281 | Wicked: For Good Writer Dana Fox on High-Concept Movie Ideas

Dana Fox (WICKED, WICKED: FOR GOOD) returns to talk about high-concept movie ideas and why the premise matters more than ever.

Dana breaks down what makes an idea market-ready, how to tell if a concept has real gas in the tank, and why emerging writers should focus on selling the idea before perfecting the execution.

She also reflects on writing WICKED as two films, crafting emotional payoff over time, and why - even at the highest level - writing never gets easier.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Meg: Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Screenwriting Life. I'm Meg LeFauve.

Lorien: And I'm Lorien McKenna. And today we're really excited to have Dana Fox with us once again. Dana is a TV and film writer, producer, and showrunner. She's the co-writer and executive producer of Wicked and Wicked for Good. She also co-wrote The Last City and Disney's Cruella and some of her additional feature credits include What Happens in Vegas, Couples Retreat, and How to be Single.

Meg: On the TV side, Dana is an executive producer on Netflix's upcoming Little House on the Prairie Series. Cannot Wait. She was the co-creator, showrunner, and EP of the Apple TV+ series Home Before Dark, and The Creator, showrunner and EP of Ben and Kate on Fox. She recently entered into a multi-year TV deal with Sony Pictures Television.

And last but certainly not least, Dana is the mother of three kids under 12, which in no way whatsoever affects the amount of time she has to work.

Lorien: So, Dana was on the show last February to talk about Wicked, and that episode became one of our most listened to episodes ever.

Dana: No way.

Lorien: Is that real?

Meg: Yes, that's real.

Lorien: In part because Dana very honestly said, I find writing really. Torturous, which struck a nerve with so many writers in our audience and a lot of our audience.

Dana: Yeah, a whole year has gone by and I feel that even more acutely than I felt it last year. So hopefully this will also be a much listened to episode.

Lorien: That was one of the questions, so we won't ask that one now.

Dana: Yeah. Torture still happening. Yes. Possibly worse than before.

Lorien: So we're really excited to talk about your experience after finishing Wicked and releasing it into the world and then doing it again with Wicked For Good. So welcome back to the show, Dana.

Dana: Thank you so much for having me. I love both of you so much. I'm such huge fans of you and this podcast and your work outside of this podcast, so I feel incredibly honored to be invited back. So thank you.

Meg:  Well, thank you. We are so excited to have a reason to have you back, especially for this wonderful movie.

Now, Dana has agreed to do our adventures in screenwriting or basically what happened in our week. So we'll let Lian go first. Lian, how was your week?

Lorien: Terrible. My week has been actively, is an active shit show. And I realized in the middle of the night last night when I couldn't sleep because insomnia is amazing for brain function that I so glibly say to the question how do you balance everything?

You know, all the things you have to do. And I always say there's no balance. It's management. And last night I realized management is just survival mode and I don't do well in survival mode. And it means that I am all over the place and it's really hard for me to write when I'm in survival mode. And I don't know if it's fight or flight or whatever.

All those-

Meg: Freeze of peace.

Lorien: Well, I don't know what it is, but I have lists of things and responsibilities and this and that, and I'm like accelerating and crashing and turning and going in the other way and it's not good. And I've been here so many times in my life and I. I dunno what to do right now at this point.

The only thing I can do, you know how it feels, Dana. It feels like I'm a little girl in a house spinning around in a tornado, being chased by a witch. That's how it feels. Mm-hmm. I don't know if you can relate to that at all.

Dana: No, no connection to anything I've been a part of.

Lorien: Yeah.

Dana: Don't understand the metaphor.

Lorien: What are you talking about? I'm like flinging into the unknown. And I know I would love to have the main character energy and be like, I'm gonna choose where I land and I'm gonna, but I don't know how to do that. The only thing I really can do is right. Like, fuck everything else I have to do.

No, really just fuck it and write because I know that when I sit and write for even an hour I get even if it's hard, even if it's torturous, I feel better.

Dana: Well, and sometimes the, it's just about trying to make that horrible feeling go away, which is like, yes, the writing is awful, but what's worse is this other feeling I'm having.

And that's where I get to at the end of every project, I say to myself, I can't feel like this anymore. I have to finish this because I can no longer live and be in these feelings.

Lorien: Yeah. And I'm having a lot of feelings and I'm not a fan. So Dana-

Dana: You don't like feelings?

Lorien: I don't like it when the feelings get when they're not in my writing, when I'm in my writing place. Okay. Then I'm like, yes. All the feelings like crush.

Dana: So you like controlling them?

Lorien: What?

Dana: You like being in a con? Oh, sorry.

Lorien: What are you, are we on therapy? Are you threatening me?

Dana: Me? Oh wait, I'm so sorry. Was that my therapist talking to me?

Lorien: Yes.

Dana: Or was that,

Lorien: I'm so sorry. I don't know. Anyway, Dana, please continue. How was your week?

Dana: I mean, first of all, I feel like listening to your description of how you feel, I was thinking it's weird that she's not talking about it as the one that I do, which is someone will ask me to do something and they'll say, Hey, can you tweet this beat where they blah, blah, blah, and make them doodly do.

And I'll think to them, would you ask a person who had just fallen off the Titanic? The boats are all gone. They've fallen off a Titanic and then there's a lifeboat, but they're currently. They're rowing away from me. Would you ask that person to tweak that? 'cause that's what you're doing. And so I, I feel exactly like you do.

I feel like I'm constantly in fight or flight and trying to survive and trying to keep my head above water. And it seems psychotic to me that people are asking me to do normal everyday life stuff all the time and work. And I'm thinking, how am I gonna get my laptop above the water line so that I can type while I'm trying to get to the lifeboat?

So I completely understand how you're feeling. I feel that way every single week. Also, when you said we're gonna do that thing, when we talk about how our week was, I sort of panicked and I had to open my calendar to see what had happened because I've literally no idea. So that gives you a sense of my week.

I was in Los Angeles like five and a half seconds ago for a wonderful a FI event, and I was in the room and thinking, God, I'm the luckiest person on planet Earth and. Steven Spielberg was like five seconds away. And then, you know, Delray Linda's over here and he was like, this is great. Hollywood's incredible.

This is the best day of my life. And then, you know, I'm on the plane and I'm trying to, I'm panicking because I'm trying to finish a pitch that I'm supposed to be doing. So I'm writing, like my hair is literally on fire and I'm on this plane and I'm covered in sweat and I'm doing it for the entire flight.

And then I'm landing and I'm running in between my flights. And then I'm meeting, I'm on a Zoom with a person I'm doing the pitch with at the lounge in, and then I'm running and doing the next flight. And then, so that's what my week was and it was absolutely crazy and I. Thought it was ironic because, you know, you do that thing at the beginning of the year where you're like, the resolutions from 20 to 26 and the big one for this year was like, don't be a psychotic mess.

Who's in fight or flight? Literally all the time. Like the only thing I decided to do this year was pay attention to my nervous system. Like, and be like, I have to get a functional nervous system. Like, I can't constantly be like this.

Lorien: Well, you are paying attention to it.

Dana: I am. I lo I'm noticing how off the rails it is.

So I guess I'm sort of doing what I said I was gonna do.

Meg: I do think that we do at some point have to pick ourselves even just to say like, I was in, I was totally in this space when I woke up and I'm in it again because it didn't last that long. But I went to work out, which I don't like. I hate working out by the way. 

Dana: Who likes that?

Meg: The whole drive there, I was like, I should go back. I'm tired. I should go to bed. Yeah. But the endorphins and that you feel so much better And it calms me down. Yes. It helps me focus. Like, and I know who has time to exercise, but it's not about. Oh, I have to. No, you have to because it just helps me focus a little bit.

Even meditating 10 minutes and then I just drop it 'cause I forget and I got too much to do and everything else takes its place. But it's like my health, it's like our sanity. Absolutely. I do think we have to start saying that's a non-negotiable, like it's a non-negotiable for me.

Dana: And by the way, doing what you did, which is like do it first because when you prioritize it in your good hours, as opposed to saying I have to sit down at my computer the second I wake up.

You prioritize it and you do the thing first that's gonna calm you down. It actually makes the whole entire rest of your day profoundly more productable productive productable. See, look at this, productive, and then.

Lorien: It’s the wicked talk product.

Dana: It's the wicked I was doing, obviously. That's what I was doing.

Thank you for that. Thank you so much. I wasn't just stroking out, I was obviously making a joke about when he holzman's wonderful ability to change words in the movie wicket. That was what I was doing.

Meg: No, but you are, it is more productive. My day has become more productive.

Dana: But it's more productive. And weirdly, you think you're not gonna have time for it, but carving out the time makes all the other things go faster and be better.

So then you do end up having time for it. So I think that's amazing that you're doing.

Meg: And we think, oh, we're exercising 'cause we wanna lose weight. We're exercising because of our blood pressure. All that's good. No, it's all because of our brain, but honestly it's everything is our brains. And just so I, and I'm trying, this is kind of my resolution about, it's not, I can't make a resolution exercise 'cause then I'll get mad and I'll do it.

But my resolution is to pick me first and as soon as I wake up, I'm picking me, I love that. I'm picking me about meditating or whatever it is. 'cause I'm, my day is, my week is pretty much the same. I'm gonna rewrite going so many different directions I can't even breathe. And then I'm trying to write and I catch myself just trying to get through it.

Yes. Just get it done. Just get it done. 'cause I have to do this and I have to do that, and I just, okay, this is my time to write, get it done. And then I'm like, but then is it even good? Like if I can't, right. I mean, sometimes yes, because-

Dana: Some days you just have to do that because you've gotta get through the day and you can't not do it.

So you gotta say, let's just get through it and we'll see what it's like tomorrow. Because you don't know.

Meg: You don't have time to data, you don't. So, but sometimes it's just become busy work and I mm-hmm. Know that maybe tomorrow I'm gonna look at this and be like, eh, I'm not sure. But sometimes you just have to say, I'm just gonna get through it.

I'm just gonna do it.

Dana: I've been dealing with one of my darling children struggling with some anxiety, and I will say that when you try to talk to children about anxiety and not yourself or another adult, it does really help because you gotta bring it down to its basics. And the one strategy that I tried to teach.

My child that weirdly, I don't think he heard a word I was saying, but has absolutely helped me, was I don't know where I got it, but somebody said physiologically the same things happen in your body when you're excited that happen in your body, when you're anxious and you just have to tell yourself, this is the feeling of me being excited.

So like today when I had a pitch, I was starting to get a stomach ache and I was like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna shit my pants. And I just thought to myself, Nope. I'm not gonna ship my pants. You know why? Because this is the feeling of being excited to do something. I'm so excited to pitch this. I can't wait to see these people.

I can't wait to tell them the story that I love. And the second I said that to myself, my stomach was like, I'm still doing the thing a little bit, but I just wasn't interpreting it. As like danger. And you know that the fight or flight instinct to like empty your bowels. Yes. So you can run away from the Cheah.

I just, it kind of stopped.

Lorien: Yeah. I just wanna shout out to Hulu Studios has the best bathroom before a pitch.

Dana: Oh, great.

Lorien: Oh, good.

Dana: talk. Thank you for that.

Lorien: They have very loud rock and roll music in there. And the doors.

Dana: Oh, they know what It's there for the doors. They know what that bathroom's for.

Lorien: Fully close you in.

It's like a full stall with a lock. All four walls.

Dana: That's the pre-pitch shit. Your pants, bathroom. And they're nice about it. They're just kind about it. They're prepared, they understand and they're like, you shouldn't have to be around us to do this. It's really sweet about.

Meg: All right. That you guys, this is hysterical.

I've so many questions. So I'm gonna make us move.

Dana:  Yes, please.

Meg: So, so the other part of my week that brings me into a question for you Dana, is I'm collaborating, I'm writing with my husband and it's great. But I have a question for you about collaboration in terms of, 'cause you're also a writer on your own, so it's not like a partnership that you're doing forever and ever.

And you've been doing it for 10 years and you've figured out when you first started with Winnie versus the second one. Did you have to learn each other's quirks, each other's, let's say, triggers? About even getting the notes or even how you write.

Dana: A hundred percent. I mean, that was the whole thing. And what's going on with, how's it been with your husband?

What's it been like?

Meg: I'm realizing after we've written many scripts together, suddenly I'm like, oh, we actually have a different kind of deep. Unconscious approach. Like even just a simple thing of, I like very short sentences with periods. So the read is very fast. He likes a lot of commas and run on sentences.

This sounds incredibly-

Dana: He and I are like sweet sweet lovers. We could just write these run on sentences till the day we die. I mean, it's interesting 'cause I thought I liked run on sentences and things that went on in commas forever. And then I met Winnie and that lady, she loves to go on. And then there's dashes and I've, I can only say this because she is the one who makes fun of herself.

She's so funny about, she's just not con that concerned about the the actual aesthetics of the grammar stuff on the page. She's writing from this like very beautiful primal place of like, these are these characters that I know so well and like this is who they are and this is what they would say.

And so she was such a perfect compliment to me. And, but I swear to God, I'm over there going, she's got one dash. And then a space and then in the next sentence, she's got a space, two dashes, and then a space. And in the next sentence, there's not a space in sight and there's one dash, and then a sentence and a half later, there's two dashes and no spaces.

I was losing my mind and finally I said to her, I was like, Whitney, I'm gonna have to like, after we get to wherever we're gonna get to, I'm gonna have to fix it. I literally don't care what it is. You tell me what you like best because like, I love you and you're the queen, and this is your baby. Tell me whatever you like best.

But I gotta make 'em all the same. I cannot have them be different. I love you, but I'm not sleeping anymore. I've stopped sleeping. So that would be formatting with.

Meg: Okay. So that's formatting, which I'm the same. Okay. What about actually approach to characters or approach to plot or when you're collaborating and you're working well together, but did you guys find any differences or have to work that out at all?

Dana: We have a ton of differences and it was just I have to say like, just as a general caveat before I like say anything else, like I absolutely fell in love with her on this level where like, I believe we are family members now. I'm completely obsessed with her.

She's incredible. The process itself was really difficult. So, and there was a lot of pressure and, you know, we were doing both movies at the same time. They told us they had booked the stages before we had a word on the page and we were like, the data is what now when you start shooting the invisible movie with no scripts.

So it was very stressful. And everybody kind of tried to just be their best selves, but of course, you know, it was stressful. So we had to like learn in an environment of stress how each of us was gonna work best. What I try to do is, you know when I approach every job, I sort of say, what am I here for and in this, and how can I be my best self and my best writing self, but also do the thing that this job desperately needs me for?

And in this particular one, I felt that the political balancing of all the different people was a big part of the job. Like I was sort of hired to be a big. Part of keeping this team kind of moving. It was me, Steven Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and John Chu. We spent 150 hours on Zoom's talking and that wasn't even the writing time.

So like there, it was very extensive. So what I would just say with you and your husband, I know. You're not asking my advice about that. I'm just saying like, I think where we did well was the fact that we did so much ideating and talking and breaking of story before words ever got put down on paper anywhere that once words were getting put down on paper, it was sort of like we had worked out all of that stuff that you're talking about.

Right. And we had sort of felt each other out and I knew, oh my God, she's incredible at this. And I think I can be helpful to her with that. But like, I need her for this and she needs me for that. And then what we realized was that there are so many different stages of even writing a script. That require different versions of a collaboration.

So we changed our collaboration as this, as the process changed. So in the beginning it was all talkie, and I was more of a questioner rather than a, this is what I think, because I'm coming into a project that's 22 years old with people who birthed it out of their bodies. And so I felt it was really important that I'd be very respectful of that and that I really was like, look, you guys know your fans a million percent better than I do, but hey, I have some questions.

They might sound kind of dumb, but like as we are trying to really world build and build this whole thing out in a cinematic way, I need to ask you, what are alphabets powers? I know she can fly kind of naturally and may not be able to control it until a certain point, but can she do spells? And they're like, what whatcha talking about?

And I'm like, well, it's not actually that obvious. Can she do them without the briery or does she need the briery to do them? And once she gets the briery and. Can she control the ones that are in there? Does she understand what they are? Can she then do them and without the groomery, can she do them or does she have to have the physical groomery with her when gery with her when she's doing them?

Like these very basic things. But it's like if you're making a superhero movie, you really have to understand that stuff. And it's not like you have to like explain as the audience, but you just have to know it to build out the world and the character and all. And you know, the props for God's sakes. It's like, so I'm like, so there's a lady with a satchel for Olive Movie two and it's like a little roomy satchel.

She's gotta have it for the whole movie. You know, it's like these little things that you really do kind of need to know. 'cause it all stems from the character stuff. So talking at the beginning was very helpful. And then once we kind of got to the stage where everything was on cards you know, I started racing to kind of turn that into an outline.

Then the first movie into an outline. And then Winnie and I kind of did a version of the collaboration where we were like splitting up the scenes and writing non-linearly throughout the whole first movie. We were just like filling in the scenes and then we merged them together like this. So then there was, sorry your audience is listening and I'm making weird hand gestures, but we put, we interwove all the scenes that.

She and I had both written, so now there's a full movie one, and at that point, Winnie then is holding all of movie one and I'm going, and I'm jamming as hard as I can on fleshing out movie two that we had all ideated together. So then I'm jamming to make that into an outline and then I'm jamming to flesh that into a script.

And then the, she's doing notes on movie one. And then at a certain point I'm done with this movie, two sort of blueprint thing. And then I throw that to her. And at that point, she and I are in different movies. So now our collaboration has become something completely different. We're not working in the same scenes together or helping each other with moments or calling each other and saying, can you read this?

And can you do your thing on this? 'cause I'm gonna do my thing on this. Now we are in two separate movies, but we're still collaborating because I'm still sending her things back and forth and she sells sending me things back and forth. But logistically it got profoundly complex because when we were both in the same movie, I had to gray out her sections for.

Myself, and then I had to gray out my sections and give that to her. So when she was rewriting, she could only rewrite in stuff that wasn't grayed out because she knew I was changing things in the grayed out section.

Meg: Oh my gosh.

Dana: So then we finally got our grayed out, our stuff done, and then we removed all the grays and we merged those and that then became the updated draft.

So it was really complicated because it was two movies and we were in such a time crunch. So my point is, I, we sort of let the collaboration evolve for what the movie needed at any moment that it needed it. And I think that might take some of the pressure off of the idea of like, this collaboration has to either work or not work.

It's like the collaboration is a living thing. It is going to change every day based on what the script needs. And the script, when it's at this stage where you're building it, the collaboration might need to look like something different than what it's gonna look like when words are actually on the page.

Meg: When you're talking about gray out and the complication, I was like, Dana could work at Pixar.

Dana: Oh my god. Really?

Meg: Not everybody could work at Pixar.

Dana: Is it all logistically and crazy?

Meg: I love it. It's logistic insanity because this one is over in character design and that one, the storyboards are coming in, so don't touch that one.You gotta fix the arc and the things. 

Dana: But you know what? That sounds delicious to me. You know why? Because that, to me, you know why that's so yummy to me is because that makes the whole process feel like we're doing a puzzle and we're all doing it together and it's on the dining room table and everybody like stops by sometimes and puts in some pieces and then somebody gets like a little obsessed with it and stays up too late and they get a crick in their neck.

But it's like, that's what that feels like to me. That feels really fun. And it takes the pressure off of like, I am the auteur who has to have genius strike today and then, you know, blah, blah. I'm just not that kind of writer. I'm just like a hard worker who has a great attitude. I'm not. A genius. I'm not an auteur, I'm not somebody who wants it to be like all my vision.

It's like I have a very strong voice, but I use my voice in the service of what that particular movie needs. So I change it all the time. It isn't like you read something and I, well, although I have had people tell me like, no matter what I read it. I kind of know I, I can hear you in it, even if it's a totally different genre or a different place.

So I guess I do sort of have like maybe a little bit of a style that I don't realize. But for me it's about how can I change my voice and use it in the service of what this completely different thing needs it to be.

Meg: Love it. So, you have Alphabet and Galinda and part one, they're becoming, and in part two, they seem to be choosing.

So now you're talking about writing 'em at the same time, but let's just talk about them as two separate movies.

Dana: Yeah, of course.

Meg: How do you approach scenes on the page as the cha, 'cause you have such a wide swath now to work with these characters. So I'm interested a, in any se number two, how much harder was it in terms of just, you're doing two, but you're writing at the same time, so you don't really know, it's not like a sequel where you're like, oh, this came out and you're writing at the same time.

So, but in terms of writing Elphaba and Glinda how was that for you in terms of having all of that swath of time to be with them?

Dana: Well, it's so funny 'cause you just. Said something that was hilarious in the beginning of when I started to work on this. 'cause I was like the newbie who didn't know this play at all and you just called her Glinda and she's only Glinda until she changes her name.

Right. And then it's Glinda. But for like four months that I was working with everybody, they kept going back and forth between Glinda and I was like, these people are stroking out. Like what are they talking about? They like, no one knows the name of this character. This is crazy. And then of course I figured it out and I was like, oh, okay.

I gotcha. I gotcha. Depends on where we are in the story. Boom. I'm back. We're with you. So, the interesting thing is when, I love that you just said like, which one was harder? 'cause there is a part of me that's just like, God, I kind of just wanna answer that like a very real way, which is that. They were both impossible, but for two totally different reasons.

The first one was so hard because there was so much pressure in all of our heads in this good way that I think we all rose to this challenge of like we have to thread the needle on tone in the hardest way possible on something that people are so obsessed with and are gonna be so mad at us.

And theater people, God bless. I am a theater nerd. I'm obsessed. They're not like. It's not like easy to please them. They're not a group that's like, let's jump up and down to tell you how great you are, unless it's great. You know? So they have a high standard and this play is so beloved. So we were very in our own heads about like, are we gonna be pleasing the fans at the same time that we have to make this something completely different than the show otherwise?

Why are we doing it? So that was all the pressure of the first one. And also it was like, you know, before the studio saw anything, you know, we were alone in this like development bubble for quite some time before the studio saw anything. And you know, there was this fear I had that we were gonna like put the script down and they were gonna be like, and then I was gonna like fall through the floor or something because I just didn't know.

I don't know. And so that was scary. And then we, once we handed in the first script and everybody was like, oh wow, this is like really a movie. Like, okay, we're really excited. So that took a lot of pressure off the first one and just, it became regular movie stuff where it's like, let's now make this amazing and let's do some notes and let's do this, that and the other.

So that one felt then okay. And manageable. For me, two loomed so large in my mind the whole time because we were doing them both at the same time. So I was constantly thinking about two every second of every day, even if we were working on one. And I really thought, God two is such a challenge, you know, it's a much harder thing to do as its own movie because it was so not designed that way.

It was absolutely designed to be a very exciting culmination of a whole other story that you had just started with. And you were all, you were supposed to have that experience on the same night. The reprises were supposed to be reprised from 40 minutes ago. They weren't supposed to be reprise from a year ago.

And the. Experience of watching the second act were you to wander in off the streets because like me, you're late to everything and you missed the first act and you weren't allowed. And let's say you walked in and you just sat down to Wicked the play for the second act, only the experience is like, you sit in your seat and it's like, and then you're like, holy shit, we're in the two to three act break of a movie.

Everyone's gonna die. We're all screwed. We all hate each other. Holy. Shit. And then it actually like bullet trains kind of to the end of the movie. And then you have this incredibly emotional song and you piece out, and that experience is the exact right capper to the first act. It's exactly what you want if you're watching it all at the same time.

But as its own thing, it's like sort of crazy, right? And it's like everyone's sort of at their peak bonkers of their character. Like the wildest things happen in movie two. And so I thought the real challenge was just how to make the audience feel like they are sitting down. They just sat their popcorn, it's been a year since I saw the other one.

They're like opening the milk dos. They haven't like opened them yet, but they're like opening them and like how do we take them gently and be like. Yes, this is this like you're coming back and we're here and how do we get them in a way that doesn't feel like previously on, you know, like we just, we didn't wanna do anything like that.

Of course. 'cause it has to feel incredibly elegant. It can't feel like that, but you have to like help them come back into the story in this way that it feels like a three act structure of a movie. So weirdly, I was constantly thinking about structure and for me structure is character. So I was always thinking, how do we make every emotional moment that happens in movie two that you care about?

Most of them are in songs. Many of them are in songs, but some of them are in scenes. How do you make those feel earned so that when you get to them, the audience is feeling what the characters are feeling or what you want them to feel because they we haven't asked the audience to like, go there too quickly and therefore they're not feeling it.

So, so much of what we did, I think with movie two was looking at for good as like, this is the banger. We're all head in the air guys. We know we are. So like. What do they say in that song? What are they really saying to each other? What are those emotional moments about in that song and how can we.

Bolster every single thing that happens before it so that when forget for good hits, you're feeling it at its like maximum sort of potential. And then we did that with every other song because the songs are the things you can't change. So any lyric in any song that made me feel anything or that felt like it was supposed to be something, I would always sort of circle it and say to everybody, like, okay, so they say this, but do we feel this?

Have we seen this in the movies? We're like, or are we just like taking you at your word that dreams the way we planned them if we work in tandem? Like, did they make dreams? Like did I miss a scene where they planned to make a business together When they got to the Emerald City? Like, I don't remember seeing them have dreams the way they planned them.

So it was about making sure that in this movie that we, you know, that Winnie and Steven were so excited to have extra space for, we could bolster those moments so that whenever they said anything, it felt very burned and emotionally real.

Lorien: We'll be right back. Welcome back to the show.

Meg: Was there anything in writing a musical that you've learned, that you've brought to your future projects that aren't musicals?

Dana: Oh, that's a, that's an astounding question. I mean, I have absolutely no answer to it, but it's wonderful and I'm gonna think I, I'm gonna think about it. I think, you know what, I think, and this is also something that came out of working with Winnie, who's very good at like, you know, maybe the first draft is gonna be a little longer.

I always write like a first draft that I'm like, oh boy. Like, that's so many words. Like, I always think of that scene with my work in Amadeus when Mozart plays the song and it's like, kind of brilliant, but it's also like very Mozart and there's just so many musical notes and it's like, blah. And you know, the emperor gets on stage and he's like, it was lovely.

It was crazy. And you know, Mozart's expecting them, him to be like, you're brilliant. And he's like, there were simply too many notes. Like, I always feel like people, if they were to read my scripts, they would just be like, there's just too many words. So. Winnie's so good at and so is Steven at economy, at tightening around what is the actual core of this thing.

And I think because watching both watching John make the movie and also developing a musical for the first time, what I understood was that songs can't stop the storytelling. They cannot stop the action. You cannot have a single song that doesn't change something because if you do, people will go to the bathroom because they're like, oh, thank God, somebody's gonna sing a quick song.

I'll be right back. And at the end of the song, nothing will have been different. I won't have missed any plot, nothing will have changed. And that was a really interesting revelation for me because even if there aren't songs in my scripts, I sort of said to myself like, everything has to be that way.

Something's in it and nothing changes or nothing. Or there's a reason the audience could go to the bathroom for any reason, because at the beginning of the scene, one thing was true. And at the end of the scene, the same thing is true. There's something wrong. You have to change it because if the song is there and at the beginning of the song, it's one way and at the end of the song, it's the other.

This is the same way. You gotta take the song out. That's not a song place. So that was helpful to me, really, even in non-musical stuff. Yeah that's great. And I did go on to sort of help with other musical things and was able to bring that into the next musicals I'd worked on. Just making sure that even if the lyrics, so if you're lucky enough to get famous songs from a famous piece of IP and a musical, you don't mess with them, but.

What I realized is, like in the songs that don't do that with the lyrics, you have to do it with the visuals.

You have to tell a story with the visuals while those lyrics are going on, that the story that you're telling visually can't be missed by the audience.

Lorien: Great.

Dana: That's so great.

Lorien: Do you think that's true of dialogue too?

Dana: You know, what I try to do is not to put too much pressure on myself in early drafts of anything. Like, I try not to be too tough on myself because I'll never get it done. I hate myself, so I hate my writing so much. I hate it more than anyone is ever gonna hate it for me. You know, I get these notes and people are like, I'm so sorry I gave you all these notes.

I'm like, you have no idea how many more notes for myself I have in my head like, don't worry about it. Yours are fine. So I feel like I try to be too hard on myself from the beginning, and I don't really write that spare at the beginning. I tend to edit, spare, like I go down despair from the editing process because it becomes very clear to me from looking at scenes.

This is, I know I hate this advice for other writers 'cause it's so bougie and it's like, no one can do this. But do you know where I've learned how to be the best writer of all time is in the editing room. It's like, you go to an editing room with an editor and they're cutting all your dialogue and you're going like, but why did you cut in was so late.

What? And he is like, 'cause you weren't saying anything. They were just faffing around. And I'm like, oh, I remember that day I was at my computer and I was faffing around 'cause I couldn't figure out what the fuck the scene was about. You know what I mean? And then it's like, and then finally I got to what the scene was about.

Right? And it's like, take that out before you shoot it. It's very expensive to shoot that stuff. Just get it out of there with the script stage. So that's where I've learned to be a really good editor of my screenplays is by watching the editors cut all my bad crap.

And then you go like, oh, right. I see why they did it that way.

And it's about point of view and like following a through line of something someone's feeling and just like. If you can't figure out how you would cut it in the cutting room, when you're looking at it on the page, there's something wrong with it. So like don't, you're not a director and don't write like a director.

'cause that pisses off directors. But be a director in your head and be like, what I. Be done with this scene by now. Would I have cut away to that other thing? And if the answer is yes, then like get rid of all of it.

Lorien: That's great advice.

Meg: Absolutely. I mean, sometimes you do need to put in dialogue. Sometimes I put in dialogue that I know if it was shooting it would be gone because, but I need them to know, the actors to know or the look correct.

I'm not directing on the page. But generally I a hundred percent agree with you. Yes, totally. And every emerging writer should get in an edit room, even if it's your friend who's doing a short film. Mm-hmm. It doesn't matter. Mm-hmm.

Dana: Exactly.

Meg: It doesn't matter. Just get in an edit room or shoot something on your phone and then try to edit it.

Dana: Try watch editors online. Talk about the way they work. Watch Look Up Myron Kerstein, who's a genius who did wicked and Tick Boom and In The Heights and all these other amazing movies. Go watch him talk about how he cuts things. And if you can't get in a room, get in a room that way and he'll literally show there.

I'm sure there's like stuff online where you're seeing demonstrations of the way that he cuts stuff. Learn from it that way. Because you'll never learn more than that at that stage.

Lorien: So during a q and a that our producer attendant, you and Winnie said there's a difference between a theater joke and a movie joke.

Dana: Oh my God. Yes.

Lorien: First, what's the difference? And second, was there a moment where something you loved on stage just like didn't work on the screen so you had to let it go or change it?

Dana: I would say like a lot of the jokes that I loved on stage didn't work in the, not a lot of them, but just many of them didn't work in the movie because they are theater jokes, you know?

And like, they worked like gangbusters in the theater. I remember being there and laughing my face off and everyone around me was too. And I think for me, the difference between a theater joke and a movie joke is like, the theater joke is trying to make sure it reaches the person in the mezzanine way back.

And a movie joke is more character based and based is behavioral and is more based in like reality and or coming out of. Pain or coming out of defensiveness because you're afraid to have someone see who you really are or whatever. It's just sort of like a different, I can't quite explain it beyond that other than it.

Smaller, you know what I mean? It's more nuanced, it's smaller, it's 'cause you're closer to their face, literally. And sometimes a joke is a look in a movie and you can't do that in theater. It's just like not a thing. So you gotta be like, and like, then everybody laughs. But that is silly in a movie.

And so it becomes very clear which ones of those you have to lose. And it's sad 'cause they're like amazing jokes, you know, like, I wanna say like, innuendo and out todo or something like that. And it's just like, it's just too much, but we love you or whatever. It's, but it's like, it's that kind of thing where it's like you can sort of tell it's a shark jump in a movie in a way that in theater it's like gorgeous.

Meg: That's great.

Dana: So yeah, I would say.

Meg: It's funny 'cause animation has to be both. You have to have-

Dana: Right.

Meg: Animation can be bigger. Yes, exactly, but it also has to have subtle to keep it real and rooted and not become Looney Toones.

Dana: I would love to actually pick your brains, if I may, on, I recently was helping out on an a live action.

Adaptation of a famous like beloved animated movie, and boy is that hard.

When you turn that into people, everything changes. You not, you can say the same words, you can do the same thing. It is a completely different movie. It's wild. Amazing. And it amazing was something that I learned so much from because I just, I don't think I would've known it unless I had like, seen it with my eyeballs and I, I had just been asked to help after the movie was, had been shot.

And so, you know, all these things that I thought were just gonna like, kill, you know, that I'd seen on the page, I'm like, oh, this is gonna kill. It was just like, Nope, that didn't work. And things that I didn't think were that big of a deal were like incredible.

Meg: Well, it's, so, it's true because like even in animation, they're designed with gigantic eyes.

Like everything is so not quite human. That, you know-

Dana: The gigantic eyes make like emotional stuff more emotional.

Meg: Yeah.

Dana: Without your brain, actually words coming outta our mouth that are emotional, your brain expecting certain things.

Meg: And yet it's, I had the reverse, which is I'm coming from live action into animation.

Dana: Interesting.

Meg: And I'm starting, like, everything is too subtle, right? Like, and Pete doctor's taking it and taking the idea, but he's making it kind of animation genius. Brilliant. Yeah. Amazing. So, it's a different, it's a different thing. Okay. So I wanna make sure we get to, last time you were on the show.

Yes. You said a really fun story about how there's many mornings in your life you roll over and pitch to your husband the new high concept idea you have.

Dana: I do that every day. It's so sad. He's like, I'm so tired. I'm like, I know. Me too.

Meg: It's my favorite thing.

Dana: Imagine the lady who had to spend the whole night thinking about it.

I'm tired. You think you're tired of this? I'm tired of this.

Meg: So. I think it's really important to talk about high concept, just to back it up one step especially for our emerging writers, because I do think the business at the moment is really going back to high concept, is going back to what's the poster?

It feels very 19 end of the eighties, nineties at the moment. So what for you, if somebody says to you, well, when you say high concept idea, just define that for our emerging writers.

Dana: Okay, so first off, I think go immediately and look at Franklin. Leonard just sent me an article he wrote for his substack that he said, I think you're gonna like this.

And I absolutely loved it and think he's completely right. So I wanna give him credit for anything I say here. That is like kind of what he said, but I totally agree with you. Franklin made this exact point, which is like. Especially for emerging writers, you're not gonna break in with like an a 24 character piece.

It's just like, who's gonna buy that right now? Like even famous people who have a million interstellar on their resume can't sell that right now. So don't try, find this, find the right idea before you write the script. Writing scripts is so hard. You, as we have all talked about, we kind of wanna die when we're doing it, and it's impossible.

So don't even start until you know you have the right idea. Because half, I think 90% of it right now is it the right idea? And I frequently say to people like. They're, you're a young writer, they're gonna think to themselves like, well, this person can't get it there. They're not gonna be able to like land the plane.

So just like, we're gonna fire them probably in a minute and a half. So is the idea something that we wanna hire the idea expensive person to fix? And so really you're selling your idea. You're not even selling your script anymore. So I agree with you types il and I agree with you about this idea of like, can you picture the poster?

Who's on it? What do you see that tells you without, if you squint your eyes or if you're like me and you're kind of going blind, I don't know why I can't see anything anymore. I'm old. I'm very old. If you're very old or you can't say anything far away do you know what the movie's about? Like when you look at it, what is, can you tell sort of basically what the movie's about from the poster?

If not, force yourself to turn that idea into something that you kind of can. And for me, these big ideas, which. Annoyingly do come to me all the time. I'm so, you know, what I should do is create a way to just give them to these other writers. 'cause I don't wanna write them. I'm exhausted. Like, I'm so tired.

Meg: What, like, for a lot of writers still don't know what we're talking about. Like, I get the poster thing, but like a high concept idea. It is character meets plot or there's conflict or like, well, how couldn't we help them understand?

Dana: It's a, it's an idea that if the execution, imagine the execution being absolutely terrible, the idea still comes through.

To me, that's sort of part of it, which is like there's a hook that somebody can market. I mean, maybe that's the easiest way to say it. Like, is a marketing person gonna go like, oh, I know how to sell that. I know who I'm selling that to and I know how to sell that. And don't even worry about like, is there a famous person in it or not, blah, blah, blah.

Because we broke the star system. There's four of them. It's Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Sandy Bullock, and George Clooney. There's no one left. So, you know, don't worry about like who's cast in it because you may or may not be able to get those people. Just say to yourself like. If I'm pitching to a complete stranger something in three sentences, do they go like, yeah, I would watch that.

Like I get that. So, and I can pitch, for example, what happens in Vegas, which when you said it at the beginning, I cringe. I was like, yeah, don't go so far back. Stay in the stay recent on the movies I've worked on guys I'm like, whew, that was a while ago. So not the Grace movie of all time, but I remember when I had the idea it was Britney Spears was going around in Vegas and met some random dude, married him and like obviously two weeks later she was trying to get an annulment and had to give this guy like a million dollars to go away.

And I thought to myself like, that's so crazy. Like, you imagine that and you had one night out and you got like a million dollars. And then I thought to myself, that's weird. Vegas is the only place where you can get married and win a million dollars in the same night. I just was like, oh my God.

There's an idea. Two strangers, they meet in Vegas. They are hammered, they get married. They think they're an amazing couple. They wake up the next morning, they're hungover. They feel like shit. They realize they're a terrible couple. They're fighting like crazy. They're about to go their separate ways. One of them puts a quarter in a slot machine and wins $3 million.

And the other one's like, well, half of that's mine, motherfucker. 'cause we're married now. Then they fall in love while they're getting a divorce. By end of movie that I walked into, I remember I had a whole pitch. It was 12 hours long with a, like, you wake up and this is what's on the bedside table of the main character.

I mean, I don't know what I was talking about. I had a whole pitch and I walked into Fox and I said, what I just said to you. And then I was gonna pitch the like, two hour version of the movie and it was gonna take forever. And I was gonna talk about what was on everybody's bedside tables. And she, Emma Watts darling, who was running Fox at the time, stopped me and said, I don't wanna know.

And I was like, oh, okay. No problem. Not for you. She's like, oh no, I wanna buy it. I just don't care what happens. And I didn't do the pitch and I left and she bought the movie. So because-

Meg: That's a great definition of a high concept movie.

Dana: That's high concept for you.

Meg: In like four or five lines, either they’re buying or they're not buying it.

Dana: Boom. Yeah. And they bought it. And then what I learned about pitching subsequent to that, I actually was taught in a terrible way. I don't know if I told this story the last time we talked, but I did learn this from what happens in Vegas, which is that I. Has been practicing the pitch. And I went into Greg McKnight, who's now my agent, who I think was my agent at the time.

I can't remember. I was talking to Greg McKnight and I was like, I'm gonna pitch you this. And so I pitch it to him and I started, I was like, fad in they, I was like, they wake up, like she reaches over to her bedside table and like put, you know, turns off her alarm before it goes off. He reaches over to his bedside table, he hits a beer and then realizes like he can still drink it even though it has cigarette butts in it.

And it's like, I went through and I pitched the entire movie in linear order. I swear to God the picture was two hours long. He. I was alone in a room with him. He fell asleep. I'm not joking. He was asleep. And I was like, oh my God, this person's asleep and we're alone. And I don't know if I'm supposed to, like a adultish said I know that he's asleep.

Should I say something loud? What am I supposed to do? Anyway, keep did, keep pitching. I'm Dan Whatcha are you supposed to do? I kept pitching. I mean, I kind of wrapped it up 'cause you know, he was asleep so I could tell it wasn't working. So I wrapped it up pretty quickly. But I, once I got to the place where I said what I just said to you, which is essentially in the movie, it's like page 25, 30.

I said that. He was like, or it was page 20, I think he like woke up from a complete dead sleep and was like, that's really good. And I was like, what? He's like, that's a movie. And I was just like, oh yeah, well that's what the movie's about. He's like, why didn't you say that? And I was like, I am saying, and now in the order that it was in, in the script, you're finding out about it after you had the bullshit thing about the bedside tables for 12 hours.

And he's like, no. Walk in, say that. Then go a little wider, say a little bit more about some stuff, then go a little wider and then go a little wider. And maybe I'll care about the emotional story at the end. But like I definitely don't care about that before I hear that I wanna buy it. So that's how I learned to pitch, was having the most horrible pitch of all time blow up in my face.

Taught me that you just tell them what they wanna buy right away and then they will actually listen to you for the rest of it.

Meg: Seems like, it's like a situation meets great individual characters and they've got a huge problem, but they're stakes. Like it feels like there's just certain elements that.

You know, and here's the thing I always say to emerging writers. Think of your top three high concept movies that you can just think of. You know, it might be et it might be what, you know, die Nail, die Hard, whatever.

Dana: Yeah.

Meg: And then just see what are the elements of those movies that you love, 'cause you know them so well.

And whatever you're working on, take those elements and stick and just to see.

Dana: Here's a crazy piece of advice. Look at bad ones. You know, like go back to the day when we were doing this and look at. Bad versions of movies and I'm not gonna name any, because I would never say anything rude about anybody else's work.

So, but even bad movies, like ET could have been a terrible movie if someone had written it badly. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And it pitched that and imagine like, is it, isn't his name Alf? Wasn't that the alien?

Meg: Alf Yeah.

Lorien: Yeah. Alf the TV show.

Dana: Alf Yeah. The show eats cats. So imagine, yeah. Yes. Imagine Alf in ET.

Mm-hmm. It's like, that's bad. That's like just arguably a bad movie. And imagine the execution of that being bad. So ETS not a good movie unless it's. The version of ET that we ended up seeing. I think you even can learn something from bad hot concept movies and then you sort of figure out like, no.

Okay, I gotta do a good one. And to me the difference between the good ones and the ones that are not good are, is there going to be enough gas in the tank for a full movie? Yes. Because a lot, I've had a million high concept ideas that are sketches for SML, you know, like where I'm like, oh, blah, blah, blah.

And then I wake up and I'm like, oh no, actually that's. Over in 20 minutes that one I do not need two hours for. So it's about also creating a situation where it's not just the big explosion, the spark, the boom, the thing that like gets you to see the movie. It's the built in character stuff. Then that is like why you end up caring about watching two people fall in love with each other while they're getting a divorce.

Meg: and the plot can last 3X.

Dana: 3X exactly.

Meg: 3X. That engine has gotta, it's gotta be an engine.

Dana: Big problem to have.

Meg: It has to feel impossible. It has to feel impossible that this person has to do that.

Dana: Yeah, that's a long way to go. And you put the worst person you can think of to be in that situation and how they're in it, and what are they gonna do.

Lorien: I love the idea of looking at bad versions. Like I can think of Eddie Murphy is a cop in Beverly Hills, right? A hooker and a billionaire fall in love. Right? Like…

Dana: Right.

Lorien: You, there are so many things that are so good and they work like et, but think of the ones that don't work and investigate them in the same way.

And-

Dana: Yeah. And that'll take the pressure off you. 'cause no one's gonna think of et. Yeah. Like, I'm not gonna come up with ET that's gonna stress me out. I'm, you know.

Lorien: You think of Die Hard, right? And you're like, well, it's so good. So how do I make mine as good as that?

And it's like, no, just look at the really bad ones and just make yours a little bit better.

Dana: Well, and then the other thing I think a lot about is that like I get a lot of my ideas from being in the real world, doing like real world stuff. I know that sounds crazy, but like I'm always just like.

Thinking while I'm in the I think I'm not great at being present in my actual life. We can go back to therapy for 10 seconds, but like, you know, part of my childhood was like my dad yelled a lot and so I was like off in space in my brain all the time, just inventing different scenarios rather than being in the one I was in.

And so I'm very good at it. And so I continue to sort of do it even though maybe it's not good for me, who cares? I've made a nice living off of it. Probably not gonna solve this at this point. So I feel like be in the world, live your life, like be out there. See things like my, even my next idea that I came up with, that I sold to Netflix with Ryan Reynolds attached is based on literally me reading the news and being like, has anyone noticed?

There's been like a lot of jewelry robberies at CAN during the Felden Festival? Like a lot of people bring their, like borrowed jewelry there and then people steal it. That's a good jumping off point for a heist movie. And then that's not the end of it. It's like you gotta go further. You gotta be like.

Last, not an idea, but like the Cannes Film Festival is kind of IP because it's known by so many people in so many different countries. And by the way, sidebar, so many people saw what happens in Vegas, not in America. It did so much better overseas. It made $220 million worldwide and 80 of it was the US and the rest of it was overseas, unheard of for an original comedy.

And it was because. Vegas was the only city that anybody anywhere knew about the United States. It was like one of the only cities people though, and they're like, oh, Vegas. So like, you know, every title in every other city was like, and like Vegas, you know? So it was just like, oh, weird. Vegas is ip. So even if you don't have access to ip, understand that IP is a category that's a little bit more amorphous than what you think it is.

It isn't necessarily that you convinced the daughter of some famous person to give you the rights to their grandfather's book. It's like. It's like known quantities can be ip. And again, that's a marketing thing that's like, can I market these like beautiful addresses on the red carpet at the Camp Film Festival in French and it's international and sexy?

Yes. That's something. And then I was like, okay, so it's a heist movie. It's set at the camp, film festival. Hold on. Well, if it's at a film festival, then shouldn't it have something to do with that? So like in the beginning of the movie, you start out, you're watching these two guys, they're in a bromance.

They're like Butch and Sundance. They're totally in love. They're incredible. They're the best thieves you've ever seen. They pull off an extraordinary heist. And then you realize you're not in an heist movie. You're actually like pulling back and you're in a theater at the Cannes Film Festival watching an extraordinary heist movie.

And the two thieves upon whom the movie is based are sitting in the audience. They've just been let out of prison. They fucking hate each other. They are not the romance they once were. And now. That's the movie. Right. So that's where I started from and I was like, well that's an idea.

Meg: I have a question. So have you done a heist movie before you pitched this?

Dana: Never.

Meg: So do you go 'cause I'm also writing a heist movie.

Dana: Oh, cute. Amazing. Can you tell me what to do?

Meg: My, I'm very lucky 'cause I'm writing it with my husband who loves them and knows them.

Dana: And your husband helped me then, for God's sake.

Meg: Did you have to go and watch a bunch of them? Like how did you learn to do the heist movie?

Dana: The number of times I had been told in my career before this point that somebody wanted whatever movie I was writing to be, whatever the movie was, meets Ocean's 11. And then I had to go watch Ocean's 11 for the 47th time. So I felt like I really got, I got it, I got Ocean's 11. I know what we're dealing with over there.

I didn't watch a ton of heist movies. I actually watched The Sting, which is extraordinary. And I'll tell you why, because I was like, so looking for not only like the bromance was really important to me. The relationship and the characters was really important to me. But I remember that movie as sort of having like a big aha at the ending of it that was sort of a Kaiser so revelation.

And I remember being like, well, how did they do that? And then I went back and re-watched it and they threaded that needle, maybe like no one has ever threaded that needle before. And the way that they did it was that they. Never lied to the audience. So there were secrets that were gonna come out that turned into twists that we then saw as the audience member.

But you could go back and watch the movie and not one scene were they lying to the audience. So the two of them knew a ton more than they were revealing that they knew. Right. And you realize that like, holy shit, they knew everything all along, but in the scenes where we were having emotional moments with them, where we thought they were fighting or they were having a problem or they were breaking up, they really were.

And it was not because we were being lied to as an audience member, it was 'cause we didn't know something that was in play in that scene. So if they were lying, it was because somebody else in the scene with them didn't know the con. So they were lying for that person, not each other.

Meg: But it was emotionally true.

Dana: And it was always emotionally true, which to me is the gold standard. Super important because I hate these movies where you finish them and they're like, it was all a dream. None of what you just spent two hours doing has ever mattered me. And it was like, but I cared.

Meg and Dana: It gets me so mad. 

Dana: God. Yeah. So it's like it has to be real. I have to have experienced the emotional journey that you told me I was on that has to have been real. Everything else can be like, I didn't realize that the key was under the blah blah blah, but like I have to have been on the journey I thought I was on emotionally.

So that was very helpful to me with the heist stuff, was being like, how do I create those twists and turns without ever lying to the audience?

Meg: That's great.

Dana: That's great. And then also, I just assume at some point they're gonna fire me and hire like the dudes that do the high stuff and then they're gonna like fix it.

I dunno, but I was like, I'm pretty good at like faking it, so I'm gonna fake it till I make it.

Meg: We'll see what happens. See that. Fake it till you fake it.

Lorien: We'll be right back. Welcome back to the show.

Meg: Alright, we ask every guest a craft question. And our current craft question is, what are the elements to you of a good scene?

So now we're gonna go down micro here to a scene. What are the elements of a great scene? Let's do opening scene. Tell me the elements of a great opening scene.

Dana: It's funny because I almost never write my openings first ever. I write my first acts first, but I don't ever write my opening scene first.

Meg: me neither.

Dana: Because I always have to figure out what exactly it's about before I do it. And I need to get deeper into the character stuff in the movie to figure out exactly how I wanna like, introduce everybody. But I think it boils down to something that, you know. This thing I always think about and quote, you know, what Hemingway said is that like, if the whole shark is there, all you have to do is show the fins.

So it's like, I think it's about showing interesting fins that make you wanna see the rest of the shark. And that would be the character perspective on it. And then I think it's about presenting some sort of unsolvable question almost that you're compelled to keep watching. And I think TV weirdly has been very good at making me more disciplined with like, quote unquote press play moments.

Because, you know, I've never worked in an ad environment, so I don't I've never had commercial breaks, but I have understood the concept of like, well, they have to keep watching. Like why are they gonna keep watching? They have to keep watching. And I've understood the concept of like a cold open before a credit scene that makes you go, oh my God, now I have to watch the rest of this episode.

So I think if you think of it that way, where it's like it's undeniable that you have to keep watching. It's about. Bringing up a question that you're dying to see answered by characters who you've learned something incredibly in interesting, but confusing about that makes you go like, well, I have to know how those particular people are gonna solve that particular problem.

Meg: That's great. I love that. I love that. That make sense? Yes. Because you're immediately introducing a problem for this particular person, and we already love them, and I love it. I love that answer so much.

Dana: And oh, and that's actually a good thing to say too, and I love them, so it's like, and I'm attracted to them in some way or another.

They can be horrible, you know, but cruel. Yeah. Like I wrote Cruella, they can be like a terrible person, but you're like, I'm fascinated by you and I have to keep watching you. So I think likable, even if it's unlikable, is also a good thing to, it's just like, I don't go, ugh. Ah, like for me, I like am not a person who can watch torture.

So it's like if you, if I saw something happening in an opening scene where someone was being tortured, I'd be like bye. So I think it's also about like staying away from the kinds of things that might make someone get super turned off. If that makes any sense. Because you can build to that and you can build an audience to be able to watch something that's really hard to look at.

But I find it a little tougher when I'm coming into movies if they're trying to start, be there.

Meg: Yeah. And if you are gonna try to start in darkness and unlikeability, it's gotta be like, but there's something so fascinating or some plot element or like, what the hell is gonna happen? Or something to drag to draw the person, the audience in.

Dana: Exactly. And also just to like, say for your listeners who are trying, and it, you know, I'm sure everything seems impossible and it's so hard and I feel that way too. But I know that I'm sitting here, standing here from a place of, you know, I'm so grateful and so privileged to have these jobs that I still have.

I will say like, I don't know that I've ever actually. Written a good opening scene. Like I, I know that there's are elements of it, but as I was saying it, I was like, have I ever done that? Come on. I'm like, I gotta get off this call and go like, look at some of my scripts. I'm like, I don't know what the fuck the opening scene's supposed to be about.

I feel like I'm like, it's like an every single script I write, it's like a near death experience. So sometimes people will ask me about them later and be like, well, what was in that? And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, who can know? I don't know what I wrote. Like, I thought I was dying. I just wrote, I just put stuff on the page to try not to die.

Feelings. It's the feelings. They're very overwhelming.

Lorien: Feelings. See feelings.

Dana: I will say the other thing that makes me really happy is like, if you can figure out a way to hack your own productivity in a way that makes you the best. Like at actually wanting to sit down and do this job. That is a really good thing to figure out.

So for me, that includes having another person staring at me out of my screen. So I force my darling friend Marie Love, who I work with on everything and produce everything with, I, like, sometimes I like force her to just her face to be there on Zoom because if I see her little face and I know she can see my screen, I'm like, no, I'm not gonna go look at that dumb website where I stare at clothes I'm not gonna buy.

And like, 'cause she can see it and sometimes I'll do it and she'll be like, you know, you're screen sharing with me. Right. And I'll. Fuck, I thought I forgot. Okay. No, I'm back to the script. I'm on the script. So having like a person there to kind of be like, I see you and I see that you're straying is very helpful for me.

I, when I'm writing the scripts, choose a soundtrack that I think. Is the vibe emotionally of the script I'm writing. So like I just helped out on Hello Kitty and for whatever reason next to Normal, the brilliant play written by Brian Yorkie and Tom Kit about a mom having like an emotional breakdown because of her dead son was the perfect soundtrack.

For the movie Hello Kitty. And it's like, why I can't quite explain because I'd be giving away the plot of that movie, but it worked for me and so I had it on repeat. And so just like, I love that soundtrack. It just makes me happy even though it's very sad. It makes me also very sad.

Sometimes I would cry while I was listening to it, but that's because that movie needed to be really happy. And then sometimes emotional and sometimes make me cry. So music sort of does that for me in a great way. But I can only listen to things that I know so well that I, the lyrics don't distract me from the writing.

So whatever you are saying is that, is it for me, color is it for me? I turn my scripts rainbow colors all the time. I like, I made glenda's stuffed pink and alphabet stuffed purple so that I could like back up and like squint my eyes and then like flip the pages on the screen of my computer and just be like, where's the green?

We had so much pink. What happened to the green? And then be like. That was just sort of my way of being, of like balancing the second movie. 'cause I felt they were apart too much and I wanted to make sure there was either connectivity between scenes, like we were cutting from one to the other. And Winnie and I wanted to make sure like even if they're not together, you're thinking, oh, they're together because they're thinking about each other because we're making this connection through cutting from one of them to the other and it'll be done in a shot that looks similar or whatever.

Lorien: It's super smart.

Dana: Whatever helps Hack yourself. Hack yourself.

Lorien: Thank you for that. I have been trying to figure out how to finish. I have a rewrite on a script. It's, and I realized I do really well with body doubling. Right. Just come over and sit with me while I fold my laundry. So I am actually gonna find someone, not my writing partner on it, but someone who else, who will just sit there with me while I talk to myself and do these things.

'cause otherwise I don't, I have to do the hack. Yeah.

Dana: Yes. Sit there with you. It's so much less depressing. It's also so much-

Meg: It's like that, it's a, it's like that film I just watched, which I loved by the way, rental family. Like, somebody needs to, starts this as a job, just like, just rent out people to sit with you.

All right. So we end every episode with the same three questions. You're a second timer, so we have a different questions for you because you've already answered the other ones.

Dana: I'm nervous about this part. This scares me a little bit, but go ahead.

Meg: No. The first one is, what's the best advice you ever received?

Dana: I mean, I would say the best advice I ever received was hard advice, which was like someone told me when I was responding to notes that I was being too defensive, and I was like no, I'm not defending it. I'm just explaining why I did it that way in a hostile voice trying to tell you that your note is dumb and my way was right.

And they're like I don't love this. It feels what I said. And I'm like no. You've mis, you've misunderstood me. Let me explain again. So. Hearing that what I was saying, which didn't feel defensive to me was reading as defensive to other people was a real game changer for me. And so I started really changing my language, surrounding getting notes from people and started being like just incredibly grateful and saying thank you so much for taking the time to, you know, think this through so much.

And I really appreciate that you tried to like synthesize your thoughts and you put them on paper for me. I'm gonna give them a lot of thought. And I don't blow off notes. I don't, I'm not one of those writers that thinks like executives are idiots. I actually think like everyone's trying really hard to do their job and make this better.

And so even if they've said, here's the note and you should solve it by doing this thing, and I hate what they've suggested, I'm well, there's talking about an area that has a problem, so I'm gonna go to that area and I'm gonna figure out why they have a problem in that area, and I'm gonna suggest a different solution and I'm gonna try to pitch it to them to convince them that this is a better way to solve it.

But I'm very upfront and open about my process with people and I bring the executives along with me and I pitch them my ideas before I even write them. And I say, I'm very, like, if you wanna see the first 30 pages before I keep going, you're welcome to see them because I think the best. Way to keep your job is to kind of make everyone feel like they're doing it with you.

And so if you hand in a draft that doesn't quite work, which none of them do, everybody, guess what? It's never done. It's never like, ta-da, you did it. It's always just like a step in a process. But if you hand in a draft that people feel like, oh, we didn't quite get there, you don't want 'em to turn and look at you and be like, well, and it's your fault.

So instead they're like, we did tell you to do all that stuff and we're in it with you, and now we see it and we realize, oh, maybe we need to fix that. So here's the next set of notes. And you haven't lost your job because they've been with you on the journey the whole way.

Lorien: Super smart. Super smart. Here's the second question for you.

What part of craft do you still struggle with?

Dana: Oh my God. All of it. Didn't we just have this talk for like an hour and 20 minutes? I hate it all. It's terrible. It's all impossible. What do you mean? There is no part of craft I do not struggle with. Okay. That is the answer.

Lorien: What part of craft today, in this moment do you feel really confident about executing?

Dana: I think I am very good at playing mind games with myself to get myself to sit down in the morning and just get into it before I go panic mode and just be like, just do some low hanging fruit. Start the day with some low hanging fruit. Just do some stuff, just fix some stuff. And then once I'm in there I'm like, I know how to do this.

I got this. So I think I'm very good at, you know, basically just like lying to myself to get myself in the seat and in the final draft. And once I'm in the seat and I'm in the final draft, I'm usually, okay.

Meg: Love it. Okay. What's your proudest career moment to date?

Dana: Aw, that's nice. What if I cry? I think the proudest career moment to me was when I was in the audience of the first Wicked and I was at the premier and I was sitting there next to my 12-year-old who's now 13 boy.

And. He put his head on my shoulder and he said, mom, I'm just so proud of you. And I lost it. I was like, well, I'm done. I can't quit the business. You can tell everybody. I was like, good thing Oliver told me to quit the business. So, I then was like, well, that was it. That was my proudest moment because really as once I had children, I started trying to take jobs that I thought would make them like me more.

And think I was cool. So I just started taking like Minecraft for two weeks and like, you know, this and that. Just things that I thought my kids would like and it's really just because I wanna feel more connected to them and I want to work out my issues that I have with them through my work. And that's the other thing I was gonna say about your question, Meg, about high concept ideas Weirdly.

You also as the writer, need to have a lot of gas in your tank on that particular idea. So once you've found that idea, that's a little bit like, oh wow, yeah, that's spicy. I like that. You have to find something else inside it that is like a core issue for you that you feel like you could talk about for hours on end with your friend, with your best friend, whoever it is.

'cause you're so passionate about it, whether it's anxiety and you wanna try to help somebody get through it or otherness. And this feeling of like, I hate when other people feel like they're the other and I wanna make them feel a part of this. And whatever it is, find something that you feel incredibly passionately about that's just like a theme in your own life and that will, you will have enough gas in your tank if that is also in the story.

Meg: Perfection. Perfection.

Dana: You guys are amazing. Perfect. What you're doing is amazing and just the fact that you care about helping other writers so much, and I've seen all the work you've done to try to do that. It's awesome. And we're in a really difficult time in the business and so all this stuff I think is really meaningful to people.

So I just also wanna tell all your listeners out there like, please don't give up. I know it's hard for us to, we're do, we're like the ones who are supposedly winning and we feel like we're dying. So, that is the feeling of being a writer. You are not doing it wrong. That is it. You are doing it right, so don't give up.

Meg: Love it. Dana, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you.

Dana: I love you guys. Thank you for having me. This was so nice of you. Go see Wicked if you haven't seen it. Yes. Or I guess you put it on your TV now or whatever you do.

Lorien: Yes. See it, it's a, both movies are brilliant and wonderful.

Dana: Aw. Thank you. I love you guys.

Lorien: Thanks so much to Dana for coming back on the show and you can watch Wicked For Good in theaters and on VOD. Now. For more support, find us on Instagram, Facebook, and now on TikTok, and head over to thescreenwritinglife.com. To learn more about our workshop program, TSL Workshops, we have a growing library of prerecorded workshops that cover craft related topics from Character Want to Outlining a Feature.

We also host two live Zooms a month where you could chat with me and Meg about projects you're working on. Right now we're running a special holiday promo. Just head over to tslworkshops.circle.so and use the code HOLIDAY25 to get 50% off your first month. The link and promo code are in th episode description, that's HOLIDAY, and then the numbers two and five after it.

If you have any questions, you can always reach out to thescreenwritinglife@gmail.com

Meg: And remember, you are not alone and keep writing.