Summer Special #5

0:02Ben Hanlin: Welcome back to What's the Trick? This is the podcast where I sit down with the world's most creative people and try and understand their creative process. Hello, I'm Ben Hanlin. This is not a normal episode. This is one of our summer specials. So if you're a new listener, this is not normally what we do. Normally we interview guests. You can stick around for this if you want, or you can go back and listen to some traditional episodes. but the reason I'm doing this if you're if this is your first summer special you've listened to is we were taking a bit of a hiatus during summer and I thought it'd be a great time to go into our vault pick out three episodes per summer special and have a little chat about them and have a little re-look at some of our old episodes because if you're an OG you've been here from the beginning you may have listened to it and forgotten this bit of advice or this information and it might go oh yeah that's a good reminder or if you're newish you maybe haven't heard any of these three and you might think oh I'm going to go back and listen to that full episode uh what else so that's what we do in this episode I'm going to look at three guests and we're going to play three clips and also it's about one year since I've started this process of doing this podcast so later on in this episode I'm going to be really honest with you and tell you what's going on behind the scenes of what's the trick and how it's really going.

1:18Ben Hanlin: So let's start with our first guest, Henry Lewis. Now, Henry Lewis is a co-creator of the Mischief Theatre Company. They're the company that create the play that goes wrong, Peter Pan that goes wrong, Magic that goes wrong and a bunch of other shows. And their story is amazing. So to bring you quickly up to speed on Henry, in 2008, he was at Lambda Drama School in London. He met two friends, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields they eventually then lived together in a flat after drama school and then one thing led to another they were putting on productions coming up with ideas they came up with the play that goes wrong it started above a pub and then from a pub it's now one of the longest running shows in the West End it's on Broadway they are global and that's what I wanted to know I was like well how does that actually happen how do you come up with an idea for a show in your flat put it on in a pub and now you have a huge theater company all over the world um so that's what we dig into and he tells us and he's really honest he tells about the financials as well of how that works but also the thing i'm looking back on this episode what do i remember taking from this episode very much his mindset and his mindset was if they had an idea he didn't overthink it he was like how do we get this live as quick as possible and he's very much a salesperson so he went right okay i need to find a venue let's just find a venue with a gap and let's put a show on and we'll figure everything else out whilst we're doing it he wasn't scared to test and fail and he wasn't trying to be perfect before he launched something i think that's something that a lot of us we get stuck in our own heads don't we we overthink and we overthink and he's like just do it it won't be good but it'll be something that you can then improve on so that was my takeaway but let's have a listen to the conversation that we had in London when I sat down with Henry Lewis where did the new ideas start to come into your brain there's never like I think the idea of like a big idea it like sometimes that happens but like I I find like 95 % of the time it's not a big idea it's it's a series of small ideas and writing is sort of it's just a process of making many many many decisions and you start and you have one small idea you're like oh you know maybe there's a scene where this happens i think a beginning an early idea within um the comedy about spies was to do we're like what what could we do we do fast what could we do differently with fast and we would sort of we heard about a hotel um that was in budapest that had been kind of um revamped after the end of the cold war and they found all these microphones and stuff in the walls and stuff because it had been this sort of all these spies had been camped out there and ever all those just like microphones everywhere in this hotel been used for years by you know kgb and all that kind of thing and we thought oh god that's quite interesting and so that was the kind of beginning of it we were like well so what okay so what if it's a farce but rather than doing the kind of classic thing you do with a farce which is in one room what if we do a couple you know what if we do two rooms and there's people listening between the rooms and then we were like okay well what if it's a hotel like this was could you do an upstairs and a downstairs could you do four rooms and so then we had the idea of the of the of the sort of of doing the the four bedrooms which is like the big kind of central sequence but that was kind of just an idea of like that's kind of concept and so then you kind of go into like well who is it and who are the character and then so then you'll make you know you're you it all comes in small chunks and so that that's really interesting because it you know you've got people would have gone oh my gosh how have you come up with comedy about swive but actually you've gone hold on i saw a thing in real life that was truth that was authentic that happened that caught my attention so you're like oh that's caught my attention ding ding ding then you've played around with that and you've gone two rooms four okay then let's so then when you're developing it and you go and you walk in and you slam it down on the desk you go here's the next one we've got two rooms we've got this do you then have a system of working do you put stuff up on walls do you brainstorm plots do you have a a web of ideas how does how does that start to shape if you don't mind me asking no all of that i mean i think um we you know we do quite a lot of i think for that we did quite a lot of structuring first you know we were sort of looking at okay well if then maybe that's the middle quite often with a farce any play but like with a farce you're really kind of i think the end of act one is quite key to be like you want to feel like it's you know you want to feel like you've done it you've done enough you've gone far enough within the first half so i think we were like oh that's quite good let's kind of let's end let's do the hotel let's end act one there and then let to act two let's kind of go outside the hotel do something completely different um that's kind of what we did so yeah so we kind of we were and we knew from you know like it's you know important with a comedy to get people laughing quite early on so we knew, okay, well, early there's going to be just a fun scene at the beginning, and then we're going to kind of, you know, then we'll have like a movement sequence, and then we'll meet the characters in a kind of, you know, big scene in a kind of lobby where we meet everyone and that kind of stuff.

6:24And so, yeah, I don't know, we were kind of, you know, we were sort of developing that. And, yeah, it just keeps kind of growing, and you add stuff, and then you do, yeah, I mean, we definitely do readings and things like that, so that's the first time when we kind of get to a point where we're like, we think we've got something we're not sure how much further we go with this without getting some outside opinions you also get to a point where you're just like you've looked at it for so long that you just kind of like wait we need some different opinions now we need some different voices so we read it with the team we have an amazing team at mischief of of actors who we work with a lot um so we they they know us really well they know our writing really well we know them really well um so they kind of i think they they get how to i think how to read this stuff really quickly we kind of know how to write for their voices so that's always really fun there's always really amazing feedback that comes from that so we do that process a few times yeah we then were sort of saying well we need to definitely workshop this especially with physical comedy and stuff i think it's just really important to do it you've got to just get up and do it because if you don't um it's just all about making sure that like dialogue fits exactly with action and making sure that just like you know especially with the the rooms and everything we were like we've got to do a workshop and we knew it was quite a big workshop because we we were like we need this four bedrooms thing we need to build it we need to sort of see it so when you say a workshop do you literally go

7:44Ben Hanlin: into a space you build this set so i'm guessing you had to you throw some money and go right we're going to ring fence a budget of this and we'll build this set and we'll get this cast together and then how long does that last that process is it a week two weeks three weeks it depends on the project for spies it was a big workshop um yes i mean i think that i think that it was the same It cost the same as the taking play that goes wrong into the West End, just for the workshop of this show. We built this whole set, and we had six weeks of time, which is a really good amount of time to kind of get into it, really work it out to try and, you know, we did a staging at the end of it where we staged kind of big chunks of the first half, a couple of chunks of the second half.

8:25We read the rest, and so did like these presentations. And that's really important too, to kind of hear audiences laughing. there's always you know when you're doing kind of you know a show where there's you know probably five jokes a minute or whatever you like you know some stuff will land some stuff won't some stuff won't be clear enough so getting that feedback is useful too but what's really interesting there

8:45Ben Hanlin: again is this idea of and i've i've heard mark randolph who started netflix is you had an idea and instead of again think you've gone right we need to just get it get it tested how do we test this as quick as possible get into a space build a rough set get it tested and get it worked out and then off the back of that you can get interest so at netflix they used to actually do something similar where they would say somebody come to me with a new idea a new concept we're not going to talk about it for a year what is the quickest way to test this thing with an audience yeah so instead of building an app for six months who can we whatsapp a group of people today to see people or buy it or can we get a landing page up on netflix for and even if it's full of errors just test it and get some feedback and it feels like you've almost got that mindset of right we've got it okay we haven't got a date let's get it tested let's get it and it's just moving through that quick phase yeah of that do you know i mean definitely i think yeah i think there's i mean i think i think you've got a i think you've got a i think with writing you've got you i mean you want to be confident i think when you're testing it um because i think uh if you're going to invest a lot of time in something you want to make sure that when you when you test it if it's a sort of high stakes test um yeah you know what someone's going to come and offer you a theater or not you want to make sure what you're showing them obviously is uh robust and and and you know you're really happy with it it's a real shame to show something and you're like oh i wasn't quite happy with that and then it kind of doesn't quite go your way that's that's that's tricky but yeah totally if you can if you can if you can test stuff quickly then um then yeah i mean the more information you have the sooner the better and that's why i mean i'm always keen whenever we do rehearsals I'm always kind of well let's get an audience in you know so there you go that was Henry Lewis let's move on to our second guest from a theatre company we now move on to a ventriloquist but not any ventriloquist this is Paul Zerdin who also won America's Got Talent I'd never sat down with an America's Got Talent winner so just to bring you up to speed on Paul he has been a ventriloquist in the uk for years he's been on tv he's extremely good and he had an amazing act and i wanted to know how you win america's got talent what his plan was for that and also what happens after you win america's got talent and this for me was a really really interesting episode paul does not hold back um first of all what i what you learn i think is his act was really solid And I've noticed this and I've spoken to people that have gone on these shows and they're and they're making stuff up for the show.

11:21Ben Hanlin: Whereas everything he did on that show, he'd been doing for decades. So he was just so calm on the day, knowing that his material was going to work. And it just shows, you know, when you're in those big high pressure situations, don't try and do something new for the first time. Go to your tried and tested material. It's really simple. And he nailed that concept. But the main thing that I learned is what really happens when you win, when they say you have a million dollars, when they say you get your own show in Vegas. He had his own show and then it eventually gets cancelled after six months through no fault of his own, which you'll hear about.

11:56Ben Hanlin: And he was just honest and he told us what goes on from the business side of that as well. So I thought really, really interesting conversation. Thoroughly nice guy as well. This is ventriloquist, America's Got Talent winner, Paul Zerden. anyway so i was just so fed up i just thought i'll go over to america and have a go at a talent show and i will um just give it a go and with that was when you obviously signed up to that and you've got this good career behind you you know you've got the chops the skills in it and we'll dive down into the axe but was there a goal in mind did you think at the end of this i then want to be able to do x y and z off the back of it yeah i wanted to get my own tv show basically and i wanted to be able to have a bigger profile and do bigger gigs bigger theaters and um you know i just thought america was a much bigger market so that could filter home and it will help my career in the uk and and abroad generally i just thought i'll just give it a go and see how it goes and it went really well yeah just a bit and um and i and i and i really loved the process and i did my first audition which was at the dolby theater and just before i walked on stage i thought why am i doing this i'm literally walking out putting myself in a position when i've been doing this for 25 years so i've got a good career everything's fine i'm going to walk out in front of these judges and you can hear when you're backstage you know and you're waiting around i got there i had to be there like seven o 'clock in the morning and then i was supposed to be i think they were doing two or three shows in an afternoon and they kept on pushing me back and i i ended up going on the last show and then in the last section i think of the show so i didn't go on stage until about nine o 'clock or 9 30 at night and i'd been there all day and i literally had lost the will to live by that point and i didn't care and i filmed a load of sort of b-roll interviews and stuff but every so often you'd hear this and i go oh my god it's like terrifying this sound but um i just gave myself a bit of a talking to and just thought go out and just do what you do well let's well let's break it down then so you applied to go on the show and unlike britain's got talent the americans got talents it's basically five rounds and then there's another spot at the end but let's focus on these five rounds let's work out i would really like to know how did you think about these acts did you go in there and say to the producers right this is going to be at one two three four five did you say the best till last but if you do that you might not get to the last what was the thought process of all of that that's a really good question and um for the first spot i just worked out what i was going to do and um and just thought i'll do this and see what happens then that went well um and then i went back to do the what they called the judges cuts which is when i got a golden buzzer um and around about that time um i can't remember it was before or after you're assigned a producer so there's lots of producers but there's there's one person looking after you and a few other acts and called meg in my case and she said what would you do if you got to the finals you know tell me what you would do and so i just sort of wrote out roughly uh for the next spot i would do this i'd finish on this bit then i'd probably finish on this bit i'd have sam coming alive it's an animatronic thing that idea that would be that bit i'd then do my human dummy routine with maybe maybe one of the judges um and just i sort of i kind of mapped it out roughly and they were she was really helpful and said okay okay okay that's great i would probably do that first and then if you got to that next round i would do that instead and just switched a couple of things around and in your head we all so this is the thing i really want to get into because i think i watch people on those shows and i always wonder this question how much of those five bits were tried tested worked on for years versus here's a new bit i've put in for the show um it was all based on tried and tested yeah so i was never going out on stage going oh my god i've done this before yes i've seen people do that i thought wow that takes some balls and sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't yeah um i started one of my spots with a whole new bit but i was going into a bit that that i knew was absolutely solid um so there was never any it was a calculated risk um all of it but i i i knew what i was going to do i'd change things around to suit the you know the occasion one of my um really good friends and who helped me write as well he was a massive fan of howard stern who was who was the simon cowell character in season 10 and and he gave me some some extra lines about howard stern and and his his catchphrases and things which i didn't know i was a fan of howard stern but i didn't know him as well as my my mate phil did and so i had little things like that which we sort of customized yeah but um generally it was it was tried and tested it was just tweaked to to fit the show and for those that people that haven't sat down and watched all of your spots back to back can i can we just get a little listen of sam what i've not done the voice yeah can we just because i just i just love the sound yeah go on give us how does sam sound well at the moment i've got a bit of a sore throat because i've been rehearsing the new material for the tour but um sam is uh hello hi hi well we're here with Ben.

17:10Ben. With a B.

17:14Ben Hanlin: You can't see this. If you're listening to this on Apple Podcast, or wherever it is, Paul's not moving his mouth, obviously. Try not. He's a ventriloquist. So anyway, so you started with Sam, and then in other rounds, then the way you made it different is you have things like, like you said, an animatronic, where you walk off, and then people think that the puppet is not going to move, and then all of a sudden it comes to life. So that's another surprise. Then you did, I mean, you did other things as well. Then you did the mask thing where you put a mask on Howie and you made him the human puppet.

17:41Ben Hanlin: So it was quite nice that in every stage there was almost another bit of theatre that you were playing with in that for those five acts. So there we go. That was Paul. We are two fantastic guests in. I've got one more lined up for you. Before that, I'm just going to have a little chat because I said to you, it's been about a year since I started this podcast. So I will start to break down. I want to tell you what my thought is on this year and some of the things that I've been thinking about, just so you know what really happens when you're making a podcast. But before I do that, I suppose a small little ad break for me.

18:15Ben Hanlin: People wonder, what am I up to when I'm not doing the pod? So as I record this today, the kids have just gone back to school. The house is finally quiet. and I'm now going back into my really, really busy few months where, so tomorrow, I'll give an example, I go get the train to Cardiff. I'm doing a lunchtime after dinner show. So I'll be on stage about four o 'clock tomorrow. And then Saturday, I'm doing my only private party of the year. I don't do many anymore. That's in London at a hotel and I'm doing a show after dinner there. So I do them. And then next week, I'm hosting two awards up in Hull and in Birmingham.

18:52Ben Hanlin: and if you've not had a look have a look on the website benhanlin.com it's had a refresh lately i've put more videos up and it shows the awards hosting and the gigs but also my keynote i do a keynote about communication and how anyone can command the room because that's what we have to do as performers and it's going really really well and it's growing and i'm doing more and more around teaching people leaders teams how to do that so if you know anyone organizing a conference or an event go and have a look at that or if you're just being nosy go and have a look at benhanlin.com right let's get into the podcast so the reason i thought it was interesting to wait now is i remember this time last year booking my first guests and starting to record and we recorded a batch and i think it launched around october november so it's very much in the works now and i just thought let's have a little think back on the last year what's gone well what hasn't gone as well and what are my honest thoughts on it so first of all let's talk about growth where we at i think as a podcast it's going well it's going okay right it's not gone stratospheric but what's happening is and this is a really good sign i think of a podcast and i've done other things like this before the way this hasn't happened is every week people are finding the pod and staying and going to look at old episodes, which shows me that as long as people stay, it doesn't matter how slow the growth is, it's going to keep growing.

20:20Ben Hanlin: So I think that was a really interesting sign. And I feel like one thing I've noticed is I'm connecting with people online much stronger in the last year because they're listening to this podcast. And I feel like we're creating a really, at the moment, I'll be honest, relatively small community, but it's growing. So I think that's really interesting um certain things i've noticed spike the growth so uh a big guest and it might be one in 10 guests you get a big influx of new listeners so the big one i think looking back is shoot from the hip shoot from the hip i didn't realize how big and loyal their followers were and that got us i think on youtube we got a hundred and something thousand views on that episode so and then some of them have stuck around and are still listeners uh derren brown was obviously a big one but that's what you notice that a big guest can bring their audience and then if some of their audience stick around you keep to grow the thing i've also noticed which i'm not doing enough of the best way to grow a podcast audience is i need to be on other podcasts the more podcasts i can appear on the more i'm going to convert that audience so that's my little goal coming forward now growth is slow but quality and that's good whereas you can have other things where you You get people listening and they drop off.

21:32Ben Hanlin: So I'm really happy with that. What can I improve on? Do you know what's really interesting? Everyone talks about the holy grail online is to build your YouTube audience. I have been putting these episodes out on YouTube as long form episodes. And also I've been clipping them up to five minutes, eight minutes, ten minutes. And the YouTube views are absolutely pants rubbish. And it's really interesting. It's just a nut that I can't crack. I'm trying to do the SEO. So that's really an area to improve on. It's, it's, you know, some podcasts do really well on YouTube, mine not so much. So I thought, I'll just be honest with you, that's quite a weak point of this show.

22:11Ben Hanlin: But the other socials, the reels are doing extremely well, better than I ever thought I'd expected. So I'll give an example. Brent Forrester, who may or may not be coming up next, is a right on The Simpsons. His video we put out last week has done 700 ,000 views as reels. Dom Jolly, I think, was the best video we put out this year. It's done 3.5 million views on reels. So the reels are doing really well. And one thing, if you ever you're thinking about doing any of this, I'm really pleased that we invested in the social videos from day one. They've really helped grow and they've also really helped to book guests because people see that and go, oh, this looks really good.

22:50Ben Hanlin: I'll be on this. So the socials are a real strong point, I think, in the pod. Let's talk about the money, because that's what people often want to know. Have I made any money on this podcast in a year? The answer is no, not a penny. In fact, it costs me every week. I reckon on average, it's probably costing me£500 an episode to give you a ballpark. And that money is getting spent on, it was studio hire, but we've got the podcast rooms are sponsoring us now. So that's free now. But we've got my editors, guest booker. So I have somebody that will book the guests and gets a fee and other things that involved in creating all the content.

23:28Ben Hanlin: Right. So at least five hundred pounds an episode. So then you get this point, well, why are we doing it? But what the benefits are, even though it's made me know financial money, it's creating lots of benefits. First of all, the guests I'm getting to sit down with people that I am just loving the conversations. so you know being able to sit down with Darren Brown for an hour and a half or Brian Conley who I loved growing up watching on telly it's just been amazing so that I would pay to have those conversations so that's just a joy in my life which I'm loving and what no one tells you when you start a podcast is you're building a network so I've now interviewed 30 or so people that if I was to message or contact they're probably going to reply because we've spent time together so i'm building my network and that the opportunities that can come from that who knows so i'll give you an example i'm not going to be too specific there is one guest that's been on the podcast that we're talking about doing a project together it may or may not happen but there is no way this conversation would have happened if we wouldn't have done the podcast so that's something no one ever talks about and the main benefit i'm noticing and it sounds a bit cheesy but is my own personal development so i'm learning from these guests i'm also a speaker and I coach people about communication, etc.

24:48Ben Hanlin: I'm putting the conversations that we're having on the pod into that content and it's making me better at that. So I'm drawing down on those lessons. So I'm essentially paying to acquire this knowledge, which I'm all happy with. So that that's a bit of a rundown, I suppose, on the pod on where it's at. And what are my plans going forward? I think the big plan going forward, we toyed around with trying to do two episodes a week but it was just hard from logistics and time and resource at the moment my next goal i reckon is substack so i was looking at substack and patreon so for those that don't know this is how you can start to monetize this podcast obviously you can get brand deals etc but it's paid subscribers is what patreon is now substack is an amazing community where you can build a newsletter and your community can talk to you etc i'm thinking of launching the what's the trick on Substack and I will put essentially an email together each week which will sum up all the benefits from the podcast and hopefully give you value there and then there might be some bonus content etc that then might be behind a paywall and then slowly but surely we're building some revenue to go back into the podcast.

26:00So if you're a creator and you're thinking about Substack

26:05Ben Hanlin: and you've not looked into it I'm telling you now keep an eye on it because people are growing their communities on Substack and the main thing is you own your audience unlike social media where you don't really know if your video is going to get shown to anyone on Substack you do and Substack will show your content to other people on Substack so you can find your audience there I'm this isn't sponsored by Substack or anything but it's an area I've been really investigating in so if any of you got any experience in that let me know but honestly any creators or performers out there don't be sleeping and keep an eye on sub stack all right anyway that's the podcast roundup i suppose for another year uh any other questions you've got on it i'll always answer them just drop me a message or speak to me before we get into our final guest if you're enjoying this hit subscribe we'll be back with our normal guests very soon uh share it on a whatsapp group if you've got any friends or people you know that are into this kind of conversation please share it to them um if you if you're an og listener and you've never put it on your instagram stories or you've never put it on a Facebook page, just do us a favour.

27:07Ben Hanlin: Go and share it and give it a shout out. Word of mouth is what we're going to do here. And I'd really appreciate it. And as always, just DM me, say hello. Say I've listened to this week. I replied to every single DM, especially on Instagram. So you can follow the Instagram page, what's the trick pod. And I'll reply to you all there. And also you can follow me. I have a culture vulture, which I'm going to save to the end of the episode. So let's get in to our final guest, who is Brent Forrester, the Simpsons writer, headed up the office, the U.S. office. So he wrote on The Simpsons, he wrote on the U.S.

27:38Ben Hanlin: office. And long story short, he grew up in California. He got himself a mentor. He wanted to be a comedy writer. He started working on the Ben Stiller show with a young Judd Apatow. They won an Emmy for that show. And then one thing's led to another and he's become a prolific TV writer. And I really wanted to speak to him to find out what goes on in those writers rooms. How is the Simpsons made? How is the US office made? And the thing I took from it was just how competitive it is. You're in a room of 15 people all competing to get their joke on the page. How do you stand out from that crowd?

28:20Ben Hanlin: He gave a really good tip on that and a few other tricks as well on how he does that. and also how you can create a culture that is less competitive and more collaborative, which I thought was really interesting. Plus, he got to tell us his favorite jokes that he ever wrote for those shows. It's a really cool episode, really cool guy. We were recording remotely. He was in his house in California and I was obviously in my house in Birmingham. So enjoy this one. The final guest of this episode is Brent Forrester. So you walk in. It's day one, right? can you because this is it this is a show that we've all grown up with and and we all love but not you know no one knows what's happening behind the scenes so this is what is what is the writer's room at the simpsons how many people what's the day-to-day go well when i got there in season five it was a well-established show uh and they had a big writing staff.

29:17I mean, they had something like 18 writers when I was there. And the writer's room was like a living room that you would hang out in, you know, couches, chairs, and then one big desk in the middle where the head writer sat facing the other writers. And he would have a computer there. Now, this was before the internet. So we would all have a printed copy of the script, holding the script. And what is that script? You know, each of the writers in turn is leaving for four weeks to write a script. And when that thing's written, it comes back to the room. So we've all now got a printed version of, you know, the next one on the assembly line.

29:57And the head writer would say, turn to page three. We need a better line for Homer here. And then the entire room would just go into silence as, you know, a dozen geniuses tried to think of a original comedy line and that room was was very intimidating there wasn't a sense of like let's talk about it hey what would be a good idea i don't know hey you know what he had a good idea what if we there was no trial and error it was just like sit in silence pronounce great comedy

30:26Ben Hanlin: line so you're sat there going i hope one in every now and my jokes come you know i can i can essentially beat the other people in the room fastest fingers first right essentially oh it's it's even worse than, than, than we're making it here because there's also a sense of risk. If I try a joke and it isn't good and it is met with silence, my stock goes down. I mean, you just sort of felt like this is my career. If I pitch a joke and people laugh, maybe I'll stay in the job. If I pitch a joke and it gets in the script, you know, maybe I've got a career and, and, but if I pitch a joke and it bombs, I'll be out of here.

31:03there there was a kid that was hired the same year i was see he sat next to me i i wrote i don't want to say his name because of of the story talented kid and he knew his job was to pitch jokes but he he felt like i did if i pitch a bad one in front of these legendary writers for three months he just said nothing he said nothing his job was to pitch and he just was like better to just not risk it and of course they fired him but but he was like better to go out that way than in a hail storm of shame with a bad pitch it was a terrible environment for

31:35Ben Hanlin: writing comedy and also i could imagine nobody in that room wants to laugh at your joke either like if i'm sat next to you i'm gonna try my best to go that was that was bad wasn't it yeah yeah yeah and no that kind of competition is is self-defeating you know young writers sometimes say to me hey i just got a job on a staff what should i know first thing i say is laugh at everybody's jokes laugh enjoy say oh ben had one nobody heard that one ben this ben has a good one right if you're that person then when you pitch people will give you a little extra you know chuckle okay so yeah pay it forward type thing so okay so how did you stand out you're this guy relatively newish and you're looking around the room how do you even stand out and get your stuff on the page?

32:22Well, you know, I used a trick, which was I would try to anticipate what jokes we were going to punch up. I would read the script beforehand and go, oh, that one from Bart, I bet you we're going to punch that one up. It's not working great. And I would, before work, literally try to write new jokes. I would do that before work, at lunch, and after work. All I had was work ethic at that time. I knew I didn't have talent the way the other people in the room did. And I just tried to outwork people. And then, you know, when we would be in the room and the head writer would go, turn to page five, we need a new joke for Bart.

32:57I would pretend to be making up the joke that I had written in the morning just to be like, you know, just thinking about it now, what if, and then I would do like a fully fleshed out, you know, backflip of a clever joke. And just through that, it seemed like I got a reputation, if for nothing else, hard work. The veteran writers were like, the guy's working hard. And eventually it did work. I started to get jokes in the script. And interestingly, after two years there, I was only there for two full seasons. And I felt by the end of two years, I fully went from novice to I know how to do this.

33:34That's an interesting look at the way a learning curve can go so i'm a magician you've basically just

33:41Ben Hanlin: described my entire career you're creating miracles out of nothing because you've essentially prepped it beforehand which is really clever yes ben and i i think that that the arts in general are that magic trick if you look at a comedian on stage you know look at taylor tomlinson you'll be like this is the funniest human every single thing she says is funny that's the illusion that's created you know she spent three years saying 99 not as funny things and one great one and she just takes those it's it's all a magic trick and writers as well we no writer is as clever as what you are reading which is the distilled genius of you know a year okay that is brent forrester so who have we had in this episode you've had a tv writer brent forest you can go and have a look at that you've had a ventriloquist paul zerdin and you've had the owner of a global theater company henry lewis you can go and check him out as well and as i said i've got a culture vulture actually before we round things up so obviously regular listeners know culture what have i seen recently that i've liked this is i'm i'm giving you a classic here this is not new but i'm i don't know about you i'm so bored of flicking through amazon prime netflix etc we've got all this choice but that feels like there's nothing good to watch so i I went back this week to watch Speed.

35:03Ben Hanlin: Speed. It's on Disney Plus. And I realised on Disney Plus, and this is not a plug for Disney Plus, there's loads of classic 90s brilliant action films. And Speed is just, I'm going to sound like my mum and dad, they don't make them like this anymore, but they don't. I was watching Speed going, if this was made now, this would be a seven-part series on Netflix, and it would kill it. Whereas it was like an hour and a half, two hours, Dennis Hopper Keanu Reeves Sandra Bullock it was just brilliant so if you're looking for a film just go and watch Speed there you go as always hit subscribe so you don't miss another episode you can always DM me if you've got any other of these that you've seen recently let me know because I'm scratching around for stuff to watch you can DM me at Ben Hanlon on What's The Trick Pod give it a share to anyone you know that might like it and I'll see you all next week for another episode of What's The Trick Thank you.