1077: Michael Arndt | The Oscar-Winning Science of Storytelling

21:27The world becomes unjust. And now Robin of Loxley can either live in an unjust world or he can go, screw it. I'm going to rebel against King John. I'm going to go into the woods. I'm going to gather a band of merry men. I'm going to drop the rich and give for the poor. So the world itself, the world becoming unfair is the thing that creates the hero, right? The hero becomes the antidote to the negative values of the story. And I think that when I started thinking about it a lot, I was just like, a lot of times what makes a hero very memorable is not the hero themselves, it's the world that they live in, right?

21:59And if you're describing the world and a problem in a world, that's something that makes it interesting. Jordan, this is a really good question. And so the examples that I use are, well, for example, Thelma and Louise. Like in Thelma and Louise, Those are two, like when you start the movie, they're just kind of two ordinary women. They're going on a weekend. They're going to have fun, right? You create this huge like doozy of an inciting incident, right? Which is Thelma almost gets raped in the parking lot and Louise comes along and kills the guy, right? Oh, right. And then they realize that they're living in this misogynistic, sexist, hostile world, that no one's going to believe them.

22:34And they go on the lam. I think what makes that story resonant and what makes them great characters was that nobody had seen two women in a Hollywood movie fighting back against sort of this universe of sexism and misogyny and male violence so defiantly, so sort of in your face, blowing up that trucker's rig and stuff like that. And that was a thing that made the movie click with people is that sense of the character's defiance. Let me give one more example, which is I think that what made The Graduate such a resonant film for audiences back in the 60s was not really Ben Braddock. Ben Braddock's a nice guy, but he's a bit of a nebbish.

23:11He's not that interesting a character. What no one had ever seen before was the world. We'd never seen Mike Nichols showing us this world of post-war ennui and shallowness and materialism. And so you're creating this sort of tilted universe world of post-war America and the sense of alienation and the sense of conformity. And then Ben is the person who's swimming against that tide, fighting against it. And so when you're trying to create a character, a memorable character, one of the things obviously you want your character to be just interesting and be flawed in a certain interesting way. What you're also doing is creating a universe that that character is reacting to.

23:51And so in order to find something interesting, to find a new story, to finally get around to answering your question, one of the things you need to do is think about the world that your character lives in. And how does that world that you're showing on screen reflect the problems in the real world? Yeah. Outside the theater in a way that feels resonant to the audience. Does that make sense? It does. I'll never forget the graduate with Dustin Hoffman and they're throwing this big party. I'll never forget the scene where they're like, come on, I got him this gift. It's amazing. And he comes out like a full scuba suit and he just sort of like totally bored and embarrassed, jumps into the swimming pool and just comes up.

24:25And yeah, I'm like, man, this guy's going through his midlife crisis, but he's like 18. Yeah. So it's so depressing when you see how just bored he is and he's got this dumb scuba thing. And he's like, whatever, just shoot me now. Yeah. Plastic. Plastics. Yeah. Plastics. Like plastics is the line that makes you jump on board with him because he says like the very first scene in the movie, his dad comes up and talks to him. He's sort of hiding up in his bedroom and his dad goes, what are you worried about? He goes, I'm worried about my future. I want it to be different. Right. So the whole movie is this allegory of conformity and nonconformity.

24:57Like he wants his future to be different. then you just create this whole tilted universe of conformity, right? And then when he finds Elaine Robinson, she's the one person that he can stand to be with, the one person he can stand to talk to. That's what makes it interesting and resonant. Let me give you one more example, which is, I talked about this in my new video, like the dude in the Big Lebowski. What makes him interesting is that, you know, he's introduced in the screenplay as being like the laziest man in LA County, which makes him pretty high the running for laziest man in the world. He's not this traditional hero who has big dreams and big aspirations and is super competent or anything like that.

25:30He's just the dude. So why do you like this guy so much? Why is he such a beloved figure? The way you get your audience on board with a lazy bum who does nothing but smoke pot and go bowling is that you surround him with this universe of super competitive, stressed out men. You have Walter, you have the big Lebowski himself, you have Jesus, the pedophile bowler, you have the sheriff in Malibu. You create this whole universe of people who are not chill, who are not laid back, right? And then the dude becomes heroic because he's so cool. He's so laid back. He's not trying to achieve anything. He's not trying to become anything different.

26:06He just abides. And that's what makes him heroic. That's what makes him like him. So it's a really interesting question of like, how do you find something new? You identify some sort of problem in the real world, and then you create that kind of universe, a tilted universe in your movie. That movie's so damn funny. There's a beverage here, man. It is interesting because he, on the face of it, would not be a character you root for because he doesn't seem to want very much. But as you put it, hero and world are two sides of the same coin. In your new video essay, you say that film, maybe better than any other medium, gives us characters who embody new ideals for how to live one's life.

26:43Now, I don't know if the dude fits into that category, but what ideals do you think we need to live our lives well at this moment in history? Are there any movies or characters that are embodying those values really well right now? Well, let me just, I'll bring up something which I don't think a movie has addressed yet, right? Which is, I mean, I think one of the problems that we all are dealing with right now is screen addiction, right? Like you walk out on the street, you walk down the sidewalks of New York and everyone's sort of staring at their screen. And there's a way in which we live in this world of self-consciousness where we're We're performing our lives, right?

27:14We're performing for this invisible, unseen audience. Literally in our case right here. Literally in our case right here. And there's a way in which all of us are negotiating two selves. There's our digital selves and our analog selves, right? And there's a way in which the digital self and the digital world is a very seductive thing, right? It's where a lot of work takes place. It's where you can make a ton of money. And it's all clean and frictionless. And the thing with screens is there's no touch, there's no smell, there's no taste. Like it's just very, we have this new problem, which is like we are haunted by our digital selves and haunted by this sort of generalized other that we're performing for.

27:53I don't think I've seen a movie yet that sort of addressed that problem and turned it into a story that can be compelling and interesting. Does that answer your question? I sort of does. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you have some work to do, my friend. So get on it. But yeah, you're saying that there could be a hero who embodies the values of authenticity in a world where this digital realm is kind of, I don't know, creating an arena, but also destroying us. Yeah, rebelling. You're just swimming against the tide of like if everybody's staring at their screen, everybody's obsessed with their digital selves.

28:26Right. Then you just want to create a hero swing against that tide and is privileging the world of atoms over the world of bits, basically. And now for a sneak preview of my movie, which is a story about you buying a mattress so my kids can go to college. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creatives every single week, it is because of my network. I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at sixminutenetworking.com. This is the circle of people that you know, like, and trust. I know networking is kind of a schmoozy, gross word, but this course is about improving your relationship-building skills, inspiring other people to want to develop a relationship with you, and the course does all of that in a super easy, not cringy, very down-to-earth way.

29:04I'm not doing the awkward strategy thing. I don't want people to feel bad or gross doing this, and it just takes a few minutes a day. And by the way, many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to this course. So come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course at sixminutenetworking.com. All right, now back to Michael Arndt. I'm curious sort of the journey that your career took. I was surprised actually to learn that one of your early jobs was working as Matthew Broderick's assistant. It's War Games, you know, was like, that was the thing where I was like, I need to get a computer now because I'm also going to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union or something.

29:38Right. He had that phone modem thing that I was just like obsessed with that. I was like, this is a gateway to another world. I want to play chess with a supercomputer. It sounds like that was kind of your big introduction to filmmaking into Hollywood is working with Matthew Broderick. And I wonder what you learn as someone's assistant. I mean, a lot of it's probably like, can you pick up the groceries from Target or whatever, but there's got to be some access to like Hollywood industry stuff too, right? Totally. Totally. I think that, you know, I went to film school, I got out of film school, I want to be a screenwriter.

30:06So I want to get jobs where I could read screenplays. And the thing that people, young people know, I think don't appreciate is how difficult it was to find screenplays. Before the internet, screenplays were really hard to get your hands on. There were vendors in New York that would sell screenplays on the sidewalk because it was just really hard to find screenplays. Now you go on your computer and like every screenplay in the world is available. You know, I got out, I got a job at a production company. Then I moved on and got a job with a producer. and that producer was working at Columbia Pictures and her job was looking for material for Matthew.

30:36So after I moved on from that job, Matthew knew me and hired me to be his assistant. And it was a great job. Matthew's the nicest guy in the world, like best boss in the world. But it was a great job because back then it was really hard to get your hands on screenplays. His agency at CAA would be sending him scripts all the time. And one of my jobs was just to read all the scripts that came in, write coverage on them, recommend whether you should read them or not. And so that was a great experience. Like that was really great You see what's out there in the marketplace. You see what the agencies are sending out.

31:05You see what scripts work or not. You see how actors are responding to a piece of material or not. So it was a very, very humble position to begin with. We all have our humble beginnings. But it was great training because, again, it was really hard back in the 90s to just get access to screenplays. So it was a great job. And Matthew's a total sweetheart. Do people just yell Ferris Bueller quotes at him all day when he walks down the street? I feel like that's got to happen. And it's such an iconic movie that literally everybody knows, even different generations. I had been with him when people go, hey, Ferris, is it your day off?

31:38You know, that kind of thing. He sort of resigned himself to, oh, that's going to happen once a week. Once a week for the rest of his life. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, it could be worse. He wasn't like a bad guy that people didn't like or something like that. He's just like this. A beloved character. Beloved character. Beloved is great. Exactly. Like everybody, save Ferris. Everybody wanted to support Ferris except for his sister and the principal. What was your childhood like? I mean, were you compelled to want to, for the movie thing, early in the game? I know you kind of grew up abroad. Did you just watch tons of movies and you're like, I want to make one of these?

32:09Yeah, not really. I think I grew up, my dad worked in the Foreign Service. I grew up as a toddler in India. And then when I was 10, 11, 12 years old, we lived in Sri Lanka. Beyond that, we lived in suburban Virginia. And no connection. The idea that you could make a living making movies was just, it never even occurred to me that you could do that for a living. it just happened somewhere else, you know? And my dad loved comedy. He would take us to go see Mel Brooks movies. He would take us to go see every new Woody Allen film together. And I think, you know, watching your dad laugh at something is always this very, it's just great when your dad just relax and laughs at something.

32:42But I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. It was really, I was in high school, I was very unhappy, but I had always kind of loved films. I remember as soon as I found out there's this thing called film school, I was like, well, that's it. That's what I'm going to do. That created the ladder or at least the bottom rung of a ladder that I could put my hand on and start climbing. So as soon as I found out there was a thing at film school, I was like, that's what I want to do. Were you thinking, I'm going to make big blockbuster movies? Or were you just like, I'm going to just do whatever and I don't care how much money it makes.

33:11That's fine. You know, it's funny that the thing that I really fell in love with with movies was I remember the moment. It was when my whole family went and saw Apocalypse Now when it was first released. And I remember that opening scene where you do a triple exposure of like the jungle panning across the jungle, Martin Sheen's face upside down and the ceiling fan going and that music from the doors is playing. And I was a kid. I was like 14 and 15 years old. I'd never seen movies do something like that, you know? And it was so lyrical and so beautiful. I was like, oh my God, this is art. Like this is art.

33:39I had been raised on multiplex fair, right? And when I saw that and that whole movie just blew my mind. It's just like still one of my favorite movies. That's when I fell in love with movies and I really fell in love with the poetry of movies, the visual, the cinema of movies. And I think it's a little ironic that I have ended up being this sort of story guy, because when I started out, I kind of didn't care about story. I wanted, I love Beautiful, The Black Stallion, like these lyrical art films. But just like my first job out of film school was reading scripts and writing coverage on scripts.

34:12That's how your brain gets trained, I guess. How many scripts do you think you read in your career? About a thousand. I think about a thousand. I think I wrote about a thousand. Yeah. Wow. You know, most of them don't work. I think that, I mean, it does get very soul crushing to read one screenplay after another. People have devoted six months a year of their life to writing this and it's just going to get read once and then get put on a shelf. And there's almost no field of human endeavor fraught with more disappointment and failure than screenwriting. And so, you know, when I started writing my own scripts, I was really determined that that wasn't going to happen to me.

34:46And I think that that's why I came up with this very rigorous sort of analytical approach to story. I mean, there's two sides of storytelling. You want to start, anytime you start writing, you're starting with the sort of intuitive, emotional side of your brain, right? You're always connecting with something that's very, very instinctive, right? But as you go through five drafts, 10 drafts, 15, 20 drafts of your story, you're going to make this transition from the quick thinking, fast, intuitive, emotional part of your brain to the sort of more analytical part of your brain. So I think that, I mean, my training reading a thousand scripts taught me, yes, you need great dialogue and you need great jokes and you need all the stuff that comes from your instincts basically.

35:26But I also feel like you can use the other part of your brain to sit down, put a story up on blocks, sort of x-ray it in formal terms and going, why is this script working or why is it not working? Right. Because you said it's much easier to get your script read. And I was surprised to freed you an interview where you said it's much easier even to get your script made into a movie than it is to write a really good script. So 99 % of your effort, you said, should go into writing a good script. You wrote, what, 10 screenplays before you sold Little Miss Sunshine? And my understanding is that from the time you seriously decided to be a writer till you sold your first screenplay, it was like a decade.

36:03Yeah, it was about 10 years. It was like 10 years. What kept you going during that time? And why does it take so long to become a really good screenwriter. Delusional optimism was the thing that sort of kept me going. I think that the one thing that kept me going was that I was told in film school that if you want to be a writer, if you want to break in, it's going to take 10 years. And of course I thought, oh, I'm smarter than everyone. It'll only take me five years, you know, but it almost... Yeah, that sounds familiar. That's like running any business. Delusional optimism and then like more delusion on top of that.

36:32We're like, everyone says it's going to take a decade, but I got this. I went to college for two years. I'm, trust me, I got this. And then also I got to enjoy the process of writing. Like I got to enjoy, like there is an exhilaration to come up with an idea going, oh, this is going to be really great. I will say that I had written 10 screenplays. Nothing had happened with any of them. None of them were especially great. Although I had written a little bit of sunshine at that point, I just hadn't quite finished it. And I was sitting down to write screenplay number 11. And I was in my thirties, like at this point.

37:02And I was just like, what am I doing with my life? Like, is there something else that I can do with my life? Because like, this isn't working out. And the one thing I'll pat myself on the back for is that I just kept going. I sat down, I thought about it. I was like, you know, I love movies. I love being part of the community of movies. And I just want to be part of that, however it is. It was about six months later that I finally sold Little Miss Sunshine. Wow. Wow. It's hard, right? Because you want to tell people, never give up on your dream. But then you're also like, but sometimes you should, because your dream is unrealistic.

37:31and you should like actually get a career so that you can have a family or support yourself or you don't have to work at a job you hate to actually make money. It's a tough balance because you could have quit then, but then you wouldn't have, of course, be where you are now, wouldn't have made Little Miss Sunshine and all these other amazing movies. But then there's also like a thousand other versions of you that just like never really cracked into it and are still picking up Target groceries for Gwyneth Paltrow or something, right? Like that's all they do. You think Gwyneth goes to Target? I don't think so.

37:58I know that was ridiculous. That was ridiculous. whatever the equivalent of target is for Gwyneth Paltrow, they're picking stuff up from their era one. I thought a lot about this because I feel like when you are a young person, one of the things you're choosing is you're choosing to enter a field and that field is going to represent your values, right? So if you want to be a Marine, you go off and join the Marines, right? And you go from being a civilian, you become a Marine, right? Or if you want to be a Buddhist monk, right? You go off and join a monastery. That institutional monastery is going to change you into the sort of the ideal of Buddhism, like, or the ideal of being a Marine or the ideal of whatever.

38:30And so when I chose to be a screenwriter, it's not just that you're trying to get movies made and make money and be a success. You're also just joining a community. And you're finding people who share your values, share your interests. I think that if I hadn't ended up being a screenwriter, I would have been a development executive. I would have been a producer. I would have been something else, maybe work as an editor or something like that. I would have done something just because I love filmmaking so much. Yeah, I feel like I've been very, very lucky. And I think you have to acknowledge that luck plays an enormous role in whether you're able to break through or not.

39:06So, I mean, I was very persistent. I worked for 10 years. I failed a lot, 10 years of failure and disappointment. But I also felt like I was very deliberate in doing due diligence on all my screenplays and trying to figure out, does this work or not? And I wrote 100 drafts of Little Miss Sunshine, like trying to get it to a point where it was going to work massive and overwhelming force. There was no way you can say no to the screenplay. So it's a big risk. You kind of jump off a cliff, but I also feel like I did it in a very methodical or kind of cautious way. I feel like no one's going to be helped by putting another mediocre screenplay on the world and you've got to be hard on yourself.

39:46You've got to be hard on your own material. You've got to let it be judged by other people and you've got to accept their judgments, right? Because if nine out of 10 people don't like your screenplay, it's pretty good bet that nine out of 10 people are not gonna like your movie. When I first started this show, 18, whatever years ago, I remember people listening and going, it's interesting stuff, but you talk way too fast. And the other person talks way too slow. And I'm pretty sure it's you that's the problem. So you need to slow down and the other person needs to speed up a little, but you really need to slow down.

40:14And also you have all these filler words that are distracting. And I remember being like, okay, I'm going to fix all that. And I told my friend about the criticism and he was like, those people are just being mean. Like you shouldn't listen to that. And I was like, no, I'm pretty sure I should listen to them because multiple people have told me the exact same thing. So they're probably right. And I thought, oh, this might be the difference between people who like fix the problem and people who go and take it personally and are like, well, screw you. You don't like me. Like you don't support me.

40:43I feel like screenwriting requires almost a degree of masochism. It still doesn't work. It still doesn't work. Everyone goes, oh, it's great. It's fine. Send the script out. You go, no, no, you're all lying to me. Tell me what still doesn't work. You've got to really, really kick the tires on your story and you've got to be hard on yourself. You're hard on yourself so it makes everyone else's job easier. It's going to make the actor's job easier, the director's job easier. The harder you are on yourself, the better your screenplay is, the easier everyone else's job is going to be. And so you've got to just kick the tires on your story, people can be peevish, like people can be assholes about your story, right?

41:18But you've got to suck it up. Like those are the people who are going to be sitting in your audience. Billy Wilder had a great quote where he was talking about the audience and he said, individually, they're idiots, but collectively, they're a genius. And I think that you have to respect the genius of your audience, right? Your audience is smarter than you. And so you have to be humble and you have to listen to the feedback you're getting. That's what Pixar really taught me was being at Pixar and the big feedback mechanism they have there. I have questions about that masochism, Gabriel. That actually explains a lot about your personality, Gabriel.

41:50Gotta keep taking it. It's all clear to me now. The genius of the audience thing is really interesting because Gabriel and I, we look at a lot of feedback. Email, DMs, there's a subreddit for the show for people who are on Reddit. A lot of people go, I really don't like this. But then the beauty of Reddit is people will go, actually, I really like that about it. And then 20 people will say, I like this, but I kind of don't like this other thing. And in Gabriel and I's collective brain, we have this giant, I don't know, spreadsheet of this is kind of working and we love it, but maybe we need to tone it down 20 % and see if people still complain about the way that this sounds sometimes.

42:28There's 10 of those irons in whatever fire we have going. I'm mixing metaphors, as you can tell. I'm not a screenwriter. And those are always kind of getting fine-tuned at some level. And that's been happening for like a decade or whatever by this point. There's a certain point where you just recognize you're not going to make everybody happy. Well, that's for sure. Yeah. There's just a certain point where you're just like, fuck it. This is a script I want to see. Or I think this joke is funny. I don't care. I'm putting it in there. Like, I think it's funny. There's a certain point where you just have to, you can't please everybody.

42:58If you try, you'd never make a movie, right? There's a certain moment of madness where you just have to jump off the cliff and go, okay, we're doing this. Or I'm sending the script out or whatever it is. You mentioned Pixar. I got to imagine, and I feel like I've heard this as well. working at Pixar is kind of like you mentioned the Marines before. It's like the Marines of storytelling. It sounds really intense, brutal at times. How did you end up at Pixar and what did you learn there? It was completely out of the blue. I had written the script for Little Miss Sunshine. It was being shot actually in the summer of 2005.

43:29So the movie hadn't been released yet. They hadn't even finished shooting it yet. And Pixar had gotten their hands on a copy of the script and they read it and they really liked it. And they brought me up and interviewed me. and they were looking for someone to work with the director Lee Unkrich on an original idea that he had. And so I met with Lee at sort of three interviews. I made it over the bar kind of each time and they hired me. And then that was right before the merger with Disney happened. So when the Disney merger happened, that was when they sort of asked Lee to take over Toy Story 3 and do it.

44:02And my joke is that they all go into a meeting and they're like, okay, this is it. We're going to make Toy Story 3. And then at the end of the meeting, they're like, wait a minute, we need somebody to write it. You. Yeah. What is it you do again over here? Project's assistant, get over here. You're writing the script. Target bags in hand. Exactly. The guy standing in the hallway was like, we need some poor schmuck to write this thing. How about you? Yeah. I just got to drop off this milk. I'll be right back. Yeah. So I feel like I was really lucky to be at Pixar from Ratatouille to Toy Story 3.

44:33It was Ratatouille, WALL-E, up, and then Toy Story 3. and then I worked on Inside Out while Toy Story 3 was still being finished. I mean, it's just a great, great experience. They really had this great collaborative culture. I was credited with writing Toy Story 3, but it was really co-writers for Andrew Stanton, Leon Critch, and John Lasseter, and then about 20 other people that were all helping to get that script to where it was. So it was probably 10 people for three years working full-time on that script. So 10 man years of labor for a 93-minute movie. Yeah. You call it collaborative. It sounds collaborative and loving, and it also sounds absolutely brutal and unforgiving.

45:11Because with that many great storytellers in the room, it sounds like everybody is putting every story element under the microscope and pushing it to the best possible version, which would explain why Pixar movies are so good. But what is it like to be a creative in that environment?

45:30it's my job is that it's the greatest job in the world except for the soul crushing anxiety that comes along with it because uh yeah i remember i had been hired to do a toy story three and after like six months i was like hey i wonder what the rotten tomatoes score for the first toy story movie is so i go look it up it's like 100 no pressure i was like well i wonder what that rotten tomatoes yeah what's rotten tomatoes for toy story uh two and it was 100 you know so it's just like, okay, you got your work cut out for you. Also, leading up to that, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up had all been nominated for Best Screenplay, and then Up had been nominated for Best Picture.

46:03Yeah. No big deal. Don't get a 98 or you have completely failed everyone here at Pixar and in the United States slash the entire planet. Well, and if you don't freaking get an Oscar nomination for your screenplay, you're like - What a loser. The last three guys got a nomination. What's your problem? This one was in the bag, pal. How did you blow this? Pressure. Yeah. How do you blow it? Listen, man, it was so much anxiety and stress for like three years, I felt like, because it was also building on the first two movies. Like, and so I felt like I was the guy, they sent the wide receiver down to the end zone and they threw this like Hail Mary.

46:36And I'm sitting there in the end zone going, please don't drop this. Please don't drop this. You know, like, oh my God. The other thing was that like, we were figuring out the story as we went along. Like, it wasn't like we had this super clear idea right from the start. I mean, we had a beginning, a middle and an end, but there were tons of adjustments that were made along the way. It's like having a story problem that you can't solve yet. You know the script is not working, but you don't know how to fix it. It's like having this itch that you can't scratch. It's just, it can be really, really, really, really agonizing, but also like totally exhilarating.

47:06Like some of the best, happiest moments of my life were in those Pixar story meetings where you have like 10 smart people in a room and like the ideas are clicking along and it just like is really, really exhilarating. I feel very, very lucky I was there like when I was. so torturous but exquisite in certain moments it sounds like i'm imagining him winning this oscar and everyone's like oh my god what are you gonna do now and he's like i need a nap so i'm gonna go take a nap quitting the business they asked me like you know do you want to write toy story 4 i was like i feel like i just put on a blindfold and ran across the freeway and i didn't get killed and now like you're going do you want to do that again i was like you know what i didn't one time No, thanks.

47:44Where's the nearest target, sir? Take me there. But look, I mean, these are some of the most beloved franchises in history, Toy Story, Star Wars. I mean, I have to imagine the pressure you described is stressing me out. I didn't even have to do it. But also you're trying to honor the history of those movies by, I imagine, offering something new and unexpected while you also take into account those audience expectations you talked about. Do you think a lot about nostalgia and honoring the past while you're pushing things forward? Is it intense to deal with the expectations of these super diehard fans?

48:18It's funny. It's very important to have fidelity to the universe that you're setting up and to those characters, right? And I remember every once in a while when I started working on Toy Story 3, someone would say like, oh, that doesn't sound like Woody. Woody would never say that. I mean, there's big guardrails on the story. But I think that the danger on something like Toy Story 3 is you're going to resort to sort of cute blandness or you're going to be sort of repeating yourself a little bit. And I remember my resolution was that I want the script to be funny, not just sort of chuckle, chuckle funny, but like really funny.

48:47And I want it to be weird also. I want there to be sort of unexpected, strange things that make sense within the logic of a toy universe, right? But that you would never think of yourself. So like you have Lotso as the bad guy, Big Baby as the heavy who is his enforcer. And you're trying to elaborate on what's come before, but remain consistent. I think that it's just a balance that you're always trying to walk to remain true to the spirit of the original stuff and still expand on the universe and the characters. I read that you sometimes don't take credit on certain projects that you're hired to rewrite.

49:24I guess I'm jumping back to some of the script doctory kind of stuff, or you use like a pseudonym, a fake name. Why is that? What's going on there? Yeah, it's, I thank you for asking. I guess it's kind of a stupid thing, but I remember, man, I worked at Loma Sunshine for like four years to get that movie made. Major investment in my life. I wrote a hundred drafts of that script. For Toy Story 3, I worked on that script for three years and was very happy that got my name on the movie and it came out. And then this was at the beginning of my script doctoring career. I was hired to work on the film Oblivion as a script doctor.

49:56I went and I did two weeks of work, just not expecting to get credit at all. What I did was I changed it from the opening and the ending. The script I got made it out to be a war movie. It was like an alien invasion. We fought back against them, blah, blah, blah. When they sent me the script, I was like, this is actually a love story. This is about a guy who's haunted by dreams of a woman that he's never met. So I sort of, I rewrote the beginning, I rewrote the ending, and that changed the nature of the movie from being kind of just this war movie to being a love story. And very surprisingly, because I only worked on that script for two weeks, the studio elected to give me credit on it.

50:30And I was just like, man, these aren't my characters. This isn't my story. I only worked on this thing for two weeks. It just is a different kind of writing. Like Little Miss Sunshine came out of me, it came out of my personal experience. It's an expression of who I am. And I Oblivion, I'm just coming in to somebody else's script. I'm making little adjustments here and there. It just felt like two completely different kinds of writing. And so I thought, I'll just use a pseudonym for stuff that I'm doing. If I'm not hired to do the full screenplay, if I'm only coming in and making adjustments to someone else's work, I just want to make a distinction between the writing I do as sort of an artist and the writing I do as sort of a craftsman.

51:05It does make sense. It makes a lot of sense. Do you think that quality, maybe humility, generosity, do you think that's helped you in the industry at all? Yeah. There have been scripts, a couple of scripts. I mean, Star Wars was one of them where I was given first position in the credits. When they arbitrate what the credits look like, whoever contributed the most should be in first position in the credits. And I was offered first position in The Force Awakens. I think that that final screenplay has maybe like three lines of dialogue that I wrote and the rest was rewritten by Larry and JJ. So, I mean, I think that the whole structure that we came up with is, I mean, again, like the studio decided I had contributed more to the final script than Larry and JJ, but I thought, you know, it's, it doesn't feel like it's my story.

51:49Like it's really theirs. It's their characters. It's all their dialogue. So I elected just to step back and take second position in the credits. They probably appreciated that, I would say, right? Because they probably agreed with you, I would assume, right? Yeah, I feel like I was being a credit hog to try and be in first position when the sensibility that's reflected in the final film is more, I mean, the story was what we all came up with together, but the sensibility reflected in the final movie is more Larry H.H.A. than it is me. Speaking of keeping your audience on the hook and wanting more, we'll be right back.

52:19If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support those who make this show possible. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support this podcast are searchable and clickable over at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. You can also use the AI chatbot on the website, jordanharbinger.com slash AI. You can ask that thing just about anything, including promo codes. And if you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code, there's a problem with the code, whatever, shoot me an email, jordan at jordanharbinger.com.

52:46I am more than happy to surface those codes for you whenever I can. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Michael Arndt. One of the big conversations in the industry right now, well, every industry right now is AI, right? What role it should play in movies and TV is freaking out everybody in LA right now, or at least in Hollywood. Broadly speaking, it seems like there's two camps. There's people like Justine Bateman who are like, get this technology away from our art. It's unethical. It's dehumanizing. And then there's other people saying, hey, okay, maybe, but you can't stop this technology.

53:21It's going to make our stories better. It's going to make the industry more efficient. Where do you land on the AI and Hollywood debate? It's a very sensitive subject, so I'm treading carefully here. I think that within the spectrum of optimism and pessimism... We'll use AI to make you sound better. So whatever you say now, we'll just redo it with AI. Don't worry. Good, good, good. Good, good, good. I think as a screenwriter, you kind of have to be an optimist. Here's an argument that I'll make. And this may turn out to be not to be the case. And this may turn out to, I could be completely wrong, but I think one of the arguments that you could make is that I had a meeting with a guy who was running a generative AI company.

53:59And he said, production costs are going to come down 90%, 95%. And I was just like, oh, you mean in 10 years? He's like, no, in two years. And I don't know if that's true, but I think that there's a lot of screenplays, including a few of my own, that don't get made because the budget doesn't make sense. I had a script about two years ago that made it up to the top of the decision ladder at a studio, and I wanted to direct it. And they said to me, we would make this movie if it costs half of what the budget is. I see. I wrote this comedy. It's very dark, very spiky comedy. It's like the darkest comedy of all time.

54:36And they were like, we love this script and we want to make it, but it's just too expensive. We can't justify it. If AI can cut the cost of making movies, just even by 50%, right? It's going to allow a lot more movies to be made. And I think it's going to allow sort of fresh voices, sort of spikier or stranger stories to get made. I think it's going to give writers, actually, I'm hoping, more control. So I think that in the optimism and pessimism debate, I totally realized that there's a dystopian alternative, right? There's a way in which Amazon and Apple and whoever else just start cranking out the McDonald's of storytelling and you're just getting bland, homogenous product.

55:21You could argue that we're kind of already at that place. We're already seeing a lot of superhero movies, stuff that's not super adventurous. I think that if AI is actually going to fulfill the promise of bringing out costs. To me, what that hopefully promises is that it's going to lessen the importance of the money people, the gatekeepers, the people who are providing the money, and it's going to empower the creative people, right? If films become much, much cheaper, it's just going to take away power from the money people and give more power to the creative people. Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't thought about that.

55:53I was thinking earlier, you know, I wonder what he thinks it's going to take for Hollywood to stop making sequels or reboots or IP-based stories and start prioritizing original screenplays again. And the answer is make it cost 5 % of what the other thing, so that it doesn't have to make$98 million to break even. So it has to be like this name brand thing. It could be like, hey, we can totally experiment with this indie offbeat designed for the Southeast Asian market thing, because it's going to cost$3 million instead of$30 million. Here's the most optimistic take, right? Which is, I have a, let's say a science fiction film.

56:30In the current climate, it would never get made because it's a big science fiction film that costs$100,$150 million. If I can use AI to make that film for a fraction of that, there was a story about a guy, I won't say his name, but he made an independent film, cost$200 ,000. He just invested his own money into it. It was a big hit, made$100 million worldwide. And he, as a director who owned the copyright, owned the negative, made$40 million. dollars. And I think that there is an opportunity, again, like if AI can bring down costs, again, I recognize this is the optimistic scenario. It may not work out this way.

57:06To me, the holy grail is having writers and directors be empowered enough that they can make their own movies and own the copyright, right? And control it. And so we're not renting our talent out to these giant corporations that control the purse strings, right? If AI can bring costs down enough, it's going to A, let a thousand flowers bloom. It'll be a lot easier to get movies made. And yes, there'll be a lot of mediocrity. There'll be a lot of stuff like movies that shouldn't have gotten made and just got made because it was possible to get them made. But I think it's going to allow for, again, sort of spikier, odder, stranger stories to be told or movies to be made.

57:45And I think that there's a possibility, and this may be very utopian of me, but there's a possibility that by cutting costs so much, it's going to, again, disempower the money people, empower the creative people. And even the Holy Grail would be leading to artists owning their work. Yeah, that's an interesting take, right? It's really going to be interesting to see how this plays out in every single industry. I like the idea of disempowering the money people, especially with the Hollywood stuff, because it really, the more I learn about it, the more I'm like, it's all risk, it's all connections, and it's all, does this already make money?

58:17And it's Like, that's just like the opposite of creating something new and interesting, right? I think that, listen, I know I'm afraid I'm going to get blowback because I'm being Panglossian. I'm being too optimistic about this stuff. And I totally recognize, like, there's a way in which if things go wrong, right, there's a way in which you just have producers hitting buttons, give me a mystery thriller, give me a Superman era movie, give me whatever. And that's what we're going to get. And I think that the general, my take is rather contrarian. I think most people tend to be siding on the side of pessimism.

58:48And they could be right and I could be completely wrong. Well, time will tell. Time will tell. I just... Or both could be right. I think that there's a case to be made for the fact that it's going to hopefully end up being a tool that empowers creative people rather than disempowers them. More likely, there's just going to be so much content that, yes, some of it's going to be like AI produced this entire thing. There's going to be some app for your television that's just AI created cartoons for every single age, every single language, every single genre. But most people won't want to do that.

59:16That'll be like the crap you put on when your kid is trying to fall asleep or something, right? It won't be like, I'm going to sit down and watch all this. It'll just be like crap that's out there, like junk TV. And then there'll be the good stuff, hopefully the good stuff that actually, you know, humans have worked on in concert with AI to make it really spectacular, but not cost$150 million to get out the gate. There's already software out there where you can just, you hit a button and you go, give me a song that's mid-tempo, blah, blah, blah, with lyrics about blah, blah, blah. and you hit the button and you get that song.

59:46But I don't think people are using that. People don't want to listen to just bespoke songs that only they know. Part of the function of art is creating a community, right? People want to go see Taylor Swift. They want to see her sing her own songs. They want to know that she's written her own songs that's based on her experience, her life, her human experience, right? It's going to create a community where everybody can go and sing along, right? So we all know these songs. That's what art does, creates a community around us. And I think that there's this weird Silicon Valley thing that now we're all going to get to make our own individual movies that are going to be custom made for us.

1:00:19But I don't think people want that. I mean, this is what happened with Barbie, right? It became this cultural phenomenon. You went to see Barbie because it was the Barbie movie and you were going to be able to take part in this broader cultural conversation. And I also feel like Warner Brothers could have just had a synthetic Barbie and a synthetic Ken, right? They come out of a computer. People don't want that. People want to see Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling playing Barbie and Ken. They want to see human people. So I think there's a lot of panic now in sort of actors being replaced, writers being replaced, because you can just hit a button and have this stuff happen.

1:00:50I mean, maybe there's people out there that are just sitting there like making their own music and only listening to that. But I don't think that's the reason that people take in art. Like they want to take in something that they feel a human connection to and that also creates a community. That's true. And also like the more niche and hipster something is, the smaller that community is, but they They're still, it's not cool if you're the only one in it, right? If you're a club, get a club. You're the only person in it. That's no fun, right? You want some people in there. You just want to make it exclusive.

1:01:15And that's the trick, right? That's the before it was cool. I've heard you say that you often write the ending of a movie and then you work backward or you find a point in the story you're really excited about and you figure out how you can believably get there. I'm curious, have you applied that to your career at all? I mean, and by the way, y 'all like how I asked that question at the end? Very meta, very mindful. Man, my career is just stumbling blindly from one obstacle to another in a series of near disasters and close escapes. I don't know how I ended up with a career I ended up with. The goal was always to be a director.

1:01:48I think I have two or three scripts now that I feel like are ready to be shot. I'm hoping I'll be shooting sometime next year. You know what? The honest truth is that I feel as though I've only recently really mastered the craft of writing. I think that I only recently felt really comfortable that I know what I'm doing. That was just only a couple of years ago. And I think for the first 30 years of my career, I was still a student. I was still figuring things out. I'd written a bunch of scripts and it was a little bit like throwing darts at the dartboard, right? And when Little Miss Sunshine came out and was such a big success, it felt like I'd thrown a dart and it hit the bullseye.

1:02:27But I was like, wait a minute, how did I do that? How did that happen? Because I feel like I was not... I still didn't understand stories and how storytelling worked. And I think that a lot of my career, I mean, this is what was so great about working at Pixar, was that I was still learning. I was still figuring out how stories work, watching WALL-E get made, watching Up get made, watching all that stuff get made, and then doing it myself, and then making these videos. The videos have been helpful to me, just in sort of clarifying and articulating the organic logic of a story. How do stories really work?

1:02:55And so the truth is, maybe everyone else is smarter than me, and I'm just a dumb guy, But for me, it's really hard to write a great screenplay. Oh, yeah, that's definitely it, right? It's really hard to write a great screenplay that you really love. And I think that when I wrote Little Miss Sunshine, I wanted to direct it, and that didn't happen. It took me a long, long time to write another two or three original screenplays that I love as much as I love that movie. And so I feel like I'm knock on wood, I'm ready to start directing those things now. But I think that what's been guiding my career up until this point is kind of the sense of like, I'm still figuring this out.

1:03:28because storytelling is so difficult and so mysterious and also powerful. I feel like movies have huge influence on your lives. Movies can change your life, right? I think it's an enormous responsibility also, and you don't want to be putting crap out there. So I think that when I look back at my career, I could have been more bold. I could have been more, what the hell I'm going to try it? But I think that I was really still invested in trying to figure out sort of how stories work. I'll watch. My next movie, I'll direct it and the script will be terrible. And people will go like, what were you thinking?

1:04:02You wasted 30. Oh man, should have stuck with Toy Story 4. Exactly. There's been no logic to my career or the direction of my career other than work with good people, take the opportunities when they come along and always put yourself in a position where you feel like you're learning something. I love that. Michael Arndt, thank you very much. This is awesome. I know we were kind of ducking and weaving between scheduling and stuff, and it's really cool to have you on. Oh, listen, thank you so, so much. And if I can just put in the plug for my screenwriting videos, like you can go on YouTube and I think just put in my name, Michael Arndt and screenwriting videos.

1:04:35We'll link to it in the show notes. Definitely. Because we want people to check that stuff out. Cause that's, that'd be great. They're great resources. Gabriel's devouring those probably has all of them bookmarked. And it's cool that you make those for other people, but also sort of secretly, not so secretly for yourself. So you can clarify your thinking. There really is something to creating things and clarifying I'll read a whole book by somebody and I'm like, okay, I kind of get it. And then I do the show and I'm like, oh, it hammers down every nail in that hatch. Totally, totally, totally.

1:05:02And also, I feel like this is, I'm making the videos that I wish I had seen when I was starting out. Like, I'm making the videos that I wish somebody had made for me, right? And I think that figuring out like the knowledge about like external stakes, internal stakes, and philosophical stakes, figuring all that stuff out took me a long, long time. I would hate to have all that knowledge just for me to get hit by a bus and have all that knowledge disappear. So I wanted to just like, just sit down, make these videos, put them out there, and hopefully people can find them helpful. They're such a great resource and I'm very, very grateful for them.

1:05:30Thank you for making them. Thank you. And I think that I'll just say, like, I'm making this new thing about how to write a good first act. It'll probably be about 60 minutes long. The examples I'm using are from The Godfather, Cinderella Tootsie, and The Bicycle Thief. And all those first acts are just totally dynamite, totally great. And they all work in sort of the same way. If people are wondering if I'm going to make a new video, yeah, there's one that'll be out. And I don't know, I'm very, these things take a long time. So it'll come out when it comes out. Yeah, no problem. By the way, you said you're going to direct something.

1:06:00Is there, and I'm putting you on the spot live, because this is ensuring my success here. Is there any way for people to come visit film sets while something is being shot? Or is that super annoying and distracting and not cool at all? Because I've never seen a movie get made at all. And I'm like, I want to check this out. You're invited, man. You're invited. If I'm making a movie, hopefully we'll be shooting in New York. If you're going to be in New York while we're shooting, come by and you can go to the craft service and get all the free food. Yeah, that's why I want free food and I want to see how a movie gets made.

1:06:28Brownies. Not necessarily a matter of. Brownies and M &Ms. Perfect. Michael, thank you so much, man. Really good to see you. Really great to talk with you. Okay. Take care. Thanks so much. Take care, you guys. If you're looking for another episode of The Jordan Harbinger Show to check out, we talked to legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone on why the American media is partially culpable for the state of the world, interviewing Vladimir Putin and so much more. Here's a quick bite. I went to Vietnam because, as I tried to say in the book, partly suicidal. It was a death instinct. It was like I have no place in the world.

1:07:03I come out of Vietnam and I'm completely zonked and I'm back in civilian society. I'm free. No one's telling me what to do. I don't know a soul. So I go over to Mexico, get bombed, laid, all that stuff, got crazy few days, come back and I zoned out and come back at midnight, trying to cross back the border at midnight, carrying my Vietnamese grass, which I'd smuggled back from Vietnam. Of course, I get stupidly busted. Federal smuggling charge five to 20 years. Oh, my God. Yeah, serious. That's a crazy punishment. How much grass are we talking about? Two ounces. That's ridiculous. Maybe less. I heard you once put LSD in your dad's drink at a party.

1:07:39That's a bold move, man. Yeah, why not? Because he needed it. What do you mean? His attitude on the war was fucked. I put a heavy dose of orange sunshine into his scotch. Man, I really dumped it in. And he got so high. He never knew what hit him. Do you think you could make a movie like Platoon now? Do you think an American studio would touch a movie like that these days? No, no, not with friendly fire and killing civilians. No, it's impossible now. National Security Cinema, read it. He goes into detail on some 800 movies the Pentagon has worked on. You have no idea the influence, how deep they've gotten.

1:08:17What I've said to you at this interview is important. If you think about it, listen to it again, you'll see why suffocation is in order here. For more, including the lesson Oliver Stone learned when he was a cab driver prior to becoming a world-famous director, check out episode 411 on The Jordan Harbinger Show. That was a lot of fun. Co-hosting these with Gabriel is always just so fun. I love doing that. We should do more of these. I say that every time. I should probably listen to myself at some point. All things Michael Arndt will be in the show notes at jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show, all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

1:08:56Please consider supporting those who support the show. Also, our newsletter, We Bit Wiser. The key here is to give you something specific and practical that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology, your relationships in under two minutes. And we just don't like long reads. I mean, who does? If you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It is a great companion to the show. JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Don't forget about 6-Minute Networking over at 6MinuteNetworking.com. I'm at JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn, where the mostly sort of sane people seem to be these days.

1:09:29This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. So if you know somebody who's interested in screenwriting, creative careers, or just the movie business in general, maybe share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.

1:09:55And we'll see you next time.

1:10:02This episode is sponsored in part by Conspirituality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling New Age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy-mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspirituality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

1:10:33An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspirituality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics. Find Conspirituality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.