September 5, 2024 • 48 mins
Maria sits down with the great Brian Koppelman (Rounders, Billions, The Bear) to learn about how he navigates risk in Hollywood and beyond. They discuss his methods of determining when a risk is worth taking, how to offset risk with hard work, and the time he bet big on Billions.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business show about making better decisions.
I'm Maria Kanikova. Nate Silver is not with us today,
he is on a book tour, but we have an
amazing guest instead, one of my dear friends, Brian Koppleman,
(00:39):
who is everything I mean. He is a writer, he
is a director, he's a producer, he is a musician,
he is an actor. He is a kindred spirit and
someone who thinks about risk in a lot of the
same ways that I do. Because he also plays poker.
I don't know how you know him. I originally knew
(01:00):
who he was, as many of you probably do through Rounders,
people who come to Brian more recently, probably no billions
before Rounders, so many other things. That's just like the
tip of an absolutely massive iceberg that we'll be talking
about today. Brian, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
My absolute pleasure. And I think people now might know
me from The Bear.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Ah yes, and people might know you as the computer
on the third season of The Bear. I just want
to point out that you have a bicycle helmet on
the table, So did you ride your bike here? Since
we're talking about risky decision making, we're in New York
by the way, we're in Manhattan.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, we're in Manhattan. I made a decision a while ago.
You know how you can come home and you're either
whether you have somebody who you live with, or you
talk to a lot of family member friend and they
ask you if you had a good day. I decided
a while ago that I wanted to be able to
like understand what that meant for myself, not just leave
(02:07):
that up to sort of an emotional thing or something
that would happen in the middle of my day. So
I decided, you know, if I do certain thing, if
I journal, if I meditate, if I exercise, and I
spend time with people that I love, I've had a
good day because I've written something, I've moved my body,
(02:29):
I've hugged somebody like those things. Well, but I don't know.
Six months ago, some months ago, I decided, anytime I
don't have to be on public transportation or in a
cab or an uber in New York City, it's a
great New York City day. And because it adds to
all these other things, so and in looking at all,
(02:49):
honestly looking at various risks, the rewards of riding a
bike all the time and walking are really great. There's
but there is this risk inherent in riding a bicycle
in New York City. But you can really mitigate the
worst of it. You can't eliminate it. You can mitigate
the worst of it by wearing a helmet. Downside is
(03:10):
you got to walk around looking like a goofball and
it's really confusing, like what to do with the helmet
sometimes and sometimes I put the helmet on and like
there's not you know, socially, it's not great, especially if
you like the older guy in the office complex or
whatever and you get off the elevator still wearing your
bike helmet. You know you are the fool for the day.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
You're someone who's from a creative industry, right, Like you
don't come from the statistical background, and yet your way
of thinking aut the world. You're someone who Your poker
game was the first poker game I ever saw in
my life because Rounders was the only time I had
ever seen poker played because I wasn't into poker. You
(03:53):
were into poker, right. The reason Rounders to this day
is like the Poker movie is because you're actually a player.
You love the game. You understand the game, you went
to the clubs, you did the leg work, you did
the research. But I think that the way that you
think about the world actually does mirror that.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
So I just want to say, my creative and business
partner and lifelong best friend, David Livina, and I did that.
It's not just me. I just important for me to say, Well,
it's right, but it's true.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
It's very important for you to say. And actually I
would love to ask a question about that that was
a risk at the beginning of your career, to say,
I'm not going to do this by myself. I'm going
to have a partner, because if you think about it,
like creative partnerships are fraught, and you and David have
been partners for how many years now.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I mean yeah, professionally almost thirty years, and but best
friends since we were kids, and I think you look
back on it and yet if someone knew they were
going to be able to really have this career at
that time, though, you're not really thinking about downside risk
other than to your friendship because your best friend like
your brother, and so you're thinking about that. So you
(05:00):
have to make you just sort of talk through a
process but also we wrote that script together, and I think,
you know, each of us just decide to go into
it really open minded and open hearted, and it was like,
let's let's write this thing together. And then as we
did that, and as we felt like this creative partnership
(05:24):
was what we'd hoped it would be, we were bringing
out kind of the best of each other, it just
made sense to roll in and continue. We've never had
a signed piece of paper.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
I was I was just about to ask that.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
And you know, people will say you have to. We've
signed many agreements together with other parties, meaning if a
studio or network wants to engage us, we both have
to sign that document, and we've signed leases, toget, We've
signed many many things together. But David and I have
never had more than a handshake and a hug agreement
(05:59):
with each other.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
So you've never actually talked about and said this is
going to be a fifty to fifty partnership.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
And yet well we've said those words to each other,
everything's fifty to fifty.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Of course, we've never written it down, never.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Written it down. In fact, I think those conversations we
didn't even email that to each other. I mean that
was just like, we're fifty to fifty and everything, and
they would it was.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
My mind is breaking right now, by the way, at
that level of trust. Right, you know the types of
topics that I write about, right, Yeah, you know. I've
written about con artists. My next book is about cheating,
and I have just come across so many instances where
that just sours. And you've been doing this for thirty
five years, You've never had a written piece of paper.
(06:41):
You took that risk, and yet here you are. You're
just such a beautiful testament to like the fact that
not everyone sucks and that there's actually there are humans
that you can take this risk with. But there's part
of my mind. The reason I said my brain is
breaking is because I would think that someone like you,
who I respect so much and you're so smart, and
you're so smart about these risks, I would think that
(07:02):
you would say, you know, just in case, let's just
sign this little piece of paper.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I understand that way of thinking, and I would advise
I might advise somebody, but I think if you can
try to silence the voices that aren't your own inside you, right,
if you can try and actually listen to the truth,
(07:27):
you kind of do know, like your body kind of knows.
Not in a woo woo way, I mean your instinct
knows because of your brain sending these signals. And if
I think about what the battle in life is, it's
to become comfortable in your own skin. Because when you
(07:48):
are able to have these moments of them and they're fleeting,
and then maybe as you live a little bit and
you work on it, they can last longer. But if
you can get to a place where you have moments
of actual calm, moments where you can actually listen to
the best part of yourself, most alive part of yourself,
(08:09):
you know when you need a piece of paper and
when you don't. And especially for someone who studied consure,
so now, well, I don't want to This is a
proby Privo caster because I don't want to. I don't
want to become willis shown in The Princess Bride and
use search a logic. But it is true that if
you know about cons it's easier to con you on
(08:30):
a surface first level, meaning if you're someone who thinks, oh,
I know what the wise guys do, then it's very
easy for a wives guy to use that and play
you sure, but I'm not talking about that kind of situation.
But basically, I think David and I knew enough about
each other to trust each other. And it wasn't a
thin knowledge, it wasn't a quick knowledge. It was we
(08:54):
had been through enough things and been there enough for
one another and knew that that was the primacy, was
to do right by the other person. Our wives were
incredibly supportive, and nobody ever would have thought about those
risks other than, like I say, to the friendship, but
writing rounders are such joy. And then the way that
(09:17):
it all came together, that we just knew we were
off and running it, and it was actually David who
had the inflection point. We finished the script and he
sent it to a young manager in LA and the
manager said, I know you wrote this with a partner.
I can spin it one of two ways, and Dave said, no,
(09:37):
I spin it like I wrote it with my partner
and we wrote it together, not like that guy. I
know about poker, And what I see is like this
is we did this together, and I wanted to reflect.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
That, Yeah, and that's amazing, and that actually, I think
is a really important reminder for listeners of our podcast.
Because we always talk about the herd statistics and kind
of those types of things, and so it is a
good reminder that the human element is very much a
part of it, you know, And that's I mean, I'm
a psychologist, Nate's the numbers guy, so to me like that,
(10:10):
that is an important thing to have in the back
of your mind because it's so easy to get lost
in the numbers, in the statistics, and it's it's really
good to have that sort of a reminder.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
You can't be in the art. So but if you're
in the arts, So what you said is true.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
You went into the arts.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yes, what you said is true that on the one hand,
you know me as your friend. You understand that I've
made a study of strategic thinking, that I can read people,
I can read situations. But when you make a decision
that you won't be happy unless you're in the arts,
(10:48):
and for me, it was you know, I knew if
I at a certain point in my life, like if
I didn't try, I wouldn't be a good father or husband.
And because I knew that I would have turned bitter,
and that if I turn bitter, you know, I knew
if I let the kind of a creative block happen,
it would be like a creative death, and like any
other death, the toxicity would lose onto those I love.
(11:09):
Then I just didn't want that. So I think there
are times where you have to turn off rationality and
reason in a way that you can make function for
your life. So you know, so as I hear people
like Scott Galloway, who's a smart guy but with say
it's not about what you want to do. You got
to pick something you're good at, and well, I disagree.
(11:34):
I think figuring out what brings you joy, Like guess
this thing I said about where you're working from the
most alive part of yourself is valuable. But like, I
didn't quit my job to write the first script. Somehow
I was, I think lucky enough to figure out, well,
if I just take two hours a day and really
(11:55):
give it everything I have for those two hours a day,
I don't have to put all the pressure on myself
that I've quit my job or that I've put my
family in jeopardy. I can just work. And I knew then, Okay,
I feel really alive doing that. I'm going to keep
doing this whether this thing sells or not, whether we
can make a career out of this or not, And
(12:15):
in fact, doing it allows me to do my job
in a much better spirit, more effectively than when I
was doing it and daydreaming about being something else. So
I could not make it an all or nothing proposition.
I could mitigate certain parts of the risk so that
I didn't have to think about the risk.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, I think that's a really important lesson. Let's take
a quick ad break and then we will come back
to talking about why sometimes to take the biggest risks,
you need to actually not take the risk that other
people talk about. So, Brian, I think that that's an
(13:07):
incredibly important point. I also so did not quit my
day job when I was working on my first book.
I knew that I wanted to write. And you know,
the advice I give to young writers when they ask
me is I'm like, unless like you know that you
can't not do it, don't do it because if you
don't have that fire, it's a shitty way of making
(13:27):
a living. Right you don't have I mean, so you're
in the director's guild, the writer's guild, so you have
health insurance, but you know, if you're just becoming a
freelance writer, no health insurance, no W two like no security.
I have to plan for like a year ahead because
I might have a month where I have an insane
amount of income and then a month where I have
(13:48):
zero income right where I just don't make anything, and
I don't know if I'm going to you know, I can't.
It's to this day, right, I have this kind of
variation in what I earn, and so I have this,
like I have to have this in savings, I have
to have this. I have to have this, like I
need to know that I can pay my mortgage for.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
The next because you're making this big real yes.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Because I'm making this big risk. And when I was
working on my first book, so I went to grad
school for psychology and everyone's like, Oh, that's amazing. You
wanted to be a professor. I was like, no, I
wanted to be a writer. I did that so that
I had the stability and the brain space to be
able to work on my first book. And that's why
I went to grad school.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, it's funny. I don't think about it in the
terms of de risking, but it is. You can take
this giant risk if you can find ways to d
risk along the way to it. But you know, you're
you can be in the Writer's Guild, but to keep
your health insurance, health insurance the whole time, so you can,
I'm saying, I can, I can. I know you're I
could have now. Yeah, you know we sold Rounders in
(14:49):
nineteen ninety seven. Wow, so like so since then, Yeah,
it's amazing, But we managed to stay in the whole
time and to you know, always have it, but you
have you're aware of it. In the years that are bad,
you're really aware of being able to work enough so
that you get credit for that core so that that
(15:10):
goes toward your health and benefits. And then if you're
in it long enough, you have lifetime. But it you know,
takes twenty years.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, And I think that those are all important things
to realize. So you knew that you wanted to be
in a creative field, and a creative field is an
incredibly These aren't the risks that we normally talk about
on this show. But I think it's so important to
realize that you're taking huge risks and the things that
so Rounders you wrote on spec so for people who
(15:39):
don't know what that means, you weren't paid.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Well we had there's a yeah, we weren't. But there's
a great little story that's perfect for this show, which
is because I was in the music business before that.
I knew some people who were attendant to the movie business.
And Dave and I had the idea for rounders, and
he met somebody who we told the idea to a
(16:04):
director producer, and that director producer offered us five thousand dollars,
and Dave was bartending and offered us five thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
I bartended too.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yeah, five thousand dollars if we would write the script
and then he and his partner, the director producer guy.
He and his partner would own half of the script.
So if we then wrote the script and they were
able to sell it, we would split it fifty to fifty.
(16:39):
And there was all this other stuff. Oh no, well,
it was very exciting. You know, someone offered money, and
David had been wanting to do this and he met
this person, and you know, he'd wanted to have a
career at this. I came through it a little later,
but I knew someone who worked. I knew someone who
connected me to a woman named Rachel Harvitz, who was
(17:00):
at Fine line, which is part of a new line.
She's a great Academy Award winning producer now, but at
the time she wasn't. She was an executive at a
company and her brother was in the Beastie Boys, and
her dad he's famous playwright, oh dad, And yeah, but
Rachel's super smart. And I smoke got a meeting with her.
David and I went up and met with her, and
(17:21):
she's like, tell me the situation, but don't tell me
your idea. Just tell me the situation. And we told
her the situation and she said, Okay, well, I can
tell that like the twenty five hundred bucks would be
good for EACHU coppleman. You need it less you have
a job, but I could see that it would be
like a good thing. But I'll tell you this, if
with you all having done nothing and having no track record,
(17:44):
you have a story and an idea that somebody who
also isn't someone who's like filled with money, they're not
a huge person. If they're willing to give you five
thousand dollars, you should risk losing that five thousand dollars
and write that script on spec because if you then
sell it and you guys control it, you'll have a
whole career. And we left her office and just looked
(18:08):
at each other and went, well, that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
That's such great advice. You're you're so you know that
the role of luck is something that I think about
a lot. Of course, that I think is so crucial.
What a lucky kind of moment that that that you
had that connection and that you had that conversation, because
your career would look so different if you had sold
fifty percent from the get go.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Oh for sure, it would have been a different ways.
And now that interestingly, because Dave's instincts are great to
the person David met ended up becoming a very big
person in Hollywood, and we have a great relationship with him.
So Dave did spot up on somebody who was going
to go the distance, but all of our careers would
have been That guy then went and directed a small
(18:51):
movie where the actress in it got nominated for an
oscar and his career was off and running, and we've
often thought about sort of how it all would have gone,
could have gone differently. So there's the luck element, but
also truly it was a risk question. Yeah, it was
like you know, and yeah, I remember was like, well,
you guys could get ten grand, you know if you counter,
(19:12):
but I wouldn't counter. No walk away.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
It's a hard piece of advice to give, by the way,
for sure, a hard piece of advice to give, having
been as you have on any other chair. But we
were so grateful and I never miss an opportunity to
thank Rachel for giving us that advice.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
It is. It is wonderful advice, and I think that
it's advice that everyone can hear at every single stage
of their career because that power to like to realize
that you can walk away, that you actually have the risk,
but you have the downside, but you also have the upside.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Yeah, it's important to say, like both Dave and I
had college paid for and I think that that's a
huge advantage that we had. We and I can never
And that's not sort of like that's something I've thought
about and said for a long time, sort of before
it was in vogue to have to always sort of
explain away these parts, you know, just but it is
(20:08):
just the fact, sure my father was able to pay
for college for me. That gave me, when you talk
about luck, that gave me the ability to make decisions, yeah,
based on a series of things that were quite different
than if I had one hundred thousand dollars worth of
debt that I had to satisfy. I did right, and
(20:29):
that shapes certain decisions, right and absolutely so for me.
That gift, it's a huge gift, is a gigantic advantage.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
You know, we talked about earlier, not on this pod,
but when you and I were just having a conversation.
You had asked me about having gone to Harvard, right,
and whether you thought that it still had some sort
of cachet, some advantage because things are changing so much.
And I thought about that question after you asked me,
and my answer is that it depends on who you are.
(21:00):
For someone like me, yes, it does. Because I wasn't
born here. I'm generation zero, I knew nobody. You know.
I'm an immigrant, like I'm a Russian Jewish immigrant, right,
and having that degree confers a certain kind of it.
Just it gives me a check mark that I wouldn't
otherwise have that gets me through the door. How did
(21:21):
I get into television? My first job in television was
as a producer. Well, I didn't start as a producer.
I became a producer for Charlie Rose, and that was,
you know, that was my kind of before I went
to grad school. And the only reason I was able
to get that job was through the Harvard Network because
there were Harvard people working at Charlie Rose who picked
(21:42):
my resume and got me that interview, and then you know,
I got in the I.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Think it's magic. To me, those are still magic words.
But I'm fifty eight years old, so I know that.
You know, I didn't go to Harvard, but I there
are certain words in our in the world, in our
language that are magic words. Whether they should be or
shouldn't be as a different.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
That's a different question. But your question to me was
are they still And I think for me they were,
and they enabled me. I had I had student loans, right,
I had no money. I grew up poor. Like my
parents had to leave everything behind when they came here,
including their passports. Right we had we got political asylum
when we came to the United States, And like, I
grew up actually poor, and I didn't realize that because
(22:26):
my mom is the most amazing person and like never
made me feel like we were poor, but we were right,
and so I they always supported me and when I
said I want to be a writer, Apparently I told
them I wanted to be a writer when I was five.
I don't remember this, but I wanted to be a
writer my entire life. But when I was in college
and I kind of went back and forth. I went
(22:48):
through recruiting, corporate recruiting, and got jobs as a consultant
and an investment banking because I was so nervous, you know,
to because I didn't know anyone. I hadn't I was
never able to do internships in the summer. I had
to work because I made it to be paid, so
I didn't have those legs up that you know, people
who are able to do you know, Harper's internship and
(23:08):
when you go up.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
When you got to Harvard, because I remember I was
walking one day with my son and like five of
his friends at Harvard, and one of his friends was
the first not only in his family, but in his
entire high school. He was the first person to apply
(23:31):
to one of the four those four schools at Princeton, Stanford, Harvard, MIT.
And he's like, they didn't even know how, he said,
And then a bunch of these young men and women
walked ahead and I was standing back with this other
kid and he was like, I'll never catch up. And
(23:52):
I was like, they're not that far ahead, and he
was like no, no, no, I met geographically like they were
going to the Hong Kong and I was like, no, no,
they're just over there and he's like no, no, no, I mean,
how do I catch up?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (24:01):
And I went did you have that face? He's like
because there he goes. They all have just and they
were of wide, you know, very I mean, my son
was the son of two New York writers and it
was like before the show, like, you know, and some
of the people that he knew there were you know,
multi generational, sure wealth and so it you know, counts
(24:24):
and things like that. But still they all had a language. Yeah,
and this young man didn't have that language. And he
literally said to me like what do I have?
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (24:38):
And this was freshman year and by the end, he
of course had it. But did you feel that at all?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Absolutely? And once again I'm going to say thank you mom,
because I remember my freshman year I took a class
and this was a totally different context, but I think
it gets at the heart of this. I took an
intensive Italian class for Romance language speakers, and I spoke
fluent French, so you needed to speak you know, some
And there was a kid there who spoke Italian because
(25:03):
he had trained at Juilliard. He already had a degree
from Juilliard as an opera singer. But he didn't know
that grammar like he so he was in it. And
you know, it was a tiny class, and you know,
grades matter. I went to Harvard, right, Like, I'm really competitive.
And I was talking to my mom and I'm like,
it's so unfair. You know, I can't like, how do
I you know, there's this kid and like, and she
(25:25):
looked at me and she said, I never want you
to say that sentence again. And she drilled it into
my head. That's saying that's so unfair. That word unfair
should not be in your vocabulary. She's like, life is
fucking unfair. Deal with it. Don't worry about that kid.
You work your ass off, you compete against yourself, you
(25:46):
do what you need to do. Yet it's unfair. Yes,
they have advantages that you don't have. My college roommates,
who are now my best friends, had money, right, I
had no money. I couldn't I couldn't afford like we
would do like they would do during like parent weekend,
like they would go to dinner and they'd invite me
with their parents, and we couldn't go because the restaurants
were too expensive for my family. And I never said
(26:07):
that to them. And if they're listening to this right now,
they're probably going to be horrified because I've never told
this to them. And these are my closest friends in
the world.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
They figured it out by now, probably.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Probably, but we couldn't afford it, Like that's why I
never went to those dinners. And there were so many,
you know, so many things. And then when I wanted
to be a writer, and I admitted to myself that
I wanted to be a writer, because I didn't at first,
and then like I secretly applied to the fiction Summinar
because it was an application process and I didn't want
anyone to ask if I'd gotten in or not. And
(26:39):
then after I got in that I could talk about it.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah, that's such a scary thing, and that's it. So
that's a giant risk. Absolutely one of the things people
don't talk about a lot. And I think this stuff applies,
you know, I mean, I would say, the risk of
coming on this podcast and talking about this kind of
fuzzy stuff versus the sciencey stuff is I know that
some listeners all may be sort of not why they're
(27:01):
interested in this pod, right. Absolutely, I listened to this
podcast because I'm a geek about like learning out behavior
and risk. I love it. Decision making is really like
the such the most important thing, but a big risk.
But it is. But I think this is broadly applicable
because a huge risk to your own self image is
a huge risk. Yes, and we have to be aware
(27:23):
and so often well we will not tell ourselves that,
but we won't take the risk, so we will downplay it.
It's like I was talking to a group of salespeople.
I was speaking at some company, you know, a big company,
to a group of salespeople, and I say, like, is
this true? I have a feeling this might be true
(27:45):
because I can relate it to my own world and
a job I really want it. I said, is it
if you have a really like the day to day
if you're a top worker, if you're if you're you know,
the top of your field, the day to day meetings
you can sell you know, one hundred units of something
to somebody. It's it's very easy to do thorough, incredibly
deep preparation, but when you have a giant opportunity to
(28:11):
present to something where you could sell ten thousand units,
it's harder to not procrastinate. It's because if you put
everything you have into it and it doesn't work, you
are crushed. And all these people agree that it's the
bigger the opportunity, the harder it is to actually put
(28:34):
the work in ahead of time, even though the reward
is the greatest. But there's this feeling about that, and
so we have to recognize. I think this is one
of the things about behavioral economics in general decision making.
Seth Godin talks about the choice and a decision, and
like most things are choices, but anything that you recognize
(28:54):
as a decision is worth taking some kind of inventory
to figure out what is what you're adding up that
you're not realizing you're adding up in the process of
making that decision. Figure it out. You're stacking a bunch
of stuff on the table and it's a seesaw, but
you know you might not be able to see out
(29:15):
of your peripheral vision, but turn your head and actually
look at what's on the both ends of the both
ends of the seesaw, and no, it's hard to do this.
That's why journal. Like one of the things about morning
Pages is if you do morning Pages enough, you find
out what you really want. You find out what really
matters to you. Same with meditation and the reason. So
(29:35):
some of this stuff sounds like anti scientific, but it's not.
All these things become to me their data generating things.
They help you figure out, kind of like where you
are on the hand, if I can return it to poker.
And you know when you asked me about poker. At
(29:56):
the very beginning, I lost a bad I lost my
whole canteen worth of money when I was in fourth
grade and Sleepway camp the first time I learned to
play poker. My dad had a carouselo chips at home,
but he didn't teach me to play. And we played
at camp and I lost everything. I had, like thirty
bucks to get me through the whole summer, and I
lost all thirty dollars and it I was like, I
(30:20):
want to learn that game. I want to understand that game.
And it was slow coming. Like that experience happened a
couple of times because you know, you can learn the game,
but then you still have to But at a certain point,
I just became really, really fascinated by all the different
(30:41):
things you had to be able to stay aware of
in order to become decent at poker. And it was
fascinating to me, and it was a way gambling is
not great for me into any other kind of gambling.
Poker I've always been able to keep as a separate thing,
and it just brought me a tremendous amount of joy
(31:03):
to think through those problems to be most most things
in life, it's don't allow you to get to that
place where you're hyper present. And yeah, if you know
how to think about poker, I'm not great poker player,
but if you know how to think about poker, you
have the ability to be hyper president at the poker table.
(31:24):
And that's a gift.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Absolutely No people laugh at me when I say that.
I became much more zen when I started playing poker
because it just it put me in that state. We'll
be back in a minute. So now, if you extrapolate
(31:56):
from that, you you know, you took a huge risk
gun rounders, and we talked about that and it kind
of led to this whole career. But as you and
I have also talked about it, it's not like your
career has been like easy going and like oh like
after rounders, everything's great, we can sell everything, everything works.
I have money, pilon in you know, live in the
(32:18):
high life. Right That's that's not how it works. And
so I'm very curious to know whether there's a point
in time where kind of you took And right now
I think nobody can dispute that you're incredibly successful.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
So I think you're welcome. But it's very well deserved
and very well earned through a lot of hard work.
So it's not like you went you know, from zero
to I think that, but right now I think that
that's kind of that's that's what.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
You don't No, I'm listening well lifef like I mean, well, honestly,
if life tg anything, the moment you kind of think
you're safe, you're not safe. Of course, I never am
able to quite say yes, because at the moment I'm
not worried about you know, like, getting to pay off
your mortgage is a really big deal. I was able
(33:07):
to pay off my mortgage.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Congratulations.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
No, that's a giant thing in life. Yeah, because they
can you know you, yeah, probably can't take it away
from you anymore. But right before the show Billions, I mean,
I thought we were gonna have to downsize and sell
our apartment, and I wasn't sure if I was gonna
be able to pay our mortgage. So you know, you
never you just never know.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
It's I think that's really important, And that's a point
that I always make, like, was that a moment where
you actually had to kind of think about risk differently?
Think about kind of what tell me about that and
about that decision making process, and kind of where where
you were before before you sold the show, and kind
of how you thought about it, how you broke it down.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
We had had giant failures. We had written a movie
that bombed, and we were supposed to make a television show,
and through a series of things, we before we even started,
we got fired and an agent called us and said,
I just want you to know you're unhireable. And I
(34:08):
was like, did you have to make that phone call?
We realized it by the no phone call when you called,
I thought maybe I was going to get hired, you know,
And just I remember this phone call from this agent,
and it was in Central Park in the winter, and
I was sitting on a bench in Central Park when
I got the call and it was snowy and gross,
and I just remember it was such a good punch.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
And this is a bad scene.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
It was terrible.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Yeah, unbelievable, too many, too many negative.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Things, that's terrible, true. And I remember exactly where I was.
But here's the thing. I would walk across the park
every day. We lived on the west side. My office
was at the top of this bridge club with like
the top floor of a bridge club on the upper side.
David and I and so yeah that at this like
(34:53):
little tiny elevator mostly walked upstairs. The final thing was
up that stairs. But it was great, loved it, loved
this weird thing. But every day would walk to the
park and h But we were off it was Christmas,
but we had started this script, and I just remember
thinking as soon as we started writing it, because it
was really the lowest point of my professional life, and
(35:13):
I really did start thinking about what else how to
keep this thing going. But then as soon as we
started writing the script, I started just feeling better. I
started being able to walk quicker instead of like just
slugging it out walking through the park, you know, in
the snow, I was able to kind of like march
through the park, and Dave was way on vacation, and
I would go through Central Park and go to our
(35:35):
office and I would work on the script and I
would send him whatever pages I did, and then he
would work on it when he got back to his
like wherever he was, and send me stuff. By the morning,
I would have stuff from him. And I remember just
working on it over this period of time and knowing, Okay,
I think this might be the thing. And to talk
(35:56):
about risks so in what you're supposed to do in
the TV business. And even though we were unhirable according
to the film agents, we did have a couple people
in TV at television companies who would have heard a
pitch from us and paid us some fee to write
(36:21):
a script if they were interested in it. And our
agent said, if you are working on something and you
want us to get you in those rooms, even though
you're cold, you know, the traditional thing is go pitch it.
If nobody wants to pitch, they're not going to want
the project, and you're going to save yourself time. Otherwise
you're going to spend four or five months writing this
script on spec, and the great likelihood is nobody is
(36:43):
going to want it, and you will have wasted the
time and the opportunity costs to find a way to
be in business with these people, and they will. You
will make some money over this time and now you'll
make no money over this time period. But what David
and I realized was if we wrote the script, and
we wrote the first episode with andrewros Orkintwo was three
of us. But Andrew was willing to go along with
(37:04):
this idea, which was, well, write it on spec. Yes,
it's possible. In fact, it's likely that nobody will want it.
But the only way a writer in Hollywood can grab
any power and control their future in any way is
to have a piece of material that the business wants,
(37:27):
because then you can set terms instead of having to
de facto take their terms. And so we decided we're
going to write it on spec so that we can
create an inflection point. If somebody wants it, we can say, well,
then you have to set a start date that you're
going to make the show, that you have to be
willing to give us the script back by this date.
If you won't, we could gain momentum and kind of
(37:50):
flip the paradigm, and we decided that that was a
risk worth taking because of the asymmetrical upside, and so
we did that and luckily, this wherelock comes in, like
we had something that had the thing in it that
made it the right thing at that time, so that
all just added up in the right way, so that
(38:13):
somebody did want it badly enough that we could set
a situation up where we could put ourselves in a
position to really succeed with it.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
That's amazing And in some ways I love the symmetry
right where the beginning of your career and this particular
point which has brought you to where you are today,
there are some symmetries despite the fact that you're now
you know, older, wiser, more mature, etc. But that thinking
and that risk calculus, it has served you well.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
It's also about telling the truth to yourself. So like, yes,
the agent said that to us undeniably, even though it
sounds apocryphal, but it's true. I mean, I've all the
email backup. But also at other times in one's life
you could ignore it we had made because you look
at me kind of incredulously, but we yes, I was
incredulous about the fact that you mean this twenty year
(39:05):
career of constantly making stuff that people want to make
and see, like, you know, we had done all sorts
of written Ocean's thirteen by them, it didn't matter. The
business doesn't care. And it's a great thing to know
that the business doesn't care. And so you have to
make the business care. You have to create something undeniable,
and you have to create a piece of work that
(39:27):
is undeniable. Like your mother said, it's unfair. It's okay,
it doesn't mean yet that's the state of play, is
that it's unfair.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yeah, I know. It's the same thing in you know,
the written realm, even though it's much more fair I
think the than Hollywood. And we'll talk about this in
a second, but you're only as good as your last
book in terms of the advance you can get and
like how people will listen to you. And I always
know this when I'm working on my next book, I'm like, shit,
if this book bombs, then I'm not going to be
(39:58):
able to sell the next one. It doesn't matter that
I've had three New York Times bestsellers. If the fourth
one is a bomb, you know, like.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
I have a question that I haven't heard Nate ask
you yet, or haven't heard somebody ask you and if
they have, So you were in one of the best
positions a human who wants to be a writer can
be in, which is you were at the New Yorker.
That's not something anybody ever kind of like cast aside
in any way, meaning if you can say to somebody,
(40:26):
I'm on staff writer at the New York No, no, no,
the access that that gives you and the sense of
security of like Harvard, I'm at the New York I lost.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
My New Yorker email last year, Brian, I had a
Maria Kondacove at New Yorker dot com email address that
I no longer have and I wasn't even warned that
they were going to take it away all of a sudden,
I couldn't log into it. Really, yes, really, but I
haven't written for them for years, so, like, I totally
understand it.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Were you worried about that?
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Though? No, no, it was No.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
I don't mean about losing the email address. I mean
were you worried about kind.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Of like sure, I went on book leave because in
order to write the biggest bluff my last book. I
had to immerse myself in that world one hundred percent.
There was no other way it was going to work.
I could just you know, stay at the New Yar,
like do my weekly thing that I was doing, plus
you know, learn poker and be able to do this,
you know, understand this world. And so I kind of
I made that calculated choice. And then you know, one
(41:23):
thing led to another and I realized, you know, there
are other things I want to be doing, and what
am I happiest doing? That was also a question I
asked myself, right, and I realized that longer for me
is happier. So I'm happiest when I get to immerse
myself in a book where I get to be in
that world for a long time.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
You know what, something we didn't talk about because what
you know, so I have to vote a lot of
time the last five years to songwriting, and I h
it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
I follow you on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Yeah, once in a while I'll say something, but like
I don't know, like sort of how that I At
a certain point I started writing songs. I wanted other
people to hear them, and I made a decision like
I don't five years ago I was like, I'm gonna
write with people, and I love like Guy Clark in
Town Van Zanne. I love country music broadly. I'll say
(42:15):
folk music songs that have stories in them that that's
the kind of consonance with what I normally do. I
come from a musical background, you know. My first career
was as an an R person producer, record producer. I've
always been around it, but a number of years ago
I started really taking it seriously and I decided I'm
going to devote time, like I'm going to devote a
(42:36):
day a week at least to working on songwriting, making
relationships with people in that business, going to Nashville, trying
to write songs with people down there with an eye
toward getting some artists to sing those songs. That's like
(42:57):
really intense use of time and also at up time,
and and like the constant risk of humiliation of rejection.
You know, it's like if you want to do anything,
that's like you're just going to deal with rejection. And
even though one gets much better at understanding rejection for
(43:19):
what it is, it's a complete lie to say like
rejection doesn't sting. It's the only difference is it stings
as opposed to it, like, you know, knocking you out,
but a jab still hurts.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
It's no longer a right cross or an upper cut,
but a jab is still like, oh, that was not fun.
I didn't want to get hit in the face. But like,
I just and I've thought about it a lot, like
what why? What made me keep me going? Because I
had off the bat. A couple of people were like, oh,
well that's a good song like come, but I had
I could stack up the rejections and it just this year, finally,
(43:54):
now there's an album coming out A really big country
artist named Jackson Deine caught a song that co wrote
and that I co wrote. And I've had a bunch
of songs get cut by people, but this is the first,
like and people artists who meant a lot to me,
where it was like a really big deal to me,
But this is like a song getting cut by somebody
who's a really big deal and they just you know,
(44:15):
he just put out the track listing and I know
that this songs on the record. We wrote it together
and congratulations, thanks, But it was I cannot tell you
the amount of time, just hours, days, energy, focus, heart
and all mostly where the writing of the songs feels
(44:38):
really great, but the rest of it felt really bad.
But I've just learned to chase This is to the
point of like the curiosity something about something about the
form of that particular kind of songwriting is hard in
a way that's like poker. That's that draws me to
(44:59):
wanting to solve it. It's not really solvable, but it's
an artist the same kind of artistic spark that happens
when I want to and this dialogue. It's the same
sort of idea of writing, but the form is strict
and you have to find a way to satisfy a
bunch of different things. And it drew me to even
though there wasn't gonna be really money in it. There
(45:23):
was just going to be a time suck and I
will pay. And people in my life really supported it
and wanted me to do it as as now it's
gonna and I know it'll look Whenever we all look
at someone doing something where it's like, oh, that person,
how did they go from that? It always looks in
(45:44):
the outside like God, they that person must be that
must be like a lot of talent, or that must
be like that's an amazing connection. Or that must and
almost always it's just like they were willing to risk
failure and they were willing to try really really really hard,
and they're ring the most out of like a talent
(46:06):
that might not actually be greater than someone else is.
It's just like the willingness to look ridiculous and the
willingness to fall on your face and the willingness to
feel bad because you're called to do it, and you
stack those things. You're aware of it, especially as you
get older. I was aware of it, and I am
(46:29):
aware of it, and it's just like a problem that
I'm drawn to. And that's the hallmark for all the things.
And that goes back to the thing I started with
about self knowledge. It's like the greater risk for me
is not doing those things because I'll feel bad and
I won't I won't feel like I could answer the questions.
(46:50):
You have a good day, honestly because I didn't chase
those I didn't listen to that spark. But I have
to listen to it. I have. That's why I do
morning pages, meditate because that stuff surfaces. You want to
write songs, Go do it, take the risk. What's the
worst that happens? Is you hear know a lot? Okay,
you'll hear no and you'll try again.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Yeah. Well I have many more questions, but I think
that that is just such a beautiful place to end,
so I could. I couldn't have thought of a better
way to put it. Thank you so much for coming on, Brian.
It's been such a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Maria, It's my pleasure.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannakova and me
Mate Silver. The show is a co production of Pushkin
Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter.
Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer
is Jacob Goldstein. And if you want to listen to
an AD free version, sign up for Pushkin Plus.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
For six seventy nine a month.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
You get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning
in only f
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business show about making better decisions.
I'm Maria Kanikova. Nate Silver is not with us today,
he is on a book tour, but we have an
amazing guest instead, one of my dear friends, Brian Koppleman,
(00:39):
who is everything I mean. He is a writer, he
is a director, he's a producer, he is a musician,
he is an actor. He is a kindred spirit and
someone who thinks about risk in a lot of the
same ways that I do. Because he also plays poker.
I don't know how you know him. I originally knew
(01:00):
who he was, as many of you probably do through Rounders,
people who come to Brian more recently, probably no billions
before Rounders, so many other things. That's just like the
tip of an absolutely massive iceberg that we'll be talking
about today. Brian, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
My absolute pleasure. And I think people now might know
me from The Bear.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Ah yes, and people might know you as the computer
on the third season of The Bear. I just want
to point out that you have a bicycle helmet on
the table, So did you ride your bike here? Since
we're talking about risky decision making, we're in New York
by the way, we're in Manhattan.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, we're in Manhattan. I made a decision a while ago.
You know how you can come home and you're either
whether you have somebody who you live with, or you
talk to a lot of family member friend and they
ask you if you had a good day. I decided
a while ago that I wanted to be able to
like understand what that meant for myself, not just leave
(02:07):
that up to sort of an emotional thing or something
that would happen in the middle of my day. So
I decided, you know, if I do certain thing, if
I journal, if I meditate, if I exercise, and I
spend time with people that I love, I've had a
good day because I've written something, I've moved my body,
(02:29):
I've hugged somebody like those things. Well, but I don't know.
Six months ago, some months ago, I decided, anytime I
don't have to be on public transportation or in a
cab or an uber in New York City, it's a
great New York City day. And because it adds to
all these other things, so and in looking at all,
(02:49):
honestly looking at various risks, the rewards of riding a
bike all the time and walking are really great. There's
but there is this risk inherent in riding a bicycle
in New York City. But you can really mitigate the
worst of it. You can't eliminate it. You can mitigate
the worst of it by wearing a helmet. Downside is
(03:10):
you got to walk around looking like a goofball and
it's really confusing, like what to do with the helmet
sometimes and sometimes I put the helmet on and like
there's not you know, socially, it's not great, especially if
you like the older guy in the office complex or
whatever and you get off the elevator still wearing your
bike helmet. You know you are the fool for the day.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
You're someone who's from a creative industry, right, Like you
don't come from the statistical background, and yet your way
of thinking aut the world. You're someone who Your poker
game was the first poker game I ever saw in
my life because Rounders was the only time I had
ever seen poker played because I wasn't into poker. You
(03:53):
were into poker, right. The reason Rounders to this day
is like the Poker movie is because you're actually a player.
You love the game. You understand the game, you went
to the clubs, you did the leg work, you did
the research. But I think that the way that you
think about the world actually does mirror that.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
So I just want to say, my creative and business
partner and lifelong best friend, David Livina, and I did that.
It's not just me. I just important for me to say, Well,
it's right, but it's true.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
It's very important for you to say. And actually I
would love to ask a question about that that was
a risk at the beginning of your career, to say,
I'm not going to do this by myself. I'm going
to have a partner, because if you think about it,
like creative partnerships are fraught, and you and David have
been partners for how many years now.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I mean yeah, professionally almost thirty years, and but best
friends since we were kids, and I think you look
back on it and yet if someone knew they were
going to be able to really have this career at
that time, though, you're not really thinking about downside risk
other than to your friendship because your best friend like
your brother, and so you're thinking about that. So you
(05:00):
have to make you just sort of talk through a
process but also we wrote that script together, and I think,
you know, each of us just decide to go into
it really open minded and open hearted, and it was like,
let's let's write this thing together. And then as we
did that, and as we felt like this creative partnership
(05:24):
was what we'd hoped it would be, we were bringing
out kind of the best of each other, it just
made sense to roll in and continue. We've never had
a signed piece of paper.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
I was I was just about to ask that.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
And you know, people will say you have to. We've
signed many agreements together with other parties, meaning if a
studio or network wants to engage us, we both have
to sign that document, and we've signed leases, toget, We've
signed many many things together. But David and I have
never had more than a handshake and a hug agreement
(05:59):
with each other.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
So you've never actually talked about and said this is
going to be a fifty to fifty partnership.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
And yet well we've said those words to each other,
everything's fifty to fifty.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Of course, we've never written it down, never.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Written it down. In fact, I think those conversations we
didn't even email that to each other. I mean that
was just like, we're fifty to fifty and everything, and
they would it was.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
My mind is breaking right now, by the way, at
that level of trust. Right, you know the types of
topics that I write about, right, Yeah, you know. I've
written about con artists. My next book is about cheating,
and I have just come across so many instances where
that just sours. And you've been doing this for thirty
five years, You've never had a written piece of paper.
(06:41):
You took that risk, and yet here you are. You're
just such a beautiful testament to like the fact that
not everyone sucks and that there's actually there are humans
that you can take this risk with. But there's part
of my mind. The reason I said my brain is
breaking is because I would think that someone like you,
who I respect so much and you're so smart, and
you're so smart about these risks, I would think that
(07:02):
you would say, you know, just in case, let's just
sign this little piece of paper.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I understand that way of thinking, and I would advise
I might advise somebody, but I think if you can
try to silence the voices that aren't your own inside you, right,
if you can try and actually listen to the truth,
(07:27):
you kind of do know, like your body kind of knows.
Not in a woo woo way, I mean your instinct
knows because of your brain sending these signals. And if
I think about what the battle in life is, it's
to become comfortable in your own skin. Because when you
(07:48):
are able to have these moments of them and they're fleeting,
and then maybe as you live a little bit and
you work on it, they can last longer. But if
you can get to a place where you have moments
of actual calm, moments where you can actually listen to
the best part of yourself, most alive part of yourself,
(08:09):
you know when you need a piece of paper and
when you don't. And especially for someone who studied consure,
so now, well, I don't want to This is a
proby Privo caster because I don't want to. I don't
want to become willis shown in The Princess Bride and
use search a logic. But it is true that if
you know about cons it's easier to con you on
(08:30):
a surface first level, meaning if you're someone who thinks, oh,
I know what the wise guys do, then it's very
easy for a wives guy to use that and play
you sure, but I'm not talking about that kind of situation.
But basically, I think David and I knew enough about
each other to trust each other. And it wasn't a
thin knowledge, it wasn't a quick knowledge. It was we
(08:54):
had been through enough things and been there enough for
one another and knew that that was the primacy, was
to do right by the other person. Our wives were
incredibly supportive, and nobody ever would have thought about those
risks other than, like I say, to the friendship, but
writing rounders are such joy. And then the way that
(09:17):
it all came together, that we just knew we were
off and running it, and it was actually David who
had the inflection point. We finished the script and he
sent it to a young manager in LA and the
manager said, I know you wrote this with a partner.
I can spin it one of two ways, and Dave said, no,
(09:37):
I spin it like I wrote it with my partner
and we wrote it together, not like that guy. I
know about poker, And what I see is like this
is we did this together, and I wanted to reflect.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
That, Yeah, and that's amazing, and that actually, I think
is a really important reminder for listeners of our podcast.
Because we always talk about the herd statistics and kind
of those types of things, and so it is a
good reminder that the human element is very much a
part of it, you know, And that's I mean, I'm
a psychologist, Nate's the numbers guy, so to me like that,
(10:10):
that is an important thing to have in the back
of your mind because it's so easy to get lost
in the numbers, in the statistics, and it's it's really
good to have that sort of a reminder.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
You can't be in the art. So but if you're
in the arts, So what you said is true.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
You went into the arts.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yes, what you said is true that on the one hand,
you know me as your friend. You understand that I've
made a study of strategic thinking, that I can read people,
I can read situations. But when you make a decision
that you won't be happy unless you're in the arts,
(10:48):
and for me, it was you know, I knew if
I at a certain point in my life, like if
I didn't try, I wouldn't be a good father or husband.
And because I knew that I would have turned bitter,
and that if I turn bitter, you know, I knew
if I let the kind of a creative block happen,
it would be like a creative death, and like any
other death, the toxicity would lose onto those I love.
(11:09):
Then I just didn't want that. So I think there
are times where you have to turn off rationality and
reason in a way that you can make function for
your life. So you know, so as I hear people
like Scott Galloway, who's a smart guy but with say
it's not about what you want to do. You got
to pick something you're good at, and well, I disagree.
(11:34):
I think figuring out what brings you joy, Like guess
this thing I said about where you're working from the
most alive part of yourself is valuable. But like, I
didn't quit my job to write the first script. Somehow
I was, I think lucky enough to figure out, well,
if I just take two hours a day and really
(11:55):
give it everything I have for those two hours a day,
I don't have to put all the pressure on myself
that I've quit my job or that I've put my
family in jeopardy. I can just work. And I knew then, Okay,
I feel really alive doing that. I'm going to keep
doing this whether this thing sells or not, whether we
can make a career out of this or not, And
(12:15):
in fact, doing it allows me to do my job
in a much better spirit, more effectively than when I
was doing it and daydreaming about being something else. So
I could not make it an all or nothing proposition.
I could mitigate certain parts of the risk so that
I didn't have to think about the risk.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, I think that's a really important lesson. Let's take
a quick ad break and then we will come back
to talking about why sometimes to take the biggest risks,
you need to actually not take the risk that other
people talk about. So, Brian, I think that that's an
(13:07):
incredibly important point. I also so did not quit my
day job when I was working on my first book.
I knew that I wanted to write. And you know,
the advice I give to young writers when they ask
me is I'm like, unless like you know that you
can't not do it, don't do it because if you
don't have that fire, it's a shitty way of making
(13:27):
a living. Right you don't have I mean, so you're
in the director's guild, the writer's guild, so you have
health insurance, but you know, if you're just becoming a
freelance writer, no health insurance, no W two like no security.
I have to plan for like a year ahead because
I might have a month where I have an insane
amount of income and then a month where I have
(13:48):
zero income right where I just don't make anything, and
I don't know if I'm going to you know, I can't.
It's to this day, right, I have this kind of
variation in what I earn, and so I have this,
like I have to have this in savings, I have
to have this. I have to have this, like I
need to know that I can pay my mortgage for.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
The next because you're making this big real yes.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Because I'm making this big risk. And when I was
working on my first book, so I went to grad
school for psychology and everyone's like, Oh, that's amazing. You
wanted to be a professor. I was like, no, I
wanted to be a writer. I did that so that
I had the stability and the brain space to be
able to work on my first book. And that's why
I went to grad school.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, it's funny. I don't think about it in the
terms of de risking, but it is. You can take
this giant risk if you can find ways to d
risk along the way to it. But you know, you're
you can be in the Writer's Guild, but to keep
your health insurance, health insurance the whole time, so you can,
I'm saying, I can, I can. I know you're I
could have now. Yeah, you know we sold Rounders in
(14:49):
nineteen ninety seven. Wow, so like so since then, Yeah,
it's amazing, But we managed to stay in the whole
time and to you know, always have it, but you
have you're aware of it. In the years that are bad,
you're really aware of being able to work enough so
that you get credit for that core so that that
(15:10):
goes toward your health and benefits. And then if you're
in it long enough, you have lifetime. But it you know,
takes twenty years.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, And I think that those are all important things
to realize. So you knew that you wanted to be
in a creative field, and a creative field is an
incredibly These aren't the risks that we normally talk about
on this show. But I think it's so important to
realize that you're taking huge risks and the things that
so Rounders you wrote on spec so for people who
(15:39):
don't know what that means, you weren't paid.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Well we had there's a yeah, we weren't. But there's
a great little story that's perfect for this show, which
is because I was in the music business before that.
I knew some people who were attendant to the movie business.
And Dave and I had the idea for rounders, and
he met somebody who we told the idea to a
(16:04):
director producer, and that director producer offered us five thousand dollars,
and Dave was bartending and offered us five thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
I bartended too.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yeah, five thousand dollars if we would write the script
and then he and his partner, the director producer guy.
He and his partner would own half of the script.
So if we then wrote the script and they were
able to sell it, we would split it fifty to fifty.
(16:39):
And there was all this other stuff. Oh no, well,
it was very exciting. You know, someone offered money, and
David had been wanting to do this and he met
this person, and you know, he'd wanted to have a
career at this. I came through it a little later,
but I knew someone who worked. I knew someone who
connected me to a woman named Rachel Harvitz, who was
(17:00):
at Fine line, which is part of a new line.
She's a great Academy Award winning producer now, but at
the time she wasn't. She was an executive at a
company and her brother was in the Beastie Boys, and
her dad he's famous playwright, oh dad, And yeah, but
Rachel's super smart. And I smoke got a meeting with her.
David and I went up and met with her, and
(17:21):
she's like, tell me the situation, but don't tell me
your idea. Just tell me the situation. And we told
her the situation and she said, Okay, well, I can
tell that like the twenty five hundred bucks would be
good for EACHU coppleman. You need it less you have
a job, but I could see that it would be
like a good thing. But I'll tell you this, if
with you all having done nothing and having no track record,
(17:44):
you have a story and an idea that somebody who
also isn't someone who's like filled with money, they're not
a huge person. If they're willing to give you five
thousand dollars, you should risk losing that five thousand dollars
and write that script on spec because if you then
sell it and you guys control it, you'll have a
whole career. And we left her office and just looked
(18:08):
at each other and went, well, that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
That's such great advice. You're you're so you know that
the role of luck is something that I think about
a lot. Of course, that I think is so crucial.
What a lucky kind of moment that that that you
had that connection and that you had that conversation, because
your career would look so different if you had sold
fifty percent from the get go.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Oh for sure, it would have been a different ways.
And now that interestingly, because Dave's instincts are great to
the person David met ended up becoming a very big
person in Hollywood, and we have a great relationship with him.
So Dave did spot up on somebody who was going
to go the distance, but all of our careers would
have been That guy then went and directed a small
(18:51):
movie where the actress in it got nominated for an
oscar and his career was off and running, and we've
often thought about sort of how it all would have gone,
could have gone differently. So there's the luck element, but
also truly it was a risk question. Yeah, it was
like you know, and yeah, I remember was like, well,
you guys could get ten grand, you know if you counter,
(19:12):
but I wouldn't counter. No walk away.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
It's a hard piece of advice to give, by the way,
for sure, a hard piece of advice to give, having
been as you have on any other chair. But we
were so grateful and I never miss an opportunity to
thank Rachel for giving us that advice.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
It is. It is wonderful advice, and I think that
it's advice that everyone can hear at every single stage
of their career because that power to like to realize
that you can walk away, that you actually have the risk,
but you have the downside, but you also have the upside.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Yeah, it's important to say, like both Dave and I
had college paid for and I think that that's a
huge advantage that we had. We and I can never
And that's not sort of like that's something I've thought
about and said for a long time, sort of before
it was in vogue to have to always sort of
explain away these parts, you know, just but it is
(20:08):
just the fact, sure my father was able to pay
for college for me. That gave me, when you talk
about luck, that gave me the ability to make decisions, yeah,
based on a series of things that were quite different
than if I had one hundred thousand dollars worth of
debt that I had to satisfy. I did right, and
(20:29):
that shapes certain decisions, right and absolutely so for me.
That gift, it's a huge gift, is a gigantic advantage.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
You know, we talked about earlier, not on this pod,
but when you and I were just having a conversation.
You had asked me about having gone to Harvard, right,
and whether you thought that it still had some sort
of cachet, some advantage because things are changing so much.
And I thought about that question after you asked me,
and my answer is that it depends on who you are.
(21:00):
For someone like me, yes, it does. Because I wasn't
born here. I'm generation zero, I knew nobody. You know.
I'm an immigrant, like I'm a Russian Jewish immigrant, right,
and having that degree confers a certain kind of it.
Just it gives me a check mark that I wouldn't
otherwise have that gets me through the door. How did
(21:21):
I get into television? My first job in television was
as a producer. Well, I didn't start as a producer.
I became a producer for Charlie Rose, and that was,
you know, that was my kind of before I went
to grad school. And the only reason I was able
to get that job was through the Harvard Network because
there were Harvard people working at Charlie Rose who picked
(21:42):
my resume and got me that interview, and then you know,
I got in the I.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Think it's magic. To me, those are still magic words.
But I'm fifty eight years old, so I know that.
You know, I didn't go to Harvard, but I there
are certain words in our in the world, in our
language that are magic words. Whether they should be or
shouldn't be as a different.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
That's a different question. But your question to me was
are they still And I think for me they were,
and they enabled me. I had I had student loans, right,
I had no money. I grew up poor. Like my
parents had to leave everything behind when they came here,
including their passports. Right we had we got political asylum
when we came to the United States, And like, I
grew up actually poor, and I didn't realize that because
(22:26):
my mom is the most amazing person and like never
made me feel like we were poor, but we were right,
and so I they always supported me and when I
said I want to be a writer, Apparently I told
them I wanted to be a writer when I was five.
I don't remember this, but I wanted to be a
writer my entire life. But when I was in college
and I kind of went back and forth. I went
(22:48):
through recruiting, corporate recruiting, and got jobs as a consultant
and an investment banking because I was so nervous, you know,
to because I didn't know anyone. I hadn't I was
never able to do internships in the summer. I had
to work because I made it to be paid, so
I didn't have those legs up that you know, people
who are able to do you know, Harper's internship and
(23:08):
when you go up.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
When you got to Harvard, because I remember I was
walking one day with my son and like five of
his friends at Harvard, and one of his friends was
the first not only in his family, but in his
entire high school. He was the first person to apply
(23:31):
to one of the four those four schools at Princeton, Stanford, Harvard, MIT.
And he's like, they didn't even know how, he said,
And then a bunch of these young men and women
walked ahead and I was standing back with this other
kid and he was like, I'll never catch up. And
(23:52):
I was like, they're not that far ahead, and he
was like no, no, no, I met geographically like they were
going to the Hong Kong and I was like, no, no,
they're just over there and he's like no, no, no, I mean,
how do I catch up?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (24:01):
And I went did you have that face? He's like
because there he goes. They all have just and they
were of wide, you know, very I mean, my son
was the son of two New York writers and it
was like before the show, like, you know, and some
of the people that he knew there were you know,
multi generational, sure wealth and so it you know, counts
(24:24):
and things like that. But still they all had a language. Yeah,
and this young man didn't have that language. And he
literally said to me like what do I have?
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (24:38):
And this was freshman year and by the end, he
of course had it. But did you feel that at all?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Absolutely? And once again I'm going to say thank you mom,
because I remember my freshman year I took a class
and this was a totally different context, but I think
it gets at the heart of this. I took an
intensive Italian class for Romance language speakers, and I spoke
fluent French, so you needed to speak you know, some
And there was a kid there who spoke Italian because
(25:03):
he had trained at Juilliard. He already had a degree
from Juilliard as an opera singer. But he didn't know
that grammar like he so he was in it. And
you know, it was a tiny class, and you know,
grades matter. I went to Harvard, right, Like, I'm really competitive.
And I was talking to my mom and I'm like,
it's so unfair. You know, I can't like, how do
I you know, there's this kid and like, and she
(25:25):
looked at me and she said, I never want you
to say that sentence again. And she drilled it into
my head. That's saying that's so unfair. That word unfair
should not be in your vocabulary. She's like, life is
fucking unfair. Deal with it. Don't worry about that kid.
You work your ass off, you compete against yourself, you
(25:46):
do what you need to do. Yet it's unfair. Yes,
they have advantages that you don't have. My college roommates,
who are now my best friends, had money, right, I
had no money. I couldn't I couldn't afford like we
would do like they would do during like parent weekend,
like they would go to dinner and they'd invite me
with their parents, and we couldn't go because the restaurants
were too expensive for my family. And I never said
(26:07):
that to them. And if they're listening to this right now,
they're probably going to be horrified because I've never told
this to them. And these are my closest friends in
the world.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
They figured it out by now, probably.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Probably, but we couldn't afford it, Like that's why I
never went to those dinners. And there were so many,
you know, so many things. And then when I wanted
to be a writer, and I admitted to myself that
I wanted to be a writer, because I didn't at first,
and then like I secretly applied to the fiction Summinar
because it was an application process and I didn't want
anyone to ask if I'd gotten in or not. And
(26:39):
then after I got in that I could talk about it.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Yeah, that's such a scary thing, and that's it. So
that's a giant risk. Absolutely one of the things people
don't talk about a lot. And I think this stuff applies,
you know, I mean, I would say, the risk of
coming on this podcast and talking about this kind of
fuzzy stuff versus the sciencey stuff is I know that
some listeners all may be sort of not why they're
(27:01):
interested in this pod, right. Absolutely, I listened to this
podcast because I'm a geek about like learning out behavior
and risk. I love it. Decision making is really like
the such the most important thing, but a big risk.
But it is. But I think this is broadly applicable
because a huge risk to your own self image is
a huge risk. Yes, and we have to be aware
(27:23):
and so often well we will not tell ourselves that,
but we won't take the risk, so we will downplay it.
It's like I was talking to a group of salespeople.
I was speaking at some company, you know, a big company,
to a group of salespeople, and I say, like, is
this true? I have a feeling this might be true
(27:45):
because I can relate it to my own world and
a job I really want it. I said, is it
if you have a really like the day to day
if you're a top worker, if you're if you're you know,
the top of your field, the day to day meetings
you can sell you know, one hundred units of something
to somebody. It's it's very easy to do thorough, incredibly
deep preparation, but when you have a giant opportunity to
(28:11):
present to something where you could sell ten thousand units,
it's harder to not procrastinate. It's because if you put
everything you have into it and it doesn't work, you
are crushed. And all these people agree that it's the
bigger the opportunity, the harder it is to actually put
(28:34):
the work in ahead of time, even though the reward
is the greatest. But there's this feeling about that, and
so we have to recognize. I think this is one
of the things about behavioral economics in general decision making.
Seth Godin talks about the choice and a decision, and
like most things are choices, but anything that you recognize
(28:54):
as a decision is worth taking some kind of inventory
to figure out what is what you're adding up that
you're not realizing you're adding up in the process of
making that decision. Figure it out. You're stacking a bunch
of stuff on the table and it's a seesaw, but
you know you might not be able to see out
(29:15):
of your peripheral vision, but turn your head and actually
look at what's on the both ends of the both
ends of the seesaw, and no, it's hard to do this.
That's why journal. Like one of the things about morning
Pages is if you do morning Pages enough, you find
out what you really want. You find out what really
matters to you. Same with meditation and the reason. So
(29:35):
some of this stuff sounds like anti scientific, but it's not.
All these things become to me their data generating things.
They help you figure out, kind of like where you
are on the hand, if I can return it to poker.
And you know when you asked me about poker. At
(29:56):
the very beginning, I lost a bad I lost my
whole canteen worth of money when I was in fourth
grade and Sleepway camp the first time I learned to
play poker. My dad had a carouselo chips at home,
but he didn't teach me to play. And we played
at camp and I lost everything. I had, like thirty
bucks to get me through the whole summer, and I
lost all thirty dollars and it I was like, I
(30:20):
want to learn that game. I want to understand that game.
And it was slow coming. Like that experience happened a
couple of times because you know, you can learn the game,
but then you still have to But at a certain point,
I just became really, really fascinated by all the different
(30:41):
things you had to be able to stay aware of
in order to become decent at poker. And it was
fascinating to me, and it was a way gambling is
not great for me into any other kind of gambling.
Poker I've always been able to keep as a separate thing,
and it just brought me a tremendous amount of joy
(31:03):
to think through those problems to be most most things
in life, it's don't allow you to get to that
place where you're hyper present. And yeah, if you know
how to think about poker, I'm not great poker player,
but if you know how to think about poker, you
have the ability to be hyper president at the poker table.
(31:24):
And that's a gift.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
Absolutely No people laugh at me when I say that.
I became much more zen when I started playing poker
because it just it put me in that state. We'll
be back in a minute. So now, if you extrapolate
(31:56):
from that, you you know, you took a huge risk
gun rounders, and we talked about that and it kind
of led to this whole career. But as you and
I have also talked about it, it's not like your
career has been like easy going and like oh like
after rounders, everything's great, we can sell everything, everything works.
I have money, pilon in you know, live in the
(32:18):
high life. Right That's that's not how it works. And
so I'm very curious to know whether there's a point
in time where kind of you took And right now
I think nobody can dispute that you're incredibly successful.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
So I think you're welcome. But it's very well deserved
and very well earned through a lot of hard work.
So it's not like you went you know, from zero
to I think that, but right now I think that
that's kind of that's that's what.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
You don't No, I'm listening well lifef like I mean, well, honestly,
if life tg anything, the moment you kind of think
you're safe, you're not safe. Of course, I never am
able to quite say yes, because at the moment I'm
not worried about you know, like, getting to pay off
your mortgage is a really big deal. I was able
(33:07):
to pay off my mortgage.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
Congratulations.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
No, that's a giant thing in life. Yeah, because they
can you know you, yeah, probably can't take it away
from you anymore. But right before the show Billions, I mean,
I thought we were gonna have to downsize and sell
our apartment, and I wasn't sure if I was gonna
be able to pay our mortgage. So you know, you
never you just never know.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
It's I think that's really important, And that's a point
that I always make, like, was that a moment where
you actually had to kind of think about risk differently?
Think about kind of what tell me about that and
about that decision making process, and kind of where where
you were before before you sold the show, and kind
of how you thought about it, how you broke it down.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
We had had giant failures. We had written a movie
that bombed, and we were supposed to make a television show,
and through a series of things, we before we even started,
we got fired and an agent called us and said,
I just want you to know you're unhireable. And I
(34:08):
was like, did you have to make that phone call?
We realized it by the no phone call when you called,
I thought maybe I was going to get hired, you know,
And just I remember this phone call from this agent,
and it was in Central Park in the winter, and
I was sitting on a bench in Central Park when
I got the call and it was snowy and gross,
and I just remember it was such a good punch.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
And this is a bad scene.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
It was terrible.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Yeah, unbelievable, too many, too many negative.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
Things, that's terrible, true. And I remember exactly where I was.
But here's the thing. I would walk across the park
every day. We lived on the west side. My office
was at the top of this bridge club with like
the top floor of a bridge club on the upper side.
David and I and so yeah that at this like
(34:53):
little tiny elevator mostly walked upstairs. The final thing was
up that stairs. But it was great, loved it, loved
this weird thing. But every day would walk to the
park and h But we were off it was Christmas,
but we had started this script, and I just remember
thinking as soon as we started writing it, because it
was really the lowest point of my professional life, and
(35:13):
I really did start thinking about what else how to
keep this thing going. But then as soon as we
started writing the script, I started just feeling better. I
started being able to walk quicker instead of like just
slugging it out walking through the park, you know, in
the snow, I was able to kind of like march
through the park, and Dave was way on vacation, and
I would go through Central Park and go to our
(35:35):
office and I would work on the script and I
would send him whatever pages I did, and then he
would work on it when he got back to his
like wherever he was, and send me stuff. By the morning,
I would have stuff from him. And I remember just
working on it over this period of time and knowing, Okay,
I think this might be the thing. And to talk
(35:56):
about risks so in what you're supposed to do in
the TV business. And even though we were unhirable according
to the film agents, we did have a couple people
in TV at television companies who would have heard a
pitch from us and paid us some fee to write
(36:21):
a script if they were interested in it. And our
agent said, if you are working on something and you
want us to get you in those rooms, even though
you're cold, you know, the traditional thing is go pitch it.
If nobody wants to pitch, they're not going to want
the project, and you're going to save yourself time. Otherwise
you're going to spend four or five months writing this
script on spec, and the great likelihood is nobody is
(36:43):
going to want it, and you will have wasted the
time and the opportunity costs to find a way to
be in business with these people, and they will. You
will make some money over this time and now you'll
make no money over this time period. But what David
and I realized was if we wrote the script, and
we wrote the first episode with andrewros Orkintwo was three
of us. But Andrew was willing to go along with
(37:04):
this idea, which was, well, write it on spec. Yes,
it's possible. In fact, it's likely that nobody will want it.
But the only way a writer in Hollywood can grab
any power and control their future in any way is
to have a piece of material that the business wants,
(37:27):
because then you can set terms instead of having to
de facto take their terms. And so we decided we're
going to write it on spec so that we can
create an inflection point. If somebody wants it, we can say, well,
then you have to set a start date that you're
going to make the show, that you have to be
willing to give us the script back by this date.
If you won't, we could gain momentum and kind of
(37:50):
flip the paradigm, and we decided that that was a
risk worth taking because of the asymmetrical upside, and so
we did that and luckily, this wherelock comes in, like
we had something that had the thing in it that
made it the right thing at that time, so that
all just added up in the right way, so that
(38:13):
somebody did want it badly enough that we could set
a situation up where we could put ourselves in a
position to really succeed with it.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
That's amazing And in some ways I love the symmetry
right where the beginning of your career and this particular
point which has brought you to where you are today,
there are some symmetries despite the fact that you're now
you know, older, wiser, more mature, etc. But that thinking
and that risk calculus, it has served you well.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
It's also about telling the truth to yourself. So like, yes,
the agent said that to us undeniably, even though it
sounds apocryphal, but it's true. I mean, I've all the
email backup. But also at other times in one's life
you could ignore it we had made because you look
at me kind of incredulously, but we yes, I was
incredulous about the fact that you mean this twenty year
(39:05):
career of constantly making stuff that people want to make
and see, like, you know, we had done all sorts
of written Ocean's thirteen by them, it didn't matter. The
business doesn't care. And it's a great thing to know
that the business doesn't care. And so you have to
make the business care. You have to create something undeniable,
and you have to create a piece of work that
(39:27):
is undeniable. Like your mother said, it's unfair. It's okay,
it doesn't mean yet that's the state of play, is
that it's unfair.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yeah, I know. It's the same thing in you know,
the written realm, even though it's much more fair I
think the than Hollywood. And we'll talk about this in
a second, but you're only as good as your last
book in terms of the advance you can get and
like how people will listen to you. And I always
know this when I'm working on my next book, I'm like, shit,
if this book bombs, then I'm not going to be
(39:58):
able to sell the next one. It doesn't matter that
I've had three New York Times bestsellers. If the fourth
one is a bomb, you know, like.
Speaker 2 (40:04):
I have a question that I haven't heard Nate ask
you yet, or haven't heard somebody ask you and if
they have, So you were in one of the best
positions a human who wants to be a writer can
be in, which is you were at the New Yorker.
That's not something anybody ever kind of like cast aside
in any way, meaning if you can say to somebody,
(40:26):
I'm on staff writer at the New York No, no, no,
the access that that gives you and the sense of
security of like Harvard, I'm at the New York I lost.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
My New Yorker email last year, Brian, I had a
Maria Kondacove at New Yorker dot com email address that
I no longer have and I wasn't even warned that
they were going to take it away all of a sudden,
I couldn't log into it. Really, yes, really, but I
haven't written for them for years, so, like, I totally
understand it.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Were you worried about that?
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Though? No, no, it was No.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
I don't mean about losing the email address. I mean
were you worried about kind.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Of like sure, I went on book leave because in
order to write the biggest bluff my last book. I
had to immerse myself in that world one hundred percent.
There was no other way it was going to work.
I could just you know, stay at the New Yar,
like do my weekly thing that I was doing, plus
you know, learn poker and be able to do this,
you know, understand this world. And so I kind of
I made that calculated choice. And then you know, one
(41:23):
thing led to another and I realized, you know, there
are other things I want to be doing, and what
am I happiest doing? That was also a question I
asked myself, right, and I realized that longer for me
is happier. So I'm happiest when I get to immerse
myself in a book where I get to be in
that world for a long time.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
You know what, something we didn't talk about because what
you know, so I have to vote a lot of
time the last five years to songwriting, and I h
it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
I follow you on Instagram.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Yeah, once in a while I'll say something, but like
I don't know, like sort of how that I At
a certain point I started writing songs. I wanted other
people to hear them, and I made a decision like
I don't five years ago I was like, I'm gonna
write with people, and I love like Guy Clark in
Town Van Zanne. I love country music broadly. I'll say
(42:15):
folk music songs that have stories in them that that's
the kind of consonance with what I normally do. I
come from a musical background, you know. My first career
was as an an R person producer, record producer. I've
always been around it, but a number of years ago
I started really taking it seriously and I decided I'm
going to devote time, like I'm going to devote a
(42:36):
day a week at least to working on songwriting, making
relationships with people in that business, going to Nashville, trying
to write songs with people down there with an eye
toward getting some artists to sing those songs. That's like
(42:57):
really intense use of time and also at up time,
and and like the constant risk of humiliation of rejection.
You know, it's like if you want to do anything,
that's like you're just going to deal with rejection. And
even though one gets much better at understanding rejection for
(43:19):
what it is, it's a complete lie to say like
rejection doesn't sting. It's the only difference is it stings
as opposed to it, like, you know, knocking you out,
but a jab still hurts.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Right.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
It's no longer a right cross or an upper cut,
but a jab is still like, oh, that was not fun.
I didn't want to get hit in the face. But like,
I just and I've thought about it a lot, like
what why? What made me keep me going? Because I
had off the bat. A couple of people were like, oh,
well that's a good song like come, but I had
I could stack up the rejections and it just this year, finally,
(43:54):
now there's an album coming out A really big country
artist named Jackson Deine caught a song that co wrote
and that I co wrote. And I've had a bunch
of songs get cut by people, but this is the first,
like and people artists who meant a lot to me,
where it was like a really big deal to me,
But this is like a song getting cut by somebody
who's a really big deal and they just you know,
(44:15):
he just put out the track listing and I know
that this songs on the record. We wrote it together
and congratulations, thanks, But it was I cannot tell you
the amount of time, just hours, days, energy, focus, heart
and all mostly where the writing of the songs feels
(44:38):
really great, but the rest of it felt really bad.
But I've just learned to chase This is to the
point of like the curiosity something about something about the
form of that particular kind of songwriting is hard in
a way that's like poker. That's that draws me to
(44:59):
wanting to solve it. It's not really solvable, but it's
an artist the same kind of artistic spark that happens
when I want to and this dialogue. It's the same
sort of idea of writing, but the form is strict
and you have to find a way to satisfy a
bunch of different things. And it drew me to even
though there wasn't gonna be really money in it. There
(45:23):
was just going to be a time suck and I
will pay. And people in my life really supported it
and wanted me to do it as as now it's
gonna and I know it'll look Whenever we all look
at someone doing something where it's like, oh, that person,
how did they go from that? It always looks in
(45:44):
the outside like God, they that person must be that
must be like a lot of talent, or that must
be like that's an amazing connection. Or that must and
almost always it's just like they were willing to risk
failure and they were willing to try really really really hard,
and they're ring the most out of like a talent
(46:06):
that might not actually be greater than someone else is.
It's just like the willingness to look ridiculous and the
willingness to fall on your face and the willingness to
feel bad because you're called to do it, and you
stack those things. You're aware of it, especially as you
get older. I was aware of it, and I am
(46:29):
aware of it, and it's just like a problem that
I'm drawn to. And that's the hallmark for all the things.
And that goes back to the thing I started with
about self knowledge. It's like the greater risk for me
is not doing those things because I'll feel bad and
I won't I won't feel like I could answer the questions.
(46:50):
You have a good day, honestly because I didn't chase
those I didn't listen to that spark. But I have
to listen to it. I have. That's why I do
morning pages, meditate because that stuff surfaces. You want to
write songs, Go do it, take the risk. What's the
worst that happens? Is you hear know a lot? Okay,
you'll hear no and you'll try again.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Yeah. Well I have many more questions, but I think
that that is just such a beautiful place to end,
so I could. I couldn't have thought of a better
way to put it. Thank you so much for coming on, Brian.
It's been such a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Maria, It's my pleasure.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kannakova and me
Mate Silver. The show is a co production of Pushkin
Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced by Isabelle Carter.
Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang. Our executive producer
is Jacob Goldstein. And if you want to listen to
an AD free version, sign up for Pushkin Plus.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
For six seventy nine a month.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
You get access to ad free listening. Thanks for tuning
in only f
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