Show notes
Michael and Phil discuss what it's like to work with a writing partner, how to choose one, and what to look out for. Dive deep into Michael's background with his partner Sivert Glarum and what they did to make it in Hollywood.Michael's Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/courseFree Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/freeSivert Glarum’s IMDB Page - https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0321770/Stephen Prestfield's Book - https://www.amazon.com/Nobody-Wants-Read-Your-Tough-Love/dp/1936891492Warner Bros. Writer’s Workshop - https://televisionworkshop.warnerbros.com/writers-workshop/Glenn Martin, DDS on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8hzMh1WQ6t5dwbnNop2fVAThe Complete Idiot’s Guide to Screenwriting by Skip Press - https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Idiots-Guide-Screenwriting-3rd/dp/1592577555Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio’s Screenwriting Website - http://wordplayer.com/Michael: (00:00)I'm always reminding myself of the basics. Cause it's really, it's funny. I remember when I was on King of the hill, having a conversation with Greg Daniels who later created the American version of The Office, but I said, Greg, there is no Writing 102. It's all Writing 101. And he's like, "Yes! That's it." Writing one. It's all writing because it is, everything is all, it's all the basics.Michael: (00:27)All right, everyone. Hey, welcome back today. We're going to talk about working with a partner and how to find one and had a, had a, why you want one or why you don't want one. And because I've been working with a TV, writing... A partner, I've had a partner for Jesus. We've been together, you know, close to 30 years. I don't want to date myself. It's maybe, oh, maybe almost that many years. And so we always work together. His name is Sivert Glarum and we always work together. That's how a partnership is, but it's tricky, it's a tricky thing, finding a partner. So I thought I'd elaborate on that for anyone who...Phil: (00:57)I think it's an interesting topic, especially for someone like myself where, you know, I've... I definitely see the value of a partner, but I also see a lot of... My experience with having to rely on other people from group projects in school, down to actually trying to lean in and trust that someone will follow through on their end. My experiences have not been great.Michael: (01:20)Yeah. It's a marriage. And like, marriages are not always easy. Not, not, not everyone's meant to get married to other people. So it's really, you know, I think I got lucky, um, in comedy, it's probably more, it's more advantageous to have a writing partner in comedy because when you, when you say something funny, you don't know, it's funny until someone else is laughing. You may think it's funny, but you know, until someone, your partner laughs, then you go, okay, that must be funny. Um, and I'll just talk about how we met because when I talk in comedy, it's, there's so many ways. I guess when we, when we met, we were team... We were teamed up, uh, in comedy that like some people have partners and its common to have a partner. It's common not to have a partner, but when you have a partner, you literally split a salary for the rest of your career.Michael: (02:06)But, but it does make you, it, in theory, it gives you the advantage of getting hired more often, because you're kind of getting two for that. You're literally getting two for the price of one. And especially when you get high up levels, you're then you're running a show. And now, you know, when you are a showrunner that you have so many responsibilities. It really helps to have someone else take some of them off your hand. And if you don't have a partner, you gotta do it all. You know, so that's, but like I said, it is tricky because you have to get along and like you're pointing out, do you, you have to, you know, you have to really get along with this person. You just have to carry your weight.Phil: (02:40)I think that'd be interesting to get, I'm sure we'll get into this. I think it'll be interesting to talk about kind of your division of labor as you're going through the process of how you're writing. Uh, you know, I, I've heard of different processes based on different writing partnerships, whether, you know, it's the, the Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garrett process of they just assign scenes. So one person takes odds and one person takes evens and as they send them back, they're continuously rewriting each other. So by the time they're done with draft one, they have 20 rewrites done. Or is it that one of you sits at the typewriter or the, excuse me, not dating myself at all, sit at the computer and like type it out while the other one dictates or does it take turns? That's an interesting...Michael: (03:23)And I've seen partners do it both ways with the way we do. We literally write everything together. So we will sit at the same at the, at the, uh, you know, computer and one will look at the monitor and the other will be at the keyboard and we literally type at the same. So, you know, the one, I tend to be the one who does the typing, uh, mostly because I'm a better typer than S. It is, um, and frustrating to no end when I'm watching him struggle to put a word together. But, uh, but sometimes he'll do it. And I, you know, I I'll loss it and watch. And so, uh, it's nice. It's nice to have someone drive the boat a little bit, but I'll talk about how we, how we met. We were, uh, I was signed by an agent and, uh, my, you know, few years out of college and was a very big deal for me.Michael: (04:09)And she blew a lot of smoke up my and she's like, I signed one baby writer a year and, uh, I make a star out of that writer this year. You're the guy and congratulations. And I was like, wow, I'm on cloud nine. And she's like, in three years, you're going to be running your own show. I was like, oh my God running. I don't even know if I can write a, you know, an episode of TV, but running. And then, you know, when the smoke cleared a couple days later, I was curious about what had happened to the previous baby writer before me. And so I got through there, I guess, through their assistant, I got the name of this guy and I called them up. He was actually two years before me and I called him up and I was like, Hey man, what, what show are you running?Michael: (04:46)Cause you obviously must be incredibly successful. And he's like, dude, I work at a record store. And, uh, so he hadn't gotten staffed at all. And so we decided to team up, we had, there are two reasons to team up. Uh, one, I, I, I knew enough then to know, like I was, it was hard. I knew, I knew enough to know that I didn't know enough and that we traded scripts. I was like, man, this guy is, this guy is a better writer than I was. Even though we were both signed independently and I was hotter than he was in terms of, I was the new flavor of the week for this agent. And rather than compete against each other for the same job we teamed up. And, uh, and that's how we, that's how we became partners.Phil: (05:28)So, so how did you broach that conversation of, um, what do you think here? Is this something that you want to do together? Like how did that conversation?Michael: (05:36)Yeah, I think we were both interested in writing with a partner. He like, he had a partner many years earlier who decided to get out and become a socialist, uh, that how Sivert describes it. And so we were both open to the idea and, you know, we kind of met and we hit it off. We were coming from similar backgrounds. We're both from the east coast. Sivert a couple of years older than me, but, you know, close in age, we both played the trumpet and, you know, grade school, that kind of thing. Right,Phil: (06:02)Right. Mastering it in heaven.Michael: (06:04)Yeah, but a lot of partners are just, they, you know, they tend to be, Hey, we were friends in college and we both want it. I know that happens a lot. And so let's, let's go out to Hollywood together and become writing partners. So that often, that often is the case. Sometimes you see a husband and wife has a writing partner.Phil: (06:20)I've, I've seen that, um, a couple of times, some pretty big names or writing partners in our couples. So, so, okay. So that's, I mean, that's a fascinating topic. I was literally just listening to, I was out on runs for our show yesterday in post-production and I had to just drive all over Hollywood and Burbank multiple times. So I started listening to a Steven Pressfield book. He wrote The War of Art, um, Turning Pro... A bunch of stuff. He he's a screenwriter who did the novel of a Legend of Bagger Vance, and also wrote the film is multiple time bestselling author been in the industry from the advertising background. And he's got this other book that I never read. And it's um, No One Wants to Read Your Shit. Pardon that? Yeah. Interesting. That's the title. And his whole point is you have to understand whether you're in advertising, writing novels, writing screenplays.Phil: (07:07)No one wants to read your shit. And, and so you shouldn't be like surprised when no one gets around to it. And ultimately it has to be that good that they want to read it. But he talks about how he got partnered up with this big name. And ultimately he felt like he wasn't getting a lot of the credit for what he was doing because he was the writer and the other guy was the name. And his agent sat him down. Once he said, you need to understand that right now he is the known deal because he's had hits with his other writing partner. He's had hits with you. He's the common denominator. You're a nobody. So you need to understand your role here. Now, obviously your situation's a little bit different because we were both young baby writers who partnered up, but it sounds like there's even a little bit of that because you were the hot thing for you, right.Michael: (07:52)It was the hot, but he was trading. Cause we traded scripts. I'm like this guy really is a really good writer. I could tell just from reading a script, like he was, he really understood story structure. And, um, he had, he had sold on his own, an episode with his previous partner an episode of the wonder years. So it was like he had, he did have a little more, you know, he had one under the belt and I had none of the under the belt, but the truth is like, and I remember in the beginning there was a struggle between us in terms of, we didn't know how to trust each other. And, and of course I wanted more of my lines in the script and his lines and, you know, back I kind of thing. And then as you get older and more mature, it's really that ego goes out the window.Michael: (08:30)And it's more about whoever pitches the line that will get you home sooner. That's the one you'll do, you know? It's like, I don't really, if it comes out of his mouth, great, that's great. Let's use that one. I don't really care. And I think he feels vice versa. It's like, um, and often, you know, we'll do a rewrite on a script and he'll want to cut a line and like, no, no, no, no, that's the best line of the script. And it's his line, you know? And he's, you know, so I'm fighting for his stuff and vice versa, you know? SoPhil: (08:58)It's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So the pride dies as you become a pro is really what I'm hearing.Michael: (09:03)Yeah, I think so. It's also like in the beginning of the novelty of seeing your words on TV, it was like, oh my God, my lines are on TV, millions of people. And then, uh, you know, that gets, it's not that it gets old, but you've become accustomed to it. And then you're really, it's really more about just doing the work and finishing the work as opposed to like your ego, you know?Phil: (09:24)Okay. So you obviously knew he was, he was engaged cause he was obviously working on the stuff, but for people who are considering teaming up, aside from the benefit of, you're more likely to get staffed, you have someone to vet your jokes or your story against to kind of tell you whether or not it's good. How can you tell whether or not someone's serious? Like someone's a good partner.Michael: (09:42)The thing, cause we were both, we were both signed by the agent. So we were both, um, intent on breaking into Hollywood. So, you know, so it wasn't like, it wasn't like a fluke or it wasn't like a Lark, neither one of us. Like it was a Lark and we were both around the same time. And Hollywood, we were both like on a struggling PAs and we would work on the weekends. We were both very committed. So after work and on the weekends, every day we met and we wrote spec scripts over, you know, wrote and wrote and wrote. And so, because he was a couple of years older, he was also a little bit more hungry, a little more desperate. It was like he had to make a, this happened now. And so we both had that same work ethic in terms of like, and I was young, I was a little younger, but I was also like, I want to, I want it now. I don't have any patience. So was like, we have to hit this now. And so it was a sense of franticness and, and uh, urgency. And it wasn't like there was no plan B for either of us. Hmm.Phil: (10:35)So how, how, how long after your partnered, did you end up, uh, selling something?Michael: (10:40)I think, um, I'm trying to remember it. Like it was, we wound up selling an episode of Lewis and Clark that I helped get, because that was my, I, we sold it to my, my, uh, my bosses. I was working as their, uh, assistant at the time. So I got that because, you know, they were my bosses and that might've been a couple of years after we were writing, but then it took another couple of years before we were able to get staffed on our first job, which was Just Shoot Me. And so it took a few years. And in between then we also got into the Warner Bros. Writing Program, which really did nothing for our career, but you know, it was something, so it took a few years of struggling. And I remember like at that age, the years feel like decades, especially when you feel like, you know, um, you know, I should be doing more with my life. So yeah.Phil: (11:26)Yeah. So, so the reason I asked that is because what you're describing is everyday after work and on weekends, you're practicing your craft. So you've talked about in other episodes is a writer writes. That's what they do. If you wrote something a year ago, you have written, but you are not actively writing. And so what I'm hearing you say is, even though you had agents, which the big misconception is you need an agent to break into Hollywood and that's that's what does it for you that didn't help? Nope. And then even then you put in years of effort to make it to your first staff job.Michael: (11:59)Yeah. And the first spec script that we wrote together, it was a friend's I think it was a first one. It made me minimum the first, it was one of the first. And, but we just kept on writing specs. We probably wrote maybe eight or so specs together, maybe more of show like anyway, ironically it was at first, I think it was the first spec, a spec script that we wrote together that wound up getting work for us years later, it was a really good, uh, spec, but like, we just didn't quit. It was like, well, write another one, write another one, you know, let's ge…
Full show notes at the publisher 
Our TOPPODCAST Picks 
Stay Connected
