227 | Oscar-Nominated Writer Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich, Unbelievable): "Understand The Difference Between Truth and Facts"

Many of Susannah Grant's movies are based on true stories, which, for a writer, often invites thorny questions about adaptation — What should I include? Is it essential that every detail I include happened verbatim? In answering these questions during today’s fascinating conversation, Susannah sheds light on an important reality: sometimes in fiction writing, there’s profound difference between truth and facts.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Meg: Hey everyone, welcome back to The Screenwriting Life. I'm Meg LeFauve.

Lorien: And I'm Lorien McKenna, and today we're chatting with Oscar and Emmy nominated writer Susannah Grant. Susannah is an Academy Award nominated writer, producer, and director. Her film credits include the screenplay for Erin Brockovich, In Her Shoes, 28 Days, Ever After, Pocahontas, and Charlotte's Web.

Lorien: Can I just say swoon? She also wrote and directed Catch and Release, and most recently Netflix's Lonely Planet, starring Laura Dern.

Meg: In the TV world, Susannah has written and produced Netflix's Unbelievable, HBO's Confirmation, the CBS series A Gifted Man, and Party of Five on Fox. She's also the executive producer of two of my personal favorites, Fleischman is in Trouble and Lessons in Chemistry on Apple TV So first of all, those credits, can we just talk, I agree, Lori and Swoon.

Meg: So welcome to the podcast. Welcome to the show, Susannah.

Susannah: Oh, it's awful nice to be here. Thank you.

Lorien: I'm pretty sure I'm gonna cry during this interview because every single one of your projects makes me cry. In some way, like all in different kinds of ways. The best way. Yeah, the best way. Very emotional.

Susannah: Good. I try to make myself cry when I write, to be honest.

Lorien: You're a perfect guest for the show then.

Susannah: It doesn't work for me. I figure it won't work for the audience.

Meg: We can't wait to chat to you about all of these amazing credits and just your life as a writer.

Meg: But first we're going to do how was our week or what we call adventures in screenwriting. We'll let Lorian go first. Lorian, how was your week?

Lorien: It was actually really great in terms of my writing. We organized an in person writing meetup at Basecamp Dinette in Burbank. And I organized a little discount with the owner there and about 30 people showed up and we occupied the back three picnic tables.

Lorien: And it was really amazing. And I was like, it's a silent writing day. And everyone showed up and everyone opened their laptops and started typing right away. It took me about an hour to settle down. To regulate myself, right? Oh, all these people are writing, I can write too, because I always feel like I'm operating on this crazy, frenetic, chaos demon level.

Lorien: So it was really great. And I got really good writing done. And it was just really nice to be with people. And the feedback I got from the group, especially the feature writers was like, it's just nice to be around another human person who's also writing and that you don't feel like you're taking something away from them or being a weirdo or anything.

Lorien: So it was really positive and I think we're going to keep doing it as much as we can. My observation about myself is that I need to figure out how to self regulate a little better.

Lorien: Susannah, how was your week?

Susannah: I'm going to answer total on, totally honestly, and say it was a very emotional week. Someone I love dearly died this week, and that was and is. Heartbreaking and and also, just puts you deeply in touch with the tender preciousness of life. And so along with the heartbreak is that incredible awareness that you don't always have of that.

Susannah: So I am both. Sad and grateful. That was my week. And I also got writing done. Also got some nice writing done. So there you go.

Meg: Did you feel that, first I'm sorry that your friend died. I'm sorry and sad.

Susannah: It was actually my mother in law who was a fabulous woman. Anyway, sorry.

Meg: Amazing. Did you feel that as you were processing that, it affected your writing, or were you able to be in the other story and leave that behind?

Susannah: Yeah, I absolutely could be in the other story, but I don't know about leave that behind. I think anytime something cracks your heart open a little bit more, it's bound to affect everything you do, right?

Susannah: And if you're spending five hours writing, it's going to be, it's going to be touched by that as well.

Meg: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My week was very much in the business in terms of the highs and lows that you go through as a writer that I think sometimes emerging writers think that you're going to hit a certain level and then it's just going to be high.

Meg: You're going to just rock it. Everything's going to be so great. As if it's some cure to life and the uncertainty of life, which, of course, it is not. It's actually puts it on rocket fuel, the uncertainty of life. So I had highs and lows, both in terms of just pitching something, feeling like it went really good in the room.

Meg: They love it. And yet there's a twist, right? They're not sure about something. So you're high and then wait, right? Or This, the uncertainty of, whenever you're doing press, like we're doing press for the movie, and all the, I guess it's all the socialization, all the socializing, you can, you're socializing when you're giving a pitch, you're socializing when you're out on the award circuit, and it's all such a privilege to even be in the room doing at all.

Meg: You are socializing a lot, and you're having to read social cues, and one moment you're like, I'm doing so well, and the next minute you're saying it's just, I, and I feel that same way in pitches sometimes, when you're like, God, this worked better at home, or whatever there's always this kind of, social aspect of our job that I think people don't think about.

Meg: And not all writers participate in it. Some writers really aren't social creatures and they don't want to be part of all of that. They don't pitch. They choose not to pitch. But I'm right now in that very much, but because I'm pitching as well as Out on the award circuit. And yeah, I find it really tires my brain out much more than writing tires my brain out because it's not the normal pond I like to swim in.

Meg: Did that make sense? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but I find the socializing. And the ups and downs of the business can be tiring. So I'm looking forward to taking a break and then writing. How about that? Woohoo! Let's write! I would like to be writing something right now.

Lorien: So I have a question about this for both of you. I love peopling. I love socializing. I love going to AFF. I love talking to writers. And it is great and I get a lot of energy out of it, but it also is really draining. And then it feels like I'm, quote, in the business and I'm doing it, but I, it's a lie because I'm not actually writing. It's a part of it, but I will tip too far in the other direction and then not have the work that I need to show for it.

Lorien: And it's this balance I swing where I people, and then I hermit. And like today I really want to go do something, but I realized I need those four hours to stay home and write. So I am choosing not to people and stay home. And it was, it's a hard decision for me because I, it's much easier for me to go out with people.

Lorien: And be social and say weird things. Huh. Have you, Susannah, in your career yeah, are you an inside cat or an outside cat?

Meg: How do you people?

Susannah: I would say by nature I'm both, but they are very they don't work and play well with each other. So it really is a choice, and I'll just stay in my home for the duration of a first draft of something.

Susannah: Once a solid first draft is down, I can usually, mix it. And it's also time of day. If I start the day, chatting, I will never find a place of deep concentration. If I start my day concentrating and then go do a bit of something, I can find my way back to it. But it has to be the first thing I do.

Susannah: So I get up ridiculously early to ensure that's the case.

Meg: Oh, I want to know how early.

Susannah: It starts with a four. It's early.

Meg: Are you waking up at four or are you writing at four?

Susannah: The window between waking up and writing is very short because I actually think your half sleepy brain is a really good writer, or at least for me, I feel it is.

Susannah: So I try to, get up somewhere between four and four 30, make a cup of coffee and get right at it where there's nothing else clouding my concentration. Wow. I find that I have, I think it's because I have very distractible concentration, I have to shut off my internet on my computer.

Susannah: I have to turn out lights. I have to do a lot of, put a lot of controls around so that I don't. Distract myself. Let myself get distracted.

Meg: I'm afraid if I did that I'd fall asleep on my computer.

Susannah: You get used to it. You do, your body assumes, develops a rhythm.

Lorien: Yeah. I find my overthinking brain shuts off around 10 o'clock at night, and then I'll do that sleepy, trust myself, I have only until midnight to write, and I'll just plow through.

Lorien: I couldn't do four because I don't go to sleep until very late, because

Susannah: I like I had that rhythm, and then I had children, so I suddenly couldn't sleep till, I couldn't write till 2 in the morning and sleep till 10 anymore, so that's when I switched it.

Lorien: Oh, you're assuming the eight hours of sleep. I see that's where my math falls apart.

Susannah: I'm a slave. I am like, I worship at the altar of sleep.

Lorien: I love that. You're

Susannah: probably much healthier than me. I'm like, ah, five hours is fine. We can do that. It's not going to burn me out. It's fine. It's fine.

Meg: Okay, so you're up at four, 4 4 30. You're starting to write.

Meg: We had heard that you don't view 3x structure as the most helpful structure, and I just, I would love to dive into that, just jump right into what you're writing when you're up at that early in that sacred space. How do you approach the page? I What is your approach? I

Susannah: do outline. If you're doing something for series work, usually the business insists that you outline.

Susannah: That's just much more of a codified part of the process. So there's always an outline. And outline with feature stuff as well. So that I, so when I wake up, I I have my little roadmap ahead of me. And that's a different. What the daily process is different than the act structure thing, which, and I don't I don't poo the three act structure at all.

Susannah: It just is unhelpful to me. I don't, when I sit down and try and structure something that way, it, I don't know, doesn't work. Now it could work that everything that I went about structuring differently. ends up being able to fall into that framework, but I never start with it. I don't get it. It's just this vast thing in the middle with how it's described.

Susannah: And you think, but that's crazy. I have a different momentum storytelling framework in my head that I use that's just works better for me.

Meg: Would it be okay to share with us? What that is.

Susannah: Yeah, the truth is, it's it will take a long time, and it's it's really something I've just jury rigged out of a million different things.

Susannah: You read a piece from this, and you read a, that book, and you hear one talk when you're 28, and you think, oh, there's a little piece I can do. So it's a cobbled together system, but it works for me. But it's all about, escalating momentum and making sure that the you're advancing the story.

Susannah: Either by or directly in relation to your main character and and that, that makes I, it's hard to, it's too hard to describe without getting out of graph paper, it, we would take the whole podcast. That makes it sound stupider than it is. It does work for me. But my take away.

Meg: It makes it sound amazing.

Lorien: I'm like, can you just do that? We'll come over, you can do the whiteboard. I am open, available. I don't need to write. I would be happy to learn from you.

Susannah: The take away is. There is no one way to do this, and there are some ways to do it poorly for sure, but there are a lot of ways to do it right.

Susannah: And what I advise everyone is to read everything, listen to everything, ask anyone if they do and take the bits of it that work for you and use it in your process. And if It makes you feel like you're moving in a way that feels productive, keep it. If it feels obstructive to that, get rid of it. And then just, over time you develop your own little toolbox,

Meg: hey everyone, we wanted to let you know about a special holiday deal for TSL Workshops, our membership community. From now until January 1st, we're offering a 5 day free trial plus 50 percent off your first 3 months of TSL workshops using the code HOLIDAY24, H O L I D A Y 24. If you didn't

Lorien: know, TSL Workshops is a community that offers twice a month live workshops with us in addition to a series of premium workshops with some of our favorite industry experts like story consultant Pat Verducci and producer Sheila Hanahan Taylor.

Lorien: We want to meet you, so come on over by clicking the link in the description below and using the discount code HOLIDAY24. We'll see you soon. Happy Holidays!

Lorien: Do you ever get stuck? A lot of times I'll write, very intuitively and Act 1 is way too long and then I have no idea what, where I'm going, right? So then I can get stuck in an endless Act 1 and be like wait, what's the plan? What's my plot? So I, I like, okay what if I just started from the beginning of act two and launched myself in that way?

Lorien: Huh. That's a cool idea. As a trick to like, not have to be bogged down by exposition. And it usually ends up being my act one anyway. But, what, where, do you have a pattern of oh, here I come, I'm getting stuck? Or what do you do when you get blocked? Like, how do I escalate the momentum kind of question?

Susannah: I'm I just, this makes me sound, I don't know, whatever. I'm not a big believer in the whole block thing. I think it's a lot conversation. Sometimes you have something to say, and so you talk. And if I sit down, and I don't think of it as blocked. I think I must not be thinking carefully about something to say.

Susannah: Maybe I should think a little deeper about, so I don't, the block thing doesn't.

Lorien: Oh, I agree.

Susannah: I don't believe in writer's block either. But do I get stuck? I don't get stuck. I overwrite. I overwrite. I, in order to find The story, sometimes I feel like I have to write every breath the people take, but I also know that sometimes it takes writing eight pages of a scene to find the really good three quarters of a page, and that's just how I do.

Susannah: It's inefficient. I always have a trash file that runs adjacent to the file I write, and it's oh, that's a good, that's a good moment. It doesn't work here, but I might want it back, so I put it in a trash file. I've never taken anything out of the trash file, and it's always longer than the script.

Susannah: It's a very inefficient system. I'm writing more than two times as much as I need to, but it's the only way I can find my way to the stuff I like. I just, I guess I write my way to the stuff I like.

Lorien: I love that. Just write, figure it out. Yeah. To your point about writer's block, it's not I don't know what that is either. You're either writing or you're not writing. It's, it feels like just write it. Write yourself through it. Yeah.

Meg: As a writer, producer, and party of five, how did you get connected to that room and what did you learn from that experience?

Susannah: I had a spec script that won the nickel fellowship. And so that gets you read by a lot of people, which was great. And I, I really grew up madly in love with films. So I was always thinking I would be in film, but Chris Kaiser and Amy Lippman, who did Party of Five got a hold of my script and thought that I would be a good fit for that show. So I met with them and I agreed and it was amazing.

Susannah: I came in as I had never written any television, so I did not come in as a writer, as a producer. I came in as junior writer. I actually hate the term. I'm not using it. The term I'm not using the infantilizing term for writers. So I'm not saying it.

Lorien: We say emerging writer.

Susannah: Thank you very much. I came in as an emerging writer. But it was great. I was on the show for three years. I was simultaneously doing features. So it was a lot of work and I was always working. And so after three years of it, I decided. I had gotten married and I thought I don't think I want to be working every minute of every day.

Susannah: So I decided to focus my energies on on features, but it was a great, it's such a good place to start as a writer, no matter what he or she wants to do. You are writing constantly and you're, it's getting made quickly. This is, I'm talking about network where you had to do 22, 24 season and you get to see right away.

Susannah: Oh boy, that works. Wow. That really works. Or that didn't work. We got away with it though, but I'm never going to do it again. It's really good at making your craft. Stronger, which I think then just makes your art stronger, if you've got more craft to support it.

Lorien: How do you think that improved your feature writing?

Susannah: It's really different. Just writing. It's good. It's good for you. No matter what. It's at the time. It was a very different animal. It was five acts with commercial breaks. It was very it was the that network structure and it's so fast that Really breaking the form is hard to do.

Susannah: Although Chris and Amy really did. They took some big swings on that show really successfully. But I got, I felt it just felt like different animals. It didn't feel as if, structurally, it didn't feel as if getting better and stronger at the, Network our drama structure was necessarily having any impact on the 115, 110 page feature script because they're just very different problems to be solved.

Meg: Do you feel like it affected your ability to like, write character or what have your I mean, I know that when I did TV for a minute, that work of go first of all helps you just know you can write that way, even though you think. I'm blocked. You're not because it's the time is ticking and you better get it done.

Susannah: Because they're paying you not to be blocked. So do it.

Meg: I also love being in a room and having other people throw out ideas and I think that helped my writing because you're watching other brains work and did you find that watching how they approach story impacted you?

Susannah: For sure, yeah, that's a really good point. And it forces you out of maybe whatever patterns are familiar to you, which is really good when you are an emerging writer because you only know what and then And then you find out, this woman whose work you really admire has a whole different way of going about it.

Susannah: And you think, Oh, that's a really cool way. But it also, I think in terms of just some scene structure stuff, because you don't want to be repetitive and you don't want to be boring. And there are a lot of scenes that you can just write them as outlined and they work, but you want them to be better.

Susannah: So like that aspect of how do I elevate it beyond. What was in the outline, I think was something I really it was a something that got exciting to me during that process.

Meg: That's really true. So I want to make sure because I would like to jump to Erin Brockovich, because it's one of my favorite movies of all time. I'm so excited that you're here and I get to ask you questions. I'm going to ask the first question again, mostly for our emerging writers, but also, actually no, for any writer who's going to set out to write a biopic just what was your general approach, because we get this question all the time from people who are writing true life stories, what was your approach to just how to approach her life, as a writer?

Susannah: It's interesting, my thinking about it has evolved. so much, and I'm not sure how much of what I think now is what I thought then, but one thing I know for sure is that the fact that it's true and the fact that it's virtuous does nothing for you. And I do think one of the early traps is to get stuck in, but it was true, or but it's so important.

Susannah: That has nothing to do with telling a good story. Nothing. In fact, I think it may raise the bar a bit on that. Because people can smell virtue, they can smell a lecture and that's, that's off putting. So I knew it was a good story. Look, she's incredible. She's such a wonderful person and I fell in love with her.

Susannah: And so communicating that character and bringing her to life. And, the wonderful thing is. She doesn't have an ounce of vanity, so she, yeah, it was my instinct anyway to do it warts and all, but she was fine with that. Absolutely. She'll tell you the most embarrassing thing she's done.

Susannah: She's just, she's not vain at all. And but it's, it was intimidating when I first sat down cause I spent a lot of time with her and then I sat down to write. And, when you're writing something from your imagination, that character better than anyone else, cause you made it up.

Susannah: So you're the, you're suddenly I was writing. And there was somebody who knew this character better than I did. And I was just on the other end of the phone, and I thought, Oh, maybe I should call Erin and see if she drank Cocoa Pepsi. Maybe I should call Erin and see if, it's just like that. And I got two days into it with that mentality.

Susannah: And I thought this is just not gonna work. I need to believe that this is mine. So I just told myself, okay, there's real Erin. She exists. I see her. I admire her. And then there is this fictional Aaron I'm creating and I'm going to trust that all the research I've done and my intuition about her and the quality of time we've spent will make that character a good partner to the real one.

Susannah: And that gave me the sort of freedom to play and move around in it and feel loose. Which I hadn't felt before. And then you get to the end of it, and you think, Okay, does that look and feel like her? And it looked and felt a lot like her. It's just trusting that, but trying to make it feel like her.

Susannah: It's a balance between factual and truthful, it's, I think it's obviously important to really honor the facts that you can't change, especially in a story like that, where there were legal implications of getting the facts wrong. But there is also a way to, to, one, one example for people who know the movie, one of my favorite scenes in it is a scene where Aaron's driving home and realizes she missed her saying her first word. And she missed tons of things over the period, tons of things with her kids. And I, the first time I did it, I did some dopey montage of it. And I was like that's terrible. So let's think of something else. And then I just got around to thinking, what would be the thing that would really, cause the point is, how does it feel?

Susannah: Not did it happen, but how does it feel? So what can I write that will feel that way? And I wrote that and that did not happen. at all. Like that was entirely imagined, but the feel of it was the truth. And she dug it. She really liked it and thought, yeah, that's exactly how I felt. It never happened, but it's exactly how I felt.

Susannah: So that's the dance. I feel like I answered it like four different ways, but

Meg: I love, which I love.

Lorien: Yeah I love that question. Is it true or how does it feel? And we talk on the show about lava and connecting to what is the truth of how it feels, right? Not literally putting your experience into something.

Lorien: So what was your connection to Aaron and that journey and the, your feeling, recognizing the truth in her experience? Why did wanna write that project? Essentially,

Susannah: I had just done ever after, which I love and, but it was, the language of that is very careful and measured and period.

Susannah: And I just came out of it saying, oh, I just wanna, I've run to write a kick ass broad. I'm just dying to write a kick ass abroad. And as it happened, like right then, I had a general meeting with Gail Lyon who was at Jersey Pictures at the time, and I said those words, I just has, I just the next thing I write is gonna feel like this.

Susannah: And she said, oh, we have something that might fit that. So it fit into what I was hungering to do at the time. And then, and then I just she had to approve me. So we got on quite well. We both have horrible potty mouths. So we bonded quickly.

Lorien: Welcome to the fucking screenwriting lab. There we go.

Meg: When you take on someone's life, and I've talked to a lot of friends and consults where they're trying to take on a life, or a team, or, and it's so much. How do you approach, this is what we're gonna do, or was that kind of already decided when you came on, in terms of, this part of her life is where we're gonna focus?

Susannah: The PG& E case was the big one, and but where you start and where you end it's interesting. I had a conversation with an editor. I was working at recently, brilliant editor, Kevin Ten. And we were working together on this movie, and there was this big scene with every character in the movie in it and he had cut it together very well.

Susannah: And I said to him, how do you approach a scene like that, where every character's covered, In singles and they're doubles and there's, wide shots and there's like how do you go about it? And he said, I asked myself, where's the emotion? And I thought, Oh, I think I do the same thing.

Susannah: So I think that's a long way of answering the question, but where's the emotion? If you're telling someone you got to pay attention to this person, why, where's the, what's the part of that story? story and then everything else is in support of that, everything that precedes Erin joining that law firm and getting that case, which is probably, I don't know, I haven't timed the movie in a long time, but it's probably the first 15 minutes of the movie.

Susannah: It is all in service of, it's showing the qualities she has, she was, What I like about her story is she's somebody whose makeup her, just who she was out of place with the world in everywhere she'd been. Until she landed in the place where who she was exactly what was needed, and it and all of a sudden, she wasn't wrong, and she wasn't pushy, and she wasn't a problem, she was the answer, and she changed nothing.

Susannah: She just found that spot for herself, or found her way to that spot, and that I loved, I don't think I could have articulated that when I started it, but I found

Lorien: that, it's funny that you're saying that, because I'm looking at all these other films you wrote, and there's a very similar thematic in them. Yes! If you look at 28 Days, right? Yeah. Where does she get the end of Ever After, the end of In Her Shoes, right? These are chaotic women who are somehow not working in the world around them, so they change the world so that they can Be themselves in the world that they've created.

Lorien: So it's a very similar, which I suspect might be a little bit of your journey as well, just putting that out there.

Susannah: First of all, thank you for pointing that out, because if you're gonna have a pattern, that's not a bad one. It's not something I've paid attention to. I try very hard not to think about what ways my work lines up with me because then I might get self conscious about it and that's death, right?

Susannah: Then I'm sorry.

Meg: But I love how strong they all are,

Susannah: I think. But they're not all, they're not all. People say I write strong characters. I don't. A lot of them are really broken and stubborn and a pain in the ass. They're not, they're just real and complicated, I don't know, Wonder Woman's strong,

Meg: strong, because it's funny, because to me that is the definition. Yeah, I guess it is. I guess it is. You are broken and fucked up and yet you're still wanting something. So many young emerging writers that we talk to, especially women, their characters don't want anything. And they're just, and I get into it in my soapbox, they're victims.

Meg: And, again, I'm not saying they can't be victimized, that's not what I'm talking about. Yeah, no, I understand. Their whole identity is that they're a victim and people are acting upon them and your characters are broken and fucked up and you know what, they still want something. Yeah. And they're even, they're not even aware of what they want, they're still driving towards something.

Meg: Anyways, I could go on and on because I just love your instincts.

Susannah: I'll tell you and I recommend this to anyone who's writing and directing, I acted for a bit before I was writing. And that is all about understanding. What a character wants and needs, right? That's it. You come into, if you don't have, if you don't know, or at least when I was acting and really, I probably did it mediocrely and, but I did study and and I was really lucky early in my career that one of my heroes, Sydney Pollack got ahold of a script of mine and, I worked with him a little bit and worshipped him and that was a real treat.

Susannah: But in our first meeting he said, you've acted, haven't you? And I said, yeah, how'd you know? And he said, all your characters want something. I've taken it from Sidney Pollack that it was the acting that did it and I believe him. So I highly recommend that everyone take acting classes because of that, because it

Meg: teaches you that.

Meg: I love that. One more question on Erin Brockovich, because I could do the whole show, but I will move on to other things, people, sorry. The relationship between Erin and Ed this is so special and there's so much great in it, but I just love that relationship. How did you approach that dynamic in terms of the characters and?

Meg: And how it was going to work in the film or what you needed.

Susannah: They did have a lot of tenderness and playfulness in their relationship. But I think the reason I'll tell you, honestly, it was such a it was such a mountain of material that I got. Aaron, I had videotapes of every plaintiff.

Susannah: I had all the legal files. I had all my time with her. I had all, it was so much stuff. And I thought, how do I, how on earth will I shape this? It just felt like I was sitting in a room full of boxes of, data and I needed to shape it into a story. And I decided, what if I just hang it on that relationship?

Susannah: And what if I give it a very it's so not. A romantic comedy? What if I use the romantic comedy structure? to give it a solid skeleton. And then everything that goes on it will not look or feel like a romantic. There are a couple of moments that do, but that's its structure. If you look at it, it is structured like a classic romantic comedy because It needed a framework that was that solid.

Susannah: There was so much, there's scenes where she's going on about the the complicated biological implications of hexavalent chromium on bodies and if you're not in, if you're not in, you don't have a solid skeleton for that stuff will just, Turned into gobbledygook, but if you have a real character drama going on and in every scene that relationship is deepening or splintering or moving, inching forward, if it's doing all the things that relationships do and you use that.

Susannah: information as the stuff of that scene, suddenly it's connected to an emotional need for the character. And then you're, then you remember it,

Meg: so good.

Lorien: I think it's so interesting that you're saying it's the rom com structure skeleton because biopic isn't really a genre in terms of what tropes are we expecting?

Lorien: What's the structure of it? And so just like drama. isn't really a genre or coming of age or comedy, right? That you actually have to have a recognizable structure to it. I don't know what you, structure, rhythm, tropes, whatever it is but it's just a different way to think about a biopic, to your point.

Lorien: I think it's really valuable to, to ask yourself, what is the character story I'm trying to tell here? What's the best way to tell through which lens?

Susannah: Yeah. It was really out of need because I thought, how can I find my way through this without just feeling like I'm swimming?

Meg: Now I'm going to move on to Unbelievable, another just amazing project in terms of it being the same kind of questions in some ways real life, but this is a very serious social issue, that you still have to make entertaining. And I say that with air quotes. Can you talk a little bit about that challenge?

Susannah: Yeah. There were two big challenges in that that I had really front of mind. I'd been working long enough that I felt like, okay, I know how to write an hour episode that will hold water and all that. But how to write scenes of sexual assault that Don't come anywhere near rape porn was a really interesting question.

Susannah: It was because, you you don't really until you think about it, or maybe I just hadn't thought about it as, as much as I should have at that point, the extent to which we are exposed to sexy, sexual abuse. It's just. everywhere. It's in perfume ads. It's in everything. And countering that was really important.

Susannah: So that was a big storytelling technique decision. And then the other one was, how do you, when you're going to be that honest about sexual assault, how do you get people back to the next episode? Because it's, there's a reason our entire culture ignores that. the issue, which is, endemic and rampant and all that.

Susannah: There are a lot of reasons we do. That's another thing. But but, and that was really, again, it's going to sound almost cheap, but you thought, the first episode is literally a cliffhanger. The character is on a bridge, One thinking about whether she is going to jump or not it is. It's not cliffhanger as a metaphor.

Susannah: She is on the edge and it had to be that you. I felt like I had to leave the main character in that precarious a place for anyone to come back and then in the second episode, you meet Merritt Weaver's character. You meet Tony Collette's character. There's also a bit of a of a exciting thing at the end of that.

Susannah: We held off on introducing Toni Collette till the end of the second episode, like the last four minutes. So of course you're like, holy shit, that's Toni Collette. Wow, I'm sticking around, so the first two episodes, we were very strategic. About, and then had enough faith in our storytelling that, obviously you're always keeping that in mind, but it felt less oh, we're going to lose everyone if we don't do this,

Lorien: so you show ran and then directed a couple of the episodes. How'd you balance this? Because I show ran a show and I can't imagine adding directing to it, like right now where I am. yet, I should say. How, what advice would you have for showrunners that are interested in doing that?

Susannah: I'd say make it the last two or three of the series. Don't do the first ones because I was, we were still doing scripts when Lisa Cholodenko did the first Chunked, fantastic. Michael dinner did the second and I was deep in the script. So I didn't start prepping the episodes that I was going to direct until really the scripts were pretty darn solid.

Susannah: And we also, we had also run out of some money a little so I, I didn't have as many shoot days as I hoped. So the production time was compressed. And then you're in post on it, but you're on post on the other. The tight time. Is prep because you're still, I also have a spectacular non writing producer.

Susannah: I worked with Sarah Timberman, who's, she's done great shows with me, but she's done great shows with lots of people. And. And, if you've got, if you've got that sort of partner, you can say, I'm tapping out to prep, let me know if, raise a flare if there's something we need to talk about.

Susannah: But we had been so hand in glove up until then that it was very easy to hand off that stuff to her. That's a really important part, actually. A really good non writing producer or just, writing producer who's a full partner in every decision and you really agree and get each other.

Susannah: It's like a, she's just a really great partner, so that made it possible.

Meg: When you started directing do you have any advice for even pro writers who are thinking about becoming directors in terms of making that switch over?

Susannah: I feel like I'm a cautionary tale. I was, the first time I directed, It was up in Vancouver, and I, it was, I don't know, 20 years ago, and I was prepping so hard, I was being so careful, you do that, when you're working in Vancouver, you're on that plane that goes back and forth all the time, and because you're going for work, you're in first class, and I sat down, and I was working on this script, and I was gonna get it right, and it was an ensemble thing about friends, and and, it was an ensemble thing about friends after one of them has died, right?

Susannah: And, there's this guy sitting next to me and keeps looking at me, and I'm like sitting there going, Stop looking at me, I'm prepping, I have to direct, it's very serious, just stop looking, stop paying attention. And I was like trying to vibe him away in this totally neurotic way. And he clearly wanted to chat, but I was like, brickwalling him.

Susannah: We land. I look to my left finally. It's Larry Kasdan. It's Larry Kasdan. And I was just like strong arming him away. The man who has made the movie about and I said, and I introduced myself and he said, yeah, you look like you're working pretty hard there. And I told him how much I admired him and that I was going to direct for the first time and he said, Don't forget to have fun.

Susannah: Which was really good advice that I didn't take. Because I just hadn't gotten myself there yet, I don't feel as if I can, maybe you have to, maybe you have to be yourself till you can be someone else. And then, at that point I thought I just need to prepare the hell out of this.

Susannah: And I'm sure that, preparation is important, but so is everything else that you bring to the, Table. And I think I was just trying to counteract the nerves with preparation, and really, what I should have done is just been nervous, and that's okay too, anyway, no, I love it.

Meg: I'm gonna remember it forever. Because even writing sometimes, I forget to have fun.

Lorien: Oh yeah, I know. We can't always control how we cope, right? No. But some of us cope in different ways and it's just where we were in that particular time. We're coping the best that we can.

Susannah: Finished that film and I was editing it and I said to my husband, Go! Damn it. Every single director said, don't just get what you need, get what you need, get what you need. And I didn't do it. I didn't get what I needed. And he said, the reason they told you that is because they never got everything they need. That's right. That's just, that was a good reminder too.

Lorien: Yes. You're in good company.

Meg: It's part of directing. We get a lot of questions on craft from our audience, and we'd love to ask you some just to figure a point of view. One is what for you is the group? Or how do you approach introducing a character? What's a great introduction to a character?

Susannah: I always think about Callie Corey's introduction of Louise. I don't know if you remember it, but she takes a candy bar out of her fridge and takes one bite of it and puts it back. And you think, oh, this is a woman who depri deprives herself of pleasure. So I think, That I have paid attention to that and what is the, what's the struggle this person, what's this person's, struggle in life and what's a very ordinary way in which that plays out in their day to day?

Susannah: That's one way. That's one way that was done so well. And And, always better to introduce them in the middle of something, as opposed to starting something, like he wakes up, he makes his bed, versus, the middle of anything. It's just, I find it's more exciting to introduce something, somebody in process, as opposed to starting, right?

Lorien: Show them making a choice.

Susannah: Or show the, impact of that choice. Yes, yeah. There's another great character introduction is Naomi Foner's introduction of River Phoenix in Running on Empty. And the first time you see him, he's playing baseball on a little league team, and he's a terrible athlete.

Susannah: And someone says to him, why do you play? And he says, baseball is my life. And that's the first introduction to this guy who's never played baseball. I've never been able to settle into any life and right then it's baseball and it doesn't fit and it's probably never fit. Anyway, it's another really good one.

Lorien: Let's talk about getting notes. How do you manage, process, apply notes?

Susannah: Here's the thing. Honestly, at this point I get fewer bad notes. It's just the luxury of having done it as long as I have, right? I'm able to make real choices about the people with whom I work and there are a lot of people I like working with who make my work better and I choose to work with them over and over.

Susannah: And I, so I, honestly, I don't encounter that many Stupid notes anymore, which is a luxury for which I'm grateful. But but I tell you what I did do when they were a regular part of my life. And that was. It's not going to go away. Stupid notes will never go away. They will never go away. Don't kid yourself.

Susannah: The first note you get is the last note you'll get. Absolutely. So deal with it. And what I like to do is to get the script out and say to the person, that's so interesting. Tell me where you first felt the problem. What, where did you first feel it? And what did you feel? And go to the page and have them go to the page and then you're into it.

Susannah: And like the note they've told you is, He can't have a dog, he has to, live in an apartment and there are no dogs, whatever, that is such a bad example. It's just proof that everybody can write really bad things off the top of their heads, but anyway, you get

Lorien: But that is probably a literal note someone in our audience has gotten. What if he can't have a dog because the apartment he lives in doesn't allow dogs?

Susannah: And the dog is essential to the storytelling, what if there were no dogs? Or we can't afford a dog. That's not, that's a different thing. Production notes are different. But I try to get somebody and often what you can get to is a point in the script they're like, I was bored here, or I was confused here, or I just hated him here.

Susannah: And you're like, oh, that's actually really useful. And let's think about other ways we can do it. And you've just, everybody's fragile, everybody, like we're used to tossing out ideas all the time and not. Feeling too judged by him because we do it all day long. But I think you have to be gentle with people's ideas, always.

Susannah: You gotta, even when they're stupid notes. And so you, without saying you're a And look, sometimes you can say you're an idiot or you're a fucking idiot or whatever, but not usually. It's never good to say that. I'm taking that back. You shouldn't do that. I don't do that.

Lorien: Under your breath late at night, late, late at night, eating chips. Why did I work with this person?

Susannah: Yeah but also often they will have a, there'll be a smart person with a different agenda and, that happens a lot in feature film where the business is shrinking. The risk is so high. Nobody knows what the theatrical world is. is nobody knows really what's, there are a few things that, will draw an audience, but very few anymore.

Susannah: The sort of 35 million thriller that you know is going to do okay at the bottom, that's dead. So nobody knows what they're doing. Anyway. The motive for the note. The motive. Yeah. Find the motive. Find because probably, I don't think going into it, thinking my script is perfect.

Susannah: These people are wrong, is ever the way to go Because a script can always get better. The best script can always get better, and maybe you'll find someone who's making it. And if there's consensus around a note, it's probably worth paying attention to. You get it from three people whose point of view you think is valid, it's probably worth paying attention to.

Susannah: But just try and find out what's underneath it when you really don't get it. And also don't I don't think it's ever good to pretend you get it when you don't, or pretend you're going to deal with it when you're not, I will often, Call up a week later and say, listen, I've thought about that note.

Susannah: I've played around with it, tried it. It didn't work. I'm doing something different. Like you don't want to pull a fast one on anyone. These people are paying you, you got to treat them with respect. And. not make your work worse, only make your work better. And it's very hard to do both sometimes.

Meg: It is very hard to do both sometimes.

Jeff: The thing I love about what you just said that I want to just highlight for our audience is you go to the page right away if you're dealing with feedback. And notes can feel very personal, I think, especially for emerging writers. So you're so smart to zero in on Specifically where it is on the page, because not only will that help you diagnose the problem, it'll invite whoever it is to be a collaborator with you, and it separates yourself as a person a little bit from the work, which I think can be so helpful when you're dealing with notes.

Susannah: That's so smart to point out, because that's a really, again, been doing this a while, and I, my entire self worth is never on the line. I always really hope people respond to my work, but I don't. Have a weekend of nausea that I used to have when I was starting. I turned to scripting on Friday I would be nauseous and weepy until Monday because I just had invested so much of my self worth in my which is you know, okay, and everybody's young at one point, but But I you know the sooner you can work your way out of that Which doesn't mean you reduce your emotional investment in it.

Susannah: You just understand that it is not, it's not your value. It's not all your value. The sooner you can do that, the better. And I know it's a hard one. It probably took me 10 years, and 10 years and a lot of success, honestly, which helps.

Meg: Yes, have that. I want to ask one little last craft question voice. We get a lot of question that emerging writers hear about voice and you need to have voice and you should be developing your voice and people are looking for voice and they're like, what is that? How do I do that?

Susannah: That's so hard. Here's the thing, I'll tell you how I started writing. I got out of college, and most of my friends were in a different town.

Susannah: And I missed them. So I started writing them letters. And I had honestly at that point thought if I'm in this, if I'm in this business, it will be as an actor. And so I just started writing letters. But I also knew I was taking note of this time in my life, so I would Xerox them before I sent them.

Susannah: And after a while, I just sat down and read them. Not really to see, I don't know. And I thought, Oh, that's a voice I backed into it. And I thought, Oh, look what I'm, I I like, I actually have a point of view about the world and have found a way to articulate it. in language. And so how you find that some other way, I have no idea. I think it's hard to find.

Meg: Do you think it's because it was unfiltered?

Susannah: Yeah. Yeah. Partly unfiltered. Partly that it wasn't in screenplay format, which is, I think, a hard format to find your voice in. Sometimes I've gone through phases where I'll just get up and write prose for, unfiltered prose for 45 minutes to the start of the day just to loosen yourself up because it's the structural restrictions of a screenplay.

Susannah: If you don't already know how you sound? It's hard to find it in that. I would, I would advocate writing letters or writing, I don't know, everybody writes me. Essay. These days, I would, long form, something longer form than a text.

Lorien: I'll go to a memoir writing class or like a class that does like generative writing like with writing prompts in prose.

Lorien: It's so natural and easy and fun for me. I'm not thinking about craft at all. Yeah. In a generative writing environment. It's there's a, you're in the graveyard and this happens and then I can just, Go. Yeah. And it's so free and I feel like play and it's always where I'm like, oh, there I am. Recenter.

Susannah: Yeah, that's a really good thing. When I was, before I had taken a writing class, I had a friend who took a writing class and the teacher at the start of every class would write three objects on the bulletin board or whatever, chalkboard, whatever the board. And, and those three objects were in the pocket of a character.

Susannah: And he'd say, start, the first ten minutes of class you're just writing about this person. And it just whatever prompt you need to get you there. So I've used that sometimes, just to loosen up.

Meg: I miss that, you guys. As you talk about this, I'm like, oh my gosh.

Susannah: Let's all go take another writing class.

Meg: Oh my gosh, because, once you get onto the other end of that stick, and everything is What you have to do for someone else and what they need and the format of the thing and the and just to oh, I gotta go do it now. I feel such longing to do what you guys..

Lorien: Ladies. I teach these. I don't know.

Meg: I have to come. I have to come to Lorien's generative writing because I'm feeling like a desert inside when you guys talk about that. I'm so excited. All right. This has been so amazing. Honestly, Susannah, I could spend another two hours because I have so many questions and we have so many questions, but we wanna honor your time, so we always ask the our guests, those the same three questions at the end of every episode.

Meg: Okay. I ask you now these questions. I'll start, or Lorien, you start. I can't remember who starts. You go I'll ask the fun one this time. Okay. What

Lorien: brings you the most joy when it comes to

Susannah: your writing? Surprising myself, like sitting down. in the morning and reading what I wrote yesterday and thinking, I don't remember writing that.

Susannah: How, where did that come, like the mystery of where, just surprising and delighting yourself. I have a really good friend who's a writer who's, who calls it the happy dance. And she said when she hits that point, she'll get up and do a little happy dance, like anything. You just feel like you're connected to, something beyond your own little ideas.

Meg: Yeah. And what, okay, my turn. What pisses you off about writing?

Susannah: Oh, about writing or my writing?

Meg: You can pick.

Susannah: Very little pisses me off about writing in general. There are things that are frustrating in the business, but that's okay. What pisses me off about my own writing and actually the I'm very at peace with this now, but the fact that I seem to need to relearn how to write a script every time I write one.

Susannah: Like I said, I've been doing it long enough and it's worked out pretty well enough times that I've accepted the process, but I make, I make beginner mistakes every time and then you go, Oh, there I am making the beginner mistake. How do I solve that? Oh, I, you don't have to walk the character into a room.

Susannah: You don't have to. You don't have to say what's going to happen in the next scene. You don't have to like all this stuff that, that I have to relearn every time. But again, at this point it's process and I don't really hate it. I don't hate anything about it. I just, that's the luckiest thing in the world to do this.

Susannah: I don't like how much sitting it takes. There you go. I don't like how much stillness it takes and how soft it makes your body go. to sit for that long. That I don't love.

Lorien: Once I was in a binge writing moment, like hyper focus. And I was, I think I was writing, got dark. There was no lights on. I'd been sitting there for eight hours. I stood up and fell over because my leg had fallen asleep and I got tripped in my chair. And it was a big moment. And I was awful. I injured myself. writing. You had a writing injury. Yes, I had a writing injury. Was there a

Lorien: little part of you that thought, yeah, I was really fucking in it. And then I told a friend about it and she drew me a comic of it and I put it on my wall. It was like, man versus nature, man versus, self, woman versus chair, it was like, there we go. Yeah. Stories.

Susannah: I decided I was going to put a treadmill at my desk just for doing emails and stuff. So I did, I got it. I bought it. I set it up. And the first day I've slipped off it and gashed open my ankle. So

Lorien: I've seen you on YouTube.

Susannah: That's me. That's me.

Jeff: Incredible.

Susannah: Another writing, another dangerous world of writing. Injury.

Jeff: I also love that you identified that feeling of starting over every time you face the blank page.

Jeff: And almost always on our show, the more success a writer has, the more common that answer is. Ed Solomon told us that every time he opens the blank page, the first question he asks is what is writing and how do I do it? So you're definitely not alone in that.

Susannah: Yeah. I believe I have spoken to Ed about that.

Jeff: Yeah.

Susannah: The other thing is at the end of every script. I always look at it and go, Oh God, who cares? Who cares? And and then you have to remember that everyone cares about each other. And if you can tell a story that makes somebody feel like they're not alone in the world and not the only person feeling what they're feeling, they care. That's lovely.

Lorien: The trap is not opening up the blank page and going, who cares? Yeah, you got to do it at the end. Don't wait until you're done. Because then that's oh no, then you just close it. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: That's hilarious. Okay. So the last question we asked Susannah is if you could go back and have a coffee with your younger self what advice would you give to her?

Susannah: Oh, I think it would be the advice that Larry Kasden gave me, which is have a little more fun with it. But who knows? Maybe if I had a little more fun with it, I wouldn't have worked as hard. I don't know. I worked really hard for a long time and it took me a while to incorporate what I learned.

Susannah: More play into my life and having children helped because they are nothing but play. But so I don't know, maybe I would tell myself that, or maybe I'd tell myself that, and then I just get lazy and not have the gratifying experiences I've had. Look, I don't think I'd change.

Susannah: It's worked out. I'm happy. I'm a happy person. And I'm generally. In the sort of like batting averages, I've had a lot of at bats that didn't work out, but I've had some at bats that worked out really nicely too. And I think that's, I'm cool with that and whatever the journey was that got me to there.

Susannah: Okay. And the truth is the ones that didn't work out, you always there's always a takeaway, if not a takeaway, there's a really good story in a year when the wounds have healed.

Meg: Thank you so much for being here today. What a treat.

Susannah: Oh, my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It's been so great to talk to you guys. I feel awkward because I feel like you asked me about you about me and I didn't ask you about you. And next time we meet, let's have a more balanced conversation.

Meg: That's why you're here.

Lorien: A plus on the setup. We were interviewing you.

Jeff: I also think our listeners probably know too much about us already. They hear about us a lot.

Meg: Okay. All right. Fair enough. Thank you. Thank you, Susannah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Great to see you all. Thanks so much to Susannah for joining us on today's show. And remember, you are not alone, and keep writing.