Assembling a Career with Erin Gibson

• Prologue
• Erin Gibson’s Path Through Comedy
• Balancing Career and Family Life
• Listener Questions on Idea Banks and Reps
• One Cool Thing
• Bonus Segment

Prologue

John August: Hey, this is John. Standard warning for people who are in the car with their kids, there’s some swearing in this episode.

John: Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and you’re listening to Episode 751 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Most careers have some level of predictability. You get a degree, you begin working in your field, and slowly progress. You might switch companies or switch tracks, but the overall trajectory of your career is pretty legible.

What if you’re a writer, particularly a writer working in film and television? How should you think about assembling a career when it’s not clear at all which projects and which opportunities are going to arise? That’s why today on the show, I am so lucky to be talking with a writer whose career is eclectic and chaotic and worth studying. In the time I’ve known her, Erin Gibson has been an actor, a TV correspondent, a viral video director, an animation showrunner, a live-action writer, and EP. She’s also the co-host of one of my very, very favorite podcasts, Attitudes. Welcome finally to Scriptnotes, Erin Gibson.

Erin Gibson: John August, this is a dream come true to be on this podcast with you as your number one fan from the InfoMania days.

John: No, way back in the days. I’ve been on your podcast twice or three times, maybe.

Erin: Yes, and a live show.

John: And a live show. I’m obsessed with your show. Your show is fantastic. You host it every week with Bryan Safi. Like Scriptnotes, is a weekly show. Keeps growing. It’s the two of you. We’ve grown up with you. We’ve seen you through marriages and breakups and everything in between.

Erin: Deaths, yes.

John: Deaths, yes. Some deaths as well. I want to talk to you about your career, which I really don’t talk to you very much about. I want to talk about career and writing, your life as a professional funny person. We’re also going to answer some listener questions about the start of your career, some really foundational questions, because these are writers who I think are just figuring out like, “Oh, how should I plan for my career?” The reality is, “Ha-ha, you really can’t plan for much.”

Erin: Say yes.

John: Say yes. That’s improv rules. In our bonus segment for premium members, I want to talk about maintaining a career, maintaining your job as a writer when you move outside of Los Angeles, because you did that ahead of everyone else and you’ve made it work brilliantly. I want to talk about all that.

Erin: I’m so excited.

Erin Gibson’s Path Through Comedy

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John: All right. Awkward pause here because I just have known you for so long. What is your memory of how we first met? Because I have a story in my head, but I think I’m telling it to myself, and I’ve probably exaggerated it.

Erin: I thought we met when– I don’t quite recall, but I thought it was InfoMania. Somehow you got in touch with us. I was like, “Is this crazy? Why is John August writing this?” We’re on this dumpy TV show with one advertiser, which was the tomato feeder that you would put in a– it was like an essay on TV. That was our advertiser. We were on Al Gore’s Network, which I don’t know if that means anything.

John: Yes, Current TV.

Erin: Current TV, which was–

John: Which later became Al Jazeera TV.

Erin: Yes. Brian and I were doing segments that were taking a look at the way the media contextualizes women and queer people and making fun of it. Then we got an email from you. I don’t know if you emailed me or Brian, one of us. Somehow you got our emails.

John: I think I somehow emailed both of you. I was looking for that email today because this is a podcast where I’m so now obsessed with finding old emails and old audio, but I cannot find the first email. The first email I can find to you is from 2011, which is about the right year, but clearly it’s a follow-up to other things. I must have met you before then. Did you, Brian, and I meet for coffee, maybe at Cucina on Beverly?

Erin: Yes. That’s when we found out about the John August goodbye, which is an hour into all meetings with John August, he will just leave. I respect it so much. I try to do it, but I am too Southern. I go, “Oh, I had a chance to do the John August goodbye, and I didn’t take it.”

John: It’s not the Irish goodbye or the French exit. It is–

Erin: You show up and you’re very present.

John: I’m incredibly present. Then at a certain point, you have to say like, “Okay, we’re done. Well, this has been great.”

Erin: You do it in the nicest way. The first time it happened, Brian and I were astounded. It was like a portal had been opened to us. We had no idea you could even do that.

John: Yes, but you can. Once you’ve done the thing you’re going to do, you can do it. I’m glad I remembered this story basically the same way you do, which is that I reached out to you because I saw you on television on this show called InfoMania, which is on Current TV, randomly, but you guys were fantastic on it. I think my email was probably just like, “You guys are great. You should do more things together.” This is pre-podcast.

Erin: Yes, it was.

John: I thought you guys were just great, if I can be helpful in any way, and so we got coffee. That’s a thing people need to do more of. First off, commenting when somebody is great and just saying like, “Hey, you’re great. I don’t have anything to offer necessarily, but I just want you to know that you’re fantastic.” It took me 30 seconds to send that email, and it helped.

Erin: Well, John, not to blow smoke up your ass, but you changed the trajectory of Brian and I’d career because we had never thought about doing stuff together on the show. Then we started doing stuff together, and then we did the podcast after the show went away. Also, because that was such a small network and such a small– like no one was really watching the show, save for John August, and just hearing a positive, like the thing we’re doing is resonating with somebody, it just fuels you. I could live off of those fumes for years.

John: Very early in my career, Go had just come out. The first week Go came out, Tom Schulman, who’s a screenwriter, emailed, or I guess he probably sent a physical letter to UTA saying like, “Oh, can you get this to John August? I thought his movie was terrific.” That was such a small thing to do, but such a nice thing to do. It made my month. It made me feel like, “Oh, I have a handhold here. Someone actually is noticing that I’m doing something good.”

Erin: It changes everything. I was actually just talking about this with my friend yesterday who got a pass on a show he’s been working on for a really long time. The pass was, “I just didn’t think the show was good.” It’s so harsh. We get such harsh feedback. People think we’re just made of Teflon. To hear something positive and nice, we all need it so badly. It’s very rarely done. I learned this. This is tangential, so maybe you won’t keep this in. My doctor during COVID sent a letter out saying, “I’m retiring.” He was the best doctor in the world. I loved this man.
I called him, and I said, “Why are you doing this?” He said, “No one ever says thanks. After I told people I was retiring, I got so many emails and phone calls telling people how I’d saved their lives and helped them with fertility and all these things. I never heard it while I was doing it, and it would have kept me in here.”

John: Send the email.

Erin: The same.

John: There’s basically no cost. Also, if you don’t have someone’s email address, drop them the DM on Instagram, wherever you can reach them. Honestly, I think I emailed you, but it could have also been Twitter back in the day because Twitter was also useful. It was like a point of connection to people. Yesterday, I was looking for how I connected with this one author. It’s like I know I’ve talked to him, but it was a Twitter DM. Everyone left Twitter, and now I have no way of reaching him.

Erin: That’ll be on for the [unintelligible 00:07:27] forever. You’ll never get that back.

John: No, but there’s always some way to reach out to somebody. I reached out to you because I loved what you’re doing on that TV show. The TV show went away. You guys started a podcast really early on in the days of podcasting called Throwing Shade. It’s now called Attitudes, but it’s the same great trajectory. It’s the same show like Scriptnotes that you have a format. The two of you come in with your shoes, your issues that you’re talking through. People know what to expect. They also know to anticipate that you guys will improv wildly and madly. You’re both incredibly good at it. I think you guys are both UCB. What is your comedy background?

Erin: Yes. I moved from Texas to go to do Second City and then very quickly decided Chicago wasn’t the place for me and came to L.A., and then gotten in with UCB. What a wonderful experience I feel like. I’m sad that I don’t know if kids have that these days. I know clowning’s the thing. Everyone’s into clowning. That was a really special time, and I’m so grateful for it. All of my friends are still from that time, including Brian, who I knew before I had worked with him.
Then we got to make that podcast into a TV show because of another person who reached out and said, “I really like what you’re doing,” and pushed it through a network that I wouldn’t say I belonged on, but I was so happy to be there and have the opportunity, and having champions somewhere that can push your stuff through when we weren’t even like, “Let’s make it a TV show.”

John: Yes. You were one of the first podcasts to become a TV show. Now, of course, all we do is take podcasts and put them on streaming services like they’re TV shows. You’re a trailblazer as always. The focus of this episode is really talking about your life as a professional funny person because, as you were coming through UCB, what did you have a vision for what you were going to do? How did you even get the job at InfoMania?

Erin: I think it was my old writing partner, Joel Church-Cooper, told me, because he was doing a movie segment on another show, and he said, “Oh, this spot is opening up. You should audition for it.” I remember I was talking about shape-ups. I think the audition was me making fun of Skechers Shape-Ups. “Shoes are all we need to feel beautiful.” Something like that. I got the job, and I remember getting it. It was the first time I had written stuff that I performed, and I was getting paid to do both. I was like, “Oh, I can synthesize these two things,” because my dream was always just to be on SNL and then call it a day because it’s that easy.

John: Absolutely.

Erin: I was like, “Oh, I can write my own stuff. This is so cool.”

John: That’s obvious now because we’ve seen people do that because people can do that on Instagram or reel, or TikTok, or however they want to do it, but it wasn’t obvious then, and you still needed to have a crew to go out with you to shoot the things. You had to write and prep it. We also were lighting BuzzFeed and Funny or Die and all that came to be.

Erin: Huffington Post.

John: Huffington Post, yes. It was a Substack before it was Substack, sort of. It was its own thing. People were writing there for free, but also people were making money off of it.

Erin: It was huge. When I met my husband, he was like, “You look familiar.” He goes, “Oh, you wrote a viral piece on Huffington Post that had a video component.” It was strange because, as you were saying, it’s like before Instagram, you had to really work at doing this stuff.

John: Yes. You had to have skills that you just don’t have now, or at least they’re different skills, and yet it feels so applicable to– anyone who’s just starting in this town today, they’re going to have slightly different references, but it’s the same kind of hustle. It’s the same kind of figuring stuff out. Curry Barker was on the show recently, and all of his early stuff was just him and his buddies making videos, video after video after video themselves, and not asking permission. They didn’t have, really, a gatekeeper there.
There was some gatekeeping for you because you needed to have some platform to put this on. Huffington Post was pretty easy to get stuff on. Funny or Die was a little bit more of a closed network. I’m saying Funny or Die because Gay of Thrones was Funny or Die, wasn’t it?

Erin: It was, yes.

John: Talk us through Gay of Thrones because I think people may not remember what that was. There’ll be some songs that you were the person who did this.

Erin: Okay. I was at Funny or Die as a writer-director, which was also another situation where I got in through a friend who was like, “Oh, we have a position open,” and brought me in. I learned how to direct there. I was getting my hair cut by Jonathan Van Ness of Pre-Queer Eye-

John: Pre-fame.

Erin: -talking about one of the Baratheons and kept talking about their vest and calling him her. I was so delighted. I said, “You want to do this? We should recap Game of Thrones because no one would ever expect this.” It was so discordant with what you think the fan base is. Then it just took off. It took off.

John: It was a phenomenon. An episode would drop, and then you would have to get the video out, recapping the episode right away because it was recap culture, but it was also this funny parody of recap culture. It was great, but exhausting, I’m sure, as well, because there’s always a celebrity guest who was in the chair of Jonathan Van Ness, doing their hair and talking about the show.

Erin: We shot at the same night we watched the episode. We were up for 48 hours straight, basically. It was fun.

John: It was fun. It’s a thing you can do. It’s a thing people should do early in their careers, as they’re just figuring out how stuff works and how to connect with things.

Erin: Also, I think– I don’t know. I listen to your show, John, and a lot of times people are giving advice to shoot your own things because it’s a calling card. I’ll also say just for now, I’m in my mid-40s, do it because you have the time. You do not have time when you start becoming a sandwich generation, or you start getting absolutely dumped on by responsibility and obligations. Do it. Just do all the things you want to do and let everybody know who you are before you get bogged down by the clutches of getting older.

John: Erin, I would say you very much are who you are from when I very first met you. You are consistent. Even though you’ve done so many different things, you have a consistent spirit. The actual Erin Gibson values are there. You’re funny, you’re incisive, but you also are very political, not in an individual person way. You’re not a candidate. You’re not going to run for office, and you’re not backing this one specific person, but issue-wise you’ve always been driven that way.

Erin: Yes. I think growing up in Texas and feeling like an outsider makes you a loud asshole about things that you think are wrong, especially in a very rule-oriented state like Texas. My dad was in the military. My dad was in the military, but also went to Kent State and was an actor. I lived in this world where there was softness and hardness and being loud, but also trying to be right. I try to straddle those two worlds because I don’t want to be a person who’s telling you how you need to think. I do have very strong opinions about what shouldn’t be happening.

I also bring that to set too because now I’m a showrunner and there’s a lot of things I feel really passionately about when it comes to gender issues. On my sets, we do not talk about actors’ bodies in Village. We don’t talk about their faces. Your opinions about what you like and don’t like are welcome, but we don’t do that on my set because those are my politics.

John: Which is good. We’re talking about how consistent you are and how clear-eyed you are about things, but especially earlier on in your career, what are some mistakes you made? What are some things where you felt like, “Oh, I zigged, and I now realize I should have zagged”? What are some things you look back in those first 5, 10 years of your career like, “Oh, that was maybe not the right choice in retrospect”?

Erin: I was too arrogant. I thought I knew everything. I think I was posturing really hard because I was scared. I wish I had been a little more vulnerable and admitted that I was out of my depth. I think that’s more endearing and less polarizing. It’s a young person’s thing that you do. Looking back, I just go, oh, I had so many opportunities I could have learned, but I closed them off because I was like, “I got this.” That’s also part of being in the comedy world. There’s just a lot of like– listen, we’re in a very masculine industry, and comedy is very masculine. As a woman, you put on a little mask, and you go, “I can play this game.” It’s not authentic to me. I’d rather be soft and admit that I don’t know something now. It feels more like me. I wish I had done that earlier because it’s such a nicer place to sit.

John: You were talking about comedy being a very masculine thing. There’s that fake it till you make it and there’s imposter syndrome that kicks in. I felt a lot of that too when I was running my very first TV show, and my first and only TV show, I knew I didn’t know what I was doing, but I wanted to make sure that nobody could see that. I would just keep plowing ahead, and it plowed right into a nervous breakdown. It was not a good situation, but I didn’t have any template for asking the questions, for being vulnerable, for expressing what I needed, for reaching out for help, because I didn’t trust the people around me.

Comedy and improv is about trust. It feels like you should have developed some of those skills, and maybe you did have certain people you did trust with that. Did you?

Erin: Yes. I have an hour-long career now because my friend, Annie, who I’ve known since my comedy days, gave me an opportunity to learn that form, because we had built this incredible bond early days in comedy. Most of my friends that I still have to this day are from the comedy world. Anytime I have an opportunity to work with my comedy friends, I do it because those are my strongest bonds, I trust those people, and we have a shorthand, but there’s people I would never work with again from the–

John: There’s individuals you wouldn’t work with, but there’s also probably situations that you would not re-enter again because you recognize what the pattern is. That’s the thing that only comes with experience. You don’t only get that experience until you have the experience. You have to go through it, and that’s why I think we’re stressing in your early years of your career, your 20s especially, if you can, is try all the things. See what works and what doesn’t work. I think what you and I are both encouraging people to do is be vulnerable and reach out for help and help other people because that’s what’s going to get you there.

Erin: Also, I think be excited about stuff. If I had been like, “Oh, I don’t know this, but I’m so stoked to learn and I really just want to get it right,” if I had that energy and if someone comes to me with that energy, I get very activated, and I’m like, “Oh, this is a much better place to jump off of than a wall.”

John: Yes, I absolutely get that. Do you have a resume? When was the last time you did an actual resume? Do you have a printed resume?

Erin: No.

John: No, I don’t have one either.

Erin: Do you have one?

John: No, no, I think most folks, at a certain point in your Hollywood career, a resume doesn’t make sense anymore. You’re not really an actor anymore. You’re not performing in front of cameras. You had your credit sheet. Even if you look somebody up on IMDb, you don’t really know. If I looked at your IMDb credits, I wouldn’t quite know who you are or sort of–

Erin: Well, because Funny or Die put every single thing that I’ve ever done on there, so it looks like I have Steven Spielberg’s career, but it’s just sketches.

John: It’s true. It’s great. I love that for us. How would you introduce yourself? If somebody said they want to introduce you on a panel, Erin Gibson is a blank, how do you fill in that blank?

Erin: I say, let me read it from my Instagram because I actually wrote this out.

John: Fantastic.

Erin: It’s a really hard thing for me to synthesize what I do because I just do Erin Gibson. Showrunner putting LOLs and hour-longs and tenderhearted sweetness in comedies.

John: I love that. That’s a good mission statement, and that clearly describes what you’re doing. The show you’re on right now is The Chicken Sisters. It is a Hallmark Channel show, and it’s second season, third season?

Erin: No, that show’s over. I hate to tell you. I’m on a new show.

John: All right. Does the new show have a name? Can it be announced, or is it a secret?

Erin: I can’t talk about it, but it is an hour-long that I’m putting LOLs in. It’s a magical realism show. We don’t have our cast yet. We have two cast members, and they’re so lovely.

John: That’s awesome.

Erin: They’re so lovely, and I just love them so much. I love talking about process with them and what I can do to make their process safe. My pilot director also was an actress for 25 years, and she’s an incredible director. She oftentimes on shows gets pulled on as a producing director. We talk a lot about being actors and what it’s like on the other side of the camera, and what we can do to make actors’ lives easier because we’d know those pressures and we know what it’s like. That’s why I have a very strict– like we don’t objectify our actors on the set rule.

I remember one time hearing, I was walking by Village as an actor, and I heard someone saying, “I think she’s too tall. We need to recast.” They were talking about me. It was brutal. I just wanted to go 10-1.

John: Oh, Erin, couldn’t you just be shorter? Couldn’t you just slouch a bit? I’m sorry. You’re messing everything up. The DP is like, “I got the camera. Does it go that high?”

Erin: “Put these guys on a fucking Apple box.” Wasn’t my problem. There’s a thing that people think that actors– that they can handle this kind of stuff. You see certain things as an actor. I don’t know if you know about these codes that they use. They used to use in commercial auditions. Do you know about the code?

John: No, no. Tell me. Nothing.

Erin: There’s a code called NPE. I feel like I heard that they also used to use them in TV. NPE is not pretty enough. If you know the code and then you start seeing it on your callback sheet, it fucks up your mind because you know you’re going in there and either the producer, the director, or the studio doesn’t think you’re hot enough for this role. The fact that anybody’s still acting is a miracle when you know this stuff. I’m so protective of our actors, and I really want to make sure that they have a functional set and a place to do this.

Listen, I’m not making high art. I’m not making the next big hit. I’m making a very good TV show. That aside, it’s still art to me, and it’s still special. I think the time on set is so magical and wonderful. I needed to feel that way, or it’s just not worth it. I’m getting three hours of sleep every night. There’s got to be something else in it besides money and another thing on my IMDb page.

John: Well, let’s talk about that then because we have writers who are at the very start of their careers, they’re thinking about they have this plan, this vision for how stuff’s going to work. I was stressing in the intro. I was like, you don’t know what this is going to be. This is not a thing where you get your degree, and everyone’s like, “Looks like your screenwriting diploma,” like, “Oh my gosh, we need to hire this kid to write all the movies.” That just doesn’t happen. You don’t know what the actual projects are going to be, but what you can decide is who you are going to be, what values you’re going to put out there in the world, and what things you will pursue and what things you will stay away from.

It sounds like the kinds of principles that you’re embodying now on this new TV show is like, “This is what the show is. I recognize the values of the show, and I recognize what is not important.” One of your things you’re stressing is like, this needs to be a good experience for the people working on the show, which, honestly, not a lot of showrunners are talking about.

Erin: It’s not an easy job. It’s being a bank manager. It’s being a creative. It’s being a stepmom or dad. It’s putting out fires. It’s doing a lot of stuff. I spent the last six years taking care of my boomer dad and my boomer mother-in-law, and I highly recommend, if you think you want to be a showrunner, to have an older, difficult family move in with you because it really does prepare you for this kind of situation. I think chaos is fun when it feels like it’s in the right direction. I understand why showrunners get stressed out. You should never take it out on anybody around you. It’s not their problem. Get a meditation routine, start smoking again, run. You have coping mechanisms, right?

John: Yes. Do some coping ahead to figure out, “This is going to be a stressful situation.” The same thing happens with directors on their first thing on their date. They go nuts because there’s just too much on their shoulders, and they’re not ready for it. Some of that is like, it’s only going to come through experience. It’s only going to come through maturity, through going through the process. You can also listen to Erin and plan a little bit ahead and write down some of your values of like, “This is not a thing I’m going to do,” and hopefully don’t do it, or if you do it, apologize and acknowledge it and do better.

Erin: I’m constantly apologizing. Part of it’s because I’m in Canada. I think it’s really powerful. Sometimes I apologize, but it’s not my fault because I don’t care. I’d rather apologize and get it over with. I also always give everybody the benefit of the doubt. When somebody messes up or somebody does something that’s discordant with what I want, I always give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe there’s a misunderstanding. I’m 98% of the time right. I didn’t yell and I didn’t get upset and I didn’t say like, “This person doesn’t understand my vision as an artiste.” I just say, “Oh, well, the email wasn’t clear,” or whatever.

I can mitigate most problems that way, but I always come at it from a place of, “This is really hard. Everyone’s stressed out. Everyone’s underwater and everyone’s just doing their best.” Some people are doing their worst and they never work with me again.

John: Excellent. Some people are completely phoning it in or actively undermining the process and you need to get rid of them.

Erin: Yes. Also, I have conversations with people like that. I will take them to a corner so everyone can see that they’re getting a talking to. Then I say, “Your behavior’s not okay.” I’m in a position of power so I can do that.

John: That’s a challenge.

Erin: It’s hard when you’re not. I have bosses above me, but I don’t have to deal with them every day. It’s hard. You have to eat some pro.

John: The challenge I had on my TV show was, while I was, in theory, the showrunner, there were people who were above me who were very closely managing everything. I didn’t have the real power I had. Not that I knew how to deal with what I did have. That is the challenge.

Erin: You don’t actually, unless you’re at a certain level. I don’t know what percentage of showrunners actually have free reign. Very few. You have to be really big. Everyone else gets death by a thousand cuts. If you know it, then you can deal with it.

John: Yes. This time, I now know it. I am much better prepared to deal with this now than I was when I was 28 years old and had never been on a TV set before. I was not ready for it at the time. Trauma is, of course, just too much, too fast, too soon. I was a classic recipe for failure and disaster. I want to talk about happier things. Do we have to? No.

Erin: No.

John: I don’t want to focus on my past failures. I want to focus on good things that have happened. You host a weekly show with Bryan Safi where you get to talk through things. I also have a weekly show where I get to talk through things. It’s not an education, but a foundation and a way of thinking about how I do the job I do is because I have this weekly conversation that’s all about this. You have a book, Feminasty, which is talking through what you think about things and is putting it down in paper. Not everyone’s going to host a podcast. Not everyone’s going to write a book about themselves. I think it is helpful to just have some forum for deciding what it is you believe and what you think.

It can take a lot of different forms. It could be who you present yourself to in smaller groups. It’s probably not your internet persona. You need to have some sense of who it is that you are and what is the work that you find valuable to do.

Erin: I agree. I also think experiences shape you in that way. One of my pieces of advice that I always give my writer’s assistants is, when you’re not working, go do stuff that absolutely scares the shit out of you. Truly do things that are outside of your comfort zone because everything that we do is that anyway. Writing stories is diving into the abyss. You can forge yourself that way too. John, I listen to your show every week. I’m not going to say I haven’t looked up Craig’s therapist to see if he’s got availability.

John: Dennis Palumbo, yes.

Erin: Yes. Reading his book, by the way, that he recommended on the show. Even if you don’t have that personally, let’s say you’re in another city and you’re starting your writing career, your podcast is such a warm hug of a way to feel like you have a sense of community. I’m sure you get listener feedback. I just wanted to tell you personally how much I value the show. I look at your website all the time because I don’t know why I can’t ever remember how to format lower thirds. I send all my writer’s assistants to your podcast.

John: Thank you.

Erin: You’re doing a great service here, not just for people’s careers, but I think giving people a sense of community who live in different places, and this is their dream. That’s what you’re fishing for, right?

John: That’s exactly what I was fishing for. Thank you. Clip that sound bite where 100% we’re set. Put it on the book cover. Knowing that you were coming on the show, I was looking back through previous guests where we talked about assembling a career and the early things that didn’t feel like they were related, but ultimately connected into the work that they were doing. We had John Hoffman on who does Only Murders in the Building, but he was an actor before that. He talked about how being an actor on so many different sets and working on different projects really gave him a sense of the breadth of what was there, what he wanted to do, and what he really didn’t want to do. We had Ashley Nicole Black on several times.

Erin: Oh, I love her.

John: Like you, she was writing for herself as an actress. She was writing for herself as a performer because no one else was writing stuff for her, and so she would need to write for herself. That’s how she learned how to do it. Brittany Nichols talking about she was doing all these different things, a background actor, doing web writing, variety shows, indie films, script to television. What strikes me is that, at any given point, it might be hard to say, “Wait, now who are you exactly?”

There’s a sensibility that follows, it connects through all these different jobs, is that they are funny people who bring their best work into whatever the specific medium is, and are reliable and trustworthy and smart and dedicated. They have to be really good at writing, but they also have to be really good at all of the other human skills that make someone be able to pull off a project.

Erin: I think about Ashley a lot because I love her sensibility. I think when you make your own stuff, people get you instantly. When you have to tell somebody who you are, it doesn’t work. It just never works. Just show them. You have to show them. Show, don’t tell.

John: What I worry about is I think sometimes the influencer culture and the TikTok, that a person who is trying to get followers on Instagram is going to contort themselves into a shape that the algorithm feeds, and it’s not an authentic presentation of themselves. We don’t get a sense of what their actual voice is, what their point of view is. It’s only like, “If I do this thing, this gets clicks, and it warps their own perception of who they are.”

Erin: Do you know Kurt Vonnegut’s rules for writing fiction?

John: I don’t, so tell me.

Erin: Okay. There’s one I love, and it goes, “If you open the door and try to make love to the world, you’ll catch a cold.” I think about it all the time because, to me, Instagram is chasing fumes. If you can really be authentic to yourself and not try to satisfy– satisfying everybody else is a losing game, right?

John: Yes.

Erin: It’s never going to work. No one’s ever going to be happy enough. It’s just, it’s an infinite– you’re on a hamster wheel. If you make yourself happy and you do something that’s joyful and it has a little piece of your soul and happiness in it, I think it translates to how other people experience that. That’s the most special thing to me. Go ahead, I guess, get a million followers. That feels so empty to me.

John: It’s valuable to a certain degree because you have a little bit of an audience. There’s some very, very funny people who’ve gotten to the million followers by just being incredibly funny and authentic and real. God bless them. They’re killing it, and that’s great. I also see people who are trying to chase other trends, and they’re not that person. They’re just copying a thing that they’re seeing, and that’s not going to work for them. You’re not developing your own voice by just copying somebody else.

At the start of any process, there’s going to be some imitation and some copying. You’re going to try to do the [unintelligible 00:33:01] lifestyle jokes because that’s what you’re used to, but you have to then move past that to find who you are. I worry that Instagram, in particular, or TikTok steer people into, “You just got to hit these metrics.”

Erin: It’s like a feedback loop of like, “Oh, if you’re doing this, you’re going to get 18 other people doing this.” It’s hard in that system to even find somebody unique because it’s not what the algorithm rewards.

John: I think of Game of Thrones because it was such a weird idea and it was very timely, very specific. It was a roll of the dice whether it was going to work, but it was a funny idea independent of itself. If it had never gone viral, it’s still– it was a funny, weird idea. You recognize that Jonathan S. has this bizarre charisma and that with the right framing around it, you can make it work.

Erin: Yes. I was lucky because I was working at Funny or Die at the time. I could just be like, “Hey, I want to do this thing.” There was no oversight. I just did it. I was very privileged in that way. Again, to your point, John, if I had a clip-on lav mic and my iPhone, I could have made that show now.

John: 100%. The great thing about this moment is that you didn’t have to have the infrastructure behind it to make that thing. People should take those shots, but do something that’s interesting and new, and just don’t chase the current trend.

Erin: Don’t chase. Same with dating. Don’t chase.

Balancing Career and Family Life

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John: Don’t chase. Don’t chase. Can we talk about you found a domestic life, I think early on and very smartly, and you locked that down, which is nice. Congratulations. Talk to us about that as a value in terms of someone who’s thinking about their career, thinking about, “I want to be happy in my personal life too.”

Erin: Are you talking about my dilapidated horse ranch in Santa Fe?

John: I am talking about that, but I’m also talking about your husband, and I’m talking about your family.

Erin: Oh, my husband. Okay. I’ve been married twice. My first husband’s a director. We’re still friends. I didn’t want to be married. I think in Hollywood, it’s really easy to put your career absolutely first. Because I married my husband, who’s also a TV writer, but he’s European, he would say, “You are doing too much. You are going to break, and you don’t need to do this.” I was chasing the thing. I was like, “Oh, I got some success. I got to do more. I got to do more. I got to do more.”
He was this influence of like, “Let’s have a nice long dinner. I don’t want you to be gone every evening.” Having somebody in your life who loves you and wants to spend time with you puts work into perspective. I feel like that sounds really shitty because I’m like, “I’m in a relationship.”

John: You also prioritized that as a part of your life, which is that because you could have blown that off and lost that.

Erin: I tried to.

John: Tell me.

Erin: I tried to break up with this person. I was like, “You don’t understand. I grew up poor. I need this. This is filling a hole.” He was like, “The hole’s never going to get filled.” I just made a decision that this relationship was more important than my job. I have continued to make that decision with other members of my family. I keep getting rewarded for choosing my family in strange ways that feed back into my career. It’s weird that I was like, “This stuff isn’t really that important,” and yet I’ve chosen the important things, and they make my career much more layered and interesting. I say no to stuff now, which gives you a weird allure to say no. I don’t know. It was a choice, that’s for sure.

John: It’s a good choice. I’d forgotten that you’d been married before, but I think of your husband as being like, well, obvious. That is the perfect person. Like you, I locked down my person. Craig, too, locked down his person. It’s great success because it’s spending the time and prioritizing having that relationship and having that home life makes your work life a different thing. It gives you a safety to come back to. It’s nice. It’s important.

Erin: There’s also a weird emphasis with playing human chess with people in Hollywood. It’s important to love who you love and not care about what they bring to the table.

John: Yes, that’s very important. You’re not assembling a portfolio.

Erin: No.

John: You are picking someone who works well with you and makes you happy.

Erin: You’re not hiring for your law firm.

John: No, absolutely, which is just crucial.

Erin: John, I’d like to just back up and point out another reason that you should be glad that I met my husband, because my husband came with a wonderful cherubic brother with Down syndrome and a mother. He was a package deal. His mother foolishly adopted a dog that she couldn’t take care of. We got stuck with that dog during some upheaval in our family. Not stuck with. He’s an angel.

I was at a very stressful point in my life where we had too much on our plate. We were at lunch with Brian, and you said you were looking for a dog. I said I happen to have an extra dog who’s the best dog in the world. Oh, I think Brian actually said it. He said, “Erin has her mother-in-law’s dog, and she needs to find a home for it. He’s the best dog in the world.” Do you know where that dog lives now?

John: That dog is Lambert. Our audience will know of Lambert because Lambert is the dog you see in the background of some of the videos. You’ll hear him walking by in the background. He is genuinely the best dog. He’s a source of such joy every day of my life. He’s asleep here in the corner.

Erin: I love Lambert so much. We couldn’t do it. I saw Lambert for his birthday last year. I’m going to reference a movie no one remembers, which is Bette Midler’s Stella, where she refuses to go to her daughter’s wedding at Tavern on the Green and instead stands in the rain and watches her marry the love of her life and cries in the rain. That’s how I felt like when I was watching Lambert at your house.

John: Yes. Lambert is fantastic, and I’m so incredibly grateful that you brought him into our lives. We have moved to Paris. The Scriptnotes audience will know that we moved to Paris in 2016, and we’d lost our dogs before then. We came back, and I put out in the universe, “Hey, I’m looking for a dog.” Then I had coffee with you guys, and you said that there’s a dog. You brought Lambert over, and it’s like, “Well, this is obviously our dog. This is the best dog,” not realizing that Lambert loves all strangers unconditionally. You could have brought him to anyone, and they were like, “Well, this is our dog.” He’s a great dog. We’re very, very lucky.

Erin: He’s so perfect for your household. We call him Orphan Annie because he went to live with– he got an artist [unintelligible 00:40:00] house.

John: Meredith also knows Lambert and knows what a wonderful dog he is.

Meredith: I love Lambert. I didn’t put it together. I knew there was an origin story like this. I didn’t realize it was Erin.

Listener Questions on Idea Banks and Reps

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John: All right, let’s answer some listener questions. Who do we want to start with, Meredith?

Meredith: Let’s start with Billy. Billy writes, apropos of your recent discussion about daydreaming, I have a question about what’s reasonable amount of ideas in the bank and how to prioritize them. I’m working out a spec TV drama that I’m very excited about. It’s fresh, it moves me when I think about the story, and it has a kernel of momentum towards getting produced. It’s the most recent story I want to tell. I have 14 others on my office whiteboard, features, and TV, at least half of which aren’t complete shitty ideas. My question is, how do you address the idea bank when you haven’t been produced?

John: I don’t know that being produced changes the idea bank. I have a list. I give you a notion of 40 different things that are ideas that are out there that at some point I could write, but I probably won’t write. Erin, how about you? Do you have that list?

Erin: I have the list. I make it a priority. I’m not allowed to add anything to the list until I finish something on the list. Otherwise, it’s haunting me in my dreams.

John: That’s fair, too. I would say to Billy that it’s good that you’re thinking about a lot of different things. What you may discover is that those ideas will conspire with each other and to try to get more brain cycles. You’ll realize, oh, these are actually the same idea, or they want to work together, or that thing that doesn’t really work about that idea actually works better than this idea. It’s good that your mind is thinking about stuff. Also, be careful of the grass is always greener problem because that other idea is always so much more tempting than the actual difficult thing you’re writing because you’re not writing that one.

It’s fresh and wonderful because it’s the beautiful person over there at the cafe versus the actual challenging relationship that you’re in right now. Recognize that that’s the reality.

Erin: Don’t cheat on your current project.

John: Don’t. I was talking, though, with a writer yesterday at coffee. Similarly, a writer who I thought she was fantastic, and I wanted to get coffee, so we got coffee. She was talking about very much like she has this main thing where she knows that I need to write at some point, but all the other things feel like cheating when she goes off because they’re easy, versus this one idea is hard. That’s actually okay, too, is to know that you have this main thing. Sometimes those little flings you have with the other projects can be good at reminding you like they’re vacations from the work that is your main thing.

Along these lines, Erin, I want to talk about what things are you writing just for yourself versus writing for other people, or other things you’re doing to keep yourself creatively satisfied that may not be your main stem idea.

Erin: Yes, I’m fueled by hatred. When I get bad network notes or network notes I don’t agree with, I blow off steam by writing something for me. I’ve finished three scripts that way. I write stuff that is– What we were talking about earlier, that are exactly in my voice. I’m a sci-fi fan, and I always wanted to try something that felt like a feminist sci-fi piece. Honestly, not even with the intent of selling it. I just wanted to do it so I have an hour-long and see what it looks like on paper as an exercise. It’s so fun. It’s so fun when it’s just for me, but it’s not something; it’s just genre. It’s like genre cosplay for me of like, “Oh, can I even do this?”

John: Which is great. Again, it’s that same spirit of experimenting like you did at the start of your career is try things. The lovely thing about being a writer is that we can just do stuff. We don’t have to get people’s permission to do anything, to do it. Billy, don’t worry about your idea bank. I would just say keep it. It’s fun to go back and revisit it and remind yourself of these friends you made at camp that you might strike up a relationship with, but don’t get so obsessed with it that you don’t do your main project. Meredith, another question we could answer.

Meredith: This one comes from Laura from Orange County. Laura writes, I’m a writer who’s a bit newer to the scene because I started out as an actress. I’ve written some short films, and also I’ve co-written with my writing partner, a web series, a pilot, and I’m working on a couple of feature films. You give advice about handling the relationship with agents and managers, but I’m still unsure how to find either one for a new writer. I have a pitch deck for our pilot. I have a YouTube channel with my web series. How do I find an agent or a manager? I’ve heard agents find you, and I should start with a manager. Where can I find a list of people to approach or email?

John: This is a fundamental question. I think we actually tried to answer this in Episode 1 or 2 of Scriptnotes. It’s a fundamental, where do you start? There’s not a list that you walk through a list, but you make your own list, and you can reach out to people. We had the two writers of K-Pop Dreamin Hunters on the show recently, and they were talking through how systematic they were about reaching out to people. They would send out 30, 40, 50 emails a week to a targeted list, showing these are the things. They wouldn’t get a very high response rate, but they got some response rate, and then they would send stuff through. They were smart, and they were thorough, and they would do it.

What I would say, though, is that needs to be a part of your job. It can’t be your full-time job. You still need to keep writing new stuff, find ways to put stuff out there, and get it going. Cold calling is not likely to succeed, but putting the energy out there that you’re looking for somebody, a manager, an agent, any one of those things will be a start. Getting to a producer, honestly, is probably even a better idea. Someone who makes the kind of thing that you’re trying to do. Then you’re starting a conversation with them, and you can back into, “Hey, I’m looking for a manager. I’m looking for an agent. Do you have recommendations?”

Because managers and agents are going to be much more likely to respond to a producer who’s buying things than to a writer who’s trying to sell themselves. Erin, talk to us about your experience with agents and managers and the writers you’re hiring onto your show. How did you get your reps? How did they get their reps? Do you know?

Erin: My manager is my first writing partner’s sister, and she was a school teacher when she was managing us, and then she became a manager. That’s unorthodox. She’s still my manager. I have been through several agents. I’ve been in big agencies that I– It’s not my culture, is the nice way to put it, but I don’t have an agent right now, and it’s fine with me. I have a great lawyer. I agree with you, John; finding producers who you align with is so powerful. I sold three projects through one production company because I love working with them and I’m so aligned. That’s such a winning formula for getting stuff done. Then I get recommended to agents through people I work with on projects. That’s cool.

John: That’s cool. That’s nice.

Erin: That’s cool.

John: Reps sort of feels like, okay, it’s a validation that you’re real, and people will pay attention to you, but honestly, you’re still doing a lot of that work yourself. You’re still–

Erin: You’re still doing the writing.

John: You’re still doing the writing. Honestly, sometimes you’re just doing the connections, or they may have set you up for that first meeting, but it’s really you doing all the work to build and maintain those relationships. Reps aren’t doing that for you. Listen, I think focus on making things and working with people who can make things, and you’ll find a way to get to reps who can help connect you to other stuff. I understand why everyone wants that sort of sense of validation that there’s a real, that you’re bona fide, that you’ve made it, you’ve crossed some sort of Rubicon, but it’s not that important.

Erin: I continue to get jobs through word of mouth or people bringing me in or friends helping me out. These producers, I have two production companies who I love, and I just bring them everything. Now that we have a relationship, I just bring them everything. Do that.

John: Do that. Again, like your writing partner’s sister, it’s somebody who you like, who you trust, you don’t dread talking on the phone with them, and that’s winning. As long as they can actually do the outreach they need to do, as long as they can function like a manager in terms of reaching out and cold calling and having no shame, then that’s a manager.

Erin: I would rather work with somebody who is passionate and likes me, who maybe isn’t a marquee name, than work with a marquee name who– it’s lipstick.

John: Meredith, another question we could answer.

Meredith: All the way from New York, tired of myself, writes, I am my own worst enemy. Despite being a playwright for many years now, I’m still struggling to steward my own emotions during the writing process. First, I walk around panicking that I’ll never figure out my idea. Then, I convince myself all that panic actually killed my idea before I had a chance to grow. If I miraculously get past that phase and I’m working on a first or second draft, I panic that today might be the day I destroy the whole thing. When I feel off about a choice I made, I have trouble distinguishing between paranoia and writerly intuition.
Here’s my question to you both. How do you deal with the internal weather of being a writer? What have you learned over the years about how to cope and find due north again?

John: Wow, yes. Erin, start us off.

Erin: I don’t know if this will apply to this person. I remember early days; I had a friend who told me, “Do you know how many people are out there doing something you’re better at just because they have more confidence?” It did destroy me. I remember that. There’s so many fake it till you make it people who were just out there killing it in the biz. This is less of a psychological thing answer because I don’t know how you deal with that level of internal turmoil. I have different things inside of me. I’m not working hard enough is my problem, so I will go the other way, but I’ve never had I can’t get started. Mine’s I can’t stop. I don’t know.

John: Yes, I resonate with parts of this question because there are times where I feel like I have overthought a thing or I’ve overworked it and I’ve ruined a thing. I’ve moved past a lot of my self-doubt and my self-bad talk. What I would stress for our questioner is to think about just actually writing the thing because it feels like so much of your anxiety is anticipatory, that you’re thinking about the process, like this is going to go bad if I do this thing and this is the problem. By all accounts, you’re probably a pretty good writer. Maybe just try writing the thing. Maybe just try sitting down at a desk and writing some scenes and take the pressure off that it has to be perfect. See what it feels like if it’s just okay.

There is a video we’ll try to find. I’ll link and put in the show notes, where Zach Kreger is talking about, I think it’s like, imagine that a crappy intern has to write this script and just let yourself be the crappy intern who just has to get the first draft done and give yourself permission for it to not be great and giving yourself that permission. Get that thing done because you can improve something that exists. You can’t improve something that never existed. Just try to just get through that first thing.

Listen, there are writers who I think vomit too easily and just put stuff out, and they show their vomit, and it’s just bad writing. There’s also writers who could really benefit from just caring a little bit less about that first step and not getting so in their head and just letting the thing exist and be the way it wants to be and let it be easy.

Erin: There’s no stakes-

John: Yes, there’s no stakes.

Erin: -at that point. There’s no stakes. It’s just you and your MacBook. Did you have Kay Cannon on the show?

John: We’ve not. She’s a terrific writer, but no, she’s not been on the show.

Erin: She came on our show, not to brag, so I win. She came on our show, and she talked about how she does a vomit draft. She does a thing where she won’t even stop. There’s no questions. She just keeps going. Then she’ll go back the next day and say, “Okay, well, this obviously doesn’t work. Oh, I like this.” Because she didn’t stop herself, she gets these really wonderful magical things that come out of her brain because she’s just fully free to just do whatever.

John: I like that. Paul and Lucia were on talking about hacks recently, and they were talking about how they set a timer for 12 minutes. They each separately go off and write a scene, and they come back together, and they just copy and paste and see what each of them did. Setting a clock may be a good idea for this writer because there’s a different kind of pressure; in a weird way, lessen the other pressure. They’re only thinking about, oh, I only have 10 minutes to knock out a first draft of this thing, of the scene. Could help. It’s worth trying some different things because clearly whatever they’re doing right now is not working for them. Experiment. Again, what Erin said: the stakes could not be lower.

Erin: I will say something, too, which might actually activate this person’s anxiety, but maybe it won’t. I’ve ushered two parents into the afterlife, and I have been very close to death in the last five years. Nothing makes you feel like everything is absolutely possible than being alive and having the gift of knowing that it’s going to be over one day. I don’t know if that will crush you into an existential crisis, but I do think about it. Why not? Why not now?

John: Why not now? Why not me? Why not this idea? Again, try. Just go.

One Cool Thing

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All right. It is time, Erin Gibson, for our one cool thing. My one cool thing is Lambert-related. I think you remember about Lambert is Lambert has the strongest teeth of any dog in the world and will destroy anything you give him. He won’t ruin things in the house. He’ll chew on pillows sometimes, but he’s generally a really well-behaved dog. Any dog toy you give him will be destroyed instantly. Except we have a new one. This is the Tuffy tug-of-war dog toy. It looks like two red donuts with a hyphen in between it. He loves it. He loves to play tug-of-war. You can pull and pull and pull, and it won’t rip apart.

He can chew on it. It won’t be destroyed. Literally, as long as I’ve known Lambert, we’ve never had a toy that can sit out other than a nylon bone or some sort of rubbery thing, which they really shouldn’t be eating. This is the one. If you have a dog who just destroys any toy you give them, I would say try the Tuffy tug-of-war dog toy available wherever you buy dog toys. It’s solid. It’s great. I’m so happy that we’ve finally found this one.

Erin: I’m happy for him.

John: He loves it. He genuinely loves it. He’ll bring it in from another room to play.

Erin: Mine is a painter, Agnes Pelton. She’s a desert transcendentalist, or was, rather. Do you know her?

John: I know, but I’m excited to hear about it.

Erin: Okay. I got full-body feels when I saw her artwork for the first time. She’s been rediscovered. She was rediscovered in the ’80s, but unfortunately died very unknown and came up with this incredible, ethereal way of painting.

John: I’m looking at this right now on the web. It’s gorgeous.

Erin: Stunning. Okay. I will steal this quote from The Observer because they nailed it. Quivering biological forms and soft beams of light.

John: That’s what it is.

Erin: She came. I’m living in New Mexico full-time, so it’s the number three art market in the US. I get exposed to a lot of art now. She’s one of these artists that had done all the stuff. She went to Pratt. She went to Italy, blah, blah, blah, but didn’t really nail her passion until she came to Taos and saw the light. There’s similar light in Colorado, but it’s just a very special quality of light. Then she created this way of painting and then died. All of her paintings went into a junk shop. Her friend came upon them. They were marked down $7 and bought all of them and preserved them. That’s why we have them.

John: Incredible.

Erin: Had I never seen her art, I guess I would have never known. You must see them in person. They’re quite large. I think there’s some at the Whitney. LACMA had a Desert Transcendentalist exhibit last year. They go around. If you see them, you have to see them in person. You will get body quivers seeing them. They’re so stunning.

John: I love them. They do look great as I’m looking through the stuff. Wikipedia, again, she died in 1961. It’s very early on. For it to be rediscovered later on, it’s fantastic. Great.

Erin: I know it’s bad to say art on a podcast, but I did it. I don’t care. Break the rules.

John: It’s fine.

Erin: Oh, I also have a second one cool thing. It’s called The Wax Child. There’s this bookstore in Canada that brings these books in from Europe. This is translated from, I don’t know. I feel like this is so up your alley. Anyway–

John: Pitch us The Wax Child because it’s how would this be a movie, or is this an adaptation waiting to happen?

Erin: Please somebody make this into a movie because I actually think it’s too scary for me to even read. Okay, I’ll read the back of the book. In 17th century Denmark, unmarried noblewoman Christine Z. Krukow and several other women are accused of witchcraft. They are rumored to be possessed by the devil, who comes to them in the form of a tall, headless man and gives them dark powers. It is said they perform unchristian acts and can steal people’s happiness, cause pestilence, illness, or even death. Once the rumor of witchcraft takes hold, they are hell in danger of the stake. Narrated by a wax doll.

John: Exactly. On your podcast, you were reading that first paragraph basically, which is from the point of view of the wax doll and what the wax doll was. I’m so creeped out.

Erin: You don’t have time for this. This is the first sentence. I’m a child shaped in beeswax. I am made like a doll the size of a human forearm. They have given me hair and fingernail pairings from the person who is to suffer. I fucking love it. I cannot read one more book about someone’s missing husband. I need this weird shit. I was going to send you this book because you can’t get this in the States.

John: It’s Canada only. That is our show. Scriptnotes is produced by Meredith Stedman with help from Lauren Loesberg. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Matt Gillespie. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask @johnaugust.com. That is also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com. The Scriptnotes book is available wherever you buy books. Scriptnotes merch is available at Cotton Bureau. If you would like to see us, not just listen to us, follow us on YouTube and Instagram.

If you’d like to read us, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. Most of all, thank you to our premium subscribers. You can send to become one at scriptnotes.net, where you get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on living and working outside of Los Angeles. Most crucially, Erin Gibson, thank you for being on the show. Please listen to Attitudes because you get to have Erin and Brian every week being very, very funny and talking about the important issues of the times.

Erin: Yes, maybe it makes things not as sad. Question mark?

John: Also, not only do you get the main feed, but you can also subscribe to the premium feeds, and you can go back and learn about groceries. You can learn about the other thing you’re doing.

Erin: We do a show about grocery stores. I’m telling you, live your weird dreams, everybody.

John: If you want to dig into the archives, you can also learn about dolls or Dateline recaps.

Erin: Thanks, John.

Bonus Segment

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[music]

John: All right. Here we are in the bonus segment. As I’m talking to you on this episode, you are in Vancouver. Thank you very much for recording this with us from Vancouver. I first knew you when you were living in Los Angeles, and you moved out of Los Angeles before it was cool to move out of Los Angeles. You moved out pre-pandemic, right?

Erin: It wasn’t my choice. Yes, but I did it. I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, home of boomers and the desert.

John: You were moving to Santa Fe because you had your father, your mother-in-law, your brother. You needed a compound where you could keep everyone together; that’s just not practical to do in Los Angeles. You needed some place where you could have everyone close, but not necessarily under one roof, but close.

Erin: Yes. We had parents who had run their lives into the ground. We were their Obi-Wan Kenobi. We were their last hope. Is that right? I don’t remember the story.

John: Absolutely. There was a droid involved. There was a little holographic projection. Leia was there. Like them, you came to the desert to–

Erin: Very Tatooine coded.

John: I knew hope was established. What I admired about that is I thought, wait, is she quitting? Is she retiring? Is she giving up? No, you just kept working and working and working because Santa Fe is not close, but it’s not that far. You were driving, and you were just driving to just do stuff.

Erin: Yes. Also, this happened right before COVID. I was lucky in that everything went remote. Nobody even knew I was in Santa Fe because everything was always on a Zoom room. Nobody even knew. I looked, and then COVID started. We all got vaccinated, and now we’re here. I just kept saying, I’ll keep writing until nobody wants me anymore, because you can’t live in Santa Fe full-time.

John: Tell us about that.

Erin: You will go feral.

John: I have never been to Santa Fe. I don’t remember. I’m sure I went through there as a kid because my family traveled to 48 states and visited basically everywhere. Pitch me Santa Fe, pros and cons.

Erin: Pros: so much beautiful light, the most stunning orange light you’ve ever seen in your life. You fall in love. If you’re fighting with your husband and the sun starts going down, and you see the sunset, all is forgiven. It washes away all of your sadness. It’s dry as hell. Your face turns into Skeletor. I’ll do a pro and then a con. Another pro: the smartest people you’ll ever meet. It is so international, and because Los Alamos is nearby, we have the highest per capita of scientists anywhere in the US. Our governor is a doctor. We had such an aggressive COVID protocol when COVID happened.
There are smart people all around. Rich people drive shitty cars. Nobody gives a shit what you do. Nobody cares how much money you have. Everyone’s on the same playing field. It’s really cool in that way. There’s industry people, but people don’t want to talk about work. People want to share art, and they want to tell you about an awesome book that they just read. It feels like an artist’s colony. It really, truly does.

John: Is it right for parody the way that Portland was for Portlandia? Is there a comedic way into Santa Fe?

Erin: Well, okay, yes, because there’s a lot of rich white people who do cowboy cosplay. My friend–

John: Jackson, Wyoming is a similar thing.

Erin: Yes, it’s very similar. Santa Fe has just more of a varied population because culturally it’s very mixed and that’s exciting, but it’s the oil tycoons who love to paint. That’s where I would say the comedy would come from.

John: I love that. Talk to us about managing your career outside there because in that time you were also doing the Looney Tunes show. You were doing a bunch of other stuff. When you do need to come to Los Angeles, how often were you there? How were you doing it? Where were you living? What were you doing?

Erin: I just go from Albuquerque to Burbank. I do same-day meetings, and I go back the same day. It’s nothing. It’s like you could live in San Francisco and do the same thing. I have a friend who has a back house. I stay with her. I sleep on people’s couches if I need to. I have my friends there. I can do it because I have friends. I have friends.

John: It would be possible, but difficult to start your career just commuting in because you wouldn’t have the casual connections that you developed over that time. An established writer can now leave pretty easily, you think.

Erin: Yes. Everyone I know in L.A. does Zoom pitches. What does it matter if I’m in? Also, listen, I know the industries and the state that it’s in. I am doing a show in Vancouver. Because I’ve lived in Santa Fe, if I have to go shoot a show somewhere else, I don’t feel the upheaval as badly as if I lived in L.A. I’m very pivotable because my life is already going back and forth. I used to be a touring comedian. I like to be on a plane. I like to be in different places. It feels exciting to me. Santa Fe is a place I can not feel the pressure of career stuff. When you go to parties in L.A., people can’t help themselves. They just Asperger’s style is to start talking about the business.

John: That’s true.

Erin: There’s no breaks from it. There’s no breaks. Your social life is work. You wake up saying you’re not doing enough.

John: Our town is basically a Hollywood town. At least our section of the town is that. If we lived further south, it would be aerospace. If we lived in San Francisco, it would be tech. That’s just the standard conversation. What is the standard Santa Fe conversation? Are you even going out to hang out with folks?

Erin: Yes. I went to a brewery where there was a marimba group, social group playing marimbas, all ages.

John: That’s the comedy of Santa Fe.

Erin: There is so much weird shit going on. I can’t even tell you. Everything is weird. It’s wonderful.

John: I grew up in Boulder, Colorado. A lot of this is familiar to me on that level. A lot of over-educated people who are working at Starbucks.

Erin: Yes. We have a plant store called Plants of the Southwest, and there’s a restaurant inside of it. You can only pay via check.

John: Incredible.

Erin: These details are great for a writer because I just absorb what’s around me. I absorb it all. We had to get a document notarized. The woman who came to do the notarization at our house also is a mechanic. She looked at our car afterwards because we got a– It’s that. Everyone does 75 different– Our plumber is a hardcore guy from Guadalajara. He loves Enya. It is characters welcome. I love it.

John: What’s also nice is that you’re getting different references than everybody else is getting because anyone who’s living in Los Angeles has the same kinds of things are happening. It’s all about [unintelligible 01:07:12] or whatever. You’re getting very specific, weird niche things, which is great. A lot of our favorite comedies come from, again, smart observations about unusual things that reveal a bigger pattern that you wouldn’t have otherwise noticed.

Erin: When I watched Widows Bay, I was like, “When did Katie Dippel live in Santa Fe?” That’s East Coast Santa Fe.

John: Again, it’s the specificity of your experience and specificity of Widows Bay, that town. It’s just everyone’s not behaving the way they should be behaving according to television rules.

Erin: When I wrote my book, my editor gave me a very specific note. She goes, this feels too West Coast elite. She was mean. I learned a lot from her because she was not letting me get away with anything. She goes, “You’re from Texas, and you should own that. You shouldn’t put on a hat that you are somebody else. That’s going to be more charming.” I feel that way in L.A. I feel like it gets insular, and your experiences get very– By the way, it’s unavoidable. These jobs suck up your life. Sometimes you go from one job to the next, and you don’t even have time to go experience anything else.
That’s why I was saying in the main feed, please go do stuff when you have time because you will lose time later. You need to have a bank account of experiences to pull from when your career starts because you’re not going to get time to do that stuff.

John: I love Chaperone, challenging figure on many levels, but she’s taking time off now to fill up her bank. I get that. She’s really young, and she’s like, “I wrote about everything I know. I need to find some new things to write about.”

Erin: Well, David Bowie did it, didn’t he? He took time off and lived in, I don’t know where he lived. I just watched the documentary, and I already forgot. To just check out and not be yourself and do something else– It’s why I love Santa. I moved to Santa Fe because of family stuff, but I stayed in Santa Fe because I love Santa Fe. I love what a wealth of character, and everyone’s just being themselves and nobody is trying to be anybody else.

John: That’s nice. It’s also nice to be the one Hollywood person there rather than everybody else around you. Other friends you push away, they are finding that is a good part of it instead of like, “Oh, I’m the oddball, and that’s nice.”

Erin: I’ll speak for comedy writers, tend to go very negative and be like, “Oh, this thing isn’t the best. Oh, I’m not on this show. I wanted to get this show,” negative, negative, negative. Even when I was doing the Amblin Warner Brothers cartoon, which was turned out to be– I pitched an adult cartoon, and they aged it down, so I was now in a children’s cartoon. I was really in my head about it because I was like, “This is going to fuck my career up.” Nobody’s going to hire me after this. I was in Santa Fe, and so everyone thought it was cool. It was cool.

John: Yes, it was cool.

Erin: I was getting a really cool opportunity to learn animation. I was writing a lot of TV that I could fuck up in a vacuum if I wanted. I mean, it needed to be good, but it wasn’t like I was writing on The Office and fucking up.

John: Yes, the stakes were low.

Erin: They were low, and everyone thought it was cool. Everybody thought it was cool. It was a nice reminder of, like, oh, yes, I have a nice job. I have a fun job. It doesn’t matter where it falls in the echelon of what everyone in L.A. thinks is cool or not cool. This person working at the sushi place thinks I’m cool. That’s nice.

John: Yes, you’re the only animation writer she knows.

Erin: She doesn’t know I’m the worst one.

John: Erin Gibson, you are my favorite animation writer living in Santa Fe. An absolute joy having you on the show. Thank you again for coming on. You’re the best.

Erin: Thank you, too. I love this show. I said it before. I love this show so much. I listened to this show when I was in Santa Fe, when I was feeling very sad about L.A., and I always had this connection, and it means a lot to me.

John: All right. Big hug.