The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hey, this is the moment, I'm Brian Koppelman. Thanks for listening.

All right, this is a real privilege and pleasure.

One, because anytime I have someone on it's actually a real friend, it's great.

Dubly so though, because before Scott Frank was my friend,

he was someone who I considered among the best screenwriters

really to ever do it.

You know a bunch of his movies from Little Man Tate, which I remember

going to see, which was your first big thing. Minority Report, a welcome on the Tombstones

was you're also directed, out of sight, get

Shorty, the Wolverine.

And as well as being an incredibly accomplished screenwriter and director, Scott is someone who's thought a lot about the

role of the writer in the world and about like why we all do this thing and

and we'll talk about it with his friends in life so I'm going to try to get him to talk about it here

But first we're going to talk about the fact that right in at that at the height of your sort of movie business

You decide it's time to not take any screenwriting jobs and write a novel

that's in the best tradition to me of Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake, the novel's

called Shaker, and it's out out now and it's a terrific read.

What the fuck were you thinking though dude?

I mean there's to just decide to do, I mean how long does he write this novel? Well I'd actually started it

way back in say 1994 I'd written a few pages of it because I'd wanted to write books for as long as I could remember I thought that be my career. I'll write books and I'll write

scripts and every now and again I'll direct one. But I started the book and then I would write, you know, I was, I think I started

...