Wrapping It Up with Hacks

Prologue

Wrapping Up Hacks’ Final Season

Dying to Love You by D.M. Hoke

You’re Dead to Me by Jaz Garawal

Monster Law and Reading for the Room

One Cool Thing

Bonus Segment

John August: Hello and welcome. My name is John August. This is episode 747 of Scriptnotes. It’s a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Often on this podcast, we are talking about how projects began. Today on the show, let’s talk about how things end. We’re joined by two other creators and showrunners behind one of my very favorite TV shows, Hacks, to look at the creative and practical considerations when it comes to wrapping up that series.

Then it’s time for a new round of the three-page challenge, where we look at the first three pages in your script and give our honest feedback. In this case, from two writers who often have to read scripts to cast and for staffing on their shows. Let’s welcome these guests. Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello-

Lucia Aniello: Hi.

John: -are the married co-creators of Hacks and many other things. I was looking through, and I’ve seen, I think, everything you’ve done-

Lucia: No.

Paul W. Downs: Wow.

John: -which is wild. Broad City, Rough Night, Time-Traveling Bong.

Paul: You have.

Lucia: You’ve seen? Oh my God.

John: I’ve seen Time Traveling Bong.

Lucia: You’re a bong head.

John: I’m a bong head.

Paul: Wow. Ilana is going to be so happy. I literally tell her every time I meet someone who’s seen it or even knows of it. I give her a text.

John: Absolutely. I could have just paid you the $5 myself. I know the economics of those kinds of movies. It’s great to finally meet you.

Lucia: Likewise.

Paul: Nice to meet you too.

Lucia: Thank you so much.

Paul: Long time.

Lucia: We really are-

John: Thank you.

Lucia: -long, long time.

John: We’ve had Jen Statsky on the show several times talking about Hacks, and so it feels really nice to wrap up the Hacks experience with the two of you. In our bonus segment for premium members, I also want to talk about cameos because we were discussing around the office it feels like there’s this network of people who cameo in different people’s projects, which is great, but also what are the considerations for asking for a cameo, getting a cameo, doing a cameo, stuff that’s essentially free? I want to talk about cameos in our bonus segment. First, I want to talk about reputation.

Paul: Uh-oh. Not mine. Please, not mine.

[laughter]

Paul: Don’t start with me.

John: A very specific example. It is summer in 2022, and we were on the East Coast looking at colleges for my daughter because she’s applying to colleges, and we’re in Amherst, Massachusetts. I need to go get my hair cut. I go to the local barber. I go to Sandy’s Barbershop, and the barber asks, “Oh, so what do you do?” I say, “I’m a screenwriter.” He’s like, “Oh, we’ve got a screenwriter here.” They’re like, “Oh, you must know Lucia Aniello because she’s a big deal in Hollywood.”

Paul: Oh my God.

John: The thing is I did know because I’d seen all of your things, and so I’d recognized your name. I’d never met her, but I was like, “Oh, she’s fantastic.” They’re like, “Damn right she’s fantastic.”

Paul: Oh my God.

John: The barbers of Amherst, Massachusetts, are very proud of you.

Lucia: Shout out Amherst, Mass. Shout out Western Mass, the Pioneer Valley. I’m from Hadley, Massachusetts. My parents own restaurants in the area. Because of that, my parents were very much people in town in Amherst.

John: I got that sense that they were.

Lucia: I think as a result, there’s a community there of people. They don’t live there anymore, but there’s a community of people who have my back and are dropping my name. I appreciate you, and I love you.

Paul: Hello, Claire and Meryl, because much like you, they listen to everything we record. They will be hearing this and be very excited.

John: I want to talk about reputation because it’s one of those things that is simultaneously incredibly important but not yet a thing you can really control. You can try to control it, but it’s fundamentally owned by other people. I think it plays an important role in Hacks because Deborah Vance is so concerned about her reputation. She’s trying to manage it, but it’s outdated her. It doesn’t actually match the real person.

Then, of course, Ava comes in and just one bad tweet has ruined her reputation. A reputation can be a liability or a huge asset. I’d love to dig into reputation a bit. I knew of you and, Lucia, I’ve known your work, and so your reputation is really good. It’s not surprising that the barbers of Amherst, Massachusetts, knew it too.

[laughter]

Paul: I love that.

John: When were you first aware of a reputation or trying to make sure the work you were doing represented who you wanted to be?

Lucia: I think it’s really interesting because there’s two versions. There’s the person that you actually are interacting with crew and executives and people who watch your work. There’s that world, but there’s also the work itself and the messaging you’re putting out in the world. I think we’d like to think that the work that we do is pretty cohesive in some ways, even though some are about a time-traveling bong and others are about a 70-something-year-old standup. I still think that there is a messaging behind all of it that just feels like we’re commenting on culture and what is good about culture and what is not good about culture through characters and stories.

Then, yes, the person that you are actually moving through the world I think it’s hard because when you’re making things, sometimes, of course, want to have the highest respect for your collaborators and everything. I also have to be completely honest. I’m sure that there’s some people out there who may be some background person, and some may be frustrated in some moment. Maybe that’s their perception of me.

Paul: No.

[laughter]

John: Never.

Lucia: You never know.

Paul: Yes, of course.

Lucia: I think it’s okay to acknowledge the idea that you want to have a good reputation, but that’s just the ripple effect of who you actually are day-to-day. Hey, we all go to therapy and try to be the best people we can be, but it’s something that I think we all strive to be good about.

Paul: It’s interesting we’re talking about reputation because in our work, obviously, there is the reputation offscreen and also then what you’re putting out into the world. It’s interesting that as we’re talking about it, it’s occurring to me that a lot of the work that we’ve done is very, very personal. It is an extension of what we hope our reputations will be.

With Broad City, Abbi and Ilana played Abbi and Ilana. Obviously, they were fictionalized versions of themselves. Actually, my character, I played Trey, the trainer at Solstice, very different from my kind of personality. That said, I do think the work, it is a representation of our values and our beliefs and a lot of the things that we want to put out into the world. It’s interesting that the work is very tied to what your reputation or the reputation you hope you have. Like you say, you can’t really control it.

John: I think it’s important that you’re finding two different ways. It’s the work you’re putting out there in the world. It’s what anybody from a distance can see. As you know, as you’re looking to collaborate with somebody, it’s like the reputation is really what is the whispers about the person. You’re calling up to ask, “What is it really like to work with the person?”
That’s where you find out that some people who have great work out there are actually just monsters, or they’re not as good as they’re supposed to be, or that movie, they didn’t really direct it; it was taken away from them. All those things are factors. It’s challenging because you do this for other people and you’re always mindful, “Are people doing that for me too? What is my reputation?”

Paul: Totally. It is something we think about because we’re called all the time about actors or writers or people that we’ve collaborated with, and what it’s like to work with them. Oprah says, she got this from Maya Angelou, that when someone tells you who they are the first time, believe them. That said, we’ve also heard things in the past about actors that might have been tricky to work with, and we’ve said, “We really feel like they’re exactly right for this part. We’re still going to work with them.” We’ve found them to be delightful.

Sometimes I think the reputation is very site-specific. It depends on a lot of factors. Making something obviously takes a whole community of people. The alchemy of that can sometimes impact one’s behavior and then reputation. Sometimes I think reputation, you do have to experience it, and you have to give people space to be better behaved on your set.

Lucia: I think that’s actually very true. We do very consciously, and actually Jean Smart, who plays Deborah Vance, is very helpful in this because she’s number one on the call sheet, and so that really sets a tone. We really try to make people feel comfortable and welcome on our set. We really do have a very, very lovely set. I do think that immediately makes maybe some tricky actors, they don’t put–

Paul: Their claws aren’t out.

Lucia: The claws aren’t out.

Paul: The fangs are hidden.

Lucia: I think that those people who maybe people have said have a tricky reputation, it feels like if you just make them feel comfortable and confident that you’re all of a sudden getting a completely different person, and that person can then be funnier because they feel more comfortable and confident.

Paul: As Lucia said, often the tone is set by the number one on your call sheet or the showrunners of the show. We have heard that. The reason I reiterate that is because I don’t want to seem self-aggrandizing. We have heard from actors like, “I was different on your set. I felt different on your set. Your set was a different vibe than other sets,” which we want it to be fun because it is a comedy. Ultimately, it’s a show about comedy, so we really want people to feel comfortable and confident to try things and discover things and make it feel as alive as it can. It is a conscious thing that we all try hard to do.

John: In terms of making choices about the work you do, are you ever worried about your reputation? Like, you’re not taking a project because it doesn’t fit, brand sounds terrible, but it doesn’t feel like a thing I would want to do. I don’t want to be associated with that person, with that project, with that idea.

Lucia: I think the truth is is there’s so little material out there that we, I don’t want to say connect to, but so much of it is self-

Paul: Generated.

Lucia: -generated that we don’t really encounter that too, too much.

Paul: As an actor, I feel that a little bit more.

Lucia: I knew you’d say that it’s different for you.

Paul: There are things that I’m like, “If I do that, it’s similar to the character I did on Broad City.” It’s like, I don’t want to be typecast in that way. I think maybe more as an actor. As writers and producers, I feel like it is all about the idea. If we spark to it, we spark to it. I don’t think we’re too conscientious about the brand. I think it’s more about what is the thing and what is it adding to the world.

As we started talking about with reputation, I think reputation is linked to legacy. I think we’re a little bit, in a way, like Deborah Vance. We’re always thinking about what we leave behind. I don’t think it’s as much about the brand, the style, the thing, as it is about just what the story is that we’re putting into the world.

John: One of the challenges is that you can be thinking, “I have an opinion about a thing, but I don’t want to say my opinion about a thing because it’s going to be a whole cycle of dealing with people’s reaction to that thing.”

Paul: Totally.

John: One of the luxuries of writing a show is that you can put some of those thoughts in other characters’ mouths-

Paul: 100%.

John: -and get them out that way. I think playwrights are often doing that. They can be the most hateful versions of themselves and those characters onstage.

Paul: Oh, yes. I think it’s so funny because with Deborah and Ava, they’re obviously very differing viewpoints about the world. There are seeds of truth to both. We try to come at them with a lot of compassion in terms of the way that we write their points of view, but also we share points of view with one or the other depending on what it is. It is interesting that we get to do that. We get to have–

Lucia: Our cake and eat it too.

Paul: Yes. We get to air our grievances with the world or not.

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John: Let’s talk about this final season. I loved it, but I was also really curious about when did you know practically and creatively that this was going to be the final season and what were some decisions going into it? When did you know that was going to be the end?

Paul: I think we knew about the length of seasons a little bit before the midway point. We had pitched the biggest tent poles of the series.

John: I remember Jen came on the show and she talked through what that was going to be. I don’t know if she’s told you this story, but I had a prediction for what was going to happen in one season-

Lucia: Yes, that’s-

Paul: Yes, I know.

John: -and I mailed her.

Paul: Sent that letter. I know.

John: [unintelligible]

Paul: I know. We were so excited. I know. I really wanted to open it early, and she wouldn’t.

Lucia: That’s true.

Paul: I was like, “Open it now.”

Lucia: “Open it. What if there’s a good idea?”

Paul: “What if we have to change it?” She was like, “Guys, no.” I tell you what, her morals are really in tune.

John: I could see it. Since that’s her reputation as a woman of strong principles.

Paul: She is.

Lucia: She is.

Paul: That should be her representation.

Lucia: She believes in justice.

Paul: It’s true. Very much. She is also a Massachusetts girl, and so she gets lit up by injustice.

Lucia: We call her the Boston Bean. [laughs]

Paul: Boston Bean is coming out. She’s fighting for what’s right. We knew that she’s going to go on the road. She’s going to get a late-night show. She’s not going to have that the whole time. It’s not going to be Larry Sanders. She’s going to eventually leave that. We pitched the final episode where she wants to call her own light. We knew a lot of those things. I think it was around Season 2 that we were like, “This feels like five seasons. We feel like next season she’s going to be striving to get the chair for late night. Season 4 is probably what we’ll explore as the late-night chapter of the story.

John: Finally getting what she wanted.

Paul: Exactly. I think we knew it around Season 2 that we hoped it would be five seasons. We didn’t know if we would ever get it. The runway, the amount of story that it took to get to those milestones, was in flux until probably Season 2 or 3.

Lucia: Yes. The beginning of Season 5, we were really already grieving the end. We were like, “What if Season 5 is two six-episode season?” You know what I mean? We were trying to stretch it out, but in the end we were like– [crosstalk]

Paul: We were asked a lot, “Is this the final season?” We didn’t want to say that because even though we knew what the end would be, we were like, “Could we make it? Could we do the Breaking Bad thing? Do two shorter ones?” We’ve loved making the show, and we feel so lucky to have made a five-season comedy that, even though we were so lucky to end it on our own terms, it felt also a little bit crazy to be like, “We’re going to say goodbye before we’re being asked to.”

Lucia: It feels honestly like breaking up with a soulmate. And you’re like, “There will be others, but this was so special.” It’s been really hard for us.

John: Let’s talk about the writing process behind this. You went into the room knowing this was going to be the final season. What did the whiteboard look like? It sounds like you knew what the last episode was, but you didn’t necessarily know what the beats were going before then.

Paul: No.

John: Talk to me about that.

Lucia: No. We knew that we wanted to have her strive towards something, but that thing that she would get would then be– it’s not a MacGuffin exactly, but it would be something where she thinks that the professional goal is the thing, but then by the very, very end, she realized the goal wasn’t the thing. It was the creation. It was the getting there. It was the, as she says in Season 1, the scratch and the claw is the fun part. We did know we wanted her to have this goal of an MSG or what ended up being MSG.

Paul: We didn’t know that would be it. I think very much like what happens in the first episode of the final season, she struggles with “what will be my legacy and what is the thing I need to do? What is the win I have to be the lead of my obituary?” because it was falsely printed and it was not flattering. She’s very determined to change it. And she and Ava have this discussion about what is the ultimate goal for a comedian.

And we had the discussion in the writer’s room. What is the ultimate goal for a standup? If it’s not to host a late-night show or to have a sitcom, both of which she tried and failed at doing, it was to sell out a major arena like MSG. Once we had that, then it was easier to build episodes around that goal. Also, in a final season, you’re also serving all of your characters and saying goodbye.

John: Absolutely. Thinking through what is the last time we’re going to see this character. What is the degree that they have arcs? How are you closing off their arcs? What did that process look like? How long is the room?

Lucia: 20 weeks.

John: 20 weeks, okay.

Lucia: 20 weeks. By week 16 or 17, we’re starting prep.

Paul: Which usually takes Lucia out of the room for some of it.

Lucia: A little bit, yes. I direct usually the first block of this episode, so usually three or so. Then Paul usually does some in the middle. If we have somebody do another episode, we really like having guest directors, but because of the way that we block shoot, it’s really hard for us to do it because it spreads a director over months and months, and then it becomes extremely cost-prohibitive to have other directors.

Paul: Also, they can’t take other work because they have to be on call if we move a scene up or what have you.

John: Give us an example. Practically, what a block looks like. You said first, two or three episodes. They’re cross-boarded across those three?

Lucia: It’s cross-boarded across those three, but if there’s a scene from episode 7 that is in that one location that we’re doing the first block, we’re pulling it up.

John: In this final season, it’s like, “What are the locations you would need to come back to?”

Lucia: We started in New York.

Paul: That’s right. We started in New York partly because of weather, which meant there were things from the final two episodes that we had to pull up to the very first day of shooting, which was really wild. It’s very hard for the actors.

John: At this point, have they seen all the scripts, or you’re basically just giving them the scenes?

Paul: No.

Lucia: We were just giving them scenes.

John: Would everything be written, or everything is a little in flux?

Lucia: The last one or two episodes we’re still finishing, but we knew enough that we knew that the ninth episode, which is what we started shooting, we knew what it would be. We just got it together enough to be like, “This is what we’re shooting.” They didn’t know what it was exactly, but we did shoot those things first.

Paul: Obviously, the hardest thing to write was the finale. Even though we knew where we were going, it was so hard to say goodbye to everybody, check all of the boxes. Also, you want to give your audience a satisfying goodbye, and so there was a lot of thought put into that. That said, usually I think the hardest episode is the first episode of the season. In a way, starting with some of the stuff at the latter end, I felt comforted by it. I was like, “Great.” We know where we’re going, even though it took a lot of writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. It was nice to start that way.

John: Locations, so there’s Los Angeles, there’s Las Vegas, there’s New York, there’s Paris.

Lucia: Yes.

John: Is there any other places you travel to?

Lucia: Not this season.

Paul: Mostly it’s in LA.

John: Things that look like Vegas are actually in Los Angeles, same with New York City.

Paul: Yes.

John: Good.

Lucia: Yes.

John: Good.

Paul: All of our interiors are here in Los Angeles. We do usually spend a week or maybe two at most doing exteriors or big casino shots in Vegas because it’s very hard to fake that. Otherwise, yes, everything is here in Los Angeles.

Lucia: It has been since the beginning, and we’re really proud and happy to be here.

John: Lucia, you said from the very first episode of the show the idea of oners and these long tracking shots. Do you feel an urge to top yourself each season with those?

Lucia: Yes. I think we do write very visually, and so we do put a lot of that stuff into the script. Also, it’s this really interesting thing where you want to have visual motifs that you repeat, but you also don’t want it to feel like, “Oh, that’s all the show does.” You do want to push yourself. There’s also just part of the vocabulary of the show is things such as in the very first episode in the pilot and then also in the finale. Like when Deborah is having that conversation with Marty and he’s like, “Oh, I’m taking your dates away,” the first half of the scene is shot on sticks.

Then as the scene turns, it goes to handheld. We did the same in the finale when Deborah is telling Ava that she’s sick and that she wants to go to Paris to, spoiler alert, end her life. We do the same thing where it sticks, and then it becomes handheld. Those things that are supposed to be imperceptible, I do want to continue throughout the series. In terms of the [unintelligible 00:18:51] we also have the visual– The opening of the pilot was behind Deborah, and the opening of-

Paul: The finale.

Lucia: -yes, episode 10 is behind Ava and her first day as a showrunner who’s making dinner. Those things, those mirrorings, I do think are worth doing without pushing yourself to do something new. Then yes, there are things like when we were in Paris, I wanted it to feel like a slightly different language. They’re in this little love cocoon, and so those shots felt different. The coverage felt a little different. It was a little bit more voyeur. We were watching them actually on vacation. I really try to just think about it as just story and, yes, reinvention and one-upping, but not for my own boredom or ego or something. It’s to do it always-

John: Absolutely.

Lucia: -for the story.

John: You’re saying it’s mirroring because it’s just making people feel rewarded for having paid attention.

Lucia: Exactly.

John: Awesome.

Lucia: Yes. For me personally, if you’re watching something I directed, I don’t ever want you to be like, “Oh, that feels like it’s a Lucia Aniello direction thing,” because I really don’t ever want my style to supersede what’s best for story. I just want it to be good.

John: You have scripts written, you start shooting, and you’re starting to say goodbye to people in front of the lens, behind the lens. Talk to me about that because it’s got to be just different. Obviously, any show could go away at any time. When you’re wrapping somebody out of an episode or wrapping a season, you don’t know that everyone is going to come back. In this case, everyone does know that they’re not coming back. People are also probably thinking about, “What is my next shot going to be?” Can you talk about some of the practical considerations of shooting a final season knowing that it’s the end?

Paul: Yes. I think it’s very sad to say goodbye to people. As you wrap them out, there were tears every block because you were saying goodbye to characters as they finished. It was really interesting. No one, I don’t think, was thinking about their next job. It was the most fun season to shoot. I think everyone was like, “Wow, this is the last time. Let’s really appreciate it,” which was so nice. There was certainly a lot of pressure and stress to get it right because it was the ending. We always say if you watch Chopped, it’s all about the ending.

Lucia: Whoever wins the dessert round wins the episode.

Paul: You really want it to feel good in the end. That said, even though there was so much pressure to make it good, people had the most fun. Jean broke the most this season that she’s ever broken, and she never breaks. She’s a theater actress who is really hard to break, and she broke the most she’s ever broken. It was just a very fun season. It just felt very nice to appreciate each other because it was the end.

The one practical thing was when it was someone’s last day, being like, “We’re going to wrap them out and just get everyone ready.” You know what I mean? It was like, “We’re going to do the thing.” Everyone was bracing for that and making sure that other casts who might be in a changeover were present so that they could actually say goodbye to Poppy Liu, for example.

John: The first season was great. I think you didn’t know while you were shooting the first season that there would be a second season.

Paul: No.

John: It was a good experience.

Paul: We didn’t know any season.

Lucia: That’s true.

Paul: Honestly, we didn’t know. It was never a guarantee.

Lucia: Maybe the fifth season, I think we knew was going to be– after the end of the fourth, we felt confident we’d get a fifth, but that’d probably be the only one. [chuckles]

Paul: Yes. I think that was the only one. We never really knew.

John: It’s different than the classic TV shows. If you’re on Friends, you know that Friends isn’t coming back until it’s not coming back.

Paul: Right. Exactly.

John: You’re this weird middle exception where it’s just like you’ve shot back-to-back or felt like back-to-back much more frequently than other shows do. There wasn’t this two-year gap between seasons. Talk to us about the– you wrap a season and you start a new season. What was the space of time in between there? How long was it? What were the conversations?

Lucia: Do you want to know how long?

John: That’s right.

Lucia: 48 hours.

John: Incredible.

Paul: That was maybe the longest. We usually were doing, let’s say, promotion for a season that was still airing, and then starting the writer’s room for the next season. When we started and when it aired, put us on a track that was like if you do want to, do it annually. Part of that decision came from story because the very first season, it ends on a plane. Ava realizes that, in a drunken pill-addled stupor, she sent a very revealing email, and that’s going to come to pass in the next season. We picked up 40 minutes later. Because we picked up so soon, that was part of it.

Obviously, we also enjoy, as viewers of TV, when our shows return. There are shows that we’re like, “Where is it?” There’s so many shows that we’re like, “Please, I need you to come back.” We did want to give that experience of viewer that it was coming back. Also, it served the story because it was so on the heels of what had just happened in the first season. Then once we set up that momentum, we had to keep it up. There was no time. There was no break.

Lucia: The only time that we had a break was during the strikes. We did skip a year that time. Randomly, the story was time-passed.

Paul: That was actually bizarre.

Lucia: That was perfect. We really have almost no time. We edit on the weekends when we’re shooting. By the time we wrapped this past season, we had already locked eight episodes,-

John: Great.

Lucia: -which is obviously very hard because production is already hard enough. Then to be editing every single weekend for four months straight is really taxing. It also meant that as we’re editing, if there’s something that we haven’t shot yet and we know this could use some clarification, we’re actually going to be shooting that scene, “Let’s tweak that.” It made it so we could fine-tune the writing as we’re shooting, which we don’t do on a massive scale. I think there’s only one scene that we added.

It does really help us because we’re just so in it. It also helps, I think, us as directors because we’re thinking about how we’re covering things. It’s like, “We just saw that. We should change up the way that they’re in the office, this next one, and we saw that one already.” It just helps you be in the groove.

Paul: The rewriting is so served by us watching the story as it goes and then being like, “Oh, we need to rewrite this to be this,” or “We really need to underline this idea so it’s not missed.”

John: As you’re wrapping stuff up, there’s all the people leaving and leaving, crew on and on, the cast leaving and crew leaving, but also post-production, it’s like, “Oh, that editor is done forever.” When did your offices closed, or are the offices closed?

Paul: Great question.

John: Is it just one by one people disappear,-

Lucia: Yes.

John: -or is there just a day where it’s all done?

Lucia: No. It’s one by one. This editor is done, but their assistant editor is still on for a couple weeks, and then that person is moving on. It’s one by one. It slowly disappears. It’s so funny. We just had a conversation the other day about bloopers and the servers.

Paul: Clear the servers.

Lucia: They want to clear the servers.

John: Clear the servers.

Paul: They want to clear the servers. It’s so weird. We’re also talking to HBO about when they close the Instagram. We’re like, “Oh my God, this sounds so sad.”

Lucia: It does.

Paul: “Close the Instagram. Give it to us. We’ll post random pictures.

Lucia: They said they wouldn’t. They won’t give it to us.

Paul: No. They were like, “No.” They were like, “It’s going to be retired,” which is so bizarre.

John: It’s weird.

Paul: It’s so weird. It’s so weird.

Lucia: There are still some little things left out there.

Paul: Clearing the servers is bone-chilling. I’m like, “Clearing the servers. What are you talking about?”

Lucia: That feels really bad. That feels like deleting a soul.

Paul: I know. I know.

John: It does. Let’s transition to talking about your features because you made two smaller features. Those are situations where they spring up, they exist, and everyone goes away. That’s how a feature works. That people don’t remain. Those servers got cleared off at some point too. Do you know where the footage is for Rough Night if you need to go back and do a thing?

Lucia: Absolutely not.

Paul: I don’t know if it exists.

Lucia: I have no idea. No. It exists on DVD.

John: It exists on DVD?

Paul: Maybe it was part of that Sony hacks. Maybe it exists somewhere on someone’s home server. I don’t know. They might have it.

Lucia: I have no idea. Randomly, that movie pops up on random streamers all the time.

Paul: It was so bizarre. Number one on HPMX recently, but not in America. Only international. It’s so weird how movies have that– they can have a second life, I guess.

Lucia: Yes. It’s interesting, though. Because it was such a shorter amount of time, it feels almost, I don’t know, like a kid that we had briefly had adopted for a year, and then we’re like, “Oh, how are you?”

John: I always thought of those as friends from camp who were like, “Oh my God, I love that. I haven’t thought about you in years.”

Paul: So right.

Lucia: It’s been nine years since that came out. Since Rough Night came out. Time Traveling Bong, it was originally made as a limited series.

Paul: Yes, prestige limited series.

John: Exactly.

Paul: It was one of those.

John: Was it Comedy Central?

Lucia: Yes.

Paul: Yes, it was Comedy Central.

Lucia: Which was so cool of them to let us make that. It was like a silly idea. We made it for a dollar.

Paul: We truly shot for 12 days or something.

Lucia: Yes, it was 12 days.

Paul: It was so fast.

Lucia: I don’t know. It was just one of the best experiences ever because it was just so fun. I really missed having a place where you can be like, “Hey, we’re friends. We make stuff here. Can we make this silly little thing?” “Yes, go make it.”

Paul: I miss Comedy Central so much.

Lucia: Really.

Paul: Originals.

Lucia: We banged the drum of like, what is the new Comedy Central? How about let’s just bring the old Comedy Central back?

John: Totally. Absolutely. That’s something we could do.

Paul: You never know. You never know.

Lucia: Comedy Central Originals, the origin for us.

John: I bring up the issue of where are the files because I have this hard drive that I’m pretty sure is all the avid stuff for my movie The Nines.

Paul: Really? Good for you.

John: I get the rights back to The Nines, I think next year.

Paul: Wow.

John: I could, in theory, do a thing or put it out on a different format. I realize there’s just very little out there about how to take back a film or what to do with that stuff. Honestly, if listeners have history or experience with getting the rights back to a movie, I’m curious what people will do because right now, Sony owns it through New Market. In theory, I get all the rights to the movie back.

Paul: Wow.

Lucia: That’s cool.

Paul: That’s great. Is that common? I don’t even know.

John: I think for true indies, it is common. It’s a 20-year deal or something that they made on it.

Paul: Wow.

John: I get stuff back on it. At some point, Time Traveling Bond could be yours.

Lucia: I hope so. Desperately. [laughs]

John: Desperately.

Paul: Yes. We love our lawyer, but I’m like, I doubt it. I’m like, “Wow, we’re getting anything back?” I don’t know.

John: Let’s segue to talking about some movies that could exist in the future. This is our three-page challenge. For folks who are new to the podcast, every so often, we invite listeners to send in the first three pages of their feature, their pilot, and we talk about them on the air. Everything we’re looking at, these people sent these in. They wanted the feedback and criticism. We are going to try to be constructive but honest because that is our reputation, is constructive but honest.

Paul: Okay. I’m trying to uphold that for you.

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John: I thought we might start with Dying to Love You, which is a script by D.M. Hoke. Do you have a synopsis for that?

Meredith Stedman: Yes. We begin with a rapid montage of our protagonist, Charlie, seeing her last boyfriends die in surprising and sudden ways. A sign falls on one boyfriend’s head while they’re up for ice cream. The next boyfriend trips and is impaled on knives in the dishwasher. The last boyfriend seems like he’s proposing to Charlie on a mountaintop when he’s knocked off, balanced by a bird, and falls off the cliff.

We quickly see that Charlie now chooses to live very much alone with the exception of her boyfriend’s stand-in, a framed poster of an action movie celebrity named Michael Johnson. The pages conclude with Charlie talking to her friend Aisha. Aisha implies that Charlie seems a bit depressed. Aisha also seems to be the sister of Charlie’s last boyfriend, Trey, the one that fell off the cliff.

John: That’s three pages of Dying to Love You. We’ll start on the title page here. Looks good. D.M. Hoke has representation, someone at the Beacon Agency. The Beacon Agency has a hotmail address. That doesn’t give me the strongest sense of confidence there. D.M. also has their phone number on it. How do we feel about phone numbers on scripts?

Paul: I’m loving the 973 because as a New Jersey boy, I’m really connected.

John: That’s the authenticity.

Paul: I instantly am like, “This is a Jersey boy or girl, don’t know.” Direct message Hoke. Not sure.

John: I think it’s Donna because it’s donnahoke.com.

Lucia: Hi, Donna.

John: That’s my guess.

Paul: Very, very good. Okay. Now you could open a detective agency. [laughter] I personally am connecting to it, but I don’t know. What do you think about putting your number on? Maybe that’s scary.

John: I think email addresses are fantastic. Everyone can reach out. I don’t want a random person calling me about the thing-

Paul: Of course.

John: -or texting me.

Paul: You’re going to call someone?

John: You’re not going to call somebody. Otherwise, great. Let’s talk about what we experienced over the course of these three pages. Who wants to start off?

Lucia: I was a little like, hey, sorry to be so gendered. I didn’t know Charlie was a girl for a second. I’m going, Charlie, say, girl Charlie. [laughs]

Paul: Probably she/her.

John: Until we get to her cone, hits the ground, we don’t know.

Paul: Right.

Lucia: It takes a second.

John: It does take a second.

Paul: I was interested in the tone. It has sort of this Final Destination thing of these people dying in rapid succession, but also the bird flying on his head and him falling off the cliff signaled to me that maybe it was a bit more comedic, that there is a campness to this. I think that’s the thing always when I’m reading something, is trying to get the tone, trying to get it as soon as I can. Hopefully, it’s right because you hate being in a screening of a movie or something and you laugh and you’re like, “Are people supposed to laugh?” You know what I mean?

John: Yes,

Paul: It’s terrifying if the filmmaker doesn’t want you to laugh now. I think tone is such an important thing. What do you think? That it’s comedic?

Lucia: It’s so interesting because it starts with this, what you’re saying, almost comedic Final Destination, but then it becomes this quiet, almost sweet conversation with a friend. I think you’re lonely. It does feel like there’s a tonal shift to me.

John: Also, the tone when we’re in her apartment and she’s talking to the poster, it’s like, “You’re a crazy person.” I wasn’t sure where I was at for that. The opening montage felt a little too fast. It’s boyfriend 1, boyfriend 2, boyfriend 3. Actually, the third one gets a name, but the first two, even if we don’t give them names, tell us what their life– just give us a physical description because boyfriend 1, I don’t know what I’m looking at.

Lucia: Totally.

Paul: It’s hard to connect. I think that this writer can do it because I felt like there were certain really evocative things that happened when she was in her apartment. There were certain mundane slice-of-life moments. Am I getting too ahead of us?

John: No, it’s perfect.

Lucia: Perfect

John: That’s great.

Paul: There were certain mundane slice-of-life moments like the single table setting or putting the toothbrush in the toothbrush holder that I thought were really Hemingway-esque. They were very evocative. They were very economical.

Paul: I really responded to that. I thought this is a great way to show that this woman is lonely. Now, this is all before she speaks to her poster as her fantasy world.

Lucia: Also, I was confused. Michael Johnson in I Die For You, I guess I was like, “Is this a real person?” It felt like it’s fictional.

John: It’s fictional, but I think it might be good to acknowledge it in the same description just because I-

Paul: Totally.

John: I see like, “Wait, it’s such a person not aware of?” At the top of page 2, we have these three suitors die, and then she’s walking home, and like an arrow from nowhere pierces this guy’s heart. I didn’t know it was a vision.

Paul: I didn’t either.

John: I was like, “Wait, that’s the fourth person?” That feels like you’re breaking the joke. Like, oh, no, it didn’t happen. There’s no acknowledgement that it didn’t happen.

Paul: That’s right.

Lucia: Right.

Paul: I think confusion, especially when someone is reading a script, is probably the worst thing. I went back and I was like, “Oh, I see. It’s italicized.” I think she’s indicating that it is just a vision, but there’s no she snaps out of it, which would have helped me.

Lucia: I guess the street sounds return is supposed to be the idea.

John: I think that sound cue is correct, but I think you just need a bigger signifier there to let us know that this was a fantasy because, otherwise, agreed. On page 2, if you’re confused about something, you’re going to probably put it down or you’re going to lose some faith in it. Last thing I’ll point out is this conversation with Aisha. Aisha has a keychain with her brother Trey’s face encased in plastic dangles from her purse. I’m just now realizing that Trey is the Black guy we saw die earlier. I think that keychain is going to be too small. We’re not going to be able to read it.

Lucia: Inserts are tough.

Paul: Inserts are tough.

John: Inserts are tough.

Paul: Inserts are tough. You only saw him for a brief moment.

John: Exactly.

Lucia: Right.

Paul: I assume that had this been four pages, we would have gotten a little bit more of that, but I agree. It’s another thing where I think you want to make it crystal clear to the viewer, and to the reader, what exactly is happening. What’s nice is you can make it more clear to the reader and the viewer because you can tell us in a stage direction.

John: Lucia, if you say more about why inserts are tough, because I think people have a hard time understanding. If you just pop in close on that thing, it’s really tough to put it editorially.

Lucia: It’s so funny because it’s tough because I think it always breaks up usually the flow of what you’re doing. Now you’re cutting to something that’s still an inanimate object. There is something about it that– Also photos, if it’s just a photo of a guy, then it’s fine, but so often photos of like– we have this a lot on Hacks, like Deborah Vance Young with Saddam Hussein or whatever, which is one we’ve done before. The photoshop is always a little weird and you’re just taken out of it. It’s just hard to do. Also for me personally, I’m not always wearing my glasses, and so I can’t, as a viewer, read inserts of texts. I can if I’m wearing my glasses, but oftentimes I’m saying to Paul, “What does that say?”

Paul: I do a lot of reading. I do a lot of reading out loud.

John: You’re the reader in the relationship.

Paul: I’m the reader. Yes.

Lucia: Even more than photo inserts, I would say texts on camera. You can shoot it, but if there’s any way to get around it, just don’t do it.

Paul: I don’t even want to say this because you know what? I don’t want to encourage it, but people watch on their phones. You know, I don’t. Sorry to brag. When people watch on their phones, everything is so much smaller. I think something like the key chain would be missed. I’m sure the goal is to have this on a very big screen.

Lucia: It’s an IMAX page.

Paul: I do think you want to think about the wider audience, and so it’s challenging. Nowadays there’s so many inserts of phones, which always takes me out because I’m always seeing, again, maybe it’s because of knowing how the sausage is made, but I’m always seeing the actor hold their phone so still and turn into the reflection.

John: No one does like that.

Paul: I just feel that in a way that does take me out of story sometimes.

John: I strongly support the move towards if someone is typing on a phone, print that on the screen so we can see it. I like subtitles because they’re like, come on, let us read what’s happening.

Paul: I remember seeing that, I think in House of Cards was the first time I encountered it, and I was like, “Oh yes, great. I’m seeing what’s happening. I’m hearing it.”

Paul: It was a good technique.

Lucia: Early House of Cards, so good.

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John: Let’s move on to our next sample here. This is You’re Dead to Me by Jaz Garawal. Can you give us a synopsis?

Meredith: This script starts in the middle of a recording session for NPR’s show Marketplace. An executive from Harper Collins is the subject of the current interview. During the recording session, a frazzled NPR producer named Lewis keeps getting called by his brother who has annoyingly programmed Lewis’s phone to play the Scooby-Doo theme song whenever he calls. Lewis is mortified. Keeps silencing it. His brother keeps calling.

Finally, when Lewis picks up, his brother Ashton says he’s flailing and needs help. Ashton barely gets this out before Lewis hangs up on him. All eyes are on Lewis at this point. The Harper Collins exec asks, “Who’s your brother?” That’s when it comes out: Lewis’s brother Ashton is apparently hugely famous.

John: Great. Title page, straightforward, looks great. I think an email on the cover page is good if it’s a sample just so someone could reach out to Jaz and say, “We loved your script.” Who would like to start on this? This interview is happening in the Harper Collins office. Kai Rizdahl, who is a radio host here in the US, is interviewing a real person, a cameo for our bonus–

Paul: We need a cameo.

John: What did we think?

Lucia: I actually found the initial dialogue here with Kai and Sarah to be, I don’t know, snappy and fun, even though if not a little– I was a little like, “I don’t know what they’re saying exactly. What do they mean, but I like it.” Yes, slap an ad for the latest Gregory book on Niagara’s For You page and call it a day. Sometimes when people are confident, we call it-

Paul: Oh, competency porn.

Lucia: -competency porn.

John: We’ve talked about that on the podcast recently. I love it. I feel like they’re doing their thing.

Lucia: They’re doing their thing.

Paul: We love that. It’s so fun.

Lucia: They’re confident. They know what they want.

John: Succession. Come on.

Paul: Yes, succession.

Lucia: Yes, exactly.

Paul: Murder, she wrote. She knows what’s up.

Paul: Oh my gosh. Classic.

Lucia: I don’t know. The dialogue here made me feel like whoever wrote this knows what they’re talking about. I did find that intriguing.

Paul: I did too. Maybe it was because I just liked the setting and I related to the content of their discussion. I was leaning in a bit. I was like, “Okay, interesting.”

John: When we get to bottom page 1, the Scooby-Dooby-Doo, that’s the wrong lyric. It’s not actually what it is. It pulled me out. It kept going back to that. I was also confused. Are we hearing the lyrics or are we just hearing the melody? If it’s just the melody, I think it’s actually funnier because you have that sensation of wanting to sing along. If it’s all full lyrics too, I don’t know if I’m by it.

Paul: I like that. That’s right.

John: I like that it’s recurring. It’d be really annoying.

Paul: I think it was a specific and funny. It wasn’t like Who Let the Dogs Out, which I feel like would have been first thought. I did like the Scooby-Doo specificity. I also agree. I think maybe the right choice is just the melody and maybe the ring tonification of the melody.

John: Middle of page 2, we have this debate about it. We have a text message. We’re seeing it on the phone screen. We’re seeing it printed across. Not a choice you have to make on the page here, but something to think about. Bolding that, sure. I’ve also seen it formatted as dialogue blocks, which is just so you can sense it because it is taking the place of dialogue. Kai Rizal is annoyed but seems relatively generous about what’s happening here.

Lucia: I was confused. I guess because of the name, you’re his brother. I got confused.

John: I got confused too. It felt like two bigger reaches from the last name if we could get there.

Lucia: Then it was like, “You’re his brother. Tell Alex to get his ass to the Christy boardroom. Code Ashton.” Then I’m starting to be like, “What kind of person are we talking about this Ashton?” You know what I mean? It started to become a little bit silly actually.

Paul: My pitch, just like a quick solve, is he answers and he says, “Ashton, I’m at work.” If we know the first name, then when we get the last name, it makes a little bit more sense that she puts together that they’re brothers.

Lucia: I like that pitch.

Paul: Thank you. Very simple. Just add the name. Although I will admit when you would call me, I wouldn’t say Lucia. I wouldn’t often invoke your name.

Lucia: I know, but I think if you’re angry enough at someone, it’s something like, “Ashton.”

Paul: Yes, that’s true. That’s true.

John: That’s the way to do it.

Lucia: “Stop calling.”

John: I think when she gives you the line reading, Paul, you could–

Paul: That’s good. Okay. I got it. I got it. With frustration. “Lucia, I’m at work.”

Lucia: Yes, exactly. I could almost buy it.

Paul: Although we don’t have the same last name. We wouldn’t work in this scene.

John: No. Absolutely.

Lucia: We talk a lot about how people don’t really say other people’s names nearly as much as they do on television or film.

Paul: In scripts, it happens a lot. Even we do it, and then we take it out in the edit. We’ve said the name Deborah too many times. She doesn’t need to say that. We all know.

John: I would– I think on Hacks, though, Deborah, it’s an opener word. I’m going to say something mean. I’m going to say something kind.

Paul: Totally.

John: It’s a way in.

Paul: That is true. [laughter]

John: We talk about conversations need doorknobs. It’s like a doorknob. You’ll be able to get the next line.

Paul: That is true. That is very true. And Deborah is a good name to say.

John: It is.

Paul: It is a good name to hear too.

John: I’ll confess, I always forget Ava’s name, and so I’m always referring to her as Hannah because Ava just doesn’t stick in my head. It’s so short that it’s hard to–

Lucia: Oh, interesting.

John: It’d be like a bad name for a dog because you can’t be able to yell, “Ava.”

Paul: So true. So true. It isn’t as sticky as Deborah.

John: Sure.

Paul: Deborah really works and is so her. When we discovered that name, when we figured out that would be her name, it really worked.

John: Also, it tells you that she’s a certain age because-

Paul: Absolutely, yes.

John: -it’s not a name that anyone has now.

Paul: No.

Lucia: That was the origin for Ava. Ava is so 1995 name.

John: Oh, absolutely.

Paul: Slightly based on a friend of ours. Not the character. We just took the name. That’s a good name.

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John: Great name. Let’s do our third one, and then I want to have a little meta discussion about this process. Third previous challenge is Monster Law. Can we give us a synopsis?

Meredith: We start in Seattle at the Lumen Field during a Seattle Seahawks game. In the back hallways, Kirk, seemingly a janitor, mops the hall, but he’s being stalked by something. Suddenly, a monster strikes from behind, bites Kirk’s arm, reveal Kirk is wearing chainmail armor. He beats up the creature and puts it in handcuffs. Finally, the creature speaks and it says, “I want my lawyer.” We cut to an office building. It’s Lorelei Griffin’s first day at Montague & Stern, attorneys at law.

John: Great. We got an email address on the title page, so of course I’m happy. I wasn’t sure if this was a feature or a pilot. We get to a credits sequence that makes me think it’s probably a series, but I wasn’t sure.

Paul: I thought so too, reading that.

John: We start in Seattle. We start in this action sequence and misdirections about who these people are and what the situations are before we get to the law firm. They feel very, very different between the two of them. I think that what’s not working for me is I think just someone who’s maybe newer to the form, they didn’t understand that these are all one scene, and instead we’re putting these cuts in there where it’s all one continuous moment. You wouldn’t need to have these other scene headers in there. Lucia, if you were directing this, it would be in the hallways. Even the camera style changes would just be reflected on the page, not as different scene blocks, right?

Lucia: Yes. Also, they do describe a lot of the shots. We’re in a wider shot now. I think that that’s not something that’s necessary to describe. I don’t mind. There’s a moment in here where they say we’re seeing the janitor from the back of the hallway. It’s that shot, that shot where somebody else is watching. I actually didn’t mind that. I thought it was good.

John: That’s helpful.

Lucia: I know that there are some directors who get frustrated when people describe shots. I’m not one of them. If you’re going to describe, it needs to be for a good reason. That was a mixed bag here.

John: What I liked about that description is it tells you what it feels like. It’s useful because it helps pull up that image in our head where if you just said why, we wouldn’t know what that was like, “Oh, okay, I get a sense of what the music is, of what the lighting is, all that stuff from that shot.”

Paul: I did think that the opening of this really gave me tone. I did understand the tone. We talk about that a lot. Often in our scripts, we are pretty visually descriptive, but it’s also because we’re directing it usually. If a director were getting this, it’s like, “You’ve told me the shots. Sometimes I think it can be overkill if it’s close up.” Some of these shots, I did think it’s giving me a sense of what this looks and feels like. I did feel like I knew the tone most from this of the three we’ve read.

Lucia: Then the tone shifts pretty dramatically-

Paul: It does.

Lucia: -to just a scene that is giving very, very little tone.

Paul: I’d say that it actually shifts most dramatically when the creature speaks, “I want my lawyer.” I’m like, “Okay.” I didn’t bump on the tonal shift because I was like, “Oh, I see. This is another misdirect.

Lucia: We have a child. The child is four. It reminded me, actually in a good way, of a Dog Man book or something.

John: It’s two things at the same time.

Lucia: Yes. It’s very visual and silly. You’re like, “I think this is going to happen.” No, the bad guy wins, actually. Then the creature talks and says something funny. There was something about it that it felt childish, but not in a dismissive way. I mean in a way where it’s clear. You’re getting jokes and misdirects and laughs or whatever it is. I like that.

John: We like that. At the very start here, exterior set all night. It’s raining because, of course, it is. I get that sense of tone there. I was frustrated, though, it was a little bit generic because it’s like we’re generic city shots. Somehow, we’re on the field with a running back, which is just like it’s all one shot, I guess. You can direct a one-er there.
Then we’re going to the back. It wasn’t specific to this setup and this series, this opener. If it’s raining, the payoff on the raining, I didn’t really understand unless that’s why the hallway is wet and flooded. It just felt really weird that we’re established and it’s raining and it doesn’t actually matter for where we’re at or why there’s a big football game happening.

Lucia: The first thing a line producer is going to say to you is, “Does it need to have the game going? Can it just be the empty hallway?”

John: It’s could. Maybe should be.

Lucia: Hate to get into the budget with you.

Paul: Maybe scarier. Although, I don’t know, the roar of the crowd in the back.

John: When we hear, “I want my lawyer,” I was curious, what does the creature sound like? Give us a description on that creature’s voice because it’s like-

Lucia: Vincent D’Onofrio in Men in Black. [laughs]

Paul: Right.

John: Right. Couldn’t do any better. Then we have this scene in the lobby where a new lawyer is showing up for the first time at the office. It felt a little stuck to me. I’ve been at that security desk too many times. I think if you’re doing a show which is a comedy, I’m thinking, we got to just find a different way in there.

Lucia: It also felt like this whole page could have been much shorter. I’m not sure what I was getting. I guess she’s nervous, and that’s why she’s like, “Good morning. You’ll wait over there. I’ll let Mr. Silva know you’re here.” That’s just not anything that–

John: It’s shoe leather. It’s not something that we need. You come into that scene much later. She spells her name, and then it’s like, oh, and then it changes when he sees who she is. We could start at that much, much later here.

Lucia: We could start with Brandon approaching her.

John: Yes.

Paul: You can feel her nerves. The actor can give you that. You know what I mean?

John: For sure.

Paul: We don’t need any dialogue for that.

John: Metaconversation, you have had a lot of writers on the show, and you’ve probably read a lot of scripts over your time staffing up on the show. What kinds of things are you looking for? Are you reading beyond those first three pages? Would you ever sit down a script after three pages like, “This is just not the writer for us?”

Paul: I think so.

Lucia: Yes. Certainly.

Paul: I think the thing that would make me put it down, in terms of what we’re looking for, I think, is if there are jokes or things that we’ve seen many, many times. If it’s something that feels like a reiteration of something we’ve seen, I think that’s what’s going to make me put it down. I think we really want something that feels voicey and specific. Obviously, because our show is a show about comedy, we really are looking at the jokes.

Lucia: We’re looking at tone and the style more than “hook me with your big story.” Of course, I think if you’re reading for staffing, it’s very different than reading for potentially, “I’m going to direct this script,” or something, which you want to have some idea of maybe where the story’s going. Also, I don’t know. Something can have very little story turn, but the writing is just, for some reason, compelling, and so you’re going to continue to read. I think compelling in any way is the thing.

Paul: Actually, we should say that we’ve had people on the show or on our staff that aren’t squarely in the comedy space. That isn’t the thing that they do. That’s also okay because if you feel something is voicey and has a point of view and is compelling, you think, “That person is good at story. That person might be very helpful in terms of breaking story even if they’re not the joke person.”

I think that’s the thing. You always want to think about the alchemy of the room. This is not something when you’re submitting a script you’ll ever know. Oh, they need somebody who’s a world builder and does story, or they need someone who’s-

Lucia: [inaudible 00:51:18]

Paul: -going to set up in a punchline. It’s not like just because you’re submitting for a half-hour comedy, it has to be filled with jokes. I should say that.

Lucia: I think we’re always more impressed by somebody who is doing their own thing than somebody who’s hyper-competent at just writing a sitcom.

John: As you were staffing, did you only read originals? Did you read specs? What did you read?

Lucia: I don’t think any specs.

Paul: I don’t think we did read specs. I think it was all originals. People had written highlights.

Lucia: For the most part, they were people that we either knew or were fans of.

Paul: There were people that we didn’t know.

Lucia: Yes. There was, I’d say, one or two.

John: Fans, you saw them perform, you saw them online. What are ways you came across them?

Paul: Pat Regan is a good example. He’s a stand-up. We thought his stand-up was very specific and very funny, but then his sample was really good.

John: Great.

Paul: The story was really compelling. It was really funny.

Lucia: He had figured out a way to translate his tone onto the page.

Paul: That’s the thing. I think, obviously, we wanted to have stand-ups in our room since the show was about a stand-up, but we also wanted people that would be contributing when they were pitching story. It was important to us that it wasn’t just someone who was great at jokes but also could help in other ways in the room.

John: You also had a fair number of writers who I think were actors as well. I recognize familiar faces who I think were also on your writing staff over the course of the season.

Lucia: Yes. Over the course of the season, we did. Guy Branum,-

John: Of course.

Lucia: -he joined the room in Season 3, I want to say, but was an actor in Season 1.

Paul: Joe Mandy is a stand-up and an actor as well.

John: He’s the first person I recognize.

Paul: Very much a writer. It comes from the Parks and Rec world and The Good Place. He was someone who was also a performer.

Lucia: Pat, aforementioned, but also a cameo on the show. These are people because we just like everything about them. We like their performance style. We like their comedy style. It just meshed into the tone of the show we envisioned. We also just like being around them. That is such a hey reputation.

John: Let’s talk about that, the chemistry of it all. You read something you like, and then what is that meeting like? Is it all three of you meeting? How long is the meeting? What are you guys talking about?

Paul: It is the three of us, which now, as you say that, I’m like, “That must be so–“

Lucia: [unintelligible 00:53:43]

John: Intimidating?

Paul: It is intimidating to have three people on the Zoom. In a way, it means we can also just all talk, and it’s not so one-on-one. Maybe it’s better. I don’t know. The three of us meet them. We just get a vibe for what they gravitate towards, what they like doing in a room, if they’ve been in a room. Some people haven’t been in a room. Also, I think it’s just a vibe check.

Lucia: It is.

Paul: It’s like, do you have clack? Are you able to have a conversation with that person? It’s such a wavelength thing. It’s almost hard to describe.

Lucia: In a weird way, sometimes we’ll be at a party, and we’ll be hanging out with somebody who maybe is a performer, a writer, or in the comedy world in some way, and we just are giggling with them and having a great hang. Then we’re like, “Hey, we should see if they want to write on the show.” Sometimes they say no. Oftentimes, people are busy, and sometimes they say yes. That is a thing.

John: We should see if they want to write on the show. Did you read them before you said that?

Lucia: No.

John: You’re just guessing.

Paul: Then we would read them.

Lucia: Yes, sure.

Paul: I think we always want to read a script.

Lucia: Here’s an example of Claudia O’Doherty. We know her. She’s a person in the world. Whenever we hang out with her, we’re like, “God, she’s so funny.” She’s been busy doing stuff. I think after, we were like, “We should see if she wants to do–” what we used to do as a blue sky room, which in the very beginning of a season, we’d do a week or two. I don’t think we are allowed to do these anymore.

Paul: We don’t.

Lucia: We don’t. A week or two where we would just have people come in. Susie Essman came in.

Paul: It’s usually people that don’t want to be on a staff full time but have really great brains or have experience. Susie Essman was one. Janis Hirsch was one. Carol Leifer started with us that way. People that had an experience similar to Deborah’s that were stand-ups and working in the ’80s. Susie is not going to be in a room. Susie Essman, she’s doing curb and she’s not going to sit in a room. I think she was so valuable to have her point of view and her experience. Also, I think for her, it was hopefully a fun experience to contribute to the world of the show because she had watched it.

Lucia: I think we’re just at a place where if there are people that we like being around and hanging out with and comedy ideas come from it, those are the kinds of people we like to collaborate with in any way.

John: Some of these people were folks who you met out in the world and you brought them in, but did you have any people who grew up in the show who became writers?

Paul: Yes. Two of our writers assistants, Ariel Karlin and Carolyn Lipka, both were writers’ assistants on the show and then became writers on the show.

John: When they were assistants, had you read them when they were just assistants? Had you read them before?

Paul: We did read samples when they had applied to be writers assistants, so yes. We did know that they had a sense of style and a tone and we did like their writing, but they had a little bit less experience maybe than some of the other writers, and so they started there.

Lucia: We also had given them scripts as writers’ assistants.

Paul: Yes. That was the way that we were able to– almost given their first shot, was having a credit on the show co-writing a script. Both of them co-wrote

Lucia: I think maybe Carolyn had her own– No. Maybe she did co-write. I can’t remember.

Paul: Yes. I think basically we had them co-write a script as writers’ assistants, and then they were staff members that got their own scripts after that. We try wherever we can to give assistants a chance to write and also-

Lucia: Promote from within.

Paul: -promote.

Paul: It does feel like hopefully that’s a track other people do. Yes, we did read their samples in the beginning to be like, “This person could be a writer on the show. Let’s hope that they are.”

John: I think it’s a good idea because I talk to assistants who are on a show and they want to write on the show, and they were never read ahead of time, and so then they’re read and like, “No, you’re not really right for this show.” It’s like, “Oh, my God, I spent two years on this show and you’re not going to bring me on to do this.”

Lucia: That’s definitely a prerequisite for us because our intention always is to try to promote from within. Also, our writers assistants do pitch in the room. We’re not like a hierarchical where we’re like, “This is your rank in the room. This is how much you should talk.” They pitch jokes, they pitch ideas. Also, we do spend quite a bit of time. One of the things we do in our show is Paul and Jen and I will go through a script, and we will highlight joke-pitch areas.

Of course, we want the writers to pitch alts on the whole script, but we have a specific highlighted– There’s probably 20 highlights on a page. The writers’ assistants and Paul and Jen and I are doing something else or rewriting something. They’ll go do highlights on a script, and they’ll just do pages and pages of alts. What’s so interesting is all writers assistants, everybody will submit alts, and then we’ll pick one, and we’ll often have no idea who wrote that joke. We’ll sometimes never know and sometimes we’ll be like, “We need to know who wrote that joke.”

John: When you say submit on alts, what are they actually doing? Are you writing or are you slacking something or what are you doing?

Lucia: They’re writing it into a final draft document.

Paul: Yes. Let’s say Jen, Lucia, and I are either prepping something or rewriting an episode or writing a script of our own. They’re sitting around and all pitching jokes and pitching on each other’s pitches. The writers’ assistant is collating all of those so that when we get that script back–

Lucia: It’s 100 pages.

Paul: There’s hundreds and hundreds of pages. There are so many alts. Then we go through and we say, “We’re going to keep these four alts for the day.” Sometimes we even bring the actors into it, and we say, “We have these four alts. Is the one you want to start with?”

Lucia: Sometimes we try some in the table reads.

Paul: Yes. In the table read, they’ll read four in a row and we’ll see what hits. That is a way that writers’ assistants are constantly writing for the show.

John: Can I ask you a logistical question about alts? Is that so often, that line is funny, but it requires a different setup, a different payoff. Then if you’re doing coverage, are you making sure you’re covering for all the alts? It feels like an impossible math.

Lucia: Yes.

Paul: Our poor script supervisors… [laughter] It’s so challenging because not only do we move very quickly and we shoot a lot of pages in a day, we have so many alts that we shoot. Yes, when we do the reverse, we have to get the response or we do have to accommodate the also we got, unless on the day we know exactly which one we’ll use, which often we don’t. Often we want to bank them. In the edit, when we’re putting it all together, sometimes one that worked on the day doesn’t work as well in the edit based on a number of factors. We try and bank them if we can.

Lucia: For the most part, we don’t do more than three on set really too often because we don’t have the time to do all you’re saying, like the reverse, because it’s gone through the process of during the table read, and often then we’ll go to the actor, and Jean will be like, “I like this one the best,” or “I like these two the best.” She’ll kind of call it. If an actor doesn’t naturally gravitate towards one of the else, it’s probably not going to be the best because they need to feel in their heart.

Paul: You can feel, I think, when it is also tickling the actor. It’s like the little secret. There’s something about it. It just hits harder.

Lucia: They do get whittled down. We’ll still try a couple on set, but that’s also a very different process than the way that we’ll shoot like a Paul and Meg scene, which we definitely have it scripted, and then they’ll add a little bit here. They’ll improvise more generally, but then we’ll not let them go crazy with improvising. Then we’ll say, “That stuff that you improvise. Let’s keep that,” or that we really liked it. We already shot it, so now let’s use this to bring us back into the scene.

John: You don’t want to stay in a wide for the whole thing. You have to actually shoot a scene.

Paul: Right.

Lucia: We don’t really do a ton of cross-covering, which for comedy, that’s not great, but it’s a balance.

John: Also, your lighting standards are very high. You make people look really good. You can’t be getting two directions at the same time and make everyone look awesome.

Lucia: Yes.

Paul: Yes.

Lucia: We can sometimes plan to block and light it a certain way if we really know we want to cross-cover something, but that requires them standing still for a long time, and that’s not always the best. Sometimes it works.

Paul: I think it’s evolved very much in the show. Hannah, who is so funny because she’s also a writer and a stand-up, in addition to being a great actor, the first season, I think she wouldn’t improvise until the last take because she would be comfortable, and then she would improvise, and we’d be like, “That is so good, but we don’t have the reverse. Now we don’t know what to do and we really want to use your alt.” She obviously got much better at being like, “Okay, I’m going to do this the very first time so that if you like it, we can do it, and if you don’t, we don’t.”

John: Talk to me about your process because you guys together need to write, but you also have Jen in the mix as well. What is it that you’ve learned over the course of years about how you guys work together?

Lucia: The way that Paul and I actually write when it’s just the two of us is slightly different than how we write with Jen because Paul and I used to just sit next to each other and be looking at a draft and be writing it, but then we would find ourselves-

Paul: Nitpicking.

Lucia: -nitpicking over the tiniest things.

Paul: Having debates that were not helpful.

John: That comma, that comma, yes.

Paul: Yes.

Lucia: Yes. What we started to do is take the same scene, we had it outlined, we knew what the basic beats were.

Paul: We would break the story together.

Lucia: Then we would each write the same scene.

Paul: At the same time.

Lucia: It would be like, “Great, we have 12 minutes to write this scene,” so you have to just bang it out, and don’t get in your head about it.

Paul: It’s almost like time chess because-

John: Oh, for sure.

Paul: -if I’m like, “I don’t really have a way in,” I bet she’ll have a way in, and then I just go. In that same way, if she didn’t have a perfect button, she was like, “He might have a button for the scene.” It just made us move through the first draft much quicker.

Lucia: Then I would read his, he would read mine, and then we would highlight our favorite parts of the other person’s. Then we would take turns combining them. Oftentimes, the things that weren’t my highlighted were his highlighted, and vice versa. Sometimes we’d have the same jokes, and sometimes we’d have totally different jokes. I’d be like, “Oh, I think that’s better,” or whatever. It just made us concentrate on just the positives.

Paul: It was positive reinforcement only. Also, it did help. If there were the same joke in a script, it would either mean it was exactly right because we had this hive mind moment or it was not right because it was two first thoughts. It was really telling in terms of it gave us a third draft by the time we combined them.

John: That’s great. We’ve had a lot of writing partners on the show, and sometimes they’ll just divvy up scenes. One person will write that scene, and they’ll paste them together at the end, or there’s two people at one computer, but this feels like a good hybrid between the two.

Paul: We’ve done both with Jen. We have done where we all three write the same scene and then pass them along. Then we highlight. Then as it passed, if someone likes the highlight, they bold the highlight. [laughs] It’s truly like a fourth draft.

Lucia: We started abandoning that after a while because we simply didn’t have time.

Paul: It started to be too time-consuming.

Lucia: If we want to get a show out yearly, that’s not going to happen. I think the lesson that we’ve really learned, it is about positive reinforcement. I think that that’s the thing that we’ve brought through just running a show, which is we all are on the same team. The best idea really should win. Paul and Jen and I had this conversation very early in making the show, where we were like, “If there’s ever any animosity interpersonally, it will show up in the work, 100%.” We were like, “We need to prioritize our personal relationships.” That will also help the show because then it’s not about ego.

There’s so many writing partners that break up or can’t work together anymore. We’ve seen them. It’s just really hard. We’ve also seen how it affects the work. We really prioritize our friendship. That really means that at the end of the day, we are still excited to see each other. Literally, after this, we’re going to go meet up with Jen to work.

John: Great.

Lucia: I’m excited.

John: Nice.

Lucia: Then I think that it’s just such a positive cycle.

Paul: We also have something that is very helpful for us, which is if one of us really believes in a joke, or if it’s just one of us gets the joke, it’s just for one, we do have the power to be like, “We have to try this.” Then we do. It’s so interesting. Oftentimes, if I’m like, “I don’t really get that one,” or “It’s not for me,” if even one person feels that passionately about it, you will see the reaction online. It’ll be like, people are quoting that thing. It always seems to work that if there is real passion for one thing. It’s like, absolutely. Don’t argue it. It’s inarguable. Let it happen. It happens. It usually works.

Lucia: I remember there was one joke of yum-yum in my tum-tum, which was not for me. It’s simply not in my wheelhouse of things I think are funny, but still to this day–

Paul: It was a meme. It became a meme.

Lucia: People love yum-yum in my tum-tum. I’m going, “[unintelligible 01:06:22]”

Paul: Absolutely. To each their own. That’s been a very helpful thing. It’s been great because almost it relieves the debate. You’re like, “Great. They’re so into it. Great. It’s going to be in there.”

Lucia: In general, having three showrunners, people are always like, “That seems like a lot.” For us, it’s great to have an odd number because sometimes it is two versus one in any different random configuration. It’s not like me and Paul versus Jen or me and Jen versus Paul or Paul versus me. It constantly shifts who’s voting. It really helps us not get into a stalemate.

Paul: Some people think, “Oh my gosh, that must be so complicated. It must be difficult.” I’m like, “I think it was really difficult to do it alone.” I’m so impressed by the showrunners that do it alone. Obviously, they also have a staff usually, and they have editors, and they have producers, and they have other people.

Lucia: Drawing number two.

Paul: Yes. Just having three brains is so helpful. Also, you’re just less alone.

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John: That’s great. Let’s do our one cool thing.

Paul: Oh yes.

John: My one cool thing is a book I’m reading right now by Cate Hall called You Can Just Do Things. I’ve had other recommendations of blog posts that Cate Hall has written, but I really like her book. It is about why some people can just do things. They have agency. They just take agency. They just do things. They just don’t wait for permission. I think the danger of this approach could be that you’re just an asshole or you doesn’t follow any rules and just annoys everybody around you. What I like about her book is she acknowledges that but also is very smart about not being so preoccupied about what other people think to stop you from doing the thing you want to do, which might be-

Paul: That’s hard.

John: -hopefully not blowing up your life continuously, but also recognizing you only have the one short life, and you have to make the best choices for what you want to do over the course of it. I really like it. It’s a very smart book. It’s short. You can read it in an afternoon. You Can Just Do Things by Cate Hall. C-A-T-E Hall.

Lucia: Cool.

Paul: Literally, for me, I’m going to read it.

John: Great.

[laughter]

Paul: I’m like, yes, thank you for that. That sounds great. You go next.

Lucia: Okay. My one cool thing is vacation. Now, I know you’re going, “People be knowing about vacation.”

John: No, we’re not showrunners.

[laughter]

Lucia: We recently took our first vacation in many, many, many years, and it was truly life-changing.

John: That’s right.

Paul: You don’t have to go anywhere, actually. It doesn’t mean you have to.

Lucia: No. We did, but you don’t have to. Now we had this show that was six solid years of our life nonstop, and we also had a kid, and so much has been going on. It really reminded me of the before times when I was still day job life and struggling and trying to get the career off the ground. Even then, I look back at those vacations and some of the most special ones, because I had no right to be vacationing when I couldn’t even– I don’t really mean that.

I really– I think vacation, no matter where you are in your life, is so important. Whether you feel like you have it all, you feel like you’re struggling, whatever it is, I still think it’s so important to just stop and enjoy and relax and recharge. I know this is so obvious, and it’s like, “What?” It really is so important, and we need to do it more.

Paul: People forget. People are grinding, and they forget to take a moment to pause. Travel can be fantastically feeding in terms of creativity, but also you don’t even have to do that. You just have to pause. Pausing is good.

Lucia: It really is.

Paul: Recharging is important.

John: Did you read any books? Did you do anything?

Paul: I read eight books.

John: Yeah. C’mon. That’s great.

Lucia: It was really good. My favorite? Chocolat.

[laughter]

John: Oh wow. I’ve never read Chocolat.

Lucia: It was really quite good.

Paul: Different from the movie, right?

Lucia: It’s been so long since I’ve seen the movie that I don’t totally remember. It changes perspective between the shopkeeper woman and this angry priest who is almost Gollum-like. The writing was just so– I was really taken.

John: Great. I like it. Vacation. Paul?

Paul: Sometimes it’s hard to vacation in times that seem absolutely crazy. Something that I think puts me at ease, helps me vacation, is if you are someone who wants to get involved politically, the State + Local Election Alliance is something that focuses on local races that are winnable and are winnable at a fraction of the cost of, let’s say, a congressional race.
If you’re looking to do something, you’re like, I don’t know, “Is my money going to make a difference?” It’s a great thing to donate too because every dollar goes to a race that’s potentially winnable, and that elects county clerks and election officials, which regardless of your political party, are very important for a fair democracy. I just think it’s a thing that if you’re looking to do something and maybe alleviate some of your anxiety around what’s going on in the world, I think it’s a very simple and easy way to do that.

Lucia: Drop the name one more time, babe?

Paul: The State + Local Election Alliance.

John: Fantastic. I’m assuming that they are tracking zillions of below-the-radar races,-

Paul: That’s right.

John: -and they’re figuring out where to maximize the dollars to make things [unintelligible 01:11:46]

Paul: That’s exactly right. It’s all non-national races that aren’t really paid attention to oftentimes, and sometimes are won by 100 votes. They’re ones that are very close and are also, in doing the math of it, ones that are winnable. I do think it’s a good thing to do if you’re looking for a place to do it.

John: There are times I’ll see famous people on Instagram talking about a very small local race in Alabama. I want to say, great that you’re trying to spotlight on that, but also, I wonder if the spotlight is actually the right spotlight.

Paul: Totally.

John: I feel like under the radar, $100 is probably maybe more helpful than you– [crosstalk]

Paul: 100%. Yes, 100%. This is nationwide, so it goes to races that are winnable in any state. It’s not like you have to choose one or listen to the endorsement of some random celebrity about one.

John: It also reminds me of with the gutting of local media and with local newspapers going away, there’s just much less information out there about endorsements of small races too, and so that someone is paying attention is–

Paul: Someone doing the homework feels really good.

John: I’m generally the person in my social circle who does the homework and looks up all those judges.

Paul: That’s really good.

John: Or Travis Helwig, honestly.

Paul: I was about to say, Travis Helwig does this progressive election guy. It is so helpful to have CliffsNotes because to do all the research is exhausting. It’s so much. There’s so many races.

Lucia: Travis is, of course, and you know this, fam, married to Jen Statsky, our third. [laughs]

John: Very nice. That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Meredith Stedman with help from Lauren Loesberg and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Nick Moore. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask@johnautus.com. That’s also a place where you can send questions like we often answer.

You’ll find transcripts at johnautus.com along with our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. The Scriptnotes book is available wherever you buy books. You can find the clips and other helpful video on our YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow. You’ll find us on Instagram, @scriptnotespodcast. Do you guys have Instagrams? You have,-

Lucia: Yes.

John: -obviously, the official Instagram, which may go away, but you have individual Instagrams as well?

Paul: Yes.

Lucia: Yes. I have @luciaaniellosetfits, where I post my outfits on set.

John: I’d like that very much.

Paul: I have at @paulwdowns, where I post everything.
[laughter]

John: That’s great.

Paul: That’s where it all goes.

John: Do you like your Instagrams? Do you like having Instagram? Is it positive or negative in your life?

Paul: Both. It’s really both. Sometimes it’s positive. Sometimes I don’t know if I should know all the inner workings of everyone in the world. Sometimes I’m like, “Why do I know that this person has shaved their eyebrows?” or whatever it is. You know what I mean? I’m like, “I don’t need to know.” Sometimes it does bring me joy to share things in my life. Yes, it’s both.

John: I may need to take it off my phone.

Paul: Really?

John: It’s getting a little too much.

Paul: It’s not positive?

John: Yes. It’s a time suck.

Paul: It is a time suck.

John: It’s not a poison, but it’s a little bit of a time suck.

Paul: I do very site-specific time on it. I try to keep it to a minimum.

John: I’m off all the other social media, but that’s the one place I’ve kept. You can find Shownotes with links to all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. We’ll also have links to the PDFs if you want to read along with us for the three-page challenges. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net to get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on the great North American network of cameos. [laughter] Paul and Lucia, an absolute pleasure getting to talk with you.

Paul: Thank you for having us.

Lucia: Thanks for having us.

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[music]

John: All right. Let us talk about cameos. I don’t mean the service where you buy someone to say something nice about you. Let’s talk about cameos because you had a ton in Hacks. Paul, you’ve shown up in cameos in many things. How do you ask a famous person to be a cameo? Do you know them in advance? Are you reaching out to their agents? Talk to us about cameos.

Paul: It’s very helpful if you know them or if you know that they are open to it because you’ve heard that they are fans of the show. If you have an in that way, I think it’s helpful. Usually, at least for us, the cameos are so specific because, again, the show is about this Las Vegas standup. For example, Carrot Top is a cameo that our show would do that I don’t think a lot of shows would do.

John: Definitely.

Paul: We didn’t know him, actually. We just reached out and asked him to do it. He was generous enough to do that. For us, it’s very specific to the story, but it is helpful if you can DM them or email them or text them.

John: Honestly. Absolutely. Are you treating it like a favor?

Paul: Oh, yes.

Lucia: Yes, definitely. Yes.

Paul: Huge, huge favor.

Lucia: It is a favor completely. You’re asking somebody to come and be themselves. I think that’s the thing that is trickiest.

John: You’re asking them to be themselves versus playing a character.

Lucia: Yes. That is really what’s hard is because people get very sensitive about the way that they’re portrayed. Also, they want to come off really funny, which we want them to as well, but sometimes that’s not the purpose of them in it. Like we had asked Joy Behar, because there’s a long-running feud of Deborah and Joy off-camera, or that we’ve referred to over the series, and then we finally got Joy to be on the show as herself, and she has a feud with Deborah. In reality, Joy Behar has not seen the show, so she goes, “What do you do? You make fun of me on this show?” We’re like, “No, we’re not making fun of you.”

John: So good.

Lucia: “You guys have a feud.” She’s like, “Okay.” She was totally a gamer and did it and was really funny. It’s interesting the way that sometimes other people in people’s orbit need to tell them, if they haven’t seen the show, “This is what it is and here’s who you’re playing.” It is very tricky when you’re asking people to play themselves.

Paul: We asked Jimmy Kimmel to come on to play himself-

John: He took it home.

Paul: -and to be very aggressive toward Deborah, which at first, I think he was like, “I don’t want to be mean to Jean Smart,” but by leaning into it and being a caricature, it was so funny. I think he had a lot of fun doing it. It was so clearly a character. I don’t know. I think that is freeing, in a way. We were very lucky that he gave us some of his very limited time.

Lucia: We never really wanted to do like, “Guess who got on the show this week, you guys?” Oftentimes Deborah’s world would have these people. Rosie O’Donnell would be a longtime friend of Deborah’s. Having that kind of cameo makes the world feel real. For us, the highest compliment we ever got on the show is somebody said to one of our writers, “I didn’t know anything about Deborah Vance until Hacks. I didn’t even know about her,” because he thought she was a real person.

John: Incredible.

Paul: Based on a real [unintelligible 01:18:56]

Lucia: For us, it’s like, “Yes, we want the world to feel so real.” That helps guide the kinds of cameos we want to have.

Paul: We like the offbeat cameo. Deidre Hall plays my mother on the show,-

John: Which is great.

Paul: -which was so delightful and just feels so exactly who would be this person’s mother. That was a tricky one because, again, she was playing herself and I’m obviously not her son. We spoke with her about it. At the end, she was like, “I love it. I’m in. Let’s do it. What’s my character’s name?” We were like, “Oh, Deidre Hall.” “Funny it is a version of you.”

John: Of you.

Paul: “It is you.” She was so great.

John: You have an idea for Deidre Hall and then you’ve got an approach or Rosie O’Donnell, which would also make sense, but then there’s the logistics of you have to be able to schedule them and get them into a thing. Actors who have auditioned, you can hold onto them, but this is a favor you’re paying them, not what they are worth. How often does that become an issue in terms of finding a way to actually make it work?

Lucia: It can be a little tricky, but I think that is the genius of our producers is the block shooting, the making it work, figuring out how to do it. If we need to do a quick build, like a pop-up set to do their cameo, we’ll do it wherever, whenever. It really is the movie magic and the machine behind the show that makes it possible for us to pull those off.

Paul: We had heard that Ann Dowd watched the show. We asked her to play a Star Trek character at a convention. It was something beneath her talent level that we thought really funny for someone so brilliant to be painted blue. We just thought that was really funny. Then I think our AD was able to figure out– she has this one day, “Let’s make that portion of that episode on that day.

John: Then that’s why it’s outdoors for most of her. I’m trying to think about how she actually plays.

Paul: We were actually at the location. Luckily, that particular episode, because it happens at a convention, it was four days of shooting there. We were just able to make that scene happen. It would be much more difficult if it were someone in Las Vegas because we’re only there for a very specific amount of time.

Lucia: That is a thing that we would have done, is separate her out to make it work. That is the kind of thing that we’re often doing.

Paul: It’s not a cameo because she did play Weed on the show as a recurring character, but Laurie Metcalf returned this season as Weed. That was one because she was doing two shows on Broadway, where we had a very specific day where we shot with her, and then we had to shoot the reverse on a different day. We had to get a double–

Lucia: No. We didn’t do the reverse. We just did the wide.

Paul: Oh, just the wide. That’s right. Just the wide. We basically had her on a day when we didn’t have the Central Park field.

Lucia: Because it rained, it was crazy.

Paul: That’s right. It was also a weather thing. There’s so many factors.

Lucia: There’s an extreme wide where it’s not her. Then the coverage was her, but it had to mix. The wide and the coverage are different, but they were together.

Paul: Oh, yes. We were with her. We did act with her.

Paul: Thank God. Thank God.

Lucia: Both sides of it.

John: Absolutely. No AI was used.

Paul: No AI was used.

John: To put her into that.

Paul: Never.

John: You guys also showed up in the studio.

Lucia: Yes.

John: Talk to us about that because it feels like you’re staring into a mirror in terms of a show about the industry, a show about the industry.

Paul: It was really wild. Seth reached out. He had been on Broad City. We know him socially. He had reached out and said, “Would you guys do this thing?” We said, “Sure. That sounds great.” It was really wild because they recreated the Golden Globes. When we got there, it was so bizarre because not only did it look like the Golden Globes in the place where the Golden Globes happened, but there were also so many celebrities there. It was really trippy.

Lucia: Also, Ramy, in the episode, was the host of the Golden Globes, but then that next Golden Globes, he was at our table. It was-

Paul: It was very surreal.

Lucia: -crazy.

Paul: We hadn’t even thought about asking Seth to do anything. We were there. That show is a lot of [unintelligible 01:22:40] We were there for the day. Happy to do it. It did make us feel a little more welcome to ask him to cameo-

Paul: -on Deborah Vance’s Late Night show. He probably would have generously said yes anyway, but I think certainly helped that we had done his show. He would have been like, “Sure, I’ll come.”

Paul: He’s a great guy. Talk about a great reputation.

Paul: Yes.

John: Yes. Also, he fits very much on– He should be on the couch for Deborah Vance’s show. 100%-

Paul: He was exactly right.

John: -that person would have been there.

Paul: It was so nice because it was like– okay, Seth said yes. Kaia Gerber feels like the opposite of him, so we’re going to reach out to Kaia. She was so lovely to just do this thing. Again, both of them doing something that was– they were playing themselves. It was beneath their talent level, but it was so funny to have them. It felt so real. What would have been on Deborah’s late-night show, it was just–

Lucia: They were playing strip poker.

Paul: It was perfect.

John: If it was the first season and it wasn’t clear what the show actually was, it would be much harder to ask because you’re like, “What am I signing up for?” but they can see the show. They know the show is great.

Paul: 100%. We’re not always lucky. I’ve said this before. We asked Cher to cameo multiple times and always got a no. It’s not like we get anybody that we ask.

Lucia: No. In the episode, in Season 4, Cher says, “I don’t want to do it.” That was real.
[laughter]

Paul: Yes, absolutely. We did get that. We asked her manager, “Is there any feedback? Can we change her?” She said, “Hre’s her email. ‘I don’t want to do it.'” I’m like, “Okay,” but she’s direct and we love that. We absolutely love an honest and direct feedback.

Lucia: You know what’s so funny is speaking of this. She has, in real life, an ice cream brand called Cherlato.

Paul: Like gelato.

Lucia: We had written a whole scene where Deborah goes to the Cherlato headquarters to try to get Cher to come on the show. Then Cher makes Deborah try all these different ice creams, which obviously Deborah, with her functioning eating disorder, doesn’t want to do. Then at the very end, she’s fattened her up with a delicious Cherlato, and then that’s when Cher gives her the news she’s not going to cameo on her show just to punish her because she stole her backup dancers in the ‘80s. Then we even wrote that whole thing.

Paul: We were encouraged by someone on her team. I was like, “This is actually the way.”

John: That is the way.

Paul: We did that.

Lucia: We still got a pass.

John: Absolutely. All that work. Absolutely.

Paul: We did the commercial. We were like, “The scene is good. We want to see it now.”

Lucia: We should put the scene now. We should just publish the pages.

Paul: We’ll do an animated version.

John: That’s what it is. That’s what you did.

Paul: We should do an animated version.

John: Like that James Spader show, its finale couldn’t happen because of the pandemic or something, and so they ended up animating the end of the series.

Lucia: Oh.

Paul: Oh, I didn’t even know that.

John: It’s wild.

Paul: Okay. Let me do that. We’ll do the Cher, honestly. Yes.

John: It’s great having a cameo from you guys on this bonus segment.

Paul: Hey, thank you for letting us bonus.

John: Cool.

Wrapping It Up with Hacks

Episode - 747

Full Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs Transcript:

Prologue

Wrapping Up Hacks’ Final Season

Dying to Love You by D.M. Hoke

You’re Dead to Me by Jaz Garawal

Monster Law and Reading for the Room

One Cool Thing

Bonus Segment

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