Patricia Resnick On Writing “9 to 5,” Working With Cher, And Writing For Mad Men

We have a fantastic episode for you. My guest is screenwriter, producer, and standup comedian Patricia Resnick, best known as the writer of the iconic film “9 to 5” and the author of the book for “9 to 5: the Musical.” Patricia Resnick was also involved in writing and producing on TV’s “Mad Men” and “Better Things,” among many other projects. Writers and friends, I promise you'll want to listen to this episode multiple times. Patricia shares her journey of becoming a successful, working screenwriter and explains how she, as a single mom, navigated a writing career during a time when women at work were often called "the girl."

The PAGE International Screenwriting Awards sponsors the WRITERS HANGOUT.
Executive Producer Kristin Overn
Creator/Executive Producer Sandy Adomaitis
Producer Terry Sampson
Music by Ethan Stoller

Episode Transcript

(00:11):
Hello, my name is SandyAdamidis, the social media
director for the PageInternational Screenwriting
Awards and your host for theWriters Hangout, a podcast that
celebrates the many Frominspiration to the first draft,
revising, getting the projectmade, and everything in between.

(00:32):
We'll talk to the best and thebrightest in the entertainment
industry, and create a spacewhere you can hang out, learn
from the pros, and have fun.
Hey, writers and friends, it'sSandy coming to you from Studio
City, the crown jewel of the SanFernando Valley.
Tonight as I record this intro,The planet.

(00:54):
Saturn is supposed to be visibleagainst the New Moon, but I
can't see it because if I move,I would disturb my cat.
We have a fantastic episode foryou.
My guest is screenwriterproducer and standup comedian,
Patricia Resnick.
Best known as the creator andwriter of the I.

(01:17):
Iconic film nine to Five, andthe author of the book for nine
to five, the Musical.
she was among the writer,producers on TV's, mad Men and
Better Things, writers andFriends.
This episode is a gift.
Patricia not only shares herjourney of becoming a successful

(01:41):
working screenwriter, but alsodescribes how she as a single
mom.
navigated a writing careerduring a time when women at work
were often called the Girl.
I'd also like to dedicate thisepisode to Luke And Darlene
Chan, my dragon.

(02:01):
Patricia Resnick, thank you somuch for joining us on The
Writer's Hangout.
Of course.
I'm happy to be here.
Hey, it's a bit of a sad daythat we're recording.
We lost Robert Redford today.
Yes.
I, was shocked because somehowin my mind he was not 89.

(02:22):
And I was lucky enough to meethim through Jane Fonda.
Years ago when we were workingon the script for nine to five,
she was shooting ElectricHorsemen in St.
George, Utah.
And she had a little dinnerparty just for.
Herself Redford, me, herproducing partner and our studio

(02:46):
exec.
'cause we were all there.
Patricia, get Outta town.
You were in an intimate dinnerwith Robert Redford.
I was, and I have to tell, Ihave to tell you for a while it
was a bit disappointing becauseI always loved movies and loved
show business and so I waslooking forward to, having them

(03:08):
talk about barefoot in the parkand the other things they'd done
together.
And during dinner all theytalked about was the problems of
sewage in Utah.
But during the course of dinnerand after enough vodka was, had
that eventually I was able toget them onto, reminiscing a

(03:32):
bit.
How wonderful.
Do you have a favorite Redfordmovie?
I think it's a tie between ButchCassidy and the way We Work.
And as far as his directing,definitely I just blanked with
Mary Tyler Moore and TimothyHutton.
Ordinary people.
For me, I think it is all thepresident's men.

(03:54):
And.
One movie that I'm gonna have torevisit.
I think I was a little too youngto watch.
It was barefoot in the park.
Not because it was R-rated oranything like that.
It was very hard for me to watcha woman stay at home waiting for
her husband to come home allday.
But that it's very dated.

(04:16):
Yes, it's very dated.
It didn't, some things hold upbetter than others.
Yeah.
your career started when you metRobert Altman while studying at
USC, which for the writers outthere that don't know the
University of SouthernCalifornia and you began working
with him on three women, howdoes one run into Robert Altman?

(04:41):
I was born and raised in MiamiBeach, Florida, and I was
completely obsessed with moviesand theater.
My mom.
Always had wanted to be anactress, which she wasn't.
She got married very young andhad a family.
And back then it was hard to doboth.
But she took me to a, just atremendous amount of theater in

(05:06):
New York and movies.
And so when I came out to LA todo my last two years of college
at USC and study film, anytime Iwas driving around town and I
saw trucks that indicatedsomething was being shot, I
always pulled over and I wouldwalk over and asked what they

(05:27):
were shooting and who thedirector was.
And I was in Westwood and I sawsome trucks and I asked, and it
was Robert Altman and I was ahuge fan and I actually had to
write a paper for a class.
On an American director.
And so I waited on the sidewalkuntil he was working on a movie,

(05:48):
by the way, named not one of hisbetter known ones, California
split.
But they were shooting in anoffice building.
And I waited outside till hecame out and I introduced myself
and I told him I was writing thepaper on him for school, and I
asked him if I could make anappointment to interview him for
the paper.
Which he said, okay.
And I did.

(06:10):
And then when I finished thepaper, I dropped it off at his
office and a couple of dayslater he called me, which was an
incredible thrill.
And um, he loved the paper.
He thought it was the best thinganyone ever wrote about him in
his movies.
And he told me the next time hehad a movie, he wanted to hire

(06:31):
me.
And that took about a year.
So I finished school.
Right after I finished school Iwent to work for him on a movie
also.
No one ever heard of calledBuffalo Bill and the Indians.
Patricia Resnick.
You have just told this mostwonderful story that I think

(06:53):
will really benefit our writersout there who are trying to
break into the business.
There's no set of rules.
I so admire what you did.
Pretty pretty gutsy.
very cool.
I really did think you weregonna say something along the
lines of, oh, I was taking aclass and, I got to meet him

(07:15):
after class.
But you you, wow.
Nothing gets in your way.
I had more guts than brains atthat point.
And something that I don't havea lot of backup for this, but I
kept this, keeps going.
In my head you have the numberthree and three women throughout
your career.

(07:35):
Starting with three women.
You, a couple of your movies ofthe week had three women, like
Parker Posey, Shirley McClain,and, oh I'm forgetting Shannon
Dougherty.
Shannon Dougherty.
May she rest NPA?
And then just nine to five.
Did you ever reflect on that atall?
That three is a very good numberfor you.
It's funny.
No.

(07:57):
But just the other day I wastalking to one of my cousins and
he brought up out of nowhere ascript that I wrote.
In the seventies that didn't getmade.
Alan Pula became attached to it,but it was called three after
30.

(08:18):
I definitely, I definitely knewat that point that numbers, in
my titles were, gonna be athing.
I never thought aboutspecifically the number three.
But I will now.
Cool.
Now I came up in development ofTV movies.
And you wrote many of them theBattle of Mary Kay in 2002, sex

(08:40):
Lies and Obsessions in PerfectMatch.
Can we talk about the world ofTV movies?
For the writers out there, theymay, wanna start out in film,
television half hour comedy, butthat's a genre.
And when you were making allthese TV movies, how did that

(09:00):
come about?
So basically what happened was,what, when I started working for
Altman I didn't really have alot of interest in television at
the time.
I just wanted to do movies.
And back then movies and TV werevery separate.
That's not true anymore.
Almost everyone moves veryeasily back and forth between

(09:22):
them, but back then they werevery divided.
Yes.
And so I just worked on moviesthen I actually had two kids on
my own in my early forties.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
And, at the time I was adaptinga book for Whoopi Goldberg And I

(09:44):
was being paid a lot of moneyand everything seemed good.
And then things started tochange.
And whether it was, partly myage, partly that they stopped
making the kind of movies that Iwrote.
And I was so supportive to kids,so I had to figure something

(10:06):
out.
And although at that time nobodywas interested anymore in me
writing movies features.
For TV, movies, I wasconsidered, a big get, oh,
Patricia, if you came into DavisEntertainment while I was
working in TV development, wewould've put Rose Petals out
before your feet.

(10:27):
Which Davis?
John at Fox.
He was at Fox down on the lot onthe film department.
And then we were up in FoxPlaza, so funny because at one
point.
I'm thinking a little beforethis, I had an overall deal at
Fox and I had an office on theFox lot and it was right down

(10:51):
the hall from John Davis.
Oh, yes.
That bungalow.
Brook Brooks.
Yes.
Yes.
It was over on the side,towards, toward the west.
Anyway, he would, he was verynice to me, and he would he
liked to bring people that hadcome in to see him.

(11:12):
To my office I had my nine tofive poster up and whatever else
I had on the wall.
And he liked to bring them inand say, this is Pat Resnick.
And she wrote nine to five, andAw.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's very sweet.
It was.
That's funny that you workedwith him, Going back to TV,
movies.
Yeah.
Anyway I needed to do whatever Icould do to continue to support

(11:35):
my family.
So I started doing TV movies andwhat I found out pretty quickly
was, although they didn't paywhat features paid they mostly
got made and I could write themfairly quickly.
And I was able to do a bunch ofthem, just one after the other.

(12:00):
And then that whole businessdied.
Just TV movies went away.
So that was then time to pivotagain.
But yeah, for a while, I wrotesome Hallmark movies.
I wrote some Lifetime movies.
The Battle of Mary Kay was forCBS, which was an unusual thing
for them'cause it was a satire.

(12:21):
What a wonderful movie.
Very funny.
thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Very funny.
I think that was definitely myfavorite, of everything that I
did in terms of TV, movies, thatwas for sure my favorite.
I remember when we worked atDavis.
That the feature people,whenever they didn't like a
feature movie, they would alwaysgo, ah, maybe it's good for tv.

(12:43):
And they were always a littletaken aback when we, the TV
development people were like no,it's not right for us.
I think just back then, andgoing back to also what you said
about TV and film being sodifferent, that was really true.
If you worked on a TV setfeature, people didn't wanna

(13:04):
hire you.
But then Davis people wouldalways turn to us and say, hire
our feature people.
And we'd go they shoot a twohour movie of the week so fast.
Yeah.
Feature people.
Their minds were blown.
And the development does also gofast.
Yeah.

(13:24):
For sure.
At that time.
People and features definitelylook down.
Yes.
Look down on television.
And that's, now that's, I don'tknow about the ba the crew, but
in my mind that kind of switchedwith John Travolta a bit'cause
he did welcome back Carter.

(13:44):
And then he was cast in SaturdayNight Live and for actors
Saturday Night Fever.
Oh, Saturday Night Fever.
Thank you.
Saturday Night Live is totallydifferent thing.
Yeah.
And it was good for actors thatthey could start going back and
forth.
But I think writers anddirectors didn't as much and no,

(14:10):
I'm actually looking.
I think, oh no, it was after Iwas gonna say so Lily Tomlin did
a movie called Moment by Moment.
It was very odd.
It was a romance with her inTravolta.
she cast him in that beforeSaturday Night Fever came out.

(14:35):
Although I'm seeing that themovie came out Saturday Night
Fever came out in 77 and I thinkMoment by Moment came out in 78.
But I remember when she told methat she was going to do this
movie and she cast John Travoltaand I remember saying to her,
the Welcome Back Coter guy.

(14:56):
Yes.
You could be right on thetimeline.
They could have, rushed Saturdaynight fever out.
Yeah.
And if those producers hadenough power, they could have
even held back moment by moment.
Yeah.
what did Lily say?
Do you remember?
She said something along thelines of Yeah, and he's great it

(15:18):
was a strange movie.
It didn't really work, but not,certainly not his fault.
Speaking of superstars, yes,you.
Pat Resnick have worked withCher.
Yes.
Tell me everything.
I love Cher.
Cher is, one of the people I waslucky enough to work with pretty

(15:38):
early in my career.
What happened was Sandy Galland,who was a superstar manager, and
he actually not only managedshare and Dolly, he had a
company called Sand Dollar withDolly, and they made movies.
I rewrote a movie for themcalled Straight Talk.
But I, because of my connectionwith Sandy.

(16:00):
He asked me.
Okay.
Backing up.
Cher at that time would do aspecial, an hour special once a
year for television.
And they would hire sketchwriters, which I really wasn't.
But I had written sketches forLily Tomlin's first Broadway
show.

(16:22):
I met her on the set of a filmthat Altman directed.
Wow.
So people would ask me to writesketches and so Sandy asked me
to write a sketch for Cher andthe guest star of the first
special who was Dolly.
And that's actually how I metDolly.

(16:44):
The second year.
The Star was supposed to be KateJackson, who was one of the
original television Charlie'sAngels and was Cher's best
friend.
But somehow at some point theygot into an argument and Kate
Jackson walked off.
Kate Jackson was probably 35 atthe time, I'm guessing, and they

(17:07):
replaced her with Lucille Ball,who I think was about 80 in the
same sketch.
And then Lucille Ball decided todo a different sketch and
somehow it became ShellyWinters.
So anyway, that was a clusterfuck.
But Cher was great.
Cher is very down to earth.

(17:32):
She was the kind of person thatif you worked with her and
hadn't seen her for a few years.
If you ran into her at a party,she would not only remember you,
she would say hello, and whenshe was talking to you, she
wouldn't look over your shoulderto see if there was anybody more
important behind you that shewould rather be talking to.

(17:52):
And she used to have I used tolove this.
She used to have garage sales ather house by invitation only her
house was, gated and you had tobe invited.
And at no point in my life, evenat my thinnest could I ever fit
into anything that Cher fitinto.

(18:13):
But I did buy a pair of herthigh high boots, which I still
have.
Oh, you better?
I still have.
And my daughter wore them tohigh school one day and.
I have a someone bought it forme.
Do you remember, because Icannot find it anywhere on the

(18:34):
internet.
Way, way back in the day.
She had a catalog and she soldthings.
They were very gothic things.
And I have a share like littlejewelry box that's in the shape
of a heart and it's one of myvery favorite things.
That's very cool.

(18:54):
Not as cool as your stories,Patricia.
Yeah.
But thank you so much.
Yeah.
Anyway, she was wonderful and Irecently got to know a young
woman who helped her, I don'tknow what she did exactly, but
was somehow involved in helpingher with her memoir and said
she's still, that's stillexactly how she is.

(19:15):
She has not.
Wonderful.
Yes.
I'm gonna be at some point doinga cross country trip, and I
think her autobiography is oneof the things that I'm gonna
listen to.
Can we continue?
That's a good idea.
Can we continue with tv?
Do you mind still talking alittle bit about tv?
Great.

(19:35):
You wrote two episodes of Ooh,one of my favorite shows.
Better Things You wrote Seasonfour, episode five.
Of course.
I'm gonna mess up saying thissimple word, carp car.
It's the spaghetti.
Can you say it?
Carbonara.
Carbonara, yeah.
And season four, episode eight.

(19:57):
Father's Day.
I watched both episodes.
Love them.
Thank you.
Now on Carbonara.
Louis CK is credited.
Were you in the same room asLouis ck?
Can you talk about that alittle?
Yeah.
No, not at all.
Pamela Alon, who created betterthings and is the genius behind

(20:19):
it, she starred in it with mostI think all the later episodes
she directed.
She ran the room.
She was a recurring characteron, Louis, which was Louis Cks
half Hour show.
And they together concocted theidea for better things, which

(20:42):
was fairly closely based onPamela's.
Real life, divorced mom, threekids.
Her mother lives down thestreet.
She takes care of her.
And she's a, a working actressin Hollywood, but not a star.
So pretty close to Pamela's reallife.
And they wrote all the episodestogether.

(21:04):
Then all the stuff came outabout him and he got canceled.
And so he, could no longer dothe show with her, at which
point she realized that if shewas gonna move forward, she felt
she didn't wanna do it alone.
She wanted a writer's room.
And so each season, I think thatstarted with season three.

(21:29):
She had a writer's room, seasonfour, season five.
He.
Still got a credit on every showbecause he's the co-creator.
Okay.
But he was nowhere, he was notanywhere around.
Was there a draft of the scriptwith that he did some work on
then you guys took it over?

(21:50):
No.
He was way off the show by then.
Really?
Because I think on it's not awriting credit.
He doesn't have Oh, I think IMBDhas him on there.
That's why I was just, oh,that's incorrect.
I should go in and do somethingabout that.
No.
Oh, okay.
He just has a co-creator creditat the top of every.

(22:10):
episode.
That makes so much sense.
I get it now.
Yeah.
I'm gonna hop around and I'mgonna jump to your standup and
then come back.
Okay.
Because I know you're doingstandup and you're out there
with a lot of females youngerfemale comics.
Do they know of Louie?
Do they talk about him?
Is he persona non grata or theyjust don't discuss him?

(22:33):
I, I haven't heard himmentioned, honestly.
Yeah, I was just curious.
Yeah, I, I'm trying to think,but.
No, I really haven't heard him.
That's probably a good thing.
Nobody's even thinking abouthim.
Now, you also worked on thefinal season of Mad Men, another
incredible series.

(22:55):
You were the Consultingproducer.
Now I'd I'd like to talk to youabout Matt Weiner.
I, during my, I was a doingestate managing for a while,
Uhhuh, and so I worked for LindaBreer, his wife.
Yeah.
Yes.
And very much involved in thehouse and the kids.
Oh my goodness.
Those kids.
I love them so much.

(23:16):
And I really admired Linda.
But recently social maid.
Yeah.
Told Hollywood reporter abouthis mistreatment of her onset.
Now.
It wasn't just, maybe she took acomment wrong or she was being
really sensitive.
It's pretty brutal.
He yelled at her for almost ahalf hour in front of the crew.

(23:39):
What was your experience?
What was it like for you therewith the writers?
'cause now you're not an actor,you're in the writer's room.
It's separate.
Madman was actually the firsttime I ever worked in a writer's
room.
And, it was pretty late in mycareer to try to, enter a

(24:02):
writer's room.
But what happened was when mykids were growing up, I really
wanted to do things that I couldwork on from home.
I didn't wanna be gone all thetime.
So hence the TV movies.
And then there was a long periodof time I was working on the
musical of nine to five and, butwhen my older child went to

(24:23):
college and my younger was in11th grade and had, that's when
they go into their room and theydon't talk to you for a couple
years anyway, I thought, oh, youknow what, I could work in a
writer's room if somebody wouldbe willing to hire me.
At this point.
I knew Matt a little bit becausehis oldest son, Martin and my

(24:48):
son were in school together.
The kids were old enough todrive and he and my son were
friendly.
He slept over there one day andI went over one morning to pick
him up and Matt was in thekitchen making breakfast for the
kids and we got to talking.
He loved that griddle in thekitchen.
He did.

(25:08):
He was making pancakes.
That's funny.
Yep.
Anyway I heard through thegrapevine after that, for the
last season the couple that hadbeen, the showrunners had left
the show and he had one of thewriters semi cell was gonna be
running the room, but that hewas looking for.
A couple of new writers and hedefinitely wanted one female.

(25:33):
So I went back to my Altmanplaybook and I emailed him and
Matt, before Matt worked on TheSopranos, he worked on sitcoms.
And so I wrote to him and Isaid, I know I'm known more for
comedy, but if anybody shouldknow that someone can write

(25:56):
both, it would be you.
And I hear you're hiring, andall I would like is, can I get
my sample script in the pile?
Patricia, again, I'm just gonnahold you up as a model to all
our writers.
What a great opening linebecause it wasn't, Matt, help me
out, our kids go to schooltogether.

(26:18):
You offered him up.
What will benefit for him beingable to write drama and comedy?
he said yes, and I guess it wentin the pile, according to him,
he told me later, the pileinitially went to the execs.
And I made it out of the pileand, it was one of, the few
scripts they had called out thatlanded on his desk and I ended

(26:40):
up meeting with him and yeah, hehired me to be a consulting
producer.
And that was my first time in awriter's room now consulting
producer sometimes don't come inall week.
So I didn't come in every day.
I came in two to three days aweek and I alternated.
There were two other consultingproducers, a woman with a lot of

(27:01):
TV credits named Lisa Albert andthe ably famous screenwriter
Robert Townsend.
Who wrote we'll start withChinatown.
And then, almost every famousmovie of that era, he either
wrote or had his finger in, Ilearned a tremendous amount.

(27:23):
It was an extremely smart room.
It was a very big room.
There were a lot of writers over10.
He also had two advertisingconsultants, one who worked in
the period, and one who workedin advertising now.
And they switched off, but I'dsay often there were about 10

(27:45):
people.
better things was half that Veryinteresting.
Now, for the writers out therewho don't quite understand, the
room can be very intense.
Yes.
You're sitting at a table yes,there's chatting, but your brain
has to be on and you're pitchingpitching, trying to figure

(28:06):
things out.
It's a lot to get into whenyou're used to being a writer
like you were, that you haveyour own space and you put your
own ideas on the paper.
And there's rules.
You can't just go, I don't likethat idea.
You have to say it in a nice wayand add in a suggestion.

(28:28):
You just don't get to tearpeople down.
Yeah.
You can if you're theshowrunner, you can if you're
the, you're absolutely right.
Back to you.
Was Matt running the room or washe mostly on set, editing, all
that kind of stuff?
So the first couple of months hewas in the room pretty much full
time with us because they hadn'tstarted shooting yet.

(28:50):
'cause we had to turn out acouple of scripts.
And then once shooting startedhe was, pulled between, this is
the life of the showrunner.
If you're doing a show that'sshooting while people are still
writing some shows, like Iworked on a show called Tales of
the City for Netflix.
We did all the scripts beforethey started shooting, so that

(29:12):
was a different situation.
But I think more often peopleare still writing as shooting
has started.
So he was then pulled betweenthe room casting directing war
wardrobe, you know, any of the10 billion dailies, editing, all
the other things that he had tobe in charge of.
So he was then in and out.

(29:34):
it's a very intense job.
It is, yeah.
Yeah.
And things were cool in theroom.
You like everybody was nice toeach other.
I found it a really lovely room.
I was, worried because otherthan myself and a writer named
David Ierson, everybody had beentogether, for a while.

(29:55):
And I thought, it might becliquey where they wouldn't want
the new people.
That wasn't the case at all.
Not at all.
Oh, good.
And it was one of, it was one ofthe shows that I worked on where
I feel like everybody wasworking really hard to try to do

(30:16):
whatever they could to help Mattget his vision, to the screen.
And help it be the best that itcould be.
that last episode.
There was a lot of pressure onyou guys to carry the Mad man
name home.
Everybody had such greatexpectations for that last

(30:38):
episode, and I think you guyshit it out of the park.
I think he did a great job.
I actually was gone by them.
But I think he did an amazingjob.
I was worried because Matt had ahistory throughout the show of
he would often read, fan, Idon't know if he went on Reddit

(30:58):
or where he was reading stuff,but he would go on social media
and he would read, all the wayalong what people thought was
gonna happen, what they wantedto happen, what they didn't
wanna happen, and if there wassomething that everybody thought
would happen, he wouldn't wannado it.
Interesting.

(31:19):
Yeah.
He was a contrarian, and becauseof that, and because everybody
wanted, or the vast majority ofpeople wanted Peggy to have
somewhat of a happy ending and asuccessful romance I was
thinking, oh God, he's gonnakill her in a car wreck or
something.

(31:39):
But, he didn't I thought it wasone of the better final and
really satisfying, the onlyperson that he really that had a
pretty sad end was Betty.
What happened to Betty, she diesof lung cancer.
But here's the thing, everybodyin that show smokes their heads

(32:00):
off for seven seasons.
And he said, it would beridiculous that someone didn't
get lung cancer.
And I think Betty was veryloosely based on his mother and,
if one has some other issues, Iguess killing off the character
based on them is satisfying.
those studios were downtown,I've been in every lot, every

(32:23):
little, industrial section ofthis town working.
I've never worked down there.
Are those cool studios?
Do you like it down there whenyou're working?
Yes.
It was really nice and thenicest thing about it was so for
the people that don't know, whenyou work on a show.
You get lunch during the courseof the day, and most shows have

(32:47):
a a dollar limit.
I can tell you it's$19.
Okay.
So on Mad Men By Mad Men seasonseven.
Guess what?
There was no limit and we couldorder, we were in downtown la,
which was filled with some ofthe best restaurants in Los
Angeles, and you could orderanything you wanted.

(33:09):
So a lot of us would just, orderstuff and take half of it home.
And that was dinner.
when I was working on Hell OnWheels, which is an a MC show
almost every day, somebody madea joke.
I wonder what the Mad Men peopleare eating?
God, we were eating everything.

(33:29):
Hey.
When you and I were coming up,scripts were actually written on
paper.
You printed out the script andtoday even hard copies are
frowned upon.
Can you share any littleexperiences or anything of what
it was like to write back in theday on a TV series or a film as
opposed to now?
Do you find things different orthings don't change?

(33:53):
No, it's really different.
First of all, the first manyyears of my career.
I was working on a typewriterWhen they came out with the IBM
Electric, which you didn't haveto use what was the white paper?
White out White.
Carbon, yeah.
You didn't, no, you didn't haveto use whiteout when you had a
mistake.
The IBM Electric had a littlewhite tape you could go over it.

(34:17):
if you had a typo.
But everything was typed, whichmeant that rewriting was really
difficult.
And basically what you would endup having to do is you would, so
let's say you a scene startedhalfway down a paper.

(34:38):
A piece of paper, but you werekeeping the top half.
So you would literally get ascissors and cut it, and then
have a glue stick or tape.
Oh my goodness.
And then type the new one andcut that and tape it together.
And then that you do thatthrough the whole script.
And then there was a placecalled Barbara's Place, and

(35:00):
their entire business wasretyping scripts and binding
them, and putting them in a nicecover.
Because even though, we wrotescripts and typed, we were not
as adept, typists asprofessional typists.

(35:21):
So it was really different.
The plus side to that was I findthat now they bother you to
rewrite every little thing.
Constantly because they knowit's on a computer.
It's not, it's not such a bigdeal to do it But you get asked

(35:45):
to do it a lot more.
But it used to be, it used to beso much harder.
And I actually know a couple ofpeople that came up when I did.
One of whom is still working andshe still writes her first
drafts by hand, really?

(36:05):
That I didn't, that, that Ididn't do.
But yeah.
And she'll then have them inputand she'll rewrite on the
computer.
Okay.
When you are out and about andpeople find out that you wrote
the movie, nine to Five, dotheir faces just light up and do
they pepper you with endlessquestions like I'm going to do

(36:28):
next?
I would say generally thereaction is very positive.
Often they wanna tell me theirrelationship to the movie.
You know, it was one of thefirst, VHS's we had in the
house.
And we used to watch it all thetime.
And then I would say the numberone question is, what is Dolly

(36:53):
really like?
And when I talk about howwonderful she is, everybody says
the same thing.
Some version of, oh, thank God.
If you had told me anythingother than that, I would've been
absolutely crushed.
I agree.
I would've been absolutelycrushed.

(37:13):
Yes.
She's an amazing human being.
She's just an incredible humanbeing.
Yes.
Now, what is the name of themovie?
Is it NINE to FIVE or is itnumeral 9 2 5?
I see it everywhere both ways.

(37:36):
So when the movie originallycame out, as I recall.
It was spelled out somehow overthe years, it devolved.
I'm actually looking at, I haveon my wall a Japanese poster.
Oh, cool.
From back in the day, which hasthe numbers, the musical, we

(38:03):
absolutely went with thenumbers.
We never spelled it out, butit's funny because the musical,
which was on Broadway in 2009,Dolly did the music lyrics and I
did the book.
And it's, it probably does ahundred or more productions a

(38:23):
year.
Everything from high schools totouring companies, summer stock.
And there's a company thathandles that.
That if you wanna do it.
Or if you wanna do one of theother, hundreds of musicals,
they perform this service foryou, contact them and they're
the ones who will get,everything you need to you.

(38:46):
But I noticed recently that ifyou were searching, it only came
up if you put the numbers.
Oh.
And I contacted them and I said,please also put it spelled out,
because somebody may go onthere, spell it out, it won't
come up.
They'll think you don't have it.

(39:07):
And they'll move on to anothershow, which I don't want you to,
because I get some money everytime the show gets signed.
Could you explain to the writersfor, with regards to Broadway,
what a writing the book means?
Writing the book is everythingthat's spoken.
It's what we would call theplay.
I don't know why in a musicalit's referred to as the book.

(39:28):
I think they just want it to bedifferent, is my personal
opinion, But that's what it is.
It's just anything that's notsung.
Yes.
Can you share with the listenersthe babies out there that might
not, and I'm not saying that asin a rude way, just meaning
maybe you're young, but theyoungins, the Utes the plot of

(39:48):
nine to five, would you mind?
Yeah, sure.
It's three secretaries who workfor the world's worst boss,
boss, and although at thebeginning they're divided, they
eventually unite in an attemptto take over the office And make
some much needed changes.

(40:09):
And it's a flat out comedy.
It is a brilliant comedy.
Now, is it true nine to five wassupposed to be a drama?
Not that I knew of.
So what happened was Jane Fondagot involved, Jane Fonda, who's
an activist and has been most ofher life got involved with an

(40:30):
organization that was trying tounionize clerical workers and
get some rights for them.
How lovely.
How lovely.
Yeah.
And they're still around, by theway.
And she decided that, she wantedto make a movie that somehow
brought that in front of people.

(40:51):
But from when I first heardabout it.
I actually read about it.
It was in there was a guy namedArmy Chard who wrote, it would
be like the page six fromVariety.
Yeah.
It was in, the little gossipycolumn.
He put that Jane Fonda wanted tomake a movie about secretaries

(41:12):
with Lily Tomlin and DollyParton, and I read that.
And so Lily gave me my firstpaid writing job.
And Dolly, I knew a bit fromthat chair special.
So when I read that, I thought,and I, I didn't know Jane Fonda,
but I was like, always been ahuge fan.

(41:34):
And I thought, I wanna writethat.
And I asked my agent to find outif there was a writer attached
yet, and there wasn't.
And we were both with what wasthen William Morris, now WME.
And they sent over a couple ofscript samples of mine to Jane
and she liked them.
And I ended up meeting with herand she gave me just a huge

(41:55):
stack of the driest materialabout offices and clerical
workers.
And she said, but I want it tobe a comedy because I think that
will make what I wanna say morepalatable to people.
And Jane is right.
Yeah.
And then she sent me off to, tryto come up with a story, in a

(42:18):
part for each of.
The three women.
Was she good at notes, givingyou script notes?
She's very smart.
She had done, she did Chinasyndrome, which also was a
message, movie which did verywell at the time.
The hardest thing, the toughestproblem for me with Jane was and
it's funny because she playscomedy well.

(42:38):
She's not a, she's not a funnyperson.
She's a serious person.
And so sometimes, there wouldbe, comedic lines of dialogue or
things that happened and shewould read them and she'd say to
me, now, why am I saying this?
Or Why is this happening?
And I would say,'cause it'sfunny.

(42:59):
And then she would say, why isit funny?
Which you cannot explain everabout anything.
I love that.
Yeah.
I love that story.
I really do.
Now I'm not sure if I'm on solidground on this.
Okay.
But do you think the criticsreally understood the feminist
undertones?
No.
Okay, good.
So I am.

(43:19):
Okay.
The workplace sexism a genderpay gap?
Not the, when the original moviecame out No.
And by the way, when the showwent to Broadway, so when the
movie came out, it wasdismissed, first of all, other
than Pauline Kale, I think allthe newspaper reviewers at the

(43:42):
time and magazine reviewers wereall men.
So we'll start there.
It was dismissed as just silly.
And then in 2008 when we wererehearsing to open on Broadway,
the, again, at that time,primarily male journalists who
were interviewing me would askme, is it gonna be set back then

(44:06):
or was it gonna be contemporary?
And I said, no, it's gonna beset back then.
And they all said, but how is acontemporary audience going to
relate?
All these problems have beenfixed.
So that was prior to me too, andI think that most men really had

(44:26):
no idea, how much of that wasstill going on by the time the
musical was revived.
In 2019 on the West End inLondon, that was no longer the
case.
There were many more femalecritics.
Our reviews were much, muchbetter.
And they often mentioned thepolitical underpinnings.

(44:48):
Bravo, London, Bravo.
I just roll my eyes but it'salso just frustrating to hear,
that they were saying, Hey, wefixed all those problems,
ladies.
It was jaw dropping.
Oh my goodness.
Now, how did you feel about thefinal cut of nine to five?
Was there a premiere?
Did you go to a premiere?
Oh, please.

(45:08):
Tell me about that evening.
First of all it wasn't the firsttime I saw the movie.
There, there usually is a castand cruise screening.
Okay.
And so I saw it there.
I had a lot of trouble with itbecause we had a hard time
getting a director that bothJane and the studio wanted, who

(45:29):
could work in the very narrowwindow of time we had where all
three ladies were free.
it was a very tiny window andJane originally wanted some of
the directors that she hadworked with who were, the top
guys.
So Sidney Pollock Mike Nichols,who actually wanted to direct
it.

(45:50):
I got to go to New York for twoweeks and meet with him in his
unbelievable apartmentoverlooking Central Park every
day.
For two weeks to rewrite itbased on what he wanted.
But that script the only peoplethat liked it were Mike and me,
nobody else.

(46:10):
Anyway, we had a real problemgetting a director, and finally
there was a guy who was reallytrying to get the job.
And eventually they said, okay,his name was Colin Higgins.
He had directed he had onlydirected one movie.
I believe he had directed foulplay.
But he had written Harold andMaude and he had written Silver
Streak, I think it was called.

(46:32):
Anyway, but he was a writerdirector, so of course he re
rewrote it.
That, and that was shocking tome because he didn't want me
around.
He didn't want me on the set.
Alt men always had the writer orwriters on the set always.
And you were extremely involved.
As a matter of fact, we did mostof the dealing with the actors

(46:56):
'cause I think he didn't reallywant to.
Working on something where thedirector didn't really want me
around was weird.
And I remember at the time Isaid that it felt like it would
be like if you had a child andwhen they were about 10 years
old, somebody took them and sentthem off to military school and

(47:17):
then you went to visit them andyou looked at them and you were
like, it was your child.
But they had a buzz cut and werein a uniform and so it wasn't
really your child.
It was like that.
Yeah.
And that was hard.
That was hard for me.

(47:37):
I bet.
Yeah.
Whenever I look at credits and Isee written by, a writer's name,
and then I see the director'sname next to it I'm always like,
there's some bullying going onthat set.
I just, yeah.
And for some people, I don'tknow this director but they'll

(47:58):
just do it.
They'll just do rewrites just toget their name on it.
And that takes money out of yourpocket.
Yes.
And I don't like that.
Yes.
And I can't imagine you in NewYork, just working with Nichols
and now Silver Street comes in.

(48:20):
A little disappointing.
Yeah, it was.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was tough.
If there was one thing, if, youknow it was a magic night and
somebody woke you up and said,you can go back and fix one
thing and nine to five that youweren't really thrilled about.
Yeah.
Do you have anything in mind?
Yeah, and it's funny becauseit's a lot of people's favorite

(48:42):
part of the movie, but oh, canyou gimme hints?
Can you gimme hints?
Can I guess?
Sure.
Take a guess.
You said favorite part of themovie.
We all really like those openingcredits, but that's good, right?
That, yeah.
Not the opening credits.
Okay.
Which actually were directed bysomebody.

(49:05):
Completely different.
Oh, okay.
That makes sense now.
Oh, I love everything Dolly'sdoing.
For some reason, I really likedthat scene.
With Lily Toman and her son.
I had never seen a mother andson interact that way before.
So it was the fantasies.
Oh, and w what, why I wouldwanna change them is my original

(49:31):
script was a much blackercomedy.
And my original conception wasthey actually try to kill their
boss, but in funny ways, andColin, and it's weird because he
wrote Harold and Maud, which isso dark, but then he wrote that

(49:52):
when he was at UCLA, later hismovies.
Became much more less dark andmore commercial.
But he wanted it.
Jane was worried about it.
Jane was concerned that peoplewouldn't feel sympathy for the
women if they tried to kill him.
And his comedy taste he told mewas more like he liked Abid

(50:14):
Costello, that kind of thing.
And he replaced them trying tokill him with getting stoned and
having the fantasies.
So even though the fantasiespeople really like that's
probably what I would take.
Yes.
Yeah, I can see that now.
I read that Jennifer Aniston andEcho Films, her production

(50:37):
companies are considering aremake with Ariana Grande,
Sydney Sweeney, and z.
As the leads now, all three ofthose actors would be great.
But who would you like to see ina remake as the leads of nine to
five?
we've been trying to eitherremake it or do it, reboot it or

(50:58):
do a sequel for years.
And I've worked on two, the lastone I had after Me Too happened,
I had an idea of how to do itwith three new women and
bringing in the three originalwomen like halfway through.
And I met with Lily and Jane andpitched it to them and they

(51:18):
liked it.
And then I had a phone call withDolly and she liked it.
And then I called my manager andI said, I have a way to redo it.
I've got all three of theoriginal.
What do we do now?
And so we went to Sean Levy,who's the producer of Stranger
Things, and a lot of very bigmovies.
He came on it, and then wedecided we would pitch it to

(51:41):
Fox.
But I thought I'd have a betterchance selling it if I brought
on a younger writer, because atthat point I had been really
just running TV for a long time.
And I thought it would behelpful if it was a writer of
color because we wanted to makethe new casting less all white.
And in fact, the musical, asit's been touring and

(52:05):
everything, I've noticed thatthey're casting, casting it all
over the place in terms of race,which I think is great.
But we got Rashida Jonesinvolved.
And at that point we weretalking about I'm trying to
remember, we were talking aboutlike Jennifer Lawrence and Issa
Rae and then I can't rememberwho else.

(52:29):
The Sidney s Sweeneys and ArianaGrande certainly is like massive
star power.
It would definitely get noticed.
The only thing I don't likeabout that is that they're
substantially younger.
Yes, I was thinking that.
And they, Jane I think was inher early forties.

(52:51):
Lily was in her late thirtiesand Dolly was probably in her
early thirties.
But my understanding and the waythat movies work is.
No one even told us that theywere remaking it.
Lily didn't know.
Jane didn't know.
Dolly didn't know.
I didn't know Colin Higginspassed away years ago, so he

(53:11):
didn't.
Oh.
We had no idea.
And from what I've read, DiabloCody is writing it and instead
of making it patriarchy, she'smaking it generational.
So I believe she described it asboomers versus millennials,
which I don't like that I alsothink now would be more Gen Z

(53:34):
versus, would be more Gen Xversus Gen Z.
Boomers are not, people my ageare not in the office very much
anymore.
But that's what they're doingwith it.
So if that's what they're doingwith it, then it makes sense
that you would wanna ask thethree women young.
Yes.
The three of them do play veryyoung and I have no idea what

(53:58):
the plot is, but I don't likethe pitting the women maybe
against other women just'causethey're older.
But maybe it all works out inthe end.
Yeah.
I don't, I have no more ideathan you do.
I didn't even, I don't even knowwhere you read about the three
women.
I hadn't even heard that.
I'll go back through my researchand I can send that to you if
you wanna yeah.
I'm just curious, but cool.

(54:19):
Sure.
Back to the original nine tofive.
Yes.
Would you, play F Mary Kill withJane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and
Dolly Parton for us I wouldn't,only because I'd fuck any of
them.
I wouldn't kill any of them, butI definitely marry Dolly.
I agree.

(54:40):
I'm with you.
Okay.
Now last week, I was fortunateenough to see you do stand up at
the Improv and West Hollywood.
First of all, Patricia it's beena long time since I've been out,
especially on the West side.
It was such a lovely evening.
Our mutual friend, Darlene Chanand her husband Frank, we walked

(55:00):
in West Hollywood to go see you.
Can you talk about how you endedup on stage at the Improv on
Melrose Avenue?
It was it was a very flukything.
It's just about a year ago,August.
My 92-year-old mom passed awayand the funeral was in New York

(55:22):
and my son and I were flyingback to LA and I happened to be
seated next to a guy I call hima young guy.
And my son is he wasn't thatyoung.
He's probably in his latethirties.
My son's 29.
I'm like, okay.
Everybody's young to me at themoment.
But he was a television writerand he told me that he really

(55:47):
had wanted to be writing morecomedy.
And I asked him what he'd beenworking on and he'd been working
on seven seasons of possibly theleast funny television show ever
aired, which is Law and Order,SVU, which I love, but no comedy
in it.
But he had decided he wanted towrite comedy and somehow he had

(56:10):
heard through friends about aguy who teaches standup and he
thought that would be a greatway to, learn how to write
jokes.
And he took the class and hestarted telling me about the
class.
And the class just sounded soappealing to me.

(56:30):
And.
I've never had any desire to beon stage.
In the mid eighties, the improvwas my hangout mostly because my
cocaine dealer was there, whichwas something I was doing up
until the middle of the eightieswhen that all stopped.

(56:50):
Patricia, who wasn't?
Yeah, everybody was but I used,I got to be friendly with a lot
of the comics and they knew thatI wrote comedy, so they would
ask me to see their sets and,get them notes.
And then they were all like, youshould do this.
And I was like, oh my God, Iwould never do that.
That just sounds like a completenightmare.
But I thought, I was sad.

(57:10):
I lost my mom.
I thought it would be I'm gonnatake this class.
And I'll learn more about jokewriting because even though I
write comedy I don't reallywrite jokes.
So I took the class and what Ididn't know was until I'd
already paid for it was theclass ended with after many

(57:33):
weeks.
And by the way, it's a wonderfulclass.
The guy's name is Jerry Katzman.
You can look him up.
I highly recommend it.
At the end, you have to do afive minute set in a showcase
where everyone, there's usually10 people in the class.
Everybody invites 10 people.
So you're in front of roughly ahundred people.

(57:55):
And the day of the showcase, Iwas so nervous, I thought I was
gonna throw up and I thoughtthis was just a really bad idea.
And I really just wanna hand.
My set to someone else and letthem go up and do it.
But I had to do it, and he putme next to last, which meant

(58:20):
that I had to sit there workingmyself up into a complete
frenzy.
But the second I got up on thestage, I was very comfortable.
I'm not I'm not afraid ofspeaking in front of people.
That's not one of my fears.
I'm afraid I'm gonna forget, youknow what I'm gonna say, or that
people wouldn't laugh.
Anyway, it went incredibly well.

(58:41):
It was a really adrenaline rushand I got the bug and then
someone else asked me to do ashow and I thought I'm just
gonna ride this train and seewhere it goes.
So that's what I've been doing.
Now I noticed what, watching youdo your standup.
You connected the jokeseamlessly.

(59:04):
You just didn't hop, from onejoke to the other.
And the other comics, they werehilarious.
But, and this is a lab, so it'snot like you're coming out and
doing a perfect set.
Is, am I correct in that?
It was a lab?
They call it the improv lab.
Okay.
So sometimes you're just workingthings out.

(59:24):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
And it had that feel, it had alittle bit of a loose feel.
Yeah.
But I wanna explore that alittle further.
Do you think because of yourbackground in writing and you
had to always answer maybe tosomeone, people were reading and
they're giving you notes is yourprocess for writing jokes

(59:47):
different from your otherwriting?
I think you're almost a littleadvanced in your joke writing.
You're almost like creating aset as opposed to just joke.
Did you realize you were doingthat?
I think, here's the thing.
You absolutely don't have to setup jokes.
You can jump from joke to joke,right?

(01:00:09):
As long as they're funny.
I have a very good friend ofmine who's been really
wonderful.
He was part of a standup comedyteam for many years.
He's been retired now.
But, when I was first startingout, he would come see my sets
and he would give me advicesometimes, performance notes or

(01:00:31):
hit this word harder or, waithere.
But one of the things he said tome was, you don't have to set up
your jokes.
You can just jump from joke tojoke.
But I think for me, that's hardto do and I think you hit on it.
It's because, I write scriptswhere you don't just drop things

(01:00:52):
in out of nowhere.
So the set that you saw.
The first joke, which is theTesla joke really doesn't
connect to anything, but I say.
Oh, I noticed something on myway over here tonight.
Okay.
And then all my next jokes haveto do with my age and in some
way or another.
And then and then I switch.

(01:01:15):
And the second half of the setis all about being a gay,
single, sober mom of two kids bydonor insemination.
But I do set that up.
I have a sentence that sets thatup so that I'm not suddenly
just, I was talking about my ageand now I'm talking about, stuff
that happened a long time ago.
My kids are 29 to 31.

(01:01:36):
So I do try to set it up.
I notice a lot of the youngercomics will often say to me, oh
my God, your writing is so good.
And sometimes they don't knowwhat my background is and I feel
like I'm cheating.
Because Yeah, because I have 40some odd years experience as a

(01:01:57):
writer.
Some of them are really funnyand great performers.
They're not really writers,they're just learning that part
of it.
Now open mic nights can betough.
Are you doing open mic nights?
I do some open mic nights, andhere's what I learned.
Because standup comedy iscertainly a business that's

(01:02:21):
adjacent.
To, movies and tv, but it is itsown business.
And so I had to learn, it's likethe first, when I went to work
on Mad Men before I went to workI took someone out to lunch
who'd done a ton of tv, and Iwas like, now what's a
showrunner?
Am I the showrunner?

(01:02:41):
And she's no, you were not theshowrunner.
I was like, what am I, what amwhat is a writer's room?
So standup comedy was the samething.
I always thought my idea of openmics was that you went to,
people showed up at theseevenings.
There was an audience who werethere to see, whoever showed up.

(01:03:04):
And you would sign up and thenyou would get up and you would
do, five minutes or whatever forthat audience.
And that's how you would workstuff out, because.
When you first write a joke,it's very hard to tell what's
gonna work, what's not gonnawork.
You might find it funny, maybenobody else finds it funny or it
needs an adjustment, but youdon't know till you get it in

(01:03:25):
front of people.
It actually turns out most openmics are not that, at least in
LA they're not most open mics.
The audience is the other peoplewho want to get up at the open
mic.
Yes, they are.

(01:03:45):
Other comics.
They are not necessarily aparticularly good audience.
No, they are not.
I have done open mics where Idid some stuff that I had done
at real shows and itconsistently killed and it
didn't get even a chuckle.

(01:04:07):
So IFI find them not, they'regood for if you wanna time stuff
out or just get comfortablesaying it in front of people
they're not that helpful, I findin terms of figuring out what's
gonna work and what's not gonnawork.

(01:04:27):
What I do instead now is whenI'm doing a smaller show, I will
sandwich in some new stuff inbetween stuff I know is gonna
work.
So that way you don't wanna do awhole show of new stuff because
if none of it works you have notentertained people.

(01:04:50):
But if you sandwich it in, it'sfine.
E every single joke is not gonnabe a banger, the other open
mics, and I haven't done these,but the big comedy stores, so
like the Comedy Store or theImprov, they have open mics, but
those aren't really open mics.
They're curated.
So once a week you can go standin a line there forever and give

(01:05:17):
them your name and thenallegedly it's done by lottery
or who gets there first.
But I don't know if that, I'veheard they pick the people they
know.
I don't know.
I have no idea because so farI'm not willing to go stand in
the line for an hour for achance to maybe get up.
There is a real audience.

(01:05:38):
What's good about those is oftenthe booker from the show, from
those places will see those openmics and, you might get booked.
But I, so far I haven't donethat.
I think you came up with a goodsolution.
When you're doing a show likethat, I saw, get some new

(01:05:58):
material in there.
Yeah.
I'm working on a set right now.
I'm gonna do a 10 minute set.
It's actually a fundraiser forSenator Adam Schiff, who is one
of our two senators from thestate of California.
Yes.
So he's doing a fundraiser andit's a very big deal for me
because the closer is SarahSilverman.

(01:06:20):
I'm gonna be the opener.
And that's a big thing.
So I'm gonna do 10 minutes, soI'm trying to get, make sure I
have the best 10 minutes I can.
So the show that you saw was metrying out some stuff to see,
this I know is gonna be in, thisis questionable.
This is new.
Let me see how it goes.

(01:06:41):
So I knew right away there's onenew thing that did great.
I'll keep in.
There was one old joke I broughtback.
It did.
Okay, I'll take it out.
And there's one, I'm still onthe fence, but I'm, I'm gonna do
a show before that other showand I'll do that again and see,
see how it goes.

(01:07:02):
Patricia, that is so exciting.
I, would love a follow up.
Just call me and tell me howthat evening went.
That sounds really exciting.
I'm very excited about it.
are you seeing anybody out therethat you're really excited
about?
Do you have any comics thatyou've liked over the years?
It's funny, I'm not like a bigstandup comedy fan.

(01:07:24):
I find a lot of the specials.
I start watching them and I loseinterest.
But I do listen in the car alot.
There's, a number of standupcomedy stations Yes.
Series has.
That's when I listen to standup.
Yeah.
There's a whole bunch of'em.
And I switched back and forth.
Just trying to hear what otherpeople are doing.

(01:07:46):
You know what I think is funnyand um, the problem with it is a
lot of times, I don't know whoit was.
I would say who do I reallylike?
I did a show one night withAtsuko Otsuka.
Oh, she has the funny haircut.
Yes.
She's funny.
And I seeing her live I foundher really funny.

(01:08:11):
The person who I would sayalmost consistently can make me
laugh is Ricky Vets.
Ricky D's piece on how dogs gottheir jobs is truly, I could
watch that over and over it.
It's so funny.

(01:08:33):
You just said his name and itmade me smile.
Yeah.
I just find him very funny.
I haven't seen her in a longtime.
I might still love her, butEarly Margaret show, like her
first two specials Yes.
I thought were really funny.
Is it true that you pretended towrite articles for your high

(01:08:54):
school paper and you convincedcelebrities to grant you
interviews?
Yes.
Who did you get and how did youobtain that kind of contact
information before the internet?
Let me think.
So some of these people,nobody's gonna know who they are
anymore, but, okay.
Dionne Warwick goddess RobertGolet Mel Brooks and Ann

(01:09:18):
Bancroft.
Oh, wait, hold the phone.
Mel Brooks and Ann Bancroft.
Yeah.
They were together.
Oh, of course.
Yes.
But wow, I'm sorry, just thatjust takes my breath away and
wait, this one's the best.
I didn't, she didn't do theinterview, but I did get a
signed photograph and she didopen the door to her own hotel

(01:09:41):
room.
Joan Crawford?
She opened the door, I knockedon her hotel room door and it
was opened and it was, there wasJoan Crawford.
And she told me she didn't havethe time, but if I gave her my
name and address, she would sendme a signed eight by 10, which I
didn't think she would.
But a couple weeks later, I gotan envelope that had the Pepsi

(01:10:04):
logo, because at that time shewas married to the CEO of
PepsiCo.
It was a signed eight by 10 ofJoan Crawford.
Did you, do you still have theeight by 10 of Joan?
I do.
You know that scene in MommyDarris where She's schooling the
Pepsi board Brilliant.

(01:10:24):
Yes.
Yeah.
Patricia Resnick.
I so appreciate all the timethat you are spending with us
and your stories.
I'm gonna have a hard timeediting this because I have been
laughing over you this entiretime.
Oh, thank you.
Now, what is the best piece ofwriting advice you ever

(01:10:48):
received?
That I ever received.
I would say it was two things.
One was fairly late in my careerand it was Matt Weiner.
And it wasn't specificallyadvice to me, but it was just
something that he often said inthe room.
So very often when he was calledout for a while, we would

(01:11:11):
continue to work on, whateverepisode we were on, whatever we
were trying to figure out.
And we would put a lot of timeand a lot of very good brains
into it, and a lot of talentedwriters.
And we would come up with thebest thing we could.
And then he would come in andhe'd say, okay, what do you got?
Walk me through it.
And he would be walked throughit and often he would say, yeah

(01:11:33):
that's good.
Do better.
And what that taught me was thatsometimes I think we think that
our first idea whether it's awhole idea or how to fix
something or how to do somethingis the best idea.
It probably isn't.

(01:11:55):
Because we're probably accessingit from everything else we've
ever seen, and it's probably notfresh.
So that I learned a lot fromthat.
The thing that I learned, oh,maybe, I don't know, eight to 10
years into my career, that savedme a lot of arguments and

(01:12:17):
trouble was and now it's prettyknown, but I hadn't heard of it
then, which is, look for thenote behind the note.
So if you are a writer, you aregoing to get a lot of notes.
You're going to get notes fromstudio execs, producers, actors,

(01:12:38):
directors.
Everybody's gonna have, someidea of how they think you can
make your thing better or fixsomething.
And often what people do isthey'll tell you what they think
is wrong, and then they'll giveyou an example of how they think
you should Change it.
Often the example is reallystupid or does it work?

(01:12:59):
Because they're not seeing is,oh, if you do that, you're now
pulling on a thread up at themiddle that's gonna unravel at
the end.
However, what, when I was young,what would happen is if the
example they gave you was reallydumb, I would dismiss the note.
Just because the example isn'tgood doesn't mean the note's not
good or Right.
and the other thing is somethingI just learned over the years,

(01:13:22):
which is do not fall in lovewith your first draft.
I always thought, oh no, my bestdrafts the first, the first be
it probably isn't.
Yes.
So those are the three pieces ofadvice that I think help me the
most.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
Absolutely.
Um, Would you like to share yoursocial media handles or where

(01:13:42):
you're gonna perform next?
Yeah, absolutely.
On Instagram, it's PatriciaResnick, R-E-S-N-I-C-K.
Please follow me.
I will always put what my nextshow is where it is, and
hopefully a link to tickets.
That's the best place to go.
Great, Patricia, thank you somuch.

(01:14:04):
I had such a great time talkingwith you.
And will you come back?
A hundred percent.
This was terrific.
I really enjoyed it.
And that's a wrap for theWriter's Hangout.
Thanks so much for listening.
If you enjoyed the show, pleasetake a moment to leave us a
review on Apple Podcasts.
Your positive feedback will helpus keep the show going so we can

(01:14:25):
continue bringing you morefuture episodes.
Remember, keep writing.
The world needs your stories.
The Writers Hangout is sponsoredby the Page International
Screenwriting Awards, withexecutive producer Kristen
Overn, producer Sandy Adamides,and myself, Terry Sampson.
And our music is composed byEthan Stoller.