[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

This week on "On Story," comedy writer Alex Gregory will take us inside the writer's room of the Emmy Award-winning comedy, "The Studio."

- The big thing going into it was we wanted people outside the business to go, "Oh, I get it."

But then people inside the business to go, "That seems plausible."

We didn't want to err on one side or the other of like talking down to the audience to, like, spoonfeed them stuff.

But at the same time, really, accuracy was paramount.

Like in terms of, like, we want people to really feel like they're getting a window into what it's like.

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [Narrator] This week on "On Story," we're joined by Alex Gregory, an accomplished comedy writer known for his work on "Veep," "King Of The Hill" and "Frasier," for a conversation on his process of co-creating the Emmy Award-winning comedy, "The Studio."

[typewriter dings] - Seth and Evan, when they were writing, went out to dinner with an exec who had been giving them really terrible notes and he had a couple of drinks and he said, "You know, I got into this business because I love movies and now my job is to ruin them."

And they thought like, what an interesting position to be in.

Like, it's inherently comedic, is that you're forced because of the forces of commerce that you have to do the thing that you know is not good.

- So you go in and you start working with them.

I know you've done a lot of things, but a lot of it has been in TV.

- Right.

- Did you notice that the four of you were seeing Hollywood the same way?

- And Frida.

- Oh, that's right, it's five.

- Yeah, the other co-creator is Frida.

And, no, I think, actually, it makes it really cool is we've all had very different experiences in it.

And like for example, Frida was Seth's assistant and came up through like the agency and was someone's assistant.

And so she's seeing it from the perspective of a young person entering the business now when all you hear are these nightmarish headlines about where it's going and where it's headed, and Seth and Evan have been at, like, the absolute apex of like making their own movies that they write and direct and have been directly in contact with studio heads in a way that most people who have worked in television haven't.

His perspective of having been in the room where big decisions are being made or direct conversation with studio heads gives him a unique perspective.

Because, like, the big thing going into it was, we wanted people outside the business to go, "Oh, I get it."

But then people inside the business to go, "That seems plausible."

We didn't want to err on one side or the other of, like, talking down to the audience to, like, spoonfeed them stuff.

But at the same time, really accuracy was paramount.

Like, in terms of like we want people to really feel like they're getting a window into what it's like.

- Which sounds a lot like "The Larry Sanders Show," which is one of my favorite shows ever made.

First of all, was it kind of like riding a bike, like, I'm sure there's a lot of the same motions and the same muscles to train for a show like that and the show like this.

- It's a very different experience because "The Studio" is very consciously, like, each episode is a mini movie, whereas "Larry Sanders" is very much an episode of television.

And so there's a certain linear aspect to "The Studio" storytelling, which is, it never starts with an A and a B story.

And then the oner style of shooting is very different from "Sanders."

- Yeah.

- The one thing that we definitely stole from "Sanders" is, like, if you're gonna do a talk show, you have to have celebrities.

And if you're doing a series about making movies, you have to have film actors in it and film directors in it or it will feel fake.

And so that was another thing that was directly lifted from "Sanders" in terms of making the world feel credible.

And so it became a lot about, like, what do you have to do as a studio head to survive in this current climate?

And by the way, it changes every year.

- How are you keeping up with all the changes so you can reflect on something that's current but still have the time that you need to make a show?

- I think what it is, is by keeping the journey about a guy who has no life outside of his job and that his entire life, his ego is consumed by whether or not his movies are successful and cool.

It means that no matter what's going on in the industry, there's a way for him to fail.

- Hey, Quinn, was I invited to some Charlize Theron party this weekend?

- What?

No.

Why would Charlize Theron invite you to her party?

You're always asking if you're invited to some celebrity's party, and the answer's always no.

- Great.

Thank you.

What do I have now?

- A meeting with the Jenga people.

- That's right.

- Yesterday was Rubik's Cube but now Jenga?

- Patty's the head of the studio.

Her corporate overlords want us to make more movies based on known brands, so I gotta take these [censored] meetings.

- So, now what do you do?

You make a Jenga movie?

- No, you take the meeting, and then you don't make the [censored] movie, and you focus on making an actual good movie.

- Oh, my God.

This is so depressing.

I'm, like, 30 years too late to this [censored] industry.

- I know.

Trust me, if it was up to me, we'd be focusing on making the next "Rosemary's Baby" or "Annie Hall" or, you know, some great film that wasn't directed by a pervert.

[Quinn] Turns out perverts make great movies.

[Matt] They really do.

- And Seth has been very candid that he has carved out an extremely tiny Venn diagram of what's gonna make him happy, which is it has to be financially successful, regarded as cool by the critics, and then regarded as interesting or cool by the people in the business he respects.

And that's tiny.

It's very hard to hit that bullseye.

So you do that and then you go, well, there are a lot of things that can go wrong with that model of happiness.

- One of the things I think works best about the show, and it's the same with "Larry Sanders," is that there's no real villain.

- That's accurate.

We specifically set out to not make executives the villain.

With studio people and executives, their outcomes are quantitative and very easy to understand.

So it's like in the Ron Howard episode, if they don't cut the sequence, they're gonna have one fewer screening per night and that is gonna kill them, and they could lose, like, $30 million at the box office.

Anyone can understand that.

Anyone at any job can understand why that's a problem.

And so I think by chasing that sort of stuff and keeping it in the realm of the executives or their priorities, I actually think it makes the show much easier to understand.

Every single one of those people is there for the love of film.

And then along the way, you get beaten into you, you can't do this or you'll lose money, you can't do that or you'll get fired.

You can't do this.

And so if you talk to studio people individually, they're all like smart, funny, interesting.

And then collectively, they form like a Voltron robot of bad ideas.

And so that's kind of what you're up against is, as you say, it's the machine.

- I am excited to announce that we are fast-tracking a Kool-Aid movie.

- Wait, what?

- Let's... go!

- I was hammering Patty to make moves like this for, like, months.

- My God, we can get Mr.

Beast to put a bunch of people in a giant pitcher of Kool-Aid, see how long they can hold their breath for money.

- Ooh.

Actually, that would crush.

- Right?

- I could sell the [censored] out of this.

- That is amazing, Maya, and I'm glad you like it and you're gonna like it even more when you hear my take.

So, what made "Barbie" stand out so much in the marketplace?

- Famous white people.

- Kinda.

It was actually one quasi-famous white lady: Greta Gerwig.

That's the reason "Barbie" worked.

It had a writer-director behind it.

It was a filmmaker's vision.

So that's what we're gonna do with Kool-Aid.

- Were there other things you were looking at, other films or TV shows that portray that industry?

- For sure "The Player."

The fact that we named Bryan Cranston's character Griffin Mill was like not even a subtle tip of the hat, you know?

And they had that big oner and we're doing oners.

So "The Player" was definitely a touchstone.

I think every movie about film or every show about film has some resonance with us, whether it's "Sunset Boulevard" or anything that's portrayed like how hard it is.

- Were there tropes, whether it was from "The Player" or from "La La Land" or any sort of Hollywood-centric film or TV shows that you were, like, very purposely trying to avoid?

- As I mentioned before, we tried to avoid, like, the sitcom style of cutting between A story and B story.

And then cinematically, I think we carved out kind of an interesting visual language for the show.

Our hope was that it would feel really, really, really voyeuristic, in a good way.

That that was one of the reasons for the oner stuff is you actually feel like you're in the room, that the camera's not looking away and that your perspective is like of a person looking around in this room.

So, you feel like you're with these people, and there's no reprieve.

Because we've heard, you know, from a lot of people who actually like the show that are, like, it's hard to watch sometimes because it's so intense and you're feeling the stuff so viscerally, which, you know, we take as a great compliment.

[typewriter dings] [Harrison] Well, let's talk about the writer's room.

- We hired a new writer for season two.

[Harrison] Okay.

- She happens to have an Academy Award.

It's Sarah Polley.

- We love Sarah.

- We love Sarah Polley.

- You don't see a lot of shows with five credited creators on them.

- Right.

- And without like a singular showrunner in charge, like, how does that democracy of ideas work?

- Well, ultimately it's Seth, 'cause he and Evan direct every episode.

So our job collectively is to give Seth and Evan everything they need to make the show.

- How are you balancing the actual mechanics of the story with visuals?

Is it just always fully intertwined?

- Absolutely, yeah.

Because the show is very visual, and we're always thinking what is this gonna look like?

And especially knowing how the show is filmed, you know when you're kind of like going off the rails when it's like, "Well, we couldn't really film that."

I'm also pleasantly surprised by what we can end up filming.

Like, there are things that are like, "Well, that's never gonna work."

And then it does.

I'm like, "Damn, okay."

- What's an example of that?

- Okay, for instance, in the season finale when Bryan Cranston, like, falls off the ledge into a gondola, I was like, "How on earth is that going to work?"

[Harrison] That was in the script?

[Alex] Yeah.

And it worked beautifully.

And so that was one of those things where you're like, "All right, live and learn."

- We gotta go.

- Go, go, go, go, go, go!

- Well, I imagine as someone who is such a veteran who's been writing TV and film for so long, you probably have a compass of what can and can't work.

Are you able to use that compass or because this is such a different project, are you just like... - Well, that's the cool thing about it was that Seth and Evan have done so much in terms of big movies like "Pineapple Express."

They have a much better sense of what's possible in terms of action that their scope of, like, I get hit by a car.

That's not what an average sitcom would do.

It's just not something you'd write.

And then it's like, yeah, this is great.

It just adds so much to, like, the vocabulary, the visual vocabulary, the show like, oh, you can do movie [censored] in this show.

You could have big stunts.

Having the world expanded as the possibilities, I think has been really fun.

[typewriter dings] - I'm curious about creating the core team, the core characters.

- Mm-hmm.

- You know, the media relations person and we're gonna have Sal Saperstein, and we're gonna have all these roles.

Where there other iterations, other people that were in that kind of core group?

- It's kind of the natural thing because like the head of marketing, the one that Kathryn Hahn plays is an essential part of any studio.

And then the head of production is the guy that's dealing with all the fires, which is Ike, Sal.

And then we also wanted a sense that while Matt is in charge of production, there is someone above him.

Like, we didn't want to have him be completely immune to pressure.

And I think Quinn, the character that Chase plays, represents young Hollywood.

'Cause we thought that was really important to have that perspective in the show.

- Hey, did you get a chance to read that script I sent you?

[Matt] Which one was that?

- The low-budget slasher that Owen Kline wrote for himself to direct.

I think he's so talented and so smart.

- Yeah, no.

It was actually a really fun read.

But Sal's been also developing a low-budget slasher movie, and I don't think we can do both, you know.

- The rip-off of "Smile?"

We're still definitely doing that one?

- Oh, yeah.

Definitely.

He actually got a director on board he's really psyched about.

We were just gonna go meet about it.

Why don't you just help him with his instead?

- Yeah, totally.

- You know this world so well, you've been in it, Seth knows it so well.

Is there actual research involved or are you just like, "No, we got it."

- Oh, no, there's research.

We would meet with studio heads, marketing heads, PR heads, social media heads, heads of production.

We met with a lot of people.

- And like, what are you asking them for?

- What's the most awful day you had?

What's the thing that you look back that you wish you could change?

Like, what are you most embarrassed by?

Like, anything like that.

Or sometimes if you just open it up and say, "What's a story that you like to tell?"

Sometimes, they'll just be like, "Well, there's this thing."

And I mean, like, for instance, "The Golden Globes" episode, Seth and Evan had done some project that was up for a Golden Globe, and they noticed the person on their team was like crying, and it was because they didn't get thanked.

And so when we brought a studio head in, we said, "Has that ever happened if you not get..." And she goes, "Oh, yeah.

And I would cry the entire limo ride home."

And this is when they won.

And so we're like, "Well, that's an episode right there."

- Team Open.

Yeah!

[Zoe] Team Open!

- Woo!

Team Open!

Yeah!

Whoo!

[laughs] Yeah!

[car door slams] [somber music] [Driver] Your movie lost?

- No, it won.

Take me home, please.

[Driver] You got it.

[somber music] - How many of these stories or kind of seeds of stories came from you specifically?

- Well, like some of this stuff came from people's own experiences.

For instance, like "The Pediatric Oncologist" episode.

So we were always trying to come up with a, like, we were like, "Let's do an episode that explains why Matt is a single man."

And so the idea was to make him date someone who, in her world, he has no clout or currency.

And I just blurted out pediatric oncologist.

[audience laughing] And at some point, Seth was like, "You know, I've been to a lot of these like charity banquets and auctions, and the doctors go out of their way to make me understand that what they do is more important than what I do."

- We all have very high-pressure jobs.

That's all I'm saying.

- Yeah, well, pressure, there's pressure.

I mean, honestly, I mean, I'm jealous of it.

We deal with life and death, and you... I mean, you just deal with Rotten Tomatoes splats.

- Yeah, I mean, the Tomatometer has a big impact on box office, I won't lie.

And for the record, you know, people die on movie sets all the time.

- Is that something to brag about?

- No, not at all.

I'm not... I would not brag about... I'm just saying, you all care deeply about the outcome of your work, just as I care deeply about the outcome of my art.

- Wait, your art?

Wait, you work for the studios that make those MK Ultra movies, right?

The exploding head movies.

You think that's art?

- I do.

- Only way he's gonna find love is if he willingly accepts or pretends to accept that what this pediatric oncologist does is more important than what he does.

And I think to this day, Seth and I are on opposite sides of that episode.

I'm 100% in the pediatric oncologist camp, and I think he's in his camp.

[typewriter dings] - So how much of these characters or of the dialogue is actually on the page?

Is there a lot of improv going on too?

- No.

No.

- Okay.

- Because of the way we shoot, it's timed very, very precisely that in order for us to do what we're trying to do, we can't really... there isn't a lot of latitude.

- Yeah.

And how do you find that pace on the script?

Are you, like, performing it as you write it, or like how do you-- - Yeah.

So you have to be very aware of motion and movement in a way that a lot of shows aren't.

And so sometimes we'll be on set and be like, "This needs a couple of extra lines, or this needs to be cut dramatically in half," because there's too much and we're pausing too much.

So I would say that the choreography on it is unlike any show I've ever worked on, where you can't just cut into a scene and just chop things up and make people move across the room.

Like, you have to follow them everywhere.

- Like "The Oner" episode, which I believe is episode two was, especially for a second episode of a first season of a show, is such a huge swing.

- That's a really cool second episode.

And I think it also, it kind of set the tone for this season of, oh, not every episode is gonna take place in the office.

And I think that that was kind of a good sort of like planting a flag of being like, don't expect office comedy.

It's not like we're gonna be here all the time.

We're gonna go on productions.

And I think in a good way, I think it kind of like expanded the world, but, yeah, it was always gonna aim big, that one.

- What were the kind of conversations you had about like visual tone and just thematic tone and the mixture of old versus new?

- I think what we wanted to do was we wanted to create a world where you understood why people wanted to be there.

So then offices are nicer than you would normally find, but you wanted it to feel beautiful and you wanted it to also have a sense of history so that if Matt is thinking that he could be the last steward of Continental Studios, you want this beautiful building and this sense of history of like this Frank Lloyd Wright building that if I [censored] up, I'm the guy that destroyed this cathedral, and it actually builds the stakes of the show.

Like, the more beautiful we make it, the more sense of place and history, the more it adds up to the weight on him.

[typewriter dings] - You were talking to me before about how important it was to have like real celebrities and real, like, true cameos.

This feels harder than getting like a notable face to play a different character.

If they're playing themselves, they need to be baked into the script early on.

What's the process of onboarding these very famous people?

You must have to do it much earlier than other shows.

- We do.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of it involves and Seth having been asked to do a bazillion cameos has an intuitive understanding of what an actor or director or person will want is all they want to know is, "What's my bit, what's my joke?

Why am I here?"

Like it can't just be, "Hey, I'm famous."

It's like, "What's my fun thing to do?"

So the people that came like really were up for playing and having fun like Ron Howard just committing to being this angry version of Ron Howard was so fun.

[dramatic music] - You want a note, Ron?

I'll give you a note.

You made a great film that you are ruining with this self-indulgent motel [censored].

- [somber music] you!

My cousin died, you [censored] suit piece of [censored]... - Your dead cousin deserves much better than to be honored in the form of a boring [censored] movie, man.

- You, listen to me 'cause I will never, ever.

[glasses shattering] [Matt] Ugh!

- You lame idiot.

- Ron.

- You bald prick.

- You want to talk to me?

You go get Patty.

Patty's got a brain.

You got nothing.

I don't even know why you're in this room.

You don't look at me.

- If you have a cameo that's based on like the frailty of their ego, or their creative ambitions, that usually plays pretty well.

But if it was like, oh, this guy's like, you know, kind of a horn dog or something, that will not fly.

So it's really more about their position as an artist.

I think they're more apt to be up for lampooning it.

- And it seems like you're fascinated by this kind of collision of ego and insecurity.

- Yeah.

- Why is that so funny to you?

- Because I have an ego, and I'm insecure.

[audience laughing] [typewriter dings] Obviously, every streamer wants serialized.

Just the way the business model works is it's good for business if every episode is a cliffhanger that leads to something else.

But it's not great for us.

And it's not great for storytelling because time has to elapse between episodes.

Because it's like, oh, if you're gonna do something about a production of a movie that you saw being pitched in another scene, it's like that's four months later, six months later, could be two years later.

So that's why it's episodic, is it allows us to play around in the different aspects of production, marketing, testing, pitching.

It's like you can't compress that and have it be believable.

- Did you still find some benefit in having, even if it's a loose arc, it still is an arc towards CinemaCon.

- Yeah, for sure.

- Was there momentum or was there like opportunities there because of that?

- Yeah, I think that if we didn't have that, the season finale would not have felt climactic.

It had to be like, okay, so this Kool-Aid movie that he bought in it in the beginning is now the thing that's gonna save his life at the end.

- And Amazon gets the entire library.

They get MK Ultra, they get Kool-Aid!

They get Blackwing.

They get everything.

And the studio, as we know it, is dead.

- There has to be a way to stop that from happening.

Our slate next year is incredible.

We're gonna [censored] crush it, man.

- Yes, so say us, but the world has to know that, otherwise the board has all the leverage.

- This presentation, if this goes as well as I think it's going to, we are gonna come out of CinemaCon with more heat than any other studio in all of Hollywood.

I'm talking about billions and billions of dollars in projected revenue.

They cannot sell us if we're about to have the best year in this studio's entire history.

- Yeah.

Yes.

- So the show comes out, the reception is wild.

What did you make of it?

Were there any reactions that surprised you either from the industry itself or just maybe from people way outside of it?

- I was stunned.

- Yeah?

- Yeah, I mean, when we made the show, we were like, "Well, our friends will like it," but, you know, it's like, thank you, Apple.

Like, we're making a show that we think our friends will like, we think it's gonna be cool and we think it's gonna be fun.

And that's as far as we thought.

And then I started getting, like, calls and emails from people I went to college with, not in the business, have not heard from in 30 years.

Like, "Hey, I really enjoyed that."

It's like, wow, I am humbled and astonished that it got the reaction it did.

When we started the show, "The Studio," it was kind of in vibe of, like, films are dying, and then as we were writing it, it was like "Barbenheimer" and "Top Gun: Maverick," and things were exploding at the box office.

And so then it was like a recalibration of like, okay, it's not dying, it's just changing.

[typewriter dings] [Narrator] You've been watching "Inside The Writer's Room: The Studio" on "On Story."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story Project, that also includes the On Story radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive, accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

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