The original post for this episode can be found here.
John August: Hey, this is John. A standard warning for people who are in the car with their kids, there’s some swearing in this episode.
Craig Mazin: Hello and welcome. My name is Craig Mazin, and this is Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.
Today on the show, I will be solo hosting, but joined by the creator and showrunner of FX’s Say Nothing, Joshua Zetumer.
We’ll talk about that show, which is one of my favorites of 2024, if not my favorite of 2024, as well as answer some listener questions. In our bonus segment for premium members, and this is probably going to be a surprise to Joshua, he and I will put on our urban planner and civil engineer hats to answer what I think is a fairly easy question. How would we make Los Angeles function better? Joshua, welcome to the show.
Joshua Zetumer: Thank you for having me. I’ve listened to the show. I love the show. I’m a big fan of yours as well. So I’m really excited to be here.
Craig: Oh, go on.
Joshua: No. I can go on. I can go on.
Craig: Please don’t.
Joshua: No, I’ll just say one thing, which was Chernobyl was very much a model in my mind in how to do a limited series right and was a huge influence on Say Nothing. I’ll be excited to talk to you about that.
Craig: Well, we will get into that. Whatever influenced you, tip of the hat, because as I said, it was one of my favorite shows of 2024. I think it’s a fantastic show, and I really want to dig into, from the writing point of view, how you put it together and ask you some interesting questions about both the nature of your process and the show itself, the story.
Before we do that, some interesting little bits of biographic detail on you. First, your parents are both psychiatrists, so I think I’m really, really sorry, but I’m not sure. I think that’s better than therapists, probably.
Joshua: I feel like it’s worse than therapists. I feel like neo-Freudians at the dinner table is like maybe worse than like a touchy-feely LA therapist because they’ll really just put it all on themselves since that the Freudians blame the parents for everything.
Craig: Right. I’m sure they were blaming their parents at the same time. Poor grandma and grandpa.
Joshua: That’s right.
Craig: That’s right.
Joshua: It echoes down the line.
Craig: Oh, yes. More interesting than that to me, I guess when you were in high school, you were a jazz drummer.
Joshua: This is true. Yes. I was a drummer, and I was going to try to be a professional drummer for a long time. My childhood was very much like shrinks and punk in San Diego, which is where I’m from, and which is infinitely uncool to be from San Diego. I was like the indoor kid, having an existential crisis while everyone else was enjoying the beach.
Craig: Well, that’s what I would have done also, just so you know. Also, love playing the drums, probably not as good as you, and people that say jazz drummer are always very, very good, I feel like–
Joshua: Or just very pretentious, or just deeply lame. [chuckles]
Craig: Fair. Fair. You can play poorly and call it polyrhythm. I’ve seen this happen.
Joshua: What kind of stuff do you play, may I ask?
Craig: I was mostly just good old– still occasionally I’ll play, but just good old standard rock and roll stuff. Nothing– I actually never got into like the full punk, tu nda, tu nda, tu nda. Jazz drumming to me is– well, first of all, I just couldn’t do the traditional grip anyway, to start with. Then I was like I’m decent with rudiments, but not like jazz drummer good. I always felt like jazz drummers are like the wizards of drummers, and guys like me are just like the warlocks of drummers.
Joshua: [laughs] I definitely– it may be a stretch to call me a jazz drummer, I certainly studied a lot of jazz in college, and I felt like I tried to apply it to other styles. I think for me, those were always my heroes. The jazz guys were always my heroes, Elvin Jones and Tony Williams, because they were so unapproachable in their skill level, and it was something I really aspired to. Ultimately, I remember there was a really dark joke that I think someone told me when I was 20 years old, when I was really studying, which was like, maybe you’ve heard it, “What’s the difference between a jazz musician and a large pizza? A large pizza can feed a family of four.”
Craig: Oh, wow.
Joshua: That’s-
Craig: A fact. It’s a tough life. You picked, I think, a similarly tough path. “Oh, I think I’ll try and do the thing that’s even less likely to work out,” which is becoming a professional screenwriter, and yet you have. You, like me, mostly working, were working in features, you worked on Quantum of Solace, I’m jealous that you got to work on a James Bond movie because I’m a huge Bond nut, you did the RoboCop reboot, which I thought was terrific, and you also did Patriots Day in 2016, which is also an excellent film. Then you went, “I think I’m going to–“
Let’s talk about Say Nothing and some facts for our listeners. Say Nothing, the limited series, is based on the book, Say Nothing, A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe, who’s also a lovely man.
It is a nine-episode series that follows the story of two sisters, Dolours and Marion Price, who joined the IRA as young women in the early ‘70s, and through that story of idealism, liberation, oppression, terrorism, imprisonment, and murder, we get what I think, this is me editorializing, the best and most complete portrayal of the complicated reality of who the IRA was, and what they achieved, and what they failed to achieve. This miniseries was not your first attempt to write about the IRA, as I understand.
Joshua: No, that’s right. My first job writing in Hollywood was writing a script about the IRA, actually for Leonardo DiCaprio, when I was 26 years old, and that film never got made, but it got me steeped in the troubles long before taking on Say Nothing. The movie that I wrote for Leonardo DiCaprio was going to be– I didn’t want to call him Leo, just there, I had a moment of being like, “I can’t call him Leo,” but it was going to be produced by David Benioff, who created Game of Thrones, of course, and then Brad Simpson, who’s one of the producers on Say Nothing.
So when the book came out, Brad had a very early option on the book, and I think I was one of the first people he thought of because I was good friends with him and I’m one of his friends who happened to be a writer who knew the history of Northern Ireland pretty well. He slipped me the book and it just instantly became my favorite book. I thought it was just an extraordinary piece of writing, and also, I just thought, upon reading it, there’s just no way in hell it’s ever going to get made, just because Hollywood is so fear-based and the idea of doing an ambitious period show set in Northern Ireland, the odds of getting it greenlit seem like they were maybe 5%, no matter how good the book was.
The show was also like un-pitchable. It’s a very awkward pitch. If you pitch it, it’s about two Catholic sisters in Belfast who joined the IRA, and then you follow them on a 30-year journey from idealism to disillusionment. That pitch does not make studio executives see dollar signs. Now, when I look at it on the platform, it’s on Hulu, I can’t believe that it got made. It feels like I got away with robbing a bank, honestly. It’s on Disney Plus outside the US, and so I see this show about Irish paramilitaries like up there next to Buzz Lightyear, and I just cackle at the very idea that somebody was ballsy enough to make it. I spent five years doing the show that I actually got it done.
It is a testament to everybody involved that it got made. Not only my producers who are Brad Simpson and Nina Jacobson at Color Force, they’re super pugnacious. They really fight for the projects. Then also John Landgraf and Gina at FX. I don’t want to shill for FX, but truly like they believed in the book, they really believed in the scripts, and they believed in the cast, and that they were willing to make a show that was period, that had no stars, that was limited, that was doing everything that you’re really told not to do. I’m just really grateful that they said yes.
Craig: I know a little something about that process because I went through it with HBO, and you’re right, you have to find some people who are willing to do a thing that probably won’t work. By won’t work I mean gathering viewership and capturing people’s imaginations. Because when we tell these stories based on real-life events and we spread them out over the time they require, there is a worry, I think, in everyone’s mind that it’s going to turn into the thing that substitute teachers show when they come in because they need to do something for the social studies class. And our job, I think, is to try and convince people that, in fact, this story isn’t going to be homework, it’s going to be gripping.
I think what you achieved, we’ll go through how, but I want to ask a simple question. When you set yourself down to lay this thing out, how much were you thinking about the audience and how much were you thinking about how to keep people riveted? Because you kept me riveted through every episode, and because it’s over 30 years of time, you are telling stories about barely young adults. You’re telling stories about women who are, in their 50s and they’re the same people living completely different kinds of lives because of the way things stretch out.
All the events that occur, all the people– you had the same problem I had with Chernobyl. Everybody sounded the same and looked the same. It’s like a collection of white people with Russian names. You have a collection of white people with Irish names. How concerned were you about grasping the audience and holding them?
Joshua: I love a show that doesn’t tell you too much. I love a show that does not spoon-feed. I think there’s a certain amount of table setting you have to do with Irish history that is mostly just jammed into the pilot that I just had to do. The show had to do two things to me. This is actually what made the adaptation such an extremely high degree of difficulty was I wanted a show that was like The Wire. I’m not going to compare it to The Wire because it’s not The Wire, nothing is The Wire. I want a show that was extremely authentic down to all the granular details. And I wanted to capture the spirit of Belfast, which is like very contradictory at times.
At the same time, I wanted to make Say Nothing for a global audience– needed to make it for a global audience who had never heard of the troubles, frankly. I think that was the tightrope of doing the show. When it came to exposition and telling the audience things, you have your narrators, which Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes are looking back on their youth and the world can be very forbidding at times. You need a guide if you’re unfamiliar with the troubles and that device, though a little shop worn, I think is very organic to the story and so it was very useful.
Then beyond that initial table setting, I really want the audience to play catch up. I love getting invested in a world. I love when I don’t know everything and I’m not spoon-fed. I think that was actually honestly a big creative, not argument, but discussion, because as a writer, I’m like really, really allergic to exposition. I love the paranoid thrillers of the early ‘70s where you just dropped into a situation with like Harry in the conversation and you’re just wondering who this guy is and what he does and you’re not spoon-fed any information.
Craig: It sounds like there was a little bit of give and take on that because I have the same thing on my end of things. There’s always a request for clarity, I guess, is that. You’ll say spoon-fed and the people on the other side of the argument will say clarity. For writers who are moving through the system maybe for the first time, that can be quite a shock. How do you navigate those conversations and get what you want?
Joshua: You underline things in the script.
[laughter]
Joshua: You just go back in your second draft and you underline multiple times.
Craig: That works?
Joshua: No, it does work. No, I have done that. I’ve definitely, not on Say Nothing, but on another project, I definitely did get some notes. I felt they had already been addressed, and so in the next draft, I went back and underlined and the executive probably got what I was doing and was like, “I’m going to leave him alone.”
I think there are the compromises you can make that will destroy your work and there are the compromises you can make that will actually be really useful. You have to know the difference, I think, because you can’t be a horrible dick the whole time. You can be really close to a horrible dick the whole time, but you can’t cross that line. You just have to know where that line is, I think.
There’s that book, Difficult Men, about all the showrunners. Running a show, you realize how they became so difficult because there’s such a degree of control that you have to maintain. Really, it’s just about how do you maintain the level of control to get what you want without turning into a monster. That’s–
Craig: Let’s dig into that because like you, I came from features where we don’t have the authority. In fact, we are often in this unenviable position of being the person who knows the most and yet has the least amount of decision-making to do because they put the director in charge. Now, over here in television, you are put in charge. This may have been your first major dose of authority, but not only just over the creative aspects of the show, but also other people working on the show. Did you have other writers on the show or were you a–
Joshua: I had a brilliant writer’s room, honestly.
Craig: Fantastic.
Joshua: If I have time, I would love to just tell you everyone who wrote on the show because–
Craig: Run through it and talk to me a little bit about how you went from a guy alone in his room writing stuff and being told by directors or producers, “Mia, mia, mia” to a guy who is in charge of a show and also now in charge of writers.
Joshua: I think you’re only as good as your writers, I think, especially in a show like this. I was an outsider telling this story, which meant that I’m an American telling a story whose characters have a life that is as far from my life as you could possibly imagine. That meant that I had to treat it with a fundamental respect. I think it meant an insane, like a crazy research process for me, which was years long. Honestly, I think I probably spent nine months just writing the pilot because of the language, frankly, and trying to teach myself to write in a Belfast accent without speaking in a Belfast accent myself, which was just a whole exhaustive process. This is not your question though.
I wanted to make sure when I had my first writer’s room that we had a ton of different perspectives. We had a multitude of different perspectives. The writers who also worked on the show with me, we had Joe Murtagh, who created Woman in the Wall and is a show runner in his own right. Joe is a writer who is of Irish descent, was raised in London, and writes amazing action and his dialogue is hysterically funny. We had Claire Barron, who is a formidable New York playwright who’s been nominated for a Pulitzer and had brilliant insight, particularly into the sisters.
Claire wrote Episode 6, which is the hunger strike episode, which is one of my just absolute favorites.
Craig: Yes, remarkable.
Joshua: When the cast read that episode, they were crying. It’s just a very powerful episode. Then we had Kirsten Sheridan, who’s the daughter of director Jim Sheridan, who’s–
Craig: Oh, wow.
Joshua: Yes. She’s been nominated for an Oscar for co-writing In America.
Craig: Sure. Sure.
Joshua: Her writing is super earthy and humane, and she’s also great with subtext. I was running it, and we had these four different writers, myself included, whose writing was all just wildly different, as different as could be. For whatever reason, the alchemy in the room was just great. It was the writer’s room that you dream of having, where there were no toxic personalities. Everybody was friends, and it just ended up being a wonderful experience. I don’t want to speak for the other writers because who knows what they secretly think.
Craig: Well, they probably will say that you were almost a complete dick, but not–
Joshua: I actually think they would say that. I actually think they would because I definitely–
Craig: “He’s almost a complete dick.”
Joshua: I work really hard, and I try to get the people around me to work really hard and do their best work. It also should be said, we also had Patrick as an executive producer, who was dropping in and out, talking about the history. We have this murderer’s row of talented people all trying to wrangle this massive book. The whole thing, by the way, took place over Zoom during the pandemic, during peak COVID.
Craig: Oh, boy.
Joshua: Me and Kirsten were in LA, Clare was in New York, and Joe was in Madrid. It was crazy. It wasn’t a unique writer’s room because a lot of people were doing that, but it was certainly the thing that got us through COVID, I think, for a couple of us.
Craig: That is a fairly impressive room. You’re gathering up all this great work from all these people. Of course, you’re generating your own work as you go. The thing that impressed me so much, one of the many things that impressed me so much about Say Nothing is the tone. Because the tone, there’s probably a million ways to go wrong and one way to go right. I think I’ve seen a lot of things go wrong with stories like this. The tone here was so gorgeously grounded. It felt so authentic. It wasn’t trying too hard. I also loved how the show found beauty in the plain, the mundane, the faces, wonderful faces. No one was too gorgeous.
Joshua: I think Anthony Boyle would totally take offense of that, but we’ll move on.
Craig: [laughs] He’s very handsome.
Joshua: He’s a handsome man.
Craig: He’s very handsome. You didn’t have a model suddenly in the middle of it. Everything felt deeply detailed and deeply real. How do you keep that tone consistent when you are pulling in so much work from other people whose minds work slightly– Everybody’s mind works differently.
Joshua: Yes. I love that you asked that question because the tone was the thing that I felt most protective of throughout the process. Really, throughout the shoot, into post specifically, I felt like my job was really to just protect the tone and to make sure that really delicate balance between comedy and tragedy was maintained. I think that that’s a facet of a lot of Irish storytelling, obviously, that you can laugh in the darkest of times, and that idea had to be shot through the whole thing.
Otherwise, it wasn’t going to work because the subject matter is so grim. You have prison, you have a hunger strike, you have orphaned children, you have people who have done terrible things in the name of their country, and then realized it was all for nothing. It’s literally could be as bleak as a show gets. The idea that it had to have humor and heart, that was always at the center of it. I think, to your point about intimacy, I think when you have a historical show, my least favorite thing in a historical show, the characters are talking about history with the knowledge that they’re living in history and you’re like making a show about punk and the characters are like, “This is what punk is” or whatever, when nobody was saying that.
So for me, I was just trying to create intimate scenes between people and then let the scope of the canvas deal with the historical details. It was really about just being very aware of what was happening historically, but then throwing everything out. Fortunately, the conceit of the show, at least for the first half, is that these are kids. These are kids who are suddenly given power over life and death, who are suddenly thrust into the center of history and have to figure out what to do, but they’re still making decisions with brains that are, you could argue, not even fully formed. You stop developing as a person when you’re 25, and these were kids who were 22 and even teenagers.
For me, it was trying to capture the experience of okay, what would it feel like to be 19 when the world around you has suddenly turned upside down and the civilization that you’re living in has suddenly adopted violence and what would it be like if you really wanted social change and thought violence was the only way to get it, but you were a teenager? That’s at the heart of the show.
Craig: That also poses an interesting challenge because, as I’ve said many times on the show, my least favorite note is the character isn’t likable enough because I think that’s a compliment.
Joshua: Yes, I agree.
Craig: However, people need to relate to characters. For instance, you have an incredible character, a British military man named Frank Kitson played by Rory Kinnear, who is in a number of ways, a villain. He certainly represents the oppression of the British Empire, yet he’s also fascinating and you admire him. He’s possibly autistic, it’s hard to get a read on him, but he’s so gorgeously smart that you find yourself leaning towards him. Similarly, at the heart of the story, the two main characters, Dolours and Marian, are doing terrible things. At some point, how do you manage those slippery slopes of both humanizing people regardless of what they did, without drifting into, say, apologia?
Joshua: Yes, I think in the case of Frank Kitson, I would quibble a tiny bit in that I don’t think I’m humanizing him. I don’t think he was– He’s somebody who, when you do the research, he’s virtually impossible to humanize. At the same time, he’s ruthlessly, brutally effective at sowing distrust amid the IRA. He’s really good at what he does despite being, undeniably, a dark, dark individual.
Craig: But brilliant.
Joshua: But brilliant, yes. I think there’s another element of it too, which is you can obviously do the tricks that screenwriters do, which is you make everyone around him dumb, which is an old screenwriting trick. I think you can either make it so they’re keystone cops or you can make them smart and him smarter, which is usually the better thing to do. In the case with this show, I wanted a slightly more comedic tone because I did not want the sort of newsreel version of Frank Kitson that I feel like we’ve seen before from stuff about the troubles. I wanted him to be funny.
On the page, Frank Kitson was very funny. I think it’s one of the reasons they greenlit the show was because the stuff with the British, it was really engaging. It did not feel like a dour political drama. I think they greenlit the show because of the tone, to be honest. Then Rory showed up on set and he was so fucking funny and so deft at understanding what the tone of the show was. Because that’s the thing you have to do. Your actors have to know about the dance you’re doing between comedy and tragedy as well. Otherwise, you’re dead. You get an actor who doesn’t understand the tone, especially in the part like that, and the show completely falls apart.
Everybody needs to know the show that they’re making, and Rory really understood the tone. There was one moment when he showed up– I’m embarrassed to say this, I probably shouldn’t say this. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow night and tell you to cut it.
Craig: Let’s find out.
Joshua: Yes, let’s find out. He shows up on set and first of all, he’s like already Frank Kitson when he gets there. We have one conversation in the makeup chair and then he’s in character and the Director Mike Lennox and I are both intimidated by him and going like, “Is he Kitson right now? We can’t tell, or is this just his vibe?” Then he does a scene– his first scene was when he is with the two lieutenants who are around him, and the guys playing the lieutenants are also incredibly funny. They’re doing it and they’re saying the lines are in the script, but it’s just so funny that I actually went to Mike Lennox, I tapped him on the shoulder and I was like, “Is it too funny?”
I just had a moment of going– because you’re making the show that is incredibly politically sensitive, and you’re finding out the tone while you’re shooting when your actor’s reading out the line.
You have the tone on the page, you don’t know what it’s going to look like. I’m like, “Should we get one that’s a little more serious, just to have it in our back pocket, in case this is too far?” Mike goes over, and Mike directed all of Derry Girls, so he knows his way around a comedy. He goes over to the actors, and talks to them for five minutes, and then comes back, sort of like hangdog, and he looks at me and he just goes like, “I don’t know how to make them any less funny.” He’s so good. I guess this is the tone.
Craig: It starts when he lands. He gets out of a helicopter and his lieutenants say, “How’s the trip over?” He looks at them with dead eyes and goes, “45 minutes,” which is awesome. Maybe it was 48, I don’t know.
Joshua: That was right.
Craig: He’ll do everything in an instant. I love how compact and efficient that was. Let’s talk a little bit about the big argument at the heart of this. You touched on it, but if you could, I have my answer. I know what I think this show is about, and I’m right, of course. I’ll give you a chance to see if you’re correct about your own show. This is, I think, of value to anybody that’s trying to write something that is a sprawling historical epic that covers many, many years. You and I have both done this. I think what we both know is the events themselves aren’t enough. There is some glue that makes a cohesive point, even if that point is debatable, and hopefully, it is. What was there for you in the very center of this?
Joshua: The challenge, of course, is that with something like this, there’s not one thing. There’s actually like three or four. I’m really curious which one is the right one according to–
Craig: I’ll tell you.
Joshua: Don’t worry, you’ll let me know.
Craig: I’ll tell you. Yes, I’ll let you know.
Joshua: No, I think for me, there’s so much there and I would actually make two thematic points about it. I think the big one is that it’s about both the romance of radical politics and also the cost of those politics, that you can have acts of violence that have a terrible cost to them for both the victims and for the perpetrators as well. That you can get swept up in something when you’re young and then have to live with those decisions for the rest of your life. This idea that there would be an emotional cost, not only for the individual but also for the entire society, I think that was something I was really interested in. That was point one. Then there’s another thing, I don’t know if that’s right. You tell me if that feels right.
Craig: You’re almost right. Let’s hear what number two is.
Joshua: I think number two was just about this idea of silence and this idea that the price of peace is silence. That if you are going to have a country go from violence to peace, I think for a lot of people in Northern Ireland, people who’ve committed acts of violence and had acts of violence done to them, that the cost of that is that you don’t talk about it, that you don’t talk about the past and you bury it. I think the reason that I wanted to do the show in the beginning– this is actually deeply embarrassing, but I was raised by therapists, as we said, and for me, it was like all emotions are on the table. I was in a house where you were expected to talk about your feelings. That can be good and it can also be bad.
The alternative is having all this trauma– we all have trauma. Having all this trauma and not talking about it. For me, it was about the idea of the destructive power of silence and what it can do to a person to have this thing inside you and not be able to get it out. This idea of unprocessed trauma, both for the victims and the perpetrators, I think that was something that was at the heart of it for me.
Craig: Those are pretty good answers. I’m going to combine them a little bit in my answer, which is the correct answer. I will say to people, if you have not yet seen Say Nothing, you will experience a series of shocking events and startling events that you can imagine having to hold inside as a secret would be very difficult. I assure you, as you’re going through that process, you still have yet to see the thing that is the most upsetting and the one that really feels like, how can you hold this inside? I’ll tell you for me, and I’m joking, I don’t really know, but as a viewer, what struck me about the show was that it articulated something that I think we all struggle with when we have hopes and desires to make the world a better place.
That is that it may be impossible to experience an ideological war and still remain idealistic when it’s over. That it might actually be impossible because the people who inspire everybody through ideas are necessarily throwing a lot of those people onto a fire, whether they are murdered or killed or injured themselves, or spiritually, they die because of things they do to other people. They become pawns in a larger movement that ultimately becomes political. I found that tragedy to be beautiful and moving. The story of people who cared so much because they were inspired to care so much and were possibly necessarily abandoned and betrayed, which, by the way, and I don’t know. Does that sound like something–
Joshua: No, I love it. I love it. I think you should just– You send me the recording and I can just play it back. I can transcribe it. I can start using it in interviews. I think it’s really good.
Craig: You just, you just Venmo me and you can have whatever you want. That leads us to, I guess my final question that revolves around the narrative of the show, and that is Gerry Fucking Adams. Gerry Adams– here’s what I knew, going into things. I was not a student of the IRA. What I knew was there was an ongoing battle between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants/the British government in Northern Ireland, which was possessed by the UK. That battle was between the IRA and the British primarily than the, I guess the Northern Irish police. It involved bombings and it also involved terrorism perpetrated by the IRA and oppressive acts perpetrated by the government.
I know Sunday Bloody Sunday, we all do because we love U2. I knew that Gerry Adams, was– this is what I thought, as an American I thought, “Oh, and then there’s this guy, Gerry Adams, who helped make peace. He’s good. He’s the head of Sinn Fein, which is the political party in Northern Ireland that is part of the British Parliament that figured out how to get to the Good Friday Accords,” I believe it’s called. Good Friday Agreement?
Joshua: Good Friday Agreement. Yes.
Craig: Good Friday Agreement, which essentially ended the troubles. Here’s what your show taught me. Gerry Fucking Adams, as they refer to him over and over, “Gerry Fucking Adams,” was the head of the IRA. He was in charge of the IRA. He was the person who was ordering the terroristic attacks. Perhaps more distressingly, or at least equally distressingly, he was also the person who was ordering the internal purges of people, Irish Catholics, who were believed to be touts, informants to the British, whether they were or not. The show, in fact, is framed around the story of a mother of seven children, or nine?
Joshua: 10, actually.
Craig: 10?
Joshua: I think in the apartment you only see, I believe, eight.
Craig: I was trying to count. There’s a lot of kids. A single mother of 10 children who was murdered by the IRA because she was suspected to be an informant. Yet, “Gerry Fucking Adams,” who, by becoming this political leader and essentially denying that he ever was part of the IRA, he becomes the interesting villain of the story. It’s his betrayal of everybody around him that’s so shocking. What you do, and this is fascinating to me, you are telling this story, and he’s still here. Gerry Adams is still alive. Gerry Adams was a member of the UK Parliament as leader of the Sinn Féin party for 35 years.
He only stepped down six years ago, in part because of some of the revelations about what happened back then. He still denies that he was even a member of the IRA, much less the leader. You found what I think is the most brilliant way to tell the story exactly the way you wanted without getting sued and it made it better. Talk to me about the amazing disclaimers that you ran at the end of every episode.
Joshua: The disclaimers are a way for us– really, this is not an answer that’s going to be satisfying for you. The disclaimers are actually a way to give Gerry his due in a way. I think it would have been morally wrong to not include them. I think on the one hand, we needed people to know that Gerry has always denied being a member of the IRA. I think when to do it and how to do it was obviously a conversation between me, the producers and the legal department. The answer that we came up with was we’re going to do it after every episode.
That kind of repetition, I think for people, creates its own feeling, which is purely unintentional on my part. I would give a disclaimer to the disclaimer and I would say that any feelings you may have about Gerry Adams are not the intention of the artist creating the show and are purely up to the viewer and their own emotional state.
Craig: Well this viewer over here, every time that disclaimer came up, I went, “Wow.” It’s an incredible story, so beautifully told, gorgeously cast. I looked up, I was like, “Who cast this? Oh, Nina Gold. Of course.”
Joshua: There you go.
Craig: Nina Gold who cast Chernobyl.
Joshua: I read an interview with her about the casting process on Chernobyl. That was one of the reasons why it had to be her.
Craig: You chose wisely.
Joshua: I would love to talk about Nina. Can I just go back and say one thing about Gerry Adams just before we move on, just beyond the disclaimer? I think one thing I would say, his role within the IRA, whether he’s running the IRA or not running the IRA, is fundamentally very murky. The IRA had an army council who– you see the old guard, in Episode 3, of other men who are the leadership. His relationship with them has always been very murky. Either way, the show depicts him as being very high up the chain of command in the IRA. I think there is something about–
Craig: The Big Guy.
Joshua: He’s called The Big Guy.
Craig: The Big Lad. The Big Lad.
Joshua: The Big Lad, yes. One of the things I just want people to take away was this fundamental contradiction about Gerry Adams, which is that on the one hand, he has a major hand in the peace process and on the other, his role in the IRA undoubtedly led to the deaths of many, many people. I think that fundamental discomfort that you should feel towards the character, I think that was something I was trying to achieve was that I wanted him, as a character, to make us uncomfortable. We shouldn’t know how we feel about him in the end of the show. I think that’s something that I really wanted, honestly, for all the characters, with the exception of the victims, of course, who are-
Craig: Blameless.
Joshua: -in many ways– No, and in many ways, the heroes of the story. Laura Donnelly playing Helen McConville, is unambiguously the hero of the story and one who is left at the end of the film. I was very adamant that the last shot would be her. She’s left holding the bag. Everybody else, you’re supposed to be kept off balance about them, where they have Dolours, of course, has her sensitivity, her humanity, and also her willingness to kill and die for her beliefs, all of which should throw you off. That was really the goal, I think, with everyone. Anyway, I just wanted to–
Craig: You got there. It was perfectly done in that by the time it concluded, I was uncomfortable with all of them. I wouldn’t know because I ask a simple question when I’m watching these things, “What would happen if I were to walk in a room and meet that person? If I were to meet them, if they were alive– Dolours is not, but if they were, how would that go and how would I feel?” The answer is I don’t know.
What’s so beautiful about your show is that it depicts this very complicated thing, which is violence in service of idea that is almost always depicted stupidly. You depict it with such intelligence and grace. Congratulations on the show. Would you be interested, because you’re so smart, in helping me answer some listener questions?
Joshua: Oh, God. I love the little bit of flattery that’s really supposed to make me say yes.
Craig: Oh, you are the child of psychiatrists.
Joshua: Oh, my God.
Craig: None of my tricks are working. How about this? I’m going to order you to answer some of the questions.
Joshua: I’m good. Unless you want to talk about Nina Gold, I’m good to answer the questions.
Craig: Oh, well, I think Nina would be blushing right now, and I can hear her saying, “Oh, God, no.”
Joshua: She’s a wizard.
Craig: She’s a wizard, and she’s a wonderful person who consistently casts things brilliantly. She casts Game of Thrones. She casts Chernobyl. She casts Say Nothing. She’s just an amazing person. A wonderful person. So well done again, Nina Gold. You’ve done it again.
Drew, would you be so kind as to give us a listener question that we could theoretically answer?
Drew Marquardt: Yes. This question comes from Riley. Riley writes, “I finally got an agent at one of the big three agencies to read one of my scripts, and just before the holidays, he told me we would talk after the holidays, which would be January 6th. I messaged him the morning of the 7th, and he replied that he was currently evacuating his home in the Palisades. On January 10th, I sent him a message saying, basically, I’m so sorry for what he’s going through. I hope he and his family are safe, and of course, no need to respond.
I didn’t mention the meeting or the script.
I haven’t heard from him since, which I totally understand. I honestly can’t imagine what all he’s having to deal with right now. First and foremost, I want to be respectful and compassionate about his situation. I also know the industry is taking an overall hit right now, and I imagine that alongside his personal issues, his current clients are probably reaching out to find out what’s going on with their careers and projects.
Do you think there’s even any time, energy, or bandwidth for him taking on a new writer right this time? And how long should I wait to follow up? I don’t want to reach out too soon and have him say, ‘Never mind. The timing isn’t right. Best of luck,’ but I also don’t want to fall through the cracks or jeopardize this potential opportunity. I also don’t feel comfortable sending the script elsewhere before talking to him first.”
Joshua: We’re going to have to workshop this one because there is not an easy answer for this one.
Craig: No. What do you think?
Joshua: Everything’s upside down right now. I think it’s been upside down for the last couple weeks. I do think that probably Riley is correct in that the agent is probably concerned about their current clients and not thinking immediately about signing new talent. I also know that it can make you incredibly itchy when you’ve turned something in and you’re waiting for a response. I don’t think that Riley should wait for the agent and I think they should try to use any leverage they have to make other inroads.
As far as the timing, the timing is the big question for me. You can wait for months to get an answer from a single person. It’s why Hollywood takes so long to do anything. So I think if they have other relationships, they should use them. Everything is still underwater here. I would at least give it another week for things to get back to relative normal would be my guess.
Craig: Yes, I think you’re right there. Riley, the issue is you aren’t a client there. My guess is this agent is probably not doing a great job of calling back his actual clients because his house may have burned down. If not, evacuation is a brutal thing to go through. I’m going to say I agree with Joshua. You don’t want to stand on ceremony here. He got the script. He has it. He didn’t write back. If you have three other agents that are excited to read this thing, yes, send it. You don’t belong to anybody just yet. I know I like to remind people that agents work for us. We don’t work for them.
I think probably you don’t need to text them again. You just wait now. Joshua says, if you have other opportunities, go for them. There is no hard rule here. He certainly would not be able to say later, “How could you do this to me?” He’s had the script.
Let’s go with Mauro, or perhaps Mauro, in Canada. Drew, what does Mauro wonder about?
Drew: What do you guys recommend to study or watch or practice in order to keep the audience’s emotions in mind when writing? What I mean is taking the reader and hopefully viewer on an emotional journey in an effective way on every page.
Craig: Questions like this always blow my mind.
Joshua: No, but actually, God.
Craig: If you have an answer, that would be great.
Joshua: No. I have sort of an answer, but it’s an annoying answer, which is read the basics, learn the basics, go read the screenplay to Rocky or whatever movie, older movie gets you excited. Find an artist you like and read all their work and then really try hard not to imitate them. I think the bigger thing for me is actually that writers need to go out and live and you have to have life experience truly in order to write something great so that you’re– which is like a corny thing to say, but I really believe it.
When you’re writing, we have a culture that recycles everything right now. A lot of it. For a long time, we’ve been in a backwards-facing culture where we want to make movies that are like the movies we grew up on because that’s the easier thing to do. It’s very easy to go out and say, “I want to make a movie like Fargo, so I’m going to go write a movie that is like Fargo.” Then what you have is a movie that’s like Fargo, but not as good as Fargo. I think the thing that I would really try to do, really recommend is using your personal relationships and saying, “What would it be like if I was writing about my mom?” but doing it on a bigger canvas?
What would it be if– I wrote television and wanted to write television because of The Sopranos. That was David Chase writing about his mom on a bigger canvas. Ultimately, he’s very open about his relationship with his mother being like the seed of The Sopranos. That I think is what artists should be doing. I think you should quietly observe your parents and your friends and just think about writing from the inside out, as they say, after learning the fundamentals. That would be really my recommendation.
Craig: That is probably a more useful answer than the one I’ll give, Mauro, which is to say, I don’t recommend that you study or watch or practice this at all, because if you’re studying it or practicing it, it’s not going to be right. What you’re really getting at, Mauro, is something that is innate to writing and it has to be developed over time. And I think is probably the function of experience. It is the fragmentation of your own brain so that not only are you yourself taking care of all the things that the script needs to be, but you’re also all the individual characters and you’re also the character that’s listening and not talking.
You are also the audience watching all of it. I return to my audience section of my mind all the time. As an audience member, I’m like, do I care? I’m like, how does that make me feel? Just as you need to quadruplicate yourself into four characters in a scene, you also need to be the audience. That is a developed skill. You have to start with some kind of innate understanding of humans and humanity. I completely agree with Joshua that part of this is just going out there and living, but a big part of it is writing stuff down, shooting it, even if you have to shoot it on your camera, watching people watch it, you’ll probably want to throw up and you’ll learn.
Oh, my God, I remember the very first time I sat in the theater and watched something that I had written on screen. It was like I was seeing it for the first time because I was fully the audience and my level of judgment and scrutiny skyrocketed because now I’m a customer. I don’t give a shit what’s happening in the kitchen. I don’t care if the fish delivery was late or the gas stove wasn’t working. I want an awesome plate of food. I don’t care about anything else.
That was a painful wake-up call. I would urge you more to go through as many painful wake-up calls as possible because it’ll speed the process along.
Joshua: That’s a really interesting answer. You asked this question to me earlier about the viewer and your relationship to the audience. I just agree with you so much that the experience of watching your own stuff, it’s just so important. The idea of going out and shooting something just like, yes, please, everyone should be doing that. Everybody should know, even if you don’t shoot it, even if you just give it to some friends to act, even if they’re terrible. Just doing that feels so important.
Then there’s this thing that happens for me where you ultimately stop paying attention to the audience when you write. You tell me if you disagree, but I feel like the artist or the writer or whatever has to be fundamentally very selfish. You have to just care about yourself and the kind of things that you would want to see. Otherwise, you’re fucked.
Craig: That’s you as the audience, right?
Joshua: Yes, it is.
Craig: That’s my point.
Joshua: It’s the same.
Craig: You’re saying, “I want to see this.”
Joshua: I’m saying don’t think about people who are different from you and what they might like-
Craig: Right, don’t do that.
Joshua: -because that’s when you’re dead, right?
Craig: That’s calculating and chasing and that’s horrible.
Joshua: I really think like I just have a feeling like Chris Nolan likes Chris Nolan movies and Michael Bay likes Michael Bay movies, and ultimately, these are biggest directors are trying to on some level make themselves happy.
Craig: That’s a great point. To amend, Mauro, when you are being the audience in your mind, you’re being you as an audience member. Not imagining a demographic or a room full of people. Just you, like what is this working on you? I’ll tell you, the first time you write something and then start tearing up as you’re writing it, that’s when you know that you’ve gotten there, unless you’re writing a comedy. That never happens.
I think we have time for one more question. Victor writes in with a question about citing sources, which is something that I think Joshua and I know a little bit about. Drew, what does Victor ask?
Drew: “I’m working on a historical drama screenplay based on real events and attempting to stay as accurate as possible. This includes taking notes and at times quoting directly from a few books that have accounts of events within the period, as well as biographies and published collections of letters from people involved to use their own words where possible. If this were to be produced, would I need to cite of these somehow, or only the book that is most directly concerned with the time frame and events that I’m writing about?”
Craig: Did you have to go through this rigorous process that I had to go through on Chernobyl?
Joshua: Oh, yes. There was a cite-your-source process with the legal department for virtually everything. You go first. What was it like for you on Chernobyl, which, by the way, I just have not gotten the chance to wax, poetic?
Craig: Oh, geez.
Joshua: No, I won’t. It’s just, it’s such an amazing piece of work. That like the balance between genre and drama, whatever you would call it, the balance of genre filmmaking and genre writing and non-genre writing was just like really at the heart of-
Craig: Thank you.
Joshua: -at the top of mind. You not only made this incredible piece of entertainment, but then also, it felt like it was capturing a fundamental truth that I think, and I think that’s what we’re all trying to search for. You state it so overtly at the cost of the lie right at the beginning. Then you’re like, “This is the thesis, and now I’m going to decimate you with how I illustrate that thesis.” I just thought, beautifully done.
Craig: Thank you. I’m very happy that decimation occurred. As I was going on the journey towards decimation, I had lots of books I was drawing from, some documentaries. I wish I had known ahead of time that I was going to have to go back and provide the sources specifically for all that stuff for HBO. They have a very rigorous guy who is going to stress test everything. It was really just an inefficient process on my end because I had to go back and go, “Okay, at least I have a pretty good memory. This was from this book, this was from this book.” I can hand all those books over, hand over all those sources, hand over the documentaries and say, “Okay, all of this worked out.” There were some interesting questions and challenges, but overall, I think maybe I had to slightly change one thing for legal purposes. I think it was somebody’s name. How did it go for you?
Joshua: Similarly, just extremely rigorous with the legal team. I think there was, you’re citing your sources for everything you want to do. They know that you’re not making a documentary, which is, I think, they know that a certain amount of artistic license has to be taken in any show, but beyond that, they’re pretty strict. All that stuff is very carefully vetted and it’s a challenging but worthwhile process to stress test the thing that you’re making. I would also say though, I would want to add one thing which is probably not the question and tell me if you experienced this, that the research can become a crutch at times.
Craig: Oh, of course, yes.
Joshua: You can have this desire, which probably you and I both had along with the listener, to make it absolutely as accurate as possible. Ultimately, I think in my case, and certainly Craig in your case as well, you can’t know what was said in every room. Because in the case of Say Nothing, it’s about the IRA, it’s a culture of secrecy.
Craig: You say nothing.
Joshua: Yes, exactly. Yours deals with state secrets and things like that. Ultimately, you have to do the research and do as much of it as you can. It’s like a musician practicing scales. You practice your scales, and you practice your scales, and you do your rudiments, or whatever, over and over. Then, at some point, you have to trust that you’ve built enough of a solid foundation that you can go and you can actually just play. Ultimately, do your homework. Do a ton of homework. Do more than you think you need.
Then, at some point, you got to let it go and go and write. Then if it’s lucky enough to be made, which is, of course, a very high bar, only then will you really have to deal with the scrutiny of a legal department. I think you should probably write the best story that you can first, and then hope it survives that process second.
Craig: Fantastic answer. I think we covered all those bases really well for our listeners. Congratulations to you and me for doing so great. Drew, I think we deserve a gold star. It’s time for our one cool thing. It can be anything at all, small or large. I’ll start with mine because it’s so wonderfully stupid today. My one cool thing is eating ice cream as an adult.
Joshua: I love it. I love this one cool thing, by the way, despite being lactose intolerant.
Craig: Same. Ice cream in my mind for so long has been associated with like sin, a weakness, bad health. It’s also like food for children. Every kid has probably gone a little crazy on ice cream, but a little bit of ice cream every now and then, I have to say as an adult, is a lovely thing. It’s just a reminder of something that is elegantly delicious that has been there our whole lives. It is the ultimate comfort food. My method is to put some ice cream in a tiny bowl. This way you won’t go crazy. Because as we get older, it’s a little harder.
Do not eat out of a carton. Folks, stop eating out of a carton. Only bad things will happen from that. Also, you have permission, I grant you permission, from one adult to another, to just eat regular ice cream if you want. You’re not obligated to chase the adult flavors. If you want, whatever, rosemary, chive and black pepper ice cream, that’s fine, do it. If you like vanilla, that’s awesome. One cool thing, if you’re an adult, give it a try, just a little bit of ice cream.
Joshua: I love that. My postscript ritual, whenever any draft goes in, is McDonald’s ice cream and bourbon, which is embarrassing to admit as an adult man-
Craig: Wow. Nice.
Joshua: -but it should be like cigarettes, and I don’t know, something more grown up, but it’s not.
Craig: That’s awesome. What is your one cool thing this week?
Joshua: Mine is less fun and whimsical. Mine is a book that you have maybe read, which is a book about the origins of punk rock called Please Kill Me. Are you familiar with this book?
Craig: I have not, no.
Joshua: Oh my God, it’s so good. It’s an oral history of the early days of punk in New York and then in London from the late ’60s to I think the ’80s. It’s an incredible oral history that really captures a scene and a particular moment in time and makes you envious to not be living in the center of culture, during the peak of culture. Even more than that, I think I’ve said this a few times, but there are moments in the book that you really can’t get out of your mind, that go beyond just rock and roll excess.
I think, I may be getting this wrong, but Iggy Pop is up there doing his very particular thing, birthing a new genre of music, inventing punk. In the process, people are pissed off, and they throw bottles, and he proceeds to roll around in the broken glass as a power move to be like the ultimate “fuck you” to the audience and shock and appall people and continue the show while he’s all cut up and things like that. I think the thing about it that is so incredible to me is that it was this time when art was really dangerous.
It was this time when you could go to a performance and anything could happen. I feel like that is the thing that we’re missing in the age of corporate consolidation. That we’re missing this element of danger and we’re missing this element of like– This is extremely lofty, so forgive me if this is like really pretentious, but I feel like on some level, the question that artists need to ask themselves is, what am I risking by saying the thing I’m going to say? In the case of Iggy, it’s like great bodily harm and death, right?
Craig: Right.
Joshua: I feel like that idea that the artist is supposed to be a risk taker, which is so hard right now with got-you culture and cancel culture and all these things, I feel like that is an important thing to remember that somehow there should be this element of danger. That book captures that spirit in incredibly vivid ways. That would be my–
Craig: All right. That’s Please Kill Me, which is what I say every morning when I wake up, just to myself. Just to myself, please kill me.
That is our show. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt. It is 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@johnaugust.com. That’s also a place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today so adroitly. You’ll find transcripts at johnaugust.com along with the signup for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.
We have T-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. I love drinkware, this is my new favorite word. You’ll find them at Cotton Bureau. You can find show notes with the links for all the things we talked about today in the e-mail you get each week as a premium subscriber and thank you to all of our premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this every week. Finally, you can sign up to become a premium subscriber at scriptnotes.net where you can get all of the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record now on how to make Los Angeles function better.
Joshua, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Joshua: Thank you so much for having me, I really enjoyed it.
[Bonus Segment]
Craig: Okay, Joshua, so this is magic wand time. We just went through this convulsion here in Los Angeles because of the fires and that prompted me to think about the ways our city, and I believe you live here in Los Angeles now.
Joshua: Yes.
Craig: The ways our city could be improved in a functioning way to help. We’re not going to address social problems like mental health right now or unhoused populations or crime. This is just like civil engineering stuff. Let’s start with this question: Should we, after the fires, start to think about leaving some of these places alone? Meaning, should we rebuild in areas where we know fires and mudslides are going to occur?
Joshua: This is a truly tragic question, right? Because as I go through Los Angeles, the dream of LA is that you can be in nature and also be steps away from the city, that nature is at your door. Now this idea that the neighborhoods that are the most ensconced in nature are the most vulnerable is truly tragic. I live in the foothills and I’m unsure if I have to move. I, of course, like everyone, have multiple people in my life who just lost everything. The idea of whether or not we should be rebuilding, it’s a really tricky one. I feel like, as the idealist in me says we shouldn’t give up on that dream.
I think the part of me that wants to be cheeky, if I’m allowed to be cheeky even in a moment like this, is that yes, we should rebuild and everybody should be legally obligated to get a pool. Every home should have a pool and it should include one of the machines that is a real thing that sucks the water out of your pool and uses it to spray down your house. I know a guy who had a pool, had this device installed, and saved his home because the water from the pool was sucked out and covered his house.
Craig: I think that’s–
Joshua: Not a real answer, but like–
Craig: No, but let’s put that under general zoning ideas. It does seem to me that in areas where we know the homes are going to be extremely vulnerable to fire, that we have to improve the infrastructure and we probably have to improve it through zoning. Some of it has already occurred. There are building codes that make homes far more, I wouldn’t say fireproof, but I would say fire resistant. The problem is that those codes were introduced, I think in 2012 or something or 2008, and nothing is grandfathered in because nobody’s going to rebuild their house to match the code.
So, so many of the homes that were built before then, and that’s the majority of homes in LA, are vulnerable. I think zoning laws perhaps coming up with, okay, if you’re in a vulnerable area, you need to install this kind of thing. That makes total sense to me. The other question I have, or it’s just an idea is, I think it’s important to look at some neighborhoods where we know there’s really only one way in.
There are certain areas where there’s one main road. If that main road is blocked off, you can’t get in there either with emergency equipment or evacuation is incredibly difficult.
Because, if you’re in Benedict Canyon, that’s Benedict Canyon. Should we be targeting some of those places and creating additional arteries for movement?
Joshua: When it comes to the canyons, in a perfect world, yes, of course, you would want more than one way out of Laurel Canyon, right? I suppose there are two, there’s this side of the hill and that side of the hill.
Craig: Mulholland and that’s it.
Joshua: But the actual cost of creating multiple exits feels, I’m sure, incredibly daunting to a city that’s already facing enormous unhoused populations, et cetera. I don’t know. You would want to hope that putting in a reservoir that strategically placed reservoirs might help, but the problem is we also have droughts. That’s another piece of the puzzle. I believe that there was a reservoir that they were supposed to be drawing from for the Palisades fire that was dry. Then I heard that they were taking the water from the Hollywood Reservoir to put out the Hollywood fire, which worked, right?
Craig: Right. I think, from what I’ve read, that the Palisades Reservoir probably would not have made enough of a difference, that that fire was just so brutal. Also, nobody could fly. That debate will be going on forever, probably, whether or not it would have mattered. Again, I’m using my magic wand here, but let’s talk a little bit about cost, because anything we do to improve this is always going to come with this enormous cost. That drives me over into traffic, which is another problem that we have in Los Angeles. I’m just trying to make it function better.
We’ve spent an enormous amount of money on creating public transportation, a metro line. Will we finish all of that in time for it to still matter? Are we heading towards a place where either working from home removes an enormous amount of traffic from the freeways, or automatic driving essentially eliminates traffic, because if every car on the road is automatic, self-driving, there is no traffic because there’s no rubbernecking, there’s no accidents.
Joshua: It’s Minority Report, basically.
Craig: It’s Minority Report, exactly. Do you think our future, that LA will function better with more mass transportation or more self-driving buses and cars?
Joshua: Cynically, I think that it will get so bad that half the people will leave and then we’ll be fine. [laughter] No, I think I–
Craig: That’s also a thing.
Joshua: I actually don’t think that self-driving cars will get there to the point where everybody has them in order to get to Minority Report. Everybody needs to have them, every single person. Because you picture Minority Report with the one old Chevy Nova in the middle of the beautifully flowing ribbon of traffic, just causing entanglements. I just feel like, no, maybe in 150 years, but by then, everything’s going to be on fire every other week unless we can fix our global problem of fixing the environment, which is the real issue, right?
I feel, no, just cynically, I don’t think we can look to self-driving cars to save us. Certainly, if the people who are trying to create self-driving cars are the same people who are trying to create them for the next 20 years, make of that what you will, I think we’ll be in trouble. Get over there. No, I think we’ve got to go work it out. I do think that mass exodus is on the table.
Craig: Mass exodus would certainly solve a lot of traffic problems. Here’s something that I think would make Los Angeles function better, at least be more enjoyable. Los Angeles is enormously spread out, we know this, it’s famously spread out, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t have, in fact, I think it’s an argument that it makes it even easier to have a very large central park. We have Griffith Park, which is enormous, but it’s like in the hills and its mountains and valleys and hiking.
What we don’t have is that great park in the middle of a city that people can enjoy, that’s beautiful, that is an oasis. It would require, again, enormous amount of public domain and the knocking down of a lot of things, but it seems to me like we could use it.
Joshua: I love that idea. I was just in London for-
Craig: There you go.
Joshua: -a long period of time making the show, and they call the parks, the lungs of London. That was the thing that I liked most about the city. I’d never spent a lot of time there in the past. That was the thing that I think I enjoyed most. I think we could just wipe out everybody who lives in Hancock Park and then just put it all there. No, exactly–
Craig: Wow. That’s where I’m at. That’s literally where I am.
Joshua: That’s where you’re proposing?
Craig: Not in my backyard.
Joshua: No, but where would you put it though? Because I do agree, it’s much better. What we have drawing the people now are like the Rick Caruso mega malls, which are not the lungs of Los Angeles, right?
Craig: No, they are not.
Joshua: We have the Grove and the Americana and that is not doing it.
Craig: There is Pan Pacific Park, which I think could be expanded. The Motion Picture Academy, of which I am surprisingly a member, is certainly screaming right now at the thought that their beautiful new museum and headquarters would be knocked down for park. That seems like a nice place and I also think as you head further south, maybe south of the like the 10, there’s also some nice areas where, again, there’s a lot of commercial stuff which would have to be like, yes, there’s a cost. You have to eliminate things.
You wouldn’t want to eliminate residences, but if we could find some places that are– or downtown, some old train yards and whatever, I would love the idea. I used to live in La Cañada and we would go over to Huntington Park in Pasadena, which is beautiful and we could use one of those.
Joshua: I agree. I would also say that it dovetails into the first question, which is it does feel like the safe way to get nature in your city, right? It is not actually like living in the foothills. It’s going to Central Park. It’s going to Richmond Park or Hyde Park or whatever.
Craig: Hyde Park, exactly. One of the things that I think would make Los Angeles function better is the elimination of jurisdictional fragmentation. I think the rest of the country and the world was very surprised by something we’re all quite used to here, which is 12 different police departments plus the county, plus the state. We’ve got LAPD, but we also have the Pasadena Police Department. We also have Santa Monica Police. We also have West Hollywood Sheriff’s Officers as part of the county. We have California Highway Patrol.
Sometimes they don’t talk to each other. Sometimes you pull up and you’re like, “Oh yes, we’re LA Fire Department.” That’s LA County across the street. The county has to come there and put that fire out. We’re going to put this fire out on this. Everybody else is looking at us like, “Just to make the one thing.” If we could combine it all into one thing, I think that probably would be better. It would be enormous, but I think it would be better.
Joshua: I’m completely with you. I think you see the same thing in medicine, right? Where like, my family’s all doctors. My brother’s a hospitalist. None of the hospitals can communicate with each other because they all speak a different coded language to do their databases. Similarly with law enforcement, I know that lack of communication, certainly when there are crises, and if the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire are any indication, there’s going to be a lot more of those. Responding very quickly is like, right at the heart of stopping some of those events.
I’m in complete agreement. I think, no doubt, they have their bureaucratic reasons, but certainly.
Craig: Oh, yes. Oh, they’re not going to change.
Joshua: I just know mostly the LAPD and the sheriffs, right? There are strange relationships where there will be corruption cases within one department and the other department remains untouched and all that.
Craig: My magic wand is going to try one more thing, and this is perhaps the most magical thinking of them all. The one thing that I think would make Los Angeles function vastly better would be a completely new airport. Air travel, which was once the domain of the wealthy, is now completely democratized. People from every socioeconomic stratus fly, and all of us in Los Angeles, unless we’re lucky enough to go somewhere super local and we can make it to Burbank, we’re all going to Los Angeles International Airport, LAX, which is ancient and stupid.
It is a stupidly designed airport where you have to roll around in a horrible oval loop, everybody’s smashed together. The terminals are subject to refurbishing at great expense, and by the time they’re done refurbishing it, it’s already old and stupid-looking. Security-wise, I think it’s a complete disaster. They’re building a monorail to help move people back and forth, which everybody hates and also probably won’t be done by the Olympics. LAX is just a nightmare. The problem, of course, with building an entire new airport is money, sure, and space.
Airports need an enormous amount of space. If you can build a brand new airport, where would you put it?
Joshua: Oh wow. Obviously, I agree with you. The LAX is the worst airport one could envision. If one were to design an airport built around all the things you don’t want to do, I think you would have LAX. Just to do one Devil’s Advocate, it’s not even a Devil’s Advocate, it’s just, have you ever seen a film called Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round?
Craig: No.
Joshua: There is a film where, I think it’s a heist movie, it’s an old heist movie, the third act of the film takes place at LAX. You get to see LAX in all of its period glory, with the cars that are the right cars, the cars that were intended to be driving there, with all of that beautiful mid-century detailing that it once had before it just became a shit show, and it’s actually really fucking cool in that movie. You realize that it was just built at a time when there was just so much less traffic, and now it’s just congested, it’s worse than the Trader Joe’s parking lot of your nightmares.
If I was going to build it some, can I still wipe out all the people in Hancock Park? Is that still a thing?
Craig: You could. I would take a wipeout here, although that’s really going to be a snarled traffic situation.
Joshua: It’ll be bad.
Craig: And really loud.
Joshua: All I can say is, if we’re waving the magic wand, the Burbank Airport is a delight, I absolutely love flying out of Burbank, it’s quaint. Perhaps if we could just amplify its size and make it our major airport, we would get a chance to redesign the parking, but that would be– if I have advice for anybody moving to LA, it is always fly out of Burbank if you can.
Craig: Yes, fly out of Burbank and take Fountain.
Joshua: That’s right.
Craig: I think we’ve done the best we can to come up with some things that will absolutely never happen to make Los Angeles function better. Almost certainly what will happen is we don’t change at all, and we go through some convulsions from time to time. It is the cost of living here in the city we love. Joshua Zetumer, thank you so much for spending your time with us today, such a fan of your work. Congratulations on Say Nothing, and hopefully we’ll get you back on the show one of these days.
Joshua: That would be great. Thank you for having me.
Links:
- Say Nothing
- Joshua Zetumer
- Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
- Difficult Men by Brett Martin
- Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
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- Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
- John August on BlueSky, Threads, Instagram, and Mastodon
- Outro by Nick Moore (send us yours!)
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You can download the episode here.