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The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Post-Pandemic Life of a Hustling Screenwriter

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3847 Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2024

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Matt is joined by writer Bruce Eric Kaplan ('Girls', 'Seinfeld', 'Six Feet Under') to discuss the life of a TV writer and how it has changed over the years, particularly coming out of the pandemic. Bruce talks about his new book chronicling his time during the pandemic as a struggling screenwriter, joining Season 2 of the hit Netflix show ‘Nobody Wants This’, the bursting of the peak TV bubble, the psychology of the working writer, and if there is room for optimism moving forward (02:31). Matt finishes the show with opening weekend box office predictions for ‘Venom 3: The Last Dance’ and ‘Conclave’. (21:30). For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ click here. Email us your thoughts! [email protected] Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Bruce Eric Kaplan Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:05.0

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0:10.1

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0:16.4

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0:56.1

It is Friday, October 25th. People think of screenwriting as the ultimate creative job,

1:02.8

but the truth is most of the job for most professional writers is selling. Selling a showrunner

1:08.1

and why they should hire you to staff their show. S selling an actor or a director on an idea or a script,

1:13.8

selling a pitch to a studio or network or streamer, sometimes pitching all over town over during a week or month, hoping someone bites.

1:22.8

And meetings, endless meetings, setting up and rescheduling and strategizing the pre-meetings to discuss how the actual meeting is going to play out.

1:31.6

Most rank-and-file writers spend years trying to put together projects that can fall apart as quickly as a big-name actor has second thoughts or gets a better offer.

1:40.6

And it all involves tons and tons of waitingading around, usually while making no money.

1:45.8

Writers know this. It's what makes so many of them so crazy. And it's gotten worse lately as the

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