Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and you're listening to Episode 720 of Script Notes.

It's a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show,

how do you sell and produce an original series in this age of streamers and IP? Tell us to answer that question.

We welcome back the co-creators of the new Spy series Ponys of no interest susanna fogle and david everson

great to have you back on script notes great to be back i listened to this show enough that it is

still freaky to see you do the thing that i hear you do yeah so last time you're here was episode

361 which is based this is episode 720, so it was a halfway

through. And so like every 360 episodes, kind of like a year cycle, you come back on the show.

This is how hard it is to get a thing made that you, yeah, it goes from script to production

over the half-life of script notes's journey as a podcast. And that was for the spy who talked to me, and now you're

back with another spy show. So spies are in your book. Yeah, we're back with something that has

some shared DNA in that we wrote it and that it is about spies, but this, it's a very different,

very different tone, very different feel. I think we learned a lot of things for making that movie that we didn't bring into this show. So, yeah, it's a different beast, but yeah, it is still things that we gravitate to. We shot them both in Boondes, yeah. French of stories and about two women. That's true. It's sort of that's hilarious. but like the tone is specific and strange. I really want to get into it because I was struck by sort of ponies. It's like a tone I've not seen on a show in a while, which is fun to say. So I want to talk about that. I want to talk about the series, but I also want to answer listener questions on trusting your judgment, how to tell if you're talented and differentiating character voices.

And in our bonus segment members, I want to talk about taste. We did a little bit of this

before we got on mic. But what is taste? How do you cultivate it? And should you even worry

about taste? So we'll get into taste. Let's remind listeners who weren't here for 360, episode 361.

What were you guys doing?

Answer, remind us who you are. Because Susanna Fogel, and at the time since we saw you last, you went off and directed a whole bunch of things. So pilots with the flight attendant, the wilds, a small light. You directed the features winner and a cat person all in the times as we've seen. You're so busy and prolific.

Congrats.

Thank you. I go for long stretches of time where I'm not working and I'm in my pajamas. So when things come out all at once and it looks like that's my regular density of work, I feel

excited that that's how it looks. And David, when you talked before, we talked about you working on

SNL way back in the day. Yeah, that was my very first writing job, yeah. Yeah. Since then, United States of Terra, up all night, new girl, madman, Mr. Robot, Mozart, the Jungle, run. And since the last time you hear, you also had young kids. Yeah, I had identical twin girls who by the time this episode airs will be two years old. That's incredible. So as Craig and I often describe on the podcast, kids are the death of a career. And so. Sure. Yeah. And when we started working on the show, they were negative six years old. This is how long we've been working on the show. Yeah. So you're working on this, you know, I wasn't married. I didn't have kids. And I'm married of two kids and I brought my kids and my wife overseas to make this show. So I couldn't get

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