Learning from my own journey as a writer

I've been thinking a lot about my own journey as a writer and what I can take from it to apply as lessons to some of you who are just starting out.

My first feature script began as an assignment for a screenwriting class in 2002. By that point I'd made a number of short films and had even run a campus TV series, where 7 of the scripts were mine. So I already had some experience translating my ideas to the page before this screenwriting assignment. I remember this was a story idea I'd had ever since my senior year of high school. At the time, I thought I had enough for a 30 minute short film (I had no idea the shorts I'd be making in school were to be closer to 5-10 min at most.) Over the next four years I kept expanding the idea with red herrings and twists until my treatment became longer and longer.

I vividly recall that I had that document in front of me one day as my professor started lecturing about the three-act structure and how most narratives we knew fit into that paradigm. I quite clearly remember scanning the document until I found the moment that would be my INCITING INCIDENT. I put a star next to that beat. Then I drew a line across the page where the division between Act One and Act Two would fit. Then another line at the midpoint, and a third line at the climax of Act Two. Just from eyeballing it, I could see that in terms of pacing, those moments were landing more or less precisely where they would in a basic three-act film.

I hadn't used any kind of Save the Cat template when I broke the story. I wasn't thinking about three acts or plot points - but I had internalized so much about films that I essentially did it on instinct. Recalling several of the other stories that came out of that class, I know that isn't always a given.

In this post, I talk about the script I had under my arm when I moved to LA, and just so you don't think I'm saying I had it all figured out: It was written on Microsoft Word and was in Times New Roman. Fortunately on my first internship a fellow aspiring took me aside and explained how I needed to fix it so that it matched industry standards.

Once I did that, the script ballooned an additional 18 pages in length. Oops. I immediately set to work finding what I could cut to make it more manageable. In an embarrassingly short amount of time, I'd taken not 20, but almost 30 pages out of the script. This leaner version was what I presented to the people at my internship and when they came back with notes, I took them to heart and did a decently sized rewrite. So for that reason, I log this as my 2003 script.

Thus, including that script, since 2003 I have written:

• 9 feature scripts (two of them with partners) 
• 4 original comedy pilots (one with a partner.) 
• 4 original drama pilots (one with a partner.)
• 6 spec episodes. 

That's a grand total of 23 scripts in 17 years, and if you look at the last 10 years, the numbers get even better.

Since 2009 the tally is:

• 5 features 
• 4 comedy pilots 
• 4 drama pilots 
• 5 spec episodes. 

Or 18 scripts in 10 years.

How many scripts should I write?

You will probably not sell your first script. You likely will not be hired off of your first script. And if you are lucky enough to get meetings off of your first script, the very first question you will get is "What else have you got?" soon followed by "What are you working on now?" When you get that first script to wear you want it, start planning your next one.

I have seen professional writers say that you should be able to turn out a new script in three months. I don't find that to be unreasonable. But that does not mean they are saying you need four new scripts a year. That's insanity. If you're just starting out - set the goal of one spec script a year. BUT that means that by the end of those 12 months, it's in its finished state. In other words - three months for the first draft and the remaining nine months to get notes, do major rewrites and really, really hone it. You should be able to do this and maintain a pretty good work/life balance too.

I personally get suspicious when I hear overeager writers say they churn out four new specs a year. Don't get so caught up that you end up valuing quantity over quality. Early on, no one's giving you any awards for how fast you work. For that matter, the learning curve on your first several scripts is pretty steep. As you rewrite and get feedback on your first couple scripts, the experience will teach you things about writing that can be applied to your later scripts. You need room for that sort of introspection and self-education to play out.

Walk, then run. It doesn't impress people when you say, "I'm on my fifth spec this year!"

Building the portfolio

When I started writing, I gave zero thought to how I was "branding" myself. I didn't see myself as "just" a horror writer or "just" a comedy writer. All I knew is that I'd get an idea for a story I really wanted to tell and I'd follow that muse. Looking backwards, I can see that the kinds of scripts I wrote were almost always a reaction to the LAST script I wrote. After spending a year in the world of a romantic comedy, that part of my brain was tapped out, but I had a GREAT idea for a genre-bending superhero courtroom thriller. And when I finished that, the next thing idea that sounded cool to me was a sequel to THE WIZARD OF OZ that was more in the tone of NARNIA. (This was JUST before the trend of mining existing IP really got big again.)

I was writing things that interested me, taking my varied influences and giving them a new spin, but none of those scripts fit well together. I tried to defend this at the time by saying I was a "genre-mixer." I'd take the concept we'd seen a billion times and try to subvert it or give it a new angle by adding another genre's tropes to it. It meant I was playing in a lot of different kinds of worlds and styles, but it confused people about the kind of writer I was.

Yes, there was the challenge of how none of this really fit in a neat box - and I can already hear the complaints of the special snowflakes about how Hollywood doesn't know how to recognize originality and only rewards mediocrity and the same old ideas. Yet if I'm truly honest with myself, I'm not heartbroken that none of those films got made. Genre-mixing often confuses an audience unless it's done very deftly. Get it wrong, and it's a fish with wings. That's what you get when you pitch "Superman meets Primal Fear."

Again, this is not me saying DON'T do this. sometimes it can help you find your own voice when you just follow where the muse takes you. Experiment! Mix it up! But at the end of the day, know that you are making it easier on yourself if you have the material that brands you as the right guy (or girl) for a particular kind of project.

I always describe that as making sure that your submissions tell a story about the kind of writer you are.

I'll give you an example - last year I applied to the Disney / ABC Writing Program. They require two script submissions - one original pilot and one spec episode of an existing show. These samples must match in terms of being both one-hours or both 30-minute shows. In other words, don't write a sitcom and submit STRANGER THINGS as your spec episode. My spec pilot was a dark teen drama thriller and my spec episode was a 13 REASONS WHY. They complimented each other - there was no confusion about the kinds of stories I could tell, about the tone I could play in, about the kinds of characters I could write for.

When I had the opportunity to submit to a showrunner recently, I gave them basically the same submissions except that I swaped out my "proper" 13 REASONS WHY spec for the one I wrote about last year and posted publicly. I did this because during my sit-down with the showrunner, the topic of that script came up and they thought it sounded like a rather clever idea. I think the gambit worked because they enjoyed the script quite a lot - more than I think they would have with the "playing it safe" version.

My most recent one hour drama pilot script started as a half-hour comedy spec pilot I wrote about nine years ago. It was a case where I had what I thought was a pretty unique concept and I leaned into the humor of it. But if you know me, I'm more of a drama writer, and the more I worked in TV drama, the more this half-hour stuck out like a sore thumb among my samples. Eventually as a thought exercise, I pondered - "What about that... but as a drama?"

By the time I was done, the lead of the comedy pilot was reduced to AT LEAST the third lead of the drama. The main POV character was someone who didn't even exist in the earliest version of the script and the second lead was a character who was on the second tier of characters in the original version. I think the script is MUCH better, but it is completely unlike the idea I started with about a decade ago. If you were to read the two, you'd definitely see the relationship and the common DNA, but it's crazy to realize how much of what was load-bearing on the first pilot got completely blown away on the second one.

The changes that got me there mostly didn't happen all at once. It was an ever-increasing number of "What ifs" that I flung at the original concept, each one opening doors that led me to further What ifs that hadn't occurred to me before. I'm not always the best person at drastically reinventing the wheel on some rewrites. This experience is one I'll reflect back on when I need that extra push to REALLY shake things up.

Ultimately, what specifically works for me might not work for you, but I'm a big believer in the value of self-reflection. If something's not working in your process, the answers can usually be found within.

Ten years on Twitter and everything that's come with that

Today is my 10-year Twitter anniversary, and it arrives just days after I crossed the 48,000 follower mark. That's really mind-boggling to me. I wouldn't normally celebrate something like a social media anniversary, but this is a case where just about everything I've achieved professionally in the last decade traces right back to Twitter.

Every single job I've had in TV came from a Twitter contact I made in the business.

Every single interview for my YouTube channel was the result of a twitter relationship.

There are too many real life friends to count that I have made through twitter, though at this point, I'd say it's easily two dozen and probably closer to three dozen.

And then there's the really cool stuff. I've gotten to know writers whose work I've followed for years. I've had drinks and meals with a few of my favorite actors. I've gotten to meet and spend time with creators whose work has been a part of my life as far back as my early childhood. At one point, I even had a meeting with one of my all-time idols. It's not just cool - it's incredibly surreal.

So while there are a large number of interactions that are and will remain merely social media relationships, there are real, substantial contacts I have cultivated there, both personal and professional. When people ask me for advice on getting started, "Get on Twitter and follow people you're interested in" is always at the top of my list.

This doesn't mean you should expect that within a month all the doors of Hollywood will be open to you, and you shouldn't look at it just as a pipeline to everyone you consider successful in Hollywood. Get to know people who are on your level or just a little higher. You're all gonna rise in this business together and more than likely you'll be in a position to help each other.

Have something to offer the conversation. My follower list grew because I had content from the blog that was drawing people to my feed. What I wrote was of interest to people, and therefore they saw value in following me. My tweets soon became an extension of that, which only helped increase awareness of me. As long as I'm contributing to the conversation on Twitter, I keep being discovered by new people and develop stronger relationships with those I know already.

It opened a lot of doors for me, and if you know how to play your cards right, it can open doors for you too.

Just be smart about it and don't be like that weirdo who in his first interactions with me directly insulted what I choose to tweet about and then since then has sent a half-dozen tweets asking for advice or help. I block assholes and Trump supporters mercilessly. So tweet smartly.

You can find me on Twitter at @BittrScrptReadr

My take on the issues surrounding Netflix removing 13 REASONS WHY's graphic suicide scene

Earlier this week, Netflix announced it was making a fairly surprising change to 13 REASONS WHY's first season finale. After two years of controversy, the streaming service decided to completely remove the graphic scene of Hannah Baker getting into the bathtub and slitting her wrists. The scene had been a flashpoint for debate since it debuted, with some critics arguing it risked provoking imitative behavior.

There's a pretty thorough write-up on the backstory of this debate on The Hollywood Reporter.

Since I've blogged a lot about 13 REASONS WHY, going so far as to make public my spec episode of the show, I wasn't surprised when a regular reader went to my old post discussing this issue and asking if I had any reaction to the edit. I do. And I've given this matter a lot of thought - so much thought that I feel obligated to do more than just give a reaction to a digital platform essentially erasing something from existence almost entirely.

I wade into this with zero illusions I will change anyone's mind on either side of the debate. If you're against the show, I don't think anything in my power will persuade you any different.

There are a lot of issues tied up in this so let me try to break them down so my position is clear.

Where do I stand on media depictions of suicide? My understanding is that there's a far more conclusive link between the reporting on real suicides and the result of suicide contagion than there has been demonstrated to exist between fictional suicides and any resulting copycats. I feel like the lack of understanding about that distinction is certainly a factor in the thinkpieces that have debated this with regard to 13 REASONS WHY.

This Vox article speaks somewhat to this point and talks to experts who note that the findings of a recent study that purported to link the show to a rise in suicide rates, "should be interpreted with caution."

felt that this report that tried to show a link between the debut in the show and a rise in male suicides was pretty inconclusive. Plenty of other people got thinkpieces out of showing the fallacy of assuming correlation was causation. The report didn't even demonstrate that any of the people who killed themselves in that peak had even been exposed to the show. But for people who read only the headlines, in their mind, this study proved the show got people killed.

I want to take this opportunity to say that I believe most of the people upset by these findings are genuine in their concern. I think the study itself has a lot of problems, problems that are compounded by media coverage that took the most sensational spin on the findings themselves. I'm not here to insult anyone who saw an article about that and got misled by the framing.

If you were to ask me what I really would like to see, it would be a comprehensive study on the impact of fictional suicides. It'd be great if that study wasn't so myopic as looking only at 13 REASONS WHY. There's plenty of suicide media out there. No one ever brings up A MILLION LITTLE THINGS despite my feeling that it handled their core suicide FAR more irresponsibly in terms of what motivated the character.

Do I think the show romanticizes suicide? I don't. I really don't. It's clearly not the intent and I think it requires some amount of bad faith on the part of the interpreter to come up with that reaction. I feel like the arguments for this position do a lot of cherry-picking. Some of this goes to how we evaluate a creative work. Briefly, let's tackle two questions:

• Did the creators intend to romanticize suicide? This seems to be an emphatic no. I've read dozens of published interviews with the writers and it's clear that their intent was 180 degrees removed from that, to the point where they explicitly avoided common pitfalls of these scenes, such as the "beautiful corpse," or showing her drifting off peacefully.
• Does the work itself romanticize suicide? I don't believe it does. I personally don't see how anyone watches the show and comes away thinking, "The message of this whole thing is that if bad things happen to you, you should kill yourself." I don't understand the mindset that sees the pain Hannah's death causes so many - particularly the "good" characters of Clay and her parents - and thinks the show is endorsing that act. 

I make this next comparison very cautiously, but it reminded me of people who were offended by THE WOLF OF WALL STREET because they came away thinking the movie lionized Jordan Belfort. No one involved with that movie was trying to make that statement, nor does the movie really make him look heroic if you take it as a whole. But if you cherry pick things like, "He has sex with insanely hot women and more money than he knows what to do with," then yeah, you might come away with the feeling that "This is so cool."

Is it fair to hold creators accountable for some segment of the audience coming away with a completely incorrect understanding of the work? It's one thing to make them own what they're actually saying, but to take them to task what people erroneously THINK was being endorsed is an entirely different thing. That kind of thinking is a pathway to art that doesn't make any bold decisions for fear that the audience won't be able to follow.

All this is to say I don't want this to come down to an argument where the two sides are "I hate this and therefore it's bad" and "I like this and therefore it's good." If you hate Katherine Langford, or you think Brian Yorkey overwrites his dialogue, that's not really supporting data for "Why Netflix should erase this show." There are plenty of shows I dislike, hell, even shows that I think reflect some ugly values. I'll point it out, but I'll never say, "this should be wiped from existence."

Also, to challenge any claim that I'm a pure 13 REASONS WHY partisan, I'll toss out there that I really have no desire to defend a different controversial element of the show - the sexual assault and attempted school shooting in the season two finale. I have a lot of issues with that subplot both in concept and execution. Even so, I think I'd be bothered by the implications of wiping that scene from the record entirely, post-release.

Does this mean I think the show should be viewed by everyone? NO. Obviously, people at risk for depression and self-harm should be amply warned about the content. The same way we rely on trigger warnings for articles or videos dealing violence and sexual assault is exactly what we should do here. I don't think the answer will ever be a wholesale ban on a particular kind of media or story. I think the solution is to be more responsible about how that media is put into the world.

To give you an example, we know that when younger children are exposed to pornographic and sexual material at an early age, it can rewire their brains and severely impact their behavior and cognitive development. I don't think you'll ever see someone seriously propose "Let's ban pornography altogether" or "Let's ban all nudity or sexual activity from Netflix completely." There we understand that with warnings and content ratings and responsible parenthood we're doing what we can to protect people in need of protecting.

By the time I came to the show, they'd put warnings up on all the more intense episodes and for season two they were even more aggressive with their content warnings. I understand some of this outrage comes from the fact Netflix took a few weeks to add some of those extra warnings, and that's unfortunate.

Could someone still ignore the content warnings? Sure. Just like someone could ignore the warning not to take a hair dryer in the shower with them, or to not put metal in a microwave. If someone is determined to do something even after the risks are explicitly put there ahead of them, there's not much that would stop them anyway.

I'm wary of giving too much weight to anecdotal stories. For every person I've seen say the show was a dangerous trigger for those who self-harm, I've read posts and articles by people like this one by B.J. Colangelo, whose piece for Birth.Movies.Death explores how much she related to what Hannah was going through, how as a survivor of sexual assault and a nearly successful suicide attempt, she found the show powerful and effective at showing suicidal teens that suicide wasn't the answer.

Colangelo fits the profile of the sort of at-risk viewer we've been told we need to protect from this material - but the show didn't trigger her the way the show's detractors claimed it would. I don't offer this to refute the stories of those with the opposite experience, but merely to underline we can't know that there is a direct, always predictable reaction to the show, even within the at-risk subgroup where all the discussion is being focused.

I'm old enough to remember the heavy metal panic of the late 80s, when a lot of parents got concerned that subliminal messages in Judas Priest's music provoked two men to attempt suicide. It seems silly to our ears now. These were men who obviously had mental health issues and no causative link between the music and the suicides could really be made. This whole debate feels like the modern version of that.

There's a poetic irony to the articles I've read by people drawing a connection between specific suicides and exposure to the show. The concept of the show is that Hannah Baker is laying out the thirteen experiences that put her on the path to taking her own life. Each experience was instigated by a different person on the tapes.

When you watch the show, do you blame all of them for Hannah's suicide? I think many of these kids treated her poorly. The two who sexually assaulted her, one of them extremely violently, absolutely deserve to be punished for what they did to her. But did they kill Hannah Baker? Were their actions, taken individually, enough to make them culpable?

I don't believe they were, even if you choose to believe that it doesn't matter that many of the people named on the tapes had no intent to do that harm. Hannah's suicide was the culmination of the domino effect of mistreatment. Do we believe that Sheri, who knocked over a stop sign in an act of carelessness that later got another student killed, is as important a factor in Hannah's suicide as the boy who raped her?

No. We don't.

Bryce Walker raped Hannah Baker. There's no doubt he should be held accountable for that violence... but is he responsible for her suicide? Or is he just a very strong link in a long chain? The show presents Hannah's attempt at explaining what motivated her suicide, but in the end, the lesson seems to be that no one factor alone was the magic bullet that claimed Hannah.

And ultimately, isn't that what we're being asked to do of the show - to give it blame for a tragic result that was already set into motion by hundreds of other factors? There may be a strange form of comfort in being able to point at this boogeyman and say "This is what took someone I love away from me!" But it's never that easy, and the answer never is "Burn this, salt the earth below it and never speak of it again!"

"Okay, enough of this. Where do you stand on the removal of the scene?" 

If a creative work has been put out there, I'm always against the original version being made completely unavailable so it can be supplanted by a newer one. If Netflix wanted to put out this new version, while letting the old one co-exist, that's great. If they want to set the safer version as the default viewing option and make the "historical one" only available after going through menus and viewing addition warnings, I'm totally behind that too.

I have no beef with the existence of alternate versions as long as they don't erase what already was. Here, I'm speaking broadly. The same issue I have with "Greedo firing first" is the same issue I have with the removal of the suicide scene and the reframing of the subsequent discovery of Hannah's body by her parents - don't change the work I've seen and try to pretend it always was this way.

I'm aware that one motivation for these edits is that a new season will drop, and with that, new viewers will discover the show. I appreciate them giving the matter that kind of thought and sensitivity, but I still find this revisionist motivation to be troubling.
The other conversation to be had, the one that would have felt crass and reductive had I leapt here without treating the charged material with due sensitivity, is the morality behind any distributor being able to completely wipe something from the digital record. This was a lot harder to do in a world where physical media was prevalent, but we're trending to an era where most content is going to live digitally more than it will on DVDs and blurays.

Ponder if you will, the next Bill Cosby in every sense of that word - a successful groundbreaking comedian, someone who kicked in doors and was a pioneer for an entire race or class of people, the man who everyone who came after him pointed to as their influence. Then one day, like Bill Cosby, ugly details from his past arise. His series is cancelled.

No, not just canceled - digitally erased from every platform, made as inaccessible as if it never existed. GONE.

Our culture is our history. The thought that significant and influential parts of it could be completely erased from the record because of the misdeeds of another Bill Cosby or Louis CK is... chilling. I'm not morally comfortable with that. Even if I don't think I'll ever watch The Cosby Show again, it's still an important chapter of TV.

I can understand the rationale behind Netflix's decision while still be wary of the Pandora's Box it opens. So if you're asking me what I feel about these edits in the abstract sense, I'm concerned.

Do I think all of Netflix's concerns about the impact of the show on teens is in good faith? Yes, and as I said, I think the same of many of the concerned parents who read these somewhat shaky studies and came away with honest concern for what they read.

Do I think it will satisfy the anti-13 REASONS WHY advocates? No.

This won't end the conversation so much as it will stoke the passions on both sides. The show's creators speak often of hoping to start a conversation about suicide. For too long, that conversation has been less about the issues the show addresses and more about the harm the show is feared to do in speaking of those issues. I hope with this concession, Netflix has given all concerned parties a way to move forward and past the argument that has raged for two years now.

Interview with me on Comics Beat

Matt O'Keefe of Comics Beat did an interview with me covering a number of topics that included the origins of the Bitter Script Reader, writing spec episodes and how Twitter has opened doors for me.

You can check it out here.

BLOOD & TREASURE co-creator Matthew Federman talks blending treasure hunting with terrorists, focus groups, teaching history and staffing

This week marks the launch of CBS's new summer adventure series, BLOOD & TREASURE, detailing the adventures of a former FBI agent and a thief as they race to get to Cleopatra's remains before a madman who sells blood antiquities to fund terrorist attacks.


Matthew Federman is the series's co-creator and executive producer, with writing partner Stephen Scaia, this is his first series on the air after a long career in TV that began on JUDGING AMY and included such series as JERICHO and HUMAN TARGET (both of which he was on with friend-of-the-blog Robert Levine, who I interviewed long ago here.) His credits also include WAREHOUSE 13 and LIMITLESS.

Matthew was kind enough to answer a few questions about the series, the writing process that goes into blending an Indiana Jones-type romp with terrorism and what he looks for in a writing staff.

Unlike most of the shows that were just ordered off of pilot season, BLOOD & TREASURE was a straight-to-series order. Can you talk about how that impacts the creative process when your focus from the start is telling an entire season's story? Is it different breaking a season when you don't have a completed pilot as a proof of concept for the room to work on from the start?

My writing partner Stephen Scaia and I sold the show with a script and bible that laid out the first season—which would have been the same in either case. So going to straight to series didn’t really affect the creative process that much for us. We still started the room with figuring out the big picture stuff, how to make the arc we had work, and then diving into 102. It did mean starting without knowing who our actors were which is a little scary because you don’t know who you’re writing to, but our cast ended up being amazing and very much what we had imagined so we didn’t need to tweak things too much for them.

Here’s how it did affect things: our first episode ended up being huge, like 10-15 minutes over. They told us it was long and we kept cutting it at script stage but somehow it was still way long. Had it been a pilot we would have had to cut a lot of stuff that we loved to deliver it and since the show is so serialized we probably would have lost some key plot elements. But because we were straight to series we were able to move a chunk of 101 into 102 in editing (basically all of the original Act 4).

We had called it a two-parter anyway and in our hearts hoped that they would do a two hour premiere which we thought was the best way to launch the show based on our story. We were told in no uncertain terms that that would not happen. The issue wasn’t creative, just corporately it’s a thing CBS doesn’t do. Then when it came time to do focus groups the biggest issue that came from the groups was they didn’t like how it ended. Almost every question they had would have been solved by the old Act 4 that got moved, or the rest of 102. One of our great execs suggested they try testing 101/102 together for focus groups to see what affect it had and the change was stark—most of the issues went away immediately.

To our great relief they decided to air it as a two-hours pilot. Creative people knock focus groups but they really saved us in this case, and I give so much credit to the Studio and Network execs for being flexible and doing what was best for the show. They’ve been great collaborators. The other thing going straight-to-series affected was our big set—Antony and Cleopatra’s tomb—which launches the show. The set is crazy awesome. And really expensive. Like more expensive than a lot of pilots, for a set you’d only see once (as far as we knew). But because the cost was spread over 13 we could do it and really introduce the show with size and scope that you normally don’t see on Network TV. And then we had this giant, beautiful set just sitting there and we thought, okay, maybe we can get some more use out of it. So you’ll see versions of it again, including in the two-hour pilot in a flashback. We really got our money out of that space and in the end its very existence affected story.

The promotion material for the show underlines the fact that your villain is funding his terrorist activities with the sale of stolen antiquities. Can you talk about integrating this aspect of real-world terrorism into what also plays as an Indiana Jones-like treasure quest romp? 

We had learned that a major source of funding for ISIS (behind oil) was that they would loot antiquities from the regions they were in and sell them on what is now referred to as the “blood antiquities market.” Then (as with Palmyra) they would blow up the big structures they couldn’t move for PR value, drawing attention to their group. We thought we had a unique opportunity to talk about some real world issues around blood antiquities (a market created by wealthy people and museums) through the filter of a fun adventure show.

And while that seems counter-intuitive, we had a model in Indiana Jones for how to do it. The Nazis are real bad guys who committed vast atrocities. They give everything stakes—but the adventure is still fun because you’re with Indy and he has a great character story going on with Marion and the audience wants them to win—and get together. We decided to fictionalize our bad guy for a number of reasons, including not wanting to be insensitive, but also to give the show the ability to be a little lighter. We didn’t want it to feel like the show 24 with treasure.

There's a promotional video out where several of your actors talk about how the scripts integrate real history into the show's mythology. I'm sure that plenty of events are fictionalized. Can you give us some sense of the thought process behind where real history takes a left turn into BLOOD & TREASURE history? We know that this is a race to find Cleopatra, which hasn't been found yet in real life. How do you build that kind of quest in a way that feels credible and fun at the same time? 

Our thinking is, there’s the stuff in history we know—that stuff we don’t mess with. There’s the stuff we don’t know because the history is lost—that stuff we can play around with, so long as we’re not impugning anyone with how we fictionalize it, or making up anything that feels contradictory to known events or people.

I think it should be pretty clear when we’re saying something known or we’re playing in our sandbox, our characters—mostly Danny, sometimes Dr. Castillo—usually says some version of “We believed [X] was the case but what if [Y].” Our hope is it ignites an interest in history for people who can then search out the stuff we’re taking off from and learn more about it, but we need to do it in such a way that it doesn’t completely slow down the story to become a history lesson.

The same video also discusses how the show takes us to the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Cairo, Paris, London, the Alps, Turkey, Rome... and Boston. On any show you're going to have to deal with the logistics of location. When you're talking about a globe-trotting show that presumably doesn't have the budget to go anywhere. How much work goes into picking those locations, because I assume it's not a case where you can go, "The African desert fell out, we need the story to work for the woods of Vancouver."

We let the story dictate the locations at first. We knew the show would be Middle Eastern/Western Europe focused because of what our story was. The whole center of the season though we weren’t sure where we’d go. Our production is based in Montreal so we knew the looks/countries we could represent there. We had some ideas for where else we’d go that would make sense. But as the story went forward the writers pitched something that would mean going to Morocco which wasn’t planned and I said, “Let’s hold on and talk to Steve about how reasonable that is.”

Stephen was focused on the production side of things which eventually meant living up in Montreal and also taking a world-wide scouting trip to see locations before later going abroad to shoot. Steve talked about the idea with our producing partners and one of them said we could go to Morocco, and in fact get a lot of great looks for different places there. So a big part of our plan changed, but it started with the story.

What it comes down to is we know every episode should hop around a little, so we try to get the story working knowing those movements will be necessary. We talk a lot about building things modularly, which means the story can change locations, or even the planned action can change, but what happens story-wise doesn’t need to change (aside for some tweaks) because it’s about how our characters are either working together or failing to.

You've mentioned on Twitter that this was your fourth or fifth effort at doing a treasure hunt show. Can you talk about what was it about this show that got a green light and what might have been missing in those earlier attempts?

It absolutely got the green light this time because of the stakes that using the real world ISIS issue gave us. In the past we had to kind of narratively explain why culture and art were important so when it came down to people dying over them it would make sense…and it’s a tough buy for a lot of people despite that we know it’s true historically (including groups like the Monuments Men in WW2 that literally put themselves in danger to protect cultural heritage).

Looking back on it, I’m glad it took this long and this was the one that got made because Stephen and I are better writers and producers, we never could have made the show this way in the past because it wasn’t really being done. Also, our cast is amazing and our leads Matt Barr (Danny) and Sofia Pernas (Lexi) have this crazy chemistry that really pops off the screen and makes the show work on a level it never could have before. I’m not one of those people that says “everything happens for a reason” but in the case of this show it feels that way.

I'm curious what you looked for when you were assembling your room. You've worked on a number of shows, you've seen how plenty of staffs work. What was at the top of your mind when you were assembling your team for BLOOD & TREASURE?

We look for a staff that represents the places that the show would be going. Diversity wasn’t just a mandate we were given, it was for us a necessity to be able to tell this story that spans cultures and is about how they clash and how they work together which is basically the story of history. (Also with explosions! Don’t worry, it won’t feel like homework!). So we wanted a staff that could give an International perspective, and then we also looked for people that got the show, not just what the show did on the surface, i.e. “it’s fun” but people who saw the show we were really making beneath that.

One of our early meetings first season was with a brother/sister writing team (Siavash and Dana Farahani) who were born in Iran and lived as refugees for a time after their family fled. They mentioned an early scene in the script when Danny first comes to recruit Lexi to go on this adventure because he believes he needs her unique skillset how despite being locked up in a police car, Lexi isn’t convinced to go with Danny at first. The thing that changes her whole demeanor and shifts the scene is when Danny mentions the Pyramid that was attacked (which starts our show). Lexi, an Egyptian, immediately loses her snarky combativeness—jaded as she is you can see how affected she is by the loss to her country and her culture. It’s the appeal to that loss that gets her to go on the journey.

They got that moment in a way a lot of Americans wouldn’t have. It was the moment I knew we’d be hiring them. Because they got that the show was about this intersection between history, culture and identity—which then we put through the fun filter.

We joke that the show should taste like cotton candy and then expand into a steak in your stomach. It is intended to be a fun adventure, and in a TV landscape of very dark shows (many of which I love) we think that is something people will be hungry for. If a family sits and watches the show, the fun is probably all the kids will see and we think that’s great. But hopefully the parents see there’s something more going on. Everyone we hire is someone we think can bring that dual perspective to the show: how can this say something while also being a ton of fun?

If you're looking for more of Matthew's insight into TV writing, check out this three part twitter thread about what he learned running the writers' room during season one. (All parts linked here.)

BLOOD & TREASURE premieres Tuesday, May 21 on CBS at 9pm,

Thoughts on BARRY's upcoming season finale and morality in story presentation

Some thoughts on next week's BARRY finale. Sunday's penultimate episode had Barry racing to stop his former partner Fuchs from murdering Barry's acting coach Gene. Complicating matters is that last season, Barry had to kill Gene's girlfriend Moss, a police detective, when she figured out Barry was a hitman.

Barry killed her and hid the body and her car in the woods - which is where Fuchs has led Gene, seemingly ready to expose Barry's secret to Gene before killing him and framing him for Moss's murder.

An obvious issue is that since Fuchs has presented himself as a friend of Barry's, even if Barry gets there in time, Gene will wonder what Barry's doing with someone that dangerous, how this person knew where to find Moss, and how Barry even knew to be there. It's a chain of questions that leads to the exposure of Barry's secret, making it possible that when Barry gets there, he might have to kill Gene.

Here's my speculation: We’ve already seen Barry murder two “good” people he didn’t want to. This is why I think we won’t see any scenario in which he has to kill Gene next week. That doesn’t mean Fuchs WON’T, but I also doubt that.

I think the most likely scenario is that Barry kills Fuchs, saves Gene and Gene gives the performance of his life convincing Barry he finds none of this suspicious. And the drive of the next season is Gene putting all the pieces together.

There’s too much meat left on Gene’s story for me to think he ends up dead next week. Killing Gene neither opens any doors, nor tells us something we don’t know. Keeping him alive offers more dramatic possibility.

I tweeted these thoughts and it prompted someone to ask, "How is it I’m still rooting for BARRY knowing he killed Gene’s GF? Was it the long delayed actually showing of the killing?"

It’s because the presentation of the story is all from his POV, which makes us complicit in his perspective. We understand the reasoning and the emotion of his choice. That identification makes us susceptible to Barry’s conviction he “had” to do it.

Moss is coded as the antagonist and so it subverts our default to see her as the hero, even though, objectively she would be. The show makes Barry charming enough that he wins us over. He kills people, but most of them are bad. Why should we care?

That’s how we’re seduced to his side. We see it all through his eyes. And at S1’s end, when our choice is “kill or go to jail,” we’re already on that dark side with Barry.

Because we had no other choice.

Didn’t we?

A response to that was: "And it’s not the same as rooting for a genuinely horrible person like in Breaking Bad. Barry’s not evil, he’s broken."

Here’s my question: “isn’t it?” Do the distinctions in motivation matter?

Supporting Barry seems different from supporting Walter White because his overall arc is coded as redemptive. He WANTS to be better, and we’re giving him points for effort. Walt’s is pretty clearly a decent fueled by lust for power. That trips our “bad guy” alarm more easily.

What Bill Hader and Alec Berg have done with BARRY is quite remarkable. There's no reason we should empathize at all with this hardened killer, but they make Barry so damn relatable that the audience is often seduced by the lure of seeing themselves in Barry's shoes. That's the power of writing and performing.

AVENGERS: ENDGAME puts a thrilling period at the end of a 22-film sentence

Note: mega-spoilers abound. This is your on warning.

After 22 films in 11 years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe reaches a climax with AVENGERS: ENDGAME. Though plenty of the films in the series are completely inessential to most continuing arcs and each other, this is the film where everything is brought to bear and it's a clear finish line for many elements that have defined these movies to this point.

I apparently didn't write a full review of last year's AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR, though I remember at the time saying that it was a perfect adaptation of the company-wide mega-crossover genre of story, with all the good and bad that implies. I have a hard time rating it as a movie because it's almost impenetrable to anyone who hasnt' seen any of the other films. It's a big season finale and that's very much how I'd describe ENDGAME. I don't thing either of these are the best MOVIES Marvel has to offer, but they're certainly the MOST movie.

ENDGAME picks up in the aftermath of Thanos's victory in INFINITY WAR. As promised, he wiped out half of all living things in the universe and what's left of the Avengers sets out to... well... avenge. Twenty minutes into the film, they catch up to Thanos and learn he's destroyed the Infinity Stones along with any chance of undoing what he did. Thanks to Thor, he's given an execution so swift and brutal that there's almost no satisfaction in seeing him taken down. And at this point I realized 90% of the trailer shots had already occurred and I had NO idea where the film was going from here.

I managed to go in almost entirely unspoiled and I encourage most viewers to do the same. There's a lot of fun in the discovery of where our surviving characters have ended up following a five-year jump into the future. Whatever issues I take with some of the plot logistics - and there are plenty - the film rises above them because of the emotional investment it builds for each character. There's an advantage that the audience has spent a decade with many of these people, but ENDGAME isn't lazy about earning the emotional stakes facing each core character.

And that is the real success of these films. I see naysayers often sneer that these films "never take any chances." Listen, bub, in 2008, it was an insane risk to launch an entire cinematic universe on the back of a C-list character played by an actor with several well-publicized falls from grace and already on his (at least) second comeback. Further, the idea to do a movie that combined ALL of these B & C listers was also a huge gamble. If it tanked, it could have taken down multiple franchises at once. Then in Phase Two, we got a film that tried to inject politics into this superhero verse, a film with a talking tree and raccoon, and another film that leaned more heavily into Norse mythology.

Not every big swing has paid off, but there's a pretty high quality average and the good films have been REALLY good. To pull off that kind of consistency with so many different films released in such a short time is nothing short of astonishing. The fact they've made it look so effortless that people can claim, "They don't take any chances" is nothing short of remarkable. Marvel has learned from its early mistakes (IRON MAN 2) and corrected them going forward.

A big part of Marvel's secret sauce came from creating compelling characters on screen that the audience became invested in. I’m a DC guy, barely read the mythos of the players who made up the core MCU, and the films work because they make you love these people. You don’t have to have spent 30 years buying the MCU characters books to be able to appreciate the movie incarnations. These aren’t movies made for “the fans,” they’re made for EVERYONE. To achieve that when starting with traditional B-listers is, well, a marvel.

And that is why ENDGAME works, because it's not trying to be some profound meditation on power and mankind, with its players merely acting as organic position papers. It's about people with real emotions and personalities coping with fantastic situations. Even in its more deliberate moments, the pace never drags and the character journeys drive the story forward.

It delivers on the big moments too. The last 45 minutes or so over the film feels like it could have been related in an issues worth of those double-page spreads with a thousand characters drawn by George Perez. To see every heroic character rally for the final fight, taking their positions for the SAVING PRIVATE RYAN of superhero movies is just one of those powerful wish fulfillment moments that the best of these movies thrive on. We've followed the Tony/Pepper relationship from the very first film now, so it was very hard not to stand up and cheer when Pepper joins the final battle in her own Iron Man armor.

It'd be easy for this review to turn into gushing about all the little moments in this final battle, but suffice to say everyone gets their moment. My only quibble is that the fight is staged in such a visually uninteresting locale.

But the back and forth reversals of that battle are beautifully done. Even before the battle's scale expands we get the pleasure of seeing Iron Man, Captain America and Thor working together to take down Thanos in one of the best examples of super-teamwork put on screen. One payoff in here is one of the film's biggest applause moment.

There's a real risk that Captain Marvel could have come off as a convenient late addition that tips the scales and overshadows everyone else. Was her rescue of Tony and Nebula convenient? Maybe a little, but I like the staging, with her hovering before a near-death Tony like some kind of beautiful angel. As a fan of Brie Larson since UNITED STATES OF TARA, I love what she brought to the part - confidence without cockiness, just complete self-assuredness that she's seen more than her new teammates can understand. I wish we'd seen her clash more with Tony and she had all too brief chemistry with Thor, but it probably was wise the film establishes her as a player, then sends her off long enough for us to forget about her until she shows up as the cavalry to the cavalry. The staging of that entrance is great too, with Thanos's ship realizing it has a much bigger problem than the armies and demigods fighting on the ground.

But it would have been a cheat for the new toy who was only established one film prior to end up as THE key player in the battle. She comes in, gets her moment, but the filmmakers don't overuse her. That said, I can't help but wonder if she would have been able to better handle the strain of using the Infinity Gauntlet.
And it all ends the way we probably expected it to - with the death of an Avenger. Tony Stark sacrifices himself using the energy of the Iron Infinity Gauntlet to defeat Thanos and his army. Everyone was expecting Cap to call back to "I can do this all day" while making a last stand against the mad god, but no one expected Thanos's final words "I am inevitable" to be match by Tony's "I am Iron Man" right before he unleashes the battle-ending power.

Tony's sacrifice is well-foreshadowed and gives the finale of the movie its necessary emotional heft. It's a good death and the mourning is given its necessary due. There truly is a sense that everything has changed for the MCU going forward and the only issue with Tony's death is that it overshadows the mourning for Black Widow too.

Enough about what worked, what doesn't work?

"Your plan is based on BACK TO THE FUTURE?" The film's approach to time travel is frustrating. With the Infinity Stones destroyed, the plan becomes to travel back in time and borrow the stones so that everything can be undone in the future. It's not unlike BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II where Marty has to run around the events of the previous film to retrieve the almanac. Most of this conceit works, particularly when Banner gets a lecture about how removing the stones from their place would create a branching, alternate timeline. To prevent that, Banner promises the stones will be returned to the instant they were taken from.

Well, that's all fine and good except during Tony, Steve and Banner's trip to the aftermath of the Battle of New York, Tony slips up in getting the Tesseract and also inadvertently frees Loki. This lets Loki flee the scene with that stone and therefore cause a major divergence in the timeline. Weirdly the film brushes past this and I think having a major paradox go uncorrected here means that when an even BIGGER paradox results later, it really adds to the feeling that actually none of this should be able to happen.

That bigger paradox? With several Avengers sent to 2014 to retrieve two other stones, Past Thanos learns of this when he captures the present day Nebula, who's part of that team. He realizes he won the first time and then places Past Nebula in her place so when she returns to the Avengers's present day, she's able to open a doorway for Past Thanos and his army to arrive and decimate the Earth. This brings a lot of time travel problems with it, particularly when it seems they're all destroyed rather than sent back to the past. With Thanos removed from 2014, none of what happened in the previous movie should come to pass, but the film straight up ignores this implication.

Like I said, if that was the only abuse of time travel logic, it would have been easier to swallow.

Captain America's fate - Steve Rogers's destiny carries similar issues. Post-battle, Steve is charged with returning the Infinity Stones to the past and also making sure everything plays out as it was meant to. (So maybe we should presume HE takes care of Loki?) Once he does that, rather than return to the present, he goes back to Peggy Carter post-WWII. The next we see of him is as an old man in the present, explaining to his friends that he opted to stay in the past and get married.

It hits the right emotional notes but leaves some lagging logical ones. Steve has been a man out of time for much of the series, so him getting a second chance isn't off-base as an ending. Peggy has been consistently played as his true love, so returning for her wouldn't be so bad... but for the fact we know she had a husband, a family and a life that - until this film - presumably didn't include him. There's something selfish about Cap knowing this and going back to take this man's place.

Sure, there's some wiggle room for us to assume this was "meant" to happen and that husband was always a time displaced Cap. It gets more complicated when we realize all that Steve knows about the future and all the things he had to stay on the sidelines for and "let" happen in order to be with Peggy. He's okay with leaving Bucky to be brainwashed as the Winter Soldier? To let him murder dozens, including Howard Stark and his wife? He never says ANYTHING to Peggy about the fact that the secret agency she's building is being infiltrated by Hydra spies?

I'm willing to meet the movie halfway here, but there's a huge can of worms that gets opened. It's another point that works up until you give it much scrutiny.

The Death of Black Widow - I'll admit, when it was clear that Hawkeye and Black Widow were being sent for the Soul Stone, I was sure I knew how this would play out. The two would battle over who got to sacrifice their lives for the cause, with Barton eventually taking one for the team and Natasha mourning her friend. That assumption was based on the fact that it feels like no one has EVER known what to do with Hawkeye. He spent 2/3 of the first AVENGERS under mind control and was so under-developed that that second AVENGERS could introduce an entire family for him and we were able to just shrug and go, "Yeah, I guess that makes sense." After that, he was basically another body in CIVIL WAR and I bet you barely noticed he wasn't in INFINITY WAR, did you?

So yeah, it seemed pretty clear that he was a safe kill for the film in that someone who seemed to matter could meet their end without disrupting the narrative. If I'd been thinking about it differently, I'd have realized that OF COURSE meant that Natasha had to be the one to die for any emotional resonance. Barton's biggest emotional tie on the team was her, while Natasha has close ties to Bruce and Steve in addition to Barton.

For the character's sake, I'm glad her death happened in a place where the movie could breathe and let the impact set in. This wasn't BUFFY killing off Anya in the heat of battle and having to move on. Her teammates are given a moment to mourn, though I feel Tony's death and funeral end up stealing the spotlight away from that completely by the end of the film. (The Hulk/Hawkeye scene was a nice effort at showing the movie didn't totally forget about her, but there was still something missing there.)

Important stray questions:

- The Ancient One makes a BIG deal about the fact that bad things happen if the Infinity Stones are removed from her timeline so, uh, should we be concerned that from the start of the movie onward, Thanos has completely destroyed these important universe-binding things?

- Where the hell was Katherine Langford supposed to fit in?

- I know poking at this paradox is a fool's errand, but if Past Nebula is dead even before Stark snaps Thanos's army away, how is Present Nebula still there at the end?

- That shot of everyone at the funeral was TOTALLY stitched together from green screen shots of the various clusters, right? And very interesting that Carol stood so apart from everyone.

- But seriously, who was Katherine Langford going to play? I know the internet lost their minds speculating she was Kate Bishop, but I feel like there's room to speculate she was playing an older version of Morgan Stark, maybe in a deleted post-credit scene flash forward? I could see a sort of "next generation" moment with her building her own armor.

In the final analysis, this is the kind of superhero spectacle that would have been unimaginable even a decade ago. To pull of something of this scare while juggling a number of emotional balls to every actor involved, along with writers Stephen McFeely & Christopher Markus and directors Anthony Russo and Joe Russo.