say, I'm going to write a book. It's about a father's relationship with his daughter, but it's also about a woman's unrequited love with her friend, but it's also about the soul and what it means to have a life. I'd say, I don't know, Sheila, that's kind of a big swing. I don't know about this, but you hit it out of the park, you did it. It was beautifully done. And so my first question is, you come up with an idea like this, where do you get the nerve to think that you can actually pull this off? This is really where do you get the nerve to think that, okay, I'm going to do this. Sheila Heti: The nerve. Michael Jamin: Well, it's such a big swing. It's like, how do you know you can do this? Do you know what I'm saying? Sheila Heti: Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I don't know that I could do it. So it's nice to hear. I mean, I don't think that you ever think you're going to be able to finish the book that you start, and then when you finish a book, you never think you're ever going to start a new one. That's sort of where I am right now. In that confused place. There's a part of it that always feels like, I dunno how to explain it. I mean, I don't know how to answer that question. It's a weird process. There's no process. There's no system to doing it, and then you hope you did it. You feel good and it feels done, but you dunno how you ever got there. Michael Jamin: And how do you know you arrived? How do you know when it's time to quit on something? And do you ever quit on something? Sheila Heti: Yeah. Yeah, A lot. A lot. But usually not like three or four years in, usually 60 pages in or something like that. Michael Jamin: 60 Sheila Heti: Pages is when you start thinking this is not working. Michael Jamin: Is it a gut feeling? How do you know Sheila Heti: Your curiosity runs out? Michael Jamin: Your curiosity runs out. Okay, so you get bored by it yourself? Sheila Heti: Yeah. Michael Jamin: Is that what you're saying? Sheila Heti: Yeah, it's just like, that was fun. That was nice. That was a good couple of weeks. I was really excited. I really thought this was going somewhere. And then it just ends. It's like a relationship. You think, oh, this is so great, I'm going to be with this person. And then after six months you're like, Michael Jamin: I was kidding myself. But you're writing. I have so much I want to say, it seems like you reinvent yourself with each piece. You know what I'm saying? It's like pure color is very, very different from how should a person be, which I was like, okay, I want to read this. I'm not sure how should a person be, which is extremely different from alphabetical diaries, which is almost like an experiment. And I wonder, do you get pushback from your agent or your publisher? Do they want you to do the same thing? We know it works. Sheila Heti: No, I think that at this point there's no expectation of that. When I wrote my second book, there was a feeling like that's not the first one. And there was some disappointment and the publisher said, this book doesn't count as your next book. In part, I think it was so different, but I think at this point that's, I mean, I've been publishing for 20 years. That's not really what people say to me anymore. Michael Jamin: Really? What do they say? They say, oh good, this is fresh. And it's more from you. Sheila Heti: No, I mean, I guess I changed publishers a lot more than other people do. So my publisher of motherhood didn't like pure color, so they rejected it. So I found a different publisher and the publisher of Tickner, my second book didn't like how should a person be? So I found a different publisher. So I think I move around a lot for that reason. Michael Jamin: Is that common with authors? You have to tell me all about this author thing? No, it's not really common. Sheila Heti: No. Usually you have one publisher and one editor and you just stick with them for a long time. So Michael Jamin: It seems though you came up through the art. Alright, I have this idea of who you are from reading your books. You have, it's all very personal what you write and which makes it brave. It's brave for a couple of reasons. It's brave because you're being so vulnerable, you're putting yourself out there, but it's also brave. I feel like you're trying something new each time and that could fail. And so that to me is part of what makes your writing so exciting. But do you have any expectation when you're writing something which is so different, do you have an expectation of your reader how you want them to react? Sheila Heti: I mean, I want them to get to the end of the book. That's what I want. I want to draw them through, but I don't think I have a feeling like, oh, I want them to be sad on this page and I want them to be curious of this page and feel this way on this page. I just want them to be interested enough to get to the end. So how do I keep that momentum up and how some people conversation, they have long monologues, they're like a monologue, but I'm not because I'm always afraid people are going to lose interest. So I kind of feel like the same with my book. I'm always afraid that somebody's going to lose interest. So I'm always t

On this week's episode, I have actress Mary Lynn Rajskub (24, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, The Dropout, Brooklyn 99 and many many more) and we dive into the origins of his career. We also talk about her new stand-up comedy tour she is doing and how that came about. We talk about so much more, so make sure you tune in. Show Notes Mary Lynn Rajskub on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marylynnrajskub/ Mary Lynn Rajskub IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0707476/ Mary Lynn Rajskub on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lynn_Rajskub Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Mary Lynn Rajskub: I don't know what else to do because I am an artist. So it's always been tied to my personal life and my personal expression, and there's a therapeutic aspect to it. And I don't really, I feel like if I could have taken the route of, I don't know. I never had the ability to be like, I'm going to write scripts, so I just kind of amped up the thing that I am good at. Michael Jamin: You're listening to, what the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity. I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts. Hey everyone. Welcome back for another episode of, what the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'm going to tell you what I'm talking about today. I'm talking with a wonderful actress named Mary Lynn Reup, who I worked with many years ago. I was introduced to her. She's doing her hair right now. How's Mary Lynn Rajskub: Your side part going? Okay, go on. Michael Jamin: Many years we were teamed up to take a pilot out based on her life and many pilots that didn't go anywhere. But Mary Lynn is, you are one of my favorite Hollywood stories, and I'm going to tell it to you and I hope it embarrasses you because it was so funny. So we were working together on telling this pilot, and then it was a few years later, we were doing Marin, mark Marin, his show. We were running his show, and then we needed someone at the last minute to play themselves in an interview. So I text Mary Lynn, I got her number on my cell phone. I text her and I Mary Lynn Rajskub: Say, oh, what did I do? Michael Jamin: I say, I say, Hey, Mary Lynn, I know this is last minute, but do you want to be in our TV show? And then you wrote back, yes, who is this? Mary Lynn Rajskub: Nope, Michael Jamin: Don't need to read a part. And we script's are Mary Lynn Rajskub: Important. Michael Jamin: I'll be there tomorrow. I just assumed I was in your phone. So I was like, whatever. And then we later had you on LX Buddy system, but for the people who are not entirely sure who you are, I mean, you've done a ton of stuff. Most, I guess your biggest role was Chloe on 24, which was a giant hit. So you're Chloe, but then I was also looking through your credits and you also played Chloe on Veronica's closet. And I wonder if that was just a trial run for the name Mary Lynn Rajskub: Trial. Yeah, it's in the ether that the quirky awkward girl, oh, let's call her Chloe in Veronica's closet. She was androgynous and it was Wally Langham who played her assistant on that show, if I'm remembering correctly. Both of us. His character turned out to be gay. It was actually kind of a sweet story. And so we both were ambiguous sexually, and we both had crushes on Scott Bayo, which is not adorable, but Michael Jamin: Not anymore. Do you remember all the parts you've done like this? Do you have a good memory for everything you've done? Mary Lynn Rajskub: You've done Michael Jamin: A lot of parts. Mary Lynn Rajskub: What's funny is you're pulling the switcheroo on me because normally people will say stuff to me and I'm like, I don't remember that at all. But things like this, if you ask me what the part is and what the story is, I most likely will remember that stuff. Michael Jamin: But when you Go ahead, Mary Lynn Rajskub: Yeah, but there are some things where either, I don't know, it depends. Sometimes I'm in stuff, I'm like, I don't remember being there. I don't remember you Michael Jamin: Really. You sometimes turn on the TV and see an episode of something you've done done a ton. And they go, oh, look at there. There I am. Do you not remember? Mary Lynn Rajskub: Yeah. And it's funny, the way that you're saying it through the prism of the actual part, I'll remember that. But there's a certain, I don't know, there's certain events or one-off things or sometimes there's stuff on 24. There's a ton ton of guest stars because there's so much plot on that show, and there's so many people that get killed per episode, most likely. In that case, it's a person that I just wasn't on set with, and so I didn't have memorized the episodes of who all the characters are type of thing. Michael Jamin: Now you do a lot of, I see you posting, you're always on the road, you're always doing standup, but did you start as a standup? Mary Lynn Rajskub: I started in standup ish, yes. I was going to school for painting, and then it turned to performance art, and then I started making fun of performance art. And then I was in San Francisco and I was going to bars and doing open mic shows. I was really attracted to solo performers, but at the time it was more performance arty. And then once I started just organically making fun of it, I started to encounter comedians who would come to these. There was a crossover between artists and comedians who would go to the same open mics. And I remember seeing the comedians and going, oh, that's, oh, that's somebody that knows their voice, their natural at storytelling, because I was seeing a lot of just poetry from their journal and stuff like that. And it wasn't until I started meeting comedians that I was like, oh, those are my people. But I still didn't understand necessarily how I was being funny. Michael Jamin: And then how did you find your voice then? That takes a long time. Mary Lynn Rajskub: Oh, I think I just found it last week. Michael Jamin: Well, tell me why, how you found it. What does that mean for you to find your, I know what it means for a writer. What does it mean for you? Mary Lynn Rajskub: What I'm realizing, honestly, lately within the past few years, especially within the past decade that I've gone on the road doing comedy in earnest, is that I do have a story to tell. It's just taken me a long time to hone in on what that is. And a lot of it is just come from my life experience and putting together, oh, that's what I thought about that, reflecting on stuff, because I think when I first started, I grew up sort of in a bubble and pretty naive, and so I just was putting a vulnerability out there, but I didn't know what I was saying or what I was doing. I got a lot of acting because of that Michael Jamin: Really. So you were vulnerable back when you were starting off? Mary Lynn Rajskub: A lot of times, and that's pretty much what I did on stages. I would improvise and I wouldn't know what I was going to say. And I can remember looking back, other people would be like, did you write a sketch packet for that? Again, there was a crossover between actors and comedy writers, and I used to just really beat myself up, and it's because I was so bogged down by whatever social anxiety and whatever my brain, the mechanism was geared towards performing, and I still can't quite articulate it, but I just know that I didn't have the presence of mind or the ability to, my brain just didn't work that way. I wasn't about to sit down and write a sketch packet. I had to go through it experientially year after year to be like, oh, I'm this type of person. That's why sometimes people will be like, they'll ask the generic question of who are your comedic influences? It's like, I never related to a guy on a stage in a suit with a tie going, here's what I think about this. It's only lately that I'm going, oh, I have an opinion on that, and it's a strong opinion, but it took me a long time to not be really reactive and really passive. Michael Jamin: But you still write out your material before as if any other comedian would, right? Or Mary Lynn Rajskub: No? I do. I do. And now that I've been doing it so long, things will come to me and it's always a joy. You, and I'm sure when you're writing, sometimes you'll get those one-liners really quick that you're like, oh, that's fully formed. I'd have one line that's been in my act forever, but I just love it. It's like, did you know you could do a bunch of yoga and still be an asshole? And that's just a real quickie. I didn't sit down trying to write that. And then I have a whole another scenario that follows that, where it's like the kernel of it is truths, but the way it comes out is pretty fabricated. Michael Jamin: Do you have a preference as to, do you prefer acting or standup, or does it not make a difference to you? Mary Lynn Rajskub: I mean, at this point, I prefer standup just because there's, well, there's meat on the bone for that in terms of I get to be in control and I get to be on stage for an hour, and it's hard and it's challenging, it's exhilarating. I love acting. It's just lately it's been a bit of diminishing returns in terms of parts that I can actually be challenged by. I would absolutely love to have something that I can dig into and that would have a lot of layers to it, something that I could come back and continue to be that character. But I'm going on 10 to 15 years of the life of a lot of guest stars, which is great. I'm very thankful, and I will do that again. But that's got its own. You're coming onto a set where everybody knows each other and you're just like, I got to now in two days, fit into the tone of the show, and then I do my one thing and then I leave. Mich

On this week's episode, I have actor Chris Gorham, (Out of Practice, The Lincoln Lawyer, NCIS: Los Angeles and many many more) and we dive into the origins of his career. We also discuss the work-life balance he has with his family and some of the things he wishes more actors were aware of while filming. There is so much more, so tune in. Show Notes Chris Gorham on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisgorham/ Chris Gorham IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0330913/ Chris Gorham on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Gorham Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Chris Gorham: But in getting to know them and talking to them, Almost all of them had day jobs, like worked for the city, Worked, worked for construction crews. They had full-on-day Jobs. Some of them were Entrepreneurs, some of them worked in government. And that was a New idea to me because that hadn't been my experience here. But as the income and equality has increased so dramatically, It feels like that's where our business has been going, where everybody has to have another, Michael Jamin: You are listening to, what the hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity. I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts. Chris Gorham: Like my backdrop, this is my, oh, I love it. Official SAG after LA delegate backdrop that we used him during the convention. Michael Jamin: I know you're a big show. We're starting already. I'm here with Chris Gorham, and he is an actor I worked with many years ago on a show called Out of Practice. He's one of the stars that was a show with starting Henry Winkler, stocker Channing, Ty Burrell, Chris Gorham, and Paul Marshall. It was a great show on CBS and only lasted a season. But Chris, Chris is about as successful working actors as you can, short of being like someone like Brad Pitt, who's known across the world. You've done a ton of TV shows, and I'm going to blow through them real fast here. Chris Gorham: Okay. You can, I can't talk about them still, but your strike is over so you can, Michael Jamin: Yeah, right, because Chris is, I guess he's in sag and actually you're one of the members, you're one of the, what do you call yourself, the king? So Chris Gorham: I'm the king of SAG aftra. No, I was elected to be on the LA local board and also elected as a delegate. So that's what this background was. Our official LA delegate background for Michael Jamin: The research delegate for for the model. What does that mean Chris Gorham: For the convention? Yeah. It's kind of reminiscent of Model un. So it's the convention that happens every two years where all the delegates get together and we elect the executive vice president, and there's certain offices that get elected by the delegate membership. Michael Jamin: I don't think we have that in the Writer's Guild. I think we have a direct democracy. You, I guess have a representative democracy. Chris Gorham: Yeah. Yeah. It's a much bigger union. How big Michael Jamin: Is it? How big do you know? About Chris Gorham: 160,000 members. Michael Jamin: Wow. Okay. Members, but that's active members. And what do you have to be to be an active member? Chris Gorham: What do you have to be? Do Michael Jamin: You have to sell? You have to work a certain amount or something? Chris Gorham: No, once you're in, you can stay in as long as you pay your dues Michael Jamin: Every year. Oh, okay. But then that doesn't mean you get health. You have to qualify for health insurance and stuff like that. Correct. Chris Gorham: Well, it's a big part of the strike. It's one of our big talking points really is only about 13% and just under 13% earn enough to qualify for our healthcare plan. And I mean, that's only about $26,700 a year to qualify for healthcare. Michael Jamin: That's a big deal. I mean, healthcare, healthcare. So most people don't realize this, and it seems so naive to say this, but I get so many comments when on social media, all these actors are millionaires. Dude, what are you talking about? You can be a working actor and book two gig. You're lucky if you do two gigs a year. And Chris Gorham: Well listen, it goes to the heart of what this strike is about is that it's worse than people even think because just to what's the best way to talk about it? So a big part of our asked during this negotiation is a big increase in the contributions to our health and pension plan by the producers. And the reason is that they haven't increased it in a long, long, long, long time. So for instance, one person could work, let's say you got hired to do an episode and got paid very well, right? For one episode. Let's say you're getting it, it's an anthology show. They're paying the top two people like series regulars, and you're getting a hundred grand for one episode. So you would think a hundred thousand dollars. That is a lot of money for one episode. If I'm doing that, I am clear. Definitely qualify. You do not qualify for healthcare because you've only done one episode and the producers only have to contribute up to a certain amount. So even though you've made a hundred grand in one episode, you still have to book another job, at least one more Michael Jamin: And clear, Chris Gorham: Not going to qualify for healthcare. Michael Jamin: I've produced a lot of shows. I don't recall ever paying a guest star anywhere close to a hundred thousand an episode. No, not even close. Chris Gorham: No, no. And the minimums have, right now, I think for a drama, the minimum's around $9,000, maybe a little more than that for an episode for top of Show guest start like the top paid guest shows on those shows. Yeah, you can't. And it's become almost impossible to negotiate a rate higher than the minimums. Michael Jamin: You can have a quote and they go, well, that's too bad. This is what we're paying you. Chris Gorham: Correct. This is what we're paying you. Michael Jamin: Let me just run through some of yours so people know who we're talking about because some people are listening to it. So Chris is, I'm going to blow some of his bigger parts, but he works so much. So let's start with Party of Five where you did four episodes, which I love that show. I just had to mention that, but of course, popular. You did a ton of those. Felicity, remember that? Odyssey five, Jake 2.0, which you started in medical investigation out of practice, which I mentioned Harper's Island Ugly Betty, Betty Laa, which I loved, of course, covert Affairs and what else? I'm going through your list here. Full Circle two Broke Girls. You worked with two of the broke girls and insatiable the Lincoln lawyer, and that doesn't include any of your guest chart. So you are incredibly successful actor and you've strung, actually, I want to hit on something. Sure. So this is a little embarrassing on my part. We had a technical, this is our second interview because I had technical errors on my point. I'm not that good with technology, even though I've done well over a hundred episodes of this, and Chris graciously allowed me to do this over. But one of the things that you said, the thing that struck me the most during our last talk, which I found incredibly interesting and humble, I said to you, Chris, how do you choose your roles? And do you remember what you said to me? Chris Gorham: Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. I said, I should be so lucky. Yeah. The reality is, it's like actors like me. I've had a lot of conversations with actors like me who star on television shows, multiple television shows, and we all joke about how many times we've been asked in interviews. The question Michael Jamin: Really, Chris Gorham: Why did you choose this to be your next project? Michael Jamin: Right. Well, I wanted to eat. That's why. Chris Gorham: Yeah, yeah. Because I think journalists sometimes forget, and they think that we're all to use your example, Brad Pitt, and that we're being sent scripts and we get to choose what our next project is, but in reality, that is not at all. What happens, what happens for the vast majority of us is we are sent auditions. Sometimes we get the scripts, sometimes we don't. And we put ourselves now what used to be going to the casting office. Now we put ourselves on tape and we send it off into the void, and we hope that we get hired. Michael Jamin: And you'll work on a part. When you do get the script, how long will you spend preparing for that before you submit your tape? Chris Gorham: Oh, it depends mostly on two things. One, how many pages it is, and then it depends on how well written it's, to be honest. You've heard this before. Michael Jamin: Go ahead. Tell me. Chris Gorham: The better the writing, the easier it is to memorize. Michael Jamin: Right. And explain why that is. Chris Gorham: Well, the reason is is because it makes sense. If it's written like a human being talks, then the next sentence follows from the sentence before. If you understand the emotion of what's going on, then it just makes sense and the dialogue flows and it's just so much easier to memorize. The stuff that's always the hardest is when you're the character that's laying pipe and you're just spewing out exposition and it's not really coming. Listen, the good writers are always trying to tie it down to that emotional reality, but sometimes you got to lay pipe, and that's stuff's always the hardest, particularly if it's a bunch of medical jargon or legal jargon. That kind of stuff is crazy. Michael Jamin: And what people don't also realize, I think, is when you're starting out an actor, oh, I could play everything. I could play a villain. I could play a teacher, I could play a biker, I coul

On this week's episode, I have from the Youtube channel "Tasting History", Max Miller. Tune in as we about the origins of what made him start this channel as well as his New York Times best-selling cookbook "Tasting History: Explore the Past through 4,000 Years of Recipes (A Cookbook)." We also dive into the complications of trying to be successful on all forms of social media. Show Notes Max Miller on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tastinghistorywithmaxmiller/ Max Miller on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tastinghistory Max Miller on YouTube: @TastingHistory Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Max Miller: A lot of people are like, this feels like an old PBS show. Yeah, Michael Jamin: It's classier. Yeah, Max Miller: It is classier. And so I'm like, I don't think the thumbnail where I'm on there going, would, you're not going to, because the video is not going to deliver on that. That's not what the video is. And so then it is clickbait, and I hate that Michael Jamin: You're listening to, what the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity, I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts. Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin. Welcome back to another episode of, what the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? Well, today I'm talking about as always, people who are doing creative things who have invented themselves creatively. And so my next guest has done just that. He's tasting history with Max Miller. He is the host, and tasting history is a really interesting channel. Well, actually I'll get to it, but he's got 2 million subscribers, which is gigantic on YouTube. So Max, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining me. Max Miller: Thank you for having me. Excited. Michael Jamin: I am so inspired by what you're doing. So basically your show, for those who don't know, it's a cooking show, but it's also, he talks about it's historical cooking, so what they made in ancient Greece or whatever, or what prisoners ate, whatever. And so it's also, it's cooking, but it's also educational, which I find it's such an interesting little niche you have, and yet it's blown up. Max Miller: Yeah, it's crazy. I actually always say I have a history show where I cook because it's really to focus more on the history than anything else. Well, tell me, how Michael Jamin: Did this all start? Max Miller: It started, well, it kind of started with a great British bakeoff. When that show first came out, actually before it even came out here in the us, I got obsessed with it and started baking everything that they had on it, and that's really how I learned how to bake. But they would always talk about the history of the dishes that they were baking. They don't do that anymore. And so I would bring my baked goods into work. I was working at Disney, the movie studio at the time, and I would bring in the baked goods and tell all of my coworkers a little bit about the history. And then one of my coworkers was like, you know what? Go tell someone else. These little anecdotes, put it up on YouTube, find an audience. And so that's what I did. Wait, were you Michael Jamin: Trying to pitch it to Disney? Is that why? Max Miller: No, no. It was more that I just needed something creative to do my job at Disney. I loved it, but it wasn't super creative, at least not my creative thing. I was creating stuff for other people. Michael Jamin: What were you doing then at Disney? Max Miller: I had been working in marketing, so I had worked on the trailers and stuff like that. And then in the months before the pandemic, really, I was working in sales, selling our movies to the theaters, which was actually a lot of fun and challenging, but not super creative in the way that I like to be. Michael Jamin: But tell me, so you're not familiar, you moved to LA for what reason then Max Miller: To do voiceover Michael Jamin: To be a voiceover actor? Max Miller: Yeah, I had been in New York doing musical theater for eight years, and New York is exhausting. And I decided, you know what? I need a slower pace of life. So I moved out here and I had a few friends out here and I wanted to do voiceover. I was always much more comfortable behind a mic than I was on stage or in front of a camera. And so I was like, okay, animation, that's the way to go. And so I did that for a little while. Did you Michael Jamin: Have much success at it? Max Miller: It's funny you ask. So in animation, no. I did a few little things and in commercial, couple little things, but where I ended up getting a lot of work was in audio books because I have the voice of, especially then of a 16-year-old boy. And so I was doing a lot of YA audio books. Interesting. Michael Jamin: See, this is so interesting. Okay, so you were an actor trying to get even more acting gigs and you must have become alright. It's good that you made some money doing voiceover for books, but it doesn't sound like you were as accomplished as you wanted to be. Is that right? Max Miller: Yeah, no, I mean, I always had to be working at a restaurant or I started temping at Disney, and then that just turned into a full-time job. But yeah, I never made a full living for more than six months at a time. I always had to call back. Michael Jamin: So you were, as I talk about this a lot, actors and writers the same thing. Help me get in the door, help me do the, everyone's always begging for an opportunity. Get me in, please let me, and then I guess at some point you just decided, I'm tired of asking. I'm just going to do something that I want to do. And this is what happens when you put energy into something, you created your own little thing and you blew up. Max Miller: Yeah, no, I mean that's the amazing thing about YouTube and TikTok and Instagram. You couldn't do this 15, 20 years ago, or at least you could do it. It was just nobody would have a place to watch you do it. Now, it's not easy, but it's available. It's an option. Michael Jamin: From what I see your show, everyone should again check it out. Tasting history with Max Miller, it seems like it's really well produced and it seems like this is a TV show, but it's free on the internet. That's what I see when I look at it. Max Miller: Well, thank you. All I notice is, oh, my lighting this week was terrible or, oh God, there's a typo on the screen. I only notice all the mistakes that I make. But Michael Jamin: Do you shoot this? It's in chat in the kitchen. Is the kitchen in your house? Max Miller: Yep. Michael Jamin: It's your kitchen and it's lit. Do you have a team helping you or you doing this all your own on your own? Max Miller: It's all me. You Michael Jamin: Have no one helping you. Max Miller: I don't want to say no one helps me because my husband does the subtitles and he reads all the scripts beforehand to make sure that it's coherent, because once in a while I'll say something and he's like, what is this? And I'm like, everyone knows what that is. And he's like, no, everyone doesn't. So then I fix up. What about Michael Jamin: Editing and stuff? Max Miller: So I just in the last couple months brought on someone to help me with some of the editing. I still end up doing all the images and a lot of that, but she's fantastic and has cut down the major part of the editing for me because that was, I mean, I would spend 15 hours, 12 to 15 hours each episode just editing. And now it's maybe four. A Michael Jamin: Lot of that. Now you use a lot of time, I imagine, to research and to prep and to practice these recipes you're doing. Is that right? Max Miller: Yeah, research is definitely the most intensive part. It's also my favorite part though. It's probably depending on the episode, anywhere from 12 to 20 hours of research and then kind of crafting the script. Michael Jamin: So this is your full-time job now? This is how you make your living? Max Miller: Yes. Michael Jamin: Fantastic. It's Max Miller: More hours than I've ever worked in my life, Michael Jamin: But I mean, you're great at it. You're great on camera. The content is very interesting, very engaging. Sometimes you take it in the field, which is a great write off. It's an excuse to get out of the house and shoot something on the field, which is great. Exactly. Have other opportunities come from this unexpected opportunities maybe? Max Miller: Yes, absolutely. One I'm not actually allowed to talk about, but it'll be something on the standard actual television, so that's exciting. And then the other is I wrote a cookbook, and that has done immensely well. It was on the New York Times bestseller list, which was something I never really expected that I would be on. Michael Jamin: Did they reach out to you? Did a publisher reach out to you or did you Max Miller: Yeah, they reached out to me shortly after I started the channel. Actually, I think it was about six months in. It was somebody who had watched my Garam episode and said, we would love to do this as a book. And it ended up being kind of rough because she was super excited about the project and she knew the channel, and then she got laid off. So I got transferred to another editor who has been absolutely great, but he didn't really know what to do with me. He did cookbooks. And I was like, well, this is a history book with recipes in it. And he's like, okay. So it took a little time to kind of figure out exactly what we were doing, but it ended up working out. But Michael Jamin: This is interesting because most people will approach a publisher, please, I got a book by my, but when you build it yourself, it's the other way around, and it's just so much make them come to you, and it's because y

On this week's episode, I have influencer/creator expert Taylor Lorenz. Tune in as we talk about her book, “Extremely Online: The Untold Story Of Fame, Influence, And Power On The Internet” as well as her experiences working as a journalist for “The Washington Post” and “The New York Times”. We also dive into some tidbits she has about social media. Show Notes Taylor Lorenz on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz/?hl=en Taylor Lorenz on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz?lang=en Taylor Lorenz on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp38w5n099xkvoqciOaeFag Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Taylor Lorenz: These old school entertainment people come on and they don't really understand the app and they clearly are not doing it themselves. They have some content assistant and then they're like, Hey kids, I guess I have to be here now. And it's like, what are you doing here? I will say the musicians do a better job. Megan Trainor has Chris Olsson, but TikTok buddy that, and music is such a part of TikTok, I feel like they get a warmer reception. Michael Jamin: You're listening to, what the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity, I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts. Hey everyone, what the hell? It's Michael Jamin talking about today. I'm going to tell you what I'm talking about. So for those of you who have been listening for a long time, I'm always telling you, just put your work out there. Get on social media, start making a name for yourself, because whether you want to be an actor or a writer or director, you got to bring more to the table than just your desire to get a big paycheck and become rich and famous. If you can bring a market, if you can bring your audience you're going to bring, that brings a lot to the table. And so my next guest is an expert on this, and she's the author of Extremely Online, the Untold Story of Fame, influence and Power on the Internet. I'm holding up her book. If you're watching this podcast, if you're driving in the car, you can imagine that there's a book and has a cover. So please welcome, pull over your car and give a round of applause to Taylor Lorenz. Thank you Taylor for coming and joining me for talking about this. It's an honor meeting you finally. Taylor Lorenz: Yeah, likewise. Excited to be here. Michael Jamin: So you wrote this great book, which I read, and there's so much, I guess there's so much. You actually document the history starting from the beginning of mommy bloggers and all these people who kind of were at the forefront and then built a name for themselves on social media. And so I'm just hoping to talk to you about how we can take some of this information and apply it to the people who listen to my podcast and follow me on social media so that they can help do the same. So I guess starting from the beginning, what was interesting that you pointed out is that women were kind of at the forefront at this whole thing. You want to talk about that a little bit? Taylor Lorenz: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I talk about this in the book, but in the turn of the millennium, the early aughts, this blogging was taking off and there were tons of blogs, and I talk about some of the big political and tech blogs at the time, but it wasn't really until the mommy bloggers entered onto the internet in the early aughts who were these moms, these stay at home moms that really had nothing else to do. A lot of them were shut out of the labor market, and they turned to blogging and ended up really building their own kind of feminist media empires by building audiences. And they were the first to really cultivate strong personal brands online and then leverage those personal brands to monetize. Michael Jamin: And you're right about, I remember this may have been 10 years ago or maybe longer, one of my friends, our screenwriter, she developed a TV show on these mommy bloggers. And I'm like, wait a minute. And there was a couple of people who did that. Max Nik, who was a guest on my podcast a while, a couple weeks ago, same thing. He wrote a show based on shit my dad says, but it's on a Twitter feed and there's all these people. It's so interesting. I was a little late to the game in terms of Hollywood exploiting all these markets, these people who are making names for themselves. Lemme back up for a second though. Why did you decide to even write this book? Taylor Lorenz: Yeah, so I started covering this. I started as a blogger myself a little bit later. Michael Jamin: What were you blogging? Taylor Lorenz: I was blogging about my life, a lot, about my life and a lot of about online culture stuff. I thought that the mainstream media was really bad at covering the internet, and so I thought, I'm going to write about the internet. This was when I was young millennial, right out of college. Michael Jamin: You were writing about your personal life? Taylor Lorenz: Yes. Michael Jamin: Okay. So that's a whole different thing. You're opening yourself up to everything. And was there any, I know I'm jumping around here, I guess I have so many questions, but I don't know, was there backlash from that? Were there repercussions? Because we're talking about people do this. What's the backlash? Taylor Lorenz: Well, this was like 2009, so it was such a different internet, and I'm so grateful, honestly, that I was blogging in that era and not this era because I think I didn't get a lot of backlash. I had a great community. I met some of my best friends, were other bloggers from that era. I became very popular on Tumblr for my single serving like meme, like blogs. So yeah, I think when you're young, you're just kind of trying a lot of different things out. I didn't know what I wanted to do out of college. I'd never studied journalism. I didn't know I was working at a call center and just became popular on the internet and then was like, I guess I'm pretty good at this Michael Jamin: Stuff. Really? I didn't know that about it. You have a pretty big following on TikTok and Instagram as well, which is so weird because you're writing about something that you are also participating in. I mean, it's almost meta how you are, what you're talking about. No, Taylor Lorenz: Yeah. I mean, I started, had I been able to monetize my blog nowadays, content creators on TikTok, they can monetize in 2009, 2010, couldn't, the best that you could hope for was one of those book deals that Urban Outfitters. Right? Michael Jamin: But Taylor Lorenz: You couldn't really leverage it into much. I ended up just leveraging it into a career in media, which has been fun. But Michael Jamin: See, this is what's interesting to me because right now you see so many people on social media, how do I monetize this? Meaning ads or even sponsorships, but there's other ways to monetize outside of brand deals or views on YouTube getting used. So yeah, there's a whole, I don't know. Do you think that's a large percentage of people on the internet? It seems like to me most are doing it to monetize for the brand deals. What's your take on it? Taylor Lorenz: Yeah, I think now that you can monetize in that way, a lot of people, that's their end goal. I'm kind of glad. I mean, it's a double-edged sword. Who knows what I could have done if I was able to monetize, but I'm really glad actually that you couldn't, because I think myself and a lot of other bloggers, we ended up going in a lot of different ways and entering into a lot of media type of jobs that, yeah, I mean would've never gotten otherwise. And I've learned how to be a journalist and I've gotten all these opportunities and my whole career from just experimenting and having fun online. So yeah, I think I always tell people, it's great if you can monetize, get the bag. If somebody comes to you offering you thousands of dollars, why not? But I think it's really good to take that virality and leverage it into, I like what Kayla Scanlan does, or Kyla, she's the economics YouTuber, and she gives all these talks about econ now, and she has a newsletter, and she's able to just do a lot more. It's not just doing a bunch of brand deals online. It's like using it to launch a career and whatever you want to have a career in. Michael Jamin: Yeah, see, I see. That's the funny, I think it's so smart what you're saying. I see some people, I'm like wondering, what's your end game out of this? Is it just to, but what you're saying is the end game, it's interesting. The end game is to do something else. And I wonder if that's what's going on with Hollywood people when I'm encouraging people to, I don't know, put theirselves out there with their art, their writing their music or whatever in my mind, to build an audience following to basically, so you can do the next thing. But I'm wondering how often that if you see that happening for people, Taylor Lorenz: I think the smart ones do recognize it. I feel like the internet, you're just hopping from lily pad to lily pad a lot of the time, which I know that's how a lot of creative people feel. It's just like, I think internet fame in itself can be a goal. I mean, look, someone like Mr. Beast, you've done it. You crack the code. Most people are not going to reach that level. And so it makes a lot of sense. If you're really into food, you're making food content, use that to open your own restaurant or food line or whatever, but use it to go into something that you're interested in because then you still, you always have that online audience. I still have my online audience. I have people that have followed me for a decade and maybe they know me from my blog or I had a Snapchat show in 2016 or things that I'

On October 7th, I hosted a webinar called "How Professional Screenwriters Create Great Characters", where I talked about how to come up with interesting and unique characters, as well as how tapping into your everyday life interactions with people can help with this. This episode addresses questions you asked in our Q&A session that we didn't have time to answer. There's lots of great info here, make sure you watch. Show Notes Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/ Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcript Michael Jamin: I feel like we're overthinking this a little bit. I feel like maybe we're giving labels that don't need to be labeled. We have a hero. We're going to put this hero on a journey. And who are the people? Or if it's a like a buddy comedy or whatever we're talking about, or if it's a husband and wife or whatever, what's the story? What's the journey we're putting them on and who are the characters we're going to get in their way? You're listening to What the Hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity, I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts. Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin, and today we're going to answer the question, what the hell is Michael Jamin talking about? Well, today I'm talking about questions from my previous webinar. As many of you know, I do a webinar every three weeks or so where I talk about screenwriting and it's about an hour long and you're all invited and it's free. And I don't always have time to answer all these questions, but Phil is here with us visiting again. Hello, Phil. Hello and happy to be here. He's going to hit me with some of these questions we're going to answer. Phil Hudson: Lemme hit you baby one more time. Let's do it. All right. So again, kind of group questions, context for everyone. This was from a webinar talking about how professional screenwriters create great characters. You've got another really good webinar that a lot of people really like, which is how to write a great story. And so contextually, these are really more character based. There's some miscellaneous stuff, there's some break in questions. We've kind of grouped them together. So as I go through these, we'll just try to keep 'em on theme and let's get into it. Let's talk craft. Think Craft is always a good place to start. Anna Renee Chavez wants to know what big differences are there between writing for animation versus live action? Michael Jamin: Great question. Oh, and I just want to clarify everybody by webinars, you are free. Go to michaeljamin.com/webinar to sign up. I changed the topics, but whatever. So this woman wants to know what's the difference between writing for animation and live action? Not that much in terms of, and I teach 'em both in my course. The differences really are not that different. The only thing you want to think about is well ask yourself why is this show animated? What's the advantages to making this show animated? So in BoJack Horseman, it's a very real and grounded show, but you have horses talking and fish talking, or Whitney, you couldn't do that in live action. So you're taking advantage of the medium. If you have it animated, take advantage of it. When my partner and I did Glen Martin DDS, which is the show there a stop motion animation, we would ask ourselves, what's Clay tastic about this? We'd call it, because it wasn't claymation, but we pretended it was claymation. So what's Clay tastic about this scene? Is someone's head going to come off? So for example, we did an episode where the character, the boy got his head stuck in an elephant's ass. You can't do that in live action. So you can do that in animation, but the story itself, it's very similar. The stories are very similar. It's just that you just take advantage of the medium. Phil Hudson: Yeah, awesome. And I think another good example of this, where a choice was made to do live action RET link's buddy system, you had mentioned to me that one point that it's basically just a cartoon. It's like a live action cartoon with silly It is, but they can't be as silly as they could if it was animated and they could do whatever they wanted. So it still kind of grounds it in this reality, but it's still a bit silly. Michael Jamin: Yeah, it could have been a cartoon, but we would've gone even we did one episode where we turned Lincoln into a robot because the character was like, my life would be easier if I was a robot. So that probably would've been even better if it was animated. But in real life we just started putting 'em in crappy robot costumes. Phil Hudson: Yeah, Michael Jamin: But it was funny. We turned him into a robot, so it was kind of broad. Phil Hudson: Love it. Julia Wells considering extraordinary and ordinary pairing. What would you say about friends, how I Met Your Mother, or shows that are more grounded? I think this is in reference in your webinar when you're talking about your characters and putting your characters together or how you write your characters for a specific story, and there's a difference between extraordinary and ordinary if you want something extraordinary when you're pairing your characters together. Michael Jamin: Well, yeah, most shows are like that. Most sitcoms, the characters are just normal people. And yeah, it was kind of like ordinary characters, kind of an extraordinary situations where it would've been unusual. I'm trying to think of an example from friends, but alright, so they did an episode where Joey and Joey and what's his name, not Kramer Chandler, the guy Chandler are going to sit in their chairs all episode, all ordinary guys doing something extraordinary. They're not going to move from their chairs and they're going to see if they get everything delivered and they're going to eat and drink and they're not going to get up, stuff like that. So I don't think it's any different from any other sitcom I've worked on other than the characters. Phil Hudson: I just started re-watching How I Met Your Mother, which I've seen who knows how many times. But it's a good background show while I'm working on stuff that's not necessarily logical, analytical stuff. And there's an episode where it's the Halloween party and he's the hanging Chad because he met the sexy pumpkin in 2001 during the election or 1999 or whatever. And so Barney's got tickets to the Victoria's Secret model, Christmas Halloween costume party, and he's trying to get his friend to this extraordinary thing and his friend won't leave. He wants to be at this party to potentially meet this girl on this rooftop again. And it's the push and pull of Come be amazing, stop looking for love, you're losing. So it plays really well in that situation. Alright, cool. AIA Saunders or AIA Sanders, I apologize for ruining that. How do you feel about basing a character on them knowing themselves or basing a character on yourself and your own doubts? Michael Jamin: Yeah, do it all. I mean, you should do it. You should totally mind your own life For stories, and I have a whole module on this in the course, and you can disguise it too, so people don't have to know it's you, but you're just stealing parts of yourself or parts of people as other characters, but you change it enough and change the name, but also change professions and change. You're just stealing attributes from people so they wouldn't know it. But that's what your life is for your life is to steal things from Phil Hudson: Perfect. Charles Shin, do you have any tips or advice with coming up with great names for your characters? Michael Jamin: I spoke a little bit about this in the old days. We used to have a baby naming book, my partner and I, and then now it's kind of easy to go on the internet or just in life. You'll come across a street name and you go, oh, that's a good last name for a character. I just kind of keep a list. What was one? I had one the other day I added to my list, I can't remember, but it was like a street sign I go that I passed. I go, that's a good character's name. Phil Hudson: Yeah. I've also seen our showrunners on Tacoma fd. There's a random character as Chief Phil Dylan. Well, I'm Phil. It was the writer's pa and I replaced Dylan, the writer's pa. Michael Jamin: Yeah, it's funny. I know they took that for you. I mean, they tend to do that a lot where at least Steve Lemi does. He'll just name characters after people he knows. Phil Hudson: Yeah. There's one line from Ike in an episode that I think you guys wrote. It's like Benjamin Duff or Benjamin Crump Michael Jamin: And Phil Hudson: Ben Crump was our DIT set. Right. So just throw people's names and give 'em fun stuff. Awesome. You also talked, I think you talked about funny names that go together too. At one point that was something you do. Michael Jamin: I talked about, I had a character named, what was his name? Something Phil Hudson: The third? It was something the fourth. The fourth, yeah. What was his Michael Jamin: Name? God, I can't remember. Phil Hudson: It was like, but it was a bunch of things together that rhymed almost or had similar names. Michael Jamin: I'd have to look it up. I can't. Oh, Dan Danforth iv. That's what it was. Dan Dan. I had a character named Dan Danforth iv, and I just thought that was a good name because Dan Danforth is weird enough. But why did his parents have to saddle in with the fourth? Because, well, they felt like they had to because the father's the third is a generational thing. They can't, so they stuck this guy with his shitty name and what's that going to, having a name like that, you're going to be teased as a child. And I thought the character is kind of a feckless type

On this week's episode, I have content creation expert "Coco Mocoe”. Tune in as we talk about her unique eye on how to spot trends for the future, as well as what different social media platforms due for creators. We also discuss her thoughts on brand deals and what she looks for and her hopes and goals for the future. Show Notes Coco Mocoe on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cocomocoe/ Coco Mocoe on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cocomocoe?lang=en Coco Mocoe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UC7MC6lTh3ui3_id2n-vnlPQ Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/course Free Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/free Join My Newsletter - https://michaeljamin.com/newsletter Autogenerated Transcripts Coco Mocoe: Again, also with TikTok, it's always about reinventing, even though I always talk about marketing, but I feel like every three months I have to find a new way to present the same information that I've been talking about. So truly the best creators are the ones that are able to reinvent themselves, even though they're still providing the same information, but finding new ways to bring it to the feed Michael Jamin: You're listening to, what the hell is Michael Jamin talking about? I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I'm talking about creativity, I'm talking about writing, and I'm talking about reinventing yourself through the arts. Hey everyone, it's Michael Jamin. Welcome back. I have a very interesting guest for everyone today. So anyone who's listening to my podcast for any amount of time, I've always said, if you want to break into Hollywood, just start doing it. Stop asking permission, start. Just make it count on social media and just start posting whatever it is you want to be good at. Make a dedicated account to proving how good you are at this one thing, whether it's writing, performing music, whatever it is, and let's just see where it goes from there. Because if you can't do that, well then Hollywood's not going to pay you to do it. You got to do it for yourself. And so my next guest is an expert in this field because not only does she make a living out of predicting trends about people who've done this before, but she's doing it herself in building her own presence online. And content absolutely is essential. I turn to it when I have questions. So please welcome Coco Moko. Thank you so much. Coco Moko, which I love your name by the way. Coco Mocoe: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's so funny when I made my username, my real name's Colleen, but I go by Coco Moko, and when I made the name, I didn't know my account would blow up, and so my managers were like, let's keep it though. It has a good ring to it. It does. Michael Jamin: But tell me, okay, so I know you've made a living at it doing this, but before you started doing it for yourself, who were you working for? Coco Mocoe: Yes. It's such a great story too. It was kind of divine timing, I guess. So I studied marketing in college, and then after college, my family's from the LA area, so I was super lucky to just live in LA. And I started a job that I got off Craigslist, and it ended up being this website called Famous Birthdays. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's very Gen Z Young. It's kind of like Wikipedia, but at the time, famous Birthdays was the only website really documenting YouTubers and at the time, musically kids. And so we had a really big audience of 12 year olds. And so I got hired there and my job was to run the musically, which had then turned to TikTok. So I was on the app early, and then the founder of Famous Birthdays, his name's Evan, he's like, if you ever see someone on your free page that you think is going to be famous, just invite them in and we'll interview them. And shortly after that was when I saw Charlie Delio when she was really early. We invited her in and we were her first ever interview, and that went super viral. And then there was a few others from that kind of era of kids and because of the videos that I was working on at Famous birthdays that were getting, I think one of the videos with Charlie Delios at 40 million Views on YouTube. And because we got an early, so, but then from there, I then got hired at buzzfeed, and I was at Buzzfeed for three and a half years where I was working on the backend with strategy, coming up with videos, and it was really just my job to go into meetings with different brands and creators and stuff and just tell them what I think the upcoming trends will be, how I think platforms are shifting, mainly TikTok and how I think that they can best create ideas that will go viral or work with people that aren't famous enough yet that they're going to decline but are eager to come in. And so that was really where I got the start with predicting and stuff, and where I learned that I had a good eye for pattern recognition, and then I just started making my own tos. That kind of blew up. And then I quit my full-time job in June of this year and have been just doing full-time stuff since. Michael Jamin: And so now you have close to a million followers, which is huge. Thank you. Coco Mocoe: Yeah. Michael Jamin: Then so, okay, so when you work for yourself, what does that mean? Coco Mocoe: Yeah, so I never really thought that I would go the consultant route. It was something that kind of just happened as a result of the videos that I was making. I never posted my trend prediction videos or algorithm decoding kind of videos with the intention of getting hired, but I was getting so many inquiries from really big brands that wanted to just pick my brain for an hour or so when I was at buzzfeed. And then I just felt, I mean, it was the different legal non-compete clauses and stuff. And so I just eventually realized that financially it made more sense to just take an hour meeting with a brand and make what I would've made in a month. And I'm so lucky you never know how long it's going to last. I'm very, very lucky. So that's kind of what the full-time thing is. Consulting sometimes brand deals. I don't always like to do a ton of brand deals. I don't want my account to just feel like one big commercial. And then I've been lucky enough to have a lot of music people actually reach out to me and I consult on the music side as well, so super lucky. But Michael Jamin: Yeah. Okay. So big brands want your opinions, but are you saying also that the creators as well want your opinions? Coco Mocoe: Yeah, a lot of creators, and I actually, that's why I made the podcast that I have ahead of the curve, which hopefully you'll be able to come on one day when your book comes out. Yeah, I love that. And I do my podcast because I can't meet with everyone, and so I started doing that for a way to reach more of the creators. But yeah, I do have a lot of creators reach out. I feel like bandwidth wise, it's hard. So I try to find ways to reach out to people in my community that isn't always just a money exchange or a meeting and stuff. So I'm still figuring it out, but I've been very lucky since I went full-time with this. Michael Jamin: You must know this, or I'm hoping. So when a musician, an actor or whatever comedian, when they're reaching out to you or they're following you, what is it do you think they want, do you think they just want to blow up on social media or do they want to move to what I do traditional Hollywood? Coco Mocoe: Yeah. No, it's such a good question, and I think a lot of it when I do get more of the bigger celebrities that have followed me every now and then, I'm always like, I don't know. At first I'd be like, I don't know why. I don't know what value I'm even providing them. I remember one time Paris Hilton followed me and I was like, she is the biggest influencer in the world. And I'm like, what could I potentially provide to someone like that through my videos? But I think a lot of it too is just when I've talked to people who have followed me, whether it's an actor or a musician or just a person who's watching tos and has never made one before. A lot of the times they say that they like that my videos are able to take something happening on the algorithm or on marketing and media, but I kind of give a bigger lens to it as well. I'm able to connect the dots to everyone, whether you're watching it, whether you are the one making the content and really simplifying it and not just making, I think a lot of when I would watch marketing videos and stuff, it would be a lot of broy ad talk, which that's important talk too, but I never really related to the AB and that kind of stuff. I liked being like, this is why this person watched it. So anyways, I think that if it is an actor or musician following me, I think some of it is just curiosity. I don't think they always have the intention of using my videos as strategy, but when they do, I think it's because as working in entertainment, it really is an attention economy, and the way that people give their attention is constantly shifting. You could make the best piece of work and you just never know if the attention's going to be there or not. I think them watching my helps maybe dissect why certain things go viral, but again, you never know. You never really know. It's just always up in the air. But I try to bring sense to it. Michael Jamin: It changes. Everything changes so fast. Whatever the algorithm, whatever the new trend, whatever's going on, changes fast. And I feel like you always seem to be on top of it. How are you on top? Are you just watching videos all day and making lists and stuff? What are you doing? Coco Mocoe: Yes. It's so funny. I get that question all the time. I do spend a good amount of time on TikTok. I try not to because I think sometimes I believe in there's this saying, and it's the universe whispers, and it's essentially this idea that once you finally turn off your phone and the TV and the for you page scrolling and you jus