Ep. 10: Brian Koppelman, co-writer/producer of Rounders, Ocean's Thirteen, The Illusionist, etc.

Brian Koppelman is a screenwriter, novelist, director, and producer. He is best known as the co-writer of Ocean's Thirteen and Rounders, as well as a producer of The Illusionist and The Lucky Ones. He has directed films including Solitary Man (Michael Douglas). In his episode, we discuss how he got started, how he handles rejection, his big breaks, his creative process, and much, much more. Show notes and links at http://www.fourhourblog.com Just search "Koppelman" Brian can be found on Twitter at @briankoppelman. Enjoy! - Tim

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  So we got three, two, one.

• 0:04Tim Ferriss?

  Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Try that again.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:16Tim Ferriss?

  No, we're just sitting at the big time.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  What if I give the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Speaker 03

  The Tim Ferriss Show.

• 0:30Tim Ferriss?

  Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Was gonna be The Tim Ferriss Experience, but then Joe Rogan would think I was copying him, so it sounds even more egotistical, but it is The Tim Ferriss Show. The guest we have with us today is Brian Kalbman. Brian, how are you?

• 0:46Speaker 04

  I'm great, man. Just great. So pleased to be here talking to you.

• 0:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's been a while. I'm very excited to reconnect and I've been thinking a lot about your craft. I follow you on Twitter. Some of your exchanges are hilarious. It's kind of like half screenwriting, half Knicks, I would say.

• 1:07Speaker 04

  Well, I try to dial back. You know, I think most people who are engaging with me on Twitter probably want to talk about creativity in some way. And then there's this fanatical core of the people who were with me at the beginning, who were there partially because I wrote about and talked about the Knicks a lot. So I feel like there's... I try to warn people, like, hey, there's gonna be a Knicks rant for the next a little while, so stay away. But I think it's probably now, like 90% about creativity and 10% about the Knicks.

• 1:38Tim Ferriss?

  No, you need to support the core, the people who were there in the beginning. So we met quite a few years ago, I would say at this point. I remember our first in-person meeting was in New York City. For those people who don't know your work, or they probably do know your work, but they're not familiar with how you were involved with these various films, maybe you could just give people a very brief overview of some of the types of movies you've worked on and just the type of work that you do, if that would be... If that's a sensible way to start.

• 2:12Speaker 04

  Sure, um, I am a writer, director and producer of mostly films and television as well. Some of the movies on which I've worked in at least one of those capacities are Rounders, Solitary Man, Runaway Jury, Ocean's Thirteen, The Illusionist. Um, I have a TV show that we're gonna shoot in the fall for Showtime called Billions. And, um, you know, Tim, there's IMDb out there, the folks can go if they want to.

• 2:43Tim Ferriss?

  No, of course, I don't wanna go line by line through your IMDb or the Wikipedia. I just think that it's, it's what's, what's always been so interesting to me, and we'll come back to sort of the genesis story in a second, is that you, you do not fit in one role, and I mean, there are many people who attempt to do this, but very, very few that I've had personal encounters with who've succeeded at sort of threading the needle, starting as a writer and then moving to, uh, you know, producing and directing. Um, and I guess we met, how long ago would it have been when we first started chatting?

• 3:18Speaker 04

  You know, I, you know, it was before, you were starting to write for Our Body the first time that we met, and I also should say that I've, like you, I, I entered just a little before you the world of podcasting, and, um, I have a podcast, uh, on Grantling called The Moment With Brian Koppelman, and, uh, that's something that I'm devoting a good amount of time to as well. So, you know, uh, it's not just writing, directing, producing, I can also, I'm also talking into a mic.

• 3:45Tim Ferriss?

  He can all, he can also talk. He's, and, uh, I remember a stand-up comedian once, uh...

• 3:50Speaker 04

  Yes, it all ties into, Tim, this idea, and when you asked, I think that, I think that there was a question behind your statement that, um, a lot, not many, that, you know, most people you wanna cross sort of end up in one thing, and... And I think what unifies every part of my own, my journey at this stuff is I always lead with my curiosity or obsession or fascination. And that's been something that I kind of codified for myself a long time ago, so that I see it all as one big endeavor, which is chasing down that which I'm curious about and finding a way to satisfy that. So if it's storytelling and there's something that is something that we should write, and

• 4:34Speaker 04

  I write most with my partner, David Levine, make movies with him too, you know, sometimes that doesn't fully scratch the itch or the way we see the story, and that means we have to find a way to direct it or produce it. And then it's just a matter of figuring out what the tactics are to bring that about.

• 4:50Tim Ferriss?

  No, definitely. And I want to focus on a lot of the tactics in our conversation today. The first place I thought we might start, just as it relates to obviously pursuing your passion, because similarly, I feel like many people chase happiness, and I put that in quotation marks in my head, whereas if they were to simply pursue what excites them, that the happiness, the well-being part often kind of takes care of itself. In your case, I saw a bit of an exchange that you pointed me to yesterday on Twitter about Rounders.

• 5:28Tim Ferriss?

  And I really enjoyed Rounders, and even more so enjoyed it having since now spent a little bit of time with poker players in the last six months. And I wanted to hear a little bit about how that movie came to be, because it doesn't appear that everybody at the agencies and elsewhere were jumping up and sort of throwing confetti in the air when you first met with them. So I was hoping you could give some backstory.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's pretty true. I mean, with the thing I tweeted, Brian complimented on Twitter, and the thing that I tweeted... Was that the screenplay for Rounders that my partner David Levine and I wrote was rejected by every single agency in town. When I say that, you may think that it's hyperbole or an exaggeration, but I mean CAA, Endeavor, William Morris, ICM, UTA, ATA, Gersh Agency. Every single agency rejected it within a span of four days because there was a young manager who believed in it. So he was like, I'm gonna get you guys an agent. And you know when you're young and starting out, and I wasn't even that young, I was thirty, you

• 6:43Speaker 04

  hold on to the words, anybody who even has the most tenuous connection to the business. So he said, you're gonna have an agent. And so I was so hyper-focused and I would write down, waiting for the call that was gonna be, hey, they loved it. So I wrote down everything that everybody said. And it's out of a Hollywood movie about the movie business because the first person would say, you know, Tom at Endeavor says it's overwritten. I don't know what that means, but what I do know is that he would then say, and Spencer at William Morris says it's underwritten.

• 7:14Tim Ferriss?

  (laughing)

• 7:18Speaker 04

  Like, I have this, I have the piece of paper somewhere.

• 7:20Tim Ferriss?

  You gotta put the vowels back in, right?

• 7:22Speaker 04

  Right. So, it was really dispiriting, man. And the thing was a labor of love. And I think, by the way, one thing to illustrate this idea, you were talking about what excites your curiosity. And that is, when you said we met however many years ago, I mean, we met because I just, out of the blue, found you because I was really curious and fascinated by what you did. And I don't even know how I chased you down, but I somehow found you through people. And I said, if you're ever in New York, I wanna take you to lunch. And something about, and by the way, I had no game plan, right? I just wanted to meet you because I thought, I bet you, in this exchange, there's a way that both of us can come away

• 8:05Speaker 04

  with a little bit more knowledge and with a little bit of an understanding of a different world. And that's like always my north star. And so even on Rounders... I was in love with poker. Um, I had become sort of like a degenerate card player. I was thirty years old. I was unhappy with the life I was living. Uh, when I went to this one poker club in, in New York City, heard the way that people spoke, saw the way they looked, I realized, okay, that's a movie. I'm obsessed enough with this world and with the idea of making movies, that I'm ready to turn my life upside down. And went to my wife and my best friend Dave, my wife Amy, my best friend Dave, and like, made a plan to be able to continue to work, but to write this script in the mornings. Amy cleared out a storage space under the apartment we were, we were living in.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  Dave and I, at the time, had no contacts in the movie business. And we met two hours every single morning. We didn't miss a morning. I think we took Sundays off, but other than that, we didn't miss a morning. And, um, we worked for two hours. He was bartending, I was going to my job. And, and that, that two hours in the morning, nothing else was going on. It was, there was a, a slop sink in this little storage area, room for one chair. I'd sit on the floor, Dave would sit at the typewriter most of the time. We had a stack of books that was like reading material about poker and the language of the game. And we just, you know, would sit in that room and write, and then at night, we would go to these poker clubs and try to collect data, you know, lines that people said, stories that they told us, character traits.

• 9:33Speaker 04

  And with, you know, no thought that it was realistic or unrealistic. We didn't calculate any of it, except how can we write a screenplay that we believe could be the basis for a movie that would be like what Diner was for us. A, a movie that, that, that people, at the time, I was probably thinking about guys in their twenties would, would, if it was, we could get it made, would wanna just, um, quote to each other. And would, it would be like the thing that was their little secret, uh, private, you know, private movie. And that, but if we could do that, we'd, we'd succeeded. And so we finished it and we really, really thought that we'd kinda captured it.

• 10:14Speaker 04

  And then that initial wave of rejection, um, was bracing, but I have to tell you, it wasn't, um, crushing. The, because I'd lived through it in a prior, you know, in a prior life, um, and I, which I'm, I'm happy to talk about, but you know, I was in the music business before and it, in, and on both sides of it, being a seller and a buyer in the music business, and watched experts. Be wrong over and over again. And it taught me that there's a value in listening to the experts, hearing their reasons. But the step that a lot of people miss is a dispassionate evaluation of the reasons.

• 10:54Speaker 04

  And that if you can dispassionately evaluate the reasons for rejection and find them with merit, you can address them. Without merit, you can ignore them. And I learned to think that way when I was in my early twenties. So that although it always stings, it's always emotionally, um, you know, as I said, dispiriting when you face rejection. If, if you can step back and, and kind of make a, an analysis and a game plan, you can then find a path forward. And, and that's what we did.

• 11:26Tim Ferriss?

  So in the case of, of rounders, I love these stories. Uh, and almost everyone that I've, uh, almost every single person I know in Silicon Valley, for instance, uh, who's, who seemingly had overnight success. And this is perhaps the cliched counterpart, but they, they have an equivalent of the sitting in the basement story. And they have an equivalent of the experts telling them, we, we either hate your idea, we hate you, or both. Or like, oh, that's an interesting company idea. We think it's terrible, but we like you. So why don't you completely change the business? And then maybe we'll consider supporting you. It's very common, actually. Love the team, hate the idea. And, uh, in this particular case, just to, because this is something I've always found,

• 12:11Tim Ferriss?

  and I quite frankly, still find so befuddling about entertainment is the, the roles and responsibilities of people with different titles. So in the case of a manager, uh, because it's, it's, it's, I don't have a, an entertainment manager. I've spoken to tons of them. Do not have an agent. I've spoken to many, many of them. Uh, but what, what I'm curious about is how did you decide, uh, to get a manager in the beginning?

• 12:35Speaker 04

  Well, that was just a lucky, so David, my, my partner, when, when, uh, out of college, went out to LA and got a job as an assistant. And was, I guess, planning to be a novelist and, and maybe a screenwriter. And when, and David, who you know, and when, and when he, um, He left LA after a couple of years realizing, in his mind, working in the business would make it harder to break into the business, that to really get the time to go do the writing he needed to do. But he somehow met somebody who met somebody who knew a twenty-four-year-old kid who'd basically hung a shingle that said manager, which is really an advisor. And he'd sold, the kid, Seth is his name, had sold one TV movie or something.

• 13:20Speaker 04

  And, and so it was, like I said, that's why I said any tenuous connection. He was a guy who was starting out also, but, you know, one thing about Hollywood, it's a land of, uh, self-invention. And so if you decide you're a manager, you're a manager. You have to be committed to it. Uh, you know, that's how it is.

• 13:38Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right, right.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  Read What Makes Sammy Run. And, and so, um...

• 13:42Tim Ferriss?

  What Makes Sammy Run, is that a novel?

• 13:44Speaker 04

  The Bud Schulberg book, you know, which is all about how somebody, uh, it's a legendary book and about how somebody, you know, makes their way, um, in Hollywood. But, yeah, what I'd say is that, so this young manager, we needed an agent because really agents are the ones who have the contacts to be able to sell something. In, in the end, though, the manager said, you know, I believe in this anyway. And he had known some people on his very low beginning level at a couple of production companies, producers.

• 14:13Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  And he got the script to some of those and we had some rejections. And then, and then some producer tried to give it, get us the option to him for free. And all along, we had to kind of keep our own sense of the project's merit, in a way, of, of its intrinsic, what we felt its intrinsic value was. And so, but finally, the right producer came along and gave it to somebody at Miramax. And then they were willing to step up. And there was this great moment early on where they wanted to option it. And I was flying in, in Las Vegas, working, I was in, I was in the music business still with an artist and... And our cell phones and Dave couldn't reach me and David said, um, no, you can't option

• 14:59Speaker 04

  it. He was, he had just had a moment of clarity where he said, you know what, you can buy it or walk away. But he knew somehow that, um, what we had was good enough that they should, we should make them commit to buying it, which meant they had to spend a lot more money and would make it more likely that they would actually want to make the movie.

• 15:20Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 15:20Speaker 04

  But, you know, my, my experience before that was-

• 15:23Tim Ferriss?

  Did that, oh, the suspense is killing me. So did that, did that, did that gambit work out?

• 15:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:29Tim Ferriss?

  Uh-huh, I like it. Okay.

• 15:30Speaker 04

  Miramax, in fact, he told me it on a cell phone at, at, at Las Vegas airport. I got, I was like, you really did that? He goes, yeah, I did it. So our guys are going back and saying, um, you know, uh, you have to pay them, you know, real money. It was like six figures, you know, which at the time for us was just a fortune of, of money.

• 15:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 04

  Would have been, you know, enough that the initial thing would have been, we each would walk away with six figures or something. And then by the time I landed in LA, Miramax had already come back and said, yes.

• 15:57Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  And then we were in, you know, we were really, um, we were really in business.

• 16:02Tim Ferriss?

  How did you, or the manager with the shingle, get in touch with the, the producer who then got it to the right person at Miramax?

• 16:10Speaker 04

  Well, Seth had been at, you know, um, had networked in, in Hollywood.

• 16:14Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 16:14Speaker 04

  The manager, he was out there and he had, you know, done all the things of going to the, um, right, you know, bars. I mean, because becoming an assistant in Hollywood is still a great way to make contacts.

• 16:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  And I think he had worked his way up to the mailroom at one of the places and met enough people that, look, we weren't getting him, you know, he wasn't getting the script to sort of like, uh, top level folks, but, um, ultimately he did get it, you know, far enough.

• 16:42Tim Ferriss?

  Now, from the, from the music business, or, well, I'm trying to, what, what I've always been fascinated by are writing duos. And I'll, I want to come back to the, sort of the, the process of making a movie because quite frankly, it's something like, you know, I've been thinking about for a long time.

• 16:59Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 17:00Tim Ferriss?

  But how do you work with David? Because I've, I've met other writing duos, for instance, uh, the Freakonomics guys. And, uh, there are these, these sort of- Wonder Twins who put out really good work and I have no idea how I would ever work with a writing partner, not because I couldn't do it, I just don't know how you would even format such a thing. So when you guys were sitting down in the basement or in the storage room, what did the process look like? What did you do over those two hours?

• 17:29Speaker 04

  That's a great question. It's shifted over the years, the ways in which we've worked.

• 17:37Speaker 04

  What we did back then was we together outlined it, we'd, you know, gone to these clubs and like I said, did a tremendous amount of research so that we understood who the people were. Then we spent a lot of time talking about the story. So we would kind of tell each other the story, you know, do a bunch of work trying to say, okay, who are these characters? And how would they interact with each other? We want to tell it about the world of poker. And then we kind of together in talking invented these characters. And then, and then I remember one of us, Dave and I never talk about who came up with what, but one of us came up with this notion of making the beginning of this movie, like making rounders start

• 18:22Speaker 04

  where the Cincinnati Kid ended, right? Where the end of the Cincinnati Kid, spoiler, skip 30 seconds if you don't know that movie that came out in 1963, but the Cincinnati Kid ends with Steve McQueen, the young guy, losing everything. And so our idea was, well, what if we start this right there, this guy who loses everything? And so then we outlined from that premise, every scene of the movie. And so it was outlined in detail and our rule from the beginning was we can deviate from the outline anytime we have a better idea, but if we don't have a better idea, let's just stick to the outline because we can always revise, rewrite later.

• 19:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 19:01Speaker 04

  And then we knew what each scene was supposed to be about, so we would just talk it back and forth because writing the movie dialogue is conversational. And so we would just go back and forth. And if one of us had a better idea, all right, write those lines or I would say it, Dave would type it, or he would type it, get up and I would type. And we really just kind of jammed it. Then at night in our separate worlds, we would each... When we felt like doing it, read through a bunch of pages, make notes. So come in the next morning and right before we started go, hey, that scene we wrote, you know, on page ten, what if this happened instead in that line? And we, you know, uh, because we've been, he and I have been like brothers since we were fourteen and fifteen years old.

• 19:45Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 19:46Speaker 04

  We have a shorthand, we don't have any bullshit between us.

• 19:51Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 19:52Speaker 04

  We, there was, there's never been an argument we've had that's been about sort of ego or about, um, anybody feeling like the other guy doesn't value his contributions.

• 20:06Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  And that's like, that's the key to a collaboration. We are each, I think, keenly grateful for what the other person brings.

• 20:16Tim Ferriss?

  No, and I'm, I'm so envious of this on some level. And people ask me, for instance, are you working on a next book? And the answer is no, because I find it so incredibly isolating, uh, to do it solo. And even if I have a team helping with design and research and things like that, it can be a very, for me at least, psychologically traumatic experience, like being locked.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  No, it's really hard. Like, I wrote, um, one of our movies, Solitary Man, starring Michael Douglas, I wrote that movie alone. David and, but now, here's the thing, I wrote it alone. David and I directed it together. Um, and, but I wrote it alone because when I'd written the beginning of it and read it to Dave, he said, you know, you have the voice for this, this is personal to you for certain reasons, you write the draft and then let's make the movie together. And I felt I needed to, uh, I felt he was right. And, uh, because the twenty pages I'd written were very particular. And it took me so much longer than it would have taken for us to do it together. It was, because we were making other movies along the way, but, but beyond that, not having

• 21:19Speaker 04

  him to bounce stuff off of, not having the benefit of his great ideas, really made it a lonely battle.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  But I was, I say, you know, when I was able to finish it and then giving it to him and then getting the benefit of his wisdom to come be my partner and go make the movie was, was great, um, and useful and like, um, something either of us should do again because then you have the other guy coming in, um, and all his ideas can happen to take something that's basically finished and then take it to a whole nother level.

• 21:50Tim Ferriss?

  Right. And now, the, uh, you know, when I, when I met with, uh, we had sushi, the three of us, uh, in New York City, uh, I, I was so fascinated by sort of the state of the industry and distribution and we'll, we'll get to that in a second, but when did you become a producer and what does that mean in the context of the films that you've been involved with as a producer? Because I'm sure like a lot of people, uh, you see a film, you look at the credits and you're like, holy shit, there are fifteen producers, I have no idea what all these people are doing. So in, in the context of what you do, uh, when did you decide to become a producer and what did that mean in, in terms

• 22:33Tim Ferriss?

  of how you related to the content and ultimately, you know, shared in the spoils or whatever? I mean, how, what, what did that, what shape did that take and what did it mean?

• 22:42Speaker 04

  Well, sometimes it's a vanity title, so you're right to recognize that when you watch a movie. Um, sometimes, you know, it just doesn't mean anything.

• 22:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 22:49Speaker 04

  But when the movies that we've, when we've been a producer on a movie, it's because we either had the central idea that made in the movie or were able to connect people to one another. Um, you know, an example, and it's actually great because it's a, a few different things is The Illusionist, which stars Edward Norton and Paul Tramati.

• 23:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, great movie. I love that movie.

• 23:11Speaker 04

  Thank you. And that's based on a short story called Eisenheim, The Illusionist, by a brilliant guy named Stephen Milhouser. And Dave and I had had that story, that story was in Best American Short Stories nineteen eighty-nine. And, uh, I, I had carried that story around. For like thirteen years and then said one day Dave and I were with Neil Berger, a writer-director, and we'd we'd helped him make his first teeny tiny movie called Interview with the Assassin. And we're standing around outside his editing room and said, "Do you know the short story, I Have an Illusionist? That should really be a movie." And he's like, "I do know it. I bet you I could figure out how to make it." Because Dave and I couldn't figure out how to write that movie originally.

• 23:48Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:48Speaker 04

  We knew there was a movie in it. We couldn't recognize it. So we said to Neil, "Hey, if you want to try to figure out how to how to write it, we'll produce it," meaning we'll acquire the short story, which we actually got for free for a year and a half.

• 24:00Tim Ferriss?

  Amazing.

• 24:01Speaker 04

  Then we paid a little bit of money to keep it going.

• 24:02Tim Ferriss?

  That's incredible.

• 24:03Speaker 04

  And we said, "And we'll suit with you, Neil, so that creatively you have us to bounce your ideas off of, and we will, um, help you along to where there's a script that we all think can get made, and then we'll go and try to attach other elements, meaning actors, financial partners, and all that stuff." Now, that movie, um, has done a hundred million worldwide at the box office, not including DVD or video on demand.

• 24:28Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 24:28Speaker 04

  It's like, the real number's like ninety-seven point five million dollars worldwide. And I'll tell you, Tim, it was rejected at every stage by everybody in Hollywood. I mean, this is, that's why I return to this theme. I think it's really important. When I say, again, every studio had a chance to see that thing at the screenplay stage and again at the final movie stage. Oh, sorry, screenplay stage? They all rejected it. At the stage where we attached Edward and Paul, they all rejected it. And then when we finished it, even though we tested it and it tested, uh, like as high as a movie can test, one of the highest testing movies of all time, meaning that the crowds objectively loved it and we did it repeat it, it was repeatable. We tested it in various

• 25:12Speaker 04

  different places. They all passed again. And and then it goes on to do a hundred. So...

• 25:17Tim Ferriss?

  That doesn't make any sense to me at all. So how is it possible? Like, what is the rationale that a an exec would use for rejecting something after the stars are attached and you've had successful crowd testing? Well, I like, I I'm just trying to figure out, besides being completely incompetent, like what, there has to be some logic, however, however perverse.

• 25:39Speaker 04

  They, by by and large, they take... They take comfort very often in decisions for which they can't be fired.

• 25:49Tim Ferriss?

  Ah, yeah, yep, yep, yep.

• 25:51Speaker 04

  So, passing on a magic movie set in Austria in the eighteen hundreds, that's pretty easy to pass on.

• 26:00Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. So, it's a, it's a, it's a, you never get fired for buying IBM type of situation.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, you could, but, but, you know, you buy The Illusionist and it fails, the next guy, the, you know, the, the, the guy under you says, uh, "Well, what an imbecile, uh, thought a movie with, with people in capes, you know, doing magic tricks is gonna sell. I would never agree on that. I'll make the next superhero movie." So, I mean, that's very reductive, by the way. I'm being very reductive, right? These are actually smart, these are actually smart people and they're thoughtful people, but there is, uh, uh, there, there is group think. There, there is, um, shallow thinking sometimes, and there is, like, herd mentality. So, um, and then, listen, a lot of the time, they're correct. It's very safe to say no.

• 26:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 26:42Speaker 04

  But I'll just tell one more rejection story.

• 26:44Tim Ferriss?

  Sure, please.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  And the reason I do is because, um, I find that on, uh, so one other thing, which is Hollywood's always trying to, um, remake what was successful today, and they don't understand that what's successful, very often don't understand what's successful today isn't gonna be successful a year from now.

• 27:01Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 27:01Speaker 04

  And so, it's mavericks who figure that out, and, and maverick producers, or smaller movie companies, or the occasional, you know, brilliant woman who's the head of production, but, but, but mostly, they forget that it's a, what's the technology term? Like a destructive technology?

• 27:16Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, disruptive.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  Uh, disruptive, they, they forget that this is disruptive technology, and, and that, that all the time, you know, bridesmaids was a destructive tech, uh, disruptive technology.

• 27:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Speaker 04

  Right? The, the conventional wisdom was, you can't put a movie with that, those women. A raunchy movie starring women doesn't work. Now, somebody at Universal realized that was a faulty premise somehow.

• 27:43Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  And so, then that becomes a disruptive thing that leads to, you hope, a bunch of others. And then, of course, you get to the point where that no longer is gonna work, cause that, that appetite's been sated. But, believe me, they'll keep, they'll make the same, that, you know, they'll keep going after that until there's just nothing left in it, for each kinda thing.

• 28:01Tim Ferriss?

  And in the case of the short story, how did you, what was the approach that you used to, it sounds like, option that for free?

• 28:10Speaker 04

  Sure, so that was...

• 28:11Tim Ferriss?

  And an option, just so I can clarify, is effectively a no-shop agreement, right? We have exclusive rights to try to develop this into a film for X period of time.

• 28:19Speaker 04

  And, and sometimes it has a B-side, which is, and then we guarantee that if we develop it into a film, the author will receive a floor of X.

• 28:30Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 28:31Speaker 04

  And then for your protection, our protection, you might say, and a ceiling of Y. And that might, those numbers might be percentages of the shooting budget of the film.

• 28:38Tim Ferriss?

  I see, got it.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  Do you want to say that a lot more, like, again?

• 28:41Tim Ferriss?

  No, I got it.

• 28:42Speaker 04

  I know, you understand it, yes.

• 28:43Tim Ferriss?

  You have the bare minimum the author is guaranteed and the maximum, in sort of broad strokes, as a percentage of the total production budget of the film.

• 28:52Speaker 04

  Exactly, and so sometimes you'll be then, and sometimes you'll have to pay a little bit upfront against those numbers. But we didn't. So here's what we did. At the time, I think we'd made one, perhaps two movies, two. We'd been involved in two movies, then Rounders and Knockground Guys, and certainly weren't as far along in our career as we are now, and, but, you know, passion and, one thing that really works in the entertainment business is genuine passion and enthusiasm, and a belief, and then some way of telling your story that gives people on the receiving end of it the confidence that you actually have the answer to the question that you're raising.

• 29:37Speaker 04

  So, we found that the story was controlled by, I think, William Morris, might have been ICM, ICM, and found the name of the woman who was in charge of those kind of subsidiary rights, they're called, of short stories. And we figured, actually, that whoever was doing that was probably a little bit junior, and was probably used to just getting faxes back, faxes sent with requests. And we we thought, you know, I bet you not that many people call her and and ask if they can take her to lunch.

• 30:08Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right.

• 30:09Speaker 04

  And so we were guys who made a couple of movies and we called and we said, can we take you to lunch? We have some stuff we want to talk about and took her to lunch and walked her through our vision for this movie. And explained that we would the truth, we're not really producers, we we don't have um development money. We don't have a fund, um we don't have backers. What we have is uh know how and passion. And if you explain this to the author, and you know, we gave her this mission that she then could embrace as her own mission, which was, I can go deliver to this author something some great news, which is there are a couple of guys who while you're sleeping, Stephen Milhouser, are gonna be, you know, doing everything they can to make something happen with your uh with your short story.

• 30:52Speaker 04

  And so she went away and got us, I think she got us a year and then another six months for free. At which point we felt, because it was getting rejected and Neil was rewriting, we felt like um it wasn't even fair to ask for more time free.

• 31:05Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 31:05Speaker 04

  But then it was only like a thousand dollars, fifteen hundred dollars. It took us years, but over those years, we then added a partner at some point when when we felt we were maybe gonna have to pay a little bit more. Neil Burger did all this work for free, wrote the script fifteen times at our, you know, with our notes and going through it. And um but eventually, I mean, eventually, everybody, everybody won.

• 31:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. I I know this, I I love I love these stories. I I do think there's perhaps one caveat that I'd love to get you to comment on, a potential caveat. And that is, uh, there are people who could confuse getting rejected with being a solid indicator that their product is absolutely good. So just because you get rejected doesn't mean your product is is good, right? So how do you, I guess what I'm wondering is what signals do you pay attention to? Uh, or or are there projects that you've had rejected and eventually you're like, you know what? Uh, the signal is, is correct. Like, this is not something I should pursue.

• 32:12Speaker 04

  Well, I think what the first thing I said at the beginning of this conversation about this area was, you must do a dispassionate evaluation, right? I said, there's this step. And the step that you try to take is, okay, that's a body blow that hurts.

• 32:24Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 32:25Speaker 04

  Um, my emotional reaction is anger.

• 32:27Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 32:27Speaker 04

  And hurt. Now let me step back and dispassionately, to the best of my ability, dispassionately evaluate the rejection. Is there something in that rejection that hits home in the secret place where I know the thing is flawed?

• 32:43Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 32:43Speaker 04

  If it does, is that addressable?

• 32:45Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  If it doesn't, um, is, are the, are the fundamental things I believe about this still true? Okay, if they are, let's press on. If they're not, can we, if they're not, can we, um, fix it? If we can't, maybe that rejection is, is right. But you have to take it, the, dispassion is really important because you, you have to know it's not a rejection of you, and you have to know, you, you, you have to be able to find a way to evaluate. But I will say, something I always think about and, um, and, and believe, it's a very fine line, for artists especially, between delusion and belief.

• 33:26Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.

• 33:27Speaker 04

  And so many people believe, are deluded in the belief, um, that they're great, uh, the work is great, and that everybody else is crazy. Right? But, but somehow, the problem is that the artists who succeed also have that exact same narrative, most of the time.

• 33:46Tim Ferriss?

  Right. They're just eccentric and not crazy.

• 33:48Speaker 04

  Well, you know, their, their crazy belief, but, but the story, the, the final sort of story in this little, um, in this little area, and it, it, of rejection is, and I'll do this very quickly because I've told it before, but when I was 21, really when I was 19, I discovered this, I, I was organizing a boycott at my college, um, against...

• 34:10Speaker 04

  Uh, in- investing, um, the school's endowment into companies that did business in South Africa because apartheid was going on.

• 34:17Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  And in organizing this stuff, I stumbled upon a singer-songwriter I wanted to play at this rally. That was Tracy Chapman. And, uh, who, uh, if a lot of your listeners are young, in their twenties, who may not know, Tracy became, for a time, the biggest singer-songwriter in the world.

• 34:35Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, huge, huge, yeah.

• 34:36Speaker 04

  And sold like thirteen million albums, but, and I worked with Tracy. I produced her demos and, um, got, so, produced her demos, worked with her. My father was in the music business, so I knew about the music business and I had, I knew people in the music business. And I had Tracy, uh, we signed her. People would come up from New York to watch her, I was in Boston, people would come up from New York to watch her perform. I would watch record company executive after record company executive, watch her, be personally moved by it, sometimes get tears in their eyes because what she was singing about was so important and her voice was so beautiful. And then they would say, can I please meet her? I just wanna meet her, she's what an ama- and I could see they weren't bullshitting me,

• 35:19Speaker 04

  Tim, they, they had a cathartic experience watching her perform.

• 35:23Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:23Speaker 04

  And they would walk me, I would walk them to their, uh, I was at Tobsen, I would walk them to their car, winter before they drove back to New York or to their hotel. And they would look me in the eye and they would say, thank you for a night I'll always remember. And then they would say, now you know, uh, we can't possibly sign her at Columbia Records.

• 35:38Tim Ferriss?

  (laughing)

• 35:41Speaker 04

  You know, I was a kid, I was twenty by this point probably, a junior at- at- at

• 35:45Tim Ferriss?

  college. I love you and I never wanna see you again. Yeah, no.

• 35:47Speaker 04

  And I would say, dude, I don't understand, like, um, man, because, I was like a guy, what are you, you just, I saw you crying and, uh, she was playing Talking About a Revolution and Baby Can I Hold You Tonight? And, and they go, yeah, yeah, but she's black. Um, she's seems a bit masculine is what they would say, right? Um, and I'd say, but didn't you see like those three or four or five hundred people who knew every word? Even though there's no record out, there's no internet, you know, it wasn't on the internet. They just come to show, yes, but it's college, it's bullshit. And I'd go, I've traveled and I had, this is part of how, to answer your question of how you know. I had traveled all over New England with her and watched her perform to any audience she performed to ended up on their feet. And coming back again and again and again, and I, so I knew that these people were wrong, even though they were rationally correct, right?

• 36:31Speaker 04

  Because nobody like her had been successful. Um, it was totally against what was going on in music at the time. So because they were on the inside, their entire, all the defenses they had up were actually valid defenses that usually you ought to have, have up. They just couldn't understand that this was disruptive. But I, because of my innocence, was able to understand that. But the lesson of that, then when it finally happened and we finally got her signed, the writer company she signed to even told me it's not gonna sell any records, but it's the beginning of a career. And all this stuff, even after playing them fast car. And watching that happen and taking that ride, and by the way, I like, you know, had a point on that album. And so I made a lot of money as a young man, um, certainly a lot of money for a twenty one year old.

• 37:11Speaker 04

  But watching that happen made me pretty indefatigable going forward when I truly believed in something. Because I've just watched experts, um, absolutely bind to conventional wisdom and, and absolutely be wrong. But we all have blind spots. I've been wrong, you've been wrong. It's just that, um, I don't know, I think that there's a, a, a likelihood that, uh, if you are sane, if you are, and if you're rigorous. If you are rigorous in your own R and D in whatever your area is, and you do your own testing and you really stress test the thing that you do. I don't know, I think that gives you a tremendous amount of inner fortitude when you come up against. The monolith.

• 37:55Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely, and I think that once you've seen it once, you recognize it as a second and a third time. And in the case of, of course, the four hour work week, I mean, that was rejected, not, not even politely, I mean, very violently in, you know, 27, I think, in 27 cases or so. And then, and then bought for, you know, bought for a song, which I, they deserved because they were the only, that was, that was the market price, right? I don't, I don't in any way hold it against them. They, they, they, they made a good decision and they got rewarded for it. But the, I, I'd love to get your advice very selfishly. And this is, this is because I, for many reasons. I mean, number one, you're very qualified. Number two, this is something that's

• 38:38Tim Ferriss?

  just been a bug in my brain for a long time. And that is potentially turning the four hour work week into a film. And we've talked about this. I was inspired by our meeting in New York quite a long time ago, in between books to go to the story seminar with Robert McKee. And I think that David might have recommended Save the Cat. I don't want to put words in his mouth. I think he might have.

• 39:01Speaker 04

  No, he wouldn't have recommended. I think you asked, I remember the conversation.

• 39:04Tim Ferriss?

  I may have forced Strongarm into a book.

• 39:07Speaker 04

  I remember when you asked, you said, is there anything that sort of talks about the conventional way you do it?

• 39:11Tim Ferriss?

  There we go. All right.

• 39:12Speaker 04

  And because, because I really think those books are pretty, I think all of this is pretty useless. But, um.

• 39:17Tim Ferriss?

  So, so just, just to, so useless as they may be, I, I became fascinated by screenwriting, at the very least. And sort of put together a skeleton structure of what could become sort of an entertaining, funny movie with philosophical takeaways, not completely unlike Fight Club, but to tracking the story and the backstory of the four hour work week. Now, the, the reason nothing has happened with that, there are many, but one of them is. That I've been scared senseless by all of the factors that can derail a promising project, right? It's like you have Edward Norton attached and this, and the audience loves it, and still there are roadblocks and people who can derail the project.

• 40:02Tim Ferriss?

  And in the case of TV, for instance, I've been working on this TV show for the last year plus, close to a year and a half if you really add in all the contract negotiation and everything else. But when you're operating with a partner that is a large company like Turner in this case, there are all sorts of internal dynamics that can lead to delays and postponement like the launch of this TV show. And it's been very, very frustrating for me as someone who likes to create, to see this work that I've put my heart and soul and sweat and tears into, get postponed with no real sort of light in sight at the end. So I guess what I'm wondering is, if you were in my shoes, how would you, in this day and age with Kickstarter and all these different options, think of creating a feature film?

• 40:47Tim Ferriss?

  How would you?

• 40:48Speaker 04

  Well, do you want to, the threshold, you know, do you, you want to write it, yes?

• 40:56Tim Ferriss?

  I absolutely would want to have a very heavy role in.

• 41:00Speaker 04

  Well, then my advice to you is pretty analog, which is write it.

• 41:03Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, alright.

• 41:04Speaker 04

  Because the power is, I'll tell you, so David and I, along with Andrew Ross Sorkin, wrote this thing, Billions, that we're gonna make for Showtime. And the standard way you would do it, if you were in our position, is you go, because, you know, when you've made some things, now, at the sort of idea stage, we're not gonna get rejected that often, right?

• 41:29Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 41:30Speaker 04

  Or at the early stage when their only outlay is to get you, pay you to write a script. So we'd, a few different times gone to HBO and made deals with them to write a script, and then their shows didn't get made. And we were trying to figure out the way to have the highest probability of, once we decided that we didn't care, it's great to get the money to write a script, but that that wasn't primary. What was, what was most important to us was the real chance to go make the show. That's what mattered, right?

• 42:00Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely, yeah, for sure.

• 42:01Speaker 04

  So we realized. That if we wrote it on spec, meaning speculatively, meaning without a deal in place.

• 42:08Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 42:08Speaker 04

  Here's what we risked. We risked three months of our lives where we would have gotten paid a lot of, you know, certainly a really good amount of money in the fourth quarter of a year, right? And where opportunity cost, we're walking away from a lot of paying jobs, right?

• 42:20Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 42:21Speaker 04

  And we decided we're gonna take three months and we're gonna, or at the time, I don't think we knew three, it could have been any amount of time, a month to five months, we're gonna write this script on spec so that we can either not sell it, and then we've wasted this time, although, I mean, you know, we can talk about whether that's even a waste of time, I don't think any of that's a waste, but essentially, right, from business standpoint, wasted that time, or we would have leverage. Because if somebody wanted what was now concretized in this, an actual script, if they wanted it, we could say, well, that's fine, you have to pay us, but more than that, you have to commit to making it.

• 42:59Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 42:59Speaker 04

  And then if you don't actually, if you're not committing right now to making it, we're not gonna sell it. And there's no way to get, uh, there are people who get that without, but it's very hard to get that without having the piece of material that's compelling, because in your case, with a screenplay.

• 43:17Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:18Speaker 04

  A real screenplay that, let's assume you write an excellent screenplay, you write it, you go to all your friends who do what I do, we all give you advice, you go take the notes, you make it better, make it better, here's a great script, well, now, the world is open to you. Why? Because now you can go get the one thing that's the most valuable, which is a piece of talent attached to it.

• 43:37Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 43:38Speaker 04

  Um, now, if you have a, because signing on, you can get a movie, let's say you get a movie star tomorrow to jump on to the four hour work week, it's not a real commitment, because they, the real movie stars aren't gonna really sign on until there's a screenplay and they really see it manifested in, in, really manifested as a story.

• 43:54Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:55Speaker 04

  But if you can manifest it as a story and get a movie star, you have a movie. That's just binary.

• 44:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 44:00Speaker 04

  That's how that happens. Now, there's huge risk, the risk to that is to your time and your ego. That's all you're risking, time and ego. Um, and I, for me, in your shoes, knowing, because you know, over the years, you've left me voicemail messages like three different times, hey, I'm working on a screenplay, uh, and then, you know, I don't hear from you again for five more months. Still working, I remember that conversation, really excited to show you, and, um... Which is great. I love getting those messages. It lets me know you're alive and happy. But, and I don't, I picture wine. I always picture a lot of wine involved right before.

• 44:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, those are probably my drunk dials to you. My drunk texting, oh god.

• 44:37Speaker 04

  But, but I, I have to say that, um, you want to do this, Tim, so you should, I mean, if I could just hear the advice you'd give somebody else. It's like, go write the script. Now, there's, if you had a screenplay, we could sit for an hour and a half and devise seven different ways, for real, like, uh, like, yeah, like seven, five, five to seven different ways to figure out how to get them, how to, how to go from a finished screenplay to, um, a made movie, that, and, and, and how much control you could keep or would have to give up along the way, depending on who and how you aligned different resources. But all of that starts from a finished screenplay.

• 45:16Tim Ferriss?

  And to create that, no, this is, this is exactly what I need to hear. Uh, the, to, to create that screenplay, I, I know you do not have a very high opinion of a lot of the screenwriting books out there. However, I, I want to become good at the craft. I want to be educated, obviously. Uh, is the best way to do that by reading?

• 45:36Speaker 04

  Your story about how you get good at anything, or Wateskin's story about how you get good at anything, it's like by going to the source and figuring out what are people doing or misunderstanding about it, like, right, how can I get better faster is your specialty.

• 45:48Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 45:48Speaker 04

  And I would suggest to you that the, that the ways in which people who've written those books talk about it is at best archaic and at worst, wrong. So, like, I, but today, I did on my podcast, um, on the moment, I interviewed my friend John Hamburg, who wrote, um, and directed, uh, I Love You Man, and Along Came Polly, and wrote Meet the Fockers and Meet the Parents. He's one of the biggest comedy writers in the business and directors. And he started talking about his approach to writing scenes. And I I I said to him, I was like, this is what I mean. John Hamburg, a guy who's just had nothing but success doing this, was talking about how he thinks about a scene. And and questions he asked himself before, and I thought, why didn't someone just put that in a fucking book?

• 46:30Speaker 04

  Like, that's worth, that's worth a million dollars. Like, that's incredible. And so I I, you know, I think what you need to do is, um, watch movies. And I said to Hamburg, how did you figure this out? And here's what he said. He said, I would watch a movie I loved, like, five times, taking notes the whole time. I would stop. I would watch individual scenes and try to figure out why those individual scenes work. What is it that makes those individual scenes work? And I would really, he was like, I would really grind on it, and I would really take notes. And I would really try to figure out each part of it, and and then I'd do it again. And like, I think that that is more valuable, especially for you who are so good at looking at systems.

• 47:15Speaker 04

  And figuring out where the mo-, you know, where within those systems are the folk, where's the fulcrum? How does this turn? How do, you're great at that, and I think that if I'm you, that's what I'm looking at. I mean, the first one of those six-second, you know, I do this thing called six-second screenwriting, um, on Vine. And the very first one I did was, uh, all screenwriting books are bullshit. You know, read screenplays, watch movies, and let them be your guide. And I still think that that's true, you know? If you're writing a conspiracy movie, watch network, but don't watch it once, watch network seven times. Watch network enough that you can start to understand where the seams are. And start to understand where the craft, uh, you know, where the craft exists and how it's built.

• 48:00Speaker 04

  That's my, I mean, look, by the way, I'm, um, I'm very extreme about this because I think it's a whole-

• 48:06Tim Ferriss?

  You're a militant screenwriter.

• 48:07Speaker 04

  I just, yeah, well, I wrote this, uh, I wrote this blog post called, um, the, uh, the screenwriting instruction, the con men and the screenwriting instruction industrial complex.

• 48:20Tim Ferriss?

  That is very extreme.

• 48:23Speaker 04

  Because, yeah, it's at BrianKopman.com. Because I decided that, um, I, I watch these people charging, you know, like a guy wants to go, a woman who wants to go to Hollywood and try to become a screenwriter. You know, $250 to that woman is a lot of money to give to somebody supposedly to teach her how to write genre. Who's, and then that person has never even sold a screenplay.

• 48:45Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right.

• 48:45Speaker 04

  Much less had a movie made.

• 48:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 48:48Speaker 04

  At least Robert McKee, who I'm, I'm not, uh, I, I can't rip McKee because too many successful screenwriters, people I admire, have, say they got something out of his, his class, but I would say at least McKee has produced credits.

• 49:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 49:00Speaker 04

  Like, he's, uh, okay, there's a, there's a podcast, um, by Craig Mason and John August called Script Notes. Um, those two guys, between them, have 20 movie credits, hit movies. Those two guys know what they're talking about. They're in the trenches making movies every day.

• 49:15Tim Ferriss?

  This is a podcast you said, Script Notes?

• 49:18Speaker 04

  Script Notes.

• 49:18Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, Script Notes.

• 49:20Speaker 04

  John August and Craig Mason. Uh, you know, um, there are resources that are, and especially now, there are so many resources for people to look to, um, that, that I think are more helpful than sort of maybe what used to be considered the thing to do. Go to the Radisson and sit in some guy's seminar.

• 49:39Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. And just, just as a starting point, uh, are, are there screenplays that you recommend any aspiring screenwriter read, or is it very sort of target specific, where I say?

• 49:50Speaker 04

  Well, I think that Tony Gilroy's screenplay for Michael Clayton is, uh, just a, a work of state of the art, you know?

• 49:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yep.

• 49:56Speaker 04

  State of the art, platinum screenplay.

• 49:58Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 49:58Speaker 04

  Uh, because what he pulls off in that movie is so difficult to pull off.

• 50:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 50:02Speaker 04

  Um, that kind of flawed hero who's still heroic, those plot mechanics, caring about those characters, and he writes like a dream, and yeah, I, I would say... That's a really great screenplay, uh, to read for sure. Um, I mean, Network by Patty Shajewski, that's a great screenplay to read as well. And especially, you know, watch the movie and then read the screenplay.

• 50:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 50:26Speaker 04

  And figure, you know, I mean, I definitely think those things. I mean, for you, I would, I would read Jerry Maguire.

• 50:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:33Speaker 04

  Um, but I would not just like, I know you know the movie, but I would try to figure out, like, I would watch the movie again, because there are very clear storytelling devices that Cameron Crowe uses. And you can't find someone who makes movies with more heart and soul than Cameron Crowe, but that doesn't mean that the craft isn't exceptional also.

• 50:50Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 50:50Speaker 04

  And, but unconventional in certain ways. And like, so if I'm you, I'm looking at that movie and I'm watching it as much, as often as I'm watching Fight Club.

• 50:58Tim Ferriss?

  Right, cool.

• 50:59Speaker 04

  Because your story is sort of in between those things.

• 51:02Tim Ferriss?

  No, definitely, absolutely, a hundred percent agreed. Uh, and, uh, I need to get on it. Well, that's, that's good news. I'm gonna be, I'll be out in your neck of the woods on the east coast, so you might get some more drunk dolls while I'm watching these, but, uh...

• 51:14Speaker 04

  No, definitely, I mean, it's so funny, because I had, we, I had, when you called me to do this, I was trying to call, I was calling you also to say that we should get together and talk about all this, because I wondered what was going on and, and, and, you know, and I've been so focused. I understand the side of it that you're talking about and why people are so engaged, but, you know, I love hearing you talk to people about, um, about how to, how to maximize yourself, because that, and, and I'm talking about how to maximize your internal life, that'll, in a way that allows you to, um, stave off fear long enough to do the work. Because he, and I would suggest to you, Tim, that even you, um, are probably afraid of failing at this.

• 51:54Tim Ferriss?

  Sure, yeah, no doubt, absolutely. I mean, I, yeah.

• 51:57Speaker 04

  And that's...

• 51:59Tim Ferriss?

  No, go ahead, sorry.

• 52:00Speaker 04

  No, no, I mean, and, and so, because, because writing is uniquely, and especially writing fictional, you know, even though it's a base in your life, you know, writing a story, a movie story, like, um, some part of our self really doesn't want to know that, um, maybe we're not great at telling stories, or this time. Like, it's so fundamental to our experience to be entertaining, but the thought of not being entertaining is kind of crushing. But, um, you're such a good storyteller that you gotta just find a way to get a discipline and a routine going that, you know, I think you, a bunch of people you talk to, as I do, do some kind of morning free writing, do you?

• 52:42Tim Ferriss?

  I'm sorry, can you say that one more time?

• 52:43Speaker 04

  Do you do morning free, do you free write in the morning?

• 52:45Tim Ferriss?

  I do journaling in the morning, uh, which is not probably the same as free writing. Uh, maybe you could explain exactly how you go about it.

• 52:54Speaker 04

  How do you go about it?

• 52:55Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I'm really just journaling my plans for the day, observing myself as a mindfulness practice. But it's not, there's no real narrative, uh, which I suppose is maybe antithetical to free writing, but it's mostly trying to just examine where I am psychologically and emotionally prior to starting the day and then setting sort of a framework for, for not, uh, completely self sabotaging for the rest of the, uh, the morning and afternoon.

• 53:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a great, I mean, that's a great practice. Um, to get in, yeah, what I do is, um, really based on the morning pages by Julia Cameron in The Artist's Way and, um, it's three longhand pages where you just keep the pen moving for three pages, no matter what, no censoring, no rereading. And I just have found that it's, um, the closest thing to magic I've come across, that if you really do it every day in a real disciplined practice, um, something happens to your subconscious that allows you to get to your most creative place. And I, I'd say, and I know you've had this experience with other things you've given people, let's say I've given that book to a hundred people and said, I'm telling you, you need to do this.

• 54:05Speaker 04

  Of that, uh, of the hundred people I've given it to, maybe ten of them have actually opened the book and done the exercises. Of those ten, seven have, um, have had books, movies, um, TV shows made out successful.

• 54:22Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 54:23Speaker 04

  And it's an incredible, it changed my, and that book changed my life, even though it's very spiritual and I'm, I'm an atheist, but the core ideas in it, the core tools in that book, um, are, they're kind of a companion to, um, the War of Art because-

• 54:38Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right.

• 54:39Speaker 04

  Presfield talks about resistance and Cameron has, I think, the cure for it. And so, um, I think they really go together and, and, uh, I think would be useful for you if, if, if it turns out this is something that's important to you to do.

• 54:56Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's one of those things that won't go away in the way that would seem to indicate, you know, before my time on this earth is expired, I have to do it. And I'm gonna get into it. I'll dig in, and I'm actually fortunate that I have some time opening up in the next few months to really dedicate to trying to really tackle it properly, so.

• 55:23Speaker 04

  But it never gets, you know, totally easy.

• 55:26Tim Ferriss?

  No.

• 55:26Speaker 04

  I mean, creating every day, I just want to say something, it may sound, I may sound glib about this stuff, but every day is still, for me, all that stuff that you have and that everybody has, the insecurity, the fear that you're not good enough, that you don't have, like, I have to wrestle it every day, you know, meditation and morning pages and long walks, and like, you have to, you know, every day, it's about building a practice that enables you to try to forget that you're afraid.

• 55:53Tim Ferriss?

  Right, just like whipping the beast of burden, trying to get to do what you want. Well, this has been really fun. I'm sure we'll end up having a round two at some point, and I'm sure my audience will probably ask for it. So I will put a bunch of links in the show notes where people can find more about you and your work, but what is the best place, if you could send people to one place to learn more about you, where would you suggest they go?

• 56:16Speaker 04

  I mean, I think Twitter, Brian Koppelman, B-R-I-A-N-K-O-P-P-E-L-M-A-N, Twitter, my blog's not that active, but at Twitter kind of leads you to places, and my podcast, which is The Moment with Brian Koppelman, which is a weekly show every Tuesday through the Grantland Network.

• 56:31Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Well, this has been great. We'll actually have to meet up for another proper meal and maybe some wine or something like that.

• 56:37Speaker 04

  Oh, you bring the wine. Let's definitely do that. You bring the wine, because I have a whole bunch of things I need to ask you soon. Oh, hey, come on my podcast.

• 56:45Tim Ferriss?

  Sure, I would love to. Done, done deal.

• 56:47Speaker 04

  Great, I'll email the sky, however those people all get to you. I'm gonna email them, and we're gonna set up.

• 56:53Tim Ferriss?

  They'll throw the net on me, but thanks so much for the time, and

• 56:58Speaker 04

  Hey, thank you.

• 56:59Tim Ferriss?

  I'll talk to you soon, man.

• 57:00Speaker 04

  Bye, Jeff.

• 57:01Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, bye-bye.

• 57:07Speaker 05

  If you want more of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to 4hourblog.com.

• 57:12Speaker 06

  F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R-B-L-O-G dot com.

• 57:16Speaker 05

  Where you'll find an award-winning blog, tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter at twitter.com/TFerriss.

• 57:29Speaker 06

  That's T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S.

• 57:31Speaker 05

  Or on Facebook at facebook.com/TimFerriss. Until next time, thanks for listening.