The original post for this episode can be found here.
John August: Hello, and welcome. My name is John August, and this is Episode 732 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.
Today on the show, we have a very special guest. Haley Z. Boston is a writer whose credits include Brand New Cherry Flavor, Hunters, and Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities. She’s also the creator and showrunner of the excellent Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. Welcome, Haley.
Haley Z. Boston: Thank you. Happy to be here.
John: I’m so excited to talk to you because I want to talk about your show. I want to talk about horror, about relationships. I want to dig in on the state of streaming shows, mentorship, and showrunning. I want to talk to you because you are the ideal person for all of these conversations. I’m so grateful to have you here.
Haley: Thank you so much.
John: I want to ask you some listener questions, too. In our bonus segment for premium members. I’d love to talk about red herrings and misdirections because your show does it really well. I want to discuss more generally the role of red herrings and misdirections in storytelling, which is right up your alley.
Haley: I think making a horror show is very challenging because when you reveal the monster, it’s no longer scary. That’s the real challenge in horror. Then, trying to get the protagonist to stay and not have the audience yelling at the TV, like, “Just leave.” I have read some comments online that do yell at her, which I would like to defend myself by saying she does try to leave.
John: She does. In the bonus segment, I want to get into a little bit more spoiler territory here because one of the things I love so much about your show is that I watched it completely cold. I watched it because my friend Mike said, “Oh, this is legit. You should absolutely watch it.” It’s like, “Okay.” I started, I hit play, not knowing whether it was a movie or a series-
Haley: Oh, wow.
John: -and just went for it. I love it for that. We have to talk about some parts of it, but I’d love most people to experience it kind of cold. Then in the bonus segment, we’ll spoil some more things.
Haley: Okay.
John: Can we talk about who you are and how you got to this place where you’re making a show?
Haley: Yes. I grew up in Portland, Oregon, with two doctor parents. I had no idea that you could be a writer.
John: I didn’t either growing up. I didn’t know it was a thing.
Haley: I don’t know how that was possible, that I didn’t know. Like, you don’t think someone’s job is to write a script and then– You just have no idea.
John: Well, you know there are authors. You know there are people who write books, but I didn’t know that it was a job to write all the things I love to watch.
Haley: I became aware of writers after I saw Juno in 2007.
John: Diablo Cody.
Haley: Diablo Cody was a hero. In 2007, I must have been 11, 12. I still didn’t know anything. I was writing a lot as a kid. I wrote about a dysfunctional family that I made up that had lots of big problems, like drug addiction and alcohol abuse.
John: Absolutely. Was it different than your family because it sounded like you had a two-doctor stable family?
Haley: Yes, I had a lovely family. I don’t know what that is, escapism into something dark. I think at that age, you can be drawn to darkness. It’s the opposite of, I think, a lot of comedy writers who escape darkness into humor.
John: Yes, for sure.
Haley: I was escaping safety. I became really interested in the feeling of being afraid. I saw The Strangers at a sleepover.
John: Yes, that’s going to knock you off your rocker because, again, it starts as a very normal thing and just goes haywire.
Haley: Yes. That movie got me really into the feeling of being afraid. I started watching horror movies with friends. Then I started watching them alone. I started to understand more about what being a writer was. I read your blog, actually, in high school.
John: Oh, that’s so funny. That’s great.
Haley: I was aware of Diablo Cody, John August, and Aaron Sorkin. Those were the three writers I knew.
John: Very nice. In my era, it was Premiere Magazine rather than the blog. It was Nora Ephron. I might have heard of who Billy Wilder was, but I hadn’t read it. I didn’t experience them.
Haley: Then I didn’t know– I was writing a script in a Word document, just playing around.
John: Of course, you do what you can.
Haley: I assumed I was going to become a doctor.
John: Yes, because two doctor parents. Of course, that’s what you should be.
Haley: Yes. You can’t make a stable living as a writer. You can. That’s what I thought when I was 16. I was like, “Well, this is all side stuff. I’ll just become a doctor.” Then I developed a phobia of needles out of nowhere, so that wasn’t really a viable option.
John: In a weird way, a helpful phobia because it steered you off a path that you were not destined to go down.
Haley: So true. I was afraid to go to a film school because I still wasn’t sure what it all meant. I went to Northwestern, which is where my parents met. I was still following some kind of path in my head. I applied to the film school. I thought to myself, “Well, if that doesn’t work out, I’ll just go be a chemistry major and continue down the doctor path.” I took a screenwriting class first quarter of college. The professor said, “You’re good at this.” I was like, “Great. Okay.” Then I had to figure out how the industry works from there.
John: After Northwestern, how did you actually make your move to actually really doing this? Did you come to Los Angeles? What was the process?
Haley: I interned in LA every summer of college. Hated it. I hated interning. I hated answering the phone.
John: Let’s talk about it. How did you get those internship jobs, and what were you doing, and why did they suck so much?
Haley: I got the first one through Northwestern. There’s a lot of Northwestern alums out here. Some alum, there was some network. I actually came to LA to do the interview. I think they were impressed by that. I did that. Then I just kept meeting people. I interned at studios and agencies. I was told to work at an agency, so I did, I worked at WME. That was my first job in the mailroom. A classic–
John: It’s a very classic entry of the space. Back in the day, when I was going through the Stark Program, at the mailroom, you were literally sorting mail as part of the job. I’m sure there is some of that now. What were you actually doing when you were in the mailroom?
Haley: It was sorting mail and delivering it. There’s a lot of fear that’s instilled upon you in that job, where it’s just a lot of people being like, “You have to know every single agent’s name and who they are.” There’s a lot of studying. I knew I wanted to be a writer. I was told to lie about it to get the interview. In my interview, I lied and said, “Oh, I want to be an agent,” blah, blah, blah. Then I made it my mission. I was like, “Once I get the job, I’ll be honest and say I want to be a writer,” so I did that.
I was in the mailroom for a week. I was lucky. I got on a desk really early. I worked for two different agents for one year. I was in and out. I hated it.
John: I want to hear about what you hated, but also, you probably took something out of it. I hope you were reading a lot.
Haley: Yes.
John: Did you read everything that was across your desk?
Haley: I worked for a book-to-TV agent first. That was lovely. I read a lot of books. I learned a lot about that side of the business. Then I worked for a motion picture lit agent. I did less reading because I had a lot of work. I met some writers who were lovely and some of my boss’s clients who agreed to read my writing. I learned a lot about what agents do and how the industry works. That helped me once I had an agent. Then I worked for a showrunner. I left that job and worked for a showrunner for two years, Network TV.
John: Was it a showrunner who had a show on the air at that point? It was still in development?
Haley: Yes. A showrunner with a deal. Carol Mendelsohn. She did CSI. At the time I worked for her, that show was done, and she was trying to get her next thing off the ground. I learned about pitching and how to deal with network notes. I’m not working in broadcast, but it was really interesting to see, and staffing, I was the assistant reading staffing samples.
John: Yes. I want to get into all of that because you had to do this yourself and figure out what made sense for you. During this time, you’re doing WME, you’re working for a showrunner, are you also writing? Did you find space to actually do your own work?
Haley: Yes. I made that a priority.
John: Good.
Haley: I had heard stories of people who come here wanting to be writers and never write. I had a slasher movie that I wrote in college that I was rewriting, and that’s what got me repped. I was still an assistant for a year, trying to get work.
John: You say you got repped. Did you get a manager? Did you get an agent?
Haley: I got both.
John: Great.
Haley: I met my manager at a networking event.
John: Those things I always dread going to, but it actually worked for you.
Haley: Sometimes they work.
John: Tell me about that networking event. What was it about your meeting this rep that clicked in a way that they agreed to read you?
Haley: It was a, I think, junior Hollywood holiday party.
John: You could go there because you were working at WME? How did you get into that?
Haley: I think it was open to any assistant. I met this young manager who had just been promoted. We were same level.
John: That’s crucial. You’re rising at the same– They’re hungry, you’re hungry. Rise together.
Haley: Totally. She asked to read my script. I sent it to her and then didn’t hear anything for months. We had a drink, and she was basically like, “I’m too new to sign you without someone else on the team, but can I send your script to some agents that I know?” I was like, “Of course.” She sent my script to a couple of agents, and then I met with my agents at Verve. They really impressed me. I didn’t do the thing where I met everywhere. I felt like they were very passionate about me, and I valued that and ended up signing with them.
John: That’s great.
Haley: I was repped and trying to get work, and I had this one feature script and no TV sample. I was like, “I want a staff.” My TV agent was like, “Well, write a pilot.” It took me a year to finally agree to do that.
John: Any sense of why you were resisting that?
Haley: I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to work in film, and I’m now writing a movie that I want to direct. The idea of working in TV and having a group of people and being a part of a team was also exciting to me. I just don’t know what I was thinking when I was 23, and like, “I don’t need a pilot.”
John: Absolutely. You have to give yourself some grace for being 23 years old. It’s a thing.
Haley: I came up with an idea for a pilot, and I was in Albuquerque assisting my boss on a pilot shoot that she was doing. I was like, “I’m going to write this pilot while I’m here because I don’t have any friends here.” I had this idea. Every day, I would sit and struggle. I wrote one page. I had another idea that I was like, “It’s about teenagers and ghosts,” and I didn’t want to do– so I pushed it away. I was like, “I’m going to be a serious writer and write a serious pilot.”
Then, I’d given myself a deadline and told my agents, “It will be ready on April 3rd,” or whatever it was. A week before the deadline, I’d written one page of my serious pilot. I was like, “I have to get this done.” I had four days where I’d finished my job on this pilot, and then I was supposed to be back at work. I was like, “Screw it, I’m writing the teenage ghosts.” I wrote it in four days, which has never happened to me since. That script got me out of assistant land. I sold it to Amazon. I got my first staffing job. Crazy.
John: Yes, because it’s the thing you were supposed to write.
Haley: Yes.
John: It just took you a while to realize that it was the thing you were meant to do.
Haley: Yes.
John: A slasher in this ghost story. Again, the horror general space. Talking about horror, because I was reading an interview you did for the LA Times, and you said this, quote, “This genre has been so much about women, as in studying feminist theory and horror, especially back in the ’70s. The genre forced men to relate to women. You’re watching women survive, which is ultimately something so powerful.” I’ve never seen it phrased that way, but it’s so true that women are almost always at the center of horror. Did you say that in class, or is it a realization you came to yourself? Tell me about your relationship to horror and how you think it, as your show, also encompasses that.
Haley: I don’t think it was something specifically that I studied in school. I’ve always been drawn to the genre, and I think because it explores often taboo subjects in a very visceral way, so it gets to these feelings that I think you don’t otherwise feel so intensely– I read Men, Women, and Chainsaws, which talks about this feminist theory behind horror, and so it’s something I stole from that.
I got really into reading about horror because I was trying to understand why I resonated with it so much. I really do just think it’s about exploring these visceral experiences and putting characters into your biggest fears and allowing yourself to face your own fears. I’m actually a very fearful person, and that’s what I love about horror. After I saw Weapons, I was scared to go to bed.
John: [laughs] Understandably, yes.
Haley: The show, so much of it was me exploring my fear of commitment, which I feel I healed through making the show.
John: Good. We talk about women being at the center of horror, and I’m thinking back to your first episode and the body horror that is shown in there, so not Rachel picking at herself, but also the conversation in the diner about her fear of childbirth and fear of having a giant baby and being ripped apart by a giant baby from the inside. There’s a viscerality to it that is just actually true to a woman’s experience of going through life, is that a woman’s life is gorier than a man’s life,-
Haley: That’s true.
John: -and it feels appropriate. I want to talk a little bit about the pilot, and then we’ll get into how you got there. I printed out the first two pages here, and I was wondering if you could read through some of the first page here, because it gives a sense of what your voice is like because this first page has no dialogue. Classically, we’re like, “Oh, God, no one’s talking on the first page, and no one’s going to read it.” You made some very smart choices of these are short paragraphs that are drawing you down the page. It is in career prime. It looks delightful.
Haley: [chuckles]
John: Good use of some underlining, some bolding. Do you mind reading this first page?
Haley: Sure. Wow. I haven’t looked at this in so long.
“A wedding band plays the song Shout by The Isley Brothers. We enter mid-song late to the party. Open on, into your summer house. Ballroom night. We’ve been dropped into a wedding in full swing in a decadent ballroom in the dead of winter. We’re in the middle of the dance floor surrounded by wedding guests, and they’re doing the thing you do to the song. You know the thing where you crouch down during this part. A little bit softer now. A little bit softer now. A little bit softer now. A little bit softer now.
Once the people crouch down to the music, we can see a stunning table with an enormous, elegant, perfect wedding cake on top, positioned in front of breathtakingly floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out on a snowy paradise. We’re not going to leave this shot. We won’t see the scope of the space. That’s for the finale. This is only a tease, and our view of the wedding cake is obscured again when all the guests rise to this part of the song. A little bit louder now. A little bit louder now. A little bit louder now. A little bit louder now.
The guests are rowdy and drunk and sweaty and alive. This is the most fun wedding you’ve ever seen. You wish your wedding was this fun. Look at everyone. They dance and dance, packed in, young and old, and everything in between. We watch them for longer than feels necessary. Then, a harsh jump cut on the same shot, only now it’s silent. Later, no music. Only the sound of someone shouting, per the song, wailing, screaming, choking for breath between sobs. The table has been knocked over. The cake is on the floor. The wind howls outside, snow falling in buckets. A Russian wolfhound licks frosting off the fallen bride and groom cake toppers, off someone’s long, drawn-out wail of grief.
We cut to: interior car moving, highway, day. A woman’s left hand on the steering wheel, engagement ring sparkling in the light. A big, stunning diamond. Chiron one week earlier than six days until I do.”
John: It’s great. Then we’re going to meet Rachel and Nicky, our central couple here. The reason why I asked you to do that, it’s specific, but it’s also a voice. It feels like it’s a person doing this thing. If people are looking at the pages themselves. You use italics in smart ways, bolds in smart ways. You’re really drawing us through this. There’s a nuance to things that just really works. A person reading this would say, “Oh, should I keep reading? Of course I’m going to keep reading,” because it just feels confident and just every moment piques my curiosity.
Haley: Thank you.
John: When you were first describing the show to people, did you know it started like that? Did you know that it had that feel?
Haley: The show is quite different than my initial vision for it. I came up with “the thing,” the very bad thing, first, and then figured out how to end up there.
John: A classic mystery, like who done it. You’re working backwards because, watching the show, you make the wrong assumptions about what’s going to happen, which is intentional, but you didn’t know that. You knew what the ultimate thing is, which we’re not going to say what the thing is. Did you know that it was going to be a family wedding at an isolated house?
Haley: Yes. That part, yes. Initially, it was Portia, the sister’s wedding.
John: Oh, interesting.
Haley: Rachel was just going to meet this family for the first time. Then, in the development process, it became more streamlined for it to be Rachel’s wedding. I think the visual, the snowy wedding, was something that was there from the beginning. I definitely figure things out in the writing. I’m one of these writers where I’m being taken on the journey. I don’t like outlining. It’s really hard in the professional world to be someone who’s like, “I don’t do that.” How do I pitch something when I don’t know the character yet?
John: You and I are a lot more like that. It can be tough. I really now want to fast forward to talking with how you work with a room when you are a person who’s intuitively going your own way. Talk to me about, you have this idea, this snowy wedding, we have this family, what is the first shape of it? Who are you telling it to? How does it become a thing you’re starting to write a script for?
Haley: I came up with the idea in 2020. It was my 27th birthday.
John: Nice.
Haley: That’s when I came up with the idea. I was in a writers’ room that was pretty time-consuming, so I didn’t have a lot of time to write and focus on this, so I would just write emails to myself. I do a lot of thinking while I’m driving, taking a shower, or walking. I would just write these emails to myself. They were themes, scenes, or dialogue. It was anything, really.
John: Would you gather them together intentionally?
Haley: It was just one email thread. I would just shoot off these little things.
John: Love it.
Haley: Character names, anything. Then, once I had time to really sit down and figure it out, it was like a year later. I had all these emails, and I just sat and wrote. I knew at that point it was going to be a road trip, and I just went along for the ride. I think at one point I’d been like, “They find a baby in a car. Okay, how do we get there?” In the initial version of the pilot, you don’t meet the family. Then that was another thing. The system came in and said, “You can’t have a pilot where you aren’t meeting all the characters.”
I started talking about the show as like, “It’s a horror show about marrying the wrong person.” This always happens to me. I pitch ideas to producers and execs, and there’s always a, “That’s not going to work.” I write the script and present it with that to back myself up. It’s execution-dependent. This is happening to me right now as I’m pitching my movie and going, “I should just not pitch it and just write–”
John: Yes, just write the movie. Yes, it is tough. I will say that over the course of my career, there’s definitely been times where it’s like, “Why am I on my ninth pitch for this thing? I could have just written it by now and shown them what the thing is.” It’s that tough balance.
Haley: It’s a risk, right?
John: Yes.
Haley: Because you could write it and no one could want it.
John: I’ve done that, too. Yes.
Haley: Which I don’t think is a waste.
John: Because at least you have the thing. You have the perfect version of the thing that you have done. You’ve written the script now. How does it end up at Netflix? What were the other conversations?
Haley: I pitched the show to, I don’t know, maybe 12 producers. We ended up having enough interest to split territories, which I think is rare in TV. I pitched to the Duffers. They had not read the script. Their response was, “This seems like a movie. All your comps are movies. I don’t know.”
John: You can get why they say that, because as I said, I didn’t know that it was a series as I started watching. It’s like, “Oh, I get where this movie is going.” Then, I was like, “Oh, no, this is a series, and I’m on the wrong–” I understand that instinct, but ultimately they came around.
Haley: Then they read the script. The next day, they were like, “We want to do this.”
John: Great.
Haley: They had a deal at Netflix, and so it was clear that I would go–
John: They had a little success at Netflix, too.
Haley: Of course.
John: Netflix does like them.
Haley: Yes. They had one other show that they were producing, but neither had been made. It was a good time.
John: It feels like a good fit. It’s a very different show than Stranger Things, but it’s not completely different, not out of the wheelhouse.
Haley: Totally. I was honored that they were interested. I was a big fan of Stranger Things from when it first dropped. I was nervous to meet them, but they’re lovely. I had two other producers that were interested that we took to all the streamers, except for HBO, who didn’t want to hear the pitch, which is fine. We went around and pitched. We had a couple of offers, and it came down to Netflix and Apple. Netflix had a better deal.
John: That’s great. That’s awesome. You’ve written a pilot. My instinct is that Netflix is reading this and they’ll say, “We love this, and there’s things we know about how stuff needs to work.” It’s like, “We got to meet the family. We got to do these things.” I’ll say watching the show, I’m like, “Wow, this thing seems really expensive and there’s no standing sets.” Then at the very end of the first episode, we get to like, “Oh, this is a standing set, and it’s gorgeous,” but we’re going to be on that set for a long time, which is TV, which is great, which is terrific.
You had staffed on a show, but you’d never run a show. You never done all these things. What were the things that, looking back now, if you could magically email yourself to let you know, these are the things you need to keep in mind, what would they be?
Haley: Oh, man. Running a show is so hard. I was told that. I was like, “I’m ready. I’m ready to run a show. Put me in.” I was warned. It’s interesting because the Duffers protected me from having someone come in with more experience because that can be a tricky situation, which was fantastic, but also, I was thrown into the fire a bit and had to figure these things out on my own. I think having a really strong North Star for what you’re making is so important because the whole process is just other people coming in and sharing their ideas, which is incredible, but you can lose sight of what the show is.
That’s another reason why I like to write something first, because I need to give it a spine. I have a thing I say where it’s like, “If I’m telling you my ideas too early, it’s like a baby.” It’s like a floppy baby, and someone’s going to come in and put their sticks in my baby, so I got to make sure the baby can walk before anyone else comes in and tries to push it over.
John: Absolutely. I’ve seen your show, and I know that stick figure people are dangerous signs of trouble, for sure. This resonates so strongly with what I was doing because my first show, I’d done Go, and then I’d sold a show, D.C., for The WB Network. My equivalent of the Duffer Brothers was Dick Wolf, who was not a caring, generous person and collaborator. We were trying to shoot the show on stages in Toronto, locations in DC, and post and writing in Los Angeles. You can guess how well that worked. Not at all.
Like you, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Maybe you were more confident and could ask the questions and sort of get the answers you needed. I had impostor syndrome and was afraid to tell people what I actually needed. It was tough.
Haley: It’s really hard. I had a great producer, Andrea Sperling, who comes from the indie film world, who was with me on the ground in Toronto.
John: Good.
Haley: Every single meeting I was doing was the first time for me. Go into a production meeting, things would happen. Afterwards, I’d be like, “Is this normal? Is that normal? Should I be worrying about this?” Because I felt confident in the story, that’s really all I needed. I knew I was well supported. That’s advice the Duffers gave me. It was like, “You’re going to get all these notes, and you have to feel confident about every creative decision that you make because you’re the one who has to stand behind it.” That was what I did. Yes, it’s challenging to enter a space for the first time and be like, “I’m the leader.” I was worried people wouldn’t respect me. That was my biggest fear.
John: I feel the same.
Haley: For the most part, they did.
John: That’s good. Before you started shooting in Toronto, you were writing the whole season. You’re a person who likes to write things yourself, and I’m sure you did a ton of writing, but you also had some other people working. Was it a challenge to get used to working with other writers on a thing to discuss? I have to imagine it was. Again, sending yourself that email back in time, what are things that you learned along the way?
Haley: I think having a strong group of writers with different skill sets was very helpful. I had a married couple in the writers’ room that were both non-traditional TV writers in that they were chaotic and liked to blow things up and go, “I know we just broke these two episodes, but we should flip them.” I loved that because I think I put my writers through a bit of hell. There were a lot of things I would do differently next time. I was chaotic in running the room, in that it was so much harder than I expected because I am someone who figures things out on the page, where I would see the outline and just go, “Ugh, I don’t think so.” Then I would make it everyone else’s problem and come back in and go, “Okay, we need to change this.”
It was great to have a team of people who were down for that. I don’t know how to do it differently and end up where we ended up because you have to go through this process of going down every path just to make sure that–
John: There’s nothing interesting right there that you’re missing.
Haley: Yes. I felt armed with that when I got to prep and on set and talking to actors, because they would have ideas that were a path I went down. I get to say, “Well, I tried that, and here’s why it didn’t work.” I find it helpful to have a lot of other people bringing different ideas in, but again, it comes back to that North Star and knowing that’s a cool idea, but it’s not this show.
John: You had your producer on set with you in Toronto. Did you have anybody from the writing room with you in Toronto?
Haley: No.
John: Would that have been helpful?
Haley: Yes.
John: I can imagine. Were you block shooting? Were you doing an episode at a time? How did it work?
Haley: Oh, God, it was insane. We shot 72 days.
John: Oh, that’s not very much for-
Haley: No, eight episodes.
John: -eight episodes, no.
Haley: 72 days, we were almost always shooting two units at once.
John: Yes, that’s where it gets rough.
Haley: It was like we were prepping Episode 5 while shooting 2 and 3 at the same time with three different directors. I was just running back and forth between everything. It was chaotic, but we got everything somehow. I don’t know how. Good planning, I guess. I was just writing the whole time.
That was another thing. I was told that that’s what would happen, and I didn’t believe it.
John: Didn’t believe it, yes.
Haley: I was like, “No, the scripts are in good shape.” We had 20 weeks to write the show. Casting started during the writers’ room. I’ve left the room with six first drafts. The pilot had already been written and rewritten many times. Six first drafts and no finale. I was alone in Toronto rewriting every episode just to do the network notes, let alone production needs, actors’ opinions, and directors’. That was insane. I’m writing the finale while we’re shooting.
John: I would say that, based on my conversations with showrunners, that’s really common and yet not a great way to make the best thing you want to make. It ends with a lot of exhaustion that comes with that. Let’s answer some listener questions, but I think some of those questions may tie us back into things we were just talking about. Do you want to start with Carrie?
Drew Marquardt: Yes. “I’m currently in my first-ever development process with a spec I wrote. I attached producers and did, essentially, a page 1 rewrite of the script per their notes. Now they have pages and pages of more notes on the rewrite. Sometimes I feel like, since I’m a younger writer, I’m getting more notes than someone older or more established might. Have you found this to be true in your early days, and how do you not lose confidence in your work during this process?”
John: It’s not that I remember it. It still happens. It’s being able to recognize that, “Okay, this is a note that is really important to them that actually needs to be addressed, and this is just a thing they’re saying,” or they’re diagnosing something that is not working for them, but they’re trying to provide a solution that’s not the right solution.
Haley: Right.
John: How are you feeling?
Haley: Yes, I definitely understand that. I got notes on the show that, mostly in the edit, where I would get notes that were like, “You can’t do this,” or a note about an editing thing that I was like, “Oh, I’m subverting that. That’s intentional, but because you see me as someone who doesn’t have experience, you think you’re explaining something to me.” I get that. It’s frustrating.
I think I have had to learn how to handle the politics of seeing the bigger notes, trying to address the ones that feel true to me, and you don’t have to take their ideas. You have to diagnose the note behind the note and then defend why you made the choice you made. I think that people become more confident in you if you have a strong opinion about, “I hear you, this is how I’m understanding your note, this is how I addressed it,” and they’ll relax and understand that you know what you’re doing.
John: Yes, what you just said, the “I hear you,” sometimes they just want to know that actually, the message got through, and that you actually understand what they’re communicating. Also, “This is what I’m doing, and this is why I’m doing what I’m doing.” Finding the right ways to do that to make sense is tough. There’s a gender component, there’s an age component, all that stuff is true. You and I could say the same thing and it’s going to read differently based on who we are.
Haley: Totally. I think having a relationship with your producers or studio exec where you’re calling them– When we were getting notes on cuts, Netflix would just send emails, and I was like, “Let’s talk on the phone.” You can get through a bit of the understanding of where the note’s coming from easier if you have a real conversation about it.
John: I was just on a kickoff call on a project today, and they asked, “Do you like to see written notes or have a phone call?” I said, “Written first, but then a phone call.” It’s really whatever works for you. It was good that they asked. That’s smart. I have a question about casting, because this is your first time casting. I love casting. Did you love casting?
Haley: Yes. It’s so fun.
John: It’s so much fun because it’s all possibilities, and nothing’s permanent. You get to play, which is great. You have these talented actors come in. It’s especially gratifying when no one gets it right, and then suddenly you get a person who gets it right. It’s like, “Oh, I was crazy, that line actually does make sense. It’s just that the right person has to embody it.” I thought Camila Morrone is fantastic, and everyone must note that Rachel seems very much your energy, and it was just a really good fit. I hope it was a great experience doing that.
Haley: Yes. It’s so funny. I have told her that I’m going to blame her for this, but I met her, and she was like, “Oh, I’m going to copy your look for the character.” I was like, “Okay, it’s not based on me, but go ahead.” I was a fan of hers since Never Going Back. I thought she was so great. She’s a very naturalistic actor. She brought so much to the character, and she’s very smart and hardworking. I’m lucky that she did such a great job, and I was in the edit just, “Oh, thank God I don’t have to–”
John: Yes. You’re not cutting around a person.
Haley: Yes.
John: I’ve been there, cutting around a performance, and it’s tough. How did you like being on set, and what was your experience being on set? Where was it great that you were there, and when– Because you said, “I know when I can walk away.” Tell me about that.
Haley: I think being on set for the setups, rehearsal, and the early parts of figuring out a scene was really great. I enjoyed being there and helping to answer questions. I am also a director, and it was hard for me to not be able to do that on the show.
John: Absolutely.
Haley: Then there’s a certain point where it’s like, “I don’t think I’m helping by sitting here and whispering things to the director. I’m going to let her do her thing and take it from there.”
John: You’ve got really good directors on that show, too, but you’re always going to do things differently. It sounds like you’re there for blocking, making sure that it’s the right scene, that it’s the right thing. You probably had tone meetings before everything, too, so you know what the thing is. You don’t need to be there for all the coverage if you know what the scene is.
Haley: Totally. I think the finale, I spent more time on set and scenes where I felt like, “There’s a lot of layers here, and I want to make sure that it’s all being communicated.” I was also just doing so much writing during production.
John: You did actually just do that stuff.
Haley: Yes.
John: I have a question here from Danielle about splitting scenes that feels right.
Drew: “I’m writing a script where the first half of the film, we see what we think is happening, and in the second half of the film, we see what’s really happening. For some scenes, I have the beginnings in the first half, and we don’t get the true ending until the second half of the film. How can I make it clear in the script that this is a continuation of a previous scene? Can I just write that in the script, or is there a specific terminology for that?”
John: Yes, you split some stuff up. You made it clear in what we just read that things are going to be divided. I think she should just say what she’s doing. People try to be too clever, or there’s some sort of magic lingo. Say what you’re doing and just trust that people are actually reading your script.
Haley: I agree. I think always go for clarity. I’m big in audience understanding. I got made fun of in a writers’ room for always being like, “Well, the audience thinks this,” or, “The audience this–” It’s like, “Oh, Haley speaks for the audience.”
John: You can’t speak for the audience.
Haley: Of course. When I’m writing, I am thinking about the reader, and I’m thinking about what the feeling is of the scene, and what you should feel watching the scene. I write a lot of things that are never going to translate to screen, but I think help the reader, the actor, and the director, if it’s not me, figure out the tone and what you should take away from the scene. There’s a line in the script where I think Nicky says to Rachel, “Everything’s going to be okay,” or “Nothing bad’s going to happen,” and there’s a line that’s like, “Well, that’s the title of the show.” I like to have fun with that. I think just be completely clear what you’re doing, and people won’t be confused.
John: In your script, in the PDF we got, the word “blood” is in red every time we see it. A very specific choice. Watching the show isn’t going to show up, but that was a choice you made. Tell me about that.
Haley: I just wanted to make it clear that blood is very significant in this show. I wanted the reader to be aware of that. When I was talking about the look of the show, I wanted no red except for blood. Actually, I, in part, hired my costume designer, Courtney Mitchell, who did a fantastic job because in her interview she pitched a bunch of red. I was like, “That’s really bold to go against what I said.” Rachel does wear a bit of red. I wanted to highlight that. I didn’t end up keeping that in the rest of the show while we were getting into production drafts and everything, because my revisions were in red.
John: Yes, exactly. It’s going to get confusing.
Haley: I did do it in the finale. I don’t know. You’ve got to have fun with the writing.
John: You have to have fun, yes. Make it an enjoyable read, and people will actually read it.
Haley: Yes.
John: That’s the secret that we just told. All right. Let’s jump ahead to our One Cool Things. My one cool thing is that I’ll link to a blog post by Daniel Frank. He calls it the five vodkas thing. Basically, it’s where you have a tasting. Like a party where you just do a tasting, where the idea is you’re bringing five different examples of a thing, and everyone’s going to taste them and try them and discuss things. We’ve done similar things with Austrian white wines or things. It’s just a good excuse to get people together. Sometimes you just need a point of focus.
I went to a birthday party where they got all the hot sauces from Hot Ones, and a bunch of chicken wings. Everyone just did the Hot Ones Challenge, which was fun. Just as an idea for an excuse to get people together, it’s like you’re going to try five different things within and everyone have a point of discussion. It doesn’t have to be a wine tasting. It can be anything. I’ll link to this post, but just any good excuse for getting people together, I think is a fun one.
Haley: Yes, I love that. I want to do that.
John: Yes, we’ll do that. What kind of things would you want to sample or have people compare and contrast?
Haley: Running the show gave me celiac.
John: Oh, no.
Haley: I was told by a showrunner, “You’re going to get an autoimmune disease.”
John: Yes, and they were right.
Haley: I think maybe gluten-free pastries around LA. I’m new to it, so I don’t really know what the good ones are.
John: There’s amazing ones in Los Angeles. In your gluten-free quest, La Provence bakery on Olympic has a gluten-free chocolate chip cookie, which is the best chocolate chip cookie you’ve had in your entire life. We actually did a tasting here on Scriptnotes once.
Drew: Yes, we did cookies.
John: We did a cookie tasting, a cookie challenge, and it was fun.
Haley: Sounds great.
John: Yes. Again, things that aren’t alcohol-based is also a great idea, too.
Haley: I got some whiskey from a bunch of different companies who are trying to woo me right now. I did a blind taste test with some friends, comparing which company gave me the best whiskey.
John: Restaurants, too, we’ll get the beer flight or the tequila flight, so you can actually taste different things. I was like, “I don’t want a full drink of that thing. I want just a sip to see what the difference is.” Great. I love it. Cool. Any One Cool Thing to share with our group?
Haley: I’ve been listening to the radio, the real radio.
John: The real radio. Tell me about the real radio.
Haley: I only listen to one thing. I listen to KCRW. I’m trying to become more worldly, so I put on the radio. I discovered there’s a show on KCRW called FREAKS ONLY. Which is every night, I think, or maybe it’s only Wednesdays. I don’t know exactly. I put it on. It’s just weird music for freaks only. I tried to put a song from it in the show, and everyone hated it. Me and my editor were both like, “Yes.”
John: What’s the song? Because I’m sure I’m going to love it.
Haley: It’s called Atomic Wave Dance. It’s just like a weird electronic jazz song. I don’t remember who it’s by, but it’s great. I put it in the show, and then the producers were like, “That song, how attached are you?” Netflix was like, “I don’t know about that song,” which made me like it more.
John: Of course.
Haley: I lost the battle. I love discovering music via, specifically, that show. Things like that. I listen to a lot of obscure music. My brother had a radio show called Abstractions that doesn’t exist anymore. My brother and I have nothing in common except for our music taste. I will send him a song from that show and be like, “This is a very you song.”
John: While watching the show, I did Shazam at one point. It was a Paul Anka song, and I loved it. Was that always scripted in there?
Haley: No.
John: How did you find that?
Haley: My music supervisor, Tiffany. It plays a role in the show. I don’t remember what it was initially, but she found that song. I didn’t know who Paul Anka was. There’s a song in Episode 4, You Are the Blood by the Castanets, that was written into the end of the pilot originally. I listen to music while I write. I make playlists for every project. I love the part of the edit where you’re placing music. It’s so fun.
John: That is our show for this week. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is, very appropriately, by Gloom Canyon. If you have an outro, you can send a link to ask@johnaugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions, like the ones we answered today. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com, along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. I’m realizing, Haley, that the posts you read on johnaugust.com are still there.
Haley: Oh, wow.
John: Everything you’ve ever read on johnaugust.com is still there and searchable and accessible.
Haley: Amazing.
John: That’s just wild, though. The Scriptnotes book is available wherever you buy books. You’ll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube, including probably clips from this. We’re recording some video for this, but we’ll see. You’ll find those on YouTube. Just search for Scriptnotes and give us a follow. You’ll find us on Instagram: @scriptnotespodcast.
We have T-shirts, hoodies, and drinkware. You’ll find those at Cotton Bureau. You can find the show notes with links to all the things we talked about in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on red herrings and misdirects.
Haley Z. Boston, an absolute pleasure to talk with you. Congratulations again on your show. It’s just a delight. Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, and something very delightful is going to happen if you watch your show.
Haley: [chuckles]
John: Thanks.
[Bonus Segment]
John: All right. Bonus segment time. Red herrings and misdirects. When I put this in as a topic, I’m like, “What even is a red herring? Where does red herring come from?” Do you know where the term “red herring” comes from?
Haley: I have no idea.
John: Apparently, it was the idea of you take a red herring, which is just a kipper, like a smelly fish, and use it to distract hunting dogs so they won’t go after the things you don’t want them to go after. You rub it on things so they’ll be misdirected another way. Sure, I’m fine. I like it in terms of how we talk about it in fiction because so often you are doing a misdirect or a red herring. There’s times where it works, and there’s times where it feels incredibly annoying and frustrating, where it feels like, “Okay, but it broke the logic of your show to do this thing,” and you have really more of a misdirect than a red herring, I’d say. We can decide what the taxonomy is.
As we start watching the show, we think like, “This family is a murderous, insane family, and she’s going to join a cult, and she’s going to be sacrificed.” In the feature version of it, we’ve seen features like that. As we watch Episode 2, we’re like, “Oh, no, I’m right. This is what’s going to happen.” At the end of Episode 2, there’s a revelation like, “Oh, no, that wasn’t the thing that was actually happening.” There’s a different explanation for stuff. When did you know that? How did you plan for the misdirect, the red herring? Talk to us about that.
Haley: We have a reveal at the midpoint of the season that changes everything. It’s one of those shows.
John: What the real thing is, what the real danger is, yes.
Haley: A lot of it, we talked about the first half of the season, Rachel believes the threat is coming from outside. By the midpoint, she realizes it’s coming from within. It was sort of the house is haunted versus I’m haunted. In figuring out that was the structure, then it became, “Okay, now how do we misdirect while still building to what the real thing is, so you don’t feel like it’s coming out of nowhere?” I think the evil family thing, which was, by the way, very hard in the marketing to try to avoid that feeling like all it is because you’re right, there are a lot of those narratives out there right now.
John: That’s absolutely right. You’re going to get married into, but it’s a family of vampires.
Haley: Yes. It was something that I think used to have a longer life in the show and then in the writers’ room, and in that process, we wanted to pull it up. I think that when you’re watching something that long, you want to be surprised. The trick is to make sure that there is some logic and grounding to it so it doesn’t feel like, “Oh, you’re just fooling me as an audience.” I wanted to try to answer a lot of questions while asking more, so that you always felt like, “Okay, you answer–” At the end of Episode 2, we answer a lot and then leave a hanging question. Then Episode 4 answers everything in the pilot, basically. I don’t know that I went in being like, “That’s the structure.” It just formed that way.
John: As you were pitching to the Duffers and other producers, what were they asking about? Because they were reading the pilot, too, so they would naturally assume, “Oh, this is a crazy, murderous family.” What would you tell them?
Haley: The thing is that when I pitched the show, I didn’t know.
John: You didn’t know. Okay, yes.
Haley: Actually, the version of the show that I pitched, it wasn’t Rachel’s wedding. This is the version I pitched to Netflix. It wasn’t Rachel’s wedding, it was Portia’s wedding. She’s sensing that there’s strangeness from this family and something’s going on. What she realizes is that it’s like an elaborate proposal. Then there was still the story of Victoria, the matriarch, with an illness. The idea was that if you aren’t a fan of marriage and you’re getting married, it feels like a ritual sacrifice. That was a much longer thread, originally. Then she did ultimately end up getting married at the end of the week because of the illness. It was really fast-tracked.
John: Right. That actually makes a lot of sense. I can completely envision how it started that way. Then, like, “Okay, but it’s actually more interesting if it’s Rachel’s wedding.”
Haley: Then there’s a bunch of Easter eggs in the show and little red herrings along the way.
John: Things that seem like they’re going to be incredibly meaningful, dangerous things.
Haley: Yes.
John: For example, to what degree do we believe that Rachel is a reliable narrator? Do we believe that she’s actually just hallucinating, that she’s actually not mentally fully there, which, after the first two episodes, you’d think, l”This could all be in her head.” We see her smoking a joint while she’s driving.
Haley: Yes, there’s a bit of that. Then the Sorry Man came in.
John: The Sorry Man, of course.
Haley: That came from the writers’ room. I love that story. It’s funny, when I was watching the pilot a million times, at a certain point, I was like, “I wish we saw the Sorry Man,” because he’s so scary-seeming. I didn’t want to do any hallucinations or dream sequences; that was important to me.
John: Yes. Also, though, there’s moments at the bar and things like that where it’s pushed to a very far degree, but it’s not strictly. It’s more of a Twin Peaks kind of feel, where it’s just like, “Sure, this could happen. It’s just a very unexpected way it’s working.”
Haley: Yes. I wanted you to feel this is a heightened version of meeting your in-laws, and using horror to externalize internal feelings.
John: Yes. The thing I admire most about what you’re doing, and this also ties into misdirection, it’s a misdirection in terms of what genre we’re in. It’s using the tropes of modern horror to really get out a relationship drama story.
Haley: Totally.
John: That was really fun. The very long tracking shots were where we were just very slowly pulling around things, and that sense of dread. It works so well because we’re not expecting them to see it in this kind of story, which is just so much fun.
Another crucial thing, and in general, when people are thinking about red herrings or misdirections, you have to make sure that during the time the misdirection is happening, there’s still valuable character information being revealed. In your case, we’re learning more about Nicky and Rachel’s relationship while this is all happening. We’re learning how this house is structured. We’re learning about the dogs. We’re learning about this stuff. Things we might be misinterpreting or being led to misinterpret about what’s happening in that shed over there will make sense after the fact. It’s having it tracked both ways.
Haley: Yes. I will say, I shouldn’t be reading what people are saying online, but I can’t help it. There’s definitely people who are not happy with some things not paying off. It’s interesting because, to me, it does pay off thematically. There’s the podcast that they listen to in the pilot about the Coldy serial killer. You see him again in Episode 4, but what she’s saying in the podcast about feeling euphoric when you’re losing all your blood, and how it felt like her wedding day, there’s just a bunch of thematic ties.
I agree. I think it’s Rachel’s eavesdropping in the diner. You think maybe that story about someone killing dogs is going to come back, and it doesn’t, but it, I think, sets the eerie atmosphere. You understand who Rachel is as someone who’s living in other people’s moments and someone who’s curious, and the type of person who would say something to that woman in the diner.
John: You’re also teaching us how to watch your show. That’s a seven-page scene at a diner where they’re basically sitting there. Your normal instinct is, “Oh, that’s way too long of a scene.” Then you realize what’s actually happening in it and just how much it’s getting us into the vibe of who these people are and what the world feels like. It seems appropriate. This is not a show that’s going to rush through things.
Haley: Right. I’ll say that’s not without tons of people pushing back against the amount of notes I got about, “We need to pace up the opening,” and “It’s not going to work.” There’s so many things I learned. Episode 7 is high energy, high energy. Then there’s a 10-minute scene of two people talking, basically. I got away with that. That’s to say, try to get away with it and see what you can get away with.
John: When I had the Game of Thrones folks on, talking about the first season of that show, they were so used to a “feature” pace where everything has to be fast, fast, fast, fast, and their episodes were coming in short. They realized, “Oh, no, we can just have two people have a long conversation at times,” and people love it. You can.
Haley: Yes.
John: Haley, congratulations again on the show, and thanks for the talk on red herrings.
Haley: Thank you.
John: Cool.