Show notes
Michael Jamin & Phil Hudson discuss the reason they started this podcast, how Michael got his start, and the biggest mistake most new screenwriters make when approaching Hollywood.Show NotesMichael's Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/courseFree Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/freeWriting for Dough: Adventures of a T.V. Comedy Writer Paperback – May 1, 1989, by Bill Idelson - Non-Affiliate Link - https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Dough-Adventures-Comedy-Writer/dp/1556660367Michael Jamin on IMDB - https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0417157/Michael: (00:00)I wasn't critiquing her story. I was saying, okay, if this is the story you want to tell, this is what you need to do. I wasn't telling her whether it was a good story or a bad story. I wasn't like that, that, you know, that's subjective. I said, if this is the one story you want to tell, this is what it needs. And at the end of our, we talked for about an hour. It was like she had witnessed a magic trick. You're listening to screenwriters need to hear this with Michael Jen. So today's episode, we're talking about breaking into the business, how I got into the business and how this whole podcast even started. So I've been a professional TV writer for 26 years and fell here. My podcasting partner, he's been bugging me for years to start an online screenwriting course, to tell everyone how, what I've learned, you know, as an opportunity.Phil: (00:50)Well, selfishly, I should add, like, this is something I wanted for myself. And so kind of like tickets to a step back here too. I have probably paid for every screenwriting program on the internet, and I've been doing that for the last decade. And then I went to film school and got a bachelor's degree specifically in screenwriting. And I still feel like I've learned more from private lessons from you, or just off-the-cuff emails you sent to me reviewing something or giving me notes. And so when I say I've been begging for this course, I remember sitting in my car, it was on a business trip to Utah. And back in 2015, maybe you need to, you need to do a course on screenwriting. And I wanted this. I, it,Michael: (01:30)I was surprised that you hadn't learned any of this in film school. That's what always shocked me. I was like, well, what are you, what are they teaching you there?Phil: (01:36)You know? And, and I think for most people, you know, I consider myself an autodidact, meaning I, I teach myself things. And when I went to film school, it was more of a networking thing through, you know, being a Robert Redford scholar and trying to get somewhere ends in the Sundance independent community. But a lot of the things that they teach in film school match up with things that I learned in these other paid courses and things that I take taken online or in screenwriting books. And so for a while, I was like, oh yeah, this must be what screenwriting is. And then I remember, you know, to kind of give some background on how we know each other. I worked at a digital marketing agency and I was actually the account manager for your wife's online business. And I never met you over the course of several years.Phil: (02:18)And there was at one point, your, your wife was like, oh, my husband, Michael is going to be getting on the call while he waits for his next show to start off, he's going to help me out with marketing. And she didn't know that I'd been wanting to be a screenwriter for this whole time and taking these courses. And I remember I said show, and she's like, oh yeah, he's a, he's going to be running mark Marin's new show. And I was like, okay. And I looked her up and I was like, oh, she's an Angry Beavers, which I grew up at real monsters. And she's an actress. I had no idea. And you, you know, it just goes to show, you never know anything about anybody. You can't just judge a book by its cover at all. And then you were, I guess at some point I had generated enough Goodwill with you through her that you were like, oh, I was like, we got our car.Phil: (03:01)I was like, I'm trying to break in. And you're like, I'm trying to break out like just a funny comment and say, you sent me some screenwriting books and got me a subscription to the writers Guild magazine, which was very helpful. And then I just remember the first email you sent and you're like, what's the definition of a story? And I gave it to you. And you were like, I think I said, uh, it's about someone who becomes a, someone who goes through trials and ends up better in the end. And you were like, what about king Lear? He goes nuts. Right? And I was like, oh, I know nothing. That was about the point when I was like, I have learned nothing over all of this time learning formatting and how to use the software. So it that's kind of about the time it clicked as well. But these people who are teaching things may not actually be teaching what the industry considers to be crafted. Yes.Michael: (03:45)That's it cause like, I, I didn't go to film school. I don't know many writers or any that did go to film school. So w like film school is a mystery to us. I don't know why people go, I don't know what they're teaching. And then I, I suspect that it's being taught by professional teachers and not by actual TV writers or screamers with a lot of experience,Phil: (04:05)You know, I had, I had maybe one or two really good screenwriting professors in my bachelor's program. And like, one of them wrote some major hits in the eighties. He's a worker, he was a working pro and he was legitimate. We were on a working campus. So like there were stages and they shot the show, Longmire. So we had the opportunity to have the showrunners of Longmeyer come in and speak to us. Those were probably some of the best things about going to film school. For me, I think a lot of people who want to learn camera work and want to learn how to, what it means to, you know, run a, run a set from a PA or a first director or to direct, I think there were a lot of benefits in that regard, but from a writing perspective, not a lot, man, my TV writing class, we wrote one spec script, the entire S like the entire semester, which seems like a lot, but it's not when you're a writer. Right. Right.Michael: (04:54)Well, and that was, that's what led you were like, Hey, put together a course and I just didn't have the time or desire, but then the pandemic hit and I had, you know, Hollywood shot. I was like, this is gonna, we're all gonna be hiding under beds for a year. And I just knew it was going to shut down the industry, like immediately. So, and it did for me, for sure, everyone, like, we just had nothing to do. So I had all this time and I was like, all right, I'll put together this course. And it took a couple of months. Uh, and so that we put together a course. And if anyone's interested, its at MichaelJamin.com/course. But from the people who signed up for it, they kind of became rabid and they just wanted more and more stuff. And then,Phil: (05:33)So lots of questions. We were doing webinars. We were breaking down case studies of stories and, you know, my technical background, I kind of step in and facilitate a lot of the technical side of this. So I saw a lot of those questions and, uh, met up with some of the members of the course that have been traveling. And yeah, it's just a lot of the same stuff. There's a lot of things people don't know. And I'm, I'm low man on the totem pole, right? I'm a, writer's PA and a PA in other regards, but I've had the ability to sit in that outside of the writer's room and in the writer's room on a few occasions, and it's just a different world. So you know that the ability to learn things in a course for me to see what you look for as a showrunner and craft what your perspective is on selling a pilot and you know, that probably not going to happen. It could, but it probably not. And so what should you focus on craft and what is craft and how you actually work on your story and what elements belong to us. Right. Those are things I didn't learn in a four year program. I had learned in other online programs. And so there's a lot of value that came from that, but there are also a lot more questions, Ryan. And I think that's kind of led to your social media stuff.Michael: (06:39)I started posting on social media and, you know, on Instagram and anyone listening to go follow me there @MichaelJaminWriter. But then, and then it became, okay, well, the next step was, people would just want her to be her more, um, like, uh, so that became, this became the podcast. And all this stuff is like, uh, the course is really the nuts and bolts of had, okay, how do we literally, right? How do we become, how do we break it down as if you were in the writer's room as if you are working for me, this, this is exactly the steps we take every day to turn an idea into an episode of television. And the podcast is more, um, kind of peripheral stuff about, you know, stuff, you know, how I got into the business, how you can get into the business and, uh, little things that are not quite so writing centric, but more,Phil: (07:22)There's going to be some of that, but it's really, there are a lot of questions, people asking. And what I've noticed from reading through your social media comments, cause you had some stuff on Tik TOK at like half a million masks known as a 400,300,000 on one, 200,000 on another. And a lot of the questions people ask are these same exact questions. Lots of people are asking these exists in resources. Like this podcast is not the only place where you can get to see a lot of this information. There's script notes, podcasts, a bunch of other really good places where you can have actual working writers teach you great, valuable stuff. But in general, there are a lot of very specific questions aren't that aren't being answered and things that I wish I would have known earlier. Right. Which, which gives us the opportunity to talk about it from those two perspectives, you 26 years in and me a decade plus into my writing attempts and still learning every single day and learning what I don't know now that I'm sitting adjacent to writers and writers.Michael: (08:17)Right. Right. So I guess we'll talk about, um, kinda how I got, how I got into the business. Like I said, I didn't go to film school was my childhood dream when I was first question cheers, uh, on, uh, you know, Thursday nights on NBC. I was like, I want to be the guy who writes the lines for norm. Like, I didn't realize like the one writer writes the entire script. I just felt like maybe there was a writer who norms limes and there's a different writer who does Diana. Like I had no idea, no clue. And so, um, that was my goal. And after college I graduated college, like two weeks later, I got my wisdom teeth pulled cause I had, um, I still had insurance. Then I got into my car and I drove from New York all the way to LA didn't really know where I was going to stay. Uh, and then I found a roommate and, and uh, that's kind of how I broke into the business. Um, just kind of like hustling and, and begging and sending out.Phil: (09:10)So let me ask you come from an economically wealthy background.Michael: (09:14)Yeah. Yeah. And, and you are impoverished, you grew up on the other side of the spectrum. Yeah.Phil: (09:19)Yeah. I grew up, um, you know, food stamps, social security welfare. Did the foster home thing as a kid for awhile. Yeah. I was definitely on the other side, but I it's interesting because since I was 18 years old, I've really focused on personal development, what people might've called self-help and there are a lot of excuses that people will come up with about what it takes to break in. And then I think this is one of those, which is you have to be wealthy to break in, but I know plenty of writers who did not come from a wealthy background. Yeah. Yeah.Michael: (09:51)I mean, it was like, I didn't have to worry, you know, I just didn't have to worry about certain things. But when I got out here, I got, I got a job. Like I, you know, it wasn't like I was getting checks every day from my parents. We were scooping ice cream. I was working at Humphrey yogurt and uh, yeah, there's a yogurt store. Um, and so I did that. And then, um, yeah, then I finally got Phi was my first PA job. I think I was making $300 a week. And,Phil: (10:15)And then I'll make it a little bit more than that in 2020. All right.Michael: (10:19)And we won and I mean, it's interesting. So it's like people say, well, you, it, you know, at least back then, and it's true in LA in Los Angeles, when I was making money, I moved up to PA where I was making maybe $400. We can $400 a week allowed me to get a studio apartment where I could live by myself for, you know, cause it wasn't that expensive. My rent was maybe 600 a month and now you can't in LA you can't get anything near that. So you have to get roommates. Right. So yeah,Phil: (10:46)I had five roommates at one point in the house. I still live in the same house. I'm married now with a kid. And you know, I had to build a bunch of businesses to establish myself. This was all part of a fricking ten-year plan to make it to LA and be able to do this. And so I get like, there are economical difficulties to hold you back, but there are ways to make it happen. Yeah. So I had an extra income that comes in from businesses that I own that, but I also have PA money that comes in to help me out and I can live in LA on peace at PA salary. I have proven that we had five roommates in a four bedroom, three bath house out in the middle of the valley. And my rent was like six 50. Right.Michael: (11:23)Split. So yeah. It's can be done. I mean, I get it. I get, it was easier for me back then. But on some ways it was difficult, more difficult because there was no, this is 1992. There was no internet. And I couldn't even the idea of becoming a television writer was like, well, I didn't know any TV writers. I didn't know anyone who was, I didn't like now you can go on the internet and you'd get all the, there were no, you know, there are no podcasts you, I had, all I knew was if I wanted to work in Hollywood, I better be in Hollywood and then I'll figure it out. But now it's like, you can live across the, and get all this content like this podcast for free and you can learn so much without ever leaving your bedroom, you know? Yeah.Phil: (12:00)Yeah. And one of the things you talk about in your course not to bring it up again, but I think is really valuable is you have to live in LA because that's where the writing happens, but you don't have to live in LA to practice your craft that's right. Right. And in some of the first advice you gave me is you need to be in LA because when they need someone, they need them today. And if you're not here today, they'll just call the next guy in line or the next girl in line. And there's 10,000 of those people. Right. Right. Right. But being here helps. And you know, the show I work on now that you work on as well, that's happened because I was available that day. Right.Michael: (12:33)And to get to your point about your craft, like, it doesn't really matter. Like if you, if you're not ready, if your, if your writing isn't at that level, it doesn't matter if you, if you have a, if Steven Spielberg owes you a favor, you know what I'm saying? Like, if you can get your script in Spiel…
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