233 | TV Development: Everything You Need To Know (ft. Glen Mazzara)

Glen Mazzara has produced, created and/or showran a litany of amazing projects. His impressive resume includes “The Walking Dead” (he showran seasons 2 and 3) and “Damien,” which he also created. But even Glen is the first to admit that there's a certain amount of luck that comes with getting the coveted greenlight. Navigating producers, networks, and the studio can be a complicated game of chess, but today, Glen breaks the game down with a refreshing amount of candor.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Lorien: The devastating fires in L.A. have impacted much of Hollywood and the TSL community, and our hearts are with you.

Meg: We recorded this episode before the fires, but have decided to air it in hopes that we might be able to bring just a little bit of comfort and normalcy during a difficult time.

Lorien: Remember, you are not alone.

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

Lorien: And I'm Lorien McKenna. And today we're thrilled to be chatting with veteran TV writer and showrunner Glen Mazzara.

Meg: Glen has worked on some of TV's most iconic shows, including The Shield and The Walking Dead, where he served as the showrunner for seasons two and three.

Lorien: He also created and he was the showrunner for Crash for STARZ and Damien for A&E. Glen has worked across multiple genres and formats, some original and some based on IP, which makes him the perfect guest to talk about what it really means to be a TV writer in today's ever-evolving landscape. Hi, Glen. Welcome to the show.

Glen: Hi, thanks for having me.

Meg: Yes. Thanks for being here. We're really excited to talk to you about all things, television and development in television, the highs, the lows, and all of it. But first, and maybe it'll all wrap into the same thing. We'll see, but first we're going to talk about adventures in screenwriting or how was your week?

We'll let Lorien start. Lorien, how was your week?

Lorien: So, a project that I thought was dead has a little glimmer of breath back into it. It was something I'd been in development on for a couple of years, ready to pitch right before the strike. That didn't happen. Post strike, everything's recalibrating. And so I kind of was feeling like, oh, well, I don't know where the fight is with this.

Like I don't quite know what to do. So I just kind of became passive about it and then kind of have some breath back in it, which was great. So I'm excited about that.

And then I also did some teaching this week. I got a chance to teach a high school class. Through the Humanitas for Writers program. They do a program at Hollywood High School. And my segment was on character. So I focused a lot on want. And part of what I do is an exercise to help students realize, figure out what they want. And be really specific around it so that it's about plot. And it's really fun to see what everybody's mind comes up with about what their big dreams are and why.

And at the end of it, the woman who runs the program asks everybody, What did you learn in this class? And quite a few of them said, I learned that characters have to want something. And I felt like I'd like achieved some really incredible and it was really inspiring for me. Like I did something like these future artists and activists and writers and painters are going to go like carry this with them, hopefully, and not forget when they're sitting down to create something.

And then I realized that I haven't been as specific with my want and that, that whole, I don't know where the fight is and giving up on that project that was in development was sort of an excuse because I am the fight. And I sort of forgot that like, I have to figure these things out as the creator of the show, as the show runner.

I can't just be like, eh, I don't know what to do with it. So it sort of inspired me in a couple of other different ways as well. So I'm trying to keep up with myself a little bit. And not have too much hope, but just enough. Right? Because, just enough, a little bit. So, how was your week, Glen?

Glen: My week was very interesting.

I have a project, That is, this actually happened last week, but I'll back up, but I've had a writer's room for this. I've had it's a major project. We have a star attached and we have a budget and we have a schedule and, This thing would shoot in Morocco and Dublin and a couple of weeks ago, I went and I scouted locations and we're actually blocking scenes and all of this.

And I was told, okay, everybody, clear your afternoon, you're going to get great news. And then, that morning I get a call and I was like, oh, I'm getting the call ahead of time. How exciting. And then it's, Oh, you're going to be pushed six months, just because it's, there's a scheduling issue with the actor and stuff like that, so it's still not an official pickup, we're still hopeful, but it throws you into that place that as writers, we all live in; limbo, and I immediately felt like, Charlie Brown, going to kick that ball and Lucy snatches it. And, you talk about hope and at first you, you feel like an idiot, like I really thought I was going to kick the ball that time, and I still may and so it's, It's just tricky.

You get more of those calls, like the executive actually said, well, this is one of those calls. And I was like, okay, I've had more of these calls than the positive call. So at this point in my career, I'm experienced enough to go like, okay, it's not personal, I mean, they still are high on the project and love the scripts.

And it seems like it really is just a scheduling issue, but it's one of those things that, you know, I think so much of what we do is trying to figure out how to play the game, how to do things right. Everything was breaking. And I was a little more protected. A lot of people around me were more surprised because I have a team, I have a production designer, a VFX team, like we have people.

So now, some of those people are going to be laid off for a little bit and hopefully we can, they'll be available to come back in six months when we pick the project back up. And I'm going to continue to polish the scripts, which I do love. I love the project. I love the, my room is wrapped, it's been wrapped for a while, so I'm just polishing all the scripts and now I'm really finding the voices and kind of all the nuance and the idiosyncrasies of all the characters.

Like i'm kind of sitting in that dream state. So maybe it's a good thing so I can kind of stay there and really see the story before we get into the craziness of production. But it was just, it was very interesting to be doing this particular podcast at this particular point.

Meg: Now when you say the script, so is the entire season written?

Glen: Yeah, for the most part. We don't have the finale. I'm writing the finale. So we've really been focusing on the first few scripts and then my staff, everybody got a script and that took us, it would be eight episodes. So we have scripts through seven, and then we have an outline for eight, but I'm sort of polishing the scripts until, and rewriting because, locations have changed. The voices have changed. 

The studio has been excellent about. notes and everything. I'm really enjoying that. So, so as I'm finding the show, that changes stuff, like we tend, we tended to have. Have a lot more than we need. And I always, I'm a big believer that the best material fights to get on screen.

So I like to have too much story and then really have to sacrifice your darlings, that kind of stuff. So I mean, I have, I know where I know what eight is, but it's not on paper. Yeah.

Meg: Well, I guess you have six months to write it.

Glen: Yeah. Yeah. It's fine. Sorry to say. But I sort of, when I'm writing I have to be right.

I sort of, you know how it is, like the characters I think go through you. So I can't write eight until I'm right at that moment. Yeah. Yes. So.

Meg: You're starting from the beginning and polishing through to get to that eighth. Yeah. I'm that way too. I do know there's writers who can't, who don't do that, but can just jump around. I can't. I have to be like, where are we in this river?

Glen: I can jump around in a script sometimes, if I'm in different storylines or something, but no, I need to be exactly where the character is,

Lorien: Right. So let's say it's six months from now, and you you have to have, like, different people than you expected, and then you're going to have to adjust those scripts again, right? Like, different actors.

Glen: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, great point. We don't have a director yet, or directors. We only have one main, the main star, but we don't have the rest of the cast. And I like that part. I like, I will, I'm a big rewriter. I'm not one of those showrunners who it's locked. Don't change it. I mean, I want things to be locked on the day. 'cause I don't like, it's not fair to the crew if everybody's riffing or something like that. I think things can fall apart.

But, when actors come in I want them to read the scripts. I like to, and I say this, I say, read the scripts. Let's go through it. Let's talk, go through your process. Let me know what you're feeling, what feels right, what feels honest, people sometimes will bump on something and then that'll lead to a story fix or something. So, but right now I feel that since my job as a showrunner is to have to understand the tone of the show, the more time I can live in the space. And know it, I can create a better foundation for other artists to come in and play.

Meg: Tone's interesting because it's very hard for emerging writers to grasp what we all mean by tone. I mean, I think when you've been in the business a while and you've been writing, it's especially for you producing and actualizing, manifesting the production.

But is there anything that when you're mentoring, you try to explain tone? Like if you're working with a writer as a mentor, their tone is not off, or even a writer on your staff and the tone is moving off. How would you describe that or help people understand what you mean by tone?

Glen: Well, that's a really tough question because , to be honest, a lot of emerging writers don't ask about tone. They don't understand tone. So I think they're under a lot of pressure to know what their story is. Okay. And I think there's been a problem with TV development. Okay. So if I could talk about this a little bit. But I think there's a lot of pressure for people to create a show in which everything's going to come together.

Okay. And I think this is the Lost model of development. We'll create a mystery and we'll pay it off at the end. Okay. And that's how Lost was sold to us as an audience and Lost, depending on who you ask, either paid itself off at the end or didn't pay itself off at the end. We fell for it again with Game of Thrones.

And Game of Thrones didn't really, and I knew I was not going to care about who was sitting on that throne at the end. I knew it, but I enjoyed watching the show for most of the run. But the idea that it's all going to come together and that but that's not how we watch TV. We watch it because we watch people who are their own worst enemies screw up and then they do it again next week.

And we want to spend time with them and we invite them in. So, so I always say it's cool people doing cool shit every episode. That's basically what TV is, right? So, so, but people are trying to create like, the solve-the-puzzle box, if you will, or something like that, and I just don't think that's how people watch TV.

So. They tend to, emerging writers, tend to really focus on plot. They tend to focus on tapestry. I have a lot of characters who are going to do this but no one character is driving. No one character is really doing stuff that is someone that you really want to spend time with. And I've taught about this.

I think that I think a lot of times people end up using the cut. Yeah. At the end of a scene to propel the plot. So somebody comes in and they find the body, let's say, and then you cut. And now we're furthering the mystery, but TV is not about the cut. TV is about the stage. So you keep the character on stage, you're paying a big actor to find that body.

Now go, now what can you do for a page and a half, two pages, four pages or whatever. Imagine Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm finds a body. You're not going to cut. You're going to stay in that scene for as long as possible. Okay. So now that's about tone. That's about the character and the quirkiness.

And what happens is I think so many emerging writers are trying to show they can do it and they're advised by people giving notes to take out anything that could that could disrupt the plot and they just want to smooth out the plot, but you're not getting a sense of their personality, their tone, it Tony's idiosyncratic Tony's weirdness, you know what I mean?

And so anything that feels odd or different or special gets broomed out of a lot of scripts. And it's not until writers realize so writers end up brooming their individual voices and their tone out of their show. And they make their shows kind of generic and bland. And, when I hired for my writer's room, I had over 400 submissions.

And I could only hire five writers and I hired quirky, interesting, writers and everybody brought something, but you know, nobody was generic, everybody was very specific and, some were experienced, some weren't that kind of stuff. So I feel like this tone issue has to do with, is inherently tied to the writer's voice, let's say, which is kind of a difficult term to describe.

Maybe you guys have done that. But I think people are so desperate to prove a certain level of competency. They push that to the side and therefore take out why, the reason that anybody would hire them because they are special. Does that make sense? You see what I'm saying?

Meg: It totally does. A hundred percent. A hundred percent.

Jeff: Before we jump into the conversation about development, Glen, As emerging writers, we constantly hear terms like the studio and the network and buyers and producers, and it's confusing for us who haven't reached that level to understand kind of who these entities are. Like it almost feels like a chess game.

Would you be able to maybe use a show that you've sold and sort of walk us through how that works? So we can have sort of a understanding of who all of these are before we jump into talking about the politics of who they are, if that makes sense.

Glen: Okay. So, there's a lot of entities out there that the emerging writers have to deal with, right?

So let's say you write a script. What do you do with it? Okay. And let's say you have, let's say you have reps. Okay. Let's say you have some reps and you've gotten a manager at least, or an agent. And I assume you guys have talked about that elsewhere, but then the manager will probably send you around to a production company.

Okay. So a production company is someone that's related to a producer. Maybe it's a star has a production company or a director or an acknowledged producer and you have different levels of executives there, but the management company, the production company will say, yeah, great. Let's attach.

Okay. We'll attach. They're not going to pay you. Okay. They're not going to pay you. They may have a deal at a studio or a network or something, maybe a studio, maybe not, but they probably have relationships and they'll ask you to develop the material. They'll give you notes. You'll work on a pitch.

They'll probably want you to do a look book now, something like that. And then you go in and you try to sell it to the studio. Okay. The studio is basically the type of bank. Okay. The bank that is also connected to the production of the show. Okay. And so they will, if they want to attach they'll do a contract with the writer, they'll do a separate contract with the producer, right, and they'll pick up, they will somehow get into the rights they'll pick up the rights of the IP if there's anything that, if you've laid out money for rights or something like that.

Then they might be affiliated with something like, let's say NBC universal, universal productions or whatever is affiliated with NBC and Peacock and so they might go right there or they might go around to all the other networks and streamers or whatever. And so you go around and you pitch there.

And these pitch meetings can get ridiculous. You could have 17 people in a pitch meeting, whatever. And it's a lot of pressure, and you go into these pitch meetings and usually the producers speak first. And then it comes to the writer and then the writer pitches for 20 minutes, half an hour.

If it's in person, if it's on Zoom, it's a little shorter. And then if there's a streamer or network wants to pick it up, they do a deal. Sometimes it takes a little while for them to close the deal. And then let's say they're going to make the show. Technically the studio is making the show for the network or the streamer.

Okay. Again, it could be the same entity, like say Netflix for Netflix, that kind of thing. And. And the studios, everyone beyond the production company, the first stop is considered a buyer. The production company I would not consider a buyer because they're not laying out money. So, there's a lot of different layers.

And one of the things is, when I did Damien, okay, I had a studio that merged with another studio, we sold to one network. It went from one network to another network within the same company. And then there were all these mergers and people leaving and stuff. And over the course of maybe a year and a half, two years.

I had 17 different executives assigned to my show, and I didn't even think, that was not really a particularly stressful project, I mean, that went pretty smooth. Unfortunately, it only went one season, but maybe it should have been more stressful somewhere. But it's a lot of, there's a lot of players out there. There's a lot of players. 

And I think it's, what's important for writers is just to realize, and some of the best advice I ever got related to Damien, cause I could see Damien going down the drain and my agent just said to me, it's out of your hands, and that's very liberating. On my recent project, I said, if somebody says something good about the project, I say, well, the truth is you're either going to make it or you're not.

I can just make sure that you're not passing because it's a bad script. That's all I can do, and I can be fun to work with and consider it and that kind of stuff. But these questions come down to their business questions. Do we want to spend money on this or do we want to spend money on that?

And we have this corporate agenda. And we're trying, and that's what it is. It really has very little to do with our work. I'm sorry to say, I'm sorry to say that's terrible, but that's how I feel sometimes. It's, there's so much more luck in it than we want to accept

Meg: Now in terms of all those notes, can you just, it's a super basic, but again, we have this question comes in. You're a showrunner who's giving you notes. Who gives me notes. Right. As a showrunner, so we know that this network's going to give you notes. And then there's a studio, there might be non writing producers. Does your manager get involved?

Like how many notes are you getting?

Glen: I get a lot of notes. I get, there's a production company involved and, And they give notes, and then the the studio slash network it's the same, so it's the same party. So they give notes my writers would give notes when I would write material, my writers gave notes or whatever and, and I've had a different approach to notes.

I used to feel that notes were somehow threatening, that they were compromising my vision or people weren't getting it or something like that. Now I'm more open to notes. I'm saying I've kind of let go and I say, well, let me try it. Let me think about it. So when I get notes, I don't say I'll look at that, cause I think people realize that’s basically saying go fuck yourself. 

So what I do is I say, Well I really have to think about it. Let me try it. And there was one time I did a pilot for Amazon and an executive gave me a lot of notes and I didn't like the notes. So I wrote the draft. I wrote the draft and I went back to her and I said I wrote the entire draft executing your notes and I moved this scene up and I had this person find this out and it works, but I don't like it.

Just, I have no interest in watching that show and let alone making that show. You can read the draft, but I spent three weeks really working on a draft to know what was at that end. So, so, and she appreciated that. She said, okay, I appreciate that. So, I find with notes, I'm more open to using them.

As experimentations, because if they don't work, I don't feel like it's time wasted. I feel more confident in the material I am providing.

Meg: No, that's good. I love that.

Glen: And also sometimes I just. Sometimes I do feel that notes, you have to be careful not to take too many notes.

Cause then, things I've had things watered, get watered down or things drift. And now I don't have an emotional connection to it. And it just becomes about making this thing work, but it's not me. So sometimes I'll just push back on a note and just say, I hear you. You're probably right, but I like it this way. I want to see it. I want to see a film that we can always cut it later or something, but like, I'm kind of digging in on that one. So, if it's a back and forth, I think people respect that. If they see that you've included them in the process,

Lorien: Right. Right. So what advice do you have for someone who might be in TV, having sold their first show, they're in development for the first time, writing the pilot, and they get so many notes, and they don't know how to do that thing, where you can defend yourself, you can't quite hear, say for example, you come from feature writing, where you have to take the notes in a different way.

Some of us on this podcast might have had that experience. And then at the end of it, you write a pilot, that's like, that's not what I sold you. That's not what we meant.

Meg: Lorien and I sold a pilot. It was, it had a voice. It was very specific. It was basically about parenting.

Lorien: It was a premise pilot of how they all meet, around a celebrity person.

Meg: And then basically the first notes were, does it have to be about parents? And do we have to, does it have to be about a celebrity? And I think we were so thrown that you were talking about a totally different show that we then tried it. And by the end of this development, Lorien and I were like, please don't greenlight this show.

Please don't greenlight this show. We don't even know what this show is. Like, it was like, If you greenlight this show, it's like going out on a ship that's burning into, like, the land of sharks. Like, we were like, Please don't.

Lorien: I think I called you at, like, 11:30 at night. “I don't know what we're writing anymore. What's happening?”

Meg: And I think we were just new to television and younger. Like, how do you steer that? How, what could we have done? I don't know.

Glen: Well, I've been in that situation and there have been times when I've sold something in a room or I've sold something and I just am like, Oh, I wish we didn't sell it here. This is not going to go well. You know what I'm saying? This is, that's not going to go well.

I had a number of development things over the pandemic, that, I had one where it was based on an IP a foreign film and it was a very clear premise, it was very clear premise and we sold it and they basically wanted to gut that premise, can you hide the premise or whatever?

And I was like, yeah, it's going to be on your poster. Like it does, and it took me a long time. And I think what I did, I took me, it took me about nine months to figure out how to maybe address these notes. And then they said, Oh, we shouldn't have given you that. No. Can you split the difference?

Go back. And I did that. And then finally, I turned in a last script that I was really happy with. And the feedback I got was. And this was a network I had worked with closely in the past. Just, we have no interest in continuing with this project. Might even thank you, tell Glen we love him, that kind of stuff.

So that's not a home for me. That's not the right place for me. You know what I'm saying? You know what I mean? I didn't enjoy that. But the script was good. So I think, you, what you can do is I think what happens is when we're creating a show, we have the idea for what the story is and the characters and that kind of stuff.

And that stuff changes. Okay. That stuff drifts, it becomes something different. But you have to kind of figure out what is your emotional connection to this material. Okay. Because you're posing a question, a philosophical question, an artistic question that you need maybe a hundred episodes to.

To explore. Right. You know what I'm saying? What are we exploring?

Lorien: Right? Yeah.

Glen: So if you drift from that, you're probably, it's probably not gonna work, or it's gonna be flat and you're not gonna care about it. I've worked on projects that I just don't feel invested in, and it becomes a paycheck or something like that.

You know what I mean? So it's not going to bring out your best material. So I think what you have to kind of be clear about is when somebody gives notes, you can say, I understand that. But what's important is this is what's important about this materials. So if we do, if we take out the parenting, okay, let's say we take out the parenting.

Well, let me ask you, why did you want to tell that story? Because you're both parents and you wanted to explore a conflict that you had around parenting or what was that?

Meg: We wanted to explore that, there's this projection of parenting that you're supposed to be perfect and you can actually achieve that.

But in fact your children learn because you are not perfect because you are making mistakes. That's how they learn how to, all of that emotional. Conflict of being a parent is how children learn to be human and to love themselves, even though you're messing up. And so it was that kind of conflict between what we're supposed to be versus what we are.

And they just didn't want to do it. I think they wanted, they wanted Friends or something.

Glen: Right. But the central question, okay, so whether or not the central question of, I'm trying to figure out my life and I'm fallible and I have responsibility for someone else and they're looking to me for the answers and I don't know what I'm doing.

Okay. So you could set that in a lot of different settings, right? You could set that in a 12th century monastery or whatever, you could put that on a spaceship. You could, you, you know what I mean? It depends on where that is. Now you want to tell it in a particular setting. But if you move away from that central question, that central premise, then you're just telling a different story.

So, I would fight for that. I would just say, this is what's important. And I've said it now. I have a track record that people kind of know. I think that I'm going to dig in on certain things. I'm not considered difficult, I don't believe, but I think if you just say, this is what's really important to me.

And if they don't get it, you should say, okay, it's just business. Then we're just not going to work together. You know what I mean? I mean, I think it just comes down, but I've had stories that I've, I did one, a thing at FBC a hundred years ago, I went in with story. I ended up, just everything got gutted.

And there's a script. I was like, who wrote this script? I have no idea what this script is. You're like, this is so far from anything I would come up with. And I wrote it. I wrote every word and it doesn't make any sense to me. I think it's okay. But. It's not me, so of course it's not going to go.

Meg: It's not going to go. But what I love about what your brain was able to do so quickly is I kind of kept it kind of broad and out parents and kind of a category and your brain immediately took it down to the I. And I think that's really great technique and you probably just do it by habit now, but that you took it right back into the I personal and it was much more moving and something that you could, it was very clear what that premise was.

So it wasn't a topic, it wasn't intellectual, you made it very personal and that was great. So thank you. Learned that today.

Lorien: Yeah, Meg, let's go take it back out. Oh my God. We have to take it back out. We're going to set it in a 12th century monastery.

Meg: And one of the monks becomes a parent.

Lorien: That's right.

Glen: I'd watch that.

Meg: I'd watch that. Okay. Nobody out there do it. We're doing it. So, okay. What about conflicting notes? When the non-writing producers give you one note and then the studio gives you a third and the network comes in and goes, I don't, what is all that?

Glen: Okay, great question. I've been in this position many times.

Your contract is technically with the studio. The showrunner is tasked and paid by the studio to deliver the show. A lot of emerging showrunners will mistakenly pit parties against each other or I'm going to get the network To get the studio to back off. Okay. Here's what people don't know. And I had this explained to me by a studio, by a network president, there was one show I was doing where I had a star who was kind of, you know, out of control.

Okay. And the studio is not controlling the situation. So, and it was the, it was just taking the show. I had stepped in as a showrunner. I didn't create the show. And I reached out to the network president and said, can you help me? We have this difficult situation and things are very tricky here.

And he said, if I get involved and I shut down the show or ask for something or whatever, they're going to charge me for it. They should be doing their jobs. I'm just there to show the show at the end, broadcast the show. So it's kind of their problem. I can't get involved. So network.

So, there is a financial responsibility whenever somebody gets involved. Okay. And there's very often tension between studios and networks and production companies and studios and networks and all of that. So a showrunner can get caught in the middle and you can try to pick and choose whose notes you want to follow.

No, you really work for the studio. So you want to kind of deliver what the studio is paying you for. That's fair. They're paying you, you should deliver what they want. Now you still have to make it the best. And I'm very open to say. Well, I think they want this or you're giving me conflicting. You're giving me conflicting notes.

You're putting me in the middle, that kind of stuff. I'll just be very open about that, but I do at the end of the day, kind of feel like, the. First among equals, if you will, is the studio, you know I sort of have to make sure I'm aligned with the studio because there have been times when I'm not aligned with the studio and In every situation I get fired.

Meg: Is that true with the streamers as well?

Lorien: Yeah I was gonna ask that, ‘cause like the what is a studio exec– like if I sell a show to Netflix and I have the contract with Netflix and Netflix pays me Are they the studio and the network?.

Glen: Yes, now, if you have a contract with Sony, so let's say you go to Sony and Sony brings you into Netflix.

Okay. And Netflix is letting Sony produce then you're with Sony, your contracts with Sony. So Netflix might say, well, we want this. We want that. We want it in a monastery or whatever. Right. They might say that. If Sony says, no, we're keeping it in a preschool, you need to follow Sony.

They're paying you. You have a responsibility.

Meg: I did not know this.

Lorien: I didn't know that either. So if you have a producer working with you...

Glen: I work with a lot of producers. Okay. I love a lot of producers I work with or whatever, but they're not paying me. They're not paying me. Okay. They're getting paid by the studio.

I'm getting paid by the studio. And a lot of times they non writing producers have a lot of control over show runners, new showrunners, and they're sort of there to like manage the situation. Okay.

I think a lot of us don't need babysitters, but I can understand how someone experienced. Would need to be involved with someone who doesn't have a lot of production experience. I get that. Okay, but you just kind of have to be very careful when you're with working with non producers, non writing producers, because you because they are a valuable part of the chain.

And so your job is to make them feel, is to include them, not make them feel included, but to actually include them. Because you want to be all on the same team. Okay. If you have a situation in which you are saying to someone, if you're playing again, playing one against the other, you've got a toxic situation.

It's dysfunctional and it's chances are it may not work out in your favor. You'll either. Your show gets screwed up or you'll get fired or something will happen. So you really have to kind of try to work with good partners. And part of working with good partners is being honest when you say this is conflicting, this is conflicting.

Now, one of the ways to gain trust in my point is let's say a non producer gave me a note and I took the note. And then the studio or the network hated the note. I would say, okay, I'll take another one. I would definitely say it was my idea to take that note. I would never say that's what they asked me to do.

That's not fair. That's not fair.

Meg: That's the same in animation. Yeah.

Glen: I think writers feel that these groups are all in collusion against writers. It's us against them sometimes.

Lorien: Wait, they're not?

Glen: That's not true. No, they drive each other crazy. The studios and the non-writing producers and the networks and the streamers, they are all in competition.

They all have different methodologies. They have different work cultures. And they drive each other bananas. They do. They frustrate each other, so, so, and a lot of times, a lot of times that breeds anxiety on the part of these executives around town. And that anxiety washes back on the writers.

So what's been a challenge in my career is how do you not get caught up in that? How do you not? How do you play politics safely? It's and so, I have a couple of things of just transparency, just being honest, I am careful not to say something to somebody that I wouldn't want repeated, you know what I mean? So if I have an issue with somebody, I may tell somebody I have an issue with this person, but then eventually I do tell that person I have a problem here, you know what I mean? Like, and that way, nobody can really use your words against you. So I think just by being transparent, being kind to people, and understanding that people have their pressure and their agendas are not always about you or about your show.

So, you kind of have to find a way to give people an out to, to, have their own anxiety, I mean, even the way that these companies merge and they restructure that breeds anxiety, people come to work, they don't know who they're reporting to, we don't really have that issue.

Lorien: Is this why there are so many therapists in L.A.?

Glen: I guess. I don't know.

Meg: So when you're when you found a piece of material either through IP or an original idea, in preparing for today, I looked at some of your other interviews, and I loved when you talked about the inner emotional life, that ultimately that is what you need to be connected to, which is very much what you're talking to us about in terms of that inner emotional life.

Is it, is there, is it just a feeling you get or how do you work with that? Let me just put it a different way on the show. We talk about lava that sometimes when you get really deep into that emotional thing, you're trying to talk about and express, it can feel pretty hot inside. Right. It can almost feel dangerous if you're pushing.

How do you keep that boundary for yourself or is it more kind of an intellectual "I'm fascinated by this idea or person" how much does the emotion come into it?

Glen: To be honest, I would say it's mostly emotion. I feel like I emotionally enter, probably my lead character. Then I start thinking about the other characters and I start feeling, and I just start imagining the world and the scenes and stuff.

And a lot of those scenes can come to a point that when I see it, in my head, I can start to feel I'll start to have an emotional reaction as if I'm watching a movie, or, and I feel if I have that reaction, an audience will have that reaction. I get offered a lot of material that's interesting or fascinating or whatever, but I'm not interested in telling a story to learn about a world.

Like to do research or whatever I sort of have to live in that world, I sort of have to think about what are the heartbreaks and the frustrations and the wants of the characters in that world, what are their wounds, and yet how are they kind of stumbling through their thing.

So it's, and it's interesting because like, I opened this by telling a story about, I got this call that I thought was going to be one call and it turned out to be another call. So I'm not exactly sure what the scene is, but that emotion of yes. Oh no. Your stomach dropping that's going in the show. That's going in the show. Now it's basically just a shot of a person on a phone.

It's not particularly interesting, but I understand the scene. Now, if I can build to it so that the audience is like the audience that their stomach sinks, I've got something, you know what I mean? And the story lends itself to those kind of disappointing calls. I can get there, but when I was talking to one of the executives who called to check in on me, check in with me, how you doing?

And I said, well, I'm thinking of doing this. She's like, okay, that's really interesting that you would just use your disappointment, put it right into the show. But that to me feels right. So, I don't know exactly where it goes, but I think that's kind of something I want to get to. And it literally is trying to write from the inside out. Okay. And I say that with all respect to your work, but it is like that, you know what I mean? That's how I approach it. And if I don't have that, if I don't, then I pass on a project or I just, or the project. Just withers away or, I'll have a bunch of meetings with somebody for a few months, and then I just say, I don't think this is for me.

I'm not finding an emotional end.

Lorien: So at the beginning, you talked about the beginning of the interview, you talked about the mystery driving an episode and instead of maybe focusing on tone and voice for emerging writers. So related to that, can you define story engine and how, if you have one, what it is?

Glen: I don't know. I don't really think about that term, but I would just say that the–

Meg: how do you know they're going to tune in the next episode, that this could go eight episodes for five years in terms of, it's got that kind of something is turning over that I want to come back in and come back in and keep watching.

Glen: Well, I may not be the right person to ask.

I've never created a show that's gone five years. So, I'll be honest, I mean, maybe I don't have that right answer, but to me, a story engine has to be, your character's internal want, your internal, the internal drive. Okay. So, not the external drive. It can't be, it can't be, I worked on The Shield.

Okay. So the external drive is either we want to catch the bad guy this week or because we're corrupt cops, we don't, we want to get away with it. Right. We want to not be caught. Okay. Right. So we either want to get away with it or we want to catch those bad guys.

But with the lead character of Vic Mackey, we had discussions about what's driving that character. And some people thought, well, he has his own code of conduct, or he does the right things for the wrong things for the right reasons, the anti hero stuff. And I felt those things always came up short because this guy was beating people.

He didn't have to, he was, and he was just barely getting away with it. This guy loves to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and he just smiles at you and eats the cookie in front of you and says, What cookie? Okay. I think we have people in the public eye who love that. They just love to cheat and get away with it.

And yeah, and get away with it and rub your nose in it. And they love the game. And if you look at the last seat, the last shot. It's like, Oh, he lost that game, but he lives to play again. If you look at the last scene of the shield, so, so there's an internal drive there, whether or not that's a story engine, but at least it's something, cause what happens is a lot of writers, if they don't develop this internal life to a character they just ended up having a character float into a scene and then something happens and now they have a want that they've developed into the scene that they've gotten out of the scene, okay? They've been activated within the scene, but I always have to answer. Why did my Character enter the scene in the first place? You know, if somebody goes into a room and they meet somebody and somebody says, I need you to do this, why did they go into that room?

Like I, again, you're trying to kind of think about the actors and what you're going to give them. So, there's a reason for that. There's a previous life, there's a previous emotion that's kind of driving them in. And I think a lot of writers that I've dealt with don't really think about that.

And I don't know if it's important, but it's important to me.

Meg: Well, considering the quality of shows you make, I think it's important. I think we can safely say, it's important. We want to make sure to talk to you about your mentoring. You're very much known for mentoring writers. I believe it's how I met you.

You were mentoring at Rideback, and I met you there. You had talked about you're teaching them the importance of this personal connection to the material, which I think is what you're talking about here, knowing that internal drive. But you also talked about the experience of transitioning careers.

Which I think a lot of our listeners are in that position, so I'd love to have you talk about that.

Glen: Well, I went to NYU and I was an English major. I have an MA in English. I thought I was going to be a teacher, but when I first went there undergraduate, my dad was a doctor at a hospital that was no longer around.

This was in Manhattan. It was St. Vincent's Hospital. So I got a summer job there. I was working as a clerk. And on some of the ICUs and stuff like that. And then to pay for my master's, there was a tuition benefits if you worked for NYU medical center. So I transferred over there and I managed their emergency room for about eight years.

I managed ICUs. I was involved in building ORs. I kind of became the person, like the manager who I was technically in the nursing department and I would facilitate these construction projects and we built out like ORs and stuff. So I was a hospital administrator for 13 years before I became a professional writer.

So what's interesting about that is that you have the, there's a lot of crisis. Okay. I teach class on crisis management. There's budgets schedules, conflict resolution, big personalities, everything going wrong, that sort of stuff. So, it was actually good training ground for Hollywood. It was very similar. It was a great training place to be a showrunner.

So, when I talk to people about switching careers, a lot of people are apologetic when you interview them that they don't have the experience. Okay, but you do have experience, but you're, what is the job you're going for? You're going for a job as a storyteller. So you have two to five minutes to tell me your story so that I understand what skills you're bringing to the table so that I want to work with you.

I want to hire you. I think you could help me make my project. You know what I'm saying? Or you're, or you have a project that I want to sign on to. So people will kind of forget that. But if you've started a business, if you've lost a business, you understand failure, welcome to Hollywood as much as if it's failure, if you obviously a lot of women take time off to raise kids or they have to care for parents, a lot of the family obligations may fall on them in a way that doesn't on men.

Tell me about that, trust me, if you can deal with screaming kids, you can deal with screaming on a set. So I'm very confident sending somebody in there, people who have been in the military, I mean, if you face that pressure, you can face this pressure, so, so, but you have to help me.

You have to make the case for yourself by telling me your story. And a lot of people don't, they just sort of say, well, I'm here. I'm a nice person. I'm here to learn, that's not why I'm not hiring you to learn to be a student. I'm hiring you so that you have skills that can help me further my project.

So I think that I think people don't give themselves enough credit for their past experiences. And you're not starting from day one in Hollywood. You've had a life, and tell me about that life, and then we can talk about the skills. Whether it's a practical skill, I once hired a woman on Damien, my lead character, Damien was a war photographer.

A woman came in and said, I used to be a photographer's assistant. I never ever thought about having anyone involved with photography, even though I had a need. I'm not a photographer, so I didn't know anything about it. I just, so I was like, oh, okay, what'd you think? And so right away she had my ear and then we hit it off creatively and I hired her.

She went on to become a showrunner. So. She wouldn't, we probably wouldn't have gone that way if she didn't play that card, so I think people really sort of have to take stock of themselves and think about it. When I, Dana Walden and I think his name was Gary Newman used to run 20th like 20th production before all the Disney versions or whatever, right?

And when I was first meeting with them, Dana stepped out. Dana did more of the creative stuff. Gary did all the production stuff when, but this was like 20 years ago. And so Dana stepped out of the room to take a call and Gary was there. And what am I going to talk to this guy about?

I talked about building ORs. I talked about finances. I talked about a 25 million project I did. I started speaking his language. He was like, Oh, this guy can handle a production budget. Okay. Got it. You know what I mean? So I had no TV production experience except for covering the set on the shield for a number of episodes, but I made that case.

And then he saw me as someone who is credible in his world.

Meg: And what I love about making the case is you're also still going back to the personal, right? You're not making the case. It's a big kind of topic intellectual way. It's like I'm valuable, let me talk about myself and my skills. So I love that it's the same as the personal to the story.

You're telling a story about yourself, which I love. I think Lorien you had another mentoring question.

Lorien: Yeah, I had another mentoring question I love that sort of dispelling the assumption that I'm starting from day one in Hollywood, and I have to prove it and be a student all the time. What are some other assumptions that writers are making that are getting in their way?

Glen: That's very interesting. Okay, let me think about this because there was, like I said I have interviewed many, hundreds of writers. I do a thing where people reach out, they want you to read their script or you get notes or whatever. And I kind of do calls like this with people. Okay.

Just cause I would like to, I feel like this is. My contribution to society is just help storytellers. Okay. So, but I did interview about 30 people when I was staffing my show. Okay. So here were a few things. That I felt were problematic and that I felt were problematic over, over the years.

One is we all have difficult or bad experiences. And if you're in an interview and you're talking with someone that you're comfortable with, you have to be careful that you're not, chatting with a friend that you're not gossiping or something. Cause that's going to make me feel like you're a gossip.

That's going to make me feel that, maybe you didn't, you know what I mean? I've had people come in and say, well, I, there was one guy one time, many shows ago came in and said, yeah, I was hired. I got a freelance. I was this showrunners assistant. I got a freelance. And then. he was jealous because I could write his show better than he could or whatever. And I've met the showrunner and the showrunner is considered a real mensch. So you don't need to come in and talk trash or whatever. It's okay to say it didn't work out. It wasn't for me. It wasn't a right match.

 If it didn't work out in your favor, you don't have to knock that other person. You could just say, Yeah, I didn't get the show, or I did get the show, but it didn't bounce my way. That's okay. We're all professionals. We understand that. So it's okay to kind of, not make it about you, but don't make it about them either, because you're disparaging somebody and that doesn't make me feel good. Okay, that's one thing.

Two is I would suggest that you do some homework on the person or on the project. Okay. So it's not that I want you to come in and blow smoke up my ass. Okay. That makes me uncomfortable and I really don't want that. But you know, when I used to have an office I had before a pandemic or whatever I always had a shield poster up.

People would come in and they would say I like The Wire. So I'm like, okay, I didn't work on that.

Lorien: Good for you.

Glen: I didn't work on the Wire. Or they, yeah. I don't like zombie shows. I never watched them The Walking Dead So I was like, okay, well, you don't have to watch the zombie show or whatever, but you should have Googled me and seen what, and watched a few episodes because I, okay, there have been four Walking Dead showrunners.

We're all very different storytellers. So you should go to my episode so that you know what kind of storyteller I am. If you're going to interview with me or, Damon Lindelof does a different thing than I do. Sean Ryan does a different thing than I do. You know what I'm saying? I mean, a lot, a lot of the people you've had, everybody's individual.

So you're trying to get a job. If you're trying to, if the interview is for a writing position on my writing staff, you want to show that you understand who I am. Right. So, so that's, and then you kind of tailor your pitch about yourself so that I think we would be a good match. You're trying to match with the showrunner.

You're not trying to match with the material. That's the problem. That's what that is, let me drill down on this. You have to as a staff writer show, you can execute or that you're willing to try to execute the showrunner's vision. The showrunner might suck. They might get fired.

But they're the ones calling the shots if you're going to get hired or not. And if you're going to stay on the show, you know what I mean? So a lot of people come in and they kind of talk about, they, I once interviewed a woman who said, I love this IP that you're making.

And I've been a fan my whole life and I really want to make sure it's done right. OK. I interviewed someone else And they said yeah, I never heard of this IP, but your script is weird and I'd like to help you figure it out. I'm sorry. So who feels more in my corner? You know what I'm saying?

Who, you know and with that woman, actually, she didn't really have great credits at the time. And the studio didn't want to hire her because they were looking for more, Emmy nominated credits. So I went back to her and I said, well, what is your story? Well, how did you get from this show to this show?

Whatever. And she explained that she made some bad decisions that it she, a show got canceled another show. She had been harassed on that kind of stuff. And she left that show, that kind of stuff. So I could go back and make a case for her. So I was invested in her. I hired her and she did a great job.

So, you know what I mean? So you kind of want to show, you want to. You want to not ingratiate yourself, but you want to show that you're part of the showrunners team. I think that's a big mistake. That's a big mistake. The, I, some of the people I interviewed for my recent go around, I'll be honest, I felt like they had no idea who I was.

So that just, so, so it's not about my ego but it makes me feel like they're not, they don't have that work ethic of the other person who is really taking the job search seriously. You know what I mean? Like I want somebody who's going to really work hard. And if you can show me that. But by how you've approached the interview, it'll put you ahead of somebody who doesn't seem to give a shit.

Meg: Yeah. So good. So good.

Lorien: That's good advice. Should a writer ever be paying a production company, an agent, like outright, like cash, like sometimes emerging writers get proposals like, you pay me 5, 000 and I'll get your movie connected with the right people to sell it.

Glen: Okay, emerging writers should not be paying for anything as far as I'm concerned.

Okay. I mean, if you have some money, maybe you could lay out a couple hundred dollars for the rights for a book or something like that. If you want to pick up IP, I know people who have done that. I usually try to get a producer to do that, but I have laid out my own money and I kind of burned it, you should never pay a production company to get involved. You should never pay an agent to read. You should never pay a manager. You know, if you go to lunch with somebody, and somebody is established, I think they should pay, like you should not, and it's a shame and I've been surprised, like sometimes an assistant has said that she participated in something and paid for it.

Not having somebody pay, but like even certain things or, I guess there's a lot of people who read scripts. Like you get, I read a lot of scripts. I don't get paid for scripts. I don't get paid for my meetings with writers. I just give all that stuff away. I give all that time away.

I feel like I benefit from it. Okay, because I like being part of the community of writers, but, I wouldn't even pay somebody to read a script and get notes or whatever. I don't know who they are. I, you know what I mean? So, money and, go watch movies.

And go read books, and fill up, and learn how it's done. And then go shoot something. That's what I think, that's how you spend your money. I don't think you give it to other people.

Lorien: Shoot a movie or TV show, not go shoot something, right?

Glen: No. Go shoot a movie. Go grab your iPhone, go shoot.

Meg: Make something.

Glen: Go, yeah, make something, exactly, yeah.

Meg: This has been amazing. Thank you so much. We always ask the same three questions at the end of every show. So we're going to ask you the questions. The first is, what brings you the most joy from writing or show running?

Glen: That's a great question. What brings me the most joy?

Yeah, you know what brings me the most joy is, to be really honest, okay I don't really like when my shows are on. Okay. I don't like them being part of the public debate or what, you know what I mean? I don't like reading about them by critics or I don't enjoy, I like making them and there's so much, and I just love. One of my favorite parts is the final sound mix.

And when you sit there and all the editing, all the writing, the actors have done their jobs, the directors, it's all the lighting's done. It's just done. And I love sound. I write a lot of scenes for, with sound in mind and you're fine tuning it and you just kind of drift in and you're an audience member and now you're watching it and you're moved by the music and it just.

I'm feeling it now and you just can see like everybody did their best work and it came together and you were a part of that. I'm sorry, I'm getting emotional, but you were a part of that, but it's bigger than you and you just see all these artists putting it together. That is very special. That is really special.

Lorien: Your dog thinks so too.

Glen: Yeah.

Lorien: Okay, so, I love that, and it made me a little teary too, because, that's such a magical part. Okay, so, question number two, what pisses you off about writing or showrunning?

Meg: About writing, maybe. What pisses you off about writing?

Glen: What really pisses me off about writing is I take it very seriously. And I don't like it when I see other writers phoning in, not taking it seriously, just thinking they can slap something together and going out with that. You know what I mean? I do see it as kind of a calling and I find I get frustrated when I see And I don't know why I give a shit about what anybody else thinks or does or whatever, but it's so hard.

And so sometimes I get, I tend to actually get pissed off and like, I just see, just junk thrown out there and people not being mindful of what they're putting out there and not giving a shit and yet cashing big checks or whatever. I just, I don't like that. I just wish everybody, I don't know, took it seriously.

And I, the other thing that, let me say this, the other thing that does piss me off is when I hear about bad behavior by writers. So I was the chair of the writer's guild inclusion and equity group, and so when you hear about some of the stuff people say.

The stuff people do, you hear about nasty behavior. I sort of feel like I've listened to a lot of people tell those stories, and I know how hard it is to work and that pisses me off. So, in both answers is other writers not behaving themselves. So it makes me sound like a jerk to say that. cause like, again, why would I give a shit about what other people do? Like I should probably just focus on my own stuff. But.

Lorien: Love of the craft and your love of the journey and that you want everyone to be in it as much as you are. And yeah, and work hard like you do. It validates us when we see other people taking what we do seriously.

Glen: I guess so. Yeah, I guess so.

Jeff: Yeah. And we've, on our show, on least, we view writing as sacred, right? Like we, I think we align in that way. And so when people undermine that, it's, it feels like an insult to us. Who really, you're among your people. We, it's all good.

Meg: I feel bad saying it, but.

Jeff: It's you're speaking our language.

Lorien: You can say something else. Like. I say what pisses me off about writing is the fact that I have to do it sometimes.

Glen: Yeah, there's that. No. No, that's all good. That's good.

Lorien: Which is what you're saying. Right?

Jeff: Glen, the last question we ask is if you could go back and have a coffee with your younger self, sort of right before that Glen's career, What advice would you give to him?

Glen: To be really honest, I don't know. I think what I think about what advice I would give to other writers that I wish I had known. Right. Okay. So some of, sometimes the advice I give other writers is I say, well, I spent a lot of time working. on other people's material. I wish I had maybe been more of an auteur or dug in on more, generated more original stuff instead of chasing jobs or whatever, but you know, I had a family to support that kind of stuff.

Right. Or sometimes I think about, not everything is. Some advice I give to emerging writers is not everything is so make or break, when you get, it's about how you handle yourself in both times of success and times of adversity and. So, but you know, we can just get so devastated by calls or disappointments or getting fired or whatever, those things are hard.

So that's advice I would give to other people. I don't know if I would give that advice to myself because I felt like I had to learn that stuff and I had to learn it the hard way. I don't, I probably would have been a jerk to myself. My younger self would have been a jerk and told my older self to go fuck off.

Who are you? You know what I'm saying? I don't think I would have been kind to myself even if I knew it was myself. You know what I mean? So, so I don't know. I don't have an answer for that. I can say what I say to other people, but

Meg: Sometimes I just want to say to my younger self, it'll be okay.

Glen: Yeah. But. Well, let's say if I, so I dealt with a lot of anxiety and I was a nut and all of that stuff, just like we all are. Right. But maybe I had to do that, like, would I have wanted me to take it down or to be more relaxed? Maybe I wouldn't have. I had the journey I have. So I don't know. I don't know.

Meg: I love that answer. I love it.

Glen: I literally don't know.

Lorien: Here's the real question. Do you want to go hang out with your younger self and have a coffee with them?

Glen: Yeah, probably. I probably would.

Lorien: You're gonna be like, fuck you, man. Get out of here.

Glen: Yeah. Yeah, I bet you my youngest self would be like, I don't have time for you. You'd think he'd be like, oh, tell me everything I need to know. I'd probably be such a dick. Yeah. That's great.

Meg: Oh my god. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Glen: I really enjoyed that. I hope you did. Thank you so much.

Meg: I took notes because as you were talking, I had an epiphany about a pitch I'm putting together.

Glen: Oh, great. Good. I look forward to seeing it.

Lorien: Thank you so much. I felt like it was a master class.

Jeff: Yeah, super helpful.

Meg: Thanks so much for tuning into the screenwriting life. Check out our Facebook page for more support.

Lorien: And remember, you are not alone, and keep writing.