738 - Building Your Audience with Courtney Kemp

18:08John August:Oh, yeah. Icons. Yes. And so that's my first staff writing drama job. And back then there was something called a minority staff writer. They've called it a million different things. But basically the show wasn't charged for your existence. So on Bernie, I was the minority staff writer. And then on Injustice, I was the minority staff writer. But those relationships, that relationship with Michelle and Robert, obviously, you know, I ended up on The Good Wife. you know, for three years after that. So, and I'm still close with them. I mean, they really taught me so much about how to write. Well, let's talk about what you learned in that room because it sounds like Bernie Mac, you learned like, oh, I shouldn't be doing this thing.

18:44John August:At all. But in Injustice and then on The Good Wife, what are the things you learned that helped you both as a staff writer and moving up those ranks? So what were the crucial things? Well, on Injustice, the showrunner of record was Jeff Melvoin. He taught me a lot about how really to run a show. Like I watched how to run a show from a perspective of producing. That was really smart. The Kings, in terms of story, Robert and Michelle are really, that first year of The Good Wife, basically, Juliana was in every scene. And so they had to figure out a way to not have her be in every scene, but keep the story going.

19:20So I learned how to create a proxy character, like characters that kept the story going, even if your main character wasn't in the scene. If you look at the first season of Power, Tommy, even though he's the best friend, he's also a proxy character. He's moving that forward.

19:35John August:And so I want to pause for one second. So like Julianne Margulies, she's the star. She's the lead. But like she literally can't be in every scene because you couldn't possibly, production-wise, you can't have her on set 16 hours a day for every day. And she had a young son at the time too. So she was really shouldering a huge burden. She's also an incredible actress, which isn't easy, right? So yes, absolutely what you're saying which is that it's not possible to put that much weight on someone and that's a thing I will also say that is a difference between a feature writer and a television writer is that the television writer has to think about how many days a week is this person going to be working and am I going to be able to spell them and give them a break?

20:17Can I double shoot? If they're in every scene I can't actually shoot two scenes at once whereas in a feature you can have one person in every scene. You know, you can do that movie with, you know, Ryan Reynolds in the grave, right? In a feature, but you can't do that. Buried, yes. I don't know why that didn't come to mind. It's a pretty obvious title. Yeah, but you know, you're absolutely right.

20:40John August:So you're learning those really practical things about like how the decisions of what's happening on the page is going to impact how you're going to actually be able to shoot the thing and how the whole, you know, franchise, that you could probably do it for one episode, but you couldn't do it over the course of eight episodes. it's like everything would come crashing down. So you have to be really smart and thinking about the whole show, not just what this one scene needs. Absolutely. And those lessons, I'll tell you one other lesson I learned from the Kings. In the first three seasons of The Good Wife, we would always have to build to, at the end of the third act, what is Alicia's dilemma?

21:14She has to make a decision one way or the other that's about her morality and her character. And it was a way of having plot feed into character. So that's something that I learned from them, from the Kings, about how to structure an episode and then structure a season. So you're structuring the episode with that dilemma, but you're also structuring the season with that dilemma as well.

21:35John August:What did you learn about running a room from the Kings or from these other showrunners? I would say the biggest things I learned about running a room came from Greg Berlanti. The year I was on Eli Stone, Greg was, I mean, and I run the room like this to this day, which is we come in and we first start talking about scenes we want to see. What are the scenes we want to see this season? And what are the scenes we want to see? What are the scenes that are necessary? You know, for example, with Nemesis, it's like we know we want to see these men meet a couple of times. But we also know we don't want to see them meet that often.

22:07That's not what the show is. The show is about I'm obsessed with you and I can't get to you, not I can get to you. So we start with that, just a big board where there's no wrong answer. Yeah. It's open and no one gets trashed or hurt or judged because they come up with a bad idea because there's no such thing as a bad idea. The worst idea that was ever come up with in a power writer's room was from this guy. So like, that's, it's totally fine. So I say that to say like that, Greg taught us that. And then the other thing that Greg was very good about was like a great idea can come from anyone, right?

22:40From anyone. It does not matter who you are or what your title is. The best idea in the room wins no matter what. And I really learned a lot about that from him.

22:51John August:That's great. So how long is that sort of blue sky, no bad ideas phase in a writer's room? Like how long do you do that before you started? It's like, okay, now we actually have to break episodes. I do a good three or four days of that. But the writers know, come in with it. Don't like, we're not gonna just shoot the shit. You know, we're gonna come in with it. We do do a lot of breaks and a lot of joking. I like to keep my room really funny because we're doing heavy things. But once you start to get the scenes I want to see, and then if it's a secondary season, like it's a tertiary season, you need to have, what do we owe the audience?

23:26And that's another day. What do we owe them? Because we've already asked a question and we have to answer it. That's right. And once you get those down, you can start to actually structure your season. You can actually start to put those places, like where do those scenes go in what order? And now you start to thematically look at what is each episode.

23:44John August:Talk to me about the transfer from you're on these shows, you're moving up the ranks to, okay, now let's have you do your own show. Let's have you, let's have Courtney Kemp, showrunner. What was that transition? What happened? I was at CIA. Nancy left ICM and moved to CIA, and I moved to CIA with her. And then I was working with Nancy and Andrew Miller, who's, they're both still my agents. And Andrew was working with 50 Cent and with Mark Canton also. So I was working on an early iteration of Get Christy Love, which I ended up shooting as a pilot many years later. Did not go. They wanted to do, Mark and 50, who were in business already, wanted to do a music-driven drama.

24:25But neither one of them really did TV. Mark's a film guy. 50, obviously, is a music guy. And so Andrew kind of set me and Mark and 50 up on a creative date. because I was really wanting to write in this kind of blaxploitation space and they really didn't know how to get into TV. And then this idea for power, which was really a combination, that lead character Ghost is a combination of my dad and 50. My father had just died prior to this. So I was trying to figure out a way to write about him. And then that's where the idea was born. That's great.

25:01John August:And so classically, you come up with a take, You have this team. You have you writing it. You're pitching it. Did you write an episode? Did you write it? Were you selling it as a spec? Were you going around town and pitching it to all the streamers? This is an old school process because this is before you really would write like a spec episode. This was me going into, let's see, where did we go? We went obviously to Starz. We also went to FX. But we started at Showtime because I had been on a CBSP deal before that. Not like an overall, but I was under contract to CBSP because of The Good Wife.

25:36John August:And it's so hard to remember who owned what at what point, but CBS and Showtime were the same company. They were the same company, yes. And so the first thing we did was we pitched it at Showtime. They didn't take it. And then we pitched it at FX, and they were like, we already have a drug-dealing show. And then we pitched it at Starz. And while they were already kind of exploring a hip-hop show, our show was not a hip-hop show. Our show was a drug dealing show that just had a hip hop soundtrack, really. And so they picked us up and they let us write it. And I was still working on Hawaii Five-0 when I was trying to figure it out.

26:15So again, still at CBS. I was still kind of knocking around CBS studios at that time. And so while I was at Hawaii Five-0 and then Beauty and the Beast, I was working on this outline. And it finally came together.

26:27John August:That's an aspect I don't hear people talking enough about is that a lot of times you are staffed on one show, but you're actually doing, you're creating another show and you're trying to do this other thing. And like, it's just so tough to be juggling so many different hats and you want to be fully present for the show you're supposed to be working on. But you have this other project, which kind of could go at any point. That balance is tough. And you were probably not the only person in those rooms who had other outside things that could catch fire. Absolutely. I am not totally unsure that Jeff Raik wasn't developing Manifest then.

27:00He went on Beauty and the Beast with me. I don't remember. No, it was the Deborah Messing show, the Deborah Messing mystery show that he was working on. It's so great to have employment. It doesn't matter. You figure it out. It's like you just figure it out. I was very lucky to be able to have a check. Yeah.

27:18John August:So you're able to make Power. Where did Power shoot? New York City? New York City, yes. That's great. And on Starz. And Starz is such a weird case because you have much more experience with Starz than I do. But I have other friends who've had shows there and it's just like, they make really good things and that no one kind of sees. And it's a cable network, but it was like the cable network people think about it. I now think of it as a streamer. And yet your show found an audience which not only brought it through this first season, but brought like other spinoff varieties of it. So you had, you know, not just a series, but like a franchise out of that.

27:51John August:You must've been pulled in so many different directions. Well, first of all, just the first part of what you said, Stars was like very much a mom and pop shop back then. It was just like Carmi and Chris Albrecht, Carmi Zlatnik and Chris Albrecht, and just, you know, whatever Chris wanted to put on, he just put on. Like, it's not the layers of asking and begging and waiting that you have now with the streamers. It was just like, you know, daddy likes what daddy likes. And that's why there were so many different shows. You know, you had my show, you had Outlander, you had Black Sails at that time.

28:22Like, it was just whatever he thought was cool. And that's the thing I would say. Taste has kind of gone out of our business. But he had taste. You know, he just really liked what he liked. And then, so that was weird, yeah. But the other thing is that Power was able, you know, our first season we went, we doubled our audience in our first season from the beginning to the end. And then we grew every year. We got bigger every year. And so by the time we were done with it, 50 very much wanted us to keep going. And I was like, we can't. There's no more story to tell. I feel really importantly, get off the stage when you've nothing left to say.

28:54That's when the spinoffs started to, I said to them, I can't make more of this show, but I can make something else in this world. And that's when those ideas of Ghost and Raising Kanan and Force came up. And that's how we started. We're about to, we're shooting Origins right now, which is I think the fifth spinoff, maybe? Fourth or fifth? Yeah, it's a lot.

29:16John August:Courtney, you've lost track of how many spinoffs of her show. She has, she has. she has, but only because she's been working on Nemesis. Well, let's talk about Nemesis. So I have a sense of probably how you pitch Nemesis. I'm going to make a lame attempt to sort of pitch Nemesis at you. So there's a story of two men. One of them runs a criminal gang that do heists and burglaries. The other one is a brash LAPD detective investigator, and they are on a crash course to confront each other. and we will learn in the pilot that the investigator's best friend died as a result of one of these heists and that the wives of these two, wives and girlfriends of these two men are also friends.

29:59John August:And so that is the complicated dynamics between the two of them. It is essentially a two-hander with a lot of other hands around it. What else would be in this, that sort of pitch of it all? Is that the core idea as you sort of went in to talk to people about it? I mean, yeah, absolutely. I think the only thing I would say is, you know, I co-created it with my now fiance, Tani Maroli. And so it came from having two conversations. One, which is what is not out there for our audience right now, which turns out to be that it's not out there for any audience. Like there's no big action show right now.

30:33John August:And Heat is a natural sort of comparison to it. And that there's not a Heat show, which is sort of surprising. Right. And so then there's that. And then there's the other piece of it, which is, are people really writing about marriage, like adult marriage? No one's writing about that right now in a way that feels considered. You know, we don't talk about the other thing that's in the show that's really strong is this idea of male burden. We're always talking about how terrible men are and all these things. But there's a lot of men who are good guys, right, who just want to be a good husband and a good father.

31:01And a good son. And a good son, exactly. And that's hard. I think one thing that people don't really get is it's hard to be a good man. It's not easy. That's one of the things that we're writing about is that these two men and they're like, you know, they're trying to fight their inner demons in order to be their versions of good men. One of them is a little bit more successful than the other, but one of that one is also a murdering thief.

31:24John August:Yeah. Whereas, you know, Isaiah is actually a white hat. It's just a little dingy from his behavior. Yeah, yeah. He's not always the most attentive father. There's things he doesn't do. No, but he doesn't cheat either. No. That's the other thing. You know, he's like, he's trying. Yeah. So you have this idea and you and Tani have created the show together. What is that partnership like? Like what is the creative partnership there sort of in terms of pitching the show, making the show, feeling like, you know, that there's a, that this is the joint vision? I would love to call Lisa Joy and find out how her experience is.

32:00But I would say - I know Lisa Joy know well,

32:02John August:but it's, yeah, it's tough, yeah. Yeah, I think in our case, I have a lot of experience running shows. This is Tony's first. So I think where we would butt heads a lot had to do with the finances of things. I'd be like, you can't afford that. Like I get, and he has written a lot of features. And so he's like a feature guy. He's like, this guy's the limit. I'm like, actually, the limit is right here. And it's more of like a credenza. And so, you know, especially, and I know we're talking about this later, but shooting LA for LA, you can't do everything you thought you were going to do on the page.

32:31You just can't. So we did have some conflict there, but working with a partner, one of the things that I did find was so great is that some of the things that I don't necessarily, are not the most important pieces of it to me were really important to him. So he got to really invest in some moments that I wouldn't, I don't know that I would have insisted on full loads, you know, but those gunshots in episode six are great. And so he was right, you know, and sound design became a big part of what we did. And I don't know that I would have focused on that. So it actually made the show better.

33:03John August:Talking about then, you have a vision for a show, pitching the show, ending up at Netflix. What was the conversation there? Well, I was on a deal at Netflix. I was on an overall deal. And some of the things that I had pitched then did not work. They were outside my genre, a little bit more creative than maybe what works for me. The pitching process was that Tanya and I had kind of talked about this show. and then we came in not only with a full pitch, but our leave behind was a script. Okay. So we did actually going, now remember going back to Power where I didn't write a script. This was, here's the show because we really didn't want to develop it.

33:44We wanted them to understand what it was. And while we went through a development process, that development process was really notes on a script.

33:52John August:Yeah. Script notes, if you will. Yeah. as opposed to trying to develop a show from scratch there, which I had not had a lot of success with. It helps concretize their thinking. It's not really you. You know what the show is anyway. You know what the show is off of two sentences, but they can't, so you have to really show them what it is. Talk to us about, I was reading through other earlier interviews, you were talking about power, and you said it sort of expressed your frustration that people want to describe it as a Black show kind of as a containment strategy. Like that's the, like it's putting a lid on it and not recognizing that sort of the overall potential of a thing.

34:30John August:And there's shows that have black leads that have a largely black cast, but they're not black shows. Scandal isn't, you would never consider it to be a black show. If you have a show that has a largely black cast, how do you make sure that a place sees the potential in it beyond just one audience? You can't. First of all, I think Scandal's such a really good, that's a great reference because while Carrie's the lead and the people that are around Carrie, like her parents, you know, are black, the other leads of that show are not black. Like, so your main romantic interests, you know, they were Scott Foley and the amazing Tony Goldwyn.

35:12So it's not, no, it's not a black show. It's just a show. Right. And it just happens to be that Carrie is based on the woman who it's really based on is a black woman. So, but what I I would say is this idea that white people will not watch shows with black people in it is so foolish. When I was growing up, everybody watched The Cosby Show. Everybody watched The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

35:32John August:Everyone still watches Black-ish. Everyone still watches... Ad Elementary. It's so foolish, and yet it's still there. And when you get to the higher levels of conversation at the streamers, they're still saying these things. And it's just, it so boggles the mind. You watched a little Nemesis, or you watched all of them? I watched the first episode of Nemesis. Okay, right. So it's a lot of black people, but did you not see yourself in those characters? Did you not see yourself as a married man? Did you not see yourself as a hardworking man? It's just people. Like human beings have so much more in common than they do in terms of difference.

36:09And I think we're all supposed to be writing, as long as we're not robots, as long as we can still hold on to humans writing, that, you know, we're writing about the human condition.

36:19John August:Yeah. You know, so I just, it really boggles the mind, but I can't stop people from doing that. I can't stop people from saying your show is just, you know, it's a black show. All right. So going back to this earlier conversation about obsession and backrooms, it does speak to the fact that there's an underserved audience. And so that underserved audience can give you like a potential, can get you in the door. But these movies are breakout hits because they're moving beyond that sort of one narrow audience that you sort of started with. And it's because they're good and they're successful and they have a universal appeal to them that is making them the hits that they are.

36:52John August:So yeah, I share your frustration because the same thing happens with like a gay story. It's like, well, yes, there's kind of a floor because there's like, you know, a gay audience may go to see a thing because they're hungry for these stories, but the good ones will break out beyond that. Absolutely. It doesn't, again, it does not matter. I don't know. It's like at one point, Logo made RuPaul's Drag Race and then it became an international phenomenon and it's like, someone said, we can't make that. It's too gay. Really? Well, you lost money, bro. You know what I mean? So it's like, I just, it's all that.

37:25It's all that. It's the, it's, it's, you know, I was told the reason that a certain place would not make, would not make a power was that it would only appeal in America. That's not true at all. And it's like, we, I mean, and the experience of Nemesis, obviously, like it's just not true. Yeah, it's nuts.

37:45John August:So one of the differences between Power and Nemesis is that Power was week to week and it's a typical sort of cable schedule release. And we can see all of Nemesis today. It all drops at once. How did that change how you were thinking about storytelling episode by episode or did it change anything for you? That's a great question and it changed a lot. All right. So when writing Power, not only did I have to contend with the fact that I was on Starz, which had this tiny audience, but I also had to contend with the fact that it was week to week and that we were at first on Saturday, We weren't even on Sunday.

38:15We weren't even on like the HBO TV night. So I had to make sure that at the ending of every episode, we were causing conversation that would last a week. So that was by design, big cliffhangers, big end title songs that would cause conversation, just anything to get people to come back. With Nemesis, I need people to stay, like keep sitting. The whole job when you're writing for a streamer is that you need people to not get up. They are, on Netflix, I will just tell everyone who's listening and if you're developing for Netflix, first of all, those first two minutes are incredibly important of your show.

38:50They have to keep people staying there.

38:52John August:Netflix will tell you that, that they will remind you that on meetings often. Yeah. Often, right? So if you go back and you look at the pilot of Nemesis, the first two minutes are the beginning of that heist, right? You just get straight into the heist. Don't even bother with like introducing people, having a conversation, nothing. You don't even know those characters, right? You get to know them during the heist, but that's it. Then the other thing is I have to get you to stay, which means I have to have, it's not just a, oh, let's have a conversation for a week. It's I need you to need the answer right now.

39:21John August:Yeah. Right now, which is very different from like, you can't speculate. It's not about speculation. It's I just need to know. And so I've had so many people say to me, I just sat and watched it all eight hours. I just watched the whole thing because that's what it should feel. You need to pump that momentum. And I think Tani was really instructive with that because he is a momentum guy. I'm a contemplative guy. I'm a like... I am too. Yeah. Yeah. So I saw you repost somebody's story on your stories talking about how, as a woman who's like, you know, I could only watch four the first night, but I got up first thing in the morning to watch four more.

39:53John August:And so that's what you're trying to do there. And so the great news is like, people can enjoy it all at once. The challenge is like, Craig and I often talk about, like the footprint is smaller because the footprint is, it's a big sudden, it's a sugar rush right in that moment, but you don't get that extended discussion over time. And that's what I'm loving about Widows Bay right now is because I have no idea what's going to happen, but Drew and I will speculate about what's happening on the island and it's because of that week to week. So it's the trade-off. It's the sudden rush versus the slow release.

40:25I do think, though, that right now, the platforms do their release strategy per the platform, whereas I actually think it should be per the show. So Widow's Bay definitely benefits from that on Apple. But Hijack could have been a dump. You know what I mean? And people would have watched all of that, especially that first season because you're stuck on that plane and it's so intense. Like you could have just dumped that and it would have been a really interesting thing. And you know what I mean? I just think there's our ways to do it. Nemesis works that way. But if you are telling a story that's like a little and crafted and maybe needs a little time to breathe, right?

41:02Adolescence is four episodes, so you can deal with it, but you can't deal with that if it was eight episodes.

41:06John August:Yeah. And maybe I will just say for your more contemplative kind of writing, which is what I am naturally, maybe you put those contemplative moments in the middle of the episode and not at the beginning or end. Something you mentioned in an earlier interview, you say like going through a pass, this may have been from your time on Berlanti shows, which is where you literally do a pass on a script saying like, did you just see that? Did they really do that shit? Did they actually, like a pass where you actually just like, is there sizzle? Is there magic to something? Is that something you're still thinking about with Nemesis?

41:37Absolutely. The oh shit moment is necessary. Like it's very, very necessary. And we need to have at least two or three in an episode where you're just like, what the hell? Did that really happen? Because first of all, two things. One, necessary. And two, you're fighting this.

41:52John August:You're fighting your phone, yeah. All the time. And so you have to build in, even if it is a moment where the person goes, looks up from their phone and goes, what did I just miss? You have to build that in because we are fighting that second screen all the time. I want to talk about an article that came out this last week. Leslie Goldberg wrote up a piece in The Ankler about streamers wanting less of a gap between seasons, which I thought was really interesting, which is that so often like these prestige shows, it's like kind of two years between seasons and the audience falls off, which is understandable because just like I kind of forgot who these people were.

42:25John August:It wasn't relevant. So the point she's making is that in some cases, they're opening writer's rooms early so they can sort of get a lead on scripts. So even before they know they're going to do a second season, they'll like put together a writer's room. They'll do whatever they can to sort of like close the gap between seasons because they're recognizing that a lot of the fall off that's happening is just because of time. It's because you don't have the, you've lost the momentum of what that show was. And so when two full years have happened between the thing, like House of the Dragon is an amazing show, but good Lord, I don't remember who any of those characters are yet.

42:58John August:Is that a thing that resonates with you? Because you were on a cable schedule that we're on an annual cycle for Power? Cadence. Absolutely. And I don't understand. That's one of the things that's been very hard to understand about how the streamer culture works, at least at Netflix, where they want to see your show air fully before they necessarily make a decision. Yeah. And, you know, I didn't grow up that way. You know, in Power, we were getting two seasons at a time. They were like, just do them. And so we had a schedule. We had a cadence because we had to hit that target. the audience was expecting that show every end of June or early July.

43:33We were either July 7th or we were June 25th almost every single year. We were on a schedule. And by the way, people used to make 24 episodes on a schedule. Like this is not because we can't do it as writers. It's because the streamers, I believe, are so afraid of making a mistake creatively that they're just like, well, let's be sure that there will be ROI. And it's just like, that's not our business. Our business is not the business of being sure. The business, our business is the business of obsession, which is somebody took a shot. Yeah, I agree.

44:06John August:So you have so much experience running shows, staffing shows, but if you were to arrive in Los Angeles now as a 26-year-old who maybe worked in New York City, but she got here and you're getting started, what would you do first if you were like a newly arrived Courtney Kemp right now? Like where would you focus your time and energy? Would you be trying to staff? Would you be trying to do a feature? What are the things you think are the best things for a new writer to be working on if they just arrived in town? If I were under 30, like I was when I got here, I would make a five-episode with eight minutes per each episode series that I would shoot myself or with some friends, cast a couple of my friends who are actors, you know, who are young actors, everybody my age, and not make it just about our fun lives, but make it about a specific thing.

44:57like a specific story that you can tell in those five episodes. Like the bad version is off the top of my head, like Jane's dad dies and we all have to go to the funeral. But there's a problem, which is that, you know, not everybody knows that Jane has just recently come out. Yeah. Right? Or whatever it is, right? You just, and I would make that, I would edit it, I would make it tight. I would put it on YouTube, I would have all my friends who were in it post about it, and I would get it so that people start to see it. Then I would get my specs together, couple spec episodes of existing shows, two episodes of two pilots, and one short story.

45:33And that's what I would do. I'd have my writing, but I would shoot something that was working for me while I was sleeping. Because that's the thing we couldn't do. We couldn't do that. We always had to have, we had to, our scripts did the work. But now you've got a phone, you can make a show. So make it. You know, and that's what I would do first. Because that's the Issa Rae model, but she made Awkward Black Girl, and then we got insecure. And I think that's so powerful. And kids can do that. but now you can do it even shorter. I'd probably shoot it in vertical, to be honest with you. Yeah.

46:01John August:Because most of the verticals we see are terrible and trashed. So if you make something that's actually really good, people are being surprised. Like, oh my God, that was good and actually felt like a thing. Absolutely. A hundred percent, that's what I would do. The other thing I'm noticing in your answer here is you think people should write spec episodes of existing series, which is not a thing I hear a lot about anymore. So tell me why that is. And do you like to read specs of existing shows as you're staffing? Okay, I only read specs of existing shows as I'm staffing. I do not read your pilot.

46:29All right, tell me why. I know I sound like everybody else because I'm not hiring you to come in and write your pilot over again. I'm hiring you to come in and ape the voice of the show. So if you can ape somebody else's voice, most of the people I've hired wrote a spec blackish. They wrote a spec like insecure or something because I know that you can make those voices work and you can do the math of going, this is what one character would say that another character wouldn't say. I always say to young writers, you should be able to cover the character name and by what the line of dialogue is, I should be able to know which character said it.

47:01Wow, yeah. And if I don't, then you didn't make it specific enough. You haven't drilled down into your characterization enough to let me know what a person is saying. So I think that's the thing that, you know, the specs teach you that your own pilot doesn't. And when you read a weak pilot from a young writer, it's not their fault. they just don't have the 10 ,000 hours. But when you read a great spec script from a young person, you know they studied that show, right? And I got hired by Greg off of a spec for his anatomy. Like, that was the job back then, you know? So I just, I really believe in them still to this day.

47:38John August:That's great. You and Mindy Kaling are the two people I've heard actually like really stand up for specs. And so what your point about covering over the character's name is so smart and I don't hear people talking about that. But yes, every line of dialogue should only be able to come from that one character. If you could move it around to another character, it's not the right line. You know what's a classic example of that? If you go and you look at the Sex and the City pilot, the original pilot, those women come across as their characters in that pilot. That's why that show, it like worked, worked, worked, worked, you know?

48:11That's it. I fully believe in that.

48:13John August:Awesome. Let's answer some listener questions. Drew, help us out with Anonymous. How transparent should you be with your reps about your financial struggles? Obviously, my manager and agent know that I haven't worked for a year, and I don't think for a second that they are gatekeeping opportunities from me. But should I tell them that I'm four months from having to sell my house? Or could that kind of honesty give them the ick? For what it's worth, I'm hustling nonstop. I'm pitching, open writing assignments, doing freelance outside of our industry, all while plastering on a hopeful smile. But unfortunately, time, along with my bank account, is running out.

48:48John August:Courtney, what's your instinct there? That's such a great, great question. I would not tell them. I would not tell them either. Because I don't think it's going to help. It's going to create this weird sort of negative feedback loop. They're going to feel kind of guilty every time they're thinking about you or putting something up for you. It's not going to make them move faster. I don't think it helps. And so I'm sorry for not having some sort of situation. It's a very common situation for writers in this town at this moment. But I don't think telling them is going to change anything. Where I would say is, let's say you're a feature writer who's like, you're trying to close a deal on something.

49:22John August:Talking to your reps like, okay, the paperwork is taking a long time. I think then you say like, listen, I really need this to close so that I can make this a payment or so I don't lose my health insurance. But when you're just looking for a job overall, I don't think that's going to help you out. To yes and what John is saying, I think the other thing is that if you have an attorney, when you are doing a deal, the attorney can say to the agent, hey man, don't go back and forth like 800 times. We're just going to close this deal and get this dude some money. Rather than you saying it, let the attorney say it to your agent and let that conversation be without you.

49:58John August:Agreed. All right. Answer a question from Mitchell here. How important is having a clear answer to the question of why now when developing or pitching a project? Many of the films and shows I love feel timeless. I mean, their appeal comes from story and characters rather than a sense of immediacy. Relatedly, what advice would you give to a writer who feels that they have a strong script but no compelling answer to why now? Is that something that can be developed later, or does its absence signal a deeper issue with the material? Courtney, as you were pitching Nemesis, was there a why now? There wasn't anything on that was like it.

50:33We were very singular in the fact that it was just this eight-episode sort of hardcore note contemplation canon. We knew we were going to be doing something that was heavy action. And so that's why. But what I would say is because if we're talking about a TV show, it takes so long to get these things up that the why now may no longer be relevant. You know, it's like if you were going to pitch somebody a story about ice right now, I just feel like it would feel dated, especially even though those things are still happening. Because of one battle after another, it feels like it's been done, weirdly enough, even though it is current.

51:09So I think actually having too much currency is lame. Just be like, why do I want to tell the story now is actually much more interesting than why would it do well now? If you can figure out a why do you need to tell the story now, then that's probably the best way to pitch it.

51:23John August:I fully agree. And according to what you're describing, there is often called a why me. Like, why am I the person for this? And you're selling like, not only is this a good idea, but I'm the person who's uniquely qualified to tell it. this is why I'm going to devote my entire creative process to this idea because I really feel it for me. Just making sure that it's clear to the people you're pitching to that why it resonates for you is important. And the why now, you can be pitching something timeless, but as long as you can sort of sometimes find ways that like, this railroad tycoon reminds me of what we're seeing in terms of our modern day billionaires.

52:03John August:So while it's not about them, it feels like it's speaking to this moment. That is the most important thing. Like what you just said is so right. Why me is so important. And going into the why me is really huge. Why am I the person who has to tell this story? Even though it's about two men who are a cop and a criminal, and I am a nice girl from Connecticut. Why? You know? It's time for our One Cool Things. Courtney, what would you like to share with our audience? My one cool thing is a YouTuber named Ryan Walker who does hotel reviews. And he goes all over the world and does hotel reviews. And he is not biased.

52:39And he is dreamy to look at. But he also goes to all these great Four Seasons and all these places all over the world. And the thing is, I'm not traveling. I'm writing. I'm hunched over a laptop with a little bit of tequila next to me. I ain't going anywhere. I'm a parent. and I'm in a relationship and I'm not traveling. So Brian gets to go everywhere. And he's just pleasant and lovely. And just, he's great. I recommend that highly as just escapist. And the videos are like 10, 11 minutes. You can take a break from writing. You can take a break, you know.

53:10John August:I love that. My one cool thing is the show Star City, which just started on Apple. So this is a spinoff of For All Mankind. So For All Mankind tells the story of the space program in an alternate universe where Russia got to the moon first and then it started off a big space race that ends up very differently than our space race. This is Russia's side of the story. So in Star City, which was their development for where they did all their things. Megan McDonnell, our previous Script Notes producer, is a co-EP on the show. So I'm sure it's great for many reasons, but I'm sure it's partly great because Megan McDonnell was on the show and was in Eastern Europe for months and months and months actually making the show.

53:51John August:It's delightful. Well, it's not fun. It's not a fun show. It's not a laugh a minute. It is like Chernobyl, but with the space program. If that sounds great to you, it's really great. It's really well done. It's gorgeous to look at. Great writing throughout. So I encourage you to check out Star City on Apple TV. Can I say a shout out to Chernobyl? Love Chernobyl. Chernobyl's a great show. Yeah, it's a great show. Craig Mason, somehow he made a really great show there. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird that Craig keeps making stuff that's so great. It's weird. That's so great. Courtney, I suspect you have many people who have worked with you and for you on different shows who are killing it.

54:27John August:Is that correct? Yeah, mostly directors who have moved around, like Anthony Hemingway, who directed the pilot of Power. I work with Rob Hardy a lot. Obviously, Mario Van Peebles. Crazy that I would be watching New Jack City as a kid and then getting to work with him. But my writers, you know, a lot of my writers have been with me a long time. So they've come up their ranks with me. and most of them have actually kind of stayed in the power universe. That's the thing, there's so many shows, nobody leaves. Yeah, why would you? Yeah, you're like Pixar, you're like golden handcuffs. Like, hey, let's make a list of Courtney Cump.

54:59Well, here's the thing. Our shows keep going and we have multiple seasons and people need work. I think it's been harder for people to get an original idea off and it's easier to get a, you know, power book 19, you know, signed off on, so.

55:13John August:That's great. I have one last request for our listeners. Many people know my company also makes software. where we make apps for writers. And we have something new that's in beta testing. And we are looking for Mac users who rely on assistive technology or alternative input methods. So switches, foot pedals, the sip and puff devices, mouth controls, head or eye tracking, adaptive keyboards. Basically, if you have some sort of non-standard input setup, we need to make sure our app works great with all those devices. So if you're someone who uses these technologies on a Mac, write in to Drew at askandjohnogles.com so we can send you a link to beta test this because we can do what we can do, but we won't know until actual people who use these things try it out.

55:53John August:So if you are a person who uses these things or know someone who uses these things on a Mac, we would love to have them test it out. And that is our show for this week. Scriptness is produced by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Cilelli. Our show this week is by Eric Pearson. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You'll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a sign up for a weekly newsletter called Interesting. which has links to lots of things about writing. The Script Notes book is available wherever you buy books.

56:23John August:You can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Script Notes and give us a follow. You'll find us on Instagram at Script Notes Podcast. Courtney, where should they follow you on Instagram? At Courtney A. Kemp. At Courtney A. Kemp. We have t-shirts and hoodies and drink wear. You'll find those at Cotton Bureau. You'll find show notes with all the links to the things we talked about today in the email. You get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to our premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become one at scriptnos.net.

56:52John August:We get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we're about to record on shooting in Los Angeles. Courtney Kemp, what an incredible pleasure it was to talk with you. This has been so great. So awesome. Please come back often. You are a delight. Oh, and congratulations on Nemesis, number one on Netflix. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Let's hope we hang in there.

57:18You